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Episode 17 and 18 of DWGL are up, but I haven't had time to watch them yet. I think I'll save them until this weekend, so I'll be able to give them my full attention. :)

Since I haven't had time to keep up, I've been trying to avoid the discussions on FFA, but I stumbled across bits of it today* anyway.

Apparently there is a manhua adaptation of this as well. Hmm! It has not been translated, but I might give it a look anyway. At least it might give more possibilities for iconing. :D Taking screencaps is a pain in the ass; working from stills is easier. At least, sometimes.

The nonny who has been writing ficlets might end up posting their little ficlets on Ao3. :D I hope they will, because I want to be able to find them easily again. And it seems perhaps they might be thinking of nomming it for Yuletide. That would be nice.

I never posted my own DWGL stuff to Ao3 because I wasn't sure how the fandom title should be formatted. Someone suggested doing it like "帝王攻略 | Dìwáng Gōnglüè (animation)", which works well enough (though I'd probably refer to the medium as "Animated series" or something more formal like that). I guess once somebody uploads something, I'll be able to bookmark the tag so that I'll be able to get to it easily while logged in. And maybe I'll upload my own stuff too, though I'll probably shove it in the anon collection because I'm shy. If people see that there's interest, then maybe other people will write too, right?

As it turns out, apparently "The Emperor's Strategy" is not an official English title for this series. I'd been using it because I saw other people call it by that title, so this is a surprise. Well, I guess I'll be leaving that bit out when tossing in exchange noms, then. Previously I had been tacking it onto the end, but if it's unofficial, well... you know.

Okay, to balance out earlier angst, here are some recent nice things.

☆ Received a comment on an old fic today. It started out "JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL" and just kept on being enthusiastic from there. :D It's so nice to get such a response. <3 Especially since this one was for a very, very rare pairing.

☆ More Di Wang Gong Lüe ficlets! The nonny who's been writing them has been so good to us. They posted this one today, with some lovely Chu Yuan whump (oh yes!). And then there was this spicy little thing last week. Absolutely lovely. I hope this person will change their mind and eventually archive them somewhere that's easier to reach, but for now I'll just keep linking their work whenever I find it. (Speaking of DWGL, episode 16 is out! But I haven't had time to watch it yet.)

☆ Hetalia ficlet rec: Sacred Earth and Divine Land is a China-centric drabble series by Orita. I really like these bite-sized snips so far. :) These were written for the Writers Discord drabble game, so I suppose more will be added after next session.

☆ The final version of the art that I commissioned last week came in and it is so gorgeous. <3 <3 The artist hasn't put it on their tumblr yet (I'm assuming they shoved it in queue), but after it's posted, I'll definitely link it here. I was very nervous, because I'm not personally acquainted with this person, and I was asking them to draw a very rare pairing. But it went so well and they're so friendly and they said that if I'm interested at a later date they'd be happy to draw for me again when they next have slots available - and I just feel really happy about everything related to this. :) <3

☆ Passenger + Bluegrass = ??? :D The radio was playing this awesome bluegrass cover of "Let Her Go", performed by The Travelin' McCourys, and ahhh I love it! This isn't the first time I've heard something by them on CKUA and loved it, so it looks like I'll have to check out their album some time soon. :)

☆ The smoke isn't as bad today as it has been recently, so I think I'll be able to go for a walk tonight. I've been feeling very restless, so it's a relief!

Oh boy. So, earlier, I didn't get around to writing commentary on episode 14 of Di Wang Gong Lüe; and now episode 15 is out too, so this will be a double entry.

Ep 14 thoughts follow. You can view the episode here.
( Episode 14 commentary )

And episode 15 thoughts follow below. You can view the episode here.
( Episode 15 commentary )

Right! As mentioned previously, ep 13 of Di Wang Gong Lüe is up here. :D

( Thoughts under the cut )

So! Episode 11 of Di Wang Gong Lüe is available thanks to subtitle-anon: here.

( Braindump and liveblogging )

Aaaand episode 09 subs for Di Wang Gong Lüe have been posted by Subtitle Nonny over here. :D

These ep commentaries are getting a bit tl;dr. But, I suppose, if I ever write fic for this canon, they might come to some use.

( Commentary and liveblogging )

So, episode 07 of Di Wang Gong Lüe is up. :)

( Braindump/liveblogging )

Random braindump, just because~

( Continued )

And while I was scribbling the above, I saw that Subtitle Nonny posted episode 05. :D Voila.

( Episode 05 thoughts )

So, recently I've been following Di Wang Gong Lüe. This is a Chinese series that came on my radar when an anon mentioned it last month* - actually, I'll just copy the way they describe it, because they sum it up well:

Di Wang Gong Lüe/帝王攻略, a Chinese animated series adapting the BL web novel with the same name, has started airing.
Features:
- Princes who were childhood friends, held hands, and planted a symbolic plum tree together.
- A complicated relationship between these two former princes (one of whom is now the Emperor and the other the King of Xi Nan) that will doubtlessly be expanded upon as the series goes along.
- Political intrigue! A murder in the Imperial Capital!
- Wuxia! Martial arts and ninjas!

They had me at "childhood friends", "complicated relationship", and "wuxia", haha.

So, I've been enjoying this, though following it is excruciating because the episodes are so short and only three have been subtitled so far! (And I think only four are currently released, total?) Ordinarily, I wait until the whole thing is out, and then watch it in one go. But I kept seeing it mentioned in threads on FFA, so I decided to give it a try, and then continued. I'm very grateful for subtitling-nonny; it's very kind of them to do this.

The novel hasn't been fantranslated yet (much to my disappointment) though pucari has done the synopsis* and first two chapters**. (Thank you!) That aside, the novel is being worked on by this group and they will hopefully post it... soon? Eventually? Currently no estimate (alas).

As for the anime, the episodes that have been subtitled can be found here: 1, 2, 3.

Anyway, I'm planning to keep my eye on this series for the next little while. :)

Brief thoughts under the cut-
( Continued )