Space mermaids? As in: alien mermaids that live in the vacuum of space and swim between the stars? A setting that uses the analogy of deep space as the open ocean but keeps all the sea monsters? DO WANT!!
Luring astronauts into black holes with a song that carries across the void where no one can hear you scream
Not audible song, though—maybe they sing in frequencies that ship’s sensors pick up—as distress beacons, as spaceports, as fleets. They would have to be huge, to travel between stars, massive space-black bodes with biolumescent patterns, photosynthesizing pure starlight into fuel, too enormous and frail to hold up in the atmosphere of a world. Fins that catch solar radiation instead of water, schools of them slingshotting between stars. Eggs laid in the tails of comets that warm and hatch as they rocket around suns. Voices that are heard in the slow radio pulses of quasars; language of half-light. Homes in the shelters of nebulae, like clownfish and sea anemone. They gather together star-stuff, shape solar systems like we build houses. Maybe, like certain breeds of lobsters, they never stop growing, so there are a few really ancient ones, star-eaters, curled up and sleeping in the warm glow of red suns, layered over with a crust of asteroids; so big passing ships assume they are young worlds, the slow thrum of their heartbeats like the pulsing of a binary system. Mermaids so large a fleet of ships is little more than krill; the universe is vast, and they live in the darkness between tiny islands of light.
China’s netizens are all in a twitter over the account of a carpenter who was commissioned to make a cinnabar red high-backed chair with the finials at the top to be “in the shape of dragons’ heads” (chéng lóngtóu 成龍頭). Unfortunately, he misinterpreted the directions to mean “[in the shape of] Jackie Chan’s head” (“Chénglóng tóu 成龍頭”).
LMAO ok so to elaborate on this absolute gem, notice how the characters provided for “in the shape of dragons’ heads” and “[in the shape of] Jackie Chan’s head” are identical? That wasn’t a typo.
The thing you need to understand about Chinese names is that they all have meaning. And I don’t mean that in the sense of “if you trace the etymology back through two languages it has its roots in a Hebrew phrase that means “God is my ____” that many Western names have. I mean that in the sense of “almost all of these words are still in regular use today and my parents very literally named me “pretty [and] wise” in Chinese.
(Sidenote: This is why we get annoyed at made-up ‘Chinese’ names that just pull two random vaguely Chinese-sounding syllables together. It is blindingly obvious when it’s not a real name).
成
(chéng) means “to become”, “to turn into”. 龍 (lóng)
is “dragon”. Thus, Jackie Chan’s Chinese stage name,
成龍 (Chénglóng), literally means “become dragon”. (頭 (tóu), of course, means “head”)
(Further sidenote: This is actually a bit of a pun/reference. Specifically, it is a reference to Bruce Lee, whose stage name was 小龍 (Xiǎolóng), or, “Little dragon”. So Jackie’s chosen stage name means both “become dragon”, and “become [like] Bruce Lee”)
The other thing you need to know about Chinese is that we don’t put spaces between terms in written text.
What all this means is that the way you’d write “[carve] into dragon heads” can be identical to the way you’d write “[carve] Jackie Chan’s head”, and literally the only difference would be where you pause when you vocalise it: before lóngtóu, or after chénglóng. XD
i think the chair turned out great
So my mom lived in China for a few years before I was born, along with her brothers. To make the Chinese versions of their names, they just went with whatever had the most similar sound. My mom’s name ended up meaning “beautiful plum blossom” (sorry I don’t know the characters), but her younger brother became"peaceful pig", which got him some interesting reactions when he introduced himself to people. As a pig farmer though, he found it absolutely hilarious.
1) I love that last story omg
2) I keep thinking about the damn chair, and the part that really gets me is, assuming this is real, the carpenter just… didn’t bother to even ask. Even though dragon heads on Chinese stuff is way, way more common a motif than Jackie Chan’s head. He was just like, oh, ok. You want this guy’s head on your furniture? Sure! No problem! Which makes me want to know: how often does he get requests involving celebrity heads? XD
You may be underestimating how popular Jackie Chan is in China. Having liver there my first reaction to this story was, yeah that’s a fair mistake, someone might want that
real power is going outside knowing you look ugly and also knowing that if you chose to perform femininity in accordance with patriarchal standards you could look attractive, but genuinely prefering to look ugly and not feeling bad about it. feels good feels organic
Me: shows up to work merely clean and well dressed like all the males there
Boss: you look tired
Me: 🖕
I was in a job orientation once and the instructor was talking about appropriate work attire and literally said “and women….please wear some makeup” and everyone laughed. I, who was not wearing makeup nor do I ever, raised my hand and asked “What’s the required amount of makeup for men?” And that was an amazingly wonderful awkward silence.
wupacing 