Lady of the Land @Lady@cat.family

@aescling okay, to raise it a little, it's better than neoliberal technocracy

@aescling i mean it's better than fascism

@coriander « The neighbor brought a suit against Wang, alleging that Yingning was a demon spirit. The county magistrate, who thought of Wang as an admirable man of talent and knew he was a scholar of sincere and honest intentions, determined that the old neighbor was making a false accusation, and was about to have him beaten as punishment. Wang interceded to have the sentence dropped, so the matter was cleared up and the neighbor released. »

@coriander if i remember correctly the neighbours try to sue the girl but the presiding official is just like, “no”

@coriander ANYWAY i think fucking a soggy knot because you thought it was the beautiful girl next door is a hell of a way to go out

@coriander but yeah chinese fiction (and like the language itself tbh) is both incredibly blunt and absolutely replete with subtext and i love both of these things

it does take some getting used to though; the first time i read a chinese ghost story i was just like “……that's it??” and it took reading quite a few of them before i started to Understand

@coriander this is also a thing in chinese fiction more generally, like the beginning of Journey to the West has this Bit where Sun Wukong goes around and messes up everyone's shit and the narrative just explains in the driest possible matter how whatever aggrieved party then sent a formal petition of complaint to the Emperor of Heaven before immediately dropping that thread and moving on to the next shenanigan

and anyway this is hilarious, to me

@coriander it's from Strange Tales from Liaozhai, a chinese zhiguai/chianqi collection by pu songling

zhiguai developed out of an earlier historical tradition and generally purported to be records of true events despite being ghost stories. the focus is supposedly on describing exactly what occurred for posterity rather than weaving an entertaining narrative. however on account of being stories of the strange, what happens is often itself absurd or entertaining and frequently quite funny. this contrast between the interesting subjectmatter and the dry prose form is part of their charm, imo

@coriander https://glitch.cat.family/@Lady/108775069053224507

@coriander remember that time that guy fucked a rotten log and then got his dick stung by a scorpion and then died

@coriander this fic was like "link furtively left camp" and i was just like dude he's alone why but then again trees are pretty cool so

@coriander no, you're alone