#But thats reserved

[toonaviv]

jumpscare grip

[reading-tlt-help-me]

finally has gotten around to finish gtn act i and dude Harrow is 17.. Gideon keeps describing this satan incarnate super duper evil person then line drops something like she looks young and frail and shes actually short and emo and she teared up when she left her tomb of a planet what a loser

AND YOU WANT ME TO HATE HER????

THIS IS MY FIRST READ PLZ INTERACT WITH NO SPOILERS

[feketeribizli]

my son has been birthed 😁✌️ had to put a hungarian on the grid at last, you may call him marci

[starry-bi-sky]

Okay so this is almost a direct copy-paste of my earlier reblog but only the Xin Yuan parts, because its long enough to be its own post and i want to share it! It deserves it's own post <3 typical starry stuff to write a 2k word long reblog, unfortunately.

I say almost because I went through to proof read and ended up adding more stuff.

I've been cooking on this idea for the last two days since I saw the Xin Mo!Shen Yuan post but??? I can't find anything on Xin Mo's backstory or how it came to be -- which means that's free fucking plot right there baby. That's a sandbox and im making LIFE SIZED CASTLES. I'm so excited.

The idea of Shen Yuan transmigrating centuries before the events of PIDW as Xin Mo -- but when he wakes up, he's not the sword. He wakes up in the body of a young boy named Xin Yuan. Now it makes sense for this boy to be a demon, but the drama, the intrigue, the spice of Xin Yuan being a human child.

SY wakes up as a boy below the age of ten, and the System tells him where he is, and SY is excited to meet his favorite protagonist -- only to gradually realize that he's like, a thousand years or so before the events of the novel. The rant he gives the system is legendary.

Bc what's the point of getting dropped into PIDW if he's never going to meet his favorite character??? This is a scam! BUT he settles into his new life, he's like, some orphan street rat or some other tragic airplane-esq backstory.

The system gives Shen Yuan his first mandatory quest: become a righteous cultivator. Which was like, kinda his plan/hopes anyways, except! There's like?? No official cultivator sects anywhere? The Cang Qiong Mountain Sect hasn't even been established yet, and there are pockets of cultivators running around, maybe some groups or schools popping up and then sinking back down, but nothing's really taken root!

If he asks someone how to become a cultivator, there's no straight answer. No "oh you can go to X to do that". He's pissed! How can he become a cultivator if there aren't any schools around to teach him? Deus ex machina, that's how.

Out of sheer luck, SY manages to help save a rogue cultivator, and promptly gets adopted by said rogue cultivator, who gives SY the name 'Xin Yuan'. He is ecstatic. And you know what? It's actually pretty fun!

He's getting to travel the world of PIDW in its early stages, and gets to see the building blocks for the eventual main story. He's discovering all this local flora and fauna that are foreign to his old world and unmentioned in the book, and he's learning cultivation! Granted, its unsafe, newly(ish) discovered cultivation, but it counts!

Wistfully, he thinks about perhaps he'll do something grand and get his name carved into legend. Something that would eventually help the protagonist later down the line in his quest for revenge.

The system remains silent to his thoughts.

But Xin Yuan doesn't take much stock in that daydream anyways. It's nothing more than fantasy to him; wish-fulfillment. He does discover however, that he is positively brimming with spiritual energy. Overwhelmingly so.

It's both a blessing and a curse, as it puts a strain on his meridians if he's not careful, and leaves him prone to qi deviations for the exact same reasons. He already has a heart demon or two from a few traumatic experiences in the past.

(bc hey! angst a day keeps the writer sadism at bay, and all that)

I'll say he's about... eight when he gets picked up by the rogue cultivator, who I'm calling Lin Kai bc he deserves a name. They travel around PIDW up until Xin Yuan is twelve, where he goes through a traumatic experience that results in a heart demon.

It's after that that Lin Kai decides to put a stop to his wandering, and find a place to settle down to raise Xin Yuan in. Coincidentally! They settle down in a nice mountain region that's thriving with spiritual energy. The mountains at the time were called something different, but they will be eventually known as the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect

Coincidentally, the mountain Lin Kai and Xin Yuan end up on is Qing Jing Peak. XY does not realize that the mountain he's on is Qing Jing. The System does not tell him. But he likes it there, more than he was expecting. And as much as he's traveled around, he really does enjoy being in one place.

He has a tendency to go down the mountain and help the village setting up down there, and when he's a teenager he starts venturing out more and more.

Xin Yuan forgets sometimes that he's in a novel, especially after settling down on Qing Jing peak. The system becomes remarkably quiet since there's no quests for him to do and not a ton of opportunities to get B-Points. He cultivates with Lin Kai, helps tend to the garden they're growing, goes down to the village to play with the other kids.

There's one boy he's best friends with, a boy whose not all that good with words, named Liu Zhihao. He's got potential for cultivation though, so Xin Yuan drags him up the mountain when he can so that Liu Zhihao can sit in on lessons with Lin Kai. He drags him all over the forest at the foot of the mountain to go look at bugs and animals.

(One time, when they're fourteen and Liu Zhihao has been learning cultivation for a few years now, Xin Yuan drags him out of bed late one night to go look at the stars. Xin Yuan tells Liu Zhihao about ascension -- something that still feels like a far off dream to many in this time -- that night, while they're sitting on the wet grass.)

("We should ascend together." Xin Yuan tells Liu Zhihao, jade eyes gleaming. Never let it be said that Xin Yuan doesn't love deeply, no matter what kind of love it is. He was always so lonely as Shen Yuan, Liu Zhihao is his best friend. "We'll become immortals, and then we won't ascend until the other is able to.")

(Liu Zhihao stares at him silently, his face unreadable. Then, quietly, he asks; "Promise?")

("Promise.")

When he starts adventuring outwards, further away from the mountain and the village, Liu Zhihao sticks to him like rice. Not that Xin Yuan's complaining, that's his best friend after all, and Liu Zhihao has become a formidable cultivator. He deserves to show off his skills.

He starts making something of a name for himself by the time he's, like, 18 -- although that name is in its baby steps, along with Liu Zhihao. They're slowly growing renown.

Perhaps XY uses his knowledge of PIDW and cultivation in general to help make advancements in the cultivation field. Although the system prevents him from sharing too much, it doesn't mean he can't practice it himself. Perhaps he's one of the first cultivators to develop a golden core. One of the first known immortal cultivators. One of the first to have a spirit sword.

(Although I don't know the logistics of any of this since my knowledge on xanxia/cultivation stuff in general is all still pretty new and google wasn't all that helpful lol.)

Either way, its my excuse to eventually make Xin Yuan come across as ethereal to other people. Peerless beauty SY for the win. Hs wifebeam is too strong, Xin Yuan has a line of suitors following after him and he's completely unaware of it. The rest of history is not.

Demon realm stuff has been stirring up since Xin Yuan was a kid, but at the time it was rare and in the beginning stages. Its been steadily ramping up and the system is sending him on more and more treacherous quests -- some of them mandatory, some optional. SY doesn't often take the optional ones unless it comes with a sufficient B-point reward.

for all intents and purposes though, he's a wandering rogue cultivator with Liu Zhihao, going from place to place to either help a town or village, or to discover more creatures or artifacts (although there aren't that many). Just all around living his life. He participates in a few major quest lines that are sure to get him mentioned in legend, even if it's a background character way.

(Unbeknownst to him, rather than being a side character in these legends, he's named directly. You can't become one of the first immortal cultivators and NOT get name dropped for clout.)

He has a spirit sword named Shā Mó, (杀 shā - to kill/weaken/counteract/reduce) (魔 mó - evil spirit, demon, possession). He routinely goes back to QJP to see Lin Kai, or to rest when traveling has worn down on him and he wants nothing more than to sleep somewhere he knows he'll be safe in. It becomes more frequent as Xin Yuan becomes more famous. Liu Zhihao often comes with him.

it all comes to a head though when the rifts between the demonic realm and the human realm become too great, and the balance between both realms becomes unstable. A demonic emperor's influence, wanting to merge the two realms so he could conquer both to satiate his own greed.

Typical evil king stuff. This comes to a climatic head in a great battle between every cultivator available and the demon emperor's army. Xin Yuan was one of the many who helped lead the charge.

In the end, it was Xin Yuan who ends up defeating the demonic emperor, but the rift that the emperor used to cross between worlds is destabilizing as well. Except instead of trying to close, it's getting bigger and bigger, threatening to swallow the heavens and earth and demonic realm whole.

You know how Yue Qingyuan's soul is bonded to his sword due to a qi deviation? Let's take it a step further >:)

Xin Yuan uses himself and Shā Mó to close the rift. However, it takes all of his spiritual energy to do so, as well as him filtering the demonic qi into his body to redirect it back to the demon realm.

In the end, Xin Yuan and his beloved sword Shā Mó fuse. Xin Yuan's soul becomes trapped in the sword. His physical body is unable to handle the immense amount of power it takes to close the rift, and is destroyed. He is immortalized in legend by his grieving cultivators.

(Liu Zhihao ends up ascending alone. He ascends with the hope that one day he'll see Xin Yuan again, even if it's in the face of someone else. Lin Kai does not ascend, too weighed down by the grief of losing his son.)

Xin Yuan, now Xin Mo, falls into a stasis. He's very confused and disorientated when he regains 'consciousness'. The system has been silent for most of his life, only popping up to give him mandatory quests, hints, points, or to answer any questions.

But once he wakes up, it cheerfully pops up again, congratulating him on completing the origin story of Xin Mo. SY freaks the fuck out. he'd shake the system screen if he could, but he doesn't have arms. or legs. or eyes for that matter.

He can sense his surroundings, but its all like imprints to him. He can sense the energies, but he can't see anything. It's all very disorientating and horrifying after years of being human. Like a sensory deprivation chamber.

The closing of the rift and the cycling demonic qi tainted both Sha Mo and Xin Yuan irreparably, and it did some kind of damage that resulted in SY needing to feed in order to use the spiritual powers. Kinda like how Xuan Su uses YQY's life force for it's spiritual energy, but instead of feeding on his own lifeforce, Xin Mo feeds on others.

The rest is history. Xin Mo is originally tied to the story of Xin Yuan -- believed to be all that remained of the man after he sacrificed himself to keep the realms separate. It's believed that the force of the realms closing permanently infused Sha Mo with demonic energy, turning it into Xin Mo.

But, like many stories do when faced against the tide of time, things get lost; chipped off; changed. Xin Mo is steadily separated from Xin Yuan, especially once it becomes clear how parasitic the sword really is, until they are all but separate entities themselves and the origin of Xin Mo's creation all but forgotten.

The years blur together when Xin Mo is not being wielded, and at first Xin Yuan was agonized by the fact that he stole the lives of all his wielders. He knows it's only a novel, but his decades spent in this life have softened him, and he's grown attached to the world around him.

But time erodes the mind like water erodes stone, and he becomes numb to it, then eventually anticipating of it. He forces himself to remember what he knows of PIDW's plot, and kinda fixates back on his old obsession on Luo Binghe. But while PIDW stays in his mind, his memories as Xin Yuan fall to the wayside.

Not forgotten, per se, but... tucked away. The system prevents him from forgetting fully.

Xin Mo isn't fully a demonic sword either i think, but instead harbors an ugly cocktail of both spiritual and demonic qi. Special circumstances and all that. Everyone just assumes he's a fully demonic sword because that's usually at the forefront, his spiritual qi weakened from the initial fusion and from years of not being fed spiritual qi. It's part of the reason his wielders always end up destroyed by him, other than the whole, yk, 'overwhelming qi' thing.

Nobody would recognize Xin Mo's human form as Xin Yuan other than some truly ancient demons. Of which Meng Mo might. But even that's iffy because there's a lack of surviving paintings of Xin Yuan, but also because of XM's demonic appearance and supposed lack of connection to XY.

Xin Mo has never spoken to his wielders before, not in the same way he does Luo Binghe. He tells Luo Binghe this, and he also tells Luo Binghe down the line that he is both spiritual and demonic -- something he also never told his wielders because there was no point to it.

okay okay i've got to end it here because its already gotten ridiculously long -- of which im both apologetic and unapologetic for -- but i DO think the Shang Qinghua and Shen Yuan meeting (and reveal) would be fucking hilarious. Especially if SY has learned how to pop between sword form and human form by then -- although i guess it doesnt matter either way because SQH's reaction is still the same.

And that reaction is internally screaming and going "hey what the FUCK?? WHY DOES XIN MO HAVE A HUMAN FORM??? WHAT IS THIS??? SYSTEM??? EXPLAIN???"

meanwhile from his place on the sword hilt xin mo is squinting at Shang Qinghua in bewilderment and going "aren't you supposed to be dead" but doesn't pay too much mind to it because its not like its going to change anything.

...up until he catches shang qinghua going "WTF" silently from his little corner while all eyes are off him. One moment SQH is standing beside his king, and the next he's been tackled to the ground by one wild-eyed, human-shaped Xin Mo.

everyone, including SQH, thinks Xin Mo is going to kill him. It is a surprise to everyone when he does not, and instead dissolves into deranged, uncontrollable laughter after spitting out some phrase in some ancient tongue and watching SQH's eyes grow wide in recognition.

[tigerlilysoda]

they are the EXACT same person and no i will not be taking criticism

[uffi29]

IF YOU ARE SOMEONE THAT WRITES JAYA FICS FROM NYA'S POV JUST KNOW THAT I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE-

[creekfiend]

fascinating to me that none of the people claiming that they Lack A Real Culture seem to be able to discern that all of the stuff that they are positing as like more authentic or whatever just seems that way to THEM because they don't see it as the default in their day-to-day lives. like it is really basic exotification? it's just aimed at an Imagined European Past which is not a good look if you're Not trying to be a fascist

we know what culture is? it's a lot of stuff. it's language and food and entertainment and music and art and performance and all kinds of things and most of all it's doing those things with other people so maybe go take a class at your local rec center and learn to cook something. perhaps attend a sport match of your choice. I don't know. just stop consulting your DNA about it

[sioneve]

Today marks the 10th anniversary of Nicomaki duet song "ずるいよMagnetic today" release! 🩷❤️

At this point I treat the song’s release date like nicomaki couple anniversary 💀 i mean!! a duet song!! WITH VERY PERSONALIZED LYRICS ABOUT THEM TOO….. pls let me have a long life so i can make it every year 😇🙏

the last time i made anniversary art for zurui yo magnetic today was in 2019! It’s getting the biggest number i’ve ever posted on tumblr lol (but that is definitely cuz of the wild almost-to-kiss-tension-pose lol)

enjoy the meal for every nkmk shipper if you’re still breathing?? nicomaki will be forever my top, it surpasses all my ships across the universe. I love you both my dumbass magnet 🩷❤️

imagine applying physics reference to your art

process (lots of skipped parts i forgot to save)

[crimeronan]

the VAST MAJORITY of teenage girls are actually very nice and doing their best and even when they ARE mean, it's typically because of the stress of going through an incredibly transformational developmental period while having 6833487 responsibilities and no basic human rights. like now that i'm nearing 30 i have a great deal more love and understanding about this than i did as a kid, you will Never catch me dragging/demonizing teen girls for buying into harmful tiktok and instagram trends or whatever. They Are Doing Their Best .

with that said.

it WAS pretty funny going thru adolescence in the late aughts / early 10s when the most mainstream teen music was demi lovato's "who says i can't wear my converse with my dress" stuff.

because EVERY girl who was ever mean to me LOVED that "i'm a brave trendsetting individual who can Be Myself even if other people Don't Understand Me" pop music....

....while also being like "oh, that girl is CREEPY. don't you know she listens to METAL. and is UGLY. and doesn't TRY TO LOOK PRETTY. and is WEIRD. and UGLY. and SHE LISTENS TO METAL...."

[k-wame]

ROBERT DE NIRO & HARVEY KEITEL Mean Streets (1973) · dir. Martin Scorsese

[i-will-just-nyom-bi]

Imagine

Charlie and her gang figured out how to send people to heaven and run the hotel for sinners who want redemption for already a few years. Some of the founders went to heaven, some stayed. Demons decide first whether they want redemption or not and after the hotel decides. Let's be honest, redemption can take years.

Charlie is the head of the hotel, along with Alastor (Ya really think he wants redemption? Also the post isn't about him so it doesn't matter whether he has some great plan right now or nah) and, of course, her beloved Vaggie.

Now, Vaggie is a fallen Angel, and after all Heaven is ready to take her back (most of the Executors or whoever they are got sent to hell, some stayed in Heaven but it doesn't matter. She did the right thing and her place is in Heaven) , except she doesn't want to go back.

She pulled the Princess of Hell, y'all . So,2 scenarios take place in my head.

1. Chaggie working with some problematic clients and Vaggie gets killed. After a week she returns and while greeted and scolded by Charlie explains "They didn't let me outta there. And you know I need my pass so I can't do anything serious. I ended up calling the Seraphims a slur so that - don't look at me like that! They wouldn't let me out! Anyway, for the next trip to Heaven, ask Angel or Husk. I ... Can't go there for about 5 years."

2. Chaggie chatting. Suddenly the air around Vaggie glows (I know this isn't how this works but Vaggie's an angel and I just need you to picture it). Vaggie mutters "shit" under her breath and turns to Charlie "Hold up a second my dear I will be back" *glass shatter* *screaming* *Vaggie's back covered with blood* "Oke babe I'm set for about half a year now- oh don't worry it wasn't our client but the drug seller that harassed Angel and us."

Just. Vaggie does bad things to stay in Hell with Charlie, and most of them are small to not anger her girlfriend.

[skunkes]

talon hates pet names but he does secretly want one, honestly, to feel more like a part of the group. (i wanted to make a comic about this but it just read like more of the overdone writing i dislike). The issue is. Well he doesnt take well to compliments or praise in general, due to past negative experiences. Likes being called handsome in any context so it has to be used sparingly because it makes him puff up so cutely.

All of al's usual go to's are too cutesy for him which also bothers Talon greatly, so we have to think outside the box. Honestly being called a little tick would be the best one, fun and fitting but he actually also has negative experiences with that one specifically. Then it just gets into throwing anything out there territory, which is entertaining in itself. My little leech, viper, pesky little louse, mosquito, kissing bug (<- a good contender actually.) Bat is too obvious but maybe al would use it as a placeholder... It's best when they come up organically, but al's been feeling the pressure to cement a good one.

[ao3fujoshevik]

this scene genuinely changed me.. i think about it so often.

[crypt-galleria]

Emmrich and his Dwarf gf

[cainez]

Consider:

Caine trying a more active approach to helping with Zooble's issues by creating an adventure where the humans get to change their appearances; like character creation basically. Zooble spends a LONG time in there but finally emerges in a form that they're actually happy with and has a moment of total euphoria!

And then the rest of the gang finishes up the adventure's main plot, so they have to leave, and as soon as Zooble is back inside the circus they reverse to their usual mismatch collection of parts. And it's about as devastating to them as you can imagine.

Caine was so proud of himself for making them happy, and is now confused and worried as he watches them break down on the floor sobbing. Tries to ask what's wrong, didn't they enjoy it?? What did he mess up?? He can do it again, he can do it better, he just needs them to be happy, to be the thing that makes them happy-

Zooble was starting to abstract but snaps back to normal consciousness when the digital world begins to shudder and break apart

[heyitsphoenixx]

its starting to sink in that im actually going to nyc for the first time this month to see d20 live and im trying not to let it sink in so the anxiety doesn't hit too lol