#OH MY GOD I'M SO SURPRISED

[omg-hellgirl]

Earlier in the decade, when Lennon was living with his mistress May Pang on East Fifty-second Street, the two rock icons often spent time together. "Mick would drop by our apartment," Pang said, "and the two of them would talk about who was the hot new guitar player, or they'd just sit on the floor eating Chinese food and watching television."

Now that John and Yoko were back together, Mick almost never saw his old friend.

Christopher P. Andersen, Mick: The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Jagger.

[fearandhatred]

in every lifetime

happy good omens season 2 anniversary everyone <3

full comic and more under the cut

here are the existing panels i have posted: panels 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, and 9 of panel 2. i probably won't post the rest because i did them really fast (like 4 of them today) so they're not great lmaooo just don't zoom in. honestly just so gobsmacked that i actually managed to finish this i need to go celebrate

and this drawing was inspired by the greatest comic ever created:

[a-memory-a-distant-echo]

ok, i'm being so brave and making the rec post that i told anon i would do like three days ago.

the obligatory caveats. this is not comprehensive—i haven't read all the fic in this fandom, and i've barely looked at anything not in english. my reading habits are pretty broad—i'll read almost any pairing, and am generally willing to suspend my disbelief to do so. i am not usually an au person, though this fandom is doing its absolute damndest to prove me wrong on that point.

also i have…more…fics that i felt i should rec somewhere, so probably this is rec post one, but ten felt like enough and also saying things in public where people can hear me is, it turns out, absolutely excruciating. please no one be mean to me about this post, especially if you wrote one of these fics, because if you are i will simply fill my pockets with rocks and take to the sea, ok? ok.

excited to find out what i manage to do that ruins the formatting, links the wrong fics and/or people, or otherwise breaks things in this post. please tell me if i've fucked up, or if your fic is on this list and you would rather i keep your name out of my mouth, or whatever.

first, a very special mention to the mlc reference guide by @yletylyf. this is such an incredibly comprehensive and generous resource. you want a timeline for this show that does an incredibly poor job of maintaining its own timeline? it's here. you want episode summaries? they're here. you want all the people and places? they're here. if you're writing fic, you want this guide, because it's so much easier and faster than scanning episodes or subs files to figure out the name of one specific guy or whatever. it also means that at least occasionally you work on the thing rather than accidentally rewatching the same scene five times, or hypothetically watching two to four episodes without even really thinking about what you're doing. the reference guide is the unsung mvp of fandom.

beyond porch and portal, difanghua, teen, by willowdream. this is the vampire au that i didn't know i wanted? the author posted it and their note was like 'i'm trying to be the change i want to see in the world,' and i was like ok sure, i'm not really convinced that the change i need is vampire aus, but i'll give it a go, and then i did and was like, oh shit, i'm eating fucking glass about this vampire au, i'm chewing on my own fucking fingers, i'm so fucking normal about this, i need another hundred thousand words of this and also seventeen more vampire aus in my inbox by monday morning. i literally finished reading it and scrolled right back to the top to read it again. i have no idea why this fic hits so hard, but it took me out at the knees. the voices are perfect. something about it is just impossibly compelling.

不安的遠離，再无歸期 | restless distance, without return, fang duobing/qiao wanmian, mature and teen, by @difeisheng. this is technically two fics but they're short and you should read both of them because they're such a brutal, perfect encapsulation of grief, and a really beautiful acknowledgement of the ways that fang duobing and qiao wanmian can be read as reflections of each other, separated by a decade, and it just fucking guts me. i dunno. it's about the grief! it's about the yearning! it's about someone who understands parts of you that you wish didn't exist! i think i've reread this like once a week for the last six weeks and i feel like it gets overlooked because it's not A Ship but like. it could be. it should be.

dance the silence down, fanghua and feihua, explicit, by @momosandlemonsoda. this fic. ugh. ok. i'm breaking my own rules. i had two when i started writing this post: no works in progress, and no reccing things that i haven't left a comment on, like a goddamn grownup. this one fic is breaking both of those rules and i feel bad about it and will hopefully spend like, all day tomorrow just commenting on every chapter or something, but i have to do this. this fic is so good. this fic ruins me. this fic is 63k, still a work in progress, and also if i were losing the whole internet tomorrow and i got to keep one fic in all the world and it was the only fic i could have for the rest of time, it might have to be this one, even as a work in progress. i ignored this fic for so long—by which i mean probably two of the four months since i first watched mysterious lotus casebook—because i was like, i don't like aus, and i especially don't like rock star aus. (or sex work aus, and you're never gonna fucking believe what else this author is writing and what else i absolutely cannot get enough of—this is a sneaky bonus rec for all i wanna do is wrong, another fic that i feel so so so normal about!) but then i was like okkkkkkk but. maybe i'll try it. people seem to be nuts for it. and then i read it and i was like OH HOLY SHIT PEOPLE ARE FULLY CORRECT TO BE ABSOLUTELY UNHINGED ABOUT THIS and normally, honestly, i wouldn't bother posting a rec like this because it's like 'oh haha have you read the five most popular fics in this fandom?' and it feels so redundant, but i know for a fact that a friend of mine who finished watching the show yesterday is reading this post, and even if everyone else has read it, she has not! anyhow as a former music person and a former diner cook, this fic like. i don't know. i feel like it broke me but also fixed me? i literally criticise writing professionally and every time i try to talk about this fic i find myself speechless because it's so perfect to me. i am deeply unwell about this fic. every time a new chapter comes out i sit down and read the whole thing again, yes, all sixty-thousand-plus words of it. some nights you go to bed and you're like 'what's the fucking point?' and then you're like 'no wait, there will eventually be more of dance the silence down,' and somehow that makes things suck a tiny bit less. my wife has made me take out like six sentences from this rec because they're too intense and too weird about it but i need you to understand: you have to read this fic.

in this dream, there is a lover to share this life with, fanghua, g, by @lianhuajing. alternative ending for the end of episode 27, in which li lianhua—precious man who has yet to discover a hill he's not willing to die on—apologises to fang duobing the only way he knows how, and it's wildly upsetting for everyone (but it's ok and it doesn't end miserably, no one panic). this is a delightfully angsty treat, and i love how conflicted fang duobing is in it—i feel like it's not something that i've seen explored a lot, but this poor boy really fuckin goes through it—his best friend and his childhood idol are the same person but are lying to him about it, and his dad's not actually his father and has been lying to him about it, and his best friend/childhood idol may have killed his father, and—yeah, is lying to him about it. like? someone give this poor man a hug and a cup of tea and a snack and a blankie. i love that we get to see some of his internal conflict in this.

quintessence of dust, feihua, teen, by justthereforit. this plays with one of my very most favourite tropes in the world, which is the one where the heart is a physical object and a physical form of trust and control and surrender and—like. this is so good. it's set in episode 13, which is, for me, one of the absolute peak angst points, and it absolutely nails it. di feisheng who's upset and vulnerable and frustrated and angry, li lianhua who knows he's going to die and can't bear the thought that he's going to take anyone else down with him, and they're both just so fucked up. chef kiss. i love it when everyone is emotionally wrecked and continually like 'ok no, i can take one more knife in my soul to protect someone else', and this absolutely delivers on that.

under moonlight, we change our futures yet again, feihua, explicit, by @thesilversun. the wedding room! obviously we have to have a wedding room fic, right? i'm not going to lie: i'm willing to suspend a lot of disbelief for wedding room fics, but in this one, it's actually a wonderfully, horrifyingly plausible setup. it walks a really fine line of keeping people in character, and acknowledging the inherent horror and seriousness of the situation, and also providing some desperately hot sex, and also managing to get the emotional beats of it, too. it has a sequel, which imo really has to be read as the conclusion to this fic, and it's just as good. it's possible that some of what i'm saying here is 'i love vulnerable-inside crusty-outside di feisheng' but like. i do. i love it so much.

what's sealed away, feihua, teen, by @bbcphile. AMNESIA FIC yessssss, a-fei my beloved, fics that handle brain damage/memory issues/amnesia well my beloveddddd. i love the a-fei arc, but i also have had a number of brain injuries and some other stuff that means that my own memory is…not so great, so i sometimes really struggle with how often amnesia in fiction is played off either as nothing to worry about or as a funny thing where everyone's in on the joke except the person who has amnesia. this fic is a great and sometimes very visceral exploration of a horrifying experience, and a really fantastic study of a-fei/di feisheng as a character, as well as the relationship that he has with li lianhua. a-fei trying to balance the trust he has in the sense memory of his body with his understanding of his relationship with li lianhua with li lianhua's reaction to—everything, really—is really well done and wonderful/terrible to read.

我只愿面朝大海 | i wish only to face the sea, g, by foreverstudent. ok so you wanna fuck yourself up some more? go read this. this is canon divergence from episode 39, and fang duobing has learned too well the lessons he's been taught, and sees the shape of things before li lianhua ever touches the wangchuan flower—so he sets about making sure that he won't be able to throw it away. this is agonising and gorgeous and maintains the canon relationships while developing the narrative differently. i wept literal tears. i was like 'ok that's it the worst part is over!' and then i remembered that there was another part coming and then i started crying. anyhow, it is—as ever, with me—about the devotion.

我住長江頭, 君住長江尾 -- i live upstream, you live downstream, fanghua, teen, by @rimbaudofficial. ok so this is Not a fic that i should like, because i am a massive academic failure and despite being in my forties have regular nightmares about having to re-engage with academia for like. any reason. HOWEVER. as noted, i read indiscriminately, even when i'm like 'reading this is a terrible idea and will be upsetting for me personally!', so i was like 'well, how bad of an idea can it possibly be?' and then instead! it was. incredibly charming? it was so fucking cute? the fang duobing characterisation in this is somehow just perfect to me—he's simultaneously confident and vulnerable, and also just so deeply committed to the weird clueless guy who he's decided is meant for him. di feisheng and li lianhua have a perfect weird-bros friendship. i would read another ten chapters of this and i would love it.

[morrigan-sims]

Pirate Outfts

I was bored, so I started trying some different outfits on Zara... The last one might be my favorite, if only because I already used another swatch of the first one for Wolf, and I can't have them wearing the same thing... But I also love being able to see all her freckles in the 2nd one...

[kindahoping4forever]

Luke via Shan Rizwan on IG

[the-eclectic-wonderer]

Your stunt double was murdered right in the middle of your kitchen.

Not just any stunt double, either. The one that spent 40 years, an entire lifetime, taking hits and rolling under cars and throwing herself into open fire as you. The one that's not you, but at the same time is maybe a better version of you, the you you would be if you had been just a pinch braver, just a pinch more likable; the one that's not you, but at the same time was the same character as you, and maybe she actually is you, in some ways (after all, you two are so similar that she was killed in your place, wasn't she?).

She was your stunt double, yes. But she was also the one who took your falls, who propped you up, who made sure you didn't spend your lunch break alone. You shared a role, you shared an apartment, you shared a girlfriend.

She took care of you in every way you can take care of a person.

And now she's gone.

It was possible to believe otherwise when she was just an absence on the other side of a phone (even though you knew, right from the start, that something was so, so wrong). It might even have been possible to believe it was all a colossal joke as you were cradling the iron trophies she was so proud to host in her bones. But luminol is unforgiving: you turn off the light and there it all is, her blood, her life slipping away from her right there on the tiles of your kitchen, and the message she left for you, the one thing she knew you'd understand right away, and there's no denying it anymore.

You are Charles-Haden Savage, and your stunt double was murdered in your place right in the middle of your kitchen.

Your hands still tingle with her ashes.

[lightning-jay]

I love you Rayla from the hit series The Dragon Prince.......

[bonefall]

NGL: Stuff like Brambleclaw being a terrible namer is like. really fun but also kinda hits with the 'he;s not some meglomaniacl villain hes just a shitty guy'. like. you could see squirrelflight finding that really endearing. IDK if this is some mastermind shit, or if i'm just reading wayyyyy to into this, but i like how you give characters that are pretty bad dudes very humanising qualities. Especially when they're silly/cute. Kinda reminds you that like. theyre like. a person. well. cat but yknow. and they chose to do bad shit, with influence from their past, rather than being inherently terrible. 👍

YEAH MAN, that's what I'm SAYING

Abusers, ideologues, and other terrible people are not masterminds. They aren't born evil. They're not inherently smart OR stupid. They can love, they can be funny and polite, they do things they believe are justified and want to be good people. They don't think of themselves as villains.

Evil isn't complex. It's really, really not. I feel like that's the #1 cause of confusion when I get a question like, "Why does this person do this malicious act, when it's bad/inconsistent/mean?" The answer is always simple;

They wanted to control someone.

They wanted something and didn't mind who they hurt.

Spite and short-sightedness.

Look for anything deeper and you will not find it. Heroics are complex, being a good person is ongoing and changes over time. We're in a constant state of growing. Malice is childishly simple; it feels good to get what you want.

With Bramblestar especially... it always goes back to what I said here, when talking about the idea of an Evil!Bramble. He's a person, and you ruin everything that's so interesting about him by stripping away that nuance. Squilf and Bramble loved each other, truly, and legitimately. He can be charming. He can be nice. He still hurts her. Reconcile with this.

He is not wiser for what he went through, as a child. His pain doesn't make him better. Man's just a jerk... that's it.

[yasmeensh]

This is what I have been working on this week. A4 paper in gouache. It's a rather difficult medium to work with. I do like the consistency, and the matte finish. But I found it hard to make the colours come out bright (I suppose gouache is like that?). I used coloured pencils and what is supposed to be oil pastels (it was straight up chalk lol). I think it could still use more work, but I fear I would just ruin it if I work any further. Overall, I'm happy with the result! Next up will be acrylics! Progress shots under the cut:

[psalmsofpsychosis]

there are fic writers writing stories, and then there are darthfett writers, constructing narrative structure that would make Nietzsche almost believe in the inherent goodness of human nature,

[cinemaocd]

You make a movie and get called by one half of the class war a shill for Big Feminism and the other half, a bootlicker of capitalism, and yet ESPN got an Oscar for making a long form commercial for their network...

[tavina-writes]

currently trying to think if I remember any situations in Jin Yong wuxia where a family preferred sons over daughters (especially as like, a socially mandated thing) and coming up short.

Like I think there are plenty of situations where powerful men/families/sects only have one child and that child is a daughter. And this is neither weird, highly remarked upon, or considered odd in any way. Nor is anyone feeling pressed to come up with a son in the future.

Ren Yingying from XAJH, Yue Lingshan from XAJH, Huang Rong from LOCH, Guo Fu (from ROCH) for a good portion of her life (16 years of it, also Guo Fu wasn't displaced bc one of the twins was a boy, NOR were her parents trying to have more children on purpose), Yang Guo and XLN's daughter from ROCH/HSDS, Gongsun Lu'e from ROCH, etc.

Also their status range from like 'extremely important and visible family in the jianghu' to 'actually not all that well known' so it's not just a "well our family is powerful so who gives a fuck" kind of situation.

Like these are male dominated books, there are more men than there are women in Jin Yong's books (there are really cool women in his books though), but there's almost none 'oh no how will a girl inherit!' left beef. The girl will learn martial arts, like it's hard?

I think this is also relatively true of Gu Long books too, so at some points I'm left ??? at the discourse re: inheritance and gender in MDZS fandom bc I don't think it's actively stated anywhere that women aren't supposed to inherit? Or aren't allowed? or are less capable? or that there's a strong societal prejudice against it? Just. It's a danmei so most of these positions are occupied by men. Like, there are maybe five whole women and even less among the juniors. Who and how and why will they inherit if they don't exist.

[who-is-page]

Life is hard! Consider buying my stuff!

My life isn't quite falling apart, but things have gotten really tricky lately. One housemate (and their super destructive, permanent houseguest) is refusing to pay their share of rent or utilities for the next three months, and another is refusing to pay their full share of rent for that same amount of time and is making us cover around $75 every month, and I'm having to double-up my hours at work while still being a full-time student (and also one of my professors, who we're 99% sure is using ChatGPT to generate her citations because none of them exist and we pointed this out, hates my guts and has been grading me really harshly and forcing me to go full-sail on every assignment to ridiculous degrees in order to pass this required class).

My spouse is working on getting full-time at their job, but it looks like they won't be able to until December, and we also have no idea how much rent is going to increase this year-- my guess is it's going to go up another $500, same as last year, to a total of $3,000, so things are gonna get really fucking bumpy until around January, probably.

So basically, if you like the work I've done, consider throwing me a tip on Ko-Fi or buying my stuff on Itch.io:

(Also I promise we have more stuff lined up that we want to polish and publish, life has just been super-duper fucking busy! There is so much more going on right now than what I've mentioned here, especially in terms of surprise medical bills and other horrible surprises. And we haven't forgotten about Inky Paws issue 2, either, which we're still hoping to have done by December and which will STILL always be entirely 100% free to download, no matter what our living or money situation looks like. That will never ever change, so please don't worry!)

[victorluvsalice]

Hi all -- I'm on vacation this week, and I wanted to share with you some shots of my trip earlier today to Roger Williams Park Zoo to look at their "Dragons & Mythical Creatures" exhibit! This is a special exhibit running until August 11th where they've set up a bunch of simple animatronics of various mythical creatures from around the world around their Wetlands Trail path. The animatronics are a bit goofy, as you can probably see from the above pictures, but they were still fun to look at, and I had a good time going through and looking at them all with my folks. :) In order of their appearance in the photoset above, we have --

-->An alicorn (winged unicorn) right at the entrance

-->A siren by the lake -- they actually had three mermaids, but the other two were the traditional lovely ladies, so I decided to prioritize getting a picture of the one with the goofiest smile XD

-->Your traditional European dragon, who roared with glowing eyes

-->The Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, depicted in feathered serpent form wrapped around a pyramid

-->The Ninki Nanka, a West African beast with the face of a horse, the neck of a giraffe, and the body of a crocodile, which lives in muddy mangroves and according to the Limba people in Sierra Leone, causes thunder and lightning -- as you can see, this one has a horn for extra value

-->An Egyptian Sphinx sporting the traditional Egyptian funerary mask for pharaohs -- honestly, between that technicolor mask and the way it was wiggling its head, it was one of the most off-putting exhibits there

-->A Japanese kappa, a mischievous creature that here appears as a turtle standing upright with a vicious-looking beak and a divot on the top of its head -- I believe that divot is supposed to hold water, and if you can trick them into bowing to you, the water will flow out and they'll lose a lot of their powers

-->A Japanese Kasa-obake, which is an old and neglected umbrella that has picked up a spirit and become a mischievous ghost with a long tongue and a single eye. ...I will admit, I immediately accused it of being a Pokemon. XD

-->A traditional griffin, with the white feathered head, wings, and talons of an eagle and the body of a lion -- I especially like this one because it includes feathered ears as well, something you don't see on a lot of griffins -- but that you do see on the GRYPHON in the original Alice books!

-->A yeti -- who you may recognize as Bumble from the Rankin-Bass stop motion Christmas films, because apparently the park couldn't resist

-->FUCKING CTHULHU. With his head out of proportion to the rest of his body. If you're wondering what the hell he's doing here, Roger Williams Park Zoo is in Providence, Rhode Island, which just so happens to be the birthplace of HP Lovecraft. I guess they felt they had to. XD

[sysig]

Just a few favourites, only a couple, I swear (Patreon)