#Qi-Compatible

[chalkrevelations]

I. Just.

This entire national grading competition arc in the mid 20-somethings eps of Qi Hun/Hikaru No Go results in me repeatedly shaking my head at Yue Zhi and tsk'ing that "he's not going to fuck you" re: Yu Liang.

Yu Liang's Secondary Backup Shi Guang has already fucked off back to Korea, and he's certainly not going to fuck you when Actual Shi Guang is closing in on him, sweetie.

I'm sitting here watching that whole Shi Guang-Yue Zhi the-girls-are-fiiiighting scene before their final weiqi match, and I just love how supremely confident Shi Guang is, not even about his eventual win, but about how fixated Yu Liang is on him. There's not even a flicker of a doubt that Yu Liang might give a single fuck about anyone but him.

Soulmates.

[dailydoseoffunblogs]

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[news4nose]

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[sunderwight]

Demon Shen Jiu is such a fun idea though.

Especially if he himself doesn't know. Like imagine, Yue Qi finds this abandoned baby and the baby is REALLY OBVIOUSLY not human. But this also enables Shen Jiu to survive being abandoned at such a young age -- a human baby would die without adequate nutrition or care, but demons are a little more resilient. Baby Demon SJ has a way more forgiving digestive system and can move under his own power from a much earlier age. By the time he's a year old he's hunting his own rodents and small birds, and has to be stopped from biting and mauling anyone he doesn't like. Which is most people. Qi-ge develops amazing reflexes.

Why do the slavers tolerate a demon baby hanging around? Maybe it's really not all that uncommon. Demons come across the borderlands from time to time, and are as liable to abandon their kids or die or etc as anyone else. It's maybe an open secret among slavers that demon-blooded kids are a better investment, even, because they can survive for longer on less. The only downside is if they don't ever look human enough to pass as human, because that limits potential buyers, but that's only relevant when the slavers are trying to sell them. For the purposes of having a network of street kids stealing and grifting and spying and etc, it's fine. A lot of the slavers themselves started out as demon-blooded street kids with no other options.

But in SJ's case, he pretty quickly starts passing as human. Mostly because he's quite strong, and he's convinced that he's the same as his Qi-ge, so he makes himself the same. Makes his hands look the same and his teeth look the same and etc. It's largely subconscious, and once he starts doing it, it becomes automatic. SJ forgets that he's a demon in the way that most people don't retain their earliest childhood memories -- although he remembers that some of the slavers were demons.

Then of course there's the question of why didn't the Cang Qiong cultivators notice?

A few options. One is that whatever kind of demon SJ is, it's really good at mimicking humans. Another is that he's only part demon, and like Luo Binghe, fully capable of handling both kinds of cultivation. So once he starts learning spiritual cultivation, even from a heretic like Wu Yanzi, he doesn't seem different from any other recruit with a patchy education on the subject. Anything else odd about him could be easily attributed to his exposure to Wu Yanzi and his wicked practices.

Although full demon SJ is a fascinating idea. (Also, it could contribute to all those qi deviations -- he's trying to cultivate AND "fake" human cultivation at the same time, I doubt Qing Jing's techniques are totally compatible with everything going on there even without the psychological turmoil.) Like I'd imagine Airplane wrote that SJ was abandoned on the streets as a baby, and the system was like "hmm he probably wouldn't survive that?" and then in some nine billionth wife arc, Airplane also creates a variety of demon that can fully pass as human (for some identity conflict with a prospective wife), even to the point of fooling human cultivators and demon-detecting tools. So the system just ties these two disparate pieces of world-building together in order to patch a critical plothole (Airplane doesn't know anything about babies). Which has the side effect that Shang Qinghua doesn't even know that SJ became a demon!

And SJ himself doesn't know. The only person who knows is Yue Qi.

Obviously this wouldn't come up much in PIDW, but it could be pretty funny in the SVSSS timeline. YQY just sitting there through the whole Luo Binghe being a half-demon reveal, wondering if he should say something. Subsequently being the most absolutely chill about the whole demon reveal thing anyway. Like he's definitely not upset that Luo Binghe is a demon, or part demon, and the multiple people who try to make a point about it just run afoul of his impenetrable smile and get nowhere.

Then eventually Yue Qingyuan decides that he should probably tell Bingqiu that Shen Qingqiu is a demon. For like, safety purposes if nothing else. He's kept the secret so long also for safety purposes (even if someone put Shen Qingqiu under a truth compulsion he wouldn't be able to admit to being a demon, because he himself doesn't know!), and he's done tons of stuff to prevent anyone ever finding out (although Xiao Jiu is so talented that he didn't have to do much), but Luo Binghe is the demon emperor. That changes things. If Shen Qingqiu is going to be visiting the demon kingdoms regularly then there's a chance something could reveal the truth unexpectedly, and that would probably be worse.

So Yue Qingyuan sits down and has a very serious discussion with Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe about how Shen Qingqiu is actually a demon, was just the cutest little demon baby in fact, here he drew a picture from memory of what Xiao Jiu used to look like before he learned to look more human, and also how a lot of slave kids and slavers and people who fall through the cracks in society have demon ancestry, some more recent than others, and Shen Qingqiu always retained a certain discomfort around his own kind because of the adult slavers who sold him off, and etc etc.

[coolshadowtwins]

SVSSS System Reveal Fic round up!

If you know one that hasn’t been recc’ed, then please put it in the comments/tags! I’ll add it to the post!

A Transmigrator and a Time Traveler Walk into the Bamboo House by VeryCharismaticDragon

Over a year after Shen Qingqiu's death, Luo Binghe consults his servant's servant, concurrently his disgraced martial uncle, for a way to bring the love of his life back. Shang Qinghua sends him in the direction of a certain time-traveling artifact, which supposedly brings one to the day they first met their soulmate.

Odd, though, that the artifact ends up missing the destination by just a few years…

A story in which post-Abyss Luo Binghe relives his disciple days, while juggling his secrets, traumas, and some unexpected revelations about the man he loves on top of that.

What is Seen by CaveteDracones

…is not [always] the real truth.

Truth-compelling artifacts in the hands of an enemy to one side, SYSTEM-mandated silence on the other, and Shen Qingqiu caught between the two. Is it too late to go back to the Water Prison? (NOTE: This one was recommended three times, and I have personally reread it multiple times. It’s one of my favorites and I really do want to read more fics in a similar vein lol)

open my lungs to let you in by ghostybreads

Shen Qingqiu had a secret. So, naturally, it was only a matter of time before he was hit by a truth serum wife plot.

//

“How are you?”

“Horny. Kind of want Binghe to rail me, I guess. But it’s manageable.”

Liu Qingge’s hand on his forehead froze, and he was close enough that Shen Qingqiu could hear his breathing stop. He stared back expressionlessly, the mortification distantly crawling up the back of his neck. Honest One-Horned–

The frustrated scream that he usually vented in his head, came out straight from mouth.

“aaAAAAAHHHH GODDAMNIT AIRPLANE–”

Futility in Practice by TGP

When Luo Binghe is fourteen years old, his shizun suffers a terrible qi deviation and fever that completely changes who he is.

and judgment is just like a cup that we share by Kieron_ODuibhir

The blob finished rotating into place in a way that wasn’t quite compatible with geometry as Shen Qingqiu understood it, and cleared a throat it didn’t seem to have.

“Greetings,” it said, somehow clearly addressing him in particular more than the room as a whole despite its total lack of features other than blueness and translucency. “I’m here on behalf of the Hyper-Celestial Peace and Order Enforcement Bureau. Crime scene secure, proceeding to interviews. Beginning with Subject One: You are Shen Qingqiu, formerly Shen Yuan, also known as Peerless Cucumber?”

First, do no harm by Terias

Shen Qingqiu has been acting especially erratic since awakening from his three day coma after a severe qi deviation.

Mu Qingfang investigates and discovers a great many things about his new shixiong. (NOTE: This one has Shen Yuan and Shen Jiu as the same soul, technically, but it still works I think!)

Show The Screenshots by A_Non_ymousWriter

When a rogue foreign System sends out a subtle virus, some outsiders are shown chat messages between a certain two transmigrators and their Systems.

AirplaneBro: nah dude shen jiu would never lay a hand on his female disciples like that, hes gay

Liu Qingge tripped on thin air while Mu Qingfang choked on his tea as Shang Qinghua (their god? creator??) casually shattered their view of their original Shen Qingiu. The fake Shen Qingqiu at least, was sharing their shock.

CucumberBro: EXCUSE ME WHAT??

CucumberBro: The fuck he is?!?! He literally GOES TO BROTHELS! LIU QINGGE FOUND HIM IN BED WITH A WOMAN THAT ONE TIME?

AirplaneBro: aight bro buckle the fuck up cuz imma take u on a joyride all about shen jiu >:)

—————-

Binghes#1Fan: I don't want to send Binghe into the Abyss...

System 2: User must comply, if User cannot do the task User will be punished and the account will be terminated.

Mobeis #1Fan: sorry bro unless ur okay w being ded af u gotta push binghe into the abyss

Ning Yingying's fists clenched. Okay, so trying to get Yuan-ge and A-Luo together would be harder than she thought.

[tcfactory]

Dumb SVSSS thought of the day is Xuan Su being one breakthrough away from cultivating a human form and making its (his?) newfound ability to speak aloud to other people everybody's problem.

Unity of the Sword cultivators give more of themselves to their bonded blades than people cultivating other paths, because they have to cultivate together with the sword, as partners. It's both a blessing and a curse, making their swords more... aware. It's not unusual for Unity swords to ascend with their masters or to cultivate humanoid forms to become something like a platonic life partner.

Xuan Su is an old blade. A powerful one, expertly if eccentrically crafted (what kind of cultivator would choose a zhanmadao when a jian is so much more ethereal and versatile?) and wielded by dozens of prodigiously talented cultivators before.

Each one of them set it aside, finding it too heavy and unwieldy for their ambitions. Each and every one of them died for it. It could feel through the bond as they each fell, the lighter, sleeker blades they replaced it with crumbling like paper under the weight of the destinies they all bore.

If it stopped calling out to young prodigies after its history of losses things would have been... much the same, probably, because Yue Qi has heard about the power of Xuan Su before he stepped foot in the sword hall, but there might have been a chance that he might have heard the call of a sword more suited to his level of cultivation, one that could have grown organically along with him.

The problem is, Xuan Su keeps calling out to new wielders and no amount of warning from Wan Jian's masters could convince the ambitious prodigies to give up on the chance to be the one who carried the famed Xuan Su to ascension.

After losing too many of its people, however, Xuan Su no longer knows how to bond normally. It clings too hard, hooks its metaphorical claws into its cultivator's soul, crawls through their meridians until there's no boundary left between them.

The last three people who tried to take it up didn't live long enough to unsheathe it.

For good or ill, Yue Qingyuan will be the last one to ever wield Xuan Su. It will either ascend with him, die with him or Wei Qingwei will throw it in the Wan Jian forge where the cursed thing deserves to be if it manages to outlive zhangmen-shixiong.

The thing is, however, that an old sword doesn't necessarily mean a mature one. Xuan Su wasn't wielded enough for its spirit to have matured fully. The only cultivator who even entertained it past the first few months of realizing that fighting with a zhanmadao is an unwieldy affair, that they could never become the picture of divine grace hauling around a blade that gave some polearms a run for their money, has been Yue Qingyuan, so most of Xuan Su's personality comes from him.

A thousand years worth of guilt and abandonment issues mixed with whatever traits it borrowed from semi-feral ex-slave teenager Yue Qi when they bonded does not make for a pleasant personality. It would remind Yue Qingyuan of a young Xiao-Jiu, expect Xuan Su has a brand of unashamed bloodthirstiness that can't be replicated by anything that's not made of 5 feet of sharp-edged murder.

It's not all bad. Xuan Su mourned with him when they though Shen Jiu was dead and rejoiced when they found him again. It has been trying its best to help Yue Qingyuan fight his heart demons so he could confess to Shen Qingqiu, even when it has heart demons of its own. They are beyond compatible in the physical and spiritual sense, granting Yue Qi the almost inhuman strength he became famous for. The mental component of their cultivation stagnates, however, because they are trying to split their attention between dealing with Yue Qingyuan's guilt and Xuan Su's abandonment issues and they are getting nowhere.

It's Shang Qinghua who accidentally gives them the push to pick one or the other. ("All right, enough!" Shang Qinghua claps his hands and freezes the dozen frantic An Ding disciples almost coming to blows about which one of their three separate crises should get the most resources. "You," he points at a kid with a missing front tooth. "All resources to your problem. And when that's done, then to his,-" Points at another child. "- and then hers. This way all of them will get solved on time and they will get solved better because you don't spread yourself thin trying to do three different things requiring full focus at once.") They decide to address Xuan Su's bottleneck because it's easier: Yue Qingyuan has already proved that he would not abandon it. They will ascend or die together.

They don't expect the backlash from its breakthrough to knock Yue Qingyuan out for several weeks (it's the bond stabilizing, finally, but his body and core need time to grow accustomed to only having his qi and his life force, all contained neatly within him as it should have been all these years). Weeks while Xuan Su is left alone on the peaks, unsupervised and without anybody knowing that it currently wears the form of a fourteen-year-old boy.

So of course the first thing it (he?) does is slip away before anyone could identify him and goes to Shen Qingqiu. The plan is simple: chew the man out for making Yue Qi sad all these years and then tell him what went down in the caves so he forgives Xuan Su's human and they can all be a happy family together! (A lot of its previous wielders sought fame to be allowed to wed various people they would not be able to marry otherwise, so Xuan Su might have acquired a passing interest in romance. Xuan Su approves of Yue Qi's choice, Shen Qingqiu is a sharp, very sword-like human and Xiu Ya is a very nice, well-balanced sword, but they really keep dragging things out way too long.)

Except Shen Qingqiu doesn't believe that the suddenly appearing feral teenager on his peak is actually a sword spirit. Swords cultivating human form are the stuff of legends and Yue Qi is far too down-to-earth for any of that nonsense. So clearly this Xiao-Su is an orphan his idiot Qi-ge has adopted; he's certainly feral enough to be one. No idea where Yue Qingquan has hidden this child before, but he's not quite presentable enough to be among the Qiong Ding disciples, despite the wonderfully elaborate clothes he's wearing. He enjoys food like he's tasting decent cooking for the first time, so he must not have been here long. Shen Qingqiu remembers being much the same when he first got to eat regularly, but hiding it much better, thank you very much.

Shen Qingqiu decides that he's going to keep an eye on his shixiong's charge until the man wakes up, because it's obvious that the kid can't be allowed to wander the peaks unsupervised. This decision has obviously nothing to do with Xiao-Su's instant hatred towards the little beast. Nope. Nothing at all.

Xuan Su eventually does manage to tell Shen Qingqiu that Qi-ge came back for him. Yue Qingyuan wakes up and confirms that yes, that bratty rascal is the great and powerful Xuan Su. They eventually learn about Binghe's demonic heritage and go investigating how the hell that has happened. But not before a few weeks of shenanigans and Luo Binghe accidentally winning Xuan Su (and by proxy Shen Qingqiu, much to the man's annoyance) over by the wonders of his godly cooking skills.

[mixelation]

i've finished reading xiran jay zhao's iron widow! here is my review so far (contains spoilers, including the "twist" at the end). my tl;dr is that it starts as a fun revenge story but both the quality of the narrative and the writing itself decline over the course of the novel. you might like it if you want a power fantasy where the main character is unapologetically violent and selfish, and you don't mind cardboard characterization or shallow worldbuilding. if you want a nuanced take on how misogyny functions in a society, a book about strong female characters (as opposed to a singular, capital Strong Female Character), or you find descriptions of anime-style action scenes cringey, you this book may not be for you.

on to the full review ->

iron widow is a scifi-fantasy YA book set in alternate timeline china, where humanity battles invading alien "hunduns" using gundam-esque giant robots called "chrysalises." a lot of the worldbuilding draws on the aesthetic and certain social norms of ~old timesy~ china (iirc zhao has stated they pulled inspiration from lots of time periods, but my familiarity with both historical china and chinese historical fantasy is very low, so i am absolutely not the person to label anything beside "the past"). so you have people checking tablets and riding around in hovercraft and using modern slang, but a lot of Aesthetic elements are more traditional, and society is deeply, deeply sexist in a way that.... feels old-fashioned (wording chosen to set the Mood apart from how modern misogyny tends to work). for example, the main character has bound feet but also uses phrases like "railed on."

chrysalises, the giant robots, work by the pilot channeling qi. for whatever reason that's not really well explained, they require a copilot to boost their control/power over the chrysalis. think "drifting" in pacific rim, except here when pilots are not compatible with their copilot (this seems to rely largely on "qi levels" and pilots don't seem to have control over it), the "weaker" copilot can become overwhelmed and die. in this setting, the main pilot is always male the copilot always female, with the copilot usually dying. this part of the premise as it is described on the back of the book confused me as a setting for a ~feminist~ story, because why would men always win in a wild mind-meld, battle-of-wills situation? however, the main character slowly figures out that it's not that men are inherently stronger pilots-- it's that women are always paired with a male pilot the military has tested to be stronger (based on qi levels), and then later one of the plot twists is that the chrysalises are designed to weaken the female copilot. this is because, in the way sexism works in this society, "families wouldn't send their sons to be pilots if they knew they could be killed by some girl." (not an exact quote, but what one character gives as the explanation)

weaker female copilots are called "concubines" and teenaged girls are frequently sold to the military to be concubines. if the concubine survives, she's dubbed a "balanced match" for the male pilot and they become quasi-married. more on this later.

this leads us to wu zetian, a "frontier peasant" who offers herself up to be a "concubine" (co-pilot). we learn that zetian's older sister was sold off by their family to be a concubine, but was murdered by her assigned pilot. like, regular murdered, not killed by a psychic link the way most concubines are. so zetian, having a shit home life, and under pressure to sell herself as well, decides she will enlist and then murder her sister's killer.

now, i had a lot of fun with the beginning of this story. but in order to get into this book, you have to accept upfront that zetian is very firmly the main character, and she is always right and ridiculously strong, clever, and resilient just because. she runs her mouth even at the risk of violence, and is usually meant to be right about whatever she's saying. she rejects her role in society just because, and she decides she doesn't care if her whole family is punished or even killed for her actions because they're terrible to her, and the reader isn't really expected to criticize this. despite having no formal education, she always knows what she needs to know to logic her way through things successfully, and she can strategize and debate on par with people whose literal jobs it is to do these things.

for the first ~25% of the book, this is fun. zetian has decided fuck the system, fuck her family, and fuck her own life-- if they're going to kill her, she's bringing her sister's murderer down with her. she doesn't care about having to endure demeaning tests or people insisting on putting her through painful make-up routines. this is a girl who just has murder on her mind, and it's pretty entertaining.

then, she's shoved into the co-pilot seat of a chrysalis with the man who killed her sister as the main pilot, and through some messy mind-scape battling, she kills him. she takes control of the chrysalis and wins the battle. and then..... the book sort of stops having a real plot, and everything slows down.

see, in the first chunk where we're reading a vengeful murder plot, everything is centered around this one goal. zetian's extreme personality makes sense because we're reading about someone who's actively thrown her life away for revenge. we're on board with it and we wan to see how she manages it. this premise allows for an unhinged protagonist making unhinged decisions.

so what happens next, if she accomplished her goal a quarter of the way in? the military decides to pair her with a character called li shimin, who is the current top pilot. he's the top pilot in that pilots are given scores (their battles are televised and they're treated as a celebrities) and also he has the highest qi level. he's also a convicted murderer and was recruited off death row. sounds fun, right? wrong. shimin is a cardboard cut out of a man. he barely speaks. the only thing he really does is drink and fight people. he gets into physical fights with little provocation. the narration makes a big point of really driving home how big and intimidating he is.... and also how he's an ethnic minority. i cannot comment on if this was meant to reflect any real world group or how they're treated, but overall shimin's characterization make me slightly uncomfortable AND he's just not very interesting. later we find out he's an ex-scholar who murdered his whole family after walking in on his brother raping someone (yeah, i..... idk), and he used to write poems. i think this was meant to make him seem more fleshed out, but the character writing needs a lot of work, so "ex-scholar and poet" is a very informed trait.

if you've followed the buzz on this book, you'll know one of its "draws" is that the end game ship is polyamorous. so, zetian has a second love interest. his name is yizhi and he's the fifth son of the richest man in the country, and he made friends with zetian before the start of the novel. the way they met and bonded doesn't super make sense, but i'm willing to buy into it. yizhi has been infused with SLIGHTLY more personality. he signs up to work for the military as a strategist, which is how he gets to hang out with zetian and shimin. his contribution to the plot is mostly just that he has money to throw at problems. oh, and he can give their chrysalis a boost of qi for extra power and starts hanging out with them in their cockpit during battles. why others don't also do this, and why pilots need to parasite a copilot instead of just having other people around for extra qi, is never explained. zetian has a line where she says something like "don't you know a triangle is the strongest shape?" so i kind of dig what i think zhao was going for (that they balance each other better than just two of them would), but it's not really a realized theme.

okay, so if zetian killed who she wanted to kill, then what's the rest of the book about? good question! it's a little unclear. zetian survives copiloting with shimin and they're declared a balanced match. then the buddies of the pilot zetian killed try to kill her. then the military tries to kill her AND shimin by sending them into battles when they're too tired. then zetian asks yizhi's rich dad to help them with their PR so the government will stop trying to kill them. then they decide to "take back" a province the hunduns took over years ago. then zetian realizes the chrysalises are rigged against female pilots and they go and kidnap and torture a guy to make him confess to how it's done. then they go to take back the province and zetian finds the cryopreserved body of an ancient emperor and his dragon chrysalis. oh, did i not mention him? yeah he's some legend that gets brought up a couple times and then suddenly he's there at the end. but he doesn't do anything. he just agrees with everything zetian wants to do, for some reason, and what she spontaneously decides to do with her new giant robot is go take over the government. she kills multiple people. then the book ends with them finding out they're on the hundun's native planet. okay???

the last 75% just reads like a bunch of things happening because why not. this by itself isn't necessarily bad, but the events are not well connected nor do events get set up in a way where you understand why they occur in the order they occur. zetian stays angry and determined, but her actual overall goal evaporates and instead it just feels like every few chapters she just decides on a new thing she wants. one could argue her overall goal is "claiming agency" or "survival," but they narrative doesn't really carry either of these themes through. for example, in the first quarter of the book, zetian repeated emphasizes she's ready and willing to through her life away if she can get her revenge, and i believed that. but after she miraculously survives.... that willingness to throw her life away vanishes, but not in a "character has undergone development" way. it's just not there anymore.

the writing isn't amazing in the first quarter, but i thought it was fine. it steadily declines over the course of the book, making it feel like a rough draft where zhao was losing steam. instead of getting to see characters interact and play off each other, we just read descriptions of events and conversations. this is nitpicky, but one thing that was starting to drive me crazy through out the book is that the narration frequently would be like "oh, earlier so-and-so showed me this" and then it would be something that could have EASILY just been included at the beginning of the scene and would have also been INTERESTING to see.

the world has a lot of elements going on, but there is a huge problem with telling and not showing, so even with lots of details, the worldbuilding feels shallow. for example, despite zetian saying defeating hunduns has to be a priority, i don't know what happens if hunduns successfully invade an area. we're never shown a ransacked village or hunduns killing anyone but unnamed pilots. the narrative spends a lot of time talking about different element qi and the advantages and disadvantages of each element, but this never actually becomes plot relevant. the pilots are paraded out to the public as fancy celebrities and zetian and shimin have photoshoots for PR, but this also never really becomes plot relevant besides being well-liked being something zetian decides would be a good idea for a few chapters. we don't even know what zetian's relationship with her sister is like, even though she decides to die seeking revenge for her.

i want to expand on that last part a bit. zetian states repeatedly that she wants to help save other girls from becoming concubines, and yet no stakes are attached to this. shimin accidentally killed a concubine he was in love with before the start of the book, so we get some flashbacks of her, but otherwise we never see the impact (or lack of impact) of these young girls' deaths. like, that character really only exists as a tragic backstory for shimin. there's no sympathetic concubine character that dies to drive home the point (although there IS a mean concubine character that presumably died and zetian never thinks of again); there's no meeting a family that misses their daughter; there's no dramatically prying open a cockpit to free a concubine. there are two other female pilots who are balanced matches, and one is a bitch to zetian and the nice one backstabs and attempts to kill her later. zetian never sympathizes with another girl or woman for more than a few lines, including her own sister, so it is unclear why saving girls is so important to her. there's a brief moment where the "nice" female pilot points out to zetian that living in poverty and being terrified of hunduns attacks likely contributed to the various types of misogynistic abuse going on in her family and that providing more support for them would help them.... and zetian sympathizes with her mother for maybe a paragraph.... and then at the end of the book she decides to murder her family. Uh. Okay? Oh, and when the "nice" pilot betrays her, she says it was because the military had her kids and was threatening them. zetian decides to literally crush her to death. Feminism, I guess.

when i read through reviews of this book, the negative ones largely complained about zetian as a character. i always take reviews complaining the main female character is a bitch with a grain of salt, because often they're just bullshit and also i like horrible women. i liked zetian alright for the first two thirds of them book, although she starts to come off as weirdly arrogant at some point. (she starts to refer to herself as one of the most powerful women in the world due to her qi level, even though this does not help her physically, politically, or socially, and she has very little actual agency until just revives a frozen emperor at the end and goes off the rails.) however, this time i think the complaints are merited. you ever read a dark harry fic? or a "naruto gets chased by villagers, becomes powerful and murders them all" type fic? it's like that but if those types of writers were 5% more aware of social issues. zetian is self-righteous about wanting to change the pilot system, but her actions do not indicate she actually gives a shit about anyone but her and her boyfriends. so in the end it seems like even though she's preaching about saving girls, she's actually going, "me! what about me! how dare you do these bad things to ME!" which like. obviously it's fine to be angry about wrongs done to you, but it comes off like she's less upset about systemic problems and more upset the systemic problems happened to HER. there's a lack of nuance and character work that would make or explore this difference.

hmm, what else. i don't really have specific compliments or complaints about the romance aspect, other than the inter-character relationships aren't really built up well. there's definitely effort put into the zetian-yizhi and zetian-shimin relationships, it's just that.... neither of the boys have a ton of personality....? also there's a few oddly placed asides about zetian not feeling ashamed of having two lovers, which feel more liek they're there to justify it to the reader than zetian's actual internal monologue. it's okay, zetian. i did not for a second think you were a shamed of a single thing you've done.

The top review on amazon says, "Wow… this is everything you could want from a science fiction novel." Iron Widow is sci-fi the way Star Wars or Pacific Rim are sci-fi: it's fantasy with robots. Except there's no loving descriptions of engines revving or switches being flipped. There's not even cool little alien dudes; I don't even know what a hundun looks like.

[scrivenger-grimgar]

MDZS headcanon time! WWX’s guidao songs all have names, just like lan music!

[Settling] listening to the spirits and consoling them, offering kindness and compassion to let them calm (its the guidao equivalent to [Calming], ie “putting a toddler in time out until they behave properly”).

[Catharsis] asking or directing spirits to fight for the player, to vent their frustration in a controlled setting.

[Agitation] stirring up residual or ambient yin qi for use, creating an oppressive atmosphere.

[Askance] thinking specific questions allow for spirits to come forward and give relevant information.

[Guiding] mentally marking an individual or set of individuals to be attacked/targeted.

[Locative] asking spirit to look for a person, place, or thing.

[Agony] directing spirits to mentally torment targets.

[Distillation] to cast off smaller grievances and isolate large grievances.

[Mischief] to play subtle tricks on targets, destroying objects, disturbing order, and hexing things.

[Awakening] mass corpse controlling song.

[Calling] to guide a spirit to possess a physical object, like ceramic dolls, corpses, paper men, or puppets.

[Invitation] to invite a spiritual cognition to inhabit a compatible corpse.

[Respite] telling spirits to not harm.

[wychelmie]

i've been asked a few times about what mods i use, and i always say i'll make a modlist and then forget - but not this time!

so here are all* the mods i use in stardew valley (all compatible with 1.6, mostly from nexus mods)

must have mods:

diverse stardew valley

ui info suite 2

fishing made easy suite

lookup anything

npc map locations

custom menu backgrounds

simple foliage

vibrant pastoral recolor (1.6 fix) + vpr inspired ui

custom farms, buildings and interiors:

custom farm loader

solo four corners farm

blackberry fields farm

rolling hills farm

modest map farm cave

elle's seasonal buildings + coop and barn interiors + town buildings

less ugly town interiors + spouse rooms + altar of yoba replacement

animal replacements:

coop animals + barn animals

dogs + cats

town animals + horses

retextures:

crops and forage

artisan goods

fish and tackles

trash and resources

wallet items

artifacts + elixirs

rings and shoes

qi items and misc

mushroom bins

farmer hair and clothes:

coii's girls pack

coii's all hats pack

coii's hairs pack

kknuma's hairs

rural outfitters

fashion sense

cosy scarves

furniture:

custom furniture

alternative textures

west elm furniture

nano's retro furniture

too many swatches I + II

idaida's furniture recolor

ornamental garden furniture

flower power furniture

chest deco for alternative textures

gameplay and stuff:

dialogue expansion

part of the community

date night

unique children

tolerable demetrius

*please check the requirements and read the installation instructions for these mods to make sure you have everything you need and it all works correctly!

[isa-ghost]

Could I mayhaps have some hc!philza headcanons? Could be him in his hardcore, or how his time in hardcorr affects him now maybe? :D

OUGH YES.

So these will be operating off the theory that qPhil is hcPhil with his memory fucked up by the Federation. I'm gonna aim for "pre island, this is how qPhil was" but we'll see what happens as I actually write these LOL

What if I call these Pre-Dilf Edition in the masterlist SKFJSKFJSKFHF

10/10 would read the hardcore deity set I did recently to go with these :D

qPhil headcanons masterlist

He either had a flawless sleep schedule (early to bed early to rise ass mf) or no sleep schedule at all (spending 3+ nights hyperfocused on smth). It made for a very loopy Phil sometimes, which his murder of crows very much enjoyed

This man can fit so much joy and whimsy in him. Everything is awesome, everything is a breathtaking work of art and everything is decades of rich history to uncover. He loves life, he loves the passage of time, he loves teaching the murder about what he finds & restores

That's his main hobby besides being a survivalist, restoration and an informal form of archiving. He sketches the builds, takes notes on the deities, adds his own little touches to each place to make it a little prettier

He could fly for hours. Sometimes he'd fly aimlessly into late into the night, too immersed in sight-seeing and chatting with the murder

He had little altars in Flowerfall, Nether Void & Greater Spawn Islands for OO, BE, and Rose respectively. He'd leave little shiny things, trinkets that made him think of them, offerings like cooked fish or blaze rods or flowers in little offering bowls. Just as a nice, more direct way of giving them thanks for creating something so beautiful and allowing him to restore it to its former glory

He fucking loves swimming and fishing and hanging out at Endlantis, he'd just very aggressively avoid the cave that is EK's tomb. It was extremely haunted, he never got good vibes down there

He sometimes considers making his own remarkable build as a sort of "I was here, I too am a mark upon this history" but looks at his house and is like "mmmmbetter not" (he's an idiot, he could 100% build something cool, just probably not on the scale of the builds the gods have created. He'd probably create it for Goddess of Death, not even himself 💀)

Obligatory gapple addiction mention. It didn't start because of the murder, but he definitely used them as an excuse to further indulge once he started devoting eating one to the crows who'd been in the murder for a year. He never really had a reason to quit, or worry about the addiction, so he never experienced negative effects from it. Gapples aren't exactly harmful, just.. tinged with just enough magic to infect the brain. (He never experienced withdrawal misery on QI bc the Feds wiped his memory so his body had no idea it should be having a bitch fit =) )

Semi-related, he loved the days where he and the murder lacked the motivation and focus to do restoration things so they'd just fuck off in a random direction for ages and go on loot sprees. Nothing more exciting than hunting for more god apples :D

He started out liking fishing. The murder got too obsessed and it became the bane of his existence. But he loves the murder, so he does it anyway. Besides, he wouldn't trade chill talks with them for the world. :')

Btw he doesn't know this but it was equal parts the Ender King & the Feds ripping rifts between the universes that got him caught and taken to QI. EK didn't plan for that to happen, he just wanted to escape to a new reality to find a vessel to come back to power. Which is why once Phil was on the island, EK went "Fuck it, I'll use that asshole since he's not only compatible, but from the same plane of existence"

Mobs never scared him much (except Enderman) despite the fact that they were very dangerous and he's a survivalist. He was practically a mob whisperer, it's how he trapped trophy ones, made certain farms and why he was 99% fearless when farming charged creepers. QI has so many mobs he's never seen in his life that his chill instincts are suddenly like AAAWTFWTF

He never felt truly alone despite being the only humanoid. He felt like Rose was always with him, very rarely OO, and the murder ofc. He could understand them and he'd talk to them all day every day. Not only that, he had pets like Pog and Champ and there were quite a few times he'd humanize inanimate objects, which scientifically helps keep you sane in isolation such as survival. He always felt like he had Something to socialize with

That said, he IS still a bit weird socially on the island. Socializing with humans is way different than crows, other animals, gods, and objects.

Btw Ian is God of Chaos (a lesser god like Goddess of Death) and other mods like Birder, D3 & Wolfy are notably larger or perhaps a different species of corvid that hang out among the murder :D

[dailydoseoffunblogs]

Belkin MagSafe Charger Review: The Ultimate 3-in-1 Solution

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[belovedstill]

Hi! I saw that you're doing ask game asks again (and i do want to hear about a random wip so have a heart ❤️❤️) and that reminded me of the next ask game you did and the fic you teased. (It was something about LBH returning to QJP instead of HHP and watching SQQ grief) is that still being written? (I'm not up to date so I really have no idea what the current status is. It just sounded really interesting)

!!!! hi! yes, i'm still writing it, thank you for sending the heart about it 💕🥺 (also i'm so '!!!' that you remembered it?) the idea you've mentioned comes from this post by @fairsweetlonging (with an addition from @happypeachsludgeflower), so i'm really only playing with some of their ideas and putting them together in a fic format (and if new things happen, new things happen). i didn't know anybody paid attention to my tags so i was only poking at the fic from time to time, just for myself

so far, there are two bits that i especially love about this wip. i'm still at the point where binghe has just come to qing jing, found shen qingqiu at the sword mound, and brought him into the bamboo house. the way i'm approaching this idea is that binghe's come back to check on sqq not for revenge, but to take one last look at his home, he's still very conflicted there. i took it in this direction because a ficlet i had in my drafts (that i will also finish/polish up one day and probably post first) starts at the same point as this wip starts, but binghe is painfully aware that there's no 'home' waiting for him anymore and so doesn't return. the lack or drive for revenge might change during rewriting, i'll see where it takes me!

anyway, one of the bits is binghe feeling very bitter because he comes into the bamboo house early in the morning, hiding his presence, only to find shizun's bed empty and two (!) tea cups left on shizun's table 😅 uh oh.

and the second bit is here in this snippet that i enjoy rereading and poking at, it's binghe getting ready to transfer some qi to sqq after his near(?) deviation and having some bittersweet reflections:

Back then, he'd found himself thinking, so what that [Shen Qingqiu's and Liu Qingge's] qi had been compatible? Luo Binghe had wished oh so very hard that his energy had been just as in tune with his master's, if not more! More compatible! And he would have given Shizun all of it! Now he knew that Shizun had made the right choice in refusing his offers. Transferring all one's qi into the body of another person would harm both the giver and the recipient. It wouldn't have mattered if Binghe had been hurt, but if Shizun—when Binghe had just been trying to help— He’d have never forgiven himself for it.

there are more, but i feel like if i share more right now, my brain will get all 'okay, story's told, time to move on!'

send me a ❤️️ for a wip-related ramble

[rozaceous]

what if mariko was instead transmigrated to svsss?

this is a question that i have to clarify: mariko as she is in tcba? or mariko as an si/oc who lands in sv instead, never goes to naruto verse? bc if the latter, she's no longer mariko at all, she's whoever she's reborn as, her story and growth are entirely different to the pt that i wouldn't call them the same character. and that's a whole other fic lol.

but mariko+eyeball shenanigans/"pocket dimension" and getting misplaced in svsss? hm. hmmmmmm. ok so let's assume that chakra and qi are compatible enough energetic systems to start, mariko could pass as a rogue cultivator but she doesn't have a sword. or rather, a cultivator w a tanto for a sword LMAO and some semi-scandalous dress that gets her mistaken for a demon esp w THOSE eyes. genjutsu it is! at least until she gets a wardrobe change.

the flora and fauna are the biggest threats, omg can you fucking imagine getting sex pollened??? legit a horror story. and mariko hates poisons/is bad w them. and what does she fucking eat if foraging is too risky? no money...

and who knows how much of svsss she even remembers, much less how long it takes her to put it together that that's where she is. but she wants to go back, and the only thing in-universe that's powerful enough for that is xin mo. her options are... limited, by that.

[ink-flavored]

💞

thank you!!

soo i've been reblogging all my games for visibility and some of them repeat emojis, so i'm just going to assume this ask is for the Sex & Kink Questions for Writers game because that's the most recent one that the queue spit out when you sent this!

💞 When you’re coming up with a romantic plot or subplot, how important is developing their sexual compatibility to you?

Pretty important, in most cases. Depending on the relationship, it can spring to mind immediately or it can be something I need to actively work on. Pride and Justice, for example, had their compatibility basically prepackaged with their romance. It just required me to flesh out the details and peel back the layers that already existed. Xinya and Yu-Qi required a bit more thought on my part, I had to come up with their dynamic with more intention.

Obviously if I start with the sex (i.e. most of the dynamics in Athendrolyn After Dark) then sexual compatibility is the whole plot, really, and I have to craft it pretty robustly. Most of the time, starting with the romance, it's like Xinya and Yu-Qi for me. The P&J boys are just horny on a whole different level.

[try out my Sex & Kink Questions for Writers game]

[applesolution98]

iPhone 12 (256GB)

Price $399

*Display:*

- 6.1-inch Super Retina HD display

- 1080 x 2536 pixels resolution

- 460 pixels per inch (PPI)

- OLED technology

- HDR10 and Dolby Vision support

- True Tone display

- Wide color gamut (P3)

*Processors:*

- Apple A14 Bionic chip

- 64-bit, 6-core processor

- 4-core graphics processor

- Neural Engine for AI tasks

*Memory and Storage:*

- 6GB RAM

- 256GB internal storage

*Cameras:*

- Dual-camera setup:

- 12MP main camera (f/1.6 aperture)

- 12MP ultra-wide-angle camera (f/2.4 aperture)

- Features: Night mode, Portrait mode, 4K video recording at up to 60fps, slow-motion video, and more

*Battery:*

- Up to 10 hours internet use

- Up to 8 hours video playback (streamed)

- Fast charging (up to 18W)

- Wireless charging (Qi-compatible)

*Additional Features:*

- IP68 water and dust resistance (up to 4 meters for up to 30 minutes)

- Face ID facial recognition

- iOS 14 operating system

- Dual-SIM support (nano-SIM and eSIM)

- No headphone jack (Lightning EarPods included)

*Dimensions:*

- Height: 150.9 mm (5.94 in)

- Width: 75.7 mm (2.98 in)

- Depth: 8.3 mm (0.33 in)

- Weight: 182 grams (6.4 oz)