#artist lu ten

[shrewisweird]

Big cousin Lu Ten helping the kids on a hard level

I like to think that he was a lot like his dad, spending time with them and showering 'em with affection.

[dianorayasiri]

Prince Lu Ten has tasted the bitter taste of betrayal, the adults have told him to tire out the children, he did not know, he was included.

[moss-on-a-pebble]

More Azula and Lu Ten stuff because I grew to like this au more than I thought I would 👍

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

the amount of time I just took out of my planned evening of rewatching The Batman just to find out who did the cover art for Ben Shive's The Cymbal Crashing Clouds

[lovely-p-issues]

I have this fanfiction idea for times when my English will become acceptable: (it was in my drafts for months and tbh if I didn't post it today like this, with mistakes and stupid parts, I wouldn't have posted it at all, so, sorry ig)

Book 1: The war

How it all started

Let's make Azulon not madly-evil, but just regular-size-evil: he didn't plan to kill Zuko, because it's a stupid idea to get rid of your possible heir, he just wanted to take a son from Ozai - so he decided to make Zuko Iroh's heir, de facto making him Iroh's son (let's not focus on formality, just assume that you can switch your fathers if you are highborn enough)

(Zuko's life isn't in danger, so Ursa doesn't kill Azulon and he'll be ruling at least to the end of that book)

It may seem a great idea (especially in comparison with killing Zuko) but we can't forget that Iroh just lost a son and is still in grief, absolutely not ready to take care of another kid. He still needs to learn how to find a new path and calm his spirit and now he needs to do it with Zuko around him.

Iroh decides to take Zuko with him for his journey - Azulon approves this, seeing his son (and heir) needs to learn how to live after losing Lu Ten and thinking that Iroh may finally teach Zuko some actual fire bending

"I do not want to want to leave, Azula. I'm sorry, little sister."

"Whatever, Zuzu. At least you won't be distracting me from my lessons. Finally, something good comes from this whole fuss around you."

(In fact, she's not happy. Not at all)

______

At this point, Iroh is not yet the nice old man you know from ATLA. He's a broken man, trying to find a purpose in his life, triggered by Zuko's alikeness to Lu Ten and tired of being imposed on things like taking care of a teenager.

He's not Ozai, he's not cruel or even just bad, he just can't force himself to care.

They don't really talk, only sometimes to establish a plan for their further journey. The worst moments are when Iroh calls Zuko Lu Ten's name and then suddenly stops, looking at him in shock. After that kind of incidents, they stay silent for days.

Zuko starts to blame himself for being, well, alive, when his much better cousin is dead. He convinces himself it would be better if he died and Lu Ten lived.

Zuko spends most of his time alone. He hates making Iroh sad and upset so he chooses to stay away. He doesn't know what this all thing with White Lotus, he just likes the idea of his uncle/formal-dad having friends.

Yet, they travel all around the world and for the first time in his life Zuko sees what sharing progress and civilization by Fire Nation looks like. And he doesn't like that.

He's still loyal to his family, so he doesn't believe that his grandfather knows what is happening.

He decides that he needs to make a proper report (soul of writer, ya know).

He makes notes and talks with people, even if he hates how awkward it is. He believes that it's necessary to help them.

I think it's a wonderful idea to see Zuko interviewing - I mean, investigating-

Zuko's raport list - random traders complaining about the difficulty of staying afloat, - migrants who are fleeing war or have lost their homes to fighting, prisoners of war (this doesn't go down too well, thank goodness Zuko is still a kid and his passion seems adorable so no one kills him), - strange ladies in nice outfits who are paid by horrible men for no one knows what, - malnourished scarred soldiers of the Fire Nation, - children of the Earth Kingdom who teach him their stupid game (once he understood the rules, it wasn't THAT stupid, but still), - crazy old ladies, who won't stop pinching his cheeks, - a young girl with a scar on her face who didn't want to tell him much, but Zuko knew what accidental burns looked like and this wasn't one of them, - a group of artists whose theatre burned down after they refused to perform plays approved by the Fire Nation authorities, - a mother who asks him if he knows what happened to her son who was an earth bender and one day. .. just didn't come home

But we all know that Zuko always prefered to act than think. Pretty often Sometimes he disappears for a night. With him disappears an old, theatre mask.

Son came home and left with his mom. Someone left some gold for the soldiers to buy food. Someone bought the most useless things from traders. Someone left burn ointment made by someone who must have grown up surrounded by fire, on the doorstep of the poor girl. And many other, strange things happened.

Of course no one suspects anything or anyone. Trust me. Not a single soul.

______

Zuko is still training but can't even be angry enough to make a big fire. He's just frustrated and that makes him choke with smoke more than anything.

But with every other day, he feels worse. He gets letters from Azula who started to receive more attention from their mother since Zuko was away. When Ozai's influence is limited, she becomes a little more normal. She's still sharp as a knife and dangerous, but feeling loved by both her parents (even if Oazi is more focused on trying to control her and transform her into a weapon) decreases her psychopathic behaviour.

"Mom asked me to take care of your stupid turtle ducks, dum dum"

She thinks he will be happy hearing that she spends time with their mom, and Zuko, honestly, is happy. It's just-

"Am I even still her son since I'm Uncle Iroh's heir?"

-where is his place now?

For the first time in days, he feels an actual rage. And just like this, his fire bending becomes hundreds of times better, even unhinged and dangerous.

Iroh sees this while coming back from meditation (or whatever) and in a second feels that something is wrong.

He reaches out to Zuko, offering him some advice and lessons, but Zuko, a 13-year-old, harmfully lonely and practically neglected at this point prince, can't hold back anymore:

"YOU WANT TO TEACH ME AFTER MONTHS OF IGNORING ME? YOU'RE JUST LIKE FATHER, HE LOOKS AT US ONLY WHEN WE ARE ABOVE EVERYONE ELSE! WHY DIDN'T YOU HELP ME WHEN I COULD NOT HOLD A LITTLE FLAME IN MY HANDS? I DON'T NEED YOUR STUPID ADVICE NOW! YOU WEREN'T THAT WISE WHEN YOU LOST BA SING SE AND GOT LU TEN KILLED"

Iroh sters at him calmly for a few seconds.

"You are right. I wasn't. I'm trying to do better. If you change your mind about training, you know where to find me."

Zuko comes to his Uncle by night.

They don't really train. They drink tea instead.

And it becomes a habit.

After a few days, they start to actually train.

They need to breathe a lot. It's too much for Zuko, but Iroh is rather stubborn about this one.

After a few weeks, for the first time in his life, Zuko feels that fire bending is soothing and just pleasant. It feels like home.

It can't last forever. Of course.

______

They stayed for a long time in the Earth Kingdom. One day Zuko sees Ba Sing Se and vast fields of previous battles, trampled, dry land and piles of burnt bodies.

It's not the work of some mad general or bunch of scared soldiers fighting for their lives. It's his chubby nice tea-loving uncle's work. This is not an accident, an accidental casualty of war. They are the pride of the Fire Nation. This is their honour. This is their civilisation and progress.

That's what his family is doing to the world. Purposely.

Something is breaking inside him. Thoughts of mourning for Lu Ten. No one has ever mentioned all those bodies, the people who died here too. His uncle, his good uncle, his father, the pride of his Nation, only cried over his son. He never even hesitated to burn to a crisp anyone who defended his home. Against them.

Zuko isn't very smart, as we know. He screams a lot at Iroh. And then he leaves.

He thinks to himself, that Lu Ten, who actually fought in those battles would understand that it was wrong. But Lu Ten would also know what to do about it.

He wanders for days, trying to avoid people, untill

He crushes into something.

"Why are you running, flame-boy? Your pants are on fire?" *wild laugh*

And this is how Prince Zuko met Lady Toph Beifong.

[charlottelie]

oh, lucifer?

chapter i. (or, selkie sees a snake) ✧･ﾟ

tags: reader uses she/her pronouns, fem!reader, reader is a trapeze artist, sinner!reader, reader works at lu lu world, no use of y/n, ducks galore

.

You hadn’t meant to. Your guiding philosophy in life and afterlife had always been ‘Ask for forgiveness, not permission’, and it seemed so sound a maxim that you were usually slightly bemused when you found yourself in the unfortunate position of actually having to ask for forgiveness. Upon your arrival in Hell you had thought, Well, I certainly didn’t mean to end up here. Upon your arrival in Lu Lu World you had thought, Well, I wouldn’t say I exactly intended to join a Hadean circus. You hadn’t meant for either of these moral catastrophes to come about—that is, your sending yourself to the Other Place and your working at a fairground—but, despite all your good intentions, here you were. Rotten luck. 

You also hadn’t meant to be late for your act again, but here you were, late as always. You dusted your hands with chalk, briskly clapping them more out of habit than anything else as you examined your makeup in a misty mirror someone had propped up outside the dressing rooms. A poster on the wall, framed by peeling paint, announced your act in proud block capitals: Selkie, the Flying Seal! They had put you right before the interval. Did that make you the star performer? Third-best, at any rate: best were the acrobats, Belladonna and the Bedbugs, the grand finale, and second-best was Sunny’s balancing act, which opened the show. You could hear someone approaching, and fast. Your boss, no doubt, come to gently encourage you to get the fuck onto the stage. 

You looked at him mildly: Didier, who insisted it was pronounced ‘Didi-AIR’, tall, half-imposing, mostly composed, rarely generous, currently furious beyond belief. 

“Selkie! Where the fuck have you been? You’re on in thirty seconds! Ten, nine, eight—” 

You liked to think of him as sort of a lost soul, someone you’d taken under your wing, although, of course, he had been the one to take pity on you and hire you in the first place, and, of course, it was your soul that was on the line. “I’m sorry, Didi-yur,” you said quietly, and he scoffed. As you watched him thoughtfully, compassionately, he grabbed you by the shoulders and half-pushed, half-led you onto the platform—surely a textbook case of abuse in the workplace, if you weren’t in Hell—and you gave him a final glance of serene benevolence before, at his command, you whipped around, stepped into the blazing golden lights of the great circus tent, waved to the crowd, flashed a smile, and leapt from the platform into the open space before you. 

The breathless silence. The hot dusty air. The rush in your stomach like an oncoming wave before you lightly caught the bar another performer had flung towards you, adjusted your grip, and neatly somersaulted to another swing. Here a half-turn, here a straddle whip, and here, at the very peak of the motion of the trapeze, you let go, and hung impossibly in the air for a second before you plummeted, as you were wont to do, and were caught by another trapeze artist. Of course the dizzying leaps and the melodramatic plunges were part of the act. You knew the movements, the swings and the sways and the somersaults; you were, admittedly, at home here. The onlookers roared in delight; your heart, admittedly, soared. But as you spun, leant back, shifted your weight, glanced at the audience, you noticed, about three rows from the front, an unprecedented, unsolicited, indeed undesirable arrival: the strangest demon you had ever met. Or, at least, the strangest demon in the past three days. 

The fine kettle of fish was this. Belladonna, Sunny, Pell-Mell, the clowns, the knife-throwers, the knife-throwees, even the Bedbugs, bless their hearts, had all signed their souls over to Didier. He had expected the same of you when you had been given the job. But you, unused to asking, used to getting, were not prepared to quite merrily hand over the one thing that had guaranteed your continued existence to a man in a slim red tie. And so you had taken on a different sort of contract—which could have been hot, but, regrettably, Didier was not inclined to make such exchanges. You were simply paid far less than what you needed. That was all. The prosaic truth. He had you under contract, but nothing so poetic as a soul-binding one. You simply sewed your own costumes, went without breakfast. You scrounged around for whatever you could whenever you could. You had taken up residence in a formerly-disused caravan with the structural integrity of a multivitamin capsule. 

You had found there was little glory in starving, little romance. It was the banality of it that struck you, when you sighed weakly after your taps wouldn’t turn on, or Didi cut off your electricity, or you found you would have to choose between food and heating. It was the endless rolling of the cold and empty days that you suspected would grind you down in the end. But of course they were punctuated by your dazzling nights, your whirling wheeling flights through the grandly lit top tent that drew so many to Lu Lu World. And of course you were resourceful. 

In your life you had always been willing to bend the rules. In your death you were no different. You had the right kind of mind for business, and your business was, up there and down here, remarkably effective. Any con, put-on, cutup, cantrip, flimflam, ramp or scam anyone could think of, you’d done it. You once stole a woman’s shoes and sold them to her husband’s mistress for twice the retail price. Double-joke was on her, because purple was not her color. Only yesterday you had sold a sweet-looking sinner an ‘astral lightning rod’ meant to attract ‘negative interdimensional frequencies’ and channel them into their neighbors’ houses. The lightning rod in question was a refashioned rake you had found in the bins outside the gift shop. To put it plainly, as it were, if it had to be said, you were a, quote-unquote, ‘scammer’, though you and yours would never call it that. You hadn’t meant to end up in this trade, after all. You would like to think you had an entrepreneurial mindset. 

This entrepreneurial mindset had landed you in a stall (without a permit, obviously) in the Lu Lu World food court, having donned a wig and taken on the persona of a charming Texan aunt. Here you sold separately heart-shaped chocolates you had bought in bulk, meticulously unwrapped, and meticulously re-wrapped in shiny pink paper, to whichever passing demons or sinners appeared lonely or gullible or both. You told them all these chocolates, if consumed, would make anyone fall in love with them. To a pale imp in a band T-shirt you had sold three for five times what you’d paid for a box of eight; to a fishlike sinner whose disinterested girlfriend had abandoned him for the fairyfloss stall you sold five at, you told him, fifty percent off (which was three times the usual price). They had told their friends; their friends had flocked to your stall; soon afterwards, your original buyers had come back for more. But now there was a lull in business, as there usually was at this time of the afternoon. So when you noticed a duck demon – literally, a demon the size and shape of a duck, albeit a cartoonishly cute one – with an odd gait and a faraway look in his eyes, you were thrilled to have once again hit the jackpot.

You called him over excitedly. “Hey there, friend, what’s got you looking so glum?” That caught his attention. Hook. “You know, I see all sorts of people come through here. But ain’t none of them got such a positively chap-fallen look on their faces—not to insult you, gorgeous.” He was watching you with wary curiosity. Line. “Come on. Don’t you wanna tell old Mrs. Appleby all about it?” Sinker. 

“You’re not married,” he said. Sinker? That was strange. 

“What?”

“You’re not married. You’re not wearing a wedding ring.” Was he one of those? A flirt? Read: creep? Those were often easier to sell to. 

You pointed at your sign. Mrs. Appleby’s Apple-licious Treats. “Mrs. Appleby. That all that ambiguous?” you said, which won you a small smile from this bizarrely fluffy, bizarrely yellow duck. He flew surprisingly gracefully (you, the Flying Seal, knew what made a graceful flight) towards your stall, perching on the countertop just in front of your merchandise. And as he did so, you felt a dull crackle of power in the air, but, habitually incautious, you ignored it. Perhaps an Overlord-adjacent was taking a piss behind the neighboring food truck. Something like that. 

“It’s just heart-shaped candy,” he said. Usually demons looked like they’d just crawled out of a monsoon drain. Not this duck. He looked like a dapper gift-shop-plushie, the kind that comes with a sweet tag with their inevitably adorable name, written beneath it, Please look after this [relevant animal]! 

“Just heart-shaped candy? Why, this is the best heart-shaped candy you’ve ever had the good fortune to feast your eyes upon! ‘Why is that, Mrs. Appleby?’ Why, I’ll tell ya!” He seemed to be enjoying himself, not least because he hadn’t left. “This chocolate is magic!” That earned you another smile. 

“Really? Is that so?”

“Sure is. Straight from my distant uncle Asmodeus. Just eat one, wait three hours, and you’ll be feeling sprightly as a spring lamb. Two’ll have all the hens—or the men, don’t look so dejected, whatever you prefer—running after you like you’re catnip and they’re a litter of kittens.”

“Hold on now. You’re trying to sell me chocolate…chocolate-ified love potions? Love potion-ified chocolate? Love-ified—” 

You waved a hand at him in pleasant dismissal. “Now, don’t you overthink it, honey. I just saw you needed a helping hand and Auntie Appleby thought she’d take a”—you surprised even yourself with this one—“quack at it.” For a glorious moment he struggled between delight and disappointment. Then he laughed, genuinely, and smiled at you with something like satisfaction.

“Two’ll make me catnip. What’ll three do?”

You paused, then shrugged nonchalantly. “Well, I ate three, and look at me now.” 

And after that it really had been sinker, and you’d sold him a box of ten and wrapped it up in pink parchment and given it to him in a pretty heart-shaped bag with added glitter. You wondered if he’d realized he was being fleeced. There was an air of irony about the way he treated you, but you were pleased to play along. A sale was a sale.

Naturally, though, you tried not to encounter people you’d sold something to after you’d sold it to them. You’d been a little careless today, telling them to wait only three hours. You’d thought that’d be enough to get them out of the grounds, but this duck was persistent. As usual, you hadn’t meant for this to happen. He still had his heart-shaped bag. He was sitting smugly in a seat far too large for him. Did he recognise you? Could he recognise you? The Flying Seal was a far cry from homely Mrs. Appleby. It could have been a coincidence. Perhaps he just liked the circus. It wasn’t strictly unusual to re-encounter your customers. But he was watching you intently, you realized, before you had to maneuver yourself into the arms of your closest friend in the circus, your counterpart, Pell-Mell, the Soaring Fiddler. And then, still incautious, you let the strange duck slip from your mind, and flung yourself from the catchbar again. 

Lucifer had decided to visit Lu Lu World less out of curiosity and more out of boredom and a vague sense of duty. It was, after all, his theme park. He’d been reckless, coming as a duck, but who’d guess this out-of-place, out-of-sorts waterfowl was the Lightbringer himself? Besides, he’d wanted to watch the circus. He hadn’t quite known what to expect. Perhaps he’d expected to be disappointed. 

But now he watched you in what seemed your most natural state. Flying, entertaining. Even without the wig and the bizarre Texan accent he recognised you (he, of all people, knew what made a good trick, a good show). He saw how you fed on the crowd’s cheers like they kept you alive. It was miraculously complex and miraculously simple. You were happy they were happy. He watched you as you rose and dove through the air as your namesake might through water—easily, happily, unembarrassed—and the lights, your smile, the spectacle, recalled to him, dimly, as if seen through rain, something he had felt a long time ago. 

You landed delicately on the platform opposite the one you had arrived from. “Selkie, the Flying Seal!” the ringmaster declared triumphantly. You winked mischievously at the audience. Did you realize they were thrilled with you? Could you realize it? Did the whole performance require a level of obliviousness? You caught the outstretched hand of your fellow performer, a small, slender girl sporting a glossy bob, and lifted her onto the platform. The two of you gave a final bow, and you, beaming, looked not down at the audience but up at the distant lights. 

Lucifer decided half-consciously that he ought to come back.

[skyward-floored]

Hey so any thoughts on people who tag non-LU stuff as LU (despite the creators of said AU aren't connected to LU in any way)?

...They need to stop doing it.

This has been a problem for years, and it drives me nuts because people I follow, and friends, and myself, have all had to deal with this and it’s incredibly discouraging.

I say this as someone who truly loves linkeduniverse— people seriously need to get it through their heads that other AUs exist out there. Often with similar or identical nicknames and/or designs for Links. And it takes all of ten seconds to click on a post and check the original tags to see if the artist meant it as lu or not. it’s not hard!

There are several posts out there that have put it more more elegantly than me, but it’s so disheartening to work hard on an au and put so much work into it and then having people take one look and go “oh it’s more lu!”. But it’s not, it’s something different and I can’t articulate exactly why it hurts so much when something you worked hard on gets tagged as someone else’s work, but it really, really does.

So just... be mindful. Be respectful of other AUs. Take ten seconds and make sure what you’re about to tag as linkeduniverse actually is that.

Don’t just mindlessly consume, okay?

[five-rivers]

Just One Day (Chapter 1)

During times like this, Iroh glimpses what Zuko could have been if Lu Ten lived.  

It’s easy, almost painfully so, for Iroh to see what he himself would have been.  He wouldn’t have had any reason to change, after all, and he had already been old by the time he’d breached the walls of Ba Sing Se.  But for Zuko?  That’s harder.  

Zuko had been a child, still forming, still being formed, when Lu Ten died.  Zuko’s training would have taken a very different path, if he had been allowed to remain a mere cousin to the crown prince.  

Looking at what could have been for Zuko is like looking into a kaleidoscope.  Even within the confines of the royal house, there are a thousand paths Zuko could have walked.  A diplomat, a priest, a soldier, a scholar, an artist, an advisor.  A spy.  An assassin.

It’s the way Zuko pours himself out of the ventilation shaft, utilizing a economy of motion that could be called graceful that does it.  The utter silence of his movements, the color of his clothes, the brightness in his eyes…  Yes.  Iroh sees what Zuko might have been.  What he might have been used for, in another world.  What even Iroh himself might have been encouraged.

But if Iroh would imagine that world, he might as well imagine any of the dozen others that have crossed his mind over the years.  That countless myriad of what-ifs set on him like a spirit plague.  If he imagines that world, he could instead picture kinder ones.  Ones where the war was over, where Zuko was happy.  

It was immaterial.  What mattered was the here and now.  Here and now, Zuko is none of those things.  Zuko is an exile, a desperate one, chasing after a rapidly narrowing beam of hope that had more in common with the lure of an angler-shark than anything good.

“Uncle?” asks Zuko, voice quiet and rough.  Burnt.

“My apologies, Nephew,” says Iroh.  “You must forgive an old man his woolgathering.”

Zuko’s pinched expression says that no, he doesn’t have to do that and probably won’t.  “You have to focus if-- if we’re doing this.  You can’t be distracted when Zhao is looking over your shoulder.”  His tone is angry.  At least, that is how most people would interpret it.

“It’s alright, it’s alright, I’ve made sure we’re alone.  We’re as safe as we can be.  In the meantime, food!  And more importantly, tea.”

Zuko scrunches his face into an expression that is both delightfully teenage and undoubtedly painful.  His face is covered in bruises and small cuts.  “Uncle…”

“You may wrinkle your nose, Prince Zuko, but every person in the world has at least one virtue, and Admiral Zhao’s is excellent taste in tea.”  He smiles as he sits down and reaches for the pot.  “Although, I am sorry to say that his virtue is a very lonely one.”

Sadly, this does not get the laugh Iroh was hoping for.  Zuko’s scowl may, however, become slightly less pronounced.  He also, once Iroh sits down, falls on the food like a starving man.  He might very well be.  Iroh’s position on the ship and in Admiral Zhao’s retinue has the unfortunate requirement of being in Zhao’s presence, or that of his trusted subordinates, most of the day.  This means that he cannot help his nephew nearly as much as he would like.  

So.  It is, in fact, very likely that this is Zuko’s first meal today.

Although, Zuko is quite capable of theft, when it serves his purposes and sense of honor.  Maybe he is just being a teenager.  Teenagers are hungry.  

Iroh would ask, but he doubts he would receive an honest answer, either way.  

Then, Zuko stops, mid-bite.  “Uncle,” he says around a dumpling, “have you eaten?”

Then again, Iroh is, perhaps, not a bastion of honesty himself.  “Of course!”  He pats his stomach.  “Have you ever known me to miss a free meal?”

Zuko squints at this, then looks back down at his food.  He doesn’t start eating again.  

“Do you ever…” he starts, before pursing his lips together.  

“Yes?” prompts Iroh, hopefully.  

“Do you ever wish,” says Zuko, quickly, the words tumbling over each other, crowding to get out of his mouth, “that you were someone else?”  He freezes, then, jaw clenched tightly, as if he fears that he has spoken out of turn.  

“No,” says Iroh, glad that, at least, this is a familiar fear.  “No.  Prince Zuko, I do not regret my decision to be with you.”

“That’s not what I mean,” says Zuko, clearly frustrated but keeping his voice at a near whisper.  “I mean…  Do you ever wish that you weren’t-- That you didn’t--  That you were a, I don’t know, a poet, or a priest, or a-- a normal person.  Somewhere.  Someone who didn’t… didn’t have to…”  He shrugged.

Iroh blinks.  Not a fear, then, perhaps.  Well, if Zuko wants to stop his hunt, to disappear from the eye of the Fire Nation and more importantly the Fire Lord, Iroh will do his best to make that happen, and with a glad heart.  Although, it would have been far more convenient if Zuko had his change of heart before he snuck onto this ship…

“I suppose all men do so at times, especially men of power.  Otherwise, why would there be so many stories of kings and lords in disguise?  Why would there be actors, or the masks of the Fire Festival?  I confess, even I have, hm, occasionally pretended to be someone who is not Prince Iroh of the Fire Nation, General and Dragon of the West.”  He paused.  “Do you wish for such a thing, Nephew?” best to not use his title and remind him of the responsibilities attached to it.

“I… I have, uncle.”  He looks up, alarm clear on his face.  “Not permanently!  Not forever!  Not-- Not even for very long!  But sometimes…”  He looks down again, a blush spreading across skin that is alternately pale, scarred, burned, bruised, and scraped.  “I wish,” he says, very quietly indeed, “I could be someone else, anyone else, just for a day.”

In that moment, Iroh can see all the things that Zuko wishes not to be, not to have.  He wishes not to hurt, not to be hurt, not to have this weight upon him, not to have this duty, not to be banished, not to be so far from home, not to be part of this war, not to have these memories, this history, not to be betrayed over and over again.

Although, that is probably not the way Zuko is thinking about it.

“But just for a day,” says Zuko.  He swallows.  “Just for a day.  I know my duty, Uncle.  I love our people.  It’s my honor to serve them.”

Ah.  Perhaps Zuko is not, quite, ready to run away with him to become nameless, faceless Earth Kingdom peasants, then.  Well, Iroh always knew this was going to be, how should he put it, a work in progress.  Or, no, that probably wasn’t the best way to put that.  He’d have to think on it.  

Metaphors took a lot of work that the youth of today just didn’t appreciate.

Iroh put his hand on Zuko’s shoulder and squeezed it as tightly as he dared.  “I understand, Prince Zuko,” he said.  “But I hope that someday, the spirits will grant your wish.”

Zuko blinked hard, then went back to inhaling his meal.  A few minutes later, he was climbing - practically levitating - his way back up into the vents.  

Iroh leaned back, sighing.  They really shouldn’t make those things as big as they did.  

.

Zuko crawled to the bend in the ventilation shaft that he’d been sleeping in while Zhao sailed north.  It was near the showers, so while it was unpleasantly damp, it was warm and he could sometimes overhear the officers talking.  

He curled up, tucking in his knees and pillowing his head on the small bag of necessities he’d been able to put together.  He should sleep.  He needed to sleep.  

But to sleep, he’d have to forget all the stupid things he had said to his uncle.  What had he been thinking?  Ugh.  He’d hit something, if that wouldn’t give away his position and therefore his presence.  

Well.  It might not, at that.  Ships were noisy.  Still.  

Still.  

Still, he hadn’t been lying.  But he knew better than to just say things like that.  That’s what got him exiled in the first place.  

He forcefully closed his eyes.  He would sleep.  He had to be rested, to break into the north pole and capture the Avatar.  

.

The sun slowly rose over the arctic horizon, waking all of the fleet’s firebenders, even if for only a moment, depending on their shift.  In his stateroom, Admiral Zhao woke slowly, and called for his aides to brief him.  Decks below, General Iroh, already awake, ran through a set of katas he had not yet taught his nephew.  In a ventilation duct near the officer’s showers, a teenage firebender gasped, coming awake all at once.  But this teenager wasn’t Prince Zuko.  Prince Zuko wasn’t on the ship.  Prince Zuko wasn’t anywhere.  

In the ventilation duct, Kuzon of Hing Wa sat up.  

.

(The moral of the story is ‘don’t make wishes when you’re in a spirit tale.’)

[xiyouyanyi]

Welcome!

@ryin-silverfish here, also known as "That person who talks a lot about FSYY and fox spirits".

This is my little LMK AU sideblog, which started off as a bunch of disjointed background notes for my fanfics, but developed into its own gigantic thing over time.

I've said elsewhere that, despite LMK (and many other JTTW adjacent works) lifting certain tidbits wholesale from FSYY——like Nezha's backstory or the Golden Dragon Shears, neither the show nor the fanworks really go into the implications of a FSYY/JTTW combined universe.

(For one, Zhao Gongming's three sisters, the Sanxiao, showing up to kick Jin and Yin's butts for stealing and breaking their treasure would be very satisfying, and also hella badass.)

Well, be the change you want, they said. 

So here it is: Journey of the Gods, aka "LMK, but FSYY is also canon and an extremely influential historical event".

Inspired by @digitaldoeslmk 's By the Book AU.

What even is FSYY?

"Ancient China's bloodiest bureaucracy recruitment program, kickstarted by a king who simped too hard for the creator goddess of humanity and the fox girl she sent to end his dynasty."

"I'll write my own God-Demon novel, with blackjacks and fox hookers and no Buddhist allegories!" ——Xu Zhonglin/Lu Xixing/Li Yunxiang

Okay, jokes aside: Investiture of the Gods(Fengshen Yanyi) is the other big "God-Demon Novel" of the Ming dynasty, written after JTTW. It's about the toppling of the Shang dynasty and its tyrannical King Zhou by King Wu of Zhou——but with more Daoism, immortals and demons helping out both sides, and ten billion magical formations and treasures. 

At the end of the story, almost everyone who died in battle were deified and became the 365 gods of the Celestial Bureaucracy, thus "Investiture of the Gods". 

Here is a link to the only full English translation of FSYY, by Gui Zhizhong.

Here is my overview of FSYY's grand overarching conflict, a.k.a. "Why are all the Daoist immortals fighting?" 

Compared to JTTW, it's a lot more formulaic and suffers from a massive character count inflation problem, but also extremely influential in Chinese folk religion, to the point of some modern temples, like Qingyang Palace, basically worshiping characters from the novel! Like, the western equivalent would be a church worshiping Dante and Beatrice from the Divine Comedy.

(Similarly, it is to orthodox Daoism what the Divine Comedy is to medieval Christian theology, and should not be treated as actual religious scriptures.)

Okay, FSYY happened in the LMK universe. So What?

Well, first, it will really do wonders to fill up that eerily empty Celestial Realm we see in the Spider Queen special, and the Celestial Bureaucracy will no longer consist of a grand total of five people.

Secondly, it can solve some major show-not-tell problems and actually give legitimacy to the grievances of the LMK Brotherhood + Havoc in Heaven, as well as fleshing out the Celestial Realm.

Third, so many cool magical treasures.

Fourth, LBD gets an origin story, with a twist.

Fifth, I delight in quality angst and horror, and FSYY had some seriously messed-up stuff and implications.

Sixth, Celestial Bureaucracy office politics.

Seventh, Nezha kicking asses and winning fights like he should.

Eighth, crazy Xianxia shit, as you’d expect from the great-granddaddy of modern Xianxia genre.

Ninth, infodumps about Chinese mythos and history trivias.

Tenth, Underworld lore.

...As you can probably tell, this is mostly just me nerding out and writing walls of texts. I'm not a very good artist and can't do Lego style, but will probably doodle some symbol/character designs for funsies.

I also derive most of my enjoyment from writing fix-its and worldbuilding, not shipping characters. Like, I love exploring individual characters through relationships, but just ain't a fan of romance.

There will be a lot of OCs, but unless otherwise specified, all of them will be based on actual characters from FSYY and JTTW, with a few folk gods sprinkled in for funsies.

With that taken care of: good luck and happy reading!

[demaparbat-hp]

4, 24, and 35 for the artist ask meme!

4—Piece you wish got more love?

My pieces usually receive such huge amounts of love from you guys, and I consider myself so lucky! If I had to choose one I wish could have gotten more attention, though, I think it'd be this Lu Ten artwork for my ATLA fanfiction For the Spirits.

I had such a fun time working on it! And I really like how it came to life. Lu Ten is one of my favorite characters, and I loved drawing him.

24—What's a compliment about your art that has always stuck with you?

Someone once told me, upon seeing one of my paintings, that it felt as if it would crawl out of the canvas and haunt them for life.

My physical artwork tends to be more visceral and personal than what you guys see over here. It really struck me that it felt alive, breathing, dangerous, to someone—communicating emotion through art has always been one of my goals, so it felt wonderful to be told as much.

35—If you had one piece of advice to give your younger artist self, what would it be?

Cut yourself some slack! Not everything you do needs to look or be perfect. Nobody is asking you to be the best at what you do—and if they are, kindly tell them to get lost!

Your art is what you make it to be. It is the form you will it to take. If an instalation or a performance or conceptualism doesn't call out to you, don't do it. If you want to spend the rest of your life painting like the old masters instead, then go ahead! Be happy, be content, be satisfied with your art.

Nobody will give you peace in life. You must seek it by yourself. Be bold, be prideful, be unapologetic. Be true.

[zipzapzopzoop]

There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow

Chapter 37: Close Encounters of the Third Kind

(Warning, this chapter contains dark themes such as kidnapping, violence, and descriptions of injury and illness. As always, take care and read at your own risk)

His heart was in his throat.

“Get him, get him, get him!”

The first shot missed, the second one hit.

Almost ten feet he plummeted, crying out when he landed painfully on the asphalt, completely entangled in netting and unable to fly.

He scrambled to get to his feet but would only end up getting tangled up further and pulled back down to the floor like an animal caught in a trap.

He began to hyperventilate, and yet it felt like he was getting no air at all. There were shouts from people standing over him.

“Alright, we got the target in the net, over.” “Get him in the car!”

There was the sound of a car trunk being opened.

He began to yell for help, but there was nobody else around. His heart slammed against his ribs as he clawed and kicked at the netting. He didn’t have anything sharp on him! He dropped his paint gun when he was shot with the net and fell.

This isn’t happening.

This isn’t happening.

Suddenly, there was the sound of barking, and whoever was dragging him let go. There was some cursing and the sounds of a scuffle nearby.

Then a gunshot.

Laszlo jolted awake.

The artist looked around wildly, but stopped upon noticing Buster laying on his chest. 

He had woken him up. It was a dream. Buster had noticed him twitching in his sleep and woke him up. 

Laszlo’s heart was still racing, he needed to calm down. He reached over and pulled on his goggles, slipping them down over his eyes.

“Thanks, buddy…” Laszlo whispered and pet the terrier with trembling hands. “I don’t know where I’d be without you…” That wasn’t completely true. He knew he’d be in the back of one of those SUVs that had been chasing him and Tiny.

“Hey Lulu…?”

Laszlo rolled over, only to find the spot she was sleeping in empty.

“Tallulah?” He sat up and looked around the room. She was nowhere to be found. 

Dread began to pool in his stomach. 

What if she got taken…? 

What if she was in the back of one of those SUVs right this moment?

Being taken who-knows-where?

Logic told him he was being paranoid, but experience told him to find his sister before it was too late.

Without thinking, Laszlo rushed out of the camp, down the lab stairs, and into the hall.

“Tallulah?!”

He heard a pained groan from one of the rooms to his left. The door was cracked open.  

“Lulu…?” He nudged the door open. 

“...Lasz..?” 

The artist froze when he saw his sister collapsed on the floor, kneeled over a trash can. She looked terrible. She was pale and had a blanket haphazardly wrapped around her, like she couldn’t decide if she was too hot or too cold.

With that, older brother mode kicked in instantly and he was on the floor by her side.

“What happened? Are you sick?” He felt her forehead with the back of his hand.

“Jesus, Lu. You’re burning up. What’s going on?”

His sister shivered and put her head down on the edge of the trashcan.

“Everything feels terrible…”

“Terrible how?” He ran a washcloth under some cold water and wrung it out before kneeling back next to her and wiping her face clean.

“Gaston, Uncle Bud, and I were being chased by those security guys, and our car went into the canal…” she began, her eyes still shut. Lasz listened patiently while he washed the cloth clean and wrung it out a second time. 

She began to take deeper breaths like she was going to be sick again, but it seemed to just be a false alarm. She sighed. “I hate this…”

“What happened when you went into the canal?” Laszlo gently prompted.

“We broke the window to get out. And while I pulled Gaston out, I cut my back pretty badly on the window…” she murmured tiredly. “It’s been hurting bad since…”

“Hang on…” Laszlo shifted the blanket to see the wound. His eyes widened when he saw it.

“Tallulah… this is really infected. Like that canal is filthy,” her brother’s voice was serious. She didn’t respond. Laszlo flinched when she began to slump to the floor. “Lulu…? Tallulah?”

Laszlo felt like his heart stopped when he realized she was completely unconscious. This was bad.

“Help… Help! I need help!” He laid her on her side and jumped up to get somebody. Laszlo ran out of the room and froze like a deer in headlights.

A younger Bud and Lucille stared back at him.

------------

Check out the chapter on my Archive!

[yumenoyousei]

Notes for my Sokkla Celebrity AU (Azula's side)

This AU idea came to me earlier this year (like May??) and wouldn't leave me alone so I wrote all the notes related to it.

I then wrote a Sokkla fic based in this universe, which I struggled a lot with. To motivate me to finish it post it on AO3, I decided to share the notes of that universe. 

So here are the Azula-centric notes for it. I'll post the Sokka-centric shortly and in a few days, the fic.

*Note, all the songs/artists are references in style and/or mood/vibe and/or lyrics. I do not think it would be the exact same song if in that Universe Azula would sing it but it just gives an idea

TW: mental health issues and mention of su*cide and attempts

Notes for Sokka's side

Without further ado,

ATLA Celebrity AU (Azula-centric)

Azula 0-12

Azula is a child actor with Zuko, gets more roles than her older brother

The whole Sozin family are renowned actors and/or singers (Ozai was an okay actor, Iroh was an amazing actor and singer, and Ursa was an amazing singer who didn't get that much recognition until she got married to Ozai)

Ozai is still very much a piece of shit, setting his children against one another

Ursa doesn't help as she unconsciously supports Zuko more, gives him his love for music and playing guitar & piano

By the time Zuko is 13 (Azula 11) he focuses on music

Azula being always pitched against him, starts dancing & is good at it 

Still, the fire siblings are closer than in canon; Zuko teaches Azula to song-write and express her feelings through lyrics

Meanwhile:

Ursa is trying to divorce Ozai, but Ozai (and the Sozin family) is having none of it because of the image it would give them

Lu Ten dies (suicide, the pressure of being an actor, Iroh is never the same, remove himself from the limelight)

Azula 13 - 16

At Ozai pressure, forms a girl group with Mai and Ty Lee (think: Morning Musume & e-girls). Mai is a better singer, and Ty Lee is a better dancer but Azula is still made the leader. She puts immense pressure on herself to be better than them. Does fewer acting gigs but is known as an actress.

Ozai hurt Zuko (scar-like in canon?) to the media they say it's an accident but behind closed doors, it gives Ursa the out she needed. She leaves with Zuko (they go stay with Iroh) intending to get Azula too but:

1- Ozai fights her even more to keep Azula

2-Ozai makes sure to make Azula believe Ursa left her because she doesn't want her

Azula dates publicly actor Chan; gives him all her firsts "to get rid of them", and breaks up soon after

Azula 17-18

The girls make more sexual dances/songs. Mai and Ty Lee are not comfortable but Azula thrives in the "sex sells" mentality (Ozai influence)

Azula snaps at reporters that ask her about Zuko which gives her a "bad girl" personality which she also thrives in (somehow her doesn't give a fuck attitude boosts her popularity)

The girls have an ugly fallout making their 4th album and get kicked out of the agency (to the girls, it looks like Azula told her father and to Azula, it looks like they left her, but it is all Ozai) 

Zuko starts a solo career under Avatar Industries (they have the Gaang also and Zuko makes friends)

Before releasing his first single, he tries to contact Azula but she's having none of it: she believes Zuko also abandoned her

Rumours about Ozai's shady money deals come out and Azula has to lay low

Azula 18

Mai and Zuko start to date in the public eye and Mai makes one (1) comment about the girls' split which makes the media go into a frenzy

Azula's mental health starts to slip, stops acting altogether after she snaps at a director

Ozai makes Azula go see Zuko telling her to "check what the rivals are doing" but Azula just misses her brother so takes the occasion

Sokka is there also because of my Sokkla agenda to support Zukko

Azula actually has a good time with her brother, they mostly talk about music, and Azula can mock him (friendly) about his cheesy music (think early Shawn Mendes) She also surprisingly has fun with Sokka

(somehow develops a tiny crush that she destroys as soon as she hears Sokka mentioning his girlfriend)

The next day, a rumour explodes that Sokka cheated on Suki (Olympic Athlete) with Azula because Azula seduced him 

Even if Sokka, Azula, and Zuko deny it, the rumours spiral

Azula writes her frustration in a song about how the media portrays her as evil even if Sokka gets less heat. Ozai made Azula release it as her first official solo single (think Billie Eilish's "Bad Guy")

It explodes and Azula releases her first solo album, the second single from the album is actually about Zuko (think Rihanna's "Bitch better have my money" energy, but saying things like; you left me and I trusted you) and it does very well on the chart

Azula 19

Azula is about to go on tour when Ozai gets arrested for money laundering

Her mental health slips even more as they discover his other shady practices and an "anonymous source" relates the abuse Azula & Zuko got

Her tour gets cancelled

Azula gets into a mental psychosis and believes it's her mother who said it to hurt her career

The media tries to get a scoop about it

Azula almost drowns in her bath; Zuko rescues her last-minute

She gets hospitalized; diagnostic OCD, and stays for 8 months

Writes a lot while she's hospitalized

Zuko visits often, and they get a heart to heart, Zuko is also followed for GAD and PTSD

Ursa visits, the first time it makes Azula slip, the second she screams at Ursa. After, the doctors tell Ursa it's best if she doesn't come

Azula 20

After she gets released, (and followed by a therapist) Azula discovers that a lot of rumours were actually set up by her father, like the cheating scandal

(He wanted to make it seem like Azula was the one trying to reach out while Zuko was the one pushing her away, thus chipping his "cute awkward turtleduck" persona he has but when Ozai sees the pictures of Azula laughing at Sokka's joke, another idea comes to his mind)

And the "anonymous source" was actually Ozai's entourage in an "if I'm going down, you're going down with me" attempt

Azula is 100% heartbroken but also 300% mad

She writes a lot of songs

At some point, Zuko tries to make her reconnect with Mai & Ty Lee and even if Azula knows most of the conflict was amplified by her father, she's scared to contact them

Zuko manages to make Azula meet Ty Lee and one thing brings another, they write a song together which they never did because the agency used to write/decide what they sang

They invite Mai to join and through songwriting, they do an album as a group (think ChloexHalle's album "Ungodly Hours")

They become better friends but decide to officially split as a band after the release of the album (Mai & Ty Lee's careers are going great anyway)

(Mai & Zuko break up and might come back together I dunno, haven't thought that far about those 2)

Azula 21

Before releasing the album, Azula announced on social media her mental health conditions and said it was the biggest reason why she was out of the public eye for 2 years.

She tries the best she can to avoid mentions of her father

The girls release the album and it does well, they are praised for their new maturity and powerful vocals

Azula works on a solo album but even with all she has written, she is stuck.

She asks for help (in a very Azula way) from Zuko and she officially meets the Gaang

Azula and Aang become weirdly fast friends

Finished by releasing an EP that is 100% about her father that she conceals as break-up songs (think Naika's EP "Transitions")

Her mother announces she's pregnant with her boyfriend's baby, it lowkey makes Azula spiral for a few weeks, writes about it

Azula 22 

Azula wins prices for her EP and with the album with the girls

She still has a "bad girl" persona (she loves to call herself a bad bitch) to the media but the way she talks about her mental health makes her relatable - she's flippantly talking about tho which a lot called "refreshing"

As she hangs out more with her brother + the Gaang, her crush on Sokka comes back, especially now that he is single, though she doesn't want to act on it

To her surprise, she writes a love song that is just that, a love song (think Selena Gomez's "Souvenir")

Because in the song she sings about blue eyes, the media/internet speculate that it's about Sokka which she denies (even if it's true)

She does a fun danceable song with Aang (think Bruno Mars & Cardi B's "Finesse remix"), surprising everyone

She does a lot of featuring that summer, with other artists but she cannot see what she wants for an album

Something with her father's sentence happens (it got almost revoked or something) which makes her revisit all the (other) songs she has about him

**Sokkla story** (Link to the fic added !!)

Notes for Sokka's side

[multifairyus]

Missing Fluff Moments in Volition

Like…the intimacy Briana and Selwyn share in that sliver of time they have together post Mesmer reveal, root sharing and firefly kiss but before the Regents arrive? I just think Tracy really coulda given them a week or at least a day or two in Volition post kiss like damn 😭 ik YA pacing has to be breakneck and also we have to let Nick have a chance in book three but like…can they get a BREAK?? imagine what those extra days of no lies, no secrets between them…

I can clearly see them making sweet, tender love to each other and also can see them jumping each other’s bones…and that is a different post entirely. But outside of sheer sexuality like just CONSIDER:

• Bree sharing Sel’s bed before sunrise ands she needs to get back to the main house? Looking him in the eyes and telling him she trusts he wouldn’t do anything she didn’t want to do? Sel unsure if he’s on the precipice of Demonia or the closest to humanity he’s ever been. Experiencing and acting on emotions he’s had so long…he is self loathing, touch starved, and deeply, deeply devoted my heart can’t take this—

• Another sparring match… The banter, the teasing? I for one want Bree to unexpectedly pin Sel down with Arthur’s strength. Yeah. YEAH.

• Bree seeing Sel’s relationship to aether post root sharing change you cannot tell me she wasn’t gazing at him lovingly while his head was titled back looking at his firework aether show. Magic signature scents/magical attunement to each other convo part 2??

• I’m still waiting for Sel being able to play the violin (that’s canon right? Did I hallucinate that?) to come into play. I feel like Aunt Lu has a fiddle somewhere and is probably off the grid as far as entertainment goes…prehaps a campfire concert? Or a private one for Bree? (Side note: Valec challenging Sel to a silly fiddle off to “The Devil went Down to Georgia” a la Guitar Hero 3? Someone PLEASE write that crack I will pay you—)

• Generally experimenting with aether—idk what exactly but just non lethal things. Can they just make cute shit together? Root sharing is in a similar vein but I’m sorry that escalates so fast my man is literally drunk off of her and she can feel his gaze intensify—I…I can’t even think of something fluffy it’s just—SCREAMS INTERNALLY

• Our beloved homosexual supporting cast, William and Alice, talking shit and theorizing over the dinner table when their friends keep disappearing oh my god they’re not even subtle about it?? Frankly I want a POV of them just WITNESSING the tension between them. During fights is the most interesting but also quiet moments of rest and healing

Demonia’s Descent has a sultry vibes fosho but had to have some manipulative, possessive energy folded in for the ✨theme✨. It’s musical genres are alt/rock/pop/synth which I think lines up too.

But like…I need the devotion and admiration energy. I need some R&B/neo soul/jazzy vibes…Maxwell, Sade, H.E.R., Xavier Omär…i stand ten toes down in my selections but there aren’t many black artists in Demonia’s Descent…I’m this👌🏾 freaking close to curating a Volition Brelwyn playlist oh my god oh my god oh my god—Update: I did it >:D

[reinaka42]

Wang Chuan Feng Hua Lu (忘川风华录) Masterpost

Wang Chuan Feng Hua Lu (忘川风华录) is a Vocal synth (Vocaloid and SynthV) music project. It consists of songs themed around different figures throughout Chinese history. The project is a collaboration between different artists and creatives, with music and videos featuring prominent traditional Chinese elements. The project's title translates to "The Records of Magnificence of the Wangchuan" - In Chinese mythology, "Wangchuan" (or River of Forgetting) is a river in the Underworld that can rid one of their past life's memories, similar to the river Lethe.

A mobile game adaptation has also been developed by NetEast. Unfortunately, I haven't played it so I can't give much insight on it. However, I assume that its premise is similar to that of the idea behind the project as a whole: all these historical figures meeting each other in the Underworld after they died. Maybe.

You can find all the songs on Bilibili. The official Weibo can be found here. The game's website, which includes all characters appearing so far in the game, can be found here, and its Weibo can be found here.

(If you prefer YouTube, I've also put together a handy playlist. Please know that most of these videos are reposts though, so please watch the original Bilibili MVs if you can!)

This blog is where I will be posting everything I feel like I need to say about the songs in this project. A lot of it is lifted from my Twitter account but will be in much more detail. Note that I probably won't touch collab songs, or songs that don't focus solely on the project's own characters.

Disclaimer: I do not speak Chinese, nor am I an expert on Chinese history. Therefore, I cannot reliably translate the lyrics to these songs, nor my words should be taken as gospel. I am merely a nerd gushing about my hyperfixation.

Playlist

多情岸 【Duo Qing An】 ➼ B link

洛阳怀 【Luo Yang Huai】 ➼ B link

易水诀 【Yi Shui Jue】 ➼ B link

山河令 【Shan He Ling】 ➼ B link

簪花人间 【Zhan Hua Ren Jian】 ➼ B link

栖凰 【Qi Huang】 ➼ B link

心上秋 【Xin Shang Qiu】 ➼ B link

祖龙吟 【Zu Long Yin】 ➼ B link

如见青山 【Ru Jian Qing Shan】 ➼ B link

竹林间 【Zhu Lin Jian】 ➼ B link

天下局 【Tian Xia Ju】 ➼ B link

青鸟衔风 【Qing Niao Xian Feng】 ➼ B link

木兰行 【Mu Lan Xing】 ➼ B link

好字唯之 【Hao Zi Wei Zhi】 ➼ B link

不可道 【Bu Ke Dao】 ➼ B link

水叙湖风 【Shui Xu Hu Feng】 (collab) ➼ B link

是非 【Shi Fei】 ➼ B link

风起甘露 【Feng Qi Gan Lu】 (collab) ➼ B link

谓剑 【Wei Jian】 ➼ B link

万象霜天 【Wan Xiang Shuang Tian】 (New Year event song) ➼ B link

千秋梦 【Qian Qiu Meng】 ➼ B link

易安难安 【Yi An Nan An】 ➼ B link

惊鹊 【Jing Que】 ➼ B link

高歌破阵 【Gao Ge Po Zhen】 (collab) ➼ B link

不赴 【Bu Fu】 ➼ B link

西行 【Xi Xing】 ➼ B link

大航海家 【Da Hang Hai Jia】 ➼ B link

牡丹乱 【Mu Dan Luan】 (collab) ➼ B link

倾国 【Qing Guo】 (collab) ➼ B link

相虎 【Xiang Hu】 ➼ B link

补天裂 【Bu Tian Lie】 ➼ B link

此期盈期 【Ci Qi Ying Qi】 (1st anniversary song) ➼ B link

破云来 【Po Yun Lai】 ➼ B link

归钓吟 【Gui Diao Yin】 ➼ B link

始见千秋 【Shi Jian Qian Qiu】 ➼ B link

临川浮梦 【Lin Chuan Fu Meng】 ➼ B link

将军行 【Jiang Jun Xing】 ➼ B link

妄语人间 【Wang Yu Ren Jian】 ➼ B link

数风流 【Shu Feng Liu】 (2nd anniversary song) ➼ B link

问剑春秋 【Wen Jian Chun Qiu】 ➼ B link

起战令 【Qi Zhan Ling】 ➼ B link

人间应又雪 【Ren Jian Ying You Xue】 ➼ B link

旷古回响 【Kuang Gu Hui Xiang】 ➼ B link

墨隐侠声 【Mo Yin Xia Sheng】 ➼ B link

桃源故人 【Tao Yuan Gu Ren】 (3rd anniversary song) ➼ B link

燕双归 【Yan Shuang Gui】 ➼ B link

拜云台 【Bai Yun Tai】 ➼ B link

思华年 【Si Hua Nian】 ➼ B link

承天 【Cheng Tian】 ➼ B link

*Note: The anniversary songs are probably for the game's anniversaries, as the project itself is more than 5 years old.

Albums

Vol 1: 溯洄 【Su Hui】 Includes character songs from Duo Qing An to Zhu Lin Jian. Features human vocals.

Vol 2: 踏浪 【Ta Lang】 Includes character songs from Tian Xia Ju to Yi An Nan An + Shui Xu Hu Feng.

Vol 3: 数风流 【Shu Feng Liu】 Includes character songs from Bu Fu to Yan Shuang Gui, and the two anniversary songs.

Visual character guide:

PRE-QIN | QIN | WESTERN CHU | HAN | THREE KINGDOMS | JIN | NORTH & SOUTHERN DYNASTIES | TANG | FIVE DYNASTIES & TEN KINGDOMS | SONG | YUAN | MING | QING | DREAM

[thesinglesjukebox]

'WEIRD AL' YANKOVIC - "POLKAMANIA!"

"Weird Al"'s first Jukebox appearance... today, we have finally truly become the Singles Jokebox.

[4.38]

TA Inskeep: Oh look, vaguely recent pop hits set to polkas. <Miranda Priestly voice> Groundbreaking. </Miranda Priestly voice> [2]

Kat Stevens: There are a certain subset of songs which I've only ever encountered in "Weird Al" polka medley form: I have no idea what the original "Cradle of Love" sounds like, nor have I any real interest in finding out. So it spoils the fun a little when it turns out I know all the tunes already. [4]

Julian Axelrod: "Weird Al" Yankovic was one of my first favorite artists, which means I was exposed to some of the biggest pop hits in history via parodies and polka medleys. So while "Polkamania!" might disgust and confound the average listener, I find it charming that he's still committing to this incredibly specific bit forty years into his career. It's been a decade since "NOW That's What I Call Polka!", which means Al has a wide array of hits to cover, from the obvious ("Shake It Off") to the inspired ("Vampire") to the baffling. (My biggest laugh came not from his polkafied version of "WAP," but the censored rendition of "Thank U, Next" that immediately follows.) It's hard to judge this through a contemporary critical lens when it exists mainly as a funhouse inversion of pop's immediate past. Listening to a "Weird Al" polka medley in the year 2024 feels like returning to your hometown and finding out your favorite old haunt is still standing and still run by the same curly-haired weirdo, untouched by the evolution of taste and the passage of time. [7]

Katherine St. Asaph: A foil to Eminem: Em is crass where Al is gosh-darn unoffensive, dying to offend where Al is dying to please, but the two artists share a drive to present themselves as more chaotic than they actually are. (I interviewed "Weird Al" once, and he was so unwaveringly on-message that it felt like interviewing a career politician.) Their pop-culture medleys are as routine and unsurprising as holiday concerts, though Al's are more event managed: doing the press circuit, he was happy to break down all the logistics of the "Polkamania" assembly and approval process. In doing so, he critiqued the song better than I ever could: SZA ghosted him, but Lin-Manuel Miranda returned his call in like 30 seconds. [4]

Tim de Reuse: I'm sorry, Al. This kind of thing was your bread and butter, but we've pulled the rug out from under you. The genre-cloud of "recognizable song awkwardly re-rendered in different style" is the basis for a million clickbait YouTube thumbnails, ten percent of all videos on TikTok, and probably a quarter of all audio-based generative AI prompts. I've already heard all of these songs as Gregorian chant, as Norwegian black metal, Midwest emo, using the soundfonts from Super Mario 64, performed by a bad Kate Bush impersonator, in fucking "Negative Harmony" -- never of my own volition. This stuff is just in the air now, competing for my attention, and it all sounds the same as every cell phone ad. Wat's left here? Polka? Is polka still funny on its own merits? Was it ever? It's not you, Al. It's us. I'm sorry for what we did. [1]

Joshua Lu: "NOW That's What I Call Polka!" was a guilty pleasure of mine, operating as a genuinely catchy and humorous summation of then-recent hits made by a man with a palatable appreciation for pop music and a knack for taking on unserious tasks with the utmost seriousness. "Polkamania!" is mostly the same, and in being his first mashup since then (aside from some Hamilton thing I can't bring myself to listen to), he's had to distill over a decade of hits down instead of just a few years' worth. All of these songs included make sense, but every other song just instills a sense of "Oh yeah, that was a thing once," culminating in a Taylor Swift remake that surely would've amused me in 2013 but now just feels a dozen lifetimes old. It doesn't help that some of these songs are just kind of boring and don't offer much by way of humor, forcing pretty straightforward polkafications and awkward transitions.  [5]

Ian Mathers: Look, none of these will ever equal "Polka Your Eyes Out" to me, both because of the song selection there and because I was 10 when it came out. But I'm happy Al's out there doing his thing, and I hope he never changes. [6]

Mark Sinker: OK, back in April some clown called on him to become our beloved worm-man god-emperor, and now look what happened: “Brat Al” Yankovic! There’s a whole slab of cultural and music theory to be explored one day, about what happens when you convert modern pop into sheet music and then convert it back out again into your favoured local sound-style: what gets elided, but also what’s gained (not nothing)! And maybe some day someone will write it up — but that day is not today and that someone is not me.  [5]

Hannah Jocelyn: The polka medleys were never my favorites; it's almost always the same shtick and there's none of the cleverness of his usual material or his (underappreciated!) style parodies. There's inspiration here to be sure, "Weird Al" doing "Bad Guy" as klezmer gets this a positive score on those grounds alone. Maybe if he released this five years ago or in five years it would work and not fall victim to the Anxious Interval. But this is "Weird Al", long-reigning king of kitsch. Who wants him to be in touch? [6]

Nortey Dowuona: Both 10 years out of date and 10 years into the future. Welcome back, polka. (And "Weird Al," too.) [10]

Taylor Alatorre: I appreciate that there's a person out there who can get me to say with a straight face a sentence like "I miss when the polkas were more thematically consistent." [5]

Jonathan Bradley: "Weird Al" sucks. I feel so mean to say that: people love this guy who, let’s face it, is completely harmless and has been delighting (mostly) children for decades, and here I am telling you how appalled I feel that we celebrate such a pristinely executed vision of pure crappiness. And yet, here we are blurbing him, so: I hate the querulous insipidity of Al’s interpretation of pop music. His schtick demands familiarity with pop — otherwise the parodies make no sense — but shies away from the music’s flair and vision and emotion, as if the pleasure these things offer is too terrifying and too adult, and must be remediated through the lens of banality so as to be controlled. His jokes rarely riff on details of the texts themselves, the way a Lonely Island video might, but replace any intensity of feeling with artefacts of suburban triviality: crappy television, crappy minor medical ailments, and so much crappy, crappy food. Even the verisimilitude of his productions — his greatest actual talent — runs headlong into the crappiness of his adenoidal voice, reassuring us that he’s not so proficient at his craft as to be mistaken for a star. And then there’s his sideshow of playing covers with an accordion, which we understand to be a joke instrument, in the style of polka, which we understand to be a joke genre. Is his polka any good? None of his listeners care. Do they go on to explore more polka? Why would they? Do people who enjoy polka think Al is contributing anything to the music they love? Who cares; the incredible notion that someone somewhere might enjoy polka is part of the joke. Because the most desiccated and shriveled aspect of Al’s relationship with pop is that he can’t imagine it has its own jokes. Cardi B is funnier in “WAP” than he is here. Lil Nas X was a better troll on “Old Town Road.” Billie Eilish had better comic timing with her interjected “duh” on “Bad Guy.” And I understand how churlish I sound saying all this. I am Seymour Skinner; I am Ed Rooney. But I like jokes! (I’m not mad. Please don’t put in the newspaper that I got mad.) The problem is that there is nothing fun happening here! [0]

Alfred Soto: I'm happy Al exists. This song sucks. [2]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[dangerousstrawberryshark]

K-pop Boy Bands Stations

Seventeen

Choi Seung-Cheol (S. Coups)

...

Yoon Jeong- Han (Jeonghan)

...

Joshua Hong (Joshua)

...

Wen Jun-Hui (Jun)

...

Kwon Soon-Yeung (Hoshi)

...

Jeon Won-Woo (Wonwoo)

...

Lee Ji-Hoon (Woozi)

...

Lee Seok-Min (DK)

...

Kim Ming-Gyu (Mingyu)

...

Xu Ming Hao (The8)

...

Boo Seung-Kwan (Seungkwan)

...

Hansol Vernon Chwe (Vernon)

...

Lee Chan (Dino)

...

TXT

Choi Soo-Bin (Soobin)

Choi Yeon-Jun (Yeonjun)

Choi Beom-Gyu (Beomgyu)

Kang Tae-Hyun (Taehyun)

Kai Kamal Huenging (Huening Kai)

Monsta X

Sohn Hyun-Woo (Shownu)

Lee Min-Hyuk (Minhyuk)

Yoo Ki-Hyun (Kihyun)

Chae Hyung-Won (Hyung-won)

Lee Joo-Heon (Jooheon)

Im Chang-Kyun (I.M)

EXO

Kim Jun-Myeon (Suho)

Kim Min Seok (Xiumin)

Byun Baek-Hyun (Baekhyun)

Kim Jong-Dae (Chen)

Park Chan-Yeol (Chanyeol)

Do Kyung-Soo (D.O)

Kim Jong-In (Kai)

Oh Se-Hun (Sehun)

Zhang Jiashuni (Lay)

Li Jiasheng (Kris)

Lu Han (Luhan)

Huang Zitao (Tao)

Stray Kids

Christopher Chan (Bang Chan)

Lee Min-Ho (Lee Know)

Seo Chang-Bin (Changbin)

Hwang Hyun-Jin (HyunJin)

Han Ji-Sang (Han)

Felix Lee (Felix)

Kim Seung-Min (Seungmin)

Yang Jeong-In (I.N)

Kim Woo-Jin (Woojin)

NCT

Lee Tae-Yong (Taeyong)

Moon Tae-Il (Taeil)

Seo Young-Ho (Johnny)

Nakamoto Yuta (Yuta)

Qian Kun (Kun)

Kim Dong-Young (Doyoung)

(Korean Name) Lee Young-Heum (Ten)

Jeong Yoon-Oh (Jaehyun)

Dong Si-Cheng (Winwin)

Kim Jung-Woo (Jungwoo)

Huang Xuxi (Lucas)

Mark Lee (Mark)

Xiao Dejun (Xiaojun)

Wong Kunhang (Hendery)

Huang Ren Jun (Renjun)

Lee Je-No (Jeno)

Lee Dong-Hyuck (Haechan)

Na Jae-Min (Jaemin)

Liu YangYang (Yangyang)

Osaki Shotaro (Shotaro)

Jung Sung-Chan (Sungchan)

Zhong Chen-Le (Chenie)

Park Ji-Sung (Jisung)

ENHYPEN

Yang Jung-Won (Jungwon)

Lee Hee-Seung (Heeseung)

Jay Park (Jay)

Jake Sim (Jake)

Park Sung-Hoon (Sunghoon)

Kim Seon-Woo (Sunoo)

BTS

Kim Nam-Joon

Kim Seok-Jin

Min Yoongi

Jung Ho-Seok

Park Ji-Min

Kim Tae-Hyung

Jeon Jung-kook

Solo Artists

Lee Ho-Seok (Wonho)

Kang Dong-Ho (Baekho.)

Cho Seung-Youn (Woodz.)