#but being the kind of cultivator he is requires being at least a bit of a jock

[waitineedaname]

now that i've finished tgcf i can make memes about all three books! i was tempted to put binghe at the absolute center because he could easily go into any quadrant at different points in his life, and both lwj and hua cheng could swing jock, but i think the most important thing is that wei wuxian is all four at once. somehow.

[inchidentally]

just me flipping out over landoscar over the past 48hrs :)

ohhh GOODDDDD the way the commentary here is already perfect but just to add!! both shuffle about and seem to do a little of their creepy unspoken communication and then both immediately slip their arms around each other at the same time before they both look over to Max at the same time. bc the slightly scary bonded little McLaren creatures need to remember the rest of the grid exists sometimes ;__;

a-amvryllis

also the fact that Oscar's growth spurt over the winter really is visible when they're stood this close

and yet he's still the same awkward recent-growth-spurts young lad that got delivered to Lando's driver's room last season. he doesn't know what to do in front of cameras and his instinct is still to have Lando dancing and sparkling like the natural star he is so that Oscar can stand just a bit behind and fulfill his own publicity quota by reacting to whatever Lando is getting up to

mecachrome

THE CHEST TAP ohhhh the way that Oscar requires very little physical touch and Lando craves it and they've just… figured it out !! Lando squeezes Oscar's shoulder, taps his arm, initiates a handshake, shuffles back a little bc Oscar's always standing just behind him, snuggles closer to him when they're in cars for the drivers parade and it's remotely cold… and taps Oscar's chest as a 'thank you'

bc for Oscar, he gets his emotional fill through his eyes. while he's perfectly content with most people to do glances and hold eye contact when someone's speaking directly to him. but his eyes l i n g e r where he's especially fond or affectionate or in love. he watches Lily when she's looking at other people, he watched Logan for when he seemed lonely or when they were talking and Logan would stare out at the crowd, and g o ddddddd does he love to watch Lando. you can track his eyes as they trace Lando's features and the way his smile responds to watching Lando's mouth.

yet there's also the way they've learned each other's ways of expressing care/affection/checking in bc Lando can trust that Oscar will be looking to him when something is awkward or unsure, and Oscar can trust that Lando will come to him and let him know how he's feeling aaaaaaand I just think that's !!!

bc no bromance, no cultivating a dynamic or relationship by blending their social lives, no performing in any way. all of their little hallmarks are the most unplanned, unintentional sweet things like the nicknames Lando accidentally started and only continued bc it makes Oscar so happy, to Oscar's hearteyes that he absolutely surely must know fandom teases him about but doesn't bother to change. them being opposites in certain things and then eerily similar in others.

all of it comes back to the way they communicate in ways everyone else has to interpret to understand - and even then it's not like we ever get to see the stuff they think and talk about behind their little privacy door and in the downtime we know they have but that isn't documented. like, I don't want to stretch too far by implying something too intense or specific but there's definitely a Their Own World kind of thing happening. whether or not it's smth they've specifically knowingly cultivated or if it's just naturally how their dynamic shakes out.

bc we all love to joke that Oscar's jealous of Carlos or Daniel or Franco - but then he brings them up on his own in friendly ways and is a very definite carlando! and ppl wanted to make a lot out of Lando openly complaining to an audience that Oscar doesn't like enough of the same thing as him so they don't hang out as much as he does other drivers he knows. but then after that they immediately start playing padel and oh it's okay now! it literally was as simple as Lando not knowing Oscar was up for padel even if golf and regular partying won't be! and that shared activities are not a defining quality of a relationship and Lando said "spends the least time with off track" about Oscar and not "likes the least" or "has the least interest in" lasfgslajgfsalf

and like, I'm always saying how of course they'll have the usual teammate fights or spats or tensions at some point! it happens! Lando is deeply ingratiated into Max V's life socially - moreso than anyone else on the grid with Lando - but they're ever so slightly on ice at the moment bc they're too similar when it comes to competitiveness. but they'll be back to normal when the season - or the WDC race - is done and finished. and nobody likes to document it for good reason but Carlos and Lando have had plenty of challenging moments and many a 'see?? we're fine!!' golf excursions or fan service videos to smooth an issue over (including the worst gifs of all time that I can't find anymore where Lando straight up looked murderous). and then ofc the "I don't feel sorry for him" Lando/Daniel DTS stuff that caused such a fandom headache. and Oscar's always had a very simple, on track the job is to win unless instructed otherwise and then off the track we interact as people not drivers. so it's fully normal to expect situations where they're not happy w each other and it shows! but it hasn't yet and that's honestly kind of weird!! esp when they don't have the big broey type of friendship that Lando's had with his other two teammates - you'd honestly expect him to feel more at ease in showing it when he's pissed off with Oscar bc there's nothing to keep up for fandom/PR sake and no messiness with shared friend groups etc to worry about. but he's cultivated an exceptionally and very pointed approach of This Is My Team and My Job/I'm Established, He Is Not Yet/I'm The Experienced One where he sees the team unity as especially important for him to publicly present and assert. like, for all he hated the idea of being the older one and no longer baby brother, he's responded to Low Maintenance Watchful Oscar in the long run as someone's he needs to take care of and whose place in the team is partly his own responsibility. he's not just one of the drivers, he's The Guy at McLaren and Oscar's extremely painful induction into the team and F1 with basically the whole world praying for his downfall was so vastly opposite to his own gradual and loving introduction that it's clear he's taking their disparities into account. a LOT. this moment being a prime example of him correcting fans because of that. and probably also an uncomfortable awareness of the segment of his own fandom who are able to inflict a special kind of hell on anyone they view as not 100% serving Lando, the object of their unhinged obsession and bias.

like, it's a side note I'll prob never be able to go too deeply into for just that reason^^ but this viewing Lando as a permanent victim whose every good deed is seen as Not Necessary and ignoring the huge differences in position within this sport and within McLaren between him and Oscar - and simply slotting Oscar into a space Carlos and Daniel held - totally undermines Lando's real life growth as a man who does understand that disparity and does appreciate that Oscar inhabits a space totally his own and nothing to do with his older, experienced teammates - and also a man who is saying and doing these things about teamwork and appreciation for Oscar in a way that responds to those differences while not remotely expecting Oscar to mimic or parrot it back because they're not equals in the sport or with the team (which makes logical sense !!) and they're not what Lando was with Carlos or Daniel. and in all the insanity I feel like this coddling, constantly pitying and victimized approach that still hearkens back to Lando being The Baby on the team - completely fails to show him appreciation for who he actually has become and what he actually does and says that is so specifically commendable and shows such growth and strength that is so admirable. the constant expectation that he's saying and doing these things in any way that expects Oscar to copy or mirror him - when their positions could not be more different or imbalanced !!!! - and ignoring the way Lando actually doesn't expect that and that he receives gratitude and appreciation from Oscar in a way that is unique to Oscar bc everyone is different !! by viewing Lando as always perfection and never in the wrong and any good deed being automatically greater than anyone else's good deed, he is cut off from authentic appreciation and praise of the individual real life complex person he actually is and that such flat, default levels of adoration will ring meaningless to him compared to people who can objectively give him praise him as objectively as they see his flaws !! and that's why Max F is his lifelong best friend above all others ! anyway !!!!!

and like. idk. part of me feels a suspicion that this private little world Lando and Oscar have - that they cultivated around the time they decided to pull a lot of their relationship off of social media and not use it for PR (apart from the bog standard team media) - is also them wisely deciding to keep their negotiation of this new front runner craziness entirely to themselves. bc of course things aren't all sunshine and roses between them all the time, but what's clear is how mutually and maturely they've approached each new bout of drama. especially considering they're so young and everyone expected that to be the downfall to Zak's plot to have two young generational talents. and EVERY time it would make perfect sense for them to snipe at each other through the press or be caught feeling cold toward each other - or someone strategically edits or crops media to make it look so - they're huddled together somewhere giggling or playing board games or sharing junk food ;__; the brain rot of stan culture threatens to destroy fandom experience for everyone else but meanwhile the objects of their obsession are sharing a conspiratorial look and grinning at each other.

like… Netflix AND an F1 reporter have quite literally goaded and begged for them to fight and hate each other and each time Oscar boldly steps forward with that cool expression and undermines the effort, with Lando literally cheering him on <3 <3

[sunderwight]

y'know what, I think it's kind of interesting to bring up Data from Star Trek in the context of the current debates about AI. like especially if you actually are familiar with the subplot about Data investigating art and creativity.

see, Data can definitely do what the AI programs going around these days can. better than, but that's beside the point, obviously. he's a sci-fi/fantasy android. but anyway, in the story, Data can perfectly replicate any painting or stitch a beautiful quilt or write a poem. he can write programs for himself that introduce variables that make things more "flawed", that imitate the particular style of an artist, he can choose to either perfectly replicate a particular sort of music or to try and create a more "human" sounding imitation that has irregular errors and mimics effort or strain. the latter is harder for him that just copying, the same way it's more complicated to have an algorithm that creates believable "original" art vs something that just duplicates whatever you give it.

but this is not the issue with Data. when Data imitates art, he himself knows that he's not really creating, he's just using his computer brain to copy things that humans have done. it's actually a source of deep personal introspection for the character, that he believes being able to create art would bring him closer to humanity, but he's not sure if he actually can.

of course, Data is a person. he's a person who is not biological, but he's still a person, and this is really obvious from go. there's no one thing that can be pointed to as the smoking gun for Data's personhood, but that's normal and also true of everyone else. Data's the culmination of a multitude of elements required to make a guy. Asking if this or that one thing is what makes Data a person is like asking if it's the flour or the eggs that make a cake.

the question of whether or not Data can create art is intrinsically tied to the question of whether or not Data can qualify as an artist. can he, like a human, take on inspiration and cultivate desirable influences in order to produce something that reflects his view on the world?

yes, he can. because he has a view on the world.

but that's the thing about the generative AI we are dealing with in the real world. that's not like Data. despite being referred to as "AI", these are algorithms that have been trained to recognize and imitate patterns. they have no perspective. the people who DO have a perspective, the humans inputting prompts, are trying to circumvent the whole part of the artistic process where they actually develop skills and create things themselves. they're not doing what Data did, in fact they're doing the opposite -- instead of exploring their own ability to create art despite their personal limitations, they are abandoning it. the data sets aren't like someone looking at a painting and taking inspiration from it, because the machine can't be inspired and the prompter isn't filtering inspiration through the necessary medium of their perspective.

Data would be very confused as to the motives and desires involved, especially since most people are not inhibited from developing at least SOME sort of artistic skill for the sake self-expression. he'd probably start researching the history of plagiarism and different cultural, historical, and legal standards for differentiating it from acceptable levels of artistic imitation, and how the use of various tools factored into it. he would cite examples of cultures where computer programming itself was considered a form of art, and court cases where rulings were made for or against examples of generative plagiarism, and cases of forgeries and imitations which required skill as good if not better than the artists who created the originals. then Geordi would suggest that maybe Data was a little bit annoyed that people who could make art in a way he can't would discount that ability. Data would be like "as a machine I do not experience annoyance" but he would allow that he was perplexed or struggling to gain internal consensus on the matter. so Geordi would sum it up with "sometimes people want to make things easy, and they aren't always good at recognizing when doing that defeats the whole idea" and Data would quirk his head thoughtfully and agree.

then they'd get back to modifying the warp core so they could escape some sentient space anomaly that had sucked the ship into intermediate space and was slowly destabilizing the hull, or whatever.

anyways, point is -- I don't think Data from Star Trek would be a big fan of AI art.

[mycurrentobsessionis]

After the Happy Ending: Do They Stay Together?

I don't believe that Baxter and Jamie are "in love," per se.

I made a post the other day talking about Baxter's rigidity and tendency to assert control over his relationships, and one of the reblogs included in the tags that there is no way that somebody still has feelings for someone that they met 5 years ago. This got me thinking on the realism of relationships in OL and the way pacing plays into the perception of that realism. Objectively, the best written romance in OLBA is the one between Cove and Jamie. Their relationship is the most deeply developed, includes the most content, and is the best supported textually. Baxter and Derek, on the other hand, have approximately the same amount of content. I found myself somewhat disappointed with Derek's romance (though I intend to replay his a few times to see if I can get some more satisfying outcomes) as it felt less like the slow-burn I expected and more meandering. Baxter's, on the other hand, felt a lot tighter in terms of pacing, despite the fact that in terms of in-universe timelines, he spends very little time with Jamie.

What do I mean by this? I mean that the player perceives less time passing over the course of Baxter's route. Or, more accurately, there are less "slow" spots. For the rest of this analysis, I will be making the following assumptions:

I am assuming all possible Baxter-related content.

I am assuming order of play as recommended by the creators (a Baxter-run includes replacing the 5 base-game moments with Baxter's moments and in chronological order).

Baxter develops a mild crush on/interest in Jamie at the Summer Soiree in Step 2.

Baxter and Jamie form a romantic attachment in Step 3, regardless of whether they formalize that attachment or not (e.g., Jamie being at "crush" but not actually dating Baxter).

The interest/comfort indicator does not necessarily represent Jamie's feelings at the beginning of each step.

I will admit to burying the lede a bit here. If the question is, "Do I personally believe that Baxter and Jamie are in love by the end of Step 4," then the short answer is no. I believe that being truly in love requires time, effort, and patience, and I think that Baxter, with the shortest timeline in-universe, does not have the time to cultivate that kind of relationship with Jamie. Rather, the questions I want to answer, and the ones I think are more interesting are these: Do Baxter and Jamie believe they are in love? Why do they believe this? Is their beginning a relationship realistic? And, are they likely to last as a couple?

Before we begin answering these questions, I think it's important to clarify the timeline of their relationship. They first meet in what is presumably late summer of 2011, and they have an approximately 3-5 minute interaction that includes minimal dialogue. There is no contact until the summer of 2016, during which they form a romantic attachment wherein Baxter is romantically and sexually attracted to Jamie, and Jamie returns at least the romantic feelings and possibly sexual feelings. This relationship lasts, generously, 3 months, and realistically 2-2.5 months. During the relationship, Baxter attempts to impress Jamie, shows his best side, and is largely performative, though there is genuine affection for Jamie, who is generally kind, cheerful, and inclusive. The relationship ends in August, either amicably or dramatically, and does not resume until approximately August of 2021, during which they work together on the Eckert-Adam wedding for four days, followed by the two days after the wedding, during which they begin a romantic relationship.

So, let's start with the question of whether Baxter and Jamie beginning a relationship is realistic. Personally, I think yes. You have to consider that this is a fictional romance story, and thus there is some suspension of disbelief that is required. The trope of two people working on a wedding together and falling in love through the process of that is not an uncommon trope. If the best man and maid of honor can fall in love under those circumstances, I don't see why a planner and a member of the planning committee couldn't. Frankly, the plot of Step 4 alone would not be out of place if this were a Hallmark movie.

Then we must consider the circumstances. These are two young people who are currently attracted to one another and have been attracted to one another in the past. They have just spent several days working in close proximity under intense pressure and on an event that tends to evoke thoughts of romance and love.

In addition to these circumstances, there are personal factors involved. I will start with Baxter, as his character is more "stable" and less influenced by player choices. Baxter has significant attachment issues that lead him to form unstable, short-term relationships that he quickly abandons at the first sign of conflict, which is likely related to childhood emotional neglect (I elaborate on this topic in this post). This has led to Baxter suffering from extreme loneliness and self-isolation as a young adult, as he has, at this point, burned most bridges in his life. Developmentally speaking, Baxter should be seeking connections with other people at this age in his life.

Attachment issues, like Rome, are not built in a day. They occur over a lifetime of neglect. As a result, they often create habitual and reactionary behavior that takes years to unlearn. In Step 3, we see a few of these behaviors, such as in "Drinks." In this moment, Baxter makes a minor mistake due to sleepiness. Jamie attempts to comfort him and/or brush off the mistake as no big deal, while offering an easy solution. However, Jamie is unable to connect with Baxter at all or to coregulate. Instead, Baxter becomes emotionally dysregulated and runs through possible solutions that he can implement on his own before reluctantly accepting the necessary assistance but refusing to be soothed. Compare this to a similar moment on Derek's route where Cove and Jamie forget their wallets, Derek offers to make the purchase for them, and they can either accept his generosity or offer to pay him back. Unlike Jamie, Baxter's negative feelings (embarrassment and disappointment), which are otherwise completely normal and valid reactions to the situation, persevere far beyond what is normal.

The major difference between Baxter's attachment issues in Steps 3 and 4 is that he is semi-aware of them in Step 4. In Step 3, he has poor insight into his own behavior and is extremely sensitive to perceived rejection, which he anticipates and attempts to circumvent. Baxter engages in various cognitive distortions, most frequently rationalization and catastrophizing, that cause him high levels of anxious distress in relationships and make it difficult for him to continue them for very long and lead to him attempting to assert control over the relation. As @mistyscenter says here, Baxter engages in a behavior called impression management, wherein he is attempting to influence Jamie's, and others', perceptions of him through regulating and controlling the information they have about him. This is likely a subconscious process for him -- basically second nature -- and allows him to feel safe in the relationship.

As of Step 4, he has ended his relationship with his parents, which was likely defined by seeking love and approval through minimizing his own needs and emotions and managing theirs. What does this accomplish? It removes the relationship that reinforced Baxter's worst habits. As long as this relationship was maintained, Baxter would be caught in a feedback loop of being positively reinforced for conforming to impossible standards set by his parents. As he could not hope to actually conform to the standards set for him (Derek actually does something similar), he is instead rewarded for manipulating the information that he gives his parents and that is what is reinforced. While we don't know when this split happened, I would assume he did it around 2019, when he no longer relied on them financially. That gives two years for those behaviors to fade. The reason those behaviors flare up again in step for is, in layman's terms, a case of slipping back into old habits. In psychological terms, this is known as spontaneous recovery -- Jamie's unexpected appearance provides a trigger for anxiety, which leads to the old avoidance behavior (leaving the restaurant), which reduces anxiety, which reinforces the avoidance behavior, and essentially lights those old neural pathways up like a Christmas tree. This is why the increased insight is important. While Baxter has fallen out of some of his worse habits, he hasn't actually formed any new, positive coping mechanisms, which means that when he is distressed, he immediately runs for the familiar. It isn't enough to just know he has a problem -- he has to actively choose to change his response. Because 19-year-old Baxter spent so much time rationalizing what were actually unreasonable emotional responses to perceived rejection and abandonment, he was incapable of doing anything different. The older 24-year-old Baxter is capable of facing past mistakes and doing something about them, though it will likely take years to relearn how to self-regulate and connect with people in a positive way habitually.

So, what does all of this have to do with my questions? A lot, actually! Baxter will tell Jamie after the wedding that he often revisited his memories with Jamie in Sunset Bird and treated them as precious, particularly those involving Jamie. Memories are not like files on a computer -- they are unstable and liable to change each time we recall them. On either side of these memories are long periods of loneliness, isolation, and self-doubt. It is probable that Baxter sees these memories as a lighthouse in a storm, something that he heavily romanticizes and clings to for comfort, much as he does his memories with Qiu and Ren. He also later adds that Jamie was the most stable relationship in his adult life. There is also the point that Baxter engages in mild superstition (or magical thinking), such as assigning meaning to coincidence (repeatedly running into Jamie over the years). This is part of why I don't think they are actually in love -- at least part of Baxter's feelings are based on a romanticized ideal of Jamie. That isn't to say I don't believe he could fall in love with the reality, just that it will take time. It does, however, lend credibility to the idea that he would restart the relationship. It is important to note his timing. Jamie is back in town for 6 days, and if Jamie does not restart the relationship themselves, Baxter will. He, notably, does this on day 5. Why is this important? It's simple, really. Days 1-3 are spent reliving memories from the first time he and Jamie formed an attachment, likely triggering the dormant feelings he had back then. While this caused him negative feelings, such as shame, guilt, embarrassment, and self-loathing, nostalgia is also a hell of a drug. On day 4, when Jamie responds positively to the idea or them reconnecting, that eases his anxiety regarding their relationship. He will protest a relationship early on if Jamie attempts to begin before he has explained his behavior and properly apologized. However, Jamie is also leaving soon. While Baxter is no longer choosing to see relationships as finite and time-bound, it's probably hard for him to kick the habit entirely. For an example of this in Step 3, he makes several comments in "Mountains" about how "it will be over soon" and "I wish it wouldn't end." He has some semi-conscious anxiety that Jamie leaving will mark the end of his opportunity to re-establish their romantic relationship, something that he holds on a pedestal, and hurries to do so to avoid feelings of abandonment. Also hence immediately wanting to visit Jamie after the events of the game.

It's hard to list personal factors for Jamie, as so much is essentially headcanon. However, there are some common factors. The first is, again, nostalgia is a hell of a drug. They have revisited many moments in which Jamie likely has very positive associations. The second is that while Baxter is not necessarily their first crush/relationship, he is their first adult relationship and one that ended against their will. There are a lot of "what ifs" that go along with that, particularly if one tends to ruminate.

So, do I think that these two maintained feelings for each other across 5 years of no-contact. Well... kind of, but not really. I think that Baxter likely did carry a flame for the idea of Jamie -- i.e., the idea of being in a loving relationship with someone who accepts you despite your worse tendencies. Baxter probably ruminated on the relationship and romanticized it. If he didn't date in the interim, then that was the last positive, stable relationship that he, and he ended it prematurely. If he did... well, basically the same thing is true. Jamie is a little more complicated, but I think it would have been more a case of lacking closure, which they can get without dating him, if they so choose. For both, I think the nostalgia of an old teen romance does a lot of heavy lifting. I do think that with personal and situational factors in mind, it isn't a stretch to believe that two people who are attracted to one another would reconnect in this way.

These two probably believe they are in love for many of the reasons they chose to get together in the end. The next question is, do they last? It's left up to the audience what happens next, so let's speculate. What kind of problems will they face as a couple? Most likely it will be similar problems to what they've already dealt with. Baxter has a lot of bad habits to unlearn and currently his support network is severely limited. His primary support person is Jamie, which is a heavy burden to place on another person, and likely to put strain on the relationship. His friend group consists mostly of Jamie's closest friends from childhood, which means talking to them about any relationship issues would likely be uncomfortable at best and unproductive or harmful at worst. His personal support group is basically Xavier, with whom he is fairly friendly, but there isn't a lot of depth there at this time. His outreach to others is primarily spurred by Jamie's encouragement and assistance. What would help them? I think that most of all, regardless of their future as a couple, Baxter needs to participate in some kind of counselling to learn distress tolerance, develop healthy coping skills, and reframe his understanding of relationships. Couples therapy would likely help them both learn healthy communication and give them a safe place to discuss developing problems in the relationship, especially during stressful times. It's normal to have some conflict in a relationship, but that is also when Baxter is most likely to relapse. Knowing how to work through those problems before they crop up will prevent the relationship from breaking under pressure. Lastly, Baxter needs to develop a healthy support network that exists outside of Jamie and that is likely to survive should his romantic relationship fail. A relationship is like a bridge: you want both embankments to be strong and stable, and you want there to be a little give. If there is too much pressure (such as Baxter equating losing Jamie to losing his entire social circle), then it won't take much for it to snap.

[gay-disabled-characters-showdown]

LGBTQ+ Disabled Characters Showdown Round 1, Wave 2, Poll 2

A character being totally canon LGBTQ+ and disabled was not required to be in this competition. Please check qualifications and propaganda before asking why a character is included.

Check out the other polls in this wave and prior here.

Nathaniel Thorn-Sorcery of Thorns

Qualifications:

Canonically bisexual and uses a cane after one of his legs is injured in the end of the first book. Also, either obviously mentally ill or just mentally-ill coded, depending on how you look at it; PTSD mainly but there's kind of more going on there.

Propaganda:

Miserable, funny, flaming bisexual drama queen. I think he thinks he's in some sort of gothic romance novel. Cane user who suggested getting a sword cane but didn't because his girlfriend basically vetoed it. His trauma-induced nightmares have a habit of coming to life in the real world, so he has to take medicine to prevent it. He was raised by an aroace-coded semi-formerly-evil demon/shapeshifting fluffy cat, which is part of why he's a bit weird. Just trust me, he has swag.

Wei Wuxian-The Untamed / Mo Dao Zu Shi

Qualifications:

Goes through a somewhat unethical organ transplant (in that the person he is giving the organ to doesn't realize that's what's going on) where he gives up his "golden core." This is like his center of power and by giving it up, not only is he not able to do most of the more "magic" things he could do before, but he's also noticeably physically weaker and gets injured much more easily (and takes longer to recover) as well as faints more often (iirc he only faints once pre-golden core removal and that was after sustaining major injuries and going on for a significant time without any healing while also fighting and traveling). Like he finds ways around it and invents new methods so that he can still do some things that he did before, just via a very different method. In the show we don't really see any characters who aren't cultivators, or at least part of that world, so Wei Wuxian is like the only character we really get to see without a golden core.

Also gotta say that this boy is severely depressed. Like "I'm-going-to-ask-my-doctor-friend-to-perform-a-mutliple-day-long-surgery-on-myself-in-which-I-will-be-awake-where-she'll-rip-out-the-core-of-my-being-and-transplant-it-into-my-adopted-brother-who-I'll-make-sure-never-finds-out-what-happened-even-though-he'll-come-to-hate-me" depressed. he has no value for his own life other than what he can give to others, even if it's his own body. like I think some fans unfairly classify him as being insane when he's really just depressed as all hell and having the worst possible things happen to him one after another and every time he breaks down it causes more trouble and usually people end up dying because of him.

Propaganda:

https://youtu.be/swbXAVADjxY ^ok this clip kinda explains the whole thing better (and obvs spoilers)

https://youtu.be/2wO5nsnkSBk ^and this video is just for fun but it's a little thing about Wei Wuxian & Jiang Cheng because their relationship makes me unwell

[leatherbookmark]

Thinking, and like. all previous nie sect leaders qi deviated to death, because that's how the saber cultivation worked: it gradually fucked up their qi and tempers on top of that. and jgy playing the song of turmoil didn't cause nmj's death, it just sped it up. so... what if that's what happened with wrh and nmj's father?

the facts we have (from chapter 49):

wrh called nmj's father, said his saber was quite cool indeed, patted it a couple of times and that was it.

after nmj's father went back, he Was Not Pleased, rather annoyed that wrh called him just for a second then sent him back.

however, nothing was "out of the ordinary".

during a night hunt, his saber suddenly shattered, and in result, he couldn't defend himself against the beast who then injured him heavily.

after nmj took him back to the unclean realm, he couldn't accept this/couldn't get over it/怎么也咽不下这口气/腹に据えかね、悔しさに満ちていた (he was full of anger and frustration)

and his wounds didn't heal.

half a year later, he passed away. "it wasn't clear whether the cause was rage or illness".

later, when wrh and nmj fight, there's this neat little sentence:

愤怒使他陡然之间力大无穷, or, 湧き上げる憤怒が一瞬にして彼に限りなき力を与えた (rage welled up in his chest and immediately gave him a surge of unlimited boundless power)

i don't know much about how powers work in xianxia novels, let alone xianxia-based webnovels, but this sounds to me a bit like the qinghe nie cultivation method kind of uh, fucking sucked.

saber cultivation requires resentful energy of beasts and monsters.

the blade requires more strength and an aggressive fighting style than a regular "honest" sword.

unfortunately, in the process, the sabers start demanding more sacrifice, more anger and more blood -- this is why after their owners' deaths, they still need to be contained.

the more one uses such a saber, the more their qi and temper gets out of control.

it's like an ouroboros. the saber needs 😡 to work. but using saber makes one 😡 as well. both the saber and the user get more powerful thanks to 😡, but by getting more 😡, they get more 😡 (<-- this is not good).

idk, again, i don't know shit, but this looks like demonic cultivation... with one's own self... while alive? 😬

another two things, from chapters 49 and 50: one, nmj doesn't seem to notice that anything is out of order with his behaviour; when lxc points out his mind is in turmoil, he says "no it's not, i know what i'm doing". two: nmj still "hasn't told nhs about the saber spirit". it could mean "about the fact that sabers fuck you up, yknow, that it's a thing", or "that baxia's saber spirit in particular is being rowdy", but if nhs knew about the saber spirits being a thing, he would've done the math, i think. so, i think it's safe to assume that nhs did not know about the saber illness.

i'm talking about this because... they just don't know, huh. nmj's father must have been at least thirtysomething when he died, which means that a, even without a war going on, he's practiced rageloop turbo 3000 for more than half of his life and that probably shows, and b, his sons haven't seen his calmer, non-saberbrained self, because he must have been like 20 when he had them. the nie are just fiery-tempered! the sabers like a fiery-tempered warrior. which, okay, but could nmj tell that his father was, over the years, steadily getting quicker to anger? he has more duties, and besides, having wrh for a neighbour is stressing... no, he couldn't.

and wrh is power-thirsty and unstable, but also clever. he did work it out that the nie cultivators are strictly bonded with their sabers, so like a cat pushing something off the table, he couldn't help himself. he literally patted the blade a couple of times -- i'm assuming it wasn't just that, and that he infused his touch with something -- but it was enough to send this bond spiralling, enough for the saber to shatter. was the beast nmj's father was fighting so strong that its horn stopped his body's regeneration abilities? or was it the damage done to the saber that fucked up his qi and his body's regeneration abilities? LOTS TO THINK ABOUT.

again, my problem is that i don't really know how it all works -- but iirc, while jc doesn't have his sword, he's able to use zidian just fine, meaning that a proper, righteous cultivator's qi isn't tied to their sword. the nie cultivation seems to me like one big clan of people with targets carefully painted on their backs, of time bombs about to explode. there's no way out of this one!

and also like. something something, jgy trying to rise from his place as a sex worker's son -- he can't do it like a normal, high-born cultivator, so he has to use means other deem undignified, cheating, unfair. something something the nie sect founder trying to rise from his place as a butcher... i'm not saying they're the same, jgy honorary nie etc, but -- if you have no resources, then even if you somehow get them... jgy is paranoid, he feels he can't fully trust even the man he considers his closest friend, he's trapped in the way he's perceived by the society. meanwhile, the nie clan is trapped in their own way of cultivation that they can't abandon because you don't just abandon the way of your ancestors, even if you're literally cultivating yourself to death.

cool!!!

anyway

nmj 🤝 nhs : losing yourself in rage and revenge on the person that murdered your family member, except that family member would have died either way, except you realized way way wayyyyy too late, and by the time the murderer is dead you don;t really have anything to be happy about

[mdzs-owns-my-ass-i-guess]

The governess

Warning: this ficlet is not very nice to JC. Or JGY.

Based off this poll

"This lowly one," she begins, though there is absolutely nothing humble about her demeanor, straight-backed, tall, eyes shining with cold disapproval, "apologizes for interrupting sect leader Jiang, however I wish to relay to you some knowledge that would help A-Ling better reapond to your high cultivation requirements."

Jiang Cheng looks at her with the diplomacy of somebody about to stomp on a cockroach. "Since when are the servants of Jinlintai so loud-mouthed? Why would I listen to you?"

"I am not a mere servant, I am Jin Ling's governess. I spend more time caring for him and raising him than you do."

Her glare grows colder, and she takes full advantage of the few extra centimetres of height she has over Jiang Cheng, making it a point to lower her pupils to emphasize it.

"A-Ling responds best to encouragement, spoken in a kind voice. Threats and yelling do nothing but tense and clamor him. Would sect leader Jiang be so kind as to be softer around his nephew?"

It does not sound like a request. Jiang Cheng feels threatened by this woman although he knows he should not. She is not a cultivator, she is not even a Jin by blood. What she is, is audacious. Zidian sparks on his finger.

"You have a lot of nerve talking down to me like this. Are you forgetting who I am?!"

"I am sure sect leader Jiang allows nobody to forget." Her tone carries the slightest lilt of sarcasm. It is quickly replaced with a stern demeanor. "A-Ling's well-being is my top priority. I care about nothing else. And I am seeing him shaking and holding back tears because he cannot perfectly execute the steps to the Jiang swordplay that you've been screaming at him to follow for hours now."

"I will not have some lowly servant tell me how to raise my nephew!"

She nimbly avoids Zidian's hit, the whip knocking over a decorative vase and the chrysantemums in it. She lands graciously, sighing with disapproval, eyebrows knit together in a frown.

"Sect Leader Jiang, please calm down." Jin Guangyao steps in, seemingly out of nowhere. Jin Ling's governess does not seem to enjoy that fact in the least.

She bows, although there is no respect behind it.

"Reel your servants in, sect leader Jin!" Jiang Cheng bellows. The governess glares at him so venomously that for a split second, he almost thinks he sees her eyes turn red.

"Lady Ming is only looking out for A-Ling, I am apologizing on her part if she has been out of line..." Jin Guangyao says, ever so polite, just a tiny bit whiny, so very humble.

The governess can see through his act like glass. Lianfang-zun is just another one of those court snakes that slither up the stairs of Jinlintai in search for fortune and fame. He just so happened to beat all others to the game - which means he is most dangerous.

She needs to keep A-Ling safe. She still remembers what happened to A-Song...

"Dinner is about to be served. You should let A-Ling get ready, and do the same yourself." Jin Guangyao continues, and the governess almost feels sick with the way his gentlemanly manners are so theatrical and over-the-top.

Jiang Cheng huffs, withdraws Zidian and storms away, Jin Guangyao in his stead. He sends the governess a warning look, his eyes almost slitting like a snake.

But she has grown up beheading them in the tall grass of her childhood home. She bows, still without an ounce of respect for either of the two sect leaders. Then, once they're out of sight, she rushes to help A-Ling stand up and dust himself.

His quivering lips make her heart squeeze. "Jiujiu will never be proud of me..."

"That's not true, young master! Sect leader Jiang is just..." she pauses, trying to avoid any curse words, "...rough around the edges. He means well, he just does not know how to convey it. Don't put his words to heart. Even if he says some... outlandish things, he would never act on them."

"I know he won't break my legs for real, but it's not nice to hear it..."

"That's just how he is." The governess sighs. "And I don't think he'll ever change. But you will meet a lot of people that say rude things to you, so you must learn not to pay attention to them, alright?"

"Okay..."

"And just so you know, your uncles are very proud of you. And I am too."

Seeing A-Ling smile again inevitably drew a smile from his governess as well. Maybe A-Ling never got to meet his mom, but he thinks she would have smiled at him exactly like that.

[veliseraptor]

AU ask: How does it go if XY and JGY meet again after both surviving canon with at least happy-adjacent endings?

oooh interesting. I mean, depends on their respective endings and how happy-adjacent they are/what form that takes. in honesty as far as Xue Yang goes I don't know that he's going to be anything approaching happy as long as Xiao Xingchen stays dead, unfortunately, which is a major bummer considering the, uh, likelihood of that happening. I've gone on record saying that by canon era Xue Yang is running on fumes and running out of fumes. I think Jin Guangyao's chances are a little better; I feel like while he might not be happy fleeing the country with his mother's body and never coming back, he could live with it, at least.

but taking plausibility out of the picture...I mean, honestly I think they'd both be happy for each other. or, well, Jin Guangyao would be happy for Xue Yang in a pretty straightforward way, because I do think he genuinely liked and cared about Xue Yang, he was just a huge liability and a loose cannon. I know there's theories going around that Jin Guangyao wasn't behind Xue Yang's near death at all - that he turned him loose but was basically just putting him under a cup and letting him outside - but I don't tend to go with that read because (a) I find it crunchier if there's the conflicted feelings but ultimately :\ what are the options, realistically and (b) while we do know that Jin Guangyao will leave extreme liabilities alive (Sisi, to name one), I think that also requires him feeling like he has some kind of ability to control them, and Xue Yang is just. "controlling" Xue Yang is, I think, always kind of a function of just pointing him more or less in the direction you want him to go and managing the collateral damage.

but I don't think Jin Guangyao was upset finding out he survived. I think it might even be a bit of a relief, even if it is potentially concerning for self-preservation reasons.

but yeah, all that being said, basically for Jin Guangyao I think it would be this sort of indulgent "oh that's nice for him, good" and some relief because a happy Xue Yang is a substantially less dangerous Xue Yang. and for Xue Yang I think Jin Guangyao's at least continued survival would actually really delight him, the more so if it was in spite of or after everybody turns on Jin Guangyao, because Xue Yang would be like.

YEAH!!! FUCK EM A-YAO GET YOURS :D in the enthusiastic way he gets whenever people Xue Yang likes less (most of them) end up losing out to Jin Guangyao. as far as he's concerned they deserve it and a-Yao is too nice and probably everyone involved should suffer more. he has ideas and will share them in detail and at length. whatever Xue Yang's resentments of or anger at Jin Guangyao about anything, he is always going to take his side against...pretty much anybody else in the entire cultivation world, with the exception of Xiao Xingchen (and maybe a-Qing, and maybe Song Lan by proxy, depending).

Jin Guangyao, regardless of how things played out, is probably feeling substantially less triumphant about any of it than Xue Yang is on his behalf. particularly if his "victory" just entails "survival." but that's why Xue Yang has to do it for him.

(the funny thing about all of this though is that while I said up there that Jin Guangyao's chances might be a little better, I meant that purely in terms of what he needs to survive. unfortunately, there are a lot more people a lot more invested in tearing Jin Guangyao down than there are people who care what happens to Xue Yang - so in that sense, purely practically speaking, the odds of him getting out of this story alive are, in fact, worse.)

[wuxiaphoenix]

Worldbuilding: Cleaning Up an Isekai

Part of the fun of any isekai is watching the characters try to find or recreate aspects of their home world they miss. (It’s truly amazing how many Japanese isekai worlds somehow have cacao for chocolate.)

Granted, if you’re working in a pure fantasy world, you can put what you like in it. But if you’re playing it in a harder mode - time travel, say, or a fantasy world based on our own history - you have to get a bit more creative. Especially when it comes to soap.

I know it’s worldwide these days, but soap as we know it (fats and oils saponified by mixing with potassium or sodium hydroxide, AKA lye) is a European cultural thing. Historians argue over whether the Celts or ancient Romans came up with it first, or if they both did. Given during the time period in question some groups on the Italian Peninsula were either Celts or mixed, I think the point is kind of moot.

What historians can mostly agree on is that soap got established, spread during the Roman Empire, took a serious hit during the Dark Ages, and rebounded from the Renaissance on.

Note that there are people who consider the Dark Ages’ reduced amount of bathing and overall hygiene as being due to a fanatical Christian preoccupation with matters of the body as evil. This view is at best ignorant. First, a key part of Roman cleanliness was public baths... which took a serious hit when epidemic diseases like smallpox kept raging through. Second, one of the major problems for everyone in the Dark Ages was finding enough calories. In straits like that, what would you do? Devote edible fats and oils to soap, or fall back on the less effective sudsy and otherwise inedible plants for cleaning? Third - soap-making requires specialized knowledge of how much lye and water to add to which specific kinds of fats at exactly what temperature. Not to mention how to treat the fats so they won’t go rancid before they’re soap, how to protect yourself from caustic lye, and how to tell if a batch gone wrong can be rescued with a little melting and tweaking, and when it’s safer just to throw the whole thing out.

These days we have written instructions, purified fats and oils, and online lye calculators, so your average careful person can make batches of soap at home. Prior to the printing press, most or all of this had to be in someone’s head. Lose a master and an apprentice or five in a Viking raid, lose even one critical step that keeps you from burning your own skin off, blinding yourself, or searing your lungs with the fumes, and soap-making goes bye-bye. No fanatics need be involved.

Which is bad, because besides the obvious morale boost of keeping clean, simple hand soap is one of the best low-tech antiseptics available. Bar none.

So a sane isekai protagonist with any knowledge of history is likely to want some. But how do you get it, in a culture that historically doesn’t have the practice?

Three options I see. First, figure out how to make it yourself. Risky but possible, if you have a lot of time and resources to dabble with. Second, and probably more practical, find someone local who works with the ingredients in soap (fats and lye) and try to explain what you want and what you know about how it’s made. Passing it off as “a tale from a mystical far-off land” optional. Third, see if there’s any way to make friendly or at least trade contact with a culture that does make soap. And bargain!

...Yes, these are all ideas I plan to use in Colors of Another Sky. There is a lot of modern medical knowledge Jason wants the people he’s with to have. Antibiotics would be awesome. Vaccines likewise. Yet those take time and knowhow he may not have or be able to leverage out of the surprising things cultivators know.

But soap? Soap may be doable. And handwashing saves lives.

A hero’s gotta start somewhere.

[marypsue]

I realise you haven't been enjoying season 4 very much, but i thought you might enjoy my newest ST related hobby, which is thinking about an AU where Bob survives season 2 and goes to Russia with Joyce and Murray to break Hopper out of jail. I personally think this is the funniest possible timeline and would have some incredible character dynamics/interactions.

If you were gonna change one plot point from ST, which do you think would have the best knock-on effect on later seasons?

Oh I'm absolutely going to be adding that scenario to the 7-11 taquito roller in my mind, thank you! Any AU where Bob survives is a good AU, and also I am dying thinking about how absolutely, incandescently confused Hopper would be about him turning up in the USSR like 'what, like it's hard'?

I love every single time people underestimate Bob Newby because he is kind and cheerful and goofy and intensely normcore and a lil fat and a bit of a scaredy cat, until the stakes become real and he immediately steps up and turns out to also be brave and inventive and kind of a badass, and leaves everyone who hadn't expected it from him and had only seen what they expected to see scratching their heads. It never fails to delight me. (I am still only at the end of s4 episode 4 so I don't actually know how they managed to resolve the whole Russia-rescue plot in canon, but now I am absolutely going to be finishing out my watch thinking the whole time about what would be the most ridiculous, absurd, infuriating, hilarious way to work Bob into it. Excellent watching-season-4-faceplant-itself-directly-into-a-wall-over-Cold-War-xenophobia coping strategy. Delightful.)

If I were going to change one plot point, in canon, with the intent that it would be a) something that could realistically happen canonically in a Netflix show between 2016-2023 and that its knock-on effects would be as well, and b) something that would have the most general positive effect on my opinion of the series...hm. That's a tough one. Because I can think really easily of thematic things that I would change, or characterisation things that I would change, but those would both require changing a lot of plot points. This is a much bigger challenge!

I am going to say that the plot point I would change...would be in season 3, where it turns out there are Russians in a secret basement under the mall. Dustin and Steve and Robin and Erica can keep chasing what they assume are Russian spies throughout most of the season, but something isn't quite adding up. They find their way into a secret sub-basement, and find the source of the Russian message Dustin intercepted - only to discover that it's all been a false flag operation, because the lab got shut down in disgrace after season 2 and Nancy and Murray's expose, and now they're having to study the Gate (and try to recreate it) in secret with plausible deniability of their government connections if they get caught. Things get considerably more complicated and less jingoistic, it's tied back into the theme of season 1, and there's like at least 25% less Murray Bauman.

(And then, even though season 4's plot isn't really all that affected by the events of season 3 beyond Literally The Last Episode, we have no boneheaded bullshit involving Russia in s4, and any sympathy that the boys might have tried to cultivate for the assholes at the lab who abducted children and raised them in captivity, being experimented on against their will, without human connection except that which was used to manipulate them in order to use them as weapons would be just patently absurd, so maybe they wouldn't fucking do that. And also maybe I wouldn't have to endure any more Murray-with-a-funny-Russian-accent cardboard cutout 'characters'. One must imagine a better world, or how else can it become?)

[lisatelramor]

Crossing Borders Ch3

Sorry for not posting on wednesday. My computer got broken irreparably on monday and i've spent all week getting a new one and transferring files over. Today involved almost 3.5 hours of driving because the store is 45 mins away give or take a bit on traffic. T_T I had to go back because I got home and couldn't find my files. Turns out for some reason the new microsoft system defaults to cloud--including desktop--and wasn't bringing any of my files up when I searched either -_-;;; I have had very high cortisol levels this last week. Sigh. Anyway, enjoy this chapter, guys!

*

There were few things Lan Zhan disliked about being a cultivator. He enjoyed the fulfilment he got from training, the pleasant burn of well-used muscles and the peace of a long meditation session. He enjoyed the challenge of a night hunt and knowing he was protecting people. He enjoyed his sect’s musical cultivation and the creative outlet it gave him. He even enjoyed, to some extent, the myriad of rules, because they gave life structure—even if by this point in his life he also had come to the conclusion that some rules were more worthwhile than others.

What Lan Zhan did not enjoy was dealing with people. Unfortunately, being a cultivator could occasionally require a lot of that. While he had grown to have some satisfaction in teaching, distraught, anxious, grieving people were not a demographic he ever found easier to deal with.

“What do you mean he’s dead?” Wan Haoran, one of the victim’s friends asked, his face not as upset as Lan Zhan would have expected considering he just received news of his friend’s demise. “He was just with us in the pottery hall less than two hours ago.”

“Unfortunately,” Lan Zhan repeated, “there was an accident.”

“What kind of accident?” Chen Xinyi asked. She, at least, looked properly upset. Her face was pale and pinched with anxiety. She had been dating the victim, if he remembered correctly.

“He fell off one of the cliffs off-trail,” Wei Ying said bluntly at Lan Zhan’s side. “Do you have any idea why he might have been wandering in the mountain alone and far from the walking trails?”

Chen Xinyi shook her head, tears building in her eyes that she didn’t let fall. “I. No… He was. He was upset. Needed to go on a walk, he’d said, but. He was planning to join us for dinner and never showed up.”

“I guess now we know why,” Li Zihan said, the last member of their group sitting on one of the corner beds in the room. She looked tired, resigned, like bad news was one more thing on top of many bad things. “I thought he just needed more time to cool down. He feels things—felt things… strongly, you know? Sometimes he needed to go on his own for a while until he evened out again.”

“He always tried to follow what he said he’d do though,” Chen Xinyi said. The tears spilled over, sliding down her cheek uninhibited.

“Did something trigger his poor mood?” Lan Zhan asked. “The monitors in the group activities you were present in did not notice anything unusual with his behavior during the program.”

The group collectively hesitated, and Wei Ying clearly honed in on it, leaning forward.

“So something did upset him,” Wei Ying said. “During or after the activities?”

“…After,” Li Zihan grunted. “It was my fault. I shouldn’t have mentioned some things.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Wan Haoran argued. “It’s ridiculous to act like nothing happened and just forget—”

“Forget what?” Wei Ying said, frustration making his voice sharp.

None of them could look them in the face. Chen Xinyi twisted a handkerchief, its edges already wet through.

“About a month ago, one of our friends died,” Wan Haoran said after a long moment. “They were really close. Shen Ming knew him from before college, and of all of us I think he was taking the death the worst. It’s actually why we decided to come here. Everything we read said this place was good for calming strong emotions and finding peace. We thought…” He trailed off.

“I shouldn’t have brought up Huang Fang,” Li Zihan said. “It’s just… he was looking calmer and I didn’t even think… It was a good memory of him. We should be able to remember the good without focusing on the tragedy.”

“People do not recover the same way, or in a straightforward manner,” Lan Zhan said. His own grief over his parents—his mother’s death, father’s neglect, and his father’s eventual death—had taken a long time to process. Presumably, Shen Ming could have recovered over time. Instead, he’d been killed before he could finish working through those emotions. It was sad, but also a little worrisome; their victim had more reasons than his murder to hold resentment past his death.

“May I ask how your friend died?” Wei Ying said, remaining focused on the important things even as Lan Zhan let himself be distracted. “I know it’s probably not something you want to think about…”

“He…fell,” Chen Xinyi said. “Not off a cliff. But.”

“He suicided,” Li Zihan said heavily. “Or at least that’s what it seemed to be. Shen Ming was there. Couldn’t talk him down.”

“You don’t think it was suicide?” Wei Ying asked, catching her wording. “Do you think Shen Ming pushed him?”

“He wouldn’t!” Chen Xinyi said immediately, eyes wide and horrified at the mere thought. “He was so devastated after! They were like brothers…”

To the side, Wan Haoran shifted, uncomfortable. Lan Zhan studied the pinched tension in his face and jaw. Remembering the event? Or something else entirely?

“Either way, the result is the same,” Li Zihan said. “They’re both dead now… Did. Did Shen Ming… Did it look like he…?”

“I do not think he went out there intending to die,” Lan Zhan said as gently as he was able. Wei Ying was better with sympathy, but he’d been told in the past that sometimes a calm, even tone could be just as helpful.

“An accident then,” Chen Xinyi said, sniffling. “He must have slipped…”

Lan Zhan exchanged a glance with Wei Ying, neither of them offering the true cause of death for the moment. There was still the uncomfortable look on Wan Haoran’s face, and too many questions to say that these people weren’t also involved in some way.

“Oh yeah,” Wei Ying said, like a thought had only just occurred to him. “We found an odd wooden bead on him; would you know anything about that?”

Recognition. Chen Xinyi’s hand twitched toward her chest—right about where a pendant would be—and her two friends also twitched.

“The bead was Huang Fang’s,” Wan Haoran said after a moment. “He had a bracelet of prayer beads his grandfather gave him that he wore everywhere. When he died, most of the bracelet was ruined, but we each kept a bead. To remember, you know?”

Lan Zhan resisted the urge to pinch his brow and sigh. Prayer beads that were emotionally significant to their owner, that had been worn regularly, and then died with him. That would definitely be enough for a ghost to latch onto. Although, why only Shen Ming had been affected was unclear. Now at least one bead had two deaths in its existence, and could possibly be on its way to a resentful artifact if they were unlucky.

“Huh,” Wei Ying said, leaning forward. “Would you mind showing me one?”

“That’s a little insensitive,” Wan Haoran said, one wrist pulling close to his body where he must have his bead. He looked at Wei Ying, cold and accusative. “Our friend died, so soon after another, and you want to look at a bead?”

“Ah, sorry, sorry.” Wei Ying held up his hands apologetically. “It just felt significant.”

“Well it’s not.” Wan Haoran shifted in front of his friends. “Unless you’re going to let us see his body, I think you should go now.”

“Of course,” Lan Zhan cut in with the slightest of polite nods. “You will be informed when his body can be visited.” He and Wei Ying retreated, the door closing on the sound of Chen Xinyi’s tears starting up in earnest again.

Wei Ying sighed as they left the room behind them. “Well. That could have gone better.”

“Hm. The beads?”

“Probably how that spirit got in. If it’s their friend, there is the question of why he’s targeting them.”

Lan Zhan hummed speculatively. “Perhaps anger over not preventing his death?”

“Or something… Wan Haoran was kind of shifty, did you notice?” Wei Ying’s fingers drummed absently on his crossed arms. “There’s something we are missing about the friendship.”

“I do not think Wan Haoran will reveal what that is.”

“Same.” Wei Ying sighed before nudging Lan Zhan. “If we play Inquiry, do you think our angry spirit will answer? Or should I go plant a spirit trap?”

“First we should add extra warding to the dormitories,” Lan Zhan said. “After… Perhaps Shen Ming’s spirit would remember what occurred at his friend’s death.”

“…Do you think I can get away with some of my specialized talismans?”

Lan Zhan’s lips tipped up at the edges. “If Wei Ying places them very carefully out of view, no one will know.”

“Are you encouraging me to be heretical?” Wei Ying asked, delighted.

“To take all the possible care in protecting our guests,” Lan Zhan corrected.

“Yeah, well your uncle would still skin me if he knew. Ah, I’m such a corrupting force on you!” Wei Ying swooned dramatically.

“Are not.” Lan Zhan let their shoulders bump together gently. “You still have not eaten,” he said into the companionable silence that followed. “Eat, then set talismans.”

“Or I could set talismans, then eat.”

Lan Zhan looked at Wei Ying patiently, knowing he would cave to Lan Zhan’s desire to ensure he was cared for.

“Ah, Lan Zhan, you’re spoiling me again.”

Lan Zhan hummed, content. There might be a crisis going on, but he wasn’t going to let Wei Ying neglect himself if he could help it.

*O*O*

Conan was going to break something. Preferably something on a certain someone. Kid, with his usual level of charisma, had managed to put Ran and Mouri in a good mood with card tricks, four games of poker, and a bunch of random stories that flowed seamlessly into one another, keeping everyone entertained. It was annoying because if it hadn’t been Kid, Conan might have actually found it entertaining.

Because it was Kid, he kept waiting for the other shoe to fall. There had to be something more going on here.

“—field full of bunnies,” Kid said, shuffling cards for a new game—blackjack now as poker had become frustrating. “I admit, I was pretty surprised to see them since this place has all kind of rules against bringing in pets and vegetarianism as the norm, but apparently, they were wild rabbits that became domesticated from people sneaking to feed them or something, and eventually the higher ups caved and made them official protected animals. That was before they got added as part of the therapy program, I think. Fuzzy animals are actually really good for soothing the spirit. Good on the newer generations for thinking outside the meditative box, right?”

Conan huffed. He would love to escape and go looking for clues, but there was no way to sneak off. Even with Kid keeping them entertained, Mouri and Ran were on high alert after Conan snuck off earlier.

“What are you here researching?” Ran asked Kid, taking the cards he dealt comfortably. Conan took his cards grudgingly; he’d tried backing out of games only to be dragged back by Mouri because it would ‘keep him occupied.’

“Ah.” Kid’s smile never faltered. “You know, there’s a huge library here, full of a lot of interesting topics. It’s well-known in certain circles for its obscure texts on the supernatural.”

“So you’re here researching, what? Legends and ghost stories?” Mouri muttered, with a frown at his hand of cards.

“Legends in part,” Kid said, dealing another card when prompted. “It probably seems silly, but legends have fueled humanity’s progress. Chasing better medicines, better weapons, better technology and methods… I ran across a legend in Japan, and was having trouble tracing it. A friend recommended trying here since their records are so comprehensive.”

“It’s also all in Chinese,” Conan said drily. And who knew what dialect or how simplified some of those documents were.

“I can read enough to get a sense of if I have the right topic,” Kid said, “and then there’s several individuals who are more than happy to help me on my research.”

Conan narrowed his eyes. “Was one called Wei Ying by chance?”

“You must have been by the library.” Kid dealt Ran another card at her gesture, then Mouri, who grimaced hard. He had a terrible poker face.

“He looked like he lived there.” Reluctantly, Conan gestured for another card as well. The three he was dealt brought him to twenty; a decently good hand.  

“Oh, he basically does. Well, in the library, in the bunny field, or glued to his boyfriend’s side depending on his mood. You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but he’s actually one of the leading minds of his generation in paranormal studies.”

“Great, so he’s a genius with ghost stories,” Mouri said sarcastically. “Sounds real useful for a career.”

“More like exorcisms, warding, and demonic identification, if I’m getting the translation right,” Kid said cheerfully like he’d missed the sarcasm entirely. “He has some fascinating thoughts about the search for immortality.”

Conan might never live down the moment that he shares a commiserating look with Mouri.

“Any more cards?” Kid asked, still cheerful. “No? Well then…” He laid out his cards. Blackjack. Again.

This was the third time in six rounds.

“You’re cheating,” Conan said as he showed his hand. “You’ve won five of the rounds.” This one included because Ran had nineteen and Mouri had busted, going seven over twenty-one. Kid had to be cheating.

“I could be counting cards,” Kid said, returning the hands to the deck, “but I’m not. And I’m not palming them, or cutting the deck in my favor. I just have Lady Luck on my side.”

“Well share a bit of it around because this is getting boring,” Mouri grumbled. “Are they going to keep us here all night, or what?”

“I’m sure they have good reason,” Ran said.

Conan had a twinge of guilt because he hadn’t told them about the murder yet. If he did, Mouri would probably try to swan in on it without even being able to speak to anyone clearly, and muddle everything up even more. He could feel Kid’s glance like a weight as cards shuffled endlessly. Some kind of tic probably.

“I’m sure we’ll be allowed out in the morning,” Kid said.

“Oh, so now you’re inviting yourself to stay the night, too?” Mouri said. “Well, there’s only three beds, so you’re out of luck.”

“I can share with Conan-kun,” Kid said with a friendly grin. “If it comes down to that anyway.”

“I don’t think the beds are big enough to share!” Conan cut in. The idea of being crammed in with Kid onto a cot of a bed was nightmare fuel.

“You’re not that big,” Kid said. “I could take the floor too if sharing is asking too much, but I’d like to save my back if I can.”

“Conan-kun, you can sleep with me,” Ran said.

It was meant to be kind. No one would think anything of a child sleeping beside them. But. Conan felt himself freeze. Sleep next to Ran? With her pressed against him? Just the two of them? “I can take the floor,” he blurted, face probably fire truck red.

Kid snickered, covering the expression innocently when the others looked. Conan scowled at him, not that scowling ever seemed to do anything.  “I couldn’t kick you out of your bed,” Kid said, almost convincingly sincere, the bastard.

“I insist,” Conan said, hating him.

“Ah, I have a travel pillow,” Ran said, accepting the change in plans easily enough like she always did. “And there’s a spare blanket… Conan-kun, do you mind using a few towels as a mattress?”

“That’s fine…” Damn Kid, this was a defeat for Conan this time. Next time he’d definitely win though.

The card game was wrapped up and bedding distributed with little discussion after that. Conan grumpily curled up on his ‘mattress’ of towels and uncharitably wished Kid an unpleasant sleep and a crick in the neck.

*O*O*

When the alarm started ringing, Wei Ying was horribly tempted to shove a pillow over his head, burrow closer in Lan Zhan’s arms, and go back to sleep. Unfortunately, this wasn’t their morning alarm clock alarm, but the emergency bell. Again. At—Wei Ying squinted at the soft glow of the alarm clock—four in the morning. Not even the Lan woke at four in the morning.

Naturally, there wasn’t actually a choice in going back to sleep. There certainly wasn’t any burrowing back into Lan Zhan’s arms, because he was already sitting up and reaching for a shirt.

“Why?” Wei Ying asked rhetorically.

Lan Zhan paused where he was slipping on his earlier-discarded socks. He gently tucked a strand of Wei Ying’s bird-nest, slept-on hair behind an ear, hand lingering on Wei Ying’s face. “You do not have to get up.”

Lan Zhan was sweet. Really. As much as Wei Ying wanted to go back to sleep and blissfully leave whatever problem was happening now in someone else’s hands, that wasn’t really an option.

“They might need me,” Wei Ying said forcing himself upright. Ugh. Too early. He was going to have an awful headache, like a sleep hangover. “Want to bet it’s the ghost no one could find earlier?”

Lan Zhan scoffed. “Obvious.”

“I dunno. Could have a couple murderous spirits by now. You never know.”

Wei Ying got yesterday’s pants to the face as Lan Zhan started gathering up clothes for Wei Ying too.

“Peh. Thanks, I wanted dusty denim to the face first thing in the morning.”

“I will grab you coffee later,” Lan Zhan said. He already looked like he hadn’t just rolled out of bed. Wei Ying was wildly jealous of how easily his boyfriend went from ‘disheveled’ to ‘could be in an office or a fashion runway’ with seemingly zero effort. Wei Ying felt lucky if he didn’t look like a bum in the same amount of time.

Shoving his limbs haphazardly into clothing, Wei Ying staggered toward the door. “Wait! No, talismans, talismans…”

Lan Zhan handed him a stack and Suiban at the same time.

“Oh. Thanks.”

His boyfriend took a moment to smooth Wei Ying’s hair out of his face because he was the functional one between the two of them, and then they were hurrying out into the night. Day? Night; the sun wasn’t up yet so it wasn’t morning in his book.

Outside, disciples were poking their heads out or hurrying by, some still in sleep clothes. Unfortunately, the guests were too, and they didn’t look like they were going to cooperate in returning to their beds this time without some sort of explanation.

Wei Ying scanned the crowd for familiar faces. Sure enough, the child from before was wiggling to the front of the group, probably trying to see what was going on. What an annoyingly nosy child. Hadn’t he heard of listening to adults? (Not that Wei Ying had ever been good at that himself, but it was the principle of things.) Add a probable curse to the mix and the kid had the potential to be a danger magnet.

Lan Zhan, much less distractable, caught someone heading from the emergency bell’s direction. “What is happening?”

The girl had a harried look of someone on a mission, but she stopped because Lan Zhan was one of the heirs to the sect. “The body is gone and another guest is dead.”

“Well shit,” Wei Ying said. He was not awake enough for this. “Who died now?”

“Chen Xinyi,” the disciple said, shifting in the way that said she’d be walking away already if it was polite to.

Lan Zhan nodded in thanks. “We won’t keep you longer,” he said, and the girl hurried away before he got all the words out.

“Chen Xinyi is…?” Wei Ying asked, drawing a blank. He wasn’t good with names and faces at the best of times, let alone just after waking up.

“The first victim’s girlfriend,” Lan Zhan said.

“Oh.” Well, double shit then. “Nothing should have gotten past the talismans we set last night.”

“Hm.”

Ugh. Either they had a human hand working in all of this or someone had messed up somewhere with the first corpse. “And the first victim, what, walked off? Killed his girlfriend?”

“We will find out,” Lan Zhan said, as composed as ever.

“Lan Zhan, Wei Ying!” a young voice called. Oh look, there was their cursed child. He elbowed past people’s legs, hurrying over, the guy here to research alchemic immortality behind him looking like he’d rather be somewhere else. Like asleep.

Wei Ying related. “Hey kid. Didn’t we say you should stick with your guardians?”

“Good luck getting him to do that,” the man—ah, what was his name again? Kuroba, right? Kuroba Kaito, jeeze Wei Ying needed caffeine—said. “Edogawa has a reputation.”

“Mr. Kuroba, Edogawa Conan,” Lan Zhan said.

“This brat is going to give Mouri-chan a panic attack, but obviously it’s more important to find out who died now.”

“Shut up!” Edogawa said with a truly impressive scowl.

“Huh.” Wei Ying glanced between them. “I didn’t know you knew each other.”

“Oh,” Kuroba said with a long-suffering look, “we’ve definitely met. So, who’s dead now?”

“What makes you think someone is dead?” Lan Zhan asked, his natural blank face keeping any hint of his thoughts at bay.

Kuroba, who could have just as good of a blank face as Lan Zhan, gave him a deadpan stare. “It’s always someone dying when Edogawa is around.”

“You’re exaggerating,” Edogawa snapped. He looked like a different child than the one Wei Ying met before, but maybe he was just less polite and more aggressive toward people he knew well. “There are plenty of times no one dies. You make it sound like I have corpses falling from the sky when I’m around.”

“Didn’t that happen?” Kuroba said.

“Falling out of a building doesn’t count.”

Oh wow, Wei Ying was getting more concerned for this child by the second, but he really couldn’t even start digging into that problem until they’d done something about the current one. “Yeah, there is someone else dead,” Wei Ying said softly, hoping no one overheard.

“Who?” Edogawa demanded. “Where was the body found? Cause of death?”

Wei Ying looked to Lan Zhan because he really was too tired to deal with this.

“Another from the same group,” Lan Zhan said calm as could be. “We have yet to learn the particulars.”

“I can help,” Edogawa said.

“Oh hell no,” Wei Ying said. It came out in English even though he was thinking it in Mandarin. “We already had this conversation. You’re a child. Children shouldn’t be interacting with corpses.”

“Thank you!” Kuroba said. “I’m so glad someone said it because it’s really unnerving.”

“Oh, come on! You’ve helped me solve cases before!” Edogawa said, glaring up at Kuroba.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you have to solve them! Other people can figure things out!”

Edogawa shot into a furious sounding mess of Japanese that had Kuroba grimacing and rolling his eyes.

Wei Ying was losing patience with this. “Look, you just. Stay. We need to find out what the hell is going on.”

Kuroba grimaced again. “Actually, can we tag along? It’s probably safer than him sneaking out.”

“I thought it was his guardian that was the detective,” Wei Ying said to Lan Zhan in Mandarin. “If this didn’t involve ghosts, I’d say drag him along.”

“It would be better to keep an eye on Edogawa,” Lan Zhan said slowly. “His curse might be part of what is happening.”

“You think? I thought it seemed pretty clearly a spirit with a grudge.”

“Mm, but perhaps the curse has a side effect of boosting resentment. If that were the case…”

“Ah. It would tip a scale from a mild threat to a serious one.”

“And perhaps be enough to lead to people near him to commit murder if they were already contemplating it.”

Well, that was a terrifying thought. It made him want to ask how big a range the deaths this kid ran across. If it was concentrated around where he lived, then there could be a plottable range of a curse’s effects. And it could be cumulative, the longer someone was in the range, the more likely they’d reach the conclusion that murder was the solution to whatever their problem was.

Who the hell even came up with something like that??

“Lan Zhan, I don’t think I’m qualified enough to deal with that level of a curse,” Wei Ying said, exhausted.

“Mm, set it aside for now. One problem at a time.”

“Right.” Just a ghost and maybe a fierce corpse that shouldn’t have been able to become a fierce corpse, and a dead girl and a missing corpse. And a child who might be escalating things by accident just by existing. Lovely. On the other hand, Kuroba had abnormally good luck, finding things in the library that Wei Ying hadn’t even known existed that actually related to what the man was researching. With any luck, maybe some of that good fortune would cancel out some of Edogawa’s and they wouldn’t have any more corpses. “You two,” Wei Ying said, switching back to English to point at the two guests so insistent about tangling themselves up in this mess. “You’re staying with each other at all times. Kuroba, you’re his impulse control. And no one is walking around without a partner.”

“He’s my impulse control?” Edogawa said indignantly.

“I didn’t catch him hanging off a wall to spy on a corpse,” Wei Ying said, “so yes, he’s your impulse control.”

Kuroba grinned. “Oh, I think I can do that. Hear that? I have better control than you, Conan-kun.”

“Do you like your shins? Because you’re going to be bruised all over them if you continue.”

Ignoring that sickeningly sweet threat, Wei Ying caught Lan Zhan’s hand. “C’mon. Your uncle is probably having an aneurism.”

*O*O*

Kaito was having a bad day. Morning? Morning. He was having a bad morning because 1, there was a murder. A second murder. 2, he had an annoying detective to keep track of (for multiple reasons of course). 3, he had slept terribly. 4, the inevitable chaos that followed Edogawa was playing havoc with his research time. And 5, he was on his way to see yet another corpse.

Yippie. Just what he wanted to be doing with his day, right? It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen more than enough dead bodies killed in violent ways in the last year since Edogawa showed up. Not even a year, really. How had his luck failed so badly that Edogawa Conan managed to show up in a remote, selective, semi-religious retreat in a whole different country?

Really, Kaito had been grasping for straws when he asked Akako about different flavors of immortality. He’d fully expected to be brushed off, but he must have caught her at one of her good moods since she’d written him a recommendation to get in here. They followed a different branch of magic, a different religion, and spoke a different language, but magic communities must all be pretty interconnected because when Kaito reached out, he’d gotten a response and permission to look through their library.

Where had Lady Luck gone to land Edogawa in his lap?

Kaito fully expected the disciples hanging around the infirmary to block their way, but a word from Lan Zhan and they stepped aside, letting Kaito and Edogawa stroll right in. If he hadn’t already known that Lan Zhan was the second in line for being the leader of this place—kind of archaic to have familial leaders, like tiny kingdoms, but who was Kaito to judge—then he’d have probably figured it out with that alone.

People respected Lan Zhan. The only truly surprising thing was how often that respect wasn’t extended toward Wei Ying as well considering how likely it looked that he’d be marrying into the family. Or whatever people did in places where gay marriage wasn’t recognized.

If it were Kaito, he’d hop off to America for a bit and get a legally binding Vegas wedding, but that was just wanting to have a legally binding marriage somewhere even if it wasn’t at home.

…Not that he was all that likely to have a gay marriage in the first place.

Anyway. Corpse! There was a freshly murdered—it was definitely murder; there were hand-shaped bruises on the neck—corpse was set up on an exam table like she was a patient. Except that she was very clearly dead. What with the bruises and the unnatural angle of her neck…

Kaito grimaced. At least this wasn’t a bloody sort of murder.

There was a sharp-eyed man watching over the body. He frowned when he caught sight of their group—or more specifically the people that shouldn’t have been part of it. Kaito gave a little wave, like this was just another part of his daily routine. It was honestly not something he was unfamiliar with by this time, which was a depressing thought.

Edogawa, as typical, zeroed in on the body and ignored everything else around him as irrelevant.

The man said something, a question, and Lan Zhan answered in a few curt words. Kaito was working on it, but his spoken and audial comprehension of Mandarin was still playing catch up to his reading skills. Either way, the man guarding the body didn’t stop Edogawa as the brat walked right up and started looking at the body’s throat.

“Is he always like that?” Wei Ying asked, not even bothering to be subtle as he nodded at Edogawa.

“Pretty much.” Kaito sighed. As Edogawa moved on to examining the woman’s wrists—there were a few bruises there too—Lan Zhan pulled a musical instrument from seemingly nowhere. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen the people here bend spatial reality, but it was still made him twitch inside. The magician in him was a little jealous of that kind of technology; imagine the things he could pull off if he wasn’t confined to physical space! The rest of him, the part that prided itself on artistry was annoyed by magical cheats for the sort of thing he would have to pull off with sleight of hand and creative use of mirrors. “What’s that for?” Kaito asked nodding at the string instrument.

“Communication,” Lan Zhan said like that wasn’t the most uncomfortable response he could have had.

Kaito shivered. Yeah, talking to ghosts was now up there with finding a corpse at all.

“It looks like she was killed by someone’s bare hands,” Edogawa said, still focused on the body to the point where he hadn’t even noticed actual magic happening behind him. “You can see the individual finger marks here…” He touched her neck lightly. “But it shouldn’t have been possible to do this much damage. This is… I could expect a gorilla to have that kind of grip, but a human hand—and this was a human hand—shouldn’t have done that much damage, let alone broken her neck the way it did. Breaking someone’s neck bare-handed is usually just leverage. This is practically crushing part of her vertebrae.”

Wei Ying raised an eyebrow in Kaito’s direction. Kaito shrugged. He didn’t really know how to say that Edogawa didn’t know anything about magic—real magic—and was a skeptic without leading to Edogawa having an argument about why magic couldn’t possibly be real with them.

“Anything else?” Wei Ying asked. Lan Zhan started playing, and aside from a glance at him, Edogawa seemed to assume that music was just part of death rituals here.

“She tried to fight, but it was a quick death. There’s a bit of skin under her nails and one of them broke, but most of her injuries seem to be confined to her neck.”

Edogawa frowned. “She shouldn’t have been able to get in here with everyone patrolling, let alone be killed. And then there’s the missing body of the first victim… What happened to him? He couldn’t have just walked away. Although if someone was strong enough to break a neck like that, they were probably strong enough to carry out a corpse single-handedly.”

Kaito and Wei Ying winced. Based on some of the things Kaito had been skimming, there was a pretty real probability that the corpse did in fact walk away. Kaito had never been more unhappy to hear that something like zombies existed, and he dealt with a witch that literally called upon Satan on the regular. It was all well outside Kaito’s area of expertise.

“Could you maybe not touch the corpse?” Wei Ying said, looking a little queasy as Edogawa took out a goddamn glove and started shifting clothing.

“I’m wearing a glove,” Edogawa said.

“…That is not the problem,” Wei Ying muttered under his breath.

“Just let him do his thing,” Kaito advised. “Creepy as it is, this really is normal for him.”

“Does he see a therapist? Because it feels like the sort of thing someone should see a therapist for.”

“You overestimate the willingness to seek out a therapist.”

“I know there’s stigma, but hell, you’re here aren’t you?”

Kaito snorted. “Yeah, we’re not here for the health benefits and you know it.”

“He might be.”

“Mouri-ojisan got free tickets from a lady at the racetracks,” Edogawa said, cutting into the conversation before they could get too off topic. “And the victim has an odd necklace…”

“Let me see,” Wei Ying said, leaning forward.

Kaito joined him. Wei Ying tugged down the victim’s shirt to show… a plain wooden bead that had been stuck on a fine chain. “That’s not the sort of necklace most young women would wear,” Kaito said. The chain was cheap, probably not even silver plated, and the bead looked worn. Paired with the otherwise normal outfit Kaito would expect from a college student spending time at a monastic-ish location—sleeves modestly long, clothing loose but flattering, wearing a simple patterned circle skirt—it was out of place. The victim’s earrings were far nicer comparatively; real silver with teardrop pearls.

How odd.

Wei Ying, however, didn’t appear to be surprised to see the necklace at all. “So she was also wearing it at the time she died,” Wei Ying muttered under his breath, thankfully still in English.

Edogawa jumped on the sentence like a terrier chasing a rat. “Too? Someone else had a bead like this?”

“The first victim,” Wei Ying said. “The beads are from a bracelet their friend owned, worn in his memory.”

Edogawa’s eyes burned with connections being made. “So it’s possible the deaths here are related to their friend’s demise.”

“Yeah,” Wei Ying said with a wry twist of his lips that meant whatever had done the murders was definitely of the supernatural variety, “I think it’s definitely related to that friend’s death.”

“Meaning the others in their group are either killers or the next victims,” Edogawa said, hand on his chin.

“If they stay where they’re supposed to, hopefully there will be no more victims,” Wei Ying said.

“I kind of doubt that’s going to happen,” Kaito said. Considering the track record with basically every time Kaito ended up around Edogawa.

“That’s pessimism talking,” Wei Ying said with forced cheerfulness. To the side, the sound of guqin strings faded to silence. “Lan Zhan. What’d you get?”

“The victim snuck out alone and slipped past the guards while they were changing shifts. I believe she merely intended to view the body of the first victim, but her presence seemed to have triggered resentment, and led to her death.” Lan Zhan reported this with a straight back and neutral expression. It was a little creepy considering he must have been communicating with the dead woman. Kaito suppressed a grimace.

“Thank you, Lan Zhan. Now we have to go tell the remaining guests about a second death…”

Edogawa frowned. “Wait. That’s all conjecture. There’s still no clear proof on who might have killed her, and if it was someone in her group, should we tell them we found her body?”

“Counter argument,” Kaito cut in, “if they’re the next potential victims, they need to know. Two dead friends are pretty convincing evidence that they have something to fear and everything to gain for not going anywhere alone.”

“Besides,” Wei Ying said, “this is going to be a legal shit show already. We’re going to have to make up so many waivers going forward.”

“Didn’t we already have to do that?” Kaito asked. He distinctly remembered skimming a document in English and Mandarin, hoping there wasn’t anything he was missing that he was agreeing to on there.

“I didn’t sign a waiver,” Edogawa said.

“You’re a minor,” Kaito said.

“Mm, normal visitors don’t sign them,” Lan Zhan said softly. “The library is different.”

“Ah.” Magic secrets and all that. Yeah, that made sense.

“Lan Zhan, do you want to be on bad-news duty or corpse searching? Or finding your uncle, I guess…”

“I do not believe I will have much to add to Uncle’s legal efforts. Although perhaps, Wei Ying would be best suited for searching for the first body…?” Lan Zhan tilted his head slightly in question.

Something about the intensity in which he said ‘best suited’ made Kaito’s neck hairs stand on end. Kaito didn’t really know a lot about what Wei Ying was researching in the library. He’d gathered that it was controversial, but the specifics were lost to his limited reading ability.

“Corpse duty it is,” Wei Ying said with a sigh. He rubbed his neck. “Well, Kuroba, Edogawa, you should either go back or stick with Lan Zhan because wandering around isn’t a good idea right now.”

“You’re wandering around,” Edogawa pointed out.

“Yes, but I’m trained to take care of myself with this sort of thing.”

Kaito could practically feel the curiosity warring with confusion in Edogawa’s twisty little brain. Ugh. He almost wanted to go back to his room. But the best place to be to know what was happening was at Edogawa’s side. Or perhaps Wei Ying’s too… If Kaito didn’t think this would blow up, he’d suggest splitting up and letting Edogawa deal with the human aspects while he helped Wei Ying with the supernatural.

That said, things were definitely going to go wrong, and he was probably going to be needed for damage control. Staying with Edogawa it was.

“Then I guess we’re going to break the news to some unhappy people,” Kaito said.

Edogawa looked even more torn for a moment, clearly wanting to see out his curiosity about Wei Ying, and yet also needing to know more about the victims’ friend group. “Fine…”

“Aw, don’t be grumpy,” Wei Ying said. “You’re still not being tossed back in your room.”

“Stop treating me like a little kid.”

“Technically, you are a little kid,” Kaito pointed out.

Edogawa scowled.

“Only technically?” Wei Ying said.

“He has a brain of someone three times that.”

“We will go now,” Lan Zhan cut in. “Wei Ying, stay safe.”

“You too.” Wei Ying leaned in to kiss his boyfriend’s cheek. It was cute, Kaito thought absently. It was rare to see same sex couples openly affectionate in public. It was nice to know that here it was accepted enough to do that even if not in the country as a whole. For all that he was in love with Aoko… well, he’d seen men he couldn’t help looking at before. It was nice to imagine that under different circumstances he might be able to find somewhere or someone to be that way toward.

Edogawa, on the other hand, looked like witnessing this was like watching people make out instead of a kiss on the cheek.

“Are you homophobic?” Kaito asked, in Japanese.

Edogawa twitched. “What? No! I just feel uncomfortable with people kissing in public. It’s like, hey, we’re still right here!”

This was perhaps the most like an actual child thing Edogawa had ever said and meant to Kaito’s face. “Really. Kissing bothers you.”

“Yes!”

Kaito laughed. And laughed harder when Edogawa scowled harder at him than when Wei Ying called him a child. “You’ll—heh—you’ll get it once you—ha—go through puberty!”

“I am going to kick you somewhere painful.”

“Is there a problem?” Lan Zhan asked. Wei Ying had walked away while Kaito was distracted.

Just them, Lan Zhan, a body, and an unhappy looking disciple at the doorway.

“No,” Kaito said back to English, forcing his laughter to subside. Ah, he’d needed that laugh. There was too much stress in his life lately. “I just found something Conan-kun said funny.”

“Then we must go.” Lan Zhan nodded to the disciple and turned away from the corpse.

Kaito followed him leisurely and, predictably, Edogawa trailed behind, glancing back at the corpse.

“What happened to the musical instrument?” Kaito heard Edogawa mutter, but it was quiet enough that it was to himself, so he didn’t answer. Let Edogawa broaden his horizons a bit and learn to accept the inexplicable.

Wasn’t there a Holmes quote about that? Ugh, he needed to stop hanging around Hakuba. He was actually starting to infiltrate his brain…

[stardust-in-my-mind-blog]

Michael stalks around the room in his usual pacing pattern, hands in fists at his sides, occasionally sending a glare in her direction over his right shoulder. She had started to count the breaths between them to help cope with the silence and the boredom and the focus it required to sit and look completely unbothered. There was about eight to twelve calm breaths in between each of his glares. It was too bad he didn’t add an angry huff or a sigh or something to go along with his childish tantrum. It would make it easier to count.

“Do you know how fucking long it took you to talk to me?” he asked, finally stopping in front of her, eyes flashing that wild blue.

“As long as it took for me to stop being disappointed and unwilling to be disappointed again,” she said calmly, eyes on his forehead. It was even hard to look an angel in the eyes. Go figure. She’d really have to work on that.

“Do you know how annoying it is to be able to read your mind and still have you fucking give me a filter statement?” he growled, hand swooping down to slide fingertips under her chin. He didn’t hold her face. He couldn’t. Just those light tingles that guided her body to where he wanted it to go. The gesture was unexpected and shocked her into looking at him directly. She didn’t move away, or flinch. He didn’t always appear to her in such a solid form, and even rarely did he actually touch her in the way of the celestial. Her eyes narrowed, but she kept his gaze.

“Do you know how annoying it is for someone to take my unconscious thoughts and feelings more seriously than my cultivated consciousness? Especially as a spiritual figure? It’s so male. You dismiss emotions in your definition of order while not… having to feel any of them since you don’t have a corporal body. It’s… injustice.” She said, knowing that if she had anything left it was the sense of justice in the name of her soul’s body. “You judge and punish without having to feel any of what you are weighing.”

“That is the privilege of power, my darling, and that happens to be something you have little of in your current life,” said the angel, his wings used as a way to whip the air around him as he snapped them open.

“From your perspective in your world, maybe. At least I can make a shadow in mine, or lift a teacup, or… feel the warmth of tea as it touches my lips to taste and falls down my throat into my stomach and fills me with a heat you can never feel but only remember. And, to be honest, since it’s been awhile, that memory is already very inaccurate of the actual experience,” she said, glancing upward to the left with her nose in the air and a bit of a smile on her lips. If he was getting birdlike in the way he was presenting his wings and puffing out his chest like that, she’d obviously poked a hole somewhere in his temper. Might was well get a few more stabs in while she had him vulnerable.

“You really are kind of an asshole,” growled the angel.

[kvibe-test]

Crafting Bezos: A Filmmaker’s Entrepreneurial Journey

The journey of producing "Bezos: The Beginning" reflects a substantial part of why I love being an entrepreneur. It was an ambitious project that took more than just skill and dedication; it required a passion for storytelling and a relentless drive to bring a powerful vision to life.

The Scriptwriting Phase

Starting with the script, I still vividly remember the long nights and countless revisions. Crafting a biographical portrayal of someone as influential as Jeff Bezos was no simple feat. I wanted to capture not just the facts, but the essence of who he is. The initial drafts were rough, to say the least, but working closely with the scriptwriters, including talented minds like Cristen Iris, we managed to refine the script into a compelling narrative. I drew a lot of inspiration from Bezos's early days, especially his drive, which resonated deeply with me as a fellow entrepreneur.

What kept me going was the excitement of piecing together different phases of Jeff's life. Measuring the weight of each event and decision helped in creating a script that could educate and inspire viewers. It felt like sculpting a masterpiece, chipping away bit by bit until we had something that truly reflected the journey of a man who transformed e-commerce.

Director's Vision and Production

Transitioning from script to screen was an equally challenging yet thrilling process. As the director, I had the final say on everything from casting to locations and even the minutiae of each shot. Selecting the cast was a meticulous exercise. We needed actors who not only fit the roles physically but could embody the spirit of each character. When Armando Gutierrez signed on to play Bezos, I knew we were stepping in the right direction. He brought a level of authenticity that was crucial for the film’s success.

The setting was another complex aspect. Filming across various locations in New York, reliving Jeff’s early, scrappy days, and retracing his steps to where he is now was exhilarating. The tech startup setups, modest homes, and even the younger Jeff’s workspace inside the garage—in each setting, we tried to maintain as much accuracy as possible. Each location was meticulously chosen to reflect Jeff’s life journey accurately.

Global Distribution

Once filming wrapped, one might think the hard part was over, but distribution brought its own set of challenges. Working with global distributors, we aimed for a worldwide release that could reach audiences far and wide. This phase demanded a different kind of persistence—changing hats from a director to a strategic marketer. Navigating through global markets required understanding cultural nuances and adapting promotion strategies accordingly. The goal was to make Jeff Bezos’s story resonate universally, whether someone was watching in New York or Tokyo.

The process of securing international screenings was a complex labyrinth of negotiations and marketing strategies. We had to ensure that the film met various international cinematic standards while also being culturally sensitive and engaging. It was this complexity that made the end result even more rewarding. Seeing "Bezos: The Beginning" break into international markets, watching the responses ripple in from different corners of the world, made every ounce of effort worthwhile.

Looking back at the journey of producing this film, I realize it captures the essence of what being an entrepreneur means to me. It’s about embracing challenges, pushing creative boundaries, and cultivating a vision into reality. Much like Jeff Bezos’s story, my journey with this film was about relentless perseverance and creativity—qualities that fuel my entrepreneurial spirit every single day.

Through this project, not only did I aim to tell Jeff Bezos’s compelling story, but in many ways, it became a reflection of my own entrepreneurial journey. Every late night, every decision, and every obstacle I overcame while producing "Bezos: The Beginning" served as a reaffirmation of why I am passionate about what I do. The joy of bringing a story to the screen, inspiring others while navigating the complexities of production and distribution—this is what I live for.

[yunmeng-jiang]

This got a little long, so my thoughts on it are under the cut!

Personality:

"Personality not too strong" (like a lot of these requirements) comes off to me as JC saying "the opposite of my mom." Therefore, I think his idea of a personality that IS too strong is:

talks over you in conversation/doesn't let you get a word in, insists that their view is the right one and they if you disagree you're denying reality

imposes their will over yours, doesn't want to let you make your own choices, doesn't support you in your decisions

nags and belittles you, complains loudly and incessantly about your habits

Lan Xichen doesn't fit that description at all - he's gentle, offers advice rather than demands, is willing to make compromises when needed, and is supportive of his loved ones.

Talkativeness:

I think this falls partially under the first point in the section above, but also involves a willingness to set aside quiet time - this one, I think, is also influenced by Wei Wuxian in some ways. Jiang Cheng is shown to be frustrated by WWX's constant conversation and noise, expressing a desire to be left alone sometimes or at least not be constantly talked at.

Lan Xichen is very good at discerning people's needs and wants, including in conversation; he doesn't overwhelm LWJ by talking too much, and he's willing to just sit and spend time with JGY, or quietly drink tea with his uncle, or just play music on his own. I think he perfectly fits the bill on this one.

Hard-working and thrifty:

We see that he is hard-working in the novel, when he insists on helping Meng Yao with house chores despite his physical state - admittedly, laundry is not his strong suit, but with that plus his dedication to cultivation training to the point where he's considered to be one of the best cultivators in his general, and his efforts to lead his sect well, I think we can say he's hard-working.

"Thrifty" is a bit less obvious, considering that he grew up in luxury, but the fact that he was an efficient and effective leader to his heavily-affected sect during and after the war, and rebuilt Cloud Recesses when it had suffered significant damages (and probably the loss of many sect treasures) while also recruiting and training new disciples and restoring their library, tells me that he has a good mind for budgeting. It's true that JGY did offer him some monetary help with the rebuilding efforts, but that was still a difficult and expensive task!

Must treat Jin Ling nicely:

Given that he's kind even to those rejected by society or deemed too difficult to deal with and generally has a gentle, polite, and friendly demeanor - even towards Wei Wuxian, who he's pretty upset with post-timeskip - I think it's also safe to assume that he'd be good to Jin Ling!

Summary/caveats:

All in all, I think Lan Xichen fits all of Jiang Cheng's requirements except for the one about cultivation not being too high.

Now, it's probable that JC was thinking of women when he created this list, since he cares about his duty to his sect and part of that is producing heirs (though he is unmarried post-timeskip, I would guess that he's either planning on adopting, naming one of his disciples as heir, or just putting it off until Jin Ling is older, or - unlikely but possible - he already has a wife and he just never mentioned it/she never came up,) and it's very possible that he's not attracted to men - same with LXC, if you don't read xiyao, nielan, etc as romantic.

Another aspect of this is that Lan Xichen is also a sect leader. Jiang Cheng obviously doesn't want to give up his sect for the sake of a marriage, and I don't believe LXC would either, so that's a definite hurdle! Maybe they could get together post-canon if Lan Xichen ends up leaving his brother in charge of the sect, but I don't know how likely that is.

lan xichen vs jiang cheng's partner requirements

the image is a screenshot of lan xichen from MDZS Q.

was not too sure about a lot of these so i did kind of guess.

explanations:

naturally beautiful: yes

graceful and obedient: is graceful. also seems much more respectful of authority and tradition than his brother; will try to find a compromise or do as he's told rather than directly oppose you?

hard-working and thrifty: uncertain how thrifty he is given that he comes from a rich sect. then again maybe he learned when hiding with meng yao.

comes from a respected family: yes

cultivation level not too high: no

personality not too strong: tbh idk what this means? he's more willing to hear you out than most of the cast but you probably could not steamroll him in an argument.

not too talkative: idk man he seems to like to chat. but idk man.

voice not too loud: seems to speak at a normal volume.

must treat jin ling nicely: uncertain, we don't really see him interact with jin ling.

[miixz]

It has been brought to my attention that we’re not all in agreement that the Wen attacked the Gusu Lan Clan first because they’re their biggest threat as an opponent and not because they were petty about the archery competition placements, so I guess this is a post I need to put out there.

Warning, lots of words ahead!

Let’s think about the other clans first, and what we know about them at the time: 

Nie Mingjue is young. His father died at Wen Rouhan’s hands and though he is very mad about this, he hasn’t been able to retaliate, which says a lot about the position he’s in. He would fight back with all he has during an attack, but he’s likely not to fare well by himself against all of the Wen’s resources.

Jin Guangshan is clearly a cunning person, but he’s also a slimy bastard who’ll take the opportunity that's more advantageous to himself and everyone seems to know that. I can see why Wen Rouhan would think that he’s more of a controllable element, especially when he’s holding the most power. Jin Guangshan has enough self preservation and lacks enough morals that he just wouldn’t oppose the Qishan Wen too strongly while they’re winning really.

Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan’s relationship is known to be a bit of a mess and their leadership works, but they’re not coordinated and seem easy to break apart, as well as not being very politically minded or full of alliances. Yunmeng is a really good location to have, but there does not seem to be a rush to take over it since they’re destabilized enough that they wouldn't fight back as strongly if not attacked first. Which they don’t, they stay in Lotus Pier pretending a war isn’t on the horizon until it comes to their doorstep.

In comparison to these, Gusu Lan is kind of thriving?

Yes, the whole thing with Qingheng-jun and Lan Qiren is sort of a mess of its own, but it’s a controlled mess. It doesn’t reach or affect them outside of the Lan, it has not made them lose any respect that we know of, the management seems to be going fine, they’re well respected enough that the lectures are a big deal event that plenty of the other clans participate in, not just because it's a tradition but because they want to be there.

There was a virtuous and prestigious elder in the Gusu Lan Clan - Lan Qiren. Everyone in the cultivation world accepted three characteristics which described him: pedantic, stubborn, and a strict teacher who produced outstanding students. Although the first two points kept a lot of people at a respective distance from him, some even to the point of secret dislike, the last one made them try everything they could to send their children to study under him. He had brought up quite a number of excellent disciples of the Lan Sect. As long as they stayed a few years in his classroom, no matter how pathetically useless they were when they first entered, they would at least seem to be decent when they depart, especially in terms of appearance and etiquette. There were plenty of parents who were so excited that tears flowed down their cheeks when they picked up their sons.

That’s the kind of thing that requires good organization and coordination between clans, a measure of respect, that they all do seem to have for the Lan and for Lan Qiren (effectively their leader). Those things are very important. 

Not to mention this creates a sort of network of all of the former disciples that would have come to classes and hold their own feelings of respect for the Lan Clan because of their time spent there. Plenty of people have a relationship of sorts with the Lan.

So, so far the Lan Clan has that the others do not:

A good functional environment within the Cloud Recesses where outsiders don’t really know of any strife.

Good relations and a history of coordination with other clans.

An experienced adult as a leader (or two, considering both LQR and QHJ sort of count).

They are also known to have the sort of beliefs that would evidently clash with Wen Rouhan’s conqueror ideas and wouldn’t be bought or manipulated on them.

Then we have the archery competition, which yes was a bit of a hit to Qishan Wen’s ego, but was also a great opportunity to look at the other clan’s disciples and ascertain their threat levels. strengths and weaknesses and such things. And it did prove that the Lan, along with what I have listed, seem to have the strongest and most well adjusted clan heirs - which isn’t exactly a surprise, they were already known as such. But it does add to the list of reasons why they’re currently the most well adjusted and the biggest threat, as even that reputation among the juniors counts as influence which is dangerous.

The respectable title of the Two Jades of Lan was given to the two sons of the Gusu Lan Clan’s current leader - Lan Huan and Lan Zhan. Just after they passed fourteen, they were deemed by the elders of each clan as exemplary models to compare with their own disciples. They were exceptionally famous among the juniors, so it was only natural that everyone recognized the names.

The Cloud Recesses are also on a pretty defensible territory should they be warned about an attack and ready for it to come. The terrain is in their favor. We know that in the war they did need to defend themselves from attacks, and that Lan Qiren was the one holding the fort, and since we don’t hear of any big attacks having landed on Cloud Recesses other than the first one, this proves both this point and also that as much as I don’t like him, Lan Qiren is as capable of handling this sort of operation as I’ve implied above.

During the Sunshot Campaign, stories of praise were told about all three of the Venerated Triad. The ones of Chifeng-zun were about how he swept over all obstacles, leaving not even a trace of the Wen-dogs after he finished. Zewu-jun - Lan Xichen - however, was different from him.

After the situation of the Gusu area had settled down, Lan Qiren was able to defend it with great tenacity. Thus, Lan Xichen often traveled to aid others, saving lives from danger. In all of the Sunshot Campaign, he had countless times recovered lost territory and assisted narrow escapes. This was why people were ecstatic whenever they heard his name, as though they gained a ray of hope, a powerful trump card.

Every time Lan Xichen passed Hejian as he was escorting other cultivators, he would rest shortly, with Hejian acting as some sort of a transit station. Nie MingJue led him to a spacious, brightly-lit hall. A few other cultivators also sat within the hall.

Let’s think of the situation where another Clan is attacked first and the Lan are left alone to prepare for what's to come. I can’t see them being okay playing nice with the Wen, and I can’t see them simply waiting around like the Jiang did.

They have a good relationship with all the other leaders they can reach out to. If Qinghe Nie was attacked, I think they would try to come to their aid while also raising their defenses, as they had a close relationship - and that's clearly possible for them to do all at once considering that passage I just included about Lan Xichen helping people in the war, a capable and whole Cloud Recesses would hold itself together even better.

If Yunmeng Jiang was attacked I’m not sure if they’d offer aid as strongly, but they likely would as well, as they’re very close geographically. 

Lanling Jin… I’m not sure.

But either way, whichever Great Clan is attacked, they are in a good position with the remaining clan leaders to reach out to them and coordinate strategies, and not even them, there are a lot of minor clans that based on the lectures and other similar interactions based on sharing knowledge would have good relationships with them. Not all of them would rally behind the Lan, but some would, and some is much better than none.

That makes for a lot more functional opposition.

Being knowledgeable of the possibility this may happen, it really just makes the most sense that they went for them first. This is their one opportunity to use the element of surprise to their advantage, obviously it’d be used to attack their most well adjusted enemy that has a better chance to fight back.

I’m unsure where to put this, but I do think that the indoctrination was also a sort of proof that the regard the cultivation world as a whole had for the Lan Clan was noticed by the Wen Clan and it bothered them (which makes sense, considering they wanted to be seen as the unquestionable leading clan).

It’s a very similar scenario to the one we are presented in the lectures, that functions as a mockery of them, a dark reflection where instead of the boys being invited to learn and socialize, they are being exposed to the cruelty of the Wen Clan and the consequences of disobeying them.

[lansplaining]

Where did the idea that LXC saw into the depths of JGY’s soul come from? Why do so many people disagree with mxtx’s claim that he’s just sweet, pure and oblivious? I low key ship xiyao but sometimes I’m confused by the popular fanon for the ship.

Hmmm, MXTX's description of LXC is one of those things that I am hesitant to comment on because I think there are some things lost in translation, and I don't speak Chinese. I think I read once (and I tried to find the post and can't, of course) that that was less in reference to his basic intelligence and more to the fact that while the novel was coming out, people kept expecting LXC to turn out to be some kind of mastermind. But I may be wrong!

And anyway, I think the two aren't necessarily related. To me, the idea is less that LXC sees into JGY's soul and more that in private, in scenes we never see, JGY shows LXC a version of himself that LXC thinks is the true one, and I'd argue JGY also thinks-- or at least hopes-- is the version of himself he'd most like to be.

Most xiyao shippers want to think that LXC isn't just being obliviously manipulated by JGY-- we want to think he truly believes in what he's seeing, and that he's largely right. (if we wanted manipulation, we'd ship xuexiao) I think some of the extremity of the xiyao shippers' push in favor of LXC's insight into JGY's personality is in resistance to the also popular fandom idea that clearly he was just a dupe and everything JGY told him was a lie, which he believed because he's just a lovely himbo.

I'd also argue that canon suggests that the version of JGY that LXC is seeing is not entirely some sugar-coated fantasy. He knows that he was a torturer and spy for Wen Ruohan. It's heavily implied he knows about a lot of the things JGS was asking JGY to do, though, for example, he probably didn't know (in novel canon) the extent of Xue Yang's demonic cultivation torture ranch. LXC doesn't need some superhuman insight to see who JGY is, his affection is based in trust: he trusts that JGY is a person who has reasons for doing the things he does, because in LXC's experience, he always has. That's part of what makes the end of canon so devastatingly hard for LXC: there could yet be an explanation. He'll never know.

I think part of the fantasy of xiyao as a ship is this idea of being known and liked for the worst parts of yourself, so it makes sense to me that the fanon warps a little bit into LXC being the person who's able to see past JGY's well-honed defenses, which naturally requires extremely good insight because JGY's a great liar. But I'm with you on finding this dynamic not quite right. JGY shows himself to LXC. Whether the version of himself that he shows is one that can be trusted in the end is the question that torments LXC, too-- but of course, I think that it is.