#heavenly escapism

[pillo-makes-art]

Commission for my good friend @bootleg-sara waaaaah!!! These are his characters Jacob (left) and James (right) and they were a pleasure to draw! I hope you like it!

[bootleg-sara]

3 whole Jameses? I spoil myself.

Blue hair is Magi (miitopia), missing the eye is the wanderer (pained hope au), and the last is canon/heavenly escapism James

[copper-sands]

art trade w/ @bootleg-sara its the him

[sunderwight]

Bingqiu AU where Luo Binghe's the chosen village sacrifice to the evil deity who lives up the mountain.

Normally the village sends maidens, but they've more or less run out of expendable girls of the right age and, ahem, "virtues". So of course Luo Binghe's early life bad luck kicks in. In the wake of his mother's death there's no one to really care about what happens to him, he's fairly pretty, and the village leaders decide that if they dress him up like a girl the teenaged homeless kid should pass well enough. And hey, y'know, he's probably got a hard life ahead for him anyway -- dying in a brothel of some venereal disease or on the streets of exposure or starvation. At least as a sacrifice, everyone else gets to benefit from his loss! And the kid will get added to a shrine and be remembered as a hero! If anything, he should be happy about this!

Binghe is not happy about this.

But he's also a skinny underfed nobody who is easily overpowered, dressed up like a bride, and tied to a post. So. Not much he can do but wait for the evil deity to come and do whatever horrible thing he's gonna do to him.

Meanwhile, Shen Yuan is pretty sure he's been isekai'd into the over-powered hero of some kind of supernatural adventure story? He's not totally sure because he doesn't recognize the setting, but the signs are there. He's got a shrine-like base of operations (though it seems to have become corrupted/ruined, probably he has to restore it somehow), he has a very resilient and handsome new body with spiritual energy of some kind flowing through him, and a very clearly magical sword. Plus lots of neat starter powers! Though it feels like he has other abilities that have been blocked somehow? Probably he has to level up in order to access them.

When he treks out of his "base" and finds what seems to be a distressed maiden, he takes it for his beginner hero mission. The girl claims that she's been doomed to be sacrificed to an evil god. That sounds a little above Shen Yuan's pay grade for dealing with, so he unties her and decides that they had better just get out of the whole region altogether. He already packed up anything useful from his base, anticipating he might get caught up in an adventure once he left, so they follow the river away from the settlement until they reach another one.

While they travel, Luo Binghe tells Shen Yuan about the cursed deity, Shen Qingqiu, who was cast out of the heavens for slaughtering one of his brethren and has apparently being do-who-knows what to maidens from the local village in exchange for his "protection" ever since. Sounds like a real asshole! And also mid-level boss type bad guy at least. Shen Yuan hopes he doesn't have to fight him, but he probably will.

Thank goodness he found Binghe, though! Clearly the helpful little sister type! He's definitely going to require her assistance if he's going to figure out how to navigate this world and level up his skills enough to take on a god.

[theladysunami]

I had a very odd dream where a train (or bus?) I was on got yanked into another world. While my dream had nothing to do with SVSSS, it did have my waking self thinking about how hilarious and/or horrifying such a thing could be as an AU.

Imagine Shen Yuan riding the subway, train or bus one day, when something happens and his whole car gets yanked into the world of PIDW. Nobody else in the car knows anything about PIDW, so Shen Yuan finds himself with the self imposed task of keeping this eccentric group of strangers alive in a weird world full of demons, monsters, and aphrodisiac plants.

The group’s first assumption would probably be that they’re still on modern earth, and just got teleported somewhere. Their second assumption, if they come across common folk, might be they somehow ended up in the past.

Then they run into some monster, or people riding on swords with specific uniforms, or a commoner mentions a name or event only Shen Yuan recognizes. The rest of the party debates what sort of Xianxia or Wuxia world they’ve ended up in, while poor Shen Yuan sweats bullets. He knows exactly what world they are in, and they are so screwed.

I have this image of poor beleaguered nerd Shen Yuan successfully protecting and leading this group of primary school kids, their cute teacher, and a handful of grannies and grandpas, while all the other adults and older teens keep wandering off and getting themselves in trouble.

[laegolas]

A fact: a god loses their divinity only when it is sealed, or when belief in them is lost.

Another fact: Hua Cheng ascended.

He was never banished - he simply abandoned heaven the moment he realized Xie Lian was not there. For many of the gods this is tantamount to a death sentence - to fade into obscurity. Hua Cheng’s survival without followers could be attributed to his ghostly origins, and his own self determination, which could be true but —

What if there was someone who sent a prayer up in remembrance of a small ghost fire who warmed a chill night. What if there was someone who lit incense for a nameless follower with a smiling mask who sacrificed everything to save everyone(someone). The offerings are meager, rare, but sincere - worth more than a million merits from gold.

Hua Cheng may be the Flower Crowned Prince’s most devoted follower. Faith, gratitude, and love, however, transform Xie Lian into Wu Ming’s steadfast believer.

[thelaithlyworm]

Daomu Biji Watcher’s Guide, May 2024

A few new entries have been popping up lately, and I’m always hopeful new fans will stumble into the pits and never leave so I thought I’d paste up a rough map.

(Obviously the best watching order, like the best reading order of Discworld or the Aubrey-Maturin books, is ‘whatever first comes to your hand’ but for the people who don’t like that…)

tl;dr:

Daomu Biji is a series about tomb raiding. Think Indiana Jones or Lara Croft but much, much longer. The protagonist Wu Xie is deeply in love with BFF1 Zhang Qiling, a hundred-year-old cryptid, and BFF2 Wang Pangzi, who was stolen in a raid from another book series. It’s comic, tragic, horrific, zany, prone to musings on life, love, desire, attachment, and has many, many piss jokes. (‘Journey to the West but modern’ is maybe the other comparison I’d make.)

Notes:

– This guide is not talking about “quality”. All of the adaptations have their own strengths and weaknesses and tone can vary a great deal, which is to say, if one of them doesn’t suit you it’s likely something else will.

– Wacky endings, and plot threads that disappear unfinished and get picked up a long time later, are as inherent to the franchise as the piss jokes.

– It’s common for the dramas to introduce characters and subplots a lot earlier than the books do. Sometimes we’ll see a character introduced ‘for the first time’ on multiple occasions and strangely familiar scenes. I’ll try to point out the biggest continuity clashes as I go.

The Soft Entry:

There are a few movies that are entertaining as standalones but will introduce various characters and background. I would recommend:

Escape from the Monstrous Snake + Mystery/Grave of the Abyss – two monster movies featuring Hei Xiazi, a supporting character. He’s a pragmatical mercenary who’s going blind in kind of a weird way, and goofy as hell when he isn’t tiptoeing over a vast abyss of existential dread. So many fun action scenes.

Time Raiders (2015) – so there are some textual clues that late in his career Wu Xie wrote this story as a memory-jogger for an amnesiac friend. The plot is a freewheeling wild ride which doesn’t directly match any book plot but introduces some major characters and how they relate to each other. It’s colourful and fast-moving. Enjoy, enjoy.

Conjuring Curse and Misty Creed are… theoretically set late in the series even if the actors look about twelve. Both work as stand-alone adventures, though Misty Creed is maybe a little deep in the lore. Again, colourful and fast-moving.

The Chronological Order

You could honestly start with most of these – they tend to come with a ‘what has gone before’ at the start or a newbie character that things get explained to. The only one I wouldn’t start with is Heavenly Palace in the Clouds, which is lovely but also the second half of a set and things won’t make sense if you haven’t seen Lost Tomb 2 first.

Lost Tomb 1 – a highly digestible 10-12 episode version of the Seven Star Lu Palace arc, ie. Baby’s First Adventure. Introduces A-Ning, Xie Yuchen, and Huo Xiuxiu early and a couple of og characters for Wu Xie to talk to instead of monologuing to himself. The restaurant scene at the end was raided from a later arc and you’ll see it again in Ultimate Note. A book character, Da Kui, was cut which is a small problem because how he died is a minor plot point discussed in Lost Tomb 2. 

Lost Tomb 2 – covers Raging Sea, Hidden Sands (underwater tomb) and Qinling God-Tree (weird bronze tree in the mountains) plus a whole lotta side stories and original content exploring the world and foreshadowing later plots. Mooostly in continuity with Lost Tomb 1 (see Da Kui above) and made as a set with Heavenly Palace in the Clouds – they share resources and a lot of actors, and some threads begun here are finished in Heavenly Palace.

Heavenly Palace in the Clouds – covers the Mt Changbai arc, a journey up a mountain to find a very old, very grand tomb. This was made so close to Lost Tomb 2 that LT2 borrows shots from Heavenly Palace and not the other way around, which is fascinating because it pointedly contradicts the last five episodes of LT2. It also brings forward some plotlines originally from the Tamutuo and Zhang Family Old Pavilion arcs (San-shu’s past in the underwater tomb, and the Huo Family videotapes) dragging some characters on-screen and forcing them to talk about their feelings, which they would clearly rather die than do. Given those plot-tweaks and the early, deliberate continuity clash, I’m tempted to call this a Canon Parallel Universe. Got some interestingly chewy character dynamics and luverly, luverly set design.

Mystic Nine – This is a prequel about Zhang Qishan – Fo-ye – and his peers, but later dramas expect us to know who Fo-ye was so I’m sticking it here. Kinda… picaresque? Lots of action scenes and Republican-era flavour and various factions jostling for power – kinda feels like an old-school wuxia story, only set in the 1930s with all that glorious Republican-era styling. Has some unfortunate cut scenes – the details of how Fo-ye recovered at his family’s house don’t make a lot of sense in the aired version, and there are a couple of missing fights in the penultimate episode. Shrug. Still a lot of fun. Comes with four side movies about supporting characters.

Ultimate Note – Covers the Tamutuo arc (a trip through the jungle) and two-thirds of the Zhang Family Old Pavilion arc (investigating Zhang Qiling’s past is like kicking a hornet’s nest). Very, very flirty and has some zippy-zip action choreography. Politely ignores Lost Tomb 1–Heavenly Palace continuity (Xie Yuchen is, once more, introduced for the first time, now with a romantically coded friendship arc) and brings in a lot of cameos from Mystic Nine and Sand Sea, which it was filmed after. Kinda tiptoes around parts of the book plot, which I suspect would be hard for anyone to film, re: Fo-ye’s actions in the 1960s. Fair warning, this ends on a cliffhanger. This is also where the Xinyue Restaurant scene appears again – two cakes!

Tibetan Sea Flower – If Tibetan Sea Flower ever airs, it will go here.

Sand Sea – Based on the Sand Sea novel. After Tibetan Sea Flower, Wu Xie goes into a bit of a decline and makes that the world’s problem. We the audience, plus Li Cu and Liang Wan, EDIT: a lovely doctor, are pretty much dropped in media res into a number of ancient conspiracies and complicated plots coming to a head in the manner of a boil. It’s weird; it’s messy; it’s mad fun. Like Mystic Nine, has a lot of factions jostling for power and colourful jianghu characters. We will, once more, see the Xinyue Restaurant scene. Also has some side movies.

Time Raiders – The textual hints that suggest Wu Xie wrote this, suggest he wrote it around Sand Sea-era, when his life was a bit complicated. I’m putting it after Sand Sea because I believe it caps a conversation that, ah, doesn’t quite make it into the drama. But notionally this is where it should go. Ah…. at one point, someone tells a story about an ancient ruler, King Mu of Zhou, who sought immortality from the Queen of the West in Tamutuo. The longer book conversation suggests that a) King Mu of Zhou engineered a “trap” for someone like Wu Xie to fall into in the future, and b) that Iron Mask Scholar, a villain from Lost Tomb 1, was an alias that King Mu of Zhou used in the Warring States Era. Which makes some of Iron Mask Scholar’s appearances in Time Raiders… interesting.

Reunion: Sound of Providence – sometimes known as Reboot. Having peaked in badassery in Sand Sea, Wu Xie has to consider what his life is going to be now, and also, he would like to track down a missing family member. So this was tweaked to make it more accessible to new viewers (so some parts of the back-story are not mentioned or conflated for simplicity) and that mostly works but I did find watching this first and then picking up the earlier dramas a bit of a mindscrew. Zhu Yilong is, however, a powerful draw and the rest of the cast sparkles. Probably best to think of Season 1 as two short seasons jammed together, which is to say, once the Warehouse 11 arc starts there are a number of characters who won’t reappear until Season 2. It’s a fun arc even so. Season 2 ends with a badass action scene and then a big party, which I think is a great way to end a story.

Escape from the Monstrous Snake, Mystery/Grave of the Abyss, Conjuring Curse, Misty Creed – these are all theoretically set around or after Reboot-era, though they can certainly be watched as stand-alones.

[smashing-pixel]

¡Personas que posiblemente no me conozcan! / People who may not know me!

¡En este juego con solo unas cuantas personas interesadas va a cumplir años! / This game with only a few interested people is going to be a year old!

Por lo cual, ¡se está planeando un collab artístico! /

Therefore, an artistic collab is being planned!

¡Puedes participar entrando al servidor de D y decir que personaje quieres dibujar! / You can participate by entering the D server and saying what character you want to draw!

(Los personajes con rayas negativas significan que ya estan ocupados, esta imagen cambiara con el tiempo.) / (Characters with negative stripes mean they are already occupied, this image will change over time.)

[burningrhino]

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale Rivals (Part Two)

Female Kratos and Kratos Lite. They both wield huge swords and would you believe me if I said they were made by the same company?

Martial artists originating in Japan

Colorful young boys originating in the early PlayStation generation that also had their own anime series

Humanoid beings who have gained the ability to conduct electricity and also carry blunt weapons

[novice-psasbr-hours]

see if this was fortnite duos, spike and sackboy would win

[imminent-danger-came]

YOU TELLING ME

THIS IS THE INTERNATIONAL RELEASE POSTER???

MILES MORALES AS SUN WUKONG. THE MONKEY KING.

[helluvapurf]

13

forgot i was still doing this ask meme for a sec my bad lol

13. worst blorboficiation

Do you mean in terms of canon portrayals, or fandom-wise? Hmmm... if we're just talking canon here, then... weeeeell- >>

-Now before anyone freaks out, no I don't "hate" Stolas... at most I'm honestly just kinda... "neutral"-feeling whenever he pops up on screen these days 🤷‍♀️

Concept-wise, I do like the idea of Stolas being this seemingly aged, powerful figure among the Ars Goetia... struggling to balance his twisted desires with his family/royalty responsibilities. Often getting lost in his own head to focus on anyone but his personal joy/fantasies-

...but at the same time, not too far gone that he can't reel it back in-time to eventually realize his mistakes, and try to do whatever he can to fix it (no matter how successful or not those attempts be-):

It was unique, compelling and overall made Stolas an entertaining character from the initial HB pilot to the end of S1. Making me super intrigued of how this crooked, broken bird could eventually grow and learn from all that happened into S2...

...aaaaand then "The Circus" & onwards just... idk, decided to do away with all that to make Stolas more like an innocent, pure-natured soul all along... who never meant to come off like a selfish jerk 'cause he's just soooo lonely & sad, having the sweetest of intentions all along~ 🥺🥺

and its like... usually I don't mind giving sympathetic/tragic backstories to explain why they behave the way they do in the present-day... but with how S2's been framing things with Stolas atm, any and all mistakes he's pulled in the past has become the fault of other people's doing?

Stolas & Stella having a cold, loveless marriage that ended in him getting caught cheating (+Stella hiring a hit on him because of said cheating)? ...Well then clearly thats all Stella's fault for being a raging harpy from birth, so bitch got what she deserved when he dumped her ass, haha~

Stolas having a demeaning, belittling view on Imps (even around Blitz a few times in S1)? ...Well then that clearly was just the fault of his eeeevil dad Paimon, pushing the idea in his son's head from his kid years (who was so pure at heart enough that he wanted to bow to Blitz, when they met, awww~).

Stolas not being the most attentive father to Octavia, ignoring her feelings over & over? ...Well then clearly thats all on Via for not being grateful for the big, noble sacrifices Stolas put into loving her (esp as she apparently only exists to be a “precautionary heir” from his toxic marriage), and the fact that he's trying should be enough to forgive all his faults as the best dad ever~

Stolas being a pushy creep towards Blitz during their S1 dynamic, stepping over boundaries despite Blitz's clear discomfort? ...Well then that's clearly all on Blitz for being the one who put the moves on Stolas first, who was just a flustered bean from the start wanting to reconnect with his old buddy & gained true feelings overtime... why can't Blitz see how much Stolas loooooves him~? :ccc

...Aaaaand yeah, idk about yall but ehhhhh- I just couldn't really get into that angle the more I watched S2 :/. Not to say that Stolas’ last couple appearances were bad, per-say ('cause I did find his sassiness to Striker while kidnapped + his reading-enthusiasm with Ozzie's contract pretty funny)... buuut to make a long story short:

Shady, morally gray Stolas who needs to work on himself >>>>> Sad baby boi Stolas who did nothing wrong ever

[bootleg-sara]

Trying to tone up my art lately, here's a James. How we feeling about this one chat

I missed him sm

[aestheticsyoutubers]

jaren smith, smii7y ↳ we finally escaped space

[mightaswellmp3]

alright, dreamscape rating

in order of how much i liked them

best of me: i love the drama and the darker undertones, personally favorite song, made it into my top five nct dream songs (that doesn't say that much). instant love. haechan... you did this for me, i know it.

no escape: another song with a darker undertone, which i guess i prefer from them. i love the high pitched something in the back of the refrain.

you: technically i would say you is the best song on the album, like i might prefer best of me and no escape, but you just works perfectly on every level, perfectly executed. and hey the jazz solo is something inbetween. i think it uses what dream has best.

flying kiss: honestly i think that song has weak points, but the quick refrain really makes up for it and the way the refrain builds in the end. it's hard for me to swallow such displays of sincerity, but the refrain makes me forget about it the moment it starts. also love the kiss sound in the end.

heavenly: technically like you, a song that just feels perfectly executed and using well what dream does best. a bit too unabashadly kitschy for my taste, but a grower

intro: dreamscape / off the wall: honestly i love them both actually. i love that they are a bit weird. i think the intro is a good introduction to the album. and i think off the wall technically would be an amazing album closer, but well life didn't turn out that way

when i'm with you: i don't know what to make of this song. i don't hate it. i had it in my head for three days and the urge to listen to it, but i'm not quite sure why. it's not that i dislike it, don't get me wrong, but with every other song i can pinpoint as to why i like them, this does not have that. make of that what you will

soft skips:

rains in heaven: a lot of mumbling in English and a 80s sound that is too overwhelming for me, that being said i don't necessarily skipped it when i listened to the album. (i have the distinct feeling that putting it up something as upbeat as off the wall might be my problem, maybe it work better for me after flying kiss)

night poem: a shrug emoji, i don't really remember that song after repeated listening.

hard skips:

i hate fruits: uncertain how suggestive the song text actually is, but man... what is it with nct dream and fumbling sensuality? they were better at this age nineteen with 119. anyway hard no, i am sorry.

[cryptiddeer]

People who pilot those big fuck-off Godzilla fighting Mechs have a tenuous and weird relationship with their humanity and independence + supernatural twins tropes + my brains complete inability to shut the fuck up about hoyoverse games = a brand new fucked up au for me to chew on