#i could be wrong because i'm biased and pay more attention to them

[tinderbox210]

La’an Noonien-Singh and Spock + in sync

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - season 1 & season 2

[pepperf]

I'm a little puzzled by a few takes I've seen along the lines of, Lila was such a great wife and mother and Diego took her for granted! Because I don't think the show gave us that at all, and I think it relied heavily and lazily on societal norms to get the audience to make that leap. It also ignored previous characterisation, which is why I plan to disregard the season as a whole - because if the characters had been like this from the start, I wouldn't have fallen in love with them.

So, what I mean is: the whole time we see her as a parent, Lila is basically phoning it in. She seems to view her kids as one monolithic, sticky entity sent purely to ruin her day (distinct shades of the Handler there). They're just a list of chores - diapers, dentist, ballet, cake, piñata... And I'm not underestimating how much parenting really is a list of chores to be done - but that's all we see, no love, no fun. She's eager to get away from them, and she's only - finally - desperate to be with them when it's convenient for the plot, at which point we're supposed to buy the idea that her kids are her sole focus (not the relationship that they spent the past two seasons building up). And even then, the focus is not on the reunion with the kids, it's on all the awkwardness of the surprise love triangle. Hell, one of the kids doesn't even get a name.

Their intent might have been to have Lila be the better parent, but like much of this season, it's all tell and no show. We're working off a couple of brief conversations from the points of view of two frustrated, tired, biased individuals who are already at odds with one another, plus the evidence of what they actually do. They show that they’re not communicating well, but they don’t show how that happened, how long this has been growing, if one of them really is more at fault. All we know is that he complains a lot, and she’s sneaking out at night to play secret agent. They tell us that she loves her children (eventually, after seven years apart), but they show her being annoyed and/or bored in every normal, non-apocalyptic interaction. They have her (and Five) tell us that Diego is a bad husband, but they show Lila sniping at his weight, his way of running a birthday party, rolling her eyes at his efforts to impress her and regain her attention - and they show him dadding at everyone (he will turn this van around, so help him), the comfortable love and affection between him and his kids, the Punjabi he learned to speak fluently to his in-laws, him looking for ways to fix his marriage...

Take the bracelet thing, for example. "You hate bracelets," says Diego. "I gave you one for Valentines and you traded it for a Dyson vacuum." I think what we're supposed to take from that is a) Lila stopped wearing the wooden bracelet (uh oh, signs the honeymoon period has worn off!), b) Diego gives thoughtless, stereotypical gifts, and c) he doesn't understand what she really wants.

But an alternative reading is this: a) Lila stopped wearing the wooden bracelet (could not be a clearer or more loaded 'fuck you' to Diego), b) Diego tried to find another way to win her affection (on his pay as a delivery driver, with a wife and three kids to support, he managed to buy a bracelet that was expensive enough to trade for a Dyson?), and c) she rejected that gift as well, without any deeper explanation than 'I hate bracelets'. She's shut down all communication between them and is not telling him what's wrong. She has shut him out so comprehensively that she's got a whole undercover life - for which she apparently has the time and energy! - and yet we're supposed to think that oh it's all on Diego. Why? Lila is not a shy and retiring flower, and she and Diego have been shown before to have some very sincere heart-to-hearts about their relationship. Something changed, okay, fine - but why would we assume it was Diego that caused that?

I think our expectations about What Women Are Like are doing a LOT of the heavy lifting in how the show wants Lila to be perceived. She's a woman, and therefore she's automatically a good wife and mother - that she's emotionally intelligent, the organiser, she'll love her children and would do anything for them, she'll tried the hardest to make her marriage work, just...because boobies, I guess. This is not how you write good parents, or good female characters, TUA! A truly astonishing amount of people actually ARE women, and they know that it doesn't automatically confer any kind of maternal or wifely abilities! These things have to be worked on!

(In real life, women are often socialised to be better at these things, this is sadly true. But an awful lot of us do not have an innate talent for it, and there's no shame in that. And, more relevantly to this post, this is not real life, and Lila is not your average person. She's not normal, and I love that about her. She was raised to be a weapon. Do we really think the Handler installed the 'homemaker' module? Lila herself said that she was scared that she wouldn't know how to be a mother, because she had no good example to base it on.)

I also think the show assumes that, when you get married and have kids, you're automatically granted a house in the suburbs, a bunch of in-laws, and enough money from just the husband's job to get by. And I think that is an incredibly privileged and blinkered assumption. Frankly, unless her parents are financing them, they should be struggling a lot more. None of that is explained, and for me it was a real gap, because these are the arguments that Lila and Diego should be having. Lila caring for the kids versus getting a job. Living with family versus striking out on their own. Diego sticking at a job that makes him miserable and difficult to live with, or taking the huge financial risk of trying to find something better. These are the real life issues they should be facing.

Listen, I think the characterisation of Lila as a parent and spouse in this season is horseshit. I think she would be so much better than they showed - of course she's going to have some low times, she's going to struggle with her own upbringing, but I think she would try her damndest to get it right, and I don't think she'd be defeated so easily. But if we're dealing with what canon actually shows us, she's, uh, kind of mediocre as a mother, and really not that great as a partner.

And yes, I'm sure Diego is no angel, either, he's obviously wrapped up in his problems, and he's probably not much fun to be around when he's fixating on, uh, *checks notes* wanting a more fulfilling job (the fiend). But honestly, he's not that far removed from the Diego we've seen all along, the one she fell in love with. It takes one conversation for him to realise how incredibly fortunate he is, and to convince him to try to work harder on his relationship and stop focusing on the unobtainable. The idea that he's the only one who is failing at this whole gig - the chief culprit in the failure of their marriage, the only one who needs to make an effort to fix things - is bizarre. And it's pretty obvious why they've done it: to justify her thing with Five later and make it all seem more palatable. But there's no real substance behind it.

tl;dr: this season was badly-written, takes some incredibly antiquated attitudes towards the role of women that are inconsistent with the characters they themselves established, and some incredibly classist attitudes towards manual labour, and just hopes that you'll either take it at face value or read the fuck into it, to better sell you a shitty romance that added nothing to the plot.

[devilstruly]

TRUE BEAUTY

pairing - kuroo tetsuro x gn. reader

includes - mutual pining, not really confessing but also not being very subtle about it either, late night talking, commenting on the plot of a kdrama. y/n mentioned once but i promise i had a good reason

a/n - this is mostly inspired by my internal monologue while watching the show, ergo the reader is rooting for seo-jun (i'm biased sorry). also reader is ticklish. i know it's another kuroo one i'm sorry but this man is so ugh

1.14 am

‘That's fucking adorable! Fuckkkk, why is he so cute! Oh my god!’ 

You found yourself snuggled into Kuroo's side comfortably, with his arm draped over the back of the couch and a blanket shared between the two of you. 

‘What the fuck is cute about that?!’ He rolled his eyes at your reaction, his arm flailing around to emphasize his words.

‘He's making up rumors about them dating!’

‘Yeah because he likes her! He just doesn't know how to express his feelings, okay? He's traumatized.’ 

‘Everyone is traumatized, that's not an excuse. Plus, don't you always say it's best to be upfront about things?’

‘He is being upfront about it! She's just oblivious!’ 

'Like you would know.'

Kuroo turned his head to the side slightly so he could mumble a response, quietly enough so that you couldn't pick up on it.

‘What was that?’ 

‘Nothing. I just can't believe you're making excuses for that asshole.’ 

Hadn't it been for you being very deeply invested into the drama as well, you would definitely giggle at Kuroo's persistence.

But alas, that wasn't the case. 

‘That's because he has a bike and good fashion sense.’ 

Kuroo huffed. ‘What's with you and bikes?’

While stating your answer, you shifted your position slightly so you'd be more comfortable, and in addition, almost naturally, Kuroo's arm wrapped around your shoulder to pull you closer.

‘They're cool.’ You replied with a grin, to which Kuroo huffed again. ‘Oh and, I like his eyes too. They're similar to yours.’

Not thinking much of your words, you continued to watch the show unfold, head resting on Kuroo's chest. You had almost forgotten about what you said, but Kuroo finally broke the silence after a while.

‘You like my eyes?’  

Barely paying attention to the television, he now faced you fully, thankful to the darkness of the room for hiding his blush. 

‘Hm? Oh yeah.’ As you finally acknowledged the proximity when you lifted your head, you could feel a blush of your own starting to creep up on your neck.

‘They're really pretty.’ You added after not being able to look away from the golden hues for god knows which time.

With a small smile you went back to your initial position, pulling the blanket tighter around yourself whilst Kuroo tried his best to process the newly received information. 

2.01 am

‘No! No, you dumb fuck! Ugh!’ 

A loud groan echoed in the room before you covered your face with your hands in agony. Kuroo's hand was patting your back gently, though not very sincerely since he was wearing a satisfied expression as he watched the screen. 

‘There there.’ 

‘Fuck off, you like this!’ 

With a huff you untangled yourself from Kuroo's limbs, scooting all the way to the other end of the couch. 

‘I just think it works better!’ Kuroo himself raised his hands in defense, but his smile remained. 

‘Bullshit! He is clearly the better option! He treats her so much better!’ 

‘But they're already dating and she loves her boyfriend. Besides, nothing's wrong with him either.’

‘No it's not, but Seo-jun is simply better.’ 

‘You're just biased because he has a bike.’

‘I'm not! I mean yeah that's a plus, but not that important! He even gave her the keys, come on!’ 

‘Oh so if it were you, you'd dump Soo-ho?’

You immediately recognized the sly undertone in Kuroo's voice and huffed whilst you turned to face him.

‘That's not what I'm saying. And she shouldn't dump him. She shouldn't be with him in the first place. Ugh, this is why relationships are dumb.’

This seemed to get the man's attention, and he readjusted his position on the couch, now barely looking at the TV. 

‘You don't want a relationship?’ His tone became much softer than the previous question, which to you was a clear indicator that the conversation had suddenly become serious. 

You chose to write the change off as the late hour delirium. 

‘I mean…it's not that I don't want it, it's just like- not right now. I don't know. I mean if the person I like is - um - will be someone I can't imagine my life without, then I'd drop this…way of thinking.’

‘Oh.’ 

The one syllable Kuroo managed to get out had you turning your head towards him in confusion, only to be met with the sight of him mumbling something under his breath. 

Opting not to point it out at the moment, you tried to distract him instead. 

‘And you?’ His head shot up in an instant. ‘What's your take on relationships?’ 

Suddenly looking anywhere but you, Kuroo shifted uncomfortably in his seat, making you raise your eyebrows as a silent way of urging him to reply. 

‘Uh…I don't- well- that's a lot of work that I don't have time for. But I think they're…great.’ 

He mentally cursed himself for his choice of words. 

‘So…’ You began, a dangerously serious expression on your face. ‘...If you were to like someone that liked you back…what would you do?’ 

Patiently waiting for an answer, you hugged your knees to your chest and rested your cheek on top of them. Unable to formulate a reply, Kuroo blinked a couple of times before taking a deep breath and slowly letting the words leave his mouth. 

‘I suppose…I would ask them out.’ 

‘Oh? Good to know.’ Your eyes widened in surprise, and a teasing smile graced your features before you turned your attention back towards the television. 

On the contrary, Kuroo still sat frozen in place, eyes glued to your side profile. 

‘Wh- what do you mean good to know?! For what?!’ 

‘Shhhh, I'm watching my husband.’ 

‘Nuh uh. Explain.’

Your attempts to distract your friend proved futile and with a frustrated sigh you defended yourself.

‘There's nothing to explain!’

‘Yes there is.’

‘Not.’ 

‘y/n.’ 

‘Tetsuro.’ 

‘Oh so we're on Tetsuro now?’ 

The sudden change in Kuroo's tone was drastic enough to cause you to tense, not turning to face him for the sake of saving youtself from a heart attack. 

‘I- forget I said that.’ You blurted out once you finally mustered up the courage to look at him. As quickly as you said that you turned your head back around, failing to notice an idea flash across Kuroo's face. 

Shuffling sounds reached your ears but you paid them no mind, until you felt a pair of hands tickling your sides. On instinct you squealed and flinched away, but with the man's quick reflexes it made no difference. 

‘Wait wait- stop! Kuroo!’ You managed to get out between tears of laughter and uncontrollable shaking, much to Kuroo's entertainment. 

‘I'll stop when you explain yourself.’ The smile on his face kept growing by each passing moment whilst your cries became louder. 

‘I will! Just- stop- please!’ Your words were barely audible by this point, but Kuroo decided to be generous and simply flopped on top of you. 

With his ear right above your heart, he could feel the rapid thumps and the heavy breathing whilst you tried to calm down. 

It was once you finally managed to get your senses back that you became aware of your position, and so your heart rate remained quick as it was. 

‘Kuroo?’ 

‘Hm?’ 

‘What are you doing?’ 

‘Me? Nothing ~’ 

Even though it was hard to see, you could practically feel the smile on his face growing. However, not minding the situation much, your hands threaded through his hair curiously and in return Kuroo became more at ease. 

3.46 am

‘Kuroo.’ 

‘I'm sleeping.’ 

‘Then go to bed.’ 

‘Just one more episode.’ 

The drowsiness started enveloping him progressively, yet he made no effort to acknowledge it - and neither did you. 

‘Fine.’ 

[ukfrislandembassy]

I think that conlangs are a very useful way of seeing how the biases of linguistic theory manifest when applied by amateurs (and occasionally professionals). When linguists are promoting their theories they often like to make the claim that they can account for all phenomena, even if there's some clear foci for their actual attention. So the outputs of conlanging as a hobby make an interesting case study of the application of these theories, because the theories bias the kinds of structures conlangers actually end up including in their languages.

Specifically, it seems clear to me that internet-based conlangers especially show the clear effects of the assumptions made by what Jim Blevins terms the 'Post-Bloomfieldian Structuralism' that has been the default mode of linguistic analysis and theorising for decades now.

In phonology this manifests with the focus on phonemes and phoneme inventories, partly at the expense of phonotactics but especially phonetics. The result of this is a flattening of phonological structure; each of these phonemes ends up being tret as a unit of equal status within the system, with any kinds of distributional asymmetries between phones only included as an afterthought by means of some phonological rules.

It's why you get channels like Conlang Critic on Youtube pronouncing each of the individual phonemes of a conlang like that tells you what you need to know about the actual sound of a language. I rarely see any kind of restricted distribution or positional neutralisation of the kind seen in e.g. the Mandarin Chinese palatal series.

Morphology is where this kind of fixation most strongly manifests, because morphemes are an even worse fit for the morphological phenomena of natural languages than phonemes are for phonological phenomena. In effect what this leads to is the same kind of atomisation that we see with phonology; all 'morphemes' are tret as having equal status in the system, so you end up with a morphological system that just comes off as a phonologically more bound version of the syntax (but with more lists).

For instance, when was the last time you saw a conlang that made use of the concept of 'stem'? Or which showed syncretism between cells in paradigms? Have you ever seen a conlang that made use of a morphological pattern that could be considered 'morphomic'? I could go on.

None of these are somehow 'strange' or 'exotic' phenomena; they're found to some extent in pretty much all Romance languages, perhaps most elaborately in French, and much of this also crops up all over Germanic too.

I think there might be some of this tendency in the lexicon too; homophony and polysemy seem oddly infrequent in conlangs, even though they're ubiquitous in natlangs (English I/eye and you/ewe are particularly neat for showing that not even pronouns are safe from this). I've not got as much to say on this as I don't tend to pay so much attention to conlang lexicons, so I could be wrong on this one.

The actual relationship of conlangs to linguistic theory is messy, and I'm acutely aware that this is largely anecdotal. Indeed, plenty of experienced conlangers make a point of highlighting at least some of these issues, and there's definitely conlangs that avoid many of these issues (Siwa/Siųa is a good one for this, you'll have to dig through the thread to get to the actual grammar). My intent here is mainly to get some discussions going, because the real question is actually 'how do we get the conlang community to understand these phenomena and make use of them at the kinds of rates that we actually find in natural languages (which is pretty much any language with morphology, with maybe a couple of exceptions)?'

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

Weird question but do you think its possible to become a zookeeper without a degree? I'm 29 and don't have the time, energy, or money to go back to college and fear I've missed my chance at my dream career. I'm not sure how to get experience or what I could possibly do to help my resume.

It’s definitely possible! Not super common, but possible - and much more so than it would have been a couple of years ago.

When I was in college (early 2010s) and wanting to enter the field, there was a pretty clear pipeline: four year degree, unpaid summer internships, then apply for a part-time or temp position somewhere, and volunteer somewhere until you get a first job. This is still somewhat of the way it’s done at bigger AZA facilities.

But, interestingly enough, things are changing. There’s two things really driving that. The first is the massive push for increased DEAI efforts in the zoo industry. After the big commitments AZA and many individual zoos made during the BLM protests in 2020, one of the big conversations that started was how inequitable zoo hiring and especially internship programs are. Requiring four years degrees and large amounts of unpaid labor before getting a job - and paying poverty wages once someone gets that job - biases success entering and staying in the zoo field towards people with generational wealth. I honestly didn’t think the advocacy that stemmed from those discussions would do much, and I’ve been very pleasantly surprised to see that I was wrong! There’s a been a lot of real movement towards creating paid internships and making hiring requirements more equitable. It isn’t happening everywhere, but I know it’s becoming more and more common (and last year there was a ton of presentations about this on the AZA annual meeting schedule, which is a huge deal). The other thing that’s happening is less formal, but equally fascinating. I’ve been present for a lot of discussions about how there’s a disconnect between what zoos are hiring for (formal education, complex resumes) and what skills the job actually requires. It seems like it’s easier to train people to work with animals and learn their behavior than it is to teach people practical skills like how to do manual labor without hurting themselves and operate heavy machinery. I’ve seen some discussions of how some of their most successful new staff have come from adjacent industries or even just other “blue-collar” jobs that involve similar types of work, regardless of what their academic background is. Which is great! Because that adds to equity and diversity of staff across the industry.

To start off the rest of my answer, there has to be a disclaimer that I’m not in hiring, so I can’t say for sure what will get you a job (and while I’ve volunteered and interned, I have never been formally hired as staff by a zoological facility). So my advice for the rest of this comes from watching and listening to a whole ton of industry folk for the past decade or so, and from what I’ve seen my friends do that’s been successful to get jobs in the field.

In terms of experience, the best thing you can do - and I hate to say this, because it does require a level of privilege to be able to do - is volunteer somewhere. It doesn’t have to be at a zoo. Anything that will give you some animal experience for a resume and references will be valuable: shelters, vet offices, riding barns, farms, even 4H. You need to be able to demonstrate that you’ve worked around a variety of species (even if they’re all domestic) and have people who can speak to the fact that you’re diligent, attentive to detail, and have common sense about things like safety protocols. If you can’t volunteer, try to find a job in any of these areas with similar skills. Or where you can learn them! Say you can’t get an animal care job, but you’re good at phones and people - you could get a desk job at an animal shelter, and help out with cleaning and animal enrichment when possible. Boom! Experience!

It’s also important to learn how to shape your current job experience to an application, which is something I can talk more about and maybe pull in advice from folk actually in hiring for. There’s a ton that can be applicable to animal jobs. Office work? You can probably speak to experience with proprietary software systems and record-keeping (which is a bigger deal than you’d think). Construction / landscaping / similar physical labor jobs? You know how to work hard in a range of weather conditions, keep a project on spec, have experience with complex project planning, and probably know a thing or two about basic safety stuff (don’t store heavy things above your head, lift with your legs, etc). You’re basically looking to communicate “I haven’t worked in this field, but here’s all the skills I have that will translate to this job.”

Realistically, if you’re coming in without a degree or a ton of animal experience, you’re much more likely to be able to get a job at smaller, non-AZA facilities to start (they might not even be zoos - there’s sanctuaries and petting zoos and all sorts of other professional animal care gigs). And this is fine and good! There’s lots of good ones out there. You can always use experience gained there to move up in the field, if it’s your dream to work at an AZA facility specifically. And a lot of people do that - you’ll hear some places talk about how they know they’re training zoos, because their staff get a foot in the door and then consistently leave for other facilities after a couple years. But there’s also a lot of reasons to stay with some of the smaller facilities. They’re often in areas with cheaper cost of living, and so a zookeeping salary will go farther. I’ve also seen that a lot of the smaller facilities - ones where like, staff know and interact with the zoo director frequently - tend to take better care of their staff. They may not be able to increase salary, but I’ve seen some of those facilities go the extra mile for their people in other ways when it’s possible. It’s a very different experience than being a small cog in the giant machines that are many AZA zoos. It’s the sort of thing you have to vet carefully, but when you find a small facility that really invests in it’s people, it can be very worthwhile.

You also have to think about the fact that you don’t have to start in zookeeping to get an animal care job! I’ve seen a lot of people start in education or in summer camp staff, and then use the relationship with the facility and their track record in those jobs to transition into animal care. Especially education, if you’ve got the skill-set, because you’re often working with ambassador animals or in collaboration with the teams that care for them. I’ve seen some people start in facilities or ground crew, too, but I think that’s less common. Getting your foot in the door somehow and building relationships is one of the biggest parts of getting a job in the field if you’re not following the traditional pipeline.

If you’re near enough to a smaller facility that you can visit regularly, do. Learn as much as you can about the zoo and what they do and what they’re involved in, to show that you’re interested and invested, and then go talk to someone there. Tell them exactly what you told me: this is a dream, and you’re really interested in their facility specifically, and you’re wondering what you should do to build a resume to apply for a job there. At worst, you’ll get some advice. At best, they might take a chance on you. I’ve heard of it happening. (The hardest part of this is, honestly, figuring out who to talk to - it’s not the sort of thing where you can just ask a keeper while they’re cleaning. But you can find opportunities, and then ask if there’s someone in management who might have time to answer a couple questions.)

So in short: yes. It’ll take some work and time, and probably some free labor, but it’s doable. More so now than any other time recently. Good luck!

[thesweetnessofspring]

Do you think Katniss and Peeta have biased opinions of each other?

Yes / No? Why?

Could you give example?

How did Peeta's hijacking affect their views of each other?

Disclaimer : these questions are for textual analysis, it’s not meant to incite fandom war.

Thank you :)

@curiousnonny

Hi nonny! This has taken me some time because I wanted to think on this for a bit. Tldr; their opinion of the other hinges a lot on how they think the other views them.

When Katniss thinks that she was just a random Seam kid Peeta helped once, she can't help but feel he's too good, too pure for Panem. When Peeta only knows Katniss from afar thinking she doesn't pay attention to him, she has an "effect" on people she doesn't herself perceive. When Katniss thinks Peeta views her as his competition, she believes him duplicitous and suspicious. And so it shifts based on whether they believe the other is actually in love with them, or if they're distant, or if they're friends.

The hijacking is definitely really tragic and this rocks how they view one another more than anything else. Obviously Peeta at first views Katniss as a mutt created by the Capitol. Once he's gone through some treatment, his views are still negative and that she's in the very least manipulative, his feelings and relationship to her bring a lot of confusion (did you love me? did you like kissing me? did you like kissing Gale? what happened on the train? are you my friend, lover, my target, or a mutt?).

Here's the thing with Peeta: he will not for the life of him admit when he needs to be cared for. He is the classic "I will take care of you, but don't worry about taking care of me, I'm fine." But underneath that, he just wants love, he wants someone to show him that he is loveable because he fears he isn't. And this personality trait doesn't disappear when he's hijacked. It is his very nature. But in seeing Katniss from a different light, in both his hijacked memories or her and the real ones clouded by the tracker jacker venom, he's broken to the point where he can't find it in him to love anyone (maybe other than Delly) because the memories have reinforced to him that his worst fear is true: he is unlovable. He gave his heart and was used and betrayed in return, never valued by anyone--not Katniss, not Haymitch, not Finnick.

In that anger, though, he is still reaching out for, yearning for Katniss to answer him. To explain everything to him. And I think a large part of him expects her to confirm she'd only used him the whole time. That his perception of her being a girl who enjoyed toying with him and Gale was true. But deeper underneath that layer of resentment, that part of Peeta that always sees the good and hopes, is searching for the reassurance: no, I love you. You are loveable.

When Peeta references the fact that the memory of Darius and Lavinia's torture wasn't "shiny" as well as the nights on the train that weren't touched by the Capitol, we're given to believe that he might have started to sort through some things on his own. And after Haymitch shakes up Katniss, she nicks a tiny crack in offering him a piece of himself back: his favorite color. Then seeing himself in his hijacked state really wakes him up to how far gone he is, how his perception cannot be trusted anymore.

This is I think where it really starts to turn back for Peeta. If he can't trust his mind, then his opinion of Katniss is wrong. So he has to learn about her all over again. And what does he learn? That she won't let him die. Not when he asks for it, over and over. Not when he first proposes it, not after more discussion, not when he's in the middle of his hijacking episode and she kisses him, puts herself in harms way again, to keep him with her.

The trouble is, Katniss has done this before during both Games, refusing to let Peeta be the one to die. So Peeta doesn't know if he is loveable, or if Katniss is simply that good and brave and strong to not let him go. That opinion he offered her about going to kill Snow, reminding her of the effect she can have...he sees now why she became the Mockingjay, why people followed her. And when he believes that she loves Gale, how can he see her sacrifices for him as anything but noble? If he is broken and worthless but she fights for him anyway, then she must be the hope Panem needs in that dark moment.

As for Katniss, well, we have access to her thoughts and some feelings. And she meets Peeta where he's at in challenging her. When he attacks her, calls her a mutt, something she never thought possible, she sees getting him back as impossible. She mourns him as if he were dead, because their relationship has changed so much she can't see it recovering, as she can't see him recovering.

She does get bits of hope, like Finnick and Annie's wedding cake, but when he comes at her with hostility, she sees that right back at him. It takes Haymitch reminding her who Peeta was, what he would have done for her, that brings her back to him. No longer is she meeting Peeta where he is in his hijacked state. Instead, she is remembering who he was, how he loved her, and tries to see him as he would have seen her in the same state. Through everyone helping out with his recovery, she finally gets glimpses into the true Peeta, the one she loves. Remembering her favorite color is green. That she loved the lamb stew. Giving others encouraging compliments. That he promised to always stay with her.

And after he had been conditioned to kill her, the fact that he saved her life as he always used to--that gave Katniss the belief and the hope that her Peeta, her dandelion in the spring, had truly come back to her, if she would only wait for his return. And then, he did.

[bumblingbabooshka]

How would Tuvok react to one or more of his children (Kes counts too) getting into a weird new interest he doesn't understand a la skibidibi toilet?

Hmm...He half-listens to it and clearly thinks it's silly but reiterates that he is listening if they ask. With Kes it would be different because she's an adult and not someone he thinks of as his child (more a mentee). As his children grow older his reaction to this phenomenon also changes. I envision him as the type of dad who if you're talking to him about anime will later point at anything vaguely cartoonish and ask if you'd like it. [why] I was under the impression you were interested in anime. [That is not anime, that is a cartoon.] Ah....... <- Doesn't know the difference but doesn't want to ask. It's a moment where you roll your eyes at your dad but also are a little bit pleased to know he was listening. He gets all the characters names a little bit wrong <3 In a batch of four one of his kids is no doubt deeply hurt by Tuvok's uncommitted attitude and another will just follow him around all day yapping. Just one more thing, father.  I also think there's a difference between something he doesn't understand and something he thinks is silly. If one if his kids wants to talk to him about say, a strategy math game they're really into he'll engage with it more than if Elieth wants to talk about shoes. Again. He strikes me as a person who'd really like for his children to of course be content in their lives but also maybe be proper and productive members of Vulcan society...why not go down to the learning center instead of watching cartoons? [It's anime./It's Saturday.] I'm saying all this thinking of them as teenagers though... When they're little he makes more of an effort to listen to them all seriously...he's nodding and paying full attention as they all regale him with tales of What We Played in the Park Today [action packed! the drama! the logical solutions! the pushing!] He isn't very interested in the topic itself but this peek into how their growing minds are operating is fascinating. He cherishes his children very plainly <3 Judging by Tuvok's personality he's a pretty strict person with strict values. He also doesn't hide when he's irritated or uninterested very well [Vulcans would be able to tell as Vulcan emotional expression is not alien to a Vulcan. Also he's their dad] and yet despite that he's patient and kind when it counts and especially soft/accommodating towards children. In 'Innocence' even though he clearly doesn't believe that there's a monster he still entertains the possibility and addresses their fear, trying to comfort them rather than shutting it down, you know? If say one of his children seemed hurt by his half-listening, no matter how silly it was, I know he'd apologize and give them his full attention like Ok. Ok. I am now Fully Prepared to listen to the process of you building a Gigantic Skull in Vulcan Minecraft. It'd be funny if Tuvok had random patches of heavily biased and half-remembered knowledge from his children. He knows your space Jordans are counterfeit...Elieth would have spotted them right away. With Kes he'd probably just try to listen for a bit before telling her that she should perhaps find someone else to speak about this particular topic with once he decided he wasn't interested and it had nothing to do with their mind power studies. v_v He's a guy who responded "No" when Harry asked if he wanted to know what he thought so I don't think he'd have any issue saying "I don't care about this" [worded differently] to another adult. Now if it was NAOMI he'd be stuck until he could find an excuse, Neelix, or her mom.

[randomingoftherandomness]

If you could choose the cast for the next generation of My Journey To You which actors/actress would you pick for the heirs of the Gong family?

Ooo! I like this :)

Now, I'm not gonna pretend I am very much versed in the who's who of new Cdrama actors and actresses because frankly, I don't watch as much shows as I used to, but I'll give this a stab.

Ding Chengxin

I didn't even hesitate with this pick :DDD

He has actually done two project with GJM and so I may be biased here in picking him, but I really want to see him do a third project in GJM's style. There's a measure of elegance about him that he has shown in his roles in Wuliang and Painted Skin that deeply captivated me. I would like to see him in another wuxia/guzhuang, and I know I'm not the only one.

As for who he would play, I am thinking that he could be great as an heir to either the Xue family or the Jue family. The side eye game/resting bitch face would be phenomenal.

(side note: I'm picking up on GJM liking to give his MC some secret world breaking tattoo...)

2. Li Hongyi

Another actor I want to see more of, and by the looks of things, will be getting more of, so I think I'm gonna be good :) He was fantastic in The Blood of Youth, but it was his turn in the rom-com The Legendary Life of Queen Lau that really sold me on him. I've always believed it is harder to do comedies than it is to do serious stuff, and somehow he managed to not make it cheesy or over the top.

I think he'd be great as an heir to the Yu lineage -- perhaps taking on more of Yun Weishan's prim and proper reticence rather than Ziyu's more relaxed personality.

3. Wu Mingjing

I have been utterly enamoured with her since I saw her in What's Wrong With My Princess a couple of days ago. I think she's absolutely fantastic and could do with some meatier roles to sink her teeth into. Definitely someone I will be paying attention to from now on and I am looking forward to checking out more of her body of work.

I think she'd steal the show as someone from the Zhi residence. The amount of ice princess looks she could rock!! The quiet but vicious sass!!! Yes, I think she would be great.

4. Ao Ruipeng

Ao Ruipeng is someone I saw and immediately saw a puppy. No. But fr. He's got this very pleasant aura about him and gives off the vibe that he's super affable. It definitely helps that he and Li Hongyi played off each other with great aplomb in The Blood of Youth.

I can see him being an heir to the Shang lineage, inheriting all of Zishang's extroversions and Jin Fan's more measured decision making processes.

(sorry. I just wanted y'all to see them both being cute together)

5. Zhao Lusi

This one I know is a fantasy casting on my part, but since this is my list, I shall indulge in all the fantasy I want :DD

She's definitely one of the best actresses of her generation, hands down. It's not even a question at this point and she has the body of work to prove it. There's something so chameleon-like of her and she becomes the characters she plays and not just plays them. She's an absolute delight to watch and I still enjoy her roles in The Long Ballad and Love Like The Galaxy. I've seen bits of her in Hidden Love, but because I'm not much for modern dramas, that's in the back burner for now, but I'll get round to it eventually.

I would not hazard a guess as to which heir she should play because I think it would ultimately depend on the narrative. Give her the role with the most weight to it and I think she would not only hit it out of the park, but flourish. Lusi is a powerhouse and it would be a treat to watch her tackle any role.

(also she was in a previous project with Li Hongyi and his unfortunate cockroach antennas serious those antennas look dry as fuck)

(I have also realised that two of my choices were previous co-stars with LHY was this a conscious decision wow idk maybe?)

[sophia-sol]

I started my reread of Heaven Official's Blessing in September and have been working my way steadily through it ever since. This time I posted my as-it-happened thoughts to mastodon as I went, because there's just SO much book in this book that there's no way I'd remember everything by the end! So now I'm copying all those thoughts over to here for posterity.

Warning, this is like 22,000 words of thoughts. But this book is so GOOD it's worth every one of those words and so many more besides! I could talk about this book forever it feels like.

Anyway. On with the liveblog! (originally posted to: https://federatedfandom.net/@soph_sol/tagged/tgcfthoughts)

thanks to a hero on youtube I have a (so far incomplete) tgcf fan-recorded audiobook to listen to, and I started this morning and still have have 72 more hours of tgcf to listen to and I am LIVING

***

[after villainousfriend provided some info about gold foil] ooh, folded gold foil as a form of currency specifically, rather than just general "gold = wealth", gives somewhat different vibes to the gold foil palaces! so rich that high-denomination money is a toy for children

***

hang on it suddenly occurs to me that the details we get about Xuan Ji (breaking her own legs, volunteering information to the opposing side in war, etc) are all second-hand from the very biased source of pei jr. why should we trust what he says about her??

I think the true answer to the Pei Ming/Xuan Ji situation is ESH, even though both of them think the other is entirely to blame! sigh both this arc and the next one have..... things I don't love

I just double checked the text and the conversation between xie lian and pei jr is after xuan ji is dragged off by the guards, so she's not present to comment. and then this is the conclusion! so I think there's a lot of massaging of the story from both sides and the truth could be all sorts of things, and I'm standing by my ESH, but one's perspective can be changed by the framing of things!

Xie Lian also cupped his hands and sent them off. Nan Feng commented, "Weirdos." Xie Lian thought, he himself was the laughingstock of the three realms, an infamous weirdo, so he'd best not comment on anyone else. This was something between General Pei and Xuan Ji, so for bystanders, there was no point in discussing who was right or wrong. Their sympathies only went out to all seventeen of those innocent brides, and the military officials and sedan drivers who escorted them but suffered a terrible fate for no reason.

***

who's the child spirit who warns Xie Lian during the Mount Yujun arc? he asks the other heavenly officials afterwards but doesn't get an answer. is it just also Hua Cheng?

[villainousfriend replies that it was cuocuo under jun wu's direction]

oh fascinating! I'm very curious as to why! just to try to make sure xie lian didn't actually die on this errand, perhaps?

***

in the tomb of the general, on the way to banyue, hua cheng absolutely knows the general was xie lian, from the way he immediately makes efforts to get the other people in the tomb to think well of the general. he must have discovered this after xie lian had already left banyue though, since he made no attempt to meet then. but an early sign of how long hua cheng has been trying to find xie lian!

update on these thoughts, later there are indications that maybe hua cheng DIDN'T know for sure? so possibly it's instead that hua cheng was paying such close attention to xie lian that he could see how uncomfortable xie lian was with how that general was being talked about, and immediately decided he needed to change that.

not entirely convinced either way though! could still be my first thought tbh!

***

hmmmm it's weird isn't it that both of the first two arcs in tgcf are about a female general betraying her people :/ do not love that

***

almost through listening to the Banyue arc, thank goodness. there are some fun bits in it but the racism is a lot.

***

when shi qingxuan and xie lian first meet, she tells him "I've heard so much about you" and I'm just giggling at the thought that:

1. hua cheng obviously can't NOT talk about dianxia, and so he xuan can't help but hear all about him

2. he xuan is friends* with shi qingxuan and has all these unfortunate xie lian facts hanging out unwillingly in his head, and at least occasionally some of them slip out

*don't ask he xuan to define what the  shi qingxuan-he xuan relationship is

***

I am drawing parallels between hua cheng and the boy with human face disease in the first arc. both worry about how xie lian will react if xie lian sees their true face, that it will be scary or ugly

(also both of them wear bandages on their face as a child, and xie lian saves them both)

the boy with human face disease triggers xie lian's trauma reaction and he DOESN'T react well in the moment, but when xie lian will see hua cheng's true face for the first time, eventually, xie lian is in fact super into it immediately

not quite sure I have an understanding of exactly what this parallel is doing, just yet, but I don't think this can be accidental!

***

for all the talk of jun wu as a mentor figure for xie lian, xie lian really resists ever talking to him or being in his presence if he can at all avoid it or put it off

I know that jun wu is creepy and horrible because I've read the rest of the book before, but clearly xie lian is better at picking up on jun wu's weird vibes than I was on my first read. because jun wu definitely does have weird vibes if you're paying attention! and xie lian is clearly not here for it, even though he talks and makes decisions from a basis of an assumption of trust for the heavenly emperor

to me it feels like.... he knows he SHOULD trust jun wu, both as the role and more personally, and over the course of his banishment the number one thing he's learned really is to ignore it when things feel bad to him, so he acts the way he thinks he ought to feel - but he still can't stop his subconscious from being like, NOPE

***

roland's fic infected me, I read it and was immediately taking pei ming seriously as a character, and now I can't stop paying attention to him on this relisten. somehow ending up on Team Three Tumors Are Interesting is not something I would have expected when I first read tgcf but I have no regrets

***

ok I have not done enough research on the history of fabric dyes to answer my own question here! many people in this book are referred to as wearing black clothes. I know from European history that before the invention of aniline dyes, black was an extremely difficult colour to achieve in clothes, but I don't know anything about the relative difficulty in other historic cultures. is it that wool and linen didn't dye black well, but other fibres are better? is it that there was no good source of black dye available in Europe but it was available elsewhere? was there a technique that simply wasn't developed?

I don't have the time to do research right now but I want to know how historically plausible (or implausible) it is for characters in historical cnovels to wear black all the time!

***

Update I found a source discussing 17th century fabric dyes in China and there are two different approaches discussed! One of them involves iron gall, which corrodes the fibres fairly rapidly and thus isn't a great long-term solution, and I know iron gall is one of the best-of-a-bad-lot options Europeans had available. But the other method, which is the first listed and thus probably the more used, relies on starting with a dark indigo dye - which wasn't a ready option in Europe at that time and the times preceding.

I am interested in the recipe provided for the black dye, which involves venetian sumac and a plant from the myricaceae family along with the indigo. From what I can find, the other two plants are both generally used for a yellow dye, and I wonder how those interacted with the dark blue from the indigo to get something black! I also wonder how much this black dye faded over time, and what shade it would generally fade to.

Black. It is first dyed a deep blue with liquid indigo then soaked in the liquids of boiled Venetian sumach wood and afterwards [in those of boiled] myricaeceae bark. According to another method, the tender indigo leaves are first soaked in water; next, green vitriol and gallnuts are added, and [with the cloth] are soaked together in this liquid. Cloth dyed in this fashion, however, will deteriorate rapidly.

***

I had first thought that the reason shi qingxuan is more powerful in her female form is because that's the form she's most often worshipped in - but according to the wiki, ling wen is NOT more powerful in her male form even though she's mostly worshipped in her male form. which makes me wonder if it's actually that shi qingxuan is more powerful when she's in the form she feels prettiest in? or do women in general have more spiritual power?

The wiki citation for this fact about ling wen: Novel, Book 5, Chapter 215: The Path Shan't Go Astray But the Mandates Are All the Same

having checked it, it's a bit inconclusive really - if the amount of power she has to expend to be in that form is less than the hypothetical increase in power from being in her most-worshipped form, she could still be more powerful in that form, but it could also be that there's no such increase, and so being in her male form leaves her with less power. I'm wondering what implications might be given elsewhere in the text, then!

***

[in response to a comment about an expectation of what form to show up in to the mid-autumn banquet] I would interpret that as being about shi wudu's feelings about the whole business with shi qingxuan's gender. like, it would be more correct to show up in her most worshipped form, but he hates that it's her most worshipped form and wants to be able to pretend that's not the case, and push her as much as possible into his image of what kind of person shi qingxuan is? lessening her power wouldn't even be a drawback to him I think; he wants to be able to keep her under his thumb.

also I am willing to bet that ling wen is committed to doing whatever it takes to keep her worshippers on her side, so it may be less that it's an expectation to show up in your most worshipped form, and more that ling wen is extra.

god shi wudu is SUCH a possessive creep

***

xie lian practiced abstinence for "most" of his mortal life, huh??? that leaves some room for him to have gotten up to things during a certain rulebreaking era of his life!!

***

is hua cheng able to track xie lian's presence via the ring of his ashes? I feel vaguely as though I remember that being a thing. anyway I wonder if on some subconscious level, the contact with the ashes allows xie lian to sense hua cheng's presence, and that's why he's drawn to the Gambling Den

***

there's a brief sequence of notes in the song that's used in the tgcf fan audiobook which bears something in common with the opening notes of a christian hymn I know, and every now and then my ear catches on it - but the hymn in question goes "you alone are my heart's desire and I long to worship you" so like, not inappropriate!

***

uh oh in my relisten I have now made it beyond the point of what I've read for the group read-along and things are unfamiliar again! helpppp I liked listening to stuff I'd already read within the last few months! I no longer know what to expect! I remember so little from my first read last November!

***

holy shit hua cheng drags he xuan for filth in the armory after xie lian and shi qingxuan free him

***

oh goddddd I knew this was coming but the story of lang qianqiu and the guoshi fangxin is so upsetting :((( and I'm only in the very beginning stages of it!

***

I may be continuing to grimly work on canning my endless pears but SPIRITUALLY I am lying on the floor staring up at the ceiling as I continue listening to the arc about the gilded banquet

***

for the first time I understand the point of music at the beginning/end of audio chapters - to give you time for mental/emotional processing before moving on to the next bit

***

going from spiritually lying down on the floor to spiritually lying down underneath the floor

***

the lang qianqiu & xie lian relationship is a parallel to the xie lian & jun wu relationship, just with xie lian on the other side of the equation

😭😭😭😭😭😭

***

I wish my audiobook app provided listening stats, the way my podcast app does. I'm curious just how many hours of tgcf I listened to yesterday!

***

just thinking about the politics and social maneuvering that are inextricably entwined with being part of the heavenly court. it's now come up multiple times that various heavenly officials think to themselves that they'd better be careful about how they speak about xie lian, because jun wu has shown him marked leniency, so being nasty about or to xie lian is no longer a good idea. and shi qingxuan, for all her flightiness, clearly has a strong grasp on the importance of appearances and of controlling the narrative to keep in good standing in th that social environment

***

what a toxic workplace culture. ....and I was about to say that it's a problem that you can't just quit and get a different job. but. you CAN. multiple different gods prove that in a variety of ways over the course of the book. you just can't quit and still maintain the same power and prestige!

***

ahhhh I wonder how many other times xie lian went to visit his parents' tomb after the end of some particularly emotionally gruelling sequence of events in his life - and how many times he wanted to but was unable to get there, because he didn't have the means to travel that far

***

ohhhh I bet while he was skewered through the heart stuck in a coffin for 100 years he thought about his parents' final resting place a LOT

***

a couple of shi qingxuan thoughts from yesterday's listening session that I forgot to note down:

first, from what we see of how accusations of bad behaviour go in the upper court, shi qingxuan is the only god willing to speak up on behalf of an accused who doesn't have a high social standing. she's bearing the burden of keeping trials from being COMPLETE jokes all on her own shoulders!

second, with hua cheng's dice-controlled distance shortening arrays, is it that specifically rolling 4 takes you to whatever you fear most, or that rolling anything other than the correct thing does? if the latter, what does that mean about shi qingxuan's greatest fears, from the adventures in paradise manor - I suppose that it's first a place where she can't use her wind powers, and second a place where her beauty is threatened?

***

also more about Themes and Parallels:

guoshi fangxin refuses to teach lang qianqiu the technique for stopping a fight by getting between the two blades, because it requires hurting yourself, and hurting yourself is almost never the best option. HELLO XIE LIAN AND ALMOST ALL YOUR CHOICES.

***

let me make a more explicit stating of the jun wu:xie lian::xie lian:lang qianqiu parallels- the jaded older mentor who makes the young earnest crown prince suffer horrible things, but the crown prince refuses to be turned to hatred by it

***

xie lian kills Anle, the last remaining of the Xianle royal family, so he's also a person who betrays his country, depending on how you look at it. so that's probably the intended connection with the first two arcs which feature people betraying their countries

***

and now some more hualian thoughts:

in the entire trial scene when the gilded banquet accusation is made, we don't get any reporting of xie lian's thoughts or feelings - it's as if he's absent from the scene, except on the rare occasions he says something. dissociation :((((((((

***

at what point did xie lian stop using a sword, I wonder? was it right after the gilded banquet? he goes to banyue after that and he was a general there so presumably he did use a sword. so what happened after banyue that made him give up the sword for good?

***

it's easy to think of hua cheng as someone who will do anything xie lian tells him, because of his devotion - but hua cheng insists on making lang qianqiu hear everything from qi rong without letting xie lian stop him, even though xie lian vehemently wants anything but this. hua cheng's priority is always xie lian, but that doesn't always actually look like him doing whatever xie lian wants! sometimes it involves making xie lian very mad!

***

oh also there was finally a clear indication that one can generally interpret eming's response to things as being indicative of how hua cheng feels! I figured this was likely the case but it's nice to get some data to back that up.

***

and there was the most hilariously not-actually-subtle moment yet of the narrative eliding the things xie lian doesn't want to think about: "due to a reason somehow not worth mentioning" XIE LIAN YOUR PROBLEMS

***

whoooo, teen xie lian is super oblivious to what it might be like for someone (... like mu qing) to not be rich and not be of a well respected background. he might want to save the common people but he doesn't know or understand anything about them!

***

actually now that I think about it there are some echoes here of the story of the buddha - growing up rich and happy and wealthy and extremely sheltered prince, then becoming exposed to the suffering of the world and finding it a transformative experience. obviously not a totally parallel story but does some interesting riffs on the basic idea I think

***

[in response to a comment from ryfulets] mu qing DID need a contract and a union, you are so incredibly correct! employer-employee relationships always have a power imbalance, and if the employer tries to act otherwise, all they're doing is making "pretend the power imbalance doesn't exist" a constant high-stakes job task for the employee!

***

I can't think much of the Xianle king and queen's parenting of qi rong. that kid is completely out of control, cruel and dangerous, and the queen merely looks sad and says qi rong will only listen to xie lian

***

hang on I'm in the pre-ascension backstory right now and we just had a moment where xie lian didn't know whether to laugh or BE CONCERNED. does.... does he perhaps only start not knowing whether to laugh or cry after being terrorized by white no-face with his crying/laughing mask, maybe????? something worth investigating

***

all I want to do is shove tgcf at everyone going "read it read it read it it's so good" but I think everyone in my life who's likely to enjoy it either has already read it or already is interested in finding time for it someday, so I don't have anyone to bring with me in my ever further descent into obsession! it is a TRIAL. I appreciate everyone here on mastodon who talks with me about this book because all I want to do is talk about it endlessly

***

tfw yin yu becomes your holotype specimen for guys with "just some guy" energy

compare all "just some guy" guys to yin yu to see if they measure up

***

just had a thought about how qi rong and xie lian both typify two very different but very common reactions to extremely bad parenting: qi rong by acting out constantly, and xie lian by feeling like it is his personal responsibility to make anything and everything be okay, and if he ever fails it is the end of the world

***

I think on my first read of the book I assumed that the king and the queen of xianle were supposed to be good, or at least to be inoffensively bland, because of the veneration with which Xie Lian regards them even by the time of canon. but no. they are problems, on so many different fronts! and a lot of things make so much more sense when I let them be bad!

***

xie lian is a master of misdirection. love me an unreliable narrator who would never ever admit to being unreliable, including to himself <3

***

the queen just wrings her hands and worries and does literally nothing useful ever, resulting in many other people doing objectively bad-for-themselves things because otherwise the queen would be Sad at them, and the king is big into the whole business of royalty being inherently better, more worthy, more admirable, untouchable, etc as compared to other people, and is absolutely willing to uphold that viewpoint via harming other people. it's awful to watch!!

***

teen xie lian’s thoughts on the appropriate attitude to gods - spoken in a temple to jun wu - are both excellent and very much not what jun wu would want!! view gods with respect and admiration but not with fear and not as if the gods are your masters!

oh and this means he is absolutely willing to tell gods that they're wrong, if he thinks he's right about something :)

***

ok it's immediately after xie lian says he'd defy the gods if the gods are wrong that all the malicious spirits trapped on the mountain are suddenly freed and immediately head for xie lian's pavilion and for honghong-er, this cannot be a coincidence, but I cannot remember WHAT it's about!

***

tfw you're rereading a book but it's like you're reading it for the first time because your memory is so bad

***

xie lian's answer to the kobayashi maru would be the same as kirk's. neither of them believe in no-win scenarios!

***

this time around I actually have a handle on the two different characters named Lang Ying! They're both from Yong'an, which is why they both have the name Lang, and if I could read Chinese they have different characters for Ying so this wouldn't be a problem; but as it is, one Lang Ying is from the early days when Xie Lian was first ascended, and the other is from after Xie Lian ascends the third time, so they won't ever appear in the narrative at the same time.

***

unbelievable to me that I used to be unable to tell feng xin and mu qing apart; they're so obviously different to me now!

so far from what I see of their squabbling in their younger days, in general it goes like so:

1. feng xin says something that contains an implicit insult to mu qing, and usually means it to be so

2. mu qing is highly sensitive to slights because he is aware of how many people resent his position due to his background as a servant and overreacts to the insult

3. feng xin is fully ready to respond in kind

4. xie lian says feng xin didn't mean it and orders both of them to calm down and stop fighting, because he can't emotionally handle it when they fight and he doesn't have the conflict resolution skills to actually address what's happening and so the best solution he can come up with is to try to pretend nothing's wrong

what a toxic dynamic, oh boy!

***

the way there are systemic barriers in place to keep gods from hearing the prayers from their poorer followers - and to keep gods from speaking to anybody but the religious elites - just expedites the process by which the gods become out of touch with the realities of mortal life. I'm at the beginning of the Yong'an drought arc and everything about it is so upsetting

***

after xie lian finds out the depth of the seriousness of the drought, and he's kind of dazedly hanging out in the Xianle capital city in the rain, a random citizen gives him an umbrella when they see him getting wet. just making note of this because I feel like when I get there, it might be instructive to compare this to the eventual scene where he's given his bamboo hat

***

I saw someone posting on tumblr something like "thank god it's finally raining," about their personal irl circumstances, and my instinctive interpretation was "oh good, Yong'an is saved!!"

can you tell I am deep in my tgcf feels at this time despite having not listened to any of it since last night

***

kicking my feet in delight - when young, beaten down hua cheng is at the run down little shrine to the crown prince, xie lian leaves out an umbrella for him so he'll be able to leave in the rain. and it's the same umbrella xie lian was given by the passers-by earlier when he was feeling awful. AND. it is a red umbrella described as looking like a crimson flower.

***

even back then at this time, when xie lian is a powerful martial god and hua cheng is an abused young teenager, they both were helping each other. hua cheng needed something to live for, and xie lian needed to know that he could do something useful for someone at least <3

***

oh I also want to mention, in this section we get a brief run-down of what a martial god's responsibilities are supposed to be: ward off evil ghosts and bring protection and peace. but given things like feng xin being worshipped as ju yang (tremendous masculinity) it's clear there isn't exactly an expectation of keeping strictly to the stated responsibilities. I wonder what the heavenly norms are, about how far and in what directions you can diverge from your godly role without it being seen as inappropriate?

***

visiting yushi huang's territory is young xie lian's first exposure to the idea of a god NOT living in luxury, and living instead in a small tumbledown cottage. also an important introduction to the idea of shamelessly doing things that other people see as embarrassing.

also it's the first time xie lian is given a bamboo hat in a meaningful way! because the rain master's spiritual device is a bamboo hat

also, and unrelated to anything - her black ox can turn into a man!! I love him

***

one more thought before I take myself to an early bed: I had completely forgotten that xie lian meets ling wen during his first ascension, back when she was merely an overworked middle court official (instead of an overworked upper court official)! under the name nangong jie, she does a lot to help xie lian! HI LING WEN MY BELOVED

***

aughfhhhh the way the Xianle royal capital treats the Yong'an refugees is SO upsetting and so..... recognizable.

***

how does it work, with the middle court officials who are deputies of upper court - it seems clear you get to choose your own deputies, as a heavenly official, but is there any limit on number? can you just decide "everyone I like is immortal now, plus none of us have to do much work because there's so many to split the work between?" it seems there must be some kind of guidelines or limits, I think, because heaven seems really into separating new gods from their previous support systems - but I want to know what they are!

(we do know there's nothing to stop a heavenly official from being an abusive boss to their deputies.....)

***

the queen of Xianle tells xie lian that the king is doing his best with the whole Yong'an situation, it's just that he's not a very good king

but xie lian ALSO does his best about the whole Yong'an situation, and it also doesn't fix things

sometimes doing your best isn't good enough to achieve good results. but I don't think the book is arguing that you shouldn't try! but the book definitely sees the king as less heroic than xie lian , despite both of them trying. hmm I'm going to have to think on this one more.

***

lang ying as a parallel for and reflection of the young Xie Lian right back at himself. xie lian seeing in ly the same determination, the dedication to righteousness no matter who stands against you, the self-assured confidence that you know what's best to do - and they're fighting on opposite sides of a war, a war that is giving xie lian a crisis of confidence and breaking down all his pre-conceived ideas of how to know that to do

***

lang ying is such an important character actually.

***

OH FUCK this confrontation between xie lian and lang ying is the first appearance of the white-clothed calamity  😭😭😭😭

***

ok it's probably also important that qi rong is present for this entire scene but. I continue to struggle to care about him as a character. which makes it harder to think about his thematic importance

I think I would be able to enjoy him more tbh if his young human self were less, like, the epitome of everything I hate about asshole high-status people getting away with anything they want, and in a way that feels to me more parallel with real life horrible amoral rich people, and thus less enjoyable for me personally

and probably I would be able to put that aside if there were other aspects of the character that spoke to me, but unfortunately he's not my type of weird little freak!

***

xie lian is SUCH a nerd about martial arts I love him so much. he justttt finished an hour-long battle to destroy a mountain full of binu and he's all excited to talk at length about sword vs saber with the young soldier who's been following him (who's definitely not someone we've seen before and will see again 😛 )

***

oh interesting.... in the land of the tender scene, it's discussed how/why a god whose cultivation method involves purity will lose strength if they lose that purity - it's about losing the faith of your followers. so 800 years later when xie lian finally gets together with hua cheng, I don't think it actually IS a big deal if he breaks the rules of his cultivation path. it's not like he has a lot of followers anyway at that point, and the followers of the scrap god are not, I think, particularly invested in their god's purity! you don't worship a scrap god because you think he's super pure!

[in response to a comment about mu qing also following a celibate cultivation path, and how this would apply to him] I propose that mu qing needs to engage in some very deliberate public relations messaging with his followers to convince them to take a different understanding of their god, and only after the success of this communication campaign does he get to have sex :D

***

hmmm the twisted junlian vibes are strong from the first appearance of the white clothed calamity, aren't they. his first move against xie lian is on one hand to sabotage his cultivation and his power, but on the other hand is also to stage a second-hand sexual assault. jun wu your problems!!! wow

***

oh holy shit but then because hua cheng is there, HUA CHENG'S SWORD is the first sword to stab xie lian. his literal sword obviously but like, the sword related sexual violence overtones are strong in tgcf. hua cheng refuses to stab xie lian though, xie lian has to do it to himself. ahhhhhhhhhhhhh

the land of the tender scene is sure a rich text to mine for details

***

the cave xie lian is in for this whole thing.... it is "long and narrow, warm and humid" and he doesn't want anyone coming into it, EHHH

***

oh the scene gets very explicit actually about the link between violence and sexual desire. setting us up well for what's to come in the rest of tgcf!

***

ok I've reached the start of the human face disease and.... as far as I can tell, the ONLY thing it does is create the freaky faces on your skin? it doesn't hurt, it's not uncomfortable or itchy, it doesn't cause other deeper systemic issues, it doesn't kill you. but people die anyway because they'd rather die than live like that. pretty ableist imo? the idea that the results of an illness are considered to obviously be a fate worse than death

***

oh boy, xie lian actually goes to ask for help after he figures out what makes someone susceptible to human face disease, and what does he get for it? the xianle guoshi telling him that everything bad that's happening is all his fault because he tried to interfere. including the coming of the white clothed calamity. GUOSHI!!

***

update, I have now reached a part where the part of the body that's infected has its normal function impaired, and the faces have started moving and acting like they're alive and screaming and are eating grass for some reason. but it's clear that these are new developments of the disease progression, so I maintain my frustration with the idea that people were killing themselves just back when it was only a cosmetic impact from the disease

***

so on the one hand I am still pro mu qing unionizing, but on the other hand, he suggests casting the human face disease curse right back on yong'an in order to destroy them, so like. I don't want him to be a union leader or anything. because WOW. my guy. maybe chill for a moment.

***

something something xie lian piloting a giant statue of himself both in the period of his life when he is losing faith in himself, and also when he has found new peace with being who he is at the end of the novel

and the first statue is made of pure gold, sculpted to be as perfect and as expensive as possible, but the second one is made of stone carved with pure devotion by someone who sees him and knows him for everything he is. the first one fails but with the second one he achieves his goals!

***

I had brought up the man who gives xie lian an umbrella a while back, in order to potentially compare him to the situation where xie lian is given a hat, later on. but I hadn't remembered at the time that the young man with the umbrella then becomes relevant in the ensuing human face disease arc! he's the one whose leg xie lian tries amputating, and is subsequently furious after the illness recurs because it means he lost his leg for nothing, and he blames xie lian.

***

ahhhhh this whole arc is just so sad, it's an arc of xie lian discovering that actually he doesn't have the strength and ability do everything he wants to do, over and over and over again, as everyone around him berates him for not doing enough

***

oh. oh shit I just had a Thought about his second banishment when he asks for the cursed shackles. maybe in that moment he wants to not have power to do anything, so that nobody (himself included) will EXPECT him to do things that are beyond him

***

the narrative voice from xie lian's pov calling a young teen "still very much a child" - Xie Lian you are barely 20 yourself!!!

***

omg the bit with shi qingxuan bursting unexpectedly out of the pickle pot to thwart pei ming is GOLD. I love them.

***

oh boy I'd totally forgotten that pei su wasn't pei ming's first ascended descendant!! he likes to have a descendant around to have under his thumb

the previous one is just mentioned briefly offhand, not even named, but he also got into trouble and was banished to the mortal realm for a hundred years, but within 50 years he had no more followers left and was gone. so this is why pei ming felt so strongly about pei su NOT being banished - he was worried this might happen again!

***

OHO! at some point a while back I was chatting with some folks about the relative power of various heavenly officials in their male vs female forms, and now at the mid-autumn banquet ling wen's male form is referred to as her "most powerful form!" even though earlier in the book it's said that it takes her a lot of power to maintain her male form. so this is interesting! anyone have thoughts on how best to reconcile these two things?

[in reply to a comment analogizing it to a high horsepower engine, capable of producing a lot of power but demanding a lot of fuel] ahh that makes some sense I think! gotta make sure your worshippers are giving you enough merits!

***

I'm appreciating the mid-autumn banquet scene so much more this time, now that I'm able to keep track of who's who. and I'm so delighted to have quan yizhen appear in the narrative! love that guy.

(also love that xie lian's instinct upon seeing an upset young god who he knows ABSOLUTELY nothing about is to help him out even if it interrupts a major social occasion)

***

it occurs to me just HOW often, when jun wu is in a scene, he's described as having his head resting on one of his hands in some way. a signal intending to show how much the ~burdens of leadership~ weigh upon him?

***

how is it decided what play about the various gods gets revealed during the game at the mid-autumn banquet? the text elides over this, and it definitely does make a difference, given the widely varying types of plays that could be presented to the audience, to very different effects!

on another note: hua cheng absolutely commissioned the play about xie lian in banyue, didn't he

***

I am not (yet?) a noted beefleaf scholar so maybe this is addressed elsewhere, but how seriously does he xuan take the role of Earth Master? he xuan must spend at least some time answering prayers and doing earth mastery things, given that he xuan makes it into the top ten ranking in the lantern competition, but to what extent? and what kind of relationship does he xuan have with ming yi's followers?

***

holy shit I'd forgotten just HOW extra hua cheng went in terms of lanterns for xie lian. 3,000 lanterns, when jun wu himself was only in the 900's! hua cheng does NOT know how to be anything but radically committed

***

ah bless, of course it's pei ming who first puts together that hua cheng is the reason for all the lanterns. he is well familiar with what obsessive devoted love looks like in other people!

***

ahhh the version of me who first read this book would be SO surprised by how much I genuinely enjoy the three tumours these days. they're just so terrible (affectionate)

***

just got to the beginning of the fetus spirit introduction, and ok I know this doesn't end up being the actual problem but I still don't like that one of the suggested explanations for what happened to the rich merchant's wife's pregnancy is that her previous abortion resulted in an angry spirit that disrupted her current pregnancy. smacks too much of those myths that if you ever get an abortion it means you'll have more trouble getting pregnant and having kids in the future.

***

oh a belated thought from the mid-autumn festival banquet - earlier in the chapter xie lian is busy thinking about how he's being too familiar in how he talks about hua cheng, and meanwhile hua cheng is busy planning the most over the top show of devotion possible.  xie lian! you can talk about hua cheng HOWEVER you want, and hua cheng will be happy! especially since when xie lian is talking to familiarly about hua cheng, it's to threaten qi rong with hua cheng on xie lian's behalf, and we KNOW hua cheng would be delighted to beat up anyone who talks shit abou  xie lian!

***

BUDDY BREATHING SCENE!!!

***

throughout the whole book there keep on being little references to xie lian's bamboo hat and the way he always prioritizes making sure he has it. it's done in ways that are pretty invisible on first read, but in my current listen, every time it comes up again I'm just like  🥺🥺🥺

***

ohhh the temple hua cheng built to xie lian in ghost city was built a long time ago but kept hidden until recently - so it hasn't been visible this whole time as a public statement of his obsession. people (ghosts) could only find out about the temple after the mid-autumn festival, when he revealed it to do the lantern thing!

***

ok going back a bunch, I had made a note briefly in my notes app, wondering about why teen hua cheng was kicked out of the xianle army, because he'd been about to tell xie lian but their conversation got cut short. I didn't post about it here because I assumed it was going to come up again! but we're back into the present day now with it having not been returned to. so. WILL it ever get addressed? or is it left to be a lingering point of curiosity about hua cheng's past?

***

the more sense I get of exactly who mu qing and feng xin are as characters, and why they have the beef with each other that they do, the more I worry that if I try reading fengqing fic, I'll have to trawl through a lot of generic bicker-couple fics to find ones that engage with the actual issues between them to the degree that I would be interested in.

they're really interesting characters! I think it would be very hard to get them to a place of actually having a relationship with each other!

any recs? :D

***

I have gotten to the fetus spirit plotline and...oh right.....I am just not personally moved by stories about parenthood and reproduction

[in response to a comment] hmmm yeah I could see it being tied to the whole celibacy thing! And it does make sense for tgcf to have a plot like this in it I think, given how much the book is about sublimated sexual violence. it's about people's choices being taken away from them, I think - the mother doesn't get to actually birth her son and raise him like she wanted to, and the father doesn't even get to know he has a son in order to make a choice on how to respond. but my heartstrings are simply never tugged by babies or anything about them!

***

lmao at pei ming criticising the irresponsibility of whichever heavenly official fathered the fetus spirit. lmao at every single other official in the hall staring at him in silence after he says this.

***

the general habit of the crowd of heavenly officials throughout the book to be more interested in what kind of juicy drama might be stirred up than in the impacts on anyone's lives - well it's very characteristic of what we see of the scumminess of heaven, isn't it

***

holy shit I forgot that jun wu has a magic virgin-detecting sword. that is extremely jun wu of him. even the rest of the court, who know he collects swords, think it's extra weird of him to have a sword like this! BECAUSE IT IS.

***

my sister is well used to listening to me talk about my obsessions. she and I used to live together in the days when I was heavily into Les Miserables the book, and she got the main brunt of it

today she and I went for a walk and I tried to tell her about tgcf and I kept having to backtrack and explain something else so that the next thing that happened would actually make sense; it was like my explanation was a series of expanding circles instead of a linear description. and it just kept going!!!

apparently I am capable of the two sentence explanation or the two hour explanation of tgcf and there is no in between option

I did cut myself off before I finished explaining though, because I want to make sure she's willing to keep listening to me in the future :P I gave her the basics of the hualian backstory and relationship, and told her she would get to hear about Jun Wu and beefleaf next time!

***

oh!!!!! I've reached shi qingxuan backstory time! YESSSS

***

growing up constantly afraid, the way shi qingxuan must have with the reverend of empty words after them.... gosh. kind of impressive honestly that they manage to determinedly live in such a carefree manner in their adult life

***

I had completely forgotten shi qingxuan's private communication array password? a four line poem in praise of Lord Wind Master's looks and skills! iconic.

***

we only get to find out the communication passwords for people who are uhhhh not your typical heavenly officials. I wonder what kinds of passwords more normal gods use?

***

oh boy the bloody fire social, and the "stabbing ecstasy" that it inspires, we return to sexual violence once again! it's amazing that I failed to pick up on all these thematic clues on my first read, that tell you how to understand xie lian's story

***

tfw you have to google for spoilers for a book YOU ALREADY READ

***

hua cheng answering the question of what is the worst suffering in the world makes me think of the dinner party in The Blue Castle where all the relatives go around and answer the question is what is the greatest happiness. now I want to force all the tgcf characters to have to go to a polite and dreary dinner party and answer the question of greatest happiness

otoh I think that Barney Snaith would absolutely agree with Hua Cheng about the greatest suffering!

actually now that I think about it there are more parallels between The Blue Castle and tgcf than I thought - both are about a protagonist who's being kept miserable by someone controlling, who figures out a way to be free, who falls in love with a man who all of polite society agrees is alarming and dangerous.

ghost king Barney Snaith is a pretty fun image to contemplate actually

***

😭😭😭😭BEEFLEAF.

I mean I haven't even gotten to any of the truly awful bits yet! but. shi qingxuan's declaration of the extent they will go to, to protect their brother as he prepares for his next heavenly calamity, and he xuan's reaction to it! he xuan is so hoping that maybe shi qingxuan won't tie themself to their brother, that maybe he xuan won't have to include them in the revenge plans. but shi qingxuan is committed, without knowing what they're committing to!

***

for the first time a venerable of empty words is capable of saying something that xie lian is actually afraid of..... because there's something that MATTERS to him to lose, for the first time in centuries! his lack of care for his own self gives him a lot of power to do things tbh, but it's also truly tragic

***

xie lian's thoughts: shi qingxuan is my friend and I want to help them in their time of trial!

hua cheng's thoughts: he xuan had better not involve dianxia in any of the plotted downfall of the Shi siblings, or else.

meanwhile. the two of them are cuddling in a small carriage that fits about 1.5 people in it, getting flustered over a joke about marriage.

what a scene!

***

oh also I continue to be horrified by Shi Wudu's casually possessive way of treating shi qingxuan and acting like he knows what's best for them at all times. what a guy!

***

hang on what happened, this morning I voluntarily enjoyed having a thought about qi rong, guess I AM learning how to appreciate him as a character after all

***

1. wow the narrative really uses the word "languidly" a lot to describe the manner in which hua cheng does things

2. when out working in the rice fields, xie lian worries about hua cheng in the sun for the second time, but this time he manages to successfully give him the bamboo hat, after being turned down in the banyue desert!

***

awwww he xuan also tries to convince xie lian to not get involved in the black water arc! possible motivations:

1. doesn't want anyone to be hurt other than his targets

2. likes xie lian personally from what he knows of him and doesn't want him hurt

3. his friend hua cheng asked him not to let xie lian get hurt

4. knows that if xie lian is hurt, hua cheng's revenge on him would be formidable

I feel like #4 is by far the most likely but it would be fun if there's some bits of the others mixed in too!

***

lolll I had totally forgotten that he xuan has tunnels dug beneath all sorts of places in the heavenly realm, including right beneath the palaces of other gods!

also: emerging from beneath shi qingxuan's bed. monster under the bed out to get you!!!

***

I'm personally offended that heaven thinks it's embarrassing to use any kind of device that isn't suitably beautiful, and that nobody would have the face to carry a shovel around. first: there are many practical and useful things in this world that aren't beautiful and yet are valuable. second: there are extremely attractive aesthetics that aren't going for ethereal beauty; eg butch lesbian earth master with the equivalent of a soft lumberjack aesthetic would be Very Good Actually

***

I love quan yizhen. napping in the middle of the day, even though heavenly officials don't need to sleep! staring in bewilderment when four people crawl out of a hole into his bedroom! taking decisive action once he figures he understands what's going on, by hurling an entire bed at pei ming! a true sage, living according to his instincts in the moment.

***

I just...!!! HUALIAN. I am endlessly charmed

- xie lian getting enormously flustered seeing hua cheng labouring half-naked in his shrine

- hua cheng using his sabre to do woodworking

- hua cheng being supportive of whatever xie lian decides to do, and xie lian not knowing what to do with the feelings he gets as a result

- xie lian fixing hua cheng's collar!

- the two of them flirting so ourageously that he xuan is no longer able to draw a tidy circle for his array

***

the story of Scholar He truly is upsetting and tragic! getting a lil teary while biking to work, listening to it

(and also dang xie lian does an impressive job deducing what happened with Scholar He and shi qingxuan!)

***

the comedy duo of hua cheng and he xuan makes me cackle every time, the way they constantly needle each other with the truth in front of other people

***

shi qingxuan on hearing more about Scholar He: "I really am nothing compared to this man."  😭

***

WAIT the possibility is brought up that maybe other people also ascended by stealing someone else's fate - I can't remember if this is addressed later but other heavenly officials are definitely the sort who would do something like this if they could! I'm now looking suspiciously at pei ming's ascended descendants

[in response to a comment wondering whether shi wudu came up with this on his own or asked around] GREAT point. is shi wudu really an innovator? he doesn't strike me as one!

***

how do heavenly calamities work? do you get to choose whether you want to undergo such a trial for greater power, or does it just happen to all gods in their time? Are they a natural force or does someone specific (eg jun wu) set what it's going to be? how often are they possible/required? many questions!

I'm at the point of shi wudu's tribulation and we're told it's unexpectedly months early; I was wondering if he xuan had any ability to manipulate when it was, so it would happen at a time that would be helpful for him to judge what shi qingxuan will do about it. but if he xuan actually wanted multiple more months and jun wu triggered it early that would be REAL interesting bc then maybe he xuan wanted to be able to have more time to see if shi qingxuan might actually decide not to prioritize shi wudu for once

--

the way that xie lian will just casually drop information about past miseries of his life like it's no big deal, just constantly! and plenty of them never even come up again! oh yeah no big deal, plenty of times in the past he's been stranded out of sea for half a month at a time, isn't that just to be expected

***

"Xie Lian always felt that he was light as a feather, like if he didn’t pay attention, Hua Cheng would disappear."  😭 xie lian has never had a good thing in his life actually stick around before and so he cannot quite believe hua cheng isn't going to go anywhere!

***

ooh I had forgotten that in the black water demon lair there really are skeleton fish, it's not just a fun thing the fanartists came up with! I love the skeleton fish

***

REPAYMENT FOR THE BUDDY BREATHING!!!

***

at first i was like, it is so CUTE how flustered both xie lian and hua cheng are after xie lian kisses hua cheng in an attempt at resuscitation, but then xie lian runs away wishing for death and I'm reminded of the entire heaps and gobs of sexual trauma this guy has ahhhhh

***

the conversation hua cheng and xie lian have over the campfire on the island in black water demon lair, about hua cheng's special someone...... it's so GOOD. both of them reassuring each other about the depth to which they want to know and accept the other, able to be articulated because they're not actually talking directly about being interested in each other. the careful steps of the dance of their relationship, growing closer and closer over the course of the book! it's so beautifully done

***

he xuan is SUCH a theatre kid. his drama levels are off the charts. the ambience! the hiding of an iron prison in the reflection of a lake! the choreography of everything he plans!

I feel like at least half the theatricality is just because he doesn't know any other way to be, and there's no intended audience. beyond that... I do think the main audience is shi qingxuan, but with a sideline in "anyone else along for the ride" and "people telling stories about it afterwards." this is after all the guy whose previous vengeance and death got a town to do yearly theatre about it ever after because it was so good!

also I do think that there's at least a little of the theatricality that's for shi wudu as well, even if perhaps he xuan doesn't consciously recognize that

***

I love how he xuan, despite having killed the original ming yi and taken over his life, won't actually stand for anyone talking about ming yi without respect. he has LINES you know.

***

I adore the whole sequence where xie lian is sharing shi qingxuan's body and they talk back and forth to each other with the same mouth and share control over the actions they take. it's so much fun! and also demonstrates a lot of trust from shi qingxuan tbh. good thing xie lian can be trusted, unlike certain other people in this part of the story :P

***

damn the real ming yi was kept alive and imprisoned for HOW long? how long ago were all the main players of the black water arc born? it was several hundred years at least, iirc. what a life. sucks to be him!

also there is a pleasing/horrible parallel in that he xuan, in order to get revenge on someone for stealing his fate and his life as a god... does the same thing to someone else

***

as xie lian reviews past events in light of new information, there's also the fun parallel that while xie lian was busy feeling guilty for sneaking around paradise manor to find the missing heavenly official, I'm sure hua cheng was busy feeling guilty about manipulating xie lian into finding the fake ming yi

***

the confrontation between he xuan and shi wudu!!! shi wudu has NO idea how much danger he's in, all "we can agree to mind our own business as water colleagues, right? :)))"

and then -

shi wudu: "you're still alive?"

he xuan: "I'm dead."

I'M DYING.

***

trying to decide if shi wudu is the Actual Worst, or if he's saying the most horrifying things he can think of to try to egg he xuan into killing him so that shi qingxuan won't be in a position to have to kill their own brother. both options seem plausible tbh

***

hualian kiss count: 3!

***

yessss the first narrative mention of the idea that Someone is stirring up trouble with all these cases of late, thank you hua cheng!

***

awww it is nice to see that the three tumours stick together even in death, even when everyone else decides it's not worth the social ramifications of continuing to admire shi wudu. pei ming collects shi wudu's corpse and ling wen attends the funeral. they may all three be terrible but they are terrible TOGETHER. <3

(and of course xie lian comes to the funeral too.)

***

HUALIAN KISS COUNT: 4

***

in this kissing session xie lian thinks about how it's unfair that he can't let his hands roam anywhere "dangerous" which, (recognising the flaws in reading into specific word choices in a translated text) oh boy, way to have only negative associations with sex at this point in your life xie lian 😭

***

BUT. he's finally able to recognize consciously that there has been an element of desire in himself in each instance of kissing. proud of u xie lian!!

***

I love how much the villagers around puqi shrine are accepting of xie lian as their local daozhang. not afraid of him or in awe of him or disdainful of him, they're happy to spend time with him and bug him about his cute relative xiao-hua and treat him like he belongs in the community

***

ok so like I ENJOY the through line of xie lian being extremely bad at cooking, and the heartbreaking backstory reasons why he cooks the way he does.... but also it's a little over-exaggerated for me? like it's not just unpleasant, it's outright dangerous, it makes people feel like they're poisoned, it can knock people out. It's just a bit much imo!

***

aha we are getting multiple hints that Something Is Up with the kid lang ying, with him suddenly behaving in ways that are completely atypical for him

***

OH NO.... lang ying being Weird about xie lian bathing in sight of other men......lang ying having been taken over by jun wu.........jun wu you are being sexually creepy about xie lian again!!

***

WAIT I never realized until this moment that puqi shrine is like. IN the village. cozy neighbours with the villagers. I thought it was a bit set apart! but while xie lian is bathing inside the shrine, a knock on the next-door house sounds close enough that he at first thinks it's his own door!! this revolutionizes my understanding of everything that happens while he lives at the shrine holy shit.

and when he's not busy with other things, xie lian hosts "how not to get scammed" talks for the local old folks in the village! I adore xie lian more and more with every passing moment

***

xie lian is so surprised that quan yizhen doesn't have any junior officials, even though xie lian doesn't have any either. qyz is a lone wolf! xie lian just can't afford any! (what does that mean?? do you need to expend merits or spiritual energy to maintain your deputies? how does it work? Tell me more!)

***

the POLITENESS of the confrontation between xie lian and ling wen over the brocade immortal! it is extremely them and it's so fun

***

ling wen and pei ming running into each other in the street: they're described as making snide comments to each other. but pei ming genuinely worries for ling wen's well being at the same time. just three tumours things!! their friendship requires saying mean things to each other :P

***

throwback to the time i said jun wu was being sexually creepy via lang ying https://federatedfandom.net/@soph_sol/111168690897913240 ......... it's actually hua cheng pretending to be lang ying WHOOPS. the vibes of "lang ying" not wanting anyone to see xie lian bathing do change when you change who it is - it comes across more as protective instead of possessive imo

it IS very funny how differently the same actions can be perceived depending on the assumed motivations. something something this is how jun wu can get away with so much as the heavenly emperor? also this is how unreliable narrators who don't understand their own motivations can trick unwary readers

***

xie lian to hua cheng: "Only after having met you did I rediscover that it’s such a simple thing to be happy"  🥺

of course this is said in a very silly context but isn't that the point? he's able to laugh himself sick over silly things! it's so important to me

***

the juxtaposition of my thoughts about the three tumours friendship involving snide remarks, and the xie lian-ling wen collegial relationship involving endless politeness....you know ling wen is really your friend when she's willing to be mean to you

***

OH. ling wen asked for time by herself with the brocade immortal and xie lian thought that would be fine because her hands were bound by ruoye. then when she comes out later the text casually mentions that her hands are at her side. but xie lian doesn't notice! a) what did she do with the brocade immortal and b) what did she do with RUOYE

***

by hua cheng's estimation, shi wudu acts entirely based on loyalty and friendship, helping his people no matter what. but pei ming "might not choose to aid corruption." this sounds about right to me!

***

oh I forgot to note while I was listening this morning! ling wen was mean to xie lian about his cooking, instead of being endlessly polite - friendship overture from her?  😂

***

returning to the ling wen watch, maybe that mention of her hands by her side was an accident? because now in the fight against the cultivators and monks who come to the shrine, when xie lian calls for Ruoye, it is on ling wen's hands and it needs to leave her! or maybe the brocade immortal is pretending to be ruoye?? genuinely do not know what to think anymore and do not remember nearly enough about this whole plotline!

well i think it must have been an accident after all. she only decides to take her leave after xie lian calls ruoye away, and then she gets the brocade immortal from inside the shrine. sigh. oh well!

***

ling wen has the politest way of breaking out! thanks for your hospitality but I'll be taking my leave now, she says conversationally, after having made sure xie lian is too busy with an extremely inconvenient fight with other people to be able to stop her. I love her so much.

***

SWORD NERDS  🤩 xie lian and qian yizhen both have an instinctive reaction upon seeing ling wen suddenly being really good at fighting, and it's to admire her beautiful move - even though she used it against them!

***

noooo puqi shrine actually collapsed?! oh I'm feeling emotional about that. it's really been something like a home for xie lian, a place where he's been able to have some fun and build some good memories, despite everything!

***

I still love the moment where xie lian, by habit, starts to report the latest incident to ling wen - who of course was there for the whole thing, as xie lian's opponent.

***

I just! love ling wen so much! EVERYONE relies on her for everything in ways they don't even think about or realise. how do you fight against her when she controls even your means of communication with each other?

***

lollll qi rong's most well known and vulgar traits were because he was trying to imitate the other two ghost kings. can't even come up with his own thing! no wonder he's the afterthought of the four calamities! c'mon qi rong you can do better than that

***

I might not love the thing where xie lian's cooking is so exaggeratedly bad that it's like poison, but it is a fun little detail that something with "incorruptible chastity" in the name is specifically bad for one's wellbeing

***

the scene where there's all sorts of disparate people showing up to run into each other on the same night at the same random out-of-the-way inn to run into each other reminds me a great deal of the climax of a Georgette Heyer novel!

of course, this isn't anywhere near the climax of tgcf; I don't think I'm even 2/3 of the way through. have I mentioned before that there's just so much book in this book?

anyway, the count so far is: Hua Cheng & Xie Lian, Heaven's Eye and the rest of his mob, Lang Cheng and the fetus spirit, Qi Rong, and another random cultivator. Would not be surprised at this point if even more named characters show up!

***

lollll xie lian really taking the opportunity provided to him by mu qing's disguise as "fu yao" to insult mu qing extensively to his face with all appearance of innocence. amazing tbh that mu qing is still attempting to keep up the disguise at this point in the story!

***

also - feng xin for the first time making overtures to xie lian under his own name and face! connecting to his private communication array, and then actually coming down to find him when xie lian suddenly stopped responding!

***

there's only about a hundred or so Upper Court officials but we only get to know the names and roles of a small fraction of that number. I want to know the specifics of more of them! Especially the civil gods - I can't remember ever getting even the name of any current civil god beyond Ling Wen. Who's the one who takes over her job in her absence, for example?

And what's the approximate ratio of civil gods to martial gods, as well?

***

known martial gods:

Jun Wu

Xie Lian

Pei Ming

Pei Su | Pei Xiu (unless he's a middle court official? unclear.)

Feng Xin

Mu Qing

Lang Qianqiu

Quan Yizhen

Yin Yu (previously)

known elemental gods:

Shi Wudu

Shi Qingxuan

Yushi Huang

Ming Yi (... sort of)

known civil gods:

Ling Wen

Jing Wen (previously)

and that's it, as far as I can remember! 15 gods out of at least a hundred! TELL ME MORE.

***

it's so 🥺 how much more xie lian laughs at this point in the story than he did earlier! "such a simple thing to be happy" strikes again!

actually I wonder. if one were to do a count of when and how often xie lian laughs in each part of the story. what kind of graphical depiction of his state of mind could you derive from the data.

***

I love xie lian & hua cheng's whole routine of puppet master and puppet at the entrance to mount tonglu, and they're clearly having fun with it too!

also. PEI MING. he sure has nerve, making fun of hua cheng when he's a small child, even though he knows this is a powerful and feared ghost king!

***

I had forgotten that the powerful demon Swift Life-Extinguishing Blade is Pei Ming's sword!  😆 I'm so delighted. that's right buddy. you have to fight YOUR OWN SWORD, WHO YOU SNAPPED, in order to fulfil your mission!

***

ok in this three wayfight between kemo and pei ming and pei ming's sword ming guang, I'm actually having trouble keeping track of who's who, because at this point I'm so used to thinking of pei ming when I hear ming guang that I don't even notice which of the two names is being used!

***

first mention of the crown prince of wuyong :) and of the xianle guoshi being old enough to remember kingdoms from before anyone else's time :) finally jun wu backstory time is approaching!

love that the xianle guoshi wanted xie lian to be more like the crown prince of wuyong btw. guoshi and jun wu of one mind :)))

***

wait, in this discussion of the dynasties of heaven, it's mentioned that there are hundreds in the upper court. much earlier in the book I clearly remember it saying that there are something like a hundred. which is it? how many unnamed gods of the upper court are there?

and I suppose - how much does that number change between dynasties and eras? is the number fairly consistent, between gods rising and falling? or are there some times with far more gods than other times?

***

ling wen to pei ming: do you remember anyone who might have a grudge against both of us?

pei ming: not specifically. there's too many.

I love my terrible tumours  🥰

***

"There is no such thing as number one in literature, it’s all subjective." You said it, Xie Lian!

***

every now and then there's a brief reference to gods who are in charge of specific things, and seem to therefore not be civil gods, martial gods, or elemental gods. This rather implies there's a whole other framework of what godhood might be like that we simply never see in the book because the only gods named or described are ones who fit in those three categories! how narrow our view of heaven is!

me: @ Betty yes I think that does make sense! but in the section I was listening to this evening, it was talking about how in Jing Wen's time there used to be even fewer female heavenly officials than there are today, and that mostly they had roles like being the gods of dancing or cooking or things like that, and that there were almost no female civil gods. and I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have been martial gods either! so if those female gods weren't civil or martial gods, and certainly aren't elemental gods either, then they must fit into another category, I think!

Betty: @ soph_sol imagine getting to heaven because of your martial prowess and being made the god of dancing or cooking :/

me: @ Betty okay that is actually incredible though. like, sucks for the god in question, but it ABSOLUTELY seems like something this heaven would do.

***

ah yes, Jing Wen is SUCH an ass. I'd forgotten how much! but he quickly and easily sorted me out on that one.

***

even after all this time xie lian is still worried about making gestures towards hua cheng that are too intimate! XIE LIAN. brush those petals off his shoulders for him! he'll like it!!

also, wow hua cheng, way to go for the wildly over the top romantic gesture there with the rain of flower petals just for xie lian

but then wildly over the top gestures is kind of hua cheng's thing <3

***

the temple of the crown prince of wuyong in the valley between two mountain spirits which are coming closer and closer, with our heroes trapped between: the trash compactor scene on a much larger scale?

***

the narration says that when it comes to martial gods there's no need to mention their strength, but I do need to give a shoutout here to pei ming, singlehandedly holding two entire mountains apart from each other

***

poor yin yu..... having a face SO unremarkable and boring that you look at him and assume he must be someone more distinctive who's in disguise, because how could a real person have a face that forgettably dull

***

he xuan may be an excellent scholar and a powerful supreme but there are some things in which yin yu can totally show him up

he xuan, ghost king, bearer of the earth master shovel for centuries: can barely control it, digs wild tunnels

yin yu, consummate professional assistant, bearer of the earth master shovel for a few hours: digs quick and careful tunnels, and can even create tidy mud steps in moments

***

pei ming is SO pei ming that he's capable of being interested in the dry femur of someone he suspected to be a beautiful woman before death. it's a bone! it's just a bone! but pei ming totally willing to get a boner for it.

this man can see beautiful women in ANYTHING

***

yesssss it's time for chekhov's red string to be activated!!! the string that's been tied around hua cheng's finger since book one is now attached to xie lian!

***

wait he xuan has over FIFTY clones in heaven in various roles to monitor things?! that is commitment. how much of his mental energy does he need to engage at all times to keep track of and control them all?

***

"This is no heaven. I don't like it here."  😭 quan yizhen, throwing truths everyone else is too cowardly to say!

***

quan yizhen pointing out yin yu's sunk cost fallacy.... what's so great about ascension? if you don't like it here, then why stay just because you worked hard for it and it was a major achievement??

***

Hua Cheng sure does intensive background checks on his trusted subordinates to have all these recorded memories of Yin Yu's history with Quan Yizhen

***

me listening to the yin yu & quan yizhen backstory:

Xie Lian couldn't bear to watch anymore and he buried his face in Hua Cheng's arms. "This...this, this, this, is too tragic to watch."

***

ok but real question, CAN I manage to keep listening to the yin yu & quan yizhen backstory. yy just learned that he gave qyz the brocade immortal without realising it and it's agonizing

***

I'm actually listening to a podcast tonight as I do evening chores instead of the tgcf audiobook. maybe I need to really quickly skim-read this section in the actual book and skip forward in the audio.

***

The thing about narrative themes that you really struggle with and narrative themes that are the most interesting for you to engage with, is that I wouldn't be surprised if it's common for those things to actually occupy space quite near to each other. Because they're both circling around a thing that you have strong emotions about.

I keep rotating in my head the issues I'm having with the yin yu & quan yizhen & brocade immortal plot, and wanting to say that it's because it's a story about people making bad decisions because the information they need in order to make better decisions is being deliberately withheld from them...... but that's literally shi qingxuan's story in the black water arc and I LOVE that arc.

(see also yi city vs xiyao, which both also have that same dynamic. one of them I can't bear and the other I'm fascinated by.)

shrug emoji. idk! it's different!!

***

yin yu not told by jian yu that what was in the gift box was the brocade immortal, until days after it was given.... then quan yizhen not told by yin yu that the armour he's wearing is a danger to him and everyone around him.... secrets compounding on each other!

I got a few more minutes into my listen but then I got to the part where yin yu doesn't tell qyz and had to nope out again

***

ok I did it I read through it in my paper copy and survived the experience and can go to bed in peace!

***

Xie Lian says that the guoshi of xianle was a good teacher, and he clearly thinks highly of him.... but from everything we see of the guoshi in book 2 I do NOT agree with Xie Lian

***

my understanding of the reason they all came to mt tonglu was to take out any reasonably powerful ghosts before they could kill too many others and get more powerful. but now they're all acting like it's helpful to go straight to the kiln with the help of the mountain spirit. this doesn't quite make sense to me! anyone have an explanation?

***

seeing yin yu calmly and capably working in the context of being hua cheng's subordinate is quite the contrast to how all over the place he is when dealing with quan yizhen, even today - so it's not that he's grown up and matured and settled into his skills, it's that he can't manage to be that person around his shidi

***

tfw u have so little care for your own well being that your love interest has to sit you down for a talk about how just because nothing can kill you doesn't mean you should just let yourself get hurt willy-nilly

***

*pedant voice* Well Actually, when people die due to a pyroclastic flow like in wuyong, the shell of ash leaves a mostly-empty hollow inside where the person was, rather than creating a stone effigy of the dead. this misconception is due to the findings at Pompeii where the hollows were used as casts to create statue-like impressions of what the hollows were shaped as, and people see the images without hearing the full context

EMBARRASSING. Local Nerd Pontificates Before Listening To The Rest Of The Scene

(I still have some questions though)

***

when hua cheng was in mount tonglu for like a decade or whatever it was, he really made a hobby of trying to figure out the history of the place, didn't he! well I guess he couldn't spend ALL of his time carving statues and killing other ghosts!

***

ohhhh I think I really did not catch the first time through that the way the crown prince of wuyong was going to take all his mortal followers to heaven to save them from the volcano was to like, temporarily appoint them all as his deputies. that's so fun! and like, interesting commentary on the whole system too tbh, where basically the gods get to pick and choose who gets to experience immortal life as the middle court deputy of a god and who dies on earth

anyway this also answers my questions about how many deputies a god is allowed to appoint, and the answer is: as many as they have power to sustain

***

it kind of feels like all the hints in mt tonglu are supposed to make the reader wonder if perhaps xie lian somehow used to be the crown prince of wuyong, in order to later pull a surprise move when showing who it actually was, and why the parallels are relevant.

I can't remember though, whether I was tricked by this on my first read or not. I don't actually remember, even, what all I already knew about the story from fandom before going in! dear Past Soph: why didn't you write down all your thoughts in excruciating detail for Current Soph to enjoy?!

***

as I continue to listen, I keep on looking at the decreasing hours left in my tgcf audiobook with dismay, like "oh no I ONLY have 13 more hours to go until I've listened to all the chapters that have been released so far"

I started listening to this fan audiobook over a month ago, on September 7, and it has just so thoroughly become a part of my daily routine. like who was I even before I spent all my time listening to and thinking about this book?

***

awww the silver wraith butterflies are a part of hua cheng's vambraces! I wonder how they were created?

***

sigh I continue to not love the whole plotline where Xuan Ji is a highly capable female general who then goes mad out of love for Pei Ming and doesn't care about literally anything else ever again and becomes someone to look down on

***

what was the ecosystem of gods and demons in tgcf like, prior to the destruction of wuyong and the creation of tonglu and the kiln? were ghost kings even a thing? or was the creation of the very idea of calamities a part of what happened when everything went down?

(and is this addressed later in the book?? I don't remember!)

[a comment tells me that bai wuxiang was the first calamity] a) that must have been a real surprise for the heavens, when the first calamity appeared! b) ....was it also a surprise for bai wuxiang when the SECOND calamity appeared?

***

a university librarian I know told me once about noticing that east asian students would often hand things over to other people using both hands, and the librarian looked it up and apparently in some cultures it is rude to give an item to someone else with only one hand

anyway I've been noticing on this read-through that every now and then it will be specified whether someone is giving someone with one hand or two, and that gesture seems to be encoding information! I'm very sure that there are many other culturally-normative details in this book that I don't happen to have context for and I bet plenty of it is like this, where if you don't know it means something then it doesn't even look like something relevant, so you don't even know to look it up

at any rate, yushi huang offers her sword to pei ming with two hands, because she's classy like that

***

I really hope we're going to move beyond banyue and little pei being present in nearly every scene sometime soon. the whole banyue arc is really unpleasant with its racist depiction of that people-group, plus then somehow the narrative doesn't see anything weird about developing what looks to be a background romance arc between banyue and little pei despite everything little pei did to the people/city/country of banyue

***

when yushi huang ascended, "the black ox ascended with her" - does that mean he's actually a god in his own right too, not just a middle court deputy of yushi huang?!

***

I love how petty the black ox is, throwing pei ming off his back 7 or 8 times during the journey where he's carrying 4 people, even though that inevitably must impede the progress of the whole group. WORTH IT.

***

"Even if this won’t kill them, if no one can help dig them out, it still doesn’t feel great to be buried for a few decades."

definitely not speaking from experience here, xie lian. who's survived being buried for a few decades? not him!!

***

relatedly, a few moments earlier xie lian was saying “Nothing is ever the matter with me” ahahahaha

***

hua cheng, sweating with anxiety: haha I definitely don't know anything about this cave filled with divine statues even though I know everything else there is to know about mt tonglu. I'm completely ignorant about clothing styles despite being obviously into fashion. I know nothing about art or about the symbology used to depict gods. don't touch anything, whoever made these statues is weird and we should leave immediately

(I love the cave of 10,000 gods so much)

***

now that Feng Xin and Fangxin are in a scene together with Feng Xin under his real name, it's a problem when listening to distinguish the two names!

***

what is with the pit full of spider silk that attacks anyone who enters the area, that feng xin & mu qing & xie lian get stuck in? it seems rather out of character from the rest of the cave system which is mostly just an endless shrine to the flower crowned martial god. is it part of a set of traps hua cheng set up to keep others out of his space, and we just don't see anything else like it because hua cheng has been directing their route to avoid such things?

***

[in a response to a comment about the origin of the wraith butterflies, and the spider silk actually being butterfly cocoon silk] mxtx should care more about insect life imo, because insects are fascinating. but the wraith butterflies are mentioned as coming from hc's silver vambraces, so I had thought they were more like eming, inanimate objects that gained life, rather than being real butterflies/moths

I wonder if hc can summon the larval form as well  and it's just that there is no use to summoning them until they can fly!

***

honestly props to mu qing and feng xin for working together to abscond with xie lian; from their perspective xl is weirdly pliant about just doing whatever a dangerous ghost king is telling him to do, and the ghost king seems intent on separating xl from any kind of protection or support from other gods. that's worrying!! and they manage to put aside their mutual grievances and team up because they both care more about xl's safety than about their hatred for each other.

***

oh my god

a) hua cheng has the coral pearl earring in his hair!!!!

b) mu qing did not stop looking for the lost earring for 800 years!!!!

***

I love the detail that mu qing is able to instantly recognize all of the clothing and accessories on the statues as being xie lian's, because mq had been so closely involved in caring for xl's wardrobe, whereas xl doesn't recognize any of it, because he had been a rich and privileged crown prince who probably never paid attention to what he was wearing at all

***

oof this bit where hua keeps the command talisman on xie lian and then looms over him untying xie lian's belt.... the sexual assault vibes are very present from xie lian's pov. hello friend your TRAUMA.

***

oof oof oof this is all just SO clearly about the trauma and xie lian is having a BAD TIME even though all hua cheng is doing is healing his frostbite injuries :((((

***

how AM I going to survive listening to Book Four though, when I get there. and it's coming up fast!

***

xie lian is so brave for speaking up and actually addressing the question of how he and hc feel about each other, so that the two of them can be in harmony again as they continue to face the trials they're experiencing here! I know how hard that was for xie lian 😭

***

also, belatedly, bai wuxiang must have been soooooooooo mad to see hc with a partially-clad xie lian under his hands. that's for bai wuxiang only!!

***

aha! confirmation that bai wuxiang was the first ever supreme ghost king! the previous generations of gods and ghosts must have had a very different experience with no ghost kings

***

xie lian and hua cheng are finally alone again after sharing that there are Feelings between them, and it's awkward because they both feel SHY! 🥺 I love them so much

also extremely accurate. how DO you manage to restart an emotionally vulnerable conversation after it's been interrupted by other things.

***

I love how the narration confidently states things about supreme ghost kings as if they're facts, when there have only ever been 3 in all of history. and you can't take the Black Water and Crimson Rain relationship as the standard by which to compare ghost king relationships! it's so funny

"I simply MUST finish creating a new archival cataloguing system that will be objectively superior to all previous systems" (https://xkcd.com/927/)

***

a mortal who dies can stick around as a ghost due to an obsessive attachment, though usually the strongest of such attachments is resentment. I wonder if there are any autistic people who remain as ghosts due to their fixation on their special interests? :D

***

hang on, a thought is occuring to me, we're told that you can't permanently destroy/kill a ghost unless you have access to their ashes, but there's been a bunch of killing of ghosts in this whole mt tonglu arc without any mention of ashes. is there a way this is reconciled anywhere? like maybe the less powerful ghosts can be destroyed even without their ashes?

ghosts are categorized by the palace of ling wen according to their danger levels, like how many they can kill. but it's a taxonomy they made up for categorization. I hope the ashes threshold [of when a ghost is powerful enough that you need to access their ashes to kill them] falls awkwardly in the middle of one of these categories

***

anyway I feel very verklempt about xie lian still remembering xiao ying from all the way back in the ghost brides arc and wanting her caring for lang ying to be justified

***

ooh when hua cheng was becoming a ghost king, he was able to ask the kiln to close without any other ghosts inside to have to fight, because the kiln could sense he had a high potential! definitely changes the vibes of what his experience must have been

***

xie lian is SO flustered after he and hua cheng kiss for the first time with no excuses, and realises what flimsy excuses they were all the other times as well. it's adorable

***

I've made it to Book Four time, it's time for 7.5 hrs of suffering as I listen through it!

***

mu qing is SO reasonable, leaving! he keeps on trying to get it into the others' heads that actually when you're impoverished and starving, doing whatever you have to do to make money is more important than pride and sense of position. and they will NOT listen. he doesn't need to keep on hanging around them if they won't listen to the advice of the only one among the group who has any experience in how to live when not rich! oh my god.

***

the king and queen of xianle continuing to just unquestioningly accept that it's their role to be taken care of by other people, simply because they're the king and queen.........

also: the queen is wasting SO much food with her cooking adventures! when xie lian and feng xin work so hard to try and keep them fed!!

***

what kind of god would xie lian have ended up being if he'd never been banished, never experienced any hardship or poverty, just went from success to success? he has always had a good heart but he's just so oblivious to so much! would he have, without noticing, slowly been corrupted by heaven's influence to become a god more like all the others, or would he have found a way to hang onto his compassion for the powerless regardless?

with all the talk earlier about how he was such a young god and that's why he was so eager to over-involve himself in the yong'an drought and famine, it really implies that at least some of the other current heavenly officials also started out very promisingly interested in actually doing good, but were influenced by the culture of the heavenly court to become less and less focused on such things.

if you're not determined, then the values of the people you spend all your time with will very easily affect the way you think about things!

***

oh boy, mu qing had personally been doing ALL of the actual work of caring for and maintaining a household of four useless nobles, for the sweet sweet pay of zero money and lots of criticism. and xie lian didn't even notice until he was gone!

***

basically right after mu qing leaves, xie lian and feng xin come across a fight in the streets between a servant and a master who had overworked the servant with no pay, and xie lian is HEARTBROKEN at the parallels with what he'd done to mu qing, even if he's not able to think it in so many words. especially when feng xin fails to notice the parallels and merely cheers on the servant while insulting the master!

I missed this entire thing on first read due to not being able to keep feng xin & mu qing straight and thus not remembering any of the relevant character notes

***

you know, feng xin and xie lian are so embarrassed and upset at the thought of busking for money, because it's putting yourself in front of a crowd for nothing but entertainment.... but back when xie lian was crown prince, one of the most notable things we're shown about him is him playing a role in a piece of theatre as he travels through the city in a parade. like yes it's a ritual that's supposed to help keep the city safe but ALSO it is absolutely entertainment for the common people. being a performer is exactly what xie lian was raised to be tbh!

***

HOLD THE PRESSES halfway through writing that last post it suddenly struck me - xie lian ruins the ritual that was supposed to keep xianle safe, because he felt it was more important to save the child who fell.... and then xianle falls shortly after

would completing the ritual have kept all this from happening? but then if he had ignored the falling child he would be an entirely different person so everything would have happened differently anyway!

[someone in comments points out that this is Omelas and IT IS.]

***

I had to skip forward a bit to make it through the part where feng xin and xie lian fail in their first efforts at busking, but now I have to make it through the part where xie lian fails in his first effort at stealing!

***

the sheer amount of pressure on xie lian during this period, wherein if he can only cultivate hard enough then he can re-ascend, and as a god he'll have the resources to care for and protect his parents and feng xin. and they're all looking at him with eager expectation, while xie lian is struggling with depression and shame and feels like he can't do anything right but also can't admit his struggles to anyone because they only people he has to talk to are the people who are relying on him to be okay. WHEW IT'S A LOT.

***

"this hand had reached out too late"  😭 😭 😭

(context: when xie lian gets kicked off the mountain by the 33 gods, runs down and falls, then sits in a blank daze, and mu qing follows after him and offers him a hand up)

***

the xianle trio is so bad at communicating and xie lian has been pushed to his limits and the fight when mu qing brings them rice is just SO much, with all of them pushing each other's buttons in the worst way  😭

***

the way bai wuxiang is tormenting xie lian by making him think he's seeing bai wuxiang's accoutrements on himself, only to have that vision disappear when he tells someone else.... making him feel like he's going mad AND making it look to other people like he's going mad! disconnecting him more and more from what few people he has left in his life.

his emotional support system is already basically nothing - his mom requires emotional support from everyone else, his dad is guaranteed to yell at him, he can't admit failures to feng xin, and even if mu qing were still around he's not the kind of person it's easy to be vulnerable with

that moment back on the mountain when he cried and bai wuxiang was there for him and it actually felt weirdly COMFORTING despite it being bai wuxiang!!!! he has nobody else he could cry on!

bai wuxiang is so good at what he does, and what he does is the worst

***

I'm back to more listening and more thoughts!

"Xie Lian was filled with rage and resentment, but he couldn’t tell who it was directed at; to White No-Face, to Feng Xin, to everyone, or to himself."

that is SUCH a mood, in terms of how things can feel when everything sucks

***

I'm approaching the Stabbing Incident (oh no!!!!) and yikes I'd forgotten that this happened directly in response to xie lian deciding he had to go confront bai wuxiang directly. I bet that means there are dimensions of xie lian feeling like it's his own fault, then, making the whole thing even worse!!

***

I love to see how much agency and intention the reader is able to see in the little ghost fire, through xie lian's eyes. baby ghost hua cheng is doing EVERYTHING he possibly can even though he is basically powerless, and xie lian sees him as exceptional, even then!

***

tomorrow as I bike in to work I will get to listen to xie lian being stabbed repeatedly! that'll wake you up in the morning

***

bai wuxiang has absolutely noticed that there's a particular ghost fire that's been hanging around xie lian, and of course doesn't think there's anything to worry about. just imagine how shocked and appalled he must have been when that little ghost fire managed to become a ghost king

***

ah of course it's the noble-looking couple who are the first to stab xie lian. the THEMES.

***

ahhhh the buff street performer who was badly injured by trying to beat xie lian in breaking rocks on his chest!!!! he actually rejects the premise of it being okay to kill a god repeatedly to save yourself! I love him

***

am I doing a play-by-play here? maybe a little. but the way the scene is constructed so that lots of different people keep needing to make a decision to make things worse again!

***

why have I been calling White No-Face bai wuxiang, when I call the other calamities by the English translations of their titles? (at least, when I refer to their titles instead of their names)

a strange affectation for me to have picked up

***

oh I had noted this down but forgot to post it here! when bai wuxiang is talking to xie lian about teaching him things, bai wuxiang says: "The first thing I taught you was: you are powerless in the face of many things in this world."

still need to rotate in my mind some of the things about this, but I wanted to put it here so I don't forget to keep thinking about it!

***

oof the Stabbening is intense. but then when xie lian is not able to scream his pain, the ghost fire screams for him, in a way that feels to xie lian like it's expressing the exact same pain. it's not like it helps or anything, but at least in that moment he is not alone in his agony and misery <3

***

okay Actually listening to the next morning is even worse. the dissociation, the blank and accepting way he simply moves through the world, and then he and I are both brought sharply to miserable reality by the corpse of the street performer, oh goddddd

***

this is the worstttttt  😭 😭 😭

***

you know how it is, tears rolling down your face as you bike along public roads because you're listening to the fight xie lian picks to drive feng xin off

***

xie lian is so! fucked! up! but feng xin is so reasonable to leave, actually, given the information he has available to him

and the queen doesn't have any practice at addressing hard things head on but she does her very best tbh!

xie lian was in a very bad state already prior to the stabbening and now he has just no faith left in other people anymore and it's heartbreaking to watch

***

the thing about currently being in a particularly emotionally challenging part of the story is that it means it's challenging for me to just listen to it in bits and pieces, because every time I put it in my ears, I'm committing to having an intense experience, and dipping in and out of that headspace is simply a lot to handle! so I only want to do it when I know I've got a good long chunk of time to dedicate to it

***

OKAY we have now heard from bai wuxiang a list of the three things he wanted to teach xie lian!

thing one: he's powerless in the face of many things

thing two: the common people aren't worthy of being saved by xie lian

thing three: if you cannot save the common people then destroy them. only after stepping on them will they revere you.

WHAT a worldview. combining thing one with the other two is just like....a lot. the three don't actually come together into a coherent thesis tbh, it's all just like a messed up lashing out that bai wuxiang goes all in on after discovering that he doesn't actually have the strength to do literally anything he wants.

***

actually now that I've written this, I feel like there are interesting thoughts to think about what it means to have the power to achieve the things you want to do

because that's something hua cheng ALSO sincerely desires, and goes after, and achieves, and uses it keep his beloved safe

whereas jun wu manages to become the emperor of all heaven, and what does he do with that power. he does NOT go back to the goals he had pre-immense-power, to the reasons he wanted to have extra lots of power in the first place! he goes all in instead on his tantrumy "well I never WANTED to save them all anyway so THERE" response

***

I love that the man who gives xie lian his bamboo hat isn't even NICE about how he does it. Like obviously it's a very kind gesture and a very meaningful one and kind of saves the world a little bit, but also the bamboo hat man was real mad at xie lian and thoroughly cursed him out for a while, and was upset at spilling his basket of rice which he needed, and then straight up left, and didn't seem at all the kind of person who would do something kind for a stranger. but then he comes BACK. and he still doesn't actually behave politely or anything! but the GESTURE of kindness is so meaningful! this man sees the humanity of another person in a crappy situation and does something to make that other person's experience a little less awful, because he too knows how much things suck sometimes. It's so perfect.

***

tbh I'd forgotten how short a time xie lien actually spends being bitter, angry, and lashing out. Things happen so RAPIDLY.

he comes back immediately post-stabbening and that same night feng xin leaves, and then the next morning he finds his parents dead, and then there's like, maybe a couple days at most of him being devastated and angry and raising the vengeful spirits of the battlefield ghosts. and then he spends 3 days in a hole in the road doing absolutely nothing, and then he rejects bai wuxiang.

xie lian really didn't want to become that person! he kept straining against it, even as he was overwhelmed with everything awful that had happened. He regularly has to reject things that intrude on his determination for revenge - like the little white flower in the ruined statue's hand, that makes him so upset. and then even when it seems like he's committed to revenge, he instead does his level best to find a reason to NOT go through with it!

***

like yes xie lian in his brief time dressing up as a twin of bai wuxiang is terrifying! this guy is DANGEROUS and a total loose cannon. but even though he thinks his whole heart's in it....he cannot commit. he does not have what it takes to truly be a calamity.

***

omgggg the PARALLELS, wu ming is penetrated by the huge cloud of vengeful spirits as he holds the black sword, and xie lian and wu ming have a kinship of screams as wu ming experiences the agony

***

godddd FUCK YOU jun wu. seeing you're not going to convince xie lian this time around, since xie lian is managing to ascend again, so showing up as the heavenly emperor to "destroy" bai wuxiang for xie lian so you can bide your time and hopefully come back again later to finish the job

***

the end of Book Four, and the end of the extant recorded audiobook!  😭 I'll pick up the physical for the remainder tomorrow

***

the scene where xie lian and hua cheng come to find and pick up the rest of their adventuring party by piloting an enormous statue of xie lian is iconic tbh. and one of the few things about the final arc of tgcf that I actually remember! I don't have anything deep to say about it, but it's so much fun.

if I tried I could probably make something out of the idea that xie lian is getting to control himself, instead of following bai wuxiang's teachings like bai wuxiang was trying so hard to make happen in the whole previous arc? that's a good one actually.

***

lol all the martial gods are so fighting-brained that none of them think to get in touch with the heavens once the barrier around mt tonglu is broken, but just try to fight everyone themselves. good thing they have the rain master with them to do the sensible things!

***

I love shi qingxuan so MUCH  😭

he's resurfaced as ol' feng, part of a group of homeless beggars, but when we first see him, he's actively working to help others in the group, despite his own significant injuries. and he seems pretty at peace with his lot. and is a fully accepted part of the social group, with the others in the group of homeless people all seeming to accept him for who he is, and like him, and make fun of him fondly and knowingly.

he has a lot less to give than he's ever had before in his life, but I think he also might have more actual friends then he's ever had before. in heaven he was generally respected and treated well, but mostly from a combo of people being afraid of his brother and desiring of what shi qingxuan could give them. But now his brother is dead, nobody in this group is afraid of him, and he can't give them much of anything - and yet they easily accept him and care about him!

***

xie lian meeting the xianle guoshi again! getting to have that weird foundation-rocking experience of reconceptualising someone who you saw in your youth as being so old and wise and above you.... who now seems more like your peer.

***

xie lian kissing hua cheng goodbye is so CUTE!

***

jun wu is just so effectively menacing and so powerful! the idea of trying to move against him and succeeding seems unthinkable. he's the emperor of heaven, the number one martial god! amazing to think that xie lian is actually going to defy him and win

***

the temporary initiation of the fight between feng xin and mu qing, and then promptly cutting it off and putting the issue aside for later after having gotten them both super worked up and not resolving anything, is super funny.

***

I want to get back to my reread! but now that I'm reading a physical book instead of listening to the audiobook it doesn't fit into my life in quite the same way because I can't read it WHILE doing other things. I miss you tgcf! I want to return!! but mostly I am either being Productive or I need time when I can relax without my brain being too involved

***

thinking about people's reactions when mei nianqing accuses jun wu of being bai wuxiang

I love that it's so unthinkable in the heavenly court that the gods don't even parse what mei nianqing is trying to say, and mu qing assumes he means that bai wuxiang is impersonating jun wu

but then xie lian thinks about the impossibility of an imposter at some point taking over the Heavenly Emperor without being noticed, since the role is so much more prominent than the Earth Master

which is so valid actually. but makes me instantly want to know who COULD take over with nobody noticing

and I just really want a fic where for some reason ling wen needs to take over, idk, for schemes or something, not even because jun wu is the worst. she knows so much about everyone and everything that she can impersonate jun wu no problem and almost nobody notices

(pei ming notices. because that's the power of ~FRIENDSHIP~. but he takes the opportunity to dunk on her rather than to reveal or betray her.)

***

the reveal scene goes on to show how easily and thoroughly jun wu can beat up and control all the other martial gods, because he's just that powerful. and I'm just saying! this is why I think it would take a civil god, actually, to be able to quietly and thoroughly take him out and take his place! someone who plans ahead and arranges situations rather than relying solely on physical power like the martial gods do!

#LingWenForHeavenlyEmperor

***

people who care more than me about themes of reproduction and babies, could you tell me what the thematic importance of the fetus spirit is, beyond just a signifier of feng xin's relationship with jian lan? I would like to be able to understand the fetus spirit better so as to appreciate its role in the story

***

shi qingxuan is so accustomed to homosocial behaviour that they don't even notice that it could have other dimensions to it. why would it matter if both shi qingxuan and he xuan see xie lian bathing? "we're all men here"!

***

I NEED to know hua cheng's verbal password for his spiritual communication array

***

upon realising he's been terrorized by jun wu, xie lian's considered response is: "... You have such awful hobbies." XIE LIAN ILU

***

I'm back! I return! I have not given up on my reread, and I got re-energised by the knowledge that the last volume of tgcf will soon be in my hands!

I had to reread the last couple chapters to remind myself where I was but now I'm into content where I can have New Thoughts again

***

and ahhhhh I love Yin Yu. Jun Wu offers him a place in the upper court, renown, all of quan yizhen's power, everything he has ever striven for.... and he rejects it because he doesn't actually want to harm quan yizhen: "I do resent him! He is annoying! But so what?! [...] I only wanted to hate him. That doesn't mean I want to hurt him."

This is honestly such a mature way to approach resentment! hating someone but knowing the other person doesn't actually deserve anything bad, so keeping yourself just to private hatred.

***

nooooooo I forgot that in canon yin yu actually dies, murdered by jun wu :( fandom is so on board with pretending that never happened that it slipped my mind!!!!

the whole conversation yin yu has with xie lian as he's dying is so interesting though

***

and then the chapter ends with the return to the theme of HEAVEN SUCKS ACTUALLY. what are gods but just people with extra power. "this world has no true gods" as xie lian tells yin yu.

***

jun wu has control of the cursed shackle around xie lian's neck, jun wu knows that threatening other people's well-being if he misbehaves will be an effective threat to ensure xie lian's good behaviour.... god jun wu is such an asshole

***

roland reminded me a while back that he xuan had a whole pile of clones disseminated throughout the whole of the heavens to help spy, and it's come up again, and I'm just impressed all over again tbh with how much he xuan managed to get up to, how thoroughly the heavens were infiltrated

***

hua cheng manages to get into the heavens secretly to help, and the glomp with which xie lian greets him immediately is SO cute  🥺

Before Hua Cheng could even walk over, Xie Lian had pounced. It was a powerful hug indeed, but Hua Cheng wasn't pushed back by the force at all; he didn't even wobble. He only placed his hands on Xie Lian's back, chuckling lightly without saying a word.

***

damn, the explanation of Yushi Huang's vital position as the only current god of agriculture is so good. if anything happens to her, "it might cause the kind of riots that topple gods."

***

jian lan  😭 referring to herself as "this bitch," back in the day sending off the man she loved for his own good because she knew she could be nothing but a burden for him in an already untenable situation!

she's so angry at feng xin now for not having ever understood or appreciated the lack of options the two of them had had back then, and although her decisions around all this might not have been the most emotionally healthy, her anger is still so valid tbh

despite that period of having to busk to make barely money to care for the royal family, feng xin /didn't/ understand what it meant to be poor or lower class, cf everything about how he relates to mu qing, and although he loved jian lan he didn't understand her position.

***

"With the Brocade Immortal on her, Ling Wen is currently considered both a civil god and a martial god."

who else is doing it like Ling Wen!

***

ling wen and the brocade immortal tricking xie lian into wearing it! hua cheng and xie lian both telling each other off for choosing problem-solving methods that mean getting beat up! so much fun stuff in this scene

***

why does xie lian keep wearing the brocade immortal even after ling wen takes her turn as a budaoweng doll? is there something that prevents him taking it off?

***

if the guoshi has been sneaking into mt tonglu every time it opens in order to prevent any new ghost kings from being born, how did hua cheng and he xuan manage? or did guoshi only start these efforts after all three current ghost kings had emerged?

***

it occurs to me that I do know another series of fantasy books involving dreams of a kingdom destroyed by volcano, and gods who wish to prevent anyone from being harmed. but Jun Wu and the story of Wuyong is VERY different from the queen's thief books! (and there are many good things about the queen's thief books but I much prefer the firmly anti-monarchy stance of tgcf)

***

ohhhh damn, after the parade when xie lian caught the child, and got jun wu's attention, jun wu wanted to appoint xie lian as a junior official in his palace, instead of leaving him alone to ascend in his own right. it's only through guoshi's efforts that he didn't.

has anyone written that canon divergence fic? where a younger xie lian finds himself in heaven as a junior official directly beneath the heavenly emperor?? that would have been a pretty different experience for him I think!

***

I'm not understanding what it is about the phrase "body in the abyss, heart in paradise" that specifically made jun wu so provoked! I mean, guoshi is still talking at length so maybe he'll explain further but rn it is not clear to me at all what the significance of the phrase is, over just the things that xie lian was doing

I had the vague feeling that there was something about the phrase in particular, rather than only the meaning behind it, that got jun wu so upset. but maybe I am overthinking it and it really is just about the meaning and nothing else!

***

guoshi, discussing a young child: yeah that kid was totally evil, better off dead, made the world worse for everybody.

IMPRESSIVELY nasty of you, guoshi!

anyway it IS very funny that apparently hua cheng's hour of birth destined him to be either the most fortunate or the most unfortunate. I think he kind of managed to get to be both at once.

***

... did xl grow up without one single decent adult role model? his parents were both terrible in their own way, guoshi is worse, and the other three subordinate guoshi were all just puppets controlled by guoshi mei nianqing. and then of course there's bai wuxiang. and that's IT in terms of adults in his childhood and teenage life we hear about, iirc!

***

it's interesting to me that guoshi frames the things bai wuxiang did to xie lian as a series of tests; I agree about what bai wuxiang would have done differently if xie lian had responded differently, but to my mind it's more.... bai wuxiang just wanting to do enough bad things to xie lian to make xie lian give up his previous approach to life, to prove that bai wuxiang himself giving up was the only possible choice and he doesn't need to feel bad about it. it's not a bunch of tests, it's an ongoing campaign of torture with a particular goal in mind. and a goal that I really do think bai wuxiang thought he would achieve eventually, that there was no way xie lian wouldn't have SOME kind of limit to how much he could take and continue on as he was!

trick's on bai wuxiang though, it's true that xie lian couldn't continue on as he was before (naive arrogant prince who wanted to help everyone below him), but xie lian got to choose who he became in response to bai wuxiang's abuse and he didn't choose to align with bai wuxiang!

***

lmao guoshi says that when xie lian ascended the third time he was the same as he always was, completely unchanged. guoshi is not particularly perceptive!

***

hmmm hua cheng also uses the framework of tests that guoshi does. I respect hua cheng's ability to analyse jun wu more than guoshi so maybe I need to take the thought seriously after all?

***

guoshi's attempts at romantic advice to xie lian are so inadequate yet so assured, lol. I love hua cheng butting in to knock him off balance!

***

it's a trial to be invested in pei ming as a character when his storyline is so tied up in those of xuan ji and banyue

***

"Xianle, you dared to have an affair with the ghost king right under my nose. What audacity." Wow jun wu way to make it sound like xie lian is cheating on you with hua cheng!

***

this exchange:

"Qianqiu! Xie Lian yelled. "Go free the other heavenly officials first!" "Yes, Master!" Lang Qianqiu answered on reflex. They both paused. Lang Qianqiu gave Xie Lian a look before dashing out.

like, holy shit, what complexity of emotions for both of them is just quickly skimmed over in "they both paused"! but despite the difficulties in their relationship, lang qianqiu sees that xie lian is right in what he asks lang qianqiu to do, and goes to do it

***

lang qianqiu taking his dead shixiong's corpse with him when the heavenly officials all have to flee the burning heavens  😭

the heavenly officials all having to flee on a giant statue of xie lian, piloted by crimson rain sought flower  🥰

***

I don't know anything about transformers but jun wu turning the on-fire heavenly city into a fiery, massive giant by moving pieces of the city around to realign differently sure feels like transformers to me

***

GIANT MECHA BATTLE TIME. that's what this is!!

***

quan yizhen just yeeting yin yu's body at guoshi in order to go personally fight an entire city-sized mecha is just peak quan yizhen I love him

(also: guoshi calling him "fluffy child" while being confused about being given custody of a corpse lol)

***

I'm so sad about black water's bone dragons being destroyed though!!

***

oh nvm the bone fish are putting the bone dragons back together, this rules actually

***

I want to know more of the history of the bone dragons! are they fossilized bones of long-dead extinct creatures? are they more recently-deceased dragons? are dragons still around in the present-day of tgcf - we don't see or hear about any living ones, iirc! how did black water gain their alliance?

I want them to be a part of the world that he connected with! he thinks of himself as a brooding loner but he loves his pet fish (of all sizes) and they love him back imo. that's a real emotional connection he has made, whatever he might think

I have many feelings about this!!!!! I'm going to make ME cry

***

damn. now I want the fic about he xuan's relationship with the water and land and plants and fish of his lair. I don't know what this fic would look like but I want it

***

hmmm am I sqq-posting here. WELP. look, I am but a humble paleontology nerd, it's not my fault that water-themed bone monsters are super cool!

***

I love rereading this book with an actual handle on who all the characters are because it means when a character is offhand referred to in a scene I can contextualize what they're doing and feel things about them in the course of a single sentence!

(the reference that inspired this thought: awwww of course it's lang qianqiu who is the one to take action to help with the human array when all the other heavenly officials are hesitating! ilu lang qianqiu!)

***

pei ming is back, with the best possible entrance! he knows how to put on a show and present himself! exploding a leg of the giant mecha, emerging through the fireworks, and upon landing his "hair remained perfect and his charm unruffled."

***

also: pei ming manages to bring himself to apologize to rong guang and team up, but maintaining an antagonistic relationship while working together beautifully as sword and master, I love this, I can't wait to see if this gets any further screentime so I can judge exactly how shippable it is

***

lord rain master!!! god I love her. showing up just in time to save an embarrassed pei ming's life, while rong guang rages

***

the first time I read the extended giant mecha fight scene a year ago, I was bored and confused, but this time I am having so much fun with it

***

how do ghost clones work? do you split your consciousness between multiple bodies and can see through all the different eyes at once and have to hold it all together in your mind? or does each body become entirely independent after creation, and you can only know what they know via communication, and then you can integrate the memories etc upon reabsorbing the clone? both of these options seem to have some significant flaws! or is there somewhere some kind of middle ground, or alternate direction for this to go?

we don't see much of how hua cheng and his clones work, and even less of he xuan's clone network! and of course, like with so much, I want to understand more fully!

***

"This was probably the first time Pei Ming had been so thoroughly humiliated in front of a woman, and it was also the first time a woman had saved him. He couldn't tell if he was angry or if it was simply his pride throwing a fit, but his face went dark red for some reason or other."

ok pei ming absolutely needs to spend some more time experiencing humiliation at the hands of a woman. you know, consensually. maybe tied up.

***

oh.... I'd forgotten that qi rong dies! I'm actually a little sad about that. he's kind of the worst but guzi loves him and qi rong does do his best for guzi, as haphazard as his best is. it's qi rong's first attempt at being decent to someone, he doesn't have a lot of practice!

the supremes are just so narratively interesting as a group. built up as, like, a THING, but there's only ever been three of them and they're all so closely connected to godhood (in a way that absolutely says interesting things about the ongoing theme of "gods: not that great actually") - and also, there's only three of them, so there aren't many inferences you CAN draw about "what supremes are like generally" because the data set is so small

though the connection via the bwxussy (....whoever I can blame for that word, um, thank you I think) is also vital to their identity. which is also connected to godhood because the kiln is created by the emperor of the heavens

***

what WOULD qi rong be like if he were a genuine supreme?

for sure he would be terrifying! I guess I'm wondering, like, what the kiln would refine him into? what would he choose to direct all that additional power into? he has less of a specific goal in mind than the three currently extant supremes, and I kind of get the feeling that you need to be laser-focused on something to be able to survive the kiln experience. how would that change and focus him?

[in response to a comment] I do rather doubt he would actually have managed to learn the history of wuyong tbh. he's never exactly been a scholarly sort or interested in the doings of people he thinks beneath him. I don't think he'd have taught himself to read the wuyong script, or investigated the temples to consider what the art might say about the history!

but I feel like, depending on what he ends up focusing on, he might indeed end up ditching the cannibalism - or at least not focus on it as much. since it's about trying to prove himself to be as scary as the other supremes, and post-kiln he would be able to be more legitimately terrifying in his own right. but he might hang onto it anyway just because he's a nasty little creep lol. and he already has that reputation to build on in getting his name as big as possible

I can't decide which of his resentments he'd focus on though!

***

I think it might also be relevant that the other three supremes didn't have much of a known presence and reputation prior to becoming supremes, whereas qi rong does, so I think that might affect how he goes post-supreming!

***

oh also I am thinking about supremes vs gods in the context of superheroes/supervillains, where a lot of supervillains kind of exist to be enemies of superheroes, rather than actually being interested in attacking the general populace for its own sake

***

and now I'm done volume 7!! only one more to go!

***

xie lian is so sad for all the swords that hua cheng destroys - they're trapped in a room in mt tonglu that's full of hundreds of swords that are all attacking them, but xie lian still mourns them after the swords are defeated. THEY'RE GOOD SWORDS, BRENT.

I love how much and how earnestly xie lian is a swords-and-swordfighting nerd

***

😭 😭 😭 xie lian jokes about being stabbed hundreds of times and hua cheng just immediately bear-hugs him and tells him quietly that it's not funny, actually. I AM MADE OF EMOTIONS.

***

as mu qing hangs over a waterfall of lava desperate for help, he says "you know I'm not lying, right?" and it reminds both him and xie lian of a time when xie lian said those words to mu qing. I couldn't remember the context, but I searched the ebook and found it!

it's from the time with the piece of spiritual land where xie lian wanted to cultivate but the other gods kick him off, with mu qing as part of that group. xie lian says he didn't really want to steal from anyone and wasn't going to take over the spiritual land either, and ends with "You know I'm not lying, right?"

but before mu qing could respond, xie lian was shoved into the ground by one of the other heavenly officials, and mu qing continued to say nothing.

so yes that is a VERY awkward context for mu qing to remind xie lian of, now that mu qing wants help from him!!

(also: xie lian realizes that actually he never forgot anything of the awful past he experienced, he's just been Not Thinking About It 😭)

***

hua cheng tries to convince xie lian to not save mu qing because it'l put xie lian in danger, but he knows that of course xie lian is going to. because that's the kind of person he is, and hua cheng will never try to get in the way of xie lian being his best self!

***

me half an hour ago: oh I can definitely finish the main story before 9pm tonight, I only have like 140 pages to go

me now, having read about 20 pages: RIGHT I forgot how much slower it is to read things when I keep stopping to write down Thoughts about it!!

***

mu qing! being honest and emotionally vulnerable about how he thinks about xie lian! and apologizing to him about the whole spiritual land situation!! it's hard for him but he DOES IT and good for him tbh. (even if it's because he thinks he's gonna die.)

also: mu qing is absolutely right about the young prince relying too much on his status and enjoying doing good deeds because of all the praise and flattery

***

"Your Highness, don't be afraid," [Hua Cheng] said with grave assurance. "Remember? The one basking in infinite glory is you; the one fallen from grace is also you. What matters is you, not the state of you. No matter what happened in the past, I will never leave you. You can tell me anything." To conclude, he added gently, "You told me that yourself."

HUALIAN JUST MEAN SO MUCH TO ME

***

the fight with bai wuxiang | jun wu is great and all, on the level of the personal relationships between the various characters involved, but I was reminded tonight of  @skygiants 2019 tgcf review talking about how turning the climax into a personal battle disarms the themes the book is otherwise engaging with of the problems being systemic, and how the collection of human beggars including shi qingxuan being the ones to engage in the ritual needed to save the city SHOULD have been the climax, thematically.....yes.

the thing is I guess that there is the story of the systemic themes and there's the story of xie lian's personal trauma, and the narrative focuses on the latter even though REALLY the reason jun wu could even do all the traumatizing stuff he did to xie lian is because of the systemic issues in heaven.

so I just keep thinking about this instead of enjoying the creepy jun wu content! because becca's right and I DO want it to be a story about revolution in heaven actually!

***

hmmmm I am also not exactly a fan of xie lian's final defeat of jun wu involving him stabbing jun wu through the heart with the sword fangxin. I liked him using the move of shattering boulders on his chest to start with! using the skills he'd learned in his time of banishment, which jun wu couldn't know, in order to defeat him! but then following that up with a move that is a direct parallel to the worst of the miseries that jun wu inflicted on xie lian.....that just doesn't feel right to me

***

lmaoooo pei ming always looks off these days when he's around yushi huang because he feels so emasculated about having been saved by her. and she always just smiles politely at him in greeting. which I'm sure just digs it in even deeper!

the narrative says that the reason she responds this way is that she "had no idea what all the fuss was about" and I am choosing to believe that what this means is that she knows why pei ming is responding this way and just thinks it's silly to make a fuss about it. so she's not going to behave as if it's worth a fuss. and she's totally aware of what her behaviour continues to do to pei ming and is kind of enjoying it.

***

awwww I am SO charmed by the residents of puqi village rebuilding xie lian's shrine for him, and welcoming him back! I love that he really has become part of the community there!

(also I love that the villagers have terrible taste and the newly rebuilt shrine is extremely tacky, and xie lian likes it anyway)

***

and all the mortal human beggars who had helped with the array back during the fighting come by the shrine too to enjoy a good meal! they've seen that gods aren't so impressive after all and are cheerfully friendly and cheerfully willing to eat as much as they possibly can. I love them.

***

the book ends with the recounting of a folk legend about a god and a ghost, and of course I am an enormous sucker for it, folk stories were my first obsession and I've never gotten over my love for them. I love getting to see a wee glimpse into the post-canon lives of xie lian and hua cheng through the eyes of ordinary people's experiences of them and interpretations of those experiences!

***

*happy sigh*

tgcf may not be a perfect book in every way but gosh I just love it SO MUCH. It's hard to believe I'm actually done this reread!!!!!!!!!! what will I even do now?

(before you say to read the extras, dummy, I must admit that yesterday I read ahead and read through all the extras on speed-mode without stopping to write down any thoughts because they were all brand new to me and I was so interested to see where they each were going!)

(the actual answer: catch up on the TGCFReadAlong lol)

(also, collate all my many toots about this reread and post them to my dreamwidth in one post so that I can more easily refer to them together.)

***

okay also probably I will reread the extras WITH pauses to note down thoughts in the very near future too. because obviously one read is insufficient. But not tonight!

***

THE END.

[angelsdean]

yo i really appreciate the way you’re going about your rewatch, i think it’s really interesting watching the breakdown of these instances and who most often writes them. it gives a fascinating perspective on the inner workings of the writing and sometimes distinguishing the writers from the characters. please don’t get me wrong, but at first i was worried that since dean was your favorite you might go about it biased, but you’ve been pretty up and forward about what happens when. so it’s pretty cool! keep doing what you’re doing 👍

thank you! I think it's easy to get caught up sometimes in feeling like these characters are real people therefore need to be judged by the same standards as people and forget that actually, they're characters in a story, and often characters are vehicles for a story's themes / messages and less so about portraying real people. And as characters all their behaviors are coming from and influenced by the views of real life writers!

Basically I have two "lenses" I'm using when doing these rewatches and "studies" posts. One lens is looking at the story as a story, so thinking about technical aspects of storytelling and also acknowledging the way various different writers influence the story and characters. So in this view, when Dean for example does something that feels inconsistent w/ past behaviors or super OOC I look at who's writing the episode and also take into consideration the context of the time, the show being very much a product of the early 2000s and everything that entails.

And then there's the other "lens" I use when I want to look at things from an in-world perspective. This one is where some might think I'm wearing my "deangirl goggles" or being an "apologist" or whatever because in this lens I'm trying to find explanations and motivations for his behavior based on in-world contexts. Like asking WHY is he behaving like this. What could be motivating this behavior? Is it a learned behavior? A response to trauma? Etc etc. So, in this interpretation when Dean for instance says something a little off-putting or is checking out a woman in a super over-the-top way, I often view it as a by-product of his overcompensating and the facade he's trying to portray to fit John's mold and be the perfect hyper-masculine man etc etc.

But yeah, I try to be fair and just lay things out as they are and add my interpretations. And during this rewatch I'm also paying more attention to Sam too and especially Sam in relation to Dean and their whole dynamic. And once I get to Cas I'll focus on him a lot too!!

[viscountessevie]

how you seen alergy wedding and lack of kathony ☠️☠️

Oh how I've missed asks but also need to reply to everyone from way back then. But baby steps we'll do this one tonight and I'll take on the old ones tomorrow!

Hi anon, thanks for the ask! Yeah so I was unwittingly following S3's production for a bit (thanks Twitter moots posting all over my TL). Honestly after a while, it just made me angry because my bar in hell about barely any Kathony in it and Allergy getting everything was turning out to be right. So I stopped paying attention for my sanity.

However, from a film graduate perspective and as someone who was trained as a producer, I will say it's VERY interesting for me to watch this car crash of a season production. Especially with them reshooting from the start - I may be wrong but this is the second time I've seen many scenes being filmed AGAIN when they were initially filmed months ago.

Sorry Anon I kind of got off track about how S3 is a money pit now and how there might not be an S4! Under the cut:

Anyways reshooting costs money, I mean we all can draw this conclusion. However with Bton's scale, each day is costing them AT LEAST an amount in the HIGH Thousands. So at this point, S3 is a money pit. It has definitely gone over budget and I will not be surprised if this eats into their S4 budget. Due to this, Netflix could potentially rescind S4's renewal.

The viewing numbers will be worse by the time the show rolls out. This is genuine biasness aside, numbers WILL drop because of Netflix's new password sharing rules. There will NO longer be the 80 million viewers/accounts by the time S3 comes out. Everyone is cancelling their accounts left and right. So the official numbers will dwindle and won't be up to the Bridgerton Standard - which is still more views than the usual shows but it may not be good enough for the Netflix executives.

Honestly after how Bton's production has shown itself to be completely unprofessional, it needs to die.

From the way they've treated their stars of colour (and it's telling how multiple cast members keep leaving), trash talking their characters of colour (see: The EPs like Tom Verica, Betsy Beers, Shonda talking about Kate and even Marina's writing) to showing blatant favouritism towards white leads while still championing itself as a "diverse ensemble show". And of course not to mention day drinking on set with heavy equipment (I have more to say on this but it's neither here nor there but feel free to ask in a follow up!)

If S4 is Philoise rumours are true, I do hope Netflix yanks back it's renewal. To be completely honest: no one else, other than the small group of yt fans, want to see two back to back white couples. The fact is most of the GA and a large portion of the fans within the fandom are people of colour who tuned in to see the diverse casting and characters of colour. The show was built on the promise of diversity. To have them negate on it now, is just very disappointing and not what a big portion of us signed up for.

Now with so many more other diversity shows (I'm BEGGING yall to go watch Mr. Malcolm's List, Sandition and these two recced by Michaela @minim236 : Tom Jones and The Confessions of Frannie Langton), people are obviously going to gravitate to these shows. Ones that are made with heart with good storytelling, treat their stars and characters with respect and are just fun to watch!

I am getting off the Bridgerton train and definitely won't be watching S3 (maybe a Kathony cut online).

I will say, if yall can let Kathony go slowly like I did, jump ship and explore other shows/books similar to Kathony because this show will continue punishing us for liking them. They do not care about what the viewers want at all which is a shame, because these are the people they are ultimately profiting off.

After expanding my HR book tastes and finding new shows like the ones listed above, I've found there is so so much out there. Feel free to hit me up for recs (I will warn you it's limited variety rn) and also you can scroll through @hptriviachamp and @mermaidsirennikita's blogs for HR recs as well shoot them, @jeanvanjer and Michaela (linked above) asks!

[purrincess-chat]

Actually thank you for being open towards pre reveal adrinette. I still do have kind of mixed feelings about how the ladynoir relationship was never acknowledged in transmission but I hope that'll be solved in the next part hopefully? But I've seen too much of negativity towards pr dating and it kind of started affecting my opinions too? Seeing your post was so refreshing tbh

As someone who has been around the block a few times, I totally get what you mean. There are a lot of fandom scholars out there posting their opinions as fact, and it can get difficult to root out how you feel, especially if it's a popular blog doing it or someone you admire and a lot of people are agreeing with them or they're being aggressive to people who disagree. I've seen blogs vague posting about me for simply defending pre reveal Adrinette and responding in ways that completely miss the points of my posts and simply just take issue with me daring to think pr Adrinette is a good thing bc what about their precious side that's getting robbed??? And honestly I don't really care, I'm not a stranger to people in this fandom vague posting about me or hating me or shit talking about me in discord servers. I've been here a while and been through my fair share, so at this point I just shrug it off.

My main advice to you would be to take every post you read with a grain of salt (including and especially mine) because everyone has their bias. For me, I've always loved Adrinette, so even my posts can be considered biased because they're my favorite side of the square, though I do try to be objective. But for me, I don't really understand why people thought Adrinette wasn't going to have something pre reveal? To me it just makes sense, but I've seen so many people being like 'No hate but pr Adrinette is the worst possible choice the writers could ever make and it's so boring and terrible and I hate it with every fiber of my being and what about my favorite side how actually dare the writers write their own show in the way they intended instead of catering to my hyper niche fanfiction ideas.' And like... people can have their opinions. I'm not saying everyone has to like every single thing about this show, I know I don't. But a lot of the posts I've seen have been claiming that pr Adrinette doesn't make sense (it does if you've been paying attention) or is a detriment to the love square (still scratching my head at this one). My favorite argument I've seen is people saying that the show is called Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir so why the hell are they focusing on anything other than their superhero sides, and I just have to wonder sometimes if people are watching the same show as me.

(more salty under the cut, so read at your own risk)

Like? Correct me if I'm wrong, but Stormy Weather was the first episode to ever premiere of the show, and within the first five minutes of that episode if you ignore the opening credits, we learn that Marinette is in love with Adrien. It's basically one of the first things we learn about her, and her love for Adrien has been a staple of the show and the love square dynamic, just as Adrien's love for Ladybug has been. This show has always been about their civilian lives just as much as it's been about their superhero alter egos. If it was only ever about the superheroes it would be very flat and wouldn't leave them much room to develop and grow. That's why the love square has four sides. That's why the love square exists at all. But this show has always included their lives as civilians, idk why people are shocked. Even the opening credits start out with "I'm Marinette, just a normal girl with a normal life." Yes, she's secretly a superhero, but the first thing they tell us about her every episode is that she's a regular girl. And after 5 seasons, I'd assume people would realize that her civilian development is just as important as her superhero development. Adrinette and LadyNoir have always been the leading sides for a reason. This show isn't only about her and Adrien being superheroes, it's also always been about them being real kids with real problems who just so also happen to moonlight as superheroes when the need arises. Yes, it's a villain of the week show, but the plotlines have always run further than that. S5 especially runs deeper than that.

I dunno, maybe I'm biased, but Adrien falling for Marinette always felt more plausible to me than her falling for Chat, and s5 has explored both of those outlets, but to me, the superheroes come with too many strings attached for them to be anything more than partners. Especially after everything that has happened the last season and a half up to this point. Their friendship and partnership is a keystone of the love square. Their dynamic works best as far as focusing on their mission and getting the job done when they're platonic. We've seen numerous times throughout canon that when one of them has feelings, they get distracted and something goes wrong. Their love for each other is their strength and their weakness as Tikki and Plagg pointed out in Transmission. And [SPOILER] as we've seen in some of the later episodes that were released thanks to Gloob's vanity, the LadyNoir dynamic is working out great for them platonically.

I think one thing I haven't seen people talk about (which granted I know people were waiting to watch the later episodes until after Kwamis Choice airs), but LadyNoir is starting to push the boundaries just as much as Adrinette just from a different angle. They're slowly letting walls down and talking about their personal lives, which is something they forbade themselves from doing prior. They're growing closer as friends without any ulterior motive behind it. In the past when Chat asked about her love life, it was because he was fishing to see if he had competition for her affection, and Ladybug rightfully shut him down. Now they're a lot more carefree and open with each other just from what we've seen of them past these episodes. Being friends is benefiting them, and it's going to benefit them when the reveal rolls around. To me, LadyNoir was always meant to be the best friends of the love square, while Adrinette was always meant to be the lovers. That's the impression I've always gotten from canon ever since s1. I knew there would come a day when Adrien loved her back pre reveal. It just always felt like a natural progression for their relationship to me.

And as I mentioned in my previous post, Adrinette needed the development they're getting. LadyNoir is solid, they came back together stronger, so now they need to help Marinette overcome her trauma surrounding Adrien or the reveal will be an absolute fucking disaster. Like could you imagine Marinette moving on with someone she deems as being "safe" only to turn around and discover that he's the very boy she fucked everything up with? How damaging would that be to their relationship? How traumatic would that be for her? And in turn him. Personally, I want the babies to succeed post reveal and just be happy together, so I fully support airing out all of the dirty laundry ahead of time.

Again, take that with as many grains of salt as you see fit because that's just how I've always viewed canon. But even if I'd been wrong, I wouldn't have been disappointed. I'm stoked for any of the sides getting development and getting together because I understand that in the end it will all come together for them and be a benefit to their post reveal relationship. And I'm so excited for that day! So, honestly, I just ignore all of the salt at this point and just watch the damn show. People can feel any kind of way they want about it, and that's great for them. What ultimately matters is what you personally feel about the show. If you enjoy pr Adrinette, that's great! Don't ever let anyone take that from you just because they're salty. The main reason I left the salt life behind is because it was affecting my enjoyment of the show, and I had to learn how to enjoy it again without being clouded by other people's opinions, and honestly, it's been the best choice I've made in this fandom. And I know people are going to inevitably vague post about me for posting this, but whatever. Die mad, I guess.

Though honestly, I'd wait until we see the second half of this two parter before worrying too much about LadyNoir. I can see where people are coming from with how quickly they moved on, but we still have another half of the story to see. And as I mentioned, from episodes that have aired that take place after these, we can see LadyNoir is doing just fine. But again, we will just have to wait and see what happens.

[yaldabaothadeez]

Making Stable Diffusion draw animu monster girls, quarterly update

The state of the art has improved significantly since I last payed any serious attention to this stuff.

Firstly, models. There's been a lot of time now for people with more VRAM than sense to make a wide variety of models fine-tuned from the original SD 1.4 and 1.5 (and to take weighted sums of those models and tune them more etc.)

The handful of anime models I've been playing with, compared to the old NAI leak or Anything V3 that I was using 3 months ago, certainly seem "better" - in that they produce more consistently good results - but as a consequence they seem to have much stronger ideas of what images should look like, meaning that half the time you're fighting against the model's biases, and you're much less likely to get the, uh, emergent behavior that was half the fun of the thing.

Far more significant though, are the proliferation of various extra networks (that I'll collapse down to just calling "LoRAs" here) that are much cheaper to train and can be applied "on top of" any model sufficiently similar to the one they were trained on. There seem to be about a dozen of these being released every hour. As you might expect, these are 80% anime, 40% porn and 20% furries (non-exclusive), but some of them are extremely Relevant To My Interests.

Cute girls after the break.

(All images technically SFW in the Internet sense, but some of the models I was working with had a very horny training set - don't actually read this at work. I also didn't spend much time on these, I wanted to see what was possible more than I cared about making them look good. You could do better than I have)

Let's start with the easy one. There's at least one anime harpy LoRA out there, and it gives pretty good results if you don't get too ambitious

we actually reliably get bird feet and wings instead of arms, so long as you don't get too ambitious with the posing (i.e. anything other than out to the side), and it's very keen on that "legs turn human halfway up the thigh" thing.

Of course, now that you have a model biased towards making harpies, you can prompt it to do less conventional stuff. Here's a harpy that's more harpy than "anime bird girl"

(girls will say they know a place and then take you to a rotting deer carcass in the woods) - I'm really fond of this one, but that's because it appeals to all the things wrong with me.

You can also de-emphasize "bird wings" and "feathers" to get other wing-armed ladies

There's a pretty good centaur LoRA too

(more data for the "dog wearing trousers" question)

but these represent the best of a batch of generations. You still get lumpy horse bodies and the occasional horse head sneaking in. Supposedly you can use this for other sorts of animal-bodied people, but it's a struggle, maybe I'm using the wrong models.

Lamia/naga are a work in progress - you're still rolling for tail topology, but it's much less likely to be a disaster

Not pictured here are the various attempts at a spider-girl model. Those are still to busy to be anywhere near reliable enough.

But the fun thing about these LoRAs is that there's nothing stopping you loading several at once. I call this one "I read a Planescape manual at an impressionable age"

And here's a horsebird

horse-snake, however, didn't work too well for obvious reasons

A few more adorable carrion birds I had left over, as a treat

[pickingupmymercedes]

About the drivers in São Paulo, I don't know how it'll go with all of them but just to kinda correct you in some stuff.

Charles last year attended a few fans who were at the door of some restaurant he was in, also in the airport, it was so packed but he signed and took photos with everyone he could and he looked very tired, but was nice to people, so I don't know this fame about him not acknowledging the fans, he's one of the best in that regard.

What I heard about Ferrari drivers is that they don't attend fans in hotel, but to be honest, I agree with them is not the place, I appreciate Charles for attending in the restaurant, that I also think is wrong.

Also George, he doesn't do much but there were some fans at the entrance of their hotel and he got out of the car in the rain to take photos, so he's good too. Also, there was a group of girls from a project about girls in motorsport sort of stuff and all of them said he was very nice and funny.

About Lance, there's a bit of a situation, some Drugovich fans think he's impending Drugo to get a chance in F1, so there's some tension, the tv commentators even kinda trash Lance during the races, is truly disrespectful and unprofessional, last year he even got booed by some dumb people that kept screaming Drugo at him, so he might not be too keen to be part of it.

But seriously, I don't blame the ones that travel back just after the race, is the end of a triple header, they must be knackered and just wanting their own bed, F1 team doesn't know how to plan that calendar, we'll have a month break in sep-oct but two triple headers after.

Anyway, with the rest I agree, if Max participates it'll be a very awkward situation. But finally some action for São Paulo GP, it never had events on or off track and is one of the biggest fanbases of F1 that truly likes the sport for what it really is: a sport, not like US, for example.

Ah, in my last ask I forgot to mention Alonso, well he's only well liked by the old ones, Lewis fans, the majority in Brasil, don't like him, also last year he commented about the track not being F1 level because there were some screws in it, apparently,but doesn't complain about Las Vegas having uncovered manholes, for example. You know how we brazilians are, so some people are very annoyed with him, so idk how that might go.

Hii, so I'll start with YES! finally SPGP is getting events that are f1 related off track. It was due. And brazilians have been ongoingly getting the gp decently full through the last 20/30 years?! It still baffles me that newer circuits get so much more hype and attention?! (Maybe it's my bias showing)

As for the drivers, see I have a bit of a different view on that because I experienced f1 in the 2010's as well, before the last big boom, and also because f1 is not the only motorsports category I follow/have attended races.

I completely agree with there being boundaries (specially at hotels - and the likes of people booking rooms just to get access to the drivers?!).

But the 'fame' of drivers being in and out and not paying much attention is not only from last year, or from when Interlagos fell as the last race to a triple header. (Btw stopping to say hi or taking photos with fans that paid to get into the paddock is not what I was referring to)

Again, maybe I'm being biased because I actually got to meet Seb, Kimi, Alonso and Lewis outside the track, on normal settings (not waiting for them at restaurants/hotels). And some older family friends have met Niki/Hill/Raikkonen at bars in São Paulo and Schumacher running in Ibirapuera (Lewis used to run there as well in the 2010's).

And I know the profile of the average f1 fan has changed, a lot, and that includes how fans and drivers interact, but from people I know that have attended the races in the past years, there seems to be a common feeling of f1 personal not being as open to the fans in Brazil as they are in other places (bit of a change to how it was in the past).

Now, as for Drugovich, I really thought it was a given that people knew he never had a chance at that Aston seat?! Specially with all the investments into the team for their future years. Like, Lance has absolutely nothing to do with him not getting a seat in f1. (also, if there's ever a chance for Brazil to get another driver in f1 it'll be with Bortoleto).

[willmarstudios]

Bookworm Will Review #9

Title: "Legendborn"

Author: Tracy Deonn

Rating: 4/5

Review: (MILD SPOILERS)

Despite 2022 almost being over, I am so so so happy I was able to read Legendborn before 2023! It had so much praise and was talked about by a lot of my peers, so I am so glad I was able to finally read it.

Plus it was the first book I ever sat down and annotated: in a different notebook because I'd hate to ruin a good book with my chicken scratch handwriting.

I'm not entirely sure where to begin except that I was really taken in by everything that was happening. In addition to it being a YA fantasy coming of age story of our protagonist Bree, it was also a very fun and interesting take on King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Deonn had such a meticulous system in place for how her world was going to function and I think it worked perfectly.

There was always something happening, even during some of the slower moments which really kept my attention as a reader. Granted, it is A LOT of information presented as you are reading, so you have to pay extra attention, but it is so worth it for the plot twists near the end.

Despite it being a fantasy world with a magic system in place, the journey we got to experience of grief and acceptance was truly the highlight of the book for me. The number of notes I made commenting, agreeing and praising the way Bree goes through the grief over her mother was so well done that I believe anyone can find relatability through it.

There were a few moments where I wished we got to explore and see more of the side characters, so I hope we can see more of them in book 2.

Finally, I wanted to talk about something that I kept thinking of and noticing when I first started reading this book. In parts 1 and 2, there are some foreshadowing hints that could have been red herrings, but as you continue to read learn that they weren't. They were intentional. Deonn did include plot regarding slavery which is something our American educational system altered (with other hardships and darker truths) and taught us in a very filtered way. I found myself taking more notes on these parts because I was worried I was being biased in thinking that a black author having a book and it purely just being an allegory for slavery. To retell history.

I am a white male who has privilege am not the best person to discuss this sort of subject.

That being said I had some great discussions with some of my amazing friends Kamilah and Momo about reading books that specifically want the takeaway to be about slavery and other black trauma.

Kamilah and Momo both share similar thoughts about wanting to read books written by BIPOC authors with diverse cast and non-white protagonists and not having to relive historical trauma because it isn't fun for them while some don't mind it. Liking one over the other doesn't make you a good or bad person. Others want to just read a book with a character who reminds them of them, whether that be fantasy, rom-com, etc. What does become an issue is when non-BIPOC authors choose to include subjects like slavery and represent it poorly whether that's through lack of properly educating themselves or just including it out of ignorance.

They both agreed that it is going to be a case of creator intention. What is the author specifically trying to say.

Obviously none of us are Tracy Deonn or have seen interviews with them regarding the inclusion of black trauma in a fantasy book, but that doesn't mean her including it was wrong or made the book terrible. In the end, it was a good thing that we are getting more diverse stories written by BIPOC authors so that we as readers can diversify the overly white saturated community that is the publishing industry. It is great to recognize and want to challenge the perspective of what we know to really grow as people and a society.

I will definitely be trying to include more diverse reading in 2023 and am so thrilled to have absolutely talented friends share their voices on the matter.

[freaky-flawless]

So I Got Cleo's G3 Doll

Here's my thoughts under the cut. Just wanna put a disclaimer that I am someone who doesn't consider themself a fan of Gen 3, but is keeping an open mind. So just keep that in mind as you read, I am biased and do compare her to the G1 dolls, but I try to give credit where credit is due.

Like I said previously, I love the doll itself. Her face up is pretty (mine does have a slight imperfection, but its subtle enough that I'm not bothered by it), her hair is pretty, her skin tone and the shimmer they added to it are beautiful. I love her new body as well, though I do wish her torso and neck were a little longer. Specifically I love her big ears and hands. I do like G1 Cleo's hand pose a little bit more, but overall her new hands are great, and because they're bigger they're easier to remove. And finally, this will probably be an unpopular opinion, but I could do without the chest articulation in place of something else, like a doll stand.

I can't say much on the quality of her hair as it's not something I'm all that knowledgeable about. All I can say is that it feels more...plasticy? Compared to her G1 doll's hair. I'm having a hard time getting it to stay flat. I also think it's kinda odd that they seemingly made it a point to give all the dolls long brushable hair, but didn't provide brushes. Don't get me wrong, I have an abundance of Monster High brushes and don't need any more, but kids brand new to the series don't. And as someone with nieces, I can say for sure that they love brushing doll hair. I feel like doll stands and hair brushes are pretty standard things for dolls to come with nowadays, especially at that price range.

I'm very amused at how much she looks like Nefera, in the sense that the two of them look even more related than G1 Cleo and Nefera. It does look to me as though they took more inspiration from Nefera's G1 design more than Cleo's, which is interesting. I also discovered that Nefera's shoes, though they don't fit, match G3 Cleo's outfit pretty well, aside from the black in them.

Speaking of G3 Cleo's outfit...that's where my biggest disappointment lies.

I haven't exactly been subtle about my dislike for her boots. They don't go with the style of her dress, and overall I think giving a character who grew up in a hot desert climate boots is a super weird choice. On top of that I don't find them to be flattering on her new leg molds. Her calves are much thicker now, and adding thick boots to them really accentuates it and makes her look slightly awkward and disproportionate. However the actual quality of them is pretty good. There's a decent amount of detail, and I appreciate that the slit in the back of them doesn't go all the way up so they can't lose their shape, which is actually an issue I have with a couple G1 dolls. I would say the same for her accessories, they're well detailed and the paint job on them is really nice.

Her dress is where things take a nosedive. I think before I was so distracted by how much I disliked her boots that I didn't pay that much attention to her dress. But now that I have her and have felt the material I'm really disappointed by it. I don't know what material was used to make it, but I can assure it's plastic and pretty cheap feeling. Compared to G1 Cleo's clothes it feels like a cheap costume. I will say this material is probably more play proof, but I do have G1 Cleo's basic outfit, which is over ten years old by now, and her jumpsuit still looks brand new, and the material is so soft. It feels like real clothes. And compared to other modern doll lines the quality of her dress is kinda embarrassing. They couldn't have used a nicer material?? And aside from that, she has this new beautiful body mold, I would have really hoped that they'd have given her an outfit to accentuate it a bit more, like Draculaura's does.

Interestingly, I think her outfit in the show and on the box art would look better on her doll, and her doll's outfit would look better on her 3D model.

tldr; the doll is gorgeous, she should have come with a brush and a doll stand, her accessories are well detailed, and the quality of her dress is cheap.