#monstrous sea

[exeuntstormtroopers]

What was writing Eliza and Her Monsters like? The process, the inspiration, or how it felt, etc etc

The inspiration was interesting, because I didn't come up with the initial kernel of idea. I'd wanted to write a book about fandom for a long time, but it was actually my agent and her assistant who came up with the "girl draws monstrous sea as a webcomic and it has a fandom" idea. I was under contract for another contemporary book, but what I really like writing is sci-fi/fantasy/supernatural/horror/etc, so they were looking for a way to incorporate those loves of mine into a contemporary book. Everything that came after that initial kernel was pretty much all my ideas, of course with some nudges and help from agent/assistant/editor.

What I remember of actually writing it was very difficult. The story came to me easily, but actually putting it down was tough because I was putting so much of myself into Eliza the character, and because I had to write the book as if Monstrous Sea, this story I love that I've been working so hard on my whole life, was some super-important, mega-popular franchise. I felt like a huge fraud. I was worried people would think I had a huge ego, or I was really self-important.

That being said, I do think I managed to get a lot of truths out in that book, and I still stand by them. I like what I got to say about fandom and creating things, although I think I have even more thoughts about it now than I did then. I also really did love the parts where I got to just talk about Monstrous Sea.

No joke, anyone wants to ask me in-depth questions about the Monstrous Sea world or characters, I will absolutely get into it right now, right this second.

[quinniehb]

amity fanart! first finished drawing in 3+ years <3 ps, francsca zappia if u see this ilysm

[violottie]

This is what 5 months of intentional starvation looks like.

"Palestinians in Gaza demonstrate the impact of the Israeli and Egyptian blockade by stepping on scales to reveal their weight loss." from Mint Press, 15/Mar/2024:

[thatexygurl]

there's so many things in tsc that just come at you all at once, so it's hard to focus on just one thing to break down, but the most glaring thing that stood out to me is how hard it is to really put someone back together. especially someone so shattered that it's nigh impossible to glue them back and pray they don't crumble under your ministrations.

if jean is neil's foil, then jeremy is andrew's direct antithesis. whereas andrew is a steady bedrock because he's been broken too many times to know how to weather the storm, jeremy is too soft hands and an even softer soul. he cares and cares and cares. so empathetic and so gentle it almost breaks your heart. you pray for the impossibility that jeremy can survive knowing the truth because if he doesn't, then what hope does jean have? so you pray he can be steady too. that he can weather the storm as well. that he will not break when knowing that just under the surface lies shark-infested waters.

but then you remember the beginning. "even knowing everything could go completely sideways, you'd make that choice every time"

in every other universe, jean has not survived. but in every other universe, he did not have the trojans.

[journey-to-the-attic]

one thing about ik is that she will always reach out

[turtleblogatlast]

[ cw: violence mention / death mention / ]

Will never stop thinking about how Leo, all alone in an endless void and being beaten again and again and again by the only other living thing around, still finds comfort in that space. The situation he was in was completely hopeless, and in any other circumstances he would not have escaped, at least not fast enough to save him from permanent (or even fatal) damage, be it physical or mental.

And yet, despite the bleakness of his situation, despite the agony and helplessness, all he needs is one glance at a crumbled photograph, one glance to remember his family, and that’s enough of a reason for him to smile.

Maybe that’s why his powers center around manipulating space - because no matter how much space is between them, no matter how dire his own situation may be, just the thought of his family, alive and okay, is enough to give Leo hope.

[thelaithlyworm]

Daomu Biji Watcher’s Guide, May 2024

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

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

tl;dr:

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

Notes:

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

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

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

The Soft Entry:

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

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

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

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

The Chronological Order

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[catwyk]

going home tomorrow so you KNOW i gotta draw as MANY specimens in the collection at the california academy of sciences as is humanly possible

[wonder-worker]

"Contemporaries acknowledged Bertha of Lotharingia's political ambitions and supraregional influence. Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus called her “the great Bertha” (τῆς μεγάλης Βέρτας) and highlighted that she reigned on her own (ἐβασίλευσεν) for several years after her husband’s death. ['Bertha’s quest for power also seems to have prompted contemporaries [...] to harshly polemicize against her in particular and against women striving for power in general.'] Liutprand of Cremona describes her negatively as a highly influential and scheming political actor, whereas the contemporary Gesta Berengarii accuses “the Beast of the Tyrrhenian, lifted up as usual by poison” and “pouring wild hisses from the mouth” of having impeded Berengar’s imperial coronation, among other things by employing “the wealth of neighboring Charybdis." [Bertha has also been identified by scholars as the figure likened to the sorceress "Circe", who the Gesta condemned for allegedly corrupting Berengar's wife with "venomous words"]. Much more positively, the epitaph on Bertha’s gravestone in the church of San Martino in Lucca underscores Bertha’s royal and imperial Carolingian pedigree as well as her transregional prestige and influence."

-Daniel G. König, "Bertha of Tuscany's Correspondence with al-Muktafī bi-llāh in the Version of Ibn al-Zubayr."

[fisheito]

yal'rlready comin for me about that next event preview and i'm like *prepares the salmon cannon, anew*

[exeuntstormtroopers]

Hello. I'm a big fan of your books (particularly Made you up and Eliza and her monsters), they are wonderful stories. I was wondering if you plan on writing and publishing Monstrous Sea and/or Children of Hypnos.

Children of Hypnos is not *officially* published, but you can read the first three books for free on Wattpad. I used Wattpad for this because I can track the reads, comments, and likes, which is good (if they're high enough) for publishers to see to maybe traditionally publish it some day.

The first Monstrous Sea book has been written (several times over many years) and hopefully one day will be published and able to be read!

[chaiaurchaandni]

israel harvests organs from palestinians without their consent

Doctor admits Israeli pathologists harvested organs without consent | Israel | The Guardian

[mekanikaltrifle]

here, my friend, some FREAK CREATURES taking a gay little nap (they were enjoying some gay Warrens time)

@roseate-lagomorph

[violottie]

like what the fuck is even this? because this tyrannical colonising machine of death says "um no cos we dont want to" MORE PALESTINIANS HAVE TO BE KILLED?!?!!! FUCK OFF

from Al Jazeera English, 20/Feb/2024:

[a-book-of-creatures]

Random unsolicited shoutout to one of my favorite book titles

[vintagerpg]

Generally, I like monster fish people. Deep ones are cool. Creech rules. Mer-man was my favorite Master of the Universe. D&D monster fish people, though? Nope. It isn’t that I don’t like sahuagin. They’re cool! But I really, really don’t like underwater adventures. So that baseline, coupled with the fact that I don’t really think of sahuagin as brand-defining for D&D the way beholders are, makes the fish-folk focus of the second installment of the Monstrous Arcana series a bit puzzling to me.

The Sea Devils (1997) is great though. Like I, Tyrant did for beholders, this is all you could possibly want to know about sahuagin and more. This is where we first are introduced to the four-armed sahuagin barons. I also generally appreciate the move to strongly associate sahuagin with sharks. This was always sort of the case, as they generally pal around in previous depictions, but here they are very firmly shown as shark-people. Coupled with the fantastic array of art (Arnie Swekel, RK Post and Todd Lockwood, among others, not to mention Jennell Jaquays on the cover) creates a sense of…it isn’t plausibility, but something like a pervasive, evocative sense. Like, there is nothing terribly realistic or ecological about this material, though it sometimes attempts to be so. Rather, it creates a package of material I want to engage with, sort of on a mythic level. Murky oceans, hostile predators, alien agendas, endless hunger. Its a shame it is underwater, though.

Fun fact: this is one of the last products published by an independent TSR — the next volume in the series is a Wizards of the Coast product!