#robin yong

[people-dujenoir]

Robin Yong

[photo-dujenoir]

Robin Yong

[ouicestbien]

Robin Yong

[sheltiechicago]

“Yuki Gomori”

by Robin Yong

“Secluded from cold, snowy winter and staying indoors as wild animals hibernate – a Haiku seasonal word.”

International Portrait Photographer of the Year

[eryanlainfa]

Pretty sure SOMEONE already did one years ago, but I did talk about this DC au for Vat7k I have, and I couldn't sleep til I had at least tried to doodle them SO

Superboy!Varian and Robin!Hugo my beloveds.

I triiiied to keep their original design visible in their hero outfits. And the AU is still pretty rough in my head, but I'm already having so much fun and bothering my friend with it haha

[alfvaen]

Summer's ended, not for the first time. I guess I can see that it was not as ridiculously hot and smoky as some of the other recent summers around here, but still not great. Also ended is another month, which means it's time for me to ramble about books and stuff.

Possible spoilers for Kim Stanley Robinson's "Science In The Capital" series, Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching books, C.L. Polk's Kingston Cycle, and, for the last time for a while, Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga.

Lois McMaster Bujold: Gentleman Jole And The Red Queen, completed September 4

Here I come at last to the end of my latest Vorkosigan Saga reread. And my first reread of this book at all. It came out after I reached the end of the series in my reread blog in 2015, which was probably the last time I did a full reread of the series up to that point. I did read a number of books in the series to my sons when they got old enough, but I was unable to persuade them to go much past A Civil Campaign with my lukewarm assessments of the later books.

My primary impression of my first read of the series is that nothing happens. Which I'm sure is not a fair assessment, but, basically, it does not reach the level of excitement of any of the previous books in the series whatsoever. I kept catching what I thought where clues about where the plot was really going to go when it picked up, and then every single time it turned out to be a false alarm and the plot continued to not pick up. It's a fairly gentle book, and I found that excruciatingly annoying.

Sure, we return to Cordelia, we return to Sergyar, we revisit some of the landmarks (literally) from Shards of Honour. See, the surprise ending of Cryoburn (which I am now spoiling for you all) is the death of Aral Vorkosigan, and all that we get to deal with it is five drabbles (100-word snippets from the point of view of Miles, Cordelia, Ivan, Gregor and Mark). For this book, it's three years later, and Cordelia, now sole Vicereine of Sergyar, is contemplating changing her life in two ways: by resigning as Vicereine…and starting some embryos of new children of hers and Aral's from his frozen seed.

We also get to really meet Admiral Oliver Jole, who's in charge of the fleet around Sergyar. Previously I only remember him as one of Aral's staff officers back in The Vor Game. And it is gradually revealed (perhaps a spoiler, but I don't really care) that that whole time, he was Aral's lover. In fact, Aral, Cordelia and Jole were a secret throuple. It makes a kind of sense, since, by Cordelia's assessment, Aral is bisexual but more attracted to men, particularly military men. He probably wants to be monogamous, to be a good Barrayaran, but Cordelia's from Beta Colony and they have far fewer sexual hangups, so she wouldn't care, and so he gets to have his same-sex relationship as well.

Cordelia tells Jole that out of her frozen eggs, some of them weren't viable, but they can do a thing where they can remove the nucleus and replace it with genetic material from another cell. Including a sperm cell. So she offers him the chance to create his own embryos with his and Aral's DNA. Which he accepts. And so now they're both gestating some children in uterine replicators…and then they end up starting their own affair. It sounded like they had had their own sexual encounters before, but only with Aral also participating; now they're trying a relationship with just the two of them, sub rosa at first.

About halfway through the book, we get Miles and his family coming to visit, which is nice to see (though it still doesn't lead to anything exciting happening), including all six of their kids. Miles is in the loop on his mother's plans for new children, but not about Jole.

There's also a few subplots--Jole's assistant who ends up dating a ghem-lord from the Cetagandan embassy, plans to build a new facility so they can relocate the capital away from its current too-close-to-a-volcano location that keep going awry, and bored teenagers getting into trouble (which provides one of the few moments of tension). One explosion near the end which provides one of the others.

When I think of similarly low-excitement stories from elsewhere in the saga, I mostly end up with novellas--"Winterfair Gifts", perhaps, which is maybe principally a romance; "The Mountains of Mourning", which was a mystery, and still had attempted horse-murder and firebombing, and infanticide, so it packs way more of a punch; and "The Flowers of Vashnoi", which still has a little drama in it. This one is attempting to be an entire novel and it feels like it doesn't have enough steam. It also kind of reminds me of Ursula Le Guin's Tehanu, which I recall being equally dull for large chunks of it, and even that had some excitement at the end. This one just feels like waving a languid goodbye.

Goodbye, Vorkosigan Saga. We'll always have Memory. We'll probably never get to see stories with Miles's children (or Cordelia and Jole's children, or Ivan's or Gregor's) growing up, outside of fanfic. Lois isn't being mean to the characters any more, they can have their happily ever after.

Jenn Lyons: The Ruin of Kings, completed September 11

It was time to try a new author again, a female author. But considering the last two books were SF and urban fantasy, probably not one of those, which was a bit of a quandary because many of the one I was interested in were one of those. But I browsed the epic fantasy books on my shelf and decided to go with Jenn Lyons. I've heard good things about it, and my wife recommended it (and has read the whole series), so I guess. It seems thick, but it's actually not even 600 pages in the copy I've got, and I'm not worried about long books putting me behind on my Goodreads challenge any more anyway. (Since I changed my goal from 100 to 90, then added those two short humorous library books, I've been consistently ahead. I might be able to fit in a Neal Stephenson before the end of the year.)

The book is oddly structured. In the first part, our main character, Kihrin, is in jail and being watched over a being named Talon who seems to have absorbed the memories of a lot of other people. They pass back and forth a "recording stone" and tell Kihrin's story at different points (Kihrin started later than Talon thought he should so she takes it upon herself to fill in the backstory). This happens over alternating chapters (labelled with who's doing the telling), fairly short, Kihrin's in first person and Talon's in third, and often from different POVs. Oh, and this is also being annotated by a different character that we don't even meet until half to two-thirds of the way through the book, who puts in footnotes that I'm not sure even add much value.

I'm not entirely sure it all works. There's the disorientation of the rapid timeline shifts, the confusion of when the further-forward timeline mentions something that hasn't happened in the backstory timeline, the fact that due to body-swapping magic I started to lose track of who was who and who was whose child/parent and who was dead and who was alive… Sometimes information was dropped that seemed irrelevant, and so I didn't retain it, until it turned out that hey, that god was going to be an actual character and things that happened centuries ago are actually relevant. It feels like a book I'm going to have to reread, and not because "it was just that good" but because there's so much that I missed the first time through. (For instance, it's got icons at the beginnings of chapters, which I missed about 95% of on my way through, even after I first noticed them.) I also belatedly noticed the family tree at the back, which might have been helpful earlier (or perhaps spoilery), and it's confusingly annotated because of the body-swap thing mentioned above. And yeah, a lot of godlike characters with weird relationships to each other and Kihrin. (I do actually kind of like Talon, who is an interesting and dangerously amoral character mostly being used a tool by others.) Plus a significant item which seemed to just randomly appear to the main character during the climax? That could have been done better with a little bit of foreshadowing and/or lampshading to explain why it was more than just a horrendous coincidence.

It reminded me in bits of other series. The backstory structure reminded me a little bit of the Kingkiller Chronicles, some of the characters and worldbuilding reminded me of the Eli Monpress series, and the mostly nasty noble characters made me think of Pierce Brown's Red Rising. I will doubtless continue reading the series, but it hasn't fully won me over.

Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, completed September 15

I definitely wanted a palate-cleanser after the Jenn Lyons, something that wasn't fantasy. And maybe not even speculative fiction at all. And, because of my schedule, with a male author. And Huckleberry Finn has been sitting there for a while…and sometimes even gets some discussion on Tumblr, mostly to do with people claiming it's a bad book because Huck uses the n-word, and other people rebutting that that's part of the whole point, having it examine Huck's learned racism, or something. So it's still being talked about, is the thing, more often than, say, Madame Bovary.

As you may have gathered, the vast majority of my reading is science fiction or fantasy, and very little of it is what anyone might call "literature". (My wife and I had a disagreement recently about whether or not Sherlock Holmes stories count as "literature". I think that they're detective stories and thus still kind of genre, like the Dick Francis books are thrillers. But it's a fine distinction.) I read very little mainstream until I was in university, when I decided to branch out a bit. I actually liked Thomas Hardy's The Return of The Native, so I went out and read some more on my own initiative (mostly I liked them except for Jude The Obscure), and I also liked Dickens and Twain and Victor Hugo, and to some extent George Eliot and Jane Austen. But most of it just doesn't scratch that itch and give me what I want in a read.

I am already somewhat familiar with the Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn milieu. Which is to say, I had a tape of the soundtrack of a Tom Sawyer musical when I was a kid (lost decades ago, I couldn't even hum any of the songs, but I remember the bit about the fence whitewashing and the confrontation with "Inj*n Joe" at the end), and I had the Classic Comics version of Huckleberry Finn so in theory I know basically how it goes. I read the actual Twain version of Tom Sawyer a few years ago, but I haven't read this one yet.

So, is it the greatest American novel ever written? Chyeah, right. I mean, it was fine, I guess. It had its moments. It was very episodic as they went down the river (and, as was lampshaded in the text, why would you head south down the river, apart from the obvious answer of "it's hard to go upstream", when you're trying to help a runaway slave get to free states)? It was entertaining in parts, when Huck was coming up with regular off-the-cuff entire fictional backstories. Constant use of the n-word, which I was expecting, though perhaps not quite that much. But it's first-person POV so I guess it's just Huck's vernacular. Still, I can see that it would be off-putting.

The most annoying parts of the book, I'd say, were the parts actually involving Tom Sawyer. Tom apparently has a mental disorder where he reads a lot of bad books and absorbs their clichés and then insists that all of the clichés have to be present every time or else you're not doing it right. We see it near the beginning of the book where he's trying to set up the local boys as bandits or something (though grudgingly he admits that it's all really pretend), but it also dominates the last quarter of the book. Due to outlandish coincidence, Huck is staying with Tom's uncle and aunt who think that he's Tom, and when Tom actually shows up he has to pretend to be his own brother Sid. But Jim has also been captured as a runaway slave and Huck wants to free him. And Tom insists that Jim has to do all of the prisoner clichés and make the actual rescue 1000% harder, to the point of having to spend days digging a tunnel, warning the household in anonymous notes, getting a grindstone for him to scratch messages on (which they have to actually let Jim out to help them do), giving him random animal companions, and I was not there for it. It was trying to be funny but mostly it just came across as stupid.

And the reason Jim got captured in the first place was because of these two con artists they'd been traveling with, who were generally referred to as "the duke" and "the king" because of their respective claims to alleged nobility. They are nasty pieces of work (well, not so bad as Huck's actually-abusive father that he fakes his own death to get away from in the early part of the book, but highly distasteful) that at least do manage to get themselves tarred and feathered by the end, but I didn't enjoy most of the time we spent with them. So if we take the other third of the book without them or Tom Sawyer, it was pretty enjoyable. The rest of the time it was mostly just tolerable.

Kim Stanley Robinson: Sixty Days And Counting, completed September 21

After the laugh-fest that was Huckleberry Finn, I didn't want something too light-hearted, and I was still feeling a little off fantasy, so I went through my male-author books looking for something else, like maybe some science fiction. It had been more than a year (my usual "long-enough" criterion for continuing in a series) since I read the last book in Kim Stanley Robinson's "Science In The Capital" series, so I thought it might be a good choice.

I'm not always the biggest Kim Stanley Robinson fan. His Orange County trilogy was middling, and while I did enjoy the Green Mars trilogy, some parts were a bit of a slog. But, to my surprise, this series has been pretty readable. It focuses on a group of people in and around the National Science Foundation in what is presumably a near-future or, by this time, possibly-alternate-near-past. (The books were published during the second Bush administration.) We have the Quibler family--Charlie and Anna, and their kids Nick and Joe, and then we have Frank Vanderwal. Frank starts out in San Diego but comes to Washington to work for the NSF, Anna also works there, and Charlie was an assistant for Senator Phil Chase. In the first book, Forty Signs of Rain, there's a big rainstorm and the capital floods; in the second, Fifty Degrees Below, there's a very cold winter and the Gulf Stream starts shutting down. Because the series is primarily about climate change.

Frank seems to have the most interesting plotlines--he meets a mysterious woman mamed Caroline during the flood, whose husband seems to be into some shady dealings such as election tampering, and they have an affair, and during the second book he starts sleeping rough in his van and in a treehouse in a local park; he may also have gotten a brain injury that affects his decision-making processes. Meanwhile, Senator Phil Chase ends up running for president (spoilers: he wins) and somehow manages to commit to trying to deal with climate problems (which is how you can tell this is actually science fiction).

There's also a subplot about a group of climate refugees from a fictionalized place called Khembalung in alternate-Tibet, who were displaced onto islands in the Indian Ocean which are now disappearing as ocean levels rise. Charlie deals with parenting young Joe (who some Khembali suspect might be a reincarnation of a Dalai Lama-type figure) while his job for Phil Chase becomes more important.

I guess the nature of the plot (and the fact that it's supposed to be mostly realistic) means that, without a large timeskip to the future, we can't have a strong resolution that ties up all the climate loose ends. We deal with the Caroline plot, and there is progress made on the climate problems, but the rest mostly seems to just…end at a point. Plus there are plenty of scenes which are just there for theme or atmosphere or something (did we really need to see so much of Charlie and Frank hiking the Sierra Nevada with some of Charlie's friends?) It didn't gel for me, and it's gotten to the point where it feels like alternate history more than extrapolation. I'm sure it won't be the last Kim Stanley Robinson I read, but I liked the other books in the series better.

Terry Pratchett: A Hat Full of Sky, completed September 24

Reread time again, and now that I've finished the Vorkosigan reread, what's next? Well, some of the series I've been rereading have been longer ones, but I couldn't settle on another one of those. I kept thinking of shorter series to reread instead. And when I did the Katherine Kurtz Deryni series in four trilogies, I found it was nice to stick my interstitial rereads one at a time in the middle of the series rather than put them all at the end, and that's also what I did during the Vorkosigan reread. So this time I am going to be doing three shorter series rereads, and my four interstitial rereads before and after each one.

Among the "interstitials" is my slower Discworld series reread. I elected not to reread the whole thing all at once, because that's like 40 books, that would have taken too long, so instead I've been doing one book per other series reread. In fact, I started the reread before I got into doing all the series rereads, apparently, way back in like 2005, before Unseen Academicals was even out, which explains how I've managed to get this far into the series at this pace. One or two a year, and it kind of adds up. (In the interim I did read a lot of the series to my daughter as well, from Mort through to where we bogged down and abandoned The Fifth Elephant) My wife, who had fallen behind in the Discworld series apart from Amazing Maurice and the Tiffany Aching books, elected to read the books she'd missed just fast enough to stay ahead of me. (And now that I'm actually reached the Tiffany Aching rereads she may end up pulling even further ahead.)

When I first read The Wee Free Men I had no idea that there would be more Tiffany Aching books (and I don't know if Terry Pratchett did, either). I don't recall that it made a huge impression on me at the time, then. It was definitely aimed at younger readers, with a young protagonist and the Nac Mac Feegles for comic relief (and tiny but sort-of-adult reinforcements), and I, at the time, was not a younger reader. But I did like later books featuring Tiffany, and so this is the one where things do start to pick up a bit.

Now she's no longer trying to do everything on her own, she's being taken into the witching apprenticeship track, such as it is, which is a bit of an adjustment. And this ain't no Harry Potter. This is more like, say, the first part of A Wizard of Earthsea, before Ged goes to the wizard's college on Roke and is still studying with Ogion on Gont. Or maybe Tehanu, which I haven't read nearly as much and don't remember as clearly. But we also have a spooky creature, like Ged's shadow, for Tiffany to confront.

Apparently when I first read this I was kind of meh on it, since I only gave it three stars on Goodreads, but this time around I liked it better, and I'll bump it up to four. The Nac Mac Feegle scenes no longer strike me as gratuitous comedic pandering, and the book does a good job of showing Granny Weatherwax's power as a witch, as well as Tiffany's burgeoning powers. (And one has to wonder if Lois McMaster Bujold read this before "Penric's Demon" or if it's just a coincidence.)

C.L. Polk: Soulstar, completed September 28

"Female diversity" slot time again. (Anyone else getting tired of hearing me call it that? The more I repeat it the worse it sounds. How about "non-white non-male"?) Last time around I snuck in another Michelle Sagara, and perhaps I should be trying one of the new authors I have piling up for this slot, but I did kind of want to finish this C.L. Polk series first. She(/they) is a person of colour from the Calgary area, though I've never managed to see her in person.

This book is the third in the Kingston Cycle, set in a kind of analog of Britain, where they use magic to keep huge storms from devastating them. The only trouble is, having magic is illegal unless you're part of the existing group of magic families, who guard their prerogatives jealously, and illegal witches are locked up (to secretly power the weather magic). The first two books concern two siblings, Miles and Grace, from one of these families, one of whom was hiding his identity after undergoing experiences likely to get him locked away, and the other trying to use her political power for good ends. For the third book, though, we switch to an unrelated side character, Robin Thorpe, who was one of these hidden witches, but the political landscape has now changed and they can come out of hiding--and need to, to save their country. Robin is heavily involved with an anti-monarchist group who wants a full democracy in the country; with all the upheaval, is it the right or wrong time to move forward?

The books also have romance subplots, which are…well, let's just say none of them are heterosexual. In this one, Robin is reunited with her nonbinary spouse who has been a captive for decades, so it's a renewal of relationship rather than a new relationship, but still with a romance feel to it.

There were times in the book where I was just seething at some of the horrible things the (generally rich and arrogant) antagonists were able to get away with, but in the end they got their come-uppances. It's a kind of a short book, actually, and at the end I did feel like I wouldn't have minded more of some plot threads, but overall it did feel like a satisfactory conclusion to the trilogy. We also have Polk's The Midnight Bargain and clearly that will have to go on my shelf.

I also read a few more comics from April 1994 on Marvel Unlimited (and a handful of back issues, now that they've started putting those in again), and then I started reading the Ed Yong book An Immense World that I believe I got for my birthday a couple of months ago. It's about the senses that various animals and other living beings use to experience the world. My progress has been kind of fitful, depending on how my fiction book reading progresses in a day and whether I feel like just doing puzzles or games or something, but I can often manage a few pages near the end of the day.

[keeskiwi]

So much more of the natural world feels close and accessible now. When I started birding, I remember thinking that I’d never see most of the species in my field guide. Sure, backyard birds like robins and western bluebirds would be easy, but not black skimmers or peregrine falcons or loggerhead shrikes. I had internalized the idea of nature as distant and remote — the province of nature documentaries and far-flung vacations. But in the past six months, I’ve seen soaring golden eagles, heard duetting great horned owls, watched dancing sandhill cranes and marveled at diving Pacific loons, all within an hour of my house. “I’ll never see that” has turned into “Where can I find that?”

-Ed Yong, When I Became a Birder, Almost Everything Else Fell Into Place

[skirino]

' qué suerte... ' murmura cuando realmente quiere decir: qué envidia. sin embargo, pierde el hilo de lo que sea que estaban hablando cuando mira el líquido vinotinto brotar de la bolsa. los ojos se le abren de sobremanera y como abeja atraída por la dulce miel adhiere la boca en el ángulo correcto. sus manos se amoldan por encima de las del ravnos en apoyo, bebiendo y succionando en un acto reflejo de su necesidad. la satisfacción es tanta que mientras se alimenta suelta gemiditos de placer. su mente parece aclararse para volverse a nublar por el hambre. un poco más, piensa... un poco más... incluso se le escapa de la cabeza que la misericordia del otro tiene un límite y que no se está separando cuando debería. @yongsaengz

párpados caen. no debió preguntarlo, porque ahora se lo está imaginando. y mientras más se lo imagina, más le enoja todo lo que sucedió. ganas de querer cobrarse venganza crecen pero, después de enfrentamiento, sabe que habilidades de combate se quedan nulas al lado de criaturas si no aprende cómo utilizar sus disciplinas de manera correcta ' no tengo ni un rasguño encima ' dice, después de unos segundos en los que se obligó a sí mismo a relajarse. trabaja con la bolsa de vitae, mordiendo una de las esquinas para abrir un hueco lo suficientemente grande como para que líquido salga y se lo acerca, luchando con las ganas de querer alimentarse parar dejar suficiente en bolsa ' puedes tomar un poco ¿está bien? la robé y también la estoy guardando ' ☆ @skirino

[flamingpudding]

Fictober23 Prompt: 8 - "Give me that, before anything happens."

Fandom: DPxDC

Rating: G

Warnings: -

"Don't touch that." Constantine said without even looking up from the book he was reading through for research. Phantom had joined the Justice League dark only recently and was still in that sort of mentor - glorified babysitting - state. It was just his luck that he lost in the stick draw and had now to 'mentor' the who-knows-how-old-he-truly-is Ghost King.

He should have stuck this job to Zatanna. The 'kid' was curious as a cat and apparently wanted to touch every good damn artifact in the House of Mysteries that Constantine had ever gotten his hands on.

"Don't touch that either." The Brite muttered without looking up, he was so close in figuring out the actual meaning of the curse placed on a good damn church bell that causes everyone who hears it to fall asleep at midnight sharp and wake up at 8 AM later like nothing happened. Behind his back Phantom stuck his tongue out at the man before reaching out to poke the artifact that caught his eye anyway. However the House of Mysteries had other ideas as it reconstructed itself at the right moment and put the artifact further away from Phantom.

The Ghost King pouted, crossing his arms and floated over to where Constantine was pouring over a curse seal. Phantom hummed as he looked over the Brites shoulder grinning. "Oh I didn't know you could use ghost speech for curses!"

"Say what now mate?!" John's head snapped to the side to stare at Phantom who was now floating over his shoulder. "It's in ghost speech? What even is that?"

The Ghost King had the nerve to give him an unimpressed stare that really made the Brite need a smoke, but he had given Zatanna his good damn word not to smoke around the 'kid', so that was a no.

"Ghost speech. The language of the Infinite Realms also known as the Ghost Zone, After Life, Hell, Home of the Damned, and so on and so on." Constantines eye twitched as the Ghost boy shrugged. He let out a suffering sigh and pushed his copie of the curse seal over to Phantom.

"What does it say?" The other blinked for a moment before turning his eyes to the photo. A scratching static white noise filled the Brite's ears and he yelped in pain, covering his ears. The noise instantly stopped and Contantine glared at the Ghost King who sheepishly scratched the back of his neck. "Sorry, I will say it again in English."

Constantine only grumbled something inaudible before motioning for the other to continue.

"You idiots don't sleep enough. Go and get at least eight hours of sleep. If you don't sleep by midnight I will be the one to make you sleep."

"The hell?"

"That's what's written there."

"Don't tell me we have another good damn Sandman problem on our hands." John gripped with one hand at his hair, he really hoped that wasn't it because dear good he did not want to get Batman or one of the other Not Dark heros involved.

"Nah, he goes by Nocturne, he never liked that name some philosophers came up with. But this does go against the agreement I had with him."

Was this how Batman felt when his Robins went against his orders? Or how the mentors of the Yonge Justice feel when the teens sass back? Because Constantine was sticking this ancient kid of a Ghost King onto Zatanna the next change he got.

"You know how to lift that curse then?" Instead of going further into a rabbit hole, Constantine decided it was easier to just find out if the Ghost King can lift a good damn curse he had been working on solving for days now instead of finding out who the hell Nocturne was now.

"Of course I know." Phantom answered easily, floating on his back around the room like he was going with the flow of water. Glowing green eyes going along the shelves where various books and artifacts were thrown on, in no particular order.

"Great. Let's go and fix this then." The man muttered, getting up from his chair and grabbing his coat. "I need a bottle of whiskey after this and a good damn smoke…"

Phantom just followed behind the man ready for his second official job with the Justice League Dark. He grinned happily of finally getting some outside action only to come to a sudden halt as the Brite man whirled around glaring at the Ghost King only inches from his the other.

"Phantom?"

"Yes?" The 'kid' answered nervously.

"Give me that, before anything happens. How often did I tell you NOT to touch anything of the artifacts? Do you even know what that thing does!"

Reluctantly like a reprimanded child the Ghost King handed over a golden plate with a glowing green crystal embedded into it, Constantine remembered it being the leftover part of a demon they had banished. The man narrowed his eyes. "The other one too."

"Fine…" Phantom handed over a crystal zepter, John had picked up from an ancient tomb. "Didn't think you noticed me picking them up, since you didn't say anything before I even touched them."

"Mate, you are forgetting who currently owns this house."

[people-dujenoir]

Robin Yong

[theinfinitedivides]

thinking thoughts about how i came out straight from the queer revenge thriller MINDF*CK that was Vigilante and proceeded to head straight into the queer + family by choice + revenge + Robin Hood sometimes MINDF*CK that is Leverage the next year. thinking thoughts about how Ji Yong and Eliot remind me of each other and if i sit on that for too long i will be ill thinking Thoughts!!!!!!! i am Thinking

[yuhi-san]

he also voices dick grayson in young justice and man is he a gremlin

Every once in a while I'm forcefully reminded that Vash and Lelouch have the same English VA and my brain grinds to a halt

[renabunss]

I would like to share an idea I have!!!!!

Stardew Valley, but make it TTS and Vat7k kind of au. Like, hear me out. Varian shows up one day to this town after his mom disappears, moving into an old house his dad used to own there, he works on the house while scowering the town and surrounding areas for answers on his mother. Over his time, he slowly meets everyone, Raps becoming his mentor kind of person, and Eugene jumps in as his substitute dad for his time there; Cass is taking the place of Robin, I'd say.

I imagine that Hugo would be like the Haley of Stardew Valley for Varian. Nuru is probably taking the role of Abigail, Yong is one of the kids (I forgot the male kids' name bc I don't talk to him).

Anyway, that's all, that's the idea!!! I'm obsessed with Stardew Valley and Vat7k, so this is just self indulgent, have a nice day/night <3

[rhmis-user-2020]

Things I must state before I get called out:

If you want to headcanon Varian or any other character as trans because it makes you feel closer to the character or not, then by all means do so. You’re valid and this is perfectly reasonable. But remember, Varian is voiced by a male actor who is Jeremy Jordan and he is a male since his pronouns are he/him and is a male character.

I may face slack for not sharing the trans Varian HC personally and only using it when it's necessary and just accepting him as a male character, but I’m in the mindset that we need more characters who were born male that do not conform to society's norms.

It’s incredibly important for boys/men to see that they can sew, cook, and clean without these activities being treated as if they are somehow emasculating. Getting rid of toxic gender stereotypes is the first step to a future where people can be accepted as equals.

Varian is bisexual which I give a pass, there are people who use the trans tag when all they really want to do is gender-swap the character to fit their smut preferences. Objectification is not representation. To be clear, I'm not saying all trans smut is like this. The type of storytelling I'm talking about is obvious to spot. You'll know it if/when you see it. Though hopefully you won't have to see it.

For Hugo, I am looking forward for him to be pansexual much like how Robin Hood from Robin Hood: Mischief in Sherwood is. Whilst Varian is bisexual for all honesty, as the prince does get headcanon as bisexual but he is mostly headcanon as gay.

Varian would interact with Nuru and Yong much more and develop a close friendship but he can have a complex and developed one with Hugo and soon grew to have a friendship to a lover dynamic.

As I stated, every Varigo shipper would have a different preference, but this is mine and you're free to add yours.

[firstdivisiongirl]

One Piece: Dub vs Sub?

I put in a comment yesterday on Instagram saying I watch One Piece English Dub (obviously not the 4kids English dub, that needs to be destroyed). I had so many people saying I’m not a real fan and I’m wrong about the Funimation dub being good. I’ve watched both dub and sub (long story about why I watch some in dub and some in dub but that’s a story for another day). The two are different. Sub is amazing but dub has some seriously great voice actors who do a great job. A lot of them are absolute VA legends. Here are some of them that may make you laugh a little when you see the characters with the same VA:

Luffy-Riza Hawkeye from Full Metal Alchemist (Colleen Clinkenbeard)

Zoro-Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z (Chris Sabat)

Law-Levi Ackerman from Attack on Titan (Matthew Mercer)

Ace-Roy Mustang from Full Metal Alchemist (Travis Willingham)

Sabo-Ichigo from Bleach (Johnny Yong Bosch)

Koby-Yurio from Yuri!! on Ice (Micah Solusod)

Brooks-Worick Arcangelo from Gangsta (Ian Sinclair)

Usopp-Maes Hughes from Full Metal Alchemist (Sonny Strait)

Nico Robin-Handler from Spyxfamily (Stephanie Young)

Sanji- Nishiki Nishio from Tokyo Ghoul (Eric Vale)

Don’t write off the dub, it’s really good. And don’t hate people who like to watch dub over sub. Be nice!

[lonestarss]

updated oc story masterlist

(my favorite characters and ships are marked in bold. dividers are made by @/cafekitsune.)

CHILDREN OF THE FIVE — after their queen, yasmin, dies under mysterious circumstances, the four ministers of lumain and their associates conduct an investigation on the people who led her astray, as well as the demon that they believe ended her life. high fantasy/mystery with horror elements.

CHARACTERS — yasmin (she/her), alsu makaira (she/her), primavera sandoval (he/him), annog macalastair (they/them), leonid bancroft (he/him), nikita bychkova (she/her), checha florentino (he/him), ermir o'brian (they/them), tsumugi makaira (she/her), akane hikaru (any pronouns), hussein al-saleh (he/him), leila morningstar (she/her), catarina sandoval (she/her), adareii (they/she) SHIPS — yasmin/leila/catarina, nikita/akane, checha/hussein

SOLA FIDE — in a fit of desperation, nermina signs a contract with a demon in exchange for safety and security. when her coworkers and roommate discover the deal, they slowly become entangled with the undead as they unravel the icy web of terror nermina has found herself in. urban fantasy/horror/drama.

CHARACTERS — nermina crown (she/her), aditi agarwal (she/any), takeem abdelsamad (he/any), celeste/sienna miller (she/they), lorenzo grant (he/they), hilal (he/him), fusae kamiyama (she/her), miguel briones (he/him), tam lin (he/him) SHIPS — nermina/aditi, takeem/celeste (semi-canon), miguel/tam lin

A ROULETTE OF REPROBATES — in a republic ruled by the god of bureaucracy, reina is sent to their begrimed undercity for protesting the supreme court's decision to execute her brother. despite her lack of experience, she must gamble her way out of this hole before his death sentence is fulfilled. high fantasy/drama with mystery elements.

CHARACTERS — reina dominique (she/her), laurens dominique (he/him), bernadette paige (she/her), rashad mahmoud (he/him), yong jin (he/him), angel mahmoud-jin (they/them), rosalyn (she/her), darren (he/him), nathalie (she/they), gordon (he/him), felix venien (he/him), donna valencia monet (she/her), alexandre godfrey (he/him), evelyn cousineau (she/her), lodupa (They/Them) SHIPS — rashad/yong, rosalyn/bernadette, gordon/darren, felix/alexandre

ACCESS ALL AREAS — determined to fulfill their dream of being a famous musician, moonstone forms a scrappy pop group just in time to compete in a music festival's fresh meat tournament. hijinks and several rude awakenings ensue as they get a taste of what it really means to live in the limelight. sci-fi/drama.

CHARACTERS — moonstone (they/them), sunstone (she/her), marisa singh (she/her), aoi takahashi (she/it), ELENA (he/him), feliz (he/him), catelyn (she/her), malik (he/him) SHIPS — moonstone/sunstone, marisa/aoi, ELENA/feliz

DUNGEON OF VIPERS — after being saved from a dragon by him, darcy and her girlfriend butt their way into the adventuring party of grizzly loner misha, following the group on their journey into their city's dark catacombs. semi-episodic urban fantasy with horror elements.

CHARACTERS — darcy vespertine (they/she), bellatrix truefire (she/her), misha viktorov (he/him), haidar zaman (he/him), sadako shirashi (she/her), morgana osbourne (she/her), jade (she/her), charlotte/angelite (she/her), mariana/serpentine (she/they), asmo/malachite (he/they), majeed/sapphire (he/him), quinn/howlite (they/them), qi yang (she/her), yue yang (he/him) SHIPS — darcy/bellatrix, misha/haidar, jade/charlotte, yue/majeed

GENSHIN IMPACT

CHARACTERS — estel de reves (they/any, electro bow), sylvie clairmont-atkin (she/they, cryo catalyst), emiliano urias (she/her, hydro sword), dakarai urias (he/him, geo bow), neesha banerjee (she/her, dendro claymore), hafsah al-yasiri (he/him, anemo catalyst), xiuying (she/her, pyro sword), robin (they/xe, alternating visions and weapons) SHIPS — estel/robin, estel/wriothesley, neesha/collei, hafsah/alhaitham, xiuying/xinyan

HONKAI STAR RAIL

CHARACTERS — melanie cardenas (she/her, imaginary/erudition), laverne somel (they/them, wind/harmony), vilho (he/they, physical/abundance), zhihao ling (any pronouns, lightning/the hunt), jess/black cat (she/they/it, fire/nihility), zan (he/they, quantum/destruction), warden somel (he/him, ice/preservation) SHIPS — melanie/ruan mei (one-sided), melanie/boothill, jess/silver wolf