#shl spoilers

[punkrockgrantaire]

Honestly the idea of ‘everyone in the martial world is obsessed with this ancient armory which supposedly contains the power to create and lead a powerful empire that will survive thru the ages’ and after truly unconscionable amount of bloodshed, misery, and tears the final dying soldiers make it in to find rooms and rooms of seeds, farming equipments and guides to agriculture’ goes so insanely hard. Like I want to use that in every dnd game ever for the rest of time. The answer is to give up fighting and live a life of peace. Oh you gave up all chances at peace chasing a violent dream? Die then

[bugbbear]

So I noticed something interesting.

Cleo, Martyn, Scott, and Bdubs all have tasks that are about the building of their base. Not NECESSARILY interactive, but at the same time, require others to view them.

Cleo and Scott both have to make their bases interfere with someone else's. Martyn had to make an exact replica and Bdubs had to make an uncomfortable house, neither of which require interaction, but both promote it.

Impulse had to make cherrywood his entire identity, which isnt expressly interactive, but (to get philosphical for a second) to have an identity you must be perceived, so.

All of the others had tasks that REQUIRED them to interact with at least one other player.

Big B's, of course, was the exception. Not only did his task not require anyone else, it made him AVOID everyone else.

Digging a hole deep into the ground? That's about as avoidant as you can get.

Whatever these special tasks are doing (because there is secret lore, of course there is, that's the fucking point of the series isnt it?), it involves the isolation of whoever has the task.

It is a secret from the viewer, from the rest of the server, and (because of vague phrasing) a secret from the one doing the task themself.

If we assume someone new gets a special task next week, will it connect to Big B's? What's the larger goal of these secret tasks? How does it connect to everything else?

[candidsoup]

Word of Honor - I realized something in Ep. 16

I realized that there was something that they probably cropped/zoomed in on the video in order to censor.

Spoilers for episode 16...

Episode 16 on YouTube

The Scorpion King and Zhao Jing are talking, and at about about 29:44 you can see Scorpion's arms move up for a fraction of a second. Then it zooms in a tiny bit to basically just show Scorpion's head, and Zhao Jing from like the top 4th? of his torso up. At 29:45-:46 you can see part of Zhao Jing's robe move a tiny bit. Scorpion is clearly pulling on part of his robe in a playful manner and they were like, oh, uh, we can't show that..... but if you pay attention that's definitely what is happening... I got the "vibes" between them already from this interaction, which is the 2nd time they're shown together. (Ep. 15 shows them talking but with Zhao Jing purposely obscured, so you just know Scorpion has some mysterious "godfather" -- the subs on Youku say "father" but "godfather" is what it said on Netflix, I believe, and may be a better translation for English speakers to understand they are NOT related...) I was surprised that not everyone gets the relationship they have with each other, tbh. Even if it's not clear earlier on, when that metaphor of the "gambler" comes in, and Scorpion says something like "I am a gambler too"..... I mean come on. But not everyone realized it? (Based on comments on YT videos and some people's reactions I've seen) Still, I wasn't aware of this little robe pull, at least not consciously, until just now. I just love noticing those little details. Knowing how much work they put in to include things, even if they might have been censored later, is fascinating (and really special!!!) to me.

[wirwerdensiegen]

Gong Jun Studio Weibo Update 2023/07/30.

[isolatedcorner]

Thinking about how ChengLing lost his family all over again by the end of SHL. Gu Xiang’s wedding was probably one of the happiest moments in his life, as not only did his father’s killer get the justice he deserved, but he gained a whole new family with Zhou Zishu and Wen KeXing. All that just to be taken away in a matter of minutes. Then his shifu leaves him to supposedly die and WKX follows not long after to an unknown fate. Damn.

[bodhimcbodeface]

One more valentine because I love this shit

[piosplayhouse]

You say that but Jiang Yanli was not a virgin. Fucking her husband is absolutely a thing that she did. They even had a baby about it

Actually, is jyl the only young woman in MXTX canon who canonically had sex? And got married?? WQ wasn't married, NYY, LMY and SHL weren't married (canonically, they're married to each other in my heart), and while several centuries is not "young", neither YWS nor SQX from tgcf are married to anyone

MXTX ladies really be out there living their best aro lives

Mianmian is married with a child, as was Qin Su. In the svsss timeline things are obviously messed up but if we're counting pidw universe as well then I think most of Bing-ge's wives had children, which is something everyone forgets about but he is indeed a father several times over. Madame Meiyin and the succubi are also probably not virgins in either timeline I'd wager. There's also a pretty prominent young-ish (within the generation of relevant characters) female character in tgcf who has a child but I don't think the translation has gotten to her yet so I won't elaborate for spoilers

[omgpurplefattie]

Twenty Questions for Fic Writers

@nutcasewithaknife tagged me!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

49

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

320,560 -- they do pile up

What fandoms do you write for?

Started out with Star Trek TOS in the 1990s, now fully in several c-drama fandoms which I all throw in together in a modern AU.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

All English -- short funny Loki/Darcy fic I wrote for another Milliways player during the original MCU craze. Loki is robbed of his magic and a) stays blue b) can't understand a word c) hides in the lab.

Am I The Asshole For...? -- Jin Guangyao describes the 3zun dynamic in an AITA formatted ask piece. Modern AU or not, depending on how you look at it.

Blue Monsters -- sequel to 'All English'. Loki hates the movie 'Avatar'.

A Matter of Priorities -- the original fic in my expanding City AU for several C-dramas. After years of being friends with benefits with Ye Baiyi, Rong Changqing gets his shit together.

Merely a Cat -- Jin Guangyao is reincarnated as Lan Xichen's cat. 5 + 1 things, canonverse.

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Always! I feel so flattered.

What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Never Held Him -- Ye Baiyi reminisces about the death of Rong Changqing. Canonverse, hard interpretation.

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

A Polycule With Many Pointy Corners -- because at the end, Shulin is alive, Peizhi still loves him, and he gets to keep the baby. Part of my City AU.

Do you get hate on fics?

I did -- on both the AITA fic and 'Merely a Cat'. That was the time of the Xiyao Troll, who was so nasty and persistent they actually put some people off writing for the fandom altogether. I got the troll on the AITA fic, then realised it was a Known Problem, and then wrote the Jiggy!cat fic to pull aggro and take part in a fic exchange the fandom organised in order to drive the troll to distraction. I wrote Eternal Sunshine of a Drunken Lan for that exchange, and received a lovely, lovely visual take on my 3zun AITA concept.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yes! I am going light on it in "Detoxify" so far, but sometimes, the plot needs it. Also, I tend to think that the characters deserve to bone. I very much thought that Ye Baiyi deserves to get all the sex from Rong Changqing, which is why "A Matter of Priorities" is very E-rated even though the sex as such is not the point.

Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

Yes, totally. The City AU, with lots of C-Drama characters all in the same modern AU and involved in each other's lives, is my main series now with more than 120K words.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not as far as I know

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope

What's your all-time favorite ship?

Always my current blorbos!

What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

The World of the Morning After -- Ye Baiyi is isekai'd into a world where everything went well, he is with Rong Changqing, and they're both immortal. He immediately decides that it's too good to be truth and he won't have anything of it in order not to get hurt even worse. I posted two chapters, mostly wrote the third, and ran out of steam. Luckily, I have a complete and detailed outline in which I re-shuffle the entire plot of SHL/TYK to hinge on Ye Baiyi's happy ending. Spoiler: he's there to make sure WenZhou get together in that branch of reality, too.

What are your writing strengths?

Nasty surprises.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Consistency; I tend to go off on tangents.

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I write everything in another language; English isn't my first language. That said, the special turn of phrase of saying "Our/your A-Fei/HuaHua/Xiaobao" that gets the trio by the feels every time somebody uses it in "Detoxify" makes a lot more sense in Chinese.

First fandom you wrote for?

Star Trek

Favorite fic you've written?

Not choosing!

Tagging @eleanorfenyxwrites @atthelamppost @dangerouscommiesubversive (no pressure)

If you're a fic writer, feel free to give it a go even if you're not tagged!!

[deepestbluesky]

i was tagged by @minnarr to list my 5 favorite fics i've written! it's actually very funny to me, because i saw one of these posts yesterday from a writer i like very much who i've followed for ages, and then i got tagged today, and i realized the connecting thread is literally just one person in between. anyway!

note: in case you haven't looked closely at my ao3 page (or. not closely tbh. to my eternal regret, it's still my top fandom), i used to write hockey rpf. i don't anymore, because i think hockey and especially the nhl is morally bankrupt and actively harmful, and i no longer feel comfortable writing about nhl players or sharing fic about them. this is all to say: 1, i actually don't think i've explicitly said that before and it's important to me, and 2, i will not mention any fics from this fandom.

LUCKILY, i've somehow???? written a lot????? since then????? this continues to baffle me. how did i get here. (🎶letting the days go by🎶) (if you think, gee, did sky have trouble picking 5 fics? it has been fully half an hour and i'm still at 11 fics. the lengths i go to for tumblr posts that don't matter.) (have now picked fics, didn't take much longer bc i decided to try and go for a wide spread of fandoms, and also to pick the ones in that 11-fic list that had the lowest kudos lol)

give thanks to the broken bones. this is a batfam fic in which bruce wayne gets kidnapped as a civilian and dick grayson comes to rescue him. i have some defensive feelings about this and about the way dick and bruce's relationship is written here, but i often feel like i'm not great at writing complicated relationships that aren't just fluffy, and i feel like i nailed it here. also: gen fics.

tired of waiting for tomorrow to come. another batfam fic! this one a character study of sorts about jason todd and also my love letter about bruce springsteen's music. it's one of the most self-indulgent fics i've ever written and i'm really satisfied with it, even tho there are definitely things i wish i'd done differently too. i wrote a dvd commentary companion too so if you want Even More Of My Thoughts about it, they are on ao3 :D

daydreamers please wake up. there are goddamn NINE fics for this fucking fandom and mine is the LONGEST??? this is a fic for another dc comic, Far Sector, written by nk jemisin and drawn by jamal campbell. i loved far sector, i think it's gorgeous and fun and a cool sci fi story with very fun characters, and so when i had a chance to write a fic for it for yuletide, i was DELIGHTED. and then i realized i had to figure out how to write horror for the first time. it was a lot of work and i think it turned out really well.

don't let the stars get you down. this is a fic for the untamed, and it's jiang yanli and jin zixuan. i have now written TWO platonic marriage fics for the untamed, and i'm personally thrilled about this fact. this one is shorter but also, in some ways, more interesting to me. i really love fics that dig into jyl and what she's doing and thinking and i haven't written as many as i'd like, but that is very much what this fic is. also i just have so much love and affection in my heart for the idea of two people being married and having a kid while not being In Love and in fact having sex with and falling in love with other people.

you're a curious one. this is a word of honor fic, and it is, of course, hanwenzhou. so, to be clear, if you count shl/tyk/qy together, it's CLEARLY my second most written fandom. and yet it ended up with only one representative on this list, partially because i have more kudos in this fandom lol. but that said, if i was only gonna pick one, it had to be REALLY on brand, and this fic is PEAK sky is on her bullshit. inspired by a critical role scene with sexy dangerous vampire attacks. the whole fic is building tension that never quite resolves bc building the tension is way more fun to me than writing sex scenes usually. spoiler: everything is actually fine and there's a happy resolution. this concept still lives in my head rent free.

idk who to tag, so AS USUAL, if you see this and want to play the game, do it and say i tagged you! i am very serious, you can tag me even if we've never interacted. you can also not tag me but say you got it from me! whatever works.

[candidsoup]

Good thing the other side just means like

After he recovers

Because they both love each other so NO ONE DIED AND ZZS WAS ABLE TO HEAL WKX (or something idk how it worked)

[khaotungsfirst]

masterpost

info

formerly known as lanzhansmiles

not spoiler free but everything is tagged

i track #useralias

currently watching (add me as a friend)

content

my gifs

all of my stuff (includes shitposts)

gifsets of specific shows are tagged like this: #nameofshowedit

tagging system

all shows with one or two words are tagged with their full name e.g. #only friends, #taikan yoho

all shows with three or more words are abbreviated with initials e.g. stay with me (#swm), laws of attraction (#loa)

exceptions: the untamed (#mdzs), kinnporsche (#kp), word of honor (#shl)

live-blogging with #ali watches

[rentrash]

Spoiler for Qi Ye / Word of Honor: making connections between the novel and the drama

Qi Ye is absolutely devastating. I’m crying so so hard.

Remember the little girl zzs killed in shl? When he killed a whole ass clan/family?? And he’s like this is something I had to do blah blah kinda regret it blah blah. Well, when reading Qi Ye, you actually learn who that little girl was 🙃🙃🙃 Turns out, it was a child he knew personally, one that his shidi, Liang/Qin Jiuxiao was very very fond of, and even wanted to save and raise.

I am sobbing, howling, wailing. My heart is shattered

As reminder: this is Liang/Qin Jiuxiao (left) and this is a very bad bad man Zhou Zishu in Tian Chuang, killing a little girl that could have been your niece or something (right)

Liang Jiuxao finding the scene, and then Eunuch Xi and the Emperor Helian Pei talking, when you realise that it was Tian Chuang that assassinated the whole family. It is later confirmed that Helian Yi indeed orchestrated the assassination, thus meaning that Tian Chuang was involved, and that the scene in shl where zzs kills the child is that particular point in the book.

And you know what makes it worse?? What I realised later on??? In shl, you see the little girl looking at zzs so she definitely saw his face as, if I remember correctly, it wasn’t covered. Which means she knew who he was and she had been in his arms before, surrounded by people she trusted. She knew she was going to die by this big brother’s hands.

[moondal514]

so I’m not letting myself read tyk until I finish qi ye but since I’ve watched shl and have been hanging out in that fandom space, every so often I glimpse a mild tyk spoiler in the form of someone detailing some atrocity Zhou Zishu committed for Helian Yi’s sake and get unreasonably excited

[bugbbear]

so i was half right

i really hope all the yellows next session open their secret tasks to see this

[minnarr]

my fanfic year in review 2023

turns out i posted 13 this year, which is better than i thought tbh! here they all are for your perusal

JANUARY

and now good-morrow to our waking souls - this was mostly written i think autumn 2021, i just cleaned up the first arc and yeeted it bc i wasn't going to finish the larger story anytime soon. pre wangxian, the old kingdom au

and two dzzs lunar new year drabbles:

such frivolous things - lqq&wkx feeling each other out precanon

to sweep clean - a snippet of qhz & his then-future wife

FEBRUARY

i posted nothing! 🥳

MARCH

winter could melt inside your hands - hanzhou, background wenzhou, postcanon in everyone's alive at siji au, huddling for warmth and first kiss

APRIL

the immortal wanderers spring exchange! i wrote 2 fics

sample of one - qi ye verse, wu xi asks zzs for help practicing kissing with mixed results

take a look at what we've made - shl au where rcq also became immortal and rongye get mixed up in canon events together & work out that the love is requited

separately, started the wip all our yesterdays where qhz shows up in siji arc in the midst of all the stuff everyone is trying to work out

MAY

Carve Out My Heart - this piece was written for the Trapped horror zine, a missing moment piece that treats rong xuan's resurrection and yue feng'er's death as a horror story

AUGUST

take a little time (walk a little line) - gao xiaolian pursues her crush on one of shen shen's female disciples in a happy postcanon au

JUNE, JULY

also nothing

AUGUST

secret weapon - a little precanon adventure where gu miaomiao and zhen ruyu meet long que's future wife when they're both after things that have been stolen from them. also healer valley is full of snake shapeshifters, including gmm

SEPTEMBER

nada

OCTOBER

The Demon General's Wife - gu xiang/gao xiaolian xianxia au with arranged marriage; another exchange fic

NOVEMBER

another month without posting

DECEMBER

i finally finished both my fandom trumps hate fics! which i had been worrying about between other events but not actually writing...i had fun with them both though

Here Comes Trouble - au where qhz lives longer, wkx is a siji disciple and talks zzs into taking the sect to camp on yby's doorstep and ask for help, much to yby's annoyance

The Road is Never Lonely - postcanon, nianxiang is on her first trip alone & this weird old couple keeps following her (spoilers: it's wenzhou)

[sealwithfeels]

Danganronpa 3 Episode 10

Well, thoughts up to episode 10 since. Spoilers below.

Sooooo they treat the aftermath of Komaeda's bomb very seriously, but the explosion itself is almost comedic, weird tonal dissonance.

I am interested what's going on with Ruruka and Seiko (and I guess Izayoi) but I'm also so torn. In one of the main games this would be cool, we get to see the characters and their beef with each other. But this is a short anime that's meant to wrap up the whole saga and so it feels like it's taking time away from the overarching plot. So I'm annoyed by that aspect as I'd rather they flesh out the main plot more, but also do genuinely want to see more of these characters and get attached to them. Maybe it's just the very fast pace and short runtime that's the problem.

TBH the whole story has the issue where it's battling with itself, be it being a grand finale for the Hope's Peak saga vs introducing a bunch of new characters and trying to flesh them out, or elaborating on the backstory for the DR2 cast but not wanting to do too many character things with them because they've already had their time in DR2 itself and we don't want things to diverge too far from that. The latter probably could have been solved by more episodes and leaning more into the corruption arc aspect, I mean there's no indication of them falling to despair yet.

I guess that's the main issue with the anime so far - for example, is the Despair arc meant to be about Yukizome investigating the school with the DR2 cast as supporting characters because they're fairly static and simplified versions of themselves in this, or is it meant to be showing us the implied juicy backstory of the Ultimate Despairs, with the murders and falling into despair and Hinata being turned into Kamukura and all that and if so then why isn't there more focus on that.

Monaca is back, and tbh it's pretty obvious twist but lol good to see she's relevant. She's in full Junko cosplay gear which is kinda cute in a villain way. She's definitely not the only traitor, that would be too simple.

I'm almost sad they're using red for blood and not the goofy bright pink for lowering the ratings. The pink blood was a fun part of the style.

Aww it's actually really sweet to see more of SHL Impostor and he's looking out for Mitarai. Mitarai is too precious and I'm convinced he's one of the traitors.

Lol that's a lot of nonvirtual!Nanami praising, and I say that as a fan of her DR2 character. Soooo they ever gonna show how she and Chihiro know each other, cause it's kinda weird for Chihiro to create a virtual person based on someone who actually existed.

Junko is here! Can't wait for the corruption arc!

But yeah my main frustration is the anime's identity feels muddled and it has misplaced priorities with the new characters. The ones who are connected to the main story, like Munakata and Yukizome, are done well here and have the right amount of focus, but some others feel just added on because they could rather than because it adds to the overall story. Which given that each side of the story has only 6-7 episodes each, is a major problem.