#spl meta

[tamlindudley]

I have a question. I remember reading ACOTAR and honestly, I really liked one character and one character only: Nesta. What did you think of her? Did you also have a positive reaction to her? I thought Feyre was a massive piece of shit to her and constantly invalidated all of her trauma, and the less said about Elain (spl?) the better

I do like Nesta but that's purely because of metas I see about her on the dash. I don't know if you mean the whole series or just book one when you say ACOTAR? But I only read book one fully and DNF'd ACOMAF and as far as I read, Nesta was barely there on the page. But I actually did like her after Feyre returned and we find out that Tamlin was unable to glamour Nesta and the poor thing was confused the whole time. I am personally not a fan of Elain. SJM seems to infantilize her and that irritates me and I see metas about her and I still don't see her having a personality except being uwu. I personally think it would have made more sense if Feyre was the middle child and Elain the youngest. Feyre going out of her way to make herself be useful and Elain being the baby would have worked that way. Although in retrospect, Feyre is a big baby too lol.

[lunarriviera]

9 people you want to know better!

Thanks for the tag @lonelylonelyghost 😚

Three ships: oh god anyone who knows me already know this but: zhoudu (mo du/justice in the dark), chengyi (under the skin) and pingxie (dmbj), i feel so obvious and simplistic and tacky—

First ship: this will tell you how old i am, but batman/catwoman from the 1966 series; also robin hood/maid marian from the 1973 disney movie, which was the first movie i ever saw. later and for most of my life it was kirk and spock, even though i didn't know what that meant.

Last song: all weekend i was hung up on "emily i'm sorry" by boygenius but also i had a dive back into "suburban legends" (from 1989) and billie eilish: "the greatest," "skinny," and most of all: "chihiro" with which i'm obsessed, i want to make a hundred edits with it. (i want to make edits all the time but it's just so time consuming...)

Last movie: probably one i taught in the spring semester? we ended with everything everywhere all at once, which the students loved. i haven't really watched movies this summer. but my bff and i are going to see shichinen no samurai on a big screen at the art museum this weekend and I AM BESIDE MYSELF WITH EXCITEMENT.

Currently reading: ten danmei at once (case file compendium and little mushroom, also qjj and spl and erha as each book comes out) but then i got distracted by an accidental mo du reread, waylaid when i went into the pdf just to search for a quote and whoops now it's three days later and i'm nearly finished with book 4, and also wrote a ten-page meta last night that i don't know what to do with? how did this happen to me? why does this novel GET TO ME?

Currently watching: i stalled out like halfway through kinnporsche for no clear reason other than that they're happy and it's kind of a nice place to stop? because i'm pretty sure all holy hell is about to break loose and the thai mob is going to try to crush their young love. but look, here they are being happy boyfriends! a nice place to end it.

idk i keep bouncing off dramas but i really want to watch killer and healer, the chinese hikaru no go, and finish the spirealm. my MDL watchlist literally has 70 things on it, it's so tragic T_T

Currently eating: a square of dark chocolate with iced coffee, but i should go make lunch, i just don't want to cook anything, it's hot

Currently craving: another extra month before the fall semester starts in two weeks and i have to teach. can i just have july back pls

tagging: @omaenanimonoda @programmedradly @lquacker @elenothar @theredshoes @aadikah @catholicjigglypuff @emmajanereading @tehfanglyfish and anyone else who likes <3

[danhoemei]

End-year update because I can

Qi ye - ✅✅ TWO times (+ the fic is written)

Reread tyk - 📙 partly (+ read many metas)

Liu yao - ✅️

Zhenhun - ✅

Qian qiu - ✅️

Prisoner - 📙 put on hold

Tma - ❌ after i finish uni

Poetry - ✅

Thesis - ✅✅✅✅✅😩 read so much...

Additionally

The minds of Billy Milligan ✅

Solving Identity Management in Modern Applications: Demystifying OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, and SAML 2.0 ✅

Dracula daily 📙 (partly)

Peerless ✅

19 days ✅ (reread from beginning again <3)

Little mushroom ✅️

-------------

Plans for 2023

Devil venerable also wants to know (ch80 + e2) ✅ ...i read it the 1st week

The governor is ill (ch134) ✅️

Golden Stage/Terrace (ch80 + e5) ✅️

Copper Coins (ch102 + e3) ✅️

Qqgk / global examination (ch166 + e1)

Jin Se (ch79 + e1) ✅️

Tai sui (ch247 + e7)

Tma (200 eps ~20-30 mins each)

Space for the thesis :') ✅️✅️✅️✅️✅️✅️✅️

To consider

2ha (ch311 + e39)

fgep (ch168 + e15)

Omniscient reader's viewpoint (ch516 + e35 💀)

The Disabled Tyrant’s Pet Palm Fish [Transmigration] (ch156)

reread tyk?? finally continue my fics??? help :')

spl (ch128 + e15) but need to wait for the official tls...

Additional books

Welcome to night vale: a novel ✅️

It devours! ✅️

The faceless old woman who secretly lives in your home ✅️

Several technical books ✅️✅️✅️📖

9 books I intend to read in 2022

Tagged by @verycharismaticdragon thanks 💚

Keep reading

[randomingoftherandomness]

The Bone of Impurity

So with the upcoming Winner is King, my brain got whirling with the thought of The Bone of Impurity which is arguably one of the main plot points of the novel and I thought I would do a bit of a meta for it? It is definitely something I hope they do not dilute for the Live Action adaptation but even if they did touch upon 1% of the shit that goes on into making a Bone of Impurity, it's still pretty Dead Dove Don't Eat. So I thought I would preempt it by actually putting down a primer on the Bone of Impurity.

I did not read the novel in Chinese and read it in English, so some of the more subtle themes present in the original work will have been missed by me. If anyone who has read the Sha Po Lang novel as it was written by Priest, do let me know if I have made any mistakes on any of the below ( •̀ᄇ• ́)ﻭ✧

Fair warning, there's some pretty Nightmare Fuel inducing shit, so I'll be keeping things under a read more in case people get squicked by this lol I'm also basing my references around the translation that Northwest Flower did because that is the one I read.

Just a basic background on The Bone of Impurity:

It is essentially a curse unique to the Northern Man people who utilise it in moments where someone's country is broken and nothing remains but revenge. To attain that, they make a sacrifice to the 'evil' gods of their beliefs

It is a cruel and horrible affliction to put on the person, but the return for it is that the person who becomes a Bone of Impurity gains the strength, intelligence, foresight and abilities of two persons

Whoever becomes a Bone of Impurity is someone who is single-mindedly ruthless and bloodthirsty when pressed towards a goal; they will attain power and their near supernatural abilities will make them unstoppable in achieving their goals

They will also gain a sort of existence that is neither alive nor dead. Sort of a zombie-like living. They also don't live very long

For all this super abilities, the flip side for anyone living with the Bone of Impurity is that they will be constantly highly suspicious and paranoid of everyone and everything; they will be slowly driven mad by the visceral hallucinations that will leave them incapable of knowing what is real and what is fake (Volume 1, Chapter 26; Volume 3, Chapter 70)

A Bone of Impurity attack comes about when the afflicted experiences heightened emotions or moments of extreme stress (I seriously cannot list out all the times it popped up in the novel because we would be here quite long lol)

It manifests in dual pupils being observed in their blood-hued eyes, hypersensitivity of the senses, their body burning up, almost sleep paralysis levels of body-lockedness and they will experience extreme pain with the bouts of attacks lasting hours at a time (Volume 2, Chapter 50 & 51)

The method of 'refining' a Bone of Impurity is...

Basically taking two babies and putting them in a dark place with no air, no water, no food. One of the babies will survive while the other one dies (Volume 3, Chapter 70)

I'm not quite certain if they have to be blood related or not, but the examples given in the book all indicate that if they have a strong connection to each other, then it would be better and that the Bone of Impurity would better take

The dead baby is then... 'refined' with the arcane arts and medicines of the Northern Man Goddesses and fed to the surviving baby (re:baby cannibalism)

I told you it wasn't pretty...

In the novel, Chang Geng is the Bone of Impurity made by Hu Ge Er, his aunt, in order to bring about chaos and tumult to Great Liang that had subjugated her people. Chang Geng is repeatedly described to have almost scary levels of intelligence and foresight, to the point where some of the characters actually wonder if he is omnipotent.

Chang Geng is also revealed to have obtained characteristics of his cousin

One of the ways Shen Yi and Gu Yun identified Chang Geng as the missing Fourth Prince is the congenital defect of a toe - which, lol, the worlds where DNA testing did not exist - and Chang Geng insists that his toe deformity was caused Hu Ge Er (Chapter 8)

It is later revealed that this was one of the further side-effects of the Bone of Impurity where the afflicted would reflect characteristics of the 'devoured' counterpart (Extra: Souls returned home)

Now on to the meta bit:

Chang Geng has a pretty much single focus sexuality on Gu Yun; even when he wasn't clear on what the nature of those feelings were, he was already dedicated to the man, already thinking up ways of how he can support him in the future

Even when he was heartbroken by the reveal of who 'Shen Shiliu' was and the lies and the subterfuge that had flowed between them, just with an apology and assurance from Gu Yun, Chang Geng was already ready to forgive him

Now, we know that Hu Ge Er said with her dying breath that the Bone of Impurity will cause him to lose his mind and will cause the death of everyone he will ever love. I think she said this because she has already detected the level of dedication he has built for Gu Yun and also because she is a horrible person and wanted one last pot shot at tormenting Chang Geng

Through all his Bone of Impurity attacks, Chang Geng has one consistent thing that he fears the most above everything else - Gu Yun abandoning him, rejecting him, leaving him in any way

My thought is simple; what makes him different from the other Bone of Impurities that were explicitly said and described in the novel? One person. Gu Yun.

Had Gu Yun not saved him from the wolves outside of Yanhui Town, he would have definitely died right there and then being killed by the Northern Man wolves. I truly believed that at that time, Chang Geng really ran out there to die. With just the scant descriptions of what Hu Ge Er did to him throughout his childhood, even the brief glimpses into her horrible abuse, is enough to cement that he was very likely unable to handle everything anymore.

If Gu Yun had not shown up and took on the mantle of Chang Geng's Yi Fu - as clumsy and as emotionally stunted as he was to deal with a dependent - was kind to him without any sort of condition attached to it, if Gu Yun had not taken that spot in Chang Geng's heart and mind as a moral compass, guiding his path to tempering the more extreme effects of the Bone of Impurity, I have no doubt that Chang Geng would have destroyed Great Liang before he even turned 21.

Because of Gu Yun, Chang Geng plotted the way to peace for Great Liang; divesting of weak emperors and ushering in a new age of stability and peace, building a foundation for his nephew to take over and build upon. All because he knew that Gu Yun loved his country, loved the people, has broken his back time and time again to toil for peace and defend its borders.

In the novel, they even explicitly say that when Gu Yun is out doing routine inspections of the borders and stuff, Chang Geng essentially shuts down; starts living like a monk and a life without colour until Gu Yun comes back to him (I don't know which extra or chapter this is in because this post has been waaaayyyy too long at this point)

With Gu Yun, especially when he learns that his supposedly unrequited and unfilial feelings were not as unrequited as they seem, he found a path to a future where he can strive to live without pain and without worry. With Gu Yun, he could focus all of the ruthlessness and all the bloodlust and the brilliance and the horrors and make it into a fulfilment of Gu Yun's dream; to be able to walk away from the battlefield and live out the rest of his days in peace and leisure.

Think about it, especially if you have read the novel, how scary can Chang Geng get when Gu Yun isn't around to temper him?

Basically, yes, I am definitely saying that Chang Geng and Gu Yun doing the horizontal dance with no pants resulted in peace for the country lol

[Bit of Trivia] Chang Geng's name is also significant because, according to Hu Ge Er, it is the name of the 'Bone of Impurity' in the Chinese dialect (Chapter 6)

[wangjiclub]

it’s sad to see that when gu yun finally considers the marquis manor as his home - because chang geng is there and he loves this child so much -, for chang geng the place feels like a prison. 

since he was little gu yun went to the battlefield surrounded by weapons, sand, and blood. also, his father didn’t want him to be a “useless child”, he was a gu, he had to grow to be a strong man regardless of his condition. those strict rules imposed by the former marquis of order made gu yun grow without feeling that the manor was his home because there was no comfort there, much less in the northwest.

chang geng is not that different from gu yun. he spent his whole childhood trying not to die because his “mother” hated him for some reason he couldn’t fully understand. besides, the person he cared about the most lied to him, and after gu yun received the order to be chang geng’s yifu there were just so many conflicts between them. more than that, chang geng was cursed. the bone of impurity was eating him alive and he felt that he couldn’t trust anyone, including himself. the only thing that kept him minimally stable was his profound love for gu yun, but even that became a problem when he kept realizing they were so far away from one another. 

but the thing is, since the beginning, they loved each other so much. for gu yun it was a relief to finally have someone that deeply cared about him and who showed affection. but chang gen was desperate. he didn’t love gu yun how he “should” and adding the bone of impurity on the equation we can understand it was a hard time for him.

[flowerbutton]

so i have feelings about c!philza and you’re all gonna have to listen to them

it’s very clear that phil blames l’manberg / the concept of governments for wilbur’s death. doomsday is pretty much the only evidence needed for that

“since i was forced to kill my son!”

that’s the big line, right? but - b u t - who forced phil to do that?

tubbo was leader of l’manberg at the time of its destruction, was fighting technoblade (he dies by techno’s hand just after phil logs on) - there’s no government there decreeing that the way to deal with wilbur soot is to kill him. the government is made of children who have followed wilbur intently for weeks, and who just won their country back - why would they even think of killing wilbur as a reasonable ‘punishment’ to destroying l’manberg?

in fact, we get a good idea that tubbo wouldn’t have, in particular from the case of ranboo’s deception - it would be too similar to what schlatt would have done, and tubbo isn’t schlatt. tommy - we may be more on the fence for, but tommy isn’t part of the government at this point as far as i can remember? and tommy also just offered wilbur the position of president-elect, so we can sort of guess tommy is not really in the hate-wilbur headspace during these events.

so the government itself didn’t force phil’s hand. maybe - maybe the abstract concept of governments, right? after all, wilbur’s just openly - even if phil isn’t around to hear it - agreed that anarchy is the way forward; surely the concept of governments is really the thing to blame here?

except - uh - how? because wilbur said he agreed with anarchy but - as the president-elect, thanks to tommy, he could have said, sure, and dissolved the l’manberg government. he didn’t need to pass the presidency onto tubbo. so - combined with what we know about wilbur from his tommy conversation in The Void - we can tell wilbur doesn’t agree with anarchy, he just didn’t think him being in government would be good. that and, y’know, he’s got a nation to explode; but we can see from this that, by this point, wilbur’s paranoia has gotten the best of him. his feelings of self-loathing and self-hatred have festered and they’re going to go out with a bang.

so who did force phil’s hand? who forced phil to kill wilbur?

well, i think we can tell from phil’s problem solving during the rest of his time on the smp, specifically doomsday / the visit to snowchester / his general response to things going on in the server.

phil’s first reaction to a problem is violence or the threat of violence. doomsday, for example, if you break it down is:

problem: techno was almost killed by l’manberg and tommy defected to them

solution: revenge with dream

when in reality, the situation is more complex, obviously. besides, phil’s reasoning for doomsday wasn’t “technoblade wasn’t given a fair trial / i was put under house arrest for aiding a ‘retired’ terrorist / tommy defected back to l’manberg and should be punished for it”. his reasoning, as he says pretty clearly, is in essence, revenge for the death of wilbur. he believes l’manberg killed wilbur, that the people and the buildings and the government are responsible for wilbur’s death.

he’s not wrong; l’manberg drove wilbur to the edge. but l’manberg didn’t hold the sword and l’manberg didn’t swing it. tubbo wasn’t forcing phil’s hand. the market didn’t demand phil do it.

phil’s first reaction to a problem is violence or the threat of violence. the syndicate, his visit to snowchester; these were intimidation tactics, a violent threat to deter what he feels is the cause of his son’s death. governments. politics.

but snowchester has nukes because of what he did. he is the cause of more potential violence there, causing the same fear and paranoia that wilbur succumbed to in his final days. tubbo has jack manifold (does he still?) and foolish (but they aren’t close) and ranboo (who has his own secrets) just as wilbur had tommy (did he still?) and tubbo (but they aren’t close; can’t trust a spy, even your own) and technoblade (who has his own secrets). phil’s instigating a similar environment of terror that wilbur created for tommy, that schlatt created for l’manberg; and phil isn’t a government. phil’s just violent.

phil’s first reaction to a problem is violence or the threat of violence

problem: wilbur blew up l’manberg, blew up his home, is begging for phil to kill him, to end it all

problem: wilbur isn’t the same wilbur phil remembers as his son, is tortured and pained and hurt

problem: wilbur needs help that phil hasn’t got the ability to provide at that moment in time

solution: kill wilbur.

the only one who forced phil’s hand is his own, and his attempts to place the blame on tubbo / l’manberg / tommy / governments is a diversion tactic so a grieving father doesn’t have to face the reality of what he did. he can’t blame himself because as soon as phil blames himself, he realises what is wrong with his response to situations. it requires in-depth personal analysis, and phil is still grieving. his attempts to get wilbur back are his attempts to remedy his mistake, to undo his first reaction, because intrinsically, he knows it wasn’t the right choice. also, y’know, he loves his son, wants wilbur back, yada yada, but wilbur is dead. ghostbur is happy being dead, he’s only unhappy after doomsday. he only asks to be brought back after phil’s violence kills friend.

tl;dr: c!phil’s first reaction is violence and that’s something he’s going to have to confront in order to grow as a character. the only thing that killed wilbur, in the end, was phil’s sword in phil’s hand - no governments and no tubbo / tommy / etc.

/rp, obvs

[priest-novels]

Blog for Priest novel content only (plus some AD/manhua/donghua because they tend to be close to the original material)

Main resources

Priest’s carrd

great tls masterpost by verycharismaticdragon, with relationships between novels and translation status, listed chronologically

Novels by tags

tyk (Tian Ya Ke | Faraway Wanderers)

qi ye (Lord Seventh)

spl (Sha Po Lang | Northwest Flower)

liu yao (Liu Yao: The Revitalization of Fuyao Sect)

modu (Silent Reading)

can ci pin (The Defective)

shbl (Shan He Biao Li - Of Mountains And Rivers)

youyi (Itinerant Doctor)

the ultimate blue seal (Zhong Ji Lan Yin) 

guardian (Zhen Hun)

lhjc (Lie Huo Jiao Chou | Drowning Sorrows in Raging Fire)

bestial blade (Shou Cong Zhi Dao)

guomen (Through The Strait Gates)

huai dao (The Way of the Evil)

tai sui

jin se

General tags

art

meta

fanfics

stuff (shitposts etc.)

other authors (mostly crossovers or comparisons)

lemon (not sfw stuff)

”novel tag + general tag” for novel-specific meta or fanfics, e.g. tyk meta.

Disclaimers

There might appear some ambiguously drama content, possible reasons are: something fits both interpretations, it’s a comparison between novel and drama, maybe just a mistake, or other.

I’m always open to suggestions and feedback!

[wanningcore]

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply! *-* This is great! 🥰💜

Does anyone know what CG says here in Chinese? It's from chapter 42.

I'm curious to know if it uses a character that implies ShenYi's name/given name/military status or maybe even the fact he was first place in the imperial exams?

I know ShenYi is exceptionally intelligent and he would get it no matter what; I on the other hand wish to understand IF indeed there is a correlation or not.

[foxghost]

on the topic of names, may I ask what the names for emperor yuan he, emperor long an, and emperor tai shi mean? are they in any way significant to the characters themselves? or their aims/principles as rulers? sorry I’m bothering you with this but your meta about names for other priest novels was stunning in every sense of the word and I want to know your thoughts in SPL names so much if you have the time and it’s not putting too much work onto you! either way thank you so much.

Era names, or reign names, were usually named for the political climate at the time. It’s also not set in stone and some emperors had more than one era name.

All 3 era names in Sha Po Lang were borrowed right out of history. :3

Yuanhe means “the greatest peace”, and it was also the era name of the Emperor Xianzong of Tang. You can sort of read the fictional Liang dynasty like a Tang extension — a lot of these imperial dramas are based on Tang because Tang / Song / Ming were recent and Han-led (well, in Tang I guess HALF Han led) dynasties that were pretty long and relatively peaceful.

Long'an = prosperous peace

Taishi = beginning (it's the same word used for the primordial formlessness that existed before the beginning of the world)

PS Don't worry, you're not bothering me at all =3= And thank you for loving the naming meta <3

[stalefruits]

i wanna play spl*toon with levi but just for the experience. i think that he would be such an insufferable tryhard. he would get mad if our league power dipped below 2000. he sees me pick trislosher and he scoffs at me for choosing such a low effort weapon that hasn’t been in the meta for literal years, even though he’s using the kensa pro with a full mpu build.

i would activate a baller right next to him and let an enemy throw a bomb at me

[procrastynol]

I wasn’t tagged, but I’ll take the invitation from @theghostcaptain and just hop on the train to answer some questions about my writing. So, I guess thanks are in order? 😉❤️

AO3: @Procrastynol

Fandoms

Currently I’m trapped in the MDZS hell (focusing on songxiao, but pretty much everything else is also go, wangxian, 3zun, anything) with a side of SVSSS and FF7 (mainly tsengru and/or turks centric). I’m still working my way through the huge load of danmei, so maybe things like TGCF, 2HA or SPL will soon join the list.

Other things I can’t seem to let go of include FF15, Mass Effect, Dragon Age and a hint of Marvel and Star Wars. If you want to go really far back, you can add LotR and Hobbit to the pile.

Where You Post

You can find all of my fics on AO3 @Procrastynol

​I rarely use tumblr anymore, mostly for keeping all the links to my fics organised in one place - and to read meta that will shred my poor heart. My main social media is Twitter, so if you want to yell at me, please go over there and feel free to do so.

Most Popular Oneshot

Conflict of Interest (FF7, tsengru, domestic fluff and dogs)

I started this one on a whim in August 2020 because A) the hype for FF7 Remake was real and B) plague times, yay! It got me back into writing fanfiction after not having done so for several years, and I’m still surprised how positively it has been received among the people who read FF7 fanfictions. A follow-up is currently in its early drafting state.

Most Popular Multichap

None (so far). But I have something brewing for my songxiao gang, so I’ll just be a little tease and tell you to stay tuned for more until Summer 2021. 😉

Favourite Story You’ve Written So Far

Untethered (MDZS, songxiao, character study xxc)

That is my November/December/Christmas-procrastination baby, which started out as a midnight word vomit I wrote in a desperate attempt to find sleep. It only grew from there, and it has become my first deep dive into the character of Xiao Xingchen and the canon setting of MDZS. To this day, it just blows me away how well this story is received despite its length and the rather limited songxiao bubble. I’m really proud of what I did here, and it has been a while since I could say that about anything I have written.

Fic You Were Nervous to Post

Frostbloom Flowers (MDZS, modern songxiao, flowershop AU)

This was my absolute first fic for the fandom, and my second fic in total after the unexpected “success” of Conflict of Interest. I was so scared to get the characters or the setting wrong, even more so since this was a prompt fill for the songxiao Secret Santa event. It has done surprisingly well, so well actually, that I have turned this into a series that I will continue this February.

How You Choose Your Titles

They either come to me or the don’t. Really, there is almost nothing in between. Sometimes a poem, a line, a lyric, an image, SOMETHING sparks my imagination and the title is the first thing I have.

If it is the other way around, the idea usually revolves around a certain dialogue, scene, setting, etc. that I want to explore and I really struggle finding a title for it once the fic is finished. There are rare instances where a title comes to me simply while working on a fic, but mostly it’s hit or miss. If it is the latter, I usually sit in my room and decide to name stories after the first thing my eyes land on 5 minutes before posting them. 😅

Do You Outline

90% of times I do. Especially larger works or multichaps need an outline. I sometimes try to write non-chronologically, and I have a really hard time doing it, so the outline becomes my LIFELINE. It allows me to skip over parts I find hard and just put the famous [get there] in certain spaces, knowing I can come back later to flesh them out because the outline guides through this process.

For oneshots, I sometimes freestyle, but even then I usually write down a few lines for the scenes/dialogues I really want to include and put them in the corresponding order, so I have a goal to work towards to and don’t start meandering around.

I hate doing them, though, even though I largely depend on outlines.

Complete

All of my fics are complete at the moment, but I have two on-going series that I’m feeding with new entries in irregular intervals.

In Progress

I have some WIPS, but none of them are in the process of being published right now. But there are a few things I’m working on, so follow me to the next paragraph if you want more details on that. 😁

Coming Soon / Not Yet Started

Curiosity killed the Cat [WT] - which is a MDZS multichapter fic I have started working on last December. I really wanted to try writing a case fic for once, something more than just drama and romance (although drama and romance will still be very much part of this). Plotting a murder mystery is really new to me and sometimes exhausting, but so far I’m having a lot of fun doing it. I don’t want to spoil the details, but it will definitely focus on pre-canon songxiao and a mysterious haunting/murder they encounter during their travels.

Another thing would be the continuation of the Egret Flower series. Currently I’m finalising the second part, writing on part three and four has already begun. Part two will feature songxiao going on the date that has been teased in the first part, Frostbloom Flowers, and part three is currently giving me a hard time because I decided to include some wangxian - we’ll see how it goes.

I’m also trying to feed the Shinra fandom a bit, since it got me back into writing literally days before I got swept away by MDZS and danmei hell. But tsengru still holds a place in my heart, has done so for years, and so Conflict of Interest has now also been turned into a series, It’s me or the Dog, and the second part for this series is also outlined already and just waiting for me to flesh it out.

Upcoming Work You’re Most Excited About

Curiosity killed the Cat [WT], definitely. I have only ever finished one other multichap in my life, and I plan to complete this one before I start posting it, to feed my lovely songxiaoists in regular intervals (and to make sure this entire case fic works and does not go up in smoke halfway down). But since this involves so many new things for me at the same time, I’m equally excited and anxious to finish it and start posting it.

Tagging

Since I’m pretty much inactive on this platform I find it a bit hard to tag someone. I think @wangji-string might have something to offer, at least if they haven’t participated already (although if you don’t feel like doing this, please feel free to ignore me). I’ll just leave it open to the rest of you whoever read this and may find it interesting - if you want to do this, please, feel free to do it! 😉

[smitening]

Developer Update - Freya

In the November SMITE Update, we will be doing something never before seen in SMITE: We will be reverting the design changes that reworked Freya’s abilities.

For those who aren’t interested in reading a lengthy post, here is a summary:

Freya’s Passive, Pulse, and Irradiate abilities are being reverted to the functionality they had before the 5.13 rework.

Balance numbers across her kit will be adjusted based on historical data for her most balanced states.

The rework was unsuccessful for multiple reasons, which is clearly visible in both data and player feedback. At this moment, her play count and win rate are both the lowest in the game across all modes and skill levels.

We strongly feel that Freya was in a better position before the rework.

We learned a lot from this process and do have ideas for how Freya could be changed in even more ways to make her “healthier” for the game, but we believe these strategies have more downside than upside.

We are aware that the revert coincides with the launch of a Freya Skin. We hope that does not dominate the discussion. This change is being done purely for gameplay reasons because we feel like we have failed Freya players by effectively removing her from the game. We wanted this to be remedied as soon as possible and the HRX Update was the soonest we could achieve it. This update falls perfectly between production finishing on Yemoja and the full ramp up on other new gods and Season 7, while also not being part of the Update that the World Championships will be played on.

Our primary goal for this change is to bring back a character that had a dedicated audience. We don’t expect these changes to adjust her power level or popularity by very much, but she should certainly be better than dead last. We hope that people who used to be Freya mains will be excited to hear that we are giving them back a character they had loved and lost.

We want to be as transparent and flexible as possible as we receive feedback about this design choice to make sure we can arrive at something we are all happy with.

The primary problem with the rework, as shown by data and player feedback, is that her skill variance did not decrease. Freya was top pick/ban in pro league throughout a series of potent nerfs. By the time she was balanced in SPL, the rest of the player base had long since stopped playing her due to nerfs.

Her stats were low, but quite acceptable, and there was little to no community requests to heavily change her. This will bring back some of her previous design concerns, but all-around should be a massive improvement over her current status.

The most important downside would be: If we continue to change Freya, she would no longer feel like Freya.

In Update 5.13 (July 24 2018) Freya’s Passive, Pulse, and Irradiate abilities were heavily changed with specific goals in mind. In this post we will go into detail about: the goals of those changes, what happened afterward, what we learned, what our new goals for her are, and why we are doing this revert.

Alright, let’s get into the real deep dive on this issue.

WHY DID WE DO THIS IN THE FIRST PLACE?

As Mid-Season 5 approached we took it upon ourselves to look for problems in the game and make large, meaningful changes to address those issues. We identified Freya as a potential candidate for gameplay improvements (Which sounds ridiculous now, after knowing what happened).

In update 5.11, roughly the time we were working on Mid-Season, Freya’s play count and win-rate were clearly at the bottom of the pack. 94th in play count and 91st in win-rate out of 96 gods.

The year before 5.11 had been quite a roller coaster ride for Freya. She had 2 significant spikes in her win-rate stats due to small buffs, followed by her metrics absolutely tanking after any adjustments to fix those spikes. These extreme highs and extreme lows usually identify core design problems, and her popularity never grew by very much, even when she dominated the meta. Both of those are usually clear signs that a rework is needed.  

We thought to ourselves: This goddess is a very well known Norse figure, she has a really cool and unique play style, she’s had an art update, which we know many people weren’t too happy with, but community discussions and things like cosplay and fan art have shown that people generally like her themes and visuals. So, why was she so unpopular and underperforming? Clearly this goddess has potential to have better metrics than that.

SO WHAT DID WE DECIDE TO DO ABOUT IT?

We went about discussing the pros and cons of her kit, what we thought people liked or didn’t like about it, and why her balance was so volatile (very strong or very weak depending on slight changes). Our conclusion was that the Pulse + Irradiate combo was the problem. Her Banish and Ultimate abilities had clear applications (even though they had high frustration potential, but more on that later). However, Pulse + Irradiate led to very high variance gameplay and included many unintuitive features. So in 5.13 we redesigned these abilities to be more consistent in their application and more clear in their synergy with the goal of making Freya an obvious Mage ADC.

5.13 Patch Notes

For all reworks we always try to preserve the gods’ core play style and unique mechanics. We learned long ago that community feedback will be overwhelmingly negative if we rework gods into something too different from their original gameplay goals. We felt that this rework reasonably met this goal while also creating the possibility of Freya being easier to balance or gain more devoted players. Oh, how wrong we were.

HOW DID HER PTS AND LAUNCH GO?

Immediate community feedback was surprisingly neutral or missing entirely. The r/smite thread regarding this Update Show doesn’t include much discussion about Freya at all. Ravana becoming an Assassin, the addition of the Mask Tree, Hades buffs, and Bakasura buffs were the top comments. (There is one rather obscene Freya joke completely unrelated to her balance/rework.)

5.13 Reddit Discussion

[danhoemei]

Danmei Masterpost

Novels and dramas with links and resources (main Masterpost)

I fixed the links to tags but let me know if anything doesn’t work as expected.

General tags

#resources (links to translations, info etc.)

#recommendations, #to check out, #fanfics

#meta (or #[series] meta, e.g. #tyk meta)

#them ladies

Please support the authors

Even if you don’t speak Chinese and read a fan translation you can purchase their work which brought you so much joy. English guides to do that:

Danmei Bookstore Masterpost (a great list of where to buy Chinese novels)

jjwxc: the most recent guide, another older guide, guide focused on mxtx

danmei news (mxtx official translation faq)

Official English Publishers

Seven Seas - series list (all mxtx novels, guardian, spl, 2ha, qian qiu, yuwu, bing an ben)

Peach Flower House - store (little mushroom, golden stage/terrace)

Novels

Priest

@priest-novels 

#bestial blade (Bestial Blade - novel)

#can ci pin (Imperfections - carrd / novel)

#guardian (Zhenhun - novel)

#guomen (Through The Strait Gates - novel)

#huai dao (The Way of the Evil - novel)

#you yi (You Yi | Itinerant Doctor - novel)

#jin se (novel)

#lhjc (Lie Huo Jiao Chou | Drowning Sorrows in Raging Fire - novel)

#liu yao (Liu Yao: The Revitalization of Fuyao Sect - novel)

#modu (Silent Reading - novel)

#shbl (Shan He Biao Li | Of Mountains and Rivers - novel)

#qi ye (Lord Seventh - novel)

#spl (Sha Po Lang - novel)

#tai sui (novel)

#tyk (Tian Ya Ke | Faraway Wanderers - novel / carrd; drama #shl)

#ultimate blue seal (novel)

MXTX

#mdzs (Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation - novel; drama #cql)

#svsss (Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System - novel)

#tgcf (Heaven Official’s Blessing - novel)

old blog @mxtx-novels-stuff 

Meng Xi Shi

#peerless (Wushuang - novel)

#thousand autumns (Qian Qiu - novel | donghua with subs)

Meatbun

#2ha (The Husky And His White Cat Shizun by Meatbun - novel)

#bing an ben (Case File Compendium by Meatbun - novel)

#yuwu (Yu Wu by Meatbun - novel - related to 2ha)

Other

#the bandit's strategy (novel - related to The emperor’s strategy & Everywhere in jianghu is wonderful)

#chun feng du jian (novel)

#copper coins (novel)

#devil venerable also wants to know (novel)

#dinghai fusheng records (novel)

#dmbj (Daomu Biji - novel; drama #ultimate note)

#dtppf (The Disabled Tyrant’s Pet Palm Fish [Transmigration] - novel)

#the emperor's strategy (novel - related to The bandit’s strategy & Everywhere in jianghu is wonderful)

#everywhere in jianghu is wonderful (novel - related to The bandit’s strategy & The emperor’s strategy)

#fanservice paradox (novel)

#golden stage (novel)

#jianghu name da (the jianghu is boundless)

#mist [unlimited] (novel)

#legend of exorcism (Tianbao Fuyao Lu - novel)

#little mushroom (novel)

#lmw (The Legendary Master’s Wife - novel)

#married thrice to salted fish (三嫁咸鱼 - novel)

#mistakenly saving the villain (novel)

#nan chan (novel)

#of all the transmigrations why am I a prisoner (carrd/novelupdates)

#poison of the human panacea (novel)

#qiang jin jiu (novel)

#qqgk (Quanqiu Gaokao / Global Examination - carrd / novel)

#renshe (novel)

#those years in quest of honour mine (novel)

#to rule in a turbulent world (novel)

#twwtadsl (The Wrong Way to a Demon Sect Leader - novel)

#villains white lotus halo (The Villain’s White Lotus Halo - novel)

#the wife is first (Qi Wei Shang - novel / carrd)

#you yao (Are You Okay - novel)

Webcomics

#saved the public enemy by mistake (bilibili | ?)

Dramas

#a chinese ghost story

#advance bravely (novel)

#bad buddy

#big dragon

#border town prodigal

#cherry magic

#cql (The Untamed; novel #mdzs)

#the devil judge 

#kieta hatsukoi (carrd, dm)

#kingdom 

#kinnporsche

#love between fairy and devil

#miss the dragon

#mriad (My Roommate Is a Detective)

#nirvana in fire 

#not me

#shl (Shang He Ling/Word of Honor - drama / carrd / resources; novel #tyk)

#the blooms at ruyi pavilion 

#the lost tomb

#the yin yang master dream of eternity

#tsomd (drama The Sleuth of Ming Dynasty; novel The Fourteenth Year of Chenghua)

#ultimate note (novel #dmbj)

#vincenzo

#we best love

#why r u

#zettai bl 

Them ladies (wlw)

baihenovels carrd

general tags: #them ladies, #wlw

#couple of mirrors

#fgep (Female General And Eldest Princess - novel)

#fragrance of the first flower 

#jwqs (Clear and Muddy Loss of Love - novel)

#legend of yunqian

#red devil and heroine su

[escapeintoyabooks]

Spell Crazy, Julie Leo

Read my review of Spell Crazy by Julie Leo

I received a complimentary copy of this book through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

I found the blurb of the book interesting yet was disappointed with the actual story. The idea of a witch university where they train to be a priestess of the moon was intriguing. Athena is a struggling witch, the bottom of her classes and always in trouble, she is just about…

[beneaththebrim]

can you tell me more of cheng gengs past and origin? i know hes the son of the emperor and the tribe goddess. what was the story between the cheng gengs mother and father on his conception why does his aunt want to kill him?

Right, so, it’s complicated :P

There’ll be some spoilers here. (All translations from the Northwest Flower tl)

So the bare bones of the story behind Changgeng’s birth are thus: After the campaign to subdue the Northern Tribes fourteen years, the Northern Tribes sisters were sent back to Great Liang’s court as tribute, Emperor Yuan He made the goddess a consort, and got her pregnant. After the scheming that led to the attack on the Black Iron Camp, the sisters ran away, both pregnant. The goddess died after giving birth and handed her baby (Changgeng) off to her sister (Huge’er), who was then captured by bandits, had her own baby (father unknown), and fed it to Changgeng to make him a Bone of Impurity.

So throughout the story, it’s somewhat unclear which of the babies died first and which was fed to which (ie, maybe Changgeng was actually Huge’er’s child), but it sorta stood to reason that the older, stronger baby (ie the goddess’ son) would have survived. This is confirmed in the Souls Returned Home extra, when we see through Changgeng’s memory how Huge’er was surprised and frightened at how he began to resemble her own dead child due to the Bone of Impurity process.

Now, as for Huge’er’s motivations, it can get a little confusing. From the memory in the Souls Returned Home extra, we have:

When she tried to strangle him while in tears, her bloody hands were fierce, but her eyes were tender.

But when she exhausted her tears and came back to her senses, she released her hand from Changgeng’s neck and even breathed air into his dying throat, her eyes returned to cold and cruel.

So basically, she views killing Changgeng as a kindness, because she knows he’s bound to suffer if he keeps on living. When she resolves not to kill him, it’s because her ruthless desire for revenge takes over.

Pretty counter-intuitive, right?

But as he has this memory during the last treatment to cure Bone of Impurity, Changgeng is able to understand:

Changgeng looked at her with sympathy. When he watched all of this from the perspective of an outsider, he suddenly understood the feelings of the insane woman.

When a person was full of the humiliation of one’s nation and hatred, it was easy to make extreme decisions—such as killing themselves, even going as far as killing their own children—but after all, these could be done only by a quick blade. Even if blood poured, there would come a day when things would change in the flow of time. And yet, she had insisted on choosing a path of self-torment, long and endless.

Huge’er is in constant conflict between her drive for revenge and her own humanity. She wants to use Changgeng as a tool to destroy Great Liang, but she also feels sympathy for her sister’s child, who had even begun looking like her own. Oddly enough, it’s not until she resolves on cruelty and no longer tries to kill Changgeng, that he has a little bit of relief.

[leedsomics]

Latent Interacting Variable-Effects Modeling of Gut Microbiome Multi-Omics in Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Latent Interacting Variable Effects (LIVE) modeling is a framework to integrate different types of microbiome multi-omics data by combining latent variables from single-omic models into a structured meta-model to determine discriminative, interacting multi-omics features driving disease status. We implemented and tested LIVE modeling in publicly available metagenomics and metabolomics datasets from Crohns Disease and Ulcerative Colitis patients. Here, LIVE modeling reduced the number of feature correlations from the original data set for CD and UC to tractable numbers and facilitated prioritization of biological associations between microbes, metabolites, enzymes and IBD status through the application of stringent thresholds on generated inferential statistics. We determined LIVE modeling confirmed previously reported IBD biomarkers and uncovered potentially novel disease mechanisms in IBD. LIVE modeling makes a distinct and complementary contribution to the current methods to integrate microbiome data to predict IBD status because of its flexibility to adapt to different types of microbiome multi-omics data, scalability for large and small cohort studies via reliance on latent variables and dimensionality reduction, and the intuitive interpretability of the linear meta-model integrating -omic data types. The results of LIVE modeling and the biological relationships can be represented in networks that connect local correlation structure of single omic data types with global community and omic structure in the latent variable VIP scores. This model arises as novel tool that allows researchers to be more selective about omic feature interaction without disrupting the structural correlation framework provided by sPLS-DA interaction effects modeling. It will lead to form testable hypothesis by identifying potential and unique interactions between metabolome and microbiome that must be considered for future studies. http://dlvr.it/STfS9g