#starrys asks

[starry-bi-sky]

Your fem danyal is living in my mind rent free, not going to lie! (I want to write the things my brainworms were daydreaming so freaking bad)

Your art is also very pretty (⁠◍⁠•⁠ᴗ⁠•⁠◍⁠)⁠❤

ME TOO BRO, ME TOO. She is very gorgeous to me and she’s been living in my mind rent free all week <33 good for her. So I have to inflict her on everyone else (and you should totally act on those brainworms if possible)

And thank you so much!! I’m so proud of how my art’s been improving lately, fem danyal has been my best muse for it

[potato-lord-but-not]

“Jarthur buttsex this” “Jarthur buttsex that” CAN WE HEAR IT FOR THE ART OF POTATOE’S OTHER HALF?? IT’S GORGEOUS

SO REAL !!!!!!!!!!! POTATOLORD WIFE BEAM ATTACK

[doctorsiren]

our new king 🎉

[salamispots]

squid 👀

[hexcii]

HEXCIIII WAVES AT YOU HI HI

Can I mayhaps give a little smooch to the Fae boys plspslpslspslsls 👉🏻👈🏻

Also sending you glitter, sparkles and pixie dust !! Maybe a couple desserts and plushies too while we're at it 🫣💕

HI STARRIE HI HI HI WAVES BACK WAVES BACK

Of course you can! They don’t mind :]]

But uh

I hope you can handle the consequences

Good luck 🫡🫡

And thank you very much for the gifts, I am going to eat every single one of them (including the glitter) 😌

[eggcromancer]

hi Eggie, I have a giftie for you :

Okay have a nice day 🫂💕💥✨‼️

Fish slippers! They're super cool!! Until a certain sea critter mistake it for a tasty snack, that is.... 🍽

[creatively-cosmic]

after literally years i decided to play kingdom again like two days ago . i dont care much for shadow milks design so i did my own take on it for fun :] plus vanilla but that design already existed i just updated it a bit oughnjdjnkdfsl

[occasionalsnippets]

could you imagine the chaos of FD!MC dating? like if its a civi they just break up cause batfam blackmails them, but if its a hero the amount of 'i know who you are so im not breaking up ' situations would be chaotically funny. and if MC was dating an older hero cause ✨parental issues✨ or if MC was to sit there and flirt with one of the villains as a last resort and batfam had to watch 😂 the reactions of 'hey thats my sibling/child(/stable parental figure?)'

(oops got a bit derailed)

Taglist: @dragondevinity, @lonely-star2044, @sheep-from-rad, @ilxandra, @thethingwiththefeathers, @star-wars-lycanwing-bat, @sackofsadstuff, @zonked-times, @paastaboi, @venfia, @fantasy-angelo, @linaisadream

Your PR team is very dedicated to pushing the image of "Gotham's sweetheart". You aren't willing to play as ditzy as "Brucie Wayne" but having a public persona is helpful, especially when business partners (victims) come to make deals with you expecting someone soft and kind and easy to run over but find themselves facing (Y/n) Drake. It's funny how they've all forgotten how your mother was before she died.

Regardless, to the public eye, you're gentle, caring, and most importantly, unobtainable.

...You could've done without the last part. You aren't sure who sneaked it in but you bet it was Tim, you just don't have evidence for it.

For the most part though, it's fine. You're disinterested in dating and there are way too many issues going on in your life (Batman, Robin, past life memories, etc) so it worked in your favour.

And then you hit 18 and become a prize.

"Gotham's sweetheart," people titter. "Young, impressionable, if you can get them, you can get Drake Industries."

Non-Gothamites really don't understand what they're getting into.

Despite that, you flirt. You tease. Use it as a tool though with what your PR team is doing with your reputation, it comes across more accidental than anything else. But, you don't really date. There's no one you're interested in and anyone interested in you for less than savoury matters will find themselves warded off by your brother and the other Waynes sooner or later.

As for dating heroes, the older ones are too old and the ones your age are too young. Sure the age gap with the older heroes might not matter in 10 years or so but if anything happened now, there will probably be repercussions.

[memories-remnant]

i want to ruffle up their fur and see how fluffy they can be, i think that would be sily

as rem ages they get fluffier like their mom. as a tiny pup they have very short fur, and currently they have some floofy! this is the maximum floof they can get currently if you ruffle them, it will be more in the future :3

[starry-bi-sky]

what if i wrote a “shen yuan transmigrates into a wife” oneshot but the whole premise is based on the song “gone, i’m gone” from hadestown and its overall theme is wanderlust and freedom and it starts out as Shen Yuan settling into life in the palace and trying to avoid harem drama and thinking he can just live with his head down for the rest of his new life, only to be hit with a sudden intense yearning to explore his new world the likes he’s never felt before. What if he was sickly in his last life. What if he spent his entire last life indoors. Trapped between four walls. What if love is not a gilded cage. What if he begins clawing at the walls of his enclosure, desperate to escape because he wants to live, god please let him live. He can’t do this again. What if he spent months preparing for his escape and in that same breath getting the attention of some of the other wives around him because he has changed and it makes them wary. what if he got binghe’s attention as he is wont to do. What if he left. What if Shen Yuan was born with a bottomless pit in his stomach and a gaping maw in his chest. What if he was starving. What if he was starving for the world around him. What if i wrote that. What then

[potato-lord-but-not]

tma sonas for my gf and I because ummmm uhhh

[princessmoms]

Flatteringly, this new generation is often referred to as "chaosborn". I think its rather catchy, don't you? -Discord

----------- [Patreon]

[cerusee]

I've never watched any Chinese dramas but I really enjoy your posts/gifs about them and it's got me interested in trying some! Do you have any recommendations for somebody who's totally new to them? Any tropes/background context I should be aware of? The historical/fantastical ones seem the most appealing to me.

Oooooh! My first thought on reading this ask was, “oh, I’m hardly qualified”; I’m only on my *stops to count on fingers* eighth cdrama, not counting the one episode I watched of the Wang Zhuocheng xianxia where he falls in love with a rock. (Long story.) There’s a lot of cdramas out there, and I myself have not even scratched the surface of what’s out there! That said, if you’re interested in historical/fantastical dramas, those ARE the ones I’ve been watching, so I still have some opinions despite being a total noob myself.

Do not start with The Untamed/Chen Qing Ling. Twas my first cdrama, like a lot of western fans, who were drawn to it in part because of the big censored-but-still-very-evident gay love story between the male leads, but honestly, as much fun as it is for the slash fans, it’s not a great jumping off point for either Chinese television in general, or even for its own wuxia-inspired genre setting. I say this as some who is still deep in the fandom four years later, and has immense love for the show: the first two episodes are flat-out bad, the overall pacing is bad (episodes frequently stop MIDSCENE), the worldbuilding is thin (a carryover from the novel it was based on), and without a larger context for why it’s made the way it’s made (stylistic choices, industry conventions, government censorship, genre conventions) a lot about it is confusing as hell to cdrama newbies, which is…so evident…a lot…in fandom wank I mean in the discourse about what story this story is trying to tell. Like, if you came to me and asked specifically, “I’m thinking of watching CQL. Should I watch CQL?” I would say yes, absolutely! It’s so much fun! I’m obsessed with the characters! I’ve written a lot of fanfic about the purple guy! But it’s not a good first cdrama, nor it is the best example of what the Chinese TV industry has to offer.

A MUCH better first cdrama especially if you like the historical/fantastical: The Legend of the Condor Heroes (2017), which not coincidentally was my second cdrama. It’s one of about a dozen television adaptations of the classic 1957 Chinese novel of the same name by Jin Yong, generally considered to be the inventor of the genre known as wuxia, which is a blend of history, fantasy, and martial arts. (One of the most well-known examples of wuxia in the west is Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning 2000 film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which you have probably at least heard of.)

Legend of the Condor Heroes (hereafter known as LOCH) has it all: romance, revenge, evil plots and daring deeds, people jumping off a burning mountain and being rescued by the worst CGIed eagles known to television or cinema, boat adventures, mountain adventures, grasslands adventures, a weird cult leader who lives on a spooky flower island (there will be math), murder, baby kidnapping, more murder, one guy inadvertently racking up a ridiculous number of martial arts teachers, sworn brotherhoods which invariably end with one guy stabbing the other, lots of VERY good martial arts fights, and, of course, Genghis Khan. Technically there are no magic/supernatural elements in this show—no ghosts, ghouls, magic, angels, devils, gods, etc—although the martial artists do have l33t skillz that might qualify as superhuman depending on how you slice your genre conventions, and are awfully fun to watch.

I’ve actually seen two LOCH adaptations (there was one in 2024 I liked a lot, with my favorite Guo Jing so far), but 2017 is a much better adaptation for newcomers as it tells a fuller version of the story and doesn’t skimp on or rush through or rewrite as many elements of the plot as other versions do; it’s meant to be a LOCH for people who haven’t seen half a dozen versions of LOCH already. It has a WONDERFUL cast, including my one of my favorite cdrama leading men, Chen Xingxu,* as the lead antagonist, Yang Kang, who is a trash fire of a person you just can’t root for, but he also can’t help it because he was raised by Wanyin Honglie. You can catch it on YouTube (I recall that there are couple of missing episodes from that playlist, but you can search on YT for those when you get there, to find them subtitled from other channels.)

*If you, like me, come away from LOCH 2017 with your mouth slightly ajar at how great CXX is, I have wonderful news for you! He’s been a lead in at least two other very good cdramas: the 2023 xianxia** The Starry Love, where he gets to play, like, five different characters (huge acting flex, and he’s great, although I would rush to stress I loved a ton of things about this show besides CXX himself), and the 2019 semi-historical drama Goodbye My Princess, which might actually be my favorite cdrama I have seen to date, and arguably THEE best well-made on a technical level, with phenomenal acting, a great script, and editing and directing I am constantly swooning over, but I am not entirely sure I can recommend to you unless you are a Tragedy Enjoyer.

(If you are a Tragedy Enjoyer, please stop whatever you’re doing and just start watching Goodbye My Princess right now, it is phenomenal. It is also available on YouTube. Watch the Director’s Cut, not the regular one! This is important. In its haste to get the main leads on screen together ASAP, the regular version does a Reader’s Digest version of stuff the Director’s Cut spends like five episodes carefully setting up, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense, nor does it flow well.)

**Speaking of xianxia! Xianxia is the high fantasy genre, full of magic and gods and demons and people dying and living multiple lives and whatnot. Important to note: xianxias are soap operas (complimentary). They tend to feature female protagonists, sweeping, epic romances, and put enormous emphasis on exploring the nuances of relationships and emotions. I have watched three that I loved (Love Between Fairy and Devil, The Starry Love, and Eternal Love: Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms), and while technically I could recommend all three, if you were going to watch just one, especially as a cdrama intro, I have to recommend Eternal Love, which really is the quintessential xianxia, the one all other xianxias are kind of shaping themselves around. I have watched it 1.5 times and I can say that it does not properly take off until like, episode 10, or whenever it is that the main couple finally, properly meet. IT IS WORTH THE INVESTMENT. This show made me want to spit blood. I cried multiple times watching it. It made me feel things. It has a wonderful immersive quality that’s hard to describe except to say that the entire show sort of vibrates on its own frequency. The casting is just kind of…perfect? Props to Maggie Huang for portraying the most perfectly hatable xianxia villainess of all time. Absolutely no one is doing it like Su Jin. No one should try. I believe this is available on YouTube, but after an abortive start, I realized it was on US Netflix, and watched it there.

As for tropes and background context: ehhhhhh. I mean, it’s an entire industry? I know substantially less about how it functions than I do about, like, American TV and film. I know government censorship is a not-inconsiderable factor, but I don’t know much of the nuance of how that plays out in terms of filming and airing. Tropes will vary according to subject. Idol dramas (shows built to showcase media personalities regardless of their ability to act) are a thing. Most cdrama audio is still dubbed (this one surprised me!), usually by professional voice actors and not by the original cast, for a confluence of reasons, some of which historically make sense (noisy filming lots rendering original audio useless), and some of which are really stupid (fans throwing hissy fits if lead actors don’t have the “right” kinds of voices for their characters).

Anyway! My recommendations are this: try The Legend of the Condor Heroes (2017) to start with, UNLESS you would prefer having your heart ripped out of your chest, in which case watch Goodbye My Princess (Director’s Cut, 2019), or UNLESS you love soap operas as much as I do, in which case watch Eternal Love: Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms (2017). All three are great shows, but they all hit differently/scratch a different itch.

Oh! Lastly! @dangermousie is a great source of cdrama recs. I should note she prefers dramas and tragedies and mostly does not vibe with xianxias. But she watches like eight million hours of dramas a week and reports her findings to us because she is a river to her people.

[ping-ski]

Pinggggg, may I give sugar!clip a ring pop, please? I'll get a real one later once I find a job 🥺💖 also, what kind of date ideas do you think he'd like? Oh and, I wanted to gift some sugar cookies that are ocean-themed for the kiddo, Atlas! Thanks if ya answered this in advance <3

He would HAPPILY take a ring pop from you. Eclipse finds it endearing and cute!

Yeah, he could always buy a nice ring for you two, but it lacks the sentimentality of the ring pop you gave him!

As for date ideas... Eclipse is particularly fond of botanical gardens and late night walks! City life is alright, but he's always had a love for nature and the outdoors. :)

He'd also appreciate a hole-in-the-wall cafe or restaurant. Generally, something lowkey or in stark contrast to the bright lights of the nightclub/music venue he owns! If you're broke and / or refuse to let him treat you, he's happy to just cuddle with on the couch and watch a movie or just chat. Any quality time is a good time for him <3

(Atlas says, "Thank you!" for the ocean-themed cookies :] He spent a good bit playing with them before only eating the blue cookies! He gave away the purple ones for Eclipse to "eat" <3)

[chaikachi]

could you draw emerald sustrai 🥺

i gotchu. she isn't paid enough for any of this 😔

[ir-dr]

Day 3561 - 29 October 2023

🎻

.//projectTiGER