#the lies they sold

[insanityisdivine]

16 Magazine presents: Rockline! Summer 1980

[shyflops]

[robinsceramics]

The magnificent catbeast thrives in snowy conditions; its gorilla-like arms are theorized to help compensate for the weight of its neck.

image description: a big, sturdy creature made of porcelain. It has a catlike head, thick limbs, and a leopard-like tail. The white clay is covered with a translucent pale-golden glaze that has crackled, leaving little lines all over the sculpture.

[keii4ii]

스쳐가는 이들/ The Warmth of Strangers P goes to the Country of the Morning, many years after the ending.

[self-spaghettification]

the black part on aaravos’s chest is suspiciously shaped like a certain sword

the more i look at it

the more i hmmmm

and the nova-blade is a double edged sword (albeit tapered)

btw, I also recently accidentally cut myself, so I was researching which open wounds need stitches and which don’t. It looks like how a deep open wound does—if it were a black void

images of wounds under the cut

fyi open wounds don’t heal correctly without stitches so this is very likely the physical or magical manifestation of the scar after—

“White as the star's heart it pierced, ivory draconic brought death's bite known ever forth as Novablade..

and though undying, took last breath, immortal Laurelion was no more”

if not the open wound itself, eternally unable to heal

take that as you will :)

[deiaiko]

I made KhunBam charms. It was mainly for my own fun, but there was a minimum order that I had to place, so I printed more than what I needed. So right now I have some charms lying around, and I'm thinking of selling it.

There are only 4 charms left. Printed two sides on 3mm acrylic. The quality isn't too great so I'll sell them for $4 each.

PS: those prices didn't include shipment and fees, so there might be an additional $5 more or less.

I will only receive payment via kofi donation. Please message me first before doing any payment, because I need to check if your country is available for shipping and just in case I'm out of stock. Update: it's now sold out <3

[unforth]

@esper-aroon has enabled me, so here let me scream at y'all about The Imperial Uncle.

Okay, so I recently read The Imperial Uncle (Huang Shu) by Da Feng Gua Guo from Peach Flower House and I really loved it??? It's first person pov, mlm, about the Emperor's uncle Jing Chengjun, who is mistrusted by everyone simply because of who his parents were and his position, and so he's basically given up on trying to convince people that he's actually a nice, decent person without ulterior motives. He's super trapped by his position, and there's so much he can't say and do, and he's also a hopeless romantic, like, from his own mouth all he really wants is to sleep beside and wake up next to someone who actually gives a shit about him, and even that is basically out of reach in his life. Like, the book starts with his wife (who he has never once had sex with) storming into a meeting he's having and announcing he's a cuckold and she's pregnant.

But also, this poor bastard really thinks he knows what's going on and his very smart. Very unreliable narrator. He's actually kinda a hilarious, impulsive himbo. But the TL:DR is that his loneliness and isolation and the extent to which he's politically trapped routinely lead him to make absolutely terrible decisions.

E. Danglar's translation is absolutely gorgeous, too, and... idk, if you love political plots, melodramatic idiot main characters, a dose of pining, and a slow burn that eventually pays off, come take a look??? (some people think it's a love triangle??? idk, I never really got that vibe, I never felt it was really in doubt which of the two potential dudes he'd end up with, but maybe I only feel that way because I got it right, lmao).

Anyway, I can't stop thinking about how these two idiots end up finally finding each other and getting together, and I have an entire AU in my head (a modern corporate one) and part of another (canon divergent from like a decade before the book starts), and I just want people to love this book as much as I did and scream with me about it.

[drawnfamiliarfaces]

Finja x Chase angst? 👀

oh dude their whole "relationship" is basically messed up angst lol (despite me often portraying it as cracky angst)

I mean, we have some good angst in Chase pursuing First not because he 'loves/cares about' him, but because he selfishly desires him for his power/sees him as a challenge to get into his Fallen Warriors army. And First having to be constantly on alert against Chase, especially when he behaves like a charming honorable warrior, hiding that cunning manipulative side of him behind amused 'harmless' smiles. I would imagine its hard for First to not start to care about Chase (he can be very charming ;) ) to some degree, so there is like this delicious angst in starting to care about someone with whom morally you would never agree with. (very Prof. X vs Magneto vibe imho)

(this also could lead to some interesting spin-off angst opportunity about First being in the Fallen Warriors Army and just...existing in this weird limbo of being a target of Chase's favorable attention, but still essentially being a servant to his Master so thus really unable to trully care about/love this evil man but he still kinda cares after all these years and, like ooooooh baby thats some scrumptious angst possibility)

Or we can have some angst in form of First, being technically 'moved on'/left only in spirit in this world and Chase, still obsessing over him all these centuries, not even realizing that he is basically pining at this point. Showing up to bother current Ninjas, Ninjanomicon and Spirit of First at every opportunity, but not being able to actually be (in any capacity) with First, besides those very brief reunions. And First, throughout the years, while still being very annoyed about Chase's continuoes presence, also feels... incredibly saddened about this man to some degree. But he still can not falter, for his duty and successors still need him and they take priority, so this weird relationship just continues on.

And like OOOOH BABIES this is just scratching the surface of any possible angst, but these are the ones that are currently circling in my mind (i want to make some comics with these scenarious) so yeah! angst! ;D

[raaorqtpbpdy]

Okay just watched the first five episode of Gen V and I just wanna say that in addition to Jordan being an amazing character, the actors who play them are phenomenal. There was not a single moment where I didn’t buy that they were the same person. Fucking exceptional there. A++

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

LOOK AT THE BOI!!!! THEY JUST ANNOUNCED IT!!!

I KNOWWWWWWW HE'S SO CUTE I NEED HIM IN MY HOUSE. BITING HIM BITING HIM BITING HIM

[jamessunderlandgf]

✦ 'EVERY OC LIST GOT THE'— TAG GAME

tagged by @bloodskinandteeth 💛 + @red-nightskies 🖤

pick an image of one of your ocs that best fits each category, you can even have multiple characters on one category, or even repeat a character for multiple categories. here is a link to the blank template.

from top to bottom, left to right—

elvira | mildred | avalon

andie | odette | faustina

nicole | mags | oslo

lottie | sibyl | tai

tagging— @confidentandgood 🫶🏻 @kanos 🫶🏻 @florbelles 🫶🏻 @unholymilf 🫶🏻 @statichvm 🫶🏻

@rosayoro 🍾 @elvves 🍾 @bearsgrove 🍾 @pitchmoss @teamhawkeye 🍾

@kyberinfinitygems 💛 @jendoe 💛 @leviiackrman 💛 @socially-awkward-skeleton 💛 @thedeadthree 💛

@jackiesarch 🍷 @pinkfey 🍷 @shellibisshe 🍷 @scalpelsister 🍷 @ghostfvcker

@a-treides 💎 @elgaravel 💎 @bloodofvalyria 💎 @moonflowcr 💎 @firstaidspray 💎

@tacticalhimbo ☀️ @loriane-elmuerto ☀️ @imogenkol ☀️ @bigbywlf ☀️ @oc-musings ☀️

and you!

[tootsquatch]

🏠📦

a new beginning starts now..

[rosegoldorigins]

Lego Monkie Kid Season 5

(Rant incoming... and guess who it is?

Li Jing. Of course it is)

______

Nezha: Dad these three are not-

Li Jing: Control yourself

Control yourself?!?!? Bro what?!?!

He didn’t say “silence” he said control yourself??!?!

As in “You know better than this”, “You are acting out”, “Don’t let you emotions/morals overcome you”

Nezha doesn’t need to “control himself” He doesn’t need to be a perfect neutral being.

He’s always strived to protect, guard and do the right thing. He meditates and spends years doing his duty.

The threat of his father's disappointment was always whether or not he could "control himself”?!?!

Whether he could look good (like in front of the underworld judges) and swallow his own desires in order to fulfil his duty?

His dad is giving I know this feels wrong and harsh but you need to do hard things for the greater good.

"Control yourself” means get it together this needs to happen (chaining Wukong).

I can’t imagine the effect those words would have on Nezha as he grew up.

(Parents don’t care about age they will put their principles and ideals on a three year old.)

Imagine child Nezha acting as children do and his father saying “control yourself”.

The shame of being a normal kid and then being called “undignified” by your father.

How much was Nezha denied in his self expression?

How often did he need to think about his image and how others would perceive him because his dad said it was more important than anything else?

Li Jing put his job above his son.

“Control yourself” I will not have an unruly child.

“Control yourself” Do not ruin my image.

[lovexmemonster]

Mairuma drawings on animal jam I never posted 💥

[kingsandbastardz]

So this is a thing that’s been bouncing around in my head for awhile, but I hadn’t really had a good starting point for it because it was just a billion fragmented pieces. I kinda have to write it now, though bc I think it’s giving me mental constipation and actively preventing me from writing other things. Anyway, forgive me for being long-winded.

---

Regardless of how you see the ending – whether you think he reached enlightenment/ascended, or he died, or he lived  -- llh’s story is about escaping the narrative.

FDB meanwhile is about being a catalyst of change or transformation, whether it is for his own life or llh’s. He exists in a shifting narrative space that's difficult to define and creates narrative movement from that.

DFS… well. He's still trapped.

First, what exactly is ‘the narrative’ I’m talking about here? It’s a thought or concept, it’s alive yet also not. It’s essentially the words of a story strung together and told and retold, adjusting to the whims of the storyteller and the desires of the people hearing it. It lives and changes organically based on call, response and group consensus.

It’s a crowd of people sitting around an old man in one town, nodding along and yelling when they don’t like the direction a story is going – and then in the next town, that same story teller making adjustments so he gets more tips that evening. It’s people in other towns asking repeatedly for the same story over and over because they like that one hero and each time, the storyteller obliges them, with small details being added or falling off. It’s the collected gossip that morphs as it moves like lightning through an entire city. It’s the records found in a courts’ archives where the ink has become smeared and illegible because a scribe dropped it in a puddle and the next scribe did his best to write in the margins what he thinks it said. Probably.

It is the men at the beginning and end of MLC telling the crowd about Li Xiangyi’s great feats while dressed in white, and heroically battling evil.

This changing, amorphous thing is The Narrative. Now, see the entirety of MLC as such a story—this narrative being told by all these different voices to the audience (us).

So LLH escapes it. FDB defies it and changes it and refuses to live by it.

DFS is… he is part of it. If he ever cared about what anyone says about him, dfs has long since given up on changing the narrative. He’s learned to accept it because it literally doesn’t matter what he says or  does – ppl will always spin it to suit the needs of the story, which will then get passed around as fact. So he lives within this framework of societal expectation for the villainous. He weaponizes it to use it to his advantage. And, ultimately, he’s trapped by it.

Imagine a yin yang symbol. Imagine llh standing on one dot with dfs standing on another. Imagine the yin yang spinning as they both walk forward. They’re interlinked, never to be separated. They’re mirrors, but at the same time always moving in opposite directions of each other as the symbol spins. This is the position I image DFS being when in relation to llh.

Narratively, DFS both parallels and moves in opposite directions to llh.

Mirrored parallels, let’s go with that - Where they are the same but on opposite ends of it:

Visually dark vs light in clothing etc, even their masks are black vs silver and on opposite sides of their faces

Skills and energy-wise: both utilize pure yang energies but fast and overwhelming vs slow and steady

Positioned as great rivals/oppositional forces of equal skill

He’s just as trapped by the narrative as LXY but as the demon lord instead of the hero

Repeatedly placed on opposite sides of the screen as a visual cue

Dfs = chaos, llh = agent of order

Llh femme presenting for a very heteronormative appearing sect and storyline while dfs is extremely masculine/heteronormative appearing, but at the helm of a sect that is full of fringe elements and is potentially queer

regarding personal health - llh uses risk percentage as an excuse to not try to heal himself – meanwhile dfs will take any risk to heal himself even if it means he dies

Dfs rescued himself as a child while llh is picked up and nurtured by others

Dfs is a self-taught genius while llh is a trained genius

Dfs survives so hard he doesn’t understand what it means to want to die, llh wants to disappear so badly that he doesn’t understand what it means to desire to live

Oh right, and the thing I didn’t mention before. Not only does DFS live in the narrative. DFS is narratively bound to llh. He is not and was never independent of llh. Not due to lack of skill or for want of trying, dfs is narratively incapable of succeeding at his greatest goals without llh’s help – or ultimately fails due to llh’s actions. Either outcome, llh is involved.

He leaves the story when LLH does (disappearing into the ocean after the Donghai Battle) and returns to the narrative (leaves seclusion) the very moment FDB forces LLH to become active again and LLH starts moving to tie up loose ends.

His attempt for establishing peace was destroyed by Shan Guado and Jiao Liqiao, yes, but it ultimately fails because lxy declares war and ‘kills’ him. It takes LLH revealing himself to everyone and establishing events for things to quiet down.

Unable to reach the guanyin elixir without llh’s help

Unable to figure out the secret behind shan gudao’s death and the war between their sects without llh’s cooperation

Succeeds in finding the styx flower, not for himself, but for llh’s benefit

Unable to reach the next level of Beifeng Baiyang without help from llh and Yangzhou Man

Continuously bids for freedom and agency – but his first attempt is foiled by not being able to get rid of the mind control bug. Then during the amnesia arc, his ‘freedom’ from his enemies comes at the cost of being kept by llh as a servant. Then as soon as he was able to get rid of the mind control bug, he’s captured by jlq and his freedom/autonomy is taken away again. If the narrative was a sentient being – it’s watching him claw his way up the side of a mountain and every time he almost reaches the top, it chops his hand or fingers off to send him flying back down below. Ultimately, DFS is only able to regain physical and mental freedom when llh rescues him and choses to give him that freedom (see amnesia arc where llh tries to keep dfs as his servant/weapon).

Cure llh/save his life – ultimately stopped by llh’s actions.

Simply put – while llh exists without dfs. As far as the narrative is concerned, dfs does not exist without llh. Jinyuan Alliance is replaced completely by Shan Gudao as the bad guys in the story. (Which he was- but there is no mention of DFS or the alliance's roles - everything is attributed to lxy's heroism and return from the dead.)

So what happens post canon in a world where llh is dead? What then? We have fdb, right?

I’ve been bothered by this – and as much as I go on about how fdb is the future of the story. That he’s the inheritor of everything llh, including dfs... There is no guarantee of anything because he’s the guy that writes his own story and transforms his narrative.

We get the bit of bonding with each other in the zombie village when llh deliberately leaves them alone with each other (could this be an example of llh facilitating emotional bonds between the two?). We get fdb’s sense of betrayal later on when he thinks dfs turned on them. And then later his happiness when he realizes dfs was on their side. We get him calling dfs Lao Di. But then we have the moment at the eastern sea with the letter - where we get him running off to investigate alone until both men just happen to arrive at the beach at the same time from opposite directions. Because fate, I guess. I think dfs and fdb’s relationship is meant to be a 50/50 swing by design because we don't know the future and Fdb is ultimately the catalyst for whatever direction the story goes.

As two men who loved the same man and who tried their best but ultimately failed to keep llh alive, will he care enough about dfs to maintain ties with him or… just… walk away after saying his goodbyes --- you know, they way they often do in jainghu.

So just for speculation’s sake. Let’s say, with no additional input or relationship development. Let’s say they take the second route and go their separate ways. FDB doesn’t reach out further to DFS and DFS never tries to find fdb for a replacement fight. They never try to bridge that llh-shaped gap.

This is where we come to the third thing – Narratively, dfs’ purpose is to remind llh of the true past and to provide information or vehicles for him in his quest to address that past.

So what does that mean for dfs when LLH dies? Dfs, as a survivor, cannot physically do the same. How will he die narratively? Imo, with the way his movements mirror llh's and his role for llh, it makes sense that dfs will do what llh did - he goes back to where he was in the past. He returns to the beginning.

And from there? Maybe, DFS returns to seclusion, or a form of seclusion at least, once again in mourning. Because otherwise what else does he have left that holds meaning for him? Jinyuan Alliance? Whatever remnants remain... he never cared about it and I’d argue that at the very start of the series, he was already 1-foot out the door with retiring from leadership. Strength was freedom – he has both, so now what? Power and skill? The one person he wants to fight is gone.

DFS goes away. Days become months, become years and life continues on. New heroes and villians will rise and fall. And one day, fdb will remember he used to know a powerful guy. Whatever happened to him? And the people around him will shrug. Some may even be young enough to be like, “Who?” FDB lets it go because he’s a busy man. He’s got businesses to run, students to train, etc – can you blame him? His life is full. Eventually, he forgets he ever asked a question.

This is how the last living piece of dfs in the worlds’ consciousness dies. He fades away from memory, absentmindedly.

Maybe one day, a student or scholar will crack open a book about the history of li xiangyi and if they don't skim, they’ll come across a line or two talking about some guy that fought lxy that one time and ultimately failed to kill him. Maybe they will be motivated enough to look further into him, maybe not.  

Llh remains alive as a memory – his legacy kept alive by fdb who’s his student and his students’ students. Sigu Sect and Baichuan Court remain as pillars of society.

DFS? Who is there to remember him? Who is there to see how his story ends? Does it matter? Who is DFS without llh?

There are plants that exist without their natural pollinators or creatures that eat their fruit because they are so ancient, those creatures no longer exist. We only know what they potentially look like based on the shape of the flower/plant/tree.. They survive because they have evolutionarily figured out stopgap measures to make up for the deaths of their pollinators. But one day those measures will no longer work. Stopgaps only buy time. That plant exists as a living memory of something that used to exist and then one day it too will die.

DFS is like that remaining plant.

You know that question about whether a tree exists if no one is there to hear them fall in the woods?

Now, here is me, getting a leg cramp in the audience. I’ve always loved the antagonists, the monster-shaped beings that weren’t really monsters inside, and all the random side characters that fall off the story one after another. I’ve always bothered the hell out of everyone bc I’m the person going “So what about x? What about y? Where is z now?”

So consider this me asking – in a story where his existence is swallowed by a narrative that no longer needs him - what about dfs? Where is he now? What is he doing now?

[sburator]

I keep thinking how 2x05 gave the Devil's Minion a dimension that their relationship didn't have in the book. And how - imo - the encounter is not an easy thing to "recover" from. Yes, even if they do find in the other things they needed - whether they were aware of them or not - even if they just slowly fall in love during however their chase may happen, or they're soulmates or, idk, either one or both have magical dicks (yes, The Blood but nvm that) -- there's still trauma and torture and basically an attempted murder at the root of it. Yes, a gentle death, though precisely targeted to be cruel and crushing; yes Armand saw Daniel and into Daniel but. That's a relationship - a love - that's built on scars. And it doesn't matter who put the physical scar on Daniel's neck, it will always be there.

They'll never have a dreamy, everything is fluff and nothing hurts relationship - no one in the VC does and that's one of the best things about it imo - but I think it speaks even more to the strength of it if it endures. And not in the empty way of a lack of hope or alternative of "enduring", but in the hopeless, eternal bond kind of enduring.

What I'm trying to say is that, I'm excited about the Devil's Minion that we'll get.