#though this not a novel i have read yet

[eighthwholove]

A few promo shots of Paul McGann as Eugene Wrayburn, from Our Mutual Friend (1998) that I have stumbled across...

[jade-len]

you know it's bad when i read svsss and tgcf, stories about just two guys falling in love and getting together, and think, "god i wish i were in between them."

gay little domestic cottage core life with binghe and qingqiu? please and thank you. being sandwiched by hua cheng and xie lian, two pretty men who are hundreds of years old? i am blushing, kicking my feet and giggling

and again, it's not even that i would want only one of them. like in both of the relationships, the two love each other too much to the point it'd feel wrong if they were separated! it wouldn't feel complete, so you gotta be with both of them!

but that's the thing; i just?? i feel so incredibly guilty whenever i think about being loved by these mxtx couples??? like it's so stupid but i feel like i'm intruding in on something and it's like, everyone else seems to just want them together only, not wanna be with them. like it's fuckin taboo or whatever

i feel like with any other character from any other media it'd be fine to simp for and write/read x readers of them, but when it comes to these books, it's off limits! no way, what are you, crazy? yes, yes i'm unhinged and desperately want their love and affection simultaneously. i want to be in a happy little poly relationship with these overpowered beautiful men with long hair.

i can't be the only guy or whoever to feel this way?? to wanna be kissed by these characters? sandwiched?? i have two hands for christ sake and they all look so happy together and im just like "lord i wanna be with them so much". someone tell me i'm not alone cmon <\3

[thenamessparkplug]

I CAN POST THIS NOW THAT IVE FINISHED THE GAME!!!!!

chat lookouts was SO GOOD i HIGHLY RECOMMEND

its about two trans gay outlaw furries i do not know what more you could want

[dyed-indigo]

How many wives did Luo Bingge have?

I see quite a lot of debate over this within the fandom, and this excerpt has been passed around quite a bit:

But I felt like I remembered Bingge being mentioned as having more wives within the text, so I decided to skim the books (CTRL + F on the Internet Archive PDFs worked wonders) to find as many references to Bingge's wife count as I could.

I was right that he was mentioned as having more wives (hundreds to be exact), on the back of the very first book in the series even. However, the backs of books are the domain of the publisher rather than the author, so this isn't really trustworthy info to go off of for canon purposes. Still, it made me curious to see if more wives were mentioned somewhere else within the series.

He is mentioned as theoretically marrying at least 100 women at once here, however this was purely speculation on what would have happened in Proud Immortal Demon Way if Luo Binghe truly aspired for marriage. He did marry many women in PIDW, however it's never made clear whether these marriages were out of love or were political (and for horny reasons, the stallion protagonist can never escape his libido).

613 is also mentioned as a number of wives, and seems oddly specific unless there's some Chinese number symbolism I'm missing here, however this is just an example of something that Madame Meiyin could predict with her fortune telling abilities. Her fortunes are mentioned to typically be about romance, so this could be Shen Qingqiu remembering an actual prediction she made in canon, however even if that were the case (which there doesn't seem to be evidence to support) it could simply be that Luo Binghe never got those wives within the novel, and was just implied to get them afterwards (cue Peerless Cucumber rant about Airplane's lazy writing).

There's mentioned to be dozens of women "barely glimpsed" within the harem, presumably in addition to wives like Ning Yingying and Liu Mingyan who were more significant, but that still doesn't give us an exact count. If the initial harem count is accurate, it does imply that most of the women within it were just written to fluff the numbers a bit.

Bingge is mentioned to have "never refused" any requests to join his harem. RIP Bingge's understanding of boundaries, but, again, we have no clue how many women even asked to join. Demon Emperors are powerful, but also scary, and Shen Qingqiu is... perhaps an unreliable narrator when it comes to any version of Luo Binghe's appeal factor.

Bingge is mentioned multiple times to have had sex with hundreds of women, however, not all of the bedded were wedded. Madame Meiyin, for example, is mentioned as someone that Bingge slept with but never married, and there's no evidence that i could find that she was the sole exception in a sea of wives.

In conclusion, while manwhore Bingge is real, his count of actual wives is more than likely less than 100, as originally specified. (Though I wouldn't blame you if you thought otherwise, the emphasis on the harem size being "innumerable" and "uncountable" in the narration is quite a lot, and historically many Chinese emperors had a larger harem than Bingge.)

At least, he had less than 100 wives in the novel. In the donghua, on the other hand...

Well. That's a fairly definite amount.

[deus-ex-mona]

we’re really in it now chizuchan…

[bimyself06]

You know what would be funny? A BSD and TGCF crossover where Soukoku meet FengQing. It can be years later in TGCF timeline(for obvious reasons) or it can be either pair ends up in the other's universe (not gonna lie it would hilarious to see soukoku in TGCF canon timeline), I doest matter just as long as those two pairs meet.

[hongluboobs]

book reader i have a copy of dream of the red chamber (volume 1) that ive been trying to get through for over a year how do i motivate myself to finish it

I'm recently coming out of a half a year ish period of not reading very much so trust me when I say the lack of motivation comes for us all. I think I have some tips for how to motivate reading in general+ some for DOTRC specifically :)

(Real quick, I assume because you mentioned a volume 1 you're talking about the Hawkes-David translation published by Penguin in five volumes under the name 'The Story of The Stone'. This is the translation I read through, and it's the one I see recommended most to english speakers looking for an enjoyable reading experience, so to any other prospective readers of this novel I HIGHLY recommend reading this translation as opposed to any other ones. I don't know if I need to say this or if it's well-known to seek out that version, but because Hong Lu's canto is coming up I want to make sure anyone interested in reading through the source material can have the best experience possible with it👍)

It's important to remember that reading is a hobby, and the best way to keep going with it is to make it a habit. Unfortunately, this means forcing yourself to read sometimes, but it comes easier the more you do it. The trick is: it doesn't have to be a lot of reading.

The hard part for me is really just picking up the book and starting to read. Normally with books I like to set a goal of a chapter or so per day, but because this book has longer chapters that wasn't always feasible for me, especially if I had stuff to do. But once I had the book in my hands and started reading I would usually go above my goal I had set :)

Last year a lot of my DOTRC reading was done while I was waiting in line for things, getting/eating food, waiting on the bus, or killing time between classes/during boring lectures (I don't know if I'd advise that last one). This is moreso once you get in the rhythm of things, though.

Another tip is sometimes the format is the thing to stop me. I don't know if you're reading from a physical book or an ipad/kindle/etc or a computer or what, but sometimes I read better on my laptop than other things because it's Always Around. Sometimes I don't feel like grabbing a book or I don't have it with me, but my laptop's already open and I'm bored so maybe I'll do a little bit of reading instead of scrolling social medias. Lately, i've been jumping between my laptop and kindle for reading (laptop for convenience, kindle for portability and reading before bed at night) but I've gone between physical books and digital devices before. (If you want the epub versions of dotrc, I'd be willing to share them as well. The only difficulty is page numbers change between reading formats so I can only really switch at the start of chapters or if I skim to where I last was.

Something that saved me while reading DOTRC specifically (as well as other sinner books) was having a place I could discuss/"liveblog" the book. These books can get LONG and the reading experience varies from "really interesting and compelling" to "oh my godddd I do not need 20 pages of Outdated Whale Facts right now". (no offense to Moby Dick. I'm only slandering that one because I read the whole thing and in spite of enjoying it I understand why there are SO many abridged versions around.) It's kind of just the classic lit experience to deal with these types of things, but it's a lot more tolerable to me if you can talk to other people about it.

When I read DOTRC I didn't have anyone else reading with me, but just having a place to tell people about all the things that happen in this book helped me to keep track of events and characters. It also motivated me to keep reading so I could tell The People what happened next. Having someone else read with me would probably have helped as well, but it's hard to sell people on reading a 5-volume behemoth of a novel with so much stuff in it it has it's own field of study dedicated to it.

You can really yap anywhere. I have a channel in my Limbus Discord dedicated to the books so I don't drive everyone insane with my rambling and it seems to have helped some of my friends get through some of the other books as well so I think this method is a pretty solid success? You could also pretty easily do it just in someone's DMs if they're already familiar with the book (this has the bonus of them potentially being able to clarify things for you and help you get a deeper understanding of the book) or even yapping on a tumblr sideblog or empty notes doc or something.

So TL;DR:

Picking up the book is the hardest part. Reading a little is better than not reading at all.

Subjecting your friends to this book will make it easier to keep going :)

Also: for Dream of the Red Chamber specifically: the book starts slow. I don't know how far in you are, but so many people drop it early. I started reading it during a 12-ish hour car ride and that might've been the play because i can see people getting bored during the first few chapters. It definitely picks up though, so trust me when I say it gets a lot easier to read as you keep going. Chapter 5 is an incredibly interesting chapter, and from there I find things pick up and start going faster. (It helps that chapter 5 is pretty relevant for the direction I think Limbus is going to take canto 8 in!) The later volumes were able to go by a lot faster for me than the earlier ones as well.

This is a long ass book, but it's gonna be a while before Hong Lu's canto drops and we get to Witness that Surrender. Or Surrender that Witness. I'm not actually sure. But regardless, you've got plenty of time to get through it, even if you're a slower reader or don't have much time to dedicate to reading. Steady progress is the name of the game for stuff like this.

Worst case, you've killed a bunch of time during the wait for Hong Lu's canto (because oh boy, I have a feeling this one's gonna be a wait) and you are able to gain a better appreciation for canto 8 by understanding some of the nicher bits of how it adapts stuff from the source.

Best case, you really enjoy reading it and end up like a bunch of the Hong Lu fans I know who were permanently changed by reading this book and started reading scholarly analysis of it for fun (or start seeking out every adaptation of it you can find, or read the book 5 times over... I am coming to realize this book does something to people.)

This book is legitimately incredibly good, even outside the context of me reading it because I was very invested in that beautiful cyan freak from a game I like. I might not have been able to get through it without Limbus providing me the push to keep going on days where I really didn't want to read, but it's a legitimate interest of mine now I will seek out information on regardless of its connection to Limbus! Trust me when I say it's worth getting through even if it feels hard or tedious.

(and if it helps- a solid amount of the stuff I feel is most likely to be Limbus relevant happens near the end of the book. There's so much in this book so things that could be relevant are scattered throughout almost all of it, but I've been picking up so many end of the book vibes from stuff we've seen lately. so you've got to get there!!)

[notachair]

ARCANE S2 SPOILERS

btw 🤗🤗🤗 to me being right about jayce using the hexcore to save or "save" viktor after being deadly (or apparently *dead* I think) injured after the attack against the council and it leading to jayvik divorce 🤗🤗🤗 happy birthday to me 🥳🥂

[lost-technology]

I woke up this morning from the weirdest this-fandom related dream ever. So, in my dream, Vash and Wolfwood were sitting by a campfire and griddle talking about weird meats. They had some weird meats with them, as in meats from different animals that they were planning on cooking and eating. Vash drew out a plastic wrapped package (vacuum pack, looked like my local store brand) that looked like a pork chop, but declared that it was, in fact, human meat. He'd gotten it from a little post-apocalyptic Noman's Land shop that specialised in such things. He said that, as a Plant, he wanted to try it to see if he was compatible for eating human. Dream!Vash? What the actual FUCK?!!! And so unwrapped it and put it on the griddle and creeped out Wolfwood, but Wolfwood understood. Something like that. And then I flashed back into my body. This entire scenario was one that I was writing as a fanfic on a public counter in some kind of cafeteria at an anime convention. Above it, appearing almost immediately, was a fancomic someone else did on the upright part of the counter that recounted the events of my fanfiction (a fancomic of my fanfiction) except that whoever did it made it more Vashwood than I had intended my story, ending it with Vash and Wolfwood kissing. At the same time, I was thinking "My fanfic doesn't deserve this, it's not that good. It's not like Sin Eaters by dragonofeternal, which has a similar theme done much better." Yes, I was literally thinking of a real fic I'd read in my dream! I commented aloud on the comic that "This is more Vashwood than I'd intended, but I'll take it." As in, it's not really my ship, no one that I see as canon, but I like people in fandom shipping whatever they like and I enjoy Vashwood when it's done well and makes sense, which it kinda did in this fancomic even though it was inspired by my fanfic, which hadn't gone in that direction. Cue some snotty twenty-something with blueish purple dyed long pigtails and a Goth look sitting around nearby looking at all of this informing me "Vashwood is canon." and I said "No it's not." And she argued that she'd read some very obscure comic where it was - and it turns out we had both, by then, shifted into Batman fandom and she was referencing some obscure storyline in which Batman and Robin had fucked like animals. I further argued that I was going by a very specific canon (ala, "Batman the Animated Series" - which was somehow Trigun now), but concededed that while I wasn't as much into the deep lore of the comics, that I wouldn't be surprised if Batman/Robn (Vash and Batman now? Huh?) was canon in some form. Brain.... what are you doing?

[quatregats]

Still debating whether or not I want to try for a second draft of the Hornblower time loop fic or just do some basic edits and throw it into the world as fanfic was intended to be published

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

THEY LET DUSTIN SAY FUCK

Okay, but seriously, how does Starset get BETTER with every new thing?

They released a new song and within ten seconds of listening, I was smiling and muttering, "I love this." I mean, they hit me right in the sweet spot with pounding heaviness and intense violins, so of course I love it, but the signature Starset melodic lyrics and dynamic verse structure are there in SPADES. Syncopation and key changes galore!

What even is this song? Progressive hard rock with orchestral elements and a dubstep verse? (I'd like dubstep a lot more if it was all like this!)

I wonder if the cover being the alchemical occult symbol for earth (as the element moreso than the planet, I believe) has deeper meaning? (I mean, it's Starset, it very well may.)

And it's so incredibly relevant to my life today... The line, "And when it all blows up, the sun will still be shining." That made me smile when I desperately needed it.

Listen to it, this song is so GOOD.

What the fuck.

(Mild warning for content that might trigger paranoia in a couple lines and themes.)

[every-sanji]

[videoworm]

i frickn love that the very first piece of information we get in the Reanimator novelization is that Herbert is so bothered by noise when he works.

he just like me fr

[yaoigoddess9158]

Holy crap why would you say this

Anyways I hope the next MXTX novel won’t be too heartbreaking (please have a good end please have a good end please have a good end please—)

[billpottsismygf]

.

[deus-ex-mona]

wdym christmas is next week?????