#which was unnecessary! come on!

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

The Teller of Small Fortunes

lighthearted fantasy adventure

follows an immigrant fortune teller who travels between villages telling small fortunes for people

when she runs into a (mostly reformed) thief and an an ex-mercenary searching for his lost daughter, she ends up traveling with them in the hopes she can help, along with a baker they meet along the way,

they encounter various magical creatures and adventurous situations, and eventually she has to face her past

no romance

[littlemizzlinguistics]

Studying linguistics is actually so wonderful because when you explain youth slang to older professors, instead of complaining about how "your generation can't speak right/ you're butchering the language" they light up and go “really? That’s so wonderful! What an innovative construction! Isn't language wonderful?"

[qiu-yan]

ok so i had this thought after reading other people's thoughts on the ship. but the amount of jiggy-bashing in postcanon xicheng fics makes absolutely no sense, just on a fundamental internal-consistency level?

arguably THE central thesis of postcanon xicheng is that lan xichen and jiang cheng have been through similar experiences: both trusted and were betrayed by a brother-figure, who was then persecuted and killed by the cultivation world, and who is now considered an evil monster by the cultivation world. both characters are credited with and praised for killing this brother figure by the general public, even though their actual feelings on the brother figure are incredibly complex.

regardless of whether you think this thesis is true or not, if you take this thesis to its logical conclusion, then the jiggy-bashing in postcanon xicheng fics makes no sense. jiang cheng rolls up and goes "rip dude your ex sucked shit" and that makes lan xichen happy? that helps lan xichen heal? if lan xichen really is where jiang cheng was after the first siege of the burial mounds 13 years ago, then no way. absolutely not.

after all, if someone had rolled up to jiang cheng during the 13-year timeskip and went "rip dude your ex sucked shit," that would not have made jiang cheng happy in the long run. that would not have helped him heal. jiang cheng was the one actively telling himself that his ex-whatever sucked shit, and it made him miserable. the entire cultivation world was telling jiang cheng that his ex-whatever sucked shit, and it made him miserable! so, if you want the central xicheng thesis of "their experiences parallel each other" to be true, the same reasoning has to also apply here to lan xichen - literally everyone else and their mom is already bashing jiggy, so additional jiggy-bashing is not going to make lan xichen happy in the long run.

in my opinion, you can absolutely make postcanon xicheng work. imo there is absolutely stuff to work with, even before getting into all the hilarious BIL drama. but a postcanon xicheng that heavily features jiggy bashing simply does not make sense.

[we-are-inevitable]

newsies fans be normal about disabled people challenge

[ciderjacks]

Wip

[whilomm]

"oh theres so much laios tentacle stuff" WHERE IS IT?? WHAT WEBSITES?? TELL ME

[schmweed]

[phoenixtakaramono]

There are only two episodes left in The Boys S4, but having seen the leaks and with what we got, I have some opinions.

My conspiracy theory is that they got too many cooks in the kitchen (writers in the writer’s room)—plus the writer’s strike and pandemic happening during this time—and it’s starting to make sense how they dropped the ball with this season.

[stepfordgoth]

TSA liquid size limits are such a jokeeeeeee like what am I going to do on an airplane with a 4.2 oz bottle of face wash that I couldn't do with a 3.8 oz bottle? Is it really this serious, 23 years after 9/11? Nearly a quarter century, bro? 🙄

[pearl-kite]

Hi I know this is out of nowhere and sorry if you answered it before. Also totally ok if you don’t want to answer

But your blog got me super interested in the redacted asmr thing

I did some research and you seem to know a lot about so do you know if there’s any like, chronological order I should watch them?

Love your blog!

Absolutely no worries! I like getting stuff to respond to, it's the opposite of a bother <3

So Redacted Audio, formerly Redacted ASMR, is a channel on youtube with a, quite frankly, massive amount of audio, and since it's been running for over 4 years now it can be a LOT to sort through. Fortunately, he's done a really good job curating and organizing playlists for the different speaker-characters.

Everything is within the same universe, and many of the characters have interacted with each other. The context is that the location is a fictional city named Dahlia set somewhere in California, which is a "cornerstone" city for magical society. The best way to get a solid rundown on magic and the setting is to listen through the Freelancer Season 1 playlist.

This one is already arranged in chronological order* and also has the benefit of giving a sampler of sorts for a wider variety of speakers. One thing to be aware of ahead of time: While this was actively being published, Erik hadn't decided who the listener-character (nicknamed Freelancer) would be romancing, so it starts off with a lot of potential toward all of them except Caelum. As it went, there were polls in the discord server that he used to run, and popular consensus eventually narrowed it down to Gavin. The first time I listened was after all of that, and I was more fond of Damien, but I'm personally pleased with Gavin now, and this playlist has been one of my favorites to just revisit if I'm bored.

*Well, mostly. There was a point where the channel got a strike for some of the audios being too spicy and he removed and/or edited some of them to try to avoid being demonetized. The first Gavin audio is one of the ones that got edited, and #3 on the playlist accidentally got relocated. It's been a long time, but I think it was originally after what's now #6, the second Caelum audio.

Aside from that one as a good introduction to the channel as a whole, there are some "main" characters that have had the most attention.

One is a group of wolf shifters: David, the current head of the pack (Chronological for his listener. A lot of people aren't super fond of the earliest ones for him, #3-5, because the character evolved a bit and they aren't really representative any longer) Asher, his second Milo, another pack member, which is absolutely underselling him, he's one of my favorites

There are a couple of vampires: Vincent, the OG for the channel Sam, a common favorite who's listener is a member of David's pack

While most of the playlists are specific to character, there are a few thematic ones as well, all of which are chronological within themselves. Now, chronology with respect to each other can start to get a bit confusing, because of how long it's taken for some of them to play out.

If you want to get a feel for the characters before worrying too much about timeline, I'd listen through most playlists as they're arranged with one main caveat:

When you hit the audios titled Inversion, give those a pause until you've listened to more speakers. Inversion was a huge crossover he did that has 10+ speakers involved.

A personal favorite has been Vega. I'm actually super not fond of the first audio he's in, which is also in the Freelance list, so I skip that one when I relisten. The first one in this list is that one with the Freelancer, but the second and onward has a demon listener nicknamed Warden. We just got an update on his story today/last night and I've been a little unwell about it 🙃

I am realizing I could go on and on and on and I kind of have, so I'm going to stop there. Hopefully that's enough to dip your toes in. I'll gladly help out with any follow-up questions, too :3

[rachymarie]

Dressed like a normal girl my age for once i guess 🤷‍♀️

felt a bit fancy

[butteredfrogs]

vent in tags

[grimark]

i think it's time for me to finally speak my truth and admit i have an irrational hatred of that fucking chocolate guy.

[calciferstims]

tiktokers be like “I am going to create the most beautiful, relaxing, aesthetically pleasing video ever, with gorgeous lighting, and deeply satisfying content”. …….. “and then I’m going to cut the video fifty thousand times in thirty seconds-”

[aberooski]

I know they're already trapped in cyberspace as it is, but I never understood why Sarina turned Syrus and Hassleberry into a dinosaur and a car as opposed to like, locking them up in there or actually putting them in danger? Like if you want the stakes to feel actually important to the duel like maybe I should actually have to worry about what will happen to them if Jaden and Aster lose...?

I dunno it doesn't really matter, like obviously it's entirely possible that the thing is just that they're just bait for Jaden so it doesn't really matter what she does with them because all she needs is to get Jaden and Aster there so she can test them in a duel so once they get there Sy and Hassleberry don't really matter anymore at that point. But I just think about this kinda stuff y'know? I'm a fanfic writer haha

[thelovesofmyentirelife]

me complaining abt witchtok lmao

remember when on witchtok (i've never even had a tiktok i'm just a witch and was whenever witchtok got super popular lmao) years ago all anyone talked abt was how deity worship+work is advanced and trickster deity this imposter spirit that constantly. one time I WASNT EVEN LIKE "THATS NOT TRUE" CUZ MAYBE THATS TRUE TO+FOR SOMEONE. I WAS JUST LIKE. "huh. that's not my experience. i was called to by a deity before i was a witch or even super in the know about all this stuff. so deity stuff was the first thing i did. it seems for y'all it's the other way around, but for me i wouldn't be a witch if i wasn't pagan. 99% of the witchcraft i do is devotional. " AND SO MANY TIKTOK WITCH PEOPLE COMMENTED YELLIN AT ME SAYIN HOW U SHOULDNT DO THAT BC ANY COMMUNICATION WITH A DEITY IS ADVANCED SHIT AND I WAS SPREADING DANGEROUS MISINFORMATION N HOW THEY WER GONNA HEX ME N SHIT. which ofc they didn't. or maybe since most of em wer self proclaimed baby witches it just didn't work lmao. but anyway now more recently i see those same witchtok ppl go back on that and be like "eh it wasn't that serious it's not advanced" and i'm like 😃🥴