#wu ya

[bitter-rock-sugar]

removing masks

[xtime4ames]

in the same way that it craves cupcakes because marcy does...

im convinced the core has had to deal with talking through a very weak voice and sniffly nose and this is fine :)

[xiaobaosnoona]

[jalluzas-ferney]

Do you guys ever think Cole saw young Lloyd in young Wu send tweet

[lufla-lu]

“i think of you, and you’re here”

[chemical-abscess]

“Shattered”

Something something the key being a symbol of power and seventh nail being a symbol of death/wither and how WKX broke and throw away both thus subverting their meaning

That thing took me waay longer than I expected but hey! the longer you spend time on something the better it becomes. And also I learned how to draw wounds properly, definitely useful for future works :)

[aring-king-king]

O.D.B

[grif-hawaiian-rolls]

sometimes u just get so filled w thoughts about a pair of characters u gotta just go bonkers ya know

[lionfission]

Some things don't change too much ig

[maleficent-ophelia]

the great shaman

[incorrect-agatha]

Alice: Be careful, that plate is hot.

Agatha: I am Agatha Harkness, a covenless witch, the infamous witch killer, survivor of the Witches’ Road, and the only person Death herself ever loved. I am the most powerful witch to ever exist. Fire can’t hurt me.

Agatha, picking up the plate: Ah shit that's hot.

[legokingfisher]

My dad was so sad when I told him Wu was dead bro he was like “WHAT?? Him and Lloyd are the only reason I let you take over the tv with your Ninjago legos so much! :(”

[dobadgerseatsnakes]

I'm terrible at taking pictures but i still want to share it. So happy to see them😭😭😭

[fujimusume]

So I attended the Thunderbolt Fantasy exhibit at the Animate Akihabara annex on opening day! I was one of the first to check it out; I’m glad my friend suggested we go there first thing in the morning!

I will post more pics whenever I have the spoons. I took a lot of pics, including close-ups of the puppets to get a closer look at the astounding amount of detail that went into each puppet.

The exhibit will run until February 11th, so if any of you Thunderbolt Fantasy fans be in Tokyo between now and early next month, do stop by. Admission is free, though there may be entry restrictions such as time limits per visitor as crowd-control measures.

Unless you are the Thunderbolt Fantasy Wiki, as I have given its mod permission to use my photos with credit, please do not repost my photos without credit/permission! Please link to this post or my photos on Twitter instead.

[checkoutmybookshelf]

The Most Toxic Situationship I have ever Seen...And I Loved Every Second

As far as sequels go, I cannot deny that this one rocked. It can be so, so hard to follow up a first book without it feeling like retreading old ground or that there is arbitrary or artificial conflict that doesn't feel natural. Xiran Jay Zhao did not have those problems. This book felt immediate, vibrant, and deeply fucked up in the best possible way. I loved how messy it was, and how it refused to make deeply morally, ethically, and organizationally messy things simple, instead giving us the chance to watch the mess unfold and force characters to make choices in situations where there is not right answer. Let's talk Heavenly Tyrant.

This is you SPOILER WARNING. If you go below the cut, I'm SPOILING THE END of the book in like the first two sentences. You've been warned.

Sooooooo...she fully stabbed Qin Zheng in the heart, which somehow radicalized him into a full-on misogynist and patriarchal asshole (although let's be fair, that wouldn't have happened if he wasn't already well on his way to this point), and Shimin is a mechanical bird now. That's a LOT to deal with, and we're going to get there, then this whole book was a LOT. You don't just casually wake up a historical hero, crown him emperor, end up in a toxic situationship with him where you both plan to take down the gods and then murder the hell out of him without a lot of other elements.

Oh also, there was a reign of terror in there that got a little out of hand before they reined it in.

Now, as a heads up for those of you who like all the sci fi stuff in these books: I'm not so much a sci fi girl, so I'm not really going to talk much about those elements of the book. They were well executed and fine, but I was here for other things, so if you want a deep dive into the more sci fi elements, this is not the review for you. My focus is really going to be character dynamics and the politics.

Zetian and Qin Zheng

Sooooooooooooooo. So so so so. These two. The absolute fuckery that is the power dynamic between Zetian and Zheng is unquestionably my favorite part of this whole book. She is out here without the education and experience he has, but the conviction that women are people, the end. He's over here being this weird combination of toxic Mr. Darcy who has the education and principles but SO MUCH PRIDE and patriarchal baggage that it fucks up his implementation and Phantom of the Opera who thinks women are property.

This is what we in the business call an irreconcileable difference. So naturally they have to rule Huaxia and defeat the gods together, which requires finding some way to WORK together. And they do, technically. They get into all these weird power and dominance struggles behind the scenes, but there are also some AMAZING saves because the truth is, they need each other for now. I'm thinking particularly of when Zetian saves Zheng's ass at her coronation and pulls off a "it was a tech glitch" cover for him low-key almost dropping dead mid-ceremony. That was an A-level situation save.

And then she goes around licking things in front of him to assert dominance, which...is a choice. That I kind of loved, not gonna lie.

That said, Zheng did that absolutely bonkers thing where he had to interact with Zetian every day, heard her advocate for women, and somehow STILL managed to think she'd be chill with being his personal fantasy of a tradwife? Like...my dude. She crushed a building of people who wanted that for her, and you think you're going to be the singular dude who changes her mind? And then he had the SHEER NERVE to be surprised when she stabbed him.

Qin Zheng. Sir. Zetian fought you tooth and nail this entire book and was in the single most mutually toxic situationship I have ever seen and you genuinely thought she LIKED YOU??? The cognitive dissonance and self-delusion there is astounding. And somehow also completely unsurprising. Although the fact that he went full paternalistic patriarch in the epilogue had me just DREADING what was coming for Zetian in the next book. And "After all, his son cannot grow up without a mother" is a HELL of a line from this man.

Now Zetian...Zetian learns SO MUCH in this book. She learns about building her own power base separate from Qin Zheng, but also she kept getting hit in the face with patriarchy. She kept getting "be a wife and mother" and "get pregnant" and "don't hurt the (extremely fake) baby" and "use your sexuality to get what you want." All of which are SO IRRITATING even as she learns to weaponize them. Literally patriarchy hurts everyone, and watching her having to use the tools of the patriarchy and hating it but having no recourse was painful and infuriating in the best way. And Qin Zheng somehow didn't see it coming because he didn't see Zetian as her own person.

I seriously want to shake this man.

Zetian and Yizhi

Yizhi just kept making me go, "Sir. SIR. Explain your damn self" through this entire book. Taking down his family made sense, but then he kept doing cloak-and-dagger secrets and betrayals and double and triple agenting, and SIR WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR ENDGAME HERE??? It seemed to be some combination of protecting Zetian as much as he could with what he was given, having a weirdly personal beef with Qin Zheng, and taking down capitalism, but I want this man's perspective and inner monologue because WHAT EVEN.

I did ADORE that he was over here quadruple agenting and conspiring to trick Zheng into thinking he would die horribly if not in isolation and mucking around with IVF procedures. Although the "Dammit Zetian, I'm a political and criminal mastermind, not a doctor" line when he said the baby PROBABLY isn't Zetian's was just...*chef's kiss*

That said...he did still definitely violate Zetian's bodily autonomy, even if it was to stop Sima Yi and Zheng from forcing her into having a biological child. It's...one of those situations that is so fucked up there just isn't a RIGHT answer, there's only the answer that you and the woman you love can (probably, we all hope) live with. I love how MESSY this whole thing was. Yizhi is a messy drama queen in the very best way possible.

And the vibes I got from how Yizhi said "entertainment establishments" on the giant-ass space station made my heart hurt for him. I was really impressed that Yizhi could be as hard and soft as he was simultaneously.

Zetian and Her Various Girl Squads

Zetian is absolutely correct that women need more autonomy. Does she go about this perfectly, or even in the most effective way possible? Big Sister showing up in a dream to ask what she's doing for the 97% of women who can't be pilots would suggest no, but we aren't going to be the people who stop trying because the solution we have in the moment isn't perfect. And one of the strengths Zetian has is that she pulls lots of different kinds of women around herself and she listens to them.

She reforms the Iron Widows and she takes as much of a personal interest as she can in these girls, helping them follow in her footsteps. Then she also brings Wan'er and Taiping into her circle and she takes the different perspectives in, synthesizes them, and does her best to advocate for them with Qin Zheng before they collectively figure out how to scaffold other structures and organizations to do that work independently. It's not perfect, and it's probably not going to be enough now that Zheng has decided he understands why binding women's feet is a GOOD idea, but Zetian made real, concrete strides forward to support and protect women.

I also love her relationships with Wan'er, Quielo, and Taiping, because again, this whole book is about fucked up situations and relationships, but Zetian does manage to make these real, valuable, and lovely connections that bring meaning to her life, both personally and publicly. I love a good girl squad, and Zetian manages to find hers, even after being surrounded by men and betrayed by a female mentor figure in the last book. That kind of resilience and willingness to see messy nuance and keep moving? Impressive as all hell.

The Shimin Thing and the State of the Polycule

Shimin is a metal bird now. Shimin is the Vermillion Bird. This honestly left me with more questions than anything else, because it's not entirely clear what Shimin is, where his head is at, or how he is. And it's not clear how Yizhi and Zetian are about getting him back in this form, in this way, especially after accepting that he was gone.

Not to mention that the Yizhi-Zetian size of the iron triangle is...a little rusted, to say the least, and Zetian had whatever the hell she had with Zheng too. Yes, she stabbed him. But that was complicated by the relief mixed in with the frustration when she didn't succeed in killing him. So uh...the triangle is doing something weird and we're going to need to address that more in the next book. None of them are ok, and they're ALL going to need to deal with the aftermath of the past year-ish.

The Politics

OK SO. The sheer amount of cognitive dissonance in Qin Zheng's whole "the products of labor should belong to the laborers" and the whole productivity fetish and the "don't be a money-grubbing capitalist" thing coexisting with "women aren't really people" thing is insane. Also, the whole, "your value in society is contingent upon the labor you provide" tends to rub me the wrong way because it does not take into account things like severe disabilities or illnesses and implies a devaluation of anyone who does not provide labor that society considers valuable. Which Zetian DOES address from a gender perspective, because Qin Zheng clearly misses the amount of labor women do that simply isn't acknowledged as such. And Zetian tried to ameliorate this. But I also wish just a little that the existence of a human life was valued more than anything else.

Zetian also learns how to perform politics in this book, which is a really interesting journey to watch, and having her go from randomly screaming slogans Wan'er feeds her to actually plotting photo ops and events is intriguing.

Overall, this was a FABULOUS book, and I cannot wait to see where these characters go and what Zhao will do next.

[todayinhiphophistory]

Today in Hip Hop History:

Wu-Tang Clan released their debut single Protect Ya Neck May 3, 1993