selenuntius

[selenuntius]

big fan of rose quartz. i think we should have more rocks with just a bit of iron in them that makes them bright pink

[selenuntius]

Nothing can compare to the relationship between a boy and his eldritch entity (aka best friend)

[selenuntius]

Man, genuinely there's little that excites me more than encountering queerness in fiction where I wasn't expecting it. I'm gonna be thinking about Kikuhiko/Yakumo from SGRS for so long.

Even setting aside the subtext of his feelings for Sukeroku, the narrative around his relationship to gender norms and his own expression is so fascinating. Guy who grows up steeped in rigid 40s gender roles and actively tries to enforce them, yet only truly feels like himself when he's acting on stage as a woman. Guy who says his life would have been better if he were born a woman and then refuses to elaborate.

[selenuntius]

Was so baffled at people claiming there’s only porn on AO3, so did a quick stats search. 

This is how the ratings look at the moment of counting, over the total 9,3M works on the archive (9 380 645 to be exact, atm)

Explicit: 1 551 860 (16,54%)

Mature: 1 409 093 (15,02%)

Teen and up: 2 834 938 (30,22%)

General: 2 651 772 (28,27%)

Not rated: 932 982 (9,95%)

Even combined, Explicit and Mature works barely overtake the total percentage of T-rated ones. That’s the overall stats on AO3, but fandom to fandom the landscape would differ greatly, of course.

The Underage tag, which is used to justify the witch hunts against the archive as a whole, returns only 222 748 works (2,37%).

EDIT: Look at the follow-up to see the ratio of Explicit and Mature works that contain sexual themes.

[selenuntius]

when will leftists realize that survivors of extremely violent and repressive communist regimes speaking about their experiences is not propaganda <3

[selenuntius]

so funny how for a brief time we managed to get perfect alignment for extensions between browsers, webextensions from chrome to firefox to safari, and then google decided "nope, we're going to enforce some new rules now, time to choose us as your only platform or put in extra work" and now you can't even publish the same extension on every chromium fork.

reminder that it's in your best interest to stop using Chrome before January 2023, or you're going to lose extension data.

[selenuntius]

.... i have never felt so seen

[selenuntius]

Just a moderation update and reblog for visibility:

I removed the welcome channel so feel free to hop in and check it out and peace out if it’s not for you. I’m less active now but I will continue to mod as necessary. Invite is still valid.

Other changes:

I ping (opt-in) and translate any major (subjective) announcements.

Translation directory channel.

DMBJ Book-Centric Discord Server

There already are several lovely servers for DMBJ out there, but I saw a gap in the market that I’m very very active in, so I set one up too! Consider this a more niche server, especially for recent book updates and extras.

Featuring:

A Xiaoge/Pingxie/DMBJ gorls lofter artbot

A news channel for the latest NPSS progress

Shipping channels

Spoilers channels for people wanting to talk extensively about their feels without black boxes of spoiler doom + spoiler-free chat when you’ve just started something but really want to talk about it

& other features if I see demand for it. Still pretty barebones at the moment.

https://discord.gg/kXYX5z6QNW

I don’t know how much demand there is for this, but if you want somewhere to talk specifically about the books, here it is!

Art of Xiwangmu by 竹墨繁漪 that I’m using as the server icon, created for a 2020 817 fansong.

[selenuntius]

not dmbj

I’ve been getting back into SDR2 recently - booted up the game just wanting to listen to some of the music and of course I had to play chapter 5 again (at least the investigation and the trial). It’s still great. I also read some fanfiction and I’ve been loving it. Because it’s an older fandom there’s a lot of reuploads of old zines that writers have no intent of selling again, which means very good, very long fics.

Actually the best ones I’ve read actually aren’t those, but from this writer called ゆきと. They only wrote 6 fics but they’re all fairly popular, especially since they’re more recent - the fandom has obviously been much less popular recently. It’s an 11 year old game that last got content in like... 2017 (the anime). But this is what’s so good about fanfiction. Taking the characters we know and love (written in character!) and examining interesting angles that I had never considered. All of them done very well. I think the best one so far that I’ve read is ザ・デイズ whose ending actually kinda blew my mind. I’d never considered what ゆきと put forth, and they wrapped it up very nicely too.

But while I think that’s the better representation of what fanfiction should be about, キミの××を拾いたい was just incredibly emotional and I will reread it so many times. It’s a 10/10 fic. It makes me want to translate it. I cried like a baby reading it. Again, it’s such a well-paced, well-written fic. You could possibly argue that it’s a bit ‘easier’ because one half of the pairing is... well, dead, and that means 1. you don’t have to write him and 2. it’s easy to get readers emotional, but the delicate scenes ゆきと paints of them is just so good and heartbreaking. The ending was also unexpected, but makes a ton of sense and is far better than anything I could’ve come up with. I’m speechless. Some of their fics are just good fics, but these two I cannot think of an equal in another fandom. Literally some of, if not the best, fics I’ve ever read, in any fandom. I’m so sad I haven’t been able to find fics this good on AO3, but I must be bad at looking for good fics there or something.

Last one: I’m really proud I finished this 130k character fic I bookmarked like 3 years ago, and it was really good too. お前の寂しさが、この広い宇宙を枯らすとして. I’m working on reading a 185k character fic too. Can’t believe I’m reading all these longfics, I’d avoided fics longer than 15k for such a long time.

[selenuntius]

[Xieping] Taṇhā

I dreamt of Zhang Qiling again. Not surprising. If he occupied most of my waking moments, it was only natural he would also feature in my dreams.

I could never see him in my dreams though. Always a shadow, a figure braving the dangers ahead, keeping up the back, or even just a presence that exuded a calm control that set me at ease. I thought that was the best my brain, now riddled with several lifetimes’ worth of memories, could come up with. And so I relished in the brief moments I could feel him by my side again, gulping down the (illusory) air I shared with him like a drowning man before I would be thrust back into a cold world without him.

But I saw him. In the denouement of a dream stitched of memories and schemes, through muggy forests that housed giant, unblinking serpents to the arid deserts where thin ribbons of muscle and scale would whisper truths and lies directly into my brain. In the darkness and silence as everything else faded away, I saw him.

He was waiting for me with a flame quivering in his hands, as if to deliver me from my darkest moment. His figure wavered, and the flame reappeared as a single cigarette held between his too-long fingers.

This was one of our last nights together, on Changbai. He didn’t look at me, instead staring into the cigarette between his fingers. We stared at the pinpoint of light as it slowly crept up towards his fingers. Just before it touched his fingers, he raised the cigarette towards his lips. My eyes followed the motion.

He finally looked up, and I could’ve sworn our eyes met. I urged myself forwards, straining against the syrupy darkness that constrained me. He inhaled.

The light disappeared, closing him into darkness and thrusting me into waking.

I wept, the familiar sound of the lamas’ morning prayer rising and falling around me.

When I arrived by his statue later in the morning, there was a young lama sweeping the snow from the small courtyard. While this corner of the temple seemed to have been all but forgotten before my arrival, the lamas had probably instructed him to clean this up for me.

After all, I was another of their esteemed guests.

I took a seat on the steps and shook out a cigarette, lit it and copied his motion from my dream while I stared at him.

I had to admit that the dream had shaken me somewhat. It felt… real, in a way. Almost as if I’d really established a connection to him, wherever he was beyond the door. Maybe it was the way it started, with him on Changbai. I knew it was no more than a dream, but the lightning that coursed down my spine when our eyes met still gave me pause.

And if it really was him, what did it mean? Why did he push me away?

I jolted back into reality when I noticed a gaze on me. It was the young lama. He had finished sweeping the courtyard, but didn’t leave, staring at me instead. I looked at him, and beckoned him closer.

He approached me hesitantly. “Well, do you have something you need to tell me?” I asked him.

He shook his head, eyes drifting away from me towards the statue.

That answered my question. “You know you shouldn’t ask,” I said, “but I won’t tell anyone. The teachers won’t mind if you can’t be perfect all the time. That’s why you’re here.”

He nodded, and opened his mouth, “Why do you come here? He-” the young lama pointed at Zhang Qiling “-makes you unhappy.” He had done enough work to temper his worldly curiosity, but I supposed my behaviour called upon a deeper confusion.

I laughed a little at that. “Do I look unhappy?” He nodded again. “Well, I guess I am, but he doesn’t make me unhappy. Him not being here makes me unhappy.”

“He does,” the young lama stated. “His existence makes you unhappy.”

Ah, he was talking about how they viewed things. “Yeah, I guess you can say that,” I admitted. “Do you think you can get me to let him go?” I could feel one of those smiles creeping up my lips. The ones that I used to threaten, to unsettle. A half-hearted one, though, as I immediately realized how dumb I must have looked.

The young lama did seem to look a bit uncomfortable as he shook his head. “You’re not ready,” he said, echoing the words I had heard from his masters so many times. “Your…” He said a word in Tibetan. I looked at him blankly. The lamas here all spoke Mandarin (possibly due to the influence of the Zhang clan), so despite having lived here my knowledge of Tibetan was still limited to numbers, directions, and the occasional swear word. “It’s thirst… love. Yearning? It’s too much, and you can’t see it.”

He ducked his head, staring at his broom as he muttered, “That’s what the masters say about you.”

That brought a genuine chuckle out of me. “I was starting to worry if you were some kind of spiritual figure here to enlighten me.” – that maybe I was still dreaming, that maybe I’ve been dreaming since he left.

I stood. “Don’t get any ideas, by the way. Not you or your masters. None of you can get me to give up. I’ve got an iron grip on this world, and you can’t release me from my… whatever it is you said.”

Only he can. I cast a final glance back, and left the young lama staring at his statue.

Please, release me.

[selenuntius]

Sketch:

[selenuntius]

I’m trying to get back into the fandom so hold me accountable I guess?

I have to finish this because if I don’t I’ll have to(?) post the worse version of this I already wrote

I dreamt of him again. Not surprising. If he occupied most of my waking moments, it was only natural he would also feature in my dreams.

I could never see him in my dreams though. Always a shadow, a figure braving the dangers ahead, keeping up the back, or even just a presence that exuded a calm control that set me at ease. I thought that was the best my brain, now riddled with several lifetimes’ worth of memories, could come up with. And so I relished in the brief moments I could feel him by my side again, gulping down the (illusory) air I shared with him like a drowning man before I would be thrust back into a cold world without him.

But I saw him. In the denouement of a dream stitched of memories and schemes, through muggy forests that housed giant, unblinking serpents to the arid deserts where thin ribbons of muscle and scale would whisper truths and lies directly into my brain. In the darkness and silence as everything else faded away, I saw him.

He was waiting for me with a flame quivering in his hands, as if to deliver me from my darkest moment. His figure wavered, and the flame reappeared as a single cigarette held between his too-long fingers.

This was one of our last nights together, on Changbai.

[selenuntius]

過去は私にとつて苦しい思ひ出である。過去は焦燥と無為と悩める心肉との不吉な悪夢であつた。

萩原朔太郎　「月に吠える」

[selenuntius]

xyl genderbend

[selenuntius]

I read a post about keping today and OP said that zhk basically stepping aside and not doing more to help zql makes sense because he wasn’t getting anything in return. I see where they’re coming from but also because my fave is zql and not zhk, I don’t see him really giving up on him. My justification (other than zql is a fucking amazing human being and everyone who’s ever worked with him is so deeply affected there’s no way they could just... stop) is that it’s also sunk cost fallacy. Zhang Haike has given so much for his clan and their cause, so to speak, that he can’t just stop now. He’s lost his sister, he’s given up his entire body and identity for decades, I can totally see him needing to believe in their cause and needing to love him to justify what he’s lost. This is where he differs from Zhang Hailou. They’re both self-aware to some extent, and Zhang Hailou has that added dimension of wanting a sense of belonging, but Zhang Haike had always been on the fringes of the whole thing emotionally. He just keeps involving himself further, until he can’t get out because of sunk cost.

[selenuntius]

It’s the intro to zhl teaching zql to mouth blade. I’d actually already written this when I posted the snippet. Edited and changed the ending a bit. Wish it were longer/actually went somewhere, but eh.

Ideally I want to see more of what went down between them back in the day, so my logic is if I keep throwing out random stuff of them someone is going to get inspired and give me more stuff

“Can you teach me that?” Zhang Qiling asks, out of the blue, one evening.

Zhang Hailou is removing some of his razors from his mouth. He doesn’t need to per se, but it is a habit left over from when he had yet to acquire his current mastery over the razors. And he doesn’t, in fact, on most nights. But tonight they are spending the night in particular luxury, and Zhang Hailou is reminded of his younger years in Xiamen.

“This?” Zhang Hailou holds up one of his razors. “You want to learn this? You don’t need to.”

Zhang Qiling’s abilities are far beyond anything he has seen so far. He once thought of himself as so strong he was almost superhuman, but now he knows better. His own mother is faster than him, probably almost as strong, and certainly more experienced. Zhang Qiling is far faster and far stronger. He does not know how old Zhang Qiling is, but he is not lacking in experience either.

For all he knows, Zhang Qiling could be his mother’s age, or even older.

No. As Zhang Qiling gazes at him, Zhang Hailou decides that he cannot be too much older than himself. Zhang Qiling is always composed and near-unreadable, but in the dim glow of the beautifully crafted lights in the room, Zhang Hailou thinks he can see a hint of expectance.

To learn a skill of death and deception? Zhang Hailou is probably just seeing things, but he lets the words slip past his lips. “If I may, how old are you?”

Zhang Qiling blinks once. Zhang Hailou now knows him well enough to tell that it means he is taken aback by the question. He seems to think for a moment before answering, “Under fifty.”

Zhang Hailou himself is coming upon fifty soon, so he was actually right. Zhang Hailou laughs at that. “I didn’t think you really were younger than me. I mean, I thought all of you Main Family were old as can be, only donning that young mask as deception. You know my mom, right? She says she’s over a hundred – is that true?”

Zhang Qiling shakes his head.

“Wait, so she lied to me? How old is she really? Has this whole Zhang clan’s longevity been a lie?” Zhang Hailou is used to speaking without much thought, and the words roll off his tongue fluidly in stark contrast to Zhang Qiling’s silence.

“I don’t know how old she is. She can be over a hundred,” Zhang Qiling answers. “Will you teach me that?” He still hasn’t given up.

Zhang Hailou taps a razor with a trimmed fingernail, soft tinks punctuating his sentence. “Why? Like I’ve said, you don’t need this. You don’t have to fall back to these unnatural skills. You’re faster and stronger than anyone I’ve ever met. Even if someone had a gun, they’d have a hard time shooting you.”

But Zhang Hailou cannot deny that he is also curious. Even when his mother taught him these skills, he has never seen anyone else try to place the blades in their mouth. It was something his mother only taught him, too, saying that he might as well place his clever tongue to good use as she sliced the inside of his mouth open. Zhx was already by his side by then, and held him in the nights as Zhang Hailou shook under the safety of his covers as blood welled in his mouth.

Zhang Qiling does not answer him, but Zhang Hailou still acquiesces. “Alright, I’ll teach you, but I don’t think it’s worth it to learn more than spitting and holding one in your mouth,” Zhang Hailou says. He takes a razor and rams it into the blade of a dagger, denting the brittle metal to cover its blade. He washes the now-blunt piece of metal with soap in the basin before crossing the room to where Zhang Qiling is seated on the bed.

He takes it wordlessly and opens his mouth, tucking it under his tongue. He purses his lips very briefly as he closes his mouth. Zhang Hailou guesses that he isn’t used to the taste of metal in his mouth.

“Move it back above with your tongue, try to touch it as little as possible,” Zhang Hailou coaches. “Then send it out with your cheeks and breath.”

Zhang Qiling follows his directions, and the metal clatters onto the ground with surprising force. Zhang Hailou cocks an eyebrow. “You’re better at this than I expected. You never talk and I don’t really see you do things with your mouth…” Zhang Hailou trails off as he remembers the accurate and varied whistles Zhang Qiling can produce. “Okay, yeah, there’s the whistles. You are pretty good at those.”

Zhang Qiling picks the blade up from the ground, washes it and starts practicing again, spitting the metal into his palm this time. Zhang Hailou watches him until flecks of red start appearing on his palm. He reaches out, almost impulsively, to catch Zhang Qiling’s wrist.

Zhang Qiling stops, and looks at him in question.

“You’re bleeding,” Zhang Hailou states the obvious. He did try his best to blunt the sharp edge of the blade, but it apparently is not good enough. “Take the blade out,” Zhang Hailou says, and Zhang Qiling complies, opening his mouth and navigating the blade onto the tip of his tongue. His lips glisten with blood and spit as they part slightly, letting the silver flash past and fall onto his palm.

Zhang Hailou is still clutching his wrist, and now he lets go. “I think you might not be doing it right,” Zhang Hailou murmurs. “Any cuts shouldn’t be on your tongue as much as your palate and maybe inner cheeks.”

Zhang Qiling’s tongue sweeps across his lips, leaving an obvious line of crimson in its wake. Zhang Hailou feels his eyes track that motion hungrily, and his hand moves to clutch Zhang Qiling’s jaw in a daze.

Zhang Qiling – does he know what he’s doing?! – opens his mouth. His lips, glistening with blood and saliva, part slightly, revealing a flash of silver. He allows Zhang Hailou’s fingers to stroke his tongue and the inside of his cheeks, warm and moist. Zhang Hailou feels the small cuts there, soft flesh flaring under his rough fingertips. It can’t be comfortable, but Zhang Qiling just looks up at him past long black lashes, eyes devoid of any emotion.

Zhang Hailou draws his fingers back, bringing the piece of metal out with him. He can see his own eyes reflected in Zhang Qiling’s, a concoction of filthy, worldly desire waiting for a spark to ignite. Zhang Qiling was too good for that, he knows. He forces himself to turn his back to Zhang Qiling, his breaths still unsteady as he washes his hand and the blade. He stares at the blade, quietly recovering his composure. He feels Zhang Qiling’s eyes boring into his back, his presence always so powerful despite his silence.

He is tantalizingly close.

Zhang Hailou cannot bring himself to do this to Zhang Qiling. Zhang Qiling needs to be – no, he needs Zhang Qiling to be – untouched, a pure symbol of their cause. For everything he’s doing, for everything he’s lost.

“I don’t think it’s worth your time to learn this.”

The dented blade clatters into the bin. Zhang Hailou looks away, averting his eyes to Zhang Qiling’s humanity.

[selenuntius]

I thought this would make a good xieping prompt but I’m uncreative so I just wrote the same old wu xie having thoughts about xiaoge again. also a bit all over the place because I was having many different thoughts; maybe I’ll either tighten this up someday or expand it

"Those who die in snow wander on endlessly if they can't find their way home."

I sometimes missed Tibet.

The clarity of the sky and humbling sight of stars looming over you at night were marvels only those who had witnessed for themselves could understand, but I found myself missing the oppressive weight of the mountains on the horizon and stifling silence of the snow too.

To be clear, I didn’t want to replicate any of that in the Rain Village. I had drafted a few plans, but the thought of morphing our courtyard in the image of snow-capped mountains was simply repulsive. Pangzi agreed.

What about him?

I looked up from my desk and out of my window to see Menyouping lounging on the tree right outside, a cat curled up on his stomach.

He seemed content with the Rain Village, but the mountains of the Northeast were his homeland after all. Would he have preferred something more like those?

Menyouping sat under the warm glow of an outdoors light, working through the moss that we had picked meticulously and oh-so-gently as the last bugs of the dying summer tapped gently against the naked bulb overhead.

No, I reminded myself. Our garden was perfect the way it was.

But the mountains all meant something to us. Even I, with my admittedly brief associations with them, felt an inexplicable pull towards the solemn strength. There was something about that purity and simplicity of those mountains that I could no longer wipe from my mind, and that reflected in my dreams.

I dreamt of my own death quite often. Sometimes they were deaths by fire, but I always preferred those by ice. The arduous climb became one of trust in dreams, and I felt catharsis as I would succumb to the snow. I had thought they’d stop as I settled into my life now, but they never did.

While I was in Tibet, locals spoke of spirits that linger in the mountains. They said that those who die in snow and cannot find their way home wander on for eternity. Maybe part of me had died in Tibet, and remained buried in the snow there, and that was why these dreams haunted me so.

Haunt perhaps wasn’t the right word. I wasn’t too bothered by them. I was going to die someday, and that wasn’t a bad way to go out. My body would join the rest of my spirit in the mountains, and I’d be happy to wander the mountains if that meant I could keep him company as he inevitably returned to them too.

Superstition was unbecoming of us citizens of the new China though. I didn’t believe in an afterlife. Another lifetime with him was just too much to ask for.

Pangzi called us to set the table for dinner. I watched him sit up slowly, carefully nudging the cat off before jumping down like one himself.

I could never have another life better than this.