slecnaztemnot

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I love it when the same character honorifics are basically used as a barometer for an evolving relationship over the course of a story.

"...Princess" (Derogatory)

"Princess." (You have disproven several of my previous assumptions but I'm still guarded and critical.)

"Princess," (Mildly impressed but still snarky)

"Princess," (I am coming to terms with how much your office has demanded of you and am finally considering you an equal)

"Princess," (I genuinely respect you, your office, and how much you have grown beyond it since we have met.)

"Princess." (Uh oh I've started catching feelings and am now using your title to remind both you and myself of the distance between us.)

"PRINCESS!" (You are in danger and I am now utterly devoted AND DOWN SO BAD.)

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shall i tell you about angels, mr lipwig?

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Apparently it's hard to draw emotion with oil pastels... But here another di feisheng appreciation post.

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Hawke family fleeing the Blight

I have some thoughts on my Hawke having to deal with another Blight and keeping her family safe again. But that's too long for this post, so I'm just gonna add it to my list of Dragon Age fics that I still need to finish...

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the other elves welcoming Legolas in Valinor

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very loosely, a follow up to this jack comic from last year!

behold! the king. there's no room in his kingdom for heroes, miracles, terrors, or the other-worldly now, his reign is one of order--

--and then word of a giant killer called jack reaches his courts.

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Bro, we are cooked. The knight that dogs the prince's shadow like a dark and silent wraith just knelt to press his forehead to the prince's hand. Yeah, now he's uttering a prayer whose recipient is ostensibly God but in reality is the deified version of the prince that exists only in his mind. Aaand the prince just caressed his cheek to preemptively grant him absolution. I gotta... I gotta get out of here.

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“I’ll hold on to you, Hawke. Till the very end”

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hightown mornings

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Certified freaks

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i was so ready to accept that there was just an evil boy band. these magical girls have a singing gimmick so the villains have to as well, don't think too hard about it just enjoy the show.

but no.

this was a targeted decision. they decided to form a boy band just to fuck with huntrix directly. they did this on PURPOSE. and in order to do this, jinu had to:

study modern pop music

write and choreograph his own routine

calibrate it specifically to go viral on tiktok (whistle and shoulder thing both easily replicated by your average fan, brilliant move)

find four 'conventionally hot' demons

TEACH THEM TO DANCE in PERFECT SYNC with the expert precision of chart topping bands

they had rehearsals

in the demon realm

for what, months? years??

was there a chalkboard that said "Always Be Posing" ??

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the adrenaline rush is real

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He made it 🥺

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huntrix x saja photoshoot

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I have an immense soft spot for Sam Vimes and his giant wife Sybil Ramkin

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HONESTLY another fave I found! Seriously, I’ve read almost 40 rebirth/second chance at life danmeis just this year alone and probably almost a 100 entirely, and not gonna lie sometimes the plot does get cliched or turns out weird at the end, but this one was my most recent read today that I found myself liking A LOT. It has all the usual expected makings of a rebirth danmei, but also tiny little twists here and there that keeps you going, and also overall being a really straightforward, comfortable but exciting read.

Summary

The novel starts with Jun Huailang and his 300+ family members and servants about to be beheaded in the city square for framed treason, all because of the new tyrant prince regent Xue Yan. In despair, Jun Huailang dies, and then when he opens his eyes again, he’s in a strange place, and sees two immortals arguing over something. A book falls to the ground and JHL picks it up, and then realizes that it’s a book - a book of which Xue Yan and JHL’s younger sister are the protagonists of. It’s basically a gouxie, angsty porn with plot novel between them and JHL and the rest of his family are basically cannon fodder and plot devices meant to move this ill-fated love and romance along. As JHL reads, the angrier he gets, because Xue Yan incarcerates his sister and she becomes his play thing, and the worst thing is that she ends up falling in love with him and willingly letting him trample all over her body and herself. 

As the immortals realize that there’s a lone soul that’s not been collected, they’re about to collect him when an accident happens - his soul is sent back in time, a few years back, before tragedy happens. A bitter, resentful JHL is intent on getting revenge on Xue Yan, and because of this, he turns up at an event that evening that would change the course of history in his past life. Instead of never having know Xue Yan, JHL meets a much younger Xue Yan for the first time as a bunch of other eunuchs and the 2nd prince is bullying him.

Xue Yan is the neglected and initially abandoned 5th prince due to a deliberate prophecy that said he was meant to curse his father, the Emperor, and so Xue Yan grows up in another country owned by his uncle, who brings him under strict regiment and trains him for war. His uncle hates his father, and vice versa, and when he’s a teenager, the Emperor sends the army to eradicate his uncle under framed treason, and he would have died, but crawls his way back to the imperial city. The Emperor has no choice but to take him in, but that’s all he does - he cares naught for his son and wouldn’t care if he really died, and so lets all his other sons bully him, and even punishes him to the verge of death a few times without even checking if Xue Yan was maligned or not.

JHL has never seen a Xue Yan like this - a weak, abandoned dog that anyone can step on - and initially, he stands by as Xue Yan is obviously bullied, trying to convince himself that this boy will end up becoming a tyrant and his enemy, but the more he sees Xue Yan, he realizes that Xue Yan was also forced and manipulated to some extent to become the cold, crazy Emperor that he was in his past life. At some point, JHL decides to be a positive force of good in his life, and if Xue Yan doesn’t do any evil, he’ll not fault Xue Yan for his past life’s crimes.

To Xue Yan, JHL is a sudden, unexpected and treasured light for him in the darkest of his days, and he knows he will never let JHL go. He falls for him, as JHL also starts realizing that all he thinks about is Xue Yan in years of absence - and the more he falls for him, the more JHL thinks that the ‘book’ he read was farce, because he cannot think of any way that Xue Yan would have abused his sister that way, no matter how far he was pushed.

Read

Novel (Online) | Novel (Translations) | Audio Drama (Slated for Nov. 2022 TBA)

Characters

1. Jun Huai Lang 君怀琅 - An intelligent young man who has a slightly weak physique and died in despair, before getting a chance to re-do everything and save his family. He also realizes at some level that it’s not just Xue Yan who drove his family to their doom in his past life, even though he was certainly the executioner, and in this life, he’s determined to drag every single person out of the shadows. In his past life, his father was framed first for taking disaster funds, and then his younger brother sacrificed himself and died outside of the city gates, before his entire family was sentenced to death. He was very isolated from plenty of important and critical happenings between Xue Yan and his sister in his first life, so much so that he has to piece together turning points in their relationship and try to prevent them in his second life. Tries to be a good cousin/friend for Xue Yan, not knowing that Xue Yan thought of him as more. He first discovers his feelings for him before Xue Yan confesses, and tries to distance himself from Xue Yan, and this triggers Xue Yan, and he cannot help but confess and kiss JHL to make his point clear. He puts Xue Yan at arm’s length, and it’s not until he’s down with the plague and Xue Yan goes to hell and back to save him, not afraid of getting the disease from close contact with him, that JHL tells him that if he lives, they can be together.

2. Xue Yan 薛晏 - A seemingly helpless and powerless prince who cannot protect himself from being bullied or harmed by others, but who is actually scheming bit by bit and can tolerate a lot of hardship to get what he wants. He didn’t know JHL well in his past life and instead knew his sister, and he resents JHL’s sister because of an incident that she could not have helped, and ends up sentencing her family to death, including JHL, because of that warped but detached sort of resentment years later. In this life, JHL comes into his life, and is the only warmth for him, a treasured thing that he will kill to protect. He insisted on being prince regent in his first life because he realized the man he looked up to, his uncle, only brought him up that way and manipulated him so he would kill his own father, who stole the throne from his uncle - and betrayed, Xue Yan refused to sit in the seat that his uncle so wanted before his death. In the second, he refuses to sit in the seat so he would never have to marry and would be able to be with JHL in public.

Other Things I Liked in the Novel

Xue Yan really takes care of everything for JHL without him knowing in the first half of the novel because he realized that he only cares for JHL, and while JHL worries about things that happened in his past life and seem to be coming bit by bit in the second, Xue Yan is one step faster despite having no memory of the first life, just because everything that concerns JHL and his family concerns him too

Xue Yan is placed under JHL’s aunt, a favoured consort in the palace, and spends a few months with JHL, his new ‘mother’ and JHL’s super cute sister, and JHL makes sure his sister parades herself in front of Xue Yan and keeps calling him gege to make sure Xue Yan will never think of his sister as an actual woman

Everyone, including JHL’s aunt, are hilariously dismayed when they realize Xue Yan tops JHL lmaooo

XY dreams of their first life, where he indifferently beheaded JHL, and he wakes up horrified and guilty and destroyed, and then realizes that it actually happened when he tells JHL about it, and keeps telling him what a right bastard he was then, much to JHL’s amusement

At the end, after they win and get a few decades together, grow old together and die within a few days of each other, they both wake up in heaven and realize that their human life together was part of their immortal trials - AND THE BOOK THAT JHL read wasn’t even an actual book (i.e. not transmigration or even rebirth to be honest) because the deity who oversees these trials saw the actual story between JHL and XY and then in his free time decided to write fanfiction between XY and JHL’s sister, and that’s the book that ended up in JHL’s hands initially at the start of the novel

XY, who’s actually a god of bad omens and war, realizes what happened, and beats the deity up over and over again, and he’s stopped after a bit when someone calls his name, and he looks up to see this gorgeous, familiar xianjun, who’s the heavenly emperor’s closest disciples, who’s looking at him with so much love and relief and fondness - because the end of their supposed ‘life’ is only a beginning