#Renascence Faire

[xhosabits]

Investec Cape Town Art Fair 2023 – A Decade of Achievement

Investec Cape Town Art Fair 2023 – A Decade of Achievement

[deanchaiyachet]

— SETTING: verda and emmy's wedding reception ; oct 28th — AVAILABILITY: closed starter for MAYA LEE | ( @mayxlee )

Dean had noticed her. His gaze would, at often times be drawn to her slim figure as she walked around, chatted with people and unwillingly made his heart skip a beat each time he'd see her. After making a fool out of himself, choking out in his words and stormed off after their first official encounter at the Renascence Faire, Dean wasn't going to dare talking to her again. So, he remained safe by Ingrid's side.

He wasn't, however, expecting Maya to be the one to talk to him this time, as she slid beside him at their chosen table and said hello, making the baker choke on the champagne he'd been sipping.

"H-hey!" He laughed nervously, reaching for a napkin to wipe his lips and chin. His gaze followed Ingrid as she exited the table, leaving Dean alone with his own dumbness around his high school crush. "Hey! You having fun?"

[justletmereadmycomics]

looOOOK AT THIS LITTLE FFUCKER THAT I GOT AT THE RENASCENCE FAIRE TODAY

ITSS A PIN :D

(iif you cantt tell dragonss gave beeen a speciall interest of mine since i was like. 6.)

PAOAUSHASHISHS DRYAPN SJISJW AJWISHSUW SJW TNINT ITS PURPLE SISHAIAHAUHSUSWIAOQJWINW TINYS WISHISHEEIEOKQPAMDDUEGEHXDIWJA

[maladaptvs-irl]

okay why do i like this loser? WELL.

he cannot possibly cross a boundary because he can’t even shake your hand without permission. how would he hurt me??? he won’t. he cannot. i am literally so safe with him.

I LIKE THE THINGS HE LIKES.

- i’m NOT a fan of creepy horror but i’m cool with jumpscares and gore. i’ll stomach it for him if he stomachs watching my comedians.

- PLEASE TAKE ME TO RENASCENCE FAIRS???? ARE YOU KIDDING??!!!!! I WANT TO GO!!!!!

- HIS OUTFITTTTT HES SO COOL GENUINELY FUCK OFF HES SO COOL HE HAS A MATCHING CANE !!!

- chances are he plays dnd. chances are PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE LET ME JOIN PLEASE PLEASE PLE-

i LOVE his hair. i want to give him space buns. i want to give him boxer braids. i want to gel that shit up. (i also desperately want to give him a deep conditioner cause babe the back is fried…)

he’s cute. (he is) (come on) (that face) (his stupid :] smile) (the creases around his eyes?) (the freckles on his arms?) (he’s a catch)

I WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT HIM. WHAT DID HE STUDY? DOES HE LIKE DOGS? DOES HE PLAY POOL? WHAT MUSIC DOES THIS BASTARD LISTEN TO?? DOES HE KNOW WHO BRENNAN LEE MULLIGAN IS??? HAS HE EVER GROWN A BEARD????? AAAAAAAAAAA

THE STUTTER T—T why is he single someone scoop him up before i do

i think he would be into animal bones

he looks soft. idc. he does.

oh he looks really young ??? maybe it’s the shaven face but he looks to be in his 20s.

he would be VERY easy to shop for. i love autistic people. yes i do know what you want say hello to more Hawaiians shirts and a short-sword. say hello to another cane. say hello to a plague mask, probably. flamethrower for valentine’s day. be responsible babe. i got you fancy medieval gloves. i got you chainmail. BABE. i’ll actually spoil the shit out of him. please.

cons? we both get mad v easily and we would shout at each other. but that’s probably fine cause i’m not worried he’d start beating my ass like most men. i don’t like his interior design choices but it is his parents house. oh that’s a con as well… 34… parents house… it’s FINE. his mom said it’s not often he lets people hug him, which WOULD be a con, but he didn’t seem uncomfortable hugging emma ?? worst of all he does sock -> shoe -> sock -> shoe /j. he talks weird but i’ll be honest i got used to it really fast. he’s VERY defensive. moreso than i am. we would fight. i don’t think he’s a conservative but he .. could be? but he’s so respectful… and he believes in climate change… i doubt it. idk. his friends are strange but he is too so that’s fitting. oh and the biggest issue is of course, no offense james, that we are both utterly useless /exg. how would anything get done??? who will step up? (me i’ll do it SIGH).

[whoisthatmovinginthedark]

I'm very sorry but I just can't stand the idea of TJC as GY.

I really like him as an actor. Truly. I watched Under the Skin for him and him only. And none of us has a clue how GY's character has been rewritten for the drama, so I realise he could perfectly cast for their version of him.

But. Every time I see his face in the SPL tag, I recoil in horror.

[witch-without-gender]

Skål babes, bitches, and bastards. Thor absolutely reached out to me in a dream a couple nights ago (you guessed it, half a dozen baby robins were screaming at me in my dream) so when I went to a renascence fair today I bought a Mjölnir necklace to wear! I also got a drinking horn to drink mead from (actually probably just gonna put it on display tbh, it’s v pretty). This was the only place I really took pictures at bc I thought it was nice

[dailyadventureprompts]

Adventure: The Doomsday Book

“If you don’t like how it’s done, do it yourself” is very bad advice for someone with a god complex

Setup: In life, the mage Varner of Boltzford was fascinated with the complexity of the world, the seemingly infinite inter-connectivity of all things in a web so complex that one mortal mind could never understand all of it. In death fascination transformed into obsession, as Varner was driven to extend his existence to perfect what he saw as the art of the gods: Genesis, the act of bringing life out of nothingness.

Decades of experiments with astral constructs and transmutation eventually led Varner into the a philosophical and theological haze of “ontology” and “ideal forms”, along with a lot of other prattle that allowed him to convince himself that the things he could create things so beautiful they could redefine beauty, so perfect they could improve on perfection, and so real that they made other things less real by comparison.

He created the Renascent Tome, an artifact that ate up the matter of the existent world to produce things that adhred to Varner’s vision of perfection, small things at first that were mere pretty trinkets, through which he learned that the more he wanted form his creation the more he had to feed it

It was shortly after the lich turned an entire town and its surrounding valley into dust that Varner fell victim to the bane of so many promising omnicidal visionaries: meddling adventurers. The heroes did what heroes did best and though they made a proper mess out of the perfectionist’s plans they were unable to keep hold of his Tome, which slipped through their grasp to cause problems in the wider world to this day, diminished in power but no less a threat.

Hooks: 

Varner went through a number of research facilities/evil lairs in his time before he was felled by heroes, and any one of them could be a resting place for his tome. Such lairs are often dumping grounds for the lich’s escaped or failed experiments: creatures and constructs so beautiful they sear or corrode things around them, eerily stagnant wilderness, the soulless progeny of attempted “master races”.  Such oddities would draw all sorts of adventurers, or at least the collectors and conservationists looking to study these anomalies.

A foolish and famehungry apprentice found the Renascent Tome at his local book fair being sold  ( at a discount no less) by an unwitting salvager. After discovering its ability to transmute things into idealized forms, he began using the book to mend broken objects and “heal” local livestock ( no matter the fact that things the book abzorbs are effectively disintegrated with a new thing made in their place). Tales of his wondrous talents reached the ear of the ailing local countess, who requested the apprentice bathe her in the books healing light and restore her to the glory she once possessed.  Now her lands are ruled by a nightmarish “perfected” tyrant, and patrolled by her inhumanly “idealized” soldiers. The thing that took the countess’s place brings the captive apprentice out from his cell every week or so to illuminate her increasingly crystalline castle, each interaction getting crueler and more alien.

Cultists of an outergod dedicated to ego destroying perfection have come to see Varner’s work as a holy relic of their faith, allowing them to perform miracles that they could have never dreamed of otherwise. They seek it always, putting a target on the party’s back should they come into possession of the Renascent Tome. When pushed to extremes, these same cultists will unleash the relic’s power without any heed for who or what it consumes, gleefully sacrificing themselves to become the foundation of the world it will create.

Item stats: The Renascent Tome

artifact

Dormant: while dormant the tome serves as a +1 arcane spellcasting focus.

A creature attuned to the Renascent tome gains the 2nd level wizard school feature: Minor Conjuration, save that the items created always have a +1 magical bonus to any rolls they were intended to make. Conjuration wizards treat both the focus and the items conjured as if they were a +2 bonus instead.

When this feature is activated, the book’s pages glow and begin siphoning in dust and small unattended objects from its surroundings. The effect is otherwise harmless.

Awakened: When awakened, the Renascent tome gains 10 charges, which may be used to cast the following spells: Discorperating light (1 charge as tasha’s caustic brew, but dealing radiant damage) Conjure Barrage ( 3 charges) or Fabricate (4 charges). Items created by the fabricate spell are of exquisite quality and retain the +1 magical bonus from the minor conjuration feature.  The tome regains 1d6+4 charges at dawn. When the last charge is spent, roll a d20, on a 1 the tome consumes itself in a blast of siphoning radiance. All creatures in a 20ft radius must make a save vs the bearer’s spell save dc ( or int+proff if they are not a caster) or suffer the effects of a successful gravity sinkhole spell

Exalted: The bonus the focus provides grows to +3 and the tome gains 10 extra charges.   The spells that it can cast now include disintegrate ( 6 charges), mirage arcane ( 7 charges) and blade of disaster (9 charges). Spells can still be cast if the item lacks the prerequisite charges, but this increases the number rolled on the no charge roll to go up by 1 per missing charge. 

Curse: Once exalted, Each spell cast from the book now also requires an extra 1d4 charges. If the no charge roll occurs, in addition to triggering a gravity sinkhole, the Tome begins to act as a sphere of annihilation from that moment onwards. 

Further Adventures:

Removing the curse from the Renascent Tome requires access to Varner’s research notes, requiring the party to either seek out a source of great knowledge of attempt to seek the imprisoned lich himself.

Varner has had a lot of time to think after he was imprisoned, and has concluded that the current material world is too corrupt and messy for any of his perfect creations to truly take root. Though his reemergence into the land of the living will bring with it a tide of new horrific experiments and dangerous objects released upon the world, his ultimate goal is to find a nice enough place to use as raw material for the eden he’s going to build. Given that he’s spent long enough as a lich that many of his own feelings have begun to atrophy, he’ll reach out to those closest to him ( like the meddling adventuring party that woke him up) to see what they think of as ideal. Say, the starting town of the campaign or wherever the heroes have decided to make their home.

Should the Renascent tome fulfill its purpose it’s safe to say that the party will have very little chance of undoing what its done, muchless surviving the process should they have been caught within its mile wide blast radius. However, with the slightest bit of divine intervention from whatever spirits are watching over their adventures, the party might just be able to turn that slim chance into a fighting one. They find themselves trapped inside the grotesque Perfection of Varner’s world, a grotesque parody of a place familiar to them with all the personality and imperfection scrubbed away.  At its center is the Tome, its own less than perfect existence protected by an enchantment Varner made to protect his magnum opus from devouring itself in an act of sentimental self sabotage. The perfect world is contained inside the book while the book is contained within the world, this paradox, if inverted, might allow the party to reverse the flow of the Tome’s reality devouring magic, deconstructing the demiplane it’s constructed and reassembling the world that was in mostly the right order. All that’s required is to brave the maze of hyper-real nostalga and face off against a perfected Varner, alive again after a near century of lichdom, ignorant of any of his previous failings, but master of his domain.

[marc-spectorr]

Okay so like I have a cute idea, so like the reader works at a renascence fair and she's a mermaid for the fair like has one of those silicone tails and stuff. And she's handing out flyers with a couple other performers at the museum and asks Steven to fair there awkwardly flirting because there dorks, and he sees her at the fair in the water tank and they flirt some more and maybe they have a underwater kiss towards the end. I just want to see Steven being a nerd and flirting with a mermaid lol 😆 I feel like it would be really cute.

awhhhheh that’s super adorable!!! steven would be totally down to attend a renaissance fair, especially if it means that he’ll see you there 🥺 ughh, but imagine tho, he’s sooo excited to dress up (bc i really think he would), watch jousting tournaments, and listen to the live music :))) ofc steven’s favorite part of the whole festival is finding you in the water tank dressed as a mermaid. he spends the most time there, watching you swim and chatting with you in between air breaks. he stays there until the fair is over, and when everyone’s packing up for the day, you let him sit at the edge of the tank. one thing led to another, and the next thing steven knows, he’s in the water, laughing. he didn’t care that he’d be soaking wet coming out of this. how could he if he’s with you? and for fun, he swims down with you and nearly drowns when you kiss him. to others, kissing while under the water might not be ideal. but to steven, it was absolutely the most perfect thing.

[derangedrhythms]

Do you have quotes that would describe this blog? ^^ 🖤 am a fan of yours

I love this ask. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to be self-indulgent 🖤

"A stranger has come / To share my room in the house not right in the head, / A girl mad as birds"

— Dylan Thomas, Collected Poems 1934-1953; from 'Love in the Asylum'

"If it's darkness / we're having, let it be extravagant."

— Jane Kenyon, from 'Taking Down the Tree'

"I feel words more than I feel pictures. I am more sensitive to words than to images."

— Simone de Beauvoir, from 'All Said and Done', tr. André Deutsch

"...a little too redolent of long-dead and morbid things..."

— Oliver Onions, Widdershins; ‘The Beckoning Fair One’

"I am eternally, devastatingly romantic [...] 'romantic' doesn't mean 'sugary.' It's dark and tormented — the furor of passion, the despair of an idealism that you can't attain."

— Catherine Breillat 

"the language of love-letters, of suicide notes,"

— Adrienne Rich, Diving into the Wreck; from ‘Trying to Talk with a Man’

"Invited to go where else but down into the depths."

— Alejandra Pizarnik, The Shadow Texts; from ‘The Green Table’, tr: Yvette Siegert

"...you could almost smell the gloom."

— Cynthia Ozick, from 'Foreign Bodies'

"Though summer’s rife and the warm rose in season, / Rebuke me not: I have a winter reason."

— Edna St. Vincent Millay, XXXV from ‘Fatal Interview’

"cracks in the walls / black sorcery / flayed phrases / fateful poems"

— Alejandra Pizarnik, from ‘The Short Cantos’, tr: Yvette Siegert

"Absolutely inside The Emotion."

— Alice Notley, Disobedience; from ‘Do you want to be excellent an a actress no not that either’

"...a delight in dwelling on dark things, and entertaining odd fancies –"

— Emily Brontë, from 'Wuthering Heights'

"For there are ghosts in the air"

— Dylan Thomas, Twenty-Five Poems; from ‘I have longed to move away’

"I rather like being slugged, to walk away from the poem with old wounds reopened and…let the poem bruise me."

— Anne Sexton, from ‘A Self-Portrait in Letters’; to Carolyn Kizer, 1st April 1959⁠

"Dark, Dark, is all I find for metaphor;"

— Edna St. Vincent Millay, Renascence; from ‘Interim’

[xhosabits]

The Ninth Edition of the Investec Cape Town Art Fair: 18-20 February 2022

The @ICTAF_ takes place at the Cape Town International Convention Centre between 18 – 20 February 2022, opening for the VIP Preview on Thursday 17th February.

[deanchaiyachet]

— SETTING: first annual renascence faire ; — AVAILABILITY: closed starter for MAYA LEE | ( @mayxlee )

Dean adjusted the hood over his head as he moved along the crowd. It was more about getting character than it ever was about being recognized, though he had been for a few people already. As he reached one of the food vendors, he crossed his arms, checking their food options before he turned to the person beside him and offered them a smile. "You look like you'd give great food advice. What should I get?"

[dangermousie]

2020 End of Year Post - cdrama edition

This is only going to cover cdramas that aired in 2020; if I had to make a post about all the cdramas I watched this year, I would still be doing it in three months...

Overall it’s been a fairly decent cdrama year (certainly better than the very lacklustre kdrama year.) It’s no miracle that 2019 was (so many excellent dramas!) but overall pretty solid.

DRAMAS WATCHED

(In order of liking from least to most as opposed to pure quality; I am including if I’ve seen enough to make up my mind; yes I realize that’s inaccurate, but that’s my list)

44 The Legend of Jing Yan - the worst cdrama I have seen this year, and possibly the worst drama of 2020, period. The hero and heroine were both uncharismatic, incapable of acting and saddled with such shrilly moronic characters, the only suspense was how they haven’t both perished long since from forgetting to breathe. Nor was anyone in the rest of the cast much better; the screenplay was written by a lower mammal and the cinematography was the best a third-rate wedding cinematographer could offer. Stay the HELL away from this one.

43 Unicorn Girl - the only unicorn about this bland yet irritating piece of pap was the fact that I was supposed to believe the leads are hockey players.

42 Autumn Cicada - I like spy stories, Allen Ren, and Republican Era settings. I can tune out Communist propaganda with the best of them. Yet, the propaganda ate the story to such a degree that there was nothing left; pre magic change Pinocchio was less wooden then this narrative.

41 You Complete Me - no you do not.

40 Skate into Love - the only positive thing I can say about this is that at least it’s better than Unicorn Girl, if for no other reason that only one of them is supposed to be a hockey player.

39 Irreplaceable Love - how do you make a story about fake siblings with a mad mother falling for each other boring? I don’t know, ask the makers of this.

38 Eternal Love Rain - I hate to rain on their parade, but these two actors cannot act, have about as much chemistry as a piece of bread, and are trapped in a story perfect for entertaining the mental abilities of the leads of Jin Yan.

37 For Married Doctoress - ummmm, you could do worse I guess. It only made me break out in mild hives. The sadistic ending did make me laugh though.

36 Dance of the Sky Empire - why you get Xu Kai and waste him in this insipid mess of a story is beyond me.

35 Love Designer - it’s inoffensive except to my sense of entertainment. There is nothing wrong with it but oh God is it bland.

34 Love a Lifetime - It felt like a lifetime watching this, but I didn’t love it. The story is incoherent, the actors have no chemistry and it’s all an epic waste of time.

33 Love is Sweet - so sweet it gave me diabetes. I like Luo Yunxi and Bai Lu, but there is literally no plot. I don’t need to sink into a plotless morass to watch pretty people engage in PG-rated make-outs. I am an adult with access to stronger stuff if I am thus inclined, though to be fair they could get x-rated and I still wouldn’t be able to sit through so many episodes of plotlessness for that.

32 Fake Princess - I love Zhao Yi Qin, but the guy needs to pick better projects. The female lead in this one has the voice and personality that can strip paint but the story is also doing nobody any favors.

31 The Changan Youth - I lost my brain checking this out. I had to go and read a dense treatise on medieval coinage or Mayan farming to try to recover it.

30 My Dear Destiny - kinda cheesy fun. It honestly shouldn’t be as low except it really feels like community theater.

29 Handsome Siblings - why is the Nic Tse version so good and this one so bad? True mystery for the ages. Chen Zhe Yuan is the sole reason this isn’t lower, because that kid tries SO HARD to make this drama bearable and almost succeeds. I can’t wait to see him in Sha Po Lang which actually will give him something to do.

28 In a Class of Her Own - see my comment on The Changan Youth. But at least Song Weilong is gorgeous to look at.

27 General’s Lady - inoffensive, pretty and so utterly pointless.

26 The Blooms at Ruyi Pavilion - those two leading actors are a no go to me but at least they considerately acted with each other instead of ruining two dramas for me. It’s very pretty though.

25 Jiu Liu Overlord - it’s a mess and I bailed, but I placed it this high merely due to the fact that Lai Yi finally gets a leading role and he’s sexy as fuck and I am shallow. Whoever styled Bai Lu should never work again except at a circus, however.

24 Cross Fire - not my genre and Luhan will always look too much like my cousin for comfort, but it’s a surprisingly gripping and dark drama. I liked it!

23 God of Lost Fantasy - if you want to watch a mediocre wuxia/xianxia, this is not a bad choice. Probably better than Legend of Fei actually, because at least it doesn’t have an A-list cast to waste and gives us Sheng Yilun himbo and shirtless.

22 Renascence - the insane cuts (it went from 70 eps to 36!!!) made a fairly cheesy story into a total mess. But I had a good time until I finally bailed mainly because of the male lead (Chen Zhe Yuan yet again carrying a not-good 2020 drama on his shoulders; the guy should be nicknamed Atlas) and the insane but in a fun way story. The female lead (both the character and the actress) were not up to par but oh well.

21 Legend of Fei - only this high because objectively there is nothing I disliked it. But there is nothing I liked either. The most uninspired drama on the list. If you could eat cardboard, this is what it would taste like.

20 Ever Night 2 - compared to EN1, it’s a waste of film. On its own merits, it’s not very good (the cast replacements are uniformly inferior and Dylan Wang is so wrong for Ning Que I cannot even put it into words; the script is useless.) But it had some parts I loved so very VERY much (all the shippy stuff was perfection) so I don’t feel too bitter.

19 Castle in the Sky 2 - a lovely if not too complex fairy tale. It is inferior to its prequel because it doesn’t have Zhang Ruo Yun who elevated it, but it’s still a solid bit of fun.

18 The Great Ruler - it’s very high fantasy, very pretty, and surprisingly involving.

17 (tie) Legend of Two Sisters in the Chaos - the secondary couple steals the show but the rest is not too bad if not too involving.

17 Legend of Awakening - a solid bit of fun with a seriously BDSM streak (theme this year apparently - but come on, the lead’s powers only activate when he’s in extreme pain!) It’s a bit generic and the costuming is done by a blind person, not to mention the OTP is a NOTP, but the rest of relationships (romantic and platonic) are wonderful (I live for the found siblings story in this one) and I like most of the characters.

16 Consummation - a rare modern cdrama I liked; a sweet coming of age story (and love story) even if wrapped in a pretty weird virtual reality concept.

15 Oops the King is in Love - this is how you do a low budget, sweet, silly piece of fluff. Our heroine pretends to be a eunuch and crosses paths with a powerless young king and they are adorable, even more so than the drama.

14 Song of Glory - pretty solid, though draggy and I didn’t love the toothpaste filter. But A+ cast, excellent leading couple chemistry, Li Qin being a BAMF and a leading man (Qin Hao) who is actually an adult.

13 And the Winner is love - objectively kind of a mess (and the heroine has the brainpower of a gnat), but the OTP chemistry is excellent and Luo Yunxi fighting and flirting with a fan as finally a leading man is worth the price of admission.

12 Miss S - snazzy and snappy and stylish and whatever else starts with S.

11 Eternal Love of Dream - I don’t know if it would work for you as well if you weren’t a hardcore shipper for this OTP in Three Lives but I was and this was such a darling, wonderful, shippy delight; plus I love this type of high fantasy.

10 (tie) Maiden Holmes - solid and sweet and a wonderful OTP. Proves that functional doesn’t have to mean boring. If you watch one cross-dressing drama this year make it this one.

10 Qin Dynasty Epic - srs bsns history epic. I am not far into it but it’s so good and smart and visually stunning (if you love battles, this one is for you.)

9 Love Lasts Two Minds - I adored this so much more than I should objectively have, but it’s so beautiful (and no I am not just referring to Alan Yu’s face) and the OTP has wonderful chemistry and the story is solid, and the whole trope of her memory being wiped but falling for him all over again while he’s constantly and utterly devoted is a fave; plus he’s in pain and semi-dyng for most of it so sluuuurp (happy ending, don’t worry)

8 To Love - yes, a modern drama is this high! But it involves intensity, tragedy, genuine adults and sexiness that is Lin Gengxin. And there is an actual plot and darkness OMG!

7 Legend of Xiao Chuo - so beautiful, so fun, so full of gorgeousness of Shawn Dou. Plus, Liao is a rare setting for a cdrama and there are a lot of characters and stories I liked a LOT. Less ship content than I wanted but more than I expected.

6 The Romance of Tiger and Rose - so so delightful. I was literally laughing out loud. I have no idea if it will work as well if one isn’t a seasoned watcher of period cdrama/reader of web novels, with bonus for watching/reading Goodbye My Princess, but it was a complete delight for me (and yes, I shipped for real, as well. Best of both worlds.)

5 Twisted Fate of Love - Jin Han gets a leading period drama role! And he’s enjoying it to the hilt, excellent as a smart, twisty bastard who is also charming and so madly in love with heroine. Sun Yi is beautiful and tough and her chemistry with JH is on fire, the story never drags, and it’s so twisty and fun and just awesome.

4 Love In Between - the most underrated drama on this list. It has no big names or big budget, but it’s wuxia that’s clever, driven, tragic, hopeful and so beautifully shot. Three separate (amazing) OTPs, a leading man who is so not typical (a doctor who cannot fight and who never acquires this ability) and who is intense and smart and damaged, a heroine who puts her quest ahead of her emotions, an unhealthy degree of involvement by yours truly. This is a drama Fei should have been.

3 Love and Redemption - such a lovely, addictive, utterly romantic fairy tale. I was obsessed with it for a reason. All the tropes you love and some you didn’t know you did, a star-crossed OTP to the nth power (and a secondary OTP I hardcore love), a twisty yet coherent plot, some insane chemistry and so much whump and hurt/comfort they must have bought blood packets in bulk.

2 Go Ahead - yes, I can’t believe it either. A contemporary slice of life cdrama made it this high on my list. But the way it feels so real, the found family perfection, the characters I love and loathe, the perfect cherry of a wonderful OTP that hits my narrative kinks on top, and just a perfect storm of loveliness all around with this one.

1 The Wolf - is that any surprise to anyone who’s checked out this tumblr for the last couple of months? Tragic, intense and gorgeous; so romantic and angsty and passionate it made me lose my mind (though some of it was gone the moment the camera panned to Darren Wang) - all my favorite tropes and then some; this is a drama that may not be perfect but it is 100% and then beyond perfect for ME.

FAVORITE DRAMA

The Wolf - I have seen objectively better cdramas; even this year. But it has been literal years since I have been this hardcore obsessed, this utterly pleased, this emotionally catered to and devastated at once. A beautiful dark fairy tale that manages to own me despite the storytelling gaps due to censorship, it took me for one of the biggest emotional roller coaster rides of my drama watching career. Visually gorgeous, poetic, intense, and so romantic it took my breath away, this is not just my favorite cdrama of 2020, it’s my favorite drama this year period, and the one cdrama this year to make it into my permanent Top 10 cdramas list.

WORST DRAMA

Legend of Jin Yan - see my write up for it for why as I refuse to waste more time on this stupid mess.

FAVORITE MALE CHARACTER

Wolfie, The Wolf - he is such a haunted, tormented, complex, dark mess; loving and violent, severely damaged and with a hidden yearning softness, longing and aloof. And the amount of charisma and sheer masculine sex appeal Darren Wang brings to the role is insane and not something I see much of in a cdrama. Plus, that character arc with its rapid fall and slow painful redemption is A++++

Runner Up:  Sifeng, Love and Redemption - has a male lead ever loved more utterly and selflessly, suffered more thoroughly and beautifully, and managed to have such chemistry with both his leading lady and his leading man (that his leading lady temporarily turned into) at once? The answer is no.

Almost made the cut - Feng Xi, Twisted Fate of Love, Han Shuo, The Romance of Tiger and Rose, Qing Ci, Love in Between.

FAVORITE FEMALE CHARACTER

Xiao Qian, The Romance of Tiger and Rose - so funny, so much the reason this drama was such a delight. I adore her beyond words.

NEEDS TO BE MURDERED

Murder Daddy, The Wolf - I am sad the censors robbed us of seeing him die on screen. He was fully human but nonetheless managed to be the worst monster in a drama full of literal ones.

Ling Xiao’s Mom, Go Ahead - I hate her so much I don’t want to look up her name. She abused the kid, the disappeared and came back to abuse him some more. I mean she literally gave her child mental health issues. She is the WORST.

FAVORITE SHIP

Xing’er x Wolfie, The Wolf - are you kidding me? Who else could it ever be for me? They destroyed each other and saved each other, sworn enemies and childhood lovers, soulmates and epic messes, they couldn’t live with or without each other. The longing, the passion, the intensity, the angst, the epicness. LIKE THERE ARE NO WORDS!!!!

FAVORITE SECONDARY OTP

Si Yuan, Shen Manqing, Love in Between - I loved them as much and often more than the main OTP. So much angst and passion and a happy ending! She is a seeming sect darling (except the sect is horrible and also sexist so her only worth is as a marriage candidate) and he’s an information broker who is actually one of the members of a destroyed sect that’s blamed for the massacre of her family. That chemistry and yearning is insane. The scene where she touches his face when he’s unconscious was in serious running for my favorite scene of 2020.

NOTP

Legend of Awakening - I have never seen a couple that didn’t just have no chemistry but exhibited actual revulsion towards each other before watching Chen Feiyu and Cheng Xiao try to act as lovers in this one. It was almost entertaining to be honest.

FAVORITE SCENE

It’s a tie and both are from The Wolf. One is a sequence where Wolfie marches to the walls alone, seeking death at Xing’er’s hands and the whole sequence with the battle and rescue follows. The other is the intercut between Xing’er going to her wedding and Wolfie going to his execution, and the auto-da-fe being intercut with her wedding.

BIGGEST CRUSH

Wolfie, The Wolf - Ummm have you seen this tumblr lately, it’s basically a drool shrine to the man.

BEST SCENE STEALER CHARACTER

Yelü Yansage, The Legend of Xiao Chuo - I have loved this actor since The Myth and he continued to competently steal every scene he was in.

NEEDS A SEQUEL

To Love - come out of the coma, dammit!!!!!!!

NEEDS A DIRECTOR’S CUT

The Wolf - duh. It started out as 59 eps and got cut to 49. I reaiize some stuff is never gonna get put in due to censorship, but some of the stuff that got cut got for time reasons because they were deluded and hoping to get a TV broadcast so ep count had to be under 50. I mean I doubt the censors would care if they kept scenes of Wolfie building her a swing or whatever. I really really want a director’s cut the way Goodbye My Princess did even if like with GMP it’s only three extra eps. Hell, I will take extra three minutes, as long as those three minutes are Darren Wang shirtless or with a sword. Ahem.

NEEDS SCISSORS TAKEN TO IT

The Song of Glory - it’s a fairly solid drama but honestly it didn’t need to be as long as it was and kind of got draggy and I got lost interest. (I could have gotten snarky and said all the dramas I didn’t like needed scissors taken to them in their entirety but decided to play nice.)

TOO MANY SCISSORS TAKEN TO IT

There are a number of dramas I could complain about with regard to this (hi there, darling The Wolf!) but this award goes to Renascence - poor Renascence was never going to be a masterpiece, but it had the potential to be a bit of good cheesy fun until it had its run time cut by more than half and became an incoherent piece of insanity.

TROPE THAT NEEDS TO DIE

Dumb shrill innocent heroine who can’t tie her shoes - see basically all the cdramas I didn’t like this year.

FAVORITE TROPE WE’VE SEEN A LOT OF

Male lead torture - I mean it’s always open season on that in cdramas, but between Love and Redemption, The Wolf, Love Lasts Two Minds, Love in Between and so on, it was a banner year!

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT

Legend of Fei - what a waste of that cast; what a waste of our finite time on this Earth. What a waste of my intelligence to hope for something better and stick with it for a dozen eps. I have had stale wonderbread that had more personality than this drama.There is absolutely nothing that stands out about this drama in any way,  from half-dimensional characters, to actors who are sleepwalking, to a plot that moves at the speed of an arthritic snail, to uninspired cinematography and direction, to lack of any chemistry between anyone in the cast. If paint-by-numbers was done by a group of particularly linear robots, it might come across the same way as this drama.

BIGGEST GOOD SURPRISE

The Wolf - honestly, I did not expect it to come out AT ALL EVER let alone to become my favorite drama of 2020. I was not familiar with the leading man (hahah), I liked Li Qin but wasn’t yet obsessed with her, and Xiao Zhan was excellent in The Untamed but I was hardly going to follow him from drama to drama (and I don’t do SLS any way.) And the trailer was enjoyable but unlike seemingly everyone, I didn’t think it was going to be some epic masterpiece. And then it came out and while it wasn’t objectively an epic masterpiece, it pulled out all the favorite tropes, shippy and narrative kinks from the deepest darkest recesses of my id. And I fell harder than I have in years. 

2020 DRAMAS I HAVEN’T SEEN THAT I MOST WANT TO WATCH

None. Covid Year gave me PLENTY of time

BEST NON-2020 DRAMA I’VE WATCHED IN 2020

Novoland Eagle Flag and Joy of Life - they are in my Top 10 dramas from anywhere now. They are quite different except being smart and giving me protagonists to obsess over.

ETA: Also The Untamed because @idlewilds3 pointed out I actually watched it in 2020 even though I didn’t think so because this hellyear has lasted about three decades.

MOST ANTICIPATED IN 2021

I am gonna limit it to dozen and leaving out ones that aren’t necesarily supposed to air next year (Joy of Life 2, Love in Flames of War, Novoland Princess from Plateau.)

Monarch Industry, Novoland Pearl Eclipse, Silk Washing Stream, Dream of Changan, Sword Snow Stride, Wu Xing Shi Jia, Ancient Love Poetry, Immortality, The Long Ballad, Mirror Twin Cities, The Imperial Age, Fall In Love

[booksfriendsnews]

[eBOOKS GRATUITOS – 08.05.2020] Vários livros e séries incríveis de diversos gêneros (fantasia, horror, ficção científica, policial, suspense, mistério; jovens e adolescentes; ficção: clássica, história e contemporânea; romances e erótico) estão disponíveis gratuitamente na Amazon.

 

ATENÇÃO!! Confira os e-books gratuitos dos dias anteriores, a partir do dia 21.04.2020. Alguns ainda se encontram gratuitamente.

 

- Esperança -  Lesley Pearse: https://amzn.to/3fr0OtP

 

- Eleonora - Edgar Allan Poe: https://amzn.to/3do8if2

 

- Nevermoor: Os desafios de Morrigan Crow - Jessica Townsend: https://amzn.to/3clxAuk

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[shilohrph]

i don’t know how to not write eight hundred words when asked simple questions. so this is stupid long. whoops ?

ooc name / alias: shiloh / shy / shi / that bitch™

age & pronouns: 21+ & she / her

zodiac sign: taurus

skeletons(s) you’re interested in / applying for: i’m trying to decide between a noah centino hera or a maia mitchell demeter. i’m having a hard time choosing which one, though ! i keep settling on one and then getting ideas for the other.  the struggle is real, friends. i just don’t know.

favorite rp tasks & events: i love tasks that ask you to dive deeper into your character. moodboards, playlists, self-paras, questionaires. all of that good stuff. i think having a character write x amount of diary enteries would be a fun one, because you could have some characters do food diaries, some do diaries from when they were kids, some who gather drawling from online and use those if their muses aren’t writers. a timeline of the characters lives with x amount of entries/important dates ? honesty hour. uhm. i’ll stop there. as for events: picture it, a toga party. i’m just sayin’. the electricity being out for a week due to a storm or something. something that would cause a lot of people from out of town to come there, like a music festival or fashion week. oh my god, what about a renascence fair ? yes ! also, i’ve always wanted to see a marathon in an rp. people training for the run, people cheering on the sidelines. possible injuries. good times that let me exercise vicariously.

what kind of plot drops would you like to see in this group?: i’m dumb and don’t know the difference between plot drops and events. i guess events are just for fun while plot drops further the plot ? besides drops that involve bits and pieces of their memory returning and the chaos that results from that, i think it would be fun to base drops around what’s going on with the characters. so maybe not have a whole bunch planned out and sorta play it by ear ? like, a birthday party for one character or a proposal event thing for another or a baby shower or... i don’t know. just stuff based around what’s relevent to what’s going on with the characters/the latest, greatest ‘tea’.

what are you most excited about? looking forward to? honestly i just love being in small-ish groups ? it’s so fun to plot relationships when you have multiple characters and connections to consider. like, that character is this character’s best friend but my character is enemies with character two, so how does it effect their relationship with character 1 ? i do a lot of indie rping, so i miss the group environment and watching & participating in all these interconnecting plots. so that’s for sure what i’m most excited about.

last show you’ve bingewatched: the society. i have a really short attention span so i hardly ever binge shows, but that one hooked me and i watched it all in one day.

top three favorite fictional characters: margo hanson from the magicians tv show, stevie bell from the ‘truly, devious’ book series, and nina zenik from the ‘six of crows’ & ‘nikolai’ duology !

the perfect wedding song according to you: so, i have no intention of ever getting married. ever. it’s just not for me. but ! i do really love ‘new years day’ by taylor swift for a wedding song, because i like the idea of loving someone through the huge events as well as during the small, quiet, maybe not-so-fun moments. also, ‘you are in love’ by taylor swift was the song i heard in my head while i was maid of honor for my two best friend’s at their wedding. so. those two ! but really, i feel like if you feel a connection to a song and it relates to your feelings for your partner, then that’s the perfect wedding song.

[duraxxor]

Headcanons about you, you spend ridiculous amounts of money getting your hair dyed blond with a vague hint of gray to make yourself seem even more distinguished than you already are, you've dabbled in writing historical research in part because you were actually there, you avoid renascence fairs one reason being because there are numerous things that they get wrong and you'd get so irritated you'd throw down a gauntlet at someone and seriously challenge them to a duel to the death

Thanks to the mentions of renaissance, it was clear that the shadow had called upon a version of Alphus Durand Daevara that existed not of Azeroth, but on one of the many timelines of planet Earth. A world where Dura was appeared to be a six foot four, pretty boy who was youthfully aged. This true vampire was casually minding his own business when suddenly, the mischievous voice rang through this supernatural drums of his. Every word was much like a strum of a guitar, except instead of it being a well-played riff or even a melodic chug, it screeched and squealed within his ears with pure insult. Ocean blue eyes turned crimson as his white blonde locks began to statically rise from irritation.

“ Listen here, ignorant shadow. Do you have ANY idea how hard it is to find a blonde and gray mixture that you can agree on? Would you rather I just simply turned white or bald? “ A balled fist covered his mouth as he cleared his throat of obscenities, calming his voice to a soft undertone that pleasantly flowed. “ I mean, you are right the writings and what not. There is history that I keep that is best kept under wraps. But to go as far as challenging them go a death battle? I’m not a barbarian, granted I don’t mind putting someone in their place over something they don’t fully comprehend. But I haven’t lived over five hundred years by mindless slaughtering humans and/or other creatures simply because my knowledge is always right. But in truth it is irritating when they refuse to have an open mind... wait a second, why am I ranting to an empty space with a voice? Who the blood hell are you??? “

[universe-inside-of-your-heart]

Ginga is cautiously approached by a person in a suit of fake armor, as if they were cosplaying. Clutching a small photo, they ask, "Pray tell, madam, art thou a university student?"

She looks questioningly at the person, an elegant brow raised slightly. There weren’t supposed to be any renascence fairs or general medieval or fantasy events for at least another month for that area…

“I am…Is there something I can help you with, Sir Knight?” ( @supermassive-hero )