#and sui zhou is like

[cinammonelles]

(guy who is normal about traveler abroad voice) hey man how's it going

[morethanwonderful]

Genuinely Zhou Ying from Tai Sui is one of the most insanity-inducing characters ever written, like

He's a prince. He's chronically ill. He eats almost nothing that isn't bland and medicinal. He hates his dad so much he wants to start a revolution to destroy him. He's born vaguely psychic and eventually becomes the closest thing his world has to omniscient. He starts his revolution by having two local politicians chopped into mincemeat, blended together, and poured out in the street. His favorite person in the world is his annoying little cousin that hides out at his house with him when he gets in trouble with his parents. He's probably a sociopath. He's murderous enough that all his servants and subordinates are scared of him. He has the same clothes made for himself every year. He founds and runs his universe's version of the CIA. He had his bones magically removed as a baby. He's a commentary on the way that psychotic and neurodivergent children are often villainized and mistreated by their caretakers. He has his bones un-removed over 20 years later. He's faking his chronic illness to cover up other, weirder chronic illness related to the bone removal and psychic thing. He loves his grandma. He purposely engineered his mother's miscarriage as a young child. He can turn himself into mist and break off chunks of his body while in mist form. He grew up with his consciousness halfway bound to a hell bubble full of demons. He has a personal assassin/assistant/general-purpose henchman that can turn into paper and ride around in his sleeve. He sometimes calls the henchman a cutesy nickname. He was partially raised by the living embodiment of emotional manipulation. He sometimes calls his annoying little cousin an even cutesier nickname. He tries to destroy the whole world in a fit of grief when he thinks his cousin's dead. He basically kills himself in order to plonk his soul into a magic mirror and see beyond the bounds of reality. He treats his own life and body as expendable assets because he was bred and raised to be a human sacrifice. He didn't speak for years as a child because the way he spoke scared his mother. His experience of the world is so alien and incomprehensible to others that a man with the power to play souls as music cannot understand his tune. He's a case study of the fact that sometimes you simply cannot save someone who doesn't want saving. He's thin and sickly from his illness but canonically beautiful. He has his father's eyes. He spoils his pet cat.

[hiemaldesirae]

one of the major problems i find with online discourse about antagonistic characters and storylines sourcing from novels is that some people cant see past what is said to what is meant- and that other people can, but in their perception of the implied lore, make overdue assumptions of plot and character.

for example: in svsss, it is heavily implied that qiu jianluo s/a'ed the original shen qingqiu, thus shaping his outlook on society in general: females are safe, males are not. this leads to point against him in the form of his favouritism for ning yingying, the only (afaik) female qing jing disciple and his habit of finding comfort in brothels. this is misconstrued by the original protagonist in the novel pidw, leading to a false misconception held by our protagonist, shen yuan, that shen qingqiu is a lecherous paedophile.

as the reader, there are a number of context clues given to tell us how that is not the case-- mostly found in the extras-- and are meant to challenge the worldview, make us realize that like shen yuan, we as the audience only know as much as the author will tell us. did shen jiu hate luo binghe specifically because his name reminded him of qiu jianluo? was he jealous of the potential luo binghe had? or was he merely looking for a target to take his anger out on?

it is not mentioned, therefore we do not know, and should not make assumptions on the canon behaviour of this character towards someone else.

however, this is often not understood by the overall fandom: either they completely look past the context clues that tell us, this character is more than they seem and instead jump straight to demonization without first considering context and setting, or they overcompensate for someone by making excuses to justify behaviour we do not have explanations for.

this is the reason why we have people who constantly demean and bully others in fandom: they cannot read or think for themselves past what is clearly shown to them and refuse to challenge the idea that the author may be deliberately feeding unreliable information to make a more interesting story, and it doesnt help that there are people attempting to justify behaviour that is specifically written to be bad.

[hnyibee]

wonder how priest feels knowing she has some of the coolest women ever in her character roster

[bellaroles]

Yan Wushi and Sui Zhou.

They are both created by Meng Xi Shi and are at the opposite end of the spectrum but anyway I still see some similarities in them lol.

[stellarish]

I've been rotating some art ideas lately that involve drawing Xi Ping with his parents, which means it's time to start working out designs for them.

[grassbreads]

Tell me how I, the gal with terminal "can't stop thinking about Tai Sui" disease, read hundreds of thousands of words of Mo Du over the course of months, starting right after I finished Tai Sui, yet it took me until right now in this instant to put together the Fei Du->Zhou Ying parallel

Like. Here's the favored son of a man who is incredibly powerful and morally bankrupt. He hates his dad and would be quite happy to commit patricide, should he get the opportunity, but he doesn't directly do so because it wouldn't suit his schemes. He has spent his entire life since his teenage years painstakingly putting together the chess pieces necessary to both destroy his dad and unravel the truth of a grand unknowable conspiracy that has haunted his entire life. He's a genius and the way his mind works is utterly incomprehensible to everyone else in the world, even those who know and love him best. The right kind of placid smile from him can be the most terrifying thing anybody has ever seen. He is willing to use himself up and toss himself out completely if it is the means to the final end of his schemes.

It's just that with Fei Du, the whole point of him is that he's not nearly so terrible as he thinks he is. He's not a psychopath. He's not cruel, regardless of how much empathy he may or may not naturally have. He's just spectacularly traumatized by his childhood. And the presence of Luo Wenzhou in his life both saves him from spiraling down into his original epic self-destructive plot and allows him to access his buried human emotions.

Then, 5 years later, Priest came back to revisit some of the same ideas and turn absolutely all of them up to eleven. She wrote a man who doesn't just think differently from others, but who perceives the world so wildly differently from anyone else that his experience of existence is utterly incomprehensible to his peers. She wrote a patricidal prince who doesn't just want to destroy his father and his company, then tear out the truth of a criminal conspiracy, but rather wants to destroy his father and his entire country, then tear out the truth of the sky itself. She wrote a man who genuinely doesn't give a single damn about anyone other than himself and his tiny tiny selection of loved ones. Who would destroy the entire world in a fit of vengeance and who uses his own willingness to kill innocents as leverage against others. She wrote a man who plans to achieve his goals by way of epic self destruction and does exactly that, leaving the main character's loss of him as the central beating tragedy in the otherwise best possible ending.

She also wrote a story in which, when Zhou Ying's closest and most loved person realizes the dark and scheming truth of him, rather than saying "I can fix him; I don't think he's really so bad," he says "yeah, this is my cousin and he's a terrible menace who tries to destroy the world sometimes. I love him more than anything."

You can absolutely see how Priest's interest in similar ideas informed both characters. It's just that Fei Chengyu didn't succeed in raising his perfect little sociopath successor, but Emperor Taiming and the demons of the impassible sea absolutely succeeded in Jokerizing Prince Zhuang. They just couldn't possibly anticipate the kind of monster that the demon of the east sea would become.

[recapitulation]

The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty (2020)

[ID: gifs from the series “The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty.” They show: Tang Fan and Dong’er slowly rising to peek over a wall at the Iron Market, a crowd of Imperial Guards walking past Sui Zhou and leaving him standing alone, a small crowd with Tang Yu and her brother at the center welcoming everyone to a meal, Tang Fan raising a hand in front of his face to block a harsh ray of sunlight, Tang Fan writing calligraphy on a fan, Sui Zhou serving dishes onto plates from the wok, a silhouetted Sui Zhou stumbling to his feet in the middle of his nightmare, and a shot of the camera pulling back on a wall of names before Tang Fan and Dong’er. /end ID]

[pippuns]

i'm really enjoying indignant cicadas guys. the vibes of this section are immaculate

[manchineel-mistress]

Ok, so I'm a danmei girlie right, not surprising considering my reblogs.

But with the realization of the fact that the fish novel (as i call it)(the diabled tyrants beloved pet fish) is coming out in 2 (two!!) days, I sometimes let myself read of my other lesser known danmei novels being licensed.

The Amount Of Money I Would Drop for 14th Year of ChengHua. IF WE GOT THOUSAND AUTUMNS AND PEERLESS, WE CAN GET 14TH YEAR OF CHENGHUA RIGHT???

It's just a such a funny novel yall. My favorite Meng Xi Shi novel 🥹🥹🥹

The dynamic between the Tang Fan (mc) and Sui Zhou (ml) is great. Sometimes you just move in with a guy you met during a case that made you lose your house and suddenly he cooks for you every day and manages your finances and embroiders his surname into handkerchiefs for you to use because your sick but still need to go to morning court- And then all the other characters are great too and sometimes when I think about Tang Fan's relationship with his sister and nephew I just (clench fist)(single tear rolls down my cheek).

Wang Zhi is still my favorite though. My beloved baby boi, would kill me in an instant if he thought it was necessary. Ambushed Tang Fan when he was going back to visit his sister and forced him to paint something for him so Tang Fan could be unfired (he got fired for a bit).

Meng Xi Shi somehow just wrote one guy's political career and then made me read 100k+ words about willingly and with great enthusiasm.

Many thanks to Chi Chi for translating it. And linking all the Wikipedia articles for historical context.

[lenateliier]

Tai Sui MV || “Historians” by Lucy Dacus

Finally done!!!! I started this back in July but stopped working on it with only 4 remaining panels to complete until... essentially yesterday and today.

Please note there are spoilers for the entire book in relation to the characters Xi Ping and Zhou Ying contained in the mini mv / edit!! Proceed at your own discretion.

[cinammonelles]

Sketchbook is full so here's a little ts sketch dump :>

Bonus Xi Ping I literally don't remember drawing

[morethanwonderful]

Zhou Ying is a really funny character in that he's technically faking his chronic illness, but not because he's secretly able-bodied

He's faking his chronic illnesses to cover up other, weirder, more magical chronic illnesses

[gemini-in-tauro]

An insignificant detail that I loved about the show is how Sui Zhou starts calling Tang Fan "Runqing" somewhere in the last arc, but never to his face. Once, when speaking with Wang Zhi, and another when speaking with Wuyun.

[intyalote]

idly skimming parts of tai sui book 1 now that i’ve finished it to hurt myself even more and i keep noticing how often zhi xiu says “my life doesn’t matter but the people” etc etc and it’s so interesting to me. at this point zhou ying is the one who has to die young while zhi xiu is an immortal and yet both of them are equally... not suicidal, they don’t want to die, but casually accepting of death? and then i think about zhi xiu being the only person to grow a new accompanying plant after the deaths of the original demonic gods and how in the end despite everything xi ping/zhou ying are uniquely positioned to see as the possessors of the hidden bones/demon eyes zhi xiu is the one who actually unravels the whole truth and uses his own life as a shield... the “like eating a fruit and burying its pit in the earth” just gets me.

[kisskissgotohell]

blindfold off, bat in hand, i am making eye contact with a hornet. tai sui fans stop shipping the main character with his literal first cousin challenge...