#back to writing original works

[luimagines]

Wild Child is up!

[stump-not-found]

au fanfic art dump yaaaay

i'm almost at 30k words who knows when i'm gonna start posting it lol

[bunnieswithknives]

Thinking about his brain

[mxystan]

taiwan travelogue by yang shuangzi tr. lin king is indeed an award-winning banger and perhaps the first time in my life i've ever felt vindicated for dual-wielding a novel with its english translation because the act of translation itself is such a big theme in the novel. big win for metafiction-obsessed himejin everywhere!!

[v-poreons]

OCposting..... This is Coven :3 she's a witch who specializes in luck magic! I need to post her so I can yap about her more, she's rotating in my brain at top speed

(Also her bf belongs to @oodliedoodlies hiiii hiiiiiiii hi hi hi)

[karalovesallthegirls]

My wife has convinced me that I should create a cohesive archive of all the little ficlets and blurbs I write on here, so I have made Maybe Someday, a collection of stories I may or may not expand on someday. I am slowly adding stories to it as I find them. I have only somewhat recently started tagging my posts so it’ll take some digging to find some of the older ones but I feel like it’s what I should do!

So that’ll update periodically if u even care

[maddieandangel]

Consider: character-exclusive trinkets.

[levemetal]

I got Procreate and gave it a test run with some silly AU sketches of course

So have Calamity SJ adopting Hong‘er! Ft. my silly calamity MNQ AU and it’s inevitable conclusion of atticwife Jun Wu in the second pic because I am no longer in control here.

SY tried to be the cool uncle, unfortunately YQY is the cooler uncle so he got the Feng Xin treatment. Binghe about to start beef with a child lmfao.

Ling Wen is new heavenly emperor and I ensure you she is as overworked as ever, but she does not care about heavenly officials marrying calamities anymore. First was YQY, and then Jun Wu. Xie Lian and Shi Qingxuan are really not trendstarters here.

[blueskittlesart]

foxboy has been forcibly made ambidextrous due to blueskittles' forgetfulness

all characters are ambidextrous when im writing them (< guy who doesnt know the difference between left and right)

[kenzan-brainrot-mp4]

The situation between Kiryu and Majima is mostly just really depressing. But I think you kinda got at a silver lining with Majima ending the game by talking to and spending time with Kiryu in a normal way.

Majima has done everything except be upfront with Kiryu about his feelings. Instead, he does a lot of self-destructive things for Kiryu’s sake that would only devastate Kiryu if he knew the extent of what’s been going on with him (thinking of Kiryu being a mess in 5 over Majima’s “death” and then Majima nearly actually dying for Kiryu’s sake).

Majima just spending time with Kiryu in the hospital and telling him about what he’s been up to probably goes a lot further in making Kiryu happy than if he had actually shown up with a immortal elixir that he put his life at risk to get.

Yeah, looking back I wish I'd taken more time to reflect on the new, more positive development between Majima and Kiryu at the end of the scene, because as depressing as their situation as a whole is, that silver lining is genuinely really significant. I believe it really does show that their relationship is not doomed to depressing hell forever, and that is largely in part to Majima's own growth in this game.

As I touched on in another post, Majima walking away from the viewer to Kiryu’s hospital room parallels very interestingly with how Yakuza 0 ended, when Majima walked away from Makoto. In y0 silences his feelings and walks away, choosing to maintain a physical And emotional distance between them that he carries all the way to yk2 (and that he Does Not Let Go Of, even In his saga in yk2), leaving all of the self-sacrificing and self-destructive gestures but none of the actual fulfillment of the ability to just. Enjoy each others' company when the danger has finally passed.

Meanwhile in pyih you see him walking towards Kiryu in the final seconds of the game, confronting him head-on (with encouragement from Saejima), just to. Talk. No business, no "take care of x for me" no "I'm Depending on your for y", just having a normal conversation like they should've, could've done in yakuza 3, like they could've done in infinite wealth, what I wish they'd done in 5 and what they Definitely didn't do enough of in Gaiden. (And, just like what Majima and Makoto should've done too in yk2, if Majima had actually grown).

Its interesting because Majima, who's all about impulsive and grandiose gestures and actions and the need to die in a way that matters for someone else, technically didn't even "win" with his plans this time, like he did with Makoto. He didn't get to pull off his hundred-millionth self-sacrificing gesture for Kiryu. He didn't get to die valiantly fighting. A giant squid (lmao) or run back to Japan with the treasure that he dug up with his own blood sweat and tears. But he seems. Strangely okay with the aftermath, all things considered (I know I've been sticking to the word "resigned" when describing how he feels in this particular moment all this time but. What I'm getting at is that he's more okay than you may expect, considering the circumstances and the stakes at hand.)

(I want to (very abruptly lol) point out the fact that we've seen this kind of arc with Majima on a smaller scale before. Majima had a lot of the same deal in y0/4, where he pushed himself with the goal to die for Saejima for Years before his release from prison and was ready to go through with it the day of. However, this ended up being another situation where he "didn't win." What he got by the end of it wasn't Saejima claiming his title as new Tojo patriarch over his dead body, but rather (after a fight goaded on by Majima himself and some pushing by Saejima) they got to just. Talk things down. And just go back to being the bros they were before that whole mess. And Saejima's been able to be Majima's rock for the rest of the games since.

I just think someone would've benefited a Lot from taking notes. And that someone is Not Saejima.)

Like I kinda-did-kinda-didn't get to at the end of the whale post, I think the most important takeaway for Majima at the end of this game is him learning to not constantly throw himself into the fire for every person he wants to protect. Getting himself killed for Saejima and Kiryu wouldn't have made them happy. Keeping himself away from Makoto didn't make her happy, and now the ship of them being involved in each other's lives has long since sailed.

Keeping himself emotionally distant hasn't helped any of them Once, and this is why it's so important that he tries to cross some of that gap now with what is honestly his worst case of lifelong devotion yet (even if it's in a way that's small, in a way that's arguably insignificant for the emotional rift they have, even if it's just through telling some pirate tale, even if Kiryu might not know the true significance of it all even now. At least its Something. At least they just get to be. People, together. It's much more casual than anything they've had with each other for the past like 5 games, but strangely that casualness is arguably more intimate, after everything that's happened.)

Honestly this decision from Majima aligns perfectly with the admittedly cheesy (but I mean this in a loving way) ending of the main plot of pyih itself; by the end of the adventure Majima seeks not the grand impossible treasure he was originally chasing after but to rather cherish and enjoy the time he spent with the people he has come to care about over the course of the game (the photo). Such simple kinds of wishes are rare for Majima at best, but that's why it's so important he gives himself that now: the ability to just sit down and talk with the people he cherishes. That literally would've saved him so many damn times, I think. I think that's something he's desperately needed with Kiryu especially since Yakuza 3. And I think that those final moments in the last cutscene of pirate yakuza means he'll let himself indulge in it, just a little.

I really just hope that it'll be enough to give him and Kiryu some of that peace and closure that they seem to chronically lack, especially when it comes to each other. I hope it means they really can be happy with each other, just for a little while. Most of all I hope it means Majima can be at least some degree of upfront one day, before it's straight up too late 💥

(tl;dr Yeah, honestly, Majima just sitting down and talking with Kiryu for once means more for himself than killing himself over that eternal life elixir ever could have. He's an old ass man, he should learn to settle down a bit, you know?)

[psychopomp-namine]

yingdu episode 5 spoilers

ohhh my god this is everything I want from cheng xiaoshi. yes. perfect. sorry, but I'm a cheng xiaoshi whump liker and link click always brings out the best of them in episode 5 of each season.

there's just something cathartic about how when cheng xiaoshi becomes an emotional mess, it's also when he's most disconnected with the people he knows (physically, as he's diving in a photo and his only link to his home timeframe is a disembodied lu guang in his head) but it's also when he's most connected with strangers (when their own personal trauma lines up with his). to me, it's a showcase of empathy and a strange manifestation of his own agency. something about how the disconnect gives him the space to blow up, and the connection heightens it and grants him permission, almost, to express his anger more freely for his own sake and for another person's behalf.

like. listen, okay, I'm gonna ramble now because cheng xiaoshi is my favorite character in this entire show, but listen. sometimes some fans will conflate adjectives to his character that are usually associated with his character archetype, but they aren't necessarily true about him as a character. and I don't mean it in a, "he's not like that because he grows out of those traits" kind of way. I mean it in a, "he was never like that" kind of way.

one of those adjectives, for me, is when people call him immature. he isn't! to me! imo! he's got big emotions, yes, but I personally don't think the presence of big emotions indicates anything about maturity. because you know what? as long as his primary trauma (feelings of abandonment) isn't touched, he is very good at handling interpersonal conflicts, and that's what's interesting to me.

qiao ling hides relevant information from him? he removes himself from the situation to give himself space and sort out his feelings. he tells her he's fine and that he'll be back.

post-earthquake arc? I'll just copy paste what I already said in a previous ask:

what initially got me was when I was first watching S1, I thought the earthquake arc would have devastating effects on [shiguang's] relationship. listen, I didn’t know what I was getting into with link click, but I thought that was expected. it’s ripe for drama! but how do they handle the fight? they put their side business on hold but they still keep being roommates. they still do their day job. they still talk. they’re still upset but they give each other space but not to the point where they can’t stand existing in each other’s spaces. that’s when I realized that oh, they really trust each other. they have a very solid foundation for their relationship that not even the earthquake arc can break. they’re pretty level-headed about this, actually, all things considered? all the doomed yaoi stuff came later, but that’s just the cherry on top. it’s the way they handled conflict and disappointment in S1 that got me.

okay, protect-namine, why go through that whole tangent? BECAUSE! circling back to yingdu episode 5, we finally, finally get to see cheng xiaoshi let out some of his anger. and it's precisely because his primary trauma point was on the table. he can forgive a friend lying, and he can forgive being told not to change the past. because at the end of the day, qiao ling and lu guang stayed. they never left him.

but he cannot handle abandonment. he cannot understand why people leave. he cannot understand why he's been clinging on to false hope this entire time. and more importantly, he cannot understand how someone can be such a hypocrite about it. "a man who'd rather be kind to strangers than face his own son" like fuck man. cheng weimin you fucked up so bad.

it's the disconnect/connect thing again too. thematically, it makes sense. when does cheng xiaoshi blow up? when he's alone, far away from the people that ground him. alone, the feeling he hates the most. he's not even in his own body. he blows up when he's inhabiting a stranger's. he doesn't even get to be angry as cheng xiaoshi.

how fucked up is that. man. I love him so much.

also I'm going crazyyyy over the family themes going on in link click. much to say about the show itself across all seasons (the twins, qiao ling and cheng xiaoshi, even the liu siblings), but for this episode... god. okay this is slight speculation territory now and I'll try to keep this very short, because this is only tangential to the post. but. imagine xia fei getting the good parent figure in cheng weimin that cheng xiaoshi never had. and he doesn't know!! he's bitter inside about his dad and he's having hotpot with xia fei and he doesn't know he was in that school!! fuck that's so good. that's so juicy.

okay, sorry, I have a lot of feelings about cheng xiaoshi. he's my link click blorbo of all time, and I love when he experiences The Horrors™ because it's also when other sides of him gets to shine.

on a brighter note:

VEIN AND CHENG XIAOSHI MEETING AGAIN!!! their greeting was so cute. also omg does xia fei know? that his boss is maybe possibly a cannibal? actually, wait, I don't think I'd be surprised if he does know.

ah and finally. finally:

I've been having many thoughts on how yingdu approaches "friendships" and their transactional nature (mostly with regards to liu xiao) but I mostly thought they're headcanon stuff. but now. I'm so so happy that episode 5 is bringing out more of the quid pro quo theme. liu xiao with the gift giving. wang qing's "friends" (bullies) demanding her to cheat on the exam for them. and now, vein and cheng xiaoshi having a friendly greeting but also exchanging favors. so good. so good. it goes along with how there's so much handshakes and handholding this season (not just with lu guang and cheng xiaoshi, but with cheng xiaoshi and the the antagonist trio too, who have all met him by "helping" him in some way). something something trust and favors. probably something that deserves its own post though, but I wanted to point this out because I am soooo here for that. it's goes hand in hand (ha!) with the whole fraud/lies vs innocence/honesty theme this season, and deals/contracts being an equalizer to the two. very good. very tasty.

edit: ooh they also point to this in the YE6 trailer too. nice, nice. if you knew someone's true colors, would you still be their friend?

man, I love episode 5. it just hits all the stuff I personally wanted to see. the only flaw is that we still haven't seen the older version of wang qing, but yeah I kinda expected that they'll hide her until episode 6. they're giving her the liu xiao treatment from season 2. sigh. really wish she'd keep showing up in S3, we need more female characters in this show 🙏

[mightbewriting]

alright team. i'm back at a truly blank page for the first time in a almost two years. what's that sound? oh, it's the looming existential dread that i've completely forgotten how to write. which, to be fair, i really may have. but we shall persevere etc., etc.

editing to add: also, a girl needs to refill her creative well so gimme all the best books you've read lately (or in the last two years; it's been rough y'all)

[mamwieleimion]

Anyone has any good russingon fic recommendations? (Light on angst pls, I can’t handle that right now).

I’m falling back into Tolkien. Re-reading all the good fics I read last year. But I’m also searching for new ones. And I’m kinda dumped on what to look for… so

Rusinngon is it. Recommendations. Please.

(I’m gonna be picky and add that I’m not currently in the mood for post-rescue and recovery fics. I’m not ready yet to hurt myself like that. I will get there in a week probably.)

[adamanteine]

soon....... soon....... my writing inspo will return

[tragedytells-tales]

Baoxu ref sheet and meme redaws again, because I can never be serious

As always: Inspired by @/kyri45's Sbh Second Star AU and @/quesocheeso's 3AM LMK AU

Baoxu shares a VA with its father on absolute accident, I completely forgot about it until now. They sure did follow in the footsteps of their grandmother and use bladed ribbon fans as their weapon of choice. And its third set of ears is hidden behind its headband and hair

( Although it can use the staff, it just picked up the fans as a baby when a demon tried to get it and it's been using fans ever since. Baoxu scares the hell out of its parents part infinity )

I imagine Shadowpeach's habit of nicknaming people stays strong. Wukong and Macaque call them "Bao bun" because they find the nickname adorable, and because Baoxu demolished a plate of them as a baby. Baoxu's been stuck with the name ever since, Shadowpeach loves being grandparents.

Masterlist

[coldercreation]

Happy 100 000 Hits CYE!🥹❤️