#obviously other series use musical cultivation as well!!!

[birbfeeder2artisticboogaloo]

i have this really. nebulous idea that i've never been able make WORK but i would like to release it into the wild in case anyone else fancies it or wants to give it a go!!

OK SO. u know how in mdzs and cql, many of the characters are cultivators. some of them use music as part of their abilities, i guess it channels the spiritual energy and lets the user direct it more carefully i think?? correct me if i'm wrong lol, i'm literally only going off ONE (1) thing i read a couple years ago and my own wild mass guessing 😅

but if that IS the case!!! then perhaps!!! it doesn't need to be just guqin, flute, etc to musically cultivate, right?? what if.........ppl could cultivate WITH THEIR VOICE???? SINGING POWER!!! maybe it could be tied to the words they sing!! or maybe just the voice ITSELF, maybe it's just vocalisations, maybe some cultivation sects use chants, others use songs!! maybe the spiritual music can convey meaning and feeling, even if it's not words. maybe when a bunch of cultivators sing TOGETHER it becomes even MORE powerful!!! idk!!! i just think there's maybe something to it????

sure i can't do anything with it, but if anyone else would like to, please do, feel free to use this post as a springboard if u like!! idk i think it might be interesting, maybe 😊

[darkandstormyart]

Xicheng fic recs

(figured i might make a list of my own)

(to be expanded as i dig out more treasure/remember stuff)

in no particular order:

Deep as the Yearning Night by FreckledStarKnight

“At first, it was pure chance. The second time was accidental. And the third time? Well, they say the third time’s the charm, after all. Lan Xichen discovers that Jiang Wanyin sings beautifully and is immediately enamored by it. His pursuit of Jiang Wanyin’s secret talent leads to a discovery and a series of events that he did not anticipate at all. Not that he’s complaining, of course. He got what he came for and more. Or, how two sect leaders get together through the song called love. CQL-verse.“

post-seclusion lxc

trying to get jc to sing

bonus lxc & jin ling feels i hadn’t considered before

cute

Always use protection by hesselives

“In which Lan Wangji attempts to hire a new bodyguard for his older brother, a well-known traveling exorcist. Jiang Wanyin doesn’t even make his carefully considered list of Top Ten Candidates, and yet here he is.

Lots of wandering in the countryside, distant yelling, and mildly inconvenient spirits.”

bodyguard au

honestly just really intersting worldbuilding

Rewrite the stars by Arashii

“Five great kingdoms have been fighting for years and when the kingdom of Yunmeng is destroyed, the Crown Prince Jiang Cheng vanishes.In Gusu, Lan Xichen makes an offer impossible for Jiang Cheng to refuse. His life or revenge? There’s only one option and Jiang Cheng swears loyalty to the man he hated the most his whole life, the Crown Prince of Gusu, Lan Xichen himself.Written for XiChengFest2020 - Day 4“

ROYALTY AU ROYALTY AU

enemies to lovers!

flashbacks! i love flashbacks so much ohmygod

No paths are bound by Arashii

“In seclusion, Lan Huan has the support of a ghost no one has seen since the massacre of Yunmeng Jiang. His feelings start changing with the often visits and conversations they share. Before Lan Huan can confess though, he ascends, leaving everything and everyone behind him.

Two hundred years later, back to the Human Realm and without powers, the Martial God Zewu-Jun has a mission to uphold. His Heavenly Calamity started. The clues are little and the support comes in the most unexpected form, the current Ghost King: Sandu Shengshou. Now they need to stick together to contain a menace that is slowly growing.“

TGCF AU TGCF AU

ghost king jiang cheng come on

doesn’t follow tgcf plot, just the setup so no spoilers

jiang cheng gets the dogs and the xichen he deserves

once upon a dream by cafedeolla

“Xicheng soulmate AU

An au where your dreams are small snippets of your soulmate’s day. They’d show small things like buying coffee, reading a book, or hanging out with people from their perspective.

The problem was that people always have expectations and Jiang Cheng knows he always falls short of them. Time and time again.“

soulmate au, but being soulmates is more a problem than a solution

misunderstandingssss all over the place

now with a squel (in progress?)

Lan Furen series by jagaimocchi

“Jiang Cheng leaves Lotus Pier before the Wen Internment Camp and before the destruction of his home. When he meets Lan Xichen on the run from the Wens after the burning of Cloud Recesses, his plan to live a peaceful life away from cultivation sects is quickly derailed. Now, free to make his own choices, he cannot find it in himself to leave the other man's side.

With love, patience and time, Jiang Cheng finds his own happiness and peace with his past.“

have you ever wanted a fic where jiang cheng peaces out from home in search for a better life, bc he’s Had Enough??? jags got you covered

adorable xicheng

good uncle-dad-figure Lan Qiren

ongoing <3

Just around the riverbend by JungleJelly

“One day.

Jiang Cheng just wanted one day of peace and quiet, away from home, away from his responsibilities, away from his idiot brother and his nutcases of a mother and father. Just a few hours alone — him and a boat and nothing else.

Clearly, that was too much to ask for.”

now with a new story in the series which is adorable too!!!

mermaid!lxc need i say more?

Bad ideas (where they lead) by JungleJelly

“Jiang Cheng is a busy man. Fortunately, he is also a huge pushover when it comes to his sister, so when she recommends that he start doing yoga, he agrees pretty easily.Featuring Lan Xichen in yoga pants, Jiang Cheng’s inability to handle a crush, and, perhaps most importantly, a big fluffy dog.“

done for 2020 MXTX MiniBang

yoga instructor Lan Xichen

Jiang Cheng is: struggling with a crush on the yoga guy from youtube & very angry about that

If there’s a price for rotten judgement by TheWanderingHeart

“All Jiang Cheng wants to do is, well... his job, really. Other than that? Keep the city safe, keep his nephew alive, keep his sanity intact (if possible).

So when his brother calls with unexpected news, he knows all of that is about to fly out of the window.

***

[Every instinct is telling him don’t ask, you don’t want to know. By this point, Nie HuaiSang has scooted closer to listen. Jiang Cheng takes a steadying breath and pulls out his antacids. “What did you do?”]”

superhero au, come on

jc just trying to do his job in peace

(he can’t)

i love it so much oh my god *sobs*

The Form of Boneless Ice by TheWanderingHeart

“Mythical beasts have long ago been driven to extinction by the gentry — hunted for sport, but more importantly for their magical cores. Since then, there remains only one creature that has never been caught. The Jiang’s retreated a long time ago. Abandoning land altogether, they sought safety where the humans could not reach.It all comes to a head though, purely by chance. (Or is it by fate that a spontaneous decision allows for them to meet? If fate were a rock!) Jiang Cheng suddenly finds his whole life balanced on the head of a pin — on the flimsy promise of a human boy. In his opinion, things cannot possibly get worse!(But then they do when the Wens decide it’s finally time to search for the elusive merpeople, and suddenly nowhere is safe.)“

there she goes again, with another beautiful xicheng story full of awwww and mythology

actually one of the first xicheng fics i read

i chose it because there were mermaids

painfully accurate takes on Jiang family dynamics

kids! lots of kids!

Let me Slytherin to Your Heart by TheWanderingHeart

“Jiang Cheng never thought he'd return to Hogwarts, but in hindsight, he probably should have known that someday he would.With his nephew about to start school, he reluctantly takes his good friend's bad parenting? career? advice and ends up tumbling head-first back into the madness that he hoped he'd left behind... and rediscovering some feelings he thought he'd left behind too.“

Harry Potter au!

just really fecking cute

lots of snakes

[I am not going to link all of Jo’s fics, though I probably could, just my 3 favourites. UOSB is there by default]

Talent Hunt Crew Finds Angry Guy Shouting On College Campus, Recruits Him For Vocal Projection Abilities by oh_fudgecakes

“Jiang Cheng, resident Angry Guy and heir to a conglomerate empire, has never been the apple of his father’s eye. Quashed under the shadow of his brilliant brother, the music prodigy Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng sees his chance to turn things around when he is recruited by the All-Stars Lan Talent Hunt. One problem: he can’t sing to save his goddamn life.As he struggles to develop his nascent singing abilities, Jiang Cheng finds himself sucked into the whirlwind drama of reality TV, helped along by his adoring siblings, his irritable vocal coach Wen Qing, and strangely enough, the unfairly attractive host of the All-Stars Lan Talent Hunt, Lan Xichen. Somewhere in the glare of the stage lights and an unexpected first love, Jiang Cheng stumbles upon the thing he was searching for all along: the courage to dream — and to attempt the impossible.“

done for 2019 MXTX Big Bang

uuuuuuuuuuh i might have cried maybe

heartwarming? painful at times? lots of family love?

slowburn xicheng being lovely

The Provenence of Hope series by velithya

“A chance meeting on a night hunt sets a course of events into motion that will change everything. Featuring Xicheng getting together, recovery for Lan Xichen, healing for Jiang Cheng, and always, always, hope.“

got everything. feels. hope. love. ~~healing~~

A Small Measure of Peace by Sandstone112

“With his brother in seclusion, Lan Xichen finds himself in temporary custody of his nephew with little to no expertise in the child-raising department. Uncertain and alone, Zewu-Jun is willing to do everything to be the person Yuan needs—even if it means inviting Sandu Shengshou to a playdate.“

a loooot of adorable family times with jc and lxc taking care of their nephews

good grandpa lqr!

canon but fixed and less painful

🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋if you wish to avoid scurvy:🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋

Some day I’m gonna make you mine series by locketofyourhair

xicheng getting together through the years

friends with benefits but the real benefits are the friends we made along the way

Take me over (take me tonight) by velithya

jiang cheng has a tattoo and lan xichen doesn’t stand a chance

i'd be the sweet feeling of release (mankind now dreams of) by piyo13

two bros, chilling in a cave, no feet apart because they don’t want to lose their cultivation powers what are you gonna do

haven’t read yet and shame on me, but AM GONNA:

Upon Our Silver Bridge by TheWanderingHeart obviously

““When the path ignites a soul, there's no remaining in place. The foot touches ground, but not for long.” ― Hakim Sanai

**

Lan Xichen's sorrows have caught the attention of something. Unlike the adventures and foes they have faced before, there is no obvious enemy here to defeat. If this is the same thing they thought had taken Nie Mingjue's life, then he believes it is fated for him to die as well. Nothing can stop the black fire when it wants to burn.Jiang Cheng is sure his part in this is over. Wei Wuxian is back, his grand adventure concluded, and he'd never been at the centre of it anyway. So what does it matter what happens to him in the end? Slowly, he will come to realise that there will always be a battle to fight, a story to tell, a choice to make, and there is no such thing as an end to anything.“

it was difficult to do things in 2020 and few i regret not doing more than not reading uosb yet :’(

i will tho

Emergency Help Wanted by piyo13

“EMERGENCY HELP WANTED I lied when I got my job. I told them I had a kid so I could leave early from work to pick him up from daycare, take him to doctor's appointments, and occasionally miss a day when he's sick. Long story short, I'm in too deep. I didn't think it through. Looking to rent a kid for bring your child to work day. Must be a boy ages four to six, longish dark hair, likes soccer. Must also be artistic as the macaroni noodle paintings I made seem a little advanced for his age. Also, I will pay extra for someone willing to play the role of husband when dropping him off. He's a prosecuting attorney who often brings his work home. Message me for further details. Serious inquiries only.“

Running Our Hands Through Embers by MarvelousMar

“If asked, Jiang Cheng would compare falling in love with Lan Xichen to a moth inevitably drawn to a flame.It burned.***In which Jiang Cheng discovers that even death can't help him escape from his trauma, so he embarks on a quest to save the people he loves, fix what he can, make the love of his life fall for him, and maybe, somewhere along the way, do a little bit of healing.”

The Beginner’s Guide to Moving On by InvincibleMel

gone from ao3, but i think there’s a link with a pdf going around

[project-paranoia]

Let’s Watch: Yin Yang Master: Dream of Eternity

I have watched this movie 85 Whole Entire Times and I do not regret.  The only thing wrong with this movie is that it wasn't a fifty episode series.  I cried, I laughed, I fell in love.  The cinematography is on point, the acting is amazing, the crew member who put snow on people's eyebrows did an amazing job, and the acting!  The subtlety, the gentleness, the love and affection, the discussion of race is one of the best I've ever seen.

As people have pointed out before in series like X-Men that fear of mutant's is practically if not thematically justified due to the laser eyes in a way that fear of ethnic minorities just isn't in real life.  In Dream of Eternity however humans are equally if not sometimes more super powered than the yao they hunt.  Demons - very much not in the Christian sense - are a mixture of spirits, resentful souls, and animals and plants who cultivated to human form.  They often appear human at first glance and in some cases the extent of their power seems to be the limited to turning into a smaller more vulnerable animal.  Qingming's deliberate care and gentleness not only reflects his upbringing as a Yin Yang Master, but parallels the experience of racial minorities labelled as aggressive.

The movie takes particular care as well in the way it looks at trauma, grief, and love.  The three of which haunt the main characters and send out ripple effects into the world around them.  In the world of Dream of Eternity no loss is purely private, it spools out into the world around the person effected until they make an effect to acknowledge and deal with their experiences.  Qingming's warmth and gentleness isn't just marked by his behaviour but by the orange light he's lit by and his variety of shishen - but he is also separate, standing alone in frame and facing away from the people around him.  Boya's loss has made him unforgiving and as cold as the blue light he's lit in, and yet he is open and instinctive, talking and acting as soon as the thought enters his head.  The Empress is lost and drifting, trapped and grief stricken, vulnerable to those who profess to love her.  The film is simple, it says and shows what it means when it means it - but it is also as complex as the very human characters it depicts.  

The movie is made even more complex by its pull from theaters.  Claims of plagiarism drench the edges of the movie, which as true as the assertion that Fan BingBing went on a spa vacation in 2018.  Although this blog is about Chinese censorship dealing specifically with BL content, Chinese censorship also effects those who criticize governmental policy.  I hope that supporters of this blog will also support Chinese media threatened by censorship for many reasons so that artists and others involved in film making can continue to make meaningful content.

Doing a watchthrough of a movie is not feasible, but please enjoy a few thousand words - with spoilers on Yin Yang Master included:

* That gentle chiming and rain soundscaping is so soothing, what a great way to calm and lull the audience before the movie even starts * Qingming is so small and isolated in the frame - cinema! * The lighting and cinematography is just so good * Shifu, soft gentle teacher * So much love stored in the Shifu * Instant grow * This boy is Sassy * This theme of deflection in Qingming's character is established early * Deflection with a teleportation portal and then immediately deflection verbally * Shifu is certainly an attractive man aged up, but his face is also soft and gentle, something to note when his double pops up later * Also the awkward question of don't you have someone you want to protect, maybe part of the problem is that shifu is just really bad at wording things * The answer that yes he does has several meanings, one of which is immediately apparent when Shifu acts out one of those Father Saves Child By Yeeting them youtube videos * ACtion MuSIC * I love them your honour * The spirit guardian's design is so specific and elegant, absolutely superb you funky little shishen * I wonder if Qingming ever thinks about that if he didn't come back with all his fellow disciples that Shifu would have been fine * Maybe it's not that he doesn't have someone he wants to protect and more that he believes that he's not capable of protecting those he wants to * subtle indication Shifu's qi is corrupted * Precious Magic Childe ;-; * The framing, I'm living for it * The Serpent graphic is lovely * Also the way they set things up * Qingming cares so much about his shifu * Mark Chao just has the ability to crumple his face like paper * Sad Time exposition involving the corrupting influence of desires * "When you're gone I'll be all alone" in just about all you need to know about Qingming at this point in the story * Also like, sympathy for Shifu in raising this lonely child.  By all accounts he was an absolutely superb father figure, and Qingming I'm sure was not an easy child to raise.  He's the sort of kid that would take a lot of calm and patience. * Slumber party! * It's kind of interesting that this is an activity Fangyue and He Shouyue are doing together.  He's definitely obsessed and in love with her and she's just doing friends and family activities with him * Also yellow/gold lighting is kind of their thing * It's interesting how they do the make up for He Shouyue.  The actor is very attractive, but they make him up to look doll like, a little too pretty, a little too shiny.  Like a porcelain doll. * Cool lit Boya and warm lit Qingming appear! * Camels! * The framing is so good, they're careful to be sure he's shown as obviously isolated as much as possible * And it should go without saying that I adore the City * The matte painting is outstanding * But there's also the lighting, the vignettes, the clusters, the foliage * It is a supremely beautiful set * The irony that Killing Stone is playing along with Boya's music and then it's Boya who kicks him around * A small note, but one I appreciate - even when Boya has warm highlight's they're red instead of orange * "It's Jason Bourne!" * I hope Qingming paid for that water taxi * It's interesting how Killing Stone goes from the safety of Qingming's orange light to the danger of Qingming's blue * Colour related foreshadowing! * Look at this poor sweet man, how could anyone suspect him of anything.  He's just a sad man who loves his dead wife * Qingming's use of a fan is interesting - battle fans show up all over wuxia and xianxia, but it feels like it also ties into the way he's so very careful in how he presents himself.  There's that quote that a sword can only be a sword but other weapons are also able to serve other purposes - not a perfect quote but the point is got across. * The way Qingming just knocks Boya back, like get An Clue, my dude * The way that Killing Stone curls around the pipa ;-; * So the movie is based on the book series 'Onmyoji' by Yumemakura Baku.  The books start with Seimei (Qingming) and Hiromasa (Boya) already in a relationship talking about various cases Seimei has recently experienced.  Plotwise, obviously the stories are different, however thematically Seimei and Hiromasa discuss why some yao stick around and solutions to the difficulties and dangers they might cause - which is generally from Seimei's very successful perspective to listen and treat them like humans.  So in that way the plots of the books and the movie are quite different, but the themes are just about identical. * Boya says Don't Talk Me I Angy and also that demons don't have feelings and Qingming's face takes out a billboard that's just like Ah, Another Fantasy Racist, Excellent * Qingming also does what should be done in this situation, taking care of the victim not the racist * Fight scene!  Fight scene! * Qingming's first few moves aren't to attack, they're to distract and just hold his fan up to block Boya's way and his view - it's only when Boya persists in attacking that Qingming fights back * Qingming's sassy smile, he is very much deliberately irritating Boya as much as he's refocusing his attention and distracting him * "nICE sWORD" * I've sighed that sigh before * This boy is taking great pleasure from teasing Boya, but also he makes a really good point * I understand and relate to what Qingming did, but also I can understand why Boya was ready to throw rocks at Qingming when he saw him again * Killing Stone lit in Qingming's orange light again * Killing Stone, my beloved * A good gauge to the state of the world for yao is no one has told this sweet boy before that demons have feelings too * There are several lines like this in the movie that just drop kick you with Implications * The same way Qingming clung to Zhongxing, Killing Stone wants to join up with Qingming to have some compassion in his life * The way he asks to be a spirit guardian is so formal too, and Qingming is so gentle with him, I cry ;-; * The warm orange light of Qingming's love ;-; * He heals the wounds * It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realise it's the actual imperial degree speaking and not one the of Jingyun Temple Masters * The mutual this guy again is delicious * "Is it because of your pretty face" * Boya draws his sword so fast and Qingming is so amused by it * Longye!  Queen!  I love her! * The two of them seem to understand each other instantly * Those sassy little smiles * He Shouyue looks even more like a doll than before * Longye has her head on a swivel from second one, she plays the Maiden so well like she's not a skilled master * And her customer service smile * Qingming is shooketh

* What happens next?  You'll have to watch and find out!

[delightfullyatomicfest]

John interviewed in Melody Maker part 3

MELODY MAKER DECEMBER 20 1969 - 

FROM ALL THE publicity, welcome and unwelcome, that they have received during their two years together, John and Yoko Lennon might seem to have little or no private life together. In fact, they appear wilfully to present their joint life to the public, for that most altruistic and most misunderstood reason: to set a good example. 

John has said in the past that he’d like them to be remembered as the Romeo and Juliet of the age, and when he says that I don’t believe he’s being egotistical. In fact the Lennons may, in a left-handed sort of way, be doing the establishment a favour - by bringing marriage back into fashion. 

Like anybody else, they do have a more private side to their life, and John comments, “There’s nothing I like more than to get home at the end of the day and sit next to Yoko and say, ‘Well, we’re together at last.’ Although we may have been holding hands all day, it’s not the same when we’re working or talking to the press. We feel a hundred miles apart by comparison.” 

It’s obvious that they have changed each other, the change in John being more noticeable because we knew more of his earlier self. But how did meeting John change Yoko ’s life? 

“He’s changed everything in a sense that I was a very lonely person before I met him,” she says. “Most people in the world are very lonely, that’s the biggest problem, and because of their loneliness they become suspicious. And the reason we’re lonely is because we can’t communicate enough from the various complexes we have and from the various social habits we’ve created. We become very inhibited, but when I met John I started to open up a little, through love, you know, and that’s the greatest thing that happened to me yet. 

“There are various facets to my life and my personality, and I never met anybody else who could understand me. We understand each other so well, and I’m not lonely any more - which is a shocking experience, really. 

Also, through loneliness or something, I was starting to become a very firm and strong ego. .. but that’s melting away, and it’s very nice.” 

On the other side of the coin, how does John feel Yoko has changed him? 

“Exactly the same, of course. I was lonely, and didn’t have full communication with anybody and it took a bit of adjusting. She rediscovered or cultivated the thing that existed in me before I left Liverpool, maybe, and recultivated the natural John Lennon that had been lost in the Beatles thing and the worldwide thing. She encouraged me to be myself, because it was me that she fell in love with, not the Beatles or whatever I was. 

“When you get sidetracked you believe it, and when you’re in the dark you believe it. She came and reminded me that there was light, and when you remember there’s light you don’t want to get back in the dark again. That’s what she did for me.” 

Yoko : “But you know I didn’t do it intentionally or anything. It’s the falling-in-love bit: you start to see all sorts of things that you don’t see if you’re not in love. I found that he has all these qualities that he was hiding away. Even in a practical sense, music-wise, he was doing all sorts of freaky things at home, just recording it on a cassette or something, but not really showing it publicly. Publicly he was doing The Beatles’ things. But he showed me all these cassettes and things and I said, ‘Why don’t you produce these as records? ’ 

“I performed the role of a mirror in a way. He was doing all those things anyway - I didn’t suggest them. It was there - and that goes for his drawing, paintings, and poetry too - especially his drawings. He’s got a stack of beautiful drawings at home, and this one series he did is going to be produced as sort of lithograph. They’re not like his cartoons - they’re another kind of drawing. I think they’re better than Picasso .” 

“She’s biased,” said John happily. 

“You’ll see them next year,” continued Yoko. “And those things were always there in John- they just came out, but artists do need encouragement. We’re always together, like 24 hours of the day. At the beginning, when we were less sure and we were still the previous us, once in awhile when John was recording I’d go shopping on the King’s Road or something -now we couldn’t conceive of that. 

“People say that if you’re together 24 hours a day for two years you must get sick and tired of each other, but it’s the contrary,” asserted Yoko. 

“We got so addicted to that situation that we miss each other more. It’s a very strange scene.” 

John: “Somebody said, ‘Won’t you get so reliant on each other that you can’t manage without each other?’ and we said yes! The only thing that could split us is death, and we have to face that. . . and we don’t even believe we’ll be split then, if we work on it. Our only worry in the world is that we die together, otherwise even if it’s only three minutes later it’s going to be hell. I couldn’t bear three minutes of it. 

“Most marriages have a little pretence going on, and we thought, ‘Are we going to have to pretend that we’re happy together because we daren’t say that we want to be apart?’ But that doesn’t happen. When two of you are together, man and wife, there’s nothing that can touch you. You have the power of two people, you have the protection - you don’t need the society or the room or the uniform or the gun, because you have the power of two minds, which is a pretty powerful thing.” 

A major part of most marriages is childbearing. John and Yoko have one child each by their previous. How important do they think a child will be to their relationship? 

“We’re not even sure that we want children/’ said John. “We’re that jealous. But if God or whoever gives us a child we’ll accept it. Maybe we’d like two or three. But even then we have to consider: is a child going to interfere between us? How can we look after a child and be together 24 hours a day?” 

Yoko : “It’s not fair to the child, maybe, because we are so close. The child will be somebody that will be saying ‘hello’ once in awhile.” 

John: “Obviously it’ll probably be different if we have one, because all the times she’s pregnant we consider it. We’re full into it, wanting a child, but when you lose it and you get over the pain then you consider whether you wanted the child. Now maybe we had that in the back of our minds all along, and that’s why she lost it. We don’t really know whether we want one or not. If she gets pregnant we’ll want one, but I’d like her not to be pregnant for a bit - she’s been pregnant since I met her! 

“I’d like her to stay slim for ayear and then maybe have one. But we don’t fancy birth pills, because I don’t trust them and anything else is out of the question ( laughs ) because it’s inconvenient. We’re not like that - we try to act naturally at all times. That’s one of our problems, besides death. It’s in God’s hands.” 

Richard Williams 

[iant0jones]

That Greek gods post was interesting, but I would enjoy hearing ypur thoughts on it.

Ahh thank you so much for asking! 💖

This post had a lot of good takes, and doctor who characters obviously have many-faceted personalities so more than one god or goddess could suit them. I’m by no means saying that post was wrong.

Also, disclaimer: I have been dabbling in and out of Hellenistic polytheism for the past year and don’t intend for any of this to sound remotely like hubris, pls don’t smite me @ the gods

Rose - Aphrodite

I agree with that post, not only because Rose is the love interest of the Doctor, but because I think her character exemplifies love in so many forms throughout the series--self love, familial love, platonic love, romantic love, and the love of strangers and the world at large. Also I think she completely captures Aphrodite’s dynamic of being soft and adoring yet viciously ferocious

Jack - in doctor who? Ares. in torchwood? Zeus

Jack as represented in doctor who can be extremely brash and gung-ho. The Doctor and the audience in general are supposed to have a somewhat tense relationship with Jack due to the fact that he’s very willing to bring violence to the table when he feels like it’s needed (which is more often than the show is used to). But in some ways, it’s still kinda comical. That’s absolutely how the Greeks viewed Ares. Also, Ares has a strong association with Aphrodite. This level of passion could only be found in our boy Jack

That being said, I think if we take his characterization in torchwood into the equation, he’s absolutely Zeus. When the Doctor takes on power, it’s often seen as out of step, out of line, and a little insane, but Jack? Jack in torchwood commands respect. He’s the father figure that has been around for a long, long time, and is often right in his decisions, even if we don’t want to admit it. Also, horny as hell

Martha - Athena

Although I think a lot of goddesses could suit Martha and, vice versa, Athena could suit a lot of doctor who characters, Athena perfectly captures the grace and strength of Martha. Her intelligence and her dignity shown throughout the series (and torchwood) are absolutely honorific and suited for this amazing goddess. This is especially true when she really comes into her own as a member of UNIT and is able to combine her skills as a doctor with her skills as a strategist. And I can totally see Athena watching that scene of Martha reciting the bones in the hand and cheering her on

Donna - Nike

As the goddess of victory, strength, and speed, Nike reminds me of Donna due to her absolute devotion to justice, whether it be towards the people of Pompeii, the Ood, or how she herself is treated by others. That woman has held so much weight on her shoulders, but she’s more than capable of pushing through all the hard times to make sure everyone comes out okay. Also, "Did I ever tell ya? Best temp in Chiswick. Hundreds words per minute.”

Amy - Hera

Oooh, my god. The level of Queen in this lady. Amy completely gives off Queen of the Gods vibes. She’s strong as hell, stubborn, and quick to temper, but she’s also incredibly sweet, devoted, giving, and motherly. The scene where she attacks the Silence after reminding them that River became who she is because she’s Amy’s daughter? BIG HERA ENERGY

Rory - Hades

Now I’m by no means suggesting that Asclepius was a bad choice for Rory, but truth be told I don’t know much about that god and so I can’t really judge how well that choice sits with me. However, I do think Hades would be an excellent choice for Rory. He’s sensitive, reserved, and often gets left with the worst lot in life. He’s also highly intelligent, shrewd, and incredibly devoted to his wife, who he puts on a pedestal and treats her like the queen she is

River - Hekate

I’m a little on the fence about this one, especially considering that the post used Hekate’s traits as the goddess of crossroads and magic to highlight for River. I think Hekate’s more accurate for River if we consider that she’s essentially the female version of Zeus, due to her insane amount of power. Despite her level of power, however, she remains humble and is willing to service Persephone and Hades by helping them in the Underworld, which is similar to how River helps her parents and the Doctor. Also, I often associate a level of controlled chaos with Hekate that River would thrive in

Clara - Dionysus

Okay, hear me the fuck out. I think Athena suits Clara best, but because I already used Athena for Martha, I’m going to use Dionysus here, and this is why: Dionysus is the god of chaos, but he’s not really ever depicted as being chaotic himself. Instead, he surrounds himself in chaos. I think this speaks to the duality of Clara needing absolute control in her life, but also being an extreme thrill-seeker who could go over the edge at any moment. Also, the level of drama that she cultivates is absolutely suited for the stage of Dionysus

Bill - Artemis

To me, every aspect of Artemis suits Bill perfectly. Bill is fiercely sharp-witted and I could easily see her taking up a bow and arrow with ease. She’s both incredibly serene and intellectual (which reminds me of Artemis’s association with the moon), yet she’s not unwilling to jump to the offense if she feels like she or a loved-one is being threatened. Incredibly just and hates unnecessary violence.

Also, LESBIAN!!!!!!!!!! Bill and Artemis drink loving-women juice for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert!!!

The Doctor - Apollo

Going back to what I said when discussing Jack, there’s always something disturbing about the Doctor when they’re given too much power. Zeus is simply too godly, and as Nine put it, “I’d make a very bad god.” I think that’s why someone like Apollo is more suitable. He’s the god of light, music, and medicine, which speaks to the healing nature of the Doctor, their creativity, and the profound influence they have on people’s lives. But at the same time Apollo can also be vicious with a bow and arrow, and is considered to be the bringer of plagues. This is reflected in the destruction that follows the Doctor wherever they go. To me, this dual nature is the most important thing there is about the Doctor

[needtherapy]

open always petal by petal (ch 1)

Song Lan knows his only passenger, Cao Huan, is more secrets than truths, but he's still the best passenger Song Lan has ever had: paid up front, self-sufficient, and silent.

It shouldn't matter that Cao Huan plays the guqin like his heart is broken.

It shouldn't matter that his smiles light up the darkest corners of Fuxue's passageways.

It shouldn't matter that he makes Song Lan curious, curious in a way he hasn't felt in years.

It's just an ordinary transport, a regular fare, a mostly-honest way to make a living. All they have to do is get from Sichuan Station to Caiyi Port. The galaxy may be a dangerous place, but Song Lan is very good at his job, and this should be an easy two-week trip.

The rest doesn't matter. It doesn't.

READ ON AO3

Notes: Rated E for Explicit. Title from e.e. cummings' poem "somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond". Thanks to @cirilien​, @coslyons​, @treemaidengeek​ and tucuxi (AO3) for the beta reads!

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3

⋆ Day 0 ⋆

The papers are fakes, Song Lan thinks, but damn good ones. It’s really only the feel of the paper—a bit too clean, a bit too smooth—that tips him off. The ID badge is probably fake too.

He examines the man standing in front of him. He’s handsome in a patrician sort of way, if a bit too thin, and nearly as tall as Song Lan himself, dressed in graceful Eastern Sector robes that rustle the way only real silk does. They’re a far cry from Song Lan’s utilitarian jacket and comfortable shirts and pants in shades of constant black, only a small step up from the uniform he used to wear.

Song Lan wonders why this obviously wealthy man would need forged travel docs. He doesn’t really care, of course. Everyone has their secrets. But he doesn’t need trouble with the Goldlighters. It’s already tricky enough to be unaffiliated without drawing the attention of the galaxy’s most powerful economic cultivation guild.

With a sigh, Song Lan fishes the comm out of a pocket and holds it to the tiny neural node on the side of his head.

[Why the fake name?] the comm speaker asks in a cheerful, melodic voice that still twinges painfully in his chest. It’s been five years. He should really get the damn thing re-coded.

Instead of being offended, the man—supposedly named Cao Huan—tilts a wry, weary smile at him.

“I had hoped to be anonymous a little longer,” he says, his elegant accent denoting excessive amounts of privilege and education. “If you require my real credentials, I can produce them.”

Song Lan shrugs and shakes his head. As long as the man is legit, he can call himself whatever he wants, but now Song Lan has another question. Frowning, he lifts the comm again.

[Why not just travel on a Goldlighter transport? You’re headed for Caiyi. It’s a major port. You know it’ll take two weeks to travel through all four sectors in my ship? The trip might be more dangerous than on a sanctioned vessel,] Xingchen’s voice asks.

Song Lan is under no illusions about his typical fares. There’s usually a good reason they want to travel without questions, and usually a good reason they choose Fuxue. He might be unaffiliated, but he’s not cheap. The galaxy is a dangerous place, and he’s very good at his job. In ten years, he’s only lost one person. It was, however, the only one who mattered.

“I am returning to my family after...some time away. I am in no hurry,” Cao Huan answers, with an edge that Song Lan takes to mean the topic is closed.

Well, he’s happy to take the man’s money; he paid extra to be the only passenger. Song Lan shrugs again and motions for Cao Huan to follow him on a very short tour: kitchen, guest bedrooms, sonic lavs, the foolishly indulgent bath, infirmary, bridge, engineering, cargo bay, plus half a dozen corridors that serve as storage, computer terminals, short-term passenger seating, and whatever else Song Lan needs them to be. He’s even strung up hammocks in emergencies.

[Make yourself at home,] he says with a nod and quick, slanted smile.

“Thank you Captain Song,” the man says with a wide, genuine smile that starts in the corner of his mouth and spreads, opening like a flower across his face. It surprises Song Lan in a way he can’t quite articulate, as though neither of them expected today to hold any need for smiles. “I have been told you are the best pilot, and I look forward to the journey.”

Song Lan finishes prepping Fuxue with supplies for the two-week flight, plus extras, because it’s always better to plan for the worst. He checks to make sure his one luxury—six skeins of outrageously expensive qiviut yarn—is carefully stowed in waterproof cases. Having warm socks and something to do with his hands in the long dark expanse of space is worth any price. Cao Huan busies himself with loading his own gear, waving Song Lan away when he offers to help.

“Commander Song! Commander Song Lan!”

Song Lan turns at the familiar voice calling a half-forgotten title, but it takes him a minute to recall the person: Ouyang Ju. They had served together some ten years ago in the war that brought down the Wen High Chancellor. Fat lot of good that had done.

“Man, it is you! Haven’t seen you in ages,” Ouyang grins, slapping Song Lan on the back. “How’s it going?”

Song Lan tries not to flinch. He has never understood the need people have to touch each other when they’re talking. It’s annoying. He smiles and tips his head, the universal motion for a polite and disengaged fine, and hopes he won’t have to elaborate. It’s not that he doesn’t like using the comm. He would just rather not use it.

Alright, maybe it’s that he doesn’t like using it.

The man’s face twists with sudden, embarrassed recollection, and Song Lan knows what’s coming next.

“Sorry to hear about your partner and...everything,” the older man says with an apologetic grimace. “He was a great guy.”

[He was,] Song Lan acknowledges, giving in to the blasted voice box. [Thanks.]

“Hey, I’m XO on the Goldlight Ren,” Ouyang nods at the huge transport vessel resting in the nearby docking bay, just visible through wide banks of windows designed, Song Lan assumes, to show off the might and power of the ships that travel here. Nothing like Fuxue, who might be ninety meters if he squints just right, can be flown by a single person, and only requires a landing pad.

“Anything you ever need, you tell me, okay? I owe you.” Without waiting for a response, Ouyang strides away, whistling a fairly dirty bar song.

Song Lan watches him go, wishing it was that easy, wishing he could reduce the war to favors performed, a series of tit-for-tat exchanges that balance to zero instead of a perpetually-red loss column.

Wishes are pointless. Only the road ahead matters.

Song Lan sees his new passenger idly poking through a bag, head dipped away, back turned, and something about his posture rings a distant alarm bell in Song Lan’s mind. He has flown the route from Sichuan Base to Caiyi Port hundreds of times in his life. It should feel exactly the same as every other trip. And yet this time, he senses trouble brewing, and he does not like it.

⋆ Day 3 ⋆

Other than the unexpected music, it’s almost like flying alone. Cao Huan seems to have a sixth sense for knowing where Song Lan will be and avoiding him. He only occasionally catches glimpses of the tall man, white robes swirling behind him as he disappears through doorways or around corners.

It suits Song Lan just fine, and he laughs to himself about his initial concern. Cao Huan is the best passenger Song Lan has ever had: paid up front, self-sufficient, and silent. Song Lan finishes his first sock less than two days out of port, a record.

The only place he consistently runs into his passenger is in the kitchen. After the third day, it occurs to Song Lan that, as strange as it seems, it must be on purpose. Song Lan gets the definite impression that Cao Huan waits for him to arrive before he eats, as though it’s some ceremony he wishes to observe.

There’s no good reason for it, but Song Lan starts to eat his meals at the narrow kitchen table too. After all, there’s no reason not to, either. He just doesn’t usually eat in the kitchen. He’s grateful to discover that conversation is not the reason Cao Huan prefers company; meals continue to be quiet, peaceful affairs.

“Captain Song?”

Cao Huan’s voice startles Song Lan into dropping the knife he’s using to stir his...whatever this goop is.

“My apologies, but...will you join me for tea tomorrow morning? It is not as enjoyable to drink tea by myself.”

Without meaning to, Song Lan looks at the cabinet that contains the “tea” and “coffee,” thinking, it’s never enjoyable to drink that swill, and Cao Huan laughs.

It’s only a laugh on the barest technicality, a soft huff of air, but it changes things so profoundly, Song Lan has trouble staying on his feet. Suddenly, Cao Huan is a person, not a passenger, not a potential problem. The word no forms in his head even as he feels himself nodding.

Cao Huan smiles and inclines his chin, pleased, and Song Lan finds himself smiling back. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. He’s not usually so soft-hearted. Xingchen was the nice one, he reminds himself, and look how that turned out. The cruelty is the only way he can snap himself out of the whispering camaraderie, a pointless train of thought, and back into his role as captain of a ship, nothing more.

[Captain, your attention is required.]

As if to punctuate the computer’s notification, an alarm sounds—unexpected, as this part of space should be smooth and easy sailing. Song Lan grimaces, shrugging apologetically.

“I’m coming,” he signs to the computer’s security camera, before running back to the bridge.

It turns out to be nothing major, only a debris field. Either a small ship had a catastrophe here or a large ship dumped trash. Neither option is particularly heartening. Bad enough if ships are carelessly leaving obstructions on a primary transit route, worse if a ship has been attacked and destroyed here where it should be safe. He knows the Joint Senate is doing its best, and Hanguang-jun, the new chairman, is by far the best leader the four sectors have had in decades, but it’s hard to protect everyone.

There’s no signs of life anywhere after three scans, and Song Lan steers them out of the mess before he resumes course and autopilot.

He doesn’t go back to the kitchen, though.

It isn’t wise, he tells himself, to think of passengers as anything but temporary. Even if they seem nice, even if they’re friendly, they always reach their destination and move on. That’s what he likes about flying transport.

Like clockwork, at 8 pm the music starts. The first night on the ship, Song Lan had thought he was going crazy, hearing the eerie twang of an instrument he didn’t think still existed outside of private art collections.

But no, his passenger had been seated in the mostly-empty cargo bay, eyes closed, playing the guqin. An actual wooden guqin. The music had echoed through the hold, wrapping its notes around Song Lan and reverberating in his chest. He had listened with a mix of disbelief and reverence to the beautiful melody flowing from the fingers of the obviously skilled musician. He listened, in fact, until Cao Huan lifted his hands off the strings and sighed, a long, plaintive sound of grief that piqued Song Lan’s curiosity more than was healthy, and he’d hurried away before Cao Huan noticed him.

The next night had been the same, the music winding into access shafts, around the bridge, even through engineering.

Which Song Lan knows, because he tried all of those places to escape it.

Tonight, though, he gives up. If he is going to be treated to an impromptu concert by a master musician every night, he may as well enjoy it. He knits on the catwalk over the cargo hold and listens, wondering if the song has words, wondering what it means to Cao Huan, wondering how long you had to practice to make the guqin sound like an ocean of sorrow.

⋆ Day 4 ⋆

Evidently, Cao Huan had not been referring to Fuxue’s stores of tea.

He had his own.

Song Lan tells himself to stop being surprised that a man who carries a guqin and can afford a private transport would have a jar of aged white tea that smells like honey and the summer sun. He sits at the table across from Cao Huan and watches him gracefully pour tea, holding back his draping sleeve with one hand.

Cao Huan notices Song Lan’s raised eyebrows.

“You must think me overly indulgent,” he says, pouring his own cup. “I am not particular about many things, but I do enjoy good tea. I am fortunate that it is something my...my family can provide.”

Oh, Song Lan thinks, his family must be tea merchants, which does explain quite a bit, and he feels a little guilty for judging the man on appearances. He wonders if it’s flash-cloned or actually soil-grown, and he peers into the cup, considering the color and shape of the leaves he can see, as though they will give him an answer.

“It is soil-grown,” Cao Huan answers Song Lan’s curious thought, and smiles when Song Lan looks startled. “It is the obvious question. Unless you were seeking your fate in the leaves?”

Song Lan snorts, and Cao Huan laughs again, again that soft exhale that feels more intimate than raucous laughter. It highlights faint lines around his eyes and softens his usually-tranquil angular features with a hint of playful teasing.

“Perhaps you do not believe in fate? Or perhaps you do not believe tea can tell the future. It is considered a noble art, Captain Song. Could so many fortune-telling market grannies be wrong?”

Song Lan laughs, a sadly rusty sound, he thinks with an internal wince, and shakes his head. The man looks pleased.

“Captain Song, may I ask a nosy question?”

Sometimes when people say things like that, they mean I am going to ask a nosy question whether you like it or not, but Cao Huan sounds sincere. Song Lan considers. With a sigh, he finds the comm.

[You may ask. I can’t guarantee that I can answer.]

The man’s mouth twitches in an almost smile. “That is fair. It is only...I noticed you signed to the camera yesterday. Do you…” he pauses, seeming to reevaluate his question, which is good, because Song Lan has frozen.

He forces himself to relax. Hand sign languages are no longer illegal, but he still can’t stop the fluttering fear from pooling in his gut.

“Does the computer understand your hand signs?” Cao Huan finishes, and Song Lan practices breathing normally.

[Yes. It’s easier to sign than find the comm sometimes, especially if I’m in a hurry,] he says through the little speaker, only a little defiantly. He won’t let this man shame him.

“Would you prefer to speak this way?” Cao Huan asks, lifting his hands and signing as he speaks.

Song Lan just stares at him.

And stares.

And stares until Cao Huan’s eyebrows raise. “If you would rather not…”

“No, I do prefer it,” Song Lan signs hurriedly, not wanting him to withdraw the offer. “It’s just...unusual to find someone who knows hand signs these days.”

The High Chancellor had been a paranoid and suspicious man, and he had outlawed the use of hand signs decades ago, fearing them to be the language of bandits and assassins. He wasn’t entirely wrong; hunters and thieves did use the signs, but so did countless others. His replacement, who preferred to be called Xiandu, wasn’t much better. All in all, almost thirty years passed before the current Joint Senate legalized them again after Xiandu’s death three years ago. In so many places around the four sectors, the sign languages that correlated to the spoken languages have been lost entirely.

Song Lan had learned the sign language after Xingchen died five years ago, after he was left for dead, after he decided he was done with the future. His teacher was a wizened old woman on an unaffiliated space station, Rogue Sky, and she was most likely one of the High Chancellor’s feared bandits. Song Lan hadn’t cared then and he didn’t care now. All he knew was that she’d refused to let him wallow in misery, no matter how much he felt he’d earned it.

Song Lan still takes her snowflake cakes whenever he’s near Qinghe space. It’s the least he can do.

Cao Huan nods in acknowledgement, still signing as he talks. Even though it’s unnecessary, Song Lan finds he likes watching, the words and motions blending together to make something wholly different.

“I have always loved languages. This one is particularly beautiful and unique.” He grins suddenly, eyes twinkling with mischief, and the expression turns his face brilliantly luminous. “Plus, it was an appealing novelty to learn something forbidden.”

Song Lan’s first reaction to the man’s captivating smile is an unwelcome surprise. Instinctively, he covers his embarrassment—which he hopes has gone unnoticed—with something he’s more familiar with.

“I did not have the luxury of enjoying the novelty,” his fingers cut angrily through the air. “I was taught illegally on an unaffiliated station by a former bandit, but it was better than never speaking again.”

Swiftly he stands and goes back to his room to berate himself. He isn’t sure which is worse, yelling at his passenger or feeling a knee-buckling surge of desire for him. He has no business doing either.

Song Lan flops on his bed and stares at the ceiling, at the sword that hangs above his head. Shuanghua, Xingchen’s pride and joy, the sword he brought with him when he joined Song Lan’s crew, the sword that couldn’t save him in the end. Couldn’t save either of them. The guilt throbs in his gut, as familiar as the vibrations of Fuxue’s heart, and he sinks into it. This is an emotion he understands.

[Captain, do you need assistance?] his computer asks, and Song Lan wants to laugh. It seems that even Fuxue thinks he’s being a moody child.

He shakes his head and signs to the camera. “What would you do if I did? I’m the captain and the crew.”

The computer is silent, the question apparently having stumped the AI.

[Zichen, do you want to talk about it?]

“No,” his hands say emphatically. He’s not an expert, but he’s pretty sure it’s not going to help to get a psych eval from a computer that’s using his dead partner’s voice.

“Captain Song?”

And now Cao Huan is on the other side of the door. Why can’t everyone just let him sulk in peace?

“Captain Song, I profoundly apologize. It was a terrible, insensitive thing I said, and I am so sorry. It is not an excuse but...I have not been around...people much lately. Evidently I am still quite bad at it. I will not disturb you…”

Song Lan yanks open the door.

“It’s nothing,” he signs slowly, calmly. “I overreacted.” Song Lan smiles ruefully. “I’m not around people much either. Thank you for the tea.”

Cao Huan blinks in surprise, and his face shifts through a series of expressions Song Lan doesn’t recognize before landing on careful neutrality.

“You’re welcome. I...I would be happy to share tea with you every day. If you wish.”

He looks like he’s considering saying something else, but he doesn’t, just nods his head once and goes. Song Lan doesn’t exactly watch him walk down the passageway, one fist resting on the small of his back, but he doesn’t not watch him either.

⋆ Day 5 ⋆

Song Lan is amused to discover that Cao Huan is insatiably curious about everything on Fuxue. It’s not hard to believe he’s been isolated for a while. He is unfailingly polite, and still mostly avoids Song Lan, but occasionally, Song Lan finds him in the oddest places: staring at the engines, examining at the computer core, meditating on the catwalk, sorting through supplies in the infirmary. Song Lan wonders if he’s bored.

He finds Cao Huan on the bridge one day, running his lithe musician’s fingers over the flight panel, murmuring something to himself. Song Lan knows as soon as Cao Huan is aware of his presence. He doesn’t startle, exactly, but he stiffens and steps back slightly. His face, when he turns to Song Lan, though, is tranquil and uncomplicated.

“My pardon, Captain,” he nods, and steps to the side as though he intends to move past Song Lan, but for once, Song Lan is curious.

“Were you talking to Fuxue?” he asks before Cao Huan looks away.

Cao Huan’s neck flushes, and he shrugs. “I have heard these Jian-class AIs have distinctive personalities, as it were. I prefer to err on the side of caution.”

Song Lan doesn’t understand what he means, but Cao Huan is still blushing, the tips of his ears turning a distracting shade of pink, and it makes him want to know.

“I don’t understand,” he says, and Cao Huan sighs.

“I was introducing myself,” he explains. “It seemed courteous.”

Song Lan can’t help his smile. He wonders if Cao Huan introduced himself to Fuxue with his real name.

“Yes, Fuxue is somewhat unique,” he agrees. “My...my partner was a gifted tech, and he gave her more autonomy than is customary since we flew alone so often.”

Cao Huan nods. “So I gathered. She tells me about him sometimes. Is her voice…” he pauses, noticing the look of surprise on Song Lan’s face. “Is that strange?”

Fuxue talks to Song Lan, and of course, she used to talk to Xingchen—one of the reasons, Song Lan suspects, that his ship is so unusual. Talking to Xingchen for extended periods of time would make anyone a bit odd. But as far as he knows, the ship has never spoken to any other passenger, much less talked to them about Xingchen. He can’t decide why Fuxue would start now, whether it’s a bug in the programming or something about Cao Huan specifically.

“Yes,” Song Lan acknowledges. “She still manages to surprise me sometimes.” He smiles up at the camera in the corner of the room and adds, “Don’t make trouble, my love.”

“I believe she likes the music,” Cao Huan says, stepping around Song Lan and moving into the passageway. “I apologize again for intruding on your bridge.” He smiles, a minute flicker, and Song Lan catches his sleeve impulsively, probably foolishly.

“You are welcome on the bridge any time,” he signs swiftly, before Cao Huan can leave. “Whether I am here or not.”

Cao Huan considers for a moment and nods, his smile a little wider, a little more genuine, and Song Lan doesn’t regret his words at all.

⋆ Day 7 ⋆

“How did you learn this?” Cao Huan asks one day, touching the toe of the sock Song Lan is knitting.

They are sitting in the two bridge seats, and Song Lan is working through a heel turn, shaping the rows to reinforce the curve. He finishes the section before he sets down the sock to answer.

“I learned when I was a boy. I grew up with scrappers, and there was a lot of downtime.”

Cao Huan is silent, rubbing the soft wool between his fingers, and Song Lan wonders why he bothered to ask.

“Would you like to learn?” Song Lan asks, and Cao Huan shakes his head slowly.

“Yes, but I am not certain I will ever...I do not know what my future holds. There may be no point in learning.”

He sounds so bleak and disappointed, dozens of questions pop in and out of Song Lan’s head, and he firmly shuts them behind a door. He isn’t going to intrude on this man’s private life.

“There is always value in learning something new,” he signs instead, and Cao Huan smiles ruefully.

“You sound like my brother,” he says, then snaps his mouth closed and hides the expressiveness of his face behind the neutral mask Song Lan is beginning to recognize, even if he’s still not certain what it means.

“Mm,” he agrees, one of the few sounds he can still make. To his surprise, Cao Huan laughs.

“Now you truly do sound like him. He is not a man of many words, but he is very eloquent with noncommittal sounds,” Cao Huan explains when Song Lan looks puzzled.

“You’re close?” Song Lan asks, and the shuttered expression returns.

Still, the man answers after a pause. “Yes, we were, but...he is gone now, living his own life. I am proud of him, but...it makes going home seem...different.”

Every word is reluctantly spoken, as though giving shape to them makes them dangerous. Song Lan vows not to ask any other questions, but Cao Huan keeps talking, and he can’t very well tell him to stop, either.

“Home used to mean people, but...they are grown or changed or…” his eyes close in obvious pain, and Song Lan wants to tell him to stop or distract him with a starboard nebula, but there’s nothing, just this palpable misery.

“Or gone,” he finishes. “Home is only a place now. It should be enough but…”

Song Lan understands this much at least.

“It’s too quiet.” He finishes Cao Huan’s sentence, and he means that home has always been Fuxue, but it no longer hums with love and laughter and Xingchen. It is the same place it was five years ago, but...it isn’t.

Abruptly, Cao Huan leans forward and squeezes Song Lan’s knee, his face softening in sympathy. It’s only a brief touch, but Song Lan’s body reacts like the brush of fingers is a line of electricity, both sharp and crushing, nothing like he expected, not that he could ever have expected this particular cataclysm. Has it been so long, he wonders, since someone touched him with kindness?

He stands, covering his sudden need to escape by hunting through one of the storage bins for a bigger set of knitting needles and a chunkier-gauge yarn. He sets them on Cao Huan’s lap.

“You may as well learn,” he signs with an easy smile. “We still have a week of travel left.”

Cao Huan laughs in disbelief when Song Lan shows him how to cast the yarn onto the needle, but he turns out to be a quick study, which Song Lan should have expected, given his dexterity with the guqin. Song Lan admits to himself that he likes the way the man’s face lights with the satisfaction of meeting a challenge, even more the way he brandishes a square of fairly smooth rows with such pride.

The quiet stretches out like a lazy cat, broken by the sound of clicking needles, and it settles serenely over Song Lan. Usually on transports, he is busy every waking moment, herding children, answering questions, sometimes even preventing bloodshed. He could get used to this uneventful kind of trip.

As if the gods have heard his thoughts, a piercing blue alarm sounds. Not an environmental emergency. Blue is an enemy attack.

Song Lan jams his needles into the yarn and tosses the whole bundle into the corner before turning to the screens, grabbing the yoke with one hand and snapping the comm headset onto his neural node with the other.

Where? he asks Fuxue through their mental link, and Xingchen’s voice relays the coordinates through the overhead speakers: 403 225 687.

He enlarges the image. Junk pirates. A mini-fleet of five. It could be worse, it could be Red Robe mercs or Goldlighters or soldiers of any major faction, but he isn’t looking forward to a run and gun. He scours the sector for a nearby...anything. There’s an asteroid field and two tiny stations, one in either direction, all so much further than is particularly helpful. He makes a decision and changes course, doubling back on the pirates and surging past them.

[Cao Huan, we have pirates,] he says via the comm. [We’re going to try to outrun them first.] He doesn’t bother explaining what the other option is.

“Give me tactical control,” Cao Huan says, calm and insistent, and even though he has no reason to think this man has ever even flown a ship before, Song Lan flips on the secondary pilot display and unlocks the manual gun controls.

[Fuxue is adapted for neural node. You’ll have to shoot manually, but it might at least scare them off,] he explains.

Cao Huan grins. “Or I might surprise you, Captain Song.”

He does, of course. Song Lan is busy avoiding the pirates’ attacks, so he can’t watch as carefully as he suspects he'd like to, but his new co-pilot seems to be racing through calculating targeting coordinates like he’s half computer. Interestingly, he isn’t aiming to destroy, only damage, and he knocks out the first two ships’ navigational cores with single, identical, virtually impossible shots.

Fuxue is easily faster than one of the ships, and Cao Huan clips its starboard wing, only dislodging the thruster, before they pull away. It’s enough to send the forty-meter ship spinning out of control in the opposite direction.

The last two though...they’re a problem. The smaller of the two has an expert pilot and gunner, and Fuxue takes several hits. One explodes against the side of the lifeboat bay, others destroy sensor arrays and scatter pieces of shielding into space. They’re going to have to do something drastic or they aren’t going to survive this.

[Rolleram?] he asks Cao Huan, not entirely sure if he’ll understand, but he nods once and waits for Song Lan to turn.

Song Lan rolls Fuxue in an arc and flies directly at the larger ship, avoiding a few shots before dodging around the ship on its right side, swooping down, using the ship as a blind. With a hard bank, he brings Fuxue up on the other side of the big pirate ship. The smaller ship is right in front of them, a perfect shot.

[Now!] he yells, but Cao Huan has already fired the phaser cannons, and without even looking, Song Lan knows he’s calculated Fuxue’s path and the pirate’s trajectory perfectly.

[Target disabled,] Fuxue confirms. [Nice shot, XO.]

Cao Huan’s mouth tips in the corner. “Thank you, Fuxue,” he says.

Song Lan shakes his head at them both. Since when did the passenger become his executive officer, and who thanks a ship’s AI?

But there’s no time to celebrate. The last ship, the largest ship, is less agile than Fuxue, but more heavily armed and is throwing everything at them in a last ditch effort. With a jarring lurch, Fuxue shudders, and Song Lan grimaces.

[Port wing…]

[Yes I know,] he snaps. He only barely has enough rudder to pivot Fuxue, pure luck more than anything. They won’t survive one more impact like that.

“Wei Drop?” Cao Huan suggests, and Song Lan snorts.

[Play dead?] No one who has ever seen the Wei Drop is fooled by it twice. But even as he derides the idea, he realizes it might work. It’s going to have to. Cao Huan is a good enough shot, and they don’t have a lot of choices left.

[Fine, but if this doesn’t work, you owe me a ship,] he says, killing Fuxue’s engine, shutting down all the systems, and letting his ship slowly start to drift oh-so-subtly in a circle.

It works. He can’t believe it works, but the pirates stop shooting, probably reluctant to break their new salvage any more than necessary, and coast toward Fuxue.

When Fuxue has made a full rotation, when Song Lan can almost see the attacking crew through the shielded fore windows, he looks at Cao Huan, who nods.

It happens so fast, the two of them working in unison to flip on all the power, stabilize Fuxue, take aim, and fire twice. At the last second, the pirate ship banks, trying to escape the shot, but they’re too close, far too close, and instead of disabling the wing or navigation, or whatever Cao Huan was aiming for, the ship explodes in a blinding blast of nuclear white light.

The last thing Song Lan thinks, the last thing he has time to think before the shockwave hits them, is Xingchen is going to be so mad about his ship.

[rosethornewrites]

Fic: and sings the tune without the words, ch. 3

Relationship: Jiāng Yànlí & Jīn Zǐxuān, Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī & Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn

Characters: Jiang Yanli, Jin Zixuan, Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji, Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian

Additional Tags: Epistolary, Food, Music

Summary: An epistolary follow-up to “the thing with feathers.” Exchanged letters.

Notes: See end.

Previous fic in the series: “the thing with feathers”

Chapters: 1 | 2

AO3 link

--------------

To Jin-gongzi,

I sincerely apologize for the delay in writing back. A-Xian had an episode, like the one you saw, but he was unconscious for two days and very frightened and confused after he woke. I had a letter started before that occurred but am writing a new one now. 

I am glad you like Zihuang’s design. When a-die took me to the luthier, we discussed the various options available for both sound and decoration. Since my practice instrument was a shoo konghou, they recommended I choose the same, but the fong shou design called to me. 

I decided on the mother of pearl instead of a precious metal or jade because I liked the shine of it, but also for another reason. Before A-Xian fell ill, he and A-Cheng always brought me lovely shells they found while swimming in the river. They used to compete with each other to see who could find the most diving. So the nacre reminds me of them. I don’t know if A-Xian remembers this—perhaps I should mention it to him. 

I confess I am still a little distressed over A-Xian’s episode, so I apologize if I go off on tangents.

As a result of my childhood illness, I sometimes have dizzy spells. Largely it is under control, but Healer Kang said that improving my core might also improve my health. I’m happy that I can find a way to contribute to Yunmeng Jiang even with a weak body. I agree that there should be more avenues available to young cultivators who may not be able to fight monsters—if the sects encouraged such disciples to utilize their cultivation to heal or engage in other activities that would enrich the sect, it would only strengthen the sects!

Cooking is an activity I quite enjoy, and I would be happy to serve lotus root and pork rib soup sometime when you visit. My soup was the very first thing he remembered, actually. When A-Xian first came to us, he was scared and so malnourished, and I always cook it for him and A-Cheng, especially when they’re sick or troubled. I’m happy cooking it for him meant so much to him that it broke through his amnesia. 

Your suggestion about handstands was something I tried. It was very difficult, and I was so involved in trying to do one that I forgot Lan-xiansheng was coming to give me a music lesson. It was so embarrassing to be caught, as I was a little disheveled. But he smiled—I think he almost laughed, even, especially after I explained. 

He said your idea is sound, but I will need to work my way up to an actual handstand. For now, he showed me several exercises I can do to work on my muscles, and recommended I do the arm motions of sword forms with a light practice wooden one. I can move to heavier ones as my strength increases, and eventually I will be ready for handstands. Thank you for the suggestion. I am glad I can speak of this with you. 

I was unable to find a konghou score in our library, but I can write to Lan-xiansheng to ask if there is one in theirs. I, too, enjoy that song, though there’s a sadness to it, since it’s a farewell song. I may not be at the level where I can play it yet, but it is good to know what music you like. 

One of our cooks is from Lanling, but not near the capitol. I asked her about those dishes, and she knows them and will be happy to prepare them next time you visit. She’s also willing to teach me how to cook them! She cooked up basi pinggou for dessert once A-Xian recovered, even, and we all very much enjoyed it. It’s so sweet, and the texture is very pleasant. A-Xian and A-Cheng competed to make the longest thread of sugar.

Yunmeng cuisine is indeed known for its spice—but never take food from A-Xian, since he goes overboard with the spices. He dumps chili oil on everything, except my soup which he insists is perfect. 

I am very fond of re gan mian (hot dry noodles), and I like pianpiya (Hubei duck) which you might enjoy since one of the dishes you mentioned is a duck dish. As a dessert, I am very fond of sweet doufunao (tofu brains/pudding). 

A-Lian was a gift from the lotuses, our beautiful lotus meimei. A-Xian’s illness changed quite a bit for us. A-Niang became protective of him, and she started talking to a-die more. She also decided that we should seek orphans and street children and educate them so they may become cultivators, if they have the capacity, or take on a trade. She’s also made it her personal mission to rescue women enslaved at brothels so they might also be able to be educated and learn trades. Our family has grown, as has our sect, and we’re all very happy. 

I think a-niang is happy to have found more purpose, and to have reconciled with a-die. They had deep misunderstandings, I think. A-Xian’s illness forced them to talk, and things are much better now. 

I am including some of the rose petal candy you enjoyed with this letter. I hope it finds you and your family well.

Jiang Yanli

  To Jiang-guniang,

Your gift of rose petal candy is much appreciated. 

I am sorry to hear of your brother’s illness; you obviously care deeply for all of your siblings, so I have no doubt it was distressing for you. When I was there, he passed out for no more than a ke, which seemed from the reaction of everyone to be more typical. Yu-furen mentioned he was attacked and fell into a coma for weeks. It is quite understandable that you are distracted. Is he recovered?

The choices behind your konghou are interesting. I have not engaged in music beyond a rudimentary grasp of the suona as a pursuit of the six arts, but perhaps I should refine my skills and consider music more carefully. As you stated, we need not limit ourselves to the sword as cultivators. 

As such, I agree with you on pursuing cultivation for healing and perhaps the arts. I wonder if cultivation could be utilized in the visual arts, as well. I tried to speak of it with fuqin but he seemed disinterested and called the idea “quaint.” I believe it is a good idea—no one thinks the Lan quaint for pursuing musical cultivation, and I have heard a branch of the Wen sect is known for its healing cultivation. In fact, you might look into them, though I don’t know what branch it is. 

It sounds very much like you have used cooking almost as a healing art for the benefit of your brother. I wonder if, like with medicine, qi can be infused in food somehow. Maybe not for healing, but for other things like comfort. I have never considered this before, and I am enjoying this discussion. I may research it in the library here, but I would like to know what you find if you look into it as well. Regardless, your cooking sounds powerful on its own. 

I had not considered the status of your body, which you mentioned was weakened by your childhood illness, and I am relieved you did not injure yourself in the attempt. That is a very real consideration if you push your body too much; I once tried one of the more advanced Jin sword techniques before I was ready to and wound up hurting my shoulder. I’m glad Lan-xiansheng prevented any harm from coming to you. 

I will see if there is a konghou score for it in the Jin library, but it could probably be adapted for the konghou by a musician, perhaps with different levels so you can start with a simpler version and then progress as you improve. That’s usually how I learn footwork and sword technique. I’m not sure if your sect trains the same way. 

Your description of your brothers eating basi pinggou made me smile, as I do the same thing. It’s part of the fun of eating it when it’s hot. I’m happy to hear you enjoyed it, and I hope you also enjoy the other dishes when you get to try them. 

Some of our cuisine is spicy, but I can scarcely imagine eating something spicier than Yunmeng dishes—your brother must like strong flavors. 

I have been living in Koi Tower my entire life, but somehow had never gone to the kitchens before. The cooks were very startled to see me. I asked about the dishes you mentioned, and one of the cooks was familiar with Yunmeng cuisine. She cautioned me that the spice can be quite strong but can be adjusted to taste. In Lanling, our doufunao is salty, so I was surprised it could be a sweet dish. 

The cook kindly made a small bowl of it and allowed me to watch the preparation. She used ginger in the syrup. It was a little strange at first, since I’m used to it being a savory dish, but it was quite good. I asked if the kitchen would consider occasionally serving it for dessert with dinner and making it when you and your family come to visit, and they were amenable. 

I don’t quite understand what you mean by “a gift from the lotuses,” but it is not my place to pry. Yu-furen stated she was Jiang Wuxian’s adopted sister, so it makes sense that she would also become your sister upon his adoption. 

Yu-furen’s idea about orphans and street children seems sensible, especially given your brother’s past. Some gentry may be concerned about elevating the status of such children, though. She may face criticism for this, and for the other. I know a-niang hates prostitutes, but I don’t think it’s their fault if they’re slaves. What else can slaves do but obey? Rescuing them seems just. 

Your parents’ relationship has turned quite positive, and it seems good for you and your siblings. 

I am including some of my favorite malt candies in several flavors, and enough that your family can try them as well. My favorite is the date walnut candy. I hope you enjoy them. 

With best regards,

Jin Zixuan

---------------

Jin Zixuan is a little jealous that Jiang Yanli’s family is so happy and his, well, isn’t. He’s also tentatively fascinated by their discussion of cultivation, and a little mad that his shitty father won’t discuss it with him. He’s also aware of why his mother hates prostitutes but is not willing to say so. 

From fan-created maps, it seems Lotus Pier is in Hubei province, so I used several dishes from there as Jiang Yanli’s favorites. Doufunao is called tofu brains but is a kind of soft pudding tofu. In Shandong province it would be made with savory flavors, but in Hubei it’s made with sugar. Cantonese cooking apparently uses ginger with it, and the recipe I found also does. I also found a recipe for date walnut candy that looks divine. 

Also, apparently the suona is popular in Shandong province, but also kind of sounds like the mating call of a peacock and I just couldn’t help myself. Music is one of the six arts young gentlemen would be expected to have some proficiency in, so it makes sense that he has at least rudimentary competence. 

Jiang Yanli upped the ante by sending him the candy he noted enjoying. And Jin Zixuan is not one to be outdone, so of course he sent some back, and enough for her siblings to boot! This is a matter of pride!

[natsunoomoi]

So sometimes I check wikis to like look things up about a show or series that I don’t have time to read or watch the whole thing fully cuz that’s a time investment I just don’t have but I have questions I just want a quick answer to.

The problem is, wikis are of course, made by like regular people with varying levels of biases and also sometimes selective memory of events. As can be seen in my more recent posts with SVSSS and MXTX’s works I’ve been on those wikis, but sometimes the explanations of plot points and a bunch of other stuff are really confusing and circular. SVSSS’s is being more cleaned up recently, but it still has some things that it says happened, that I couldn’t find at all when reading the book and I’m just like, where did they find that info to put on the wiki?

Like one of my earlier posts when I started reading SVSSS at the beginning, I mentioned how I read that original Luo Binghe got killed by his harem eventually and I thought that made sense cuz ultimately no one in that original plotline made choices that made them genuinely happy. But when I read the book, I didn’t see any mention of that anywhere...? I think last time I went to go look at BC Novels they had one chapter left to translate. Is it in there?

Then at other times, I wonder if there’s an inconsistency because there’s a limitation between the translation I read and like something in the original Chinese text like there’s a typo, which obviously there’s a mistake then. But then other times, I’m wondering if people read a different thing, but most of the people with a different interpretation don’t seem to be able to read Chinese and are reading the same translation as me, but I’m confused where they got certain details from?

Like for instance, there’s another part on the wiki where it says Airplane originally planned for PIDW to be a BL from the beginning, but I’ve literally been trying to find where that was stated because I don’t remember that and I don’t see that anywhere and the chapter citation that is listed on the wiki goes to a chapter that doesn’t talk about that at all. Airplane/Qinghua does say that he made changes to Qingqiu’s character that were originally more complex to make him a trash human and he did that to make a living, but I can’t find where it says he originally wanted it to be a BL theme to begin with. In the chapter they cite it says that Qinghua had designed Binghe to have an appearance in a way that appealed more to a female audience and be more of a pretty boy. That doesn’t mean that he meant his entire book to be a BL it just means you make your main character look a certain way partly for internal logic because that look is really popular with women so the in-story women would probably find him attractive and in a meta sense any females who happen to also read a stallion novel like some women read shounen manga would find him hot in real life. A successful story does things like that to reach people outside of its target audience and that’s kind of a lot of the reason why a lot of Shounen Jump manga are really popular with women too even though a lot of the stories have the male perspective in mind. The chapter it cites only talks about the actual physical appearance design choice he made for Binghe vs Mobei-Jun. He just says that Mobei-Jun was made for the kind of male character he prefers to think about, but Binghe was just designed with the idea of what would make him more popular and also could kind of be like a self-insert-ish for his desire to beat on people for funsies. It doesn’t talk at all about what the genre he planned for the book to be and interpreting the text to that much is really stretching the context to wishful thinking levels. I don’t even actually care either way what kind of novel PIDW was because it’s not actually that important to enjoying the story of SVSSS, but I don’t know if it’s the Ravenclaw in me or what, but it just bugs me when there’s something that seems *wrong* printed on a thing that is supposed to inform other people. I’m literally reading chapters at the same time as trying to write this post to find where I think maybe it was said, but it sure as hell wasn’t the chapter the wiki cites.

The other day I re-read the chapter when Qinghua taunts SY with Qingqiu’s real memories, and he doesn’t even say it then. ATM, I’m trying to look through the last chapter because there’s that one part when Qinghua shows up right at the end and talks with SY at the celebration, but even at the start at the chapter, SY talks about how Qingqiu was super straight to him. SY is an unreliable narrator, but given the context of Qingqiu’s life events that makes sense. His personal trauma because of Qiu Jianluo also pushed him away from any amount of closeness he could have with other men other than ones he already trusted to some degree. He had a lot of problems forming new relationships of any kind with other men because of deep-seated trust issues. Not that he didn’t have any, but meaningful ones were pretty absent. One only because of a very sad misunderstanding and lack of communication and explanation, but the others just tough.

But like also there’s like that SJ slept in the Warm Red Pavilion and he went there just for comfort rather than more lascivious reasons. Yeah, it’s true that he didn’t go there for those intentions, but like it’s still in the environment so it’s not like he’s unaware of what happens there. I mentioned it in the previous post about his search for means to grow his cultivation, but only to say he’s probably not that innocent and there may be some truth to him wanting to do something to Ning Yingying out of desperation to make up for his low cultivation foundation. Like he’s aware of those kinds of things and he probably came across something that said that was a way he could grow his cultivation. Desperation and this motivation I think is probably the only reason why he would be so tempted to cross that line with Yingying because he otherwise treats women rather well. She is his favorite too, so if a person who usually treats females well for some reason wants to do something that would be hurtful to their favorite person, there has to be a much deeper motivation behind that. The only thing that is a canonically greater obsession I think would have to be his cultivation level. He has a number of self-esteem issues and such a well, but his greatest pride and greatest concern is his cultivation. He is proud of his abilities, but also he laments and regrets the version of him he couldn’t become so much I can foresee that if there was a suggestion that he could overcome his late start in some way by using someone female, I think he’d at least think about it and also consider who he knows could be a viable candidate should he want to act on it and that is how that part of PIDW happened. Pain and desperation make people do things that are uncharacteristic, so it has to be something that really bothers him more than in a moment of weakness that idea is there.

Which is another point I have an issue with on the wiki because it says his low cultivation is “logically” because he started late and spent so much time with a fake master. It’s not logically. It’s factually. It’s mentioned several times especially in the extras chapters from Shen Jiu’s point of view where he talks about how he is specifically behind because of wasting time with Qiu Jianluo and Wu Yanzi and also that he was the last to form a golden core. If it was coming out of SY or someone else’s mouth as an explanation, maybe you can say “logically”, but if it’s coming from SJ’s point of view chapter it sure as hell is not. That *IS* his motivation. He states it himself.

Also, I think some people don’t understand what it means to have a low cultivation foundation. Cultivation from what I gather according to the rules of this world is like a lot of talents we have in our world where you need to start young to be good at it. There’s a few skills that you can learn that if you don’t start at a specific time you lose the optimal window to develop your talent for it because of the way the brain functions and basically purges off skillsets you’re not using in your environment. 

Learning a language is one such skill. When a baby is born, it has the capability to learn how to speak every language in the world, but as it gets older its brain purges out the sounds that it doesn’t hear from its environment and this keeps going into older childhood as well. The taxi driver I talked to the other day about this said you have to start before you’re 10, which sounds about right. The phoneme purging in your brain starts quite early though so that’s why my company has classes for Moms and their 1 or 2 year old so that they can speak to them in English to try to keep English sounds in their environment so that they can have perfect pronunciation when they grow up. If you try to learn a new language when you’re older that’s how you have accents. You don’t have the phonemes to speak the language perfectly so your brain is imitating the sounds with the ones you do have. Plus it’s a constant use skill. I used to be able to speak Cantonese with no accent up until my teens, but I haven’t spoken it in so long that slowly I started to have an accent and now I can’t say the words properly anymore. I don’t know that much Cantonese to begin with that aren’t baby words, but I used to be able to say them properly.

Music is another one and that one has an even more narrow window. Kids with parents hoping that they will be music prodigies usually start them on music VERY young like 3 or 4. It’s not that it’s impossible for someone to pick up an instrument later in life, but there’s a type of sense to music and hearing the scale and developing that skill that if you don’t start kids on it at that time, their musical ear will not be as good.

And it’s that “not as good” thing that Qingqiu is chasing. He is exceptionally powerful and talented which is why despite starting late he became favored. He is very capable and good at what he does, but he is not as good as what he could have been. Even though he is so good, he is only haunted by how much better he would have been if he had started on time and had proper instruction. A musician who maybe wants to be a concert violinist but took up the instrument late may struggle to get a good seat in an orchestra because despite any talent they have, their ear is not as developed as someone else. Such a musician would be vexed and lament that they hadn’t discovered their love for the instrument sooner just as Qingqiu is vexed and laments that he didn’t start proper cultivation development earlier.

And I’m griping about SVSSS more because I read that book so I have more points of reference to go on. But like the wikis for MDZS and TGCF aren’t much better. MDZS is maybe a little more coherent and easier to follow, but TGCF confused the hell out of me and it took me awhile to understand what was going on. I really needed it though cuz I was watching the donghua and like I think the way they present some of the scenes is like slightly out of order for like foreshadowing and other like film reasons, so I checked the wiki while watching to try to get more context cuz I don’t have much time right now to pick up another book at the moment. I was so confused though cuz like...it seems like the logic in the entries is so circular and I’m trying to keep track of all the characters and what’s happening. I hope it’s better now but at the time I was watching it I was so confused and struggling to make sense of what’s happening.

And like maybe you’re wondering why if I read the book, would I bother checking a wiki. Mostly out of laziness because I’m thinking of something and I don’t want to go find the exact chapter to help me flesh out my thought and reference point. I end up getting more frustrated sometimes depending on what I’m looking up because of the above things.

Plus again I’m like a bit mystified as to why Qingqiu’s look seems to appeal to me. It’s not just him though and like other characters with a similar style in some of the games I play. I think there’s some imprint from some very old childhood memory that I only vaguely remember. Like it’s a look that seems familiar, but I can’t put my finger on where it’s from and I can’t figure it out, so I keep just going to check images to see if it will make me remember. I think it’s a movie I saw with my Dad as a young child, but I can’t remember it at all. I remember there was one Jet Li movie I watched with my Dad once and I ended up watching all the time cuz I thought Jet Li was really cute in that movie (I was also 3 so I don’t know why I’m thinking that way, but whatever), but like Jet Li was bald in that movie because it was about a Shaolin Temple. I think at the time my Dad showed me that movie I already showed an interest in movies from my own heritage, so that’s why he showed me that. But like I can’t remember anything else. I suppose it could have been something my grandpa watched because sometimes he’d watch a Chinese movie when I was playing in the living room and I’d stop to watch too and then he’d fast-forward through the intimacy scenes, but because I’d just look over at something he was already watching I have no idea what any of those were.

[miloqnzh925]

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Each location they check out gets the documentary-style treatment, and their videos are all the better for it. If you're interested in what it's like to live in a nation, then Gareth Leonard's http://www.bbc.co.uk/search?q=vlog much deeper approach to travel is for you. The flashy, short-form videos that other vloggers goal for actually aren't worth your time if you want to explore a new place with somebody keen on expanding cultural horizons. Gareth takes his time with each piece of material and delivers a series that will make you want to discover more before you travel. Another excellent vlog with a strong focus on food is Miss Mina, hosted by the eponymous Mina Oh.

The Vlog Diaries

Both are fascinating in their own method, although food videos are definitely the strong point throughout. This sincere travel vlog is packed full of useful pointers and practical details. Making viral material does not appear to be at the forefront of Mark Wolters' thinking, as he and his family check out the world. All of it started from one travel let-down and has now blossomed into an incredibly valuable resource. Do not resent the rather troubling name of the vlog Aly (who is a psychology graduate from England) is in fact a great host and guide. Aly is so great that she's self-published a book to assist others seeking to travel to a few of the lots of locations she has actually visited.

One male making a genuine modification is Phil of Philwaukee fame, who has partnered with the Matador Network for this series. It's fun, loaded with favorable vibes and something we truly wish to see more of. Delving into a classic Volkswagen (VW) van and driving off into the sundown is the things teenage dreams are made from. It's also the truth that this vlog follows, as 2 intrepid visitors intend to go off the grid and find their own adventures around the globe. VW vans obviously have various labels depending upon where you are for Brits, they are understood as camper vans, while Americans call them buses. best travel vlog.

Originally from Australia and now settling into the Los Angeles lifestyle by method of a substantial stay in Shanghai, Jenny Zhou's profession is simply as remarkable as her travel content. There are some great on-location videos on her channel, however as Jenny tries to make it in the acting world, we question how lots of more travel videos we'll get. There's still plenty to check out in the vlogger's back brochure though, and her Shanghai films, in specific, make for fun watching.

Excitement About Best Travel Vlog

Vlogging has actually ended up being a super popular way for nomads to package up their experiences and share them with the world. On the audience side, they condense an entire mess of details down into a tight little package, in addition to providing a genuine and tangible sense of what a location might be like, assisting you judge whether it's worth a go to or not. But not all vloggers are produced equivalent. To help you arrange the wheat from the chaff, we have actually gathered a list of the 16 finest and most prominent travel vloggers that you need to be following in 2021, particularly if this is the year that you're going to explore the land down under!Max & Lee are an Australian/ Canadian couple and along with their charming Australian Shepherd pet dog Occy, they have excellent enjoyable tape-recording their vlog travel adventures for their substantial 1.

If you're a fan of Van Life, then this video blog is for you. You can get some amazing pointers to help you get your own adventure on the road. It might seem a little arrogant to call yourself The Professional Vagabond, but this is a title that Matthew Karsten has well and really earned - travel documentary. He's been on the road for over eight years, and is showing no sign of slowing down, despite the fact that he's now a daddy. He's acquired over 50,000 subscribers on You, Tube, over 150,000 followers on Instagram, and runs an effective and popular blog site.

You'll observe an unique lack of Australia on that list, however he can't be too far off right Matt?A You, Tube veteran of 13 years and counting, over the last few years Overlander TV has taken its vlog to the next level, with an expert electronic camera team catching spectacular, cinema-level video footage. A number of years ago Overlander created an 87 minute feature-length movie called Australian Motorbike Experience, which followed Mark Shea on an impressive two-wheeled tour along Australia's West Coast. With over 23 million channel views and screenings of Shea's film worldwide, Overlander is revealing a simple You, Tube channel can become so much more!Careening towards one million subscribers, Marko and Alex Ayling are acclaimed travel videographers that let their pictures do (most of) the talking.

Facts About Music Vlog Revealed

They've covered most of the world, consisting of Australia, so if you're searching for a bit of Oz travel inspo especially the spots that make for the very best shots head to their channel and sign up with the movement!Looking for inspiration that is a little more unique and adrenaline fuelled? Brave & Far is run by Mike Corey, who enjoys experiencing (and recording) action-packed hijinks around the world. Don't expect any run of the mill scenery shots here; Corey is only thinking about activities that disgust, entertain and/or excite, as his 300K+ You, Tube followers will attest. Kirsten and Siya are a funny, lovely, adventure-loving couple now with a baby in tow that appear to draw in followers for their characters as much as the destinations they showcase.

The set have generated almost 300,000 subscribers, and travelled to Australia in 2017, producing videos along the method (vlog). With over 700,000 You, Tube subscribers, British backpacker Ben Brown has made a profession out of feeding his travel addiction by developing an army of eager followers. Ben has travelled all over from the Arctic to Australia and Africa, shooting in an individual, POV style so that you seem like you're right there in amongst the action and when it comes to his most popular upload, in a vehicle crash!Hey, Nadine! This travel blogger is a water fountain of understanding when it pertains to travel ideas, techniques and hacks, offering up a genuine encyclopaedia of valuable content.

[farmerlan]

Farmer Lan’s Rewatch Guide to The Untamed - Episode 1

HERE WE GO I am strapped in with my Topo Chico and ready to take on Episode 1 of The Untamed. It’s going to be wild. I have no idea what I’m doing. If you’re reading this and have a better suggestion on how I should format everything, feel free to tell me because right now this is just the diary of a madwoman.

CAUTION: Due to the chronological differences between the novel and the drama, there will be instances where I bring in references further along in the novel and/or drama to explain what is going on, so there will be spoilers if you haven’t finished the series.

[Starting scene – there’s a voiceover of people rejoicing over WWX’s death, we see a chaotic battlefield and people fighting over the Stygian Tiger Amulet (here forth abbreviated as the STA because abbreviations are my jam). WWX commits suicide by falling off a cliff, LWJ tries to stop him and then JC sends him to the depths of hell. Flash to the present when some storyteller is narrating this story, and we’re told 16 years has passed since the Nightless City incident and WWX is seemingly gone forever – although his body has never been recovered despite extensive search efforts.]

Differences from the novel:

In the novel, there is no mention of clans trying to fight over the STA during the bloodbath at Nightless City. It’s definitely true that the existence of the STA and WWX’s unchecked power led to the actions of the Nightless City, but it was a combination of multiple events that led up to the battle, and not an explicit cause and effect.

It is also explicitly stated during Chapter 1 as people recount the tale of WWX that he destroyed the STA prior to his death.

In the novel, it is stated in Chapter 1 and confirmed by WWX himself (in Chapter 43) that WWX’s death was caused by his own power rebounding upon him and he ended up being torn apart by his own undead creations. So unfortunately the epic cliff scene was entirely scripted for the drama.

13 years has passed in the novel vs. 16 years in the drama. I can’t remember if there was an exact reason why they switched up the timeline, but just know that the timeline of the novel series of events itself is also very confusing and I will probably do a post with my take on it sometime later.

[Cut to present – WWX is summoned by MXY’s sacrifice, there’s some weird mask action going on, WWX creates a ruckus at the arrival of the Gusu disciples, they set up shop with the Demon Summoning flags, tell WWX to go wait inside and then they wait for the spirits to come their way.]

Differences from the novel:

The mask does not exist in the novel. In the novel, the body that WWX is summoned into is that of MXY’s, and MXY is a different person in every way from WWX in terms of face, height, etc. So everyone who sees WWX thinks he is MXY up until he finally reveals himself. It’s obviously a stylistic choice made to reflect why no one can recognize WWX in the drama series even though they are played by the same actor, because otherwise I can see how it can get confusing for viewers.

WWX is shown to be playing the WangXian melody in the room but this does not happen in the novel, although it does lead to a pretty epic snark from my favorite boy LJY about how awful WWX’s playing is (which IS in the novel, but happens later in the story instead). WWX does NOT use a flute at all until the Da Fan Shan arc in the novel. Also Jingyi, never stop being you.

It is not explicitly mentioned that MXY went to Lan Ling Jin sect in the novel at this current point, only that he was accepted as a disciple by a sect before being kicked out. We find this out later.

Other than that, the scenes with MXY closely follows the novel up until the Demonic Left Arm (DLA) to show up.

[WWX is hauled in to confess his crimes by Matriarch Mo, things go to shit in about 3 seconds and the disciples realize they need to call for backup STAT, the flare for LWJ is sent. WWX realizes this needs to end fast in order to avoid meeting LWJ and exposing himself. A-Tong becomes possessed by the DLA, dies, and then the DLA possesses Matriarch Mo. Attempts to restrain her fail and WWX revives the other now-undead Mos to fight her.]

Differences from the novel:

The sassy verbal takedown of Matriarch Mo by WWX is indeed in the novel and just as great.

The drama identifies the black marks on the victims’ necks as being caused by the STA. There is no such scene in the novel. Basically, there is no mention of the STA being the cause of ANY of this, because in the novel, it’s not.

In the novel, the disciples send flares for back up but are uncertain how quickly back up will arrive, and they definitely did not specifically call for LWJ. However, WWX realizes he needs to intervene to end this quickly because the spirit is too powerful for the disciples to deal with, and he can’t leave the Mo household until the revenge curse put upon him by MXY is lifted (i.e. until everyone MXY wants dead is dead).

A funny scene that gets left out of the drama is: Matriarch Mo leaps to attack LSZ, who can’t dodge in time. Instead, WWX literally KICKS LJY into her path because he knows that the Gusu robes are imbued with magical protective spells, so he basically used LJY as a human talisman as a last resort. LJY did not find this funny, and WWX plays the “I didn’t do anything, I have no idea what I just did and I can’t be held culpable because I’m batshit crazy” card. Ah, my boys.

 [LWJ appears just as Matriarch Mo appears to have gotten the upper hand, and subdues her with the POWER OF MUSIC dundun (also sensually massaging the guqin strings helloooo). WWX is hiding but HE IS HERE for all of his boo’s actions. LWJ clarifies that the DLA is a spiritual sword ghost with traces of the STA, everyone gasps because didn’t WWX die? OR DID HE NOT? Time will tell, my friends. Anyway, with the DLA subdued for now, LWJ hears the footsteps of WWX running away and chases after him but sees nobody. He thinks….”WEIYING IS IT REALLY YOU??” WWX A MYSERIOUS PERSON (to be revealed...but OK it’s NHS I told you there would be spoilers) gives money to the storyteller, and then we see WWX with Little Apple and he has one more wound left on his arm, indicating there’s someone else he needs to kill on behalf of MXY.]

Differences from the novel:

In the novel, WWX leaves the moment he hears LWJ’s guqin and does not stay to spectate.

See above re: no mention of what caused this, and certainly no discussion of the STA.

There’s no mention of LWJ suspecting that it is WWX in MXY’s body, or even suspecting that he has returned at all.

In the novel, the four wounds left as a physical reminder of the body count for the revenge curse is for the three members of the Mo family and for A-Tong. Therefore, WWX leaves the Mo family effectively free of his debt to MXY, but in the drama, he is shown to still have one remaining person left to kill…dun dun dun.

Storyteller man is not around in the novel – consider him a convenient voiceover tool for the drama ha. Thanks to the @redisthecolouroffate​ for the catch, I missed this but this is also the episode where NHS first shows up to reward the man for his storytelling, which is a nice bit of foreshadowing done by the show which is not in the novel at all.

Overall Thoughts

The drama does a really good job of setting the tone from the beginning. There’s not too much deviation here compared to the first five chapters of the novel (which covers this whole Ep 1 arc) since the majority of it was to set up the premise for the show and introduce our main characters.

The main difference here is we can see the drama is already setting itself up for the STA to play a much bigger role than in the novel. In the novel, our protagonists really have no idea what is behind the DLA at this point, and they certainly don’t immediately assert that it is a ‘sword ghost’ that has been tainted by the STA. In the novel, the only explanation for the DLA at present is in Chapter 5, when WWX notes that the spirit is more powerful than most, given that this spirit has already claimed three lives in the span of a few hours. WWX also deduced that this was the arm of a person who died by dismemberment, and to summarize the novel, the ghost arm is effectively trying to find the rest of its body. Until then, it moves between ‘live hosts’ like a parasite.

Also – WWX is also noted to be wearing badly applied make up in the novel but not in the drama. It is clarified in Chapter 1 that MXY was homosexual and was kicked out of his cultivation sect as he harassed a fellow male disciple and is now basically a gay lunatic, which is unfortunately not a great look in ye olden days.

Lastly, cute tidbit in the novel in Chapter 3 that didn’t make its way into the drama – WWX secretly marveled at LSZ’s knowledge and manners, and wondered “Who in that godforsaken, old-fashioned place (referring to the Cloud Recesses) could have brought him up/taught him so well?” OH YOU’LL FIND OUT WHO HA.

[ziyal]

What exactly is the untamed about?? I know a lot of people who like black sails recommend it which is cool because they obviously have good taste. It looks pretty good

Hi anon yes I think it is pretty good! I will do my BEST to give you a quick primer

The Untamed/CQL (that abbreviation is based on the Chinese title, Chen Qing Ling) is a Chinese tv series that is an adaptation of a serial web novel, Mo Dao Zu Shi (”Founder of Demonic Cultivation”).

A bad back-cover summary: 16 years ago, our protagonist Wei Wuxian died. Everyone knows him as a despicable necromancer, an evil person who even turned against his own family. However, his side of the story was different. When he’s resurrected and meets up with Lan Wangji, a man who was once very important to him, he must confront memories from his first life of how everything went wrong. .....also they’re in love!!

IT'S GOT

ROMANCE! the central pairing is a beautiful and sweet canon gay romance*

the other major ship things going on are two separate problematic gay murder love triangles. for me, this is precisely the correct shipping ratio. thanks.

REALLY excellent complicated fraught family relationships that get me just as much as the romance does

fun worldbuilding with a lot of lore and backstory to dig into and think about like, magic systems and history and class structures

some v sexy villains for my villain fuckers out there hey-o

really good acting?? Wang Yibo (who plays Lan Wangji) is particularly impressive for all his little micro-expressions in a way that is very "Spock from Star Trek". everyone else is also very good. and also so pretty. excellent show for looking at extremely beautiful people who act good.

charmingly mid-budget fantasy special effects... love that...

the world's most ADORABLE BABY. who doesn’t love BABY

the costumes and music are great

a big fanbase which has so far really pleasantly surprised me with the quality of fanworks and analysis. lots of great fic, vids, thoughtful meta, etc. like every fandom is annoying sometimes but MDZS fans seem to mostly be very smart and funny, good for us

( * = chinese censorship laws mean that they can't ~technically~ say that it's gay but it's... not actually made non-romantic by this. they just say and do a bunch of things that are obviously romantic but aren't allowed to kiss. like, everyone behind the scenes knew exactly what they were doing and we know this, it’s not AT ALL a case of “adaptation made it straight”)

This is one of those fandoms where it’s hard to give an elevator pitch “sell me on it” summary because if you just like, describe the premise, it doesn’t sound particularly special but it’s just that everything it does is executed REALLY well? Amazing acting, writing, character relationships... like it’s not PERFECT (what is) but for me it’s close! It really grabbed me and sucked me into an obsessive binge, which is saying a lot since I hardly ever watch tv shows and yet this one I sped through all 50 episodes in a month.

My TOP pieces of advice for watching the show are: stick it out for the first few episodes even if you’re not feeling it right away because you WILL BE confused by episodes 1-2, but once you get past the first few the story becomes much more straightforward. Also, look up a character list or something and keep it on hand for reference because they throw a lot of people at you and it is confusing.

I have never seen any of Black Sails, so I don’t know what the crossover appeal is there, BUT I asked a friend who is in that fandom and she said that some of the commonalities are: “canon gays, theme of condemnation of ‘civilized’ society for the harm it does to marginalized people, morally gray protagonist at odds with said society”. perhaps this helps sell!

Although there are several adaptations of MDZS, I would personally recommend starting with watching The Untamed as your gateway, for a few reasons:

the only full English fan translation of the novel is... fine, but the prose quality is a little clunky (there's a really nice, better written translation by someone else that's ongoing at this blog, but they're only about a quarter of the way through atm)

like I said there’s Lots of Characters so I think it really helps to have visuals to keep track of who's who at first lol

the adaptation rearranges the timeline in which the story is told to a way that I personally find much more palatable (from cutting back and forth intermittently between a present & past timeline, to opening with the present and then jumping back and showing you the entire backstory in order)

Besides the novel there's also a manhua and an animated series, which are both closer adaptations of the novel but aren't completed yet, and an audio drama (which I haven't listened to most of).

The show is on Netflix, Viki, and also free to watch on Youtube!

If you have any other questions feel free to hit me up (I’m probably more quickly responsive on twitter though, you can shoot me a DM there if you want!)

[oneiriad]

Addams family and MDZS please if you're still doing the crossover thing

So, what would a crossover between these be like. Hmmm.

1. It’s neither Morticia and Gomez Addams first or second or third honeymoon that brings them to China. It’s a lovely, carefully planned out vacation. Rooms booked at haunted hotels only, and of course once one of their lovely local guides mention the quaint local area called the Burial Mounds? Why, how could they not visit such a scenic location?

2. The Lan sect still exists. Whether the others do is less vital, but the Lan do, and since the Burial Mounds is still a location heavy in resentful energy they still keep a guard there. Usually they have to handle the occasional straying fierce corpse. Trying to shoo away some hopelessly clueless American tourists? Not so much (in later decades, as China opens more, yes, but assuming this is the original Addams series - definitely not so much.)

3. Said Americans are surprisingly resistant to shooing. The language barrier doesn’t help, so eventually the Lan disciple calls for back up. And since we’re talking the Burial Mounds, said back-up is the Gusu Lan’s two resident immortals.

4. Wei Wuxian somehow gets talked into giving the Addams’ a private tour of his old haunts. They take pictures and Morticia takes saplings of black bamboo and discuss horticulture with him.

5. Gomez talks LWJ into a sword fight. I don’t know how, it’s Gomez.

6. Everybody parts happily, the Addams’ with memories and souvenirs and the cultivators with a standing invite to drop by anytime, they’re always welcome.

7. A few months later Morticia’s letters start to arrive, chatty and friendly and if possibly Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian come to agree that Americans are obviously weird, well - it’s not like they are the first to reach that conclusion.

8. Writing back to advice on how to handle a freely roaming hand - musical scores included, and fortunately Morticia and Gomez are of a cultured background, even if cultivation is not their scene - is unexpected.

9. Getting a letter back about the nice new family member, complete with a photo of a hand giving them a thumbs up? Americans are weird.

10. They do end up visiting the Addams household some years later, after the children have been born. They have - other errands to run in the US, and, well, Morticia has invited them so many times, it’d be rude. And she so wants to show them her bamboo and her carefully cultivated lotus pond, and she promised to cook nice, vegetarian meals for Lan Wangji.

11. At some point they are given a tour of the playroom.

12. Possibly, they are initially a little discomforted by the playroom’s similarity to Wen Ruohan’s Fire Palace. Mind you, the Addams’ are very happy to explain exactly what they use the various instruments for and they do know what a normal human’s limits are for the various instruments. And they do kindly offer their guests the free use of the playroom at any time. They even offer to have Lurch clean the entire place up first.

13. (Wei Wuxian spends some time with Chenqing and Lurch before determining that whatever he is, it’s neither fierce corpse or ghoul or anything in urgent need of being put to rest.)

14. Possibly WWX and LWJ accept their kind hosts’ hospitable offer before their stay ends.

15. Possibly Wednesday keeps a tally of which couple is more sappy - her parents or the nice Chinese gentlemen.

16. When they return to China, WWX and LWJ might each have a few - interesting toys in their luggage. Fortunately, the Chinese government long ago learned to stay hands off with cultivators, otherwise they might have had to answer some interesting questions.

[snowflake-of-destruction]

Terraqua :))))))))

1. How do much do I ship it?: Never heard of it/ Notp / Dislike / used to ship / maybe / ship it / aww / otp / IS IT CANON YET?

This rating applies to canon. Just want to clarify, since I'm going to also talk headcanons for different AUs (go to the asterisk reference sections at the bottom if you want a little explanation of AUs)  in some answers, and, in those situations, feelings are different.

2. What non sexual activities do they like to do together?

KH Post Canon: Learning how to be adults together. I know it's not the most "fun" answer, and they deserve a break, but even if things stay stable, they aren't getting one as such. Aqua is now the Master in Residence at the Land of Departure and someone all the Guardians of Light will look to as an authority (and Yensid will reinforce it!) , and Terra will get a lot of the same treatment from multiple factions.

 Not only will the GoL look at him as someone knowledgeable (Him! The screw up who not only isn't a master but has a lot less off-world experience where he was actually conscious than most of his new comrades), but, when it comes to the recompleted former Org members, while it's clear he is definitely not "The Superior" and they don't want him to be, even those that glance by Roxas/Sora/Ventus etc. as green behind the ears or "kids" despite their experience are naturally inclined to view him as an equal and/or someone to ask guidance from even if only on a subconscious level because he shares Xemnas features. 

And neither has the first clue what they are doing. Hell, they lived sheltered with Eraqus and the Land of Departure Castle probably taking care of a lot of their needs. So, yeah, Aqua and Terra learn to cook together, hone vocabulary and speaking style to sound "like a real adult" and not like teenagers who are using bigger and bigger words to sound mature, practice how to lead meetings without voice shaking and how to make people feel heard (and refrain from interrupting with "you're wrong and also stupid because of Xyz"), read up on history and powers of old keyblade masters like they are cramming for exams (because even stuff they were taught by Eraqus...it's kind of been awhile), bitch together over how to simultaneously be 28 and 18, and basically bond over "fooling" everyone into thinking they are competent. 

Then they indulge in a bunch of "childish" things they never did because they were always in a rush to grow up when they were actually younger. They slide down bannisters and have food fights and swing from the rings in the training area, feet lifted and knees near to knocking the ground.

Lost Masters AU*: Finishing growing up in the Mysterious Tower under Yensid's comparatively lax supervision, obviously effected their hobbies as much as their outlook on life. They escaped often to the book(s) where Fantasia sleeps and so they are used to music made through flora, fauna, and movements of their own body. Creating symphonies that are part sparring, part dancing, part gardening and finding out what creates the best music was a passion and it carries on beyond the Tower and beyond having (snuck) access to Yensid's books. Even in adulthood, they both have a tendency to dance when nobody's watching, and, wherever they settle there is a carefully cultivated flower bed they can be found tending to (and humming to them the whole time, teaching them the notes they should be playing but mostly refuse to)  when not on mission.

Grass is Greener**:  If you asked the couple themselves this question, (more politely phrased of course because you don't say the phrase "nonsexual things" in conversation) Aqua would beam and talk about going out on the boat...that they don't own anymore (Xem bought it off baby sister out of pity. He drew the short straw between him and Ansem), and didn't use much when they did. Terra would shrug and say he hardly remembers anymore, honesty slipping out because he forgets to be guarded until Aqua grips his arm too tight and says that he's joking on his behalf. 

With some prompting, Terra will slowly come up with the latest Netlfix series they are binging...separately. Not that he'll say they watch separately, because that's not anyone else's business, and it's not even a reflection on their relationship, just like not remembering what they do for fun isn't as bad as it sounds (Is it? Now he'll brood too much on it). With Aqua working days that start early and Terra working mostly nights, they hardly see each other. Even before that, before Terra's breakdown, which he is more apt to explain away than she is if they ever talk about it (which they try not to at all costs), he was doing his residency at the hospital and worked a lot of odd hours. Med school is actually...wow...more of a blur than Terra realized....but they had fun? Once? Together? Since the college days? Of course they did. They have many activities together. Lots of stuff. Common interests. That's what they do. Common interests.

3. Who does chores around the house?

In General/Canonverse: Split right down the middle. Some tasks they trade off on, and some become full time assignments, like, for instance, Aqua cooks and Terra does the dishes. 

Grass is Greener: Terra. Period. It's not discussed, and Aqua would adamantly refute this, but in Terra's mind he has to do everything. He did even when he was working/studying to be a doctor. Aqua knows how blessed she is to have a husband that just full stop doesn't let her lift a finger (because he loves her! And he likes doing house things), but not fully. Eraqus is old money (and so was Aqua's mom, though she barely remembers her before she took off) and Xehanort's "new money" only bolstered it, and besides just living on that kind of cushion, she was the only child with Eraqus who also had to "make up" for being a single parent for awhile, and then the youngest child and only girl when the family became blended, so she was never made to do anything in her life and kind of still believes in the cleaning fairy. She knows housework is difficult, but in the same way she knows what it's like to live paycheck to paycheck now that she and Terra don't accept any help from Eraqus and Xehanort....just live in one of their houses (to take care of it for them!) without paying a dime even towards taxes and insurance much less rent...and Aqua's car insurance is paid for six months at a time as a birthday gift in the fall and an anniversary gift in the spring...but scorn handouts otherwise. 

4. Who’s the better cook?

Canonverse/General: Aqua. 

Lost Masters: Terra. It starts off being Aqua, but, you know, you forget a lot of things once you're a Nobody. 

Grass is Greener: Terra.  Though Aqua starts to catch up once they start a couple's cooking class that Terra keeps canceling on, leaving her to take Tifa or Aerith

5. Who’s the funniest drunk?

Aqua, all universes. Terra just gets very quiet and stares at the wall to make sure it doesn't move. Aqua becomes the life of the party. Not a small task, considering their friends.

6. Do they have kids?

Canonverse/In general: Absolutely, eventually, and more than one. It would vary story to story how many, the sexes, and the ages, but they will have at least two.

Lost Masters:  I wasn't planning on it, but damn if I don't now want to rework the timeline.

Grass is Greener: "When are you guys going to have kids?" That question is the bane of their existence. "You've been together for a long time." "You'd be such great parents." There's a lot of pressure, but no baby and there's not going to be.

7. Do they have any traditions?

Canon-verse: Even though Eraqus's grave is near enough they pass by it regularly, they (and Ventus) have a yearly celebration of remembrance of his life where they gather by the gravesite and tell stories. Over time they even get comfortable enough to share negative memories. It's not disrespectful. It's remembering the whole man and learning every lesson he taught. Terra and Aqua also go all out decorating the castle for solstices, though Terra takes lead with jokes about how the one time Aqua changed the castle's decor on her own she went a little overboard. Each year picking a different world they went to separately to vacation at and re-experience together in peace.

Grass is Greener: Beach vacation every year. This is carried on from Aqua's family who used to rent a condo on the beach for the first week or so of July (or, when they got older, multiple condos, next door units so there was some pretense of supervision, Aqua, Xemnas, and Ansem sometimes getting to invite friends to come meet them/stay over for part of the time). Aqua and Terra usually do a shorter time because of schedules.  They also go all out for Halloween, turning most of the house into a haunted house for touring Halloween and the preceding or following weekend--and Aqua actually does most of the work on this, it's a grand creative project.  Ansem's for New Year's. The Dads' for Thanksgiving. Christmas tree hunting for all the households with the Dads, Ansem, and Xemnas.  Terra's family for Christmas Eve dinner and service, and then Xemnas's for Christmas because The Dads passed hosting on to him. 

8. What do they fight about?

 Canon/General: Projecting their own insecurities/sensitivities on to each other and expecting to hear things the other would never say. Take care of yourself statements twisted into assuming Aqua is worried about Terra falling prey to darkness again. Observations that everyone seems to be re-adjusting well to relatively normal/new normal life read as "Stay out of their lives and stop meddling, Aqua. You're what causes things to go wrong" 

Lost Masters: There's only the one fight planned. I don't know what smaller fights may be. Aqua handles being passed over for Master while Terra advances worse than Terra does when the opposite happens in canon. It doesn't help that Yensid takes her demands to be given another test right away badly. Terra tries to comfort her. It does not go well. 

Grass is Greener: Fight? They don't fight. They didn't fight when Terra was struggling even in his first semesters in med school (with what he wanted in life more than with the program itself, but there was a fair bit of both), confided it to Aqua, and she gently reminded him of what The Plan was--the plan that so much work and her fathers' money when someone lost some of their scholarships was put toward. They didn't fight when Aqua threw her side of The Plan out and decided it would be fun to be a teacher instead of following after Xemnas and going to law school. They didn't fight when Terra discarded more of The Plan after even more work, money, and time wasted, and started bartending of all things when even if he wasn't going to be a doctor there were so many other careers he could build. It's temporary, Aqua tells herself. He's happier, Aqua tells herself. So she's happy for him and she will not mention it and they will not fight. They don't fight over kids, or lack of kids even though that was on The Plan too that they should have one already--so they could space them out and also because Aqua had calculated the optimal age. They don't fight over money. They don't fight over hardly getting to see each other and how one or the other always seem to be late or make other plans when they do schedule off nights to be together. They just simply never argue. They are happy. Couple goals.

9. What would they do if they found their paring tag on tumblr? (If they have one)

General/Canon: They would first worry over who was watching them but then they'd get into pointing out cute art to each other and they may even write their own memoir to pass off as fanfic. It's uncomfortable how often they are the parents or aunt and uncle of the group--they aren't even completely comfortable being leaders like I said before, though they want to try their best--and even more awkward because the other Guardians of Light largely find it hilarious and tease them relentlessly. 

Lost Masters: If they find it while they are together, it's cute and a sign that everything will turn out alright. If they find it later, it's devastating for Terra, and ammunition for Dark Aqua 

Grass is Greener: Aqua doesn't really get a lot of the content but she likes how they seem to be popular, and she really likes her hair short. She should go back to wearing it short. Terra is into the fantasy anime vibes, and it's reassuring to think they may be together and in love in another universe. He thinks they are canon at least from how a lot of the tag is. It's validating.

10. Who cried at the end of Marley and me?

Neither, though they ended up talking about how Ventus definitely would have cried.

11. Who always wins at Mario kart?

Terra mostly. Aqua will have a well strategized/lucky race once in awhile though

12. One thing I like about this ship?

Even in the moments where they doubt or misunderstand each other or act stubborn, I feel like you can feel love, respect, and just the barest pining tinge even before everything goes wrong and it's cranked up. I'll break examples down when I get to games that include them on my replay I am sure. 

13. One thing I don’t like about the ship?

That they are treated as the default and even if you ship them with other people it has to be just for fun or an extra ship because at the end of the day everyone agrees with Terraqua. That's just a lowkey pet peeve though, and for “no reason” since, at the end of the day, I agree with Terraqua. 

I dislike the idea that they are "mom and dad" in a lot of people's eyes...in case I didn't give off that vibe already. Let them rest. Whether you see them are near 30 or as 18, they still deserve to just only be responsible for themselves. And, guess what, some of the kiddos have more life experience than them. 

14. The song I would say fits them?

You come into my house and keep asking me this question? Be gone with you!

15. Another headcanon about the paring? (Free space)

General: They adopt a bunch of animals. Since they are often on missions and not the most stable parents of even fur babies in the first years post KH3, this, in practice, consists of claiming animals on several worlds and visiting them every time they are there to spoil them and bring them gifts. Prince Eric's dog Max? Terra and Aqua's. Nemo and his father? Marlin resents the implication, but they are their fish. Thomas O'Malley the Alley Cat? You shouldn't be allowed to call yourself a pet owner when you also turn into a cat when you go to visit them, but, yes, he is part of the family.

Lost Masters: Instead of making large wayfinder charms, since it is just the two of them, Aqua makes smaller charms that hang from woven macrame bracelets that morph meaning as they get older. Terra continues to wear his up until "present." Aqua's comes with her even when she's a Nobody, but eventually gets confiscated by Ventus though it somehow ends up with Xigbar who doesn't hesitate to literally dangle the reminder of her human life over her. 

GiG: People tend to think Terra not Aqua is the one related to Xemnas and Ansem unless they specifically know better. Sometimes Terra goes along with this. He hasn't found a way to parlay this into some funny prank so far, but is on the look out for a way. Aqua doesn't see (or refuses to see) that Terra resembles Xem a little. Vehement denial is better for the sanity. 

*Lost Masters AU is the name for the canon divergence where Xehaqus eloped/ Xehanort chose love over power or darkness, and it changed everyone's fate--though fate still demanded both villains and heroes. Canon divergent post Xehanort's little jaunt to the future and spanning that time of Young Xehanort and Eraqus and up through the sage so far, though, you know, skipping around the years with different protags. Yeah, ambitious, but it would be so cool. I've decided I'm waiting until after I beat Melody of Memory to consider further whether I'm writing it or just posting a skeleton  in case we get some Radiant Garden/Ansem the Wise and apprentices/Kairi background I want to work in. Want to know more? Hit me up

**Grass is Greener is a modern au/soap opera-ish au created between me and Shaky. It's on both of our blogs, tagged Grass is Greener Verse.

[meretricula]

I still have not watched The Untamed. Have some fic recs.

So, for context, I've never actually watched The Untamed or read The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation but I have spent the past several weeks chewing my way through the Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian tag on AO3 (with extensive filters, obviously, I'm not superhuman and I do still have a day job) and I finally got to the end, so: here are the ones I liked the best! I have zero first-hand canon knowledge, so I can recommend them secure in the knowledge that you really don't need to have watched or read canon in order to enjoy them. Have fun!

(For the sake of the experiment, I guess, here is what I think happens in this show: there is a Sunshine One (high French ponytail, mostly wears black) and a Grumpy One (very fancy hairpieces and a ribbon headband, always wears white or pale blue). They are both excruciatingly beautiful. They went to magic school together and the Sunshine One spent a lot of time pulling the Grumpy One's pigtails, but never clued into the fact that the Grumpy One is already very embarrassingly in love with him. Blah blah tragedy, blah blah war crimes, blah blah parting of the ways, Sunshine One adopts an orphan child, continuing tragedy & war crimes, then Sunshine One falls off a cliff while Grumpy One stares in very evocative horror. The .gifsets of this moment are very nice. Grumpy One finds Sunshine One's child, takes him home, and raises him as his own child. Timeskip to when their child is his teens, Sunshine One is resurrected in a different body, identity shenanigans, Grumpy One finally gets to be with the love of his life, there is plot but I don't really care about it, they live happily ever after. I'm supposed to start watching tomorrow so I will finally find out which of my inferences are correct!)

Two vids that I really enjoy and are mostly legible without knowing the show's visual shorthand: NFWMB and a love that won't keep still. Grumpy One's face is truly a work of art.

Some cute modern AUs that really don't demand anything from you in terms of background knowledge: The Simplest Way Forward (they're student musicians in the same orchestra who get green card married so that they can adopt the kid who gets ditched at Sunshine One's door), Window Shopping (they're quarantined in apartments opposite each other and Sunshine One's kid wants to see Grumpy One's pet rabbits), Unstrictly Ballroom (they are ballroom dancers but Sunshine One was unjustly banned from competition years ago and Grumpy One has finally found him working in a strip club; I know it sounds cheesy but it is AGONIZING), A Keen Rabbit Lover (they are both women and grad school students and pining disgustingly for each other when everything gets disrupted by Sunshine One VERY BADLY misinterpreting Grumpy One's drunken confession that she "likes rabbits"), your heartbeat, across the grass (Grumpy One is a soccer superstar and the kid Sunshine One babysits for wants to go to a game; I rec this with the caveat that if you know anything about professional soccer the bits about professional soccer are massively unrealistic), Year Of Night Call (they are extremely codependent trauma surgeons who share an on-call bed), And they were roommates... (they're both women and grad students and wind up living together after Sunshine's family throw her out), Out of the Bin and Into Your Heart (Sunshine comes up with a ridiculous fake-dating scheme to throw off their admirers at the Chinese cultural center; Grumpy plays along for reasons that are blatantly obvious to everyone except Sunshine), "Congratulations, Get Rich" (Sunshine tries to start a tradition of kissing at midnight on Chinese New Year so he'll have an excuse to kiss Grumpy), one good thing (Sunshine is a ghost haunting Grumpy's house and Grumpy just happens to come from a long family line of exorcists), Lifelong Confidant (Sunshine has a happy, normal life as a barista-slash-music-teacher and two roommates he loves, except for the tragic past he never talks about -- which is obviously about to make a dramatic reappearance in the person of Grumpy, one of the judges of a celebrity baking show his roommates watch), how to fall in love with a catfish: a guide by wei wuxian (disaster rat) (college RA and all-around human disaster Sunshine develops an improbable chat relationship with Grumpy, who he assumes is catfishing him by using a moderately famous actor's photos on Tinder but -- obviously -- actually is a moderately famous actor; I don't normally like college AUs but this one is solid and VERY funny); you've ruined my life (by not being mine) (Sunshine and Grumpy met at a summer study abroad program and start texting when they're back in the States but on opposite sides of the country; I also don't normally like high school AUs but this is ADORABLE, if you can stand an excruciatingly slow burn)

Actual canon fic that is pretty easy to follow: my age has never made me wise (Sunshine One wanders off without either of them declaring their feelings and proceeds to pine GROSSLY when he hears gossip that Grumpy One is planning a wedding), A Civil Combpaign (Sunshine One's nephew with whom he has a very tenuous relationship decides he wants to marry Sunshine & Grumpy's only child for "diplomatic reasons"; hilarity ensues; this requires probably the most background knowledge but you'll be able to figure out the relationships from context), Content Warning: Romance (Sunshine One is easily embarrassed by praise, so Grumpy ties him up and tells him how wonderful he is; you will never look at praise kink the same again), the hidden source is the watchful heart (after a year of wandering on his own after the end of the show, Sunshine finally comes home), seldom all they seem (mild canon divergence in which Grumpy and Sunshine are betrothed as children; definitely also read the sequel about Grumpy's beautiful kind-hearted fairy tale prince of a brother and the amoral scheming political mastermind who unfortunately adores him), The Absolutely True Story of the Yiling Patriarch: A Manifesto in Many Parts (their child gets together with his friends and publishes a very popular romance about them in an attempt to rehabilitate Sunshine's reputation, which is not unwelcome but is somewhat puzzling to Sunshine since he is not actually in a relationship with Grumpy), Linger in the Sun (Sunshine joins Grumpy on an educational school field trip investigating a series of hilarious curses, which becomes only slightly less hilarious when Sunshine and Grumpy are the latest victims), come home to my heart (it can have a little bodyswap. as a treat.), anyway, here's wuji (a delightfully over-the-top and melodramatic story about the next generation watching Grumpy and Sunshine eventually get their HEA, and falling in love along the way), hunters seeking solid ground (Sunshine, suffering from years of PTSD nightmares so bad that he may actually be dying of sleep deprivation, finally lets Grumpy give him what he needs and deserves; if you just want to read about someone Suffering, A Lot, so that someone who loves him can make it better, this is the fic and the catharsis is WORTH IT), Grand Pianos Crash Together (uncomplicated post-series get-together fic that's very charming and well done and features an unexpectedly hot first time), My Leaves Reach Ever for the Sun (canon divergence in which Sunshine comes up with a madcap crossdressing scheme in order to attend his nephew's christening and inevitably ropes Grumpy in; this story really needs a beta but there are such sweet and lovely moments in it that I keep coming back to reread it anyway), A Crying Shame (canon divergence in which Sunshine's child cries so much at Grumpy leaving them that he just gives up and stays)

Bonus fics which are not modern AUs but aren't really canon either: all your life you'll dream of this (vaguely canon universe but with some fairy tale elements, specifically Cinderella -- no, really! I swear it's good! Grumpy is Cinderella!), debt of a knife (Grumpy is a warlord who has just claimed Sunshine as his captive bride; the premise sounds kind of dubcon-y but all the sex is consensual), turn towards the sun (Kushiel's Dart AU in which Grumpy and Sunshine are BDSM study buddies)

[luciddeparture]

Is Meditation for Morons?

I’m can’t exactly recall the first time I decided to meditate. I just know what happened when I finally bothered to learn how to. It has since had a profound effect on my life. 

Now I know what you are probably thinking… “Meditation? I don’t need any of that woo woo crap in my life.” That’s at least how I used to feel about it, but who knows? Maybe you are a little bit less cynical than I was. 

It is somewhat ironic that I am now the one who is writing a blog on meditation and its benefits.

When I first heard about meditation I immediately dismissed it, until I rediscovered it about two years ago whilst listening to a podcast called The Tim Ferris Show. The podcast is a series of interviews where Tim Ferris interviews top performers in a variety of fields from all around the world. Surprisingly, over “80% of the people [he] interviews have some form of meditation practice”. That’s a significant percentage! I’m by no means insinuating that we all need to be world-class performers, but I feel that it could not hurt to learn from those who are achieving high levels of success. Especially when there is an easily identifiable common trait, which in this case is meditation. 

It slowly became clearer and clearer to me that meditation might be less bullshit than I had originally anticipated. 

Before we get into things, it is important to acknowledge that although meditation is now becoming increasingly commercialised and “trendy” in Western Cultures, meditation has been a huge component of many spiritual practices for many hundreds of years. In the East, meditation played a huge role in particular in both Hinduism and Buddhism. The earliest records of Meditation can be found in the Vedas, a religious text written in Sanskrit in 500bc.  After reading the Vedas the Buddha added his own spin too, developing his own technique called Satipatthana, which is now most commonly known as Mindfulness. The direct translation is Sati (Attention) or (Remember) + Upa (Inside) + Thana (to keep) So Satipatthana means: To keep your attention inside. 

Transcendental Meditation was introduced to the West in part by the popular culture of the 1960’s. A notable contribution was The Beatles sharing their experiences after visiting India. Although Mindfulness meditation was introduced much later to Western Cultures. Throughout this article I will primarily be discussing the effects of Mindfulness Meditation.

Over the last few years, the process of meditation, as well as its effects, has become a rapidly expanding subfield of neurological research. One of the most interesting experiments involved scientists conducting tests on a Monk, finding that although he was 41 he had the brain of a 33 year old. They gave him an FMRI scan while asking him to cultivate a sense of compassion by meditating, and the neural activity in his empathy circuits grew by 700-800%!  One of the researches later wrote “Such an extreme increase befuddles science.” 

When most of us anticipate getting burned our pain receptors act as though we are already suffering. So much so that when the pain actually comes nothing really changes. Once the physical stimulus stops the mental pain slowly subsides. Expert meditators act much less in anticipation of the pain and feel the pain more intensely while the stimulus is present. Their awareness of the pain ceases immediately as soon as the stimulus is removed.  

Interestingly enough, the emotional centre for  the brain, the Amygdala, acts in a similar fashion to the pain response. Meditators are often much better at responding in anticipation to emotional stress.

I’m someone who has always lived predominately inside their thoughts, probably leaning on the more erratic side. The thought of being able to sit in silence sorta freaked me out, not to mention seeming borderline impossible.

To understand what my mind looks like, you need to look no further than The Simpsons. Remember that scene where Homer is listening to Marge and inside his brain a monkey is clanging symbols? That’s the relationship I had with my brain almost all of the time. I believe this is the same for most of us. 

Let’s put this to the test. You, my lucky reader, can be the test subject of a little experiment on your own psyche. For the next minute, I want you to close your eyes and just do your best to focus solely on your breath. 3…2..1. GO! 

How did you go? Did you get lost in your thoughts? Did you forget entirely that you were even trying to focus at all? Where did your mind take you? Your relationship (or lack of)? Work? Or maybe even what you might have for dinner?

I found that when I first began meditating my mind would sometimes find itself distracted on the most obscure things. The reason why I am illustrating this point is because often when I speak to others who have tried meditation for the first time, I hear “I tried meditation, and it’s not for me - I just think too much”. I hate to say it, but these are the people who probably should be learning to meditate most of all. 

The way I see meditation, is similar to closing background apps on your phone. It saves battery, and it just makes your phone faster. No brainer. I believe the same is true with meditation and giving your brain a break from constantly thinking. 

A lot of the people who are reading this article will have grown up with internet access. Therefore,  you have been bombarded with external stimuli in each and every moment. Bzzz, Bzzzz, Bzzzzzzzz. I’m sure that most of you will have received a messages even whilst reading this article.

Our brains have been over stimulated and are in a constant state of overdrive. Even when we are asleep our brains are constantly thinking, even if it is in the form of dreams! Obviously that isn’t a negative on it’s own, in fact sleep is crucial for the brain. But when you add everything up it’s a lot for a brain that has only been subject to this much stimuli for around 15 years - the first iPhone only came out 13 years ago. 

As you discovered just before, learning to “not think” doesn’t happen instantly. Like you, when I first attempted to sit in silence and tried to focus on my breath it did not work. My monkey mind remained supreme. Once again I was convinced that it wasn’t for me. But like all skills, meditation takes time and discipline to both learn, and improve. 

I’m not saying this to deter you, it’s just the truth. An easy comparison might be to say that you wanted to learn how to play a musical instrument. It would be ridiculous to expect that you would be able to play your favourite song after your first time attempting to pick up the instrument. The same logic can be applied to meditation. It takes time, practice and discipline - however unlike musical instruments, you bring your mind to all situations in life. In my opinion, sharpening your ability to think is well worth the investment. According to scientific studies Mindfulness meditation induces big changes in the minds of experts, but when beginners first meditate not much happens.

At its core, the aim of meditation is to become more present in each moment by focusing and training attention and awareness. This is to achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state. This in turn gives you the ability to have significantly more control of how you react to external and internal stimuli when they arise in your life.

In Mindfulness meditation, the goal is to act as an observer whilst focusing on your breath, watching your conscious experience as thoughts and sensations arise and disappear. 

As mentioned earlier we are often multi tasking, with tech and external stimuli, but even whilst we are not, we remain deep in thought. We are often living in the past or in the future through memory rather than in each and every moment.  

Meditation helps you learn how to not be constantly reactive to stimuli on the inside or outside. When I meditate, I find that it simply quiets my mind. It’s a simple reset of the brain allowing me to slow down and focus solely on the present. 

Another way of looking at it is that meditation is like going to the gym. You can see it as a way of working out your mind. To begin with your mind will wander, time traveling from the past to the future. But with practice you can slowly train your mind to become more present.

Being present throughout the day allows me to consciously make better decisions, rather than just remaining on autopilot. 

As hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio puts it “When you're centred, your emotions are not hijacking you”. “Meditation is 'the single most important reason for my success.”

If you are looking to start meditation, Mindfulness meditation apps are a great way to initially learn how to meditate. I still find myself using one most days. Having tried all of them, I would recommend Sam Harris’ Waking Up app. Its thirty day training course is clear and concise and an awesome starting point to learn how to meditate. After that, new daily meditations appear on the app. Harris is a Neuroscientist and an Atheist and breaks meditation down in a way that is less spiritual which might make more sense to a western audience. 

Worried it’s going to cost too much? If you can’t afford a subscription, you can email the help section and receive a one year free subscription. No questions asked. You have no excuse not to try it! 

Other Mindfulness app alternatives are: 

- Headspace - Andy Puddicombe

- Smiling Mind (An Australian non-profit alternative)

For further learning check out these guys:

Sam Harris, Mooji, Ram Dass and Andy Puddicombe

I am by no means an expert in this field, I just wanted to share something which has improved the quality of my life by at least 10%. I hope that it works for you too! 

[orodrethsgeek]

pls tell us about the sad gay cultivator show/novel

Okay okay, so: the first thing you need to know is that this series is situated within a larger genre of Chinese media, which I will very broadly describe as: fantasy martial arts heroes use magic and sword fighting to protect common people from dangers such as ghosts/the undead, demons/other mythological creatures, and items possessed by strong dark energy. This is my first experience with the genre, so I can’t promise this is the most comprehensive or nuanced version (I’ll link to some more educated posts), but I think it’s enough to at least establish the setting of the world. In the case of this series, there are five major/noble clans of cultivators (the martial arts heroes), all with their own styles/philosophies of cultivation. (There are several smaller clans and also unaffiliated/‘rogue’ cultivators roaming around, too, but for the most part they’re not the focus here. Usually.)

((The other thing to understand about this series is that there are So Many Versions. It began life as a boy love novel [Mo Dao Zu Shi], and subsequently animated and graphic novel versions were created. I think there are audio dramas? And last year the live action version was released. Since that’s the one I’m most familiar with, that’s mostly what I’ll be referencing.))

So, broadly, the plot of the sad gay cultivators show is… well actually there are a lot of plots, but generally it can be summarized as: medieval Chinese fantasy political drama (very queer), not entirely told in chronological order. The series starts with a flashback in which we watch our main protagonist, Wei WuXian, die! It’s okay though, because in virtually the next scene we find out that 16 years later he’s brought back to life through not entirely clear circumstances. Shenanigans ensue, he reunites with his long lost love, adopts befriends the next generation of cultivators, runs into pretty much everyone he ever offended/hurt in his previous life, and solves a decades-long murder mystery while consequently clearing his name—oh, which was necessary, because he died reviled for his deeds in his first life, including developing his own, less-than-approved method of cultivation (demonic cultivation, i.e.: he used dead people/spirits to fight).

Before we get to see Wei WuXian redeem himself, though, we have to find out what exactly went so wrong the first time, which is why a good chunk of the live action episodes are dedicated to a flashback of the events that led to him dying after his life fell apart around him. (Don’t worry, you’ll definitely still cry when it happens, even though you saw it before!) Lots of political intrigue, lots of familial drama, plenty of tragedy! Really, what’s not to love?

Major players:

Wei WuXian, obviously

Lan WangJi, the other main protagonist and aforementioned long lost love

Jiang Cheng, Wei Wuxian’s adopted brother

Literally so many more guys, this is a huge, amazing ensemble cast I guarantee you’ll find a fave or three

Clans!

the Lan Clan: stoic from the outside, beautiful, better than you; so many rules tho; magic music

The Jiang clan: Wei Wuxian’s adopted family, motto of “attempt the impossible,” they have a rough time buddy, but at least the lotuses seems pretty?

The Jin clan: rich as sin, name literally means gold, pretty but not the best at social relationships

The Nie clan: actually kinda hard to describe in a pithy way, their ancestors were butchers???? They use big ass sabers instead of swords unless they’re Nie HuaiSang, in which case… would you like to borrow his porn? Or see his collection of fans?

The Wen clan: sun and fire motif, a liiiiiiiiiiittle bit… how do you say, mad with power for much of their screen time

Themes!

what does it mean to do the right thing? What does it cost?

What does it mean to trust someone and how far are you willing to extend that trust?

What is family?

More!!! It’s late and I’ve had alcohol!

Bonus incentives: literally everyone in this show is pretty. No, really, they’re gorgeous.