there's a hell of a good universe next door

certified adult. she/her. Message me to join the zhanchengxian comm

[runespoor7]

What if daemons in mdzs, and WWX is terrified of dogs, obviously

and JC's daemon that doesn't settle, not when they're in the Cloud Recesses, not when they're hostages of the Wens, not when he loses his parents or his core--

It's a bit old not to be settled, really. Especially if you're trying to rebuild your legacy, if you need people to take you seriously.

JC and his sulky cat daemon during the war, who hates being seen, who plays with WWX's crow daemon less and less - WWX's daemon often flies too high or too far these days, farther than anyone else - JC's daemon who hisses at JC

(JC and his daemon had furious whispered conversations once, and now they mostly have JC begging, begging his daemon to please hold on, a bit longer, and his daemon who always asks holding on for what, and JC never has an answer but she stays a cat where people can see her. She only changes when there's no-one else but Yanli, and with the years, even changing is less of a reprieve as it once was.

Don't, JC warns/threatens/begs his soul.

His soul scratches him.

Sometimes when she's playing with WWX's - less often - she looks like she might fight for real, not play fight. Sometimes it's scary seeing the cat with the bird. Sometimes JC thinks about telling her to take another form, they'll deal with the repercussions of people realizing his daemon wasn't settled, but she won't. The cat shape is a jail but changing jails would be even more painful after this time.)

It happens after the fake ("fake") duel; after WWX leaves.

Don't, JC gasps, like a prayer, like a curse--

Why? she barks back. He's gone, he's gone, it doesn't matter-- I wish I were a cat in truth! That I would not care. You're the one who still wants to protect him, and you still want to protect your disciples, you're so stupid, you made me into this, she snarls, and her teeth flash as big and white as a child's nightmares.

When JC brings his sister to visit WWX to announce her wedding, WWX's breath catches, his pupils dilate. His wide smile twists into a horrified rictus.

JC leaves his soul outside of the cave, so WWX doesn't get too scared to talk to them, and stays close to the door, so he doesn't feel his dog soul tugging on him.

[psyfi]

gotta admit this sign did make me laugh

[mundane-theron-sca-etienne]

[fraddit]

When you stay in a hotel room, do you unpack your suitcase into the provided closet and dresser?

always

sometimes (explain in tags if desired)

never

never been in a hotel room/bald/etc

Remaining time: 2 days 12 hours

[bion-art]

hi 🥺

[positivelyqueer]

”I have this artistic idea but not the skills to achieve it to the standard I want.”

congrats! Now you have a motif! A recurring theme! A focus for your art! Something to haunt you!

Seventeen still lives of dandelions? Three hundred poems about grief? A sketchbook dedicated to your grandmother’s house? Two books trying to unravel the complexities of familial relationships?

Don’t let the fear of it not being perfect on the first try stop you from being Weird About It!

[jaseroque]

Please view Hokusai's gradual working towards The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, over a period of 39 years.

An early exploration of the themes Hokusai would keep coming back to is Spring in Enoshima, done in 1793 when he was 33. The wave is small and there are no boats, but Mt Fuji is clear in the background, and Enoshima is in Kanagawa, so we are clearly beginning to work towards something here.

A second pass, eleven years later in 1803 when he was 44. The title of this one begins to get more familiar: The View of Honmoku Off Kanazawa. It has a towering wave over a smaller boat, but Mt Fuji is not present, and the boat is considerably larger and has a sail. But the feeling of danger in the wave and the smallness of the boat are here, and of course the general composition is definitely recognizable.

This is A View Of Express Delivery Boats, done in 1805, merely two years later at age 46. Here we find the wave and the boats almost exactly as we'll find them in The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, though Mt Fuji isn't present, and the location is uncertain. And it's a good picture! The wave is threatening, the boats are small -- but the feeling of "ocean" isn't really there yet, is it? It's unlikely this picture would have become a classic for the ages. But that's okay, there's still time.

And here we have it, a full 26 years later, done by Hokusai in 1831 at the age of 72. The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, one of the most recognizable pieces of art in the world. The boats are there, the mountain is there, the wave is there, and the FEELING is there. He did it! He reached the apex of his ongoing motif and theme!

Or did he? Because the whole point of a motif is not that you're striving to get to the perfect version of it, the one idealized image you carried in your head all along, and when it is done, you are also done. Hokusai is on record at the age of 73 saying he'd only just begun to feel like he was learning how to draw things properly, and that "if I keep up my efforts, I will have even a better understanding when I was 80 and by 90 will have penetrated to the heart of things. At 100, I may reach a level of divine understanding, and if I live decades beyond that, everything I paint — dot and line — will be alive." He had drawn The Great Wave, but he didn't believe he was finished -- he thought that he was still just beginning to get started.

And he wasn't finished with his ocean motif, either. Please check out his Mt Fuji At Sea, done in 1834 at the age of 75.

It's all there; Mt Fuji, the ocean, the wave. The boats are gone, but replaced with birds, flying with the wave instead of fighting against it. It's not as famous as The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, but that's not what motifs are for -- each successive work does not have to surpass the previous in terms of success, especially in terms of external success. They're there for you to keep playing with, keep remixing and re-experiencing, for as long as you think you have something to say.

[spin-the-wheel-polls]

you were almost turned into a vampire, but before you could be fully turned, the vampire was staked. This left you with a vampire weakness, while still being human.

Spin the wheel to find out your weakness!

How much does this effect you?

Nothing changes

It's inconvenient but I can deal with jty

It will be hard to adjust but I'll figure it out

I don't know if I'll be able to live like this

Maybe I can find another vampire to finish the turning?

I might just kill myself

Results/other

Remaining time: 5 days 15 hours

thanks @theemmjay for submitting this poll idea!! Seriously it's such a cool concept I love it so much

[sobcat]

[asteroidtroglodyte]

TIL the reason you don’t find much Lyme’s Disease in California is not because we don’t have Ticks, or Lyme Disease Vectors; but rather: because the Western Fence Lizard (if you live anywhere in California this is your regular Garden Variety Lizard) has adapted a passive immune response that makes their blood lethal to Lyme Disease Bacteria. Any Tick that feeds on one gets its gut cleansed of Lyme Disease as a side effect.

Fucking neat.

[iheartvelma]

There is a new vaccine going into Phase 3 trials from Valneva and Pfizer as well as a monoclonal antibody-based prophylactic treatment being researched at UMass!

[dragon-in-a-fez]

"the only cure for this weird disease is the special lizard blood" is a Star Trek TOS plot that escaped into the real world

[athos-silvani]

Not for the first time, either-- Ozempic and similar drugs were developed from gila monster spit.

[mevima]

That CDC link, by the way, now says that "LB6V (formerly VLA15) ... recently completed Phase 3 human trials."

[arlo-maintenanceman]

I got curious and looked into the ‘you can only have sex one day of the year’ movie more and holy shit

for those not as invested in this shit as I am, the movie ends with the protagonists not having sex and deciding people who like having sex are shallow and weird. Yknow. Agreeing with the facist government banning them from having sex.

If you think about it for more than a second, yes it is.

[fic-dumpster]

[bytedykes]

[ID: Meme using a screenshot from Toy Story 3. Barbie looks through Ken's clothing as Ken is tied to a paddle ball toy, stripped to his underwear. Barbie is labeled, "me doing my chores," and Ken is labeled, "the pathetic fictional man who is stuck in my thoughts so i can keep going". /end ID]

[rob-thedairyqueen]

[ID addition: I think it’s very important to note that the underwear in question is a pair of heart boxers. /end addition]

[deep-state-partisan]

[d0uble-0h-se7en]

Is it just me or do a lot of people in our/my generation use the whole... "the world is fucked, everythings terrible, nothing will ever get better, and we'll all burn alive in the climate crisis or die by nuclear bomb" mentality as, well, a cop-out to avoid thinking about their futures?

[d0uble-0h-se7en]

Girl you are not dying tragically young as a victim of societal collapse. Start taking your education seriously, make a long-term plan for how you want to achieve your personal, financial, and career goals with realistic expectations, and research different types of retirement funds 💀 "late-stage capitalism" is not going to kidnap you in the night and take away all your power over the scary things in life to turn you into a passive victim of circumstance any time soon

[d0uble-0h-se7en]

"But this time its different!" Its really not. The Cuban missile crisis almost had the world blow up, and it didn't. The cold war that set the stage for it existed in a constant state of the threat of nuclear annihilation.

Our world map today looks completely different from how it looked a thousand years ago. Nations and empires have risen and collapsed. Wars have been waged over petty bullshit that changed names and borders. Empires that were once thought invincible and perpetual crumbled to dust within a peasant's lifetime as they tilled their fields and worried about crop failure. The invention of flight, motion pictures, and the automobile chased the coattails of WWI and the great depression. Children played mischief games and elders complained about kids these days being too soft and sensitive during the fall of the Roman empire.

Our generational struggles are not uniquely terrible compared to any other generation's. Your life will not come to a dramatic and cinematic end to all of humanity and the world as we know it any time soon. The world will change and evolve as it always has throughout all of history and all of its constant perpetual bullshit, and you will continue to live on regardless of the outcome. Yes, even if you're queer. Yes, even if you're trans. Yes, even if you're neurodivergent. Yes, even if you're racialized. Set up your 401k and find ways to guard against becoming senile not if, but when you grow old.

[dogletantte]

My mother is going to be 63 years old this year. She was born in 1963. She lived most of her life under the threat of the world ending.

I know this, because when I was nineteen and despairing I broke down crying in her arms one day, and I asked her what the point was. Why carry on, when there’s so much wrong in the world? Why keep going, keep trying, when it feels like every battle is insurmountable, and that even when, by some miracle, you win, you don’t get to rest, you just get to fight again? What’s the point, when everything just gets worse all the time?

And she told me, yes, it’s hard. I never thought I’d be forty, let alone fifty. I never thought I’d see retirement. I thought the world would have ended by now. And I thought I had two choices. I could spend whatever time I had despairing, or I could choose to live, in whatever time I had. So I fought, and I lost more battles than I won. But I’ve been happy, too. I’ve had two careers, two children, and a husband I love. I’ve had friends and adventures. I’ve seen the pyramids the coliseum and the place where two oceans meet. I’ve lived. And it was worth it. It’ll be worth it for you, too.

And I thought about that, and what I know about my mum — and you need to know, my mum is cool. She is. She’s a stone cold badass — she protested Thatcher. She went to Pride when it was still a riot because she understood the solidarity even if she didn’t understand the people she was marching with. She went door to door for the Brexit remain campaign.

And, sure. We left the EU. But when she had a daughter who turned out to be a son she showed up for me every time. She toasted Thatcher’s death with a glass of milk and stayed up late telling me stories of her protesting days.

She retired three years ago. She’s in France right now, sending me pictures of hikes she’s taking with my father, and the patisserie she’s going to eat after.

She lived, and it was worth it. It’ll be worth it for us, too.

[himemeiya]

My other girlfriend is my

Joyride [x]

[ghostlyarchaeologist]

"Hey, we’re thieves, man, and we’re good at what we do, but this is way, way out of our league. And you expect us to go catch some psycho with a city killer? A country killer?"

Leverage S05E09 The Rundown Job.

[theswisscheeserag]

You gotta be really publicly passionate about things if you want your friends to text you. Bc people will forget to text you because they’re human. But if you’re really openly the friend who loves identifying ants your friends will think of you when they see ants. And they’ll text you “what ant is this [blurry photo]”. And then they’ll ask you how you’ve been and we should get coffee sometime. But if they don’t know what you love they’ll never know what you like

[theswisscheeserag]

And then when the ant convention is in town they’ll be like dude… we should go to the ant convention. But they would never think to go if they didn’t know u loved ants

[theswisscheeserag]

And sometimes you need to ask them to go to the ant convention. But you Will not get anywhere hiding your passions

[destinationtoast]

AO3 creators... have you ever posted something you didn't want associated with your main account?*

Yes - created a separate account

Yes - posted anonymously

Yes - orphaned it after posting

Yes - posted it under a different pseud (but clearly linked to my main)

Yes - Multiple of the above

No - I don't have fanworks I feel that way about

No - I do have fanworks I feel that way about but don't post them at all

I didn't know about these options and am going to go learn a thing

Vanilla extract /answers please

Remaining time: 3 days 16 hours

*Could be something kinky, dark, "weird," off-brand in some way, etc! But I'm not talking about "I split up my different fandoms into different pseuds" or something else where it's purely an organizational preference.