[#chengxian but make it double jiang >:), twin jiang AU]
jc and jwy basically grew up with people always unsure who is whom because yzy and jyl loved to make them wear identical or matching outfits. How could they not when those little kids are so identical?
They grew up finding this pretty funny, keeping this game for years. even their teachers couldn't tell who was whom since they were wearing uniforms and grew up to have similar voices. But as fun as it can be, sometimes they are a bit sad and tired of this because it isn't just when they are trying to trick people, it /all/ the time.
classmate and teacher? Most likely will get it wrong or guess right.
friends? will often get it wrong.
But these people aren't always around, so it is expected.
but family?+
This is what sometimes hit a bit more. When jfm doesn't seem to care enough to try getting it right. When jyl has a moment of hesitation every time she's about to call a name. The way yzy gets it wrong but /argues/ ("are you saying I don't recognise my own child?" yes muqin).
They are very close to one another and they are physically identical, but they aren't /the same person/ either. At some point, they just gave up to have people know.
Until they realise they do. it took some years to really notice, but wwx always gets it right, only one rare occasion does he miss it and often it's when he just woke up and still not fully awake.
but he will always figure out which is jc and which is jwy, even in their little game of "guess which is jc" wwx simply noticed things as he was always hanging around them. Their voices are very similar, but the way they speak is a bit different. They are physically identical, but they have mannerisms that aren't the same.
jc likes sweeter things while jwy is more of a spicy person. jc will prefer pacifying a situation while jwy will get angry more easily. jc prefers lighter and more pastel colours while jwy prefers darker ones. jc is a bit more talkative than jwy is.
There are a bunch of little things wwx notices and he can in a second tell who is who. He cannot understand how everyone else has a hard time, they are easy to differentiate.
this is probably how jc and jwy crush on wwx got even bigger than what they already had before. Having wwx known them so well and without mistakes, they feel warm and actually seen. They don't care what yzy says about wwx, he is great.
So they try to flirt and pursue wwx semi-discreetly since they don't want their parents to notice both sons are pursuing the kid of a friend (who could arguably be called their step-sibling). They aren't sure if it is working, but wwx is simply a bit oblivious and dense and he eventually caught up to them (thanks to nhs not being as blind and seeing how they look at wwx).
and wwx also realise really quickly that he might also love the twin and not the way jfm hoped it would be. He has always been a bit angry at anyone trying to flirt at them and he now understands better where it comes from. he also accepts that a couple of sexy dreams he had wasn't just "well, we are close, so this is normal".
But they are all dumb kid and keep dancing around each other without doing anything until one time jc decide to attack and kisses wwx one night the three of them are alone at home and watching movies.
it's a bit surprising that jc is the one to make the first move (people would probably have expected jwy to be) and wwx is stunned for a little moment as jc sits on his lap straddling him, looking a bit nervous at the lack of response.
he was about to apologise and get off when wwx kisses him, pulling him closer.
"Don't forget about me!" jwy ends up saying, a little pout on his face as he slides close, stealing wwx lips from his twin, giving him a smirk when he huffs a bit.
They quickly forget about the movie they were watching, the new makeout session is much more interesting. "We really love you a-ying" jc whispered again in his ear, "Would you like to go out with us?".
It takes a little moment for just to /really/ realise the twin wanted to date him together all along. No choosing and leaving someone behind.
Somehow he feels like he shouldn't be surprised, he's sure they have shared and tried together things that are a bit more "unshareable" for them. a bright smile appears on his lips as he kisses jc again, "Of course, I would like to, I wasn't sure what I would have done with all the love I have for you two" he jokes, rather happy to see them both just as happy.
Of course, they don't tell anyone (but nhs /somehow/ knows and he makes it vaguely known). neither of them wants to know what rage yzy would get into and what kind of comments jfm would make about /both/twins dating him.
also, soon, there are other reasons wwx can differentiate jc and jwy, but these reasons cannot be known by anyone else but him ;)
Hey i’m a fashion design student so i have tons and tons of pdfs and docs with basic sewing techniques, pattern how-tos, and resources for fabric and trims. I’ve compiled it all into a shareable folder for anyone who wants to look into sewing and making their own clothing. I’ll be adding to this folder whenever i come across new resources
Updated just now with new hand sewing resources (mainly buttonholes) and textbook pdfs on fashion history, fashion illustration, and thinking through designs!
Hear me out. What if Jiang Cheng is the one to end up in Luo Binghe's world.
While he was being tortured and having his core stolen something went very wrong and he ended up falling into the demon realm.
Before Luo Binghe has completely taken over, think closer to when he gets his sword.
But! I can't decide if I want it to follow the original story or SVSSS version. Cus on the one hand, Original Luo Binghe and Jiang Cheng is beautiful. On the other I just the want the author to see Jiang Cheng and have no clue who is his. Like the system only has info on him since he came to the world. But that could also lead to a love triangle I do not want.
so in highschool, my best friend wasnt allowed to go on dates unless there was another couple there to keep an eye on him. part of this was his parents being insane, but also, part of it was him being insane. in a problem with no reasonable parties, there are no reasonable solutions.
at some point in my junior year, my sorta-gf broke up with me, and i just wasnt feeling dating, which was bad for my friend, because he had a good thing going with a girl he met in court.
he kind of hounded me about it. kept pushing me to just put me feet back in the dating pool and i wasnt real thrilled about it, because i knew he was pushing me for his own benefit, not mine, so i kept telling him to fuck off, and after a few weeks of being told that i would date when i was damn well ready, he eventually said: okay. what if i paid for the date AND found you a blind date AND all you had to do was show up?
and i shouldve said no, i know, but i let him wear me down, and i will own my fault in that. a date starting on such a stupid premise could never have gone well.
but he still managed to find a way to make it worse.
i dont know how long he tried to set a blind date up. it couldve been multiple attempts. he couldve stooped to this immediately. but what happened in the end was that he called a girl from the ward he attended - a girl that he knew had a giant, mushy crush on him - and he said: hey! how would you feel about going on a date this weekend?
(you know, implying it was with him, but never actually saying it.)
and she said YES WOW I WOULD LOVE TO and he said great! and then he called me up and said he found me a date.
i did not learn about his crimes until several weeks later. i will die swearing before god almighty that i would never have allowed this travesty to happen if i had known.
that was on a monday. the date of the date rolled around that friday evening, and im sorry to confess, i really phoned the whole thing in. i showed up in my favorite comfy outfit, which was also a fashion crime: basketball shorts and flipflops and a baja hoodie. it was super comfy but it made me look kind of crazy. i picked him up first, and then i picked up his date next, and then we went to pick up my date, and thats where you're gonna get the play by play.
i arrived, walked across the yard, and knocked on the front door. she opened it almost immediately, like shed been waiting right by it, and i could see her expression go from OMG IM SO EXCITED to super disappointed, then disgusted and finally pissed. and because i didn't know about my friends sins, i thought it was from my outfit. which seemed... harsh. like, hey, im allowed to be quirky, fuck you. also its a blind date, i thought the deal was that we were both going to be sad broken sacks of mortality.
anyway, we looked at each other for several seconds before she slammed the door in my face.
i looked back at my friend. he was sweating bullets. i dont know what he expected from this, but there was this big long pause where we both tried to figure out what to do, and then the door opened up, and her dad invited me in, and he said she was gonna need a few minutes to finish getting ready, and that in the meantime we could sit and talk.
we did not talk. we did sit. i sat down on the couch, and he sat down in a chair across the couch, and then instead of talking he cleaned his pistol on the coffee table. i wasnt actually sure if it was a threat, or if it was just a fidget thing for 40+ year old republican men, but when i tried to help he got snappy so i just watched him put a pistol back together.
he was okay at it.
eventually my date came downstairs, still mad as hell for reasons beyond my ken, and i felt pretty guilty for being such a mess because i thought that was why she was so angry. i tried to make up for by walking her to the car and getting the door for her, just generally trying to be extra polite, but before i could make it back to the drivers side, her dad called me back to the door. so i flipped around, went to the door, and immediately regreted my decision.
soon as i was within range, her dad got waaaay too close to me, leaned in, and said "whatever you do to her, i will do to you," and my brain went into overdrive making three consecutive realizations.
realization one was, damn, the pistol thing was a threat. that sucks. what an asshole. realization two was, wait, im autistic and even i know theres a 0% chance me and my date even hold hands, least of all boink. does this guy actually think there's even a 1% chance of anyone in that car getting laid tonight? is he an idiot? and then realization three went through, which was wait, is this guy threatening to fuck me? and unfortunately, with my brain doing so much processing, my mouth was left to run amok, so somewhere between realization 2 and 3, i said:
"i can't get pregnant"
which, i swear, wasn't actually me trying to be a smartass, it was just me pointing out that he couldn't actually follow up on that threat. it just wasn't possible. we do not live in the omegaverse and im not scared of you.
still, it was an insanely catastrophic thing to say, and the moment we both heard it, we bluescreened. that single sentence obliterated both of our momentary streams of consciousness like a saltine in front of a sand blaster. problem was, he'd probably gone his whole life not even realizing someone could say something that stupid, and making that realization was going to cost him a lot of thinking time. me though? i had been saying shit like that for 17 years, i didnt have to rewrite my expectations of human nature, i just had to plan an exit and start striding. so i was already halfway back to the car before i heard "hey. hey come back. Hey. Hey. HEY. HEY WAIT. HEY GET BACK HERE. HEY-"
and then i was in my car, and i drove away.
if this happened today, he'd have called her, and the whole thing wouldve imploded then and there, but back then, there were still a decent number of teenagers without cell phones. especially the teenagers of insane, gun toting parents. so she just said: whoa what was that all about? and i said: dont worry about it, he'll tell you about it when you get home.
and she said: ok and went back to staring daggers at me and my friend.
WHICH SURPRISINGLY isnt even how the story ends.
we went to an improv comedy show, and it was a disaster. it shouldve been like, 7/10 tops, but between my date being mad, and my friend having a good time, and me having the existential terror of knowing that a guy with a pistol was probably waiting outside his house for me to come back, it was easily 11/10. i laughed way too hard at everything. especially the jokes that flopped. id sit there in this mostly silent room and laugh until i dry heaved a little, and my date was absolutely disgusted, and even my friend was a little embarrassed, which would just make me laugh harder. i laughed so hard that night i could barely talk the next day. and then the show ended, and my friend said, you know, that was a good time, but i think we should maybe do something a little chiller? who wants to walk around the park? and his date said yeah, and my date said no, and i finally had mercy on the poor woman so i said, look, im gonna drop you off. and i am so, so sorry about this, but im dropping you off like a block away. super duper sorry.
do talk to your dad about the pistols thing if you dont want this happening more in the future tho.
and she said: okay. so i dropped her off, and she walked a block down, and that was that.
then i drove my friend and his date to a park that was good for wandering. i figured they wanted something more private, so instead of following them around point blank, i chose a park with this 30 foot rope tower, and i climbed to the top and i said: hey i can see you anywhere from up here, you are officially chaperoned from a distance. get panopticoned idiot. except my friend really is an idiot, and he didnt really get the whole 'now i dont have to third wheel so insanely hard with you guys' thing so he climbed up the tower too, and then his date followed behind him, so there are three people basically sitting together on top of a telephone pole.
and then they started making out.
i was close enough to hear it.
i didnt really know what to do so i was just kind of sitting there, dissociating, when some college kids came around and started shaking the tower. my friend's date went aaaaaaaaaa im afraid of heights :( and my friend went oh, dont worry, ill hold you tight ;) and i went hey, im gonna climb down and ask them to stop.
so i did climb down, and i did ask them to stop, and they flipped me off, which i wasnt even mad about. at that point i was i was like yeah, it would be weirder if this wasnt a mess. gods plan has been to fly this day like a 747 into my metaphorical twin towers and brother he is close enough for me to see him grinning through the cockpit window. still, eventually the college students got bored, so they climbed up the tower, which gave my friend and his date a window to climb down, and together we walked back to my car.
now, i cant explain why this is, but sitting back in the drivers seat was my carriage-back-into-a-pumpkin moment. i'd been chill about all the chaos, just rolling with the punches, but sitting down made me realize how much of a shitshow the day had been, and while i couldnt go back and fix all of it, i could go back and fix one thing.
so i told my friend and his date, hey, you two, stay here and don't do anything weird. don't. then i walked back to the rope tower, and i started picking up the shoes the college students had left at the base in order to climb.
about halfway through this, i realized that if i took all their shoes, they might think i was in it for the money, and i actually wanted them to know i was in it specifically to spite them. fuck those guys. so i put all the right shoes back, gave myself a 100 foot headstart, yelled "nice shoes, assholes", did a little jig, and started running.
my advice to everyone is that college students are faster than you think. even with the headstart, and the whole climb down the tower thing, i was still only fivish seconds ahead of them by the time i got to my car. i flung the door open, looked in the backseat, didnt see anyone, flung the stolen shoes in the backseat, heard two "ow"s, took that as proof of presence, jumped in and pealed out of the lot.
my friend and his date popped up a few seconds later. they were, uh, doing something weird in the back seat. my one request - obliterated.
they climbed up to ask where the hell all the shoes had come from, and i was like yeah i stole them from the college students, and they were like oh. cool. hope you had fun. and i was like, i did. i did. but speaking of fun, what were you doing back there?
and for the first time in my buddies life, i think he was actually embarassed.
They are just straight up not paying loyalties! “Disney’s argument is that they have purchased the rights but not the obligations of the contract.”
This is seriously dangerous to creators
Read the letter from Alan Dean Foster:
Dear Mickey,
We have a lot in common, you and I. We share a birthday: November 18. My dad’s nickname was Mickey. There’s more.
When you purchased Lucasfilm you acquired the rights to some books I wrote. STAR WARS, the novelization of the very first film. SPLINTER OF THE MIND’S EYE, the first sequel novel. You owe me royalties on these books. You stopped paying them.
When you purchased 20th Century Fox, you eventually acquired the rights to other books I had written. The novelizations of ALIEN, ALIENS, and ALIEN 3. You’ve never paid royalties on any of these, or even issued royalty statements for them.
All these books are all still very much in print. They still earn money. For you. When one company buys another, they acquire its liabilities as well as its assets. You’re certainly reaping the benefits of the assets. I’d very much like my miniscule (though it’s not small to me) share.
You want me to sign an NDA (Non-disclosure agreement) before even talking. I’ve signed a lot of NDAs in my 50-year career. Never once did anyone ever ask me to sign one prior to negotiations. For the obvious reason that once you sign, you can no longer talk about the matter at hand. Every one of my representatives in this matter, with many, many decades of experience in such business, echo my bewilderment.
You continue to ignore requests from my agents. You continue to ignore queries from SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. You continue to ignore my legal representatives. I know this is what gargantuan corporations often do. Ignore requests and inquiries hoping the petitioner will simply go away. Or possibly die. But I’m still here, and I am still entitled to what you owe me. Including not to be ignored, just because I’m only one lone writer. How many other writers and artists out there are you similarly ignoring?
My wife has serious medical issues and in 2016 I was diagnosed with an advanced form of cancer. We could use the money. Not charity: just what I’m owed. I’ve always loved Disney. The films, the parks, growing up with the Disneyland TV show. I don’t think Unca Walt would approve of how you are currently treating me. Maybe someone in the right position just hasn’t received the word, though after all these months of ignored requests and queries, that’s hard to countenance. Or as a guy named Bob Iger said….
“The way you do anything is the way you do everything.”
“If you have time to watch Netflix you have time for a side hustle” my side hustle is relaxing so that my body and brain can heal from by this nose-to-the-grindstone bullshit. I refuse to feel guilty for being a human with the need to relax sometimes. my side hustle is no.
life has become so much better since deciding to consume media with unbridled joy. i don’t care if people think it’s cringe, i don’t care if there are flaws. i can simultaneously acknowledge these faults while loving and consuming media that brings me joy.
for anyone too young to know this: watching The Truman Show is a vastly different experience now, compared to how it was before youtube and social media influencers became normal
before it was like, "what a horrifying thing to do to a human being! to take away their autonomy and privacy, all for the sake of profits! to create fake scenarios for them to react to, just to retain viewership! to ruin their happiness just so some corporate entity could harvest money from their very humanity! how could anyone do something so evil?"
and now it's like, "ah, yeah. this is still deeply fucked up, but it's pretty much what every influencer has been doing to their kids for a decade now. probably bad that we've normalized this experience"
