raven | Reading

Fandom: Mo Dao Zu Shi; Chen Qing Ling
Pairings/Characters: Gen; M/M; Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian; Jin Zixuan, Wen Qing, Wen Ning, Nie Mingjue, Nie Huaisang, Jiang Fengmian, Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, Jiang Yanli, Lan Xichen, Lan An, Lan Wangji
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 1,209 words
Content Notes: No Archive Warnings Apply, arrant pedantry, Author Showed Her Work, Food Porn, gastrotravelogue, tea nerdery
Creator Tags:
headcanon, the untamed 陈情令, cql, mo dao zu shi, mdzs, wei wuxian, lan wangji, nie huaisang, jin zixuan, wen qing, nie mingjue, wangxian headcanon at the very end because that's what i'm here for, tea, i really like tea, heicha, oolong, white tea, green tea, dragonwell, my ramblings, qi is a thing for some tea drinkers

Creator Links: (AO3)

Haoppopotamus; (Instagram)

haoppopotamus; (Tumblr)

watch-grok-brainrot (formerly ~~wangxianbunnydoodles~~)
Theme: Food & Cooking, Cultural Differences, Meta, Worldbuilding

Summary: Since watching ep 3 for the first time (i.e. january), this has been knocking around in my brain. In ep 3, we see JZXuan waltzing into the same inn as the Yunmeng Trio, booting them, and then rejecting “bad tea”. Ever since, I’ve watched a lot of tea being poured in CQL. It got me thinking, what kind of tea would different sects prefer and what would different characters drink?

Reccer’s Notes: In which Haoppo uses her tea connoisseurship as a vehicle for characterization and worldbuilding (and invites her imaginary friends to illustrate and share her interest.) For the likes of me (with no claim to Asian cred by birth or upbringing, and whose blunted sensory range reduces almost all tea to hot leaf juice), this serves as a window into an unfamiliar area of interest and body of cultural reference frames (the idea that tea might possess qi, not necessarily related to its flavor, was a new one on me—but of obvious importance to cultivators.)

Fanwork Links: Tea Preferences by CQL Sects - a Headcanon

(The original post, preserved on the Wayback Machine, includes a beautiful and apropos GIF header: Tea Preferences by CQL Sects - a Headcanon (~~wangxianbunnydoodles~~)

Current Music: “Cha Ge”

settiai

In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

Current Mood: blank

jamethiel

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

isis

What I recently finished reading:

A reread of Velocity Weapon by Megan E. O'Keefe - here's my original review from 2020:

Space opera that reminds me a bit of Imperial Radch smushed with the Expanse, though it doesn't feel like it's actually inspired by either. There's a sentient spaceship and a culture which dominates the universe and controls the gates which allow passage between worlds (which were invented using a mysterious technology that may have come from another civilization), and generally modern SF style views of gender and sexuality (the main characters, siblings, have two fathers, and there's a character who uses 'they' pronouns, presumably nonbinary). The story mostly follows Sanda, a 'gunnery sergeant' [this seemed odd to me for various reasons - she seems to be an actual officer, not a noncom, but I guess military ranks in this far future world are different?] who wakes up after a battle alone, on board a deserted enemy warship, which tells her that it's 230 years after the battle and that both sides' planets have been destroyed. Other POVs are Sanda's brother, Biran, who has been recently elevated to the political elite of their society, and Jules, a young gangster girl on a planet far away, whose narrative seems to have little to do with the main story until the very end when things are connected in order to set up the next book. I liked it a lot, though I felt that after the first few big reveals (which were great!) things dragged for a while before rushing to a climax that quickly went on to a cliffhanger.

Rereading my review, I guess I still agree with it! I'm sadly appalled that I forgot so many of the spoilery details in the intervening 5 years.

But I'm on to the next book in the series, Chaos Vector...

settiai

Two fandom-related posts in a row? Really? I can't even remember the last time that happened.

Critical Role has its fourth campaign starting in just over two weeks, and they posted the first artwork of the new characters earlier this week. They haven't released any other details like classes and such, but I'm very, very, very curious about several of them. Especially since they posted a video earlier today about character vibes, some of which sound kinda amazing.

The fandom is definitely ramping up again, which is helping with forcing my brain to get through watching as many of the specials that I've missed as I can before CR4 starts. I've missed having a proper weekly fandom, and I really want to try to get back in the habit of napping after work on Thursdays so that I can stay up late watching the new episodes live.

Current Mood: hopeful

settiai

Yuletide nominations are officially open, which means I have to get my ass in gear and actually figure out what I want to request and nominate this year.

A couple of my usual requests are almost always nominated by other people, so I can hopefully scratch those off the list. That doesn't help narrow it down a lot, though, because I've written down a frankly ridiculous number of fandoms this year that I've been considering requesting.

Right now, I'm leaning towards the following for my nominations:

Black Ships - Jo Graham OR Hand of Isis - Jo Graham OR Stealing Fire - Jo Graham
Home Alone (Movies) (mainly because of this post)
Hornblower (TV)
Peacemakers (2003)
The Witch Wolf (Webcomic)

My other requests will depend on what does or doesn't get nominated, but some of my ideas for fandoms that tend to show up in the tag set regularly are:

Gargoyles (Cartoon)
Jurassic Park Original Trilogy (Movies)
Justice League International
The Martian (2015)
The Scarlet Pimpernel (1982)
Titanic (1997)
Treasure Planet

Of course, there's always a chance that I'll see something in the tag set that I wasn't expecting that calls to me. That's definitely happened before, and it'll probably happen again.

Current Mood: thoughtful

rmc28

Or rather the text message to book my covid & flu vaccinations. "For 75+ and immunosuppressed". I just double-checked and "have had a blood cancer" is still top of the NHS list of qualifying conditions, so that's my armour when the GP surgery gatekeepers are like, you're too young and you might be DEPRIVING someone of this vaccine who NEEDS it. (This has been the conversation the last three times I got invited to get vaccinated, sigh, and then they get a manager to look at my medical record, and then they grudgingly admit that maybe I can has jabs.)

Date is the Saturday when all the Cambridge undergraduates arrive, so just in time. I'll mostly be avoiding students for the first couple weeks of term to let the freshers flu play out, but I will be playing ice hockey so not entirely. Also getting in and out of the city centre that day may be entertaining, probably best done on foot.

runpunkrun in

fancake

Photograph of steel spoons and spices in a dramatic setting with added text that gives it the look of a gourmet magazine cover: September 2025. Food & Cooking, at Fancake. Steel teaspoons are arranged in an elogated oval to suggest a fish, with the bowls acting as scales and some of the handles left visible to create the fins and tail, giving the creature a spiky appearance. The concave bowls are dusted with a powdery orange spice for color and one spoon at the front of the fish is filled with a coarse black spice to create an eye. The fish is on a black surface with a rough texture and around it are three skinny green peppers, a mound of salt, a mound of orange spice, and a dipping bowl filled with a clear amber liquid.

aurumcalendula

The fact that the option to enroll in extended security updates for Windows 10 hasn't shown up yet on my PC is stressing me out.

I almost regret not buying a Windows 11 capable PC a few years ago (how hard they're pushing Copilot/AI stuff turned me off it and the news about one of the Windows 11 updates bricking SSDs doesn't fill me with confidence).

minoanmiss in

agonyaunt

...and the person I reported it to didn’t seem too concerned Content advisory: ableism, and also sexual harassment. ( Read more... )

magid in

agonyaunt

gift link (with three other questions answered)

My husband and I moved into an apartment complex recently. We befriended some of our new neighbors while sitting around the swimming pool. We have discussed politics with some of them, having been given hints that we are all on the same page. But one couple — whom we like a lot — has provided no information about their politics. We have no idea where they stand! The state of the country is very important to us, and we are willing to socialize only with people who support our beliefs. Should we continue to see this couple whose politics are a mystery, or should we tell them where we stand and see how they react?

NEW NEIGHBOR

( answer )

pauraque

In this sequel to The Three-Body Problem, it's now out in the open that an alien invasion is coming. But the aliens' doomed planet is far away and this is hard SF, so they're not expected to reach Earth for 400 years. The book follows a mostly new set of characters and international organizations as they try to work out a long-term plan to somehow defend Earth against a force with vastly superior technology and no interest in negotiating.

This book is 500 pages long and I don't think it had to be. I found the first half a real slog, as it mostly focused on plot elements that I felt were not plausible (not for speculative reasons, but for No Real Person Would Ever Do This reasons) and, surprisingly, a romance. I don't know if Liu got the criticism that the first book didn't care about people so he decided to put in a love story, or what, but the way he handles it is extremely strange and unrealistic and made me question whether he had ever interacted with a woman in his entire life, so maybe he should have stuck with ideas over people.

It also suffers from a rather flat and awkward English translation that calls way more attention to the fact that it is a translation than the first book's did. (They had a different translator for this one, but brought back Ken Liu for book three.) That's not the book's fault, but it definitely affected my experience of it.

That said, the second half did pick up a lot, and leaned much more heavily into Liu's strengths as a writer: the inventive worldbuilding and the show-stopping cinematic set pieces. I did enjoy that and it brought me back to what I liked about the first book. Liu has a distinctive knack for making even catastrophic and grisly events weirdly fun to read about because of how hard he commits to them and how intricately he constructs their details. Anybody can write about stuff blowing up in space, but not everybody can show exactly why and how it's blowing up, zoom into individual pieces of debris and out to massive chain reactions, and have a reader like me, who is often bored by action scenes, attentively following along every step of the way.

many spoilery thoughts

The main thing I thought was implausible was the concept of the Wallfacers. Basically, the UN chooses four people and gives them each unlimited resources to develop and enact a plan to defend against the aliens. There's no oversight and anything they do is legal and unquestioned. This is supposed to counter the aliens' ability to remotely surveil Earth; if the plan takes shape in one person's head, then the aliens, who are said to not understand secrets and deception, won't find out about it.

Many things about this concept invite skepticism, but my biggest issue is how the presentation glosses over the complexity of human societies. Liu assumes that essentially everyone in the world will tacitly support whatever the UN does, with no significant debate or objection, even when it directly affects people's lives. He has the Wallfacers using so many resources for their massive defense constructions that it's crushing the global economy, and people just twiddle their thumbs and let it happen. He often paints global reactions with an extremely broad brush, like "people felt/thought X" as though all of humanity were a monolith. I can't speak for countries other than my own, but in this situation I can confidently say that half the people in the US probably wouldn't even believe the aliens were real, and even if they did, they sure as hell wouldn't put their faith in four people arbitrarily selected by the UN to save us all.

Sometimes Liu seems to know there are problems with these ideas, as when the narrative flashes forward a couple of centuries and the Wallfacer project is seen as one of the many "silly" things attempted during the initial panic over the invasion. Then again, Wallfacer Luo Ji's plan does basically work in the end, so I wasn't really clear on what the book was trying to say here.

I did enjoy the future worldbuilding, where most humans live in underground cities of massive treelike skyscrapers that hold up the ceiling where a holographic sky is projected. He did a slightly better job here of showing that cultures aren't all the same; a lot of people in the future are "hibernators" who were put into stasis in the past at various times and reawoken later, and their attitudes often differ from people who are native to the future. This also helped build a believable friendship between Shi Qiang and Luo Ji, since they're the only two people they know from their time. (I think this is the only compelling human relationship in the book, certainly better than whatever the hell was supposed to be happening with Luo Ji and the imaginary woman he made up in his head who turned out to be real somehow... It's a long story.)

I was also interested in the concept of the accidental generation ships. Almost the entire Earth fleet is destroyed by an alien probe that they thought was harmless, and the few crews that barely escape believe (understandably) that returning to Earth is suicide and that continuing to flee is humanity's best hope for survival. This entire scenario plays out over the length of a chapter, but whole books could be written about it! The part where they realize that they have too many people to keep alive long-term and some will have to be sacrificed read like an homage to "The Cold Equations," though I don't know if that story is as well-known among Chinese SF readers.

Of course it's also consistent with the book's generally pessimistic outlook on space exploration. I did know before I started reading what the "dark forest" solution to the Fermi Paradox is, but I didn't know the hypothesis was named after the book!! The idea is that the reason we haven't found aliens is that the galaxy is fucking dangerous and any planetary civilizations that foolishly jump around waving their hands and flashing neon signs trying to make first contact only make themselves a target. Aliens are out there, but the ones who have survived are the quiet ones. As a person whose favorite SF canon is Star Trek, this obviously doesn't align with my preferred way of looking at things, but it's internally consistent and not implausible, so I can roll with it.

I am invested enough to read the third book, and looking forward to getting back to a translator who knows what he's doing at least.

osprey_archer

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

I was so charmed by The Fairy Circus that I decided to see if the university archives had any of Lathrop’s other books, and indeed, they have The Colt from Moon Mountain... and the colt is a unicorn colt!!!!!!! Sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have spoiled that, I went into the archive not knowing and nearly squeaked with delight when I saw the cover, but as it IS on the cover it’s probably not a serious spoiler. Unicorn befriends farmgirl! Delightful.

The archive people know me, by the way. I was rooting through my purse for my ID and the desk clerk was like, “Don’t worry, I’ve seen you before.”

I also read Dick Francis’s Whip Hand, the sequel to Odds Against. In Odds Against, iron woobie Sid Halley had been forced out of his jockey career by a tragic accident that resulted in a horrifyingly deformed left hand, which led to him becoming a private investigator, which over the course of the book led to him losing said left hand entirely.

About three chapters into Whip Hand, the baddie trains a shotgun on Sid’s right hand at point-blank range and threatens to shoot it off. Sid endures in stoic (but deeply terrified) silence; I the reader screamed like a tea kettle. “IS HE GOING TO LOSE ONE APPENDAGE EACH BOOK?” I shrieked with horrified delight at this new horizon of whumpiness.

( Spoilers )

What I’m Reading Now

Another quote from A Sand County Almanac: “Man always kills the thing he loves, and so we pioneers have killed our wilderness. Some say we had to. Be that as it may, I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?”

What I Plan to Read Next

Jostein Gaarder’s The Solitaire Mystery! Which comes with a side mystery: Gaarder has published a number of books since the 1990s, most of which have indeed been translated into English, and yet most of them are not available through any of the various libraries to which I have access. Why not? Where are they? A mystery worthy of Gaarder himself.

skygiants

I liked the Korean movie Phantom (2023) enough that I decided to hunt down the novel on which it's based, Mai Jia's The Message -- in large part out of curiosity about whether it's also lesbians.

The answer: ... sort of! The lesbians are not technically textual but there's a bit of Lesbian Speculation and then a big pointed narrative hole where lesbians could potentially be. It is, however, without a doubt, Women Being Really Weird About Each Other, to the point where I'm considering it as a Yuletide fandom (perhaps even moreso than the movie, where the women are also weird about each other but in a more triumphant cinematic way and less of an ambiguous, psychologically complex and melancholic way. you know.)

The plot: well, as in the movie, there's a spy, and there's the Japanese Occupation, and there's a Big Haunted House where we're keeping all the possible spies to play mind games with until somebody fesses up. Because the book is set in 1941 China, there are actually three factions at play -- the Japanese and collaborators, the Communists and the Nationalists -- and for the whole first part of the book, fascinatingly enough, we are almost entirely in the head of the Japanese officer who's running the operation and choreographing all the mind games in an attempt to ferret out the Communist agent in his codebreaking division. The result is sort of a weird and almost darkly funny anti-heroic anti-Poirot situation, in which Hihara is constantly engineering increasingly complicated locked-room scenarios designed to get the spy to confess like the culprit in a Thin Man movie, and is constantly thwarted by his suspects inconveniently refusing to stick to the script, even when presented with apparently incontrovertible evidence, placed under torture, lied to about the deaths of other members of the party, etc. etc.

The suspects include several variously annoying men, plus two women whom we and everyone else are clearly intended to find the most interesting people there: quiet and competent Li Ningyu, cryptography division head, mother of two, whom everyone knows is semi-separated from an abusive husband, and who somehow manages to keep calmly slithering her way out of every accusation Hihara tries to stick on her; and her opposite, loud bratty chic Gu Xiaomeng, whom Hihara would very much like to rule out as a suspect as quickly as possible because she's the daughter of a very wealthy collaborator, and who seems moderately obsessed with her boss Li Ningyu For Some Reason.

Both book and movie spend, like, sixty percent of their length on this big house espionage mind games scenario and then abruptly take a left turn, with the next forty percent being Something Completely Different. In the film this left turn involves DRAMATIC ROMANTIC ACTION HEROICS!!!! so I was quite surprised to find that the book's left turn ( involves spoilers )

mific in

fancake

Fandom: due South
Characters/Pairings: Diefenbaker
Rating: Gen
Length: n/a (artwork)
Content Notes: may induce donut cravings!
Creator Links: Wagnetic on AO3
Theme: Food and cooking, Happy endings, Crafts, Textiles

Summary: A bag featuring Dief and the imminent demise of some donuts.

Reccer's Notes:
I will never stop reccing this! An excellently crafted bag with a felt appliqué of Dief about to enjoy a stack of donuts. It's so good, and a perfect likeness of Dief with a "donuts incoming" gleam in his eye!

Fanwork Links: Hungry Like the Wolf

musesfool

Last night at this time, I was on what ended up to be a 90 minute (or more - I left after 90 minutes) call with other shareholders in my building to discuss options for complying with local law 97, which is all about reducing carbon emissions. It was informative, though as usual, the people running these meetings are bad at it it, and 2 people basically monopolized all the Q&A time with very specific-to-them concerns instead of applicable-to-all-tenants stuff, but at least nobody accused the board of being racist for muting them, which is what happened the last time I joined a building-related zoom call. Still only about a quarter of the people who live here showed up, which I find inexplicable considering the financial considerations involved. While no final decision was made, it seems like there will be a recommendation to take one of the incremental measures while continuing to explore the more expensive (but not the ludicrously expensive most expensive) options. So we'll see how that goes. If it helps my apartment not to turn into a sauna going forward, I am interested!

*

Baby Miss L is still trying to finalize her Halloween costume, but as with last year, there may be multiple outfits as she has a very full social calendar. She has gotten better about school, too - apparently she waves hello to everyone as she enters, and I imagine they all appreciate her attention. *g* I have also started compiling a list of books to buy her for her birthday and Christmas, which I guess I'll start shopping for soon.

*

I complain about work fairly often, but today I learned that 1. they've confirmed that our insurance will cover covid jabs for everyone who uses it, and 2. they're giving us 2 extra paid holidays this year since both 12/26 and 1/2 fall on Fridays. So I know I have it pretty good despite...everything happening in the world to try to ruin public health and nonprofits.

*

I can't remember if I posted about the very addictive phone game I recently downloaded, but after several lelvels where the only way to advance was to spend money to get helpful items, I deleted it. I can't be spending that kind of money and I am definitely the kind of person who needs to defeat the puzzles, even though I can see they are specifically designed to not be beatable without those helpful items. It's one reason I don't gamble or play "real" video games - I tend to get feverishly obsessive about winning and neither sleep nor money matter to me in that state. *hands* At least I know this about myself? Idk, but it felt good to delete the game even though I am still craving it.

*

The Mets snapped their losing streak on Sunday and still control their destiny in terms of a wild card spot, but given how poorly they've played for so long, this series with San Diego feels like a playoff game already. We'll see if they can hold the early lead. ....and now Lindor goes deep! <333

*

Current Mood: anxious
Current Music: Mets vs Padres on tv

pushkin666

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Location: on my Chandler/Joey chair

princessofgeeks

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

asakiyume

Yesterday I was responsible to get R to a first English class, only I was late.

( go slow )

Any time we can slow stuff down and humanize it, even if it's only for a little bit, it feels like a victory.

tinkaton

➤ It's To Clutch a Razor release day!!! Got my holds on Libby and a physical library copy so we'll see which comes in sooner lmao. I want to re-read When Among Crows before I read the sequel so I should get on that (though it's only a novella so I can definitely read it in a day or two).

➤ Hades II has also been given an official release date! It's coming out of early access September 25th which is Soon TM. I've just been waiting until the full game release to play it so I'm excited. 🥳 I've gotta finish Metaphor: ReFantazio first though, so I won't be getting to it right away, boo. Though that may be more of a struggle than anticipated because my PS5 shut down on me last night in the middle of playing because I think it overheated and I've been too scared to see if it'll turn back on. 😐 So we'll see how pissed I'm about to be.

➤ I've been reading The Summer Hikaru Died manga (finished the first 3 volumes and I've got the next 2 in hand already) and it's really good! It's a slow burn horror with queer coming-of-age themes about a boy in rural Japan who discovers his best friend has died and been replaced by an eldritch entity. The art is really good and I always love a good queerness-as-monstrous metaphor. Definitely going to be trying to keep up with this one as it comes out.

➤ My birthday's coming up soon, and of course my work schedule is all over the place this week lmao I worked Sunday and I'm working this Saturday, but I took some days off in between and a couple next week to give myself a three-day weekend anyway. Nothing major planned, might just try out a new fancy Chinese buffet with my family on one of my days off. I have been buying myself a bunch of stuff under the "it's my birthday month" mantra sjdhfksjhfds I ordered ANOTHER Jayvik zine full bundle so I really have to lay off the zines for a while lmao. (Easier said than done because there's like 50 million Arcane zines coming up please stop tempting me!!) I've also been eyeing a couple Hatsune Miku figurines I really want and they're not even that expensive (about ~25 bucks each) but I've been spending so much money lately and I've got my car inspection coming up too so I'm just bracing to be hit with a surprise big expense. 😑

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raven

raven@ao3

March 2025

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Page Summary

full_metal_ox in fancake - Mo Dao Zu Shi; Chen Qing Ling: Tea Preferences by CQL Sects - a Headcanon, by watch-grok-brainrot
settiai - Aurendor D&D: Summary for 9/17 Game
jamethiel - I keep on meaning to post and failing
isis - wednesday reads
settiai - Critical Role
settiai - Yuletide!
rmc28 - I have had the call
runpunkrun in fancake - Theme Reminder: Food & Cooking
aurumcalendula - (no subject)
minoanmiss in agonyaunt - Ask a Manager: A a colleague is harassing female coworkers...
magid in agonyaunt - [NYTimes Social Q’s] My Husband and I Have No Idea About the Politics of Two New Friends
pauraque - The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin (2008)
osprey_archer - Wednesday Reading Meme
skygiants - (no subject)
mific in fancake - due South: Hungry Like the Wolf, by Wagnetic
musesfool - a 2-run bomb from brett baty
pushkin666 - Fic: Supernatural - The House That Follows, Sam/Dean
princessofgeeks - 3 things
asakiyume - taking a little time
tinkaton - 098 ☆

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Style: Propaganda for Funky Circles by ninetydegrees
Resources: Am i brave enough?

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philosophy supernatural nude

still crazy after all these years

Reading

Mo Dao Zu Shi; Chen Qing Ling: Tea Preferences by CQL Sects - a Headcanon, by watch-grok-brainrot

Aurendor D&D: Summary for 9/17 Game

I keep on meaning to post and failing

wednesday reads

Critical Role

Yuletide!

I have had the call

Theme Reminder: Food & Cooking

(no subject)

Ask a Manager: A a colleague is harassing female coworkers...

[NYTimes Social Q’s] My Husband and I Have No Idea About the Politics of Two New Friends

The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin (2008)

Wednesday Reading Meme

(no subject)

due South: Hungry Like the Wolf, by Wagnetic

a 2-run bomb from brett baty

Fic: Supernatural - The House That Follows, Sam/Dean

3 things

taking a little time

098 ☆

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March 2025

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