Has Been Lately Watching

A dragon who decides to hoard mint and various types of mint plants (and not knowing that mint has the mushroom’s blessing of inevitability were ever its planted) can go one of two ways.

1: The dragon is absolutely horrified as the mint engulfs and takes over its den. Its gold? Mint. Its gems and goblets? Mint. Its stores of wine? Mint. No matter what they do they can’t get rid of it.

2: The dragon is delightfully ecstatic as the mint engulfs and takes over its den. It’s a self growing hoard. No matter what any adventurers or knights do, they can’t get rid of it.

ARSENIC FOR TEA SPOILERS

(also I haven't read AFT for a while so please excuse any errors)

Stephen Bampton is so nuanced to me because YES he's a murderer, attempted murderer and also was very willing to be complicit in another indirect murder (Lord Wells would have likely been hanged if he'd been arrested) but on the other hand he's a poor, homosexual 17 year old who likely doesn't have a great time at school because of this (remember Hetty saying how she's been secretly darning his socks???) and I'm assuming boys at Eton would have picked on nearly anyone who had a hint of being an outsider. Violence or at the very least ostracization has likely been used against him his whole life and so that's his first resort.

I'm not saying he deserves forgiveness or redemption but maybe some more understanding??? Stephen has been proven to time and time again that adults cannot be trusted - Mr Curtis, obviously, and his father for leaving him and his mother for cheating and then Lady Wells for also cheating, and he also probably felt this way about the police who couldn't catch Mr Curtis the first time round. I'm not saying he was right in what he did, but Stephen could have very possibly thought he was doing Bertie and Daisy a favour by getting rid of their parents and letting Lord Wells take the blame as 'adults can't be trusted'. A lot of what he does seems to be a misguided sense of protection for others and self defence. And he does constantly reiterate to Hazel and Daisy that he's going to keep them safe, that nothing's going to happen to them. Stephen might possibly have also seen how Bertie's parents treat him (reading between the lines, it seems Bertie is mostly ignored and/or seen as a burden child) keeping up this thought process that 'adults can't be trusted'.

The calculated murder almost (ALMOST) makes me want to sympathise with him, as yes Stephen clearly wants to hurt Mr Curtis but then he doesn't want to hurt anyone else? He thinks that when Mr Curtis is out of everyone's lives, not only his but Bertie's too, then things would go back to normal, or at least he wouldn't have to relive the hurt of what Mr Curtis did to his family. However, I do say that it ALMOST makes me want to sympathise with him because in the second half of the book, Stephen gets panicky and resorts to unplanned murder attempts (ie. pushing Lady Wells down the stairs who he thought was Lucy) which screams to me that maybe, not a violent streak as such but definitely an 'angry when fearful' streak was always within Stephen.

In essence, I don't think Stephen murders because he's a cruel person, even though he nears this when pushing someone down the stairs, but murders because he wants to protect Bertie. Ok and yes quite possibly vengeance. As with all the murders, it always goes too far and too deep.

New Howl piece! :D Very proud of it ^^ Took me quite a while to draw all those little houses, haha! XD

Jiangzuo Alliance (sort of) Leverage AU?

For my @nif-exchange recipient, @star-shadows, who prompted “The brotherhood of the Jiangzuo Alliance”. Sadly I’m not good with words/art/ideas so I just made… this. I hope someone else fills your prompts because I’m also into them!

This is mostly animated because I can’t actually draw anything more complicated than basic shapes and wanted to distract people from looking too closely at the details. I also had to come up with increasingly contrived ways to cover up the hands, because hands.

Art references:

MCS & Li Gang

Gong Yu

Tong Lu

Zhen Ping

AO3 link if images don’t load (@ tumblr why): http://archiveofourown.org/works/12822456/

must enemies turn into lovers? can't they be the mirror of each other, connected by a defining trait of their character and arc, but ultimately separated by fate or ideology? can't they feel each other's presence in the crowd, a tether, a like calls to like, and at the same time repulsion for the distorted reflection they find in their enemy? can't they be each other's most feared destiny? can't they squash every time they meet the tiny fragment of empathy and connection that refuses to die, despite the opposite ideas, despite the blood, despite and because of the tragedy of it all?

IF DIFANGHUA HAD HINGE DATING PROFILES

@userdramas event 11 inspiration ↳ thank you @yao-yaos & @jiaoliqiao for filling my dashboard with this show and inspiring me to pick it up

Can you do something for me, please?

I want you to reblog this if you believe that two people can be very close and physically affectionate with one another, but still have a completely nonsexual, non-romantic relationship. 

Even if the two people in question are capable of being sexually or romantically attracted to one another. 

Because the friendship I share with someone I consider family in a way that transcends blood has been typecast as a romantic relationship ENTIRELY too many times, and I’m beginning to get sick of it. 

Wait also, he's really young and sheltered and new to the jianghu? Damn he learnt fast

Just saw a post calling Fang Duobing a dimwit, 'all muscle no brain', dumb, and someone who relied on Li Lianhua doing all the solving and then took all the credit for it.

I can't disagree more. Yes, LLH usually ended up putting all the pieces together in the end, but a lot of the time Fang Duobing picked up on clues and noticed stuff no one else had noticed. He was involved in the investigating just as much as Li Lianhua was and he most certainly did not 'take all the credit'. To me this does not describe Fang Duobing at all.

I'm actually tempted to go back and show how smart Fang Duobing actually is. The only thing he's dumb about is Li Lianhua.

(Please don't try and find the post and start trouble. I'm simply vehemently disagreeing with someone's personal opinion on a character. They have a right to have it and I have a right to completely disagree.)