One Of The Best Tips For Writing Descriptions Of Pain Is Actually A Snippet I Remember From A Story Where

i can’t stop drawing liu qingge sfhds

soundless love song.

SOME FLOOF 

"Rolling Girl" Soos edition! Ft. Lee Soo Hyuk, Choi Jung Soo, Kim Rok Soo (and with a special appearance from Cale) TvT

(This is also uploaded to youtube! Special thanks to Soy for adding the music 🙏)

Loop/gif :

(And a few of my fav frames!) :

How would zyx have handled being born in the canon sects?

my brain is mush, but let’s give this a shot. in no particular order...

Yunmeng Jiang: 

Comes over as part of the Meishan Yu side courtesy of Madame Yu, as Yu Lin 虞琳 (no courtesy name, same lin character as in DBD). 

Freaks out when she Realizes some realizations.

And then it’s down to business because she fucking lives here now, it’s her fucking house and it’s going to fucking catch fire.

Due to precociousness and competence from of being Done since birth, she’s trained as the successor of Jinzhu/Yinzhu for JC. 

Pre-WWX arrival, she sticks to teaching/providing emotional and mental support to the Jiang sibs so they don’t end up so screwed by their parents.

(Secretly works with JYL to help her cultivation bc fuck that noise.)

Once WWX arrives, she ends up tag-teaming with JYL to keep the peace. WWX ends up treating her like Shijie #2 - especially when he starts to cultivate and notices that she knows a lot more than she lets on.

WWX: “Lin-jiejie! Play with Xianxian!” JC: “Wei Wuxian, have you no shame? Even our shimei is more well-behaved than you!” WWX: “Our... what?”

(Still younger than everyone, but she never says anything. Conceal don’t feel.)

Overall: more emotionally stable and patient, Exhausted(TM), and much more reserved. Can’t wait to fuck off somewhere.

If the Golden Core transfer thing is going to happen, it’s not going on her watch - she’d knock WWX out, let JC take her GC instead, and then finds a nice quiet mountain to retire onto. Immortality didn’t mean much to someone that has died before. Also, the math then works out. Everything should be okay. Right?

(Obviously, no. But we’ll leave it at that.)

Lanling Jin:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Lanling Jin is... ugh. Name: Jin Zi’ai/ 金子藹 (zi as the generational character, ai for affable/luxuriant)

IDK if you know those dinner parties with your relatives when you are done with their shit by hour 2... but it’s like that 24/7. She awaits the day she’s powerful and influential enough to go feral.

The resources available to her are awful. She’s a close enough cousin that she has to see JGS’s shit all day. Deal with Jin Zixun all day. But for the sake of survival and agency, she grits her teeth and ingratiates herself with Madame Jin to get close to Jin Zixuan and get access to better cultivation education and resources.

Mme Jin cuts her a deal - if she can be useful to her son and the heir of Lanling Jin, she’ll help out on the side.

At first, JZA (god that’s so weird to see a vowel in an MXTX name abbr) is planning to just use JZX and get the fuck out.

And then his awkwardness makes her care. Damn it.

Plan: Get her uncle pushed down the stairs Actively set up JZX to take over Lanling Jin by Year 5 post-Sunshot Campaign.

Reluctantly ends up taking MY/JGY under her wing once she remembers the Qin Su situation. Ticks another year off of JGS’s life.

Best fucking friends with LQY.

(Plans go to shit once she meets people outside of LLJ. Recalibrating...)

(Due to a bad JZX/JYL encounter, WWX makes an exception and she’s the only girl he hates. “Just as insufferable, if not more, than that Peacock.”)

Qinghe Nie:

It’s fucking cold. She complains about humid heat, but she also bitches about cold and snow. All weather sucks.

QHN is probably the only sect that lets her get away with as much as she does in Shuangfeng. Goes gender-neutral again.

Name: Nie Yunxun. Done.

‘Don’t yell bankai, don’t yell bankai -’ as NYX is training with a humongous sabre. Big sword is encouraged. Give an inch, take a mile.

Da-ge energy pulls them in like a black hole. “Damn it, now I fucking care.” None of this Song of Turmoil Shit on their watch.

(”Da-ge,” because NHS latched onto them and NMJ allowed it, “Not everything is so black and white.” Tries their best to slowly make him chill the fuck out.)

Pretty prim and proper despite a foul mouth - slated to take over for Nie Zonghui when it comes time for the new generation.

Refuses to believe that eating dirt is the only future for sabre-wielders. Convinces NHS to trust and confide in them once he figures out what they’re trying to research and test.

(NHS latching on - 1) he catches NYX punning a subtle insult on LLJ during a discussion conference, 2) while escorting NHS to watch a play, he then catches them making the bitterest commentary on the not-so-great plot, and 3) on the days that he really can’t confront the fact that his Da-ge is going to cultivate to his own death, they will lie to NMJ’s face with no shame and let him hide.)

Uses QHN reputation to their advantage to play stupid and guileless. “A pretty, dumb brute.”

In public, NYX is essentially NHS’s long-suffering henchman.

In private, NYX and NHS are the Shady Duo, scheming tirelessly to... make the Cultivation Realm better, of course :) (better for some, not for others.)

Gusu Lan:

This feels worse than LLJ.

Lan Wenhui 藍文慧, wen for literary, and hui for intelligence.

CR is fine to visit, but awful to grow up in.

Grows up like a grumpy version of Lan Jingyi, because she knows that things aren’t going to be okay and there’s nothing she can do about it from her position.

Acts out a lot (like pre-ZYF death little Lin-lin). Sometimes accidentally, sometime purposefully. Living the CR feels like perpetually having an itch that she’s not allowed to scratch.

In trying to ‘tame the little beast’, LQR discovers two methods: 1) stump her with challenging/stimulating work, or 2) make LWJ ‘babysit’ her.

(Never mind telling an eight-year-old to watch a seven-year-old - but it’s the Chinese way to outsource your older kids to watch younger kids)

LWH can’t bring herself to be mean to LWJ. Thus LWJ gains a reluctant cousin-friend, and a buff to his social interaction skills.

LXC dotes on her so unabashedly that she effectively goes speechless for the whole day out of embarrassment.

Thus LQR discovers method #3 to nerf the Little Devil of the Cloud Recesses, and is so proud of himself and his nephews.

(WWX kicks him off his laurels when he arrives.)

Endgame: post-SSC (since she’s not in a position to change much without being scrutinized), seeing the 3Zun’s essentially make an alliance sans YMJ (+ JYL being betrothed to JZX), JGS basically is the most influential leader of the cultivation world.

Fuck no.

She orchestrates a ruse, if you will. ‘Accidentally’ lets JC pull her ribbon and doesn’t object. When questioned, lies and says that ‘he was her first love since catching a glimpse during the Cloud Recesses.’ (Complete with inflectionless voice)

“well shit, there’s nothing really objectionable about this match... so... congrats on your upcoming nuptials?”

Actually using that time to 1) go back and forth between YMJ with a semi-legit reason to interact and collude with the Yunmeng sibs and warn them of the upcoming BS, 2) delay the JZX/JYL wedding, 3) give LWJ time with WWX and hopefully they both get their heads out of their asses.

Shenanigans, fake dating/betrothal-turned-real? idk.

Qishan Wen:

The worst. Worstest. 

Two options:

Option one, side-side-side branch Wen

She’s fucking off.

Learning some cultivation/stealing some manuals, do a little spying and map-making, and deserting. 

Drops some secret missives for the other main sects, when the information becomes more relevant. 

Due diligence done, fucks off to some coastal town as their standoffish, neighborhood Cultivator. 

Micromanages the town and its well-being with the tenacity of playing a city builder/animal crossing in her previous life. 

Grow old. 

Die.

Option two, Wen Qing/Wen Ning’s family, the middle child. Wen Ling 溫玲, ling for exquisite.

She’s close enough to be in WRH’s purview but not in his main family. Whew.

Tries to convince older sister WQ to turn traitor and dip. 

Almost causes catastrophic end for their family bc of premature planning. 

She can’t play the same espionage game as WQ or MY/JGY does with WRH because she knows there’s no recovering from being publicly seen supporting WRH post-SSC. So she just works as a mainline fighter bc at least she’ll be able to defend herself and feel ‘useful’.

Fakes death and deserts mid-SSC. 

If lucky, lives and reluctantly infiltrates LLJ to be in the position to rescue her family after the war.

If she’s not... WWX kills her while she’s on the battlefield. She sees him and picks that moment to fake her death.

In this case, WWX catches her in the act, kills her but she calls out for WQ.

WQ learns about her death. WN is the one to tell WWX about the relation.

Tries to revive her as ‘owing one’ to the Wen sibs, looks for her corpse, encounters LWJ, gets his help to catch her soul with inquiry.

(Prime LWJ vinegar-drinking as he makes up his own reasons for why Wen Yuan exists and why WWX is taking care of him).

Ends up possessing WN on accident when WangXian returns to the Burial Mounds, able to help avert the Qiongqi Path incident.

Grimy spytime shenanigans to fight back against LLJ and surviving, and ends up passing on once things settle.

“all retail employees should get to kill one customer per holiday season” text post based on statistical error. jin guangyao, who works customer service in fantasy ancient china and discreetly kills 18,000 people per year, is an outlier and should not have been counted

[image is a 2-panel comic. an anonymous person angrily demands of a smiling jin guangyao, “this is outrageous! i demand to speak to your sect leader!” jin guangyao, still smiling dangerously, replies, “i am the sect leader.”]

hey do you have any tips on plot development? how to do come up with relevant but dramatic things to keep the plot going? i also don’t want to make it too intense?

I actually have quite a lot of resources that I’ve created over the years surrounding plot development. I’ve linked as many as I could find for you:

Resources For Plot Development

Useful Writing Resources

Useful Writing Resources II

31 Days of Plot Development

Novel Planning 101

How To Write A Good Plot Twist

How To Foreshadow

What To Cut Out Of Your Story

Tackling Subplots

Things A Reader Needs From A Story

A Guide To Tension & Suspense In Your Writing

How To Turn A Good Idea Into A Good Story

Planning A Scene In A Story

21 Plot Shapes and the Pros and Cons Of Each

How To Outline Effectively

Tips On Writing Intense Scenes

Writing The First Chapter

Tips On Starting A Scene

Plot Structures

Finding & Fixing Plot Holes

Tumblr is Tracking Shared Links

It looks like Tumblr @staff have finally implemented tracking garbage into shared links in the Tumblr mobile app. It took them years and years, but Tumblr is finally making an attempt to track shared links you click or links you share with friends.

When you share a post and choose to “copy” a link to your clipboard, you can see that they use their (new?) url shortener, at.tumblr.com.  The shortened URL appears to contain: your blog name; either the ID of the destination post, or the short string associated with the post; and an alphanumeric string.  Eg:

https://at.tumblr.com/pizza-and-ramen/im-fucking-dying-this-is-hilarious/uqndb20nkyob

The shortened URL redirects you to the destination link, but with 2 URL parameters: _branch_referrer and _branch_match_id.  Both are associated with a third-party analytics tool, branch.io.  Eg:

https://pizza-and-ramen.tumblr.com/post/118684413624/im-fucking-dying-this-is-hilarious?_branch_referrer=H4sIAAAAAAAAAxXEwQ2AIAwAwIlKH8aP21RQaaSAUIIyvZpczqvmuiCSGm2yhmJsEsw8BgFFB4Vki8gCe7MnxwPc86%2BeK3w8ByqcWsU7jHnql0u99xd0v%2FAuVQAAAA%3D%3D&_branch_match_id=1104914739086906151

_branch_referrer appears to be another shortened at.tumblr.com URL, except it’s been gzipped, base64 encoded, then URL encoded.  Eg:

H4sIAAAAAAAAAxXEwQ2AIAwAwIlKH8aP21RQaaSAUIIyvZpczqvmuiCSGm2yhmJsEsw8BgFFB4Vki8gCe7MnxwPc86%2BeK3w8ByqcWsU7jHnql0u99xd0v%2FAuVQAAAA%3D%3D

URL decode to:

H4sIAAAAAAAAAxXEwQ2AIAwAwIlKH8aP21RQaaSAUIIyvZpczqvmuiCSGm2yhmJsEsw8BgFFB4Vki8gCe7MnxwPc86+eK3w8ByqcWsU7jHnql0u99xd0v/AuVQAAAA==

base64 decode to (in hex for legibility):

1F8B0800 00000000 000315C4 C10D8020 0C00C089 4A1FC68F DB545069 A4805082 32BD9A5C CEABE6BA 20921A6D B286626C 12CC3C06 01450785 648BC802 7BB327C7 03DCF3AF 9E2B7C3C 072A9C5A C53B8C79 EA974BBD F71774BF F02E5500 0000

and unzipped with gunzip:

https://at.tumblr.com/pizza-and-ramen/im-fucking-dying-this-is-hilarious/xlz53wqdowww

which directs to the post with the same _branch_referrer but a new _branch_match_id:

https://pizza-and-ramen.tumblr.com/post/118684413624/im-fucking-dying-this-is-hilarious?_branch_match_id=1104899685865808870&_branch_referrer=H4sIAAAAAAAAAxXEwQ2AIAwAwIlKH8aP21RQaaSAUIIyvZpczqvmuiCSGm2yhmJsEsw8BgFFB4Vki8gCe7MnxwPc86%2BeK3w8ByqcWsU7jHnql0u99xd0v%2FAuVQAAAA%3D%3D

_branch_match_id, according to this stackoverflow answer, is an identifier unique to you, used to track users.  It could be based on browser fingerprinting, as branch.io’s branch_match_id is.

Anyway, there’s not a terribly easy way to avoid this tracking from the Tumblr mobile app, but if you get a link that has the id, not the string, you can modify it to the format of blog.tumblr.com/ID, like so before sending it to a friend:

https://at.tumblr.com/pizza-and-ramen/118684413624/uqndb20nkyob

https://pizza-and-ramen.tumblr.com/118684413624

Alternately, you could paste the link in your browser, allow it to redirect, then remove everything past the ? at the end, eg:

https://pizza-and-ramen.tumblr.com/post/118684413624/im-fucking-dying-this-is-hilarious?_branch_referrer=H4sIAAAAAAAAAxXEwQ2AIAwAwIlKH8aP21RQaaSAUIIyvZpczqvmuiCSGm2yhmJsEsw8BgFFB4Vki8gCe7MnxwPc86%2BeK3w8ByqcWsU7jHnql0u99xd0v%2FAuVQAAAA%3D%3D&_branch_match_id=1104914739086906151

https://pizza-and-ramen.tumblr.com/post/118684413624/im-fucking-dying-this-is-hilarious

Anyway, this has been my privacy rant of the day.  Thanks for reading, and let me know if you know more about this than I do!

and also it was an accident. you will absolutely not make me feel bad about an accident

i will not apologize to my sibiling whos done the same thing to me and never apologized you hypocrite