pratik telling akarsha about the snail race he won at school 🐌
passports…should not expire
Please, for the love of god, please don’t be this person. No matter how long it’s been since an update, no matter how many unfinished stories are sitting on their account, no matter what - do not be this person.
Not only is it insanely rude, but you also do more damage than you think be being such a self-entitled ass about something someone created for free and for fun. “This author” can see what you say.
RIP decency indeed.
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.
So I watched the Chinese dub of Arcane for the first time...
Unsurprisingly, lines like 'what will it be, man or woman?' were tweaked to remove any gay implications.
What's funny is Caitlyn's brothel girl is straight up flirting with her now? And the audio is loud and clear unlike in English where its hard to tell what they're talking about???
My translation: I've been here several times now, and couldn't find anyone decent*... so when I saw you, it was as if I'd came across treasure!
*or 'good enough' or 'adequate'? hard to translate but you get the gist
this scene is bery VERY wenzhou coded
Nihuang my beloved finally competed her. The face is a little messed up in the photo somehow. The little armour details was a real test of patience.
Ma Xiuying from the Radiant Emperor duology!
Design/research notes under the cut
The characters read 馬秀英 (Pinyin: mǎ xiù yīng), her personal name, and 孝慈高皇后 (xiào cí gāo huáng hòu), her name as Empress.
There's certainly no dearth of material on Chinese clothing history out there. That is, if you can read Chinese, which I can't, so everything I have is from secondary and tertiary sources and/or relies on translation software. Fortunately, we're dealing with historical fantasy here, so some anachronisms are not only allowed but encouraged.
While Shelley Parker-Chan takes many liberties, the books are still set in a very specific time period, which is both a blessing and a curse. Most readily accessible resources will tell you about dynasties, which can span hundreds of years, and the duology takes place in a transitional period. So how to dress a Semu girl from the Yuan dynasty who lives with Nanren rebels wanting to revive the Song dynasty and who later becomes the first Ming empress?
Let's go through them one by one. The best resource was this book which is on the Internet Archive. I disregarded Mongol and Semu influences for the design since clothing is very much political and a way to either stand out or fit in with the surrounding society, see for example Wang Baoxiang wearing a topknot in Khanbaliq. Ma, I imagine, would want to fit in with the Nanren around her, so she's pretty much wearing the attire of Han women under Yuan rule. For the hair I went for something that looks youthful while being plausible, though I found very little on hair in this period, so who's to say.
The next one is from a specific scene in the book, so there is some description to go on: red, long sleeves with gold embroidery, high hair, red and gold ribbons. Since this is the scene where Ma declares herself queen and future empress in front of the Red Turban, it has to be a very deliberate dress. It therefore takes inspiration from Song aristocrats' broad-sleeved gowns as well as from 翟衣 (dí yī), the highest ceremonial gown of both Song and Ming empresses. (Some examples for 翟衣 are in this post, which also features the bird shaped crown I just had to include, and this post.) Her hair still has the loops, but it's much more sculpted.
Finally, Empress Ma! This is mainly based on the two actual portraits I could find of the historical figure that Ma is based on, with elements taken from other portraits and paintings. It includes 凤冠 (fèng guān), the phoenix crown, 霞帔 (xiá pèi), the sash, and 禁步 (jīn bù), the jade belt. This video shows how Ming dynasty layers are worn, but it refers to a much later period so it's not quite the same as Ma's.
(Some additional, historically irrelevant notes: I realized too late that a right-to-left timeline might be more appropriate. Oh well! Also, how the colours photograph frustrates me, I swear I did not make her this deathly pale. And finally, some of the characters look a bit smudged because my cat spilled water on them. I did what I could to save them.)
my kitty cat has the biggest prettyest most big beautoful wet eyes i’ve ever seen….. but i know it’s alljust a trick. shes going to bite me
Even about Li Lianhua, Fang Duobing got tricked successively at the start but he learnt so quickly? He caught on so quick so that Li Lianhua's many deceptive efforts later on mostly fail?
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.)