saw a fic the other day where Yanli was like "my husband's half-brother is creepy and horrible and I'm never letting him hold my baby" and I was just like ??????? umm ding dong you're wrong ???? like she wouldn't see this bundle of deeply familiar traits and traumas and just go "I'm going to take care of that small tired man whether he likes it or not :) :) :)"
The Book of Names lists each person murdered at Auschwitz
“but what if my friend gets offended and hates me and refuses to speak to me after i set a boundary” easy peasy! that is not your friend. hope this helps
look I know this looks like shit but I saw this tiktok and just. had to Jin Sibs it.
Mo Xuanyu loves this shit because he’s a gremlin who thrives off causing chaos.
Qin Su is in the weird position of being the JGS Bastard Elephant In The Room that the wider Jin family don’t really want to acknowledge, but also don’t want to upset in case she causes any more scandal, so for her, Jin family gatherings are low risk, high entertainment value.
Jin Zixuan struggles, because he was brought up to respect and care about the opinions of these people… but he also knows they’re awful… but he also hates drama and rocking the boat… but he also hates seeing his siblings treated shittily… mostly he is on Interrupt In A Loud And Timely Manner If People Are Being Assholes To Meng Yao duty
Meng Yao objectively has the worst time because he has basically designated himself the person who runs Interference for the siblings at gatherings, and he also really fucking hates confrontation, so does his best to keep the peace no matter how awful their relatives are to him… up until a point, when he’s exhausted enough not to give a shit anymore, and he retreats to a bathroom with a bottle of wine in each hand and his boyfriends on speed dial, and tells Xuanyu to do his worst.
more in this AU
Jiang Cheng with his little nephew Jin Ling.
artworks by 半场先生@weibo
A note taking method that blends the best of paper and digital note taking that I’ve been exploring lately. So far it’s working really well for me :) Hope it helps!
Each note taking system has its pros and cons. Here are some of the problems I found with (fully) paper and (fully) digital note taking systems.
Paper
Can’t use the search function on your notes.
Can’t add images and other types of digital files easily.
Difficult to keep overview between notebooks.
Can’t share these as easily as digital notes.
Digital
Not as ‘romantic’.
Sometimes less engaging.
Lack of physical presence can lead to you forgetting about it.
Can be more difficult to do things like sketching, making schemes, making illustrations etc.
Benefits of Hybrid
I like using hybrid methods because they bring you the best of both worlds.
Easily searchable.
Information in your notes is traceable.
Makes it easier to find and carry out actions e.g. finding extra info.
Doesn’t damage books.
Allows you to embed different types of files.
Source material (e.g. book, academic paper)
Any kind of notebook :)
Digital note-taking app → I like Notion (it’s free).
As you go, use a pencil to lightly put numbers into the margins whenever you deem something worthy of noting down or remembering. This will help you locate the source of specific parts of your notes later.
Write the information down in question-and-answer style. Come up with useful questions that link to the material you want to remember (e.g. Q → What is the main problem with using platform-based planning for new ventures? A → Assumptions underlying the plan are used as fact rather than best-guess estimates to be tested and questioned). Use the numbers you placed in the margin of the pages to specify the source of the information you used for each answer.
Example → Chapter 1 page 27 note 3 becomes 1.p27.3
Supporting notes
Write down your thoughts, anything you’re curious about, things you want to look up, things you’re confused about, actions you’ve been inspired to do, etc. For example → ?m Maybe I can apply this to my visualization assignment? / ! Look up what 'plurality of the future’ is / fex Organizational transformation through design. I find this a great way to support and manage the learning process.
Action key
Keep a small action key in which you have an overview of what your action marks mean (e.g. ?m→ questions to myself, f → find, fex → find example, ?? → I don’t get it, ! → general actions)
Don’t be afraid to customize your actions!
Actionable notes
Your paper notes will contain a structured and easy to read overview of actionable items that came up during the reading. This can be questions you need answered, reminders to find specific information, etc. This will make them a lot harder to forget to do!
Easily traceable sources
With the codes you’ll be able to tell easily and quickly where the information you’ve written in your notes came from.
Searchable & review-ready notes
Notes will be (mostly) made in question-and-answer style. This will allow you to easily review using active recall. All you need to do is cover/hide the answer and you can check how well you truly know the material.
Thanks for reading!
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.
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Resources For Creating Characters
Resources For Describing Characters
Resources For Writing The Mafia
Resources For Writing Royalty
Commentary on Social Issues In Writing
Guide to Character Development
How To Fit Character Development Into Your Story
Tips on Character Consistency
Designing A Character From Scratch
Making characters for your world
Characters First, Story Second Method
Tips on Character Motivations
31 Days of Character Development : May 2018 Writing Challenge
How To Analyze A Character
Alternative Method of Character Creation
Connecting To Your Own Characters
Interview As Your Characters
Flipping Character Traits On Their Head
Character Driven vs. Plot Driven Stories
Tips On Writing About Mental Illness
Giving Your Protagonists Negative Traits
Giving Characters Distinct Voices in Dialogue
Giving Characters Flaws
Making Characters More Unique
Keeping Characters Realistic
Writing Good Villains
Creating Villains
Guide to Writing The Hero
Positive Character Development Without Romanticizing Toxic Behavior
Tips on Writing Cold & Distant Characters
Balancing Multiple Main Characters
Creating Diverse Otherworld Characters
Foreshadowing The Villain
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