Clever Manka is dressed and undressed

This week's dump on cm.net.

Guardian-ish Twitter:
A thread of Zhu Yilong with that delightful ponytail that he hated so much and a gif of him looking Quite Intense. *fans self*
I laugh every time I see people talk about how "thic" Bai Yu and Zhu Yilong are/were. I love his muscles, but the man is not thic, y'all.
Zhu Yilong from an old promotional shoot sure is something.
Fanart: Domestic happiness with Da Qing.

Untamed Twitter:
If people believed Lan Sizhui was Lan Wangji's biological son.
glymr 's thoughts on Nie Huaisang's feelings about using Lan Xichen for endgame.

General Twitter:
"when i listen to 'Kiss Me' by Sixpence None The Richer i am transported to when i was an angsty suburban caucasian girl who had a crush on the star QB. is this how white people feel about rap songs? i get it now. this is lit." The responses to this tweet are hilarious and bring on some lovely 90s nostalgia.

Someone named Space_Fucker left kudos on Binary System. XD

I'm in the process of preparing the first chapter of Ghost Story for posting tomorrow. So! Exciting!

A fairly small Untamed collection today.

Twitter:
The sheer physicality of the scene where Shen Wei catches a swooning Zhao Yunlan--the strength and trust required for that--is just staggeringly erotic.

I am mortally offended that I cannot immediately purchase this calendar. If anyone knows where I can do so in a reasonable manner, please let me know.

A lovely thread on Jiang Yanli from The Untamed.

Let me be clear, I hate paparazzi photos and other pics where it's obvious someone snapped a photo of a celebrity in a private moment but I also need to tell y'all I had an Actual Meltdown when I saw this pic and video of Zhu Yilong smoking. My smoking kink is apparently strong enough to overpower the angel of my better nature because when I say Actual Meltdown, I'm not shitting you, even I was embarrassed for me. It was bad.

Neither Guardian or Untamed related, but this clip of RM (from BTS) is just... The dude is fucking talented.

Would someone (looking in bonibaru 's direction) tell me what is the significance of Xiao Zhan singing ABBA? I am obviously missing out on a delightful cultural reference here and it's killing me.

naye, I got your card yesterday and it moved my heart of stone to tears. Actual, legit tears. Thank you thank you thank you. It made me feel so good. I love fandom as a thing, and I love the fandoms I'm in, and the fact that Guardian fandom has been so welcoming and friendly to me is just... it's really great. *warm fuzzies*

Speaking of cards, I am getting a new airbrush for my birthday! It's scheduled to arrive by this weekend so perhaps I will be motivated to work on those cards I promised everyone Actual Ages Ago. The brush itself cost twice as much as the entire rig I got last year, so it had better be more reliable. At least the old one came with a good air compressor so it wasn't a complete waste.

Writing is not coming easily lately and I'm not sure why. Uncertainty about character motivation for one is definitely a problem for one (the History 3: Trapped PWP) but I don't know why Deconstruction is giving me such a hard ti.... oh, oh yeah I do. Never mind, ha ha! Typing it out made me realize--I've got everything but the last chapter and epilogue of Ghost Story back from beta so my brain really wants to stay there where the water is nice and warm and soft and easy and doesn't involve creating new stuff. Revisions, y'all. I like revising soooo much more than writing. sigh. Welp.

At least I got my sundial_exchange  fic uploaded!

*puts on headphones and big girl pants to get cracking on Actual Writing*

This week’s collection is Tuesday, December 10: The Untamed.

One Guardian Twitter find: 
"I Wish to Lie to Get Out of Trouble But I Can't Lie to Someone This Hot" Scroll up to start at the top of the thread tho.

And one Untamed Tumblr find:
Someone read and wrote down all those Lan Clan rules.

I'm waaaay too many words into the fic currently titled Voyeur (working title but I kinda dig it). Exposition! Exposition as far as the eye can see /o\ I mean, it's a tricky thing to avoid in a story that contains only one person and no dialogue, but 2k  words of it? Ha ha ha ha ha NO. I'll be culling that, but here's a paragraph that'll probably stay:

Caught in the too-familiar conflict between his desires and his duties, he groaned into the empty apartment. He was so tired of fighting—fighting to conceal his identity, fighting his own people, fighting his desires. He stepped back toward the bed and flexed his hands, knowing what he was going to do, regardless of ethics or morality. It was wrong, it was a violation—a betrayal of trust. But too many years, too many instances of denial, too much loneliness and loss made him weak. Kneeling on the mattress, he reached for the pillow in the middle of bed, sunk his hands into it, and greedily pulled the memories into his mind.

While I was cleaning art space this weekend, I found transcriptions of the magnetic poetry I wrote on my fridge in the beloved old apartment (the one I used as a base for Ghost Story). Twenty-something me was not all that much different from nearly-fifty me for rolling around in The Feels. I might post those tomorrow.

Today's Guardian spam on Tumblr starts at 10a US CST. New posts on the hour until 2pm (of 3pm if any new ones cross my dash before then). That link won't work until the first group posts, btw.

Found on Twitter, in good time for my finishing the SecretVirgin!ZYL fic.

I signed on to read some of my fic at an event sponsored by my former graduate students. One of them (one who watched Guardian =D) is the organizer for the grad students' creative writing readings program and decided that the last event of 2019 would be all fanfic. I'm not reading any explicit porn (explanation below), so I'll pick something from Ghost Story, most likely one of the scenes with Zhao Yunlan, Zhu Hong, and Da Qing. My biggest concern is asya_ana 's language guide only has the cheaty (non-IPA) pronunciations for Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan. I mean, I'm pretty sure I'm okay on both of them, but I'd like to confirm. Can anyone please (literally) spell those out for me?

People have sorta ribbed me about not reading my porn aloud (like I can be shamed or something), but I don't want someone recording parts and them showing them out of context. Fic gets enough shitty press as it is. Not gonna feed into that mentality. If anyone ever wants to schedule a reading in someone's house where all agree there will be no recordings, I will absolutely read aloud anything I've written. That rim job in Lollipop was lovingly rendered, damn it, and I'm very proud of it! =D

Speaking of writing, I got nearly 2k words done for Ghost Story yesterday and realized I'd neglected to insert an important plot point. Whoops! So unless my beta encourages significant cuts, this fic is looking at hitting 80k words. Also, this is why I can't imagine posting as I write.

Gonna finish The Untamed either today or tomorrow. Episodes 38 and 39 are rough, y'all. I'm unclear on exactly what was going on with Lan Zhan and Lan Xichen's parents. I got the jist, but Lan Xichen seemed a little chill about the whole thing if my understanding was correct. Lan clan is uncomfortably chill about a lot of things, tho, so...

Stull Cemetery, about half an hour from where I live, is a famous gate to hell. It's rumored to be why Lawrence, KS, was chosen as Dean and Sam's hometown in Supernatural.

This week's collection is Tuesday, October 29: Cemeteries.

This Guardian Twitter thread is 100% accurate. The "don't you dare try to fckin sacrifice yourself again you stubborn mf" line could be the show's tagline (or, more appropriately and likely perhaps) an episode title.

The new OTW icon that showed up in my email this morning (see icon) made me laugh so hard I actually cried. Don't piss off the combo of lawyers and librarians, y'all. Especially lawyers and librarians who are mostly women.

Got my Bingo card!


This week's Tumblr collection is Tuesday, October 15: Floors.

This week's collection is Tuesday, September 24: Cher.