going to be predictable and wonder if song 7 or 70 works w anything yqy... otherwise i am shooting a dartboard and throwing... an long at 36! if you are inclined to write him :3
Okay so I did laugh very hard when I checked the songs you picked, because 70 was ‘Electric Weekend Zone’ by Flavor Foley, and all the ironic reinterpreting in the world could not make that a yqy song. HOWEVER. Number 7 was “IRIS OUT” by Kenshi Yonezu!! (Funnily enough, 36 is “Jane Doe” by Kenshi Yonezu and Hikaru Utada, also from the Chainsaw Man movie! I will set that on the backburner for darling An Long to see what I can work with!) That said:
I'm heartsick and it's painful
My head’s severed from my body
I love yous spew from my carotid artery and it's iris out
Yue Qingyuan’s death is slow enough that he can spare a moment to be amused, in the middle of it all. Truly, if only Shen Qingqiu had less of an eye for talent. It would be a student of his that discovered how to kill Yue Qingyuan—and in a way that so precisely mimicked Xuan Su’s bottomless, devouring greed, no less.
After all, Yue Qingyuan has been a corpse walking on broken legs for the better part of his life. Once the arrows came raining down, he had simply drawn his secondary sword, Gao Han, to etch protective arrays into the air and kept moving. The arrows would not slow him for a second, he had thought, and he was almost right. Even once his defenses failed, even when the first arrow pierced qi-reinforced skin through enchanted armor, Yue Qingyuan had kept walking.
Stab wounds feel at first like a blow before the body recognizes the intrusion and protests with shrieking, fiery pain. Both sensations are easy to ignore. It was only when that agony had bloomed into a curdling chill that Yue Qingyuan had registered the true nature of this trap, and despaired.
Yue Qingyuan is quite alone, discounting the archers above him (and, he imagines, Luo Binghe, watching from afar.) The shidimen who might have told him what this poison was or could have cured him are far-off. They do not even know he is here. A pang of regret strikes Yue Qingyuan in time with an arrow thudding through his left shin. Cang Qiong is likely to fall with him, and the remaining righteous sects with it. What a waste.
There you go again, says the voice of his shizun somewhere in the back of his head. Rushing in just to please nobody.
(Yue Qingyuan had been told—ordered, cajoled, pleaded at, screamed at—to ignore Shen Qingqiu’s letter of blood. The trap was too obvious, Luo Binghe’s grudge too deep. He hadn’t heard a word of it. His heart had been wailing too loudly in his throat to make out a thing over its lament.
His legs, Yue Qingyuan thinks he murmured. His lips were numb, but he remembers how the words seared his tongue on their way out. He broke his legs again.)
Even as the arrows tear through him, even as the poison eats through armor and robes and skin, Yue Qingyuan keeps moving. He does not know how to do anything but. He drops Gao Han and finally draws Xuan Su. For all their history, Xuan Su is still his sword—still his heart, forever aflame. It dances through the air like a phoenix, its aura alone enough to disintegrate the hail of arrows still coming down upon him.
But it isn’t enough. It’s never, never enough. Not when every swing of his blade wrings Yue Qingyuan’s soul like an old cloth and every beat of his heart sends the awful hooks of the poison deeper into his veins. The poison is corroding away his very flesh, leaving weeping pits across his body. And still Yue Qingyuan staggers forward.
Yue Qingyuan is being whittled away. It is a very distinct way to die, and one he is already familiar with. It is a diminishing. Pain has never grounded Yue Qingyuan; it only makes him feel unreal and stupid. He feels evanescent, like an exhale made visible in winter.
As a child, Shen Jiu had been particularly fascinated by that phenomenon. It was proof of life, a flag of perseverance even in the harshest, most miserable depths of the season. Yue Qi and Shen Jiu would huddle together and breathe into their cupped hands, ruing how the warmth of their breath turned to cold dampness against their frozen palms.
It was so cold, when Yue Qingyuan visited Shen Qingqiu in the Water Prison. He had been dressed in the thinnest, meanest robes—hardly befitting of a political prisoner, forget a peak lord—and his skin had been clammy from both the damp and from pain. It isn’t fair. Yue Qingyuan never wanted Shen Qingqiu to feel the cold or hurt like that again. (There he goes again, rushing in to save Xiao Jiu and failing to help anyone at all.)
Yue Qingyuan only stops once his limbs have been so ravaged that he can hold neither himself nor Xuan Su aloft, and it is only then that Luo Binghe calls off the arrows. Yue Qingyuan knows this because as soon as he falls to his knees in the fallow field which he has watered so richly with his blood, everything goes quiet and still, and then, between blinks, the half-demon himself is standing before him.
Yue Qingyuan does not resist when Luo Binghe pulls Xuan Su from his crumbling fingers. He would not, he thinks, even if he could. Its devastating radiance has turned feeble and sickly, finally reflecting the state of his wretched, fading life. But Yue Qingyuan keeps his gaze steady, and Luo Binghe does him the hideous courtesy of returning his regard.
There is only cool contempt in the man’s eyes. Tianlang-jun had not seemed contemptuous, not even when he was taunting the assembled sects before the cultivators turned the tide of their ambush to success. Yue Qingyuan does not blame Luo Binghe for his contempt now.
He does not hate Luo Binghe, he thinks. He had not hated him during the trial where he ripped open Shen Qingqiu’s history like the ill-written pages of a salacious yellow book rather than a poorly scarred-over wound. He had not hated him when he saw the terrible proof of how a student learns from their master in the Water Prison before Shen Qingqiu’s trial. He had not hated Luo Binghe even when Shen Qingqiu was declared guilty of too many crimes to count before the entire jianghu, and Luo Binghe had leered at Yue Qingyuan in triumph while Shen Qingqiu had not looked at him at all.
But he hates Luo Binghe now, for delivering this final proof that Yue Qingyuan will never, never be enough to save Shen Jiu.
Distantly, Yue Qingyuan is surprised that not one arrow pierced his throat. Perhaps a thing like him does not deserve such a quick ending. But it feels like something is choking him all the same.
Luo Binghe lingers to watch Yue Qingyuan die—perhaps to make sure that this time, it will take. Yue Qingyuan knows better to think this a mercy, and yet it comes as a relief all the same.
He lowers his gaze to Xuan Su as he bleeds out. He has the strange sense that Luo Binghe’s red eyes, too, have fixed on his sword rather than Yue Qingyuan himself; another mercy-that-is-not. Yue Qingyuan’s vision, already hazed by blood and pain, narrows until Xuan Su’s waning glow is all he can see, a candle guttering in the wind. Xiao Jiu, Yue Qingyuan thinks for the final time as that spark finally goes out, I’m sorry.
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3/4/8 for the asks! & i'm also just curious by the nature of the ask list if you do have a specific site/method of noting down the books you've read, and how you go about archiving them if you do (rating system, if you mark rereads, etc!)
3. What were your top five books of the year?
Answered here!
4. Did you discover any new authors that you love this year?
Natsu Hyuuga, author of The Apothecary Diaries :) I started reading the books in tandem with watching the anime, and WOW, it was so rewarding!!! I really do adore the blend of romance and mystery in the books, and the cast of characters and their voices are all so delightful to read <33 Also, I read Priest's "Qi Ye" and "Tian Ya Ke" and enjoyed them enough to consider reading some of their other famous titles! (Plus, I technically read my first Jane Austen book this year, and I enjoyed p&p enough to want to read more by her as well!)
8. Did you meet any of your reading goals? Which ones?
I've answered this question but don't wanna keep linking things at you, so I'll instead flip the question: yes, I hit my expected book count, but I didn't quite manage to read everything I wanted to! I kind of wanted to catch up with the released Apothecary Diaries light novels, but taking a break from them means I can be doubly insane about Maomao again when s3 starts dropping next year :) There were also a few books which were recommended to me that I never got to and intend to try next year! Lastly, I really need to get back into reading physical books, because audiobooks are great and all, but holy shit do I need to get better at focusing 100% of my attention on a book instead of driving/sewing/painting my nails while reading...
And aww hehe, that's a great question!! I don't do anything fancy at all, lmao, I just list book titles by month in my notes app every time I finish one! (If I start a book in one month and end in another, I try to mark it down by which month I read more of the book in XD) I don't rate books (because I don't think I'm very good at doing so), but I do mark full rereads by re-entering the book as a new entry :) Oh, and I keep a running tally of how many books I've read on the same note, just for my own ego <3
the thing about kuuga is that all the adults - godai, ichijou, sawatari, tsubaki, enokida (and thus the police) - are all working their utmost. this is a show about extraordinary times taking extraordinary effort, making people have to stretch and contort themselves, overexert in all aspects just to make due. but enokida's the only one of them with real obligations outside of this situation, and it's important that she is, and that she's a mother, and that she's too busy to see sayuru.
i feel like it would be easy for any show to dismiss her and call her a bad mom, i feel like less would go completely the other way and say she's not at fault at all. but, see, the problem isnt "fault"- she has to do this. not only because there's an existential threat at their doors making her work overtime, but also she's the sole breadwinner of her family and she wants to make good financial decisions. this is nobody's "fault". this is something she has to do, unambiguously. but while she does it- and this is crucial to me - kuuga understands children deserve respect.
enokida isnt only neglecting her promises as mother for ice cream, amusement park days, parent-teacher conferences- she's also avoiding addressing it at all to sayuru. it's meccha clear that this is a serious problem; she communicates flippantly to her mother (at times) but never ever to sayuru. and it's this communication with sayuru that .. not "fixes", but brings them closer together when the issue is actually brought to a head. enokida knows what she's doing isnt the best motherwise, but she knows the real issue is that she's avoiding sayuru himself as well. she knows she cant make any promises, but that's why she says she'll find something she can do for him without a promise. its why the thing that makes him cry is her telling him she loves him.
it's true. she cant stop what shes doing. she cant magically be home all the time. she admits she'll be busy as long as the ULF are active. she has to do her utmost, just like everyone else. she tells it all. but she'll try her best for him within that. and thats all sayuru needed to hear.
"she doesn't need to be a perfect mother, she just needs to be sayuru's mother."
I DIDN'T REALIZE YOU HAD CATS (re logan's blog)... DO YOU HAVE MORE PICTURES OF THEM PERHAPS <3
OHH FUCK YES I DO BESTIE !!!!!!!!! uhhh 726 according to my phone. i simply have the most wonderful and photogenic gatos you ever did see <3 heres some of my favorites just for YOU
the tuxedo cat is shadow and the tabby is babycat and they're my dearest friends <3 shadows a lazy bastard who is lying on my feet as i type this and babycat is the strangest goddamn creature ive ever met. her name is technically pepper but she's been called that maybe 3 times in her life. she's babycat
💌 been a while! but hi hi <3 hope you've been doing well. hmu about your soils anytime x']
HIIIIIII TOBIAS!!! omg where do I even start, there are so many awesome things about you!!! Like literally just in this ask you show a level of caring and attentiveness that most people would be hard pressed to put into action so often but you do it literally all the time!!! Whenever we talk you always remember all these little details about my interests or things happening in my life that I mentioned in passing and I'm always in awe a little bit cause the fact that you remember all these things not just for me but for everyone you interact with is so incredible and you do it in a way that's so natural too! You're really able to make others feel special so effortlessly (or at least it seems effortlessly hakfhsldjsk) and I admire that about you so much!!!!!
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first impression - mannnn this guy's sketchy as hell. gonna keep Sara as far away as possible, thank you very much.
impression now - OUGHHHH. what a deeply tragic character. there's something especially sobering about not getting to know a character until they're already dead and gone.
favorite moment - "This ... is resistance!" my first playthrough I was too devastated by Joe to properly appreciate Kai's final moments, but on replays ... woof. alternatively, when he finally breaks in the Main Game as his role is revealed. it's incredibly sad but BOY does it hit hard!
idea for a story - I'd love to see a chat between Kai and Hinako, two people who have never known anything but the organization they're ultimately betrayed by. him meeting any of the dummies could be interesting to see where his priorities lie in the human vs doll debate too ...
unpopular opinion - I don't think he's coming back in 3-2 lol. I'm sure we'll learn more about him but I think he's good and gone; his death would lose some meaning if it turned out to be a fakeout.
favorite relationship - moreso what could have been but ... Kai and Sara sibling aus live in my head rentfree ...
favorite headcanon - I love him being a hacker/tech guy on the side ... Kai and Shin being the only characters who know how to use a computer real.
Mishima is actually a fantastic singer! Going out to karaoke bars with his coworkers is what ended up endearing them all to him. He's been pressured by students and teachers alike to perform for school festivals (Not that he minds). He isn't so good with instruments because he's not the most well coordinated person, but he still likes to borrow keyboards from the school music room to practice.
♥ - family headcanon
The yougest child and only son, has 3 older sisters. His mother is from Australia and they took occasional trips to visit family when he was younger. He grew up speaking both English and Japanese at home, and while he wants to learn the Aboriginal language his grandmother spoke, he has trouble finding resources. His father has some kind of high-paying job like an attorney or doctor, their relationship is strained but has improved slightly over time. His art studio was property inherited from his father's side of the family, he was the only one who was willing to fix it up and make use of it rather than selling it.
▼ - childhood headcanon
[Hits him with the "undiagnosed ADHD/Autism childhood" beam] He's always had a lot of trouble fitting in with other people, and has been through a lot of changes to try and make up for it. From being the overly-friendly type to being shut off and abrasive, it took him a while to start to find a balance between being happy with himself and making other people feel comfortable. Joined a ton of clubs and honor societies in school to try and make connections, then quit them all due to burnout. He got along well with his oldest sister, who was also more of the artsy type, and his mother, and spent most of his time outside of school and extracurriculars helping out with domestic work or doing crafts with them
this is kind of out of the blue, but i really love your style! especially with faces. the semi-realism while still keeping the expressions so energetic/animated/...well, expressive, and keeping it natural to your style is so cool & inspires me. i really like seeing how you differentiate face and eye shapes. hope you have a good day :]
