Also a Falconer Bard

Me in 2016: I’m still salty about that

Probably started by bringing her injured animals to doctor on as a kid. Later on, not necessarily a lot later, he started dragging in bullied disciples to patch up and hide from Wen Xu or somebody, and then probably he'd just kind of...fold a lot of them into his canonical personal retinue of loyal subordinates, however that worked exactly.

Wet kitten Wen Ning constantly dragging smaller wetter kittens back to his big sister to protect. She has tried all the arguments already. She knows there's no budging him.

Also lmaoooo hang on, Wen Ning had Wen Qing outnumbered a lot of the time, didn't he. She didn't have personal minions she could trust like that. These people just extracted a high-status prisoner from the custody of an erratic and violent superior pursuing a personal grudge without blinking, for their Wen-gongzi.

and i was like hmmn what did i say??

#they were supposed to watch his back! #and keep him busy! #and take a sword for him if the opportunity arose probably; wen ning wouldn't want that but wen qing would

#these unnamed subordinates with no lines are rapidly becoming my favorite mdzs supporting cast #like what did they think about the plot #wen ning got pressganged by jin zixun in the company of his subordinates #so some of them probably lasted all the way to the Siege

#there might have been a guy who personally carried jiang cheng out of the charnel house of lotus pier #or retrieved his parents' bodies from the corpse heap #and roughly four to ten years later#watched jiang cheng come to kill him #and had his corpse dumped in the blood pool #and knew for a fact that jiang wanyin did not even know he existed and wouldn't care if he did

#it all goes in circles and some of us get ground up in the gears

Wen Sect Leader Wen Ning lives rent free in my mind. Saves everyone from Wen Ruohan. Frees Wen Qing up to do her medical research to her little mad scientist heart's content. Makes Wen Yuan his heir. Depending on where it falls in the timeline, he can two-birds-one-stone reconciliation with the Jiang sect and getting rid of his own rivals by handing the likes of Wen Chao to them, or just prevent a bunch of tragedies altogether. Time traveling fix-it fic Wen Ning going hmm I wonder if I still have some corpse powers and then punching through his uncle's ribcage to test it.

like. you could not tell he was the kind of guy who would quietly and unapologetically rescue his sect's enemies out of moral conviction, but he was. people contain multitudes. so same way, in this scenario the political world is rocked by this mediocre, sweet-tempered, unassuming teenage Wen cousin purging the upper ranks of his family and usurping the sect by force.

Wen Qing's reputation before the war (at least the part Wei Wuxian bothered to recall) notably consisted of one part 'medical genius' and one part 'only normal person in the Wen leadership.' Wen Ning turning out to be the most insane murderer in his family would be accepted as narratively coherent, despite being a shocking twist.

bets would be on about whether he and Wen Qing would go on to kill each other off. i feel like they'd lose a lot of vassal sects and guest disciples on account of the sect doesn't seem as stable or powerful suddenly.

diplomatic relations would not normalize for a while, unless he managed to do this during the war so all the other sects felt it was a favor to them, because killing family members for power tends to be frowned upon. nie mingjue in particular i think would be of the opinion that Sect Leader Wen Qionglin was a mad dog.

which would baffle everyone, given they met once. and, huh, that interaction with Wei Wuxian championing this kid against his mean cousin, whom he went on to clear out of the way of his succession, would look really different suddenly in hindsight lmao.

if this was back far enough that the qishan indoctrination never happened, wwx wouldn't even feel more than moderate dislike toward wen chao lmao. he's just an especially obnoxious young master.

further thoughts: if Wen Ning did follow up impulsively killing Wen Ruohan with deliberately getting rid of Wen Chao and Wen Xu so as to carry off a coup, it would not be because he wants to be sect leader.

so to what extent would it be to protect Wen Sect, or at least people in it, from being run by Wen Xu, to what extent would it be to protect all the other sects from the possibility of Wen Sect still waging a war, and to what extent would it be to protect Wen Qing from the fallout of his murder?

i feel like the last part is not non-zero, given she died the first time because he punched someone to death.

but making the decision to double down on the violence in order to be able to control the outcome is a fascinating move, it is not even in the top five most likely reactions for him to have.

the characterization here would be so interesting to get right, because Wen Ning is so passive right up until he plants himself like a mountain, and he's never had to stay in mountain mode the way he would to pull this off. so he'd be taking leaves out of Wei Wuxian's book, deliberately.

but much as he admires him, he knows how comprehensively things wound up going to shit due to partly Wei Wuxian's choices (particularly the impulsive choice to reanimate Wen Ning's corpse to murder people) and is ultimately confident enough about rejecting wwx's reasoning to blow things wide open with Jiang Cheng.

so he'd have to be trying to copy Wei Wuxian's way of seizing control of the circumstances and do insane things because someone has to do them, while also applying his own sense of caution, and pursuing the idea that you can't just seize control when you want to and then let it go again, it's something you have to maintain.

ironically making him more like wen ruohan than he has any business ever becoming.

i think if he didn't tell Wen Qing everything he'd blow up.

but while he's more of a talker than Lan Wangji, he is not someone who uses a lot of words, or who would be good at explaining as large and complicated a story as this would be. so 'everything' would take a really long while to fill in.

Also consider Mikinakoos' as they're extending support beyond their traditional service areas due to the scale of this emergency!

Donations for Namaygoosisagagun First Nation:

Donations for Whitesand First Nation:

I have 45 usd oc commissions open ♡ I have 15 slots open!

I can not draw: real people (example: "can you draw me / my grandma / etc") as it is beyond my capabilities. Non humanoid characters, mecha, furry or helmed characters or characters with large horns that will not fit in the portrait aspect ratio.

You can purchase a comm here!

https://ko-fi.com/c/a0ddd9de2c

Anyway, she really, really loves it when I tell her stories. She loves stories anyway, and at first this manifested as "stories about Tad-Cu Bryn", aka my father (her grandfather) who died before she was born. This has been a lovely way to keep his memory alive, and she adores every story - she has her favourites, which she will request.

Then it became apparent that she specifically loves me telling her stories. She'll happily ask others for them too, but from me she just wants any anecdote at all; which of course is wonderful and demonstrates that she is a child of impeccable taste and wisdom and brilliance, but also she has ADHD and the energy reserves of a seven year old and so this gets Tiring very quickly

Yesterday, in the car on the way back from the wildlife centre, she asked for one of my longer stories, and I was like hey, how about we try something different?

And she was like, no, tell me a story about Tad-Cu Bryn

And I was like, this will be a brand new story and you get to play it and help me tell it

And she was like, explain

So I gave her three characters to choose from. The first was a warrior with a sword she could name, who was nonetheless dyspraxic. The second was a gymnastic elf who could commune with trees but was afraid of heights. The third was a dyslexic witch whose spells sometimes go wrong when she spells the words wrong.

She picked the witch. I pulled up an online d20 on my phone. I went to start, and she insisted my mother had to play as the elf.

So I told them that the new queen of the kingdom had called for them, because their palace treasury had been robbed - specifically, a single enchanted coin that brings luck and wealth to a ruler's reign had been stolen. And tales of enchanted coins were suddenly emanating from across the land, so each one needed investigating until the right coin was found.

It turns out kids who like stories will absolutely lap this shit up. She was enthralled. It was the simplest story - they had to get into a bank, revive some unconscious gnomes, then enter the vault, find the coin that had been deposited into it, then get back to the queen. Enough to fill a half hour car ride, basically, but she managed to fill it with all the wacky hijinks you get from a ttrpg, particularly when she tried to smash a door down with a hammer but rolled a 1.

We finished with the queen saying it wasn't the right coin, and then my niece demanded we go again, this time with her playing as a sapient reticulated python. That time we made it all the way to the final boss fight, which was a sorcerer who created a big coin monster out of loads of coins; I asked my niece what she wanted to do, and she described graphically how she wanted to constrict and eat the sorcerer and immediately rolled a 19. So, sure! Okay. The sorcerer is now very dead. The coin monster, though, was still there, and as my niece tried to say she would do the same thing, I was like, no, you're a snake and you just ate. You're now immobile.

At this point, my sister advised her to regurgitate the sorcerer.

Great! said my niece. I'm going to do it at the coin monster.

And rolled a 20.

So she projectile vomited a dead sorcerer into the coin monster, and won the day.

Anyway, today she immediately demanded we play "the game with the story where we choose", and my brother in law is now asking me how he can do this with her ("Are you making it all up as you go along??"). But yeah, turns out, this is a fantastic way to entertain a seven year old. Vague ongoing quest, then three steps: get into (place), resolve (minor puzzle), boss fight to finish. Boom. Easy.

Namaygoosisagagun First Nation/Collins has burned to the ground. The entire community is nothing but ashes after being quickly consumed by wildfires. They did not have any support from emergency services, and no one offered aid. The community saved themselves by escaping into boats because no one came.

Mishkeegogamang and Cat Lake have lost power. Families are ending up in shelters with nothing. Armstrong, Lac La Croix, Whitesand, Gull Bay, Lac des Mille Lacs are currently in the fires path and all members are being evacuated.

All this loss, all this devastation, and it was entirely preventable.

After steadily underfunding wildland firefighting and purposefully excluding Indigenous wildland firefighters and Indigenous wildfire organizations from wildfire operations, firefighter training, decisionmaking, and resource exchanges, in 2025, Doug Ford slashed the forest firefighting budget.

It's hard to ignore his decision to cut funding and leave us out of adequate fire training (even though we've lived with forest fires for thousands of years—far longer than settlers have been in Canada—and made sure fires like the ones we're all seeing today were prevented through kinisitotēn) when, despite making up less than 5% of the population, we account for 42% percent of all wildfire evacuations in Canada.

And when we are successfully evacuated, we face discrimination and racism—like Kashechewan—because it's always been easier to blame us than it is to blame the true culprit: denialism, corportate greed, and colonization.

The people of Collins and every other impacted community deserve better.

Right now, the AFN is currently accepting donations to help Collins First Nation. If you're able to, please consider donating.

ONWA (Ontario Native Women's Association) is another great place to donate to. They have outreach vans going to motels and inns and offering food, water, resources, and cultural support to those impacted by the wildfires.

Other places to consider donating to are Mikinakoos Emergency Fund, Red Cross, True North Aid, Indigenous Climate Action. You can also send donations directly to Whitesand First Nation via e-transfer ([email protected]) and they request that you add your full name in the e-transfer comment section to receive a tax receipt.

*Before sending money, verify that the appeal appears on an official First Nation, Tribal Council or registered charity channel.

If you can't offer financial support, please consider donating items of need. Moontime Connections is currently accepting drop-off donations. If you live in the Thunder Bay area, Namaygoosisagagun Health Office is also taking in donations! They can also bemailed to Superior Inn Hotel & Conference Centre at 555 West Arthur Street, Thunder Bay, ON, P7E 5P8.

items needed are: food, diapers, medical masks, men’s and women’s joggers (all sizes), children’s clothing (newborn to size 14), children’s shoes, summer clothing, men’s clothing, toiletries (lotion, Vaseline, toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo, conditioner, soap, deodorant, etc.), strollers, adult depends-all sizes, dog & cat food

Original recipe is here: https://www.wearesovegan.com/creamy-miso-coconut-butter-beans but the modified version in this post is betterrrr:

Ingredience:

olive oil

1 onion, peeled + sliced

1 can of cannellini beans*

1 can of chickpeas*

1 can of full-fat coconut milk

2 tbsp white miso paste

salt + pepper

100g (3.5oz) baby spinach

1 handful of fresh dill or parsley (I usually use parsley; The Beans are still delicious even with dried herbs, but use less)

1/2 lemon, juice only

some tasty fresh fuckin BREAD

*When I make a double batch (and I always make a double batch, you should too at least if you're cooking for a group) I do 3 cans cannellini beans and 1 can chickpeas-- I think this is the ideal ratio but it's not very practical to do in a single batch

Steps:

Drizzle a splash of olive oil in a large pan or pot on a low-medium heat. Next add the onion and cook for 6-8 minutes or until the onion turns translucent (you don’t want to brown the onion).

Add the beans - including all the juices from the tins - into the pan. Then turn the heat up and cook for 5-8 minutes or until some of the liquid has reduced. While you're waiting, here's some prep you can do in anticipation of later steps: A. Put the miso paste into a small bowl and ladle a bit of the hot liquid in. Stir it around to dissolve. (This saves you from intractable undissolved miso clumps in the final product later) B. Chop the herbs if you got herbs that need to be chopped

Pour in the coconut milk. (You can reserve a few dollops of the cream for topping later if you want to be fancy, but I never bother).

Stir in the miso paste (dissolve it first if you haven't already!) and a generous pinch of pepper, then cook for a minute. Go a bit longer if the broth seems too runny, but it's probably fine.

Stir in the spinach and cook for another minute until it has wilted.

Chop most of the dill/parsley if you didn't already (save a few leaves for topping later if you want to be fancy) then add the chopped dill into the pan along with the lemon juice.

Give everything a good stir, then taste the sauce and season with salt and more pepper, if necessary.

Remove the pan from the heat (and if you chose the Fancy Life, top with the remaining dill leaves, a splash of olive oil, freshly ground black pepper and dollops of the remaining coconut cream.)

Serve with toasted bread for dunking into the creamy beans oh my god do not neglect the bread dunking bread dunking is THE POINT.

Congratulations! You are now enjoying The Beans!

---

Doubled version of this recipe under the cut for my own benefit, so I can glance at it without having to remember to double everything:

It wasn't close I beat the pants off that man, and others like him. I did it more than once. Some guys got humble and stayed. One guy got angry and stormed out.

And I think about that every fuck damn time I hear that bullshit, which seems to be all the fuck over the place these days. Oh, women are just fragile little soft delicate flower creatures who can't do ANYTHING and could NEVER compete with big strong manly muscular strong MEN.

I think about driving that dude into the mats and seeing the brutal reality of this big dude's misogany meet the realization that a woman was beating his ass literally that second, that none of his strength could stop the fact that I'd just hip thrown him facefirst into the mats and that had I actually connected with the axe kick to his neck I would have crushed a bunch of important shit and he could not stop me, and his whole psyche collapsing like a dying star in that moment.