Sheng Lingyuan’s smiling expression remained unaltered, as if it were mere decoration drawn on his skin, and black mist curled up around him, mingling with the steam. He tilted his head, looking down with a face like some sinister, wicked god, and reached out a hand to straighten the Dowager Empress’s crooked hairpin.

exhibit #whothefuckevenknows of my primary, secondary, and tertiary reaction to sheng lingyuan's particularly unhinged moments is "that's hot"

LISE!!!

Drowning Sorrows in Raging Fire is on Rosmeis List! Aaaaaah!

Now I just have to figure out how to order it. If this is the thing that makes me get a paypal account I'm very okay with it.

I SAW I don't think that it's available for ordering yet (unless I'm missing something) but I'm here fluttering around checking repeatedly to see if there are updates about it

aloha lise! i've been following you for years and i realize we somehow always end up in the same fandoms or i enjoy most of the stuff you "promote" on your tumblr! so because of your impeccable taste, i would like to ask if you have any recommendations for books and shows?

(i very much enjoyed mcu (mostly loki and stoki thanks to you HAHA), mdzs, cql, tgcf, svsss, lymond chronicles, doctrine of labyrinth...many of the same fandoms that you are in and i got to know and like many of them thanks to you!)

hello and thank you! I certainly have well-defined tastes at the very least. I have fun and that's what matters

as far as recommendations go...oh lord anon, I read...a lot, and watch somewhat less but have still watched a lot of things, and mostly the things I do fandom for are a smaller subset of the things I like. so I almost don't know where to start with this? I guess right off the bat I'm presently rewatching The X-Files which I'm very much enjoying, and if you haven't Kinnporsched yet you might give it a try. outside of that...I wrote a recs list a long time ago that was basically "my personal 'essential fantasy/scifi' list" and favorite books/favorite books of the decade posts. You can also check my #book recs tag or my #book starter kits tag.

if you haven't read The Silmarillion I'll throw The Silmarillion on here too even though it has next to nothing in common with the other things on the list you gave. I recently finished reading the Green Bone Saga by Jane Fonda and definitely recommend that. if you hang around this blog on a regular basis I've started doing monthly reading recaps going over everything I read in the prior month and a snapshot of my thoughts on it, so there might be some recs in there for you, too.

if you enjoyed MXTX's works I will recommend trying out some other danmei, of which there are...very many. I'm a big fan of 2HA or Husky and his White Cat Shizun, which is...being published officially, though slowly, and unfortunately never had a complete alternate (human) translation online. I'm really enjoying QJJ which is basically a historical epic of war and political intrigue in the classical style that happens to have gay main characters.

I'm reading LHJC and have been enjoying it but the translation has gone quiet for a while and is incomplete. :(

this is all fiction and also reading material...I read a lot of nonfiction as well. I do watch things once in a while but really I'm very bad at it. several things on my list that I'm sure I'll enjoy when I eventually get to them but just. haven't yet. of course right now I am forgetting everything I have ever watched in my entire life. Princess Mononoke and The Last Unicorn are foundational movies that shaped my personality. Le Chevalier d'Eon is the weirdest anime nobody else I know has ever seen. I've really enjoyed what I've seen of Kingdom and My Country: The New Age but haven't yet finished either.

lord, what other shows/movies have I even watched

when I’m talking about how I want notes on my translations just so we’re clear this is what I’m talking about

ah yes. normal and non-troubling things for a person to say

do love a man who can make an extreme, borderline absurd threat in a complete deadpan. and you know he can follow through, too

from the perspective of chapter 64 in the novel, 😬😬😬

There were still heaps of white bones under his feet; there was no end to them. He couldn’t help but ask, “How many corpses are here?”

Sheng Lingyuan: “Forty-one thousand, six hundred and thirty-six.”

“… Ah?” Xuan Ji was tongue-tied for a while. “That can’t be, their arms and legs are all over the place. How did you know, did you count the heads?”

“Of course I knew,” Sheng Lingyuan said with an indifferent tone. “I killed them myself.”

oh okay

“People said that Emperor Qizheng, who was iron-blooded and ruthless, was a temperamental lunatic. He was born during the bloodbath between his father and elder brother, and was born with bad luck. They also said that he murdered his mother, his teacher, burned many books, forbade freedom of speech, liked flattery, loved going to wars, and persecuted the honest and the virtuous.”

so Drowning Sorrows in Raging Fire is off to a promising start

“Were gods only fit to sacrifice themselves, to be taken apart and consumed by monsters, so the only thing that could defeat the monsters was an even more vicious and cruel demon?”

have the strangest feeling that this is some kind of thesis statement here 🤔

get you a boy who can and will stick his fingers through someone’s skull even as he’s being cut to ribbons by the spell meant to control him. just saying

so far my LHJC experience has been like...reading along, enjoying myself, having a good time but not super strong feelings and then priest just absolutely fucking decks me out of nowhere

Electricity flashed throughout Aluojin’s body. Like an old ragdoll that was falling apart at the seams, he said in a voice as quiet as a whisper, “Otherwise, how could the words of the Sombre Sacrifice wake you? You’ve been shackled by humans since you were born, neither your life nor death could be tolerated by the order of the world… Do you not resent?”

Before Aluojin finished speaking, he started crumbling along the cracks of the black spiderweb-like lines.

“Your whole life,” he stiffened, and only a low raspy sound managed to escape from his throat, an unearthly smile froze upon his face. “Left with nothing… have you had a single day…of happiness…”

Sheng Lingyuan didn’t answer, just closed his eyes.

SNIPED. that’s just not fair, ma’am, you have to give a gal warning before doing that