Reading

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Guardian Readalong: Vol. 3, Bonus Stories: The Mountain Spirit

Welcome aboard for this week's extra in our Guardian readalong!

are last week's extras. You can find all previous discussions on the schedule posts (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5), or via the !readalong tag.

Summary: Jianghu wanderer Shen San is injured while saving someone, falls down a cliff, and finds himself in the care of a beautiful ~~immortal~~ yao, who nurses him back to health. He soon finds himself entirely smitten. Returning as promised after taking care of unfinished business, he finds the cottage empty. Three years later, having made a home there, Shen San discovers his yao-xiong has been secretly around all this time. They settle into domesticity, disrupted only by a book of erotica and Shen San falling ill. Before Shen San dies, he promises to come back in his next life and find him again. Afterwards, the newly-named Shen Wei hunts down the original Soul-Guarding Order, which Shen San had given away, and unseals Daqing so Daqing can take care of Kunlun's reincarnations.

The corresponding part in the Chinese version/the fan translation is the "Shen San" extra.

Excerpts:
I could have quoted everything! But I managed to restrain myself. *g*

( 1) Shen San, jianghu wanderer )

( 2) Human, immortal, yao? )

( 3) Shen San has a revelation )

( 4) High literature )

( 5) A promise )

Questions:

What do you think about Shen San? How much is he like Kunlun, or like Zhao Yunlan? Do you think Shen San and his yao-xiong ever managed to make proper use of that book of erotica? *g* How do you feel about the tragedy of it all? Should Wei have resisted harder? Can you make sense of how the parts about the Soul-Guarding Order fit with everything else? Which parts of this extra have parallels in the drama?

(As usual, these are just conversation starters - feel free to answer all, some, or none, and to say as much or as little as you like!)

Our schedule - only one more extra to go! Sign up if you'd like to host it!

Current Mood: tired

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Weekly proof of life: mostly media

Reading:

scruloose and I finished listening to Artificial Condition and have started Rogue Protocol (but only barely--we've listened to however much of chapter 1 we could get in over supper on Friday before

scruloose had to be doing something else).

We'll Prescribe You a Cat (Syou Ishida) was a very quick read and hard for me to pin down. It's a story in the vein of "~mysterious~ place provides X [often wishes granted or strange/deadly creatures, as in xxxHOLiC or Pet Shop of Horrors], but the actual cats being prescribed mostly appear to be just ("just") cats. I think this is the first in a series. Alas, I find the prose of the translation awfully flat, and can only hope I would've found the book more engaging in different hands.

I also read The City in Glass, which was my first time reading Nghi Vo. Gorgeous prose, a neat concept, and a great read overall.

Watching: We're six episodes into The Summer Hikaru Died (which is, I suppose unsurprisingly given the premise, touching on a significant existential question from Newsflesh [and from plenty of other places]). It continues to be very good. ^_^

I think we also saw an ep. of Silo sometime last week.

And on Friday I started watching Glass Heart on my own. As so often turns out to be the way, choosing it from my horrifying to-watch list was mostly random. Sometimes the choice is made simply because something is short (ten episodes, in this case) and I've seen several friends talking about it very recently. I'm six episodes in now.

I knew going in that Machida Keita is in it (who I knew only from Cherry Magic). I did not know in advance that Satoh Takeru is one of the leads, and then couldn't place him until I caved and looked up the cast. (He played Kenshin in the live-action Rurouni Kenshin movies [of which I've still only seen the first], and was impossibly good in the role. I keep meaning to rewatch the first and watch the others, despite my feelings about the franchise overall being irrevocably poisoned now by the horrible revelations about the creator. I still need to offload my set of the manga. >.<)

Weathering: The drought continues. Parts of the province are on fire, although the uncomfortably-close-to-me wildfire is under control, last I heard.

Planning: We don't have tickets yet, because there aren't yet showtimes for it, but the plan is to see Dongji Rescue late in the week. *fidgets*

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Update (mostly about fannish projects)

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Some JP BL drama cd stuff

Due to a recent conversation with a friend, I went to check some of the recent Morikawa Toshiyuki BL drama cd works, and hey, he is still active!

The context was a discussion about how JP BL (well, that and dangai) tend to cast less known actors, sometimes newbie actors, which means the acting is usually kind of stilted. I said that I wish more experienced actors will also do BL, but it's usually seen as a stepping stone to better projects and not something they will do once they get more popular.

And so I said, "Explain Morikawa Toshiyuki."

(Context: Morikawa Toshiyuki is a very well known veteran JP voice actor, famous for roles like FF7's Sephiroth, JJBA's Kira, Berserk [1997 version]'s Griffith, etc.).

To which my friend replied, "Probably because he likes banging new bottoms."

(Context: He was [idk if still is] known as the Emperor of BL [Teiou, 帝王] because he is usually the first voice actor other voice actors get paired with in a BL work, and he has a long, long list of past works XD).

Then both of us were like, wait a min, is he still doing BL drama cds?

And so I checked, and he is! There's an upcoming BL drama cd where he's the top, and Maeno Tomoaki is the bottom (my voice preference is actually Maeno Tomoaki x Morikawa Toshiyuki but this is fine), Afterglow (release date: 2025/09/24). It's gonna be a yakuza story, painful and serious in tone. Looking forward to it (if only I can remember to somehow acquire it when it's out).

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Bleach fic

Limbo (1014 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Bleach (Anime & Manga)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Kira Izuru & Matsumoto Rangiku, Kurosaki Ichigo & Kurosaki Isshin
Characters: Kira Izuru, Matsumoto Rangiku, Kurosaki Ichigo, Kurosaki Isshin, Tia Harribel
Additional Tags: Bittersweet, Grief/Mourning, Post-Winter War (Bleach), Awkward Conversations, Angst
Summary:

Three different shared griefs, in three different places.

The Ordinary Ever After Part (5552 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Bleach (Anime & Manga)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Ayasegawa Yumichika/Madarame Ikkaku
Characters: Madarame Ikkaku, Ayasegawa Yumichika
Additional Tags: Fluff, Slice of Life, Established Relationship, Humor, Smut, Post-Thousand Year Blood War Arc (Bleach)
Summary:

A series of moments in Ikkaku and Yumichika's life together.

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Icon Drop June and July

Here are the icons I made in June and July - most of them are HPI, and most of them were made for

land_of_art. Hope you enjoy!

Teasers:

( 58 total, most of those HPI )

Comments are love - and concrit, too. <3 Take and use as many icons as you like, credit is appreciated. Texture and brush makers: here in my resource post.

Previous icon posts:

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!event

Guardian Wishlist 2025 coming soon!

Just a reminder that Guardian Wishlist 2025 is opening for business at

guardian_wishlist on 28 August!

This gifting fest runs along the lines of

fandomtrees and its ilk, but is specifically for Guardian (show, novel, and RPF) and related fandoms (main actors' other roles). It works like this:

People sign up with a wishlist of prompts and things they'd like to receive. Requests can include any media, including transformative works like fic, art, icons, vids, podfic, and also picspams and meta, translation advice, related music links, ~~lollipops, branches from a Divine Tree, wisps of Chaos, powerful ancient artefacts~~ anything.
Anyone can write, draw, record, or otherwise create gifts for any sign-up. Gifts can be posted directly in comments (which are screened until reveals) or to an AO3 collection. Gift posting continues right up until reveals. There are no minimums for gifts.

We'll be back closer to the date with updated rules and guidelines (all announcements and such are crossposted here on

sid_guardian), but here is this year's schedule again:

28 August: sign-ups open
5 September: first wishlists posted
15 September: sign-ups close
16 September: final wishlists posted
6 October (Reunion Festival): gifts revealed

And if you haven’t, come check out our participation poll in our initial announcement post!

Girl Genius for Friday, August 15, 2025

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20250815

The Girl Genius comic for Friday, August 15, 2025 has been posted.

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20250815

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Legend of Yunxi

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Obon fic: キズ: Red Skies [Lime+Yue; R]

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Poll: Drugs and lollipops (drama 'verse)

Poll #33486 Drugs and lollipops

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 15

View Respondents

Where does Wang Zheng get the drugs to sedate the others in the mountains?

View Answers

she bought them online before leaving Dragon City
7 (50.0%)

she raided Lin Jing's drug stash at the SID
2 (14.3%)

she raided Da Qing's drug stash at the SID
1 (7.1%)

she found them in Zhu Hong's luggage (along with the syringe of resurrection juice)
0 (0.0%)

she gathered local traditional herbs in the mountains
7 (50.0%)

she slipped out and procured them from a local healer in the village
4 (28.6%)

other
0 (0.0%)

Second best time Zhao Yunlan offers someone a lollipop (the first is YOHE!Shen Wei, obviously)

View Answers

Guo Changcheng upon his arrival at the SID (ep 1)
5 (41.7%)

Zheng Yi when she's in hospital (ep 12)
2 (16.7%)

Cong Bo upon his recruitment (ep 14)
3 (25.0%)

Ying Chun at their first meeting (ep 21)
2 (16.7%)

random lab tech at the Inspectorate (ep 30)
1 (8.3%)

Da Qing, when Zhao Yunlan goes to retrieve xiao-Guo and Shen Wei from Dixing (half-eaten lollipop) (ep 33)
3 (25.0%)

other
0 (0.0%)

When you read "SID", do you mentally hear it as

View Answers

sid
7 (46.7%)

S.I.D.
9 (60.0%)

Special Investigation Department
0 (0.0%)

other
0 (0.0%)

(no subject)

😔 Another month when I have to ask for help with rent again. (My landlord lets me split it into two payments, but uh the second payment is coming up fast)

A GoFundMe for keeping my business (and me) afloat.

Girl Genius for Wednesday, August 13, 2025

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20250813

The Girl Genius comic for Wednesday, August 13, 2025 has been posted.

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20250813

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Restroom of Terror [Sasaki/Miyano; PG]

Title: Restroom of Terror
Fandom/Pairing: Sasaki to Miyano - Sasaki/Miyano
Summary: There are strange rumours at Miyano's school, whispers that Hanako, or some other ghost, has moved into the all-boy's school. Of course, Miyano gets the honour of investigating the matter...
Rating: PG
Content: Teenage boy romance, ghosts, spooky stuff...
Disclaimer: I did not create these characters, they belong to Harusono Shô. I'm just borrowing them to act out my fantasies, while not earning any money whatsoever from it.
Notes: 1700+ words. It's just a little ghost story for Obon 2025... Many thanks to my friend

zabimitsuki for cheering me on and beta-reading this piece for me. :)

Read it here: DW | AO3

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Obon fic: Sasaki to Miyano: Restroom of Terror [Sasaki/Miyano; PG]

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Wednesday is on holiday

This week I'm starting to really see the effect of being on holiday. My brain is starting to wake up, so not everything needs to be an easy read anymore.

Recently read

Mina V. Esquerra, What Kind of Day. DNF at 56%. For some reason I was utterly bored. Also, Naya (the FL) was annoying. Meh.

Ginn Hale, Lord of the White Hell: Book 1 & Lord of the White Hell: Book 2. Heavy-handed at times, both in world-building and in characterization, but I enjoyed these nonetheless. Still, by the time I had finished these I was more than ready to leave Kiram behind, so it's a good thing the next part of the series switches protagonists. Yay, more Elezar (bastard though he is).

William Marx, The Hatred of Literature. Very much NOT an impartial, dispassionate account.
If the accusation of immorality leveled at literature is among those that continue to elicit a response and still today serve to justify the banning of various books, it is because this accusation primarily concerns childhood and education and raises the image of readers who are defenseless before the representation of evil ... The ethical judgement an individual is supposed to be able to exercise in a real situation ... is considered to be lacking when that same person is confronted with a literary text: literature apparently deprives the reader of moral autonomy, which is why readers should be emancipated from literary custody.

I think "which is why readers should be emancipated from literary custody" is my new favourite. Marx is often so delightfully sarcastic.

Tero Tähtinen, Kuunkajoa lootuslammella (Moonlight in the Lotus Pond). An essay collection on Chinese literature.

Lynn Flewelling, Luck in the Shadows. Queer fantasy from the 90s. Lately, I've found two new-to-me fantasy series from the 90s, both of which first drew me in because of their queer protagonists and both of which I ended up loving for more than that. The first was Melissa Scott's Astreiant series; the second is this, the Nightrunner series.

Back in the 90s, I was still reading exclusively in Finnish, so books that had no Finnish translation never appeared on my radar. And then, later, I never even heard of either the Astreiant or the Nightrunner series, until very recently. With Astreiant, I saw a couple of recs on Bluesky this spring, but I can't remember how I heard about the Nightrunner. Somehow it just appeared in my want-to-read shelf on Goodreads. It's a mystery. But it begs the question: how many other fantastic older fantasy books am I not reading simply because I've never even heard of them?

Luck in the Shadows, the first part of the seven-part Nightrunner series, features the swashbuckling adventures of Alec and Seregil, a pair of spies who try to uncover treasonous plots and oppose the rise of old evil, guided by their wise old wizard handler. It's got a very 90s feel, for obvious reasons, which I felt was a draw rather than a deterrent. :D

The epub file has a lot of errors though: mostly random dots in the middles of sentences, but also missing quotation marks, sentences that start with a lowercase letter, and so on. Sloppy proofreading work, worse than what you'd usually find.

Currently reading

Lynn Flewelling, Stalking Darkness, the second part of the Nightrunner series, because I'm hooked.

Heli Rantala, et al., Kirjojen kaipuu, a book on book culture in early 19th century Finland. Really interesting so far, especially reading about the way reading and acquiring books was very much a social activity back then, in part because of the difficulty of sourcing books at all here in European periphery.

Up next

I think that, if I were smart, I would read something else than the next part of the Nightrunner series, because these are long books and I've noticed that reading too much of the same thing has diminishing returns on enjoyment. But I'm not sure I'm that smart.

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link roundup

Some recent interesting stuff

I rather not really talk about irl now so here are some non-irl things that has been kinda interesting:

Bathrooms!

I had a random conversation elsewhere about the frequency of bathing, how the bathroom is built, and how that is different in different places, inspired by this article about how an idol is leading a bathing cancel clique in Japan. My house is kinda old style so my bathroom has a large water container with a tap over it so there's the option to just dunk water over your body with a water scoop (very refreshing on a hot day) or use the more modern heater and shower head. Malaysian bathrooms are built to drain water efficiently because our toilets/bathrooms are wet rooms (tiled, with a drainage hole). I hated cleaning the bathroom in the U.S. because there's no drainage except in the bathtub so you have to mop the floor and then dry the floor. But here in Malaysia, I just apply water + soap to the floor liberally, scrub, and the water will drain.

Anyway, I ended up looking into bathing cultures in different places, and here are some interesting articles:

Bathing Practices as a Religious and Medical Encounter: Water, Climate and Health Across Monsoon Asia

The Peculiar Bathroom Habits of Westerners

Covid jab

For the record, I had my 11th Covid jab today. (I'm only posting about it because this is where I look when I'm checking dates. :-)

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Four recent fics (Guardian, various)

Three flashfics for

fan_flashworks, plus another instalment of my Chu Shuzhi/Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan post-canon 'verse.

Title: Behind another face (100 words) [General Audiences]
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Relationships: Zhang Shi & Shen Xi, Shen Xi/Zhao Xinci
Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Complicated Relationships, Sharing a Body, Secrets, Drabble, Face challenge
Summary:

Zhang Shi meets Shen Xi.

Title: Take back the world (1288 words) [Teen and Up]
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Wang Yike/Zhang Ruonan
Additional Tags: Reference to canon rape, Aftermath of canon rape, Pre-Canon, Upsetting Dixing powers, Revenge challenge
Summary:

One day, everything falls apart.

Title: two are halves of one (851 words) [Teen and Up]
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Episode Related, Episode 22 after the blindness arc, First Kiss (for one of them), Crowd challenge
Summary:

A deep twist of desire makes Zhao Yunlan laugh. "After this—” He circles his chopsticks over the meal and has to clear his throat to keep his voice light. “Shen Wei, I think you should give me a thorough health check.”

Title: life in the silver lining (2732 words) [Teen and Up]
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Relationships: Chu Shuzhi/Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Complicated Relationships, The emotional implications of the existence of time travel, intimacy is hard, rated for themes
Series: Part 4 of Breakage and Repair 'verse (CSZ/SW/ZYL)
Summary:

“You’ve time-travelled before.” Shuzhi’s voice was low and raw. “What if the next time you go to Dixing, the Hallows open a portal to the past? Would you go and stop Ye Zun, and put everything back how it’s supposed to be?”

(Follows on from Raw Nerves, Old Scars.)

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Four recent fics (Guardian, various)

Three flashfics for

(Follows on from Raw Nerves, Old Scars.)

Bathrooms!

Other fun links