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Slo-Mo Rewatch: Guardian episode 8, part 2

Zhao Yunlan sprawled on a couch, grinning at his phone. The background shows a purple sky with stars. Text reads, "Slo-Mo Rewatch. Guardian - half an episode per week @ sid_guardian.dreamwidth.org"

Hi, welcome to this week's instalment of the Guardian drama Slo-Mo Rewatch! Watch half an episode a week, and then come and chat about it here in comments. Or you can just jump into the comments without rewatching, of course!

Here is last week's half-episode. On to the second half!

Episode 8, from 22:19:

Summary: In Dixing, the Regent sends a smoke message. In Haixing, Shen Wei pours his drunk mentor into car and then finds Zhao Yunlan ill on the kerb. He takes him home in a taxi (where he serves as a pillow), then discovers Zhao Yunlan's disaster apartment (featuring: wine bottles, dirty dishes, THE FRIDGE). During the night, Zhu Jiu finds the pillar with the Mountain-River Awl, but can't approach it. Meanwhile Shen Wei discovers that Zhao Yunlan asked Dixing about him and the Regent is ratting him out. He alters the message. In the morning, Zhao Yunlan wakes up to a tidy flat and Shen Wei sitting next to his bed. He tries to recruit Shen Wei for the SID again, but fails again. Wang Zheng sees a newspaper report about an earthquake in the Hanga mountains, passes out and regains her memory. Da Qing comes to tell Zhao Yunlan and finds Shen Wei there in the early morning. The Sundial begins to glow and resonate with the Awl; Lin Jing traces the source to the mountains.

Quote:

Shen Wei: "I suggest you eat regular meals. I don't want to find you on the road again."

Zhao Yunlan: "If you want to know whether I eat regular meals, why don't you just join ourSID, and you'll know?"

Shen Wei: "So your SID doesn't need a consultant, it needs a nanny?"

Detail:

I always notice that when Shen Wei takes off Zhao Yunlan's boots, he accidentally slips one of Zhao Yunlan's socks off his heel and doesn't pull it back up, argh! :p

Questions:

What's going through Shen Wei's head in the taxi? How is Zhao Yunlan feeling about Shen Wei taking him home? What's your favourite detail in Zhao Yunlan's flat? What's Shen Wei's favourite detail? Why do you think Zhao Yunlan keeps trying to recruit Shen Wei after Shen Wei has refused more than once? Do you think Shen Wei is seriously hoping to warn Zhao Yunlan away from leaving Dragon City? Why is Da Qing surprised to find Shen Wei with Zhao Yunlan in the morning? Why does Wang Zheng try to leave the SID? Any thoughts about how any of this compares to the novel? Or about parallels with other parts of the drama?

(These are all just conversation starters - feel free to answer all, some, or none, and to say as much or as little as you like! You don't have to be keeping up with the rewatch to join in!)

For the next two weekends, we're taking a break for the holidays - time to catch up on the rewatch, if you've been meaning to! Regular posts will resume on 9 January.

Here is our schedule for the current batch of episodes - please do sign up to host a post if you can!

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Project 2026

What will happen after the moral equivalent of the battle of Yorktown?

I think we should have another Constitutional Convention.

( Read more... )

What rights and rebalances would you fight for? What values would you wage peace for?

Fic in a Box - my gifts!

I received three fantastic gifts for

ficinabox - what a bounty! Time got away from me; I've been meaning share this this sooner, but here they finally are:

A wonderful Grimm fic where everyone comes together to shape the future of the Wesen world - I really wish the show had gone in a direction like this, instead of insisting the Wesen world had to keep hidden:
Clock Strikes Midnight (4204 words) [Teen]
Fandom: Grimm (TV)
Relationship: Nick Burkhardt/Sean Renard/Juliette Silverton
Characters: Nick Burkhardt, Sean Renard, Juliette Silverton, Rosalee Calvert, Alexander
Content Tags: background Rosalee Calvert/Monroe, Wesen & Grimm & Royals Politics, Plans to make the Wesen world go public, Politics, Worldbuilding, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Voice of Reason Rosalee Calvert

Summary: "Revelation is inevitable. Sooner or later, we will be found out and our secrets dragged out of the shadows and into the light."

At a potluck picnic in the park, Portland's Wesen gather to decide their future—and that of the world.
A delightful Grimm fic in an unconventional format - this one's from a Wesen textbook! I'm so fascinated with all the bits and pieces of history we got over the course of the show, and I love getting more of that!
A Historical Perspective on the Gesetzbuch Ehrenkodex (6082 words) [Teen]
Fandom: Grimm (TV)
Content Tags: Wesen & Grimm & Royals Politics, In-Universe Textbook, Pre-Canon, In-Universe Documents

Summary: Being the introduction to a textbook on the history of a complex time in the wesen world.
And an amazing gift in a Yuletide-rare fandom where two characters I've been wanting more interaction for get to have a great missing scene together that I wish had happened just like this in canon:
A Private Audience (1265 words) [Teen]
Fandom: Nantucket Trilogy - S.M. Stirling
Relationships: Kashtiliash/Kathryn Hollard, Raupasha & Kashtiliash, Raupasha/Kenneth Hollard
Characters: Kashtiliash, Raupasha, Kathryn Hollard
Content Tags: Missing Scene, Not Canon Incompliant, Uptimers vs Downtimers, Hollard Family Tropism for Royalty

Summary: Raupasha seeks Kashtiliash's permission this time...

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Wheel of Time art for multifandomdoodle || TV

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where did the month go?

I have no idea where December went! On the one hand, yay, I'm done with work now for this year! On the other, what do you mean, Yuletide reveals are in a few days?! *flails*

So before that happens, a catch-up update!

Time keeps slipping; I ended up putting a santa hat on my default icon a week late, and my Christmas decorations are still very partial. It's one of those years ...

ficinabox had multiple delays and ate into the Yuletide period more than I'd expected, after rarepairexchange had already had more delays than expected, eating into the ficinabox period. (Because I really am constitutionally incapable of letting a story go until it's gone live, I will keep working on it and often expanding it ...) So I probably should try and stick mostly to exchanges with a fixed reveals date next year - if those have delays, they tend to be small ones.

I got a whole bounty of gifts for ficinabox - I'll post about that separately - and I wrote two stories myself! I don't think I'm terribly anonymous; it's fairly easy to tell which are mine. But I'll talk about that after author reveals. *g*

Right now I'm working on Yuletide, being chased by BEARS - I'm editing and (yes) expanding my assignment, and fiddling with a treat. I'm really having fun with my assignment! But fighting a bit with the narrative voice; I may end up making changes there after all.

Over at sid_guardian, our slo-mo rewatch (half an episode per week) is going strong! We're having fantastic discussions every week, and it's so much fun. And we're only at episode 8 (taxi scene and Zhao Yunlan's disaster flat coming up this weekend!), so we're going to be at this for some time. :D

Recently I've been making spinach eggdrop soup, which is delicious! It's mainly this recipe, though I've made a few changes. (I boil the broth for 10 minutes with chopped ginger and scallion, which makes it super flavourful, then add the cornstarch, then the eggs. And I don't bother with blanching the spinach - I just dump it straight into the soup after the eggs are in. Also works with frozen!)

How's everyone else doing? *sprays BEAR repellent all around*

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real life

Running out of time...

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Girl Genius for Friday, December 19, 2025

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20251219

The Girl Genius comic for Friday, December 19, 2025 has been posted.

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20251219

Current Mood: restless
Current Music: Annie Lennox - The First Noel

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Belated cake note | First morning of vacation

Since I'm vaguely tracking things we've been making: a few days ago we made Smitten Kitchen's gingerbread apple upside-down cake. It's tasty, although I didn't like it nearly as much as the SK Mom's Apple Cake that we made not that long ago. (

scruloose likes it more than I do, for the record.) Now I mostly just want to make an actual gingerbread. ^^;

(My brain keeps starting to compose a post or posts about my currently-annoyingly-complication feelings about holiday baked goods etc., between our intensely-covid-cautious life and my still-newish need to stay aware of my blood glucose, but will I actually manage to write about it? Who knows. It's exhausting.)

I started my first day of vacation waking ahead of my alarm from a weird, teeth-clenchingly stressful dream, possibly one of a sequence, and it takes me a while to shake off dreams like that. >.< I've gotten a couple of household things done/underway, though, and am sitting down to do some manga work once I've posted this.

We still haven't decorated Bucky; he comes with lights, which are the most important part of a Christmas tree, especially without the smell of a real tree, and at least one year we bought our tree and put lights on it and never did anything more, and that was fine. I guess it's possible this'll be another such year. (Although we're due for strong winds and heavy rain tonight and into tomorrow, and if we lose power, I guess that's something we could do tomorrow afternoon.)

But we got most of our other fragments of decor up last night, and this morning I put out my Nativity set for the first time in a few years. It's wooden, but a couple of the pieces have taken damage over the years nonetheless (before my time, or when I was young enough that I don't remember what happened), and having it out around the cats has made me nervous since my mother gave it to me* several years ago. But a few months ago I bought a piece of display wall shelving for my office (and my office mostly stays shut when I'm not in it for long), and the set fits in it fairly well, so now it's there and I've got my fingers crossed.

(Also, this year I bought an old-fashioned ceramic tree from a local artist, and it's on a speaker under the wall display, so realistically, if a cat gets up on my desk where they shouldn't be, I'll know about it from the tree going down. [Which I really hope it doesn't, because it's breakable and the lights aren't actually attached, so that's all kinds of cat hazard in a package. And thus, it's in my office; if the cats were actually prone to getting on my desk and messing with things, I wouldn't have bought the tree at all, but even Sinha is really pretty good about it.])

*I think I mentioned at the time that this is the Nativity set of my childhood, carved of olive wood. My mother's parents once--in the '50s, I think? When she was a kid--were in Jerusalem over Christmastime, and brought it home. Mum deciding to pass it on to me is genuinely one of the best gifts she's ever given me.

The Daily Spell

I stumbled across this well-spell-crafted game whilst wondering around itch.io: The Daily Spell, a story about a sudden surge in magical beast manifestations in a fantasy city, told through daily word puzzles that resolve into the headlines of brief newspaper articles that advance the story. Quite delightful and very well done.

$rf$

Entry tags:

fan art,
guardian

(no subject)

Da Qing and young!Zhao Yunlan wrapped in blankets, with the title "Teaching the way of the Cat".

Image: colour pencil sketch of a black cat wrapped neatly in a blue blanket, and a young man (Zhao Yunlan) sprawled/face-planeted under a red blanket, with his feet sticking out the bottom and one sock fallen off. He is holding a lollipop.

notes

* Perspective is really hard. ;-p
* Still avoiding drawing faces.
* I think my attempt at Da Qing is on a par with Guo Changcheng's notebook sketch, but in my defence, that is one weird-looking cat. ;-)

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Aha!

With the help of multiple people, I finally got the ancient $15 scanner to talk to my computer via shareware. Woohoo!

(Meanwhile, I can't write a story to save my life. Argh!)

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type: promo

Guardian Pinch Hit for Fandom Mixtape!

fandommixtapeex is an 18+ multi-fandom exchange using songs as work prompts. It has a bunch of post-deadline pinch hits, one of which is 100% Guardian! (镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018) RPF, 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018), 镇魂 | Guardian - priest). The due date is December 28th, 2025 at 10pm EDT. To claim, go to the linked post, and comment with
* The number and/or username of the pinch hit you would like to pick up
* Your ao3 username
* An email where the mod can reach you

Fanfiction should be at least 1000 words, and wholly created for the event. Fanart should be a complete artwork on unlined paper. Podfic should be of an existing work that is at least 1000 words, or a new recording of a work written by the creator that is at least 500 words.

Current Mood: excited
Current Music: Sting - A Winter's Night Live From Durham Cathedral2009

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manga/anime: yona of the dawn

The hoped-for silver lining of the Yona manga ending!

"Yona of the Dawn Gets Sequel Anime". [Anime News Network]

I'm delighted both that this is happening and that it was announced so promptly on the heels of the manga ending. (;_;) As we learned from the second Fruits Basket anime arriving thirteen years after that manga ended, anything is possible, but it's sure nicer to have this sort of thing happen with a speed that makes more sense.

ANN says "sequel anime", which I'd imagine means it'll pick up where the first one left off, but how OAVs factor into that, I'm not even going to try to guess.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: robbinsdale, mn

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a few recent highlights

Drive-by life update:

1. I have properly moved into my new apartment, by which I mean I am now sleeping and eating here. My books are still in my aunt's garage, and my plants are still in my parents' basement (right up against a south-facing patio door; they're fine, don't worry), but I have acquired a new sofa as well as an over-the-toilet storage rack, a kitchen storage/counter unit, a folding step-stool, and assorted hardware supplies. I still need a few more things, but overall it's shaping up nicely.

2. I have settled in at work, and I think it's going fairly well. Credentialing is a pain but I have been figuring out where information is stored and tidying up a bunch of old and/or duplicate files and folders, as well as making spreadsheets to keep track of data and projects.

3. This morning I had my 6-month follow-up for my uterine fibroid embolization, which basically meant I had a pelvic ultrasound so the tech and a doctor could look at my innards and make sure nothing seemed problematic. I am pleased to report that the fibroid in question (the one that pressed against my bladder) has shrunk from 4.9cm to 3.5cm. I mean, I'd already experienced a significant reduction in phantom urinary urges by two weeks after the June surgery, but it's nice to have hard numbers to back up my experience.

4. I got my Yuletide fic posted last night, so not quite right up against the deadline, but I am still moderately annoyed at myself for procrastinating. Ah well. There's always next year.

right, okay, an update

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Current Mood: drained

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Reading Wednesday 12/17/25 | Has anyone listened to the Queen's Thief audiobooks?

What I Just Finished Reading: Legendborn (Tracy Deonn) and Season of Love (Helena Greer), both of which fall into the category of "I enjoyed this but I don't feel any urge to pick up the sequel".

And not that recent, but I did finish Anne Lamott's Almost Everything: Notes on Hope not terribly long ago.

What I am Currently Reading: Llinos Cathryn Thomas' Advent novella All is Bright, one chapter per day. And

scruloose and I are a few chapters into the audiobook of System Collapse.

What I Plan to Read Next: Very possibly The Dark is Rising, with solstice nipping at our heels.

Bonus TV note:

scruloose and I have finished season 2 of Silo!

When we finish System Collapse, that'll be the end of Murderbot listening until sometime after the new book comes out. Listening to the audiobooks together has cut way into our shared TV watching, but does have the advantage of being easier to drop in and out of if we don't have a lot of time in an evening, so I've been trying to see what our iteration of Hoopla has that

scruloose might be into. It does have Gideon the Ninth, which they might get a kick out of, but that's a significantly longer book, and we already had to check Network Effect out twice to get through it.

Last night it occurred to me that the Queen's Thief books are on the shorter side, and lo, Hoopla has them all! Have any of you listened to them? Any comments on how their reader is? It remains possible that finding out that I really like the Murderbot audiobooks isn't a sign of anything other than that I like that narrator in particular. ^^;

Girl Genius for Wednesday, December 17, 2025

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20251217

The Girl Genius comic for Wednesday, December 17, 2025 has been posted.

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20251217

as widely requested

This was the best of the gingerbread cuneiform. I put the good ones in the freezer to give to pals tomorrow at brunch and will eat the rest, or something. This is one of the maple syrup tables, which were lighter in colour and held the clarity slightly better. (More water, therefore harder texture? Not sure.)

I copied characters from Andrew George's excellent renderings of the tablets, as any photos I looked at were way too unclear. However, I freely skipped tricky characters or sections. Sîn-lēqi-unninni would be pissed.

ETA: Oh, I believe this text is taken from a fragment of the third tablet.

§rf§

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weekly update

Me-and-media update

Previous poll review
In the Mind's eye poll, 22.4% of respondents said their mind's eye is as vivid as IMAX (wow!), 20.7% said pretty vivid, 25.9% said they can visualise if they work at it, and 22.4% said it's a bit patchy/vague. Nearly fourteen percent, including me, have no mind's eye. (I do occasionally see things in my dreams, eg, wake up with the memory of an orange cat, so I voted "other" as well.)

In ticky-boxes, spices (56.9%) came second to hugs (67.2%), followed by being able to name characters from Winnie-the-Pooh (39.7). Thank you for your votes!!

Reading
I was trying to write romance for Yuletide, and digressive murder mysteries were not helping my subconscious to deliver the romance beats/pacing, so I stepped away from Murder Must Advertise (Peter Wimsey) for a while and read a Jennifer Crusie instead. Not one of her better ones, but I've read the better ones so many times... I haven't returned to Murder Must Advertise yet, but I will (and I'll have forgotten everything, oh well).

In audio, I'm relistening to The Wedding People by Alison Espach, read by Helen Laser. It's so good! Phoebe's POV is specific and observational. As I said last time I read it, "Give me all the middle-aged women's midlife crises! Warning for suicidal protagonist, but the book is overall life-affirming."

Kdramas
Still loving Knight Flower. It's adorable and dramatic and silly, with many great women. Competent goofballs FTW! And Andrew and I started Jeongnyeon: A Star Is Born, set in the 1950s after the Korean war, about an all-female theatre troupe. It is fabulous, incredibly gay, and I love everything about it. See also "so many great women!" Moon Okgyeong is mesmerising, ahhhh, I totally understand why everyone's smitten with her (or is it him? or them?). We are racing through it (by our standards).

Other TV
We finished Down Cemetery Road, and I want more, especially of Emma Thompson as Zoe. Finished The Lowdown with Ethan Hawke. We're still going on Pluribus, which continues to be fascinating, and Prehistoric Planet. (My Apple+ subscription runs out on Sunday.) We finished the available episodes of Stranger Things, and I have Robin, Will and Max tied for first place as MVP.

I'm having a bit of trouble with season 3 of The Cleaner, but we might watch some more. And then there's Krapopolis, which is mixing things up this season. My sister and I are still watching Fringe and Bluey.

Audio entertainment
Writing Excuses, Letters from an American, Cross Party Lines, some Brandon Sanderson youtube lectures.

Online life
I am seriously not keeping up with Dreamwidth or my inbox. Sorry! I keep opening things in tabs to read/reply to later, but I'm going to have to give myself an amnesty and just close a bunch of them.

I'm enjoying the hockey show squee on my reading page, and though I don't know if the show will be for me, I plan to take a look at some point, just in case.

Writing/making things
I had a good writing run in November, but we got some bad news and now brain is refusing to brain, stories are refusing to story, sentences are refusing, etc. I ended up defaulting on Yuletide, though there is still a chance I'll finish the fic.

I am enjoying doodling, though -- it's freeing not having a clue what I'm doing. I posted one pic to Tumblr and it got notes and everything, and I just posted another to

fan_flashworks. (I bought an ancient second-hand flatbed scanner for $15, but I couldn't convince my computer to recognise it, so I guess I'll continue to photograph my sketches for now, even though it messes with the colour balance. I don't know how long this art phase will last, so investing in a newer scanner seems premature.)

Life/health/mental state things
I've been staying up too late lately (including to write an angry submission on a stupid roading project), and it's taking its toll. Offline things are a bit stressful and distracting (stuck in a waiting phase). Summer keeps coming and going. Christmas is imminent.

I need to get more active here on Dreamwidth again. *clings to you all*

Goals
Maybe I should make some of these for next year? Hm.

Good things
The boy! The cat! The house! Coloured pencils and a sketchbook and an ArtLine pen. TV that centres female characters. Also: Guardian! The slo-mo rewatch. ♥ ♥ ♥ Christmas mince pies. Early Christmas present bone-conduction earphones (after years of using this kind of earpiece, now I have stereo sound!).

Poll #33963 dance dance revolution

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 51

View Respondents

Have you danced this week?

View Answers

yes, with other people
3 (5.9%)

yes, with a pet or other animal
1 (2.0%)

yes, on my own
14 (27.5%)

kind of / only briefly
15 (29.4%)

no / not yet
24 (47.1%)

other
1 (2.0%)

ticky-box full of "Fighting!" (화이팅!)
9 (17.6%)

ticky-box full of books borrowed from an acquaintance quite some time ago, which really need to be returned but it's super awkward
9 (17.6%)

ticky-box full of enthusiastically and fervently loving what you love
32 (62.7%)

ticky-box full of giant prehistoric otters roaming the savannas
27 (52.9%)

ticky-box full of hugs, so many hugs
39 (76.5%)

Current Mood: cold
Current Location: Rat te Kāinga

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Cold weather is not currently seasonable

All of my cold weather clothing is either military surplus or hand me downs from cousins in the oil fields.

I might need to figure this out. (This is JANUARY weather, not December!)