Today's remote work problem: doing screencaps for a how-to walkthrough (Kaltura Capture in the event) and suddenly realizing that I just captured one of my "emergency soothing ZYL images" off to the side and now need to crop it out.

The Tunnelbear icon, I'm deliberately leaving in as a sort of easter egg for the technical staff who may be directing faculty to this webpage. We have to take our amusement where we can, especially with 150 hold-out faculty to turf out of the buildings by midnight as per Michigan's new stay-at-home order.

...shame we're not quite desperate enough for laughs for me to leave the image in, really.

Today was better than yesterday, so let me celebrate.

For everyone who replied "Hands. Hngh." in my small poll a while back, have some straight-up ZYL hand porn.

And, as a bonus, have some manual dexterity porn, especially that third one with the two swords. And then have some more, in which the business card one is somehow even more unfair than the butterfly knife.

So really, I think the marketing-side lesson to be learned from Zhu Yilong and the new year's concert is that you can make him up all sexy and smoldering and it works for a while but eventually you have to face the fact that it's going to run straight into his default public persona, which is to smile adorably, and I'm sorry but the smile is gonna win over the makeup. I'm sorry, hard-working makeup artist, but thems the breaks when it's a public appearance.

*is really very amused by this*

There is a small war of sweater-posts going on in the Zhu Yilong tag on tumblr right now, and it's both adorable and hilarious. First handful of the latest posts.

...I feel a strong urge to shake the hand of Zhu Yilong's photographer(s), and possibly buy them a drink for sterling service to fan-kind.

Because that hotel-room shoot was really a brilliant use of a found-set.

*drums fingers*

Okay, so it's not actually impossible to have an underground civilization of individuals who still depend on thermal-source light (photosynthesis, vitamin D and melatonin regulation and other neurochemical production). It's just STAGGERINGLY INEFFICIENT. I mean, when you have an actual star doing the fusion boogey to provide that in truly stunning abundance for the low, low price of, you know, standing on the surface of a planet, then packing everyone up and moving them underground where you'd have to have, let's be honest, sustained fusion level technology in order to supply enough light to thrive is... is... *waves hands inarticulately*

The thing is, light from electricity is, in itself, kind of stunningly inefficient. First you have to have something that powers the generators, and that's losing you something like 90% in the conversion process (it's a really appalling exchange rate for mechanical generation). So to sustain a wholly underground civilization? Yeah, we're definitely talking fusion if not actual matter-antimatter. Plus, frankly, the sheer arrogance to say, as a civilization, "we enjoy the benefits of complete shelter and controlled environment enough to pay this staggering energy-cost and think it a good deal".

Now, I could see losing that kind of technology in an extinction-level event. But that leaves us with the inescapable conclusion that there is no way Dixing could have gone back underground and survived. But if they built the capability back up, given the resentment we see in current day, I also see zero chance it wouldn't have been weaponized PDQ and kicked off another round of war.

The only reasonable solution I'm seeing here is Haixing basically subsidizing Dixing. Dedicating X percent of their resources and (eventually) their energy production to Dixing in return for Dixing's withdrawal. Which does make for tasty political complications, so all right I'll go with it, but it still makes my teeth itch with the flat out implausibility.

stultiloquentia is a terrible, terrible purveyor of crack, so I'm sharing the wealth like a good fangirl.

If you'd like an oh hell yes, do me now experience, see this vid.

If you'd like a precious babies experience, try this one.

And if you'd like to just boggle over Zhu Yilong's mastery of body language, try this one.

You know, on reflection (and the cherry-picking edition of Guardian rewatch), it occurs to me to wonder just how much of the Trolling With Bears interlude was a way to (somewhat) subtly discourage Zhao Yunlan from involving the rest of SID in his 'consultations' with Shen Wei. I can't help feeling there's a definite thread, in there, of "send a minion with a computer to communicate with me and I will troll you mercilessly in front of them; remember that".

And you notice, Zhao Yunlan never tries that again.

In keeping with my tendency to have interesting thoughts right before I have to go off and do something else for a while (in this case, all the chores I put off to attend a wedding), I find myself thinking about how Shen Wei reacts to Zhao Yunlan's relationship to his father, and what it suggests about how much he knows when--and also how he's situating himself.

( Family )

Did I say the last story of the arc? Ahahaha. It is to be laughing.

This is why I call it The Arc that Will Not Die.

Admittedly, the momentum of the arc /does/ call for Shen Wei finally getting a chance to be taken care of for a while. But still!

*eyes the bunny gnawing her ankle, which does not let go and merely lops its ears winsomely*

You're not fooling anyone.