slowly learning that life is okay

i love characters who do the “i worship the myth i make of you” and in turn dehumanize and get wrong the object of their devotion and love. yes project a thing that does not exist onto a pedestal and kneel at it like it is your altar. this will surely not blow up in both of your faces eventually

sometimes i’m doing alright and then i remember that kitay probably isn’t as good of a person as we think. that he’s probably just as violent and jaded as the rest of the characters but he appears much kinder through rin’s eyes, because no matter how poorly she thinks of the rest of the world, she can never bring herself to distrust kitay

Just finished Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao and there was less pegging then I had been told there was, but in the end that guy didn’t deserve to be pegged by such a woman so it was for the best

More Poppy War content because I cannot sleep.

Chen Kitay is the most dangerous person in all of the books. He's more dangerous than the Trifecta, Nezha, Rin, Vaisra.

Because Kitay is fucking SMART.

Kitay holds the power over the greatest weapon Nikan has had since the Trifecta. Kitay can control the Last Speerly, can subject Rin to not having fire. And, if that doesn't work, suicide will end the Phoenix for good.

Kitay is a terribly competent soldier, able to fight off Nezha, who is regularly described as almost superhumanly adept in combat, for minutes before surrendering. Even better, Kitay knows Yin Nezha personally, deeply

Even worse, he's the smartest of them all, both strategically and absolutely. He has an eidectic memory which makes him capable of remembering everything he reads on the first try. He is able to understand new Hesperian technology in days, he's able to design a machine that makes Rin fly.

Kitay sits in the war room of the Dragon Lord, the richest and most powerful man in the empire, and is listened to because he makes so much damn sense. He could see the Dragon Lord's water campaign failure coming from miles away, is a strategical linchpin in the campaign of the Southern army. He is adept in personal strategy too, immediately correctly guessing why Vaisra would betray them, giving clear and sound reasons. He's, in conclusion, a brilliant commander.

And he's ruthless, when he wants to be. He breaks Rin's hands when they need to escape, he is able to design traps that kill dozens of soldiers when Sinegard is under attack. After that he manages to fight and survive the onslaught that is the siege on Sinegard, which means he must have taken lives. It happens to be Rin who narrates, who is very unreliable. Kitay is her blindspot. She wants him to be a good man, a hero. He's the most moral man in the series, but don't let that fool you. The fact that he is the best person in the Poppy War character gallery doesn't really mean much, when comparing him to, say, Rin or Daji. Kitay is willing to kill, and more than capable of it. That only he has a moral compass that still somewhat works doesn't make him a good man in the slightest.

He's mentally unbreakable, too. He survived Golan Niis with nothing but wit and cunning, he withstood interrogation for weeks at least. He manages to let the Phoenix run through his mind without the side effects on his reasoning that Rin seems to be suffering from. I'd argue that he's mentally about as strong as she is, but he is just not willing to fight her. Everyone else should rightfully be terrified if Kitay decides to come for you.

And we haven't even spoken about his wealth. Kitay is the son of the defense minister, one of the richest inhabitants of Sinegard, canonically lives in a mansion with servants. We should believe that his influence extends far beyond the city's walls.

Kitay will outhink you, outmanouver you, remember your every move, then stand back as Rin burns you to death after he figured out a way around you using your own tactics. He might not have a god, but he doesn't really need one, either.

The Pantheon knows he'd be way too powerful then.

making art sites that don't allow NSFW is useless to me. not even to get my rocks off, i mean at this point not allowing NSFW ends up being a nightmare of random queers getting banned because the guidelines are too ill-defined and art that presents the human body, especially femme and trans, will just get obliterated for no reason despite not being sexual.

come here and make art :) except the gross art. we don't want the gross art

rin!

lately ive been bedridden with a terrible case of i dont wanna

i've got a serious case of rinezha brainrot rn

free museum trips are wasted on unappreciative middle schoolers. let me go

A deleted scene from Iron Widow - Yizhi helping Shimin through withdrawal by letting Shimin lie on his lap and reading Shimin books 🥺

Art by 其中一个每木 (fengyuu on Lofter)!

(Before you ask, I had to delete this scene, along with many others, because I had a really strict wordcount limit for my book 😭)

This art piece is now available as a postcard at Dual Wield Studio!

Also, to elaborate on the wordcount thing: publishing is rarely willing to take on debut books that go over 100k words because of production costs. My original draft of Iron Widow was 118k. I squashed it down to, I shit you not, 99,920 WORDS in order to go on submission to publishers with it. I managed to add some deleted scenes back in after it sold, but it was still reaaally frowned upon to go any higher, so there was a lot I left out, including this scene. A lot of you have asked if I’m going to release a deleted scene compilation. Well, I’m holding off on that for now because I want to try incorporating them as flashbacks in the sequels instead. Better for these to be in the canon series than as bonus material not everyone will read.

But here’s some bonus content of messages I sent to a friend while preparing Iron Widow for sub:

I'm a fandom oldie and a strong proponent of "ship and let ship", and I defend everyone else's right to ship what they love... But I think that gives people the idea that I like, automatically love every single ship??? Or every single trope?

I don't though!

There are a lot of fandom tropes that are on my "absolutely fuck no" list. There are a lot of irk kinks that are also on my "nope absolutely not" list, too. Personally, this is healthy. I'm able to look at something and go "Yep, I hate it, but it's not harming anyone, so continue to do as you please."

I think this is where the rubber meets the road for actually having principles. It’s easy to defend the things we like, just like it’s easy to fight for our own rights and those of people just like us. When you have to use logic to extend your sense of justice to people you can’t relate to, that actually takes effort.

God, being a person is such a fucking burden

writing fanfiction is constantly flipping between "this is a hobby i do for fun its not that serious" and "if this isnt my next greatest hit im going to back flip off the empire state building"