Healthy Relationships With People? We Don’t Know Her

The Unapologetic Self as the Truest form of Self

she’s so iconic i love her

Mianmian has had it with this patriarchy.

confessions~

11 Compliments That Aren’t About Physical Appearance

You light up the room

I like your voice

You inspire me

I love how passionate you are

You make the world a better place

You’re one of the bravest people I know

You make me comfortable to be myself

You’re an incredible friend

You have a really refreshing perspective

You are so smart

You are truly making a difference

— sossafetymag

My ancestors, watching me dump an entire stick of cinnamon, two cloves, an allspice berry, and a generous grating of nutmeg into my tea, sweetened with white sugar and loaded with cream, while I sit in my clean warm house surrounded by books, 25+ outfits for different occasions, and 6 pairs of shoes, in a building heated so well I have the windows open in mid-autumn:

Our daughter prospers. We are proud of her. She has never labored in a field but knows riches we could not have imagined.

my advice to the kids is that they should fight people on the playground while they can still get away with it without legal consequences

hello!! do you have any book recs for historical fiction/ non- fiction or something similar to the palace of illusions? thank you!!

A short list because I'm not well:

Song of Draupadi by Ira Mukhoty

Indian mythology retelling

Mahabharat from Draupadi's POV

Descriptive prose and lush worldbuilding

Everything Mukhoty writes about Indian women is readable

Nefertiti by Michelle Moran

Egyptian history retelling

Nefertiti's reign from her sister's POV

Morally grey central characters

The writing style is so descriptive and nice

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker Chan

Queer Chinese history + fantasy retelling

Breathtaking, immersive worldbuilding

Wlw and mlm hostility; two evil non binary leads

Mulan but with a sapphic romance

The Forest of Enchantments by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Indian mythology retelling

Ramayan from Sita's POV

Exploration of duty vs desire

Not as good as The Palace of Illusions, but still worth a read

The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri

Indian inspired fantasy

Sapphic romance between central characters

Cool magical systems

Morally grey female lead

Circe by Madeline Miller

Greek mythology retelling

Morally grey female lead, lyrical prose

Same author as The Song of Achilles

I have heard divisive stuff about it tbh

Sati Series by Koral Dasgupta

Indian mythology retelling

Feminist historization of female figures from Indian myth

Includes Ahalya and Kunti so far

I hope you find something to your liking from this list!

Kofi: papenathys

The Untamed and its pretty snow scenes.

thank you @jiang-yanlii and @miannmian the inspiration. y'all truly are my muses /p <3

so. wangxian yuuri!!! on ice au?

so Wei Ying is an up and coming ice skater from China who idolises the beloved prodigy skater of China, Lan Wangji. he first fell in love with ice skating when he was watching a recording of Lan Zhan's juniors performance with his best friend Nie Huaisang.

he immediately started consuming everything ice skating and Huaisang helps him as he too shares a love of the ice. he even gets himself a bunny when he sees a cute little bunny when he sees that Wangji got a bunny named Bichen. he names his beloved bunny Suibian.

he gets ballet training from his beloved godmother Baoshan Sanren who encourages him to ice skate competitively because she sees his passion when very few others do. so he decides to compete after a lot of deliberation. Madam Yu isn't happy about this but considering that everyone else supports him, she decides to shut up for once (I'll tone down the abusive tendencies for my own sanity).

as the years go by, he definitely becomes a pretty big name in the skating world. while he does have an outgoing personality and image, he still has a hard time performing thanks to episodes and often gets low technical scores. he goes to Detroit at eighteen to pursue better training opportunities. (it was Baoshan Sanren who had to tell Wuxian in somewhat harsh but loving words that he should go and pursue better opportunities outside of Yunmeng.)

so he trains with our coach OC and Wen Qing and Wen Ning, his roommates who let him stay at their place. after seeing Wuxian underperform way too many times, his coach talks to him and encourages him to get therapy which ends up helping him with PTSD and anxiety a lot.

fast forward to the Sochi Grand Prix Final. Wei Ying is incredibly excited because it's his day. he's finally made it to the Grand Prix and it might be the day he beats his idol and catch his attention. he's performed pretty well at his short program so he has a good chance of winning even if the famous Lan Zhan is competing. then comes the phone call. when his jiejie calls him with the news of Suibian's death, he finds himself unable to concentrate and on the verge of an anxiety attack. his coach has to calm him down and despite of his coach telling him to withdraw since he's not in a condition to perform well, he insists repeatedly on skating anyway. of course, he crashes and burns.

a few months later, he comes back to his hometown after five years with the intention of retirement. Madam Yu was right, I just wasted all of that money and time when I could have been here for my family, he thinks. his godmother Baoshan Sanren is there to pick him up and deliver him to the Jiangs safely at the train station and he gets quite a mouthful for not informing everyone about his plans. his jiejie and didi are both supportive in their own different ways and he gets to meet Jiang Cheng and Huaisang's adopted triplets for the first time. he firstly talks to Suibian and mostly mopes around and helps around the house whenever he can. when he finally gets the courage to get back on the ice, he performs his favourite routine of Lan Zhan for Huaisang. unknown to them, the kids had recorded the whole thing and put it on the internet and it spreads on to every social media possible (actually knowing Huaisang, he probably put his kids up to it.)

at first, Wei Ying freaks out and avoids social media for days. but then, one day after coming back from the rink he sees a very familiar rabbit in the hutch he'd built for Suibian. when Yanli confirms his suspicions by talking about the nice gentleman from your posters who just arrived, he freaks out and runs to the hot springs area. he barges in on Lan Zhan bathing and there's an awkward second, before Wangji says through gritted teeth, "Get. Out."

and that's all I have for now :))

im pretty sure i cried reading this

I have… thoughts about wangxian, and specifically about the moment when they part ways at Qiongqi Path, with Wei Wuxian leading the Wen remnants and Lan Wangji declining to stop them.

I’ve seen a few people fluent in chinese do very thoughtful breakdowns of the exact nuances of the things Wei Wuxian says to Lan Wangji at that moment, but I’m going to link to and quote hunxi-guilai’s post, because tumblr’s search function is broken and this was the only one of the several I was able to dig up ;u;

蓝湛 / Lan Zhan

如果我和他们之间必有一战 / if there must be a fight between me and them

那我宁愿和你 决一生死。/ then I would rather fight to the death with you.

要死，/ If I must die,

也至少死在你含光君的手上. / then at least I would die by you, Hanguang-jun, at your hands

不冤了。/ I would not be wronged.

And specifically, I made a connection between Wei Wuxian’s attitude here and his perspective on life after his resurrection.

Because this is a low point. This is Wei Wuxian explicitly handing his trust over to Lan Wangji, saying that if Lan Zhan decides he’s gone too far, that he’s crossed an unforgiveable line, and that he needs to be put down, then Wei Wuxian accepts that judgment. Wei Wuxian is taking a stand and doing what he thinks is right, knowing that lots of people will probably fight him over it, but if Lan Zhan decides that he’s this far in the wrong and takes him out, he won’t argue, he won’t feel wronged, he’ll accept it.

So that’s good! That’s painful. This scene aches in all kinds of ways. 

But what I want to talk about is a different angle on Wei Wuxian’s self-judgment. Namely, whether or not he’s worthy of love.

He has… some issues with that. Madam Yu and Jiang Fengmian told him to protect his siblings no matter what, which he did, at horrible expense to himself. And then he kept the knowledge of what he’d sacrificed from them, because telling them what he’d done would have only hurt them more, and might have distracted them, making them think that they needed to spend (waste) their energy protecting him when he was the one who needed to protect them.

Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli are the most obvious examples of this, but there are moments like this with Wen Qing, when she has to physically knock him out before she and the other Wens can go sacrifice themselves to protect him, or later on with Wen Ning, where he speaks up on Wei Wuxian’s behalf to Jiang Cheng, knowing that Wei Wuxian would have never wanted him to tell Jiang Cheng these things, and that he would have been upset to know it happened.

And there are littler, smaller moments too, like in the Xuanwu’s cave, where Wei Wuxian has a giant fresh chest burn, but still tries to give all the limited medicine they have to Lan Wangji, or when Jin Ling gets a curse mark on his leg, and Wei Wuxian knocks him out so he can transfer it to himself without ever letting Jin Ling know that he was doing that for him. And then when he’s reunited with Lan Wangji, he tries to act like nothing is even wrong, nothing to worry about here, Lan Zhan!

I came to this book for the romance, but something I wasn’t expecting to be so compelled by was Wei Wuxian gradually becoming more at ease with the way Lan Wangji wants to care for him and protect him. I do think it’s a delicate balance, because Wei Wuxian isn’t incapable, even after losing his golden core, and there’s a subtle but important distinction between Wei Wuxian being willing to cheerfully impose on Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian not wanting to be a burden. Wei Wuxian has never been good at letting people take care of him, unless he’s being Baby with Jiang Yanli, and even then, he was pretty much only good at letting her know he needed to be cared for in very undemanding, roundabout ways. ‘I’m hungry.’

I’ve seen other people notice that he breaks out that same 'I’m hungry’ tactic with Lan Wangji, eventually, when they’re leaving Yunmeng. He doesn’t expect Lan Wangji to recognize what it means, and is moved when Lan Wangji reaches down to pick a lotus pod for him. And it comes out in other ways too, if somewhat indirect, deflect-y ways, like ‘please protect this weak, helpless man’ said with a grin, so Lan Wangji stops inching closer to figuring out the golden core thing.

But especially with that Qiongqi Path exchange translated up above, I feel like there’s an element here where Wei Wuxian is gradually starting to defer to Lan Wangji’s judgment about Wei Wuxian, regardless of Wei Wuxian’s feelings about himself. And as little as Lan Wangji says out loud, it’s pretty clear that he is firmly of the opinion that Wei Ying needs to be loved, protected, and cherished, and Wei Wuxian is gradually learning to accept that.