sister dante in the pit

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roland • they/he fic @ ao3 user bloodletter, essays etc @ durandal.blog

He Xuan found himself in the courtyard of a stately house. It was not unlike the Nether Water Manor, but the sun shone undimmed and the furnishings were bright, which made it not unlike the Palace of Wind and Water, though this was the mortal world. He was dressed presentably, in the sable colours of a civil servant. He heard snatches of a familiar voice. The other words were unintelligible, but she called for him. He Xuan’s heart leapt with joy, and he was afraid. He stole into the nearest passage, seeking a place to hide. He knew his way around; it was his house. But his movement was sluggish, as though his limbs were held back by invisible forces, and his pursuer drew near; it was her house, too. Arms wound around his torso, and he sagged in on himself instinctively, as if protecting his organs. A face pressed against his back. “Found you,” she said sweetly. He Xuan sank to his knees. Terror melted into despair. Miao’er laughed, and came around to the front of him. His hands were splayed, covering his face, and she touched them. He Xuan tucked his chin against his chest, like a child, in case she would try to peel his hands away and see him, but she only held him by the back of his head and pressed him close, his forehead against her belly.
VN screenshot: multilayered b&w image including waves on a beach and a tea set. text: "one room, a study, accommodates you as you receive his tawdry little report"
Edited tumblr post screenshot that says "it's so important to cheat on your brother"
She worked quickly, but the process of tying still brought her into close proximity with Shi Qingxuan’s warmth. To maintain focus, He Xuan spoke without much thought. “They chained me and hauled me away like a common criminal, you know. Naturally, I thought of doing the same to you.”
“After the first year, they promoted me to supervisor of a group of other prisoners in the work camp. I was literate and had good behaviour, so it made less work for the guards. I got nothing out of it, not even better meals. And it just made the others hate me even more. I was already seen as an arrogant failed scholar who thought I was better than the rest of them. I didn’t mind having somewhat more stimulating work, but I would have been better off making bricks. I had to pay for any authority I had in the yard in other ways.” She tipped her hand, and a drizzle of wax fell like slow rain onto the back of Shi Qingxuan’s bare thigh. Shi Qingxuan sobbed. He Xuan kept her face steady, though all the malice in the world tugged at the corners of her mouth, trying to break free. “But it worked out to my advantage in the end. When it was time to impersonate the Earth Master, I had some experience directing construction projects.”
Whenever I attempt to share my critical writing, especially about contemporary speculative fiction, the following dialogue plays out in my head: POINT: My qualifications don't support the hotness of my takes. Who do I think I am to publicly expound my criticisms when I'm a blogger with a BA and no fiction publication credits? COUNTERPOINT: Posting is free. Also, I'm working on that last thing, it just takes some time. POINT: Sharing my sincere thoughts about the genre, industry, and the work of other authors in the field will harm my ability to get published in future. COUNTERPOINT: This is possible. However, if the genre can't sustain good-faith debate and reflect on itself in a clear-eyed manner, it's not worth my energy. My impulses toward engaging with sff via fiction and non-fiction projects come from the same source. I wouldn't care about this title if I didn't care about the genre.
There is a likeability crisis in much contemporary queer sff. Authors are unwilling to make their characters look bad, and it compromises the integrity of the story. I don’t think this is the result of individual authors’ incompetence. The state of the publishing industry and the social media ecosystem around genre fiction has refigured the reader as, primarily, a customer, and the customer is always right. If Yamamoto had written a highly entertaining and optimistic crime novel with a cast of highly flawed marginalized people who the reader is expected to root for even as they hurt each other, themselves, and the people around them—if they took seriously the premise of they story they did in fact write—it may have been more difficult to market. It may have received more negative Goodreads reviews from the kind of people who don’t like Wuthering Heights because it’s just a bunch of terrible people treating each other terribly. But oh my god. Who cares. Those people can go read a book that isn’t about people who steal things for a living and send each other to jail. Expecting authors to honour the gravity of their own concepts is not in conflict with appreciating fun, escapist genre fiction. Why are the “let people enjoy things [and don’t say anything negative about the things they enjoy]” crew the only ones who deserve to enjoy anything?
Shi Qingxuan woke in the early morning. This was not unusual; everyone becomes a light sleeper in a beggar colony, unless one was a drunk, and Shi Qingxuan could hardly stand the taste of wine these days. He would curl up tighter in his blanket or coat, and daydream, on count his breath, and before long fall back to sleep. Another thing one learned in a beggar colony was the preciousness of good rest. Chang Yuan was staring at him through the dimness. Shi Qingxuan flinched. It was more than surprise; for a moment, he mistook the man for a sight from his nightmares. He exhaled shakily. “Chang-xiong, can’t you sleep?” His companion rolled onto his back. “Just woke up for some reason.” Shi Qingxuan laughed softly; the walls were thin. “Me too.” He rested his head in the crook of his elbow. “Hey, Chang-xiong.” “What.”
Image of Haman Karn captioned "your honour it was weird girl Wednesday"
When I came up with the movie theatre idea, which was the first actual scene I wrote that still made it into the final fic (expository narration to feel my way to character voice doesn’t count), the film that jumped to mind was Leave Her To Heaven (1945)… this video essay does a good job summarizing critical perspectives on the film, particularly regarding its cinematography and production design, use of psychoanalytic tropes, and its entanglement with midcentury anxieties about women's autonomy and mobility… - femme fatales and psychopathic women - reckoning with the artificiality of Haman's _ZZ_ stuff; link to that tumblr post analyzing her fashion/visual design - her monumental/dominating quality alongside her smallness, desperation, jealousy - the Ellen Berent-isms: “Ellen always wins.” / “There’s nothing wrong with Ellen. She just loves too much. It makes an outsider out of everyone else.” - we do not have to hand it to her but being someone with this personal magnetism and intelligence and being raised a socialite, to eventually be a rich housewife? Of course she started killing - putting this kind of character in the pressure cooker of a social Darwinist revanchist breakaway state at a tender age… of course she’s going to become the worst version of herself. There are the Riefenstahls and Mishimas of the world, but fascist movements are generally terrible at creating artistic work or cultural entities that are in any way vibrant. Axis very advanced in terms of what it can manage re: manufacturing but stilted and tacky regarding culture—everything is a prewar holdover, they’re not creating anything new or alive. Disco Elysium came to mind a few times during the writing process; I kept thinking about how if this were a different kind of fugitive rebel force living in an abandoned mining facility on the edge of space, the shining jewel of their socio-cultural achievements over their first 3 years on Axis might be something other than a tiny mall where you c…
Shi Qingxuan visibly steeled herself, and set down her brush. “You can do whatever you like to me. I know that’s the deal. But could I make one request?” He Xuan frowned, and said nothing. As expected, Shi Qingxuan took her silence as permission to continue. “I want to know it’s you, instead of a clone, or something like that. Will you promise that, when we speak… you’ll come as yourself?” He Xuan never flushed outside of a mortal guise, but it was a near thing. Who was Shi Qingxuan, to ask such a thing of her? The thought stormed through He Xuan’s mind with the seductive force of self-righteousness, even as part of her whispered that Shi Qingxuan, more than anyone else alive, was entitled to make such a request. “Do you think I creep around my own lair in disguises?” He Xuan was an accomplished liar; these things rolled out from her mouth easily.
art from an artbook of char in his 0079 zeon outfit with the hair and glasses from zeta
AO3 screenshot of my fic's tags and summary
two screenshots of haman karn in her double zeta neon-zeon commander's uniform, recoloured into pink and orange. superimposed text reads "cold, but still alive" followed by a track listing
tweet by will sennet @senn_spud: (To my girl friends gay friend while she's in the bathroom) Big dog...you are mother
Each chamber at Paradise Manor looks the same as any other—red, gauche—so He Xuan cannot tell whether she has been received here before. Irrelevant, in any case, but these are the things she thinks of while she waits: floor plans, escape routes. There are voices, hushed, from the other side of the screen; they are speaking to each other, not for her, and are not concerned with the fact she can overhear their plotting. It’s immaterial to them. They exist in their own world, and care for her very little. That is the point of all this.
gif from SD gundam of chibi haman karn giggling, which turns into maniacal anime laughter
tumblr tag screenshot: some of us are... not kind bottoms haven't had a threesome since the other bottom here threw me off my partner every time i tried to ride them
a gif i have saved as "feeling it vibe", showing a person at a festival ? vibing to music with their eyes closed
Emma, a brunette 80s anime lady, speaks to her superior officer Bright: "Kamille is instinctively attracted to me."
A tweet that reads: Reply with a fic premise that you think I would write and I'll tell you how embarrassingly accurate it is.
[Verse 1] I gave my strength For years, like an ox, I pushed And for years, like a ship, I sank To the bottom of that unknown sea [Verse 2] I'm still learning to be free and not so somber Every night, I stay up a little longer Searching on that field of stars Do you know who you are? Can you dig up my tree? Can you find what's inside of me? Find the origin of my defeat
He Xuan was aware of several inconvenient facts. First, that he had spent centuries in futile struggle for acknowledgement that his pain, his family’s pain, was real and terrible. He never expected Shi Wudu to repent, but He Xuan had hoped, like a fool, that the man could muster a mote of regret when pushed to the brink. He Xuan had been surprised by the plaintive questions that fought to escape his own throat back then: Were we even human to you? This can’t be all we ever get, can it?
Picrew art of a white person with long dark hair smiling while holding a hot cup of tea
Hx POV rewrite - creepy skull pool scene - hx gender vs sqx gender - whirling internal situation - her love for sqx - not being too good to not savour a revenge murder - wanting to be seen and heard and not being ready for the conversation to be over - giving insight to her fantasy version of this dynamic - wanting to be able to play dolls with sqx (sqx is the doll) (sometimes hx is also a doll and she's hovering dissociated outside her own body making the barbies kiss)
Screenshot of my top 10 most used additional tags on ao3 Post-Canon (8) Pre-Canon (7) Rough Sex (5) Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues (5) Under-negotiated Kink (5) Missing Scene (4) Verbal Humiliation (4) Emotional Manipulation Dom/sub Undertones (4) Mutual Pining (4)
Fanlore text screenshot Fanfiction All mentioned information regarding AO3 is accurate as of September 2023. And I'm Home by MeronS. Text redacted for spoilers. tender prey by bloodletter, a completed English fanfiction where Sugimoto is transferred to the 7th division under Tsurumi pre-canon. Features Ogata/Sugimoto, Yuusaku & Ogata, Sugimoto & Tsurumi, and Ogata/Tsurumi. Rated Explicit. It is the oldest long-fic on AO3 and is only accessible to logged-in users of the website.
zine cover. a distorted 19th century etching of a figure kneeling on rocks by a raging sea, extending their arms to the horizon with hair whipping in the wind. caption is "burial at sea: trans gothic and tian guan ci fu"
Box full of print copies of my beefleaf zine
Spread from one page folding mini zine including tgcf official art and bits and pieces of text
Nie huaisang from the mdzs donghua
screenshot of a pdf: Introduction > be me, 2020 > covid unemployed > everyone on twitter is watching the untamed > watch the untamed > exposed to broader mxtx fandom > see fanart of a yuri couple from one of her other books > they’re called beefleaf for some reason3 and also they’re transbians (???) > informed that beefleaf are neither lesbians nor trans > disappointed > read tgcf > become detached from the social dogma Like any gothic tale, this story is about obsession. Mine, in particular. But He Xuan’s, too.
crop of a zine cover: a distorted 19th century etching of an ostensibly female figure, hair blowing wildly, kneeling on rocks by a stormy ocean with their arms outstretched to the sky. overtop, the text: "burial at sea: trans gothic and tian guan ci fu"
GET TO KNOW MY SHIPPING PREFERENCES & SHIPS (1 like = 1 answer) 1. List 3 shipping tropes you love 2. List 3 shipping tropes you don't love 3. One emotional aspect of a ship that always gets you 4. One physical aspect of a ship that always gets you 5. Multiship or Monoship? 6. Rare pairs or Mainstream? 7. Polyamory or Monogamy? 8. If the ship is physical, reversible or not? 9. Do you always have romantic ships for fandoms? 10. How important is the sexual part (if any) of your ship? 11. Opinion on platonic ships? 12. List 3 ships you currently love 13. List 5 OTPs from past fandoms 14. Opinion on the importance of marriage? 15. Opinion on OC kids?
Digital illustration of He Xuan from TGCF in a ghostly female form. She is wearing flowy black, dark green, and dark blue robes with a titty window. The robes and long black hair somewhat resemble seaweed.
dril tweet screencap: the xrays indicate you have a laughing skull in your stomach. you're deathpreg. don't you dare give birth to that bonehead in my office
Playlist cover: distorted black and white image of a person submerged in water, with a single hand breaching the surface
He Xuan trailed her fingers through the water in the pool, and remarked in an offhand fashion, "There are several blocked channels keeping the high tide out of the upper caves, but it would be trivial to cause the dams to fail." Gooseflesh prickled on Shi Qingxuan's arms. "You are the only one on the island who couldn't survive it," He Xuan added. After a pause, Shi Qingxuan replied, "I guess that's so."
In encroaching dawn light, Shi Qingxuan made out several massive, pale shapes moving in the distant fog. It was chilling to behold, and Shi Qingxuan was not reassured when they came close enough to recognize the bleached-white forms of the bone dragons that guarded the first Black Water Isle. The creatures were swimming towards a point on the shore up ahead, and did not appear to have noticed Shi Qingxuan. The hair on Shi Qingxuan's arms stood on end, but they crept closer to see the beasts nearly beach themselves in their enthusiasm to reach a small, dark figure on the shoreline. Small in a relative sense, of course. He Xuan crouched on the sand before them, and the immense beasts rustled and snapped at each other's spines as they plied his attention. Shi Qingxuan summoned their bravery, and went to him. As they walked closer, they were able to parse his motions; he was reaching into a bucket and tossing something forth, one at a time, for the bone dragons to fight over. Shi Qingxuan couldn’t smell blood or meat, but perhaps it was very fresh.
The primary consideration to be weighed with the assumption of this form, she has found, is the increased weight of Shi Qingxuan’s attention. Whenever He Xuan tires of her unsubtle hinting and appeases her by changing shape, He Xuan catches Shi Qingxuan staring when she thinks He Xuan can’t see, and often--unapologetic and unabashed--when she must know that He Xuan can. As the Earth Master, He Xuan is as inconspicuous and forgettable as is plausible for a major god. It’s a way of being that she has made a habit of out of necessity. She never wanted to be ordinary once in her life.
He Xuan and Hua Cheng playing weiqi at Paradise Manor, in their female forms
see you at the sun’s collapse by bloodletter Summary: He saluted her in that way he sometimes mockingly did, as a loyal general ought to greet the sagest of chief ministers. “Come on, now,” she said. “You can do better than that.”