Found The Killer Post Again Bc I Lost It

This is Lungs.

Long story short, I recently got Among Us {as in, a couple of days ago}, and I’m already quite obsessed. In the first game I played with my mates, I set my name to “Lungs” {simply just to be cursed} and instantly fell in love with pink and the egg hat. From that day on, I’ve been using to same name, colour and hat.

But, I’ve heard about these things called “Among Usonas” and people just making Among Us OCs in general which is really exciting. It’s always good to have a highly creative fandom, that from what I’ve seen, isn’t really toxic at all. Makes my little, autistic brain happy when I can engage with an obsession through art. Cough, Ghost fan art. Cough, Will Wood fan art. Cough, OC art.

So this is a little bit about Lungs!

His nickname comes from both his strangeness and how he could be considered the “lungs” of the ship since he’s mostly tasked with clearing things out in O2 and is often the first man on the job when O2 malfunctions. However, he is very much paranoid when fixing the reactor which can make him look suspicious. Speaking of paranoia; Lungs is very much scared of the dark and will rush his way down to electrical if the power shuts off.

About his outfit. Lungs strongly dislikes it when he’s made to wear any other colour. He does not perceive pink as a feminine colour, more of a colour that suits his personality, which is why he becomes pretty frustrated when other crew mates accidentally think he might be a female. When Lungs makes his breakfast, he always ends up flinging a fried egg on his helmet and goes abaout the day wondering why he smells so lovely. He only realises at night when the egg starts to go off. However, when he wakes up, since he has the memory of a goldfish, he will not recall the egg and teh cycle will repeat. In summary, he constantly is egged.

If you haven’t gathered already, Lungs is a little bit stupid. He is often fooled into putting trust into someone, is framed or even frames himself. This gets our little pink spacebean into plenty of dilemmas, despite not being an imposter. But like they say, ignorance is bliss. Lungs, despite being a complete moron, is happy go lucky and a straight up loveable idiot. He has a very fatherly attitude and will protect even the silliest of things, such as the egg he keeps as a friend, convinced that one day it will hatch, despite it being 3D printed. Lungs just loves to make friends with anything and anyone. He’s just happy to be here.

Lungs is a short and lanky gentleman. He’s probably the shortest man on the ship. He doesn’t really mind this, and doesn’t try to compensate for his height by being confident... because he’s not confident at all, but also because he quite likes being small.

So basically he’s cute.

A year post abyss, Peak lords Shen Qingqiu and Shang Qinghua cuddle puddle havers. With or without the privacy barriers, in SQQ's bamboo house or in SQH's office.

Who cares ommgggg who cares we're dead meat anyway or so they think.

Did ask, very much care because people are losing their minds. Rumors are flying. The Sect Leader tactfully (read, tearfully) extracted himself from Master Shen's house after Peak Lord Shang answered the door, telling him that, no Qingqiu is not available and is resting (So was he by the state of his hair and robes). Peak Lord Liu Qingge nearly deviated this one time when he burst into SQH's office for an update on something trivial only to find SQQ curled up on top of SQH who was snoring into SQQ's hair, scrolls abandoned.

It's getting out of hand. They've been spotted casually leaning into each others touch around their peaks. Master Shen insists they need sunlight (it's nearly dusk) as he fills in Peak Lord Shang's official reports (signed SQQ), Peak Lord Qinghua sleepily agrees against Master Shen's side.

Jaws are on the floor with tongues still wagging, the rumor mill is frenzied, enough that the matter has reached the borderlands near the rifts and by extension, the demons and the abyss and one young heavenly demon who is as jealous as he is confused.

Somewhere under Master Shen, Peak Lord Shang shivers awake.

A comic about the spectrum of responses to stress - we talk alot about the more extreme ends of this and trauma, but the more subtle and every day responses can be harder to spot. if we can understand our own and other’s responses better, problems Are easier to confront and blaming is less likely to happen :) hope it’s helpful!!

i collect images with powerful ot3/third wheel energies so you don’t have to. i am releasing them to you, the public, so you may share in my bounty

gender neutral greetings ✨

Smaugust 2024 by Critbit

So You Want to Read More about Chinese Mythos: a rough list of primary sources

"How/Where can I learn more about Chinese mythology?" is a question I saw a lot on other sites, back when I was venturing outside of Shenmo novel booksphere and into IRL folk religions + general mythos, but had rarely found satisfying answers.

As such, this is my attempt at writing something past me will find useful.

(Built into it is the assumption that you can read Chinese, which I only realized after writing the post. I try to amend for it by adding links to existing translations, as well as links to digitalized Chinese versions when there doesn't seem to be one.)

The thing about all mythologies and legends is that they are 1) complicated, and 2) are products of their times. As such, it is very important to specify the "when" and "wheres" and "what are you looking for" when answering a question as broad as this.

-Do you want one or more "books with an overarching story"?

In that case, Journey to the West and Investiture of the Gods (Fengshen Yanyi) serve as good starting points, made more accessible for general readers by the fact that they both had English translations——Anthony C. Yu's JTTW translation is very good, Gu Zhizhong's FSYY one, not so much.

Crucially, they are both Ming vernacular novels. Though they are fictional works that are not on the same level of "seriousness" as actual religious scriptures, these books still took inspiration from the popular religion of their times, at a point where the blending of the Three Teachings (Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism) had become truly mainstream.

And for FSYY specifically, the book had a huge influence on subsequent popular worship because of its "pantheon-building" aspect, to the point of some Daoists actually putting characters from the novel into their temples.

(Vernacular novels + operas being a medium for the spread of popular worship and popular fictional characters eventually being worshipped IRL is a thing in Ming-Qing China. Meir Shahar has a paper that goes into detail about the relationship between the two.)

After that, if you want to read other Shenmo novels, works that are much less well-written but may be more reflective of Ming folk religions at the time, check out Journey to the North/South/East (named as such bc of what basically amounted to a Ming print house marketing strategy) too.

-Do you want to know about the priestly Daoist side of things, the "how the deities are organized and worshipped in a somewhat more formal setting" vs "how the stories are told"?

Though I won't recommend diving straight into the entire Daozang or Yunji Qiqian or some other books compiled in the Daoist text collections, I can think of a few "list of gods/immortals" type works, like Liexian Zhuan and Zhenling Weiye Tu.

Also, though it is much closer to the folk religion side than the organized Daoist side, the Yuan-Ming era Grand Compendium of the Three Religions' Deities, aka Sanjiao Soushen Daquan, is invaluable in understanding the origins and evolutions of certain popular deities.

(A quirk of historical Daoist scriptures is that they often come up with giant lists of gods that have never appeared in other prior texts, or enjoy any actual worship in temples.)

(The "organized/folk" divide is itself a dubious one, seeing how both state religion and "priestly" Daoism had channels to incorporate popular deities and practices into their systems. But if you are just looking at written materials, I feel like there is still a noticeable difference.)

Lastly, if you want to know more about Daoist immortal-hood and how to attain it: Ge Hong's Baopuzi (N & S. dynasty) and Zhonglv Chuandao Ji (late Tang/Five Dynasties) are both texts about external and internal alchemy with English translations.

-Do you want something older, more ancient, from Warring States and Qin-Han Era China?

Classics of Mountains and Seas, aka Shanhai Jing, is the way to go. It also reads like a bestiary-slash-fantastical cookbook, full of strange beasts, plants, kingdoms of unusual humanoids, and the occasional half-man, half-beast gods.

A later work, the Han-dynasty Huai Nan Zi, is an even denser read, being a collection of essays, but it's also where a lot of ancient legends like "Nvwa patches the sky" and "Chang'e steals the elixir of immortality" can be first found in bits and pieces.

Shenyi Jing might or might not be a Northern-Southern dynasties work masquerading as a Han one. It was written in a style that emulated the Classics of Mountains and Seas, and had some neat fantastic beasts and additional descriptions of gods/beasts mentioned in the previous 2 works.

-Do you have too much time on your hands, a willingness to get through lot of classical Chinese, and an obsession over yaoguais and ghosts?

Then it's time to flip open the encyclopedic folklore compendiums——Soushen Ji (N/S dynasty), You Yang Za Zu (Tang), Taiping Guangji (early Song), Yijian Zhi (Southern Song)...

Okay, to be honest, you probably can't read all of them from start to finish. I can't either. These aren't purely folklore compendiums, but giant encyclopedias collecting matters ranging from history and biography to medicine and geography, with specific sections on yaoguais, ghosts and "strange things that happened to someone".

As such, I recommend you only check the relevant sections and use the Full Text Search function well.

Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studios, aka Liaozhai Zhiyi, is in a similar vein, but a lot more entertaining and readable. Together with Yuewei Caotang Biji and Zi Buyu, they formed the "Big Three" of Qing dynasty folktale compendiums, all of which featured a lot of stories about fox spirits and ghosts.

Lastly...

The Yuan-Ming Zajus (a sort of folk opera) get an honorable mention. Apart from JTTW Zaju, an early, pre-novel version of the story that has very different characterization of SWK, there are also a few plays centered around Erlang (specifically, Zhao Erlang) and Nezha, such as "Erlang Drunkenly Shot the Demon-locking Mirror". Sadly, none of these had an English translation.

Because of the fragmented nature of Chinese mythos, you can always find some tidbits scattered inside history books like Zuo Zhuan or poetry collections like Qu Yuan's Chuci. Since they aren't really about mythology overall and are too numerous to cite, I do not include them in this post, but if you wanna go down even deeper in this already gigantic rabbit hole, it's a good thing to keep in mind.

Близнецы Шэни моя маленькая римская империя 🙏

They’re passive aggressively cleaning each others faces in the banana bed rn