Imagine With Me For A Moment....

I don’t remember where I got this image from, all I know it’s a website that has a article talking about Japanese desserts, I saved it for art reference.

(Edit: Apparently there’s a tagging limit so I couldn’t tag every dessert in this image, fucking Tumblr -_-*)

Personality Quizzes

Personality quizzes: WHAT’S YOUR SPIRIT ANIMAL?!?!?!?!

Me: disappointment

Woah, this is really interesting! I think it could be awesome! But what if Izuku had both his version of AFO and OFA? By giving his DNA to people, would he be able to let them keep their quirks and give them a blocker? Would it only work with the first person? Since OFA might be distributed across several people, would AFO not be able to take it at all or be able to take it with resistance from the quirk?

Someone else can add their ideas now, too! ^^

I have thought of an idea and want to mix it with the “AFO is hisashi midoriya” theory/fic fuel

*Please note that I am not caught up in the anime or manga in any sense, but spoilers mean nothing to me*

One for all could not be forcibly taken from the user, but All for One is the only character that we know of who can take quirks. We also know that the nomu have traces of dna from quirks. I’m wondering if the reason that afo couldn’t just take ofa is because it’s still partially his brothers quirk and since they are related the afo quirk does not recognize ofa as different Dna to take, which prevents afo from taking it.

Now for the Dad for one stuff:

I’m trying to think of how it would play out if correct. OFA is doubly protected in Izuku since it has the DNA of both the the brother and son of the only person who could take it to protect it.

But what if Izuku had AFO with the whole DNA blocking thing? Would Izuku basically be a safe that can keep all the extremely powerful quirks away from AFO? Or is there some other way this could go?

This idea is still in the earlier stages of thought but I thought I would share it. Maybe someone else can help expand on it. Sorry for rambling. Also please be kind I’m new to this ‘actually posting my thoughts instead of lurking’ thing.

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.

Something born from a convo on twt

(Bingmei is still The Emperor and The HHP Palace Master but he spends more time with his family and house duties, and working hard into his dream of having a BIG family)

The tweet that inspired this, which I very much agree, omega Binghe supremacy

more drawing break sketches hehe

anyway i was listening to lullaby for a princess and i really went 'haha what if yqy and sqq were celestia and luna'

Thank you so much! I’ll try and do that, ugh I’m gonna be such a mess of feelings lol

Thank you for the advice!

H e l p

So I know this girl. She’s really cute, I’ve known her for a while, and I had a crush on her for the longest time, right?

Well, today she told me something. She sent me a message telling me she likes me. I know, impossible to believe right??

But the thing is.. I now have a girlfriend. We’ve been dating for one year, it’s been really awesome, and yeahhhhh-

But I sorta still like this girl? It was really painful telling her I couldn’t be with her, but I’m happy in this other relationship and I don’t want my current girlfriend to know that I still like her because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings..

Can someone please help or give me advice on what I should do? Should I tell my current girlfriend I like the other girl? I don’t intend to cheat, so that’s not a valid option..

this is actually incredibly sweet

*screams* ♡♡♡♡♡

*sweats* ha.. is it. is it hot in here? or is it just me? *sweats harder, pulls at collar* ha, ha.. you're sexy.

i think it's just you my love, you really light up the room and light sources tend to be pretty hot ;3