“Shh, it’s alright,” the villain said. “You’re doing beautifully and I’m so proud of you. But that’s enough now. It was cruel of them to make you fight me – you could never have won. It’s not your fault.”
The ancient and powerful villain may have had a calm and gentle face as he spoke, but he was furious, not at the hero, but the gods for continually sending kids and teenagers to fight their battles.
I know other writers have already beat this poor horse to death*, but it still really jars me when I see just “Zhao” or “Shen” used to refer to the main characters in Guardian. I’ve been thinking about why that is, and I had a thought:
Guardian behind the scenes – Arm strength, for @xparrot ❤
Waaaaah but there is just so much to love here:
The gorgeous outfits they’re both in
And
Zhu Yilong
is in Shen Wei’s glasses even! for maximum nerd-power effect
Bai Yu cracking himself up at how much he’s straining
The clear physical effort ZYL is putting into it, but it’s well within his limits, looking at how measuredly he lowers the weights
But seriously, the way ZYL presses his lips and adjusts his grip, uuuuugggh
BY’s embarrassed glance at the camera
Their challenging grins
ZYL neatly buttoning his jacket back up after he’s sufficiently pwned BY
And not shown here, but afterward when they walk off together and BY is complaining, “You’re so good looking, and stronger than me, how can I even live in this world?” 😀 😀 😀
it isn’t though!!! it’s because most relationships aren’t worth the effort. The “sweater curse” is actually most commonly called the “BOYFRIEND sweater curse.” Which=heteronormative, but the curse most often falls on a woman knitting a sweater for a boyfriend. Before she finishes the sweater, they break up – pop culture would have you believe it’s because the boyfriend freaks out do to the weirdness/clinginess of having a sweater made for you, but I think knitters are wiser than that.
It’s because after spending serious £££ on materials, and then HUNDREDS OF HOURS OF LABOR on the creation of the item, with every stitch a prayer of totally focused intent, creating a large display of technical skill – it is then gifted to a non-knitter who does NOT APPRECIATE the work/effort/skill/cost/TIME it took to make it, and in fact thinks you’re a bit weird and making a big deal out of a piece of clothing, and after they go “oh thanks” and shove your creation in the cupboard next to a sweater they got for £15 at an M&S sale, then they never wear your sweater because it’s too tight because when you asked them how their favorite sweaters usually fit they said “I ‘unno” and when you measured them for the fifth time and asked, rather tersely, if they had enough room in the chest, they said “I guess,” and then if pressed they say they don’t really like the sweater design, but then you point out that they were supposed to participate in helping you design it and they say they don’t really care about how things look, and when you say that you tried to match it to their other clothes so how can they hate it, then they say that honestly their mother still buys all their clothes because they hate going shopping, and that they hate all their other clothes too, well. That’s when a sensible knitter goes “Fuck this shit. And you know what? Fuck this man.”
This is what happens when someone posts in a knitting forum “Attack of the sweater curse!” – this is the usual story. It has a rigid plot. It is as old as myth.
That’s when you look at the time you spent and realize, “I could LITERALLY have written the first draft of a novel instead of doing this.” That’s when you go “I could have taken that £200 and bought myself a new wardrobe.” That’s when you go “I could have taken all that intent, all that willpower, all that creative force, and laid down some fucking witchcraft, all right?” That’s when you go “I basically spent 100 hours straight thinking about this bastard while making something amazing for him, and I have no evidence that he ever spent 10 hours of his life thinking about me.”
And “I could spend this time and energy and money in making myself an enormous, intricate heirloom silk shawl with just a touch of cashmere, in elvish twists and leafy lace in all the colors of the night, shot through with subtly glittering stars, warm in winter and cool and summer and light as a lover’s kiss on the shoulders, suitable for draping over my arms at weddings or wrapping myself in to watch the sea, a lace-knotted promise to myself that I will keep for my entire life and gift to my favorite granddaughter when I die, and she will wear it to keep alive my memory – but instead I have this sweater, and this fuckboy.”
The sweater curse is a lesson that the universe gives to a knitter at an important point in their life. It is a gift.
Knitting a sweater for a husband or wife generally doesn’t call down the curse, because the relationship is meant to be stronger than 4-ply.
(Although I say this, but I’ve taken over 5 years to finish a pair of mittens for my husband, because he casually asked me to do something customized with the cables, and I still can’t get the math to work on the right hand.)
Another question for you to consider about this photo (which I love and adore btw) @for-the-flail is… how come he has slashes to the skin of his shoulder but no corresponding cuts to his clothing (e.g. there is no damage at all visible to the shoulder of his suit when he emerges from the bushes after falling off the roof – and I’m not even sure, from this pic, that there is any damage to the shirt other than the blood that has soaked into it?)?
I think the only logical answer is that Shen Wei’s shirt (and by extension all his clothes) is a magical projection rather than a real shirt, so is immune to dark energy attacks. This explains how he can easily switch between his civvies and the Envoy’s robes.
It also means that Shen Wei is in actuality going around naked all the time.
(Zhao Yunlan has been really pushing hard for Lin Jing to finish that dark-energy dispeller he’s been working on…)
I fully accept this theory, because it makes me giggle entirely too much (and probably inappropriately).
Triggered by another post I didn’t want to hijack:
Excalibur.
In the legends, Excalibur comes out of a lake (although some versions have Excalibur as the sword in the stone, those are later…the sword Arthur pulls from the stone breaks and he goes to get a better one).
From the “Lady of the Lake.”
Here’s the thing.
In northern Europe in the Iron Age all the way through to the early Medieval period, most iron came from bog iron. It was hard to smelt, because it was a rather low grade ore, but you didn’t have to mine it and it was a renewable resource (in about twenty years you could just come back and get more, because it formed constantly).
Meaning that the iron used to make a sword came…out of water.
In most fairy stories, fairies don’t like iron. So the vision of the Lady as some kind of fairy or elf? Not likely.
The idea of her as a druid? Maybe.
But what’s far more likely is this: The Lady of the Lake was a smith.
But….but…
The Celtic deity in charge of smiths and ironworking was Bridget, a goddess. The mystical associations with the Lady would fit with her being a priestess of Bridget…and thus, a smith.
IOW, Arthurian people, maybe we should not be visualizing the Lady of the Lake as a slender, graceful woman in a gown…
Lady Karasu 