it’s been a thousand years and people are still arguing about jiang cheng torturing demonic cultivators. listen, real or not real doesn’t even fucking matter
if jiang cheng had a torture dungeon you know who would have loved it? wei wuxian
(If you learned more than one, pick the one you learned the most or took for the longest time or enjoyed the most or whatever. Pick the one most meaningful to you.)
one of my favorite books as a kid was this one on speculative
zoology/evolution that I loved so much I borrowed it to the point my
school had to chase me up on returning it several times. it influenced my early creature art and design and pushed me to delve into my own specbio (on dragons. no surprises there). I loved the informatic entries, all their little lore bits and ecological adaptations; the wild color palettes, their weird little shapes. it was called The New Dinosaurs, by Dougal Dixon.
there were two more books in the series that my school didn’t have, which is either a blessing or a curse, because the third book in the set is called Man After Man.
It is 1880s America, you are about to spawn as a Historically Significant White Guy. Choose a class:
TROUBLEMAKING FRONTIER PREACHER
Special Power: Good Christian. Your vague adherence to American protestantism will ensure that law enforcement does not bother you whatsoever.
Victory condition: Fuck enough of your followers wives to start an inbred theofascist micronation.
MANICALLY AMBITIOUS CON ARTIST
Special Power: Basic Literacy. You’re poor, but you know how to read. They’ll never expect it. You may forge literally any document and it will be believed 100% of the time.
Victory Condition: Steal enough money to fuck off to Latin America. A Spanish speaking nation might as well be the moon to your debtors.
EUROPEAN NOBLE FAILSON
Special Power: Colonial Wealth. Your funny accent, foppish dress, and noble title, will make any American think you are totally good to buy it on credit.
Victory Condition: Become the boytoy to the wife of some borderline-gangster politician and save up enough political capital to run for office and get addicted to opium.
DOOMED FRONTIER EXPLORER
Special Power:How The Fuck Are You Alive. Your freakish diet of pork, whiskey, and maple syrup, makes you entirely immune to all physical injury and disease. Somehow.
Victory Condition: You have one mission, and one mission only. You need to piss off some completely friendly natives. You need to piss them off so bad they leave your stupid ass to starve in a food forest they’ve been cultivating for literally thousands of years.
Bro I fucking love the DB Cooper case nothing about this whole situation sounds real. None of the passengers on the plane realized they were being hijacked until the plane landed two hours after it was supposed to and the fbi showed up with suitcases full of money. The note about the bomb almost went unnoticed because the flight attendant thought she was being sexually harassed so she didn’t read it. One of the main suspects was the first trans woman in Washington to have a sex change operation. A reporter who was so dead set on his suspect that he brought him to court was so upset about being wrong that he went catatonic and was treated with electroshock therapy and it WORKED. There’s been multiple “I’m DB Cooper” death confessions. He never even SAID his name was DB Cooper. Either he got away with a million bucks in today’s money and the most iconic and harmless crime American history or he impaled himself on a pine tree while falling a zillion miles an hour in the dark while clutching duffel bags full of cash and either option is equally hilarious. He wore a clip on tie. He committed an act of sky piracy. What in the fucking looney toons
We all love urban fantasy but we have to contend with the fact that if monsters were real, some of them would be normies. Your werewolf boyfriend posts on LinkedIn. The tentacled horror you’ve been thirsting after is a Disney adult.
You did it, you made unimaginable horror within man-made comprehension.
Sorry I’m late, I got added to the Wild Hunt last night and ran and reveled with them for what felt like 100 years plus a day until I landed the killing blow on a stag with bronze antlers then suddenly woke in my bed, willow leaves in my hair, a nameless song echoing in my ears, and my hands still bloody, so yeah, totally missed my alarm and stuff.
sometimes i think abt how if a man from 1942 saw me vaping on my little e-cigarette he would think i looked impossibly futuristic and also like a haunting allegory for humanity’s progressive alienation from itself by technology. “where’s the smoke? the fire? where’s all the goddamned romance?” he’d demand, impassioned
