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Kyoujin posted:For sure and bet it relates to all the gifts and things she does for the boaters to buy their loyalty I think it's most likely that her power doesn't give her direct influence over peoples' minds, but instead tells her exactly how to behave in order to influence their views/behavior. It can probably also only be used to make the "possessions" (the employed Avowed in this case) fit the desires of their employer, so she couldn't just influence them to do whatever she wants.
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May 3, 2023 21:39
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Magically enhanced social engineering as opposed to out and out mind control is still pretty creepy.
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May 3, 2023 22:02
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And remember the pov parts from the active super hero, how mind control people are super restricted. So that would be another reason she keeps that aspect of her rabbit powers secret.
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May 3, 2023 22:32
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avoraciopoctules posted:Initial impressions of A Nerubian's Journey, after seeing it mentioned positively several times here: This is all on point: It's a bit of a slow start, the prose is unimpressive and you have to look poo poo up on Wiki a lot at first if you're not a WOW nerd (I did), but once it gets to the First Contact stuff it becomes quite fun. I think you'll enjoy the future chapters.
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May 3, 2023 22:47
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avoraciopoctules posted:Initial impressions of A Nerubian's Journey, after seeing it mentioned positively several times here: They maintain about that same pacing and plain but functional style throughout. It's a forum game that got written up, and it's hard for me to tell if the writer or the forumites were the ones so committed to never doing anything.
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May 4, 2023 00:19
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Chapter 156 of Forge of Destiny Ling Qi really has no idea what she's doing to Meizhen when she finds Ling Qi asleep tangled up with another girl half-undressed in the house's common room, huh? That poor Meizhen is dying here girl.
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May 4, 2023 01:06
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^^^ Have you gotten to any of the Meizhen PoV chapters yet? Those are kind of interesting as a view into how she views Ling Qi.Wittgen posted:Magically enhanced social engineering as opposed to out and out mind control is still pretty creepy. For sure, but it's still a distinction (mainly in the sense that it being social engineering means you can probably resist it if you're aware of it, which will probably be the case with Alden).
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May 4, 2023 01:41
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The Meizhen subtext honestly flew past my head my first time reading through Forge, so it was pretty easy to understand Ling Qi's viewpoint. Speaking of lesbians, Necroepilogos has to be the work I most look forward to every week. For the longest time I kept forgetting that it updated on Thursdays so I would feel the same thrill of surprise at breakfast time every. time. I just don't get that happy to see any other web serial update. Okay, maybe I'm 75% as happy with a couple of em. When it comes to descriptive writing, Katalepsis always punched way above its weight, when compared to basically the entire genre, but the nigh-on slapstick relationship antics were just never all that fun for me. I just wanted to learn more about the world! And Necroepilogos delivers on the beautifully textured character/environmental work that I so appreciated.
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May 4, 2023 02:59
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catgirlgenius posted:The Meizhen subtext honestly flew past my head my first time reading through Forge, so it was pretty easy to understand Ling Qi's viewpoint. one of the funniest bits on reread is when ling qi askes cui what meizen wants for a gift and then is like "oh, a necklace, gently embraced in the firm slopes of heaving bosoms, ill head to a jewelry store" and cui is like meh i tried
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May 4, 2023 03:46
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Ytlaya posted:^^^ Have you gotten to any of the Meizhen PoV chapters yet? Those are kind of interesting as a view into how she views Ling Qi. I think I've had... 1 Meizhen chapter so far. A Cui chapter too. Poor girl was "crying" (well as close to crying as she gets anyway) in her room after Ling Qi turned her down. I'm like 1000% sure this pairing will never happen though. Ling Qi basically starts drooling every time she catches sight of a big muscly guy. Nitrousoxide fucked around with this message at 04:09 on May 4, 2023 |
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May 4, 2023 04:04
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Nitrousoxide posted:Chapter 156 of Forge of Destiny She really doesn't. To be fair, I don't think I got it the first time or two I read that scene either.
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May 4, 2023 04:10
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catgirlgenius posted:The Meizhen subtext honestly flew past my head my first time reading through Forge, so it was pretty easy to understand Ling Qi's viewpoint. Hey, I'm really happy to hear you're enjoying what I'm doing with Necroepilogos so far, thank you so much. I'm kind of using the story to push myself into subject areas and styles and experiments that I wouldn't do so in Katalepsis, because of the nature of the story and setting. Necro has already ended up exceeding all my expectations, and I've barely scratched the surface of the plans so far. If anything I'm worried about it getting too weird and dark, but it seems to be working.
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May 4, 2023 04:59
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Nitrousoxide posted:Chapter 156 of Forge of Destiny Ahhh Lake Gate and Dream Party. Good times. Birds falling out the sky dead with heart attacks and red realm girls weeping in the streets as a pissed of Meizhen stomps by is an enduring image Cui giving Ling Qi gift misplaced gift ideas because she caught Meizhen staring at a girls tits is something I still laugh about years later. Also welcome to Six. Enjoy the ride.
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May 5, 2023 00:07
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A big flaming stink posted:unrelated to this comment, but i have just realized that the author of this serial is literally the former punter of the Minnesota Vikings Chris Kluwe Its Rinaldo posted:WHAT I am SHOCKED, SHOCKED to hear that he would do something as nerdy as write a web serial.  Ok, maybe not that shocked.
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May 5, 2023 17:16
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Red faced troll fits
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May 5, 2023 19:38
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Forge of Destiny Ch 170 & 186 I really like this POV of Ling Qi's mother, and later, Ling Qi's view of Cai Renxiang's mother. They really help to express how alien and like gods the cultivators are to people of lower realms. Its easy to lose sight of this when Ling Qi is primarily interacting with people lower than her, or she's just abnormally resistant to their oppressive aura like she is to the Bae clan.
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May 5, 2023 20:35
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Forge of Destiny Books one and two are great. I can always tell when something is good... because I buy the next one in the series before I'm done with the current one. Also finished BTDEM book five and I know as authors we like to torture our characters, but drat Selkie Elaine can't catch a break. It's just one thing after the other. Still good though and I got book six for after Forge of Destiny V3.
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May 6, 2023 02:53
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Threads of Fate Chapter 17 I'm enjoying the structure of this book more. We don't have the detailed day after day detailed cultivation description we were getting in Forge. It's been mostly Ling Qi having to learn how to navigate inner sect politics as the spymaster for her lady. The drastically reduced Bai Meizhen content is a bit of a bummer, but that little shitposter in her head Sixiang is easily making up for it. I think they're rapidly rising up to be my #1 supporting character. Loving how they delight in pointing out Ling Qi ogling guys and cackling as Cai Renxiang keeps giving her more and more smoozing work that she dreads. Nitrousoxide fucked around with this message at 01:42 on May 7, 2023 |
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May 7, 2023 01:38
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Looking at the comments for the latest Super Supportive chapters (the new one is out btw - apparently I was wrong and Manon's ability probably does involve some subtle/low-level mind manipulation, likely in the sense of lowering someone's defenses against being manipulated), and apparently a number (more than one even!) of commenters think that Thwart Hog is Aunt Connie  I feel like that sort of thing is a symptom of having consumed too much bad fiction. Just a completely baffling opinion that only makes sense if you're craving Mystery Box reveals constantly. Nitrousoxide posted:I'm enjoying the structure of this book more. We don't have the detailed day after day detailed cultivation description we were getting in Forge. It's been mostly Ling Qi having to learn how to navigate inner sect politics as the spymaster for her lady. The drastically reduced Bai Meizhen content is a bit of a bummer, but that little shitposter in her head Sixiang is easily making up for it. I think they're rapidly rising up to be my #1 supporting character. Loving how they delight in pointing out Ling Qi ogling guys and cackling as Cai Renxiang keeps giving her more and more smoozing work that she dreads. Yeah, I like the shift away from detailing the cultivation minutae. I only really care about the important stuff and don't really need to know that Ling Qi is continuing her training. One thing I like about the parts soon after where you are (so this is still a minor spoiler for you) is how the story actually acknowledges that Ling Qi has been kind of lovely to people by constantly being aloof and treating them all cynically, and how she matures some and starts to actually engage with more people socially. I feel like many other stories would just stick to the "protagonist is aloof and better than other people" framing.
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May 7, 2023 04:42
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Ytlaya posted:Looking at the comments for the latest Super Supportive chapters (the new one is out btw - apparently I was wrong and Manon's ability probably does involve some subtle/low-level mind manipulation, likely in the sense of lowering someone's defenses against being manipulated), and apparently a number (more than one even!) of commenters think that Thwart Hog is Aunt Connie its the same sort of thing that leads to fan music videos having the song lyrics sync up with literal representations of them in the video. Things gotta click together just-so, you cant just allow vibes to exist without being defined
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May 7, 2023 05:44
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Haha, the Aunt's unreliability being due to summons would be kind of funny. Honestly feels somewhat possible. I could see where there is appeal in that the undeclared avowed life is important to consider thematically but challenging to explore deeply because of how it's criminalized. If the main character doesn't make a connection with an unregistered avowed, the path he wants to take in life will not really allow the story much room to explore it. In addition to narrative utility, there is plausibility. There is a generic component, and the main character is avowed and his mom was deep in word chain stuff. Thwart Hog being the aunt is nonsense though. That would mean the Aunt is faking an Australian accent on jobs. It would mean she is a psycho who doesn't have any reaction to finding out her nephew who she has raised is avowed. It would mean the main character was never able to recognize at all his aunt had super strength.
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May 7, 2023 05:58
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Wittgen posted:Haha, the Aunt's unreliability being due to summons would be kind of funny. Honestly feels somewhat possible. I could see where there is appeal in that the undeclared avowed life is important to consider thematically but challenging to explore deeply because of how it's criminalized. If the main character doesn't make a connection with an unregistered avowed, the path he wants to take in life will not really allow the story much room to explore it. In addition to narrative utility, there is plausibility. There is a generic component, and the main character is avowed and his mom was deep in word chain stuff. But don't we know that the aunt is constantly partying and stuff? The aunt would have to be convincingly faking a persona that makes her being frequently absent unsurprising to Alden, which just doesn't seem plausible at all (especially since Alden is a pretty perceptive guy). His aunt just seems like a fairly realistic "immature adult who has no business raising a child but was suddenly forced to due to his parents dying." When is it mentioned that his mom was involved with word chains? I don't remember learning much about his parents at all (other than that they died), but it's possible I missed something.
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May 7, 2023 06:37
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First chapter, when Alden is trapped in either rubble or bubble, mentions him trying the chain his mother taught him.
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May 7, 2023 09:04
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Yeah, his mom taught him a word chain and also she worked at a healing center. It was a big deal for a non-avowed human to have that position. I am making a bit of an inference that she was working with word chains in a substantial way. It would mean that the aunt was having to fake things constantly, but a non-registered avowed would have to really commit to the bit. And it's not like she would have to be lying entirely. She could be a flakey party person that just plays into and exaggerates that to cover for her occasional absences. A big reason I find this idea intriguing is because it is comic book as all hell. Heroes like The Flash and Spider-Man often have their loved ones seeing them as really unreliable. This could be an interesting little inversion of that. I would still say it's unlikely, but I think it's a fun theory.
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May 7, 2023 12:48
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Elfface posted:First chapter, when Alden is trapped in either rubble or bubble, mentions him trying the chain his mother taught him. From what we learn later, it seems like most humans don't actually know what they're doing with word chains (and it also doesn't say his mom specifically taught him, but since he was taught useless/wrong wordchains it just seems to imply that it's the generic pseudo-chaining a lot of humans learn, like the ones in the class Alden currently takes). edit: Ah, I found the part you're talking about. quote:Everyone was so proud of her. Houses of Healing usually had just one healer—a superhuman or even an Artonan—plus an apprentice or two, and a small handful of regular human nurses who had to go through years of extra training and be granted special authority to use certain healing wordchains. I wonder if he learned his wordchains from somewhere else (like the class he's taking - it sounds like stuff like this might just be a part of human culture in their setting, almost like astrology or something), because if his mom was using real wordchains she wouldn't have been teaching him English ones that don't do anything (and she probably would have only known those specific healing ones). But that quote actually seems to cement the idea that his mom was a normal person, since she was in a position that requires a lot of training and presumably scrutiny. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 23:31 on May 7, 2023 |
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May 7, 2023 23:26
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I can’t believe I just got rickrolled by a Royal Road ad
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May 8, 2023 04:07
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New Super Supportive. I really like the approach Alden takes to issues; the way he acts is very believable as someone who is just completely confused and has no idea what's expected of him in that situation, including doing something really dumb (trying to catch the creature) just because he feels the pressure to do *something*. The situation itself was also an interesting one to deal with. It's also interesting getting some more insight into how Artonans view summoning contracts.
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May 8, 2023 04:34
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Yeah. I like how Alden isn't some cold, calculating genius when dumped in a chaotic situation. After floundering for a bit he then breaks down the situation, reevaluates, and comes to the solution he needs to escalate. His way of solving the situation shows how important being a superhero support is to him and he already acts like one.
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May 8, 2023 04:50
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Alden rules. Joe rules. These dumb kids are so hosed.
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May 8, 2023 14:43
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nrook posted:I can’t believe I just got rickrolled by a Royal Road ad I love that ad.
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May 8, 2023 14:50
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nrook posted:I can’t believe I just got rickrolled by a Royal Road ad Selkie even told us they'd done that. Wittgen posted:Alden rules. Joe rules. These dumb kids are so hosed. Nah. Joe deals in favors. He's not going to get them kicked out, he's going to make them owe him 1+ favors to be called in later. Or maybe just money since Joe seems to view his current resources as inadequate despite being vastly more than Alden can imagine. It was another good chapter.
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May 8, 2023 16:24
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I'm sorry, but if I started off my wizard career deeply in debt to a wizard of Joe's stature, I would consider myself pretty hosed. Oh, they'll get out of this situation. The consequences of whatever dumb poo poo they were pulling will be wiped out by Joe. The cost of Joe's solution will follow them for the rest of their lives. Joe is so good at amoral wizard bullshit that his punishment for war crimes and sleeping with the wives of high ranking politicians was to get tenure at magic Oxford.
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May 8, 2023 16:53
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The interactions between Alden and the Artonan teens are pretty funny/interesting, because there's this weird dynamic where Alden is simultaneously subordinate and semi-superior to them despite being around the same age. He's contracted labor, but special contracted labor in a situation where the students don't hold authority (and it's obvious that Avowed aren't really seen the same way as hired help in our societies - their powers and circumstances lend them a different sort of status). It seems sort of like working with a very high-class butler that an organization you're affiliated with hired. They're acting in service to you, but they answer to something higher so you're hosed if you treat them badly. Wittgen posted:I'm sorry, but if I started off my wizard career deeply in debt to a wizard of Joe's stature, I would consider myself pretty hosed. Oh, they'll get out of this situation. The consequences of whatever dumb poo poo they were pulling will be wiped out by Joe. The cost of Joe's solution will follow them for the rest of their lives. Yeah, but he also values that sort of attitude (only applied more smartly). I think the worst case is that they find themselves connected to Joe in a way that is mutually beneficial in some fashion (but essentially involuntary). Joe seems like he treats people who he finds useful pretty well, even if it's for reasons beneficial to himself.
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May 8, 2023 18:56
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Megazver posted:This is all on point: It's a bit of a slow start, the prose is unimpressive and you have to look poo poo up on Wiki a lot at first if you're not a WOW nerd (I did), but once it gets to the First Contact stuff it becomes quite fun. I think you'll enjoy the future chapters. I did end up reading up to the end of A Nerubian's Journey over the course of 3-4 days, and I am fairly positive on it. Not sure I would recommend it to someone who isn't hazily aware of at least the plot of Warcraft 3, but as someone who played the strategy games and read few articles about the MMO, the fantasy of somebody averting all those tragedies with ~Decorum~ and basic diplomacy was enjoyable. This is one of those fanfics about what might happen if you stripped most of the melodrama out of a story and had people just talk out their differences. "Fix fics" can be very satisfying when you are dealing with an IP that has cool ideas implemented poorly or obvious unsatisfying contrivances, and Warcraft does seem like a good match for that kind of story. I would put it a notch over the usual isekai savior stuff for three reasons. 1. It is more about the real diplomatic and bureaucratic work than the wizard battles. There's some fun details and challenges there you wouldn't see in a story mostly about how cool the self insert was. 2. This story is full of real enthusiasm for how cool characters and setting elements could be if they weren't so heavily instrumentalized for endless video game quests. 3. These days, the optimism about people saving the world via just talking things out might seem a little quaint. But that doesn't mean it isn't nice. When I read a story about people dodging a bunch of unfortunate looming problems by sharing information and cooperating with each other a bit more, I do tend to find that pretty heartening.
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May 8, 2023 21:09
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nrook posted:I can’t believe I just got rickrolled by a Royal Road ad Good, GOOOD, let the hate flow through you. And tell more people that you got rickrolled by BTDEM's author/ad  It's taken a while, but now I'm finally seeing a bunch of posts on reddit, various discord channels, now here... the marketing is working!
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May 8, 2023 22:18
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Selkie Myth posted:Good, GOOOD, let the hate flow through you. The urge to counter market is strong just to discourage future behavior. (It is a nice gimmick, well done.)
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May 8, 2023 23:19
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I assume countermarket here means buying an ad with rick astley on it that links to btdem’s rr page
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May 8, 2023 23:20
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If the anatorans appeared in 1960, doesn't that mean the soviets should still be around?
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May 8, 2023 23:28
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Only Villains: I love the idea of an undead that is so introverted and out of touch they don't even realize the mostly uninhabited pasture lands around them have become a country that isn't too keen on zombies wandering into their lands.
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May 8, 2023 23:42
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Threads of Destiny Chapter 44 Meizhen actually trying to comfort Ling Qi with a quick pat on the shoulder after she took her first life? My you've grown.
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May 8, 2023 23:45
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