Recs of various sorts plus cake

Earlier this week I wrote up a recpost for the Cdrama 'Under the Skin' (which I'm actually rewatching already, it's just really good and there's all these things you pick up with a second viewing.) I also recently watched 长公主在上, aka Her Royal Highness, aka Eldest Princess Above, which has a great write up here but, to give a quick teaser, is web drama (27 very short episodes = about an hour runtime) about an imperial princess (the current emperor's older sister) who is the one with power and the political intrigue that results from that. There's princess/bodyguard development within backstabbing and spy shenanigans and kneeling for penance in the rain. trobadora did a nice promo for it here that goes into more depth than the tumblr post if you want more info. I was happily surprised by it and it's well work the hour spent watching. If you check it out make sure you go to the youtube playlist for the two extras.

Have two weeks of recthething posts (MDZS/Untamed fic and tumblr art for that, Guardian and Merlin)

the turning year by bleuett
Summary Snippet: Lan Wangji grows vegetables and flowers for his small town. Wei Ying is the new kind-of delivery boy. They fall in love. (interesting sci-fic/space AU meet-cute)

oh you fill my lungs with sweetness by Anonymous (2k)
Summary: Wei Ying is sick. Lan Zhan cares for him. (wonderfully sweet modern cultivation h/c sickfic)

No Compasses, No Signs by brooklinegirl (36k)
Summary Snippet: The old woman looks at Lan Zhan. "What's his name?"

Lan Zhan looks down at the man's pale, slack face, and presses his own hand against the cut, trying to staunch the blood flow with his glove. "Wei Ying," he says without thinking about it.

The man stirs slightly in his arms, his eyes blinking open for a moment. "Oh," he says faintly. "It's you." (Great modern-with-more (that I won't spoil) AU fic)

tumblr art:
MDZS/The Untamed:
- Someone said scar kissing and, yes. (SFW and utterly hot LWJ and WWX)
- 5 gifts WWX gave to LWJ + 1 LWJ gave to WWX (beautiful and heartfelt comic)
Guardian -Guardian Fanart 镇魂同人 (adorable comic, translation in the tags)
Merlin:
- Merlin’s Magic Reveal being like…. (a comic showing perfect, and hilarious, examples of how contrastive stress changes a sentence's meaning)
- that damned lake (beautiful and evocative)

bdylanhollis posted a video making waky cake recently and it got me to drag out my recipes for it since I'd kind of forgotten about it. I've made it twice now. His recipe is here (straight into a 9x9" cake pan add 1 1/2 C flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 c sugar and 1/3 C cocoa. Mix with fork. Make three wells and pour 2 tbsp vinegar in one, 1/3 C oil another and some vanilla the last. Pour 1 C water over and stir to combine. Then bake at 350 for a half hour. When cool, top with icing made of 1 C pdr sugar + 2tbsp cocoa and enough water.) which I mostly followed, but tweaked according to old recipes I had by adding a pinch of salt and I also tried replacing the water with cold leftover coffee one of the times (excellent and doesn't add any actual coffee flavor, just a depth to the chocolate) and with the icing if you like a richer one add some creamy peanut butter to thicken it and add a bit of flavor or also use coffee instead of the water here. Overall, easy, not a ton of work and tasty. Do recommend.

I would very much like for the weather to make up its mind. It went from the 70s to 20s in two days. Ugh.