spookykittenwrites
Yi City squad and journaling habits, rated by level of reading quality, inspired by a convo with @ilacion
Song Lan: blunt half sentences that are extremely to the point. He keeps track of moon cycle and placement, location (when they’re near a city) and that’s about it. Meticulous notes on what they’re hunting, though. Would be dry as sand to read 2/10
Xiao Xingchen: flowery in every sense of the word… flowers doodled in the margins, it’s all written in super flowery language or literally poetry, he presses flowers in between the pages as well. The flowers pressed are labelled with where they were gathered but not in any logical way, like, there’d be a peony pressed with “Xue Yang looked beautiful in the dying light of the sun, the moon hung above us only barely visible through the maples. Zichen stoked the fire and smiled softly at the song of night birds. A willow nearby rustled in the wind.” No dates or locations, only vibes. 6/10, only because you’d never know it was a journal and it would end up in some rare books collection somewhere labeled as poetry.
Xue Yang: an actual journal! It’s clear and detailed, well-written and fairly organized. Unfortunately, he keeps his research and personal journals in one book so you’ll never know whether the “I had to put another one down today, these things keep getting out of hand. My new knife is very effective, though I need to find a new whetstone.” is about work or his personal life (and you don’t want to know!). 8/10 for readability, but you’ll wish you hadn’t.
A-Qing: she has an incredible memory and doesn’t need to write things down to remember them, never mind that it would ruin her disguise as a blind girl if she was carrying around a book. she does, however, use essentially shadow marks to tell other people who to steal from when someone rich is rude to her. 10/10 for saying fuck the system.