#I mean... tangentially

[egophiliac]

(breathing into a paper bag) FRALIO....

can't believe they gave us another guy. oh my god. so I guess Kelka is more, uhhh, more OOO then, and Fralio is Ankh? not that it matters too much, although they do seem to be doing something with the connected Riders so. who knows. anything goes! or if I may, anything gOOOes! god. of course they're the Ambition parallel. of course they are. oh my god.

fortunately there's nothing else they can throw at me right now that could possibly --

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[javierduffy]

different.

[followthebluebell]

Lately my cats' water dishes have been weirdly dirty and I couldn't figure out why, but last night I caught one of the gremlins in the act... he used the litter box, then went to the water dish and splashed around in it like he was washing his paws? (I know I'm assigning him human behaviour; I'm just not sure how else to describe it lol) So now I'm realizing that it's not actually dirt that's been in the water, it's litter. Have you ever had a cat do this? Is this something that seems gross to me as a human but doesn't really affect cats? Or is this something that I should try to stop him doing? Do you think a fountain water dish would help? I've never had a cat doing something like this before.

oh yeah, some cats like playing in their litter. It gets gross SO FAST. It's not... ok, it's a bad behavior because it's gross, it means he's drinking litter slurry, and it's hard to clean.

It's also pretty hard to change because some cats just like playing in water.

Giving him a fountain MIGHT help. My first choice is to usually just move the water further away from the box. That way, when he goes for a little dip, his paws won't have as much litter trapped in his paw fur. A litter catcher around his box may help as well.

[onebizarrekai]

to speedily clarify because I am so inclined:

interacting with old art is completely normal and there's nothing wrong with doing that (if I had a problem with it why would it still be online). not to be specific, but art that I made 4 years ago is hardly even old… I have been on this website for nearly 10 years

'likespamming' is completely fine and normal. I don't see the reason anyone would have a problem with it

anyway there's no need to ever feel like interacting is bad somehow or that artists will strike you with lightning if they see you. especially when all you're doing is using the website in its intended way

[wackywatchdotcom]

im so mad were never gonna get to see the characters doing horrifically boring things i want to see what 24 hours in the circus is like bc yeah theres the adventure but once caine leaves how DO you occupy that time. it cant all be fun i need to see them have an extremely uninteresting activity or no activity at all it makes me nauseous

[withthewindinherfootsteps]

I sometimes see the opinion that MXTX took the clichéd tropes she'd critiqued in Scum Villain, and played them straight in MDZS. But though a lot of them appear in MDZS, I'd argue that none are actually played straight at all!

The main point of MDZS's tropes is subversion. Yes, WWX has a 'tragic backstory', even an arguably overused one (orphaned by his parents at a young age, forced to live on the streets with nobody to rely on, etc) – but how things differ in how it's used. Tragic backstories are normally used to build sympathy for a character, to make us care and get invested in them. But... we're never actually shown any of those street days, we're never shown and never dwell upon how much he suffered during them. They're only really mentioned in passing and whenever dogs come up! If the goal was to make us feel bad for WWX, this would be very ineffective writing. But what's actually important here isn't that WWX went through tragedies – it's how he doesn't let the tragedies he went through define him. He doesn't dwell on them, the narrative doesn't dwell on them, it's never used to earn sympathy points... because what defines WWX is his choices and how he chooses to act, not a backstory completely out of his control. What gets us invested in him is his personality and the character writing of MXTX, not tragic events used as a substitute for identity.

And this trope treatment fits extremely well with WWX's personality itself – he's someone who 'forgets the pain as soon as the wound has healed'*, but also who actively chooses to focus on the present because you can't change the past; someone who holds the belief that 'gains and losses [should] remain uncommented on' when choosing what to do.

The use of the tragic backstory isn't the only thing that's subverted, either – the other main thing is the 'blackening' of the protagonist, and its impact on the protagonist's fall. After being thrown into the Burial Mounds, on a surface level it does seem like this blackening has occurred: the first thing we see when he returns is his gruesome torture of the Wen cultivators; he's 'forsaken' traditional cultivation in favour of an 'evil but more powerful' path; and frankly, Sunshot-era WWX is terrifying. But MDZS is not a blackening story, and so the events of the Burial Mounds aren't used as a catalyst for that purpose. Though it's true that WWX's not entirely the same person he was before (because how could be be?), underneath it all, his morals, worldview and core** stay the same. Though gruesome, his revenge is directed towards the ones who wronged him, not those past that and certainly not the entire world. His experience in the Burial Mounds doesn't lead to him being some evil, blackened overlord... like everyone says he is at the start! That's subverted, because again, WWX's values and choices are more important to the story than genre conventions.

But the most crucial thing? What leads to WWX's downfall isn't any blackening! It isn't any vengeance or morally dubious actions***– he was praised for those things during the Sunshot Campaign! No, what leads to his downfall is something completely unrelated to that, something which would've disappeared had the trope been played straight. It's him doing what's right by defending the Wens, it's him following his moral code when it opposes the world's, it's him standing up to the injustice of others – not others standing up to the injustice of him. That's the subversion here.

(Also, once again, the fall of Lotus Pier, the Burial Mound, etc, aren't used for sympathy points – and if it was relevant, they wouldn't have been used to excuse any actions, either. Using tragic events as an excuse for doing bad things is critiqued many times in MDZS, through characters like Xue Yang and Jin Guangyao. And that's not exactly a trope subversion, but it is a critique of badly handled 'excuses'.)

These are by no means all the tropes MDZS subverts – the nature of guidao vs the usual nature of modao being another very major one – but they're the main ones that feature in Scum Villain.

So, though at first glance MDZS seems to play the tropes MXTX critiqued there straighter, it's not a simple case of using them as cliches, and we see that by how they're used to impact the narrative, and how that differs from what they're traditionally used for. MDZS doesn't fall back into clichés Scum Villain satirised – it's the subversion to Scum Villain's exploration and critique.

--

*Which I know is generally used negatively, to describe someone not learning a lesson from a punishment, but it really describes WWX in general, too. He doesn't dwell on that pain, he does his best to move on from it.

**...heh

***And, because it's often debated – whatever the morality/culpability of Nightless City is doesn't even matter! The events happened at a pledge conference against him that was already taking place. WWX's actions there didn't make people want to kill him because that was explicitly happening beforehand.

[metalicar]

Excuse me, but I've reached S04E08 and am I getting this right? First Bobby bullies Eddie into getting himself a date with Ana while he cries about it (because Shannon is now perfect, even though he ran from her every chance he got when they were actually together). At the aforementioned date they do math (even though the intro to the scene teases at something sexual), aaand he's saved by a call so they don't have to kiss. Afterwards he comes home to his son and Buck. Has a crisis on how to explain his relationship to his son. His son has a meltdown and runs to Buck, because he clocked his dad as seeking a replacement to mom. He's just a boy but even he understands his dad better than Eddie understands himself. Holy shit you guys weren't wrong huh. Happy pride to Eddie I guess.

[hunybody]

celebrities that spin out over anonymous hate not even like death threats or something just twitter accounts are so embarrassing to me. just don't look king some of us are tumblr users getting paid dozens of dollars an hour and we cope just fine. make a bed from your thousands or perhaps millions of dollars and lay down to deep breathe i'm sure it will all be okay <3

[adhdo5]

I was prompted to post these a bit ago bc of my madness posting abt the Xiyao laundry audioextra upload someone posted like last week and I think there is really a lot there in the Xiyao laundry thing in general (hashtag release the Yunping tapes) and not all of it is smth I see ~talked abt as much as I think it deserves SO . Collected thoughts on Xiyao laundry

OK so like Yeah they're cute. I absolutely get why people's primary reaction to this is that it's cute and I think this is not even wrong. The politics of uselessness r complicated and I Will be returning to this but a legitimate angle of this is that LXC, who has spent his life largely defined by the fact that he pretty much excels at everything expected of him, has nothing expected of him and gets to be incompetent at something he ~feels obligated to do and have that not actually be a fail state, still get offered the same kindness regardless of his ability to be exceedingly capable/responsible etc.; meanwhile MY, who historically has had pretty much no one ever gaf about whether he's struggling or overworked or generally about him as a person (and the audiodrama extra version even has a bit where MY's coworkers are shit talking him including talking abt how he's probably not even actually doing any work), has someone earnestly caring about that, if ineffectually, and materially recognizing his workload as important and effortful and trying to help him with it. That is I think legitimately kind of sweet! Especially if one interprets the "he didn't even know who I was" line as true and as in the audiodrama extra this is set b4 MY figures it out! They appreciate each other in ways they don't usually get to be appreciated and it's nontransactional in this way and ;x;

HOWEVER. #Nuance. There's Other Angles.

I've talked abt this before inc on my blog but I do kind of never get tired of thinking abt it: there's a reason LXC is incapable of doing laundry and it's not just inexperience it's that he is physically incapable of the task bc of his cultivator strength!!!!! And the disparity of cultivation level is explicitly a class thing w/ JGY wrt 3zun especially!!! No matter his intention Zewu-jun CANNOT SULLY HIS HANDS WITH THE TASK bangs my head against a wall. It's such an innocuous detail yet it captures how from even this early on in their relationship and in this context it's not ignorable how much LXC is in fact a nobleman where JGY is not and this is a literal physical difference and it's in his very flesh and it has explicitly destructive results. See again vampire AU posting

And going off that it's notable how this does in fact also end up creating more work and while MY doesn't begrudge that in the moment and it's pettier here and arguably inextricable with the first point (LXC is not only incapable here he's actively bad at something, he actively makes smth worse and he's forgiven for it and that's genuinely kind of nice) it's it's also worth noting more grimly given how their relationship ends. It's not just destructive it's destructive to MY specifically

And on the notes of "inextricable from first point but also tragic" – it's sweet tht LXC gets no external consequences for this (yet lol) but is that really something he can Accept. It is an arguably underexamined element of Sunshot Xiyao how fucking miserable LXC is; he might be in an environment where this isn't fucking him up but he did bring his complexes here and you don't suddenly know how to accept that kind of grace yknow – and, and this is tangentially related to the stuff I was posting earlier today, this is one of the first of several kinds of vulnerability that LXC's almost only able to experience with MY/JGY. Considering how much that's arguably a running theme for them and considering where that leads that's also quite Foreshadowing Dismal!!

This is an audio drama exclusive but the way in the audiodrama extra ver that MY realizes who LXC is here and then ~lies about it is also crunchy as helllllll

AND between the coworkers thing in the audiodrama extra and the added scenes in the donghua and this and the notion in general (which comes from MXTX's post) that it's important they do the laundry themselves bc the robes would give LXC away it's a highlight of how genuinely precarious this is for MY which is another thing that both makes it more sweet and more. Despair.

It's just so lovely how it is both indicative of how genuinely good they are to and for each other, the ways in which they're meaningfully and significantly compassionate and helpful to one another, and also of the ways in which their situation here is precarious and high-stress and dangerous as fuck, AND also the ways in which they hurt each other so so bad, and how all of those things are largely different facets of the same qualities and the same significances. And That's My Post. Stream Apple Pie by the Scary Jokes

[bitofanupsidedowner]

however the love triangle is resolved (byler obviously) whoever ends up single is going to have one hell of a time explaining their lore when they do start dating people. they're introduced to the party and afterwards when theyre going home they're trying to bond, like,

"wow, you're really close to your friends. it's really cute. :)"

"oh, yeah, that's probably because of the neverending crucible of torment and agony we went through together as adolescents."

"you mean, like, highschool?"

"yes... like highschool."

[dailyhtfboards]

Day 104

Today’s board is:

Ya know at least he’s enjoying himself <333 (He’s gonna die brutally in 0.5 seconds)

(From TV episode 3C Sea What I Found)

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

context, if such a thing even exists

stede: i think we should ask the crew to provide their own linens when they visit

ed: aw, what? what kind of shitass inn doesn’t even do linens for their guests?

stede: we can still do linens for regular guests, i just think-

ed: oh, cmon, we can’t give the crew worse service, they already hate me

stede: they do not hate you-

ed: well they might if we skimp on the linens!

stede: ed-

ed: i’ve gotten really good at washing linens, actually. i don’t know if you’ve noticed that. see how little jizz is on our sheets?

stede: …i mean, there is that rather large—

ed: ok that’s from literally a twenty minutes ago that doesn’t count, you know that doesn’t count

stede: alright, alright

ed: we literally haven’t even gotten out of bed yet

stede: fair enough

ed: if i wasn’t good at doing laundry this sheet would be just one big jizz stain and you know it

stede: this is true, you’re right. you’ve done an excellent job, sweetheart

ed: aww thanks babe :)

stede: im just a bit worried about the foursome

ed: (experiencing a sudden coughing fit) the what?

stede: the foursome? jim, olu, archie, and zheng?

ed: oh. oh. (clears throat) i thought you—nevermind. um.

ed: uhh what about them? you think i can’t handle their post-orgy cleanup?

stede: well…

ed: wait, seriously? it’s just two extra people, mate, it’s not that much more mess

stede: it’s not the quantity i’m concerned with, it’s the. well.

ed: …well?

stede: well. the thing is, archie always refers to sex with her partners as “goop sex”

ed:

ed: goop sex

stede: yes, goop sex

ed: are you sure she doesn’t call it “group sex” and you’re just mishearing her?

stede: no, it’s definitely goop sex

ed: hm

stede: admittedly i’m not completely sure what goop sex actually is—unless you happen to be familiar…?

ed: yeah no i’ve never heard of goop sex

stede: darn. well, in any case, i imagine there’s a very strong possibility that goop sex stains fabrics!

ed: hm, yeah, probably

stede: so you see my concern

ed: i do, yeah

stede: with the linens

ed: mhmm

stede: especially since we only have the one set!

ed: mhmm

stede: which we should probably do something about, actually, if we want to provide free linen service to our guests. although maybe we can wait until after the crew visits so we have an excuse for not doing their linens? what do you think?

ed: mmm

stede:

stede: ed, darling

ed: hhwhat sorry huh

stede: you zoned out for a moment there

ed: oh shit, my bad, babe

stede: no worries! i was just wondering where you’d gone to

ed: right, well, i’d gone to goop sex

stede: yknow i probably could’ve guessed that myself actually

ed: specifically i was thinking that we should try and figure out what goop sex is

stede: i

stede: hm.

stede:

stede:

stede: okay, but—

ed: oh cmon don’t give me that

stede: ed, th-

ed: i saw your face just now! i bet you already have some ideas!

stede: ok but ed we really only have the one set of linens!

ed: and you’re telling me you’re not willing to risk those linens to try out some of your guesses about goop sex?

stede: y—i’m—well. I-I mean,

ed: yeahhhh that’s what i thought, you fuckin pervert

stede: alright well i better not hear any complaining when our only set of sheets is reduced to one big goop stain!

ed: that is a price i will gladly pay to let you try out your goopy sex theories on me

[ducktracy]

So do you like bugs or nah?

I LOVE BUGS!! a lot!! i just went on a big long rambling post yesterday about all my favorite characterizations i like about him and that he’s tied for being in my top 5 favorite LT characters ever. believe it or not one of my driving forces of getting into LT was for him specifically

but i just don’t have very much to say about him! yet! he sneaks up on me, my Bugs Thoughts And Analyses come to me when i’m actually reviewing his shorts. he’s coy

the thing about me is that Daffy and Porky are an exception in my enjoyment of LT. i don’t really care AS MUCH for most of the characters. i’m so much more into the shorts for the people behind it and the production behind it rather than the characters, and this is probably why i’m so picky or disenfranchised with a lot of modern LT stuff. i care more about how, say, Friz Freleng portrays Bugs or Bob McKimson portrays Bugs than Bugs himself. i care more about what McKimson’s Sylvester represents about his cartoons and directorial voice, compared to Freleng’s Sylvester and what that says, than Sylvester himself as a character. so much of my interest in LT is completely dominated by its place in animation history and what it means about the medium of animation, what it says about the directors, etc, etc. the characters are just incidental to that. Daffy and Porky have won out as the single exceptions, and they also have the benefit of having been rotated around all the directors, so it hits all my LT niches in one

just because i don’t post as much about Bugs doesn’t mean i don’t like him!! rather, i’d rather let the Bugs People do their thing and claim him than me tread on their turf! he’s already so popular and has a bunch of people who will post art and analyses of him, i’m sure… i’ll focus my energies on characters like Porky who get very little love or characters like Daffy who are obnoxiously misunderstood (Porky too.) i’ll get there! trust me i love Bugs and while he’s lower in my top 5 of characters, he’s probably the character i have the most investment in besides Daffy and Porky. this isn’t the first time i’ve been asked this and it makes me sad like noooo 🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲

[alex51324]

Today in Spam...

I mean, what the actual fuck? was my initial reaction, followed by, man, is this person on the wrong fucking site.

I venture to guess that this is the social media site upon which you are least likely to randomly spam somebody who is actually impressed by your Elon Musk roleplay account.

I mean, the actual guy keeps getting caught larping as other people on social media, presumably to escape the horror of being Elon Musk, so how pathetic do you have to be? It's like a mobius strip of cringe.

[autistrix]

The first year or two of a raptor's life is by far the most difficult. They're independent but still learning, often making mistakes. For carnivores, mistakes mean missed meals, and hunger makes you weaker and less likely to succeed on the next try. It is for this reason that falconry, when practiced ethically, has been a boon to raptor species around the world for thousands of years. Feeding young raptors in spite of their mistakes provides a safety net they wouldn't otherwise have, giving them a head start when released back into the wild.

[teyvatairconditioningco]

LISTEN TO ME IT'S NOT ABOUT THE PISS, IT'S ABOUT ASSERTING DOMINANCE

THIS ISN'T THE PISS KINK POSITION, IT'S THE DEGRADATION POSITION

(I'm yelling but I don't have context for these scenes and I CANNOT imagine pb making mc dominant in anyway except that one time no one liked and that we don't talk about)

BUT ANYWAY: HAVE I EVER PISSED ON SOMEONE? NO; WOULD THE MORE FERAL, FICTIONAL VERSION OF MYSELF PISS ON SOMEONE TO ESTABLISH DOMINANCE... YEAH PROBABLY (at least for the bit)