#I talk so much when I write

[changingplumbob]

Honey, I'm home!

TLDR: I'm back. Incoming reblogs. Normal posting resumes 21st at 9am NZDT (GMT+13).

My cat summary, tales of travel woe and random trip tidbits below.

Cat! The cat survived the cattery. Apparently she wasn't eating too much and just stayed in her cage area (I say cage but it was a neat two level set up, she had an individual food bowl, litter tray and cat bed). She's lost a bit of weight so she'll be getting bigger feeds the next few days. She's periodically patrolling the house and hiding in my bed which is fair.

Travel! So our first bus was running late. Trying to make up for it the bus sped over the hill. Imagine sitting sideways on a bus with a large suitcase as the bus quickly drives a winding downhill road. So fun right (sarcasm is heavy here). We made the train but halfway through the trip it stopped and sat for 10 minutes because of an "incident" (yeah I'm curious to). Bus from train station to airport was fine but the baggage check in went down just as we reached it. Then the plane was delayed by about half and hour. Fast forward to this morning. Checking in at the airport early to discover our 8:15am flight was cancelled because the aircraft was damaged overnight. They put us in a van for a nice hour and a half trip along a sometimes empty, sometimes standstill motorway. At the new airport we checked in fine, but what do you know the plane home was delayed. Hour delay this time. Eventually back home, took the airport bus to the train station no problem. What do you know, the train line was having errors and replacement buses were running instead. At the home train station we just gave up and got a taxi to the vets, and then home.

Wedding! It was nice, my cousin and his bride were so damn happy. It was in a place called the Tree Church where the structure is actually made out of shrubs so it's like getting married in a church made out of nature. The sun was shining and she walked down the isle to an instrumental of Taylor Swift - Wildest Dreams. Her dress was gorgeous, their vows were sweet and I was sitting in an aisle seat so got to throw flower petals over them as they walked up the aisle together. Then (remember I'm in summer people) they had an ice cream truck after a champagne toast and they had vegan ice cream!!!

Reception! It was at a vineyard and half the area had trellises with grapes growing above you. There was so much food, and some vegan stuff! Because my cousin has a large family (lots of aunts and uncles) I was the only cousin from our branch. But you know when the band started playing ABBA I had to get up and dance with my aunts because how can you not dance to Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (Man After Midnight)? I sang along, loudest to Love Story obviously.

Tea Ceremony! So my cousin's wife (is she my cousin in law now? IDK), her parents are Chinese and came to NZ before she was born. She had lots of family fly over from China and Canada and they brought her and my cousin these beautiful red robes for a tea ceremony. Basically it allows the married couple to honour their elders by serving them tea. The couple also get money and jewellery from elders. Apparently all the Cantonese speaking relatives told them they hoped to see a grandchild next year, no pressure cousin.

Internet! As some of you probably realised the air bnb had wifi so I was able to keep up on some people's posts. But because I'm an overthinker I wanted to keep my post about going away near the top of my blog. I'm now going to blog some things I wanted to reblog during the 5 days which you may well have already seen but I want to reblog anyway to show support.

Me! This whole thing has been about me but anyway, I am very sleep deprived. I was not sleeping well before we left. The house we were staying was so creeky I barely slept while we were there. So I'm going to do extra rambles because that's what happens when I'm tired. Thank you for a couple of sunflowers today, with my travel chaos I needed them. I keep them in my inbox for low days but appreciate it beyond measure. I'm going to try get to my asks today but sleep may claim me first. The favourite facts are coming I promise! Lastly check out this puzzle that I was fiddling with intermittently for 3 days. I can't believe I eventually solved it!

[cairafea]

my favourite genre of seventeen is when they're straight up lying

ref:

[erabu-san]

I enjoyed every second of this quest

[This art has platonic intention. Thank you for not tag ship!]

[abstractfrog]

Happy 1 year anniversary to Mr Sherlock Holmes! Here's a litttleee celebratory comic from me

[sugarcoatednightshade]

thinking about how Humans Are Space Orcs stories always talk about how indestructible humans are, our endurance, our ability to withstand common poisons, etc. and thats all well and good, its really fun to read, but it gets repetitive after a while because we aren't all like that.

And that got me thinking about why this trope is so common in the first place, and the conclusion I came to is actually kind of obvious if you think about it. Not everyone is allowed to go into space. This is true now, with the number of physical restrictions placed on astronauts (including height limits), but I imagine it's just as strict in some imaginary future where humans are first coming into contact with alien species. Because in that case there will definitely be military personnel alongside any possible diplomatic parties.

And I imagine that all interactions aliens have ever had up until this point have been with trained personnel. Even basic military troops conform to this standard, to some degree. So aliens meet us and they're shocked and horrified to discover that we have no obvious weaknesses, we're all either crazy smart or crazy strong (still always a little crazy, academia and war will do that to you), and not only that but we like, literally all the same height so there's no way to tell any of us apart.

And Humans Are Death Worlders stories spread throughout the galaxy. Years or decades or centuries of interspecies suspicion and hostilities preventing any alien from setting foot/claw/limb/appendage/etc. on Earth until slowly more beings are allowed to come through. And not just diplomats who keep to government buildings, but tourists. Exchange students. Temporary visitors granted permission to go wherever they please, so they go out in search of 'real terran culture' and what do they find?

Humans with innate heart defects that prevent them from drinking caffeine. Humans with chronic pain and chronic fatigue who lack the boundless endurance humans are supposedly famous for. Humans too tall or too short or too fat to be allowed into space. Humans who are so scared of the world they need to take pills just to function. Humans with IBS who can't stand spicy foods, capsaicin really is poison to them. Lactose intolerance and celiac disease, my god all the autoimmune disorders out there, humans who struggle to function because their own bodies fight them. Humans who bruise easily and take too long to heal. Humans who sustained one too many concussions and now struggle to talk and read and write. Humans who've had strokes. Humans who were born unable to talk or hear or speak, and humans who through some accident lost that ability later.

Aliens visit Earth, and do you know what they find? Humanity, in all its wholeness.

[bread-that-draws]

Flowey’s so funny and has me so fucked up like he’s a talking flower. He tries to kill you upon your first interaction. He is ten years old. He is damaged beyond repair. He’s a flower named Flowey. He’s become friends with every single character. He’s killed all of them countless times. He knows everything about everyone. He doesn’t care anymore. He takes care of his mom when she can’t take care of herself. He’s killed her before. He doesn’t care if you kill her. He thinks she’s trying to replace him. He just wants to be himself again. He wants to destroy everything. He hates you. You’re the only one who understands him. He wants his best friend back. He’s terrified of them. He believes in kill or be killed because he died by giving mercy to the wrong person. He believes himself to be the wrong person. He doesn’t understand when you show him that kindness he showed others, even when you know he could kill you for it. He’s tried every route. He asks you if you have anything better to do when you try to do the same. He’s a direct reflection of the player. He’s a fucking talking flower named flowey and his only voice line is by Ronald McDonald and his officially licensed plush does a little dance for you

[dootznbootz]

Thinking about how Telemachus has heard "You are just like your father" by so many people for most of his life. How different yet refreshing it is to hear said father tell him warmly "You're so much like your mother".

[lycandrophile]

it's silly but the biggest reason why im not into t yet is bc im so afraid of losing my hair. do you have any solutions/tips for it?

first of all, i don’t think it’s silly — it’s natural to be worried when hair loss is talked about by so many people as like…one of the worst results of aging for men. listening to my dad talk about how much he hates balding definitely did not make me feel particularly good about the knowledge that i may very well be joining him someday. i’m not saying the fear is right, because i don’t think hair loss is something awful that we should avoid at all costs, but it’s an understandable fear given the beauty standards we’re working with, and it’s one that a lot of us (myself included) feel.

one thing that’s helped me is just…paying more attention to the guys that i interact with on a daily basis. i’ve learned two things from it: 1) hair loss is super fucking common. i’d say it’s much harder to find an adult man who isn’t balding at all than it is to find one who’s completely bald. and 2) if you forget everything you’ve been told about how bad hair loss is, you’ll realize that quite frankly, every single one of those guys looks totally fucking fine. it doesn’t ruin their appearance and make them ugly, it looks totally natural and isn’t really even something you’d notice if you weren’t looking for it. we put so much weight on it but it’s really just not that big of a deal. i’ll hear my parents talk shit about men in my family who are losing their hair when i didn’t even notice a difference last time i saw them. it’s one of those things (like so many other appearance-related things) that you really only notice at all because you’ve been taught that you’re supposed to care about it.

this isn’t something i’ve done personally, but if you really want to desensitize yourself to the idea of it, embrace the time-honored queer tradition of just shaving your whole damn head! find out what you’d look like without hair, find out how you feel about it and what you can do that makes you feel good about your appearance without hair, test the waters while it’s still a temporary change and not something permanent. that way, it won’t feel like this big scary unknown, and you’ll actually have a frame of reference for your feelings about how you look without hair rather than accepting the societal assumption that you’ll inevitably hate it. if you don’t want to actually shave your head, you could also just fuck around with bald filters or photoshop and see what happens.

oh, and if you’re attracted to men, keep an eye out for guys who are bald or balding and also hot as fuck. in my experience, there’s no insecurity or potential future insecurity that being gay for other men hasn’t helped me with. just off the top of my head, i can think of a couple actors who i think are absolutely fucking gorgeous who have helped me get over my fears about losing my hair. despite what our anti-aging-obsessed world might want you to think, there is no such thing as a physical feature that automatically makes someone less attractive, and while making attractiveness less of a priority in your life is good, it can’t hurt to also give yourself some proof that actually, you might lose your hair and look hot as hell doing it.

basically, entertain the possibility that it won’t be a bad thing at all! whether that’s just because it turns out to be a neutral thing for you or because you end up actually liking it, it’s not an inherently bad thing. i’ve ended up liking a lot of things that were “supposed to” be bad effects of t — i love the weight i’ve gained and the new shape it gives my body, i get a lot of gender euphoria from the fact that my acne is now on parts of my face that i saw a lot of guys in high school get it and i’m not complaining about the scars i get from it either because i’ve always liked the added texture that acne scars give my skin, and so on. i think there’s a lot of joy to be had in the changes we’re taught to fear, once we look past that conditioning and actually explore how we feel about it.

but if it’s something you really don’t want and you just want to improve your chances of not having to deal with it, it’s not like there’s nothing you can do! products like finasteride (oral) and minoxidil (usually topical but i think there might also be oral versions) are pretty commonly used among trans guys, for the purpose of avoiding hair loss and for other reasons, and there are plenty of other anti-hair loss products out there (though i don’t know how effective any one of them might be). if it’s a big enough deal for you, you can just decide that you’ll go off of t if/when you start noticing signs of it, since no longer having higher t levels would stop the process in its tracks. and if you don’t find prevention options that work for you so it ends up happening, you can always explore different hair styles (judging by the pattern of hair loss i see in my family, i suspect that keeping my hair long would make it less obvious if i started losing mine), find your preferred method of covering it when you don’t feel good about it (personally i love a good beanie generally and would probably wear them a lot more if i didn’t have hair to worry about because my main complaint is the way they press my hair onto my neck), or just shave it all off if you don’t like the look of the partial balding but don’t mind a shaved head. the point being — you have options!

at the end of the day, whether you go on t or not, you’re going to see your body change as you age in ways that aren’t always going to be attractive to others or aesthetically pleasing to you. that’s just the reality of having a body. even if you never went on t, you’d get older and you might see your hair thin out even if you don’t bald, you’ll see your skin start to wrinkle and sag in places that used to be smooth, your metabolism might slow or your body fat might start to gather in new places; hell, you might lose your hair for a totally different reason and end up in the same place but without the benefits of having been on t that whole time. life is full of bodily changes like that. transphobes will fearmonger about the permanent changes of testosterone all day long but the truth is, there is no escaping permanent bodily changes. whether or not you go on t, your body now isn’t the same as it will be in 1 or 5 or 10 or 20 or 50 years, just like it isn’t the same as it was at any point in your life before now. our bodies are never supposed to stop growing and aging and changing throughout our lives. there’s no guaranteeing that we’ll love every single change our bodies go through, but that’s okay! there are so many things in life that are more important than the way our bodies look. even if you go on t and lose your hair and don’t like how it looks, your life won’t be ruined; plenty of other things will bring you joy and more than make up for the insecurities.

just think about the gender euphoria and relief from dysphoria that t could give you. would losing your hair be bad enough to outweigh all of that? or is it just the pressure of a society that decided balding is bad that’s making you fear one single change despite how much joy you could have if you let that fear go? only you can decide if going on t is worth the potential downsides for you, but i suspect that for most of us, the benefits of going on t far outweigh the possibility of side effects like hair loss happening down the line.

[gorillawithautism]

the mr beast pyramids thing is fucked up for several reasons but here are some of the ones that i personally have been thinking about

1. historical significance and capitalism (aka "why does this white man get special privileges? why is he allowed to rent out a world wonder and why do we live in a world where that's possible") - it's not that renting out the pyramids is unheard of because it's definitely happened before. @jehadism even mentioned that the location was rented out for a rave recently. but why do we live in a world where it's possible to reserve access to historical monuments for the rich white foreigners? and how is it that one (1) man has enough money to do this?

2. contemporary cultural significance and the egyptian government (aka "my egyptian mutuals hate this and i've been friends with them long enough to at least have an introductory understanding as to why") - how much access does the average egyptian have to their own history? what with white foreigners looting graves and the egyptian dictatorship destroying monuments, how much easier is it for a white american like myself to go to a museum in person and see the results of white colonialism in "ancient egypt" exhibits as if egyptians aren't a real, still-living community of people? and how much harder is it for an egyptian under dictatorship to visit historical monuments in their own city? what hoops does the average egyptian need to go through just to view artifacts that should be preserved by egyptians, for egyptians, in egypt? why is it that mr beast doesn't have to go through these hoops and can make a public youtube video about it and yet egyptians get disappeared by their own government if they try to speak up against that very government desecrating historical sites?

3. information dissemination and the indoctrination of white supremacist youth (aka "what does this mean for future attitudes towards egyptians and egyptian culture") - mr beast's fanbase is predominantly children which is something mr beast himself has full knowledge of and has stated as such. especially with the more recent allegations against him and his various business pursuits, any adults who happen to watch him already don't care about the moral truth of his actions. the children that watch his channel are the target audience here. he has an ethical responsibility to carefully consider what he shows to the public. he has a moral obligation to show these children how to be a good person and to educate them. or at the very least he has a duty to not model 'how to be human scum' for the kids on the other side of the screen. and yet, here he is, promoting an orientalist view of egypt. planting little seeds in their minds that (white) egyptology is cool and mysterious and fantastical. not to mention he has no historical or archaeological certification. he's showing these kids that it's okay for the most average of white americans (albeit very very rich but other than that still extremely average) to waltz into an egyptian burial ground and play make believe about solving mysteries and getting trapped in mazes and chased by the living dead despite having zero certification. even when the white people invading egyptian historical sites are literally trained historians and archeologists, they still exemplify white supremacist, orientalist notions about egypt. the problem isn't that mr beast's opinions about egypt will inevitably suck (well. it's a problem but given that he's a rich white man and literally mr beast, i'm treating that as a given and it's not what i'm gonna focus my thoughts on) no the problem here is that he's teaching children that it's okay to have said opinions. he's teaching white children to mistreat the nonwhite children around them and to grow up and continue to oppress egyptians in the exact way they saw their childhood idol do. he's teaching any egyptian children who watch him that white people will always devalue their history and their culture

[babybinko]

A job will have you 50 with a 25 year old best friend like "damn where tf Goro at today??" 😂😂😂

[erabu-san]

I enjoyed every second of this quest This art has platonic intention, please don't tag ship

[lemongogo]

they should get to kill each other at least twice .i think

[icewindandboringhorror]

I made a few new wax seal stamps out of clay (like the ones I did for my worldbuilding stuff forever ago), this time just of random symbols that I thought might look good done in the style of painting over the raised part of the wax or etc. :0c Some of them aren't carved deep enough to really show up that well, but overall they worked okay for being clay lol

[chancheols]

"I feel like I had nothing to hide. I didn't feel like I had to show you my good side. I feel like I can be myself around you."

[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.

[soupinaboot]

Do you think Batman ever just casually drops the most insane lore to people at random like it's nothing? Cause I do.