#OH MY GOOOOODDDDDDDDDDDD

[picopepin]

RETURN OF THE KING LOOK @ghosthustler!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love you Mettaton

[thegreymoon]

The Story of Minglan

Bitch, you just tried to strangle your daughter. What maternal instinct?

And the only reason you took your son when you abandoned her was because you thought you could get more money for him.

***

OH MY GOOOOODDDDDDDDDDDD 🤬🤬

THIS REPULSIVE PETTY PIECE OF SHIT WASTE OF AIR!!

Seriously, I despise him more than Manniang!

My guy, quit while you're ahead! You lost the girl because you were spineless. Get over it and stop embarrassing yourself! 🤬🤬

***

LMAO, what else is he supposed to do?

Let's say it's been four or five years since Manniang ran off. This child was two at most at the time. He would be six or seven now. What are you talking about? That is still a whole baby!

I love (and by love, I mean hate) how disposable children are in this society unless they are sons anchoring their mother's position in their respective households.

***

Oh, shut the fuck up, you bitter, pathetic loser.

***

Drag him, Tingye!

I am so sick and tired of his bullshit.

***

NOOOO, BUT DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND, HE IS THE MAIN CHARACTER OF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE!

OF COURSE, MINGLAN WAS SUPPOSED TO WAIT UNTIL RETIREMENT FOR HIM TO GET HIS SHIT TOGETHER AND SUFFER ALL KINDS OF INDIGNITIES IN THE MEANTIME!

HOW DARE SHE NOT BUILD A SHRINE TO HIS ESTEEMED PERSON AND PUT HER ENTIRE LIFE ON HOLD SO THAT HE CAN FEEL IMPORTANT?

With all that said, this actor is beyond fantastic, I can see why people are obsessed with him. I hope to watch him in a more sympathetic role next time.

***

LMAO, look at the pot calling the kettle black 🤣🤣

I cannot with this loser of a man.

***

If he had not been born rich, he would have been the founding father of the incel movement, blaming every man with even a semblance of a spine on his inability to fuck.

***

Oh, sure, it was for the government 🙄🙄

Your jealousy is palpable. You can't even convince yourself.

***

LMAO, what the fuck.

This is a dead child you're talking about! Your child! And you are mad you cannot get money and status because of him?

***

She's right, though, she did make the biggest fool out of him.

***

Good for you for slapping her, Minglan!

I've been waiting for someone to do it for ages now.

In fact, so many people in this drama deserve slapping. It's about time you got started on that.

***

Aww, he found his dead baby 😢

***

Wait, that's all?

THAT'S ALL??

WE DO NOT EVEN GET A BEHEADING 😭😭

Not only does her sorry ass not get punished in any way, he will continue to provide for her for the rest of her life. Sure, she will not be living in a manor in luxury as his wife, but she will have a roof over he head and food to eat, plus he will have to employ people in the middle of nowhere to make sure she doesn't go causing trouble again.

She should be in prison instead. Or in some hard labour colony, which I'm sure there are plenty of in Song Dynasty China. OR BEHEADED!!

And what about his maternal Bai relatives? Do they at least get arrested/exiled/beheaded? They have been REPEATEDLY trying to kill him for YEARS!

I am very disappointed with this resolution.

***

Well, I am glad this is over.

Honestly, as far as I am concerned, this whole Manniang subplot has been a huge blight on this otherwise excellent show and a black stain on Gu Tingye as a character. Big thanks to @ruizhi for filling me in on the details from the novel so that I can understand the writing decisions here better. Obviously, I realise that I am in the minority for disliking these decisions (and Gu Tingye as a character) because from what I have seen, he is a firm favourite among the people who watched this drama and everyone is on board with this sanitised version of his character arc.

I have to be honest, if they had kept his harem from the novel, I probably would not have touched this with a ten-foot pole, because I freely admit that I watch c-dramas for the pretty people and idealised romance. I also know that this would have made Gu Tingye more realistic and thus harder to project on, which is ironic because my complaints here are the lack of realism and easy ways out since they decided to include his other women in the drama too. Harem stories depress and infuriate me and I do not watch them unless there are very compelling reasons for me to pick them up, so out of a couple of hundred dramas on my to-watch list, this one would probably not have made it to the top if it had been closer to the source material.

Even as it is, all this is precisely why I put off watching Minglan for the longest time. I knew it had polygamy at its core and this made me disinclined to start it, even though it was warmly recommended by many people in whose good taste I trust. I eventually only started watching because a c-drama friend of mine told me that there is no harem here and that Minglan and Tingye were monogamous and ride-or-die for each other, so Manniang showing up early on was an extremely nasty surprise.

With that said, now that I am here already and very invested in this story, I've long since come to terms with the fact that romance is not the main focus of this show and adjusted my expectations. I am really enjoying it for what it is, which is a family drama focused on women's struggle and suffering in this hell system that they must learn to navigate or die destitute, which is why I am especially irked by this cheap trickery they are employing to make Gu Tingye's and Minglan's relationship more "clean" than it actually is. You cannot have it both ways. Either these characters are realistic people of their time or they are not. Either you are sticking to the book version of them in the adaptation or you are not. But these cake-eating writers (as in wanting their cake and eating it too) definitely tried to get away with both and ended up with huge inconsistencies in their story that irritated me enough to sit down and write this entire screed.

Like I said in my comments on my previous Minglan post, this is the exact thing that made TTEOTM unwatchable for me and landed it on the list of the worst dramas I ever subjected myself to, despite my unceasing obsession with Luo Yunxi. Obviously, I am feeling this on a lesser level with Gu Tingye, because overall, the writing of Minglan committed fewer crimes than TTEOM and remains solid on all other fronts, so I am still invested in the story overall, him as a character and him and Minglan as a couple, but the writers here are just as much cake eaters as the writers on TTEOTM. They looked at this bad boy who worked for a story in another medium precisely because he was morally compromised in some way, wanted that for themselves, but then could not or would not follow through, either because they feared they would alienate a big portion of their audience, or because the Chinese censorship board wouldn't let them get away with it. Then they did this ridiculous thing where they tried going, "Yeah, he's bad, but he's not really! He was set up! It was a misunderstanding!" And ended up blowing a giant hole in their whole story.

If they didn't want to explore Gu Tingye as a man of his time making the same selfish decisions as other men of that time, then they should not have had him acting like one. They should have had a logical and consistent reason why he didn't keep mistresses and concubines (such as, idk, seeing his mother suffer or something) and not introduce Manniang in the first place. What was the point of her in the plotline if we were not going to see him and Minglan make the hard decisions, either to treat his illegitimate offspring as lower-class citizens so that her biological kids could be afforded all the privileges of their rank (which would obviously not sit right with the modern audience), or go with the modern moral code that the show wants them to have and deny Minglan's bio kids by treating all the children equally (which could have been done legally if Minglan was to adopt them, but of course, she was never going to do that)? If you never intended to go there, then why bring in Manniang and her kids in the first place?

In my opinion, if they wanted Gu Tingye untarnished in this way and his love with Minglan unburdened with the baggage of other women and stepkids, they should never have kept Manniang in the adaptation. Once they brought her in, there was no stuffing that genie back into the bottle. The shadow of book!Tingye has been around since the adult actors took over and it is not even the non-monogamy that is an issue for me now, but the character inconsistency and the extremely cheap sleight of hand that they pulled in an attempt to smooth it over.

Here is the thing. Every time I start on a story, be it a book, movie, drama, or whatever, there is a certain premise that it promises to fulfil, which comes with the expectations and limitations of the genre. I adjust my standards accordingly, so if I sit down to watch a fluffy romcom with a young, naive intern falling in love with the son of CEO, then I will judge it on how funny it is and whether the main couple is hot enough and has enough chemistry to keep me invested till the end. I am not going to be particularly worried about the power imbalance and the IRL implications of such a setup, my main concern will be if the main couple look like they are having good enough sex and if I can shoehorn my own escapist fantasy into that dynamic. However, if I start a show that deals with misogyny, patriarchy and sexual harassment of women in the workplace, then you cannot dump the privileged son of the CEO into a relationship with the main heroine and expect me to root for it, unless he is right there beside her, taking his father to court for abuse of power and dismantling the system from within. This is, IMO, what this drama failed to do with Gu Tingye. You cannot promise me a Xiao Qi and deliver a Sheng Hong with the serial numbers filed off.

Based on what I've heard and read about the original novel, book!Tingye is not that much better than Sheng Hong. He had multiple women and illegitimate children that he was playing favourites with based on their birth and rank. He sabotaged his older son and indirectly caused his death so that Minglan's children would not have competition. His daughter by Manniang was just as traumatised as Minglan. He had concubines, who were also technically wives with no way out of a hell marriage, whom he then discarded when it was convenient for him. The only reason this marriage was a victory for Minglan is that she was now the favoured wife with the highest rank, thus her circumstances in life dramatically improved. I understand why they didn't want to portray this to a wider audience, and that doing so would have seriously dented Feng Shaofeng's reputation as a heartthrob in the c-ent industry, but then they shouldn't have opened that can of worms to begin with.

I feel like they should have cut the Manniang storyline completely if they weren't going to do it properly, or, idk, had her go off the deep end much earlier and kill her kids off before he got with Minglan. That could have been used as a catalyst for his change, having him go, "That's it! No more mistresses and concubines for me!" Then we could have seen the rest of it play out as it did (minus Manniang) with a REASON, with his family pressuring him to take in a wife and concubines, him saying no, then falling in love with Minglan and moving on from there naturally and giving us a clean, idealised romance that is not typical for their time.

However, once they brought in Manniang but did not bring in all the nasty stuff implied with him having a kept woman and illegitimate children, they shot themselves in the foot because now Gu Tingye's character was in conflict with the story's internal logic. We have seen how this world functions, we have seen how concubines and the children of concubines are treated. Naturally, once they introduced Manniang and her kids (but especially her son), we were expecting to see exactly what happened in the novel, because this is the premise of the story and the laws by which the world it is set in is governed. The fact that this didn't happen did not make me sigh in relief and think of Gu Tingye as a good guy, it made me question why the story never went there. The cowardly shortcuts out of this predicament and the cheap trickery the writers used to avoid it made me feel like the story was "lying" to me, which is maybe a ridiculous word to use because this whole thing is fiction and therefore a lie. But I could no longer suspend my disbelief, immerse myself in the narrative and root for these characters. Suddenly, they felt fake.

Also, I feel downright insulted by these writing choices.

"Yeah, Gu Tingye had another woman but that's OK because she was actually evil so she doesn't count and he was right to abandon her and have his true romance with Minglan! 😀"

"Yeah, he had a son that he would have had to have been grossly unfair to or not have Minglan's kids get the full extent of their privilege of rank, but that's OK, because the kid just conveniently died! 😀"

"Yeah, his daughter should be traumatised in a hundred different ways from having such a biological mother and dealing with the inferiority complex from growing up right next to Minglan's legitimate children and knowing that in the eyes of society and her own father, she is lesser than them, but don't worry, that's OK, because we are making her suuuuuuuper well adjusted! 😀"

"Yeah, if Chang'er had lived, the audience would have been forced to confront the fact that Gu Tingye was very much a man of his time and that Minglan was also no benevolent saint and that they would have treated children that are not biologically hers as second-class citizens, just like Sheng Hong and Wang Ruofu did in the Sheng household! But that's OK, we'll just kill his illegitimate firstborn son so that you don't have to think about that! 😀"

As a character, Gu Tingye feels so disingenuous because of these shortcuts the writers took to scapegoat Manniang and absolve him of the consequences of being just like the other men in this drama. Would he have been an idealised c-drama hero that girls could pin their fantasies on if they had kept his novel characterisation? Absolutely not. They made him more attractive and palatable to a wider, modern, likely younger-leaning audience at the cost of the story's internal logic, plot coherency and character consistency, and that, for me, is a much bigger writing crime than him having a harem and treating his illegitimate children as lesser-than.

Again, this is an adaptation and nobody put a gun to their heads and forced them to include Manniang. If they had wanted Gu Tingye untarnished and idealised, they should have handled her differently. They cannot have it both ways.

With that said, I realise that I am in the minority here because most viewers were obviously very happy to let this slide (just like they were with TTEOTM). Again, most viewers will not agree with me on Gu Tingye because he is obviously a favourite ML for many, but for me personally, the overall drama loses lots of points on him, especially because of Manniang.

In any case, there are still more than twenty episodes left here for me, so onwards and forward to better plot points and character arcs! 😅

[onboardsorasora]

Hi!!!

I just happened to come across Chip ’n’ Dale's Rescue Rangers Theme Song and thought about your little Daniel.

Yes, we all know Cars and Bluey, but what about the old Disney animated series from the 90s? Darkwing duck, Chip'n Dale, TaleSpin, Ducktales, Inspector Gadget, and of course The rescuers Down Under?

Does Little Daniel calm Max down after an unpleasant conversation with Jos with the words "Hakuna Matata"? Running around the house in a black raincoat? Maybe at breakfast he's wondering if Max has a pool with gold so he can swim in it? Or is he pestering Seb with "Cheeese" because Seb once brought them cheese?

Oh my gooooodddddddddddd

I read this ask when I was out in the forest and I started singing the dark wing duck theme song lmao

Little Daniel would start singing it too I think! Maybe they're all lounging together and someone calls him DR out of habit and he goes 'its not DR it's DW! Darkwing duucckk! When there's twuble you call Dee DubleU!' while he's colouring

Then that takes them down a rabbit hole of old cartoons that he probably would have liked and Max and Charles are both showing him different cartoon opening themes just to see him wiggle like crazy.

[thatweirdguyinenglish]

EVERYONE GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM MY BABY BOY IS HE OK OH FUCK

I WILL FIGHT EVEN SAKUNA TO MAKE SURE THIS BOY DONT DIE OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHMY GOOOOODDDDDDDDDDDD

[watchthekittycatcher]

oh my gooooodddddddddddd mom your dad being abusive is NOT the flex you think it is

[meerschweinchen-archive]

moodle crashed incident, kill count rising

[butterflyutas]

WATCHING EPSIODE 32 OF THE UNTAMED LIKE

[jaebam]

endless gifs of jaebeom’s smile ♡: 15/∞

[ashiiplier]

MY BOY MY BOY DID YALL SEE HIM DID YOU FUCKING SEE HIM OH MY GOD IM SHAKING I CANT BREATHE OH MY FUCKING GOD DID YOU SEE HIM

ANTI IT'S FUCKING ANTI DID YOU FUCKING SEEEEE HIMMMMMM IM SOBBING OH MY FUCKING GOOOOODDDDDDDDDDDD

[faebriel]

I just saw your post about everything everywhere all at once. I watched it for the first time last weekend and loved it!!

… :)

Tell me your favorite parts. Absolutely fucking ramble. Give me your opinions and criticisms. What bit made you laugh the hardest and what bit got you thoroughly hooked. I want to hear it.

OMFG RHYLEY !!!!!! i'm going to be honest with you new favourite movie. as in i just sat and watched a two and a half hour movie at home bc i was having a bad day and paid attention the whole time kind of movie. i love it so so much i LOVEEEE maximalism so i love the style i love #positivity so i love the story love love love

my favourite parts are definitely the parts at the lunar new year party, every part of those scenes spread across the movie i just. the absolute apathy evelyn has and how it drips from her every action and smashing up the place and waymond convincing the auditor to give them more time and then deidre comes out and sits with evelyn and they talk..... AND THEN THE PARTS WITH JOY.............god. i'm also giving runnerups to the rock scenes bc they made me cry the fucking hardest the first time i saw it (when evelyn turns around with the googly eyes i fr sobbed) and also the raccoonie scenes bc the part where evelyn and the guy are running after the truck also make me sob

i don't want to talk about the laundry and taxes line i will start chewing on cables (this is /j i will talk about it forever if pressed)

i just love....this story so much man evelyn and waymond live in my head RENT FREE i know we say ohhh X redefined love every few weeks but THIS TIME I MEAN IT !! I MEAN IT. their relationship is so so important to me when i think about evelyn finally sticking the googly eye on her forehead and "i'm fighting like you" i'll be fucking sick /pos. they are messy and imperfect and that is why they are perfect. and evelyn couldn't save joy (or help anyone even herself) until she understood his point of view. waymond is just so full of love and kindness for everything and everyone (all of the time) it drives me so crazy. no matter the universe he's reaching out to evelyns and running out after her into the rainy street and baking cookies for their auditor and goddd. gooooodddddddddddd

also the ending when evelyn grabs onto joy to pull her out of the void and then she turns around and realises gongong is helping her too (and waymond ofc). what if i bawled

it's just such such such an engaging story like the first second i saw the divorce papers i was like 👀 and then it just roped me tf in. but bonus points go to the scene where joy shows up at the audit place in her Fits™ bc oh my fucking god talk about a scene. we all talk about michelle yeoh and ke huy quan in this movie which like Good fucking deserved they killed it reanimated it and killed it again give them EGOTs but stephanie hsu has such charisma and command over every scene she's in and ESPECIALLY that one it's crazy. anyway probably fave movie ever hands down

[inigostears]

OH MY GOOOOODDDDDDDDDDDD

IT IS ABOUT FUCKING TIME, INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS.

[harryfeatgaga]

Him being really messy gets me going. Idk maybe you’re pregnant & not in the mood but him like wanking next to me in bed while I goad him through... yeah I’m into it. And him pushing his face into your neck and feeling it all over your thigh as he like ends up rubbing up against your leg. You saying something like “made a mess of the new sheets, only put these on our bed yesterday” & he gets all embarrassed cause he’s a married man, baby in the way & he’s just humped you. A deep “darlin’ stop-“

OH MY GOOOOODDDDDDDDDDDD WHY AM I SO INTO THIS ISJNDBHHUJ WHAT THE FUCKKKKKDJNCFDJCK THIS IS SO……WOW……I LOVE THIS

[livepasthope]

oh my gooooodddddddddddd okay

[mrsbsmooth]

OH MY GOOOOODDDDDDDDDDDD he is PERFECTTRTR

@thoracic-orchid

Underrated biconic circus boy 💓💓💓🥰🥰🥰

[yullet-remade]

oh my gooooodddddddddddd