#all about efficiency

[jaderoxytism]

ive never ran anything other than a personal private blog so this is new i just have jaderoxy brain rot rn and i get bored at work and really like drawing girls sooooooooooooooooo

im shay or whatever it ends up being later when i feel like something new

19 years of damnation on this earth

i dont care about gender theres nothing in here this bitch empty so i guess just whatever for pronouns

and obvs if ur gross and weird and a douche then i cant stop u from looking i guess but know that i hope ypu shrivel and rot and not even the maggots that eat you will think you are of any worth at all

uhmmmmm i might also draw fefnep bc i rlly like them too and i also might not draw a whole lot at all im very inconsistent and not very motivated

and i dont really think this blog will get anywhere anyway its mostly just so i can have somewhere to post doodles when one occasionally looks good

and also bluhbluhbluhhhh maid of void sure thats relevant

[humming-fly]

I only just now realized what a shame it is we never got to see Al and Greedling really interacting

[paperglader]

they really put alicent in bridgerton blue on the reunion and genuinely expected me to think that she didn’t in fact march all the way to dragonstone to get wifed up? bfr

[icewindandboringhorror]

On average, what is the total MONTHLY amount that you spend on dining out*?

*(This doesn't only count going out to restaurants, but also stuff like picking up fast food to bring home, getting a coffee on the way to work, getting a premade sandwich from a grocery store deli during lunch, buying a quick snack from a convenience store or food cart whilst walking somewhere, ordering a pizza or any other food to be delivered to your home, etc.)

*(If you often dine out in groups/as a household: calculate and divide the costs so that you get a Per Person average. This is for YOU individually, NOT the total household/group costs)

(I'm sure polls similar to this have been made before (very common topic), I just haven't personally seen one that I can remember, so, I was curious to do my own! I was discussing this with a group of people today and it was very interesting to see how widely the number varied between individuals. :0c )

(Reblog for bigger sample size if you can, and feel free to explain your answer in tags if there's anything extra to add!)

[kaiserouo]

i love 1999 gears

also the version w/o gears because apparently i've never made a portrait for normal version excalibur

btw this is for the 1st option of this

[alicenotalice]

A favorite Tangoism of mine is when he comes across some Ridiculous Doc Nonsense (the hourglass, the flood, etc) while streaming and just rolls his eyes, calls it “compensating” and moves on without further comment

[xskyll]

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[doctorsiren]

Consider: I repackage another ace attorney au (split phoenix au) into mp100 for the sillies

[withthewindinherfootsteps]

Wei Wuxian and Narrative Agency – Part One

For Xiantober Day One: Genius… albeit stretching the prompt so it refers to MXTX and MDZS itself, but at the end of the day it’s still about WWX – so no harm done!

(Part Two | Part Three | Full version on AO3)

The narrative is a very active player in MDZS’ story. How it presents information, what it chooses to show and omit, often reflects important facets of its themes and characters – Nie Huaisang, for instance, is so good at hiding behind his mask that not even the narrative can hold him accountable; the present day’s storyline as a murder mystery and the slow reveal of information about the past both prompt the reader to think critically about the truth of events, when the importance of thinking critically is an important theme; and the dangers not thinking critically (and instead basing conclusions on rumours without much evidence) are shown by tricking unquestioning readers into the very same trap the cultivation world falls into, as the information given by the title, summary and in-universe rumours – which contradicts how we see actually Wei Wuxian act – turns out to be false.

But nowhere do I love this trait more than in its treatment of Wei Wuxian – and, more specifically, in its way of emphasising his agency. We’re not just told how much his active choices define his character, and we’re not just shown this in-universe through his personality, worldview and the events he causes. I’d argue that this aspect goes a step further, and shapes the structure of the out-of-universe narrative as well.

There are two main ways this happens: one, in how the aspects of Wei Wuxian’s life that are shown and hidden directly tell us what’s important about his character (which is good writing but isn’t necessarily tied to this shaping of the narrative), which is what we’ll explore today; and two, how what’s shown and hidden reflects what Wei Wuxian himself prefers to dwell on, resulting in the narrative respecting his own thoughts and feelings on matters (which very much is tied to it). We’ll explore this at a later date.

But as for now – let’s explore my favourite aspect of MDZS.

(Here, narrative agency will be considered the ability of a character to meaningfully influence their events and the story they’re in.)

Tragedy, Circumstance, Choice

If we simply look at Wei Wuxian’s backstory in a vacuum, it seems almost typically tragic. His  parents died in circumstances beyond his control, he was left alone as a child with nobody to care for him, he was forced to grow up fending for himself on the streets, he was faced with abuse when he finally was taken in… as with all typical woobies, everything simply happened to him, and none of it was good. It’s just another example of the lack of agency being used for sympathy points, right?

…Except there’s one problem with that idea. We don’t actually see any of this.

It would’ve been easy to start the flashbacks during these times. We’re telling the story of Wei Wuxian in (largely) chronological order, and these are likely important experiences for him! But instead of starting in his street days, or evenat the moment Jiang Fengmian took him in*, we start at the lectures in the Cloud Recesses. That’s not even something mentioned in, and therefore something that’s able to disprove, the rumours at the start of the novel. So why is this the case? 

Well, there are multiple reasons – the main one being that MDZS is also Lan Wangji’s (and Wangxian’s) story, and having the flashbacks open with their first meeting is very satisfying. But I want to focus on something else.

This period doesn’t have to be shown, because what happens to Wei Wuxian, especially out of his control, isn’t what’s important about his character.

We’re not even at Lotus Pier here, where Wei Wuxian certainly has more agency than he would’ve had as a young child, but where the harm caused by Madame Yu is still completely out of his control. Here, he has agency! Though there are consequences, he is free to act, and what happens to him is a result of those actions and not of circumstance. Yes, he gets punished more than others who also take those same actions (due to classism); yes, it’s not his choice to be picked on by Lan Qiren in class (yet look how he responds, twisting the situation to his advantage and ending up tricking Lan Qiren into letting him leave, which is what he wanted to do. He is not at all helpless here!); yes, these choices have been influenced by his learned mindset from Madame Yu that punishment is arbitrary and will happen anyway, so you may as well do what you want regardless. But there is cause-and-effect here. It’s not circumstantial tragedy.

Therefore, instead of our first impression of past!Wei Wuxian being that of an unfortunate woobie, it’s of someone who has the freedom, ability and will to choose and act (and that’s after these initial tragic events have taken place). This is compounded by the fact that before we see any of his backstory, we get a similar impression of him in the present day.

If the purpose of his tragic past was to earn him sympathy points, to make us pity him due to how much he was influenced by events out of his control, this would’ve been a terrible way of going about it… and it’s this that betrays the true reason for its existence. Because now, the flashbacks instead show us how little these tragedies define who he is! From the very start, Wei Wuxian isn’t someone defined by circumstances out of his control, but rather by who he is as a person and by what choices he makes in the present day (which is both a mindset in-universe, and a nice little out-of-universe detail that lines up! Because out-of-universe, this means he’s not defined by sympathy points from a backstory, but rather by his great character writing… aka, by who he is as a person and what choices he makes). And this refusal to be defined by tragedy is a conscious choice on his part, too – but we’ll explore that more later. 

The important thing is that this idea of Wei Wuxian isn’t because of what exists in his past, it’s because of what parts of his past are shown to us (as well as what he chooses to do, with agency, in the present). 

Now, if this relationship between what’s displayed and what’s omitted was just a one-time thing, I might’ve considered it a cool detail or a nice way to establish a character, but not something the narrative is actively focusing on. But it’s a pattern that continues throughout the flashbacks. What, arguably, are the two other most important times in Wei Wuxian’s life where he doesn’t have enough agency to meaningfully influence his circumstances? His three months in the Burial Mounds (before escaping – he managed to assume some control of the circumstances but not enough to substantially reduce his suffering in his time there), and his loss and death during the First Siege. And we’re not shown either of them! We skip to when Wei Wuxian has emerged from the Burial Mounds and is torturing the Wens, or we skip to the present day – both times he has agency once more, because, again, what he’s like without it doesn’t matter enough to be shown. 

Furthermore, I’d argue this does actually contrast the other tragic events we see in Wei Wuxian’s later life. Things do go horribly wrong, but it’s either due to choices he knows the consequences of (see: rescuing the Wen Remnants in the first place), or instances where he still has some ability to act in the situation and influence it within the limitations. If he’d had no ability to influence circumstances at Qiongqi path, he would have died in the ambush; if he’d been unable to do that at Nightless City, he would’ve died then, too (of course Lan Wangji helped him escape as well). The attention drawn to him losing control of his actions in both instances is very interesting, but intentional or not, it’s still his actions influencing the plot. And that influence happens to be detrimental. The very ability to act and influence, at a base level,  is not taken away (though, of course, that doesn’t make these events any less tragic).

So, so far, the narrative seems to be telling us that the ability to act and choose is key to Wei Wuxian’s character. And it’s doing it through omitting his moments without agency in favour of instead showing us his moments with it. 

Let’s see if this is echoed in the text itself before we go further – because even with this pattern, nothing would end up mattering if Wei Wuxian’s agency wasn’t actually that important to the story itself. But thankfully it is, and that first impression we get of Wei Wuxian in the Cloud Recesses turns out to very much be accurate! Though there are defining circumstances out of his control that occur, such as the massacre of Lotus Pier, the majority of the important events of his life are due to his own choices. He didn’t happen to be forced to cease traditional cultivation and solely use guidao, didn’t happen to lose his Golden Core in a fight with Wen Zhuliu or due to some force in the Burial Mounds, it was his own choice to give it and his spiritual powers away. He didn’t tragically happen to get targeted by the cultivation world, it was a result of him acting on his morals and protecting the Wen remnants (a choice which he was fully aware of the implications of). He isn’t a protagonist to whom things simply occur, and that activeness and agency is my favourite thing about him. 

That’s not to say that the times Wei Wuxian doesn’t have agency, or feels like he doesn’t have any, don’t exist at all, either – but they are rare enough to have attention directly drawn to them in his internal narration:

Or else what could he do? He could do nothing. He was powerless. Lotus Pier had been destroyed, both Jiang FengMian and Madam Yu were gone, and Jiang Cheng had disappeared as well. He was the only one left, alone, with not even a sword in his hands. He didn’t know anything, he couldn’t do anything! For the first time, he discovered how little his power was. In front of something as large as the QishanWen Sect, it was the same as a mantis trying to stop a chariot. - Chapter 59, EXR translation

(And even in this circumstance, note that he still does force himself to act – to carry on searching for Jiang Cheng, to place his faith in Wen Ning – and does accomplish his goal (albeit with the help of others)! So even in dire situations, he isn’t simply passive. This is actually also the case with his time in the Burial Mounds, almost certainly the First Siege, and even his days on the streets as well (Chapter 20: he did actively fight with dogs to get food despite their danger and his growing fear of them, rather than just waiting and hoping to somehow receive some more). He can’t influence or immediately influence his circumstances, but that doesn’t stop him from trying.)

Overall, although they do influence him, Wei Wuxian is very much who he is in spite of his circumstances, not because of them. We’re shown the importance of his agency both in-universe by the major impacts his choices have on himself and the plot, as well as by narrative presentation – important periods where he lacks the ability to meaningfully influence anything are often mentioned but not directly shown, which suggests that such moments and circumstances aren’t as important to understanding Wei Wuxian’s character as moments where he does have this agency are. And I’d argue this works very well. Depending on the version of the story you consume, you may end up having different interpretations as to how much circumstances were at play nearer the end of his life – but nobody comes out of MDZS thinking about Wei Wuxian, the poor bearer of yet another generically tragic backstory.

(Part Two | Part Three | Full version on AO3)

—

*We are shown this moment in more detail in Chapter 23… but even then, it’s through the framing of Wei Wuxian remembering Jiang Yanli’s narration, not through a flashback proper or even him remembering the experience itself!

[blessphemy]

cost of living crisis bad yes but sometimes I think about the calculations about that one ancient tunic and think ‘well it’s nice that 1 bland outfit doesn’t represent the equivalent of $38,000 in labor anymore’

[triglycercule]

dusttale canon fics translated!!!

have you ever wanted to know MORE about canon dusttale/murder!sans??? heard that one of dusttale's creators wrote fics but it's in korean and you can't be bothered to translate it??? WELL BOY do i have the solution to you because I TRANSLATED THE FICS!!!

well technically i localized it because the fics straight out of translation were a bit funky and out of context in some parts. also the fics are actually not all that detailed (and idk if this is a good thing) so i added more detail and such but idk if some people would rather just the straight translation no extra flourishes

IN THAT CASE if you just wanna read the straight translation dw! if you go to the og korean version HERE and go to the comments some else will have already done a direct translation

keep in mind i do NOT actually know korean and this entire project was done with the help of google translate (god bless the camera translate feature), some research, and my sheer brainpower. if something is messed up PLEASE lmk

heartfelt message below because this is 1/2 of my thanks for 100 followers gift to the world don't open if you don't wanna read CRINGE (ew,,, APPRECIATION AND FEELINGS??? GROSS!)

when will we get more canon dust content i cry out. the delusional side of me says one day but the realistic side says never

so uhhh i hit 100 followers. WOOO YIPPEE!!! and i just wanna say tysm for following me and liking and reblogging all my posts and all that stuff it GENUINELY means a lot. like fr /srs type of meaning to me. i don't remember how and i don't really know why but the murder time trio genuinely mean so much to me and i'm glad that there are a whole ONE HUNDRED ass people that also like all the ideas and dumb stuff i come up with for them and they liked it enough to follow it. like i can't even come up with 100 people i know irl. i never knew i would actually get people to see the shit i post on here and i remember how actually terrified i was when i tagged one of my posts and it actually got interactions (i'm still scared when i post. not a thing has changed)

but ya! im really glad that there are this many people that actually care about my ideas so that's cool. someday im gonna run out of ideas and panic but that day has yet to come. i guess you could consider this the first half of my 100 followers thankgratulations because i still have my horror sans character analysis that i'm still working on and paused to work on this (a simple side quest this was). if i weren't a LAZY FUCK than maybe i wouldve done a DTIYS or something that people do for big milestones like this but like i said. i'm lazy. call me sans. comic sans

anyways triglycercule OUT! time to delete this account! jk!(fashion au)

[chopshajen]

10-14.

Ok I saw a photo of Tyler that grabbed me by the brainstem so I decided that doing a painting/value study of that photo would be a good idea. It was certainly an idea that cost me much sleep, but I’m happy with how it turned out so?? Worth?? I eyeballed everything, no tracing, then painted in grayscale as I always do before placing it in Mx. Gradient Map’s capable hands LOL

[kings-highway]

Haikyuu Flash Fiction: "STZ - 7 Minutes in Heaven" (Ushiten)

---

Semi thought it would be a funny prank. After all, Tendou's been harbouring this crush on Ushijima for so long it was getting ridiculous. Where's the harm in pulling on his leg a bit? So when the team is at a party and everyone is laughing and it's ten minutes to midnight, they suggest a game of truth or dare - and oh, it would have been easy to just dare oblivious Ushijima to kiss the poor lovelorn idiot but Semi had other ideas. "Seven minutes in Heaven," he says. "With.. Tendou."

The look Tendou gives him is worth a million bad karma points. Priceless even!

"What is that?" Ushijima would ask, because he has never heard of this odd game. Semi, gladly explains the rules to an increasingly flustered Tendou.

"You have to make-out in a closet for seven minutes."

Ushijima just shrugs and gets up, and Semi is quite happy to follow them to the closet, intending to use something to tie the handles and lock them in.

The closet door shuts.

Now, what you might have already begun to expect to happen did not actually occur to Semi - Or Tendou - upon shutting that closet door.

1. Ushijima Wakatoshi does not break game rules (Tendou will try to explain most people don't actually do any kissing.)

2. Ushijima Wakatoshi wins games.

Semi is hopeful that what he's done is fluster and embarass Tendou enough to take him down a peg. What he gets, instead, when that closet door opens again, is Ushijima wandering out like nothing at all has happened, followed by a Tendou that could barely walk, flushed more red than he'd thought human skin could be, and breathing so hard he may as well have run a marathon.

Semi finds neat holes cut into all his clothes about 6 days later.

[mirroredmasquerader]

So I made a series of vital errors and I am hyperaware that no one followed me for this content.

However.

There's this game-

[cringefailvox]

never been more vox-coded than just now when i told myself i could have a sobbing breakdown for five minutes and then i had to get back to work and then i did. five minutes on the dot

[houseswife]

yeah your boyfriend peeled you an orange but would he fake his death to make you his afterlife? would black flowers blossom, fearless on his breath?