#i don't do this

[animramz22]

How I look while failing that math test so I gotta start praying to E&D down in hell

[alipeeps]

Fangs of Fortune and Hope

So much of Fangs of Fortune revolves around hope, not just for the characters, but for the audience... and the way hope is used as a narrative device.

(Read more cos holy shit this got away from me...)

Hopes and dreams are a primary motivation, and humanising aspect, of the characters.

Zhao Yuanzhou's story is all about hope. Has been without hope for so very long... trapped by his own nature in a life without end, without hope of relief, mired in misery.. and fearing what he will become/do. Zhuo Yichen represents the first spark of hope he has had in so long - that the cycle can be broken, that his torment can end... and that the world can be protected from the danger he represents.

But as the show progresses, he finds himself daring to hope for more than just death... as he builds connections with the team - with Zhuo Yichen and Wen Xiao in particular - he begins to hope for something else... for the possibility of a future, one that is no longer bleak and lonely. As the Baize goddess - who never gave up hope for him - promised, he found the person(s) who would make him want to live.

When his senses are sealed and he is fighting not to be overwhelmed his demonic energy, he holds onto the hope - the dream - of a future for him and Wen Xiao to keep the demonic energy at bay.

And he never - never - gave up hope for Li Lun, that he could be redeemed, be saved. Even as he used up all his thousands of years of cultivation to re-forge the Cloud Light Sword in order to forcibly remove Li Lun from Bai Jiu's body, he still hoped for Li Lun to live on, made Zhuo Yichen promise to save his life, offered a way for his spirit to endure with the hope of cultivating back to a human form.

Bai Jiu's entire story arc is motivated by hope. He leaves home whilst still a child with the desperate, burning hope of learning medicine to become a healer and be able to save his mum. And it is that desperate hope that leaves him vulnerable to Wen Zongyu's manipulation, that pushes him to go against his nature and betray his friends - people he genuinely cares for.

And Ying Lei is all about hopes and dreams. He goes against centuries of tradition and expectations to pursue his hopes and dreams in the mortal realm.. and the dream he is pursuing is informed wholly by the hopes and dreams of humans. He sees how humans find connection and comfort in food, how food can be an act of love and caring, and longing... and he wants to be a part of that, to be able to provide that connection and affection to people. He uses his magic in "frivolous" ways to make a perishable food last much longer, in the hope that his friend will still be able to eat a comforting food even if he is not there to cook it freshly. He does this even before they have rescued Bai Yu.. spending his time and his magical energy in the hope that they will rescue him.

Even in the midst of tragedy, these characters cling onto hope - even as both Bingyi and Zhuo Yichen are forced to kill the ones they love most to save the world, each of them finds a way to save a shred of their soul, so that they are not gone forever, so that there is hope of return.

And hope is a major theme for the audience too. Despite the clear and repeated foreshadowing, as we come to know and love these characters, we cannot help but build hope that there is another way, that the fate they are seemingly doomed to can be avoided. The show plays with this idea, by turns affirming that their ending is inevitable and suggesting that maybe it is not. Ying Long's spirit reminds Zhuo Yichen and Zhao Yuanzhou that they are fated to repeat the same choice that he and Bingyi had to make, before expressing the hope that they and their friends will be able to travel the world and have adventures together.

If there were no hope at all, if the fated ending were presented as relentlessly inescapable, there would be no tension, no investment in the outcome. So the show keeps offering us that hope, teasing us with the idea that... maybe. Even though in our hearts we know how it must end... we can't help but hope. And isn't that the very core of the story? So much death and tragedy, loss and pain... and yet there is always still hope.

But what struck me in particular - and what inspired me to write this post - is the way hope is used as a narrative device.

One way in which this is done is in subverting expectations. I've remarked several times on how the show often used flashbacks to add more information/context to a previous scene that then alters the present narrative. And this was often done when a situation seemed hopeless. Where it seemed there was no way they could escape/survive this - and then a flashback to a previous scene would reveal that the team had foreseen this outcome and planned for it and all hope was not lost after all. For a moment the audience is plunged into despair - the team is doomed! - and then we rejoice because hope is given back to us.

But more powerful than that is how the audience's hope is used to underscore the most harrowing scenes.

Out of the many deaths in this show, the two deaths that were (for me) the most traumatic were those of Ying Lei and Bai Jiu - both by virtue of their being unexpected, and also because the characters were the youngest (I know Ying Lei was a demi-god and physically older than everyone but Zhao Yuanzhou, but in god/demon terms he was still a youngster and his personality was very young, and he and Bai Jiu were very much the goofy kids of the team) and most innocent of the group.

But also because in both of these deaths the show deliberately - it seemed to me - offered us a moment of hope that they would survive... only to then snatch it away.

During the fight with Li Lun, Ying Lei was so badly injured and I was so worried that he was going to die... but then he broke through to Li Lun and the team saved Bai Jiu and Ying Lei was hugging him and reluctant to let go of him and I thought it was over, they'd saved Bai Jiu, everything was going to be okay.

A moment of hope and relief. And then Ying Lei died.

And then when Zhao Yuanzhou and Zhuo Yichen realised Bai Jiu must have been the one to destroy the ashes and save Zhuo Yichen, Zhao Yuanzhou urges Zhuo Yichen to use the feather and go to Bai Jiu and I had a moment of wild hope that yes, Zhuo Yichen can get to him and get him to a doctor, it's not too late, he can be saved...

The episode ends on a moment of (for me) fierce and desperate hope that Bai Jiu will live.

Only for that hope to be immediately ripped away at the start of the next episode. Zhuo Yichen - who had rushed there hoping against hope - finds Bai Jiu already dead and his grief, and ours, is all the more raw and debilitating for that brief moment of hope.

Our hope is weaponised against us to maximise the impact of the narrative. And god is it effective. I don't think I've ever had such an emotional response to a show.

And then the extra episode, after all the pain and loss and grief of episode 34, once again gives us back hope. Zhuo Yichen saved that scrap of Zhao Yuanzhou's soul and sets out on a desperate, hopeful quest to find it. And at the very end, he does. And the show ends on that final, joyous moment of hope restored - their story can continue.

[trainwreck-pumpkin-pie]

executive dysfunction time

[shadesofmauve]

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

that article going around abt firefox's new ad program is annoying bc it's phrased as though "mozilla has finally TURNED on its people and is SELLING YOU OUT for cold hard cash!!" when. that's not what's happening. it is specifically being implemented to discourage tracking behavior, and literally all the data they are giving to advertisers is aggregate and anonymized, which is like, the opposite of what that post wants you to worry about, lol

[kenapiece-main]

Can you believe I'm having to make this meme even after successfully finishing up taxes and applying to job

[captainjonnitkessler]

>Join a union

>Hear people constantly complaining that the current union leadership is super corrupt, it's all just the same ten guys making all the decisions in secret and nobody else in the union ever gets to know what's going on

>Go to the monthly union meetings that are completely open to all 1200 union members

>The only attendees are the same ten guys every month, giving detailed reports about everything that's going on

[nathaniacolver]

arcane ships be like

i love a show that teaches equality (😭😭😭)

[mayhemchicken-artblog]

in the hour or so it took me to draw this op turned reblogs off

EDIT: reblogs are STAYING OFF. op was right and correct and i have never regretted making a post as much as this one. if you want to reblog my art you can reblog something else from my blog. or commission me, lord knows i deserve financial compensation for the nightmare this post has put me through

[some-pers0n]

I'm always entertained by people doing those "canon VS fanon" memes where both are misunderstanding characters to such a violent degree 'cause like

[fox-bright]

I am never going to be able to leave Reddit.

[12neonlit-stage]

you're allowed to discuss and work together, reblog for a higher sample size or something

You have 1 week, good luck!

[golyadkin]

you'll get the urge as an artist or a writer to say out loud the things you're worried about "the proportions are off" "kind of out of character" "i'm not good at summaries" "didn't get as much detail as i wanted" "i made a mistake and here's how" and that's the self-conscious part of your brain telling you "it's bad and if you don't tell them you know it's bad then they'll think you're stupid" but you've got to ignore that little voice and pretend you think it's good or else that little voice is going to ruin your life

[pangur-and-grim]

a lot of you probably knows Belphie's story, but I'll summarize just in case.

Devon Rex cats are better for people with allergies (less shed fur + less Fel d1 protein in their saliva), so on February 16, 2024, I went the breeder route and put down a deposit. before Belphie even opened his eyes, he was mine!

every Friday, the breeder sent me a new photo. I had a broken leg, and was basically rotting in bed at that point, so it was the best part of my week. then, at 12 weeks old, I BROUGHT HIM HOME!

at first, he was so alive! like a wind-up monkey that never shut off. he dangled from the wall-hangings, savaged my feet as I walked, and used my elderly cats as jumping poles to do cool acrobatics over. but all this gradually faded.

first, he stopped playing. then he stopped climbing. then he stopped moving much at all. my vet ran tests on him and found multiple pathogens (calcivrius + mycoplasma), but the medication didn't help - he kept declining.

on September 17th, I woke up to find him swollen like a balloon. we finally had an answer: he had Feline infectious Peritonitis, aka FIP. before 2017, this would've been a death sentence. he would've kept bloating until he drowned in his own fluids. and before 2024, I would've been forced to inject him with black market drugs. but thankfully, South Tower Animal Hospital in Fergus, Ontario was doing a study on the oral medication! we drove two hours, enrolled him, and left with the GS-441524 pills.

and he went from those photos above.....to this:

I thought Belphie would die as a kitten. I'd accepted that he would never grow up. but now he gets to LIVE!

and all for the low cost of $7,553.....ahhhahaha........god.

that + a recent home disaster has wiped out my savings, but I still need to pay for Belphie's medication. to remain in this study, I need to do bloodwork monthly until Feb 2025, and he'll need daily pills until March 2025.

I've put a risograph print + enamel pin set up at greerstothers.shop. I hate asking for help, but if you'd like to support Belphie's continued treatment, please consider checking them out!

[acorviart]

not to sound like a boomer, but I need some people to learn how to write emails in a semi-professional (at the very least) format so you're not cold emailing a business/potential employer/any other stranger about formal matters in the exact same way you'd DM a close friend on instagram

the formality/language can loosen up in the email chain once you've established a rapport and you match the other person if they're being less formal, but please don't have the very first email you send a stranger be written in all lowercase ultra-casual sms slang with no greeting or signature and a billion emojis