#i like the story within the story

[peachblossomdrama]

Has anyone ever told you that your eyes shine like stars?

Battle of the Writers ep 3

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I know those eyes.

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[luckyyharms]

if anyone complains about no agathario I'm going to punch them in the face LOOK AT LILIA LOOK AT HER. SHE'S FINALLY FOUND PEACE WITH HERSELF ANDBHER POWERS. SHE HAS A COVEN. LOOK AT HER

(further rant in tags)

[historicity-was-already-taken]

To any Palestinian folks who have sent me requests for aid: I’m so sorry—there are active scammers going around posing as folks in Gaza, and I don’t know how to figure out which ones are real and which ones are scams.

En lieu of those. I’d like to direct you all towards NGOs which I know are not scams

[feelo-fick]

i thought the reason was obvious..??

but you dont seem to get the implication so i guess ill just keep talking and you can listen if you want to

—

that one meme but its them :] sort of a sequel to this

[coockie8]

This is gonna sound cold, but as a creator, if there is any type of ship you are so uncomfortable with that you would demand your fans not ship specific characters of yours due to that, then straight up do not release your creations to the public.

Again, I know this is gonna seem cold, but you do not have control over how other people are going to interpret or engage with your creations, and if there exists an interpretation or form of engagement you loathe so much you would demand people never do that with your characters, then keep your creations to yourself.

There are 8 billion people on the planet, which means the potential for approximately 8 billion different interpretations and forms of engagement. It is impossible for you to like, or even just be comfortable with, every single one of those, and it is crucial that you make your peace with the fact people are going to be interacting with your stories in ways you don't approve of if you're going to be publishing. Because again, this is going to happen, you can't control it, and you will drive yourself insane trying.

[captain-astors]

The Crown Prince

[anistarrose]

to me, the most fascinating (and utterly unintentional) feature of TAZ Balance's narrative structure is the way that on the first listen, Tres Horny Boys are the audience surrogates because they, much like us, have no idea what the fuck is going on, but on all subsequent relistens, then Lucretia, and sometimes Barry, and arguably especially Lup in the umbrella become the new audience stand-ins, because just like us, they are, in fact, painfully aware of what the fuck is going on :)

[yardsards]

laios when his party needed more members:

[3-aem]

universal healthcare is not broken and anyone trying to convince you it is is delusional and a dckrider for big health insurance. yes there are wait times but waiting for care is Not the same as being denied care.

in america your physician prescribes care and an insurer can still cuck you out of it because someone across the continent who has never met you can say: doesn’t seem medically necessary. Leaving you to handle a bill that is wildly inflated by the same insurers that just denied you.

let me drill it through your head you can pay thousands a year in premiums and still end up sick and financially burdened for years by One incident. no insurance company is Avoiding going broke by denying claims. theyre doing it to profit off your misfortune and your illness. Because healthcare fundamentally does not cost the amount that they claim it to be.

[baravaggio]

Nana x "Where is My Place in the World? Early Shōjo Manga Portrayals of Lesbianism" by Fujimoto Yukari (tr. Lucy Fraser)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Cruel and Unusual Punishments (the PSA episode).

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[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.

[puppppppppy]

xīn yá ref update ^_^

[agentc0rn]

⦿ Help Zygarde end the clash between Xerneas and Yveltal and restore order.

[merlinmylove]

Arthur being in disguise or hiding (because villain of the week is trying to kill him) and he overhears what his own people think of his father

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Two guards speaking quietly about the new locked gates policy

“But The King says — “

“The child-slayer? I won’t listen to a word that man says — let the family pass”

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Two peasant women gathering herbs

“The mad tyrant has ordered yet another attack on the druid community. A shame I say, most of my recipes come from them, and if he kills them all, how will the potion makers survive?!”

“He burned my aunt you know — she had no magic! She never studied, she knew no spells or anything, but she was a midwife. A woman with knowledge of herbs and how to best practice medicine — that was treason enough”

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

A group of servants walking past him

“I was sweeping in Lord Alders chambers when he complained to Gaius about paying his secret tax again”

“A secret tax?”

“Yes! Apparently his wife, the Countess, knows magic and The King allows it! Lord Alders pays him a handsome sum a year so his wife gets to keep her head on her shoulders. His estate you know, is next to the river and we need fish to eat”

“So The King allows a noble woman to live because her estate is of convenience to the kingdom?! All-while my father, a shoemaker, lost his head for knowing how to read druidic? The Hypocrisy!”

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

A drunk father grieving in the tavern

“My boy was only five summers old! He didn’t know how to read his own name, let alone study magic! But still, he was to hang”

“But why? What was his crime?”

“He was playing in the field with the other boys, and the wheat made him sneeze and suddenly his hair changed and became blue. He didn’t even realise what happened until the others pointed it out. Apparently, there was no need for a trial. He was guilty…

A little boy had to hang because of one moment, one spark of something he must’ve been born with because he never learned, and The Rotten King tied a noose around his neck.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Arthur returning home safely after Gaius was able to identify the poison the attackers used

“May I ask where you found this information?”

“In one of my books, my lord. Here, I belive you read from this when Merlin drank from the poisoned chalice.”

He flips through the pages haphazardly before releasing

“But this is a book of magical poisons and plants!”

“Well yes sire…how else would I be able to recognise the symptoms?”

Arthur thinks back to the woman who was arrested last week for having a book on magical plants. She was deemed a witch and a traitor with clear intentions of killing the royal family, and was subsequently burned alive

“So the information is useful in your hands, but traitorous in anyone else’s?”

“It’s just a book Arthur. What one chooses to do after reading it, is entirely up to oneself”

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Arthur needs some time to think

Maybe Merlin could help…