#it was originally going to be much shorter

[runesinthenight]

There are so many ways that this is a different piece. Not only did they change how it is arranged and remove the context inportant to understanding the piece, but they changed "please take one" to an allergy warning.

The fact that they removed the "please take one" portion of it from a museum standpoint changes so much too. In a museum, you are not supposed to touch any of the pieces unless there is a sign which expressly says you can. The original sign expressly said that. That is the sort of sign that will get visitors to interact with the piece. I would take a piece of candy from that pile.

However, the new sign only has a warning on it. The first sentence is an allergy warning. That in it of itself isn't bad. Having an allergy warning is good if you're inviting people to take a piece of candy. The second line is a choking hazard. While this may be true, it feels more like a way for the museum to cover their ass.

Actually, that whole warning comes across as a legal message. It gives the feeling that the museum is putting all of the blame on you if you decide to eat the candy and something bad happens. It is not inviting. It puts off the visitor. I would not take a piece of candy from that piece.

Now, if in an ideal world where politics and political messaging were not involved and the change was purely for liability reasons, I still would have done it differently. I would have placed it under the "please take one" or on a smaller sign under the original sign.

Doing a little research, the signage for this piece has changed a few times over the years, some having the warning, some not, some mentioning AIDS, some not. But the main outcry has been when this sign does not mention AIDS because it is such an integral part of understanding the piece. This piece is meant to be interacted with and that interaction is meant to spark an emotional connection in the visitor. Taking and eating a piece of candy from it should make you think about Ross and his struggle. It should not just be "oh! Free candy!" That removes so much meaning with the piece. Especially to people who have never interacted with this piece or this artist before.

I am in the museum industry. This is my career. And signage is a critically important part of how a museum presents itself and interacts with the public. I really wish there was a way I could see all of the itterations of this sign and see how they've changed over the years and across institutions. Because this piece is on loan to the Smithsonian from the Art Institute of Chicago and I am curious about what aspects were or were not included as part of the loan agreement. But I also want to see when exactly the first sign was from. As doing a quick search shows that the Art Institute of Chicago aslo got into some hot water in 2022 for not including AIDS in the interpretive portion of their text (which is excluded altogether in the Smithsonian sign).

Signage can be difficult. It's a balance between too much text and not enough. You have to make signage that appeals to a wide range of visitors, especially visitors not knowledgeable about the subject. Art museums tend to lean on the shorter side of signage text with the curator often largely in charge of what does or does not go on. The second sign is an example of what I, in my professional opinion, would consider too little text as important context to understand and connecting with the piece is left out.

the david zwirner gallery and the felix gonzalez torres foundation in the smithsonian removed the descriptive plaque for portrait of ross in la by felix gonzalez-torres. the old plaque explained portrait for ross' origins as the artist's partner's aids related death, and replaced it with a plaque with absolutely no information about the piece itself, who ross was, or who gonzalez-torres was either. portrait of ross was also reeranged to lay on the floor long ways instead of in a pile as it typically is situated, and the plaque outside the exhibition FOR GONZALEZ-TORRES omits his sexuality, as well as his aids related death. i'm in utter disbelief

[protect-namine]

Ahhhhh your theory about how Vein died is sooooooooooo fucking real. Like I've seen people talk about how Lu Guang might have a secret power? But I feel like that's not the case cuz then we might have seen it play out in S1 and S2. Lg would surely would have used it in the fight with Qian Jin.

for context, anon is talking about this post where I theorize how vein "died." I go into it in more detail there, but the tl;dr version of it is: no lu guang did not kill him vein directly. he just delayed vein from entering the clinic early, thus creating a butterfly effect (hence his whole speech about it) that led to wang qing being awake when vein tries to leave with the notebook, thus creating an opportunity for her to "kill" vein which she wouldn't have had originally. but liu xiao interrupted this chain of events and that's why vein is alive using the faking death ability.

I am linking the reblog version here because other people have added their own thoughts since the creation of the post. I'm not sure if anon has seen it or just the original post, because in my original post I posit that liu xiao has the faking death ability. but after seeing other people's thoughts, I am now more leaning to the idea that wang qing has the faking death ability or perhaps, that a combination of wang qing and liu xiao is what made the "heart attack but fake death" happen. perhaps (unintentionally) they created a power combo-ing effect similar to how lu guang and cheng xiaoshi can create a mind link across time when combining their powers, or how li tianchen can possess people across space by proxy of li tianxi.

a power combo that works across "death" would be interesting, though this is merely speculative at this point. it would certainly provide another perspective to why they're paired up in the ed.

to now address anon: yeah, exactly. even if the addition of non-photo based powers is a recent change in writing direction (that they may not have had foresight on during the writing of previous seasons), it still would be too much of a drastic change for lu guang to be hiding another ability.

as I said in the post, it is unfortunate that we have to rely on information outside of the show to make sense of it, but yingdu really does make more sense when you've seen the recent interview with director li. in particular, it is heavily implied that liu xiao has more than one ability, and the process of gaining an ability (aside from inheritance from parents) is through death or stealing it from others.

while I am a believer in the idea that lu guang is willing to do morally questionable things for cheng xiaoshi, I don't think he would've had an opportunity to just get a new ability so soon after he just got the diving ability from cheng xiaoshi. on the flip side, if he always had multiple abilities since he was a kid, it would be bad writing lmao because then why has he never used it until now? especially when he's been timelooping for who knows how long to avoid a death node. I know link click is possibly retconning some details (2018 is now 2019, they changed the plans for red eyes, etc etc) but I don't think this would be a retcon they'd do because it would change too much of lu guang's character.

I am going to use this ask as a jumping off point to talk about yingdu's storytelling style, and how we should take this into account when analyzing this season. putting this under the cut now since this gets long and is kinda just a tangent now to the ask itself, though it does circle back to lu guang's role in vein's "death" in the end.

part of the reason vein's death is confusing is definitely because of the animation of lu guang puppeteering wang qing. I can totally see how people would come to the conclusion that lu guang was controlling her somehow. but we have to remember that yingdu is not like S1 and S2, for multiple reasons. one, it's a shorter season meant to introduce plot hooks, not plot; it's a setup for S3. two, it's a change in perspective from cheng xiaoshi's more grounded reality to lu guang who has been timelooping for forever. three, it was animated by a different studio than studio lan. fourth, it aims to provide a different story, and the storytelling style reflects that.

whereas S1 and S2 has a storytelling style that focused more on plot details and building up tension; yingdu focused more on relationships and emotions. it heavily uses visual metaphors in its storytelling compared to previous seasons.

in a way, although I have qualms about yingdu's writing, I do think visual metaphors is a valid solution to the problem of, "we only have six episodes to establish new plots and characters and motivations. how do we convey information efficiently in that amount of time without compromising artistry?"

I will mention one metaphor in detail that will be relevant for the lu guang discussion later. one example is glasses as a perception metaphor. this meta was written in YE5, and YE6 continues the metaphor as well because we see lu guang wear clear glasses for the first time, symbolizing that he is no longer stuck in his rose-tinted glasses era of looking into the past, and has decided to look into the future, solidified by his decision to remove vein from the situation and also because he reveals later that this is the last time he can loop.

there are, of course, more examples. idk if I have links for existing meta on this, but we have hands as a metaphor for relationships (hand holding, handshakes, fist bumps, etc) and the power balance of each relationship (with regards to secrets, deals, etc). we have various color theories floating around. we have theater/cinema and chess as metaphors for everyone's narrative roles. lu guang's imaginary clock as a metaphor for how he thinks the timeline should go, and how it's prevented from running by red strings forming the word BRIDON. we even see the clock fall apart in one of the later episodes (I forget which one atm). hell I could write a whole meta on liu xiao's tetris game as a metaphor for how he sees the "game" he's playing and the role xia fei plays into all of it.

side note: I think it's incredibly valid for people to feel that yingdu did not have enough space to properly establish characters, and I feel the same way too. but at the same time, I think a lot of characterization also gets missed in yingdu because it's a season that loves its metaphors and encodes character motivations through it instead of just showing it to us. I have conflicting feelings about this, but ultimately, they only had 6 episodes to tell a story, and I think that's something we should always keep in mind when managing expectations.

circling back to vein's "death" and lu guang's role in it... visual metaphors are gonna be confusing if people don't know this is what yingdu's storyelling heavily uses. I don't think we should be reading yingdu the same way we did S1/S2.

someone could watch lu guang puppetering wang qing and think, "oh he's using her to kill vein directly" but if we stick to yingdu's storytelling style, it is more likely a metaphor for him learning to manipulate the butterfly effect for his purposes (again also symbolized by the glasses metaphor, since he wears clear glasses in the same episode)

scenes should also not be taken out of context. there is a reason he made a whole speech about the butterfly effect first. a small change (delaying vein) results in a big change (killing vein). if lu guang was controlling wang qing or whatever, that is not a small change. that is not a butterfly effect. we literally had a butterfly land on lu guang's shoulder after he made this speech to vein. the point was to create a butterfly effect that would lead to a situation where vein dies.

and for my final tangent: this sets us up perfectly for S3 because I believe lu guang and liu xiao are supposed to be narrative foils.

they both have expressed wanting control over the timelines. liu xiao wants "to make uncertainties into certainties" (whatever this means) and lu guang wants "to make certainties (cheng xiaoshi's death node) uncertain." but as of S1 and S2, lu guang was not yet in a position to properly rival liu xiao over this theming, because we know he's been timelooping and failing over and over to save cheng xiaoshi, while liu xiao has been successfully manipulating people into doing things for him (getting li tianchen to retrieve liu min's phone for him; baiting cheng xiaoshi to go to bridon so he can use him to bait wang qing to revealing where she hid the location of cheng weimin's notebook so vein can steal it).

now, lu guang has shown some semblance of control. and we have seen the effects of it. cheng xiaoshi is still alive and well in a post-S2 post-yingdu timeline.

I mentioned this way back in YE2, but there's also a distinct change in the way we're moving from "closed loops" to "butterfly effects" as a theme in yingdu. yingdu has many objectives it wanted to do as a season, but the main one was lu guang learning to manipulate the timelines through creating a butterfly effect. in keeping with this theme and objective, it just does not make sense for him to kill vein by somehow directly controlling wang qing.

[noctlas332]

gyahhh day 13 fl chan

[necrotic-nephilim]

Nightwing: Brothers In Blood is such a fucking hilarious comic for DickJay content, given the bulk of the plot is Jason deciding to dress up as Nightwing and kill people which, Dick predictably is not fond of, as a concept.

There's so much in that arc that makes me unwell. Dick straight up saying he wishes Jason had died. The way they instantly banter when they run into each other before Dick gets mad at Jason for dressing up as Nightwing, then Jason begs Dick to work with him.

But what I think gets me the most is the outright confirmation of how even now, Jason still has a serious case of hero worship for Dick and just wants to be like him and get his approval.

nightwing (1996) #120

There's such a complex Jason has over Dick and it makes me Unwell. Jason identifying with Dick, wanting his attention, his approval. His love, even. I mean, later on when Jason gets kidnapped, in his mind he hallucinates Dick talking to him and it outright confirms he wants Dick to save him and Jason has a doomsday spiral about Dick not saving him, through his mental image of Dick.

nightwing (1996) #121

Jason wants Dick in his life, there's so much unrequited love and weirdness between them. They're so not normal about each other. Later on he sends Dick a note saying he just wishes they could be family again and I think it's so unhinged of Jason. Dressing up as Dick, just because of how much he loves and respects Dick. So much potential in that.

Also aside from all of that complex this comic is also hilarious for the bit it has where Dick accidentally takes a job as a model and has to dress up as Nightwing, specifically Jason!Nightwing because of the sex appeal Cheyenne (the woman Dick is seeing) thinks it has. And when he's on the runway and sees Jason in the audience he just jumps at Jason, in front of everyone, to beat the shit out of him, while dressed as Nightwing. Which the public thinks is a planned stunt to bank on the weird Sexy Rivalry between the two Nightwings currently running around. It's the most unhinged thing and I think it's so funny. Dick's sort-of-girlfriend makes him dress up as Nightwing!Jason because she thinks it's hot and it'll sell, then Dick beats Jason up in front of everyone, still dressed as Nightwing (specifically Jason), and it reads as a sexy performance modeling piece.

nightwing (1996) #120

Imagine being so weirdly homoerotic about your sort of kind of brother figure that you can't hesitate fighting him when you're supposed to be modeling and everyone thinks the tension is so good it's a part of the show. These two cannot leave each other alone with their weird tangled feelings for each other. I love it dearly.

[horrendousmustard]

Rize ☆〜（ゝ。∂

[pareidolla]

how tall is your broken for scientific purposes

oh!! this is such perfect timing i actually just finished marking down everyone's heights the other day

broken — 5'3 (160 cm) contrarian/opportunist — 5'4 (162 cm) hero — 5'6 (167 cm) hunted — 5'7 (170 cm) paranoid — 5'8 (172 cm) smitten/cold — 6'0 (182 cm) skeptic — 6'2 (187 cm) cheated — 6'4 (193 cm) stubborn — 6'9 (205 cm)

my broken is very small ♡♡♡♡ little purse dog ♡♡ hero is also very small ♡♡ ok edward elric ♡♡♡

[personinthepalace]

The Discount Wiggles - Taskmaster Australia Series 2 (Fruit Salad Remix)

for @savemefrommysolitude - Happy Birthday!!

[ariquar]

I've never designed an ohmes-raht in my life

[princess-stabbity]

on my hands and knees, begging modders to make more practical hairstyles for shepard

[thealphabard]

Zora brain rot comes and goes in waves. But he's excited to go home and see the little dude after being trapped in termina for a while 😊

[descendant-of-truth]

I finished rewatching Axess today and now I'm even more mad than I already was about them not including the fact that Netto and Rockman are brothers

You're telling me that they added a whole plot about Yuriko being the long-lost twin sister of Mariko who had been presumed dead during her childhood and DIDN'T use that as an opportunity to parallel the main characters?? The main characters consisting of twins who were separated by a screen and secrecy for years of their lives while one was presumed dead by the other???

I just. it was RIGHT THERE. they had to go out of their way to make Yuriko a character with that much drama behind her and yet they couldn't be bothered to use the built-in twin drama from the original games??

Like, if there was any plot point that deserved to be expanded on in an adaptation of that series, it was the fact that Rockman was originally a human before he died and was brought back as a navi by Yuuichiro. It's a story that begs to be explored but for some reason I can't fathom, it's not included in any of the adaptations.

And it just keeps getting more outrageous because Yuriko's main purpose in the first game was to foreshadow the brother reveal. She asks Netto if he's a twin and you can respond with either yes or no, something that seems a bit silly on a surface level but might prompt the player to start asking questions.

The game actually does a really good job with hinting at it if you interact with the right people and items, rewarding your engagement with story details you might not otherwise see. And it's a right shame that we never got to see how the writers of the anime or manga might have tackled it, because it fundamentally changes so much about how you perceive the story.

Netto and Rockman being best friends doesn't lack emotional impact by any means, but it's so much more complicated when they're brothers. In the anime and manga, Rockman existing in a different world from Netto is just How Things Are, but in the games... it wasn't supposed to be that way.

There's an underlying sense of tragedy to the situation, made hopeful by the fact that Netto and Rockman are still brothers who make an amazing team despite the barrier between them (and in some cases, arguably because of it)

And there's... a little bit of that in the adaptations, I suppose? They do occasionally lament the fact that they can't live in the same world, and are overjoyed when something plot-related happens that lets them do that for a brief amount of time, but it's inherently a different conflict.

I wonder if anyone's asked about this during an interview, because it just boggles the mind how something so important and obvious to the story was left out to dry in all the adaptations

[protect-namine]

yingdu episode 5 spoilers

ohhh my god this is everything I want from cheng xiaoshi. yes. perfect. sorry, but I'm a cheng xiaoshi whump liker and link click always brings out the best of them in episode 5 of each season.

there's just something cathartic about how when cheng xiaoshi becomes an emotional mess, it's also when he's most disconnected with the people he knows (physically, as he's diving in a photo and his only link to his home timeframe is a disembodied lu guang in his head) but it's also when he's most connected with strangers (when their own personal trauma lines up with his). to me, it's a showcase of empathy and a strange manifestation of his own agency. something about how the disconnect gives him the space to blow up, and the connection heightens it and grants him permission, almost, to express his anger more freely for his own sake and for another person's behalf.

like. listen, okay, I'm gonna ramble now because cheng xiaoshi is my favorite character in this entire show, but listen. sometimes some fans will conflate adjectives to his character that are usually associated with his character archetype, but they aren't necessarily true about him as a character. and I don't mean it in a, "he's not like that because he grows out of those traits" kind of way. I mean it in a, "he was never like that" kind of way.

one of those adjectives, for me, is when people call him immature. he isn't! to me! imo! he's got big emotions, yes, but I personally don't think the presence of big emotions indicates anything about maturity. because you know what? as long as his primary trauma (feelings of abandonment) isn't touched, he is very good at handling interpersonal conflicts, and that's what's interesting to me.

qiao ling hides relevant information from him? he removes himself from the situation to give himself space and sort out his feelings. he tells her he's fine and that he'll be back.

post-earthquake arc? I'll just copy paste what I already said in a previous ask:

what initially got me was when I was first watching S1, I thought the earthquake arc would have devastating effects on [shiguang's] relationship. listen, I didn’t know what I was getting into with link click, but I thought that was expected. it’s ripe for drama! but how do they handle the fight? they put their side business on hold but they still keep being roommates. they still do their day job. they still talk. they’re still upset but they give each other space but not to the point where they can’t stand existing in each other’s spaces. that’s when I realized that oh, they really trust each other. they have a very solid foundation for their relationship that not even the earthquake arc can break. they’re pretty level-headed about this, actually, all things considered? all the doomed yaoi stuff came later, but that’s just the cherry on top. it’s the way they handled conflict and disappointment in S1 that got me.

okay, protect-namine, why go through that whole tangent? BECAUSE! circling back to yingdu episode 5, we finally, finally get to see cheng xiaoshi let out some of his anger. and it's precisely because his primary trauma point was on the table. he can forgive a friend lying, and he can forgive being told not to change the past. because at the end of the day, qiao ling and lu guang stayed. they never left him.

but he cannot handle abandonment. he cannot understand why people leave. he cannot understand why he's been clinging on to false hope this entire time. and more importantly, he cannot understand how someone can be such a hypocrite about it. "a man who'd rather be kind to strangers than face his own son" like fuck man. cheng weimin you fucked up so bad.

it's the disconnect/connect thing again too. thematically, it makes sense. when does cheng xiaoshi blow up? when he's alone, far away from the people that ground him. alone, the feeling he hates the most. he's not even in his own body. he blows up when he's inhabiting a stranger's. he doesn't even get to be angry as cheng xiaoshi.

how fucked up is that. man. I love him so much.

also I'm going crazyyyy over the family themes going on in link click. much to say about the show itself across all seasons (the twins, qiao ling and cheng xiaoshi, even the liu siblings), but for this episode... god. okay this is slight speculation territory now and I'll try to keep this very short, because this is only tangential to the post. but. imagine xia fei getting the good parent figure in cheng weimin that cheng xiaoshi never had. and he doesn't know!! he's bitter inside about his dad and he's having hotpot with xia fei and he doesn't know he was in that school!! fuck that's so good. that's so juicy.

okay, sorry, I have a lot of feelings about cheng xiaoshi. he's my link click blorbo of all time, and I love when he experiences The Horrors™ because it's also when other sides of him gets to shine.

on a brighter note:

VEIN AND CHENG XIAOSHI MEETING AGAIN!!! their greeting was so cute. also omg does xia fei know? that his boss is maybe possibly a cannibal? actually, wait, I don't think I'd be surprised if he does know.

ah and finally. finally:

I've been having many thoughts on how yingdu approaches "friendships" and their transactional nature (mostly with regards to liu xiao) but I mostly thought they're headcanon stuff. but now. I'm so so happy that episode 5 is bringing out more of the quid pro quo theme. liu xiao with the gift giving. wang qing's "friends" (bullies) demanding her to cheat on the exam for them. and now, vein and cheng xiaoshi having a friendly greeting but also exchanging favors. so good. so good. it goes along with how there's so much handshakes and handholding this season (not just with lu guang and cheng xiaoshi, but with cheng xiaoshi and the the antagonist trio too, who have all met him by "helping" him in some way). something something trust and favors. probably something that deserves its own post though, but I wanted to point this out because I am soooo here for that. it's goes hand in hand (ha!) with the whole fraud/lies vs innocence/honesty theme this season, and deals/contracts being an equalizer to the two. very good. very tasty.

edit: ooh they also point to this in the YE6 trailer too. nice, nice. if you knew someone's true colors, would you still be their friend?

man, I love episode 5. it just hits all the stuff I personally wanted to see. the only flaw is that we still haven't seen the older version of wang qing, but yeah I kinda expected that they'll hide her until episode 6. they're giving her the liu xiao treatment from season 2. sigh. really wish she'd keep showing up in S3, we need more female characters in this show 🙏

[northern-passage]

i got my laptop back from repairs today and decided to do a big "what have i been up to" post :-)

things have been kinda all over the place with me lately since march/april. i took a break from working on tnp & wrote one day hike (about 13k words if i remember correctly)

then i was working on faith, my neotwiny jam submission, which wasn't a lot but took a lot of reworking on my part with the word count limit and it was a fun challenge

i also at the same time was working on the first draft of a private project (a novel, i guess.... 😱) which i finished earlier this month and came in at around 100k~ and is now marinating in my files until i find the strength to start editing and redrafting.

this leads me to blood choke which is what i have been working on since, and takes place in the same world as my novel (and is similar in some ways and different in others) which i'm hoping to release the first 2 chapters of soon.

i did some little mini "games" also that i'm not sure will ever see the light of day hahahaha but i have another short kinetic story potentially for another jam that i think is sitting at around 2.5k right now.... i feel a bit self-conscious about it so not sure if i'll publish but it's a sort of companion piece to faith so! we'll see. the other one is almost 5k but it's not at all where i want it to be coding/UI wise so im not sure what im doing with that one, either....

anyways i know it's been quiet here, i've just been working on other projects, and also with all of the computer problems i was having (computer crashes/bluescreening and files getting corrupted) i wasn't working on tnp as much out of fear of potentially losing stuff, especially since my tnp files are Massive compared to my other work. however that has now (hopefully) been fixed with a new hard drive so fingies crossed 🤞

hope you all are having a nice pride month and thanks for sticking around o7

[phoenix-is-the-hottest-thing]

sorry if you already answered that but I'm kinda confused on who luocha supposed to be? is he void archives or just alternative version of (?) otto (?) like himeko and bronya

Short answer: We don't know.

Longer answer:

Luocha is a reference to the Seven Swords visual novel, much like Yanqing, Sushang, etc.

It's unfinished and not officially translated in English but there's a fantranslated script being done (not sure if still being done or not) and some youtube channels with subtitles of okay quality.

It's possible that Luocha's actually Void Archives, since he has divine keys, but those could just as well be references too.

Bonus:

Sushang has bigger dick energy than Luocha.

[celestial-toys]

crawls out of my writing cave on all fours, disheveled and holding a twenty-four-thousand-word-long document between my teeth

[paigemathews]

abi’s hundred two hundred and fifty follower celebration: choose your three favorite charmed ships | paige matthews & henry mitchell

they are so underappreciated. it’s bets and movie nights and realizing that you know her absolutely ridiculous popcorn order. it’s the banter and playfulness as you realize that love doesn’t have to uproot your world, it’s about growing roots. it’s about understanding what it’s like to be on your own in a cold world, without anyone by your corner. healing and learning to be vulnerable and to love and building a family between yourselves.