#ive only read the book and never watched the donghua

[fistfuloflightning]

The Tiger, the Crane, and the Dragon

[rozaceous]

ive read mdzs years ago and stalled on tgcf (mainly bc i got really busy and then forgot everything lmao), but never really tried scum villain. if you don't mind, can you share why you like it? personally, the summary didn't really draw me in and the animation looked unfortunately really .... low budget.

hi anon! you've activated my trap card, which is Talking About Things I Enjoy At Length! congratulations! congratulations! congratulations! important things must be said three times!

(i also stalled w tgcf btw, bc it's so long that i could never summon up sufficient interest. and i will say that the svsss donghua is less than inspiring. i thought it was fun but that's speaking as someone who watched it after already being in love w the source content, so ymmv. i wasn't a particular fan of the animation style either, but considering that scum villain is the black sheep of mxtx's works in terms of the official content that gets produced, i was glad for what i could get.)

reasons to love scum villain!

hilarious use of unreliable narrator. shen qingqiu is one of my top favorite characters ever. he's not stupid or even, despite common fan depiction, all that oblivious--he's just incredibly genre-savvy and hasn't realized that the genre has changed. also he's hysterical.

but then sometimes, too, you look more objectively at things he glosses over and have a 'wait a sec' moment bc it's actually deeply disturbing.

it has a really fun way of of playing with transmigration stories and tropes. this was, in a sense, my intro to chinese web novel conventions as a western reader, and you can learn a lot bc mxtx is busy poking fun at all of them.

phenomenally meta.

luo binghe is a fantastic character. ppl who don't like him--i'll meet you out back. ostensibly the protagonist of the novel sqq has found himself in, supposedly blessed with every talent and the world prepared to fall at his feet, but MAN is it hard being luo binghe.

ppl will make a big deal abt lbh being obsessed w sqq but fail to acknowledge that sqq is just as weird and obsessed abt lbh. epitome of that AITA response of:

liu qingge

mxtx does so much with her villains, always.

as much as some of the miscommunication between sqq and lbh is contrived, it's also literally the only way that things could play out and makes absolute sense.

this classic scene, given utterly without context:

After a pause, Shen Qingqiu changed his angle. "What's your name?" The first one replied. "Six Balls." "What does that mean?" "When I was born, my pa held me and said I was six balls heavy." Shen Qingqiu was speechless. Shot put balls or ping-pong balls?! This kind of name is absolutely meaningless.

i think, honestly, my favorite thing abt scum villain is that you can read it quickly and have a good time, but if you're taking your time and paying attention, there is so much more happening underneath the surface! it's such a clever book, i'm honestly stunned (and humbled) that mxtx produced this as her first novel and at such a young age.

[blysse-and-blunder]

in lieu of a commonplace book

9pm, march 5, 2021

because it’s the pandemic and life is Like That now, I’m typing this in a sidescreen while attending a virtual birthday party

reading finished under heaven and immediately picked up ken liu’s the grace of kings which i’ve been wanting to read for years now, and the contrast is striking. uh is so stylized, so arch and intentional in creating a voice for the narration, each character, and the world itself--you can tell he’s going for everything being as beautifully written as possible. whereas, with tgok, the content is (arguably) more interesting and unique, true fantasy where uh is historical-fantasy, but the writing style is much more...declarative. characters get internal lives but like, not really? they have hopes and desires, but no one has...yet...a ton of personality? I’m sticking with it for the plot, and the worldbuilding.

watching @dinosauriaawesome has persuaded me to watch the mdzs donghua on youtube, and when i can get past the product placement (CORNETTO) and advertisements, i am enjoying it-- i’m on ep 5. the pacing is different, the characterizations are subtly different, and i’ve gotten past ‘hey that’s wrong >:(’ reactions and have passed into appreciating its choices for themselves. the scenery is still, always, beautiful.

listening this video of the stellenbosch university choir singing ‘baba yetu’ from civ iv has lived rent free in my head for years, and especially now that the group i’m in has begun working on baba yetu ourselves, i can’t stop thinking about. i mean, there’s no comparison really, stellenbosch not only does it better technically but it’s earned and belongs to them in a way that it never can for us (i’d thought we’d be working with a south african group to do this piece, which is part of the reason i stuck around for virtual choir this pandemic, but while we did, it wasn’t for baba yetu). anyway, this vid make me want to cry regularly.

playing spent some quality time with doctor layton again this week, and while i’m still not happy with the amount of vague or poorly-worded puzzles in this game (and seriously confused about potential glitches-- i put the same answer into one puzzle two times, and it was correct only the second time?), the rush of having solved something does, in fact, have me hooked :(  i was also soundly defeated during house game night last week during ticket to ride europe, with only the consolation of tanking G’s strategy at the same time. M continues to be smarter/more strategic than all of us, which would be disheartening if she wasn’t so damn good as a person.

making repotted a sad...aloe? succulent of some sort, which A left behind when she moved out and which the cat had spilled. its prospects don’t look great, but a little sprout also popped off of it and began putting out its own rootlets, so hopefully at least one of the two make it.

working on sat down to read geoffrey of monmouth’s history of the kings of britain from the beginning this week, to get at the non-arthurian bits i’ve never touched before, and it is wild. i have no trenchant observations, except to be sort of impressed at the amount of slaughter and destruction Brutus et al get up to.

[creepweirdo]

hey emily! tumblr chaos is what we needed tbh i think without it these last few months would’ve been much harder for me. ive taken a look at that tgcf drive and i think it’ll help thanks so much!!! attempt number 4 at the book this weekend i think. and i am pretty sure there’s wlw. my friend who also liked cql/mdzs told me to read it for that reason. ooo lwj really did deserve better. i read that fic after you recommended it and ahhh my heart. i wish we’d had more of his point of view to see how

he coped in those years. i think my biggest deserves better is jyl who existed to make soup then die. that moment at phoenix mountain when she shredded zixun was amazing and i wanted more of that please. i gif sometimes but i’m also one for sitting back and observing so that’s all good. i hadn’t giffed for years until cql dragged me back in. i think like you i was waiting for a fandom to grab me and thankfully mdzs really did. my blog is still mostly multifandom though because i just like to

spam all of my interests. cap tho! i am so excited for the sambucky show (tho i ship sam steve because that whole ‘on your left’ thing was the most rom com part of all of the mcu) because its just two fools dragging each other. perfection. as for other famdoms im in, i was in shadowhunters when that was on (awful books, but i loved magnus bane) and the magicians. so basically i’m into hot people with magic ig? ok this is long so q’s - if you could change one thing about mdzs plot, what would it

be and why and for non-mdzs what animal would you most like to be and why? (omg 4 i talked a lot again) /your cc 💜

hi classified cultivator!!

OMG HAHAHA attempt number 4! hopefully you can get into it and enjoy it hahaha 😳😁 omg you read the fic!!! ahhhh 💔😭😭😭 i STILL haven’t been able to read anymore wangxian fic yet LMAO - i’ve been reading ,,,, xue yang and yi city fics 😔🧍🏼‍♀️

so so so true about wanting to see more of his pov! like, that fic is now canon to me bc there’s no way lan zhan would have been able to recover !! 😭 and omg yeah! jyl deserved soooo much better HAHAHA yes that scene!! remember how i read fanfic before watching anything canon? so i actually read that scene in a fic before watching the donghua and when it happened in the donghua i was like OMG ITS REAL!! hahaha. and then i lost my mind again seeing it happen in the live action. there were so many moments like that and they all made me laugh so much 💀 (another thing was the golden core transfer??? read it in a fic beforehand and was like wow this is a really dramatic plot point this fic writer has come up with, really unique and interesting HAHAH - and then i saw it in the live action LMAO)

HAHAHA omg there’s just something soooo unintentionally homoerotic about all the cap movies! they way that they repeatedly create the greatest love stories of the century lmaooo. hahaha the whole set up of sam and steve’s relationship in cap2 is so gay 💀 haha stucky was the first ship that really brought me into fandom but i’ve acquired some more taste now and yeah both samsteve and sambucky are ❤️ 

lmaooo shadow hunters! hahaha i only recently found out about all the drama and premise of those books - so funny. i never got into the show but i remember when it was REALLY popular on tumblr and when i saw gifs of it everywhere!

ahahha liking ‘hot people with magic’ - you’ve become self aware 😳💀

ooooo if i could change one thing about the plot 👁👁 (i’m answering in relation to the show bc i’m STILL on chapter 15 of the novel HAHAH)

this is such a HARD question bc now i want to change one thing that would ensure that none of the drama and death happens but then the story wouldn’t happen 😭 part of me wants to change jiang fengmian and madam yu’s relationship and the way that they “parented” - i have a feeling wwx and jiang cheng would have been wayyyy more well adjusted and all the antagonising wwx did in the cloud recesses wouldn’t have happened with the wen clan and then the war wouldn’t have happened etc. hopefully the tensions with the wen clan and the other major sects could have remained as a cold war ???? and everyone could have been able to live their nice and happy lives ❤️

i was going to say that maybe if wwx’s parents didn’t die but then wwx wouldn’t have gone to the cloud recesses’ lectures and met lan zhan :((((((( HOWEVER that could be a good AU ,,, adult lan zhan still being all repressed and gay and fuddy-duddy-like coming across rouge cultivator wwx and just losing his mind in the same way as he did as a teen 💀 it can be a fic that lives in my heart hahaha bc theres no way im confident enough to write mdzs fic. but yeah i’m going to go with my first answer??? even tho i’m kind of obsessed with the second now HAHAH.

LMAO honestly i would love to be a house cat - just lounging around all day, maybe laying in a patch of sunlight. that’s honestly my dream. my family has a pet dog and whenever i have to go to work i’m always so jealous of his lifestyle 💔 he wakes up early to eat food and then lays on the couch all day 😍 life GOALS HAHAHA.

what about you?? what would you change and what animal would you like to be 😁😁❤️

thank you for the questions!! i hope you’re having a good week! if you celebrate it, are you excited for christmas? i can’t believe it’s nearly 2021 😳

[anarchistbitch]

hiiii, I'm back, sorry I took so long, i was gonna reply earlier but i had hw and so that I wouldnt procrastinate I told myself I wouldnt reply until I got it done and then when I did it I was tired af and fell asleep and then it slipped my mind, sorry sorry sorry

first off, a song rec Quizás, Quizás, Quizás by Andrea Bocelli and Jennifer López

I'm glad you had a great republic day♡ love me those independence celebration holidays

thank you for the link <3 and yeah, you're right, she worked on it so it should be good, i just have trust issues lmao

ah mbj, mbj, it's the same with moshang bc you see the fandom constantly talking about them but then you read the book and ???? where are they???? goes to show our love for them ig

YES definitely, it was SO easy to forget how powerful he really was bc he was just kind of going around being ~annoying and quirky~ that also happens with the whole book itself I think, cause it has a lot more humor than the others but the things happening are just as fucked up and painful

new hc: there was another person involved when binghe was conceived

they should just exaggerate sqq's inner monologue about how binghe is gonna kill him and all that, if shen yuan could convince himself of heterosexuality I'm sure they can convince the censors

I become a puddle of tears whenever I think of gongyi xiao, he was just a good boy and yeah, your sibling had a galaxy brain moment, they're so right

they're literally the "bro get your dog" "it dont bite" "yes it do" vine, he's sqq's (and our) little meow meow

I adore cbaw toooooo, it's so beautiful and nice, def a comfort read, and SJSJSJS ikkkkk, I understand they were trying to show that they looked so much alike but damnbro sjsnznsnsn

noooooooo, I actually love the watermark??? idk I just think it's charming, I made sure it was still visible sjdjsjsj my editing was basically adding more sky so I didnt have to crop anything out

I did see and I couldn't agree more ksdjdjsjsjsj this week was so tiring???? I dont even know why but everyone I talked to seemed so exhausted already, on thursday we got the day off bc we changed president and the ceremony was taking place that day (we just got our first ever woman president btw, she had so many good campaign promises, here's to hoping she sticks to them) but we'd just been back for three days and everyone was celebrating the day off as if we were three months in, seriously

thanks to having our day off I didnt have my second class with ms devil, first day was just introductions and going over syllabus so thursday was gonna be our real first class but monday I wont be able to escape my fate any longer

dont apologize for rambling, I do love reading what you have to say 😌💖

about your ps, 😳💍 might be a bit soon but will you marry me??

good luck on your classes and make sure to rest and eat properly!!

-M<3

between the both of us i have a worse reply timing so pls dont apologize😭😭 also good for you for completing your hw!!

ive only listened to a few of jlo's songs and the song does give that vibe of wanting to be with each other but being able to due to whatever reason .the guitar in the song is really well played too!!

Song rec for ya: Never tear us apart by INXS (yea the song from euphoria s2 ep3😔 i dont know if youve watched it but this song is really so so good)

and yea i dont you blame you for the trust issues lol so many good books/comics have gone through.. tremendous changes when being adapted. but hey nellie is there!!

moshang is THE ship cause he really married his blorbo 😭😭 and isnt it enough? to create the perfect man? and marry him ?? speaking of sqh. whats ur thought on cumplane👀👀 i have a few hc's that they were together before transmigration but never told each other about PIDW. like a mr & mrs smith au but the being-agents is them hating each other on socmed.

ykw? su xiyan deserves two partners😤

gongyi xiao🥺🥺 when i tell you i cried when i saw him in the donghua. in another au where lbh is a disciple of huan hua i feel like they would been besties or at least have certain respect for e/o.

binghe is also sqh's meow meow <3

cbaw was such a great manhua and im so sad its ending but the drama is airing in a few weeks!!! also the next chapter is of their honeymoon 😳😳

heres hoping to a political term with no bad happenings and many progressive actions 💗💗💗💗💗💗💗

everyone is so tired and idk if its cause of the weather or its that the vibes™ . but so many things are gonna happen in a few weeks and then months including my graduation to the next year(my teacher is a little shit and im stubborn i will literally graduate just to spite her)

celebrate ur days off!!! its literally so cold and i havent been out at all(covid restrictions back on and also my family member is high risk)

school is depressing as fuck but one thing i kinda realized that they also set a precedent of "this is how school is supposed to be :(:(" and i think have a slightly optimistic look on ur situation definitely helps a lot

skds i love reading what you have to say

damn take me out to dinner first🙄🙄 but yes i accept💗💗💗💗💗

the same for you as well!! stay safe and healthy!!