#or vice versa tbh

[twinkbugspray]

:,)

It’s an old tradition that during a leap year women could propose to men. This was usually depicted as old or ugly women trapping men, but some art focused more on the role reversal and could be quite cute.

I have a soft spot in my heart for the last one because it plays on the idea of “undesirable” people, a tall masculine woman and a shy effeminate man, finding each other but instead of mocking them depicts it as sweet that she could finally ask him because he was too shy and insecure to ask her.

[qiu-yan]

MDZS and asshole victims: thoughts on the second siege of the burial mounds scene

this post is not about morality judgments. this post is about reader sympathies only.

one rather clever rhetorical trick MDZS employs is putting all the more background "surviving victims of wei wuxian's actions" into one big angry mob at the second siege of the burial mounds, instead of letting them crop up anywhere else in the story. it's easy for a first-time reader to write off the guy who lost a leg at nightless city, or the guy whose parents died at nightless city, because both of those guys are being dicks. they're part of an angry mob baying for wei wuxian's blood--unfairly baying for wei wuxian's blood, because this time he didn't even do the thing they're saying he did. by putting these two victims into a mob of not just fellow victims but also unaffected individuals (ie. sect leader yao, who just showed up for kicks), the story can effectively equate these victims' grievances (ie. "you killed my parents") with unreasonable mob rule--even if these two things might not actually be equivalent.

the effect of this rhetorical trick, then, is that the reader can at once perceive the themes about mob mentality MXTX wishes to convey, and also effectively write off the victims' complaints. "yes, i did that to you, but i literally died already, what more do you want me to do? shall i walk on my knees repenting?" becomes easier for the reader to accept. and more importantly--wei wuxian's likability as a moral and just protagonist is not impacted.

ngl tho. it would be a bit more difficult for the reader to write off these victims' complaints if, instead of meeting said victims in an angry mob, the reader instead met these victims almost anywhere else. imagine if, instead of meeting mr. "you killed my parents" at the second siege of the burial mounds, we instead met him getting smashed at the local bar and crying about how his parents are dead. imagine if, instead of meeting mr. "you chopped off my leg" as a member of an angry mob, we instead met him begging for alms on the side of the road because his disability rendered him unable to work in a wuxia-esque setting. or imagine--if either of these background characters, overcome with survivor's guilt and trauma from nightless city, hung himself in his bedroom, and the next day his body was discovered by his 15-year-old daughter.

all of these scenarios are entirely plausible. you could easily include any of them into the story without changing the main plot at all. but suddenly shit just got a lot more depressing.

however, no such scene would ever be included in MDZS. the reason is that, as a work of fiction, MDZS's single most ardent goal is for us the readers to conclude not just that "we like wei wuxian as a character," but also that "wei wuxian is ultimately a morally righteous person." when the narrative focus shifts onto the people who were actually helped by wei wuxian's actions (mianmian and her family, lan sizhui, the few months of dignity the wen remnants were afforded) this becomes much easier for us to conclude; wei wuxian does indeed look like a hero. but the more narrative focus is given to the negative impacts of wei wuxian's actions--the more the "victims of wei wuxian" (whether actual victims or not) are given a face, instead of abstracted away by broad summaries--the more the reader might side-eye wei wuxian instead. every new victim given a name, given narrative attention that isn't just focused on making them look like an asshole, arouses the reader's sympathies in the opposite direction--and thus increases the risk that the reader might ultimately disagree with the novel's conclusion of "wei wuxian is a righteous person."

tbh, this does not seem like a risk MXTX particularly wants to take. instead, she's mastered the art of writing Asshole Victims.

which is an entirely valid writing decision, because imo basically every work of genre fiction out there does this to some extent.

[nightmarearian]

Done (heavy quotation marks) with monster Ody @evergreen292 ;)

tbh I couldn’t for the life of me pick a color palette I liked And Render it so I gave up on color. Enjoy the half assery.

Tbh I’ve just been call it Ithacan Naga, but it’s objectively it’s a mix of snake, owl/bird, and human. So 🤷.

Tbh the wings are supposed to be white/gray-brown, cause owls & Hermes, while his scales are supposed to be an oscillating scale from sea green-blue to purple-tinted gray. Uhm. Evidently that sorta didn’t happen but also did. So.

The purple/grayer scales are gonna be more around with the feathers and wings.

Those fin colors are. Too blue and too bright but I love the colors themselves so they’re staying for now.

Uhm. That’s it for now, ig. I’m sorta on a timer rn and I’m tired so <3

The writing bit with this is still in the works (😭)

[mousecracker]

teen edolas erza vs teen earthland erza

[beneathsilverstars]

i was gonna say which ISAT character i think has the most autistic swag but tbh i don't think i can choose

isabeau has the "i'm gonna study Being Social so i can get a good grade in masking" and "very fast at mental math" autism

mirabelle has the "please let me infodump about my fandom special interest" and "non-human characters are neat" autism

odile has the "sometimes i ignore social rules on purpose, other times i genuinely don't realize until i've already fucked up" and "deadpan everything" autism

siffrin has the "i hate when my routine is disrupted" and "carefully copying normal behaviors from the people around me" autism

bonnie is the only one without an obvious autistic reading to me, i think it's harder to get a read on them bc the quest is an even more unusual and stressful situation for them than it is for the adult members of the party... but I could see them having "people my age think i'm kinda weird so i end up making friends with adults instead" autism, lmao

also. it's soo real for autistic people to end up in a mostly-autistic friend group bc they struggle to communicate with non-autistic people. and then STILL struggle to communicate w each other.

[losing-track]

if tsukishima kei has 1 million fans then i am one of them. if tsukishima kei has 100 fans then i am one of them. if tsukishima kei has 1 fan then i am dead. because that one fan is yamaguchi tadashi

[darlingboydiaz]

i thought it was a fandom headcanon that buck is bi, but no, i'm at episode 3x12 in my first time watching and the opening scene is literally maddie, chimney, buck and josh playing poker. they joke about setting up buck and josh, with maddie being adamant about the fact that she's not setting the two up because she knows they wouldn't click ("oh no, i like you way too much to set you up with my brother. (...) and i love you too much to let you keep being so incredibly, tragically single.") at no point does buck object to being set up with a man, he's only complaining about how hard dating is.

what i'm saying is, buddie season 7 canon?

[illmasc]

saw a post the other day that was like…if i ever say i don’t like frottage, that’s not me, i’ve been replaced and…yeah

desperate t4t thigh humping. you agree.

[casscainmainly]

I feel like people underestimate how down Alfred is to participate in The Mission. He’s not some put upon old gentleman who’s on the sides going “I know I can’t stop you, but maybe I can keep you alive, sigh”. He’s like, “I’m not going to stop you, I’m going to help you because I have opinions about how things should be done”. Pretty sure in his first appearance he basically invited himself into Bruce and Dick’s life like Sophie Hatter in Howl’s Moving Castle, and personally I think that busybody character trait makes Alfred much more interesting, even with his updated version of being with Bruce since the beginning

Alfred is interesting because he definitely loves Bruce the most, sometimes to the detriment of everyone else. I agree that busybody Alfred is super interesting, but I think even put-upon Alfred is complex - there's a sense in which he adopts helplessness to absolve himself of the responsibility of what Bruce has become. Particularly with Leslie as his counterpart/foil, when you see what happened when she did go against Bruce, Alfred is kinda right in thinking that the only way to retain a relationship with Bruce is to enable him.

And it's important that Alfred did quit at least once (not an Alfred expert so can't say how many times). In the one I'm thinking about (Nightwing: Alfred's Return), he quits after the events of Knightfall, and Dick convinces him to come back. There, he calls Bruce and Dick his sons; he is definitely an enabler, but he does truly love them, and it's a bit of a Catch-22 for him.

This turned out way more Alfred-defensive than I expected. I really dislike the idea that Alfred is infallible and pure, but I also think he isn't horribly evil for enabling Bruce and the Robins. He's a flawed individual making choices in a flawed environment. I think he's heavily misunderstood because he's rarely a main character, so we filter him through his actions to others (and he is, to be fair, The Adult in a lot of situations). I just think he's a lot more nuanced than people give him credit for.

[atopvisenyashill]

This is just a thought experiment because I always toy with what-ifs like this and dabble in exploring it through fic, so I come to you because you understand the world better...

What could have happened (show events obviously) if, on hearing that Daemon and Rhaenyra got married and suspecting them of conspiring to murder Laenor, Rhaenys went to Viserys (privately) and threatened to publicly accuse Daemon and Rhaenyra of the murder as well as disinheriting all of Rhaenyra's sons from the Driftmark line of succession IF Viserys didn't a) dissolve or undo the marriage, b) banish Daemon and c) give House Velaryon custody of Baela and Rhaena? And she has Corlys's support in all of this, she's not doing it behind his back. She's just taking the lead.

that's interesting.

because okay. having a bunch of velaryons get their tongues ripped out is one thing. but the kinslaying thing is serious here, and rhaenys is also much smarter than the silent five - she's not waiting years to do this, and she's talking to him privately rather than calling Rhaenyra a whore in public (and like. sidebar bitching but i see people say like "they added vaemond calling her a whore to-" yeah yeah sure but the thing is no matter how he phrases it, he's implying she's a whore guys. why do we keep forgetting that they're all implying that she's a treasonous whore in public jfc). rhaenys & corlys are also the main branch which is more than you can say for vaemond and his family - they're not jockeying to become the main branch, they're pretty rightly annoyed by how the main velaryon branch has been treated by their overlords. big difference here in approach to the problem.

hmmm. so several things. firstly, if rhaenys approaches this more as "fuck daemon" i do think she's likely to get more traction there than if she approaches it as "fuck daemon and FUCK your daughter too." she's also just making a smarter argument - not "give me driftmark over rhaenyra's kids" (which is stupid) but "i think daemon & rhaenyra murdered my goddamn son" (which is a legit reason to be upset). i think if she brings this less as a conspiracy and has a bit of proof - or "proof" as it were - that might help as well. ALSO also the fact that she's not moving to disinherit the boys - she's saying she'll let them stay in the line of succession BUT she wants the girls, and she wants daemon gone. really framing this not as a move against rhaenyra (and therefore against viserys) but as a move against daemon. i mean take otto for an example - because he frames the brothel escapade as somehting bad rhaenyra has done, viserys goes on the defensive immediately. here, because rhaenys isn't clearly jockeying to get rhaenyra disinherited, he might not react badly.

HOWEVER. Viserys is known for reacting badly when it comes to Rhaenyra! He takes it as an insult to himself (he's not wrong) or questioning of his judgement (again, not wrong). And of course he's particularly defensive about the kids because of the implication that Rhaenyra is committing high treason and should be executed for it. Because Rhaenys comes at this not from the PoV of "disinherit Rhaenyra for Aegon" or even "disinherit Lucerys for Baela/Rhaena" but solely on a "get Daemon OUT OF MY HOUSE and give me my granddaughters" she can really stick to her guns there that she's not saying anything about Viserys' judgement or Rhaenyra's. But I mean she is saying something about Rhaenyra's judgement inherently here by implying Rhaenyra had a hand in Laenor's death.

When you look at the Driftmark brawl, or the final dinner, in general what Viserys wants is for people to stop fighting with him. And considering Viserys is not particularly pleased with the Daemyra marriage in book canon (until, iirc, they have a kid and then like any grandpa/uncle he's just kind of happy they're having babies), and we get that time skip so we don't know for sure how Viserys reacts + Daemon rejects Viserys' offer to come home at Laena's funeral....see, I think he'd play ball with the Daemon exiling but once she mentions the boys he's going to get defensive and tongue chopping happy. especially post driftmark brawl, where he's prickly about the boys - it's possible he says something like "well if you want custody of the girls why don't you want custody of lucerys, he IS corlys' heir after all" and depending on how she responds to that, she might get what she want - which is Daemon exiled and custody of the girls - or he might bar her from the capital, which is going to kick off a minor political crisis.

[virtues-end]

Quick question: I'm not sure if it's a bug or intentional, but with Shea's romance when you can progress in the inn, both options are labelled with the romantic black heart. Just wanted to see if this is supposed to be how it is, or if one of the options should be the white heart for more sexual interest only. (Hopefully I am remembering the hearts the right way around).

At the moment, I currently have it so that if you've picked the 'romantic' route for Shea near the start of the game, it sort of locks you in, and you'll only see the romantic variation of that scene, including the ♥ options (the same goes for the 'lust' branch with the ♡ hearts). I'm still not entirely sure if I'll keep it that way for the rest of the game/in the future, but for now it's how the game's coded. :T

[tommysparker]

it took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize when they’re referring to Athur’s partner, they meant his P.I co worker and NOT a romantic partner.

[a2zillustration]

Forgive me if I missed a post or something but is Croissant Ace?

(That comic with Mizora and the Emperor is a damn MOOD)

Asking for a friend.

(It's me, I am ace, and a Gale lover ^_^)

They are! This game has been a wild ride for them lmao

[turtledotjpeg]

This came from a randomized AU prompt involving flight attendants and characters meeting in a coffee shop - I went with the main four meeting in an off-brand airport starbucks (plus melody because I have a blorbo agenda here :P), but got thoroughly sidetracked drawing melody + pika as flight attendants haha

(gon & killua meet in the airport and quickly hit it off, but while goofing off they accidentally bowl over leorio who really needed that coffee after 18 hours in transit back to medical school

kurapika is about ready to murder leorio - not for the coffee stain, but because he didn't apologize sincerely enough - but then gon jumps in very politely and says it was his fault and he's very sorry. kurapika decides to let it go :)

some handwavey logic later and they all end up on the same plane. kurapika gives gon and killua extra bags of the little pretzels and nearly kills leorio again for trying to flirt with melody. they all have a feeling it's not the last time they'll cross paths 🙂)

[butcharyastark]

awake at 1am thinking about how both max and silver's arcs in black sails are about getting exactly what you always wanted and it backfiring spectacularly. and making everything worse somehow

[kudzucataclysm]

tobi and shion subplot: oh fuck tobi accidentally ate a bomb and now he has to manipulate his bowels in a way as to not trigger it to detonate

desmond and francis subplot at the same time: