#so YMMV

[mariana-oconnor]

Mustard custard is very conflicting for me. On the one hand: rhyme. On the other hand: please no.

[falconwhitaker]

Related to my last reblog, I do wonder if a lot of people my age (early 30s) ended up with our opinions of feminism kinda warped by the way it was treated online.

I'm conjecturing a lot here, but I feel like a lot of people using the word "feminist" pejoratively – I'm looking at you here, atheist YouTube – used it less as a reference to a specific ideology and more as a way of indicating "left-wing person who believes others deserve rights".

Think about how "feminist" or "feminazi" became "SJW". Like if you're a feminist, you're a social justice warrior, so you're left wing, you believe in equality, you're progressive, right?

Except that feminism covers a huge spectrum of ideologies clustered under the umbrella of "Promoting women's social, political and economic rights", and not all of those ideologies are going to be intersectional. Being a feminist is not the same thing as being anti-racist, or trans-inclusive, or pro-queer, or disability positive, or opposed to fat hatred, or supportive of Jewish people, or any other progressive stance.

Feminism is about the rights and equality of women. That means even the shitty forms – white feminism, trans excluding radical feminism, sex worker excluding radical feminism, any other shitty form of feminism you can think of – is still feminism.

It's shitty feminism. But it's still feminism. And we can't just shove them under the carpet by saying "They're not real feminists" because they are. We have to acknowledge them. Accept that, whether we want them or not, they are a part of our movement. And then we work together as hard as fucking possible to prove oh my god your version of feminism is really really shit for people who aren't just like you let's do it the way that doesn't make the world worse.

[broadacre]

I don't know what you kids are on, but Ladybug is GOOD, sometimes even GREAT. The slow burn really burns, but the payoff makes it all worth it.

[silvysartfulness]

so three questions in one, i would like to know your:

-xuexiao thoughts

-songxiao thoughts

-songxue thoughts

separated from songxuexiao

(if you would also like to provide your songxuexiao thoughts i would love to read that too i just wanna see specifically how you feel and think about each ship individually)

(+bonus: any a-qing ships you do or don't have, why/why not, and/or any sexuality/gender headcanons you might have for her)

Oh wow, that’s a very broad question! Let’s see what we can come up with…

XueXiao was my entry point to the SXX ship. I love their chemistry in CQL (much more than in MDZS) I love how – when all other variables were stripped away – they make each other happy. How they share the same silly, almost childish humour, and love to laugh and tease and joke together.

How Xiao Xingchen’s patience and gentle nature allows Xue Yang to experiment with being a kind of person he’s never been before – just a human being, a bit sharp around the edges, but no longer an attack-dog, a weapon or tool. Just a person, being given affection for free, just for being.

And how Xue Yang makes Xiao Xingchen happy, makes him laugh. He’s helpful – first, no doubt, because he’s learned to make himself useful to stay alive. But later just because he actually enjoys taking care of the people he likes. And Xiao Xingchen relishes in being loved and appreciated – and also getting to be just a human being. No legendary hero or world-saviour. But just a person, loved.

I also have a huge weak spot for the kind of hopeless obsessive devotion Xue Yang expresses after Xiao Xingchen’s death! That getting him back somehow matters more than anything, even his own life. That he never stops trying. That his final moments is remembering Xiao Xingchen’s kindness, smiling as he looks at the candy and finally lets go.

That’s a major reason why I started writing Heaven – to give them a second chance at realizing how much they did and do care about each other, how much the other cares. How much of that was real.

SongXiao is by far the weakest part of the triangle for me, personally. Not as in they’re not close, because they are, but because they don’t interest me much without Xue Yang there to spice things up. They have some issues, certainly, but on their own they’re just a bit too straight-laced and wholesome to be very interesting.

I do find Song Lan’s issues with touch clashing with Xiao Xingchen’s tactile nature interesting, and the Yearning can be good, too.

But still... Without Xue Yang there, I don’t connect much to these two on their own. I virtually never read fic for just the two of them (and not only because a lot of SongXiao fics sadly often spring fun surprise “fix-it”s that just boil down to “kill Xue Yang and everything’s fine!” on you without even warning for it.) They’re just a bit eh.

SongXue is delicious. It’s hurty and crunchy with a lot of fun chemistry to poke at. They both start from a place of loathing everything the other is, and then take a fascinating further detour through destroying the most precious things the other has. For that to turn into any kind of working relationship… It takes a lot of work. And that work, the dealing with and overcoming past trauma, forced cooperation, realizing the things they have in common, the world’s most grudging respect and appreciation slowly growing between them... That’s my catnip. I love it. I’m not interested in canon divergent stories where they just rush past all that to forgiveness and love. I want to see the work.

When I first started writing Heaven, my outlook was to fit in some angry hatesex at best, and really struggled with imagining a way for them to actually grow to love each other. And it did take a lot of work! Some 350k of it! And a lot of hurt, and compromise, and dogged determination from the both of them! But now they’ve finally gotten there and it feels solid. It feels earned.

No forgiveness for the unforgivable hurt of the past, but an unspoken mutual agreement to look to the future. Love that for them.

Finally, the SongXueXiao triangle as a whole – I love how well they all balance each other when together.

Xiao Xingchen can be overly idealistic, but paired with Song Lan’s pragmatism it turns into more concrete things to actually do, and Xue Yang’s irreverent habit of pointing out the weakest links in their reasoning to tear down their arguments also identifies what really needs working on… It’s a good way of making progress!

I like how Song Lan’s stubborn patience and stern sense of justice can temper Xue Yang’s worst and most violent impulses, and how Xue Yang can push Song Lan out of his comfort zone and force him to consider greyscales and not just neat blacks and whites.

I love how Xue Yang grows when he’s feeling loved, and how much he loves taking care of his loved ones, though he wouldn’t realize himself that that’s what he’s actually doing. He just likes pampering them, when given the chance! It does piss him off to no end, sometimes, the way they try to "change" him and "hold him back" - but once he’s calmed down a bit, he can usually see when it’s merited and for his own good, and even when not… the compromises are an acceptable trade-off to get to have the good parts of the relationship.

They’re good for each other, a mix of supporting the best in each other, and helping temper and guide their weaknesses into better habits and more nuanced understanding.

This is a set, do not separate. ♥

As for a-Qing… I love her as a character! Especially her weird aggro-sibling relationship with Xue Yang. But I don’t have any very strong feelings about her aside from that – I’ll happily read fics where she stays single all her life, or ends up in a happily married polycule, or settles down with husband and kids, or dates around as she pleases. She can be ace or lesbian or pan or anything. You do you, Queen!

In Deep Blue Sea, she had a friends with benefits situationship with Wen Qing. In Under The Wheel it wasn’t stated outright, but the way she kept wandering with the other three, she never settled down with any one partner, but had the occasional flings and a number of more or less casual bedmates along the journey.

The only real notp I’d have for her would probably be Xiao Xingchen or Song Lan, who are more gege/parent-coded to her in my mind. If, in some version of events, she would be interested in exploring sex with the mysterious (canonically designated handsome) stranger who lived with them in Yi City, though? Sure, why not. I don’t know if Xue Yang would go for it, and it’s not a ship I would seek out, but that I can imagine enjoying if handled just right.

Other than that, as I said, pretty much anything goes. She’s not a character I would seek out fic for, but I very much like her as part of the whole Yi City mess. She should get to have fun and get good things! She certainly deserves it every bit as much as the other three disasters.

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads

Into The Bright Open

younger-YA secret garden retelling

follows a privileged but emotionally neglected girl who’s sent to live with the uncle she’s never met in rural Ontario after her parents die

she becomes friends with the Indigenous housekeepers and locals, and her younger cousin - who’s kept in the attic because of her health by an abusive stepmother

[share-the-skye]

So I loved every second of it and need to see it like 13 more times but what I really want is a volume of large books where every page is a frame and it’s every frame in the entire film.

[doedipus]

someone tagged this on a beer post. while you can't really get non-alcoholic beer, sometimes you can find what they call "session" beers that have pretty low alcohol content (<4%). for comparison, most beer is around 5%, wine is usually 10-15%, and spirits will be >20%.

[petepetepete]

First: faint in the distance, a sound of static begins; like an old cathode-ray tube down the block reminding you that there was life before digital.

The sound grows. The hiss becomes more solid, somehow; a chorus of primordial energy left from the Big Bang.

You think you can pick out individual screams if only you could focus, but who could ever hope to focus amid this din?

It’s rolling; a thundering stampede of panicked hooves trying desperately to find purchase in the uneven landscape of a craggy desert.

The sound is all-encompassing, now. There is no area without the sound. There may never have been. You are smaller now than you remember yourself being; your old form diminished somehow without your agency or awareness.

Suddenly, a panicked crack echoes down to your marrow and you become the sound. You are the sound and the sound is you and now you know and have always known and will always know:

20+40 = 60. 7+8 = 15. 60+15 = 75.

75.

75.

75.

[egophiliac]

just something I wanted to try! (tumblr please don't absolutely destroy this, thank you)

[thelittlestspider]

i think the reason ths is such a mess rn is bc i haven't read enough of the comics to understand peter's character. same with wade and miguel.

[radiojamming]

A sacred text. A belovéd vampire. A tragic reminder to us all.

Acrylic, gold leaf, and silver leaf on goatskin vellum. Marginalia to come when I have time.

(Thank you to @wayneradiotv and @socpens for this incredible moment in streaming.)

[fandom-geek]

i think the thing that really gets me about pre-canon durge is their absolute sense of duty, and their utter isolation outside of the cult of bhaal.

most of the cultists seem eager to see durge upon their return, and one even says they were the first to feed him flesh. gortash tells them of an exhibition of a bhaalspawn's corpse and another bhaalspawn's creations and durge immediately plans to attack the hall of wonder to recover them. they then apparently entrust said bhaalspawn's corpse to sceleritas fel to "restore" through taxidermy. they deride orin for her artistry with corpses explicitly because "bhaal will never care" and because orin "[does] not understand lord bhaal".

even their infamous prayer for forgiveness is framed around their absolute submission to bhaal's plans, and the crime that requires forgiveness? admiring his rival's chosen. that's one line, and the next three paragraphs are swearing to carry out his plan exactly as they've been told to, all for his forgiveness.

hell, even their room reinforces this. orin has barely touched the place aside from installing her mother's corpse and her manifesto - and that is some of the only decoration. what was it before orin, an empty room with skulls, a bed, a desk, some chests and a wardrobe?

the durge didn't have any semblance of a life outside of bhaal, aside from gortash. and is it any surprise? the only other hint they ever had a life outside of the cult is the flashback of kid durge murdering their adopted family, all thanks to their father's urging.

bhaal even tries to force them back into isolation after they've been tadpoled by forcing them to kill alfira, and then trying to force a durge who resists him to kill their lover. if they continue resisting, bhaal kills them. bhaal will not allow them to have a life outside of him and, if it weren't for jergal, he would've succeeded.

[thisisadonaldduckblognow]

all the rise boys get done dirty on characterization by fandom in different ways i think. (not ALL the time every fanwork etc etc these are just like, trends i tend to notice?) every fandom suffers from losing character nuance.

- leo i’ve talked about plenty on this blog, how some of his canon traits (genuine belief in his skill and cockiness, capacity for joy, his manipulativeness whether for good or ill) seem to get watered down or wiped off the board and supplemented with generic sad boy. his struggles with purpose and identity and not wanting to fail somehow morph into “he hates and completely holds no value for himself”

- donnie’s canon personality gets blurred out and largely replaced with whatever list of Neurodivergent Traits. and i think there’s such a fine line to walk between exploring a character that’s been word of god confirmed as on the spectrum and overwriting what’s canonically there. it’s a hard needle to thread. it also feels like a lot of his canon emotiveness gets left off the table for some reason. bc he does have his moments of flat/deadpan delivery, but a lot of the time he’s honestly very emotive. he has the passion of a theatre kid and the vindictiveness of... also a theatre kid. and the mind of a scientist.

- raph loses so much of his rowdy teen boy energy it’s kind of wild? like interpretations sand off that he’s also impulsive and can be reckless and dumb and LOVES fighting and roughhousing and isn’t the most eloquent person. suddenly there’s this pitch perfect soft boy big bro who would never hurt a fly and always says the exact right supportive thing and singlehandedly raised his 3 brothers (which simultaneously sands off all the nuance of splinter’s issues emotionally connecting with his sons and how that affected all of them). and like i LOVE raph, he’s so full of love and care and anxiety, he clearly has learned to put a lot of work into being aware of his strength and size. but there’s a difference you know?

- mikey is like. where raph gets overparentified by fanon, mikey gets over “family therapist”-ed IMO. the impulsiveness, the goofiness, the powerful emotions including a VERY powerful temper, the flat-out dumb teen boy choices... they get ignored. suddenly there’s this only very sweet and earnest boy who has read a hundred psychology books and runs group family therapy weekly or something. he is crying in his room bc leo and raph are arguing about something. which is so. he IS very sweet and can be very earnest and is full of love! he HAS come in with his opinions and unsolicited advice a couple of times and life coached for the greater good. but there’s a difference between what he does in canon and the role he gets in fanon.

[mirielvairenen]

Let’s add space travel! Tolkien could have teamed up with the angels of the other planets (who he met when he got kidnapped to Mars and only could speak to because of his linguist skills) to purge the demonic Nazis who are causing the Blitz. Also Merlin should wake up just because. By CS Lewis

I have a very rough idea in my head that I don't think I can clearly articulate beyond "And that concludes tonight's reports on German air forc—WHAT'S THIS? IT'S KING ARTHUR WITH A STEEL CHAIR"

[pancake-breakfast]

Been watching through Link Click with my brother for Sibling Anime Night and, as this is my second watch, there are all these little details that are just driving me crazy. I have to remember not to say a darn thing because he doesn't know yet, but geez. They put some thought into this. They knew what they were doing.

Here are a few:

Qiao Ling telling Cheng Xiaoshi that Lu Guang is way more mature than him despite being the younger of the two.

Near the end of the first episode (in the sub), Lu Guang very insistently tells Cheng Xiaoshi to never ask about the future.

In the Noodle Lesbians episode, Cheng Xiaoshi telling Lu Guang, "Just because you don't see a glimmer of hope doesn't mean it's not hiding somewhere," and Lu Guang's expression fading into this soft smile as he chuckles, as if he's thinking, "It's just like you to say something like that."

In the basketball episode, how jealous Lu Guang sounds when Cheng Xiaoshi high-fives someone else.

When Cheng Xiaoshi runs out to start warning people about the earthquake, Lu Guang gritting his teeth and shouting, "You can't save them. They are already dead!" And then hurriedly lecturing Cheng Xiaoshi on how much of a fixed point death is no matter how much you might want to change it. "No matter how hard this is, you can't alter their fates!"

Lu Guang: "The future that we now know could completely disappear." (dub) "It could even cause the disappearance of the life we have now." (sub)

In the Aunt May arc, the three superheroes that our main three dress up as being the Star of Justice, Bringing Hope (Cheng Xiaoshi), Star of Courage, Conquering Fear (Lu Guang), and Star of Wisdom, Lighting the Way (sub)/Serving Knowledge (dub) (Qiao Ling). Gods, I could write an essay just on that.

I just... I just wanna grab some of these characters and shake them. Maybe slap them a few times. Why they gotta be like this?

[stardust-falling]

Having more thoughts about Shen Jiu because of course I am.

I don’t think he has the capacity for empathy or genuine selflessness.

He spent the entirety of his formative years deep in survival mode, and because of that, he evaluates people solely based off of how they might threaten or ensure his safety and/or comfort. As far as individual people themselves with their own perspectives… honestly I don’t think he even thinks of that.

Maybe a controversial opinion, but I don’t think even YQY is exempt.

Shen Jiu doesn’t have a moral code. When every day is spent on surviving, a moral code is a luxury.

And really, he just never got out of that mode. See, the thing is, once you’ve had enough adverse experiences it only takes a little bit to trigger you back into that mindset. Shen Jiu was used to being scolded and then beaten or abused, so for him, even a simple chiding is a precursor to abuse— even if he DOES recognize that nothing more will happen, his body and mental patterns will still go into that preparation time.

So of course he never left survival mode, because even if nothing is actively happening, your mind will keep reinforcing those patterns.

For someone with a normal upbringing, as far as I can tell, empathy is something you learn and develop from those around you. Many seem to think it’s something innate and natural and if you don’t have it then there’s something wrong with you from birth. I think Shen Jiu falls into exactly this category of thought— and so he doesn’t even consider that he could try to learn and develop it as a skill he can perform, even if it doesn’t come naturally.

Of course, would he even try? He hasn’t been given any incentive. Any time he has tried to do something good, he ends up getting hurt (saving Yue Qi leading to being taken by QJL) or misinterpreted and admonished (the well ghost incident, keep in mind my earlier point about scoldings perpetuating the same patterns).

So he stays in that same vicious cycle, perpetually in survival mode and unable to escape, even in a relatively secure position (see: his paranoia).

Now, this is all relevant to the discussions of SJ’s feminism, misogyny, and/or lack thereof. I feel like a lot of discussions aren’t really getting the full picture.

SJ sees people, no matter who they are, as solely how they can affect him. Just because this isn’t exclusive to women, or because if comes from a reasonable place, does that really mean it doesn’t play into misogyny?

Let’s take another angle.

I think his abuse of LBH and other talented disciples also is rooted, deep down, in this same issue. He’s not just hurting LBH only to hurt him, his aim is specifically to stunt his cultivation. There’s jealousy at play there of course, but there’s a bit more layers to it too— SJ doesn’t think he’s capable of goodness. So reasonably, he’ll be a bad teacher. He already knows what happens when someone becomes more powerful than their oppressor. LBH may be a child now, but a part of SJ whether he acknowledges it or not sees him as a future threat that needs to be treated as such.

It’s rooted in fear— because everything is with SJ.

So does that mean it’s not actually abuse?

No. The behaviors he shows are still abusive, the reasoning just gives a lens for understanding.

Now, with his views on women— I mentioned in the tags of my original post that I don’t think he views women as people. This is based in that earlier idea of how he interprets others based off their risk and benefit to him. For women specifically, though, there’s another layer.

Shen Jiu grew up in a society where women are inherently lesser— and he grew up in an extreme version of this. He saw women being treated as property firsthand(both as slaves, as well as QJL’s views on his sister). Your worldview is shaped by the world that you view during those early years. Whether he agreed or not, SJ would still take on the patterns of his environment. This, though, is just the same as general societal misogyny and ingrained bias. I don’t think he’s any different than anyone else in this way.

But where SJ’s particular flavor comes in is that to him, women are a source of comfort. For various reasons— positive past experiences, less threatening (or at least don’t carry the dangers men do). He craves comfort— needs it really, because he doesn’t get it and his cortisol levels are always so high they’re poisoning his body. Women are the best source of that comfort for him.

It’s not that he likes them— at least, not any more than someone would like drinking water, or a coat in the winter. They’re fulfilling a survival need for him.

That is what the objectification is where SJ is concerned.

So… is it misogyny?

I’d say yes, in a way it still is. It’s not violent, and it doesn’t come from some inherent sense of “superiority as a man” but at the core of it all, he’s still not viewing women as people, and he has no interest in changing the status quo, because it benefits him to be able to go purchase comfort at a pleasure house, even if it’s not what people usually do there. The picture is bigger than just misogyny, but the traits taken as themselves are misogynistic nonetheless.

I could go into his specific relationships with women and how that informs his character, but this post is already long enough. We know that he mentally divides people by sex, and that distinction has a lot of weight in his judgment of them. Even if it comes from a place of trauma, even if it comes from a general worldview that applies to everyone, he still views women as a commodity— so on some level, and from an outside perspective, he is misogynistic.

In the end, though, it still all comes from him being stuck in survival mode. His lack of empathy, his viewing others as risks and benefits— these things themselves aren’t moral failings— it’s just a consequence of his environment. He’s a bad person because he won’t confront this, develop a moral code, and act on it, not because he doesn’t experience empathy.

But in his circumstance, there’s not really a chance for him to choose to be good. Because he’s still trying to survive, and goodness is a luxury he doesn’t realize he can afford now.

He’s scum, but pitiful, you know?