#whys he so fucking huge

[mudmerry]

WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT THING THROW IT BACK IN THROW IT BACK IN

whtober day 11: fishing

[whaliiwatching]

one in a million admirers…

based on ofc this prompt

[foldingfittedsheets]

My mom has this awful friend, Cynthia. My loathing goes deep enough that I’m not even going to change her name. If she ever finds this she knows what she did.

On multiple occasions my mom asked this horrible irresponsible chicken brained woman to watch after our animals while we were away. I don’t know why once wasn’t enough, because the first failure was so spectacular that anyone in their right mind would know she couldn’t be trusted with any level of responsibility or direction following.

You might be thinking to yourself, FFS, this level of antipathy is surely unwarranted! But you’d be wrong.

To set the scene, we were living in downstairs of our house when I was about fifteen. My mom has always wanted more animals than can reasonably be kept indoors which is how we ended up with three cats. When she wanted to kick them all outside I protested, and so all three cats lived in my bedroom with no access to the rest of the house.

That really wasn’t great, so in an attempt to give them options we made a window cutout with a cat door in it to give them access to the outdoors. Looking back on this as an environmentally conscious adult it’s wretched, cats should be indoor only, but at the time I was desperate to give them some freedom because one bedroom is too small for three cats.

So my parents and I went on a week long trip to visit family out of state. We told Cynthia to come feed and water the cats, and to scoop the litter box. Most importantly, don’t lock the handle of the door, because we only have the key to the deadbolt.

I’m sure you can see where this is going.

Cynthia locked us out. We arrived home after 12 hours on the road, desperate for the comfort of our own beds. We were met with an unyielding door. With a sigh I volunteered, “I can punch in the cat door and climb in the window.”

I slipped behind the bamboo outside my window and pushed in the cutout. A horrible insidious reek wafted out at me. I paused, prickling with foreboding. But I had a job to do, and by god I’d see it through. I hefted myself up into the window and my hand immediately landed in something wet.

Skin crawling, I pulled myself up and surveyed the darkened room as a miserable odor of decay and suffering poured out of the room around me. I could see dark shapes littering the carpet and it didn’t take a genius to guess that the cats had taken up hunting in a big way during my absence.

I pulled my hand out of the pile of vomit it had landed in and dropped into my onetime bedroom turned now into a hellpit of decomposing wretchedness. I turned on the light. I wished I had not turned on the light.

My eyes scanned across the floor, tallying as they went. Two dead birds, a dead baby rabbit, five dead mice, and one dead snake. I paused on my alarm clock, perplexed to see a stain of white on it. I stepped closer and saw a furtive movement.

The tally suddenly contained also: one live bird that had shit in several places, probably in pure terror to find itself trapped in a room littered with decomposing woodland creatures, which honestly, fair. I coaxed it out the window and finished the survey with five discrete piles of vomit.

I unlocked the door and let my parents in. They exclaimed in disgust at the horrible smell. We stood together in my doorway floored by the magnitude of neglect. The unscooped litter box was a subtle footnote in the tangible reek my living space. I disposed of the parade of ecological disaster, cleaned vomit, and scooped the box after a brutally long day on the road. The cats were fine, and happy to see me. They had a huge dish or food and water so Cynthia’s neglect at least hadn’t harmed them.

Then I slept on the couch while my bedroom aired out, the windows flung wide to dispel the uneasy ghosts of the hunted. I spent the whole night cursing Cynthia’s name for this evil she’d visited upon me. When my mom asked her, "Cynthia, didn't you see the dead animals?"

Cynthia responded, "Yes, they smelled so bad, I just ran in and out as fast as I could." I fully don't believe she did any caretaking, and I'm personally of the opinion that she locked herself out on the first day and never came back.

The next day my room had returned to a habitable level of smellscape and I gratefully crawled into my bed that night. I stretched out and froze as my foot brushed something cold and wet?

The final indignity: one last dead snake, inside my very sheets.

Fucking Cynthia.

[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.

[radioactive-earthshine]

NGL I have STRONG opinions about digital releases omitting the letters to the editor section of older comics. I feel like the letters are a part of comic history and should be aggressively preserved.

[arundolyn]

"I have to run errands myself today..."

"EH? W... wouldn't this cause a tummyache...?" // "Ah! In that case... apple and potato salad, straight from Auntie Leap's cookbook!"

[louferrignojrofficial]

he is a vision

[spy-x-family]

i don't think tanjiro is the successor of sun breathing 'despite not being related to yoriichi'. i think it's that yoriichi is family to the kamados

in kny, family is whoever loves you. rui tries to make a family but ultimately fails not bc they're not blood related but bc he doesn't really love them. on the other hand, kanae, kocho, and kanao are sisters. zenitsu's master is his grandfather. inosuke's family were the boars (and then of course later, his birth mother kotoha, because tho he barely has any memories of her, he remembers she loved him dearly)

yoriichi was an unwanted child and later an unwanted brother when michikatsu's hatred for him festered and grew. he was rejected from the corps and only had the kamados. when he felt like his existence was worthless, it was the sumiyoshi who told him he deserved to be here as much as everyone else and made the effort to weave yoriichi into the family by passing down his earrings and sword form. he was rejected by his family but accepted by another. if family is whoever loves you, then that's yoriichi's people, and that love was why tanjiro succeeded him

[allyriadayne]

ALICENT'S REBELLION

[butwhatifidothis]

I guess the ultimate thing that kills CF for me - or at least nudges it away from me saying I definitively like it - is just how much Edelgard is clearly written with the player in mind before she's written with her character in mind.

Because on all of the other routes, there's a power to Edelgard's presence. Even on BE, there's a sense that for as lonely as Edelgard might be, she still ultimately will do whatever it takes for her to get what she wants. Be that be killing her citizens (or otherwise letting them be killed), endangering her friends, assisting in kidnapping people, allowing Byleth to support her only when they have the Sword of the Creator, covering for TWS - no bar is too low for her to limbo under if doing so means she's even a step closer to her goals.

She's manipulative! She's deceitful! She doesn't care for the lives of her people! Even her friends are forfeit if they try to stand in her way! And this happens no matter how close you, the player, get to her, in the case of BE - C+ ain't stoppin' Remire, and going to the coronation ain't stopping the Holy Tomb.

And in the war phase, she is dominating the field. She has the Kingdom completely on the ropes, down to a few houses standing against Imperial rule, and the Alliance is stuck in neutrality - she may not be able to do much to it, but neither can they do anything to her (to say nothing of the Alliance houses who stand with her). She's far from the underdog in this race, and she shows off how threatening she can be.

CF? Her route?

She scweams at scawy rats. She gets embawwassed when you find her dwawings. She's just so wonewy, and she's just so gwad that you chose her. She somehow fails to capture Rhea, or frame Dimitri for regicide, and so now has to deal with that on the Kingdom's side of the war. But that doesn't stop Elly Welly-kins fwom twying to find her pwecious teacher, because you're just so important to her. She cwies and hugs you when you meet her in the Goddess Tower!! Because she missed you so much!!

It's like... Dimitri and Claude certainly show different sides of themselves on their respective routes. It's the whole point! You grow closer to them and thus see how they treat those close to them, as opposed to being the Kinda Neat Teacher they see run along every now and then. But, like... Claude doesn't become a blushing maiden whenever Byleth speaks with him on VW. Dimitri doesn't scream at scary rats and get called cute for it on AM. They don't get Basic Bitch Gap Moe Traits slapped onto them that are only ever shown to the player and only on their routes. Unlike Edelgard.

Dimitri's endearing trait is that he's this big huge dude who can bench-press forests and arm-wrestle god who still wants to learn to sew and who teaches kids to protect themselves and who buys candies for his friends. Claude's endearing trait is that he's this mastermind planner who has contingency and lie and obfuscation as three separate legal government names who still wants everyone to be safe and happy and hold hands and be friends.

Edelgard is strong, confident, and willing to do some of the shittiest things known to man for her goals. Her endearing trait is that her screams are cute. She's shy about her drawings of the player character. She blushes over the player potentially joking about having sex with her per her JPN version of her C support; you know, the one about how Byleth walks in on Edelgard muttering in her sleep from a nightmare about her tortured family? Perfect time to joke about fucking her! Dimitri and Claude's endearments are, well, endearing; Edelgard's are all straight up embarrassing for her.

Hell, even the smaller stuff is affected! Claude's passion for poisons and mushrooms are things he has no qualms about having others know about, despite how weird they are. Dimitri laughing at shitty jokes brings him no personal discomfort or embarrassment, despite just how loudly he laughs at them. They have traits to them that can easily be uwu worthy, and they don't care! Of the lords, only Edelgard does! Because, it feels like, the only way for a strong, resolute female character to come off as approachable is if she's knocked down a few pegs for specifically and only you, the player.

And that sucks ass! I'm sorry, but when I'm playing Edelgard's route I don't want to deal with her hiding herself away in her room for a month IN THE MIDDLE OF HER FUCKING WAR because she's just so embawwassed! It is so fucking insensitive that Edelgard is literally the only lord of the three who can have her trauma openly belittled at any point in the story by Byleth, all to have some cheap cutesy uwu moment about her fear of rats (calling her screaming in fear cute and INSISTING that it's really cute which is just. Fucking ew man)! Why can we fucking mock Edelgard's manner of speech during the MASSACRE OF REMIRE?

This shit doesn't happen to Claude or Dimitri! And saying "oh just don't pick those options then" is bullshit because no equivalent options exist for the male lords! It's piss-boilingly annoying that the second you choose to see things from the strong confident villainous ambitious female lord's perspective you can reduce her down to this bumbling moeblob just for you (sometimes unavoidably!) like!! Dude!

[introspectivememories]

can i be honest? i dont think tim and bear have a really grand proposal. i think it happens at their apartment that they got bc bear finally put his foot down and went "baby you're immunocompromised. you cannot live on a murderboat on the gotham river" and tim reluctantly gives in but not without finding some random apartment complex that's still near the marina so he can go down and get his ass beat at poker by pie. and so it happens late at night, when tim is in nightwing sleep shorts and bear's old band tee on and bear is in some horrendous anime sweats and no shirt because their home is the only place he's ever felt comfortable leaving his scars out. and the lamplight gives a soft hazy glow to bear's tattoos and tim reaches under the shirt to scratch and in the movement bear can see the bear tim got tattooed onto his hip and he can't help grin softly. and they're both sitting on the couch as some lame ass procedural drama goes on in the background and they're eating batburger. tim's got the nightwing special and bear has the sword robin combo. and the ringbox is burning a hole through bear's thigh and tim makes some stupid comment about how lame meredith sounds begging some guy to love her and all bear can think is how much he loves this boy. so he gets up to get some water and he positions his phone so that he can get the best video bc tim is a sucker for home video and he plops down on the sofa hard enough that tim turns around to complain except bear is holding the ringbox open with a soft "marry me?" and tim goes "what?" and bear says "baby i have loved you since you walked through the gates of our high school and i loved you when you left and i loved you when you came back. i love the way you talk to yourself and i love the way dance when i put music on. and i even love the fact that you shove your ice cold feet in my shins every night. and i don't know exactly what to say except that i want to do this everyday until you get dentures and i get a hip replacement. and i want to be horny in the old age home and-" and tim cuts him off sob-laughing and says "can i say yes now?" and bear who is also crying says "wait, let me finish love. -and i want to do this in as many lives as we get together. so all this to says, timothy jackson drake, will you marry me?" and tim launches himself bear and shouts "yes, yes, yes! a thousand times over, yes" and they're sobbing as they slip the rings on each other.

[themyscirah]

Complaining abt Suicide Squad yet again but the fact that they have Waller exposing the alien community to space racist attacks and talking abt how she got to her position through deceit and being a terrible person and stuff is just. Ahsfiwueh JUST SAY YOU DONT KNOW WALLER.

Anyways literally the 3rd mission of the Squad ever (and the first framed as smth Waller picked and not orders from above) was the Squad discrediting and stopping a rogue vigilante who was only arresting POC and funneling white people into white supremacy groups (of which he was the most prominent member) in SUICIDE SQUAD #4. and it's explicitly framed as this mission being personal for Waller that she's hiding from the government bc its illegal like. Guys. Please why are we having her incite (space bc comics) racist attacks now

Also the whole "Amanda got her position through deceit and being a terrible person" NO. she KEPT her position through being shitty and playing complicated political games!!! She wasn't always that way like there is a difference and it is IMPORTANT ppl PLEASEEEE. In Secret Origins #14 we learn Amanda's backstory and she used to be a normal, caring person! Like even after she entered into working in government and politics she wasn't automatically morally bankrupt like please people. She was originally given control of the Squad by Reagan (*sigh* 80s comics...) to distract and get rid of her because she was so successful at pushing progressive social policy in Congress. Acting like she's this static pillar of evil is such a waste of her character and so fucking uninteresting and disrespectful to her arc it drives me MAD.

Like I am NOT saying Waller is all sunshine and rainbows, she fucking SUCKS (said w love <3) but like there's a human being there. It's a progression, she has a character arc like please, DC, please!!! They've fucked up Waller so bad and made her so opaque and uninteresting she can't even be the protagonist of her own story for fucks sake!

Like I don't know how many times I have to scream it until DC hears me or remembers but WALLER IS THE MAIN CHARACTER OF SUICIDE SQUAD. ITS HER BOOK. yet right now she's a cutout to be used as the villain wherever the writers please. Even in her book we get none of her perspective really displayed, no exploration of her thoughts with any kind of understanding of the role she traditionally has played and was made to play in the story.

[discount--dracula]

today i'm saying farewell to my darlings (only for a short while, but it hurts nonetheless)

see you in our new home lovelies

[hooked-on-elvis]

Those are absolutely two of my favorite pictures of Elvis. Of course I like the details and all the info I can get on the pictures. One thing I have to say is that in that moment Elvis was in his 7th season at the International Hotel in Las Vegas (August 4th - September 4th 1972), and it was the first time he brought Linda Thompson to accompany him during the concerts (prior to that she had only accompanied Elvis during rehearsals in July). You can imagine how jealous I am of her because, well, just look at Elvis! 🫠🥲 Anyway, here's a little story about the fans with Elvis in those pictures:

Las Vegas, NV. Monday, August 28, 1972. Elvis with two Italian fans. The woman is Nicla Crippa and the man was the President of the Italian fan club, his name is Livio Monari. Livio Monari started the Italian FC in 1962. Together with Nicla Crippa, a personal friend and member of his Fan Club, they met Elvis just after the Midnight show on 26th August 1972. Photos taken that day didn't come out, so they asked to see Elvis again... to have new ones taken on the 28th August (2nd meeting) which are the ones shown above. They had just attended the Dinner & Midnight shows on the 28th Aug: when a waiter approached them - that Elvis was waiting for them.

Nicla said the following about the meeting:

1972 was a special year for me, I picked up all my saving of a year and together with Livio Monari at that time president of the E.P.F.C. of Italy, I flew to Las Vegas in August to see Elvis performing. When we arrived we were so excited that we started immediately to ask anybody of Elvis entourage if we could meet Elvis, crook Col. Parker was at a gambling table with his cigar and he said very rude "NO, you cannot met Elvis", then Joe Esposito who said No too, and when I told him "Hey Joe you are Italian like us" he answered "I'm not Italian, I was born in Chicago" very rude too... until I saw the name of Emilio Muscelli on an office door, I knocked and entered and I said with all my 18 years old enthusiasm (in fact I was not yet 18, I would have turned 18 on December 30) "Hi Emilio, we are Italians and we are here to see Elvis concerts and meet him"... well he took it good to his heart and from that point on he treated me like his daughter - he was 50 years old. We saw 14 concerts in 7 days and we met Elvis TWICE, the first time on August 26 but the pictures Joe Esposito took with Livio's camera did not come out as Livio due the emotion charged an already used film in the camera... the second time on August 28, this time we called a professional photographer to take the 2 pictures to be sure. When I saw Elvis the first time coming out of his dressing room I ran towards him and I almost jumped on him, I hugged and kissed him and he returned the hugs and kisses to me and he asked me "Hey baby how old are you" I answered "18" and he said "And you came all the way from Italy just to see me?" "Yes Elvis" and he "Oh baby..." and he hugged me again very tight. We stayed with him for 15 minutes, we gave him a trophy we brought from Italy unfortunately we have no picture of Elvis with our trophy but I saw it at Graceland Trophy Room in 1987. He wrote a dedication to me, and one to Livio, on 2 LPs we brought with us, he gave us a yellow scarf each, but especially I held his right hand in my hands for a long time, and he did not withdraw it, on the contrary he caressed my hands. He was such a gentle, sweet and tender person, he made us feel at ease and he slowed down speaking English as at that time I could not speak English well. We asked "when will you come to Europe?" he said looking at Joe "I definitely wanna go, after a project I have for January 1973 (Aloha from Hawaii) I'll ask Parker to organize a tour to Europe". The night after Emilio gave us seats in the first row, Elvis saw me from stage and he stooped down and he put a red scarf around my neck... and on August 28 we met him again same place backstage and he said "Hey you are still here, good", he had such a sense of humour. Those 2 meetings with Elvis still are the best moments of my life!

Credits: elvis-collectors.com

[threecheers-forsweetrevenge]

Me everytime i see a pic of Kimi in that ferrari suit👇

(the Ferrari suit)

also the lotus one.... DONT GET ME STARTED

[natelia-aldelliz]

more ghost!Roach with accidental necromancer Soap, their first interaction !

(please ignore the fact that i can't draw the same character twice lmao)