#you can see him on the left.

[stringbeans-and-peas]

I saw this and it reminded me of Philip Wittebane. So I must buy it. Now it sits on my dresser next to the snail. (That I also bought today)

[mccromy]

Tbh I think people should be more rabid about moshang. Like, talk about an artist falling in love with his creation, then upgrade it to infinity.

I mean, it is not like Shang Qinghua made Mobei-Jun and fell in love with him because he was so beautiful. Shang Qinghua designed Mobei-Jun to be what Shang Qinghua considered perfect. Every single flaw was included lovingly, every virtue, every inch of his body and face to be what Shang Qinghua found the most handsome, attractive. His ideal man. He made Mobei-Jun for himself, he made him with the intention to love him.

He told a history about a boy who was wronged, who had every ounce of kindness bleed out through a thousand cuts. Who took revenge on every single person who hurt him, even if by negligence. Made the whole world revolve around him, changed it to satisfy his readers.

And then made Mobei-Jun for himself. He made him silent, strong, mistrustful, arrogant, spoiled and beautiful and set him up for betrayal. Made his life tragic in that way authors do with their favorite characters.

(Luo Binghe was perfect in the eyes of the world. Shang Qinghua crafted Mobei-Jun to be perfect in his eyes.)

Can you imagine? If god made you solely with the intention to love you. Perfect in the eyes of god, literally.

And then Shang Qinghua became Mobei-Jun's servant. Mobei-Jun was both his King and his favorite creation. (As if god made himself a personal deity to worship.)

Their relationship was rocky (mountain sized rocks) for what amounts to decades. Shang Qinghua's perfect man was so incredibly flawed it made him near impossible to get along with, he was also destined to kill Shang Qinghua. And Shang Qinghua was far from perfect himself, he was also destined to stab Mobei-Jun in the back. What's more, Shang Qinghua wove those threads of fate himself.

(In the end none of that happened. But think about it.)

Even better, when put like that, Moshang sounds so poetic. And it could be!... If moshang was composed by anybody else other than Mobei "to get your man you need to beat him up at least three times a day" Jun and Shang "the best way to seduce someone is to be so pathetic and lame!" Qinghua.

Shang Qinghua is literally Mobei-Jun's creator but he's also his little minion going nice one, boss!, the LeFou to Mobei-Jun's Gaston. The sleazy car salesman to Mobei-Jun's Nepo baby CEO. The Connecticut Clark to his Malfina.

How, just how is it possible that I have to channel my inner truffle hog when sniffing around for moshang brainrot? Everybody should be losing black brain matter through their nostrils about them, and yet.

[tagerrkix]

rage.

[juniemunie]

[Abandoned by the Lightners, his heart became cracked with hatred.]

Hitting a lil' too close to home?

[yumedoca]

So yeah, 'Ranma 0.5' or something like that..

[royaltea000]

I love Bai Long Ma he truly don’t gaf

[keferon]

Okay I’m. Usually. Usually I don’t enjoy human aus and usually I hate drawing transformers as humans because it feels so wrong to my brain.

But then I stumbled upon Dream of something more by Gemma_Inkyboots and aaauuuhh fuck. Here’s the pile of the most vague and unspecific and undetailed fanart. Because I’m being torn between “I can’t drawing human designs” and “If don’t draw something for this fic I die”.

[heartorbit]

so when's the wxs phantom of the opera set

[gingermintpepper]

In my Zeus bag today so I'm just gonna put it out there that exactly none of the great Ancient Greek warrior-heroes stayed loyal and faithful and completely monogamous and yet none of them have their greatness questioned nor do we question why they had the cultural prominence that they did and still do.

Jason, the brilliant leader of the Argo, got cold feet when it came to Medea - already put off by some of her magic and then exiled from his birthland because of her political ploys, he took Creusa to bed and fully intended on marrying her despite not properly dissolving things with Medea.

Theseus was a fierce warrior and an incredibly talented king but he had a horrible temper and was almost fatally weak to women. This is the man who got imprisoned in the Underworld for trying to get a friend laid, the man who started the whole Attic War because he couldn't keep his legs closed.

And we cannot at all forget Heracles for whom a not inconsiderable amount of his joy in life was loving people then losing the people around him that he loved. Wives, children, serving boys, mentors, Heracles had a list of lovers - male and female - long enough to rival some gods and even after completing his labours and coming down to the end of his life, he did not have one wife but three.

And y'know what, just because he's a cultural darling, I'll put Achilles up here too because that man was a Theseus type where he was fantastic at the thing he was born to do (that is, fight whereas Theseus' was to rule) but that was not enough to eclipse his horrid temper and his weakness to young pretty things. This is the man that killed two of Apollo's sons because they wouldn't let him hit - Tenes because he refused to let Achilles have his sister and Troilus who refused Achilles so vehemently that he ran into Apollo's temple to avoid him and still couldn't escape.

All four of these men are still celebrated as great heroes and men. All four of these men are given the dignity of nuance, of having their flaws treated as just that, flaws which enrich their character and can be used to discuss the wider cultural point of what truly makes a hero heroic. All four of these men still have their legacies respected.

Why can that same mindset not be applied to Zeus? Zeus, who was a warrior-king raised in seclusion apart from his family. Zeus who must have learned to embrace the violence of thunder for every time he cried as a babe, the Corybantes would bang their shields to hide the sound. Zeus learned to be great because being good would not see the universe's affairs in its order.

The wonderful thing about sympathy is that we never run out of it. There's no rule stopping us from being sympathetic to multiple plights at once, there's no law that necessitate things always exist on the good-evil binary. Yes, Zeus sentenced Prometheus to sufferation in Tartarus for what (to us) seems like a cruel reason. Prometheus only wanted to help humans! But when you think about Prometheus' actions from a king's perspective, the narrative is completely different: Prometheus stole divine knowledge and gifted it to humans after Zeus explicitly told him not to. And this was after Prometheus cheated all the gods out of a huge portion of wealth by having humans keep the best part of a sacrifice's meat while the gods must delight themselves with bones, fat and skin. Yes, Zeus gave Persephone away to Hades without consulting Demeter but what king consults a woman who is not his wife about the arrangement of his daughter's marriage to another king? Yes, Zeus breaks the marriage vows he set with Hera despite his love of her but what is the Master of Fate if not its staunchest slave?

The nuance is there. Even in his most bizarre actions, the nuance and logic and reason is there. The Ancient Greeks weren't a daft people, they worshipped Zeus as their primary god for a reason and they did not associate him with half the vices modern audiences take issue with. Zeus was a father, a visitor, a protector, a fair judge of character, a guide for the lost, the arbiter of revenge for those that had been wronged, a pillar of strength for those who needed it and a shield to protect those who made their home among the biting snakes. His children were reflections of him, extensions of his will who acted both as his mercy and as his retribution, his brothers and sisters deferred to him because he was wise as well as powerful. Zeus didn't become king by accident and it is a damn shame he does not get more respect.

[callme-l]

I don't know which implication of the "Aim is getting better" joke is better:

The two twins (Stan and Ford) used a joke from their father to feel more confident

OR

Stan reminds Ford so much of their father that he can't even tell them apart in his memories.

[tallochar]

Just got hit real hard by a drive-by idea where Flashpoint doesn't happen and Dick just takes a few months off to chill (read: Donna shows up and drags him off to have adventures now that Bruce is back in town and everything seems status quo again)

And when he comes back it initially looks like that set up so many fandom fics have where Tim has been isolating himself / been left to his own means and only works with the others out of politeness.

And the moment Dick clocks that that's what the others think is happening, he can straight up feel the grey hairs trying to show up, because while he had phone calls with Tim (who seemed to be coping better with everything that went wrong in his life) and Damian (with whom Dick did not talk about anyone outside of Damian and, occasionally, Bruce, which was already hard enough on Dick without bringing the others in) he had also thought that things had sort of started settling back into what Dick used to think as normal before Bruce "died" on them.

Except Damian and Jason don't know how to pick up on that sort of thing, Cass is still doing her Hong Kong / Journey of Self Discovery Thing as far as anyone seems to know / Bruce is CLEARLY (to Dick and Alfred and absolutely no one else) still communicating with Tim because he's on an even keel but also he must have done something to piss off Tim because Tim is doing the Politely Co-Workers Thing at Bruce (with Alfred's approval and support so Bruce must have fucked up REAL BAD) and it's stressing Bruce out so much that Dick can practically see the tension lines heading to a breaking point in the man why is no one else seeing the tension lines.

Plus Barbara and Dick were still on not-so-great terms when Dick split from Gotham, so he's not had much luck talking to her and some desire to call her but not enough to actually call her a lot, just some, which hasn't made Babs less pissed at him, so he's not getting information on that side and of course if Barbara is pissed at him and Tim is pissed at Bruce and Dick wasn't around for Tim to bitch about Bruce in person (and Tim would NEVER on a phone line, not even a secure one) then Dick is 1000% sure that Tim and Barbara have been having a shared and supportive bitch fest for however many weeks / months Dick was away that has just solidified them in a block of their own.

All of which means that Dick's little brother has been left unbothered, unnoogied and unsupervised for all the time Dick was away and like, sure, some people would think Dick would feel horrible for that and want to octopus-grab him and cuddle him but those people would be wrong because Dick is now honestly terrified to find out WHAT Tim has been up to without supervision and limits.

Between YJ, his civilian friends, his other friends in the superhero community, whatever new people Tim for sure rustled up, the lack of supervision on who Tim teams up with and for what, all the villain-frenemies he might have decided it was worth cooperating with, Tim being pissed at Bruce enough to keep a physical distance if not a communication distance...

And then, just as it is hitting Dick that, of course just keeping track on the phone was a bad idea to begin with why did he think that was a good idea and that what with Barbara and Tim in agreement and both Tim and Barbara at odds with Bruce and Alfred firmly entrenched in his usual If-Tim-Is-Handling-Master-Bruce-I-Will-Not-Hear-A-Thing-Against-The-Lad british politeness artillery position, this means that no one who would not enable him in the Wrong And Not Dick Approved Ways has been actually keeping as close track of Tim as he should have been kept track of (because *will smith hands memes* TIM!) ...

... Red Robin swings by, Azrael in tow, clearly going after Lynx.

And it's not that new Azrael that they had, which was still an Azrael but wasn't the Worst of the Azraels.

It's fucking Jean Paul Valley, who is supposed to be dead and clearly did not have the goddamn grace to decide to stay dead.

Dick, internally while outwardly having a BSOD moment: Tim. Tim you had just told Dick you were going to check out a couple of leads tonight. Tim why are you swinging from rooftops with JPV in tow. Tim why is JPV ALIVE. Why did you NOT tell Dick about it, TIM. TIM.

[blamemma]

daniel ricciardo speaks on how australia feels like home, even though he spends much of the year away.

[risingsunresistance]

[its-a-me-mango]

I freaking love having OC's I can do anything I want with them.

[hermesmoly]

Zeus and Metis filling up my brain again. Metis was his best friend. His first friend. The one who gave him the drug that freed his siblings, his future wife. He loved her. As a friend or a lover? Maybe it goes beyond that. Some versions she resisted him. Some versions she loved him back, even doing it behind Hera's back. Does it matter? He killed her. He was her best friend and he subdued her into nothing. He had to. Did he have to? Was his kinghood worth it? Maybe that's why he was lenient with Dionysus, his son said to take over his throne. Was the wisdom he gained, her wisdom, for good and for evil, worth it? Maybe that's why he keeps Athena around, the motherless goddess, motherless because of him, even when she tried to betray him. In the essence of her mother, Athena's mother, it's almost like Athena's betrayal was warranted- he betrayed her first.

[mothcpu]

protect me from what I want