🦑acetheinvader🦑

3️⃣ 🐈s. 👽 aroace. autistic. 🏳️‍🌈. genderless. grey millennial. antiracist abolitionist. 🦑. 📚 m/m, danmei, svsss main. 🎶 jpop. p4p pin maker, merch collector. ind.

[nyoomerr]

thoughts about the new svsss extra so far?

hmmm... i want to preface this by saying that i love seeing the fandom excited and energized by getting new content, and i don't want to detract from that excitement! however, i don't personally share that same sentiment, and am feeling hesitant to read the new extra(s) once it's available to me 😅

i'll put my thoughts on it below the break, as they'll include both spoilers for the extra content and also me just generally being a party pooper lmao.

mxtx wrote svsss when she was in high school a full decade ago. personally, i find that my writing style and tastes changes by some amount year-to-year, and even thinking about writing an extra for something i wrote five years ago feels... odd, let alone ten years. especially if that original piece was done all the way back in high school, when i was still very actively learning and receiving an education in literature and writing.

even if i were to attempt to write something that continued the universe of a story i'd written that long ago, i know with great certainty that it wouldn't quite fit. it would be shaped by my present tastes rather than the ones i had that long ago... to be blunt, i actively dislike the stuff i wrote that long ago, and so i think that any "extra" content i'd write for stories that old might even be somewhat antithetical to how i intended the original story to be read.

i'm sure that this isn't the case for everyone. however, based on what i've learned about the new svsss extra(s?), i think it is the case for mxtx.

let me disclaimer this next part by saying that i think it's very possible that there's been a game of fandom telephone, and my understanding of the extra content is not accurate to its reality. how i understand the extra, though, is "lbh knew sqq was a different person all along, including when he was a child / pre-abyss."

i think this is a very good example of an edit being made that goes against (how i saw) mxtx's original intent of svsss, but that fits (how i see) mxtx's more recent tastes.

lbh not knowing that sy!sqq was a different person is a source of very interesting conflict. rather than "sj doesn't like me, sy does," it's a game of "sqq didn't like me, now he does, what did i personally do that changed his mind? was i being tested? will it happen again?"

lbh choosing to eventually trust sqq despite not fully understanding the change in sqq's behavior is very compelling and interesting to me, especially when that trust gets betrayed at the edge of the abyss. sy!sqq's own internal struggle as he's forced to stand in the role of lbh's abuser is also interesting, especially when he chooses to act out the abyss scene seemingly as sj!sqq would have in PIDW rather than trying to find a more gentle method to send lbh down.

it's also a level of conflict between bingqiu that didn't really seem to make an appearance between any other main couple in mxtx's following books - to me personally, it felt like the conflict between wangxian was less than that of bingqiu, and the conflict between hualian is much less than wangxian. this reads to me as mxtx's own tastes growing to prefer a more harmonious main pairing with most of the conflict driving the plot externally rather than internally.

this isn't a bad thing, of course! but it does feel like - based on my personal reading of mxtx's works - putting out an extra a decade later saying "actually, lbh knew all along" is an attempt to re-contextualize svsss to fit that more recent preference of hers.

i do think that lbh is clever and sharpminded enough to eventually figure out that sy!sqq is not the same guy that sj!sqq was. personally, i think this is a realization he's most likely to have after jinlan city, while he's looking into methods to try and resurrect sy!sqq (aka, trying to find a way to call a soul back into a body). i also think that it's important closure for lbh (and sy!sqq, tbh) to have as they enter a proper relationship together post canon.

i just think that putting that realization when lbh is so young removes a lot of interesting conflict between them, and re-contextualizes the rest of the novel in a way that doesn't seem to fit quite as well to me.

...not to mention the implications that lbh, a child, figured out the whole soul-swap thing but that not a single other person in that book was able to realize it the entire time. that's a different essay rant, but i think it's disrespectful to the characters of the peak lords to make such an implication.

i've also seen some rumblings that part of the extras is "sy wakes up in the hospital, and lbh and mbj reverse transmigrate to find sy/sqh and live their new lives out in the modern world." again, i don't know how much of that is accurate VS fandom telephone, but i'm more or less ambivalent to this one. i think it's good for lbh's character but bad for sqq's, if that makes sense... i think with time they'd both overall be happier in the modern world, though good fucking luck to lbh now that he'll have to deal with sy!sqq getting a reinforcing dose of societal expectations and homophobia, lmao. i do also roll my eyes at "and then they all woke up and were back in the Real World" endings because they take away some of the magic for me, but i am a fan of getting canon names for sqh and sqq's little sister!

i won't speak much on the "sj chose to start fresh in a new world" part of the extra spoilers - i don't personally feel like i have as strong an opinion on his character as i do lbh's. i'm not sure i personally think sj was the sort of person to choose a new life for himself, but it is interesting for mxtx to step in and give a very strong canon confirmation that he hated himself.

anyway, that's all quite rambly, but i guess the TLDR is that i have a lot of mixed feelings about what i've heard about the extra content and how it fits with my understanding of and interest in bingqiu's characters. i don't know if i'll ever read the new extra content, but i think that if i ever do, it's unlikely that i'll internalize it as canon... or else i think that i'll end up less interested bingqiu's overall dynamic 😅

ALL THAT SAID i hope that you 🫵 enjoy the extras - or, if you have mixed feelings like i do, at least enjoy all the energy and excitement within fandom about them. i'm enjoying all the art of lbh with cute little pigtails for sure <33

[wjsjuexian]

I watched 2 and came back, It's perfect👌

You know, the mission can be repeated, but the opportunity to beat up WuXian may only come once.

[tinyyellowflowers-blog]

Was talking to a coworker today who explained that her grandfather was like Snow White “but Californian. And an old man.” in that the creatures of the forest would follow him around and presumably duet with him.

“When he died the ravens sat in the trees outside for a week, watching. Taking turns. A horde of raccoons tried to break into the house every night, tearing at the siding. Eventually they gave up, but it was unsettling.”

“Aww. They were checking on him!” I said, like a normal person. Internally, I thought “Maybe you could do the thing you do with dead pets, where you show them to the living pets so the living pet understands they’re gone. But I guess if you did that to a bunch of scavenging species, they’d be like “Well, that’s very sad but he IS food now.” So what you’d need, for human sensibilities, is some sort of transparent corpse barrier. Like a see-through coffin oh that’s what the dwarves were doing! You’ve stopped paying attention to this conversation about the loss of a beloved family member you gotta phase back in.”

[lightacrobat]

[gallusrostromegalus]

So one of my neighbors has a lawn Roomba or whatever they're called, and this thing trundles around looking like a background robot in the background of the original trilogy, and ABSOLUTELY BAFFLING THE DOGS.

They have concluded, I think, that it's some kind of prey animal because right after this video ended they decided to crouch down and stalk it, which means I'm 90% sure I'm going to have to stop Arwen from eating it at some point.

[theodorepython]

Of course it's a prey animal it fucking eats GRASS

[gallusrostromegalus]

While I can’t fault your reasoning on robot taxonomy, apparently we’re both wrong:  Arwen, as much as she is a high-prey-drive animal, is foremost, a herding dog, and has decided that the Lawn Roomba is a SHEEP.

What happened is the lawn roomba belongs to the guy that does most of the maintainence on the neighborhood park, and he had it out grazing on a different section of lawn when my parents came down for a walk and Arwen was siezed by 200 years worth fo Kelpie Instincts, rolled out of her Harness and proceded to herd the shit out of this tiny, oblivious robot.  

Everything was on display- mock-stalking, intimidating eye contact, barking, running in front of it to try to get it to balk, the scariest barking she can muster (which is actually.  pretty scary if you’re not used to Loud Dogs), looking back at my parents for directions.  or rather, looking at my Mom while Dad tried unsuccessuflly to capture her.

After about ten minutes they realized she wasn’t biting it, and decided to let her play Sheep Simulator 5000 for a while. She eventually figured out that 

It  doesn’t respond to Yelling, Posturing or Aggressive Eye Contact

It does respond to having it’s wheels or bump hazards hit 

It would respond to its side being nosed or slapped by moving in a different direction

Conent that this was apparently some kind of blind, deaf and particularly stupid sheep, she could now manage the robot by smacking it if it got too close to the creek bed or fence for her liking, and was eventually content to sit on the highest point of the field and Supervise (TM) it.

“Hey.” Said Roger, owner of the robot. “Do you think if I put the ramp down she’ll herd it into the back of my pickup?”

Arwen was mostly asleep in the afternoon sun as roger put the ramp down but woke right up when mom Whistled, then pointed at the truck.  She immediately went after the robot and did something that wouldn’t have occured to me, an allegedly more intelligent being: the robot is roughly triangular, and when it hits an obstacle, will change direction so that one of its other sides (rather than points) is now the ‘front’.  So to get it to move in a straight line in the direction she wanted, Arwen would smack the two sides of the robot that she didn’t want it to go in in quick sucession, and got it across the field, over a small hill and up the ramp as fast as it’s clumsy little wheels could go.

“I didn’t know you had a fully-trained sheepdog!” Said Roger

“Me either.” said Mom.

So Arwen now has a Semi-Weekly Appointment to play with Sheepbot.

[da-kit-kat]

i need you to know that arwen and sheepbot have been living rent free in my brain for the past 4 years

[eurodynamic]

[kanagenwrites]

I once wrote a 1500 word essay on something I'd forgotten to read in the 40 minutes before class. Including the time it took to read the thing I'd forgotten to read.

I got an A on that paper.

Writing is a skill. Skill is muscle. If you don't use a muscle, it atrophies. If you are a student and you are tempted to use genAI to cheese an assignment, I am begging you for your own sake to not do it.

This is not a moral stance about genAI (which is shit at what it's ostensibly for, and full of lies and evil, and fueled by art theft and burning rainforests, and there is no good reason to ever use it for anything; that's the moral reason for why you shouldn't use it), it is a purely pragmatic stance based on the fact that if you use it you will never learn the single most essential skill that is used in every single workplace.

You will never learn to bullshit.

And if you cannot bullshit, you will not understand when you are being fed bullshit by others.

For your own sake you must learn to do your own thinking, your own bullshitting, because our trashfire society runs on bullshit and for your own good you must become fluent in it, because very few people will bother to translate it for you. It was asinine in the late 90s, and it is asinine today, but it is the central truth of adult society: everything is bullshit, and you need to know what is going on beneath the bullshit, and you need to be able to bullshit back if necessary.

I know that the expectations being placed on you are ever-increasing, and I know that it does not seem rational to put effort into explaining the plot of a Charles Dickens novel to someone who has read the thing 50 times and will read 50 identical essays about it over the weekend. I know you are being handed ever-greater heaps of what is functionally mindless busywork because of an institutional obsession with metrics that don't actually measure learning in a useful way. High school was nightmarish in the 90s and I am fully aware that it has only gotten worse.

Nevertheless, you must try, if only for your own sake. Curiosity is your best hope, and dogged determination your best weapon. Learn, please, if only out of spite.

I was able to get an A on that paper because I was able to skim the reading, figure out what it was about, and bullshit for 1500 words in the space of 40 minutes.

Imagine what you can do if you learn to bullshit like I can bullshit.

[eldritchamy]

For my senior year of AP English, I was assigned reading over Easter break. We were instructed to read The Old Man And The Sea, and save the rest of the short stories in the book for the first week back.

Unfortunately, what I heard was "read everything BUT The Old Man And The Sea."

Double unfortunately: the first day back was a test, on The Old Man And The Sea. Which I had read exactly zero words of. It was, notably, a short essay test. It wasn't multiple choice or fill in the blank. It was designed to require deliberate answers from scratch, entirely out of your own head, with nothing to go on BUT what was in your head.

And in the course of about 45 minutes, I was able to use the questions of the test itself to piece together a vague enough sense of how the story went to bullshit my way through other questions. I gave wide, thematic answers that were extremely light on details, since I did not know any of them, and did not even know this test would be happening until it was in front of me. An essay test for an AP-level English class.

I had a starting point of zero information, and an essay test about the thing I was supposed to have read.

I bullshitted my way to a B+ on it.

On a test I should have gotten a ZERO on.

It's been 16 years since I took that test.

I couldn't tell you a damn thing about The Old Man And The Sea.

But you better fucking believe I still know how to bullshit, and when someone is trying to bullshit me.

The power and utility of knowing how bullshit works CANNOT be overstated. It is one of the most important skills you can ever have.

[wishfulsketching]

Kinda the korra meme. Wanted to draw Liu Qingge and it turned to this

Bingaboo and Anger Management will never get along

EXTRA :

[meltedmush]

For no reason other than it's Christmas and it's very funny consider: nativity scene but it's birth of binghe cuddled by skinzun and the manger is just full of skin creatures all staring out into your soul. Three wise men can be SQQ, YQY and a very confused SQH

Happy holidays everyone! :D

[sexysilverstrider]

the group chat when i ask whos available to hang out next week

[medusasstory]

Honestly this is one of the best formatted jokes of all time.

[allpiesforourown]

You know what, fuck you. *spreadsheet-izes your danmei*

[magekrove]

my svsss comic about sqq and his little personality split (what if)

[mxtxfoodzine]

Introducing the 2024 MXTX Food Zine!

The third edition of the MXTX Food Zine is out now in PDF and ready-to-print format! Inside, you’ll find 55 delicious recipes and over 70 new fanworks from all three MXTX fandoms, including art, fanfiction, and themed recipe cards. You can also download the front cover as a poster here.

Special thanks to our editor @czeriah for the print tests and design work, to @conscydraws for the cover art, and to all the creators: this project would never have been possible without you.

To the fandom: reblog this post, download the zine, and enjoy! If you can’t access the documents, email [email protected] for help or message the mods here on tumblr.

The mods would like to note that this zine has always been free: but if you would like to donate something or support us via platforms like Ko-Fi, we ask instead that you donate to a humanitarian organization such as the World Food Kitchen, the Trevor Project, or another trusted charity of your choice.

Thank you for sharing this project with us, and happy reading! If you'd like to share/leave kudos and comments on your favorite entries, you can find them at our AO3 collection (fanfiction) or on tumblr/twitter/Bluesky (artwork) starting November 17.

Previous editions: 2022 | 2023

[conscydraws]

Just finished the cover for 2024 MXTX Food Zine!

@mxtxfoodzine contains 55 recipes going along with art and fanfiction as well as a printable no-title version of the cover. Releasing this November.

[newlevant]

New zine that's free for anyone to print and distribute! Read the whole thing at newlevant.com/COVIDzine or in the rest of this post.

UPDATE 4/11/2023:

I swapped out the colloidal silver nasal spray info for xylitol nasal spray info. I originally included colloidal silver spray because of the linked study and recommendation from RTHM, but I don't want to be pointing people toward something with notable health risks. Xylitol spray (Xlear) is also cheaper and more widely available!

[fatliberation]

This is such a concise and informative resource! PLEASE boost this and keep each other safe! The pandemic is NOT OVER.

[liss-art]

Now I have layouts for 5 standees, 1 sticker pack and 15 postcards. And I made a PREORDERS form If something in the form is not clear, DM me, please! (I added QiJiu!)

[megapocalypse-deactivated202502]

Two sides of the same coin... 😔

[jeusus]

Sh-Shizun!!!