[wtfishisgoingon]

Xie Lian is such a fun character because he is fucking terrifying. Like he can fight normal martial gods with two cursed shackles and deflect an attack from E-Ming. It’s so funny to me that a lot of characters in the story mischaracterise him like - “your highness that’s too powerful you don’t have a spiritual weapon!!” And Xie Lian just goes “no worries” and solos them with Rouye.

The only character who treats Xie Lian like he can take care of himself is Hua Cheng, but he also wants to protect him - not because Xie Lian can’t protect himself, but because Hua Cheng just wants him to take it easy and chill out. Xie Lian lets him fight for him because he knows it makes him feel better (and he looks kinda hot when he fights).

but he’s so scary and everybody just forgets all the time I find it sooo funny

I feel like it’s mostly because of his intense stubbornness and refusal to lose, which means he’s built up a lot of skill over 800 years (especially in using his own body without relying on spiritual power). He also just bounces back and takes injuries like a pro - I feel like u have to tho if you’ve had as many as him.

So essentially, Xie Lian is the scariest but he’s too sweet to just fight with people, meanwhile Hua Cheng would love to protect his Gege because it makes him feel like he has a purpose.

All the fights involving Xie Lian start with “I’m going to obliterate this twink!!” And then the twink obliterates them instead.

[gia-lan]

yes yes yes justice for my martial god icon Xie Lian, he's not a damsel in distress damn it

but I also want to go a step further and appreciate how his unwillingness to fight and resort to violence in the present time speaks to how his trauma and experiences over the past 800 years have shaped him. when I think of Xie Lian, I often think of that quote: do you know the violence it took to become this gentle?

because by god that's him down to a tee. he has suffered, he has fought in devastating wars, he has the skills and knowledge to topple generals, armies, and kingdoms, and he has. but he doesn't want to because he knows, he has seen, he has felt firsthand the consequences of violence. he knows how quick people are to resort to it and how that choice has the potential to eat you alive from the inside out, to corrode your soul, and lay waste to your life.

so he chooses sweet smiles and shrugs. sometimes, he chooses to walk away. always, always he chooses kindness.

and I think that's beautiful as much as it is devastating. because I know what's at the genesis of that kindness.

[ghost-kings-court-jester]

There’s something to be said too for how alone he’s been for 800 years and how he’s been fighting daily just to survive and then this tall handsome ghost is like “I know you got this Gege but sit back rest let me deal with this filth for you” that I think he kinda likes like yeah he does want a little spoiling and holding back because it will be handled anyway because Hua Cheng is also incredibly strong and it’s nice to just rest and be taken care of.

He has been fighting, he has been evil and cruel, he’s been a victim and a perpetrator and he’s so tired because he’s been forced to fight and think of another path that doesn’t lead to disaster and pull his still breakable body to its feet over and over again until he finds a solution. And now he finally has someone who gets it because he has also been a victim and a perpetrator and fighting his whole life and death and he is so solidly in Xie Lian’s corner that he can finally think in peace and come up with answers that aren’t self destructive because he has the breathing room it’s just god I love hualians whole dynamic.

It’s not a damsel and a knight it’s two partners working in tandem to solve a problem by having each others backs at all times. Hell Hua Cheng sometimes lets E Ming fight for itself so he can help Xie Lian think because sometimes that’s harder than the fight. It’s not about fighting and the glory of battle for them it’s about thinking of solutions and third paths because that’s how they got here in the first place.

[seadeepspaceontheside]

Money can be exchanged for goods and services.

[sabertoothwalrus]

for those who don’t remember, “mole interest” was an experiment I did 2 years ago because I wanted to test what causes tags to go trending on tumblr. My hypothesis was that all it takes is one (1) post blowing up in an established tag to make the entire tag trend.

I had randomly generated 2 words, which is where “mole interest” came from. I failed to consider that by generating a new tag, it wouldn’t have had enough posts already in it to prove what I now call “the mole interest effect”.

But now it does.

In 2023, we said “fuck it” a la mythbusters and ended up doing whatever it took to get #mole interest to trend. And it did. And it happened to be September 11th that day, and we managed to get #mole interest to trend ABOVE #9/11.

So, in the name of science, I ask you to reblog just this post. Let’s put the mole interest effect to the test.

[littlecakeclub]

The Matriarch Isn’t the Villain. She’s the Mirror

I often hear a discourse where Celine in K-pop Demon Hunters, Alma in Encanto and Ming in Turning Red are seen as vilains. They’re the ones who restricted the younger generation, hurt them, and are ultimately responsible for their pain, trauma and self-doubt. They’re framed as the real villains of the story. But I’d like to differ.

These are stories of intergenerational trauma. They are women who survived, repressed, and tried to protect their families the only way they knew how: through control, perfectionism, and emotional suppression.

And yet, when the next generation begins to reclaim joy, freedom, softness — they become the obstacle. Not because they’re bad people, but because they’re scarred. Their minds cling to survival strategies, unable to recognize that the environment has changed.

Alma is still stuck fleeing the colonizers.

Ming is still afraid of her true self.

Celine believes that fear and mistakes must be hidden.

It’s not about hating these characters. It’s about how unprocessed trauma twists love into control. How survival, unexamined, turns into rigidity. These women were never given space to process their own pain and they project it onto their daughters and granddaughters.

And here’s something we rarely say enough: intergenerational trauma can create toxic patterns but that doesn’t always mean there was abuse or conscious harm. Even when their love becomes suffocating or controlling, these women are not necessarily “abusive parents.” They are daughters of silence, fear, and sacrifice. And they were never taught another way. It’s important to make that distinction, especially in a world that often pushes a binary, punitive reading of family dynamics.

They’re the product of a generation that was told to endure. But endurance without healing becomes its own kind of violence.

What’s powerful in these stories is that they don’t end in vengeance. They end in confrontation and transformation. The confrontation is necessary: the younger generation refuses the silence. Refuses the shame. Refuses to carry a burden that wasn’t theirs to begin with.

The house is destroyed in Encanto.

Mei accepts her full self.

So does Rumi.

And in the best cases, this confrontation allows the elder to soften too. Alma opens up. Ming listens. And I’m hoping in the sequel, Celine will open too.

Maybe that’s also why these stories speak so deeply to POC audiences. These aren’t stories about cutting ties. They’re stories about how hard it is to transform them, to protect ancestral bonds while refusing to perpetuate inherited pain. In many racialized families, collectivity, loyalty, and intergenerational duty are sacred... even when they come at the cost of personal boundaries.

And sometimes, Western individualist frameworks read these tensions as dysfunction or villainy. But for us, they’re just the difficult truth of growing up and trying to do better.

These women aren’t villains. That would be too easy. They embody the fragile, necessary work of bringing change without breaking the thread. These stories are about refusing to inherit their pain without reflection. Because love, without accountability, is not enough.

These stories show us that each generation has something to learn from the next. And the new generation must also break free from the chains they inherited while preserving what is meaningfull.

But it’s not just their story.

One day, we’ll be the older generation.

And we’ll need to be humble enough to learn from the ones after us.

So don’t be a fool.

We may be Mei, Rumi, or Mirabel today.

But tomorrow, we could be Ming, Celine, or Alma.

And when that time comes, we’ll realize how hard it is to unlearn what once kept us safe.

So let’s have compassion for all these characters.

Because these stories show us not just how the cycle of generations works, but how it can make us better, stronger, and more connected... if we’re all willing to go through the change.

∘₊✧──────✧──────✧₊∘

If you’re curious, I’ve written more on K-pop Demon Hunters:

A post on the mental health themes woven through the songs — right here.

A breakdown of Celine-Rumi in comparaison to Gothel–Rapunzel dynamic — here.

An analysis about Rumi, Jinu, and the danger of sinking together — here.

Some book recs for each of the K-pop Demon Hunters characters — here.

[fishy-my-wishy]

YES. I hate seeing these characters hated so much when it’s obvious people have never experienced anything like that or that their hatred for the people that have restricted them end up blinding them to the complexities and the pain these characters have

[elodieunderglass]

I am writing a story about generational trauma and have paused a few times and been like “oh man, people are going to get mad - they’re going to think that a take-home message is that I’m pushing something like reconciliation with your abuser, but really I see it as things like: you have to process your emotional inheritance, you have to choose what to keep and what to discard; you have to choose mindfully who you’re going to be for your kids. And I don’t know if people are going to get that.”

but I realised the story will just have to be Brave and True. Kill your Darlings, and a prominent Darling is the Author yourself.

[greenheart-anon]

[guldaastan]

greta was time's person of the year a few years ago. she was adored by all liberal world leaders and parties. and when she learnt about people's struggle under occupation and colonialism, she stood in solidarity with them . she now stands with palestine and armenia and kashmir and every oppressed person in the world. she could have been rich as fuck by simply remaining as a climate activist. yet she chose to do the right thing. i love her for her integrity.

[leebrontide]

One sad side effect of big box stores is that you just don’t get lifelong hyper fixation guy access like you used to.

Like yeah I can go to Menards and buy a door.

But it used to be I could go to the door store, and speak to a man whose sole passion in life was doors and who would talk about the history of door insulation patterns over the last 50 years without stopping to breathe.

That man is gonna find me the BEST door option for me.

Seriously my neighborhood had one of these. They were across the street from the lighting shop owned by the guy who could tell you the exact date, off the top of his head, that your property got electrical wiring based on your address.

Now these guys rarely get to own a shop, make a good living, and sell the very finest doors for decades. They’re relegated to Reddit posts which are informative but ultimately do not replace door guy having a door shop.

I don’t want to talk to some miserable, underpaid 20 year old who was in plumbing last week and in doors this week and doesn’t know a hammer from a hanger.

I want my door guy back.

[hotvampireadjacent]

As , the United States, potentially heads into another forever war I can only think of this quote.

[reasonablywittyatbest]

Whenever I think about students using AI, I think about an essay I did in high school. Now see, we were reading The Grapes of Wrath, and I just couldn't do it. I got 25 pages in and my brain refused to read any more. I hated it. And its not like I hate the classics, I loved English class and I loved reading. I had even enjoyed Of Mice and Men, which I had read for fun. For some reason though, I absolutely could NOT read The Grapes of Wrath.

And it turned out I also couldn't watch the movie. I fell asleep in class both days we were watching it.

This, of course, meant I had to cheat on my essay.

And I got an A.

The essay was to compare the book and the movie and discuss the changes and how that affected the story.

Well it turned out Sparknotes had an entire section devoted to comparing and contrasting the book and the movie. Using that, and flipping to pages mentioned in Sparknotes to read sections of the book, I was able to bullshit an A paper.

But see the thing is, that this kind of 'cheating' still takes skills, you still learn things.

I had to know how to find the information I needed, I needed to be able to comprehend what sparknotes was saying and the analysis they did, I needed to know how to USE the information I read there to write an essay, I needed to know how to make sure none of it was marked as plagerized. I had to form an opinion on the sparknotes analysis so I could express my own opinions in the essay.

Was it cheating? Yeah, I didn't read the book or watch the movie. I used Sparknotes. It was a lot less work than if I had read the book and watched the movie and done it all myself.

The thing is though, I still had to use my fucking brain. Being able to bullshit an essay like that is a skill in and of itself that is useful. I exercised important skills, and even if it wasnt the intended way I still learned.

ChatGTP and other AI do not give that experience to people, people have to do nothing and gain nothing from it.

Using AI is absolutely different from other ways students have cheated in the past, and I stand by my opinion that its making students dumber, more helpless, and less capable.

However you feel about higher education, I think its undeniable that students using chatgtp is to their detriment. And by extension a detriment to anyone they work with or anyone who has to rely on them for something.

[ot3]

m/m/f has had had too much of a stranglehold on the polybait industry. we have to evolve. we have to flip the scripts. we need two girls who are ostensibly both in love with the same dude but have an incredibly charged and potent interpersonal dynamic with each other that is equally as weighty as the romance it is supposedly being presented in opposition to. we need a girl protagonist who has a canonical love interest but is also overwhelmingly and undeniably in love with her same gendered best friend that the source material desperately tries to no homo. of course it goes without saying that they could just all be girls too and that's also fine. we have options, is what i'm saying.

[radicalgraff]

“If you promise to stay alive just a little bit longer I promise that we are going to make this world a place worth living in by any means necessary. I ain’t giving up. I swear.” 

Spotted in Clackamas, Oregon

[anarchopuppy]

I can’t stop thinking about this message, so I spent a while trying to isolate just the writing and make it transparent. I might order a shirt with it

Whoever in Clackamas wrote this message on their bus stop, I love you

[slipperyslideyday]

[ if you promise to stay alive just a little bit longer I promise that we are going to make this world a place worth living in by any means necessary.  I ain’t giving up. I swear. end caption ]  

[cheese24k]

[modmad]

We interrupt your usual schedule to bring you a very small pig descending a set of stairs.

[bugtears-deactivated20150413]

HE JUMPS RIGHT INTO IT AND MAKES LITTEL SOUNDS N0

[vladtheimpalainvalhalla]

Constant state of oink

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Noisiest beast in the world

[meredithmcclaren]

Just a little comic.

[meredithmcclaren]

A long, long, LONG time ago (five years, jeez), I did a little comic about two sisters.

I finally got someone to let me do a bigger book about them.

THE RIFT is coming 2029.

[tloaak]

much better footage of the haka that shut down parliament today

[tloaak]

@endless-demon thank you so much for asking! it's a little complicated but I think simplification does a disservice to the issue and is exactly what people like David Seymour rely on to spread lies about historical context and current consequences. I'm putting this in a reblog because it's long, and I'm putting it on this post because I'd rather this video be the one to get seen. as always I'm pakeha and also not an expert, so I'm very open to corrections on details but im confident of the broad strokes.

so when the English first arrived to build settlements in aotearoa, they formed a treaty with Māori (te Tiriti o Waitangi), the people already living there, that the English can govern their own settlements, as long as they allowed for continued māori sovereignty (tino rangatiratanga). there exist two versions of the text, English and te reo Māori, which do not perfectly match. after this, the English settlers began acquiring massive swathes of land by legally questionable means, and asserting absolute sovereignty over these areas. these culminated in the land wars, which then lead to massive land confiscation as a form of both political punishment and colonization. the end result is that now the crown own nearly all land in aotearoa and claim absolute sovereignty over it.

now, the Māori text does not claim sovereignty over the property that the crown recognizes Māori own. the text promises, among other things, self determination for Māori, which is essentially impossible under a westminster system of government because they are currently a demographic minority. it's only very recent in our history that the crown has acknowledged the legitimacy of the te reo Māori text, and even more recently that we began to actually implement any of its principles. one of the biggest ways the treaty is used in modern day is to guarantee Māori have an opportunity at the table for major national decisions (particular those of environmental significance), and to defer organizational power for Māori issues to Māori communities.

the treaty principles bill seeks to water down these promises by allowing these rights to all new zealanders, "democratising" the treaty and removing those guarantees that have been so hard fought for by Māori. but, more importantly, it seeks to seed division and racism within this country to gather more support for the ACT party who are sponsoring this bill.

this bill was part of the coalition agreement by our current 3 party right wing government. the national party agreed to sponsor this bill to first reading (allowing public submission on the bill) but no further. I personally believe, along with many others, that when the time comes to vote for the second reading the act party will threaten to pull out of the coalition if the bill is not passed again, and our prime minister will not have the strength of character to stand up to his deputy. regardless, the relationship between the crown and Māori has already been damaged, both by the simple introduction of the bill as well as all the changes our current government has implemented.

as Paul Goldsmith, Minister for Treaty Negotiations outlined in his speech during the bill, the National party believe that te Tiriti must be killed, not in a single action, but by a thousand cuts, like the removal of references to the treaty from our legislation and curriculums, and the disestablishment of agencies like the Māori Health Authority, cuts to Māori advisors to govt departments, removing māori seats from local government, etc.

there's so much more to this issue, like the centuries of abuse and mistreatment of Māori by the crown authorities, how this abuse is ongoing to Māori children and adults today in state care, how iwi voices are our last line of defence against environmental and ecological damage by industry, the unilateral natural of the treaty reparation settlement process... but this is why this protest was staged in parliament today.

(in fact, there is a much larger protest taking place nationwide, scheduled to arrive the day the bill was supposed to be introduced. the bill was in fact introduced a week earlier, in a move many suspect was done to prevent exactly this kind of protest.)

as far as I'm concerned though? I think te pāti Māori achieved exactly what they wanted by this protest. they forced the government to drop the mask of civility, and force the protestors out of the building. and they showed their supporters that their protests are working - they felt threatened enough by this that they lashed out, felt a need to retaliate by suspending hana-rawhiti maipi-clarke from the house for 24 hours. the coalition are getting nervous

[omgthatdress]

ily, menswear guy

[luntfontanne]

everything is truly so terrible but i just remembered doreen ketchens playing clarinet for her infant grandson and then i was kind of okay again for 36 seconds

[distinguishedbaloney]

[eilooxara]

Non cooking spray stick

[eilooxara]

Non spray stick cooking

[that-house]

Non cooking stick spray

[yeahokayillreblogthat]

yeah okay ill reblog that