Ares: This is Apollo. :D He made me want 10 more little brothers.
Ares: This is Hermes. He made me good with just two.
Ares: And this is Dionysus. He came out of -- fucking nowhere.
I saw the photo in my feed and went ohh, dude, no, we do not handle yellow rocks with our bare hands until we know for sure what they are. And I know that orange...
In comments, they continue:
and that's where I started cussing at the computer monitor. But someone else had got there first:
So just as a reminder, folks. If you don't know what it is, don't put it in your fucking mouth!
At Halloween last year, the tiniest little girl dressed as one of the Folk came to my door. There's an increasingly magnificent native beautyberry to one side of my stoop, with its marvelous electric purple berries served up in great tumbles, and she was transfixed by it. She got her candy, I complimented her costume, she started down the stairs, and then stopped, and turned back around.
Her: "Are those for-eating berries?"
Me: "Oh, you are so smart and clever for asking first! That is such a good idea, I'm so impressed! These are Callicarpa, called beautyberry, and they are edible. Usually they are for cooking, though, to make syrup or jam, and they're not very nice right off the bush. But they are a food berry, and you're so smart to ask!"
Her: "Can I...try one?"
Me: "If your mother says you may."
Her mother, from the walk: "Are you SURE, like, 100% sure. That those are food."
Me: "A hundred percent sure, ma'am. I could show you a couple of websites on them, if you want."
The Girl: *waits for her mother's nod, then gently reaches out and takes three very small berries and puts them into her mouth*
The Girl: *makes an inquisitive face as she chews, walking down the path toward her mother*
Me, turning back inside: "Husband, you should have seen this very smart little girl just now!"
I always assumed when ancient people were figuring out what was edible and what wasn’t, it was a really scary thing people were forced to do to survive. I didn’t realize this was a service that some people just feel instinctively driven to provide, even when there’s literally no reason to do it and almost every reason not to
when you’re a gay lion and you accidentally tried to introduce your lesbian lioness friend to one of her own exes at a gay bar and she goes into the bathroom and bitches you out for not being able to tell her endlessly rotating cast of girlfriends apart which isn’t really fair because first of all they all keep dyeing their hair different colors and second of all she keeps getting back together with different ones at different times and meanwhile you’ve been “single” for like 8 months but are spending a lot of time with one specific guy who works at your old co-op and were going to excitedly tell her about it tonight but now you’ve ruined the whole subject of dating by trying to introduce her to her own ex at a gay bar (which is a watering hole. because you’re lions.)
Like it does not matter how correct you are, or how beautiful your coherence of thought may be. If you're annoying, people will spend their time and energy elsewhere
i wish people would stop romanticizing not eating breakfast and not getting enough sleep and being dependent on coffee to function and always being in a bad mood and treating yourself poorly because that behavior is very unhealthy for you
everyone knows that elros’ father is eärendil. of course he is; a not-insignificant amount of elros’ political legitimacy in númenor comes from the descent from the three houses of the edain he can claim through eärendil. it’s eärendil’s name on the king list, eärendil who gets honoured during the festivals. ask elros who his father is, and he’ll answer ‘eärendil’
elros doesn’t talk that much his father, which is weird, because he’s an incredibly talkative guy. he’s got precisely three canned eärendil anecdotes he rolls out whenever someone asks about him, and that’s the most he’ll say in public. in private, though, among people he knows well, he’ll occasionally drop a reference or an off-the-cuff recollection into conversation, always in relation to some other topic. ‘my old man said this’ ‘you sound like my old man’ kind of thing
but if you, like, listen to what he’s saying, maybe collate some of his stories, the person he describes as his old man doesn’t sound much like eärendil. his old man was actually around for most of his childhood. his old man taught him everything he knows about horses. his old man was someone he can consciously imitate when he’s trying to be intimidating. his old man had specific and extremely arcane opinions about chord progression
when people try to follow up on this, elros without fail dodges the question. the closest he’s come to actually addressing the discrepancy is a somewhat wistful comment that sometimes you make do with what you have
There's nothing that makes a joke unfunnier than over-explaining it, but because of this post I feel obligated to explain why Quan Yizhen stuffing gold bars in Xie Lian's donation box is so funny from a Chinese reader's perspective.
Quan Yizhen & his gold bars happened at a time of the story full of tragic and tumultuous events. He Xuan just killed Shi Wudu and the entire heavenly court was reeling from his death. Soon after, Xie Lian uncovered Ling Wen's role in the Brocade Immortal fiasco. While everyone else was embroiled in these serious and momentous incidents, Quan Yizhen was on his equally important and serious side quest to stuff XL's donation box full of gold bars.
I think an important rule of comedy is that once the comedian shows that he is aware of himself being comical, once it becomes obvious that he's trying to make people laugh, the joke stops being as funny. A good comedy should be performed with serious and sincere intention. And that's why Quan Yizhen stuffing gold bars in XL's donation box is so funny - because he's so incredibly serious about it.
Quan Yizhen didn't just dump a whole sack of gold bars into the donation box - which would be the quickest and easiest way - he actually took the time to stack them up inside the box one by one (“一根一根地塞”, chapter 128). Actually he stacked the gold bars so neatly and tightly that they clogged up the donation box (chapter 133). So you see how seriously Quan Yizhen took this task; he showed the same amount of attention and dedication that a 10-year-old would show to his beloved lego toys. In chapter 128, when MXTX describes Quan Yizhen finishing up with the gold bars, she uses the verb 收工, which means clock out/finish a day's work. So again you see this is by no means frivolous for Quan Yizhen - this is actual important hard work for him!
I think it goes without saying that the situation is funny also because Quan Yizhen's so persistent about it. The heavenly court may have turned topsy turvy and everyone else may have very grown-up and life-and-death stuff to worry about, but Quan Yizhen will get these gold bars into Xie Lian's donation box (come to think of it he reminds me of the squirrel in Ice Age, they're both so locked in).
The second time XL caught Quan Yizhen in chapter 133 is especially funny to me first of all because of the timing. XL just had a tense confrontation with Ling Wen and brought her back to Puqi Shrine, and while the readers are holding their breath waiting for more startling details about the Brocade Immortal unveiled, we see XL opening the door to reveal Quan Yizhen squatting in front the donation box like a clumsy thief. The verb "squat" (蹲) is important here because like I explained in this other post, it's undignified and uncouth to squat; you wouldn't catch any other heaven official concerned with their personal image doing it. However, squatting in front of the box makes it easier for Quan Yizhen to stack the gold bars, which again shows how seriously he's taking this.
When MXTX describes Quan Yizhen stuffing the gold bars, she uses the phrase 鬼鬼祟祟, which means "sneakily" but with exclusively negative connotations, like when you describing a thief tiptoeing around to find stuff to steal. So it's funny that even though Quan Yizhen is doing something nice for XL, he has to do it in a very underhanded way (I honestly never expected to see 鬼鬼祟祟 in the same sentence as "putting gold bars in donation box", which made me burst out laughing when I first read it).
The whole situation is funny also because it's gold bars. There're pretty specific standards of gift-giving in Chinese culture, like certain gifts would show that you're cultured, sophisticated, and have good taste, but other gifts would show the opposite. For example, it'd very cool to gift someone a great calligrapher's calligraphy or a great artist's painting. It'd also be cool to gift someone stuff made from jade (jade has a lot of cultural significance attached to it and is seen as a noble gem). It'd even be cool to gift someone pearls because they have aesthetic value, and the kind that glows in the dark are especially prized. But gold bars have no cultural significance attached to it except crude, vulgar, obscene wealth. Therefore it's deeply uncool to gift someone gold bars to thank them, and the deep uncoolness is why it's so funny.
Anyway I think the overall characterisation of Quan Yizhen is just hillarious, from the cartoonish way he moves to his childlike speech patterns (he usually speaks in short, broken sentences). In chapter 133, when Quan Yizhen stole a melon from XL's backyard and slinked away with the melon in his mouth, the verb for "carrying something in one's mouth" is 叼, which is usually used on animals, like a dog carrying a bone or a cat carrying its kitten. So my mental image of Quan Yizhen is literally this:
(tagging @ghooostbaby because you said you were interested :))
you have permission to pick that 2 year old "abandoned" project back up. it's not mad at you for setting it aside. and maybe time and distance have helped ease or erase the things that made you put it down in the first place.
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