No title available
No title available
Cookie Run:Kingdom Official!
hello vonnie
taylor price
izzy's playlists!
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
No title available
h
TMBGareOK. The Official They Might Be Giants tumblr
oozey mess
Jimmy Eat World
No title available
noise dept.
Interview Vampire Daily
Show & Tell
gracie abrams
ellievsbear
RMH
Sade Olutola
seen from Singapore
seen from Finland
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Pakistan
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from Singapore
seen from Italy
seen from Brazil
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Russia
seen from Kazakhstan
seen from United States
seen from Mexico
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Colombia
@moltensoultraveler
I wish more cdramas actually wrote male-female friendships that didn't end with one or both parties declaring long-hidden passionate romantic feelings towards the other. A little piece of me dies inside when a childhood best friend/sworn sibling pulls out the 'actually I've loved you all along' line.
today I saw a woman getting reposted by twitter. she was showing the audience her favourite shoes + her captions mentioned that she had recently been homeless and EVERY SINGLE reply and retweet was calling her fat, saying fat people don't deserve nice shoes/clothes, saying 'can't believe homeless ppl can get fat eww' and posting pig memes/comparisons. I did scroll through all of them because I was obsessively desperate to see at least one person calling people out on their bullshit and telling them to shut up. There wasn't a single one. genuinely disgusting site with one of the most populated 'meanspo'/'fatspo' communities i've ever seen
mainly seen this on other platforms but: truly sick and tired of people criticising Yanxi for making Wei Yingluo too overpowered
Wei Yingluo ISN'T in fact the best embroideress in the entire imperial palace. she is the best among the batch of teenage newbies that just entered the palace. The drama has explicitly explained this point to us. Even then Linglong is implied to be almost on par with her.
Wei Yingluo is heavily implied to have grown up in a difficult household with her sister being the only one advocating for her. It's pretty easy to think she's been conditioned to be very resourceful and perceptive.
Wei Yingluo is also pretty bad at a bunch of stuff AND suffers for it. For instance, she's actually pretty bad at appealing to people and getting them to do what she wants if they aren't either automatically intimidated into submission or innately endeared by her personality. She tried to shut Linglong up after Linglong almost got her killed by Consort Gao, Linglong very much did not stop wreaking havoc and eventually got Jixiang killed. She could not stop Jinxiu from bullying her: Jinxiu was obviously scared of her but still shit on her whenever she wanted and caused problems whenever she could. She could not stop Mingyu from getting in her way: Mingyu did not fear, respect, or like Yingluo and was obsessed putting Yingluo in her place. Yingluo could not do anything about it except wipe up Mingyu's messes until the millionth crisis FINALLY drilled it into Mingyu's skull that Yingluo isn't so bad after all and it'll be better if they work together. Yingluo could not do shit about Erqing running rampant over the Empress' palace after her marriage: yes she could slap and humiliate her but she couldn't stop Erqing from completely blindsiding Mingyu and ruining Rongyin's life. I could easily imagine someone like...idk...Shen Minglan? who's really good at persuasion and people management, to be better at these things than Yingluo.
hot (?) take: cdramas set in real or fictional historical periods have given me every reason to believe that a woman character would feel terrified and deeply uncomfortable at having their arm grabbed, or their door blocked by a random ass dude. And I don't just mean looking guarded and vulnerable in that moment, I mean I expect this woman to put a good few metres between her and the guy at every subsequent encounter and go to great lengths to avoid any future meeting with him alone until she realises that the guy either had good reasons to block her (i.e. safety reasons, not because he wants her to 'hear him out') or that he's realised how weird what he did was and expressed this to her (in the style of 'destined', for example). I definitely do not want to see cdrama writers treating this as a 'meet cute' or something that plants the seeds of their relationship in any positive way, yet the directing of those scenes makes it abundantly clear that this is the intention in many, many cases. I suppose if you're one of those dramas that knows it's about a toxic romance and revels in it, go for it lol but it pisses me off when the drama tries so hard to present someone as a cute wholesome dude who respects his partner/women in general but then writes him as a dominating freak in order to make him attractive
more awareness around abuse in immigrant families plz, especially asian ones. lets not normalize parents hitting someone with a slipper because they got bad grades or absolutely refusing their child any form of online communication because "it will distract them from their studies" or shaming their child's body and personality because "it'll embarrass us in front of ur relatives" etc. every time you see an unhealthy asian family relationship in the media where the 'loving' aunt tells the teenage girl to lose weight, that's fatshaming, not teasing. every time you see a jokey american 2000s sitcom where the token immigrant family feels no love and acts emotionless. thats abuse via neglect and a distant family relationship.
please please please know if you are the child of immigrants: you can be a good student. you can follow your culture. you are not shameful because of something like the dress you're wearing or whether you made your hair. it is abuse if your parents are implying these things are not true.
please do not normalize abuse in your culture. americans, do not normalize abuse in immigrant families (especially asian ones). don't. make it. acceptable. don't tell kids 'oh yeah thats how indians raise their kids lol' don't tell kids 'well yk the hispanic tradition' etc etc.
don't make abuse a tradition.
i've experienced/seen this shit in so many different ways that this just hits home in the worst way possible
I was talking to a couple of fellow east asian diaspora students in the uni hall the other day, and someone was complaining about their parents repeatedly calling them a 'fat pig'. Another kid says 'nah, asian elders are just blunt like that. they're doing it for your own good so you shouldn't be mad at them'.
A white classmate and I were talking about our family dynamics and he was pretty curious about my parents. I tried to explained the nuances of my parents' behaviour (they were strict on health-related things but genuinely dgaf about my results as long as I tried my best) and dude legit refused to believe that a chinese couple could be anything but a tiger mom/tiger dad lmao
I regularly come across social media shorts of kids misbehaving (or just doing toddler-things like crying or running around in crowded places) and there will be people in the comment joking about how their hispanic parents would send the child flying into the next room. And asian commenters will chime in and say 'yeah but my parents would have waited until we're at home to do it' as if these are good things. wtf. genuinely wtf are we doing
it's really weird to me how people say 'INDIAN bots' and 'INDIAN scam call centres' when their point/complaint could be made perfectly well just by saying 'bots' and 'scam call centres'.
Incredibly funny that Mina Harker thinks 'Van Helsing is impressed by me knowing train schedules randomly. No, actually, I know train schedules because Jonathan needs them sometimes' as if the latter makes it any less impressive.
I honestly think people read too much into Lucy's 'i wish I could marry 3 men' quote' when they attribute it to her 'promiscuousness', when there's every indication that she's just saying that because she felt bad for the other two, not because she wanted 3 in any romantic way.
Lucy rejected John and Quincey even before she knew Arthur will propose, simply because she only loved Arthur. Imo that line is just more material for the characterisation of her being incredibly kind and grateful to everyone around her, which is backed up by pretty much all of her passages. Sure that quote meant she's maybe quite a playful person but it really doesn't mean much when it's a one-liner whine in a letter to her best friend.
(Not that promiscuousness is a damning trait as certain adaptations seem to believe, btw)
It confuses me how often people dismiss Santos for feeling like she's being treated 'like a pariah' for getting Langdon out. Cos I can easily imagine what she's feeling.
Like she's literally an intern who's new to everybody, then the beloved ultra-competent senior got kicked out hours after he publicly humiliated her, and a couple of senior members in the office knows she's been poking around about suspicious stuff in the hours leading up to his dismissal enough to put two and two together. Why would she not worry?
(Also we probably should not act like Garcia is an expert to the layers of psychological trauma and denial that Santos has, when she straight up told Santos that she's happy to eat ramen and have sex with her but doesn't want to talk about anything serious. I don't suppose she's got much insight into what Santos' really thinking. Also it's pretty rich for her to act like Santos is delusional when she's the person who turned cold on Santos for telling her Langdon's behaving strange lol.)
Ruyi's last scene is really interesting. She fantasises about what life would be like if they weren't in the palace and thinks about how they would still be alive and well and kind and drinking tea together. She specifically mentions them by their birth name, stripped from their family name that binds them to their clans and the titles that binds them to the harem. But when it comes to Qianlong, she calls him 'huangshang' (the emperor) instead of Hongli.
That stood out to me, especially since Qianlong is the only person she ACTUALLY knew as Hongli. Like...she's never known the empress as Langhua or Consort Gao as Xiyue, but for more than a decade he was Hongli to her. anyway I don't really have theories for this, just something I thought was interesting
IMO The Princess Royal has a serious pacing issue. (Spoilers ahead)
The first quarter started off great: Li Rong and Pen Wenxuan got the 'figuring out we've both time travelled' thing done and dusted in no time, which is to be expected of 2 highly intelligent characters. After that they've got plenty to do, from relationship shenanigans, to helping Li Chuan with various things, and especially figuring out the characters and motives of various people.
Once Consort Rou took centre stage in the plot, everything really went downhill. Consort Rou functions best when she's a shit stirrer watching big players duel and finishing them off when they're both weakened by each other. When put into a position of power she quite literally doesn't know what to do with herself. Context clues tell us that she's basically climbed to such a high position by being an underdog and this might be THE first time she's invested with so much power. She's also alienated Su Rongqing, which is probably the only person (apart from the emperor himself) who has enough intelligence and status to counter the Li Rong/Pei Wenxuan/Shangguan Ya/Qin siblings power alliance that's backing Li Chuan.
So we're just watching a comparatively incompetent woman and her kids fumble as they're outsmarted by the main cast at every step, while the writers failed to add much to the plot: the Shangguans and Peis have well and truly given up on controlling the youngsters, the nobility (shijia) can't give two shits about the three of them refusing to fall into line because they've got bigger problems to worry about, namely Consort Rou snatching them out of their own manors and sentencing them to execution. Li Chuan's burgeoning existential crisis is given precisely 0 screentime because the writers (and probably Li Chuan himself) are more concerned with Consort Rou trying to murder him. Su Rongqing is the only serious threat, but we sidestep him at every turn because Consort Rou keeps sprinting forward and tanking Su Rongqing's traps due to her own stupidity.
After Consort Rou falls, things get fascinating. Consort Rou's monologue to the emperor single-handedly added so much depth to his character. The reveal of the actual details of Li Rong's first death adds so many layers to everything that's been going on, although the 'infodump' format left much to be desired. HOWEVER, we are now catapulting towards the finale with barely any time to address these things, since it would take decades for the consequences of decisions to materialise. Which brings us to the imperial coup, also known as period cdrama writer's miracle solution to all loose ends and nuance.
Cdramas stop peppering red flags onto your completely wholesome and sweet male lead challenge level: impossible
The Princess Royal is a fucking masterpiece that's ruined because the male lead inexplicably assaulted his wife on a boat.
Li Rong proceeded to absolutely flip out at him, much to my pleasure. At last there is a cdrama woman who does not simply 'melt' into a forced kiss/embrace.
Pei Wenxuan proceeded to bring up a WHOLE different incident to prove he found out that she cared for him all along. NO NO NO. Sir, one thing at a time, please! We can talk about her tendency to repress her emotions and the 12 different relationship issues you guys have AFTER we talk about the completely unwarranted assault! Writers stop derailing the consequences to his (bizarre) actions. To add insult to injury, this revelation ACTUALLY did shock Li Rong out of her anger. Pei Wenxuan proceeded to """"apologise"""" for violently pinning Li Rong down, claiming that he's mad at himself, not at her. Well, probably true, but THAT'S NOT HOW ANY OF IT WORKS, SIR!
(Not to mention, this is genuinely out of character in every way possible. Even at the end of their first life when their marriage was a sham and a shit show, bridge burnt so badly that Pei Wenxuan was Li Rong's first suspect for her murder, even THEN Pei Wenxuan didn't do much more than insult Li Rong and threaten her. Didn't get up close and personal, didn't grab her or pin her down or even shove her, didn't try to dominate her, none of that shit. So why the fuck is he behaving like this now?)
I'm seriously sick of cdrama writers pretending like they're 'feminist' in any sense while pulling bullshit like this. To these people, a good man is someone who is happy for his wife to be dominant in politics or even in their relationship, so long as she doesn't (god forbid) decides to leave him, upon which all bets are off. This used to be the shit that's reserved for second male/female leads turned villains, but apparently it's now considered a romantic trait in a man.
It doesn't give me much faith in the writer's ability to ...write healthy relationships, which was promptly proven right when Su Ronghua's gesture of love towards Shangguan Ya in their first life involves KIDNAPPING her and pretending to be a bandit who, and I quote, 'is not here for money, only for appearance/sex'. But it's supposed to be sweet because he released her and risked his life to give her a chance to escape when they ran into actual bandits? Writers stop making the sweetest men in your fictional story abuse/threaten abuse to the women they love for no reason? Please? Find better ways to entertain your audience?
Watching ep 1 of The Princess Royal is really interesting because Li Rong expected Pei Wenxuan to kill her, but Pei Wenxuan didn't expected Li Rong to kill him.
Li Rong's exact words could be translated as 'He really did kill me after all'. There's a sense of resignation to this instead of surprise. She had been waiting for him to make a move, maybe pleasantly surprised that it hadn't happened yet, but when it did happen she was unsurprised to be proven right. When Su Rongqing mentioned earlier that he would kill Pei Wenxuan if she dies, she didn't push back on it because in her mind, Pei Wenxuan would be the reason if she did die.
In contrast, Pei Wenxuan quite literally refused to believe that Li Rong tried to kill him until the assassin announced it to his face. He thinks Li Rong would at most try to scare him. This is why he threatened Li Rong at their last meeting but thought nothing of it because to him, actually killing each other wasn't even on the books.
Anyway, it'll be really interesting to see what caused their respective attitudes.
genuinely dwp1's paris arc would be so much more interesting if they found andy a proper alternative love interest that's not the rich creep who can't take no for an answer, flirts with her at every opportunity while she's dating someone else, kisses her after she tells him to find another girl, and on a different occasion kisses her after she tells him no she's too drunk without stopping to confirm whether she's just whining for fun or genuinely too out of it to consent.
like imagine if she met a person at paris who...i dunno, has nigel's personality but is attracted to women? doesn't seem too implausible given all the networking she got up to. NOW we can have an actual conversation on fashion, on devotion to your career, on what andy wants out of a relationship and out of life. we might even get an actual nuanced conversation about miranda and whether the culture of runway will really corrupt you, instead of 'lmao miranda really sucks amiright?' coming out of the mouth of a douchebag who spends his time exploiting the corporate power imbalance to chase after an industry rookie fresh out of university, in a relationship and at best only vaguely interested in him
as a chinese person who grew up in the west it's SO incredibly refreshing that joan's mother is portrayed not as someone who looks down on her new profession as a companion, but as someone who is genuinely concerned that joan did not see happy or fulfilled after seeing her drop out of medicine after all she went through.
I was expecting them run with the typical tiger mom stereotype. like 'haha you aren't working in finance/medicine/law so your asian mom thinks your life's a trainwreck. typical asian parents am i right?' and I'm so happy that they chose to go with something different and arguably more interesting.
One interesting thing about Ruyi is that, for someone who considers Qianlong her one true love, she doesn't seem super bothered by him liking other women. Like, provided that those women aren't destructive to her, him or any other innocents, she's pretty chill about it. Ruyi cares more about not failing other people than whether other people have failed her. This is the exact point she made to Hailan about the eldest prince.
Which is why Qianlong comparing her to Wei Yanwan was the final straw. Not only did Qianlong see her efforts to protect and support him as controlling, excessive and a sign that she changed, but he had also compared her to Yanwan, the maximally selfish woman who spent her life extracting from others instead of giving, which is exactly the opposite of who Ruyi is or wants to be.
Zhenhuan time travel fanfiction idea:
As the Empress Dowager to the deeply paranoid Qianlong emperor, Zhenhuan makes it a point to promptly nip any and all of Qianlong's insecurities and tension with her in the bud by being incredibly honest and unsubtle about his concerns. Despite this being an exhausting process, Zhenhuan spent her dowager years as a happy mother to Qianlong who remains a filial and loving son, never growing distant from her.
Towards the end of her life, Zhenhuan began to reminisce her days in Yongzheng's harem and grieves how An Lingrong's insecurity and suspicion of her and Meizhuang festered until Lingrong became vicious towards them and eventually died in pain. Like Qianlong, An Lingrong was plagued by insecurities and paranoid by nature but unlike in Qianlong's case, that had killed her relationship with Zhenhuan. Although it wasn't Zhenhuan fault, she is convinced that had she acted differently, been more attentive, more earnest, less subtle, tried everything she could, she might have been able to save Lingrong. Zhenhuan dies of old age and wakes up as her younger self on the day of the harem selection with the memories of her past life intact. Zhenhuan is determined to preserve her and Meizhuang's relationship with Lingrong through sheer force of will. The rest of the story is an exploration on whether Zhenhuan could change their history or whether Lingrong's personality and attitude meant that she is doomed to push away any genuine relationship no matter how hard Zhenhuan tries.
