#Complete My Assignment

[grrlboy-w1zard]

Coursework TMA thingy ! ! !

(Edit:cleaned it up a bit, previous version under the cut)

[kokokoula]

when it comes to you, tsukishima finds himself being protective of you without even trying.

he hears your worries about the same friend for maybe the hundredth time, about how they got mad at you for something incredibly harmless and for you being you. he rolls his eyes at your friend's overbearing insecurity and their lack of taste in people as he seemingly reads his book. he had suggested you find a better friend, but you insist they make you happy. he scoffs at that. he himself already makes you happy, why would you need someone else who can't even give you half the joy he does? he doesn't say that though, instead he insists in turn that he comes along with you the next time you two meet. he can already imagine yamaguchi surprised at him for volunteering to go to a social gathering.

"you won't scare them off?" you make him promise and as much as he wants to make them feel sorry for ever hurting you, he sighs and promises. on that day, he stands right behind you, keeping an eye out for every single interaction you have with your friend. you introduce kei, and his looming expression doesn't change. he sees their uncomfortable smile and avoiding of his gaze, and couldn't help but smirk. you nudge him with your elbow, and tsukishima ruffles your hair. "don't worry, pipsqueak." he says, keeping his voice low.

tsukishima isn't a fan of any sort of pda, but throughout the entire time, he makes sure to have some sort of physical contact with you. it could be an arm around your shoulders, or just rubbing soothing circles on the back of your hand. the last thing he wants is you feeling anxious about your friend, despite you assuring him you were perfectly ok. you know of his well intentions, and at the end of the day when your friend has left, you treat him to strawberry shortcake.

"what's this?" he asks as he digs his fork into the cake. you intertwine your fingers with his free hand.

"just for you being, well, you." you grin and he melts like he always do when you smile at him. he gives you the first bite.

"you're gonna be the death of me, love."

[greyphilosopher]

Peace of mind

...

I thought Hollow could use some outside time.

[martyryo]

something something the ways of the miracle

[alyssaweewee]

them as cats

[cherylblossom]

#Book!Lucy Gray singing 'Pure As The Driven Snow' AFTER Coriolanus kills Mayfair Lipp

“I know you killed Mayfair to protect me. Me and the rest of the Covey.” She rested her forehead on his chest. “I'll never be able to thank you for that.” He stroked her hair. “Well, she's gone for good now. You're safe.”

[aniisol]

ren "i'll be rid of the evil in his heart" dog versus martyn "i can't be evil if i'm dead" inthelittlewood

[tetrangel]

25ji ship week day 7! getting some well-deserved rest 🎼❄️🎨🎀

[mtsodie]

Show me the pathetic wet man (Kallamar), pretty please? 🥺

the slayer

[baeshijima]

thinking abt big cat mydei who loves to simply lay on you, wrapping his arms around your torso with his head either nestled in the crook of your neck or atop your chest to feel the rhythmic beats of your heart.

he loves the proximity between you, almost melding into one another if he believed hard enough, but what he adores even more is when you play with his hair, your nails lightly scratching his scalp or braiding his hair as he doesn’t even try to fight the sleep which pervades him in moments such as these.

[likesdoodling]

A day in the life of taking care of hyperactive elflings~

[starrytoya]

seeing people be proud of being so overly dependent on chatgpt genuinely fucks me up because... the whole point of being human is to think for oneself, to enjoy creating and to have original thoughts. why would you be proud to outsource the one thing that ties us to our ancestors generations ago? why would you be proud to use something that causes so much ethical and environmental harm? are we collectively losing the things that make us human?

[elodieunderglass]

Do you have more Moby Dick: Modern Translation chapters anywhere that certain interested parties (me and everyone with taste) could read?

In reference to this translation of Moby Dick into insufferable modern idiom, in which Ishmael is suddenly shown up in a startling light as a person we’ve actually met and knew well but didn’t really like:

I’m sorry, I haven’t written any more of that! After chapter 1’s mad rush of energy, the book tackles more tricky, boring and unfunny content, including passages that are just uncomfortably problematic in any time; and, like, entire chapters about listening to a church sermon.

A line translation (and that is mostly a very faithful line translation! The only thing I regret not doing was perfectly capturing the fart joke!) apparently has a lot of educational value, and helps to reframe the whole novel. That’s worthy work! But i simply wouldn’t want to do a line translation on the next few chapters. My brain is picking daisies instead, already. I would say: “sorry, I’m abridging this for my own mental health. You’re eligible for a free refund.” In which case the educational value is negligible (you can just read the plot summary online. There’s a really big whale in it.)

Anyone else who wants to take a stab at it (FROM HELL’S HEART) would be welcome and I’ll gladly promote your efforts. It’s just. I am going

🌼-🌼-🌼-🌼-🌼-🌼-🌼

- come here let me measure your head

[horrendousmustard]

HELLO!!!!!! I am officially opening commissions for the first time ever! If you have ever wanted a custom piece from me, a realistic artwork of your niche fave/OC or just want to support a young artist, please contact me through my new website at https://artistree.io/horrendousmustard! I am most familiar with translating anime characters into a realistic style using coloured pencils.

I will draw:

portraits

humans and humanoids

ocs

mild gore

simple and semi-detailed backgrounds

I will not draw:

mechas & complex vehicles

nudity and nsfw

extreme gore

kisses

fetishes

complex perspective without a provided reference

☆ If you think your idea doesn’t fit in with the examples on my website or my guidelines, please dm me to discuss your commission! I will try to make things work, but I will need to pass if I think the idea is beyond my skill level or makes me uncomfortable. Please be patient with me if I cannot complete your commission quickly as I am managing this on top of school. If you are paying for an OC without a visual reference or a character with a cartoony art style, I may need to ask some questions about the character’s features or headcanons you may have for their appearance.

Commissions has been something I wanted to do for a long time so I’m very excited to finally have it up and running!!!! Please treat me well 🙏

[withthewindinherfootsteps]

Wei Wuxian and Narrative Agency – Part One

For Xiantober Day One: Genius… albeit stretching the prompt so it refers to MXTX and MDZS itself, but at the end of the day it’s still about WWX – so no harm done!

(Part Two | Part Three | Full version on AO3)

The narrative is a very active player in MDZS’ story. How it presents information, what it chooses to show and omit, often reflects important facets of its themes and characters – Nie Huaisang, for instance, is so good at hiding behind his mask that not even the narrative can hold him accountable; the present day’s storyline as a murder mystery and the slow reveal of information about the past both prompt the reader to think critically about the truth of events, when the importance of thinking critically is an important theme; and the dangers not thinking critically (and instead basing conclusions on rumours without much evidence) are shown by tricking unquestioning readers into the very same trap the cultivation world falls into, as the information given by the title, summary and in-universe rumours – which contradicts how we see actually Wei Wuxian act – turns out to be false.

But nowhere do I love this trait more than in its treatment of Wei Wuxian – and, more specifically, in its way of emphasising his agency. We’re not just told how much his active choices define his character, and we’re not just shown this in-universe through his personality, worldview and the events he causes. I’d argue that this aspect goes a step further, and shapes the structure of the out-of-universe narrative as well.

There are two main ways this happens: one, in how the aspects of Wei Wuxian’s life that are shown and hidden directly tell us what’s important about his character (which is good writing but isn’t necessarily tied to this shaping of the narrative), which is what we’ll explore today; and two, how what’s shown and hidden reflects what Wei Wuxian himself prefers to dwell on, resulting in the narrative respecting his own thoughts and feelings on matters (which very much is tied to it). We’ll explore this at a later date.

But as for now – let’s explore my favourite aspect of MDZS.

(Here, narrative agency will be considered the ability of a character to meaningfully influence their events and the story they’re in.)

Tragedy, Circumstance, Choice

If we simply look at Wei Wuxian’s backstory in a vacuum, it seems almost typically tragic. His  parents died in circumstances beyond his control, he was left alone as a child with nobody to care for him, he was forced to grow up fending for himself on the streets, he was faced with abuse when he finally was taken in… as with all typical woobies, everything simply happened to him, and none of it was good. It’s just another example of the lack of agency being used for sympathy points, right?

…Except there’s one problem with that idea. We don’t actually see any of this.

It would’ve been easy to start the flashbacks during these times. We’re telling the story of Wei Wuxian in (largely) chronological order, and these are likely important experiences for him! But instead of starting in his street days, or evenat the moment Jiang Fengmian took him in*, we start at the lectures in the Cloud Recesses. That’s not even something mentioned in, and therefore something that’s able to disprove, the rumours at the start of the novel. So why is this the case? 

Well, there are multiple reasons – the main one being that MDZS is also Lan Wangji’s (and Wangxian’s) story, and having the flashbacks open with their first meeting is very satisfying. But I want to focus on something else.

This period doesn’t have to be shown, because what happens to Wei Wuxian, especially out of his control, isn’t what’s important about his character.

We’re not even at Lotus Pier here, where Wei Wuxian certainly has more agency than he would’ve had as a young child, but where the harm caused by Madame Yu is still completely out of his control. Here, he has agency! Though there are consequences, he is free to act, and what happens to him is a result of those actions and not of circumstance. Yes, he gets punished more than others who also take those same actions (due to classism); yes, it’s not his choice to be picked on by Lan Qiren in class (yet look how he responds, twisting the situation to his advantage and ending up tricking Lan Qiren into letting him leave, which is what he wanted to do. He is not at all helpless here!); yes, these choices have been influenced by his learned mindset from Madame Yu that punishment is arbitrary and will happen anyway, so you may as well do what you want regardless. But there is cause-and-effect here. It’s not circumstantial tragedy.

Therefore, instead of our first impression of past!Wei Wuxian being that of an unfortunate woobie, it’s of someone who has the freedom, ability and will to choose and act (and that’s after these initial tragic events have taken place). This is compounded by the fact that before we see any of his backstory, we get a similar impression of him in the present day.

If the purpose of his tragic past was to earn him sympathy points, to make us pity him due to how much he was influenced by events out of his control, this would’ve been a terrible way of going about it… and it’s this that betrays the true reason for its existence. Because now, the flashbacks instead show us how little these tragedies define who he is! From the very start, Wei Wuxian isn’t someone defined by circumstances out of his control, but rather by who he is as a person and by what choices he makes in the present day (which is both a mindset in-universe, and a nice little out-of-universe detail that lines up! Because out-of-universe, this means he’s not defined by sympathy points from a backstory, but rather by his great character writing… aka, by who he is as a person and what choices he makes). And this refusal to be defined by tragedy is a conscious choice on his part, too – but we’ll explore that more later. 

The important thing is that this idea of Wei Wuxian isn’t because of what exists in his past, it’s because of what parts of his past are shown to us (as well as what he chooses to do, with agency, in the present). 

Now, if this relationship between what’s displayed and what’s omitted was just a one-time thing, I might’ve considered it a cool detail or a nice way to establish a character, but not something the narrative is actively focusing on. But it’s a pattern that continues throughout the flashbacks. What, arguably, are the two other most important times in Wei Wuxian’s life where he doesn’t have enough agency to meaningfully influence his circumstances? His three months in the Burial Mounds (before escaping – he managed to assume some control of the circumstances but not enough to substantially reduce his suffering in his time there), and his loss and death during the First Siege. And we’re not shown either of them! We skip to when Wei Wuxian has emerged from the Burial Mounds and is torturing the Wens, or we skip to the present day – both times he has agency once more, because, again, what he’s like without it doesn’t matter enough to be shown. 

Furthermore, I’d argue this does actually contrast the other tragic events we see in Wei Wuxian’s later life. Things do go horribly wrong, but it’s either due to choices he knows the consequences of (see: rescuing the Wen Remnants in the first place), or instances where he still has some ability to act in the situation and influence it within the limitations. If he’d had no ability to influence circumstances at Qiongqi path, he would have died in the ambush; if he’d been unable to do that at Nightless City, he would’ve died then, too (of course Lan Wangji helped him escape as well). The attention drawn to him losing control of his actions in both instances is very interesting, but intentional or not, it’s still his actions influencing the plot. And that influence happens to be detrimental. The very ability to act and influence, at a base level,  is not taken away (though, of course, that doesn’t make these events any less tragic).

So, so far, the narrative seems to be telling us that the ability to act and choose is key to Wei Wuxian’s character. And it’s doing it through omitting his moments without agency in favour of instead showing us his moments with it. 

Let’s see if this is echoed in the text itself before we go further – because even with this pattern, nothing would end up mattering if Wei Wuxian’s agency wasn’t actually that important to the story itself. But thankfully it is, and that first impression we get of Wei Wuxian in the Cloud Recesses turns out to very much be accurate! Though there are defining circumstances out of his control that occur, such as the massacre of Lotus Pier, the majority of the important events of his life are due to his own choices. He didn’t happen to be forced to cease traditional cultivation and solely use guidao, didn’t happen to lose his Golden Core in a fight with Wen Zhuliu or due to some force in the Burial Mounds, it was his own choice to give it and his spiritual powers away. He didn’t tragically happen to get targeted by the cultivation world, it was a result of him acting on his morals and protecting the Wen remnants (a choice which he was fully aware of the implications of). He isn’t a protagonist to whom things simply occur, and that activeness and agency is my favourite thing about him. 

That’s not to say that the times Wei Wuxian doesn’t have agency, or feels like he doesn’t have any, don’t exist at all, either – but they are rare enough to have attention directly drawn to them in his internal narration:

Or else what could he do? He could do nothing. He was powerless. Lotus Pier had been destroyed, both Jiang FengMian and Madam Yu were gone, and Jiang Cheng had disappeared as well. He was the only one left, alone, with not even a sword in his hands. He didn’t know anything, he couldn’t do anything! For the first time, he discovered how little his power was. In front of something as large as the QishanWen Sect, it was the same as a mantis trying to stop a chariot. - Chapter 59, EXR translation

(And even in this circumstance, note that he still does force himself to act – to carry on searching for Jiang Cheng, to place his faith in Wen Ning – and does accomplish his goal (albeit with the help of others)! So even in dire situations, he isn’t simply passive. This is actually also the case with his time in the Burial Mounds, almost certainly the First Siege, and even his days on the streets as well (Chapter 20: he did actively fight with dogs to get food despite their danger and his growing fear of them, rather than just waiting and hoping to somehow receive some more). He can’t influence or immediately influence his circumstances, but that doesn’t stop him from trying.)

Overall, although they do influence him, Wei Wuxian is very much who he is in spite of his circumstances, not because of them. We’re shown the importance of his agency both in-universe by the major impacts his choices have on himself and the plot, as well as by narrative presentation – important periods where he lacks the ability to meaningfully influence anything are often mentioned but not directly shown, which suggests that such moments and circumstances aren’t as important to understanding Wei Wuxian’s character as moments where he does have this agency are. And I’d argue this works very well. Depending on the version of the story you consume, you may end up having different interpretations as to how much circumstances were at play nearer the end of his life – but nobody comes out of MDZS thinking about Wei Wuxian, the poor bearer of yet another generically tragic backstory.

(Part Two | Part Three | Full version on AO3)

—

*We are shown this moment in more detail in Chapter 23… but even then, it’s through the framing of Wei Wuxian remembering Jiang Yanli’s narration, not through a flashback proper or even him remembering the experience itself!

[tiniest-headcrab-art]

School work (ewwwwwwww. to school not my work, I like this art actually)

My current wip👍

The one om the right isn't actually complete, I gotta add some minute details but who gives a fuck bro

Concepts of this one and the final version! I was pretty inspired by Lain here

Anyways some sketchbook pages under more