#Mellow asks

[toasted-melow]

Art idea: Eddie and Frank playing a video game together

Ohh yeaaah!! The husbands might play some video games at the summer nights

I think frank is having way fun than Eddie 🤭✨️

[mellowcremepuff]

guzma told me he loves you!!! :O

EEEEE 😭 thank you so much omg 😭

[barblaz-arts]

Thanks for the charlie x vaggie art bc I had no clue what to watch after i finished the show i got the amazon prime video free trial (The Power if you care) for but now i have this and they are precious!

Glad you liked it! They are absolutely adorable. Have you watched the pilot on YouTube too? It isn't necessarily canon anymore but you might wanna see it for more of the gals

[secretmellowblog]

One thing I feel people almost always overlook about Javert is that:

The book’s narrator is usually harsh/sarcastic towards Javert, and that harshness is why his character has pathos. Javert is able to be sympathetic because Victor Hugo has basically no respect for his beliefs. Javert is so pitiable because Hugo mocks and drags him on basically every page he appears.

I’ve mentioned before that the message of Les Mis is (paraphrasing) that ACAB— Javert is the best police officer it is possible to be, and he is terrible, because the laws he enforces are terrible. His law & order ideology is terrible. Everything he believes is fundamentally wrong, and so deeply wrong that it deserves no respect.

Yes, Hugo acknowledges that Javert occasionally has a misguided kind of nobility— the nobility of holding yourself honestly to a set of bad rules, the nobility of following a terrible moral code even when it hurts you. But Hugo has no respect for Javert’s bigotry, or his bootlicking, or his deranged obsessive worship of law and order. Hugo portrays the way that Javert martyrs himself for his ideology as strangely honorable— but the ideology itself is mocked and condemned. Hugo thinks martyrdom is cool, but that Javert is martyring himself for a terrible cause.

In his most sympathetic moments, Javert’s worldview is portrayed as pitiable…. not a worldview that’s worthy of true total genuine respect, but a worldview that’s deeply pathetic in its wrongness.

Without himself suspecting the fact, Javert in his formidable happiness was to be pitied, as is every ignorant man who triumphs.

This is part of why those old 2012-era les mis fanfics always threw me off, if anyone remembers the fandom trends at the time. XD People used to write Valjean and pre-barricades Javert having political debates, as if the two of them could make arguments about law that were equally valid and worthy of respect, and pre-barricades Javert had a worthwhile set of beliefs that Valjean could learn from. But to me it’s personally kinda like, no XD. Nah. The whole thing about pre-barricades Javert is that he does not have any valid points to make. He has nothing resembling a point. He is “ignorant” and determined to stay that way because he literally believes that thinking is evil. He is a violent authoritarian whose worldview is just “mindless self-destructive bootlicking and bigotry.” I joked about it in a previous post but if we want a character who offers a genuinely meaningful counterpoint to Valjean’s philosophy, who could debate him on politics, and who could represent justice while Valjean represents mercy— that character is Enjolras, not Javert.

Valjean has a fascinating complicated relationship with law and politics and violence, but Javert is just a deeply pitiable brainwashed creature who martyrs himself for Wrong things.

Hugo pities Javert, but he does not treat Javert’s worldview --‘authority is always right, rigid social hierarchies must always be enforced, human life has no intrinsic value, the police must violently suppress any kind of crime or rebellion’— as something that deserves to be genuinely respected. It is not something that’s even worthy of debate. It is wrong, it is nonsense, it is an incoherent cruel self-contradicting ideology, and Javert only believes it because (to quote Hugo’s sarcastic narration) “thought was something to which he was unused.” (Or to be more charitable, Javert believes these terrible things because he was born inside a prison and has been brainwashed from birth into internalizing a cruel carceral view of the world.)

And I think Hugo generally does a good job of walking that tightrope — having pity for Javert without portraying Javert’s ideology as something worthy of genuine admiration. He sympathizes with how rigidly Javert holds himself to his own moral code, while condemning the moral code itself for being idiotic. He has empathy with Javert’s sincere self-destructive dedication to what he believes in, while pointing out the things he believes in are all stupid. He pities Javert’s martyrdom, while condemning the nonsense that Javert martyrs himself for.

One of my Top Ten Favorite Pathetic Javert Moments is this one, when Javert recognizes Marius’s body after the barricades:

A spy of the first quality, who had observed everything, listened to everything, and taken in everything, even when he thought that he was to die; who had played the spy even in his agony, and who, with his elbows leaning on the first step of the sepulchre, had taken notes.

Because Javert martyrs himself so earnestly for this terrible cause! He “takes notes” even when he believes he’s going to die and the notes cannot possibly be of any use to anyone, simply because taking notes is the thing he has been ordered to do. He’s so self-destructively dedicated to performing these useless pointless tasks because he believes there is real ~dignity~ to his mindless bootlicking— when there isn’t.

That’s why Javert’s emotional breakdown and suicide hit so hard for me, in a way that it wouldn’t if the narration was forgiving towards his stupid belief system. The contrast between Javert’s sheer pathetic terror and the often harsh/sarcastic narration is just….wild. It makes Javert sympathetic without making his awful ideology seem good, reasonable, or valuable. (And while this is only adjacent to the point I’m making- the harsh narration in Derailed also emphasizes the way Javert has been trained to view his own thoughts/emotions with contempt.) Javert is deeply pitiable/sympathetic without his ideology being framed as correct. And the whole tragedy of his character comes from the fact that he is utterly entirely wrong.

If I were to summarize the pathos of Javert, I wouldn’t say “he’s sympathetic because he’s a noble anti-hero with good strong morals who makes some valuable points about the importance of law” or w/e. I’d say that you can feel sorry for him because he’s a wretched brainwashed creature who’s never done anything right even though he wants to, and is deeply ridiculously pathetic without ever realizing it.

As Hugo puts it: “without himself suspecting the fact, Javert (…) was to be pitied.”

[mamoonde]

i really really really love the idea of wei wuxian revolutionizing modern cultivation over breakfast and conceptualizing these different theories simultaneously because the adhd brain has no brakes and the only reason it took him a decade to publish all these ideas was because he could not stick to a single train of thought long enough to finish (verbalizing) it, let alone put it down on paper coherently.

the only reason he even got to publishing them eventually (and enrolling to cultivation theory grad program to get on that track) was because one morning, his undergrad thesis advisor, lan qiren, finally got fed up and sat him down for an early morning progress check-in because it was midterm season and wei wuxian still hadn't decided on a topic.

wei wuxian, fueled by an unhealthy amount of redbull and three all-nighters, finally word vomits all his 'convoluted' ideas which he'd thought were uselessly obvious and redundant (because he's gone over these like a bajillion times, it's very plain-as-day to him, so he probably just hasn't read the articles that say these exact things).

lan qiren, teacup frozen halfway to his mouth: ...first of all, i only understood half of how you got to these conclusions, which only means they are indeed too convoluted and will need to be pared down; secondly: you have never mentioned any of these ideas before. why.

wei wuxian: oh. haven't i? oh well, i just thought, xyz, because, obviously, abcde. which is really what the 2 centuries old law on ghjkl was alluding to, right? and so, logically, xyz.

lan qiren: [mind blown, screaming, good gods this is the same child who's always tardy and spent freshman year pulling on the metaphorical pigtails of my straight-laced nephew?!?!??!??!?!] ..again, why...how have you never even spoken or submitted these ideas?

wei wuxian: because!!! they're so obvious!! surely, it's been published somewhere already? i can't be the only one to connect these dots, surely??

lan qiren: incredibly, you are. no one else has even thought to question tradition nor pursued more thoughts on the law of ghjkl, with half as much...sound arguments as you seem to have. in the past century, the focus of modern cultivation has tended towards practical uses and tools, some fine-tuning, perhaps. not entirely new theories.

wei wuxian: huh....

lan qiren, sighing, feeling a migraine: your problem with your thesis is not a lack of focus or ingenuity, but likely to be more a lack of recent, evidentiary sources. you will need to become very familiar with the university archives and dig deep for sources that will back up every argument you make.

he jots down notes on a paper. "you will also need to strictly adhere to the structure and methodology of these articles, especially given how radical your thesis will be. if you are diligent enough, you may just be able to submit your thesis without too much of a delay." he slides the list of materials to a gaping wei wuxian. "depending on your output then, we can discuss the possibility of submitting this for peer review."

"peer review." wei wuxian repeats. "as in, that thing where some uppity committee of old coots put their stamp of approval for it to become the reading materials of undergrads like me. you're joking."

lan qiren chooses to ignore the sentiment about peer review committees being uppity old coots, especially considering how he can't completely deny it on account of some of his colleagues, but also as a member said peer review committee, he isn't exactly pleased about being lumped in the same category.

wei wuxian backtracks at his unamused look. "right, you're not joking, of course you're not." he slowly inches the list towards himself. "right, yes, i guess i'll uh, get to it then. ok bye."

----

idk, just, waves hand at wei wuxian candidly explaining new modern cultivation theories over cheerios at 2 in the afternoon to lwj who's trying to help him structure his grad thesis, getting mind blow dick hard at how this messy genius who's talking with his mouth full of half eaten cereal is the object of his affection....

wwx: --oh, oops, your highlighter fell

lwj: mn

wwx: ...aren't you gonna get that?

lwj: it's fine; i'll pick it up later. finish your thought.

wwx: right... i'll pick it up for you!

lwj, fighting for his life, trying to think unsexy thoughts: NO! sit. finish your meal, and then your thought.

[starflungwaddledee]

Song quiery/request: Starstruck and Meta? o:

starstruck and meta knight (gen... ish?) ; liar by the Arcadian Wild

i sense deception to come, honestly, truth and i are never one coz i am the lying man, and i have made you my next victim oh, i need you to see through my act, to tell me i'm wrong, to take off the mask or else i'll be left in the lie, and i'll deceive my way straight to demise

[seaglassdinosaur]

Grover talking about Ares’ wars like they’re the niche indi-albums of a popular artist is everything to me.

[pepperpixel]

More powerpuff girls art!! I actually drew all of these probably at least a month ago? But I just kept getting sidetracked and never got around to finishing em up and posting em. Here they are now tho!

[allyheart707]

Hi I would love to see more of Mellow and Gram! (I forgot the human’s name)

They are all SO COOL and I wish to see more/hear more if you have anymore lore for them!!

(If you don’t want to you don’t have to!!)

I hope you have a nice day! ^-^

Work doodles!! Thank you for the ask and OMG YES! I would love to draw more with them- tbh I just thought nobody would be intrested!! Hehe I had some ideas for a few short comics, I may make them sometime soon. Idk depends on how much time Little Subjects takes up XP

[bruciemilf]

based upon how you see teen!bruce: jason always wondered why alfred and bruce treated his Worse Moments (unnecessary violence, penchant for murder, etc) like teenage rebellion. like it sucked and made him feel small (and angrier) but he also often just wondered why?? why not take him seriously??

he takes one look at teenage bruce (perpetual glare and charming smile, bruised knuckles, probably a split lip) and hears bruce proudly recounting the “latest” fights he won after asking about and thinks, “ah, that’s why.” he asks alfred about it, if he’s already used to murderous teen boy shenanigans and alfred just smiles and gives him a cup of tea and says, “it a family tradition, young sir.”

(dick overhears this. as jason is crying quietly about being Just Like His Dad, dick has the panicked realisation that fuck, damian’s gonna get so much worse, isn’t he??)

BESTIE PLEASE SJJSJS no because i understand the wattpad girlies. Bruce as a suave, hurt inside and silver gold outside loner who behaves like he's straight out of a Neil Gaiman book? Sign me up.

Alfred tells Jason his murderous tendencies are 10x more toelratable than the parties teen Bruce used to throw. Great Gatsby style but make it trashy. Rue from Euphoria but make it Tim Burton.

And Bruce himself is lenient because, honestly? He knows he was an absolute scoundrel as a kid. He liked to drink fast and forget quicker. He liked bleeding fists and mean words and rare, kind words to normal people.

He liked champagne in broken glasses and feeding birds with Alfred after a hangover. He stole Harvey's girlfriend because " You just don't look good next to her, Harv" (because Harvey was too soft and too shy and too good natured to be a walking wallet) and he lost too much too early. He bribed teachers for grades he could earn just to prove a point.

If you were a classmate of his and he caught you being mean to the lunch lady or other kids your family is banned from every high class restaurant in town. Teen Bruce was aware he had privilege and power and weaponized it, and I like to think that's why adult Bruce chooses to stay retreated from the public (think Battinson)

Your honor he was like this

[seirindono]

Hey Mel was your nickname Malicious or something and you decided to make your name Mel in your world

Mel: Malicious... But why?

Just call her Mel, she'll get flustered otherwise ( ´ ▿ ` )

[toasted-melow]

Hope I’m not bothering but I would like to politely request some poly content (Eddie/Frank/Howdy) pls

Only if you want to ofc

awwwwww!!! Yes yes yesss I love them poly ship sooooo much !!!! 😔🤌💖💖

They're super cutie boyyysss ahhhhh 🥺🤲💖

[mellowcremepuff]

You’re a really nice and sweet person and your f/o loves you so much ♥️ I hope you can rest and have a good sleep! You deserve it!

This means so so much to me, you have no idea.

Thank you so much Anon 🩷🩷!!

[loupy-mongoose]

Hurry! Get Jamie some donuts!

Sorry, I'm not ready to share her first donut experience yet.

[astrum-aetherium]

i just want him to fall asleep on me like babyboy let me hold you.

i cherish this idea greatly, as he deserves some proper rest. i feel like your embrace would offer him the most comfort, wherefore he would feel comfortable enough to simply doze off leant against you, or with his head in your lap, or ensnared in your arms.

however, he would need to feel subdued enough to not worry about his studies or his personal ailments which he is normally kept awake by — i'd say it'd be in the framework of him having suffered or still being in the middle of suffering through a paralyzing headache, mellowed by medication and alcohol. he would have to be exhausted, too, to simply yield control like that and fall asleep on you. an added inviting factor could be you raking his scalp with your fingers, caressing his head, messing with his hair a little.

once he has passed out, you'd let yourself wrap your arms around him and thereby hold him even tighter, more tenderly — to establish maximized comfort even in his unconscious state. here, i'm drawing a rather indulgent image in my head, him slotted so gently in your grasp: like my beloved, wonderful, and unimaginably poetic lana del rey once said, "put the tv on, flowers in a vase, lie your head."

as a visual example of this sweet scenario, i'm attaching a pinterest image that i've loved passionately ever since i discovered it. find it under the cut.

[elitadream]

Oh! Speaking of Toadsworth, how would he react once he found out about Kamek almost kidnapping Peach in Sing For Absolution?

That's another question @drones-of-innocence would probably answer much better than I! ^-^ But one way or another, he would be absolutely appalled that such a thing happened. 😨😥

I imagine him spotting the Captain of the Guard while on his early routine walk the next morning, and noting how frazzled he looks. As soon as he would hear the news- ("A fight has occurred in the Princess' chambers, Sir! The evil wizard Kamek has infiltrated the castle while the Kingdom was alseep. It appears he was aiming to cast a dark spell on Her Majesty." / "Thank the stars, mister Mario was able to intervene in time and neutralize the threat! Kamek has since been removed from the perimeter and is currently being detained." / "The Princess is physically unharmed, but she may need time to emotionally recover from the ordeal.") - he would hurry towards Peach's private quarters as fast as his feet can carry him. He would find the Princess quietly sitting in her bed, looking at the empty space next to her, alone and seemingly lost in thought. Appearing strangely calm and contemplative amidst the chaos left in her own room.

"My child! Are you alright?"

He would take her hands in his, fretting and lamenting about what happened, but to his surprise, Peach would seem... distracted. As if something else entirely was occupying her mind.

"I'm fine, Toadsworth. No need to worry about me," she would assure him softly, her gaze however drifting back to the covers. Letting his own eyes wander, the old toad would eventually see the red smears staining her carpet, near her shattered mirror and destroyed vanity.

"Goodness," he would breathe, recoiling in horror. "Is that..."

Beside him, Peach would lower her head with a trembling sigh, curling in on herself.

"He got hurt," she would mutter, waveringly. "And it's all my fault."

Suddenly remembering that the Guard mentioned Mario, Toadsworth would hum and sit beside her, patting her arm comfortingly.

"Do you want to talk about it?" He would venture, offering her his handkerchief.

And so, she would recount her night to him. Telling him all that happened, from the moment she abruptly awoke to the moment she fell back asleep.

"I asked him to stay, and he did," she would murmur, with a touch of wonder. "Even before Kamek arrived, he could sense that I was in danger. And he protected me. Risked his life for me, again. How could I ever repay him?"

"Oh, I believe merely knowing that you are safe is all he needs or wants," Toasworth would answer, giving her a kind and knowing smile. "It's something he and I have in common."

Peach would lean a bit against him, letting out a fragile and thoughtful sound. "He is so good to me, Toadsworth. Always has been. I don't deserve a friend like him."

"A 'friend', you say?" Toadsworth would echo teasingly, earning him a tiny giggle. Peach would otherwise remain silent at his playful inquiry, and the old toad would nod sagely to himself at his daughter's reaction.

"I shall arrange something special for him. As a thanking gesture," he would promise. "Is there something that you know he likes?"

Peach would fiddle absentmindedly with the handkerchief, a faint blush coloring her cheeks.

"He... He likes spending time with me. He told me so himself, once," she would say, her voice taking on a dreamy quality.

Toadsworth would grin widely under his bushy mustache, his beady eyes twinkling with delight.

"Then it's settled! I shall prepare a nice retreat for you two to enjoy and send him the invitation myself. In the meantime, let's get you away from this dreadful mess and have another room temporarily accomodated for you. Would you like some tea?"

"Oh yes, please," she would respond, following his lead and walking with him down the royal corridor. ✨️🩷