#feeling antsy

[chacolachao]

All Chapter Alternate Covers from SPF Vol 1 Read the comic here on Tumblr | DeviantArt | Or DL the entire Vol 1 for free on Ko-Fi

[itsjustagoober]

A rare rant from me, but I really don't get the need to belittle someone while you're informing them of something they did incorrectly, if there was some sort of misunderstanding or if you don't know their situation and are trying to get information about it.

Just not feeling anxious and stuff today because when I go to pick up my Great Uncle from his home, I usually have no problems from any of his neighbors in the condominium. Usually a wave or a 'good morning' or even silence, just no troubles and they know what I'm here to do.

Now, sure, I haven't been here for the last two or three weeks to get him, but the regulars still recognize me. This lady I've never seen before, which is probably part of why this was an issue to her, came up behind me while I was holding the door for some other ladies struggling with their walkers. She walked past me before I went in and it was fine, because I was happy to let her go first like anyone else.

She went up to the elevator and I came in behind her, making sure the door didn't slam because it's super heavy. She must've seen me in the reflection of the metal around the elevators, as she then spun on her heels to give me a lecture about how I needed to have been buzzed in and am I waiting for someone down here.

It caught me off-guard, so I just did my best to answer her question. No, I didn't get buzzed in because I came in behind you and I'm not waiting for him, I'm going up to get him because he needs help to get ready and he has an appointment we'll be late for soon.

She wasn't having it and told me I was in the wrong for it because I have to be buzzed in and I could just wait down here for him. She then put her hand up when I tried to get in the elevator with her, as I had assumed she got her point across and I'll just be sure to worry about it next time.

So, then I had to sit and wait for the doors to close and listen to her go, then waiting longer for the elevator to come back down because only one of them was working today. The other lady, who I didn't notice was sitting in the lobby with me when I entered, simply gave a shake of her head and got up to let her husband in behind us.

It flustered me really good and I've just been thinking of how I could've done anything better, but it also just makes me frustrated that she decided to make it her problem to solve it with a lecture and being petty.

So yeah, just...why do complete strangers feel the need to be holier than thou because of some misunderstanding when they think they're on the top with the advantage or whatever? Is it some kind of gotcha thing? I don't understand, I really don't.

Gonna chill the rest of today and get the stuff I need done, when I do. I'll see y'all when I get a moment to sit or maybe when I get home.

[dradelcra]

Uh oh girlies i' m about to drop into an (another) obscure niche for a bit so bear with me <3

[hinamie]

mentor

[starry-bi-sky]

“Your brother is adorable.” The cashier cooed at Danny, peering over the counter with a smile. “What’s his name?”

Danny looked down to the surly, scowling little de-aged Batman currently holding onto his hand, glaring up at the cashier with bright blue eyes.

Things had already been bad enough when he’d gotten caught in a fight in Gotham, but things went from bad to worse when a magician had hit Batman with a de-aging spell and then shoved them through a portal.

Into a different fucking dimension.

Because of course neither of their lives could be easy. And now the two of them were stuck in Iowa in the middle of nowhere, at a truck stop gas station, trying to go on a cross-country roadtrip to reach the nearest hero city and get home.

He looked up and smiled awkwardly, trying to come up with a name off the top of his head — one of the heroes called Batman ‘B’ when he got hit right? B for Batman, right. B… B… Bee… Bees.

“Buzz.” He said, and tried not to grimace as the cashier’s face warped with surprise. “Like the astronaut.”

This was gonna be a long trip.

[rowrowronnie]

quick 40 min doodle because mentally he’s still with me

[saturnniidae]

I think Astrid Hofferson has a bad case of the 'my childhood was wasted, I grew up too fast for something ultimately proven pointless.' Syndrome and that she deserves to get to do silly things she missed out on and take up new hobbies, even if she's not particularly good at them–it's purely for the experience yknow, and learn to finally breathe no longer needing to be on constant high alert and get to be truly happy

[dicapriho]

2pm at work feels like

[th3e-m4ng0]

[ghost-proofbaby]

hey y’all!

so i’ve been considering this a lot in the past few weeks, and figured i’d make an official post so you all know i’m alive and what not since i have been very much inactive as of recently.

i’m taking a break.

not forever! not because of anything in the fandom! this break is solely due to personal life reasons and the fact i just can’t be as active on here right now between my jobs and personal affairs. and it also won’t be long — i’m going to be off here probably through the end of november. if i have the time/mental capacity to come back before then, i absolutely will 🖤 but right now, tumblr isn’t something that fits easily within my days and also, writing for my fics hasn’t been something i can easily do not due to lack of inspiration but lack of time.

again, this is just due to my own personal life currently. nothing happened in the fandom that motivated this decision (i honestly don’t even know what’s happening on here currently solely because i haven’t had the time to scroll lol) and it’s very much not permanent, and will HOPEFULLY be very short. like i said, until the end of november. i’ll still be writing in my free time, and my hope is to be able to update fics once i’m back and worse better than ever! 🖤

see y’all in december <3

[milkweedman]

Keep interrupting crochet bag projects to start new crochet bag projects. Haven't had more than 2 going at once and I've finished all of them; the problem is that it has created a never-ending cycle of crochet bags. Any time I get close to having no more bag projects I start a new one. And then in the time it takes to finish that one I start another.

[agoobersretreat]

"Feeling very antsy and zoomies, today. What a horrible combination, ehehehe~"

"I think I'll lurk, but I'm around for anything y'all wanna do with me. Anything...~."

"Hint-hint, wink-wink, nudge-nudge. Ya know what I'm sayin'?"

[itsjustagoober]

Feeling a certain way today. Gonna be over at @agoobersretreat and maybe @maddys-mad-menagerie-asks and @maddys-mad-menagerie today.

See y'all around.

[rinbylin]

friendships as marital ties (and other notes on relational ties) in mlc

this is sort of a third installment in the series of meta on 'mlc as an exemplar of constructing queer narratives out of chinese ideological frameworks' (1. jianghu as queer space and 2. how it manifests in li xiangyi) - focusing on the nature of relationships in it. (which I've briefly mentioned in the first one and finally actually getting to it!!)

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I would like to first call attention to chinese ideological frameworks as a premise of queer reading in mlc. the goal of chinese philosophy is to explore the becoming of human, taking two broad paths of the (mainstream) secular vs. escaping the secular. (these two paths are not a strict dichotomy, and rather, are ever in flux and in conversation with each other.) as said by @markiafc too, chineseness is so much about the rigidity of structures, and in equal part, a desire to break out of them. thus, chinese ideological frameworks can very much offer a rich reading of queerness - that mlc, a story very deliberately structured based on chinese ideologies (more accurately, with good reasons for me to believe that it is as such), has managed to materialise.

if the conceptualisation of queerness is premised on a defiance against mainstream norms, then a reliable way to read queerness in chinese ideological frameworks can be to deconstruct it by the mainstream confucian frameworks.

in mlc, this is implicitly set up with its stage of wulin/martial jianghu. then it is further broken down by asking, hey wulin jianghu is still closely related to the hegemonic values and the mainstream structure of authority (historically, 侠 xia being politically involved says a lot about this), so what is the true meaning of jianghu? what does it then really take for jianghu to be a queer space offering comfort and freedom to those who have escaped to it - to be the space that allow the transcendence of rigid roles and labels? mlc took a step further to resist the proxy to mainstream values that wulin jianghu has become.

this is why there can be a very strong buddhism reading of mlc (suggested here, expounded in the A+++ meta by @markiafc here and here, and also what I've seen discussed by cnet as well), given that buddhism is one of the 'extra-secular' ideologies, alongside (philosophical) taoism. I've also touched on a taoist angle in this meta. both schools are articulated in different sets of languages, but ultimately convey a same ideal of what it means to be human and how to live well - that is, to resist the roles and labels defined by the norms.

so, back to confucian frameworks.

a lot can be discussed about mlc with it. but in the context of this meta about relationships in mlc, it's specifically drawing on how confucianism conceptualises social relationships with familial ties as a cornerstone, and how these relational ties are inextricable from the conceptualisation of the 'self'.

as such, one of the things about mlc that has fascinated me is how deliberately it seems to ignore and reject the conventional familial ties (the kind by blood and marital ties). I've joked about how it is a miracle for me to love mlc as much as I do, as a prime dysfunctional family story enjoyer, despite none of its main characters struggling with any complicated feelings about their (biological) parents. but on closer examination, mlc is also making a comment on the model of familial-based relationships that dominates mainstream society - but through the absence of it.

with this, I want to talk about 1) how mlc rejects the conventional ties; and then 2) how it repurposes these ties in its own ways.

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the five relational ties in confucianism:

father and son 父子有亲 - (natural) affection between father and son

ruler and subject 君臣有义 - righteous relationship between ruler and subject

older and younger brothers 兄弟 (长幼有序) - this is actually about seniority within the family; the order between older vs younger family members

husband and wife 夫妇有别 - differentiation between husband and wife (demarcated by the 内外 spectrum of gendered inner-external spheres)

friends 朋友有信 - trust between friends

logically inferred, all these ties are hierarchical and familial-based except for the last one: friends. ruler-subject is sort of an extension of the natural familial ties, while friendship is the inverse space of 1-4 (ie. you fall back on 5 to define a social relationship outside of the familial sphere that cannot be qualified as 1-4). while all are premised on mutuality, it is only no. 5 that is defined by a sense of choice and equality.

on the surface, 1-4 don't quite exist in mlc in particularly meaningful ways to the narrative or are even outright overlooked, and friendship is the relational tie most valued by mlc. we can tell it's true just by looking at the most meaningful relationships in mlc of difanghua. but at the same time, it is more nuanced. we can take a closer look at how the story plays around with most of the ties as part of a broader queer narrative.

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1) how mlc rejects the conventional ties

mlc's rejection of mainstream relational ties can be best seen in fdb escaping from marriage. and it was not just any engagement with anybody but an engagement with the imperial family. he struggles with the prospect of being married to princess zhaoling, but generally, it's about the idea of complying to mainstream conventions and expectations that includes compulsory heterosexuality. all these point not only to a defiance against amatonormativity - the resistance of the traditional husband-wife tie, but also an irreverence for the ties of ruler-subject (the engagement being an imperial decree) and father-son (matters of marriage being sole decisions made by parents).

of course this is on top of how fdb's own biological father is a p-o-s, and the narrative gives fdb minimal struggles in this aspect, allowing him to sever this tie without looking back (I love it, yeap). along the same line is how lxy is an orphan, who came to gain important relationships that are built on natural compassion among people rather than innate, blood-based ties - even as llh. the sense of defiance from the narrative is especially stark to me considering that he could have a completely different familial-based life - as a son, brother, and ruler, if his biological family was still around. the narrative also deliberately treats his biological brother as a phantom, replaced with an older brother who he was bonded with neither by blood nor marital ties. on dfs's front, absolutely nothing is to be known about his biological family. his childhood history with the toxic patriarch of his life - who is not even his biological father - was afforded a clean break and closure.

we can keep going on, but that's pretty much the point.

ritualisation is one of the most important things of the confucianism school, especially to the honoring of these social relationships (and the officiating of social roles). the one ceremony/ritual we saw in mlc involving the main characters - or more accurately speaking, came closest to seeing - was the imminent wedding ceremony of dfs and jlq. even in that case, it was premised on non-mutuality with dfs being the unwilling, passive party. (fem-coded dfs? 25 marks.)

and that brings us to the next part.

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2) how mlc repurposes these ties

that particular wedding ceremony gets hijacked by dfs and lxy/llh, and gets turned into an important milestone in their relationship. they consummate - what is on text - their friendship after a long time being more enemies and rivals than friends. it is a clear establishment of the trust they have for each other. and here it is where I circle back to the subject of this post: friendships as marital ties.

in this article, as a part of a feminist, egalitarian reframing of confucianism, there is a proposal for spousal relationships to be reframed as a friendship tie. (this aligns with the interrelatedness of the five ties eg. the ruler-subject mirrors father-son dynamic, with the confucian belief that rulers have an obligation to their subjects alike parents to their own children.) by doing so, it removes the functional, gendered differentiation assigned to marital ties, and shifts it to something equal, and independent of gender. you exalt the value of trust between spouses, instead of basing marital relationships on gendered roles. as such, spouses become more like friends, and conversely, friends can also become more like spouses. (romance not a prerequisite. it has never been about romance anyway.)

given that mlc has repeatedly applied marital motifs to llh and dfs's characters in their joint narratives, this opens up a reading friendships as a marital tie. seeing marriage as a bridge for strangers to become family, marriage in mlc becomes a metaphor for the chosen commitment and mutual trust put in by strangers/friends (non-familial ties) into the becoming of family. the blurring of lines between marital ties and friendship encourages a genuine space of queer experience that goes beyond any pressure for strict labels - of sexuality, and relationships as romantic, sexual, etc etc.

(note: despite the borrowing of a feminist concept, I strongly hesitate to call mlc a feminist story. it's a whole discussion - or debate - on its own. nevertheless, it is definitely a gender-conscious story that lays foundation for a strong queer and egalitarian reading.)

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it is to be noted that it is intended - and also beneficial to take the confucian framework of relational ties beyond face value. the framework offers what it believed to be the most fundamental social relationship dynamics, and sees room for extension and matching to other kinds of relationships (all if not, most). a relationship such as teacher-student, which is outside of the five ties stated, can also mirror the affection of father-son ties, albeit not in a literal and identical way.

speaking of which. fdb and lxy/llh.

indeed they're known by others to be good friends. fdb thinks they're good friends too - insists on it, and puts his best efforts in keeping it that way. but does it really go both ways? if it does not, then can it really still be friendship? my humble take is that, ultimately - weighing in with llh's perspective - this is a relationship that is not so much based on trust, and rather, based on an innate affection that is only unique to family. (in this case, not blood/marital-based but one that was chosen and built aka lxy's relationship with sgd.) in other words, less of a friendship, more of a familial one.

it is a lot clearer considering their relationship from llh's point of view: some brat you never wanted in your life came barging in, and whether he was going to bring any positive effect to your life was secondary to the tranquility - which you have carved for yourself in the past decade - that is so integral to your personhood. no way. but the moment you hear that he's family? well, that changes the game completely. even before learning about fdb being sgd's son (then beginning to take initiative in showing greater acceptance), it is apparent in llh that there was an instinctive resonance with fdb as his shixiong's nephew. (eg. he remarked to his shifu's grave about how alike fdb is to himself.) this is unlike with dfs whom he had taken a much longer time to build trust with. you do not apply trust - aka the quality of friendships - to family. family is something deeper, more instinctive than that. if fdb was never family, I find it hard to imagine given llh's personality, that he would have let some brazen, bratty stranger intrude for that long. (boy invited himself to llh's home, sat himself down eating the owner's dinner and nosing in his cooking abilities!!! ily bb but that was uncalled for 😭)

of course there are many more layers in their relationship. there is a substantial degree of their history as (unwitting) teacher-disciple: fdb is still healthy and alive all thanks to the existence of lxy as a spiritual teacher role model in his life, regardless it being one-sided or not. there is also indeed some part of friendship in it, especially from fdb's point of view. he sees llh as a kindred spirit who he could enjoy a life of freedom with for life. but llh never reciprocates. he knew this was short-lived. and so ultimately, the hierarchical layer of their relationship overpowers the equal one, where llh's treatment of fdb as a nephew/小辈 younger family member and a disciple is the one that sealed the fate of their relationship.

if (blood-based) familial ties are irrelevant in jianghu, then the closest proxy to a father-son relationship in the martial world would be a teacher-disciple relationship. lxy and his shifu are a clear, indisputable example. for fdb and llh, their teacher-disciple tie is murkier and not consistently applied. they were also never ritualised as teacher-disciple, and thus are not teacher-disciple in any official capacity as far as confucian ideas are concerned. yet in crucial moments, it is invoked by llh as a card of authority over fdb to get out of sticky situations with fdb. and there was their final scene together: in a moment of sincerity, llh gives the approval to fdb as his disciple - then entrusting fdb with the secret manual of his techniques, up until his final letter in which fdb was recommended to dfs as a successor to his martial abilities.

in an imperial setting, this would have been the relationship of an emperor and his crown prince that straddles both ruler-subject and father-son ties aka a tag-team of disaster. the teacher has an obligation to nurture his disciple as a successor to himself, and love him like a son too. on the flipside, he holds the final power in their relationship - withholding knowledge and feelings from the younger one. they are only equals in a way a parent-child can be. they are only equals as much as the parent allows. and this is how fdb got left behind in the dust of llh's departure. he was the child treating his parent like a friend, supporting him emotionally and begging to be loved back the same way he loves his parent - but the parent had a lifetime way ahead of him and stayed out of his reach, physically and emotionally.

llh and fdb operate with the trapping of a friendship but have always been family in the core. llh had known that way before fdb did, just like everything else he had known and put out of fdb's reach. because. fdb did not have to know. fdb is different and will forge his own path. and that's a kind of love llh has for him that nobody understands (in fact not even fdb himself) - one that is on a different plane from friendships.

by repurposing the framework of relational ties, mlc showed that the essence of familial relationships aka its intimacy and closeness can be independent from biology and formalised rituals. and it is important to myself for stories to say that people can build close ties and deeply meaningful relationships even without being born or ritualised into any.

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then back to how these relational ties are inextricable from the conceptualisation of the 'self' in confucian worldview: the roles you play in these relationships are intended to define you. there is no 'self' independent from it. while the concept of a social, relational self is fully rooted in reality, being locked into social roles can be a painful way to live - a way that llh has experienced as lxy the sigu sect leader. so, in order for lxy/llh to realise a sense of self that exists outside the norms, it inevitably points to another way that requires a cut from these relationships. that is then the buddhist (or taoist) answer of looking past attachments to the world such as the confucian idea of relationships defining your being. only with a dissolution of a sense of 'self', can there be true liberation.

[yuriyuruandyuraart]

self indulgent horross doodles just because i can >B)

[angeart]

it’s time for me to tell you about boatem circus mumbo. where does he come from? how did he get into the circus? what’s the trauma he carries? 

boatem circus mumbo is an enderman hybrid. they’re kind of rare, and some people are very interested in their teleporting ability. this leads to mumbo getting captured and taken to a specialised lab to be studied entirely against his will. 

this lab is a floating manmade island. entirely surrounded by water. 

water hurts endermen. which means mumbo can’t use his abilities to get away, because there’s nowhere safe for him to teleport to, outside of this island that’s now become his prison. he’s put in a small room, the walls of which are infused by running water, serving as a constant barrier. a perfect cell to contain an enderman hybrid.

but it’s more than a cell. it’s also the research lab. it’s not made with a sliver of comfort in mind; quite the opposite, it’s imbued with countless traps and mechanisms, from spikes and pits to fire and lava. it doesn’t contain a bed, even though it’s meant for long-term containment.

the research is set up to focus on studying the limits of teleporting. all the hows: how far, how often, how many times in a row, etc. the way they’re doing this is, essentially, by putting mumbo in harmful situations. hence the traps littering the room! lava from the ceiling? floor dropping from underneath him? water from somewhere? spikes? lots of ways to hurt him!

he doesn’t have a choice here. mere survival and fear of pain takes over. he’s forced to teleport to avoid harm.

he’s kept in almost constant motion. his mind is in overdrive. there’s a constant sense of danger and impending doom of not knowing where it’ll come from this time. all he knows is to jump away from pain. (personally, i like to think this is where mumbo’s antsy restlessness comes from.)

it goes on for days. weeks. with barely any breaks. 

it exhausts him. he can’t keep up. at some point it’s simply too much.

he’s so scared. everything hurts. he can’t.

he can’t do it anymore. even if he’d want to, he can’t.

they wear him down to nothing, so much so that his teleportation abilities fail and he can no longer get out of the way of danger at all besides belated stumbles which do very little, and aren’t what the researchers are after. they grant him longer rest, but it barely seems to fix anything. he’s burned out, overworked, done. stripped of everything that used to make him seem special in their eyes.

it reaches a point when they consider him useless. that’s how exhausted he is.

and this is when he overhears them talking about dropping him overboard. just dumping him in the water. into the ocean. (that’d surely kill him.) getting rid of him as if he was nothing.

he can’t do anything about it.

but someone proposes to sell him instead! that way they can at least get some cash for him.

so they take him to a black market. put water-magic imbuded shackles around his wrists (they hurt, they burn), shove him in a cage, and start figuring out how this whole selling hybrids works.

scar, coincidentally, crosses their path.

he sees this hybrid, worn down and caged and terrified, and… he has to act, right? he has to.

what happens is that he cons them. (<3) he uses his wonderful silver tongue, gives them some money, and says he’ll sell mumbo for them, he has contacts, etcetc. and then he’ll give them the rest of the money once the deed is done, based on how much mumbo sells for! a great deal! don’t worry about a thing!

he smooth talks his way until he has mumbo in his possession.

they’re still in the black market. mumbo’s still shackled and caged. he’s terrified. he doesn’t know scar, or his intentions. he fully expects to be sold to someone horrible, or to another hell of a lab.

scar takes him somewhere private, and instead of anything mumbo expects, he… opens the cage.

mumbo presses into the far corner, so so so scared, and he flinches at scar’s approach, and—

scar apologises?

so softly.

and he undoes mumbo’s shakles.

the very moment they’re off and the water magic relents, running on pure instinct and fear, mumbo teleports. 

just once. not even very far. just outside of the cage.

it’s as much as he can manage, honestly. teleporting carries so much for him now. memories of danger and pain and fear tangled with the ever-present fatigue that pins him in place.

he didn’t even really mean to do it; it’s just become instinctual when he feels a smidge of a possible threat. he did it without thinking, and… he can’t do it again. he feels weak and dizzy and nauseous, half-ready to collapse just from that. even though his freedom is at stake, he simply can't do it.

(but he doesn’t have to. he doesn’t. scar’s there. mumbo’s going to be okay.)

gently, quietly, scar tells him it’s okay. he won’t hurt him. he tells him that he’s free to go, but if he has nowhere to go, he can come with scar. 

it sounds like a trap. like just another scam.

but mumbo has nowhere to go. and scar is so gentle with him?

he ends up giving in and going with scar. and scar never gave him a reason to regret it.

he becomes part of the boatem circus. and even then, he doesn’t teleport for months afterwards. and he doesn’t participate in the circus shows for the longest time. (not until grian comes along.)