thecatapprentice

[thecatapprentice]

stupid idea for a MDZS fanmade visual novel:

you play as jin zixuan. after a long series of various events and misunderstandings, you come to understand that your acquaintance jiang yanli, who you once wrote off as average, is in fact a perfect soul who you desperately want to marry. the only problem now is that she 1. is still convinced that you hate her, 2. probably hates your loser ass too, and 3. is surrounded by men and women who are far more qualified to date her than you are. #1 and #2 can hopefully be resolved eventually with enough time, effort, and apologies.....but #3 seems to render that impossible, since if you're not careful any one of these "more qualified" bachelor/ettes might snap her up first!!!!!

you immediately identifies wei wuxian as your biggest threat, because from your (jin zixuan's) pov, wei wuxian is jiang yanli's male childhood friend who she super dotes on. after seeing how close they are, you are initially almost ready to give up - except then you find out that lan wangji is gay and in love with wei wuxian, and thus realize that you can eliminate wei wuxian as a threat if wangxian get together. 

you then realize that this also applies to everyone else you see as a romantic threat. so, because you are a problem solver, you come up with a solution: before any of jiang yanli's friends can make a move on her, you will find a way to pair them all off with each other. that way, they will all be too busy dating each other and your path to yanli's heart will be (relatively) clear. 

so instead of being a dating sim, the objective of the visual novel is to help all the various side couples involving yanli's friends get together, so none of them can threaten xuanli. 

ideally, the game will let you freely choose which couples to push together, so there will be a wide variety of routes and endings.

("jiang yanli's friends" in this game is just the set that includes all the mdzs characters more commonly shipped with each other. jiang cheng is there, but he's yanli's brother so he's not a threat. so zixuan's strategy for him is just to keep him available on the side, so he can be paired up with whoever's left over after all the other matches have been made but is still a high enough threat.)

jin zixuan's threat assessments (accuracy not guaranteed):

extremely high:

wei wuxian

high:

nie mingjue (bc of his muscles)

lan xichen (bc he's popular)

wen qing (bc even straight girls would go lesbian for her)

medium:

wen ning (he seems too timid for dating)

nie huaisang (he seems more interested in hookups than dating)

jin guangyao (my own half-brother wouldnt betray me....right?)

low:

mianmian (she's my friend so she wouldn't betray me. also she seems interested in someone else (mr. mianmian))

lan wangji (gay, uninterested in women)

su minshan (too much of a hater)

jiang cheng (brother) 

conditions for victory:

wei wuxian must be paired with someone.

everyone from the high-risk group is paired off.

a maximum of 1 person from the medium-risk group is left unpaired; everyone else from the medium-risk group is paired off.

yanli approval score (explained below) is above a certain threshold.

you do not need to pair up anyone from the low-risk group in order to win; the low-risk group is there purely to help you. pairing off people in the high- and medium-risk group is necessary not because they are actually a threat to xuanli, but rather because jin zixuan will only feel secure enough to confess once almost all of his perceived romantic rivals have been removed.

some game notes:

throuples are allowed.

while wangxian is the most straightforward way to eliminate wei wuxian as a threat, the game also allows for other wei wuxian pairings. in other words, you as the player can betray lan wangji by pairing wei wuxian up with someone else instead - in which case the game is still winnable (ie. jin zixuan can still get together with jiang yanli, which is the victory condition), but you also unlock a special CG of lan wangji crying.

the achievement of the victory condition is decided not just by whether or not you successfully pair everyone else up, but also by a hidden metric called the yanli approval score. this is calculated by your interactions with wei wuxian, jiang cheng, and jiang yanli herself as the game continues: if you are kind to them, then the score goes up, and if you are rude to them, then the score goes down. if your yanli approval score is low enough upon the game's end, then yanli will still refuse to date zixuan even if you've successfully paired everyone else off.

notably, attempting to pair jiang cheng up with someone and then failing nets you a severe yanli approval score demerit, while successfully pairing up jiang cheng with someone nets you a high yanli approval score increase. interestingly, pairing chengxian together nets you the highest increase in yanli approval score.

if you get nielan together and then do not pair up jin guangyao with anyone, then the game gives you the option of putting in the hard work to help him network. it is highly recommended that you take this option, as if you do not, jin guangyao will expose to jiang yanli everything you as jin zixuan have done in the least flattering terms possible, which will make yanli unwilling to date zixuan and will net you a game over.

if you get xiyao together and then do not pair up nie mingjue with anyone, then the game gives you the option of putting in the hard work to find him a hobby. it is highly recommended that you take this option, as if you do not, nie huaisang will push jin zixuan into the traffic and you will get a game over.

if you intend on pairing up jiang cheng with anyone other than wei wuxian himself, then wei wuxian will run interference against you; a successful strategy therefore must include anti-wei-wuxian measures. this remains true even if you previously helped wangxian get together, because wei wuxian is an ungrateful bastard.

if you intend on pairing up jiang cheng with lan xichen, then both wei wuxian and lan wangji will run interference. because of this, the xicheng route is probably the hardest route involving jiang cheng in the entire game; to compensate for this, the xicheng route also has the second-most CGs (after wangxian).

if you get jin guangyao together with someone, then he will offer his assistance to you for the rest of the game. this translates into additional stats, intel, and information on who likes who the most, which will make the rest of your run easier.

if you get nie mingjue together with someone, then nie huaisang will offer his assistance to you for the rest of the game as well. nie huaisang offers the same assistance as jin guangyao above, but he also includes his own commentary and opinions.

you (as jin zixuan) cannot date anyone else. sorry zixuan x other shippers, this is a xuanli game.

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yk, for some reason, Wei Wuxian is the fannon self-sacrificial one in the dynamic, and Lan Wangji is the one who has to fight for love and take what he needs.

But, like, thinking about it, isn't it the opposite?

Once Wei Wuxian gets an inkling of his feelings, he starts pushing Lan Wangji. In little ways, and nothing he can't walk back, but he does.

Lan Wangji pushed exactly one time before their get-together. And he was pissed off at himself for it.

So here's what I'm saying: Modern AU where Lan Wangji starts to think that he's trapping Wei Wuxian, that he's holding his Wei Ying back from something amazing, and just... goes. For the love of his life, for everything that Wei Wuxian is and could be, he leaves. Cue Wei Wuxian going "WAHT THE FUCK, YOU GORGEOUS MAN?!" and one Crazy Road Trip in the pursuit of True Love.

Literally would be one Chaotic Road Trip. I imagine Wei Wuxian making a lot of friends and gushing about Lan Wangji at every given opportunity and he picks up the ducklings along the way and when he eventually gets there, Lan Wangji is utterly miserable but hiding it fairly well, and Wei Wuxian is like "if you don't kiss me, I am actually going to die. Do you want that? Do you want me to die, er-gege?" And there's a happily ever after.

But yeah, I was listening to Try by Pink, and I realized who, exactly, the roles should go to. XD

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Modern AU in which WWX works a maintenance job at the Lan's corporation to make ends meet for himself and A-Yuan.

He does various things such as cleaning, fixing leaks, electrical work - so nobody really knows how intelligent and creative he really is.

Until one day.

Wei Ying was tasked with cleaning the co-CEO's office one evening, and his eyes caught onto a piece of paper on the desk, with graphs and figures and questions about how things don't add up.

He looks at the data, huffs and picks up a pen to fix it.

Halfway through he realizes what he's done, chuckles a bit bitterly and continues on with the cleaning.

Lan Wangji is stunned to find a half solution written on his paperwork the next morning.

And so begins a Cinderella-style search for the secret genius among the staff.

They find him snacking on chilli in the janitor's office.

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When I first started taking diabetes meds I constantly felt like my blood sugar was low and I insisted on getting a blood sugar monitor to test this and it turned out the meds were just bringing my sugar levels down to what they ought to be and I was just so used to having high blood sugar I thought it was low and eventually I got used to it and I guess what I’m saying is that getting healthier sometimes feels scary and unnatural in the beginning stages but you get past that part eventually

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Important to note though that this only works when you have an adult - probably a parent - who is involved and available. If you just give kids free access to whatever and then walk away and ignore them, you're going to mess up the kids. Because learning to tell the difference between garbage and value, between manipulation and information, takes time or mentorship. If someone doesn't show you, you have to figure it out on your own and that involves making a whole lot of mistakes. Good judgment tends to come from a whole lot of experience with bad judgment. Involved parenting, or mentoring, with teenagers and children means giving them this kind of leadership and teaching. It's hard work, and it can be a lot easier to just try to control their choices rather than teaching them how to make their own (good) choices.

On the subject about parents needing to control their child's reading and invade their privacy in order to "protect" them from "inappropriate material:

Until I was in....college? At least? The vast, vast majority of the books I read were either a) assigned by my school or b) (the vast majority of my reading) provided to me by my mother.

My mom is a librarian. She filled our rooms with books, picked especially for us. She pointed out books on the shelves in our home library (separate from our bedroom shelves) that she thought we would like. She bought us books for birthdays, Christmas, and just stacks of recommendations. She once paid me $10 to read one of the Cirque Du Freak books because she said I needed "to be exposed to bad literature."

She respected my privacy in room, didn't go through my belongings. She explicitly pointed out to us that she wouldn't know if we took a particular book of the shelf, as long as we returned it, if we didn't want her to know we were reading it. She purposely brought us books that she didn't care for herself, because she thought we might find them valuable or enjoyable.

And if we wanted to read something she thought might upset or disturb us, she would explain why. She wouldn't stop us from reading it - just ask us to check in with her, to talk through it.

And so when I read something that upset or disturbed me, I would go to her. She would listen and talk through it with me.

If she said she didn't think I would like something, or that a book might disturb me, or that she thought I should wait until I was older, I listened to her.

She didn't need restrictions or control to protect me. Because she proved I could trust her.

Controlling kids is never about "protecting" them. It's just about control.

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pasta art

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there’s something very beautiful about being able to try again tomorrow

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It’s so crazy that suicide prevention is just people going awwww don’t!! Awwww come on noooooooooo stopppppp

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“Izuku is five the first time he’s saved by a hero.“

(from @captainkirkk ‘s fic journey to the past!! one i did w kacchan, another w jirou)

bonus: theyre both crying and you cant blame them

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Introducing the 2022 MXTX Food Zine!

(April 11, 2023 update: due to a storage issue, the download links in the original version of this post are no longer working. Please reblog this version instead.)

The MXTX Food Zine is out now - download it here on Google Drive for free! Inside, you’ll find 25 delicious recipes and 34 new fanworks across all three MXTX fandoms, including art, fanfiction, and themed recipe cards.

Our team has been working on this project since December 2021 for an anticipated release in May 2022, but the general state of the world this year slowed the process down and delayed the release to this October.

Special thanks to @wwjgyd for the beautiful design work, to @suzapallito for the cover art, and to all the creators: this project would never have been possible without you.

To the fandom: reblog this post, download the zine, and enjoy! If you can’t access the documents, email mxtxfoodzine@gmail.com for help or message the mods here on tumblr.

Other links: ringbound version | perfect-bound version | individual pages for printing

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Toddlers are so pure. She doesn’t understand that we help her with certain things because she’s little. She thinks that everyone just helps each other like that. So she tries to blow on my food and cut it up for me and tries to help me put on my shoes.

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My favorite quotes from my favorite fics

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It has been... a very productive week for amirite foraging!

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love pulling the old "i'm going to put this right here where i can't miss it so i remember to do it" to "i became blind to it within minutes and now it's been there for a month" bait and switch on myself

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Wave in Backlight - Peter Witt

German , b. 1966 -

Oil on canvas, 80 x 80 cm.