#y'all bitches the real ones | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

difeisheng · 5 months

Text

qiao wanmian and di feisheng's first appearances in the present-day narrative are mirrors of each other, orbiting the presence of li xiangyi and li lianhua. episode 5 introduces them both in the same way, stepping back into li lianhua's life while he watches from out of sight. di feisheng emerges from seclusion, qiao wanmian meets xiao zijin in yucheng. and what other information this episode gives us about these characters is the inverse of what we would've expected. where we assumed qiao wanmian might be the ex-lover, still mourning after ten years of missing li xiangyi, the first thing we (and li lianhua) see is that she's happy with someone else. it comes to be more nuanced than that, but the first impression we get is that qiao wanmian has moved on. di feisheng's first moment he gets by himself, meanwhile, is him drinking his grief over li xiangyi's absence away. he has jinyuanmeng bowing to his feet and and a tremendous amount of power in the jianghu he could use against anyone, yet here is, seemingly, above many other things, lonely.

the next arc serves to reinforce this idea, that where qiao wanmian by normal genre conventions should be the one who couldn't get over li xiangyi, it's di feisheng who continues to cling onto his history with him instead. during the liansanjiao's trip to baichuanyuan and pudu temple, we see qiao wanmian trying to work through her lingering emotions about li xiangyi over and over, and eventually (thanks to li lianhua's intervention) achieves some kind of tenuous closure on that part of her past. all of we see of di feisheng, on the other hand, is him becoming increasingly obsessed with what he views as unresolved events, until he finally chokes li lianhua against a wall to interrogate him about it. mysterious lotus casebook swapped what might be more typical framing of these characters. qiao wanmian is not a sad figure waiting for her sweetheart to return, but someone who realizes she was more attached to what he represents than to him, and in finding him as a person manages to become friends in this new life of the present. di feisheng isn't someone who moves on from an existence measured against li xiangyi and finds a new way to define himself, but rather a person who wound up isolated and frozen in time for ten years after losing him, and still struggles to leave their relationship behind or allow it to evolve.

tl;dr the real jilted lover of li xiangyi by the choices of the story is di feisheng, not qiao wanmian

#hi i know i've said this before but I HAVE RECEIPTS NOW #this was gonna be a section of di feisheng gender meta but i've been keeping this to myself for months and needed to scream #some of y'all insist that the narrative rivalry over llh is qwm vs fdb but why would you pit two bad bitches against one another #when the real parallel/foil is qwm and dfs #mysterious lotus casebook #feihua #li xiangyi #qiao wanmian #di feisheng #mlc meta #ashton originals

101 notes · View notes

total-drama-brainrot · 1 month

Note

Question about p! Noah..

How would he hypothetically react to being stabbed. (Accidentally) Like not a deadly stab wound but one big enough for it to be considered concerning.

How would the rest of the cast react?

Ok so what I'm asking is how committed is p! Noah to the bit? How for would he go in such a serious situation. Maybe he didn't care at all and walked around bleeding? Maybe he was only thinking of ways to torment the others using this to his advantage. Idk.

Also love this au sm!!

"Hypothetically", just say you want to stab him. This is a safe space, I'm not judging. ...Okay I'm judging a little bit.

I actually have a few thoughts about reactions to stabbings, as someone who's been involved in more than my fair share of them, and generally I think a lot of people don't tend to understand just how much it fucking hurts to be stabbed, even when it's non-fatal. It is a very painful experience, even with the added anaesthetic of adrenaline, and seeing just how often media portrays people walking off stab wounds or regarding them as little more than scratches is just. Infuriating.

Now, I personally headcanon Noah as someone with a fairly high pain tolerance. This is backed by a lot of the bone-crushing and otherwise painful experiences he suffers through in the show and is generally able to shrug off without complaint (and really, Noah would realistically have so much chronic pain after World Tour in particular, given how much he's crushed, tossed and thrown about in that season alone). But that doesn't mean I think he can just brute-force his way through acting unconcerned by a literal stab wound.

Even p!Noah wouldn't have that unwavering of a constitution, and he's crazy. Though I do think he'd make a good effort of maintaining his persona as the unflappable unstable wildcard, he'd be quick to abscond from the situation at hand and treat the wound. Again, that shit hurts, and it's really hard to keep up any pretences under the pain of a stab wound, so getting himself out of the situation as fast as possible would be his top priority- the less time he spends around the others in his vulnerable state, the slimmer the chances are of them seeing behind his mask of mania to the scared person hidden behind it.

Because his detachment from reality is the vast majority of his defence mechanism game plan; if Noah allows himself to be seen as anything but the psychopath he's portrayed himself as- either by the audience or the now aware cast- he's lost practically everything he's spent seasons building up on camera. Letting himself be seen as vulnerable or even affected by something as "inconsequential" as a stab would is a no-go, so he'd stutter out a few witty zingers and bounce.

(Which is an incredibly unhealthy mindset to have, but p!Noah isn't exactly mentally sound even without his exaggerated persona. His commitment to The Bit is strong enough for him to momentarily disregard his physical wellbeing, but not enough to grant him the ability to completely ignore it.)

It'd play out something like this:

---

Noah's eyes momentarily widened in shock as he felt the cold steel of Duncan's knife embed itself into the meat of his upper thigh. The pain was searingly sharp, molten agony burning like lava in his veins, and the bookworm found himself reflexively stumbling backwards from the punk.

"Did you just stab me?" He asked incredulously, sparing a glance down towards the weapon sticking out of his now ruined cargo shorts. The sight was almost comedic; Noah's oversized shorts rested against the hilt of the knife like cushions, completely blanketing the wound beneath them. He was almost amused enough to laugh, but the constant screaming of his nerves had his laughter congealing against the back of his throat with the rest of his saliva, leaving his mouth uncomfortably dry.

Duncan, in turn, seemed just as shocked by the turn of events. The delinquent's terrified blue eyes darted from Noah's face to the knife jutting out of his thigh. Which prompted the cynic to contort his grimace into a toothy grin, as any sign of weakness here would completely ruin his carefully cultivated image, though the edges of his smile were soured by the constant throbbing pain in his leg.

Truly, it was Noah's own fault. He shouldn't've provoked the stab-happy jailbird, but messing with Duncan was just too fun an opportunity to pass up.

"Oh fuck! Oh shit, dude, I'm so sorry!"

And he really was. Noah could tell by the shaky panic in his voice, the bulging of his ice-blue eyes, and the way Duncan seemed to curl self-consciously into himself. Not that the pessimist thought he had any right to act to timid- he was the one with the knife in his leg.

Again, Noah wanted nothing more than to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. Here he was, stood before the resident metal-faced punk, brandishing the other's knife deep in the flesh of his thigh like some sort of twisted fashion statement. Every minor twitch and spasm of his muscles had white-hot agony lick at the back of his mind like flames, matching the welling heat of pained tears he desperately choked down; Noah refused to cry in front of Duncan, refused to let the other know just how much pain he was in.

He took a few tentative steps backwards, edging towards the exit of the Economy Cabin and towards the relative safety of the Confessional. Each step was a test in his composure, as every time he put even the slightest bit of weight onto his pierced leg Noah felt liquid hot torture bubble through his veins.

"Wow. I know you offered to give me a piercing, but don't you think this is a bit much?" Noah snarked, playing off the unsteady tightness of his voice as mirth with a humourless giggle, and disguising the wince he couldn't quite subdue as a cocky tilting of his head.

Noah placed a steadying hand on the doorframe of the exit, never once turning his back to his assaulter or letting his feral grin falter, as his tear-fogged eyes scanned across the cabin. He'd made it to the exit, but really needed a moment to catch his breath. It was so hard to breath around the sharp, burning pain.

The cynic felt, more than saw, the concerned looks the other occupants of Economy were shooting him. In fact, both Owen and Alejandro had jumped from their seats to, assumedly, assist him. That wouldn't do- Noah staunchly refused to show any semblance of helplessness in front of Alejandro. The latino's hero complex and overblown ego would never let Noah hear the end of it, and making himself even the slightest bit sympathetic in front of their audience would offset the persona he'd worked so hard to maintain.

Damn his team and their inconstant bouts of humanity; concern was the last thing Noah wanted! The whole situation was jeopardising his image! He'd have to do something drastic to stop his well intentioned teammates from following him- something crazy.

"I'm keeping this, by the way."

The bookworm yanked the knife from it's nested perch in is thigh, scattering scarlet droplets of blood in its wake, and brandished his newfound weapon with performative flourish. It hurt like a bitch, and Noah had to force down a shudder at the feeling of his own rapidly welling blood as it began to trickle down his leg like molasses in rivulets of crimson. No doubt his shorts would be ruined, not that they weren't already.

A resounding cry of disbelief rattled through the cabin, though Noah payed it no mind.

It... probably wasn't the best idea, ripping the knife out of his stab wound. But Noah was nothing if not committed to his act, and it wasn't as if he could just re-plug the bleeding with the knife.

Unless? ...No, no that was stupid. The persistent throbbing pain of his sluggishly bleeding wound was probably just messing with his head.

It was, however, satisfying to watch the well-intentioned concern on the other's faces drain into white-faced revulsion and terror, as Noah playfully began to spin the blood soaked weapon between his fingers. Both Owen and Alejandro came to a halt a few meters away from him, the Spaniard in particular seemed to recoil at the stray droplets of the cynic's blood as his face took on a peculiar green tinge.

And Duncan stood shell-shocked in his original position, apparently still stunned by disbelief by his own actions. Not that Noah cared, but it was a little ironic to him; the big bad delinquent couldn't handle the ramifications of his own violence. How sad, Noah's heart was just bleeding for him- or was it his leg? It was hard to tell, the rapid loss of blood made his deductive skills a little wonky.

"Thanks for the gift, Duncey. Toodles!~"

With that, Noah skittered his way out of the cabin, leaving a trail of scarlet behind him.

"Dude, what the fuck."

---

And then p!Noah hobbles his way to the Confessional to treat his stab wound and stop the bleeding. And probably has a little cry over it because ouch, being stabbed hurts. (Obviously he'd muffle the sounds of his sobs and agonised hissed breaths as he deals with the wound- he wouldn't want anyone overhearing his moment of weakness.)

Then, of course, he remembers that the Confessional is decked out with a camera and quickly re-masks into his usual persona and waxes poetic about how pretty he looks covered in his own blood, and how Duncan was so generous in gifting him his prized knife, and how Noah would love to repay the favour. Or something along those lines.

Duncan in this scenario would have the added bonus of not only dealing with the guilt of stabbing someone, but also the paranoia of Noah's rebuttal. Of which Noah would relish in, because of course he would.

As for the others, Noah would make a conscious and continuous effort to keep them as unconcerned with his wellbeing as possible, since his whole goal is to make himself seem as inhuman and unstable as possible. Letting the others care about him would humanise Noah in the eyes of the cast and the audience at large, which is a big no-no for his game plan.

That doesn't mean he wouldn't let Owen fuss over him in private; Owen's one of the very few people around who knows that a lot of Noah's instability is an exaggeration, so Noah isn't as hesitant to lower his walls.

#in short: he's screaming on the inside but outwardly he's still committed to the bit.#no amount of crazy can make someone immune to the pain of being stabbed though #he can only keep the act up for so long before the mask slips.#being stabbed hurts y'all. like HURTS hurts. it's super hard to act casual when there's a knife sticking out of you.#also blood is a bitch to clean up so the real victim in this scenario is the intern who has to clean the confessional after Noah's used it.#pushing my nowen agenda at the end there. owen's the only one allowed to care about p!noah in his eyes #(in turn p!noah cares a lot about owen too but shh 🤫 that's a secret)#total drama #td noah #psycho!noah au #silly ideas #silly hypotheticals #others' ideas #replies #tw stabbing #tw blood

35 notes · View notes

the-unconquered-queen · 3 months

Text

(To be clear, this is about books that have you switch PoVs all throughout, so not a book that lets you have one or two scenes where you play as someone else if that's not the whole book)

#playchoices #I'm gonna keep it so real with y'all I don't know if there are more than the ones on this list #and yes I had to specify that I mean multiple povs throughout the whole book #because lbr if any one instance counted that one scene where you play as Bryce in OH 2 would've smoked all of these bitches #unconquered queries

20 notes · View notes

angorwhosebabyisthis · 3 months

Text

[cws: drugging, SA and SA apologia, fantasy racism/ableism, forced institutionalization.]

i know i never shut up about it but god i am still just. So Salty about how the show handles the dynamic between mayor jones and pericles for many reasons, and one of the biggest is that there are really strong overtones here of sexual assault.

a character who already brings to mind the Slimy, Shady Cis White Guy with Buried Allegations archetype:

takes advantage of the trust of someone who's doing something with him in secret--

(which will get that person in a disproportionate amount of trouble compared to him, if they're discovered)

--to catch him off guard so he can grab him, drug him, and do violent things to his body while he's unconscious; scars him for life in a way that is disabling and should cause a lot of ongoing suffering, which, like many other things that should have a strong negative impact on him physically or psychologically, the writers ignore; and dumps him there alone to discover what's been done to him when he wakes up.

specifically, he does this to someone from a marginalized group that's highly unlikely to be believed if they tell anyone what he did--and going by the fact that mayor jones never got in any trouble until present day, he wasn't.

goes out of the way to ruin the life of the victim and discredit him as thoroughly as possible, because he's a loose end and he needs to shut him up.

flees the scene and gets away scot free with this for twenty years, has a successful privileged career and is considered a pillar of the community in the meantime.

when his dirty secret, which he's been paranoid about finally facing consequences for after the victim has recently become a risk again, is discovered, it's a huge career-ending scandal.

is redeemed by the end, while his victim goes on to be the Monstrous Irredeemable Pure Evil Main Villain and also sexually abuse someone himself, which is played as horrific and traumatizing (as it should be).

more specifically, is portrayed as showing redeeming, heroic anti-villain qualities by backhanding the victim into a wall as hard as he can in present day.

me: hm. yeah fuck this

#sdmi #scooby doo: mystery incorporated #professor pericles #fred jones sr.#SDMItag #SDMIcrit tag #the crit files #cws in post #like. jesus christ dude.#i'm guessing there's probably been You Can't Like Mayor Jones He's Abusive discourse before; i don't want to contribute to it or anything #no shade to mayor jones enjoyers y'all have fun #but holy shit i do not like this man lmfao #this isn't even getting into the fact that it is extremely easy to read pericles as a victim of *other* SA both metaphorical and literal #(metaphorical: the entity groomed him his entire life)#(literal: the creators intentionally made reference with him; onscreen; to Inappropriate Handling that happens to parrots in real life)#(he comes from a world where people assume there is zero difference between him and an animal; and would probably touch him the same way)#(no one would have *recognized* it was inappropriate and there is not a chance in hell he would have been allowed to say stop)#(many many MANY things about his character immediately make sense with that reading whether the writers thought it through that far or not)#(which i have a Whole Post planned to go into; but this bit was enough of a detour that i felt like it should just be its own post lmao)#also re: scarred for life and ongoing suffering + disability as a result: on a literal level a scar like that would hurt like a *bitch*#especially with the complete lack of medical care it seems to have gotten; going by how it looks. it would be a huge source of chronic pain #on a not-literal level: boy howdy what a metaphor!#anyway yeah i would say this is roughly equivalent to if they'd had ricky finally get free from the snakes after twenty years #had him go into a Scary Evil Villain Spiral after while completely ignoring how horrifying it was or the trauma it'd have caused him #had pericles gloat about having pulled off injecting the snakes; and say he should have lived 'the rest of his miserable life' that way #and not only had no one go 'wtf' at any of that but given him a Redeeming Moment where he incapacitates ricky with venom again #and also tried to frame ricky as deserving the snakes/having done it to himself because he Did Bad Things while looking for the treasure #and also had him abuse someone partly in reaction to them mocking him over the snakes; and saying that being tortured and abused with them #for twenty years makes him unfit to be anything but subordinate. on a watsonian level ricky's standing up for himself against abuse but jfc #don't get me wrong there are definitely still differences in their dynamics but yeah i am not happy about it lmfao

17 notes · View notes

sintari · 2 years

Photo

“It’s me.” Aemond in 1x07 / 1x08

#aemond targaryen #aemond one eye #aemond #damn never underestimate a mf with something to prove #how do y'all like me now?#mama's favorite war criminal #the aemond brainrot is real #hotd #who got a dragon now bitches

44 notes · View notes

fideidefenswhore · 1 year

Note

What are your thoughts on Jane Boleyn, and the role she supposedly played in the fall of 3 Queens (Anne Boleyn, Anna of Cleves, Katheryn Howard)? Do you think she has been too maligned by historians for centuries, especially when it comes to the relationship with the Boleyns (it seems she got along with Anne)?

Now that I've read both works and compared them side by side, I suppose I would say my stance on Jane Boleyn falls somewhere in between that of Julia Fox and James Taffe ('Somewhere in between' is not, btw, Alison Weir); although closer to the former than the latter. Offering critique of both biographies, I would say that of JF is too apologetic (smoothing out wrinkles that exist in her arguments rather than acknowledging them) and JT is too severe.

Especially when it comes to the relationship with the Boleyns? Yes and no. Obviously she was married to George, she sent him a message of comfort while he was in the Tower, and wore only black the rest of her life, which was quite the potent statement. However, I would allow for the possibility that she potentially, inadvertently implicated him or AB (ie, testimony of hers was twisted to suit the crown's case). This is where I think there are flaws in the arguments of some of her defenders-- they cannot allow for even that possibility and so make claims that disallow it; some of which are untrue. 'Jane was only blamed as a means of absolving Henry in the whitewash of Elizabethan propagandists' is not true. Johannes Sleidan in 1545 claimed that Anne and George died by her 'false accusation'. Sleidan was a Reformer, so he would have been more sympathetic towards the plights of these two than the average person, and would have spoken to others that were as well, but the motivation to vindicate Elizabeth did not yet exist; she was at this point the very unlikely third in line to the throne.

I do appreciate that you said 'got along' with Anne, not 'besties', because...it's possible they were very close, certainly, but we must also allow for the possibility of animosity. The linchpin for the argument of closeness is the report from Chapuys that they 'conspired together' to banish Henry's mistress from court. Was this the precise truth? Considering the source I'm doubtful. Probably there was a lady Henry was serving at this time (although that we never have a name makes the story somewhat suppositious), but did they need to have 'conspired together' against her for Jane to be banished from court (which is what happened instead)? Jane might have merely made Anne aware of her, and Henry finding out that she'd been the source would have been enough for banishment. Or, as was presented plausibly in Adrienne Dillard's fictional rendition, Jane might have dropped hints to Cromwell that this mistress was a supporter of the two exiled and contumacious royal women that were Anne's adversaries, Cromwell might have passed this along to Henry, and Henry might have banished Jane for shattering the illusion that this woman had no independent ambitions or ulterior motives and merely let him hit for the sheer pleasure of his company.

If this was evidence of closeness, and it might be, then we also have to remember that the end result was Jane's banishment from court, and that there is, as JT fairly pointed out, no evidence that any of the Boleyns spoke in her defense, favor, or for her return. It would take an extremely magnanimous person to accept all that with equanimity and not feel any resentment whatsoever. So, if there was intimacy, there might have also been rift.

That leaves the question: enough 'rift' for her to seek vengeance? I doubt that much for all the reasons Fox outlines in her biography, but at the same time I wish there was not this relentless push to only defend women that we assert 'deserve' defense, on the premise they were entirely selfless, accepted every insult with grace, never kept any grudges, never had personal ambitions (the actions she took during the queenships of those you mentioned would suggest otherwise), mixed emotions, or conflicting loyalties; that we could acknowledge that acknowledging the agency of historic women also means acknowledging they were capable of making mistakes.

#anon #it feels like an 'overcorrection' to some degree. if that makes sense?#altho that's generally what ppl say about AB too and i generally think they're wrong lol #'waaah AB apologism waaaaahhh joanna denny wahhhhhhhhhhhh h/ayley nolan'#bitch. no one serious is taking those seriously. if joanna denny was the definitive AB bio that would be one thing #the definitive is eric ives who oh no said in his personal opinion that his favorite was more attractive in personality and appearance #than the other...oh my god that is the worst thing anyone has every said in the HISTORY OF TIME #are y'all this sensitive in real life bcus fr.#how do you bitches SURVIVE..................#anyway what i was initially going to say after coming back to this:#*ever #like the way this figure is used to have it both ways really bothers...me?#i think there's some ambiguity here but like #i read someone claim that JS must have been 'so sweet' bcus otherwise JB would not have been her lady in waiting....#which is like. be fr? if JB loved george and anne she would have hated her lol #or at the very least have been uneasy in her presence (there's a great scene with this in adrienne's sequel btw)#but like...idk man. ppl just don't seem to get how humans worked? or have any sort of emotional; media; literal; literacy?#this was my thing with BSR too 'how dare THEY say henry NEVER loved coa how dare THEY say jane was to blame for anne's miscarriage'#like right...were 'they' saying that or was anne? or was that what anne believed? was the show perhaps from her (gasp) POV and so #these things were portrayed? i mean ffs.... by our literal primary sources those were the things she said.#someone's emotions and beliefs /= infallible unassailable entire truths #nor are they necessarily 'fair' and the same with our judgements. welcome to being a human being #so yeah like re: JB....#*that she felt like that? was it entirely fair to blame and resent the seymours?#is that necessarily fair? no. how much she did or didn't was probably dependent on how accurate chapuys report was about JS #the extent to which she had disparaged anne #as for the why as JF theorized ; the need of income and the possibility that since cromwell had helped her with income #this was the favor he wanted in return (so her as a spy in the household)#and re: conflicting loyalties ; i mean ...goddamn; people are complex #i think it's entirely possible that JB loved anne but also had this innate sympathy for coa and mary too.

12 notes · View notes