lex

They're in the clear.

do not taste plants if you don't know what they are

do not identify a fruit as edible just because it tastes sweet

hope you didn't eat any fucking seeds, bro

I saw the photo in my feed and went ohh, dude, no, we do not handle yellow rocks with our bare hands until we know for sure what they are. And I know that orange...

In comments, they continue:

and that's where I started cussing at the computer monitor. But someone else had got there first:

this^ fucking ask

somehow makes the app freeze

^cannot interact with any on screen buttons past this point, i have to force close the app

and does THIS to the website

what the fuck

how did they do this

how do i contact support to fix this

elros doesn’t talk that much his father, which is weird, because he’s an incredibly talkative guy. he’s got precisely three canned eärendil anecdotes he rolls out whenever someone asks about him, and that’s the most he’ll say in public. in private, though, among people he knows well, he’ll occasionally drop a reference or an off-the-cuff recollection into conversation, always in relation to some other topic. ‘my old man said this’ ‘you sound like my old man’ kind of thing

but if you, like, listen to what he’s saying, maybe collate some of his stories, the person he describes as his old man doesn’t sound much like eärendil. his old man was actually around for most of his childhood. his old man taught him everything he knows about horses. his old man was someone he can consciously imitate when he’s trying to be intimidating. his old man had specific and extremely arcane opinions about chord progression

There's nothing that makes a joke unfunnier than over-explaining it, but because of this post I feel obligated to explain why Quan Yizhen stuffing gold bars in Xie Lian's donation box is so funny from a Chinese reader's perspective.

Quan Yizhen & his gold bars happened at a time of the story full of tragic and tumultuous events. He Xuan just killed Shi Wudu and the entire heavenly court was reeling from his death. Soon after, Xie Lian uncovered Ling Wen's role in the Brocade Immortal fiasco. While everyone else was embroiled in these serious and momentous incidents, Quan Yizhen was on his equally important and serious side quest to stuff XL's donation box full of gold bars.

I think an important rule of comedy is that once the comedian shows that he is aware of himself being comical, once it becomes obvious that he's trying to make people laugh, the joke stops being as funny. A good comedy should be performed with serious and sincere intention. And that's why Quan Yizhen stuffing gold bars in XL's donation box is so funny - because he's so incredibly serious about it.

Quan Yizhen didn't just dump a whole sack of gold bars into the donation box - which would be the quickest and easiest way - he actually took the time to stack them up inside the box one by one (“一根一根地塞”, chapter 128). Actually he stacked the gold bars so neatly and tightly that they clogged up the donation box (chapter 133). So you see how seriously Quan Yizhen took this task; he showed the same amount of attention and dedication that a 10-year-old would show to his beloved lego toys. In chapter 128, when MXTX describes Quan Yizhen finishing up with the gold bars, she uses the verb 收工, which means clock out/finish a day's work. So again you see this is by no means frivolous for Quan Yizhen - this is actual important hard work for him!

I think it goes without saying that the situation is funny also because Quan Yizhen's so persistent about it. The heavenly court may have turned topsy turvy and everyone else may have very grown-up and life-and-death stuff to worry about, but Quan Yizhen will get these gold bars into Xie Lian's donation box (come to think of it he reminds me of the squirrel in Ice Age, they're both so locked in).