My little headcanon is that they get together once in a while to make crafts with Xie Lian's scraps and some mysterious sea shells that keep showing up wherever Shi Qingxuan goes

Design for old Feng because I think they would still like to look cute once everything is settled 🥺

imagine being on your lunch break, and your supervisor comes over to your table, tells you to stand up in front of everyone. they draw everyone's attention to your thighs. they tell you that you have broken the dress code because of the length of your shorts. they tell you to go change (so you do not get the rest of your lunch break). they do this every single day at lunch. every day. so you read the whole dress code front and back, and you choose your clothing carefully to not break it. you bring a cloth tape measure with you to work because they will not believe you. this time when your supervisor tells you that you're breaking dress code, you pull out your tape measure and show that you are within the limit. your supervisor says "I bet you wouldn't want me to bring you to the boss and let him measure it, would you?" it's clearly a threat: if you don't obey then you will be put alone in a room with your boss and he will touch your thighs. you don't know how to respond. you're taken out of lunch again.

A tiktok screenshot that says "Hey guys I'm struggling mentally, but I don't want kind responses. I want you to respond like a mentally absent parent. Thank you."

It has 20,306 comments, some of which are included here and say:

"Well Kate, I don't know what you want from me"

"The phone goes both ways. When's the last time you checked on me?"

"You're the strong one, I never have to worry about you"

"Go in there and mentally struggle them dishes" - response from creator: "Yes ma'am"

"Reacted "👍" to your message."

"I struggled my whole life you'll be fine"

"it's always something with you"

"Well I guess I'm just a bad mom"

Almost all of the comments were liked by the creator.

humidity

oh alas, you say. oh papa, whatever shall i do, it is ever so hotte and drye in california. the very air hath been sucked of all its moisturey droplets and whatnot.* one hundredy and tennith desiccated degrees!

*(yo, drought is serious. i am pretty obviously not making fun of that.)

alright. let’s check it out. here’s a random california city, right about now:

thirty-two percent. and here’s a random mid-atlantic city located somewhere in the wet fleshy crease behind a demon’s knee*:

*(confession: i do not live in dc, but several years ago i spent three weeks steaming like a tinned ham in arlington in august. none of the pants i took with me could ever keep a crease again.)

huh! funny thing! “see, dc’s actually seven degrees COOLER,” you say, because you’ve obviously never gone outside and taken a deep lungful of wet sock trash air in your life. and now for added bliss, here’s what early wednesday morning’s gonna be like for these poor clowns:

that’s right! eighty-two percent humidity! the point at which showers no longer matter, because you’re all caught in God’s grease trap! just stressed human eels miserably slip slidin’ their way through a damp melty bathwater-flavored hellscape that feels like it’s actively sous viding their top layer of skin! a hundred thousand people packed into public transit breathing air that feels like deepthroating swamp thing! and you wanna talk to me about fuckin california!

[cue science voice]: human bodies cool through evaporation, a process by which the body sweats and sweet invisible angels towel us off, whisking away our unwanted moisture into the air and literally chilling us out. (it’s also why air conditioned air feels so fucking deliciously refreshing: it’s not just being cooled, it’s being conditioned, aka, dehumidified. it’s cool dry air.) but. if the air is already made out of fucking chowder and can’t absorb shit then guess what the fuck our bodies can’t do.