09/08/23 - Genshin is also an excellent work of art that’s going to push the entire gaming industry forward.
“A story from my best friend.
His hometown is in Hunan. He’s been married for two years, and plans to be child-free, so they haven’t had any children. His cousin got married a couple of years before him and had a daughter soon after.
His whole family is a bit sexist. Since their first kid was a girl, they immediately began preparing to have a second kid. Thankfully, the second baby turned out to be a boy, or else they would’ve had to keep going.
Every since the second kid was born, my best friend’s cousin started casually asking him when he planned to have a kid. My best friend said that he was child-free, he was never going to have one. And his cousin would look all doubtful and be like, “Are you just infertile?”
After having this conversation a couple of times, my best friend got a little impatient, and just went, “‘Kay, sure, fine, I’m just infertile.”
One day, his cousin came to him and brought up letting my best friend adopt his oldest. The reason was, “You can’t have kids anyways. This way, there’ll be someone to take care of you in old age.”
Everyone knows what the real reason is. My best friend turned him down right away. Said it’s not that he doesn’t want to, but he can’t.
He and his wife are both salarymen in Beijing. They put together a down payment together and are going to stay in Beijing long-term. Neither of their parents are close to them, and they’ve still got a mortgage to pay off. Who would even take care of the kid?
When his cousin heard this reasoning, he brought up an explosive fucking plan:
Well, we could raise her for you, if you just pay off her living expenses every month.”
Comments say, “Jesus, does he think your best friend is a retard?”
“Hey, wanna hear a joke? Women have such high status these days, it’s like they’re riding on top of men.”
“Hahahaha, tell his cousin to take care of the girl for now, pay off everything for her for now, and I’ll adopt her once I’m actually old.”
A tiktok video of an LV collapsible vanity. The blogger says, “That’s such fantastic storage though. It’s great for people renting a 10-square-metre apartment, with no place to put a real vanity.”
Comments say, “You could buy another 10 square metres instead of this thing.”
“I just want to know what the point of only wearing one glove is.”
“How much is this thing?” The reply is, “Over 350K, man.”
A news article about the 6.9 earthquake in Morocco that’s resulted in at least 31 deaths.
Comments say, “Oh my god, why didn’t this earthquake happen in Japan?”
“They’re so friendly towards China too.”
“Soon, there’s gonna be tons of donations and resources rolling in.”
“Oh my god, I just found out my favourite math youtuber is my ex-girlfriend! I was studying ahead the other day and felt a bit confused about some of the concepts. When I searched Bilibili, I went through several videos, and all of them felt like they didn’t really get to the point. Then I discovered a youtuber who explained the concept really well, really made me feel like I’d learned a lot. Then, whenever I’d encounter a problem I couldn’t grasp, I’d go watch her videos.
More and more, I felt like, she’s really such a great tutor. She makes everything sound so simple. And she has a super sweet voice. Sometimes, I kind of felt bad for her, like why is no one watching this really awesome series. I had a bunch of coins, and I tipped them all to her.
Then one day, there was a question where I watched her video and still didn’t get it, so I messaged her for help. I figured that youtubers are probably really busy with a lot of stuff, but she replied back to me in just a few hours. She’s super nice, really patient, and even made a sequel video just for me. When I thanked her, I asked if she does tutoring on the side, and she said there’s no need. I was welcome to message her about any questions I had. She’ll definitely get back to me.
I know she must be busy as hell, so I only ever asked her when I really couldn’t get it on my own. That was, until last night, in the explanation video she sent to me, her mom told her to go to bed already, and she’d used my ex-girlfriend’s name. I was totally shocked! My ex-girlfriend had a super common last name, but a really rare name! At the time, I couldn’t believe it, and I had to double-check her IP address and her unboxing videos and some of her language habits, and it all matched my ex-girlfriend!
I never thought something this dramatic would happen! I was still doubtful at this point, so I asked her. And! She admitted to it right away! And she’d recognised me too! Because I really liked to get caught up in myself, especially when it came to maths. She said that I “hadn’t changed at all”, and even got mad I never recognised her voice.
But it’s been three years since I last spoke to her. Honestly, I barely even remember what her face looks like. But I still remember that I used to like her a lot, and she used to like me a lot.
So feigning casualness, I was all like, “What are you doing now?’
And she told me she was playing Genshin. I’m not exaggerating when I say, that Genshin is the biggest, most ambitious game miHoYo’s ever made. I’ve spent over 8700 hours in this game, and still haven’t discovered all its secrets. I still don’t have all the weapons and equipment, or all the spells and skills. Although the combat in this game isn’t that different from what we’ve seen before in other phone games, but the creatively designed enemies and boss fights has made this game in a whole other league compared to other phone games. Just like Legend of Zelda a couple of years ago, Genshin is also an excellent work of art that’s going to push the entire gaming industry forward.”
Comments say, “Who has a knife. I need to stab somebody.”
“Yell out with me: Fuck off!”
“Someone continue the story, or I really am going to murder someone.”
“In 695 AD, a 32-year-old Xue Huaiyi was just about to spend a pleasurable night with a 72-year-old Wu Zetian. After bathing and changing, Xue Huaiyi ran to the bed chambers, and saw Wu Zetian lying on her side in bed. He hurried forward to hold her, but Wu Zetian suddenly ordered, “Take him down and beat him to death!”
Why would Wu Zetian kill such a sweet and obedient little lover?
Xue Huaiyi’s actual name is Feng Xiaobao, a snake oil salesman. He was very tall and muscular, and handsome too, so he’d always been popular with women. This brought him the greatest opportunity of his life—the recommendation of Princess Qianjin.
Princess Qianjin is the daughter of Li Yuan. After Wu Zetian came into power, she went about systematically wiping out the Li family. To avoid disaster, she had to honour Wu Zetian as her mother, even though generationally speaking, Wu Zetian is her niece-in-law. But even so, she lived in fear every day, constantly afraid that Wu Zetian would come after her anyways.
So when she saw Feng Xiaobao, Princess Qianjin felt like she had found a treasure. She took him back to her manor right away and tested him out herself. After making sure that he was indeed very good at serving people, she dressed him up and sent him to Wu Zetian’s bedchambers.
Ever since her husband had passed away, Wu Zetian had been feeling very lonely too. She was very satisfied when she saw the tall and handsome Feng Xiaobao, and made use of him right away.
Feng Xiaobao knew this was the greatest opportunity in his life too, so he used every trick he had, to make sure Wu Zetian was happy. Overjoyed, Wu Zetian made him her consort. But she lived in the Imperial Palace after all, and she was worried about gossip. She was theoretically the Dowager Empress at the time, she can’t be too over the top. So she had to create a reasonable identity for Feng Xiaobao.
In the Qin Dynasty, Dowager Empress Zhao had her consort Lao Ai as a eunuch, but he was found out right away. After all, it’s pretty easy to tell at a glance whether someone was a real man or not. With this sort of example, of course Wu Zetian wouldn’t make the same mistake. She first had Feng Xiaobao change his name to Xue Huaiyi, and put him into her SIL Xue Shao’s family tree, then had him join a monastery.
Of course, this becoming a monk is just to pull the wool over people’s eyes. Aside from losing all his hair, Feng Xiaobao didn’t do anything else. It merely allowed him to frequently enter the palace and meet with Wu Zetian in private under the guise of explaining scriptures to her. Wu Zetian was so pleased with him, that she eventually named him Cardinal of White Horse Temple.
A street-wandering Feng Xiaobao became the well-respected Cardinal Xue Huaiyi, and easily found his spot in the elite circles of society. This kind of treatment made all the men in all of Tang drool with envy.
But Xue Huaiyi didn’t let down his guard with that. He’d had plenty of sugar mommies before. He knew very well that Wu Zetian just thought of him as a toy to pass the time with. If she ever got bored with him one day, then she wouldn’t think twice about kicking him aside. And once he lost Wu Zetian’s favour, he wouldn’t have a good ending either.
So aside from just kissing up to Wu Zetian, he had to prove his value in other ways too.
After much thought, Xue Huaiyi came up with what he thought was the best plan: Wu Zetian was a devout Buddhist, and was extremely ambitious. She wanted nothing more than to be the first female Emperor. And as the Cardinal of White Horse Temple, no one was in a better position than him to make waves for her.
So, Xue Huaiyi got to work right away. First, he gathered all the monks, and went through mountains of Buddhist scripture, until he found a reference to women ruling the world in the Dayun Scriptures. He hired some academic monks to spin a story based on it, and came up with a rumour that “The Tang are failing because Maitreya has come to Earth.” Of course, Maitreya referred to Wu Zetian.
This rumour gave Wu Zetian the evidence she needed to ascend the throne, and as a result, Wu Zetian favoured Xue Huaiyi more and more. Not only did she grant him all kinds of noble titles and positions, but she ignored all the illegal dealings he had gotten up to.
Wu Zetian’s favour made Xue Huaiyi more reckless too. He even demanded to enter the palace from the main gate, which only Chancellors could use. Tang Dynasty Chancellors were pretty powerful, physically speaking that is. They pulled Xue Huaiyi off his horse and gave him the beating of his life.
Xue Huaiyi was afraid to fight back against these old Chancellors, so he ran crying to Wu Zetian. But Wu Zetian would never make enemies with her own Chancellors for his sake, so not only did she not get revenge for him, but she even told him off. He broke down right away. He never thought that after all he’d done for Wu Zetian, he was still just a consort who deserved to get beat in her eyes.
This made Xue Huaiyi begin to hate Wu Zetian. He no longer eager went into the palace to serve her as before. He even started keeping various women in the White Horse Temple to have fun with. He thought he could get one over Wu Zetian this way, but what kind of person was Wu Zetian? If this consort isn’t behaving, then I’ll just get a new consort.
So, slowly, Xue Huaiyi began to lose favour. Out of his mind now, he even set fire to Wu Zetian’s luxurious Ming Palace in envy. Wu Zetian built the Ming Palace to show off her deeds and accomplishments! How would she feel for it to be burnt down in such a clownish way? So she summoned him into the palace and had him beaten to death.
Honestly, Xue Huaiyi would’ve been a legend among consorts with how much favour he had, but since he was so greedy and even wanted to be equals with Wu Zetian, it’s not strange at all he would have such an ending.”
Comments say, “Bullshit. What Princess Qianjin? It was Princess Taiping that recommended him—Wu Zetian’s own daughter!”
A tiktok video of a guy showing off what his girlfriend is like when she first sees him.
Comments say, “You can take videos in your dreams now?”
“You can tell she keeps dogs, and it’s probably a golden retriever.”
“I feel more like she’s petting a dog XD”
Literally while I’m uploading the video above, weibo updated, and now the news is, the earthquake in Morocco has caused 296 deaths.
Comments say, “How did the numbers jump this much this quickly!?”
“Oh my god, I swear I saw an article literally just last minute and it was still only 26 people!”
“We’ve been getting so many plate movements lately.”
child free -> child-free
Kay -> 'Kay
10 square metre apartment -> 10-square-metre apartment
laying on her side -> lying on her side
What does the "Women have such high status" thing have to do with the story it's responding to? Also, how is it a joke?