#I'm going crazy about it honestly

[marlynnofmany]

This is a post about generative AI

“I’m loving the new Food Generator! You just tell it what you want to eat, and it appears right there on the table! Never mind the fact that the machine gets its ingredients by teleporting them out of other people's fridges, and it has an exhaust pipe belching diesel from the back of the house, and sometimes it puts glass in the food. I can make pizza with any topping I want, and the number of dishes I have to clean is way down!”

[martyryo]

I can't be trusted with colors.

[murderedbyhomework]

There's a saying somewhere on the cn fandom that 如果角姐是戀愛腦，李相夷便是師兄腦 (if jiao liqiao is love brain, Li Xiangyi was shixiong brain) and like it's so true tho. Like we as a random do not talk about just how much Li Xiangyi/Li Lianhua loved his shixiong, even outside the obvious "spending his remaining 10 years with the one goal of finding his shixiong's remains and immediately giving up on fighting against death after finding sgd to the extent where dfs had to bring out the big guns to get llh to continue living for a while".

There's way too many stuff I could talk about but I'll briefly talk about Wenjing. As depicted in canon, Wenjing was sgd's 18th birthday present for lxy, made from Yun Metal (not that lxy knew it at the time). The name of the sword itself says a lot about lxy's love for his shixiong. Wenjing (刎頸）refers to the phrase 刎頸之交, aka "a friendship/relationship one would slit their throat for, referring to friendships where one would willingly and gladly lay down their life for the other". Li Xiangyi is the one who names this sword, and he directly references this phrase when naming the sword. One could say wenjing was a symbol of just how much sgd meant to lxy.

So how much does wenjing mean to Li Xiangyi/Li Lianhua? Going off canon, lxy was a bit of a peacock, and he liked to show off things he deemed impressive, yet for things that were actually really important to him, such as his love for cheap candy, he kept close to his chest. So what about Wenjing? It's a beautiful sword, and very well made, but Li Xiangyi never showed it off to anyone and kept it extremely private, because in his opinion, sgd's gift was something he wanted to keep just for himself. As top of the Jianghu, a lot of him was shown to the public and under public scrutiny, everything about him placed on the spotlight, placed on a pedestal, yet lxy was possessive enough over this sword to keep it to himself, like a secret only his shixiong and himself would know.

And then there's lxy always keeping wenjing on him even during his years as llh. As lxy, he had shaoshi as a sword already, and he didn't need another sword on him, not really, because he's proven that even disarmed he's not defenseless, but he kept wenjing on him anyway, because it was probably a symbol of his shixiong's love for him. And as llh, he would continue keeping the sword on him, despite being a wandering doctor who supposedly knew no martial arts and would be too poor to have such a beautiful sword.

And finally, llh chose to destroy shaoshi instead of using it to end himself (it's canon he literally said to shaoshi "using you to end me is rather inappropriate"), but despite wenjing later being revealed as, in fact, a sign of sgd's betrayal and hate of llh, llh never destroyed that it. He did throw it into a cliff face so no one could ever reach it again (low key excalibur situation hmn), but in my mind, it wasn't ever an action of hate against sgd, not a rejection of his gift, but rather llh throwing wenjing away from himself before he could actually get really mad and destroy this gift from his shixiong. He might have left wenjing behind when he went off to die, but we all know Llh's love language is abandonment.

[scarlettjskipper]

HSR: Spoilers for Penacony's Trailblazer Mission 2.1!

God, the WAY Sunday yelled at Gallagher at end, demanding to know why he killed Robin broke my heart. I wanted to pat his back and hold his hand, dear Lord.

I can't imagine the agony he must be going through. He's reunited with his sister after literal years, only for her to be murdered, then the people who adopted them both force him to pretend that she's alive, try to stop him from looking into her death and who caused it.

AND THAT LIGHTCONE OH MY GOD THAT LIGHTCONE The fact that he kept it securely... After all this time... He looked so young and happy, too. Oh, my heart.

There's a lot of questionable things going on with him (just like everyone else in Penacony) but my heart really goes out to him. He's one of the people who has, arguably, been having the worst times.

[edwardshundredyearoldspunk]

I'm so sorry to the dead boy detectives fandom. netflix has created an environment that makes it inhospitable for good, long lasting tv and I'm sorry dead boy detectives is yet another victim to it. tv has always been a numbers game, but when you gain a reputation for being serial cancellers, you create an environment where potential viewers just don't want to risk falling in love with something that is likely to be cancelled. when you do absolutely nothing to improve that reputation and instead continue cancelling good shows just because you don't think they have wide enough audiences, that is BAD. when you blame subscribers for not watching fast enough, when you hold fans hostage under the uncertainty, that is bad it's bad for tv, it's bad for jobs, it's bad for the niche audiences who see themselves represented in these shows. it's bad for art. but netflix stopped pretending to care about art a long, long time ago, hasn't it? so I'm sorry to the dead boy detectives fandom, because I know this was a queer show. and I know it was a special show. and I know sometimes it's hard to not take the cancellation of these special shows that feel personal personally. just know that the love was there, it didn't change anything, but it matters that the love was there

[californiaquail]

anyone else feeling fundamentally incapable of adjusting to society. also just discovered there's a 30 tag limit which i can't believe i've never hit before

[pardonmydelays]

i have a confession to make: i'm actually doing better than i ever was

[marshmellowtea]

i'm a "sandra fucking hates raymond bean so much but she's willing to play nice with him because she knows it's important to chris that he respects him and his drama society even though she knows that'll literally never happen for him" truther.......raymond actually likes her and she knows that and will play into that when she's around him because chris keeps looking at them with these pleading, hopeful eyes, like she can somehow help convince his father that this little acting thing he's doing is worth something, but the entire time she's thinking about gutting raymond like a fucking fish because he's an asshole to her and their friends and ESPECIALLY to chris but chris is so blinded by his desire to be loved by him and his absolute paralyzing terror of him to recognize that and her sympathy for him over that has won out over her anger that he brought this man into their theater <3

[doerot]

Many such cases of adding a third fucked up guy into the mix to make me actually interested in a ship

[takemebacktowheniwassane]

when you realize that your on the aromantic spectrum way too fucking late in the game and you really just want someone to give you affection in life

[some-pers0n]

Every once in a while I think about the ship I've been obsessed over for close to two years now and feel like I'm ascending to another plane of reality. Like sometimes you just encounter a ship that hits every single mark and is perfect in every regard and you're left stunned how something like that can even exist

[vynegar]

"Albie" (main story 11-21)

At the end of Episode 11 (Part 1), we find out that "Albie" is simply a name that Vyn made up on the spot when Rosa asked. He may have been inspired by his own birth name, Vilhelm Richard Albert de Haspran.

In Chinese, Vyn choose the name "阿明". "阿" is a prefix used to form nicknames, "明" can be a name but also means "bright, clear". In Vyn's Romantic Rail Getaway card "Food for Thought", he tells us the meaning of his name:

You can see the character 明 appear in the word 明亮 ("bright"), although 明 is such a common character that I wouldn't say that this Chinese text alone is enough is sufficient evidence to show the connection between the two names. It's the way that the "Albie" and "阿明" happen to coincide in the name "Albert", which made me take note of Vyn's "careless" choice in name.

If the Chinese name was intended to subtly reference "Albert", I can certainly imagine imagine this as one way to preserve that reference through translation, even if it becomes more obvious. We do have an example of the translation preserving plot-relevant wordplay in a name: Lowe Leare ("Lowly"), originally 萧仁 ("小人", both pronounced "xiao ren" but with different tones). However, there's also an incident of a plot-relevant name being missed through translation, though it was in an event (not the main story) that probably foreshadowed a distant plot point and had infamously bad translation issues.

Anyway, it remains possible that "Albie" is a coincidence. However, after Vyn and Rosa wrap up their conversation about Albie's name, the narration makes a comment on the importance of that moment:

It isn't until the whole case is settled that you are surprised to realize something... You had briefly touched on the key to cracking the case at this very moment.

...which at least gives me enough confidence to not feel silly writing up a whole post about it. We've only seen part of this case, and there's a lot of mystery still surrounding Vyn's behavior so I don't have any definitive hypotheses on why Vyn might have chosen his own name for Albie. Is there something that made Vyn seen himself in Albie? Did the delinquent's attitude remind Vyn of the cruel, stratified world that he was born in? Is he reminded of how people who have imperfections will be tossed aside and abandoned? I guess we'll see when part 2 of this episode is released.

[graff-aganda]

No no ikr. The ENT fandom is so quiet around here. And honestly I'm just excited to see art of my favourite dudes, because we rarely get fanart around here, and when we do it's usually Trip or T'Pol solely. Malcolm gets left in the dust quite a lot so I'm happy you drew him as well - and so well done too!

Anyway, ramble over, lol.

OMG... Well I think I can see why a lot of fanart is of Trip and/or T'pol (those two seem like they're doing some heavy lifting for the show/are just a lot of people's faves. I've got a few half baked ideas in mind for them myself.) but the rest of the crew as a whole do deserve more love I think! :]

[thesmokinpossum]

Didn't felt like mentioning it immediately but shoutout to my sick and twisted brain for getting so triggered by an unexpected Christmas parade that I ended up havin the absolute worst panic attack of my entire life (potentially the only real one? I've had a couple other episodes I thought of as panic attacks but they were not even close to that so who knows) to the point where I spent the very last day of my 30th year on this earth in the ER, good times, good times 😊

[hellsingmongrel]

Man, so I'm not normally the biggest fan of Modern AUs, nor am I overly fond of fiction focused on kids, but...last night, my sleeping brain decided to concoct this Trigun (Stampede-flavored) Modern AU that now is living rent free in my damn brain! I want to get it out of my head and into the ether. I don't know if I'm going to do anything long-form with it, and I'm having to translate dream weirdness into more coherent storytelling, but here we go.

So it's modern day Earth, like 2024 or some shit, right? And that's when this version of Earth had just begun fucking around with Plant cloning. It's early enough that the SEEDS project hasn't even left the planet, the scientists haven't yet figured out how to put Plants in bulbs and use them for fuel, none of that! But they've already had Tessla happen, and the boys have already been born. Since they're not in space, even though they had to have found out about their sister, Nai hasn't had a chance to literally nuke humanity from orbit, and I guess Rem has had a chance to try and curtail some of his trauma, so he's...more stable? Ish? Stable enough where he's not actively trying to murder everyone. And the boys are "older," like we see in the flashbacks for the time Vash encountered Nai during the Last Run, so probably around 6 years old but looking 16 or so.

Rem has managed to fudge their paperwork so they've started going to school with human kids, to try and give them a normal childhood. Nai isn't as eager to play ball with the whole "being human" thing as much as Vash is, but Vash has got so many friends, Meryl and Milly and Lina are there and they're like the cutest, most stupidly adorable group of friends, just a bunch of little goofballs, like kids that age are. And the school has a field trip to a theme park (it was Disneyworld in my dream because my school actually did this, but ours was a band trip) and Vash manages to convince Rem to let him go. Vash and Nai and Rem are still paranoid about humans figuring out who they are, so you know, he's told to be extra careful and take care of himself, and Nai gives him one of his blades or something for self defense, just in case something happens. Even though Vash would never, that boy has trauma around knives and trying to defend himself, if you've read Trimax, iykyk. But he takes it anyway, and somehow, he manages to sneak it into the park. Maybe the metal doesn't register on metal detectors or something, who knows.

But he's a kid, and kids are dumb. Especially when they're 16. Especially if those 16 year olds aren't actually 16 and don't have the actual lived experience to know better. So he starts playing with the knife in front of the girls, showing off and just being a silly little guy. And then the knife slips. Bad. We're talking "this is how he probably lost his arm in this AU" bad. Blood everywhere, the girls are panicking and take him to the school chaperones and it's like "HOLY SHIT WTF DUDE, We're taking you to the ER, someone call his mom!"

And he hears that, pictures the doctors finding out he's not human, remembers what happened to Tessla, and panics. Boy does a runner like only Vash can do, and he manages to get away from them, out of the park, and escapes from security. And when parents get involved in trying to find him, the authorities start looking into the incident, and someone in the government overseeing the Plant research is able to recognize the elemental make up of the blade he dropped, and they start having suspicions. So the feds get involved, and it just goes from bad to worse, right?

Meanwhile, loopy from blood loss and panicking and a little sobbing mess because he feels dumb about slipping up and he's afraid he'll never get to go home to his mom and his brother again and is spiraling the way kids do when they panic, he gets lost in the city and ends up stumbling over teenage Wolfwood, who lives on the streets and has a few street kids that he looks after on his own with Livio. They never got to live at the orphanage, but that also means that the Eye (in whatever form it takes in this AU) never got ahold of them, so yeah, shits fucked for them, but it's actually a whole lot better for them than it might have been. And it's Wolfwood without all of the EoM trauma, so you can just imagine what he does when this delirious, bloody, terrified, severely injured kid runs him over in the street, sobbing about being caught by the adults and taken away.

Big Brother Nico do what Big Brother Nico do.

At that point, I ended up waking up, but damn if my brain didn't give me enough details to come up with a dumb AU idea that I kind of love and want to do something with, but I don't know if I have the time or spoons to do so.

Ideas I'd had following this beginning to flesh itself out in my head; Luida and Brad are Plant researchers brought onto the project to help the feds figure out wtf is going on with this whole situation, and when Luida is told to talk to Rem, because she's not giving them anything they can use, the two of them reach a secret accord to bring Vash home safe and sound and cover everything back up nice and squeaky clean the way it should have stayed.

Vash's arm is bad enough that he can't really heal it very well on his own without medical care, Plant healing or no. He's doing better than most kids would, but it still begins to go septic, and it forces Nico and Livio to make the really hard decision to find adults they can trust to bring him to so he can get the care he needs. He still ends up losing his arm, though.

At the end of everything, Melanie ends up taking Nico and Livio and the other kids in, so they still get to have their momma figure, even if she comes in later. Maybe she's the one that they find to help them. Is she maybe someone they've known was mostly safe but was never able to get them to stick around long enough to take care of them? Either way, the boys get Vash to her, and it starts the process of getting him home and the kids finally staying at the orphanage.

Meryl, Milly, and Lina all end up sneaking away when they realize that Vash is in more trouble than the adults are letting on, trying to go find him, since they know him better than anyone other than Rem and Nai. Eventually, they meet up with Nico and Livio while everyone is trying to avoid federal agents.

Obviously it's lovey-dovey Vashwood and Insurance Girlfriends and Polygun-flavored, but in the "these kids are too oblivious to think about sexy things, yet" sort of way, because I really do headcanon that at least Vash is ace, Wolfwood is probably demi, and also I am not writing children getting intimate like that. >8/ But kids having little crushes on each other is adorable and I can't not have Vashwood and Insurance Girlfriends be the eventual outcome, once those idiots all grow up and get their heads screwed on straight.

Also, because Nai hasn't had a chance to murder everyone, Rem's managed to work with him enough that he's very slowly overcoming his trauma and regaining his ability to trust that he's not in permanent danger. He'll probably grow up to be a Plants Rights activist or something, lbh. Or a politician. But he's not going to murder people, so either way, it's a win/win!

Because Nico's been living on the streets with him, Razlo either hasn't had to manifest as strongly for Livio, or hasn't manifested at all. Livio is still the sweet, shy, crybaby teddy bear we see, and maybe Razlo only comes out when the feds start getting closer and almost managing to grab the kids, and because he's been able to bond with Nico and the other kids so well this time, Livio is close enough to them that the thought of them getting hurt or taken away is enough to make him want to protect their little group instead of just Livio.

Wolfwood absolutely grumbles about how alike Vash and Livio are. Both a couple'a crybabies, geez, what the Hell you two??? But he also is very much a teddy bear who gives the best hugs when one of his little band of gremlins is upset, so he probably spends more time in a cuddle pile than anything else, now that there's two of them to lose their shit at the drop of a hat.

Vash was totally the one very sweet boy in a clique of girls that everyone who'd known him realized, when they were adults looking back, that he was very much the sweet gay kid hanging out with the girls because it was safer to be himself around them than it was to be around the other boys. (This isn't meant as a stereotype of gay kids, this is based on actual kids I grew up with. My friend group honest to God adopted them because we were all a bunch of momma bears.)

Vash is also...not trans? Because he's a Plant and Plants don't work the same way humans do, but he's also not what humans would think of as a cis boy. He expresses a masc presentation, but probably the closest equivalent would be an intersexed kid. Nai, too, tbh, though he's probably more of the "I don't give a fuck" opinion when it comes to his own gender identity. He uses he/him because that's what humans think when they see him, but he doesn't care any deeper than that.

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

if dorian didn't show up, do you think louis would have shot minnie?

I do. I know some people think either he wouldn't have or he would've missed so that's why the writers had him shoot Dorian instead, but mmmmmm no, I don't personally think so. I like to think that if he had taken the shot, his shaky hands would've caused him to shoot her fatally.

Mostly because I'm already so normal about the fact that of the Ericson crew, Marlon and Louis are the only ones with a body count. Well, that we know of, but shown to us in the game, at least. Plus, we know it's Louis' first kill.

Like yeah, Clementine and AJ become part of the crew and they have bigger body counts, and if we're counting indirect kills caused by actions, then Tenn has a count... and I guess everyone has blood on their hands for blowing up the boat... but I'm talking about killed directly with a weapon like....... I lied, I'm not normal about that at all, Louis and Marlon are the ones who have killed someone in Louis' route. I'm also not normal about the fact that Louis kills Dorian and then even as he's clearly in shock, he tries to go with Clementine to get AJ, and then later on when they talk about it, he says it feels like bile but not quite and he's glad he has it in him to do it.... listen, listen, listen... I'm obsessed with that.

Anyway, so if Louis shot Minerva, I think he would've accidentally killed her and can you imagine? He's already enough of a mess after killing the woman who pinned him down and tried to cut his finger off [or succeeded] but he knew Minerva, they were friends before the twins were taken. Even Violet couldn't kill her even though that would've been the smarter thing to do, and we know thanks to meta knowledge that killing her would've saved lives, but Violet couldn't, and I don't think Louis would intentionally either.

Speaking of Violet, if Louis killed Minerva, I hate to think about what that would've done to Vi. I think she might've actually left at that point, like what was planned before it got changed to her being burned. I don't think she would've attacked Louis over it, though, like yeah she attacked Clementine in the cell but Louis? I don't know, but I don't think so just because it's Louis and he'd be a mess about it anyway.

Though if he did kill her, it would be a neat parallel to draw... y'know, because Louis forgave AJ for killing Marlon even though he was pissed and heartbroken, and Violet was annoyed with him the entire time... but could she ever forgive Louis for killing Minerva? Y'know? We already have a similar parallel with AJ shooting Tenn, but still.

If Clementine killed Minerva in that moment, though, then I could see Violet attacking her since in her eyes, Clem proved her right.

So yeah, I get why they added the Dorian kill to his route. It adds another compelling element to Louis as a character, but we also need Minerva alive for episode 4; Louis can't kill her, he can't miss, and he's not going to stay with her because we need Violet to stay on the boat and him to be on shore for all routes.