#Narrative mirrors

[bisquid]

At some point Aragorn meets Jon and is like 'oh look a spiritual twin, allow me to buy you a drink and help troubleshoot Logistics'

Aragorn, 87, So Fucking Done: okay so you probably know this, being like 40, but teenagers, like hobbits, do not possess survival instincts unless Forced To By The Narrative

Jon: I'm seventeen

Aragorn: you're WHAT

[notbecauseofvictories]

I'm re-reading the Discworld series for reasons, and honestly the most relatable part of reading these as an adult is how many of the protagonists start out being tired, used to their little routine and vaguely disgruntled by the interruption of the Plot. Sam Vimes wants to lie drunk in a gutter and absolutely doesn't want to be arresting dragons. Rincewind is yanked into every situation he's ever encountered, though he'd much rather be lying in a gutter too. (Minus the alcohol. Plus regretting everything he's ever done said witnessed or even heard about fourth-hand in his whole life.) Granny Weatherwax is deeply suspicious of foreign parts and that includes the next town over; Nanny has leaned into the armor of "nothing ever happens to jolly grannies who terrorize their daughters-in-law and make Saucy Jokes"

Only the young people don't seem to have picked up on this---and that's fortunate, because someone has to run around making things happen, if only so Vimes and Granny and Rincewind have a reason to get up (complaining bitterly the whole time) and put it all to rights. Without Carrot, Margrat, Eric, etc. these characters don't have that reason; they're likely to stay in the metaphorical gutter and keep wondering where it all went wrong or why anything has to change.

............well, that's not quite true. You get the sense that Vetinari knows how much certain people hate the Plot. And as the person sitting behind the metaphorical lighting board of Ankh-Morpork, he takes no small pleasure in forcing the Plot-haters specifically to stand up, and say some lines.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

she turns, makes direct eye contact with you, smiles,

[justcallme-ange]

Got some feelings about c!Dream and his whole arc. So I’m making it everyone else's problem XD

The Beginning

The End (Wishful)

Also for those that like Angst: The End (Actual)

[whetstonefires]

Thinking about the parallels set up between Wei Wuxian and Mo Xuanyu, and how actually most of them are oddly specious.

The sketch of the backstory lines up, but on close examination they're mirror images.

Wei Wuxian wasn't kicked out of his sect, he left it. Wei Wuxian didn't hate the house he grew up in, he loved it, and getting the people there killed was the absolute last purpose for which his dark powers were ever intended.

Jiang Cheng was no Mo Ziyuan--his jealousy was a complicated thing all twisted up with love, and while he would lash out at Wei Wuxian both as a casual means of shit communication and more damagingly in moments of high tension, he had neither the desire nor the ability to bully him, and in general respected his boundaries almost too well.

When Wei Wuxian destroyed himself about Jiang Cheng, it was to give him cultivation, and protect his life and happiness. He would never have killed him.

Madam Yu was a domineering aunt-like figure, who hated Wei Wuxian for reasons of reputation, and because she had resented his dead mother, but she crucially did not have the power to actually disrupt his lifestyle to any significant extent.

Mo Xuanyu was shut up in a small room to rot; Wei Wuxian didn't even attend classes unless he wanted to. Mo Xuanyu was weak and disliked; Wei Wuxian was brilliant and popular.

Mo Xuanyu's uncle is a cipher of a figure, without character or agency, a nonentity who is resented to death apparently mostly for what he didn't do; in theory he is the master of the house, but he certainly never protected his wife and son's punching bag from them.

And this is what got me thinking along this track: because people keep interpreting Jiang Fengmian as this, as exactly like Mo Xuanyu's nameless uncle, a nonentity who lets his wife make all the decisions, and is contemptible therefore.

He shows up in fic characterized this way all the time, handled narratively as a gap rather than a person, an absence where there should have been a parent, and it's...totally inaccurate? The man only has a few scenes but the things that are most firmly established about him are:

he regularly goes out of his way to protect Wei Wuxian

he's extremely fond of Wei Wuxian

he cares a lot about ethical behavior

he's conflict-avoidant and gentle

he can and will overrule Yu Ziyuan when he's made up his mind, and there's nothing she can do about it

his communication skills are mediocre at best

he doesn't understand jiang cheng

he has a dumb sense of humor

Now almost none of this made it into cql besides point 4 and maybe 6, 5 is technically there but buried by the cinematic framing, so I totally get why the fandom on the whole struggles to characterize him well, and it's easier to write him off.

But it keeps bugging me to see him and Yu Ziyuan squashed into the mold of the Mo, because not only is that boring and reductive and kind-of-missing-the-point, it's like. Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng's characterization suffers a lot when you alter the environment and take away the influence exerted by their shared father figure.

Jiang Fengmian was Wei Wuxian's primary adult role model and it shows.

Jiang Cheng's relationship to his own sense of ethics is fraught because 'teaching him good ethics' was his dad's number one parenting goal, but they misunderstood each other so badly (partly because Yu Ziyuan kept loudly misinterpreting them to each other, which is so realistic I can't get over it, that's exactly how it works good lord) that Jiang Cheng has a direct association between the concept of 'doing the right thing even when it's hard' and a feeling of personal inadequacy.

The fact that Wei Wuxian got their dad-person's approval for being exactly himself and Jiang Cheng not only couldn't do that, he couldn't even get that same level of approval when he really pushed himself to rise to expectations, because Jiang Fengmian did not intend that warmth as a 'reward,' and so never realized he was withholding it, and therefore misunderstood Jiang Cheng's visible jealousy as a dangerous sense of personal entitlement that had to be carefully restrained, which reinforced his distrust of Jiang-Cheng-the-person and fed into a shitty loop where they were less and less able to relate to one another--that's fantastic. That's so human! I love it so much.

Both their failures are their own but at the same time it would never have gotten so bad if Yu Ziyuan hadn't been interjecting herself in there, in the middle of their relationship, fucking it up. That's family, baby.

I would ofc like if there was more fic engaging with the subtleties of all this because it's so good, mxtx did such elegant work here and it is not sufficiently appreciated. But it's the kind of thing that's hard to write good fic about; I am struggling with it myself.

So mostly I wish there was just more fic that didn't impose Mo Xuanyu's cliche angst backstory on Wei Wuxian, who has a whole different thing going on.

[jesncin]

The Twin In the Mirror, an origin remix of the Golden Boy arc from Hellblazer.

Precursor to this comic. This one takes a lot of inspiration from When I Arrived At The Castle by E. M. Carroll in terms of visuals and how the characters are staged.

[constarlations]

🍊 Big Sis Nemona 🍊

my favorite Unovan/Latina Pokémon trainer ever created

Twitter Link

[acesstark]

IWTV character as random posts and tweets I’ve been collecting, part two

[lovegrowsart]

i need people to recognise that while osha was/is emotionally repressed, that doesn't mean she's innately passive in her personality?? passivity is forced upon her by other characters (primarily sol and the jedi) but since she was a kid she expressed a desire for action and adventure - she was the one sneaking out of the fortress to the bunta tree, desiring her own life outside of the coven and her relationship with mae, drawn to the jedi and their lightsabers, and even when she leaves the jedi order, she doesn't exactly settle down somewhere quiet but goes to the other end of the galaxy and takes up a dangerous mechanic job that's only legal for droids to do while hopping from ship to ship and getting tattoos on drunk nights out with her crew? even in episode five with yord trying to haul her back to the ship, she doesn't exactly go completely willing (sol has to force push her into yord!) and is then the one that convinces yord to go back (💀), and she also immediately latches onto the idea of rejoining the jedi when she thinks sol is offering that at the beginning of episode four, and once she does know the truth, she instinctively force choked sol and bled his lightsaber (even anakin needed more convincing/encouragement to go dark side than she did)

mae comes across are more active/aggressive because she's more emotionally open/driven and has the truth that osha does not (that sol killed their mother) so is therefore incredibly motivated by that truth and desire for revenge/justice - but she's also the one that was comfortable and content with her life in the coven, that seemed to only need osha in her life, that didn't like osha sneaking out of the fortress, that seemed to flourish under the coven's teachings whereas osha chafed against it, doesn't actually seem to like conflict all that much considering how quickly she's willing to give herself up to the jedi once she knows osha is alive and then when she seems content for sol's punishment to be facing the high council/the republic, she seems surprised when she succeeds in killing indara and then doesn't kill the shopkeep alien even though that'd likely (and does) make things harder for her, offers torbin the option of going to the council or taking the poison, and doesn't even kill kelnecca or sol, and generally is clearly not all that committed to the dark side/sith stuff qimir's trying to teach her and spends episode five running from him/pleading for her life over trying to fight him (in comparison osha manages to (temporarily) defeat him by siccing giant bat moths on him)

they're both more complicated than they might appear on the surface!!

[detectiveneve]

"Epler says players will see early on (and as the narrative develops across Veilguard) that Solas sees much of himself in you, the player-controlled Rook, especially "the parts that maybe he doesn't like to face." As a result, there's an interesting push and pull between Solas and Rook. He says players can define the relationship between these two characters with their choices in dialogue." (here)

game-sanctioned parallels between antagonist and protagonist. oh I'm sure I'll be normal about this

[novelconcepts]

The more the show progresses, the more I want to see the 90s cast infiltrating the modern timeline. We've gotten hints of it with Shauna and her younger self, her Jackie hauntings. We've gotten a little more with adult Lottie seeing teenage Nat (and Laura Lee), and with Natalie getting teenage Lottie in her final moments. I want more. I want the teen cast to be absolutely invasive on pivotal adult moments, infecting their adult counterparts when least expected. I want Taissa's argument with Van to dissolve into their teenage selves, their bond endless and timeless and inescapable. I want Misty absolutely wrecked by young Natalie lurking around corners, watching from mirrors. I want to see these women unable to navigate adulthood without the specters of their teenage selves cropping up absolutely everywhere, more and more as they let the memories in, as they stop being able to repress the trauma. They didn't grow up. They never could. You are always doomed to regress around your high school teammates. You are haunted by the phantom elements of your misspent youth. It is a comfort, and it is a gift, and it is a trial, and it is a curse. I would love to see that reflected with greater intensity, until the lines blur, until the timelines have no choice but to intersect. They haven't escaped themselves at all. They didn't grow up. They just got older.

[navarice]

actually afraid for my life and mental state after the show comes out because nicola coughlan herself said that this season is incredibly romantic and sexy but if I'm breaking down walls and running up and down the street simply because polin TOUCHED HANDS???? i fear i may not survive to see the rest of the season dearest readers.

[tavtime]

There is something skittering around in my brain tonight about the way that BG3 intends the audience to view mind flayers as individuals vs as a species, and the way that plays out in the player's relationships with Omeluum and the Emperor.

I mean, one of the primary gears upon which the story turns is that when a person becomes illithid, the soul they previously had is destroyed (but not their memories of the person they were). This is presented as an insurmountable wrong - literally socially aberrant - and it certainly is so from both the point of view of the gods concerned with mortal souls, and illithids' mortal prey concerned with keeping their brains in their heads.

The Emperor's storyline takes this to the conclusion that the condition of being soulless is, in and of itself, a complete destruction of the individual; that whatever it was before, the illithid will be invariably manipulative, inherently untrustworthy, and unable to reconcile its needs and desires into peaceful coexistence with non-illithids. It's certainly the conclusion you're intended to draw from Duke Stelmane's story, as well as numerous supporting texts, most notably from the creche.

But then... Omeluum offers the refutation to that. Here he is, leading a peaceful life because he just... wants to. Absent a soul or comprehensible mortal desires to operate as a moral compass, Omeluum still chooses to contribute to the Society of Brilliance. He voluntarily and at personal cost researches alternative food for himself so that he doesn't need to feed on sentient beings. He helps the player character multiple times, despite the fact that doing so carries variable risk with little promise of reward.

So clearly, being illithid in and of itself is not what makes someone manipulative or untrustworthy: it's not a baked-in species trait. The Emporer isn't Like That solely because he's a mind flayer; he's like that because... he's like that. That's who he is as a person. That's what he has become, in his current incarnation, and yes, some of it is certainly due to his transformation (having your soul shredded and your will broken would screw most people up pretty badly, I imagine), but not all of it! If something about his circumstances had been different, maybe he could've been different as well. Maybe his moral compass would have pointed in a similar direction as Omeluum's.

[skitskatdacat63]

2011 Monaco Grand Prix - Vettonso

[momo-t-daye]

Part One

Co-(god)parenting a teenager with your (maybe?) ex can be quite the adventure

(O.W.L.s might be easier if you'd had the examiners as tutors since you were old enough to talk, Sirius)

So, for the mirror pattern, I'd been goofing around with attempting marbling with India ink and water, I made an awful mess but I had fun and the swirly pattern looks interesting

[raayllum]

Callum reclaiming his own agency from Aaravos in S7 and in doing so, reclaiming the cube (finally making it his, as intended) and literally using it to unlock the Book of Destiny (primal magic)