#THEY MAKE ME SO INSANE YOU DON'T EVEN UNDERSTAND

[sanni276]

Joker Jr. AU but a bit different

I have recently seen and read several Tim Drake AU's where he is Joker Jr. They were all really interesting but I noticed how Tim was (obviously since that's like the main trait of the Joker) always insane in these fics, which has given me the following idea: Tim is Joker Jr. but he is not insane and actually purposefully became him to at as a spy.

Hear me out: Little 11/12-year old Timothy was out at night doing some nighttime photography (*cough* batstalking *cough*) when he witnessed the Joker doing something so brutally sick and wrong (Barbara being shot maybe?) that Tim decided that Joker needed to be stopped and it had to happen soon. Somewhere in that thought process it somehow got into his head that he had to do something.

I am sadly not actually smart enough to explain to you how he did it, but Tim tricks the Joker into making him his "son" and into thinking that he is insane. However instead of bringing chaos and harm upon the people of Gotham, Tim is using JJ as a cover to infiltrate the world of Gotham's rogues and send warnings to the police and citizens before attacks so they can be stopped or at least as many people saved as possible.

Another use of Tim pretending to be JJ is, that he can slowly convince Harley to leave the Joker over time and even better: Joker might take him to Ethiopia where Tim saves Jason. Through Jason's vague memories of being rescued in the last second by a child that was with the Joker? the Bat's finally become aware of the fact that Joker has a child (i imagine that they only heard rumours about it before and they kind of brushed it off since the story didn't really add up or some other excuse like that). They are obviously very concerned but when they finally find Tim and expect to meet a traumaticzed child that has become close to insanity, this happens instead:

*Batman and co. dramatically landing on the roof JJ is standing on*

*Tim turning around and starting to wave exitedly when he sees them*: Hi :)! Omg I can't believe I'm meeting you guys, i am a big fan do you need something from me? Information maybe? That would be no problem although you might have to wait a bit if you need like specific info on a rogue because i would have to investigate first and-

Nightwing: Wtf B?! You told me to come from Blud tonight since I am the best of us with children but I wouldn't touch whatever this is with a ten-foot-pole.

Batman (ignoring his son): Hello Timothy (yeah they figured out his identity), we are here to rescue you from the Joker and bring you home to your family.

Tim: Rescue me? Why would you have to rescue me? *whispering to himself* and my parents have found out i'm not at drake manor? I am going to have to check they're travel plans again.

*Bat's sharing a concerned glance*

Jason: I know this is hard to understand for you and you must be so scared, but Joker is very dangerous. We can help you. You are safe now and you don't need to defend him.

*Tim looking at them with a confused Pikachu face*: Ewwww, I would rather drop my camera off a roof than defend the Joker. I think we are having a little misunderstanding right now.

Tim, completly convinced from his Hero's greatness, just assumed that the Bat's knew about his existence, who he was and that he was only pretending to be a rogue. Why wouldn't they? There the best detectives in the world after all!

He then procedes to explain to them how he is literally the perfect spy, since his parents wouldn't even really miss him if he died and he already made contingencies that would assure all the data and evidence he has on people would be automatically deleted.

The Bat's leave that rooftop not only without Tim, but also somehow even more concerned than before.

In conclusion: Give me an AU that is just Tim my sweet-summer child doing the most reckless shit that is somehow atually very helpful for everyone while the Batfam is just desperatly trying and failing to convince Tim that he has no obligation for what he is doing and that his sacrifice would not be worth it (during the many encounters they have, Tim slowly turns out to be the perfect adoption bait and I think we all already know how this is going to end.)

This is literally my first ever tumblr post or post about the batfam so I hope I did this the right way and this was somewhat possible to enjoy. Please tell me if i made any mistakes since english isn't my first language and feel free to write fic's using my idea!

[pleaseinsertwittyurl]

There are always 2 sides.

The discourse around Louis and Lestat being a victim and abuser and nothing more drives me insane.

Something i don't think enough people remember is that the very same reason the fight began in 1×05 (lestat grabbing claudia by the throat when she tries to "take louis away") we see Louis himself do to her in 1×07 when she tries to get Louis to burn Lestat.

They BOTH would harm her rather than live in a world without the other. They are both guilty of abusing her and each other.

There is an implication that a good deal of time passed between Louis and Lestat meeting and the church. Louis expresses that he shares himself with Lestat in a way he only had with Paul. I would assume that goes both ways, to a degree. We know Louis knows at least enough about Nicki to discourage Claudia poking that wound. He also clearly knows that the threat of leaving is his most powerful weapon against Lestat.

Mental abuse is abuse. And Louis abused Lestat mentally for years. Shaming him, ridiculing him, shutting him out, manipulating him into making Claudia (a traumatic moment for him, whether Louis understands the depths of it or not) by promising to give him what he's being denying him, promising to never put him through what he fears the most.

Louis admits to purposely making Lestat suffer. He admits he was warned that Claudia would suffer and he wanted her anyway because he needed to feel redeemed. He is not innocent. He is not a trapped, weak victim. He made choices to hurt both Lestat and Claudia time and time again.

Does this justify Lestat's actions in 1×05? Obviously not. But we now know Louis was not willing to stop the fight. He taunted Lestat the same way he taunted the Alderman. He was unleashing years of frustrations just as Lestat was. His priority was not to protect Claudia, it was to hurt Lestat, consequences be damned.

I hate the drop scene as much as the next person and Lestat has admitted he will never earn forgiveness for what he did. But if you view Louis as some squeaky clean victim who was manipulated, trapped, and abused by Lestat you are missing so much of what this show is conveying.

We will always tend to paint ourselves as the hero of our own story. It is hard to accept your faults or that you hurt people you love. It is much easier to shift that blame on to someone else, to frame them as the villian. But life is not usually that black and white. Claudia had harsh words for them both in her diary, even before they got to Europe, for a reason. They both made hurtful mistakes with her, both treated her like a pawn in their relationship instead of a person, both harmed her, took away her choice, never prioritized her.

That is the great tragedy. That she never had a choice and was not allowed to be her own person. And in the end, they both are responsible for her misery and her death. That's what makes the reunion scene so important. They have been grieving her and carrying that guilt alone, all the while longing for the comfort of the other for 70+ years. Louis has found clarity in his memories, he has accepted his role in their suffering, he has seen Lestat's perspective more fully. Lestat is broken, totally consumed with that guilt and grief. Both know that although they cannot change what they've done, they can forgive the other, even if they can't forgive themselves. They can love each other despite everything they've done to one another because they cannot stop loving each other. But now they can try to rebuild that love from the rubble.

[necarion]

The moralizing element also ties in "nicely" with moralizing coming from people who never did have to suffer. As a non-craving example, think of moralizing stuff coming from insane morning people, who can get up early, go do a work out, make a nice breakfast, read a book, and then go to work, directed at night people who can barely wake up before work. "It's easy for me, it should be easy for you."

People who don't experience the cravings often assume that because they had no problem with it, anyone who does must have unusually poor moral control. But I can also say that I deal with that aspect even though I understand the problems! I personally never have any interest in drinking (stuff tastes nasty to me and also my physiological effects from being even mildly intoxicated are not fun (first side effect is dizziness, even before any sort of relaxation kicks in)), so I do sort of implicitly judge people for getting drunk. They're super annoying to be around and waste a ton of money, especially at restaurants. It's easy for me to not-drink, why can't they?

(This also ties into two interesting flavors of anti-gay activists. There are the types for whom being straight legitimately was a difficult choice (bi, or gay folks) who believe, rightly, that it can be a choice, and can therefore judge people for making the wrong one. And the ones who are super straight for whom it makes zero sense that anyone would ever choose this. They must be particularly depraved if they do something that's a sin and really gross just for the purpose of being sinful).

Last week's WITH was about the pursuit of treatments that might do for addiction what GLP-1 agonists do for cravings for food, and the guest had an interesting point about how you can have phenomena with very complex causes (the main examples here being opiate addiction and the general rise in obesity) that do not require you to untangle or address those causes in order to procure solutions. Like, is addiction a disease, a social ill, a product of trauma, a failure of willpower, or all of these things?

It doesn't necessarily matter! It turns out that "craving stuff" is a pretty basic neurological feedback loop and it may be tractable to pharmaceutical intervention. Heck, GLP-1 agonists may be that intervention: people have reported (and clinical trials are being conducted to study) that these drugs, among their many effects, simply blunt cravings, to the point where people have as a side effect of taking them for diabetes or weight loss also found they helped cut down on drinking, or gambling, or using other drugs.

So even if GLP-1 agonists don't have all the miraculous effects reported (there are some reports they may be effective as an Alzheimer's treatment!), it would be crazy if we have discovered a drug that allows us to better marshal our faculties to decide which cravings to give in to, a drug that simply imbues us with self-control. And I think that's really interesting, because it's an outright clash between two ways of seeing the world: a moralistic one in which virtues are the product of individual decisions, and in which taking a drug to achieve some outcome that "ought" to be a product of virtue might be seen as cheating, and one that reminds us that, for better or worse, we are meat, and all our complex behaviors arise as the result of the state of the meat that we are--and from which view, refusing to acknowledge the mutability of your meat in aid of achieving your goals, or even broader social benefit (addiction is really bad and there very few good options to treat it), is simply goofy.

But a lot of people's reaction to the existence of GLP-1 agonists--or for that matter any medical intervention for things which are moralized as willpower problems--includes contempt founded on being wedded to that moralizing framework. I think a lot of moralism develops as a response to conditions of existence being imposed on us that are objectively pretty miserable, and that when we discover the occasional intervention that liberates us from that pretty restrictive framework, our attitude should be one of jubilation: hear, O ye people, that what was long believed to be an implacable trade-off of human existence is no more. But I think a lot of people's reaction is to double down: I had to suffer, or someone I know had to suffer, therefore you ought to suffer as well, or else our suffering has no meaning.

[delulustateofmind]

hello, I'm currently going insane over the last part of "can my friend join". And i read your replies to asks related to that. And I'm going to ask something so crazy but I think it'd be soooo interesting, and something to ponder abt (for me at least)

Tw. Narcotics?

Say the reader gets their hands on edibles or something. Maybe weed to smoke or as brownies (because we know Suguru smokes/at least carries lighters. Maybe for this hypothetical scenario, let's assume he has it and that's how she got it). One of the effects can be that it makes you laugh uncontrollably about things that aren't THAT funny. And in general puts one in better mood.

Let's say satosugu see reader laughing her heart out at something random n silly and find out it's because she accidentally somehow consumed an edible.

(For the sake of this scenario, again, let's assume that the depression meds or some medical complications after so many pregnancies lead to reader being rendered infertile. So no question about any baby being harmed. )

In that case... how do they feel? Do they want her bubbly-ness back? Or are they now indifferent? Or do they hate her smiles and the sound of her laughter?

Will Suguru try to forcefully take away the edibles, (after a few times) if satoru is against the idea, coz satoru likes how you seem to have a bit of personality outside of being a cardboard cutout of the person you used to be? Will SATORU too put his foot down on letting you choose if or not you want to have access to these?

I am sorry in case i inadvertently offended you with this ask. I genuinely found it hilarious, imagining their confusion at first. It would be interesting to read about a scene where satoru and Suguru maybe cannot come to an agreement about a situation. And both are stubborn/ want control.

I understand if you won't want to answer this one, and i apologise in case you don't like stuff like this. I genuinely do not mean to make you uncomfortable.

Thank you for reading!

Anon, baby, it takes a whole lot to offend me. You're so freaking sweet, mwah.

TW: Narcotics, unedited, implied dubcon/noncon

I think I hinted at this in one of the previous asks, but yes, they definitely use narcotics. It’s kind of like a date night situation, because normally, you’re so numb. But when you’re high on that sweet little pill they give you? Oh my, you’re back to being the sweetest little thing.

Sure, you might be a little spaced out, and sure, you might not fully understand what’s going on. But Satoru loves the giggly mess you become. You let him hold you, nuzzle into you, and for once, you don’t resist. The sex is incredible for them because you actually seem like you’re enjoying it. You’re softer, more pliable, and sometimes, you even blurt out that you love them during it.

Those moments—hearing you say “I love you”—fuel both Satoru and Suguru’s belief that there’s still an ounce of the old you left inside. As much as they’d want to keep you drugged and loveable forever, Suguru worries about the long-term effects on your brain. So, he insists on keeping it as a weekly date night ritual.

On those nights, they send the kids out of the estate and have an absolute field day with you, indulging in every ounce of affection and compliance you offer under the influence of their little solution.

[redbo-and-simbo]

(So..he probably would've left her around the workshop, right?)

(Probably.)

(I haven't been by there in a while. I've mostly been with Seawatt or following the android. Maybe he's got some new gadget I could mess around with.)

(Or steal.)

. . .

(sculk sensor goes off)

(machinery starts whirring)

Wait- What?

ACK-!

(A wind charge?? From where??)

(vent grate is opened with a triggered lever)

WOOAH-!

(weight falls onto a pair of arms)

Got you.

(sounds of struggle)

Let go of me!

Would you quit squirming? I'm getting so sick of you running away.

(weight slams against a tabletop)

(pained hiss)

(a metal clasp clicks)

Wh- Hey! What are you doing? Get away!

(a sneaker slams into a visor and it clatters to the floor)

Shit-! Ow- I knew I should've done the legs first.

(another clasp clicks)

Whatever. Would you stop struggling? It's only going to make things harder for both of us.

Hey, don't you-

Stay still. Please.

(another)

I'm not going to hurt you.

You're literally strapping me to some weird table!

Touché.

(the final click of metal)

You just have to believe me. I don't want any harm to come to you.

(sounds of struggle continue)

..But you're only going to hurt yourself if you keep trying to escape again. You're dumber than you're supposed to be if you think you can break those clasps.

And stop looking at me like that. You're not in danger. I just know that you're stubborn, and you know how to worm your way out of problems. I knew I wouldn't be able to speak to you without you running off.

It's not favorable, but I'd advise you calm down, or else I'll just have to administer a drug to make you.

How can I be calm right now, man? I don't trust you.

Just take it easy..

(head suddenly slams into the table)

Get your hands away from me.

You're not in any danger, it's alright.

(breathing picks up)

(Does he really have to put his hands in my hair? Seriously?)

(Crap, right. He's an Evbo, too. He knows all my weaknesses.)

(I hate all this, but..)

(breathing slows and becomes more steady)

(His nails feel so nice..)

Theeere we go. Good.

Let's get that mask off of you.

(click)

(click)

(deep breath)

(gas mask is set aside)

Feels better?

...

Right. I should've guessed you wouldn't be so eager to speak.

Well, I still have questions. So as I observe you, I'd like for you to answer them. Sound good?

..I don't really have a choice, do I?

No, I assure you you do. There's no consequence to not answering.

(Get your hands of my face, dude. Ugh- My eyes are closed but I can still feel him staring at me.)

I suppose my first question is simple: you were sent to me by the Creator, yes?

(He'd kill me if I was just some rogue Evbo..)

Y..Yeah. I was.

What are you? Are you him? Or are you another one of his creations?

(I've gotta play into his insane ideas.)

No. I'm just- Something of a prophet. Is the um..best way I can put it.

So I was right..

What does he want from me? What do I need to do for him to accept me as his only marionette?

I can't say.

You can't say?

I'm..just supposed to tell him when the time is right.

(sigh)

I suppose it's beyond my understanding. I'm not sure why he picked you of all Evbos. You're no different than the rest.

(rustle of cloth being pushed up)

(sharp breath)

As far as visible physical differences—chapped lips, longer hair, decreased muscle mass—they're all just results of external factors. Wearing that mask, time, and, I'd assume, hiding in the vents so often you don't eat properly, respectively.

That hand feels so weird.

Hm?

(I didn't mean to say that out loud..)

The textureless one.

I figured.

..This undershirt's not yours. I suppose my theory about you finding Seawatt is correct?

...

Right. Then I suppose my project was worth pursuing after all.

Do me a favor and stay still and calm for me. I need to run some diagnostic tests.

What kind of tests?

I need to examine your physiology, and your brainwaves.

(two latches click open)

You're not even going to put up a fight?

My legs are still trapped. I can't really do much.

But you could still struggle, attack me, make a commotion until someone stops by to help you out. Yet you're doing none of that.

I'd almost say you enjoy having my hands on you.

...

(chuckle)

Your silence is telling, "Simbo."

(Ugh. Hate this guy.)

(rustling of cloth)

(a hoodie and shirt are dropped on the floor)

(clasps click again)

(visor is picked up from the floor)

I just have to hook up some stuff, alright? And don't worry, I wouldn't hurt someone sent by the Creator. That's too precious a resource to lose.

(..I know this is just a facade, but..I kind of like feeling important..)

. . .

. . .

(machine whirring)

(incoherent, analytical mumbling)

(writing)

...How's Widget, by the way?

Oh. That's right. You named her, didn't you?

The Viewers were saying you wanted to see her?

Yeah. And then I got stuck here.

(chuckle)

Right. I apologize for all this. It won't have to be like this next time. If you don't run off, anyway.

..I'll take your word for it.

Still skeptical, I see. I can't blame you. Regardless, I suppose you could pay her a visit before you head back to the vents.

She's in my room. Feel free to rest there, if you'd like.

Wh- Oh- Really?

Of course. You're welcome to at any time.

Right. Gotcha.

. . .

. . .

Alright, that's all the data I need to collect.

(clasps click one by one)

(shifting)

(clothes are grabbed off the floor)

..Thanks.

(clothes rustling as they're pulled back on)

No problem.

I'm gonna dismantle the machine I set up in the vents to get you down here. My room's the door over there.

Right. Uh.. Cool.

. . .

(door creaks open)

(sneakers step across a wooden floor)

(bed creaks as weight sinks onto the edge)

Hey there, kitty.

Mrrp!

[pastorfutureletthembe]

You worked so hard for this WOW thank you so much.

As a starting point, I do not think Yingdu and the main timeline (s1&2) are the same timeline.

We are missing a lot of info and Lu Guang is such an unreadable and unrelatable character it is complicated to have actual groundbreaking info on what the original timeline was like.

For some reason, I always thought Cheng Xiaoshi died very early in the original timeline, on this trip, and that everything was very different from what we know. Lu Guang just decided to follow a clear path that he could control and know everything about in order to, even if starting from scratch, save Cheng Xiaoshi's life. Devil is in the details. That way, Lu Guang saving Cheng Xiaohi's life would be the original reason why Vein kills CXS.

But reading your analysis I realize that it would make more sense if Vein came for Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang after they altered the past in the main timeframe (season and 2) in the original as well. Would really make it a timeloop haha.

The details on Liu Xiao, or his whole character for what matters, confuse me. He has an interest in Cheng Xiaoshi because he seems to know he's Cheng Wei Ming's son. Daddy is the key for understanding Yingdu's point apparently. But if Lii Xiao is interested, it means the guy has something that he already wants so... What is it? Is it already time related and is it why he takes interest in Xia Fei as well (applied physics student and all)?

I personally don't think any metas of mine would cover timelines in details like this, because I know myself and I think working in the specifics might spoil the story for me if I go deeper into this insanity. But I'll read everything about it of course. It's more fun when I'm not the one cooking my brain out hahaha

(yingdu episode 4 spoilers)

as of YE4, here's my understanding of the timelines so far. this is just from lu guang's time hopping experience. I still think time itself might be broken. years still don't line up, things happen in the incorrect months, etc. we are not fixing those. we're just looking at lu guang's diving points, and how we got from S1 to yingdu then back to S1 again.

the important things we learned from YE4 are:

lu guang was supposed to meet liu xiao somewhere else (not the bridon airport)

vein kills cheng xiaoshi some time after the doudou case, but before lu guang gets stabbed by red eyes

cheng xiaoshi in S1 did not discover his abilities through the yingdu event

possible timeline of events

original timeline (timeline A) happens. presumably, the overseas trip still happened and cheng xiaoshi discovered his dive ability there with lu guang by his side. house of the hotheaded probably were not messing around back then.

potentially, though not certainly, cheng xiaoshi dies at some point (not due to vein) and lu guang dives back in time to prevent this. this could happen once or multiple times (timelines A-1 to A-n). I don't actually think this is the case. I think vein killing cheng xiaoshi is the first time he dies, because lu guang gives a lot importance to 091305. however, I'm open to the possibility that cheng xiaoshi could've already died before vein got to him (I'm thinking of the many injured xiaoshis in the XƎTЯOVerthink video, so this bullet point is just to cover those possibilities).

at some point, lu guang is able to reach the first half of season one events (timeline B, potentially still timeline A). for the sake of this post, let's call it timeline B. they do the emma case*, the ouyang case, and the doudou case, among many others. they have NOT done the xu shanshan case yet. or if they have, they did not do any of the liu min-related plot yet.

by now, either in this timeline or in previous ones, lu guang has already met liu xiao. (YE4 lu guang suggests that they weren't supposed to meet liu xiao in the airport, so they must have met somewhere else).

the date is september 13, 2021. still in timeline B (season one first half), someone enters the time photo studio as a client. later on, vein kills cheng xiaoshi and qiao ling. and xiao li too, I guess?

lu guang may have dived at least twice to try to prevent this specific event, but still failed (timeline B-1 and B-2) (this is just to cover the animation discrepancies in the vein attack). it'a also possible qiao ling died in these timelines instead of in timeline B, as a result of lu guang trying to change things.

at some point, he dives into the sunset photo he took during the time he met cheng xiaoshi at the basket ball court. the year is 2019, somehow, instead of 2018. we now enter the yingdu timeline (timeline C). house of the hotheaded trio are messing around, cheng xiaoshi discovers how to dive for the first time alone (without lu guang). lu guang is tired, traumatized, and has no control over these changes.

this one is speculation, since we don't know how yingdu ends yet. but I think it's highly likely that lu guang will dive one more time to burn the bridon photo (timeline D) so cheng xiaoshi wouldn't have to experience yingdu arc.

screenshot from this pv.

it's important that cheng xiaoshi avoids yingdu for S1 to happen (again).

because lu guang avoids yingdu arc, cheng xiaoshi learns about his dive ability later in life, post-university, likely through lu guang himself so he could control the situation. we see this in both his nightmare in YE4 and cheng xiaoshi's flashback in S1E6.

this would also explain how cheng xiaoshi in S1 didn't know he could clap by himself into a photo until S1E9, since he had always assumed he needed lu guang to activate his powers.

and finally, this would also explain how cheng xiaoshi still doesn't know what happened to his parents. he believes they'll still come back one day, which is why he refuses to move out of the shop.

cheng xiaoshi and lu guang still go to some overseas trip (qiao ling mentions this in the doudou arc) but it's not clear if they still went to yingdu. maybe they went to a different country? or another set of events happen instead of what we saw in yingdu?

the year is 2021. we re-enter the events of season one, but this time from timeline D. but with drastic changes, because lu guang isn't the only one messing around with timelines, apparently.

some changes in timeline D from timeline B:

in april, someone spied on the time photo studio trio and created dossiers/files about them. most likely candidate is liu xiao.

*emma's case should've happened in september (during the third fiscal quarter), but it happens in april. it's up in the air if emma still died in timeline B or not, and if the liu siblings were involved originally or just now in timeline D. if emma did die originally in timeline B, cheng xiaoshi might not have noticed yet before vein killed him. also, I think it's interesting that in S1E1 lu guang said, "you didn't do anything stupid, right?" when he saw emma's death on the news. he was asleep when cheng xiaoshi sent the text, so he wasn't able to keep him in line during that particular moment of the dive. did cheng xiaoshi send the text in timeline B?

doudou's case, which they also previously solved by september (since they solved it before cheng xiaoshi's death via vein), is now solved in october. in the grand scheme of things, this one is actually... fine? doudou has been kidnapped for three years so it's not time sensitive when they save him a month early or later. how they found out the case may have been different in the two timelines though. it's possible the dad just found the time photo studio a month later than usual. why though?

lu guang also somehow avoided the vein attack node in this timeline.

new events take place in timeline D that lu guang hasn't done before: xu shanshan case that leads to red eyes, and the entirety of season 2. lu guang gets stabbed and he thinks, for a moment, that maybe he really can change a death node with this event. this should take them all the way to december 2021 or january 2022 (most of S2 happened in october, then they spent two months in the hospital after the tunnels).

if the above events are correct, there are four open-ended questions left:

I am not entirely sure, but I am open to the possibility that there's another dive that happened during season 2 (did lu guang ever use his hospital picture from the episode hostage?)

which of these dives does the S2 finale dive refer to?

there is one mystery that I don't know where to place yet: someone is clearly diving as cheng xiaoshi during yingdu arc (timeline C). we don't know how, or who (we assume it's cheng xiaoshi for now, because that's the simplest answer, but that's not confirmed. we just know his eyes are gold in the vivian case). if so, why? yingdu shouldn't have led to S2 because YE4 implies that it's important that S1 cheng xiaoshi did not discover his dive powers in yingdu. so why dive back to the yingdu timeline? does the yingdu arc function like season 1, where we'll revisit these scenes again in another timeline? why? I wonder if this is how lu guang decided to get rid of the photo.

as always: why is time broken? 2018 is now 2019. april is september, and now september is october.

mmmkay lmk if I missed anything else. but yeah, I think lu guang must've gone through the first half of S1 twice already. I wonder how far along cheng xiaoshi was in his character arc when he died. if he did the earthquake arc by then, he should've started his journey of accepting "past or future, let it be."

[stormyoceans]

when the cute boy who asked you to call yourself phi when you're with him confesses to you and all you want to do is cross the distance that separates you from him and kiss him and wipe away his tears and tell him that you like him too but he's an intern and you're his mentor so you grip the edge of the table to stop yourself from doing something stupid ANYWAY WELCOME BACK PRIDE AND PREJUDICE HAND FLEX SCENE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[vaguely-concerned]

the strength it must have taken for illario to not immediately go full 'lmao since when have you even had a kiss hello lucanis' sibling violence mode during the café talk. inspirational. rook and lucanis really were doing all that right in front of his salad huh

[dammit-tazmuir]

I just genuinely do not remotely understand where you're getting this notion that "there's nothing sympathetic about Ianthe" or that "we're not supposed to care about her." Like where is your textual evidence? Because I have literally not seen one single person in this fandom yet who doesn't adore her, and I have a very hard time believing that's by accident.

I've seen people shit on Corona, and even rip her apart to emphasize Ianthe's tragedy without acknowledging how mutually toxic they are. I've seen people fail to acknowledge the nuance and sympathetic circumstances around all of John's stuff. I've seen almost nothing but making Silas the butt of jokes, and only very rarely any appreciation. I've seen people have problems with Palamedes of all people. I've seen criticism for Paul's existence.

I have at not one point yet encountered a person who doesn't adore Ianthe and want good things for her. I have never seen a single person be like "fuck that toxic bitch, I hope she gets what's coming to her" the way they do characters like John. Like maybe I've just been lucky so far, but I'm sorry, it REALLY, REALLY does sound like you personally sympathize with her LESS than most people do and are projecting that onto other people? Or taking "she's awful" extremely literally. Have you never seen or written a character that makes you go "oh they're the absolute worst, I adore them"? Is that just a new concept? I want to understand here.

I typed up a whole big thing about personal theories for Ianthe's mentality but decided it was probably too much and saved it elsewhere, so let me know if you want that I guess, but no worries if not.

For that matter though, what specifically proves that "Harrow is a terrible person"? Because a lot of fans find her deeply relatable, and there are both fans and other characters who don't see her sour grumpy attitude as particularly offputting and some actively find it endearing. "She made Gideon's life shitty for 16 years" can only do so much heavy lifting when we know for a fact Crux and other adults were worse offenders, Gideon was also constantly shitty to Harrow, Harrow was literally younger than Gideon, and Harrow was dealing with severe and untreated mental illness that Gideon personally exacerbated. (We KNOW Gideon is inclined to pull pranks on Harrow and rearrange things when she's out of the room and do other things that were very likely to cause Harrow to need to go to Crux for reality checks, that Gideon is a significant contributor to her fearing she's simply insane, and that she was actively afraid to let Gideon specifically know bad her brain was even though that could have helped a lot of them a lot.) And also when that stopped nearly immediately the second they were away from the adults perpetuating it. I don't know man but I feel like staying in a pattern one was raised in when it's never been challenged says a lot less about a person than how they behave and adapt once it's gone.

Is it because the baby nun who was 500% paranoia by volume between her hallucinations and her recent trauma she can't properly remember and having been raised to be extremely secretive at all times Or Else wasn't ecstatic about being romantic or bffs with someone who she knows killed and ate one of the only other friends she had in cold blood while also dealing with constant attempts on her life? Because even with all that she was honestly still pretty soft with Ianthe. Denying being friends in words doesn't change that she was relying on Ianthe and trusting her even more than she did their God and being fairly intimate with her. Actions should speak louder than words.

Like genuinely, why do you think "we're not supposed to" like or care about or sympathize with Ianthe, or that Harrow is objectively terrible start to finish? I don't see it.

A big reason I ignore all the meta from Tamsyn Muir about The Locked Tomb is that her values system about some of her characters seems deeply at odds with their characterization in-book.

Muir clearly loathes Ianthe, and yet HTN shows an Ianthe who is deeply insecure, scared, and desperately lonely. Yeah, she killed her Cav and a few other people. This is quite bad. I do not think Ianthe is a good person. But I don't find her irredeemable like Muir says.

Hitting on Harrow isn't ideal, but also Harrow is her only friend and flirtation is one of the few ways Ianthe knows to show her companionship. Throughout HTN, Ianthe seems to be trying to make friends, to be helpful, and is rebuffed at every turn by Harrow.

In contrast, while Harrow is less evil than many of the other characters, she is clearly a profoundly horrible person. She is mean and cruel to those around her, she has made Gideon's life absolutely miserable for 16ish years, she rebuffs basically every single offer of help and friendship anyone but Gideon ever shows her in either of the two series (and quite meanly; basically anything anyone ever gets from her is some verbose equivalent of "go fuck yourself".)

But we spend all this time in her head, so we know it's because she's scared and insecure and doesn't know how to handle it. So very much of her behavior is forgiven by Muir and by the audience because of this. A sizeable portion of the fanbase seems to be mad at John for trying to tell her to get more sleep, or to try doing something relaxing (make soup), or even to ask other people for help. Yes, you cannot will your way out of depression, but "try to get more sleep" and "do soothing things" are basically foremost of any serious advice for how to deal with it.

John doesn't know why she's been not getting enough sleep. But he's also a deeply fucked-up person. And yet he's trying with Harrow. Badly, clumsily, but trying. He doesn't really know why she's been on such edge and miserable. But Harrow never tells him. She has John and Ianthe (and probably Mercymorn and Augustine, although they're even more fucked up) she could have tried asking for help, and refuses.

But, Harrow is the protagonist, and we see inside her head, and she's not willing to actually murder Gideon, and she thinks murdering 200 children was bad, actually. So we're expected to sympathize with her.

Don't get me wrong, I sympathize with her. I want her to be better. I like fucked-up protagonists who aren't great people.

But do not, for one second, suggest that Harrow is not one of the worst human beings in this series (behind John, Cytharea, Mercymorn, Augustine, and Ianthe, in roughly that order). She brings an untold amount of her misery upon herself by being deliberately, not prickly, but just so. fucking. awful.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

had a wanda in my game ask me how to effectively use meteor m like my beautiful daughter i havent the slightest clue. also round starts in five seconds.

[kaiser1ns]

TAKIISHI CHIKA IN CHAPTER 153

[king-spite]

so it seems the poppy war has become my absolute favorite series so ofc i'm losing my mind comparing every scene with my other favorite series (red queen) and making an unfathomable amount of headcanons

[stardustinthesky]

spoils of war │ deleted scene

[quaranmine]

On Wednesday before I gave my presentation I confessed to a new employee that I was worried it would be too long and she brightly told me her life hack was to just let AI rewrite things for her. She said I should put in all my talking points and ask ChatGPT to give me a five minute exactly presentation. I was like....how is the most polite possible way (since this is a new colleague I shouldn't get off on the wrong foot with) that I can express that I will Not be taking this advice. Ever. I told her that I didn't think we were allowed to use ChatGPT at this job (we most certainly are not, it is a nightmare for any type of protected information) and also that I prefer to write all of my own work. Despite my best efforts the last part of that was still passive aggressive, lol.

Something about being a writer makes it so that it's almost offensive to me for someone to suggest I use AI to do my work instead? Like, the day I reach the point where I let AI write something for me is the day y'all need to be checking me for brain damage because clearly I'm losing it

[bacchuschucklefuck]

Can you expand on what you mean by Baron being "too cool" to really fit a horror monster? It's a very interesting concept and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Is it that they're too active/involved/tangible and it detracts from their scariness?

I feel like I should preface this with a wall of disclaimers lmao 1/I am a hardcore, down-to-the-marrow, avid, deeply sincere horror enthusiast, esp. horror creatures. this usually means my mileage is vastly different from the average populace's, and my scaredy bone has been disintegrated by longterm exposure. most things in a piece of horror media won't scare me! so I practically never use that on its own as the scale to talk abt horror experiences, but when something does scare me it's always a special occasion to be treasured. 2/canon d20 is never really meant to be horror horror, and for good reasons: it doesn't fit the company's output, it takes a kind of carelessness in production estimation that is always a huge risk, it's often vulnerable in a way that kinda goes against how TTRPGs usually facilitates vulnerability, and for most people it's just! stressful! d20, even with the "horror-themed" seasons, generally just plays with horror tropes and stays focused in its goal of being a comedy improv tabletop theater show. 3/fantasy high's chosen system is DnD, which as I've mentioned before is before all a combat-based game system, which means the magic circle of play is drawn based on stats that facilitate and prioritize combat. want or not this affects every interaction you have in the game, and given fantasy high's concept from the ground up (everyone's going to school of DnD stuff to get better at DnD) it's doubly relevant. 4/This Is Fine I have no quarrel with this. my meters are internal, I do not ask this show to be anything it doesn't advertise itself to be, and what it is is fucking great! I like it! when I expand on this ask's question it will be like a physicist going insane in a lab. that's the mindset we're going in with.

disclaimers done. my stance on horror as a genre is that it's a utility genre rather than a content genre or a demographic genre; it is the discard of narratives. it's the trash pile. horror, above being scary, is about being ugly and messy, it's the cracks on the ground any story inevitably steps over to stay a genre that isn't horror. the genre's been around long enough to develop a codex and a general language that medias and makers and enthusiasts of the genre can use to talk about and build onto, but if you go into individual pieces there's really no unifying Horror Story. one person's beautiful life can be another's horror story, it's just how it is.

this makes The Monster a deeply intriguing piece of the genre. thing is a monster is in a decent percentage of any story - it's just when the antagonist force steps into something past a certain line traced out in the story's world. monstrousness is in pretty much every western fantasy story, it's in any story with a hero and something to vanquish or win; more than anything it's a proxy of that thing up there. the line in a narrative's world. the monster is the guard of the unknown lands, where heroic, civilized people don't tread.

what does this mean in the context of horror? the genre is about that perceived lawlessness, that "unknown land" so to say. we're in the monster's home. that's the literary context that we often walk into a horror piece with; the monster knows more than you about where you are. it may not understand you, but it holds more information than you, and with that it moves swifter than you, has more covered than you, and is more assured in its existence in this context than you. it's a struggle to catch up to it, it's nigh impossible to get one over it, and you're never sure it'll 100% work, because you just don't have the information necessary to.

with that framing you can kinda see where I'm coming from here: horror's often about the breaking of rules. I always think a monster's most effective when it breaks well-established rules of both existence and visual storytelling. think Possum (2018) or Undertale's Omega Flowey or the Xenomorph Queen - unique change in medium, unique change in graphic, unique change in design language, etc. in that sense I actually really like how canon baron plays out: they don't really function like anything else in the fantasy high universe, the bad kids have not managed to kill them when they've felled literal gods, their domain in fhjy literally introduces new mechanics to encompass their existence! from an experience design standpoint they slap mad shit. BUT! I can't help finding their character, like as a character riz (and the other bad kids, eventually) interact with, to be very... coherent? in design. this is kinda hard for me to articulate in words, it's more often a sense you get once you've looked at enough of these scrumptious fuckers, their general design and the way they show up is just kinda too clean, so to say. always kinda newly made? fresh unboxed. it, once again, makes sense for their lore - they are looking for more about themself from riz - and their function - they're an antagonist in a game experience, they're meant to be interacted with in a way that produces results and meshes with the existing magic circle - but that shininess takes away from the implied history they should have dominion over and the person they're haunting doesn't.

from another angle there is kinda something there about how put-together canon baron is as a concept; the domain they call home is riz's deep-seeded fears, extremely vulnerable things he's drawn borders around to quarantine and refused to walk into. things that from his perspective would irreversibly shatter certain pleasant fictions his world is built on top of. canon baron, While Extremely Cool, I feel is kinda too neat to connect with and signify the apocalyticized mess that'd result from this paradigm shift. the part where they're in riz's briefcase and looking through every mirror is Very Cool And Fucked Up! but ultimately the show draws a line around them as well, by making game-physical, tangible spaces they're in (the mirrors and the haunted mordred manor) and put riz and the bad kids there only when they need to confront stuff. riz is meaningfully narratively away from baron's unknown land for most of fantasy high.

with that and all of my disclaimers in mind my conclusion here is if canon baron wants to be a Horror Monster they'd have to cross way more lines. be a Lot more invasive. hence (holds up my class swap baron like a long cat)

[meowsticmarvels]

i think i mightve talked abt this a bit in my longpost about how insane phi as a character is to me but yknow what i really wanna point out? all the nonary game shit she has to go through happens in really quick succession to her - she doesn't really get a proper "break" in between VLR and ZTD for her mentally. junpei and akane at least have about a year between the two, and sigma has 45 years (not that either of those situations were particularly good either though, looking at how sigma and junpei especially turned out, and sigma spent years WORKING on the AB game, just not participating in it). but for phi? she has a matter of DAYS in between the two. the time sigma spends she spends in cold sleep, so mentally to her, her consciousness goes from the events of VLR's phi end to DCOM almost instantly. dcom only ends up lasting for about 5 days, and even then the prologue states that phi/sigma/akane spent most of it worrying about radical-6 and the future + the flashback with diana shows phi is just so Tired after everything after just that. and then the decision game happens. my point is just that i cannot imagine being in a death game like that (not to mention everyone had radical-6, so she went from a body that Did have it to one that didn't, which i can imagine would probably a pretty weird experience considering one of its symptoms is messing up your perception of time. and also she was on the moon.), spending 5 days like god how did the apocalypse start i can't let it happen this time and then being in Another death game that is much more gruesome and violent. not to mention both of them in a way HAD to happen because of her (2074 nonary game bc it needed to train sigma and phi's SHIFTing abilities to a good enough degree and decision game one of the reasons was to ensure she and delta were born). in summary: i would fucking die at that point if i was phi dealing with that All At Once. in the span of a few days. and with the memories of my + others' deaths. what the fuck