#a calm discussion

[the-dormant-ocean]

Qiao Ling: Lu Guang! Did you break the timeline?! Lu Guang: Yes. Qiao Ling: WHY? Lu Guang: Cheng Xiaoshi was gone and he was 85% of my impulse control. Also, life is meaningless without him.

[unordinary-diary]

So I have a question about Arlo’s powers that you might have the answer to

Do you know what the bleeding is all about? Like when he starts coughing up blood after his barrier breaks. Does he just like straight up start bleeding internally or something?

Anyway I love this blog sm you are giving me the unO content I crave

Ah, thank you! Yes, I absolutely have the answer. In fact, I’m going to take this opportunity to make a post that was already floating in my head.

Arlo and Recoil Damage

First, to answer your question in a literal sense, yes. It’s definitely internal bleeding. Specifically, damage to his lungs.

It’s also not at all unprecedented for a person to be wounded like this. Every person with a conjuring type ability takes damage when their conjures are damaged.

(Rein in ch. 16)

(Cecile attacking Arlo, ch. 109)

The difference with Arlo, is that his damage happens below the skin. Here’s where it gets juicy.

Symbolism

Arlo’s ability is very symbolic, possibly the most so of anyone in the series. His nigh unbreakable barrier he puts around himself represents his metaphorical walls, and how he keeps everyone at a distance. His passive makes him invulnerable— he gets punched in the face, clawed at, stabbed at, etc, and doesn’t even blink. The only way to hurt Arlo is to break through his barrier. And when his walls are broken down, there’s a wound in his chest. It’s not literal enough to be his heart that bleeds, but it’s very close.

There’s also something that’s been kicking around in my head for awhile—

“You’re the strongest one out of all of us here right now. You can try to brush this whole thing off... but to the rest of us, it’s still scary. If even you can’t protect yourself, what can the rest of us do?” — Remi, Ep. 61.

I remembered the line being “When people as strong as you show fear, it scares the rest of us.” However, that must have come from a different scene and I won’t track it down.

It’s plain and simple: High tiers have been taught their whole lives to bottle things up.

This is also seen reflected in Seraphina—

(ep. 20) Granted, the circumstances here are very different, but it’s a similar idea. High tiers showing emotions scares people.

So they bottle them up...

… until they explode.

(Ep. 106)

The judgment Arlo and Seraphina face is very similar. Seraphina rejects these expectations before the story starts, but Arlo has yet to do so. He is very much like the Seraphina we see in flashbacks.

All of this is to say: it is significant that his barrier wounds are internal. The little bit of blood we can see is mainly there so the audience knows he’s injured— but otherwise? Barrier cracks aren’t an injury that people can really see. Recoil damage is typically reflected as scratches, so his internal wounds are both unique, and symbolic of the way he hides his feelings.

[elexuscal]

i am just imagining the future discourse that comes from the culture clash between all the different relations of humans vs. dragons.

like okay. the classical British/European mode is pretty much universally disparaged and disregarded at this point, and For Good Reason. like you've still god the far right groups that believe that Dragons are Inferior Beasts but they're the same as any extremist racist idealogy.

a lot spicier is debates around whether it's good to have a "captain" relationship with your dragon. lots of "can it be reclaimed" conversations.

flip that stuff on the head with the Inca and any similar cultures that had some mode of "the humans belong to the dragons". imagine the entire Crucible of Gold subplot where Laurence and co wrestle with whether or not it's slavery, with all the relevant nuances, but also Twitter exists.

and then there's the Tswana. where dragons are not just culturally humans, but culturally Literally Specific Reincarnated Humans. i don't even want to imagine what debates on that topic look like.

[buddyhollyscurls]

atp i feel like the ONLY way Yor is gonna NOT fight Loid when things get too deep for her is if/when they figure out their true identities so they can go on a mission together and she can beat the crap outta someone else as a way to relieve her nerves so here's how i imagine they're finally gonna get together:

Yor is gonna figure out he's twilight first but by this point i feel she's already realizing her feelings for him or is starting to given her jealous tendencies so she won't let him know she knows. but then he finds out her identity and ofc is shocked and he's also like do i tell her i know? do i break up the family? so as he's considering this he's thinking about his relationship with yor and how didn't he see the Signs but he's like come to think of it, they were there. And he's just imagining their time together and how she is with Anya and it hits him holy shit. i want to be with her frfr

so they go out on a mission (i feel at this point they gotta have a target in common like come on now) run into each other and he just blurts out YOR?! and she's like LOID??!! and he's like YOU KNOW?? and she's like well .... so ofc they have to have the BIG talk and she's about to go off as her usual but this time Loid really wants to have this talk and by now knows exactly what is about to happen so when her face starts getting red from blushing he puts the target in front of him like a shield and is like Yor I have something - punch - i want to say - punch punch kick

[deargravity]

akashi is actually not as good at everything as people like / want to believe but let me not get into that today

[velvetjune]

the chapter songs in Alan Wake 2,, flawless

[the-magnificent-otaku-draws]

The possible hilarity of Jet and Zuko having parallel domestication arcs in Ba Sing Se. Just Iroh trying to teach an ex-prince who lived the last few months in the middle of nowhere and a guy who's spent his entire life breaking the law to help people while raising 20 kids in the woods to be normal citizens™

[mylonelydreaming]

An interesting minor difference between the English and Japanese versions of TotK. In Japanese, Purah yells quite harshly at Link to hurry up and look through the telescope

[rapidhighway]

Why don't you watch the best doctor who episode midnight and then the best doctor who episode waters of mars and maybe you'll calm down

[jewish-microwave-laser]

just saw someone with my own two eyes say you're not allowed to be interested in cnc if you're not a survivor of rape or sexual assault. as if no afab/fem person ever has walked home at night with their keys between their fingers or their finger on the button of their pepper spray. as if drink tampering isn't super prevalent in both gay and straight bars and something all of us warn each other about. as if nobody's changed their outfit because they could practically hear the echoes of "they were asking for it" if the worst case scenario came true. as if you only start being afraid of your autonomy and safety being taken away if it's already happened to you once before

the internet is certainly a place

[butcher--bird]

ive drawn some things and im so scared to post them bc back in ye olden days (2017 fandom *eughh*) when i was like 14 i was harassed by so many adults im nervous to post the most basic ass fandom shit ever this suuuuuucks actually

idk, i see alot of people posting genderbend art nowadays so i assume the loud minority of people that would harass people over harmless 'what if' genderbend art has mostly dissipated. personally as a genderfluid/gnc person i see no issue. in fact that sort of thing helped me realize my gender identity!! harassing somebody over drawing a dude as a chick is stupid, frankly. i will tag accordingly but don't act silly bc i don't engage with that stuff im here to play and draw.

[flowerfletching]

Alright so I've seen someone post about how Jenny x Gilan is a bit weird, which I do agree with, but since I don't really focus on their relationship much I don't really have much to say on it, plus what I would have had to say was better said by other people. That being said when I looked on the reblogs I also noticed that someone brought up Halt x Pauline and how there are some things weird about it because of how they met but I also have more to add to it. And since this is really long I decided to make it my own post since I have a LOT to say on this. Plus it's just a bit different than their reason for mentioning it so I figured it'd just be a better idea if I made it an individual post-

First, to the person who mentioned it, I agree. There is absolutely NO WAY Halt would have fumbled that hard and I don't care how pretty she is, it just makes absolutely no sense whatsoever for him. There's also the fact that, a little bit after, Halt said that he was tempted to tell her about his royal background but ultimately decided not to. And you want to know why he decided not to? Why, that's just because he thought that she wouldn't be impressed. Not because he just spent all that time escaping to begin with and didn't want to risk her stabbing him in the back, no it was just because he thought she wouldn't be impressed. Keep in mind, I'm pretty sure they had literally JUST met. Like, bro. Seriously?

Then there's also the fact that their relationship just kinda feels shallow and undeveloped. I feel like it's shallow because it was literally love at first sight, which was essentially loving the other immediately without knowing the other person literally AT ALL. We also don't really see them growing together much before they actually get married, and the little moments that we actually DO get to see still don't have very much development and don't really show good examples of the love that is allegedly there. I get that there was a lot of the relationship that was built behind the scenes but still, you really couldn't show us much proof of those developments, could you? Plus it also just feels like their marriage in general was just used as a plot device, providing as a huge event that got disrupted to lead into the main plot of the book.

Alright but that could be mostly excused if the relationship was actually nice, cute, and functioning in the end, right? Well, while there are some scenes of them having a good relationship, there's this one scene that absolutely DESTROYED any chances of me actually enjoying that ship.

My final reason for not liking this ship, which is actually kinda why I just don't like Pauline in general, is in the Lost Stories (I believe the section it's in is Purple Prose and it's the first chapter of it). I mentioned not liking this section when I rebloged someone else's post and mentioned that I had another reason for not liking this section, and this is that reason. This is actually the main reason, actually. The idea is that Halt, Pauline, and Will are all having dinner together, right? Will decides to read to them what he plans to read at Horace and Cassandra's wedding for his speech. Will's wording was a bit extra and Halt didn't hesitate to let him know. Now I will admit, I feel as though Halt was being a bit rude in this scene. And while his personality of being blunt and grim doesn't really make that behavior okay, his behavior absolutely does NOT justify Pauline's response to it.

How it ended was by I believe Will mentioning the way that Halt was acting, and then Pauline ominously (literally the word that was used, I'm not joking) said that she would talk to him later. And how did Halt react to that, exactly? Well when it comes to his reaction, it says that the wolfish smile was wiped off of his face and that he looked scared. Halt, the war hero, the one that had been betrayed by his own family, and the one most famous for hiding his feelings, was scared of his own wife. I've seen the trope of men being scared of their wives but I feel like if Halt, of all people, has to be scared of his wife, then there's a problem. Not to say men having to be scared of their wives ISN'T an issue, it is, but for someone like him to be scared it MUST be bad. Especially after she literally just hit him... TWICE. This scene alone proved that Pauline would hit Halt (proven by the first hit), she WOULD do it again (proven by the second hit), and that there's probably more that goes on behind the scenes that we don't see (proven by Halt looking scared when Pauline ominously mentioned talking to him later). Once again, Halt was being rude in the way he let Will know that he didn't approve of the way that he decided to go about his speech. That does NOT, however, justify Pauline's behavior in response to it.

And the thing is, Pauline is the stupid either. She's smart enough and is good enough with people that there's almost no POSSIBLE way that she doesn't know what she's doing. And yet, she does it anyway. This is either borderline, signs of, or is straight up abusive behavior. You might think I'm exaggerating and I hope wouldn't really blame you, with the way he wrote it it wasn't really depicted as serious since that probably wasn't the way it was intended. That still doesn't change what actually happened.

And yeah, that's the reason why I have such a hard time actually liking this ship. To me it feels shallow, underdeveloped/forced, is borderline abusive, and is basically built on an interaction that was just ENTIRELY out of character to begin with. And while yes, there are some good moments, I feel like there aren't NEARLY enough to make up for all of the flaws in it.

[airenyah]

ok but hear me out.... dunk in a calm/quiet/serious role and joong in a sunshine boy/cinnamon roll role:

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

This Ravenous Fate

start of a sapphic YA duology set in 1920s Harlem, in a world where reapers (vampires) are the result of horrific human experimentation

follows a reluctant heir to a powerful reaper-hunting family, who has just returned from paris

and her childhood best friend who she hasn’t seen since she was turned and almost killed her five years ago

in the wake of a string of murders, they’re forced to work together to find out how they’re linked, and investigate rumours of a cure

[rotzaprachim]

something that either hasn’t occured to many people or that has been pointedly ignored is that any large scale movement of Jews from Israel back to the diaspora would involve a lot of people who have called for the death of Israelis to be now live with people who are in some way Israeli. If you want Jews to leave Palestine and return to places they used to live you’re gonna have to get around to the fact they might even be Israeli and human beings. Idk. Something to think about

[bumblingbabooshka]

If 'Resolutions' happened with Chakotay & Tuvok they would have made a beautiful home down there on that planet. It'd be Better Homes & Gardens material by the time they left. If it happened with Tuvok & Janeway it'd just be the captain running around barefoot chasing a monkey while Tuvok grew flowers and made comments about her not tracking dirt into the house after he just cleaned the floors.