#a lot more probably but now they feel shame for it

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

do you think Eridan would listen to kpop ? (either the human or Troll variant)

if not...then which troll would be the most likely to :3c

LOL no way, he's a hipster. KPop is mainstream as hell; if anything, he'd have disdain for it (and for pop as a whole). One of the less emotionally perturbed trolls would probably enjoy that stuff, though I don't know that I'd call any of the Alternian crew the kind who'd consider it to be their favorite, since nearly all of them are at least a little alt in some way, and kpop (and idol culture as a whole) is heavily tied up in politics, propaganda, capitalism, and consumption - so the troll version of it would be that times a thousand.

I'd say Feferi, Gamzee, and Kanaya probably quite like it because they're most at ease with their society, but it's not their favorite. Equius probably sees it as being aimed at the lower castes, and therefore crass and beneath him. Everyone else would probably get the propaganda vibes and dislike it on principle, even if some of them might secretly find some songs catchy (cough Karkat cough).

If you want to get into Beforan trolls, haha, oh man. I think more of them would like it than not.

Normally, I'd say that Eridan would at least make a show of liking it, given how much he makes a show of being a Sea Dweller(TM), but his hipster tastes, like his interest in magic, don't appear to be things he can shake. Karkat even calls him a hipster, so you KNOW he's out here dissing Trollor Swift and making disdainful faces when people bring up Troll Marvel.

I have as a selection of bands for Eridan Have a Nice Life (post-rock/post-punk/shoegaze), Sprain (noise rock/experimental rock), and Tool (alternative metal/art rock/progressive rock). Generally, I find he vibes with stuff on the darker side of post/prog rock, or the more lyrical side of heavy metal - both in terms of themes (lots of darker topics, like death, murder, suicide, child abuse, etc.) and in terms of sound. It also fulfills the requirement of being "hipster" by nature. Eridan is a very troubled, angry, violent guy, and I personally like to call the linked bands "angry man music". Just a smattering of lyrics for those who don't want to listen:

I've been doing a lot of damned things without you And all the damned things I do confound you Yeah, Satan and his devils try to take my hand And the angels on my shoulders try to tell me that they understand Oh well, oh well

Imagine this: I'm the guest on some obscene talk show In a cell of moral compromise The audience is made up of everyone that I have ever met in my entire life Every sin I've ever committed is put up on display by screens hung around the stage And we watch, watch, watch, watch, watch, watch, watch The host says "I now present to you an elaborate choreography of failure!" The audience erupts with seemingly coordinated jets of jargon laughter "Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Shame on you!"

I'm broken, looking up to see the enemy And I have swallowed the poison you feed me But I survive on the poison you feed me, leaving me Guilt-fed, hatred-fed, weakness-fed It makes me feel ugly

I think even when his tastes do venture lighter, they still never really cross the threshold into pure pop. There's always going to be a hipster, indie, punk-y, shoegaze/post-rock bent to his tastes. I also list for him Dirt Poor Robins, Family Crest, Johnny Hollow...

Wisdom unearned is Intrepid and proud Till we’re dragged by the tide and nearly have drowned Entropy thrives In conditions enclosed Innovations arise When humanity chokes

Cast your heart to the floor, love Feel the sting, feel the weight Of a love, of a love not strong enough Your head's on fire Your hands and feet come off the ground Oh, sweet desire, when your mind, when your mind When your mind's not strong enough It's not that your head is gone It's just that your heart is on fire, fire It's not that the beat is off It's just that your heart is on fire, fire

Once when I was all alone I called you, and you weren't at home My heart fell like a stone, to the ground To the ground, to the ground Why, when morn had dawned on me And anger grew like ecstasy And Leda threw the swan on me and I fell to the ground To the ground, to the ground

Hilariously, this alt/hipster taste means that he runs up against stuff that's ridiculously anti-government; I personally like to believe he does actually listen to outright anti-fascist songs, but if you point it out, he's just like. No it isn't. So SWMRS, Silver Mt. Zion, Vansire.

Well, you gotta keep it up But it will never be enough No sonrisa teenage shit pop Well, you gotta keep it up But it will never be enough No sonrisa teenage shit pop Death to the motherfucking fascist insect This shit makes me so sadistic Death to the motherfucking fascist insect This shit makes me so sadistic Death to the motherfucking fascist insect This shit makes me so sadistic Death to the motherfucking fascist insect This shit makes me so sadistic

There's fresh meat in the club tonight God bless our dead marines Someone had an accident Above the burning trees While somewhere distant peacefully Our vulgar princes sleep Dead kids don't get photographed God bless our dead marines

So I convalesced in the middle west And fell for Ohio's roads I'm standing still by the windowsill Where I once watched the world explode So when it's looking dark in your narrative arc I'm here and you can talk with me A hackneyed fool under fascist rule Wasting days singing about his dreams

It's a pretentious-ass taste, but one that fits in with the vocabulary he likes to use:

CA: all of her FRAUDULENT MAGICS cannot come close to posin threat to my mastery ovver the TRUEST SCIENCES CA: an wwith my empiricists wwand i servve as the righteous hope that wwill incinerate delusion and the deluded alike CA: my holy fire is the wwhite fury bled from the wwrath-wweary eyes of fifty thousand nonfictional angels CA: and wwhen theyre finished wweepin they wwill boww before their prince GG: wow what are you talking about

I miss the days when stars were saintly They sang to me in ways innately Before we enslaved the symphony To playing anthems for selling things I used to wonder, wander farther Into awe, but those days were squandered My ghost was lost to the grownup gallows So I find my spirit in the bottle

Those modal masterworks Atonal oeuvres it seems When I ask afterwards All message lost in between The shifting aperture Depicting sun-soaked scenes I guess they resonate That's Universal Consciousness

Fate’s a funny thing It makes a victim of the will and brings a suit of broken bands A snake so full of tail That it can barely breathe to say it “doesn’t understand.” So, what am I to think? What am I to think? I’m doing it now At least I know I am At least I caught myself before I sent this out Into a stupid world that doesn’t give a damn Oh, what kind of fool do you think I am?

Like, I really can't stress enough, but Eridan is abjectly fucking miserable, angry and violent, anxious and unhappy. And his taste in music should reflect that, his feelings of impotence, his angry and anxious energy, his desperation. Have a Nice Life is probably the band I pick for him, because their discography reflects so greatly these emotions of anger, impotence, self-loathing and self-destruction.

The thing about being a hipster is that there's, the way I see it, three main reasons people wind up falling into it - the first is that they want to feel special, feel better than other people (not really Eridan's deal); the second is that they're just generally a music liker and their taste is indiscriminate enough to include indie stuff, too (and this is also not really Eridan's deal); and the last is because there is something in their soul that cries out for validation that they can't receive in the mainstream - for example, emotions, impulses, thoughts, and urges too dark for radio play (such as an obsession with genocide and murder). It's actually really important to me that Eridan IS a hipster, and specifically the type of hipster who's super pretentious and looks down on stuff that's "popular."

He has a massive fixation on being understood - complaining constantly that people don't "get it," that "nobody understands." This would extend to his taste in music. He would seek out genuine-ness, something grungy, something real, and unfortunately, stuff that's made for mass-market consumption must have the edges sanded off by nature. Given he actually gets upset when people don't "get" him, I'd wager that he doesn't treat media that he feels doesn't "get" him pretty poorly, too.

To be clear, I'm not trying to diss KPop in any way. It's not really my thing, but I get why people like it, and I'm not saying you shouldn't. Just feel like I have to toss that in there. I just really don't think Eridan would like it. And also he would probably be mean about it if you told him you liked it.

[restinslices]

Having Percy As A Brother

Don’t know why I was thinking about this. You’re a non demigod in this post btw. I haven’t read HOO yet so this is just PJO and general stuff

I love Percy as much as the next person but oh my damn

This kid is giving you a headache

I can imagine that all those monster fights end up affecting you

“Next time you fight a huge monster, don’t fight around my car!” “Oh yeah, I’ll be sure to ask them if we can fight in a field next time” “Don’t be sarcastic with me shitass. My car has a big dent in it!”

Obviously you’re worried about him, but with all the shit he gets into and survives, you’re not shaking in your boots

Sometimes Sally has to work in the morning which means you’re in charge of getting Percy up and ready for school

A terrible terrible fate

“Perseus! I’ve woken you up three times!” “I’m just resting my eyes”

Be fr-

Gotta check on that boy every five minutes. He just keeps falling asleep

Do I have any canon material to back this up? No. I just get a vibe

“If I come back in this room and you’re not up, it’s gonna be me and you. You think just because you survived a battle with Kronos, you can survive a battle with me? WRONG!”

Now realistically fighting you wouldn’t be a problem, but let’s ignore that-

I can see him accidentally putting his shirt for camp on, which obviously he can’t wear to school. Kinda gets a lil attitude when you tell him this because he’s so sleepy

“You got an attitude? I would hate for us both to have an attitude, now everybody’s day fucked up”

Yeah, you fuss at him a lot

But it’s not in a mean way

Siblings fuss. It happens. Percy knows you love him

“Here, I made you lunch” “Why?” “Because you’ll probably blow the school up and have to leave, so you won’t make it to lunch” “oh”

You help him when it comes to reading stuff in English

And you chill out with him after he has a nightmare - which is often

Ya’ll watch tv and talk about whatever. He probably doesn’t wanna talk much about his nightmares.

Percy has a whole cabin to himself and does NOT keep that shit clean, so I think that sometimes leaks into his home life

“Why does your room smell like a raccoon’s ass?” “Well it started once you walked in here” “Ha! You think you’re funny, you fish? Clean this room! This is not a camp!”

Oh yeah, the smart ass remarks are constant. He’s a little sarcastic asshole in the books and show (I forgot how he was in the movies)

It drives Sally insane because sometimes she can’t tell if you two are actually angry with each other or not

I feel like I can’t end this without mentioning Annabeth

Before they start dating, you liked to be an asshole and invite her over for dinner

You look over at Percy from time to time with the most devious look on your face

“Hey Percy, you were gonna pay for that dent in my car, right?” “No?” “Hm… Ann-” “I meant not right now! I need to save more money first” “Lovely”

He’s a victim of blackmailing

It’s a real shame when they get together finally. Now you have no leverage over him

Rip

Yeah idk why I wanted to write this, but here we are!

[purplekoop]

Kinda just now got hit by the realization that Dipper could've solved the big author mystery right away if their family just. Talked about the Stans and didn't shame them into being effectively forgotten.

"Hey so your one great uncle is a weirdo wannabe scientist who last we heard moved to Who Cares, Oregon to do paranormal research. He also had six fingers, isn't that whacky?" Just as like a casual little fact to drop at any point would've given him a pretty big clue about where these journals probably came from.

And I don't think this is a plot hole, far from it. It really does feel like a significant truth with strained distant families like the Pines. It's just "easier" to forget about an inconvenient relative or two rather than taking the effort to try and support them or, if NOTHING else, learn from them. I really don't find it hard to believe that with Shermie as an infant when the Stans effectively vanished, that whole family history was just... never brought up again. Shoot, the only reason Stanley got away with passing as Ford is probably because Shermie just never got to learn anything about his brothers, because why *would* his parents tell him anything about those failures? Even Ford's polydactylism was probably something they were ashamed of and didn't want to have anyone remember.

I think even past the core Pines family plotline, a lot of the show's mysteries only happen because there was something (or someone) shameful that somebody decided was more convenient to just ignore. Quentin Trembly, the Northwest Manor Ghost, most of Gideon's schemes, all are just constructed for the sake of vanity or convenience. And god, McGucket, the man who accidentally founded a cult for forcibly forgetting inconvenient truths, only to be ignored by his own son for becoming an inconvenience.

I dunno, I just think it's a neat and thoroughly true to life core theme for a show about mysteries that the biggest cause of obfuscated information is that someone decided it'd just be easier that way, regardless of the actual consequences.

[thewritehag]

People get up in arms when they find out some of the greatest military minds were bottoms. They had a lot of stress put on them, maybe they want to be taken care of for a bit.

[struggling-jpg]

Yanqing and Yunli Appreciation Post

Keep Reading cut due to 2.4 spoilers~ (also relatively long-ish post)

These two bounce off each other so well! As a writer, it feels so satisfying to see their characters shine through the quest and the event in the way their interactions highlight them. So I'm gonna use this space to ramble about it!

My previous post pretty much talked about it already, but Yanqing!!! My son!!! I was quite worried that any potential arc for him would be shoved down the road or to the side due to the scale HSR has, but the game's been actually holding up to his ongoing arc. As a result, at least to me, he's come through as one of the best written/developed characters on the Xianzhou so far.

The nature of the length of the updates lets what we get in previous quests settle in for a long while, and considering the mentioned of flow of time in-game, Yanqing's had the time to think and develop as a person. The fact that so many players have had their view and opinion of him finally turn around in this quest is a testament to that. We get to see more facets of him, as in, doing his job and the responsibilities of doing so, and how his insecurities are mentioned in a main quest for all to see. He's constantly referencing others and his past encounters. You can tell that Jing Yuan raised him with his manner and approach to things, which is highlighted by the contrast to Yunli (will get to that soon).

His position as a child soldier has made him mature faster, be quiet even when he's been wronged (filial piety/saving face (aka thank you person on Reddit who makes the banger character Yanqing (and other characters in general) appreciation posts)), take a step back and have to be able to read the room (though, reasonably, he doesn't catch on all the time), and much, much more. The fact that other official content has described him as being more worried about diplomacy and all that. He doesn't have the luxury to be as carefree or brash for someone his age.

There's a lot to unpack there still, even with the development he's had now and that's good! If the Hoyo writing team was wild enough, it'd be cool to see them address the grayness of his role and Jing Yuan's mindset in raising him as he did (We love Dad-Yuan and he loves his son dearly no question, but it'd be so interesting to explore his flaws/mistakes in this perspective!).

Now onto Yunli.

I'm saying straight off the bat, I'm irritated by her!

And that's a good thing!

Her being annoying or bratty or irritating doesn't automatically make her a badly written character! She only would become one if they don't do anything with her, and HSR most probably will, and she should be given the same room to develop in her own arc.

She acts like her age, and she doesn't have the same pressures as Yanqing does. Just like how you can see Jing Yuan in Yanqing, you can see Huaiyan in Yunli, if anything he says is to go by. She's tempremental and outspoken to a fault, and based on the way how quickly Huaiyan relented when she talked back, you can tell that Huaiyan isn't as strict/stern with her to give her a sense of being humble.

I had this thought that she's technically what the general fandom viewed Yanqing as initially, and I'm not saying that as a 100% thing, by the way. But like by some traits and the vibes. She, of course, has a lot more nuance that will be explored at one point or another.

But back on topic, she's a foil. They represent two different approaches and lifestyles and can clearly learn from each other. Her inconsideration of the fact that she's on the Luofu but enforcing Zhuming practices (which I noticed people were upset by, and same; which I imagine is the point), her bluntness to no matter who she's talking to—there's a lot to work with here.

Just like with their swordplay, Yanqing could learn from her mental strength while Yunli can learn from his focused speed and defense. He can learn to regain a more firm grasp of his recently found purpose while she can learn to mature and take in her surroundings and be more thoughtful in that front.

Another interesting note is that where we are with Yanqing currently is in the middle of his arc, we've had the time to see him take a long route of struggle to get to this point, exacerbated by irl players views of him. He's in the middle of his growth and we've had since 1.0 to get to know him. But with Yunli, she was introduced very recently, so we're technically at the "beginning" of her character arc. In a way, Yunli now highlights how far Yanqing has come and changed, and in a way Yanqing now is a potential show for the arc that Yunli can have (not being the exact same as him of course).

I think the idea with these two is that they develop to be more balanced. Balance is such an important thing, especially in Chinese culture (Daoism (Yin-Yang), etc.), and 2.4 has shown how much potential they have to make for amazing character arcs.

It's cool that while they have such similar base traits, they're so different from each other. Calling Yunli a female Yanqing or Yanqing a male Yunli is simply outright incorrect. Their backgrounds, upbringings, ideals, swordstyles, perspectives, and positions in life are so distinct. I'm looking forward to their futures!

[wildstar25]

What physical part(s) of Arsay does her partners find the most attractive! Is it the same for all partners or does it differ between them?

(also optional bonus ask of what part(s) of/about Arsay generally do they love the most, physical or not!)

Meanwhile, if you were to ask the same of Arsay:

[sysig]

Wander Dr. Doran! Yeahh :) (Patreon)

[obeymeow]

nightbringer lesson 14 FUCKED ME UP in several ways but primarily I've spent the last 48 hours making myself sad over the solomon backstory we got. specifically I have, for no reason, latched onto that one chapter in the Kids event where baby solomon cried because he felt so guilty over being responsible for that spell. and that just feels a touch more depressing in context

[pynkhues]

https://x.com/pixielayer/status/1818003659675869381

since you're in your smut writing renaissance era... i'll just leave it here and hope it sparks the creative juice flow *wink-wonk*

(ok that sounded weird. i'm out)

Lmaooo, anon!! LOOK, I will keep it in mind.

[stinkrascal]

i stayed up til 4am last night cuz moonrise towers needs me to defend it yall. sleep can wait

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[snekdood]

i refuse to let insecure fucks from my home town who are so controlled by their fear of being different make me feel bad or weird existing as i am online. yeah, i did find a place i could express myself freely and people didnt reject me, im sorry you weren’t able to shame me into having 0 friends anywhere, hoping that’d make me become the basic blonde bitch you want me to be

[onocleqs]

can't fucking believe vent is still down. where else am i gonna yell about being ill

[ghostlyheart]

Happy Valentines Day!! 💝 I hope you spend the day being haunted by someone you love 👻 (or if you're like me, just eating a lot of heart-shaped candy)

Poll:

[misskamelie]

Every interaction I have with my peers is always somehow permeated by a halo of "they can tell there's something off about me"

[toastsnaffler]

prev post reminds me a friend told me last week she doesnt believe i actually struggle with emotional volatility/dysregulation like ive mentioned before bc shes never seen it firsthand...............