#a very real reality i live in

[tastycitrus]

Neinheart: Alright, knight, your first mission will be— *he stops short upon seeing level 260+ Dawn Warrior* Neinheart: Dawn Warrior: Dawn Warrior, sweating: The remaster reset my story quest progress and I never bothered to replay it until now because I need to complete it for the artifact mission, okay?

[fumifooms]

I should have touched on dark elves in my beauty standards post... Let me just slap this on here real quick. So as we went into there, beauty standards can show political dynamics and sort of reflects the politics of who get to be seen as human, who get to be seen as desirable and promoted within a society. So like, beauty is power right, in the sense that beauty standards are highly influenced by the ones in power, the ones who have the time & resources to look a certain way and the power to present that look as desirable to large groups. It’s complex and diverse but generally beauty standards are upheld by the elite, the influential.

By the former 'time & resources' thing I mean stuff like clothes, health, makeup or even cosmetic surgeries, or even simply the freedom to only go out in public when you look your best— Meanwhile the latter, the power to present that look as desirable to large groups, usually applies more to situations where it’s about a whole category of people like an ethnicity that was uplifted as the ideal. Not just in a political or economic dynamic, but discrimination on a systematic level without regard for individual appearance or action.

For example in the former, not all people who wear makeup are rich, and while makeup did historically help signal status, if you’re poor and wear nice makeup you can still touch some of that beneficial association with the beauty standards that makeup helps you attain. In the latter……. Well you get, "no, all elves are good! So the elves who do bad things must be something else!". Where, in trying to have uniform standards for a whole group, you kinda just get erased or othered if you don’t conform to expectations. The elves especially put effort into giving off this air of perfection, which they've successfully made tallmen populations believe. So, for those people, the answer that "But elves are inherently good and beautiful and perfect?" asks, isn't "well elves mustn't be inherently perfect", but instead is "there must be bad ones too, innately too." A similar phenomenon happens with the reverse too, where people will say there are "the good ones" within a group that's seen negatively.

"But Fumi, in this case the difference is purely linguistic and perceived, there’s no visual difference!" Yeah, and there being little visual distinction between two groups has never stopped people from being discriminated tbh. Different types of christians seeing each other as heathwbs for example, or the deep british vs irish hatred that has existed. A tidbit of history I find fascinating was the infamous use of "speak white" from english-speaking canadians against french-speaking canadians especially, because complicated history aside, last century as the business owners the anglophones had the power over the majoritarily francophone working class and a lot of political sway even though they were the minority in the Québec region. There’s a different cultural and ethnic identity there, and language was the most important difference between the two groups- and I suppose the most noticeable one.

The way we as social creatures and social groups categorize people and the groups they form is complex, interesting and very important to our society and the way we approach both the world and social interactions, and that's what leads to discrimination. We decide what’s important and then we decide it’s what people should be judged and distinguished by. Belonging to a group is a show of status, and can be a weaponized both ways, for and against. If you’re not worthy to be an elf, a "good" elf, then you’re not.

Interesting especially because looking at the elf portraits page there seems to be many different cultures within the elf race, so yes "good elf" vs "dark elf" is considered something like a race rather than an ethnicity or culture presumably. There's definitely a "main" elven culture since it seems pretty uniform whenever it's brought up in the adventurer's bible and the story, though, wether the differenr cultures form different communities in different places or live together as one nation. But maybe more treated like a mental illness since it’s acquired, or sometimes slang? It's not completely clear wether it's thought of as fully innate or something learned, a chosen moral failure like sin is, but with how they speak about it they do sound very essentialists, even Chilchuck seems to get a chill considering Marcille could be one. Quoting Kui's lore comic, "There are two kinds of elves, nice holy elves and evil elves bewitched by darkness". It’s just considered like an innate thing that separates them from the concept of elves... 🤔 But this sort of category being vague is often a feature and not a bug, because then they can be a boogeyman to bring up just whenever is convenient, that can fit whoever, like calling a kid a "fairy's child" for whatever behavior in the olden days, because if you don't precise a lot what a dark elf is then it can apply to whoever you see fit, and it doesn't need to be coherent or consistent. The sort of discrimination headspace that leads to the classic fascist "the enemy is both strong and weak" type rethoric.

"Dark elves" is interesting within Dunmeshi because it's about people trying to fully separate elves from the concept of bad and untrustworthy people, even though they look the same. "Elf" isn’t just a beauty standard, it is The ultimate ideal of perfection both in appearance and morality, and if something threatens that perception and reputation it has to get rationalized and compartmentalized. Those are coping mechanisms to avoid having your whole world view challenged or shattered. To tallmen who practically worship elves, it’s a huge deal!! To them that makes it make sense! Some elves are born good and some elves are born evil, simple as! No world view re-examination needed!

So for Marcille for example... It’s interesting because she has an outside view of elven society despite being elven herself. She was raised amongst tallmen, aka the people who idolize elves to this intense degree. It had to have affected her dynamics with others— not unlike the academy students, mostly gnomes and tallmen, who looked up to her as some natural-born genius, even though she did do research and study to get her skills and grades. It also had to affect her relationship with having a role model growing up (having none around except for her mother who pretty much renounced her elven culture, a novel series that sensationalizes and glamorizes elves), her dynamic with being elven itself, because even though she doesn't feel like she fully fits into it she's interested in elven culture, and she herself enforces the beauty standards around elves and acts elitist about it- as seen when tallmen actors playing Daltian Clan opera, when men are very masculine rather than very androgynous like with Laios, having long hair, having no facial or body hair. With this angle, all of this behavior of hers is very "internalized high standards that were my bible to follow growing up and so others must follow them too and these high standards must be worth upholding".

Considering everything, elves being looked up to as a role model in appearance and behavior, plus them having the reputation of being great at magic, and Marcille having grown up amongst mostly tallmen, we start understanding that there was IMMENSE pressure on Marcille to conform to that idea of an elf. She has a lot of pressure and a very high beauty & behavior compass to conform to. She also has an idealist and rigid sense of justice and morals, like how Namari is a heartless traitor for leaving instead of coming along to save Falin, and she needs people to believe she has noooo facial or body hair. She probably WAS afraid of being seen as a dark elf, aka fundamentally evil, for her dark magic research. You don't want to be a letdown, do you? You don't want to be the ugliest elf, do you? You don't want to be a dark elf, do you? You don't want to be one of the bad ones.

Shave your facial hair and deny you have any body hair. Take care of elven traditions like hair-braiding and have pride. Be the kind, smartest model student. Do magic by the book. Never do dark magic. Ah shit-

And so she hid the domain of her research, and so she hid being a half-elf.

[aiscapades]

girl i had huge crush on in school who was a very good friend to me she's so smart and wonderful and kind just told me she's proud of me for inquiring about a breast reduction i literally started crying what the absolute fuck I'm so gay and so deprived of love in my daily life what the fuck kck .?? HELLO??

[anghraine]

I honestly feel a lot better about having posted anything at AO3, even things I won't finish, and there's something that warms my heart about posting fic for The Borgias in 2024.

I was actually deciding between two different WIPs to represent that "phase" between my undergrad years and grad school. The other one was the prologue to a Legend of Korra/Star Wars fusion in which Noatak/Amon is Korra's father and this is revealed in S1 (I think it was going to be Tarrlok who figures it out first, lol) and it actually affects the plot and it isn't just the LOK canon plot with minor adjustments—the fusion with SW was meant to be more than vague I-am-your-father inspiration. In any case, I only ever wrote the prologue about the Noatak/Senna quasi-romance that led to Korra's existence and never even got to the sheer comedy of Korra as Tarrlok's niece :(

But the Juan and Lucrezia as dysfunctional twins one-shot is closer to being a whole fic (in a side-story way) and I did like being able to add one more to my Borgias oeuvre—and getting at least some part of that AU on AO3 after all the time I spent on it!

[b-blushes]

migraine has been bestowed upon me

[tullycicero]

the funniest part of being in dark academia spaces etc online is that you do really begin to see how like fake all of it is when people are posting and reblogging pictures of your own university (and romanticising your own degree) and they've all just been... desaturated to high heaven like no the shortcut to your lectures doesn't look like that - nothing weirder than seeing people look up to what is essentially half of your life as an aesthetic pinnacle and meanwhile there you are doing studying the classics in an old british university and that is not the vibe

idk it just makes me laugh, seeing photos that can literally include the outside of my own student bedroom being romanticised when i can see very clearly that the sepia filter is blasted to 100 and there aren't tourists everywhere

[lovebitesandcrosses]

Man, I would find so much solace and comfort in the obsessive love related tags if they weren’t all just like kinda unwell teenagers roleplaying anime characters. I’m not one to shit on what mentally ill young people do to cope so whatever but like… girl you’re not a yandere it’s just your first crush please stop.

[creepyscritches]

My mom is going on a cruise w her bestie to a lot of European countries she's not seen yet (hasn't been to/lived in Europe or Africa since shortly before I was born). She asked me what gift I'd like and tbh I just really loooooove spices and flavors I dont have the opportunity to discover/try here, but like 🤔 not sure if customs would bar her from bringing spices home. Maybe a cool rock or smth instead as I seem to be collecting small stone animals when I travel lately

[aerithisms]

i still have so many questions about the ff7 remake story. why did aerith even have knowledge of the future in remake to begin with? from a watsonion perspective, why does she lose that knowledge after the end of remake when sephiroth doesn't? (i'm fully aware the doylist reason is that having a character who knows the future would totally break the plot but i'm still curious if there's more to what they were doing with aerith's remake character or if this is it). what was her motivation to encourage the party to fight the whispers in the original game when she knew the party would defeat sephiroth in the end if events followed fate? was it simply that she wanted the chance to live? because that makes me want to lie down and cry!!!!

[tendercherie]

no, I meant hard to believe you were off of it for any amount of time! 😅

LMFAO brutal

[masterroadtripper]

Con O'Neill as Michael in Scarborough Ahoy (1996)

(Remaining screenshots below cut)

[agayconcept]

aaaand i had to turn off asks bc im getting death threats for reblogging a chappell roan post. lmfao. y'all really said 'no we won't stop at harassing a bipolar woman into a public mental health crisis bc we got mad she had a reasonable political take that criticized a genocidal government, now we will try to harass anyone defending / agreeing with her within an inch of their life also. we are The Good Guys btw.' like wow. i hope y'all don't behave this way in real life but sadly i know u almost definitely do

[themyscirah]

This is technically a Diana's age poll but I framed it partially around Julia's rescue because that's the event I need to contextualize and whether or not Diana is a thing yet is p important for my purposes. I would keep the Pérez run and postcrisis continuity in mind when answering this bc that's when this is relevant but I'd keep in mind that even though Diana is very young there (like early 20s) we don't know I don't think if she ages differently as a child (esp as a themysciran AND being made from clay) and in some versions she is older than she looks and was made earlier

Edit: I accidentally logic-ed this out in the tags lol 🤦‍♀️but feel free to still vote however you want. Going to publish this anyway bc I think I made some good points later in my tags

[cuddlingsun]

i hate feelings!!!! go away!!!!!!

[sampilled]

i don't even want a relationship i literally spend more time fantasising about having a best friend