#and i had figured that there was a cultural difference there

[achillesuwu]

(hehehehehe thank u ♥️

Ok that take a completely different turn but I can still cook *put my hat on* So, Merlin knew Arthur was his soulmate in canon era but decided to hide it (I always love to put cultural aspect to soulmate in soulmate au! Like Soulmate have many the rights, like if Arthur or Guinevere find their soulmate post being married they could terminate their marriage,... Which mean that Merlin revealing he is Arthur soulmate would destroy any marriage alliance of Uther so that's why he decided to hide it at first. Then he didn't want to break Gwen's heart) BUT he kind of started to put a spell around him 👀 so he would "half" forget that Arthur is his soulmate

By that I mean that Merlin didn't really think about their bond but thought about it enough that he would not get naked in front of Arthur

BUT the spell he did was an uncompleted amnesiac spell that he would need to destroy and refresh often (so he would stay at that balanced state of remembering without remembering) HOWEVER 👀 when Arthur died Merlin was far too gone to even think about it. It went beyond the tipping point and the spell fully took. (if Merlin came back to Camelot, Gaius just didn't have the heart to tell him and break his heart even more)

Also I see that I haven't wrote this part of the au on tumblr but in this au sorcerer have the capacity to bring their soulmark to life when they start doing magic 👀 Merlin always had a blue little (at first) blue dragon following him (and living in Camelot's forest) and no long after Arthur died an even smaller red dragon appeared too 👀 so actually when Merlin arrives Arthur see an gigantic (like vaghar sized if you watch House of the dragon) version of his soulmark blow the trees as it lands and then see a smaller figure approach as (still gigantic but way smaller) red dragon start landings too.

So Arthur is at first like : omfg

Then : Merlin!!! ✨😍

Then : Wait MY SOULMATE IS MERLIN 😲😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

Then he is 25% crying inside because Merlin doesn't remember him 15% worried at Merlin amnesia 10% glad Merlin seems to still have his sassiness 🥺♥️ 50% weak in the knee because that's the first time he actually see Merlin being the greatest 😵‍💫 and He is his soulmate omg omg *Arthur using all his training to stay standing when Merlin's eyes glow as he strips him and turn him with magic to see his soulmark without a by your leave✋*

The social magical worker is sure as hell not pay enough to deal with all of this so they leave to deal with that "kid who drank a purpling potion" (there is, in fact, no kid)

Au where merthur have soulmate identifying mark but merlin is the only one who know they are because if Arthur knew he would find out about his magic 👀 (arthur's mark being a beautiful dragon mainly on on his back but its tall is draped on his torso, a wing stretch on his right shoulder, another end on his hip and its head rest upon his stomach. As if it were jealousy protecting him. its scale are of a blue so dark it nearly look black. It has golden eye and tread of gold on is horn, gold shimmer on its body highlighting its scale at some place.

It screams powerful sorcerer.)

And thus it doesn't change anything from the show. Merlin doesn't tell him not even at the very end (Merlin's mark is a smaller red dragon with its head on his shoulder and who is is holding itself on his shoulder)

It would be very angsty but also SO FUNNY if in a post return futur where arthur (Gwen, the knights) are very confuse and lost but luckily for them there exist multiple center for "People who got Teleported at the wrong place/Bought back from the dead? We are here to help!/ your five yo drank a weird potion? No problem! Etc" basically Magic help center.

Just imagine basic social worker sorcerers who tries to do their job at 3 am and see THE Emrys mark ™ on a random dude and they are like *gasp*.

Them : what the fuck

Arthur :???

Them :WHAT THE FUCK

the others :????

Them : we are calling your soulmate RIGHT NOW. WHAT THE FUCK should I call the government too???? I'M NOT PAY ENOUGH FOR THIS.

Arthur : my???

Them : YOU. DO NOT MOVE IF I LOSE YOU I'M DEAD. DEAD.

You can imagine arthur pendragon pacing like a 13 years old stressed before an oral presentation because even if he was afraid then thought he globally didn't really care about his soulmate. He realised that it wasn't so much that he didn't care but he thought it would simply never be so he just... Kinda forgot about it. Now he just can not put it away because is soulmate IS coming and WHERE IS MERLIN WHEN HE NEEDS HIM (he is blocking any thoughts about Merlin potential dead thank you very much)

(Gwen is currently finding the situation extremely funny because she figured out in 5x13 and she is 80 yo (in a younger body but still) . And she is waaaayyyyyy to old to see her former husband stay in his denial.

Leon is 78 years old and he is slowly recognising the dragon in question that look very much like Merlin's family crest. He is looking at his wife in a very conspiracy way.

Gwaine is currently not really giving a damn about the whole soulmate thing. What do you MEAN you can send messages to people in less that a second?!?!?

Elyan would usually not give a damn but he is very much not happy ™ to find out that his sister (first) husband had a soulmate mark who isn't dead and he is glaring at Arthur but he is also getting a hug from gwen so it doesn't look menacing at all.

Perceval (57) is right behind Gwaine but he is currently watching himself in the mirror because seeing his younger self again is weird asf

Meanwhile Lancelot is talking with the assistant (on the verge of a break down because they are going to see the GOD OF MAGIC OH MY GOD) about magical history

[crustaceousfaggot]

Relationships in The Terror (2018) I think would have been fun to see explored onscreen if they'd had more than 10 episodes:

Gibson & Jopson (You and the coworker at your customer service job who is objectively annoying but also the only other gay person on staff, so I guess you're friends now)

Bridgens & Goodsir (I know you're not a proper doctor but I see that you are trying and you are full of so so so much love and care and we are the same in that way)

Peglar & Hickey (Hickey sees this friendly doe-eyed gayboy and assumes he'll be an easy mark, Peglar gently informs him that his husband is over on Erebus and he's not interested in mutiny, thank you very much)

Bridgens & Fitzjames (Fun fact: a steward can also be a father figure if your abandonment issues are bad enough!)

Jopson & Little (Joplittle girlies I am trying to understand your culture but this is one of the most Men Standing Beside Each Other ships I have ever seen)

Hickey & Darlington (I just want one scene where it's established that Hickey is kinda shit at his job and his boss hates him)

Fitzjames & Le Vesconte (I know they technically interact but c'mon I need more Dundy in my life)

Gibson & Hodgson (Okay this one I'm actually insane about. Hodgson who likes to think of himself as chill and friendly with the lower ranks vs Billy who wants this guy to shut up so he can do his job. Someone on Discord compared it to when customer service jobs make you wear a name tag - customers try to be friendly and address you by name, but it just feels jarring and a bit violating because of the inherent power differential. And then when their dynamic is swapped, when Billy is the Lieutenant to Hickey's Captain and Hodgson is a decorative piece of meat? Bro. And, like, Hodson ate the flesh of this man who had made his bed and shaved his face for the past 3 years. Did that affect him differently than if it had been a random AB? I'm losing my mind over here.)

Armitage & Tozer (he wants that Marine cock sooooooo bad god bless)

[pinep-ne]

More of a drabble (deepest apologies) and a little Jovier doodle cause u deserve it (to make up for it) ^_^

AHH!!! First time drawing them...

Anywho. (Lifting the cloche) Your fic, @officialbugdrink...

Placed in Blackwater, pre-canon, where instead of acquaintances, Charles and Arthur's relationship is semi-established.

(i have this fic and more posted on ao3!)

----------

"Charles."

The voice behind him is out of breath. Charles had already known who it was before a word was uttered. Arthur tends to stumble about a lot, not necessarily stomping unless he's particularly angry, but there's an off-kilter sway to it, and it holds an odd little rhythm Charles can recognize yards away.

He turns behind him and sure enough, the man stands before him, clouds of soft white billowing from his nose and mouth, chin tilted down, unconsciously searching for the warmth of his fleece-lined collar. Looking a lot like he has no clue how he got there in the first place.

Charles turns to him fully. The lantern sitting at his feet— its amber light shifting, casting different in angles upon Arthur's unsure expression. He has his hands behind his back, very obviously putting a wall between Charles himself and the culprit of his own bashfulness.

Charles finds it so endearing in this moment he feels he's forgotten how to breathe. He sets his rifle against the tree he's been leaning on.

"Arthur," he says, like a soft sigh. "Why're you up so late?"

Arthur shifts again, turning his head to behind him, very inconspicuously, then back to Charles.

His voice stays hushed like the entire world is listening. "I know you ain't like a whole lotta attention, figured you was guarding tonight, woulda made it a little more... well..." Arthur trails off, averting his gaze again, shoulders dropping. Then, he starts up as he usually does, as if he's been shocked. Opens his mouth, and shuts it; another telling quirk of his.

"I made you somethin'," he settles on.

Before Charles can even process it, Arthur's slowly revealed the item in his hands, unable to hold back a smile. A small, whittled figure. Charles stares blankly at the thing, then back to Arthur, before he recognizes its shape.

It's... a horse. Not much bigger than his palm, carved and smoothened by deft yet obviously intermediate hands. Arthur's steps forward, offering for Charles to take it, like they're exchanging some divine, precious object.

Precious, certainly. "It's Taima," Arthur exclaims, a little less quiet than before.

"Arthur, I've never..."

"I know!" He huffs, "I just wanted to give you somethin' anyway. An' the gangs doing the whole gift thing come morning. Lord knows I'd get shit for the next week, if I'd shown you this then. Save us both the trouble."

Charles runs his thumb along the detail, still fixated on it, feeling like his heart's caught in his throat. It certainly looks like her, now. Stylized slightly, but the head especially, her character portrayed to an impressive extent. He's known about Arthur's sketches. Seeing it translated to a tangible, sentimental thing, and a craft born from love specifically, is a whole other experience he's found himself unprepared for.

It was the smallest detail he'd shared over a few beers; only the vast prairie and Arthur having the ears to hear it. A simple admission, that he's never really had the opportunity to celebrate anything close to Christmas. As a child, it simply wasn't a part of his culture. Now it's merely on account of his lack of community, of permanence, and by that matter, any relation to anyone.

Arthur, still, rambles on all matter-of-factly. As if the gesture isn't completely shattering Charles where he stands, unable to yet say anything. Soon though, he notices, and immediately begins to wind down. Takes it as distaste, maybe. He starts spewing out empty apologies, under the guise of reassurances, doused greatly in insecurity, as he usually does when he can't really make sense of a reaction.

Charles doesn't take the time to decipher it, only grabs Arthur by his collar before the man can tear away anymore pages, catching him in a fleeting kiss. Embodying the desperate need to express something back; so rushed that it's painful. He snakes a hand, occupied with the little figure, beneath Arthur's arm, covering the expanse of his back— embracing.

"Thank you," he manages, muffled somewhere in the fleece of Arthur's coat. The figure is warm in his hand, as are the arms wrapped around him, and the body that sways them both.

[stars-and-sugarcubes]

Pluto, the Internet, a Night in the Woods.

I was going to repost thoughts I shared from watching a Night In the Woods video essay, but I have decided to expand on it and re-write it completely.

" During one of Rosa's sleepy reminiscences about her youth, she says, 'Back then there were places that brought us all together, the church and the union.' Both the union and the church were hubs for community building and shared values. You could trust that your fellows in these places would think about the world similarly to you, and if you think about how unions suffered near extinction when manufacturing moved out and the industries that these unions had formed in died, that on top of how with each generation we become more and more agnostic, thereby losing that common gathering place in the church. it kind of explains why young people are so atomized and miserable these days. The only common place that we can gather and delude ourselves in is the internet. "

- Flundering Chipper (minutes 30:44 to 31:27)

1971, Intel released the first microprocessor, and home computers entered the market in 1977, raising in popularity and accessibility through the 80s and 90s. Today, technology is known to have developed exponentially since then.

The video essayist, Flunderingchipper, spoke about the younger generation's lack of religious faith and physical spaces to commune, and it made the cogs turn in my head. GenZ, the Sagittarius Pluto generation (1995-2008), is considered both digitally fluent and dependent due to being the first generation to fully grow up with computers and abundant internet access. GenZ also marks a significant difference between the generations after and before them.

The timeline for micro computer and personal computer usage begins at the bookend of the late Summer sign of Virgo (1959-1971) and the beginning of the Autumn signs with Libra (1971-1983), planting the seeds for the transformation of social and worldly connectedness we see today with Pluto now in Aquarius (2023-2044). Computers and further advancements like smartphones cemented themselves in the US and the world through Pluto's transits in Scorpio (1983-1995) and Sagittarius, the generation of Sag. Pluto is gaining the reputation of being extremely different from older generations and being connected online and less so in person. That is, not to mention the Capricorn (2008-2023) and Aquarius generations. On the internet, the general impression American GenZ seems to be that they are absurd, politically minded, and socially aware, gregarious, zealous, and unwilling to participate in corporate and political struggles of older generations. At least, from what I understand.

Computers came in the autumn of Pluto's treck through the zodiac. A time when previous generations harvested their gifts and their young have less material gains in turn. It started with the Libra Pluto generation, but the Scorpio Pluto generation was likely the first to notice it. Millennials.

All this to say, Pluto, the planet of ordeals, transformations, and death, showed us a time when the internet grew in influence, taking the place of community with friends and colleagues. Less people go outside to have fun. More people turn to gaming, social media, art, and sharing their interests with each other. There are fewer free spaces to commune. The Church loses its grip as people grapple with religious dogma and share in their struggles with it. People learn more about the world and connect with others from further distances. The average person can share themselves with the world and create communities and gain influence on a wider scale, changing the culture around public figures. Mall walkways are emptier, and stores shut down and become desolate. Small shops and average people are threatened by growing corporate power. But that begins to bleed into Capricorn Pluto.

As an older GenZ person reflecting on life as we move forward, I just find this morbidly fascinating. We must endure Pluto's travel through winter.

[bastardlybonkers]

re: ur post about toshiro and laios - i humbly offer this panel of laios completely misunderstanding the way izutsumi eats isn't an 'eastern thing', cuz hes not used to it

a good panel to bring up 👆 laios is a great example of a well meaning white person who ends up making micro agressions and racist generalizations without realizing because hes ignorant and very underexposed to any cultures other than his own. i mean hell both he and falin are extremely racist about 'the mountain people'

and much like theyre racist towards the nomadic people, kabru is racist towards kobolds due to him conflating them with monsters. tbh i think every character in dunmeshi exhibits some sort of racial bias at least once, which can be hard for fans to deal with, as i think most people are unused to racism being one of the major character flaws in their favs. unfortunately, when writing a story that is implied to take place in an earlier time period, or hell even just writing a story period, you cant really ignore racism as part of your worldbuilding, especially if, like kui, youre using it to make a point.

tldr everyone in dunmeshi is kinda racist in one way or another and it is a deliberate choice on kuis part, because she wanted to portray both real-world tensions through a fantasy lense and flesh out her own world with realistic tensions that would build in its history. if you are ignoring that the characters are racist then you are missing the point

also, im saying all this as a white person myself, so please Please do not think that im the only person talking about this. there are many poc, both in the replies/tags of my post and in posts of their own, who have made similar points to me and brought up things i havent touched on and you should absolutely read their takes as well

[darth-kote]

the beef between hunter and crosshair once the latter returns to the squad lives in my mind rent free forever, and no, I will not elaborate

[prince-liest]

I’m reading Witch King by Martha Wells, and now that I have read more than one (1) series by this author, I have been suddenly brained with a two-by-four sharpied over with “realizing that I really enjoy novels by Martha Wells because they live in the specific niche created by the intersection of casually and thoroughly queer casts and non-romance storylines”

I am as ever a sucker for non-human main characters struggling with their very human feelings, which is why I jumped on Witch King the moment I saw “the author of Murderbot wrote another book with a main character that’s non-human,” but I live in this dichotomy where I can really enjoy reading queer romances but I don’t really identify with non-ace characters (which is not actually something I figured out how to differentiate until I was Last Week Years Old). so there are lots of books out there that I enjoy reading but it’s comparatively rare for me to read something that feels like it was written For Me and Martha Wells does that very well

anyway, give me more ace it-pronouns human-spliced robot main characters and people-eating demons who consider rank over gender when finding new bodies to inhabit

[laventadorn]

This is half about danmei, which isn't the main or even tertiary purpose of this blog, BUT also half about writing in general, so here I stick it.

I've been reading danmei since 2020 but I've really struggled to write anything for it. If i measure success by just getting something going, the fic I'm currently working on is the most "successful" venture I've had. It took me ages to even crank out the opening scenes. Despite longing to write in the New Hyperfixation for a long time, I just couldn't grok it.

Initially I thought it was unfamiliarity with the background of the culture the media was based in. With HP, for example, there is a whole lot of English culture that's easily accessible to me, and I studied British literature in school for years. Obviously this isn't the same thing as being English, but it gave me enough of a background to fake it that once when i applied to a graduate program in England, they thought I was actually English.

But with china, there is so much I don't understand and can't access in the same way, so I thought perhaps that was the problem.

But now I'm thinking it's more about the literary approach.

The tradition I learned to write in is one of realism. I often cite Jane Austen as my favorite author; she was a writer of realism: people, situations, and style are all as close to reality as possible. She was actually one of the most hard-line realist writers of the time, even meticulously accurate in minutiae such as how long it took to travel between cities, or when you could reasonably expect to receive a letter. The way she renders character is also heavily based in the psychology of real people, especially in the latter half of her career. And I love the psychology of character. Nothing interests me more as a reader or a writer. It's what I use as a foundation for writing: how to render people and their emotional responses within a tradition of realism, so that they feel (as much as possible, given that i also love fantasy) like genuine human beings.

But this is not, in my experience of it, what Chinese BL is about.

Now, the first of my caveats is that plenty of western media isn't, either (though fandom tends to be obsessed with it to the point of mania, where a character's psychology is microscopically detailed, in particular their responses to trauma). But western media often maintains a veneer of it -- my favorite marvel movie is Captain America: the Winter Soldier, which features Steve feeling purposeless and empty in a world he no longer fits in. (And then his internal conflict is symbolically made external with the reappearance of his dearest friend, whose mind has been wiped to forget him.) That whole movie revolves around Steve's psychology. And that's a big budget blockbuster movie chock full of punchy, blow-uppy action scenes. It still finds time to make a character feel depressed and lost.

(They then did absolutely nothing interesting with it, but you know. They had a single moment.)

To a certain extent, if western media is character based, it has to explore the characters' mental state, and tries to do so in a way that enlightens both the audience and the character, opening up their dark parts and forcing them to change. We probably have Joseph Campbell to thank for a lot of this; his Hero's Journey was modeled heavily on the works of Carl Jung, the psychologist. In fact, Carl Jung was hugely influential in English-speaking literary criticism of the 1970's. (I say "English speaking" because that's the only field I'm familiar with.) To give you the biggest example I know of, Ursula K. le Guin's phenomenal Earthsea trilogy is steeped in Jungian psychology, no book more so than the opening novel, A Wizard of Earthsea. The climax of that novel blew my mind, by the way.

My second caveat is this: it's not that the patterns of Chinese BL don't have character work, or that they aren't concerned with the character's interiority. With my fixation on character, if those things were entirely absent, I wouldn't be reading these books. It's more that the media tradition of hyper-focus on the characters' mental state, the delicate unfolding of their psychology, is not what drives the media. The characters do suffer, and they have feelings and desires, but they are often preternaturally strong-willed and able to withstand horrific trauma while still maintaining their sense of self.

(Two characters really come to mind. One is Chang Geng from Sha Po Lang, whose "mother" repeatedly puts him through such intense physical and psychological abuse in his childhood that you wonder how anyone could possibly stay sane. But he's also been injected with a magical poison that will drive him insane, and gives him bloody nightmares every night, and requires him to drink blood -- you get the idea. The other is Gu Mang from Yuwu: Remnants of Filth, who goes through things that are just mind-bogglingly Yiiiikes. Each of them feels the pain, but realism isn't where we're trying to arrive at, because it would be impossible for a real person to hold it together under the things they endured. But neither of them is supposed to be like a real person. Chang Geng, Gu Mang, is supposed to be more.)

Nothing is always. To use the novel I'm writing for as an obvious example toward some measure of realism, Xie Lian spends Book 4 being deeply traumatized; it's part of his character journey and essential to the plot. But his character psychology is still not based in realism. It wasn't designed to be. MXTX herself said in her afterword for TGCF that neither Hua Cheng nor Xie Lian were remotely like real people, because they weren't supposed to be. They were supposed to be larger than life, more than mere existence.

So when I am puttering around with my Psychology of the Individual writing tool, I get a bit wrong-footed because the entire way that I approach writing does not seamlessly settle into this brave new frontier. How can I realistically explore the emotions and mind of people who are not written to be like real people at all? That's what's truly been stumping me.

[danieyells]

Do you think methods of exorcism and laying spirits to rest would have to differ depending on the spirit's origin? Or would it depend more on where the act is taking place than where the spirit is from?

Like Zenji covers his face around purifying incense and covers his ears when Haku plays his flute to lay the childrens' spirits to rest, but would non-Japanese methods still be a threat to him?

Knowing him he wouldn't wanna risk it, but I'm imagining Hotarubi going on a mission thinking they're dealing with a Japanese spirit and Haku's like okay I'll put it to rest and it doesn't work. . .because the spirit is from another culture entirely. At most it's put off for a bit but it comes back because it hasn't been given proper peace or something.

[vv-ispy]

Amos' bow lore translation thoughts

I could be taking the idiom too literally with my struggling chinese but gives the impression Deca refused to listen as opposed to couldn't understand

The young man, elf/sprit, and knight are all specified to be nameless — why does no one have names? ????

Chinese — "scaled the towering spire, and challenged the eccentric lord within the winds"

[anouchan-jpg]

Hi, can you please suggest what I should do? I met this really cute girl from a dating site a few years ago. Both of us are Rajputs and share the same traditional values. We had been seeing each other for 7 months, and today she decided to talk about the prospect of marriage in the future. I am attracted to her and would have loved to marry her but my friends suggested I ask her about her past relationships. I assumed she was a virgin although she has talked about being in a relationship, but she looked so innocent until she opened up about her past, like she has a body count of 9. I can't seem to accept that a traditional girl like her can be similar to a prostitute. She portrayed herself to be an anti-feminist traditional woman, so I thought she wouldn't be like this and I fell in love with her but she completely played with my emotions. I don't want to be the last nice guy to accept her in the end. I feel betrayed 😔

.

[fabdante]

lately i've been on a comically intensive quest to recreate my grandmothers rice pilaf

the dilemma being my grandma died when i was in elementary school and i cannot ask her questions

[dykefever]

i think ... it is time to start writing some of the new book... scary

[blujayonthewing]

a slightly annoying thing about playing dnd for Me, Personally is that I do think it'd be fun to play some kind of thief, but rogues are pretty obviously the best suited for that, and I'm so annoyed on principle that 5e automatically assumes your rogue Must Be some kind of criminal that I stubbornly refuse to build a rogue who steals shit

[izzy-b-hands]

gdocs has apparently decided it no longer wants profanity, and is suggesting the replacement of 'ship' for every time i use 'shit' in this draft (thus far only twice, but we're early on and no one's had reason to swear more yet lmao)

Which is whatever (horrifying and weird that a word processor is trying to keep me from swearing, not a thing I had on my Future Bullshit Bingo Card), but I don't know how it anticipates I'll be able to resolve their suggested version of the current line 'throwing Stede's ship (sp. shit) overboard'

Honestly, if they could manage to throw the ship overboard while being on it is a new fic idea in and of itself.

[philsmeatylegss]

There is nothing to being a mentally ill 14 year old fan of shane dawson in the 2015-2018 era. That man travelled to a town absolutely devastated by the 2018 forest fire, people who lost absolutely everything, and just turned to the camera and was like “a laser in space is the reason for this. The government did it.” And you would just be like yep. Checks out.