#and nobody ever sees that coming

[lewiscarrolatemybrain]

I saw a thing — I dunno how accurate it is, but I saw a thing — that said the traditional mindset around martial arts is that parents should not teach their own children, even if the parent is an absolute master, because naturally you’ll be less willing to beat the crap out of your own actual kid and therefore actually stall their progress. Even if you try to be strict and have high expectations, you’ll still end up stalling their progress because you won’t force them to push through their own discomfort as far or as frequently as you probably would to just one more student.

And now I’m picturing Sizhui raised by Wangxian and all the other juniors commenting that the Lan sword master and teachers must have really pulled through because everyone knows Hanguang-Jun is so indulgent and doting on his son and there’s no way he would have drilled Sizhui hard enough for him to be as prepared and composed as he is in crisis situations.

Sizhui, who has spent his entire life dealing with Wei Wuxian’s “teach kids to swim by throwing them directly into the water without warning and only intervene if they look like they are actively drowning” approach, just sits there like 🙃

[daily-sifloop]

Kisses!!! Please!!!!!! They deserve it

day 11: behind the scenes

[aroaceleovaldez]

having been in the fandom for awhile, one interesting shift I remember seeing was around when BoO came out and people realized solangelo was implied to be a future thing, people were kind of scrambling to remember literally anything about Will cause of how minor of a character he had been up until that point.

And one of the things they were looking at with Will was that previously to BoO, people thought Will was a lot older. Because he was a cabin counselor (and generally how he was usually interacting with characters like Percy, Annabeth, and Clarisse - all 16+ish, or Leo - 15/16), most people assumed he was closer to 16 at least, if not actually older than Percy. It wasn't uncommon to see HoO!Will being 17 or so (this is also why there's a decent amount of hcs of him being at CHB pre-BoTL despite not existing until TLO). After BoO happened, it wasn't uncommon to see Solangelo content with a significantly older Will.

Like, it has always been implied in the series that Will is on the younger side (since Michael Yew joined CHB in SoM and Will is younger than him/would have joined BoTL at the earliest) and it's just the entire Apollo cabin keeling over in TLO that made Will counselor. But I just think it's interesting to remember that for awhile Will was not confirmed to be 13 in HoO/14 in TOA when solangelo first became a thing/people started paying attention to Will, and the fandom very widely thought he was older.

[somegrumpynerd]

Bitty update! Or I guess bitties (bittys?) update since there's apparently two of them now.

I didn't expect to see much of them after that last encounter since they seemed pretty unhappy about me getting too close, but I kept leaving out food and keeping my eyes peeled just in case. A lot of people have been saying to leave jerky but I haven't been able to find any so I've been leaving out bread and ham, is this okay for them?

Anyway, the other day when I was on my lunch break I saw the horror bitty scurrying around again. He saw me and disappeared which I expected, but then he came back and just kinda sat across from me and ate?? I didn't want to say anything in case it spooked him so we just sort of ate lunch together in silence, but I did try and take a sneaky picture

Is this good? Is this normal for bitties? When he was finished eating he just got up and walked off and I didn't see where he went, but I assume he's not super scared of me if he sat and ate so close right?

Also I found this cute little ketchup jar, I've been keeping it in the fridge since it's been warm in work and I thought they'd like a cool treat. Well I found it like this the other day so I guess that's a yes lol

[suntails]

I’m going to paint you a picture of modern communication, and how it is fundamentally broken.

Let’s look at one friend. You chat pretty much everyday, and mostly talk to this person on twitter and discord, with occasional tumblr DMs. That’s three places you talk. But that’s actually not true, because you also have each other’s priv twitters and talk there as well. That’s four. Now account for, let’s say, one post reply per account per person, in addition to your DMs. That’s eight. But that’s ALSO not true, because not only do you talk in discord DMs with each other, but you’re in a friend group server as well! And you talk in those channels together! That’s nine.

This is one friend.

Now look around you. How many friends, how many mutuals are you in contact with. A few, a handful, a dozen, more? How many accounts per person do you have, how many places can you send each other posts, devolve into separate topics and conversations? How many people text you as well. Friends, family, coworkers? What do you do day to day around catching up, what IRL commitments will rip you away long enough to let the pile build again?

I can’t do it. I cannot live an actual life in the real world and balance this much interaction, it’s crushing. I reply to a friend’s post because I’m interested in the subject, I want to have a discussion! I WANT to talk about it with them, but I immediately kick myself for adding another conversation to the pile. Day by day, I ignore messages for hours on end and watch mountains pile around me, to reply en masse at the end of the night to let the cycle repeat. I wake up to six discord DMs and as I clear the third, the first replies back again.

We weren’t meant to have thirty simultaneous conversations. We weren’t. And you know in your bones that the number isn’t an exaggeration.

[nostalgicmiscellaneous]

Season 3 - Colin & Penelope's Triumph

Stop listening to loud people in bubbles who want to bring down your enthusiasm and crumple your joy with how much we have to enjoy Penelope and Colin's season. There are some people with a clear agenda of hatred because of their own couples that will straight up lie, cherry pick and manipulate to try to get people turned off or to feel insecure about saying they love what they love. Sometimes, people with a weaker personality and herd mentality fall for that and start thinking oh, maybe it's not good or i shouldn't like. Some nonsenses that we read sometimes and some fall for it: Nonsense: "Polin is not popular, the show would be doomed by them. People wont watch" Reality:

Nonsense: "Polin is being dragged by negative reviews by public and fans who doesn't see chemistry" ( lol, i can't even with that one...) Reality:

At this moment, very near season 1 in critics ( 87%) and above in audience score and higher than season 2 in both aspects. Does it make anyone like or dislike more? because it sure wouldn't make me like more or less something. Nonsense: Only negative things go viral. Reality:

That tweet is from 13 hours ago. You read that right. 13 hours ago and look at views, look at 139K ( HOLY SHIT) that have liked and an insane 65K have already bookmarked. That's viral in a insane level by people loving their chemistry and them together. If anything they have too much chemistry. lol Artists, famous figures and all saying they watched and loved also on SNSs. The general audience loving it. We, from inside the fandom, might have our issues, things we wanted more or less, but it's glorious what we have and how much Nicola Coughlan & Luke Newton gave and are giving us. The hatred is being silenced by the simple truth and the enjoyment people are having. They tried to hate on their popularity, it didn't work. They tried with their chemistry, it didn't work. They tried telling us it was fast or forced even with all we have already got of their relationship ( a couple that actually has been developing from season 1 and that already had a bond and has a different personality and path from other couples) and with 4 episodes left. They tried with their acting. Were proved wrong and more and more people are realizing the characters paths and the acting choices and praising. They tried with their looks. Made them look bad instead. So they tried with lies and look what they got back on their faces...a glorious triumph. So, have a great time. Be a fan and just be happy, enjoy without worrying, without comparisons. Some people are so bitter that they just don't want to like anything. It's their loss.

[uncanny-tranny]

Realizing you can never please anybody can be a devastating loss... until you internalize exactly what that means.

When you sacrifice so much of yourself for others, you forget that you leave yourself behind. Not being able to please everybody means you can start learning how to fully embody who you are instead of juggling everybody else's baggage, trying to make something work out.

You might feel devastated about this, thinking you're terrible for not pleasing everybody. The truth is, it was impossible from the start, and learning who you are is infinitely rewarding

[lang-shih-na]

the very first words out of shih-na's mouth to lang after admitting to being a spy and a murderer are flirting with him. you really have to respect a girlie who shoots her shot even in her darkest hour

[cherry-bomb1985]

I keep thinking about Hell's words: "This is the only way it should have ended."

Should. Not could. *Should*.

Like V1 should have been mass produced, obliterated all the Earth Movers, and then the next machine should have come along to counter it in turn and continue the war. Like all that fighting and the cycle of violence should have been perpetuated.

Like Mankind should never have finally gotten their act together, and tried to continue on even in the absence of divinity and in the face of total climate collapse.

There's a notable difference between 'could' and 'should', and the fact that those words are spoken by the only one who would've been *extremely disappointed* by this outcome has me raising eyebrows.

[shinidamachu]

I think you or someone else discussed how Inuyasha is most likely demisexual because of his lack of interest in nudity until he formed an emotional bond. I was just thinking how the anti’s claimed Inuyasha settled for Kagome, but all evidence points to him loving her *despite* her resemblance to Kikyo. Not hating on Kikyo, just pointing out how Inuyasha kept saying it’s his fault she died because he didn’t trust her, even though trust has to go both ways but whatever, so if he was settling then Kagome would be a daily reminder that he failed Kikyo. Which would sound like hell considering his repeated claims of his fault.

But clearly in the past discussion of Inuyasha being demisexual, we all know he isn’t shallow or ”settling”.

I might have mentioned Inuyasha being demisexual once or twice, but I don't remember posting something that specific. Maybe someone else did and I reblogged it?

I'm glad you brought up the "Inuyasha settled for Kagome" terrible take, though, because you make great points and boy do I have something to say about it.

First, I love that you mentioned trust has to go both ways despite Inuyasha blaming Kikyo's death solely on his lack of trust on her. It always bothered me how quickily and sincerely he owned up to the role he played on her fate when there was zero reciprocity from Kikyo.

He went as far as taking responsability for things that have never really happened and that would be completely out of his control if they had, such as Kikyo "dying to follow after him" even though he didn't ask for it and never would.

The irony is that, between the two of them, Kikyo was actually the one more equipped to realize they were being played and yet, not only she falls for the same trap, but never really acknowledges that her lack of trust on Inuyasha was just as detrimental to their downfall.

Naraku's entire plan was based on both of them doubting each other. If either one had been more trusting, it'd have failed. Inuyasha recognizes this and regrets not trusting Kikyo, immediately treating her like the victim that she is and never once blaming her.

But he is a victim himself and she never extends the same courtesy to him, still thinking her actions were justified because he should have trusted her — not the other way around — and so she never bothers easing his guilt. On the contrary, she purposely adds to it.

The thing about the love triangle — for lack of a better term — is that Inuyasha and Kagome are constantly pushing their feelings aside to empathize with each other's and Kikyo's pain, while Kikyo acts like she's the only one who's hurting.

Which is to be expected at first because she is the one who died and was brought back against her will, but as the story progressed, I kept waiting for Kikyo to see a little bit of herself on the ordinary girl who was entrusted the weight of the world upon her shoulders, had her shoes to fill and the mess she left behind to clean up.

I kept waiting for her to show some sympathy for the boy who lost fifty years of his life because she misjudged him and was willing to die for a debt she manipulated and guilt-tripped him into thinking he had, a boy she supposedly loves.

None of it came, at least not in a way that felt organic or satisfying. That's my main issue with how Kikyo was written. You can't paint her as a complex character and then gloss over her flaws. You can't sell her as gray character and then pretend the bad things she did never happened.

Takahashi wanted her to reap all of the rewards that come with a redemption arc without really bothering to make her go through one, because that would mean having Kikyo face her mistakes for what they were — including her distrust on Inuyasha — and then apologizing or making up for it, a feat that rarely happened in canon, if at all.

Instead, she abruptly stops acting as vicious, so everything can be conveniently forgiven and forgotten because "she isn't like that anymore." The lack of explanation about what motivated this change makes harder for the audience to connect with her and results in many plot inconsistencies.

And the lack of accountability regarding Kikyo's actions keeps her from growing and reaching her full potential as a character, indirectly regressing or preventing the development of the characters around her as well, which I believe is a huge part of why the story feels repetitive and stagnant at times.

Now, you're definitely onto something when you argue that all evidence actually points to Inuyasha falling in love with Kagome despite her resemblance to Kikyo. I've actually talked about it here and here.

While it's true that Inuyasha mistook Kagome for Kikyo when they first met, it would've been unreasonable to expect anything different. Their looks and scents are similar, he had just woken up from a fifty years long spell and up until then he had no reason to believe otherwise, but Inuyasha actually caught up in a decent amount of time.

After that, as much as he still refused to call Kagome by name, he was also very aware she wasn't Kikyo, to the point that it took seeing her with complete priestess attire on for him to even make that correlation again.

And yet, Inuyasha still doesn't go back into thinking they're the same person, but rather that Kagome's a girl who resembles Kikyo. Only eventually, even this starts to change the more time they spend together and suddenly, when Inuyasha has a nightmare about Kikyo, is Kagome he sees first.

Mind you, he has only seen Kagome in priestess clothes once. Kikyo wore those her entire life. It'd be understandable for him to confuse Kagome for Kikyo and yet Kagome was his first thought here when, by logic, she shouldn't have been. From them on, he doesn't even see any resemblance between the two girls at all anymore.

Which makes sense, because even if Inuyasha had tried to use Kagome as a replacement — something he never did — he couldn't possibly have succeded, since both girls are polar opposites — a creative choice that was done completely on purpose — and Kagome wasn't slightly interested on being anyone but herself, making her into the worst Kikyo replacement ever.

That's why it got easier for Inuyasha to distinguish one girl from the other with time. Their distinct personalities make up for completely different dynamics and bring completely different feelings out of Inuyasha, because they represent completely different things to him and, again: this is done absolutely on purpose.

In the manga, this is better illustrated by two very specific panels. In the first one, Kikyo is smiling sadly but genuinely at Inuyasha — which we don't see her do often — and he admitted later on that the exchange made him feel guilty, like he had done something wrong, since he had just been rude to her.

In the second one, Kagome is smiling brightly at Inuyasha, which she does constantly, then we immediately see him blush and think to himself how relieved he is to see that smile

Of course those are very different contexts, but they pretty much set the tone for both relationships and if the arrangement of those panels wasn't a conscious choice — which I doubt — then Takahashi is insanely lucky. It's also worth noting that Inuyasha felt relieved to see Kagome smiling because it was further confirmation that even after Kikyo's resurrection, she was still Kagome.

So I think it's safe to say the physical resemblance actually slowed the romantic process down, considering that the staged betrayal made Inuyasha build his walls even taller than they were when he met Kikyo. This becomes even more clear when you compare their respective first "amicable" conversations.

With Kikyo, even though he was reluctant about her approach and suspicious of her intentions, there was still a part of him that obviously wanted it to be true, so he was at least open to what she had to say.

With Kagome, he was visibly more aggressive and closed off because he has been burned before and she was the reincarnation of the woman who did the burning, which makes her managing to get his trust so quickly that much more remarkable, since she apparently did in less time and in worse circumstances, what Kikyo couldn't.

And Kagome did it precisely because she never acted like Kikyo. She actually took the time to know Inuyasha, to give him her trust and to earn his, to build a solid relationship, based on honesty and real acceptance.

I like to think that, while Kikyo found a crack on Inuyasha's defense she could slip in, Kagome slowly smashed his walls to the ground, therefore leaving an ever lasting impact on him that she couldn't have made by being anyone but herself.

When Inuyasha starts to pursue Kagome romantically, he does so after concluding that there's absolutely no resemblance between the two girls at all and after going through an entire arc where Kagome cried for his sake and trusted him blindly, none of which has anything to do with Kikyo.

People argue that Inuyasha was actually trying to kiss Kikyo here, but why would he do that when he still thinks she betrayed him? And if this was really the case, then why has he never willingly kissed or tried to kiss Kikyo until their final goodbye, Sunrise additions excluded?

At this point, it makes more sense to me that he was avoiding to look at Kagome not because she looks like Kikyo — he has been looking at her just fine before —, but because he has started to catch feelings for her despite his efforts not to and doesn't know how to act. In fact, when he had the chance to kiss Kikyo soon after, this is what we got instead:

And then he hugs her — something the anime cut out — but the important thing is that Inuyasha had this and many other opportunities to rekindle his relationship with Kikyo and simply didn't.

In this particular occasion, he even go as far as to ask Kikyo to return the piece of soul that keeps her "alive" to Kagome knowing full well what the consequences were.

Why would Inuyasha settle for a "replacement" when he could have the real thing instead? Even if you believe resurrected Kikyo to be nothing more than a malicious replica of the original, she's still more Kikyo than Kagome could or would ever be.

I dislike this notion because if it's true and there's not an ounce of Kikyo there, why should the audience or the characters care if she "lives" or "dies"? If she gets a redemption arc or not? It feels like a cop out to only consider her the real Kikyo when she does good things.

That being said, save for maybe one scene at the beginning where Inuyasha shoved a bow and some arrows at Kagome because Kikyo was a master archer, he never expected her to behave like Kikyo, never tried to change her so she would and never acted frustrated or disappointed at the fact that she was her own person.

Inuyasha has his flaws — as any good main character should — but he always respected the inviduality of both girls, which is more than I can say about the people who insist on this baseless take.

To wrongly paint Inuyasha as someone who settled for Kagome because she looks like Kikyo gets especially icky when even Naraku, the villain who was obsessed with her, never redirected said obsession to Kagome.

It's such a common trope that I was actually expecting it, but I'm glad it didn't happen because it's a subtle and yet effective way of sedimenting both girls as separate individuals instead of going for the cheapest option.

And ironically, the only character who treated Kagome as if she was Kikyo was Kikyo herself, but even that was very early on and she only seemed to do it as a way of belittling Kagome, because while mentioning her to other people — or by the end of the story — Kikyo had no trouble referring to Kagome as a different being.

Sunrise's adaptation made very questionable choices but something they were pretty consistent on was making clear Kagome and Kikyo aren't the same.

Besides, something fundamentally wrong with this argument is that Inuyasha comes off as shallow and Kikyo as disposeable. Shallow because it suggests physical appearance is all that matters — which goes against everything his character stands for in canon — and the soul is just a seal of approval.

Disposeable because it hints Kikyo's personality is so forgettable and unimportant that it played absolutely no part on sparkling Inuyasha's interest. She's so easily replaceable that even someone who had opposite world views, thoughts, feelings, temperament and mannerisms could do the trick. The memories they made are so generic that it wouldn't have make a difference if any other character was in her place.

Why do people even like those characters, why do they even ship them together if they truly believe that? That's why I don't buy that they actually do.

You see, considering how huge Kagome's soul is, Kikyo technically has got to be someone else's reincarnation too, but I've never seen anyone making the case that she is anyone but herself or that her predecessor is also the love of Inuyasha's life.

The reason they try to do this with Kagome is so that they can pretend Inuyasha and Kikyo somehow ended up together to cope with the fact that they didn't. And that's the exact same reason they pretend he setled for Kagome as well.

Which is funny because what exactly was Inuyasha settling for? Like, in the great scheem of things, what was Kikyo able to give him that he couldn't get a thousand times better from Kagome with no strings attached and just had to make his peace with it?

It seems to me like it was the other way around: Kagome managed to accomplish everything Kikyo failed to do, so if anything Inuyasha was settling, it was for Kikyo, resigned to spend the rest of his life as human — something he hated to be — just to get "accepted" or to die for something he didn't do just to appease her.

Finally, to say inuyasha settled implies he had no other choice but to marry Kagome. He had: staying single, because now that he has friends and wasn't alone anymore, he doesn't need a lover to fill that empty space in his life if he doesn't want one.

Plus, Kagome wasn't entitled to his love. She jumped trought that well knowing that three years is a long time, that people and feelings change and that what waited for her on the other side was a mystery, but she did it anyway because all she ever wanted from him was to stay by his side and for him to be honest with her.

Kagome would've been fine with a platonic relationship because even though she obviously wanted more, she was ready to accept whatever Inuyasha was willing to give her, but he wanted her to return so he could give her everything, which he couldn't before because he felt in debt with Kikyo. That's the whole point.

Inuyasha was the one who iniciated every romantic moment they had early on: the first hug, both almost kisses, etc. And it was clear that the things Kagome made him feel, such as that sense of peace, of belonging, of unadultered happiness, were very new to him, so the idea that Inuyasha was settling for her is laughable when this is the character in question:

I know a lot of those scenes were deleted or changed by Sunrise but I watched the anime without reading the manga beforehand and reached the exact same conclusions, so I'm still of the opinion that the people who convinced themselves Kagome was a consolation prize either didn't pay attention or have an agenda of their own to push, that won't change by reading the original material.

TLDR; one does not simply "settle" for their soulmate. They come home to them.

[itsafternoonpast5]

thinking about their friendship so hard

[diwara]

Just a quiet life in a peaceful village

[coquelicoq]

everyone in indigo cloud loves stone so much. he's this curmudgeonly old man that they're all constantly antagonizing but he's THEIR curmudgeonly old man to antagonize. he scares off big predators just by being present and he refuses to talk when he's shifted and he swallows shells whole even in groundling form and he wears ratty gray sweatpants on official diplomatic missions. he's not in charge but everyone wants his input on major decisions. every time he shows up someone goes 😍 stone's here!! he's such a source of comfort to them.

[khattikeri]

i'm gonna be honest i believe that jin ling's postcanon opinion of jiang cheng eventually shifts to "you're my family, you raised me and i love you, but you're exhausting to deal with"

[dukeofthomas]

I'm so done with the way everyone avoids calling Bruce an abuser. 'He's a bad parent' 'he's flawed' 'what he did was kinda fucked up' call it what it is!! He's an abusive parent, no ifs or buts about it! He's not just a bad parent, he didn't just fuck up, he's their abuser. Loving your kids or wanting the best for them doesn't mean you won't hurt them and it doesn't excuse doing so, and I personally don't think it makes it even slightly better.

[dailykugisaki]

Day 280 | id in alt

Motherfucker didn't say please.