#but more of a

[xstarlightxstarbrightx]

adventuring rambles #1

HAHAHA I TOTALLY DIDN'T KEEL OVER BECAUSE OF SICKNESS, FINALS, AND GENERALLY JUST PERISHING LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO NOT AT ALL anyway, so i'm currently deep in the brain rot (i have been the entire time gone, u think this shit goes away? no, no it doesn't, i live here now) and i was thinkin abt like, yk, how time works in Teyvat. cuz like me personally i didn't start playing till after Sumeru (and my acc is as old as Inazuma release but i didnt play cuz reasons), but every nation is updated like what, every year or so? so, therefore, at least in my opinion (and thus my h/c's b/c SUE ME) the traveler is in each nation for about a year. which means Lumi's in Mondstadt for a year after the Dvalin thing, doing generally good deeds and getting commissions and figuring out how Mora and stuff works (bc this IS a new world for her, girl doesn't know EVERYTHING yet) so there's a year of her helping out around Mondstadt, working w/ Kaeya and essentially doing team building b/c he's gonna be traveling w/ her when the Rite of Descension finally comes around, wringing Paimon for information on everything she can (girl is feral for info on Teyvat), all that jazz. which makes sense; the Traveler comes to be Very Well Known TM and while fighting a dragon is cool i doubt that's the ONLY reason she gets to be well known, right?

anyway, this massive prelude is just me yapping abt how they totally go to Dragonspine nearer the end of the year to do stuff. and the only reason they CAN go to Dragonspine is b/c they meet Bennett (who Lumi immediately wants to adopt b/c HE'S A BABY), and Benny offers to take 'em up there. :) so,,, i like to imagine that when they're up in Dragonspine, doing everything that has to do w/ that place, a silly thing happens where Lumi and Kaeya kinda get separated from Bennett and like,,, trapped in a place and almost get murdered by a Frostarm Lawlachurl (i have horrible trauma w/ that one fucker by the goddamn crimson tree. he may be dead but i will never forget the fear). anyway, so Kaeya literally almost dies, and it culminates w/ Lumi almost dying to sheer cold to get him to a waypoint, and then her refusing to leave him while he's getting patched up b/c uh oh abandonment issues! (dw abt Bennett and Paimon btw, they made it back to Mondstadt to try and get help; tho tbf that was also an arduous journey in of itself)

now, u must be asking; why did i come up w/ this idea?

b/c it was the best way to express the general Dragonspine experience, and also bc i CAN. totally didn't also write a love confession afterwards, no not at all, i'm not a psychopath

after this, Lumi never goes to Dragonspine w/o AT LEAST 15 warming bottles. and after she finds out abt portable waypoints, u know for a FACT she carries 5 on her at All Times. also Kaeya would never admit it but he gets a little stressed around Frostarm Lawlachurls now.

anyway i WILL Return TM w/ the silly goofy Liyue chapter (at least everything i can FUCKIN REMEMBER BRO (tho i DID take notes when my friend redid it so!! :)c))

[cetoddle-archive]

idk i’m kinda scared

[victusinveritas]

For those not in the know, this is one of the Amanita mushrooms referred to as a Destroying Angel. Never, ever, ever, ever forage with an app. Especially for mushrooms.

[nightmare-from-heaven]

Hey. Your brain needs to de-frag. Literally it needs you to sit there and space out.

If you want your memory or executive function to improve, stare out a window at the skyline or sidewalk or trees or birds on the electrical wires for like 20+ minutes per day. (With no other stimulation like a podcast or TV if you can manage but hey baby steps innit). If you're fortunate enough to have safe outside with any bits of nature, go stare closely at a 1 meter square of grass and trip out on the bugs and shapes of grasses and stuff.

Literally this will make you smarter. Our brains HAVE TO HAVE this zone out time to do important stuff behind the scenes. This does not happen during sleep, it's something else.

That weird pressurized feeling you get sometimes might be your brain on no defrag.

Give your brain a Daily Dose Of De-Frag.

[jackyjackdraws]

I got this idea at 3am.

No, I won't elaborate further

[memeclassheroes]

[tawnysoup]

Found my fav Slay the Princess route recently. Dragon my beloved. Your horrifying beak mouth was an impossible-to-refuse lip syncing challenge 💖

Shoutouts to @blacktabbygames for making such a cool game!

[charbroiledchicken]

if it's good enough for you, then it deserves to be made. don't let anyone else decide if your story is worth it or not.

[bearvverine]

me and gang at the haunted house

[justscarfy]

Guess who just watched sonic 3

[arynneva]

wait do people read first person stories and think they're the ones in the story???

Saw people talking about not liking first person, which is fair, but their reasoning was like "I would not do that" and I don't understand that mindset.

First person stories are still about a character. A character making their own decisions. First person isn't about you???? At least I thought it wasn't. What am I missing? I've always seen first person as just a more in-depth look into a character's mind and stricter POV. Not as a reader stand-in.

[moodsandtenses]

There's something hilarious about how so much subsequent media has positioned Vampires and Werewolves as, like, binary opposite entities, and then you read Dracula (1897) and realize that wolves are that guy's preferred solution to every problem. You'd say something to Dracula about "ah yes, werewolves, vampires' great eternal enemies," and he'd just be like "you mean my subcontractors?"

[the-moon-loves-the-sea]

Shared here today by Matthew Boroson on Facebook. (ETA: Gaining inspiration from other authors is great. Lifting passages and avoiding giving credit isn’t.)

Tanith Lee was the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award for best novel, for the second book of the Flat Earth series. She died in 2015. You can buy Tales From the Flat Earth here and here .

[shadesofmauve]

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

[mushyooms]

buying him time