#but i could certainly try!

[skeletoninthemelonland]

a glimpse of what their early dynamic looks like

[tea-cat-arts]

I simply think this fandom doesn't give Wei Wuxian enough credit for the various ways in which he saved Lan Wangji

[kakusu-shipping]

Wait I don't wanna be an asshole who only posts Silly Meme Crossover ships, so REAL FAST, I don't get crossover ships much but one I HAVE been considering and I'll share it to offset the silly haha meme I just posted. Deal? Cool

Checkered King X Kinger

Both Kings in an Unreal world, both Chess Themed, Both Purple-adjacent, and both are tragic bisexuals who lost their beloved wife (Checkered King to an unspecified illness, Kinger to Abstraction)

Do I think they should kiss? Eeeeeh. Do I think they should go to the same group therapy sessions and chat? Absolutely.

I dunno if you asked me a crossover ship I liked now I think I would say these two. It helps I consumed all of their medias in the same 24 span of time.

[hulloitsdani]

What do u think Kiran is

How do u think the order sees kiran

*slowly sits up in my chair*

I think Kiran is a very normal person. This is someone you and I have met before. Be that from the other side of grocery store cashier, waiting in the same elevator, or walking by on a crosswalk. Kiran is a civilian from our world trying to roll with the punches of being warped somewhere completely alien. And you can see it in how they conduct themselves.

I always have a lot of fun writing Kiran’s dialogue because their casual modern speech almost feels like a dialect in comparison to the more formal fantasy tone everyone else speaks with. An “ain’t” will never exit Alfonse’s mouth, you know? And there’s a difference in “Do you have gold?” vs “You got gold?” To me, this gives Kiran an air of unfamiliarity to anyone they interact with. Let’s use Grima as an example, because it doesn’t sound like this grammatical change would make much of difference until Kiran has the audacity to hit Grima with a bro mid sentence. But that’s just how they talk. And as sweet and friendly as they are, there’s always moments like that to remind that no one has the cultural context to fully understand Kiran. Except for the audience, who can realize that Kiran let the customer service voice drop to talk to Grima like he’s an actual person.

And that’s just about how they talk! This view is only emphasized by every other thing about them! They’re a lovable goof, which is normal chill person behavior in the audience’s eyes but feels REALLY ODD to the characters of FE’s medieval fantasy war setting. There is this air of unknown about them that the more socially perceptive will pick up on and will try to come to a conclusion about. Example, I imagine Soren would interpret a lot of this as a dangerous and deeply annoying lack of intelligence from someone he has the displeasure of sharing a tactics table with. Or looping back to the Grima example, he would totally think Kiran has greedy ulterior motives behind that pleasant facade. It takes a lot of work for those types to realize that the discrepancy present isn’t really any of those things. But I also wouldn’t be too surprised if Kiran doesn’t try to directly prove any of those assumptions wrong unless they have to.

Why? Well now it’s time for the implications! Oh how we love the implications.

Because the Summoner is a different story. No one has any fucking clue what that is.

I can tell you what Kiran has pieced together so far. Summoning people from across time and space is apparently not easy. It’s not some school of magical study that some mage could pull off with enough time and research. Trust, Eitri tried. It’s a lot of complex moving parts. For example, the contracts. The contracts Kiran automatically binds their summoned to don’t even compare to the ones Veronica used in book 1. They are far more intense and infinitely harder to break. The only way out of them is if Kiran wills it so. Not even death is an option, because Kiran can come in for the revive. If they had to guess, it’s an older, more completed version of the art. Something lost to time. But no matter the case, Kiran has the ability to take full control of whoever they manage to summon. From a lowly farmer to the divine. And their power only grows.

In a similar vein, if there was any character to canonically see the hud, I think it would be Kiran. It’s genuinely part of their power set. I have previously described Kiran as the party mage until Veronica shows up to be the actual mage, but it would be way more accurate to call them a mystic/seer. They see the map, everyone’s stats, and is doing a fast amount of math to give the combat forecast. Then, upon processing all this information their enemies couldn’t dream of having at their disposal, Kiran can telepathically communicate any change in plans to anyone under contract. Kiran is not inherently some great tactician the moment they touch ground in Askr; they simply can do things no one else can. They’re learning the actual tactics part on the fly. This makes them simultaneously the largest ace up the Order’s sleeve and potentially its biggest liability. If they fall, it could cause a whole system cascade. By that same token, some of the biggest threats the Order has faced are the ones who do their research and rightfully target Kiran.

Now. Thinking critically about all that. That’s downright terrifying. A ridiculous amount of power has been dropped callously into Kiran’s lap and they have to work extremely hard to be moral with it. It’s terrifyingly easy not to be. It would actively take less effort to ‘take the reins’ as it were. But in order to be able to sleep at night ever again, they go the extra mile to not invalidate the will of their summoned. To take over like that. To make a colony of worker bees out of people. Because oh dear god they just summoned a child and the fact that they could easily force them to fight and die for them, only to be revived and do it all over again, is HAUNTING. No. No the Order has an in house orphanage now. This kid is getting adopted and cared for god damnit or Kiran might just pop a blood vessel. And sure that child is going to be a child and there will never be a world where they get along with everyone else, but that’s just going to need be a problem they address when they get there and not an excuse to use Hubris; the power set. Now replace the word child with everyone they ever summoned and you have the wider philosophy they apply to the entire Order.

They’re hyper aware of the power imbalance. They hate it with every bone in their body. They work really hard to correct it in whatever way they can.

So Kiran might not jump on the opportunity to correct those who think lesser of them. It’s… oddly comforting to know someone is keeping a critical eye on them. Holding them accountable. Especially since so much of the order just thinks of them as this quirky yet well meaning host. And, really, what can they even do about that? They have gone over the contract with every hero they summon and despite that they still choose to stay. So, what, do they try to inspire more mistrust? The problem with that they would have to actually do acts that intentionally inspire mistrust. And even if that was successful they can’t just waste the extra man power because every other month there’s some new divine asshole who wants them all dead. And if they fail that means they have to start their life from square one and god they can’t do that again so—

Just breathe Kiran.

It’s fine. You’re fine. Just breathe.

You have work to do.

[conchiferrous]

question about the extent of the hana hana no mi's capabilities

[ID: Nami holds Usopp in her arms while he has a gaping hole in his chest. Usopp wearily says: "Nami, level with me, am I going to make it?" Nami, panicked, responds: "Uh. Don't think about it too much." After smearing hand blood on Nami's face, new skin suddenly forms over Usopp's wound with a few pink flower petals floating down from the area. They both say "What." in unison. Usopp says on the spot: "Perdoname, I was pretending to not have regenerative powers, which I have btw, because if the enemy knows about my powers they might take advantage of that knowledge." Nami looks behind her to see Robin doing a thumbs up with a pained expression while holding her other hand up in the I'm using my powers position. /END ID]

[lunarharp]

pretty & cute witch men

[vaguely-concerned]

Thinking about the symbolic weight of smoking in the TLT universe that comes to the fore in The Unwanted Guest -- the way it moves through from person to person: Pyrrha smoked, and Augustine wanted to impress her in all her stone cold fox MILF James Bond glory (and tbf who wouldn't) so he started too. and even though as far as he knows she's been gone for a myriad and is never coming back, he keeps the habit. Ianthe sees something in the hollowed-out Faberge eggshell of Augustine that resonates with her, all that gilded eloquent emptiness and disdain through the ages, so she picked it up from him to try to emulate it. She picked it up so hard that Palamedes -- the exact spiritual antithesis of the 'smoking! on a space station! what a powermove' ennui Ianthe so admired -- spontaneously unnerded enough to even known how to, simply from a sort of contact contamination of the soul.

G1deon and Augustine sharing a jittery smoke after their near-Harrow experience during soup night, and it's the closest thing to any real sense of brotherhood that remains between them. Pyrrha going ten thousand years dying both literally and for a smoke (and then Camilla sold her fucking cigarettes (for a third of what they were worth, probably Pyrrha's own good, and also more importantly grocery money). what an entirely haunted time to be alive etc.). Augustine and Mercy trading a cigarette back and forth in the middle of their collusion over the love and murder of god.

An act of small and measured self-destruction in the name of something a little bit like connection when you're stuck somewhere in yourself where love itself dares not or cannot tread (ritualized, transmissible)..........

[rozecrest]

the readers group guide at the end of the wicked years finishing with this question is so . can you lay the hell off her

[sincapjelly]

Do you think baby Cole ever became so sick and Lilly panicked, thought it was her fault and cried beside the sleeping baby?..

She herself grew up as a sickly child, her father would be so worried that she might just die one day because her immune system was so weak. Seeing Cole get sick like that as a few months old baby, she knows why it's happening and she is blaming herself, thinking she passed her curse on him. History is going to repeat, that's what she thinks despite knowing Cole is growing up under better conditions. And Lilly wasn't sick when she gave birth to Cole and passed shortly after, like her mother did.

None of these stop her from crying beside the baby though. She knows she survived her fragile baby days because of her powers healing her, and he has her powers now, yet she is worrying deeply for Cole's health. She wouldn't handle losing her baby because she passed him her terrible immune system.

[wildsaltair]

Ranting in the tags isn’t enough so I’m going to say one more time that just because Maximus isn’t morally gray doesn’t mean he isn’t complex

[dykedvonte]

I think the most baffling thing about the Tulpar as a vessel to me is the fact that the ship really did only have a one way communication system.

I know it was cheap but even the most basic of vessels regarding major transport would have some way, shape or form for outside communication. Not only that but there was absolutely no form of innate emergency signal to show they may have been offline or in trouble despite clearly having a system to dock credits if they went off course. It's another factor that really shows that bad situations are made to get worse by design. One person who is required to relay all information to the crew and make all the choices without feedback. No way to update or call for help in case of a dire situation. No way to inform of inner personal conflicts and acquire procedures accordingly.

It really is like they are all in some sort of fucked up solitary confinement. They have their own world with strict roles that are meaningless in the end, as long as the cargo makes it, it doesn't matter what happens on that ship to the company. They don't want to hear anything and will come to conclusions on what happened based on how much pay they can withhold from the workers. Even what they do send is short, sterile and corporate to the extent it was likely written and sent out with a command by some random unmanned computer in an office.

There's something to be said about how unfair it is to force absolute power and control onto one person when you as an entity could do so much more to offload it but I've said it many times before so I won't again.

[relaxxattack]

can you imagine if they left the epilogue as it was without adding hs2. like if they leaned more into the “fanfic parody” aspect of it.

imagine if you read the homestuck epilogues and instead of being forced to contend with fascist jane for the next five years, the epilogues just ended with dirk saying “Oh and this was all a dream. Btw.”

like i think that would have been insanely funny. there would have been so so many memes about the officially licensed homestuck parody where rose and jade cheat on their marriages and dirk makes davekat kiss. i think everyone would have found that to be such a riot

it would have been way more fun to analyze too because instead of being forced to take 40yrold divorced dave seriously everyone could be like “what does it mean when on page 42 dirk described him as a white lanky bitch… what level of irony is this… what does it symbolize”

instead it feels like we got told a joke that we weren’t exactly in on, felt hurt about it, and now we’ve all been sitting around for half a decade waiting for a punchline that might never come

[tangledinink]

clenches fist. finally sucked it up and ordered a new ipad...

[heartsouls]

no plz tell me all your thoughts about the gregory hate so I can reblog it💀

OHHH boy this is gonna be a long one buckle up

Ever since Gregory was first announced I believe most of the fandom have interpreted him as this frail child who was always on the verge of tears and needed G.Freddy’s protection (think C.C 2.0), but once the game came out most ppl were shocked to see this kid actually has a lot of bite to him and kicked ass (ppl’s first reactions to him destroying the animatronics still make me laugh).

This was MY first introduction to him, so I wasn’t completely taken aback but still pleasantly surprised. Most if not all his actions made sense or at least made sense for a 10yr boy to think/act. Giant robots coming after me with the intention to kill (and insulting me for no damn reason)? Yeah I’d probably add an extra kick in there for good measure. Then came the first repair scene, when Vanessa revealed the high possibility of Gregory being an homeless orphan everything just clicked into place for me.

OF COURSE that’s why Gregory was so aggressive, he had to learn how to fight on his own to survive he’d probably had to face even worse than this! He wasn’t going to let that all go to waste bc some weird murderous rabbit lady wanted to drag him into her plans. It explains why he brushed off G.Freddy’s worries about him bc he’s used to have to just keep moving and bare thru pain, especially in an environment where that’s really the ONLY thing you can do. It’s why he’s so blunt and can come off as rude bc he was most likely never taught how to behave “correctly” bc really who has the time?

He was just using all the knowledge he learned on how to survive from a cruel and harsh environment for another. But this time he has an ally for once, an adult (father) figure who actually cares about his wellbeing, it’s no wonder why he became so attached (but struggles to show it bc he’s not used to it). And through all that easily irritable aggression, there are moments to remind us he’s still a kid.

A useless fridge magnet? Yeah that is pretty lame man.

Now imagine my shock when I see others hating on him and calling him a villain. “How could he KILL the poor animatronics? He was so mean, he’s the true monster!” Wh- DID WE WATCH THE SAME GAME? You mean the same animatronics that says he doesn’t have anyone to care about him? Yeah real sweethearts they are. Gregory isn’t a damn monster, he’s a survivor! He’s doing what he only knows best, IT’S TO SURVIVE!

“How could he be so mean to G.Freddy??? Those are his friends! He made Freddy feel bad!” Trust me when I say that Gregory cares about G.Freddy ALOT, did you see his reactions whenever G.Freddy got hurt??? That’s his father thank you very much!

“How could he have killed Vanny in that one ending?! He’s the real villain!” …Do I even need to explain this one?

And ohhhhhh don’t get me started on the awful “bratty gremlin devil” Gregory HCs. Now this isn’t to say that Gregory can’t be a gremlin or whatever. He can be, he is a bit cheeky, but then some started to intensify it and made it his entire personality. No, Gregory wasn’t just itching to rip Roxy’s eyes out or do the next batshit insane thing, he noticed the other upgrades and put two and two together (It gets more weird and slightly disrespectful when they add in the homeless thing as if that automatically makes someone act “feral”….tiktok.)

And then we have the complete opposite where some portray him as what I mentioned in the first paragraph. The poor helpless child who cant handle anything by himself…even though that’s complete bullshit (he’s also usually portrayed to be obnoxiously sweet for some reason). I don’t think many ppl realize how often were not in G.Freddy during SB, and Gregory is described to be quick on his feet and wits (plus his tools) and he doing damn well by himself! [Obviously this isnt to say that he didnt need G.Freddy’s help and protection, ofc he did, he just didnt need to RELY on it like some ppl make it seem he did].

(I know we went a bit off-topic for the last two paragraphs, trust me it connects)

All of this comes down to simply that some just can’t accept the fact that Gregory isn’t their perfect victim. He doesn’t crumble to the floor and beg for G.Freddy to help him up like they want him too. He’s not shy and sheepishly asking for help like they think he’s supposed to. And when they realize that part they try to push him into the other far end where he’s crazy, cold, and cruel. But he’s not. He cares, and he cares deeply. He’s still a little boy, he cried and tried to cover his face when he saw Vanny die. He should be leaping in victory, he killed his killer after all right? But he didn’t, bc despite everything she was still a human being, and he was so scared.

He has complex trauma (duh), he’s not this way or that way, and I get it. It’s hard to write or draw that kind of trauma for Gregory, especially when SB didn’t really give us much. But the way ppl act as if that’s what he actually is is soooooo frustrating. In my opinion the fact that his trauma is so complex and the fact he’s not your typical written victim is what makes him so interesting! And I feel like a lot ppl were slowly getting around to it…

Until GGY and Ruin happened and the hate came back so much worse, Welcome to the real Freddy Hell.

[depressedhatakekakashi]

I see people will now also blame Kakashi for character issues Sakura has, even though Tsunade obv didn’t fix them either because Sakura CONTINUES to have these issues throughout shippuden.

I really wish people would learn the diffrences between ‘character fault’ and ‘Writer unable to both allow the female lead to express her desire to do better, and then actually follow through and ACTUALLY LET HER DO BETTER’

[fwoopersongs]

On 33 elders and the Lan's Discipline Whip

This tumblr post by @qiu-yan the other day on moral luck in MDZS came past my dash, and there was a mention of the thirty three elders in the Lan Clan who were injured by Lan Wangji - some of you may remember it better as the reason for his thirty three whip scars xD. And I remembered reading (mostly on twitter) people saying things like he got whipped 33 times 'for going against his sect elders', or that the elders deserved it for acting unjustly. Maybe this was a CQL thing??? But I wanted to share my understanding of the situation from reading the novel.

For the record, elders here aren't like ‘Elders’ in the sense of people in positions of power within a clan i.e. 长老 as you might see in sects from more conventional Xianxia novels. Instead, its noun for ‘older generation’ i.e. 前辈 within the clan. 

So, here's a translation of Lan Xichen’s recount to Wei Wuxian of how Lan Wangji came to bear scars of thirty three strokes of the Lan Discipline Whip from Chapter 99/100, Discipline Whip Scars aka Hensheng: To Hate Life 3.

On Versions I’m comparing between two versions of the novel where the first chapter title is: {1} ��无羡死了，大快人心! (lit: Wei Wuxian is dead, gratifying news for everyone!) & {2} 重生 (lit: Alive Again). The version I’m translating is {1} from the website Zhenhun using footnotes to compare it against {2}. Line breaks and other cosmetic or grammatical changes are ignored. References to chapter numbers and such will be based on {2} since this is the version used on the MDZS fandom Wiki. All chapter titles also are referenced from the wiki.

Wei Wuxian repeated, "Discipline Whip scarring?!" 

He grasped at Lan Xichen again and said, "Clan Leader Lan, I truly have no idea. Please, tell me. How did he get those injuries? Does it have something to do with me?!?”

Embittered anger surfaced on Lan Xichen’s face, "If it doesn’t ‘have anything to do with you’, did he perhaps scar himself for no particular reason at all?” [1]

Zewu-jun had always been restrained and composed to the utmost, but this was a matter which had impacted Lan Wangji and thus uncharacteristically, his anger was roused. Yet after observing Wei Wuxian's expression carefully, this anger receded slightly and he asked tentatively, "You… you've had some memory loss?"

"My memories?" Wei Wuxian said. He immediately tried hard to see if there was anything he could not recall, and then replied, "I don't think there’s any period of time which I don’t remem — yes!"

There was indeed one period during which his memories were blurred and indistinct.

The bloodbath at Nightless City!

On that night many years ago, he had believed Wen Qing and Wen Ning gone, their bones ground to dust and scattered by their enemies. On top of that, seeing the Great Clans on their impassioned, self-righteous warpath and witnessing Jiang Yanli die before his eyes, he finally utterly lost control. Combining the two halves of the Yin Tiger Tally, he unleashed it, allowing it to kill indiscriminately. The dead under the Tally’s power killed others, who then became new fierce corpses, creating an endless supply of massacring puppets which turned the place into a blood-soaked hell.

After that, [2] although Wei Wuxian could just barely manage to stay on his feet, he distantly felt himself leave this slaughterhouse of a ruined city. There was a long period in which he was not fully aware of anything. When he finally came back to himself, he had already been sitting in a daze at the foot of Yiling’s Knoll of Unmarked Graves [3] for a long time.

Lan Xichen asked, "Do you remember now?"

Wei Wuxian murmured, "That period at Nightless City? I… I’d always thought that I had wandered back in a daze, but..."

Lan Xichen was so angry he could have laughed, "Young Master Wei, How many enemies were you up against that night? It was three thousand! No matter how much of an unparalleled talent of this age you may be - withdrawing entirely unharmed under those circumstances? How could that be possible?"

Wei Wuxian asked, "Lan Zhan... what did Lan Zhan do?"

"What did Wangji do. If you don’t remember it yourself, I fear he will never tell you of his own accord, and you certainly won’t be asking [4]. Fine. Let me tell you." Lan Xichen said.

"Young Master Wei, on that night after you took out the two halves of the Yin Tiger Tally, merged them into one, and slaughtered to your heart's content, you were at the end of your strength. Wangji, having been injured by you in your madness, was in about the same state. He was only able to get to his feet by leaning on Bichen. Even so, the moment he saw you stumbling away, he immediately followed.

"There weren't many people left conscious at the scene. I was barely able to move and could only watch as Wangji, with his Spiritual Energy clearly almost depleted, limped laboriously in your wake, then grabbed and pulled you onto Bichen. The both of you flew off on the sword together.

“I only regained my Spiritual Energy two shicheng* later and hurried back to the Lan Clan in Gusu seeking support. I was worried that if people from the other families caught up to the both of you first, Wangji would be perceived as your accomplice. The best outcome of this would leave him with a stain on his name for life and a damaged reputation, the worst scenario would be him being dispatched without a chance to defend himself. And so along with my shufu, I gathered thirty-three elders who had always praised and thought highly of Wangji. Together, we spent two days as the sword flies secretly [5] searching. That was how we found traces of your trail within the borders of Yiling. Wangji had hidden you in a cave. When we arrived, you were sitting on a stone within the cave, dazed, while Wangji held your hand, transferring Spiritual Energy to you and speaking softly [6].

“And the whole time, you were only repeating one word at him.

“‘Scram!’”

Wei Wuxian’s throat was dry, his eyes red. He was unable to say a word. 

Lan Xichen continued, "My shufu appeared suddenly before him, giving him a scolding and asking him for an explanation. He seemed to have expected us to find him, yet he said there was nothing to explain, that this was just how it was. Since childhood and even after growing up, he had never been defiant toward our shufu and me [7]. But for you, Wangji not only talked back to shufu, he even turned his sword on the cultivation practitioners of the same origin, the same bloodline of the Gusu Lan Clan as himself, severely injuring [8] the thirty-three elders we had requested help from...

Wei Wuxian buried his hands in his hair, saying, "I... I didn’t know... I really..."

Besides repeating that he really didn't know, there was nothing else was able to say. 

Lan Xichen tried holding back for a moment, but went on to add, "Thirty-three Discipline Whip scars! All the strokes within one session, one for each person. You ought to know how painful that is, how long it takes to recover from it! [9], [Note] After willfully sending you back to the Knoll, Wangji returned, despondent, to receive his punishment. How long he knelt before the Wall of Discipline! When I went to see him, I said ‘Young Master Wei has already made a grave mistake. Why would you compound it?’ But he replied that he wasn’t able to judge if what you did was right or wrong, and regardless of that, he was willing to bear all the consequences with you. [10] Those few years he was said to have spent ‘reflecting on his mistakes before the Wall’ were, at their core, because his motion was limited by his injuries. And even so, after learning of your death, he forced himself in this condition to get up because no matter what, he had to go to the Knoll and see for himself…” [11]

*One shicheng is approximately equal to two hours.

[1] This part in italics isn’t in {2}. [2] Added in {2}: But after going through all of these, Wei Wuxian’s body and spirit had been seriously damaged. [3] He was at the foot of a small hill near the Knoll in the revised version.  [4] This part in italics isn’t in {2}. [5] In {2} Lan Xicheng and his uncle explicitly requested the elders to keep this a secret.  [6] In {2} Lan Wangji was asking him something. [7] In {2}, Lan Xichen only specifies that Lan Wangji has never talked back to his uncle, leaving himself out of the sentence. [8] In {2} Lan Xichen says they were severely injured, nearly fatally. [9] There’s a break in {2} with Wei Wuxian’s inner thought of ‘This, he knew.’ Reason being what I have in [Note]. [10] This part in italics isn’t in {2}. [11] This part in italics isn’t in {2}.

[Note] Per Chapter 11, The Elegant Flirt 1: Wei Wuxian has never been beaten with the Discipline Whip before, but he has seen its mark on Jiang Cheng. They’d tried all sorts of ways to make the scarring go away, but it was in vain. All clans use it for disciplining members who had committed grave wrongdoing. Later in Chapter 59, Sandu: The Three Poisons 4, we learn that Jiang Cheng was hit with it by Wen Chao who got his hands on the Jiang Clan Discipline Whip.

// a thought //

We just learnt that Lan Wangji had been injured by a berserk Wei Wuxian himself, was struggling to stand and nearly out of Spiritual Energy. Then he had to control Bichen to fly them both to Yiling, and at least at the moment they were found, was attempting to heal Wei Wuxian with the Spiritual Energy transfer. From Lan Xichen’s account, it took Lan Xichen four hours to recover somewhat and regain enough Spiritual Energy to go home for help. So let’s say Lan Wangji did take some time off from minding the catatonic Wei Wuxian to replenish his Spiritual Energy, he’s still not fighting them at a hundred percent. His elders from Gusu Lan had not participated in the fighting at Nightless City (uninjured), but they’d all been on their swords for two days, searching for Lan Wangji. Probably still in a much better form than him though. How was he able to injure them ‘severely’? 

(I think there are two options. One, Lan Wangji is just that good of a fighter. Two, his elders were holding back.)