#but more of a curious fascination

[xstarlightxstarbrightx]

thoughts on how the Liyue Archon quest went [5]

Bolai: so what kinda silk flowers u guys want Paimon: uh. the good kind? Bolai: Zhongli: lists the flowers Bolai: oh i see, u three must be this fine gentlemen's servants then! please refrain from contributing further! Kaeya: Lumi: ???? bro. Bolai: anyway!

i love how, immediately after, Zhongli just,,, yaps about flowers. he's so silly, and he yaps so much. and also Kaeya and Lumine are just like "oh,,, he's so knowledgeable,,,, and also his voice pretty,,,,,,,,"

and then immediately it's followed up with "oh do you have any mora to pay for these flowers?"

anyway, the Traveler Trio go off to get the flowers turned into perfume after the whole thing, while Zhongli goes and waits by the Statue of the Seven. while i am focusing mainly on Lumine and Kaeya rn, i do think that currently, Zhongli's just,,, burdened by such a heavy weight? he's probably still thinking about this decision he's made, and is probably consistently thinking of the outcome it'll have. he's a God of Contracts currently thinking heavily about this Big Ass Contract(tm) that he's got rn. so it makes sense that he kinda just,,, stops to stare at this Statue of his Divinity.

meanwhile, with the Traveler Trio goes off to like,,, talk to women abt perfume.

Paimon: [in reference to some NPC i forgot] Paimon remembers she smells pretty good! Lumi: Lumi: we barely spoke to her when we first arrived here, why are you SNIFFING PEOPLE, PAIMON Kaeya: even by Lumi's standards, that's weird.

anyway, Lumine gets a Weird Vibe(tm) from Ying'er and Kaeya, meanwhile, is personally very concerned and disturbed by the,,, innuendos that Ying'er uses when chatting with them.

on the way back to Zhongli, I like to imagine that Lumi tells Kaeya about her theory while Paimon is charging ahead. she's incredibly adamant about him being the Geo Archon, but Kaeya's not convinced. the current belief he holds is that Zhongli is more likely an adeptus of some kind—because Zhongli's DEFINITELY not human. but the God of Commerce not knowing about Mora??? pleaaaase.

and while Lumi's like 100% sure, Kaeya makes the joke that 'maybe Zhongli was just a simp for Rex Lapis before he died or something, lmao'.

and then they walk in on Zhongli staring at the Statue and kind of being Zoned Out(tm) and Kaeya's just like "hmmmmmmmmmmm"

[cinammonelles]

I want to talk about this page in particular because the implications here are so riveting.

Lavi is currently 19. Allen is believed to be 16.

Which means that either

The Bookmen are lying

Bookman Jr. did die then and Allen either didn't age the first few years or his age got fucked up multiple times before he met Mana

The first seems highly improbable at this point tbh. If the Bookmen were planning to make Allen take the poison to make him remember his past then lying about when Past!Junior (presumably) died seems counterintuitive and would only make Allen mistrust them more once he was in full possession of his memories.

It doesn't seem like Allen de-aged to an infant. He says his earliest memories are from when he was in the circus. Even if he did age back to an infant, he would've needed caretakers and nothing in the story suggests he had any.

(Note how little Allen doesn't have his Innocence in the last panel. What the fuck does this mean Hoshino.)

Allen looks perhaps 4-5 in both of these panels. If Past!Junior died over 19 years ago and Allen aged linearly since then, then he would have to be 23+ by now. Even considering the possibility that he aged back to an infant, he he should be 19+ by now and he looks barely over 17.

We can assume that he must've aged in a somewhat even fashion once he joined the circus because otherwise the performers would've commented on it at some point of time.

What happened in the years between Junior dying and little Allen getting into the circus? Was he in a child's body till he acquired his Innocence? How did he even acquire his Innocence in the first place?

There's also a final possibility that came to me while I was writing this post— Lavi was born while Past!Junior was still alive. He was born with the 'mark' because Past!Junior was no longer fit to be a Junior. I genuinely have no idea how Hoshino will explain this. Will it be some sort of corruption? Memory loss? Chronic illness?

All of them seem equally unlikely options at this point. But so did the possibility of Allen and Bookman Jr. being different people before this chapter :)

Either ways, this was a very intriguing chapter and I'm looking forward to whatever Hoshino has in store for us.

[quatregats]

Also I realize that the answer is probably just reading enough period sources but as a linguist I really do need to pick Patrick O'Brian's brain about where in the world he got his different speech patterns from

[cuubism]

hello friends. despite my 9 million existing dreamling wips i'm feeling the need to branch out a bit for the sake of my mental variety. what pairing other than dreamling should i write a little something for? could be romantic or platonic

other way of phrasing i guess: any pairings you really want to see more fics for in the fandom?

[merlinaknight]

Again, the whole interview is a pleasure to read. But this part stood out to me.

If there's something I've been wondering about Walton all this time it's this. Initially I thought he's an extrovert as he loves people, getting to know them, and seems to enjoy being around them. But then I noticed certain quirks of his in interviews. I can't explain what they are, but they gave me introverted vibes. So I'm not sure. He's definitely an ambivert, but exactly what type is what keeps me wondering about him.

[moldybits]

notes: symptoms in this poll are defined as ptsd/trauma symptoms (dissociation, amnesia, hyperarousal, etc)

this is an inclusive poll for any type of system/system origin. but it’s specifically how weed affects systems with trauma. this is not syscourse and i want nothing to do with it!

reblogs are encouraged for sample size

i’m convinced that all the progress we’ve made since december has to do with THC and our endocannabinoid system and i’m curious if other people benefit the way we have.

[waterwindow]

the difference between what people like on twitter vs what people like on tumblr from me is kinda mind blowing

[queerasian]

I’ve seen so many discussions about this that I’m really curious about a wider response. Only putting 2 options because I wonder what people would say without other choices like ‘it’s complicated.’

Please rb and add thoughts in the tags if you want!

[lloydfrontera]

Days late but i'm reading the Q&A and i cannot tell if this guy is just Taking The Piss it slowly going mad from adapting it or if he's actually semi-incompetent

I saw a post about it and lots of people were. super mad abt it especially since the adaptation made so many changes. i have no strong thoughts but i also do not think generally so I Have No Input. ultimately i don't even know how much creative control he has, or what "the original author approved of the changes" means.

i genuinely. from the q&a cannot tell if he is trying to take the piss or just does not know how to read. i'm trying to be neutral because I Know Nothing. but this is more like the political side of webcomic discussions and you're probably more the socio-economic side so

oh don't worry nonnie! i have plenty of strong thoughts about it for the both of us :))

i hesitate a lot to criticize anyone's artwork because i know how hard art can be. and i personally have no real experience adapting from one medium to another so i'm even more apprehensive of speaking about something i know very little of.

but oh boy did the q&a dash away all of my reservations.

forgive me for taking your ask as an excuse to rant about it but i wanna thoroughly dissect it (derogatory)

i cannot tell if this guy is just Taking The Piss it slowly going mad from adapting it or if he's actually semi-incompetent

i don't think he's taking the piss. i think he's being completely earnest about thinking he's doing a good job at adapting tged. i think he genuinely thinks he's cracked the code on how to make a good adaptation.

i think he's completely wrong

here's what i mean. this is his answer when asked what's the most important part to keep in mind when adapting something:

now, this doesn't sound bad at first. i'll give him that, at first glance, this looks like pretty decent advice. when making something, especially a work of fiction, it's pretty tempting to guide yourself by a 'what will the audience like?' mentality. and it's not a bad thing to want your content to be engaging, that's half of the challenge of making anything made to consumed.

but to consider it the most important part of the creative process?? to create or adapt a story based on what it's 'entertaining' instead of what you're trying to convey to your audience??

especially when this is what you think is what you should be focusing on

like. sir. is that really what you're worrying about. really.

that last panel is especially infuriating to me because. why does he care so much about making the episodes funny. why is that his most pressing concern. there are so many things that are way more important than the comedy, like character development, relationship building, plot foreshadowing, a million other things and instead he just. cares about whether the latest episode was funny or not.

tged is a fun novel, it has so many funny moments but if asked i would not say it was a comedy. and it certainly never seemed to make an effort to make sure all of its chapters were funny.

so why on god's green earth does he seem to believe the adaptation needs to be over all other things funny.

why was that the direction he decided to take.

and i for one i'm almost absolutely certain it was his decision to go that route.

especially because this was his answer at being asked if he felt any pressure regarding the characters or plot development.

nunca quise madrear a alguien mas que a este pinche monillo

he does go on to say all the changes were approved by bk moon but like. god what a way to confirm that he didn't a single shit about the characters and plot beyond making something he personally found funny lmaooo

and then this!! this!!

the way he's admitting that he's changing whatever he feels like because as long as he 'doesn't stray too far from the central storyline' it doesn't matter,,,, because he already knows the ending and so as long as he can check off some boxes regarding the plot it doesn't really matter what happens in between,,, i wanna wring his neck so bad,,,

i already ranted about it in the tags before but you can't take a story and assume that as long as you get from point A to point B the parts in between don't matter. that's not how it works.

the ending of a story is the culmination of all the emotional and narrative build up you've done through the entire length of your work. is all the character moments, relationship growth and plot development that you've carefully sown in your story coming together to finally deliver what you've build up.

yes, the ending is an absolute masterpiece. because it has en entire novel of build up before it. because it took its time to make the audience engage earnestly with its characters and its plot. because it didn't make fun of itself at every moment possible and instead took itself seriously when the narrative called for it.

because the novel was telling a story and it wanted us to be invested on it beyond a superficial 'haha funny man makes ugly faces' reaction.

and because lee hyunmin is too busy wondering if every chapter is as funny as possible he's not doing the work needed to make sure the ending delivers the absolute gut punch and emotional catharsis it does on the novel.

he thinks he can just fuck around his way through the plot and still reap the same rewards bk moon did with the novel.

and if he keeps going like this he's not gonna be able to.

but that's just my opinion of course <3

[randomfoggytiger]

Californication viewers, I'm curious:

Recently I fell out-of-love with the idea of soulmates; so, with that and my curiosity in mind, tell me truly:

[dungeons-and-dragon-age]

he could've said if it bothered him it's fine!

[the-eclectic-wonderer]

I always think about how in multiple episodes it's basically canon that Blanche is bi but considers dating women to be more hassle (which is a whole rabbit hole to go down - does she struggle with societal homophobia when she's with women? Has she only been with fellow high maintenance femmes when shes really after a Dorothy type? Has she internalized the idea that her attraction to women isn't 'real'? Her reaction to Clayton adds to these questions). Not to mention how this goes together with her relationships with the girls; making to kiss Rose that one time (and Rose multiple times seeming very aware of Blanche's proclivities), begging Dorothy for 'relief' and being convinced she's attracted to women too.

Yes, anon! It’s really interesting to delve into Blanche’s psyche about all this stuff!

I started writing down my thoughts and ended up with a long ramble -- allow me to place it all under a cut, so I don't clog up anyone's dash, haha.

Personally, I think she has some strong mental blocks when it comes to her sexuality because of the way she was brought up. I mean, she grew up in Atlanta approx in the 1930s/1940s — I’m sure I don’t have to detail the kind of casual bigotry she must have seen around her during her formative years! Just look at the story she recounts in S1E13 A Little Romance:

“Now, you have to understand that in those days in the South a lot of things were still taboo. Certain people were not to mix. So Benjamin and I had to meet in secret. Oh, we knew if any of the bigots in town found out about us, there’d be a terrible scandal.”

And all of this because Benjamin was a yankee… can you imagine what ‘the bigots in town’ thought about homosexuality? Yeah, I’m pretty sure Blanche learned to suppress that part of herself very early on. We know she turns to denial when she’s faced with uncomfortable truths and emotions she can’t deal with, so I think she likely just refuses to acknowledge that part of herself most of the time, and it only comes out (pun intended!) when she’s not paying much attention to things, or when there’s something more important going on. See the two examples you point out: when she tries to kiss Rose she’s concerned with not being kissed at midnight, and when she propositions Dorothy she’s, well… she’s desperate to get some, if we can be frank.

When she’s in a more rational state, her reactions tend to be more measured… but not by much. She does advise Rose not to date women (S3E10 The Audit):

“Oh, no, honey, don’t do that! No job is worth having to date women!”

But she’s also really flattered at receiving lots and lots of phone calls from women, after her appearance as a ‘lesbian’ on TV (S7E15 Goodbye, Mr Gordon):

“By the way, Dorothy, if I were a lesbian, I sure would be a popular one. Look at this, 20 calls.”

And of course we can’t forget her reaction to finding out that Jean has a crush on Rose in S2E5 Isn’t It Romantic?:

“Jean has the hots for Rose? I don’t believe it, I do not believe it! […] To think Jean would prefer Rose over me? That’s ridiculous! […] Now you tell me the truth: if you had to pick between Rose and me, who would you pick? Who?”

All of these are (likely) intended to be jokes about her vanity and her libertine nature (in the same way as Rose’s observations are), but considering a lot of the writers of this show were queer themselves, it wouldn’t seem strange to me if they were intentionally peppered in to suggest that Blanche might be a bisexual in denial. It certainly fits her character!

I haven’t spoken about her reaction to Clayton’s coming out yet, but that’s immensely interesting too, of course. I think Blanche has the same attitude towards homosexuality that I see in a lot of (mostly older) people in my Country nowadays: it’s fine as a general concept, but when it comes to her family (or, God forbid, herself) then the problems come out. See for example what she says about Jean:

“Well, I’ll never understand what Jean doesn’t see in the opposite sex, but if that makes her happy, that’s fine by me!”

Which isn’t a homophobic attitude at all! If anything, if you take her upbringing into account, it’s pretty accepting. But then, when Clayton comes out to her (S4E9 Scared Straight) and tells her he wants to get married (S6E14 Sister Of The Bride), this is what she says:

“Oh, Clayton, please be serious. You're just saying that so I won't set you up with any more women. […] Well, then you're saying it 'cause you're trying to get back at me for something. Clay, I know you too well for this. After all, I know it can't be true. You're my brother. […] Clayton Hollingsworth. You look me in the face and tell me you really are… what you just said you are.��

“I'm having a little trouble putting this all together. Clayton, I just feel like I don't know you anymore.”

“[…] Dorothy, that's different. We're talking about going out in public. Oh, what are people gonna say?”

“Will you tell me why you want to put yourself and Doug through this? You know how people can be.”

“Oh, look, I can accept the fact that he's gay, but why does he have to slip a ring on this guy's finger so the whole world will know?”

Quite the difference from her attitude towards Jean, wouldn’t you say? I think there’s three elements at play here.

1) When Clayton comes out to Blanche, she feels disoriented because this is life-changing information Clayton has never shared with her before. While her reaction as a whole isn’t ideal, personally I think it’s understandable. Clayton is her baby brother; she’s known him as straight all his life, he’s been married to a woman for years before his divorce, and she recounts an episode from their adolescence when he was on a date with a woman and very clearly implicated having a physical encounter with her. He's done everything in his power to pass as straight until this point in time -- I don't find it strange that Blanche would be shocked at his coming out, especially given her upbringing (and the fact that this is set in the 80s! We can't expect modern sensibilities from the characters!). Once again, her reaction isn't the best (she can't even bring herself to say the word 'gay' at first...), but the shock per se isn't that surprising, imho.

2) Blanche is scared because of societal implications above all. She doesn't necessarily see being queer as something wrong, but she's been taught it's not socially acceptable and acts accordingly. Notice how she's worried about what people are going to say, and she struggles to accept that Clayton wants the whole world to know about his relationship with Doug.

Societal expectations in general are a big theme for Blanche's character, and often drive her development; another big example of this is her attitude towards Rebecca's decision to get artificially inseminated, but it's a bit of a baseline issue for her, I feel. She has this whole thing about her beauty and her (supposed) youth and her attractiveness that has some inherent elements, but it's mostly an issue of how other people perceive her, I think, and her response to her brother's coming out is easy to relate to this theme. I mean, she even says it to Rose in S7E15:

"Well, I don't mind being labeled a lesbian, honey, but since I'm not, you just ruined my social life."

So yeah. I think it's safe to say her main concern is societal disapproval of queerness: she wants to be accepted and celebrated by the people around her, and she thinks that being openly queer will destroy her place in her social circle (and she's worried about the same happening to Clayton too, of course).

3) This is sort of related to point 2, but it felt distinct enough to treat it separately. I think she might have reacted so badly to Clayton's coming out (and especially to his showing up with a partner) because he's open about his sexuality, and she's not ready to face what that means for her. My lovely mutual @\hecatesbroom recently published her latest amazing work the odd one(s) out, on the relationship between Dorothy and her brother Phil and how Phil's open queerness might have impacted Dorothy; I think a similar situation might have occurred between Blanche and Clayton after his coming out.

Blanche has a sort of advantage on Dorothy because of her bisexuality, in the sense that she has 'passing privilege' (I really dislike this concept, but allow me to use it to make a point): it's painfully clear that she loved her late husband with all her heart, and she's obviously attracted to men as well, so she can pretend not to like women without too much of a hassle (whereas, if you believe Dorothy to be a repressed lesbian, her situation is much more complicated).

The issue with this is that this 'advantage' is a double-edged sword: she might have the comfort of being socially acceptable, but she's had to suffocate a big part of herself to obtain that comfort. And so, what happens when Clayton -- her baby brother Clayton, the one who's always been just like her, who's grown up with her same environment and influences -- begins openly living as a gay man? I'm sure the situation must have had a strong impact on her, even if just on a subconscious level; I've always found it curious that she seems to have a harder time accepting Clayton in S6E14 than she does in S4E9 (she even calls his sexuality a phase), and while a part of it may be attributed to the higher social exposure Clayton's commitment to Doug brings, I think this may be a result of her inner conflict, provoked by watching her brother live openly while she's been suppressing a part of herself all her life.

Here I'm assuming she's never acted upon her attraction to women before, but there's some space to believe she has done so and has decided it's too much of a hassle, as you say -- likely because she'd for sure do it in secret, given her fear of societal condemnation. If she has been with women before, and decided to give up on it, I still think she'd be greatly impacted by Clayton's coming out: it means her baby brother is a) braver than she is, and b) going to openly face (and likely suffer because of) the same social issues she's run away from. In this lens, I find it interesting that she cautions him about how people can be, almost as if they've both experienced it.

Whew. Wow, this was a lot more than I'd originally meant to write, haha! Seems you sparked a big train of thought, anon! I think all of the Girls (with the possible exception of Sophia) are really fascinating to analyze with a queer lens, and Blanche is always interesting to me, of course. As a final note, I'd like to point out that she does come around to Clayton's sexuality and his relationship, in the end: as often happens, she just needs the Girls' help to put things back in perspective, understand she's hurting someone she loves, and correct her actions. I'd like to think living with the Girls might lead to her becoming more accepting of herself, too.

[thelastspeecher]

My biggest geology pet peeve isn't when people say "dirt" instead of "soil", though I have known many geologists and soil scientists who get very upset about it.

No, it's when people say an earthquake was a magnitude of so and so on the Richter Scale. Richter Magnitude is actually outdated and has limitations, particularly for large earthquakes (which I won't get into). The standard used by the vast majority of seismologists is now the Moment Magnitude. There may be some stray incidences of Richter being used, particularly for a small earthquake, but nowadays the value reported is almost always Moment Magnitude.

And yet!

The news and everyone and their mother continues to call it the Richter Scale! It's not! Especially if it's a big earthquake (which ones on the news typically are), it's the Moment Magnitude!

...And that's my biggest geology pet peeve.

[velvetjune]

for only showing up in the live action segments, it’s absurd how much mr door and thomas zane have consumed my thoughts. could not even begin to imagine what mr door’s role is in future games, let alone anything for zane, but the mystery only adds to the intrigue. so much of this goes to just how phenomenal the actors are—they performed every scene with intention and charisma

[yuridovewing]

mapleshade’s vengeance is sort of a case study to me because there are three separate instances within this narrative alone where it’s clear there’s a gendered double standard. at least for the time.

-Frecklewish, Ravenwing, and Oakstar all exile and ostracize three children and indirectly cause their deaths? Only Frecklewish is tossed in the Dark Forest while Ravenwing and Oakstar are forgiven and blessed.

-Mapleshade and Appledusk both break the code? Appledusk is comforted and coddled, his pregnant mate he was cheating on barely falters before defending him and forgiving him, while Mapleshade is attacked by her clanmates, berated by them, and exiled without a single person standing up to her. (While narratively yes, this is the point, we’ve also had numerous instances of the woman being treated far worse than the man in these cases, ie SilverGray and LeafCrow)

-Ashfur and Mapleshade both commit horrific crimes over their loved one dumping them? Ashfur’s just a sweet boy who loved too much and Mapleshade (rightfully) gets sent to the dark forest for her crimes.

Honestly I can’t believe some people still don’t see the double standard here

[age-of-moonknight]

“Tigra,” Vengeance of the Moon Knight (Vol. 2/2024), #2.

Writer: Jed MacKay; Penciler and Inker: Alessandro Cappuccio; Colorist: Rachelle Rosenberg; Letterer: Cory Petit