#context being my memories feel as real as my life now and I have trouble mentally separating them

[stayathome-ts]

The problem with accidentally viewing your life through a semi-fictional lens due to context is that you start applying that to the present as well as the part, and often reality doesn’t work that way, except when it does and that just confuses the whole thing.

[yuri-is-online]

Was Lilia more “Oh my thorn fairy I have another child?! I can barely cast a spell as of now and future me wants a fucking KID?! AT THAT AGE?!”

Or more of a

I HAVE ANOTHER SON?! AND IT’S FROM ME!?

If his Yutu tells him he comes from the future? Because it could imply he does regain his remaining years and magic. Idk how you wrote that problem that even rn it’s giving talk about Lilia surviving book 7 or not.

If it’s the second I already see him passing by Silver’s room really excited and saying “YOU HAVE A BROTHER!” And zooming off, leaving a very confused Silver and thinking he refers to either Malleus or Sebek.

technically anon asked first but this ask is much longer so it was awkward to screenshot for an answer. Here is the link the anon used for reference, I obligated as an elderly hater to let you know it's from SAO. Anon's idea is extremely good and we're going to roll with it for this Yutu's Uniqe Magic because you know he was always going to be a little shit.

notes: they/them used for Yuu, context on the fyuuture kid au can be found here and here. SPOILERS FOR: Book 7, Lilia's back story, and Silver's unique magic. Please engage with this in mind. For more fyuutre kid au, please check out the series section of my masterlist.

I have a bit of difficult time writing for Lilia given how much older he is than the rest of the cast, so I tend to write his Yuu as being a bit older themselves. Maybe they had an extremely difficult childhood and connected with Lilia over their shared sense of robbed innocence. Whatever it was I think this Yuu has a bit of a fascination with creatures of the night and a lot of their weirdo reputation within their community comes from kids telling each other that Yuu and Yutu are vampires. That makes me tempted to say Lilia! Yutu's real name is Alucard or Sebastian, something vaguely vampire themed.

None of those rumors are helped by Yutu finding himself very lethargic when out in the sunlight or his preference for colder temperatures. From his perspective he can't exactly help being who he is, people should really just get over themselves and let him do his thing. It's not his fault that bats really seem to like him for some reason, the neighbors are exaggerating Mr. Animal Control officer he swears.

Because he prefers to spend his awake hours in the dark, he is waaaaay too comfortable doing things and going places he shouldn't. He's real familiar with all the abandoned buildings and sketchy alleys of your town and has tagged quite a few of them. I like the idea of Lilia! Yutu being really interested in street art and Graffiti. I could see him putting up a bunch of bats everywhere and getting in a bunch of trouble for it. He has very fond memories of Yuu letting him paint murals on portions of their house in an effort to meet him halfway. He might like a good prank but unlike his father Yutu is always pulling his punches with Yuu.

Lilia didn't exactly have a supportive parent while he was growing up, something I feel like Yuu remembers and is very conscious of in their parenting of Yutu. Unfortunately for Lilia they also remember that he had another child and was a lot older than them, something Yutu raises several eyebrows at and causes him to ignore the things Yuu tries to tell him about his "great sense of humor" and "desire for different peoples to learn and grow with one another-" yeah that's great can you back up a bit to where you said he had another family? Yutu goes through life thinking he was the product of an affair Yuu had with a much older, married man who was just trying to feel young again. The amnesia stuff... sometimes he wonders if his dad tried to have Yuu killed. He never says it out loud because something tells him he's wrong, but gut feelings aren't as trustworthy as statistics...

So you can imagine his surprise when he tumbles out of a coffin and is told that his dad was a faerie general bound in service to a family of dragons, veteran of an ancient war, and technically the adoptive father of the Prince of the children of the night and the Prince of the rival human kingdom that killed his best friends. One of which is alive and overwhelmed with joy to meet him. Silver wanted Yutu almost as badly as Lilia and Yuu did so to see him alive and awkwardly squirming in his arms? Silver hasn't cried this much since they lost Lilia and Malleus.

Having a proper older brother, not just the concept, is an extreme change for Yutu. He's used to it just being him and Yuu, and he was sort of expecting Silver to hate him just for existing. Nothing could be further from the truth, Silver wants his younger brother to have the same freedoms he did while attending school but he also respectfully requests that Yutu spend at least some of his free time with him. He tried desperately to find his dreams over the years and was never able to make firm contact, but he doesn't want to pressure Yutu into caring about him. Yutu is didn't realize how badly he wanted other family members until he got to have Silver, he's even willing to take up sword fighting so they can get closer.

Sebek is also overwhelmed with tears upon seeing Lilia! Yutu. He is a bit harsh on him for "not living up to Master Lilia's legacy" because he doesn't know anything about fighting. He does applaud him for his willingness to learn. Yutu thinks Sebek is hilarious and messes with him just as much as Lilia does. Something Sebek is completely willing to let him do because it makes him feel like Lilia never left.

All of the Yutus get to see some of the photographs Yuu left behind, but Lilia! Yutu is especially interested in them. He makes a small photo album of all the ones he can find of his dad, especially ones where he's with Yuu and Silver. He's partially driven by guilt for thinking his father was a terrible person, but really he just wants to feel closer to him. He's half fae, and sure he has Sebek to talk about that with but what he really needs is a connection with his father. Yutu doesn't really care about being a faerie. He just cares about his dad's acceptance, everything else can go hang.

I don't have a name for his unique magic, but going off of anon's idea it allows him to overwhelm his target's mind, forcing them to think about their greatest fears to the point they are convinced they are really going through it. Someone hates spider? All over their face and in their clothes. Crippling fear of failure? Suddenly that emotion is all they can focus on. And if it's a mindless creature like a blot phantom or a monster they become overwhelmed with the sensation that they are unable to breathe and about to die. Yutu can't control the illusion the person experiences so usually he tries not to use it on his classmates.

That changes when he goes into the past. Some rando want to shit talk Yuu? Nightmare. Macho NRC guy wants to rumble? Nightmare. Some random guy jumped out from behind him and yells "BOO!" Nightma-

If Yutu had been just a hair slower he would have been in extreme pain, the dangerous glint in those familiar ruby eyes scream that. The short fae smiles almost cruelly, advancing on him clearly upset even though Yutu has dropped the spell.

"Well now, that's no way to great a senior." Lilia's voice is strangely soothing, it occurs to Yutu that this is probably the first time his father has ever been angry at him and he can't help himself. He laughs,

"Yeah sorry about that." He makes sure to try and be cute about it, which helps to diffuse the tension some what. "You really scared me so it was all I could think to do."

Lilia is very impressed by Yutu's reflexes and control over his unique magic. He is even further impressed by how eager Yutu is to train with Silver. The kid has some real promise and fits into Silver and Sebek's dynamic better than Lilia could have dreamed of. He really hopes the two will benefit from having a relatively normal human friend their age to train with. Maybe he and Yuu will stick around and give him some piece of mind about the kids being in good hands when he's gone.

Yutu hanging around Diasomnia gives him an excuse to chat with Yuu more, not that he exactly needed it. Lilia sort of hates the way he's drawn to you, it feels unfair. Unfair to you to give you hope there could be something more and toy with your affections; unfair to him for life to finally allow him to realize what romantic love is like just in time to have to let it go. There is a bittersweet tone to all of your interactions that his housemates are a bit too socially awkward to pick up on but Cater does.

Yutu is surprised how much he likes Cater, he associates him with a terrifying monster he's had to fight multiple times, not a fun guy who is really determined to help his parents get together. And what's even better he's really chill when Yutu asks for stories about Lilia, he has a lot of them and a completely different perspective than his older brother allowing Yutu to glean some more insight to what his parents might have been thinking in the future.

He finds himself spending a lot of time with the pop music club, not as an official member though he's not great at carrying a tune. Kalim, Cater, and Lilia are glad to have another person to chill with, sometimes they'll play music and Yutu will draw something based off whatever noise they made. Cater wants to talk him into doing album art for them... you know if they ever get around to making a recording.

I think Yutu will only tell Lilia who he is if he has no choice. He wants to mess with the timeline as little as possible, but should a monster from his timeline appear in this one, say like an overblotted Yuu another asker was so nice as to bring up, well it's not like he says who he is. He just addresses the monster as his parent and has a very loud meltdown not wanting to fight them again. Something Malleus is more than willing to assist him with.

"Think nothing of it." Malleus's power is truly terrifying, Yutu is torn between sorrow that he wasn't on their side and relief he didn't overblot a second time. "You are Lilia's son yes? That makes you my subject, and a most precious one at that." Not that Yutu has avoided interacting with Malleus exactly, he's just found talking to him exceptionally awkward because well. He's not Yuu, he's very aware of how important Malleus is supposed to be. But the way he's looking at him now makes him think that maybe he was missing out on interacting with another older brother.

Something that's confirmed when he turns to see how big his father's eyes have gotten, the man is shaking as he stares at his face and flicks between him, Malleus, and Silver like he's staring at the most precious pieces of art in the whole universe.

As you brought up Lilia's survival isn't guaranteed, I did not solve that problem at all. I sort of just... wrote that Lilia would age more or less like a normal human and not really be able to use magic on par with what a fae would consider normal but would still be impressive to a human... so while Lilia might be a bit reluctant to show his face in Briar Valley he would still have enough years to have and raise Yutu. He might have actually died around the same time as Yuu if they had lived a normal life.

He is overwhelmingly excited at the thought of having another baby. Lilia might not know what to do with them but he does really like kids. What's harder for him to accept is his relationship with Yuu. Raising a child is something he's done before, being someone's long term partner is not. He is unused to feeling desirable, and unfamiliar with acting on his own desires. Sure Lilia might seem very free spirited, but much of his life has been dictated by a sense of duty. The thought of having something precious to him that chose him specifically of their own free will is... disarming. He's overwhelmed with how helpless you make him feel and how little he despises it.

Yutu's need to be accepted by his father is met and exceeded almost immediately. Lilia wants to cook a big family dinner for Yuu and all of his boys, something that Malleus politely rejects asking if he can instead show his Culinary Crucible skills off to Yutu (it's really so he can make babiest brother promise to never eat anything Paw Paw makes EVER) and it's all so normal Yutu almost forgets that he's listening to a practical god smugly tell him he knows all about edible weeds as his father flies around him cracking jokes and pinching his cheeks. His older brother is asleep on the couch waiting for the food to be done and his precious parent is helping his Uncle Sebek set the table, listening to him sniffle about how beautiful Master Lilia's family is.

Lilia might be practically retired, but his mind is still sharp. The information Yutu is able to pass on to him lands in good hands. When he tucks Yutu into bed that night, long after the boy has gone to sleep so as not to embarrass him he makes sure to take a good long look at the little miracle. He is beyond grateful Yutu exists, not even the Thorn Fairy could have given him a finer blessing (he'll have to make sure to tease you about that later, that's got to be a good pick up line) He will make sure that this risk his son has taken pays off, Lilia Vanrouge wasn't feared for no reason. Something it seems some foolish mortals need reminding of.

[prettyboykatsuki]

father jing yuan and his beloved child,,, fuck or die... ari you're cooking

fem!reader, incest, estranged relationships, sex pollen

i feel like. well. i like estranged fathers in my incest fic i guess. but i like the idea of jing yuan and his estranged daughter a lot being real. in the fuck or die context.

i imagine it in the concept of you once being his beloved. when you were smaller, younger. life is different on luofu you know? but you loved your father more than anyone in the world. when you were a little girl, there was no one more important. and he was always a good father to you - but you ended up having a fight when you were going your own path in life. you were taking on dangerous research, doing dangerous things.

you don't remember it now, because it was so long ago - but you haven't seen him in years. though jing yuan, the sort of man he is, has kept tabs on you in all that time. he thought about forcing you home. he thought about being disciplinary. but he convinced himself you'd return at your own time someday. the rift in the relationship is never mended, not completely

when you return to the luofu, it's been a long time. your adulthood has leveled you into a fine woman. you're here because your close friend is getting married. you have no intent on seeing your father. but of course that's impossible. it's yanqing who drags you home, drops you unceremoniously at his office.

and there's a calm air about him. a wave of grief washed over with a wave of love and nostalgia. it will never be the same, your relationship - and seeing him now only reaffirms. still, you decide to neglect the bad blood between you. you decided to drink with him, speak with him, open up the avenues because you're also growing older.

you never know when the mara will take him. and you talk to him civil, but the little loved girl inside you trembles whenever he speaks to you so gently. it's troubling.

i always think of it as poison. the aeons and their disturbed sense of humor, maybe. a bottle of poisoned wine, something made in a lab - causing the loss of inhibitions and provocation of lust. an aphrodisiac puts it lightly. but it sparks it within you both

the only way the pain subsides is being touched, and there's no one for you to call. only jing yuan, the only thing left of your childhood.

there's something apologetic about it. some deep sense of innate disgust overwhelmed by chemicals and frustration. but there's a specific sadness in his face you've never seen - something strange and suffocated.

your skin is burning hot in all the places he touches, sobbing with relief and yet burdened with whats happening. but there's something too, admittedly tender, about the gesture. something almost profound with the soft forehead kiss, the promise of pleasure. it's an apology, among many things, and something about that is too crushing for you to bear.

so you do what you know how, revert to the smallest parts of you. a girl in the arms of your one and only parent, cradled gently in his embrace. the warmth of it is suffocating, but it's sweet. a bitter memory but one you hold as your rocked, split open on his cock like it's natural. he takes care of you, and you remember. what is was like when he loved you.

you ask if he still does - buried so deep within you, you can feel it up to your throat. it's aching and intrusive and it feels good, but it makes you cry. every time he touches you want to cry.

"it's not a matter of if. nothing could measure up to your importance, silly girl."

[lower-mkdr]

Just a personal rambling about Adela's skin

Just as a heads up, I'm not spoiler free when it comes to Adela so I hope you can bear with me today since her new skin has me totally in love even if the showcase isn't out yet, the Adela brainrot is real and it's always there, but I've been taking my time to let it out. Going to the point, GOD, I LOVE HER SO MUCH.

I like the way it's something elegant yet quite simple, since it fits her style really well. I often think about how Adela is so complex yet she keeps trying to be pretty simple for the sake of her own view of "a perfect and relaxing life", but it's the details what makes the difference, she's still pretty elegant and has a lot of style.

Regarding what we know by the tranlations, the name is "tower candlelight". The first thing I thought about was the "Tower" mentioned in Phantom of the Mist, the clock tower where everything changes, where Letta warns us to no get close to, but it ends being what connects every piece of information together with Adela guiding us to learn the story about Mad Shears.

I'm not really surprised by the idea of a concept similar to Rapunzel, but I absolutely adore it. It's the way she's trapped by her own hair, in a tower the same description calls "My heart shall become a tall tower, and I shall sit at its precipice. There, there is nothing but silence and sorrow." (Just in case, I'm using the tranlation provided by Jiu Jiu subs).

It explains itself pretty well, right? She's been trapped for a long time by her own worries, her way to escape? "let's cut the worries away", but she's still there, her heart still is there. Same as the story in her interrogation, no matter how much Adela wants to avoid it, she knows there's something she's missing. It's just a "Let's think I'm out" but she's not, she's just there, imagining she's out.

I like how there's many candles around here, even birdcages and their surrounded by flowers (I'll do another post later if I find them or have an idea about it, flower language it's really interesting). I would love to say that she's another flower between those cages, there's even vines around.

The hairstyle is something so personal that the second I saw it I felt like crying while saying to my friends "I love how she has long hair, but I don't know how to feel about it in her case". For Adela, long hair represents worries that suffocate the owner of said hair, so being able to see her with pretty long hair, despite being something that I love and adore in a personal way, it really got me thinking "Is she okay????" (baby, do you want a hug and some tea?)

All the context so far left me really intrigued, but it also means that this is a part of herself, an important one. Probably this is how Adela felt for many years since she was young, she always was bound to something, until she decided to cut it away herself in search of her own happiness (Her relationship with her mother, the connection with Chief, the multiple times she tried to find a place she could call "home", but never found one), and in the end, it was all a part of her that she neglected, her own memories, in search for some stability. Here she looks so far quite calm, I guess it would be related/explain later to have some connection with Chief?

It reminds her of her 100% compliance line "People tend to bury themselves with old troubling memories, overburdened and suffocated, so I cut it away from me. But little did I know that I also cut away something that allowed my heart to sing. It's you who helped me rediscover that something".

She's no longer waiting for a home, nor searching for one, she's no longer suffocating herself constantly with feelings she can't comprehend (see the Mother's pendant interaction, It keeps hurting me), she's just here, looking at you with a smile, knowing things can change, but change doesn't really mean something bad. Her hearth is free now, she is free now

[journen]

Okay!! Because I'm not a huge fan of the format of long twitter threads, and this whole thing got kinda long 😅 I figured it could be best to post these story idea ramblings to Tumblr! So lol, prepare for some ramblings sabout my Ghost and Soap AU that's post MW2 campaign where Simon leaves the army to raise his nephew after his fam are killed.

This is all based off the au from this fic I wrote 🙈 if you want more context, you can find some here!

I just have a lot of ideas for this au and wanted to share some that I'll probably never be able to write, but yeah. Lmk if you guys have any thoughts! 😊

I guess TW too for: mentioned child injury, mentioned murder, references to Ghost's past from the comics. There's nothing graphic tho!

--------------------

Price swears to Simon, in that hospital room a few days after the attack on Simon's fam, where Jo is lying injured and unconscious, but stable, that he will track down Roba and his men to get justice. He makes it a vow.

Theres not much development on the case for years tho. Maybe, after it initially happened, there was a brief investigation into it, but they ran into a lot of issues getting jurisdiction to operate in Mexico so the case went dry.

So, Simon has to learn to live with the fact that the people who did this to his family, and who tortured him, are still alive out there somewhere. But his nephew is his first priority, and he's accepted that too. He's not going to carelessly risk his life so he can't be there to raise his orphaned nephew in the name of revenge.

I don't think Simon, at this stage of his life, would be a violent revenge seeker? Perhaps if he is pushed too far, but let's not go there yet hahhaha.

Also, he's with Soap too, who helps ground him and keep him level headed.

Anyways, years later, Price calls Simon up, telling him of their update on the case. Maybe Roba has been located, and they only have a few day window to act. 

Price shows him the layout of the compound. Simon recognizes it. It's where he was kept captive for months all those years ago. Price offers that, if he wants, there's a spot on the squad for him. His Intel could be valuable. And he's cleared it with a lot of the other high ups to bring Simon along, or just didn't give them a choice, lol. (I have no idea if this would actually be possible irl, to have an SAS soldier who left the ranks, rejoin for a covert mission, but bare with me. Price can make it happen in this AU 🤣)

Simon has been out of active service for 5/6 years at this point though. And Price is asking him if he wants back in for one final op. Joseph is now around 10 years old maybe. He and Soap have been in a steady relationship for 5, Soap still serving in the military.

Anyways, cue big moment of Ghost picking up his old skull mask again. One he hasn't worn in 6 years. Holding the fabric brings back a lot of old memories for him. It feels heavy in his hands. He had changed so much since when he was the man who wore this mask...

but he still had it in him. He knew he did, deep down.

But did he want to *go* there, was he ready? Was it appropriate?

Would he be letting down Joseph though, if he agreed to this op?

What would Soap's feelings on the matter be?

But ultimately, Ghost agrees to it. I think he would need to take some time to consider it though. Maybe talk it through with the bf, Soap. But I think Simon would come to the conclusion that the team would be safest with him on the squad because of his existing knowledge of the compound. And he'd maybe feel safer being there himself, there to try to help the others if they run into trouble fighting his demons.

He does tell Price he has one condition about the op though, is that nobody dies. And he doesn't plan on dying either. He has to live for Joseph, and for Soap, too.

Jo is maybe 9 or 10 at this point. When Simon and Soap go away, I don't think Simon would tell Jo the real nature of his mission. He wouldn't lie to him, but the truth is a lot for a 10 year old to take in right? Maybe he says the mission is going to be scary, but that he's going to do his best to make sure they all make it back okay.

Maybe Joseph stays with one of Soap's sisters.

Ghost feels terrible to do this to Jo but he has to stop Roba from doing this again.

And blabkabla stuff happens and Simon makes it back okay tho yayyyyy 🤣

[alex31624]

Duck Comic Reading Club Week 16: Paperinik New Adventures: Second Draft

And now, the comic from this week. Have to say, it was an improvement, and it shows immediately.

Oh yes, look at this. Is beautiful. Never turn into Urk again, PK.

This issue starts with Lyla directing an interview to Donald, who's the president of Ducklair Industries. He talks about how he got the job after Ducklair himself took him as a protegé.

Ok, we're in Quack Pack. Who'll be the genie this time?

But looks like Lyla will be Huey in this scenario.

But, turns out, she's not the only one who's having a bad feeling about what's happening.

Odin felt a disturbance in the air, and put himself in motion. After a quick trip to Time 0, Odin checked his memories and his suspicions were confirmed.

I love how good the art is again.

After a really good action sequence, with PK not having any trouble beating some bank robbers, Donald is ready to watch his interview. But his relaxing time is interrupted by some mysterious monks. Those monks claim being Ducklair comrades, and ask Donald for help.

But this is no regular monk, is a cyber monk, and has bringing a functional robot like the world has never seen.

Donald wants to commercialize the robot, as servants. But Lyla is offended by the idea, she thinks that the robots could be humanity friends.

Am I imagine this, or Lyla is a bit of a communist?

Maybe, but what its real is that Lyla wasn't Huey, she's the genie. She's the one who has altered the timeline.

But why?

Anyway, the monks and PK set a trap to Lyla, and confronted her. And now, we have the plot twist. The robot was another Lyla.

But that's not all.

What the hell is going on?

Ok, ok, it looks more complicated that it really is. Lyla changed the past, and altered the events of the present, and in consequence, the future. Odin and Lyla came back to stop her, and now, the original time line and the new time line are merging.

See? Easy.

Now, they have to capture her. But she is in some place outside time and space. With the help of the Time Police, PK and Odin raid the enemy base.

They found the original Lyla and the mastermind behind all, Geena.

Turned out Geena wanted to liberate the robots from their slavery life, and all thanks to PK. You see, he was the only one who ever treat her as an individual instead of a machine.

It actually make a lot of sense. Geena felt a bit of humanity in Donald actions, and wanted more. For her and her people. Robots. Something.

But Geena is a sore loser, and activated a bomb that would trap everybody outside time, trapping them forever. Odin explained that what she tried to do was taken out of context by other robots and a war was imminent.

That made Geena had a change of heart, and she sacrifices herself to save everyone.

Geena died a hero and we have this powerful moment.

Lyla and Donald return to their time, Odin gives Donald some memories for Uno, and the end.

This was good. It wasn't amazing, but it wasn't bad by any mean.

Geena's final moments were the best part. Even if she was wrong in her ways, you have to admit that, there's a limit how much a person can take before fighting back.

In days where my country is suffering, and people is taking the streets, tired of living in fear, I can understand Geena.

[gumasantan]

i'm reviewing for my exams tomorrow...but i've been thinking a lot about 1000xRESIST lately.

it's a game, not a film or a show or a book. 1000xRESIST is a game about...many things: surviving an alien invasion, living underground, clones of human beings, stubborn parents, angst of a teenage girl, generational trauma, and a lot of things. i don't exaggerate when i say the title describes just how much themes the game dives into. since i finished the game a week ago, a feeling of longing has grown and grown inside me that can only probably be helped by replaying the game, but i can't anymore. i want to restart my memory just so i can play it again without any prior knowledge. we all feel like that sometimes, right? when we deeply resonate with a piece of media we now consider a transcendent level of art form we just wanna keep replaying it and have our minds reset, so that we may able to uniquely experience them again and again, forever, even.

i attached a pretty landscape of hong kong to not only help reel you and others in reading this, but also to remind myself how this game made me long for a memory i never had. it connected with me so much that everytime i try to recall parts of the game, it's difficult for me to dissociate myself from them, and so, i end up with a mess of thoughts, unable to properly communicate what i'm trying to say; the memories of watcher, iris, (two of the game's main characters) and i seemingly fused together into one. heck, it is not explicitly a "self-insert" type of game where the devs intend you to project yourself into it so that the story makes sense.

so, why do i reminisce about hong kong when i haven't even visited the place? for context, the troubles during the 2019 hong kong protests are ultimately what sets off the events in the game, even though the game takes place around 3047 onwards. it is one of the few games where i actually see and feel the emotional impact that such a historic moment had on the lived experiences of fictional video game characters. fictional, in name only, but they are very much real in our world: expatriates who had to flee persecution as a result of resistance. one could say that this game is dedicated to these courageous people. not only to them, but to their children who are yet to exist.

i mention this because iris was born from these people. walked on earth away from hong kong, and as she grew up, came to realize how homesick she was about that place she was a stranger to. iris and i—we are as different as we can be. i was born and am living in my native country, doing my best to live since birth. i shouldn't ever feel homesick, but weirdly, touching this game and seeing iris' life through watcher's eyes, i can't help but go back and revisit the life i swear i lived in hong kong.

i'm not the only one who feels like this, however. watcher feels the same way. of course, watcher was cloned from a clone that was cloned from iris. it's only natural that watcher retains some of that "irisness" two generations down. though she is aware that she is reliving an amalgamation of hers and iris' memories, i relate to her struggle to separate her own consciousness from iris'. this is my belief: when you keep confusing someone's memories with your own, that just proves that you two are more alike than you would think.

i said before that iris and i were as different as we can be, but by my own words, that shouldn't be true. am i hypocritical? delusional? i'm contradicting myself, but not intentionally. i would 100% disagree with myself here had i not played this game and this predicament came up in another situation, but after playing the game, i don't know. the more i think about it, the more i get convinced that iris, though raised in very different circumstances, ended up sharing some of the same traits as i do. i would argue that there are just human characteristics that we all just happen to share, kindness for example, but no, these ones—they're too personal for and very understood by me to say "no, we're different."

at the end, the game rewards you for sticking to the end: a future of your own choosing. this may be a part of the game where some people would get stuck in for more than an hour, or as short as a minute, depending how much the player sticks to their own convictions. for me, i don't know how to build a future i want because i don't know what i want out of it; i don't know what's right. the game slapped me in my face with my own hypocrisies and dared me to stick with these foolish principles. eventually, i did reach the epilogue, but it didn't feel like i actually crossed the bridge.

i'm still trying to understand just as much as i'm trying to examine every minute detail in the game. the game's mechanics are mainly built around memories and the more i keep playing the game and watch multiple playthroughs of it, i realize just how important each memory is to conveying a message that's ultimately different for all of us. a thousand different lessons for anyone to learn; it is THAT complex.

if you stuck around this long, thank you. please, please, PLEASE play 1000xRESIST. there's something here for us to learn, a thing or more. these things about hong kong and memories are part of a bigger whole that i will want to talk about once i know how to express it. especially to my fellow asians, this game will speak to your heart. i've never felt a surge of emotions this strong since i finished signalis, another masterpiece which i may get around to talking about later! (play that too!)

[jariktig]

fun q; 1, 3, 6, 9, 13 ,23 ,33

what are 3 things you’d say shaped you into who you are?

(a) Being encouraged to be myself, and to know what I wanted to be (my mum still has a copy of The Female Eunuch that she annotated when I was very small with "What I have always wanted for [my nickname] is that she should know who she wants to be", and my parents lived up to that. As did the various educational establishments I went to, and my first boss. And that freedom and the security and confidence it brings has made a massive difference to me.

(b) Being held accountable for my failings, and learning to put them right - again, in all sorts of contexts. One does not learn and grow without that, and there are some memories from my primary school days that still sting and still direct me because the head teacher there was so good at doing it... as are the people I live with now.

(c) Caring for Offspring, and trying to be there in the right way for them, in some very uncharted waters.

3. 3 films you could watch for the rest of your life and not get bored of?

I've got nowt, sorry. I'm not very cinematically inclined...

6. what’s the best and worst part of being online/a creator?

Best: that whole "these are my people" feeling, and the joy of being able to make the world happier, a bit. And I love the way fandom people leverage their skills for charity.

Worst: there's never enough time, is there?

9. tell a story about your childhood

When I was ten or so, we spent a year in China (my dad was teaching at a uni there), and at the end we travelled back via the Trans-Siberian railway to Moscow and then on to Finland. And on the train there was a boy of about the same age and my brother and I played D&D with him. (There is only so much of Siberia you can look at out of a train window, certainly when you are 11). And I got into a certain amount of trouble because Gervase (not his real name, but it might as well have been) ruled as DM that I could only play a female character if I gave her a charisma of 18. In response to which I hit him, and told him and my brother both that it was my game, and I would be DM-ing from here on out, or we weren't playing at all. After which his mum spoke to mine, and mine spoke to me about not resorting to unnecessary violence even in defence of important principles, and I spent the next two weeks reading Gormenghast and Midnight's Children on repeat while my brother and Gervase played some board game, because I had gone through my own books and was reduced to stealing my parents'.

13. what are you doing right now?

Aside from answering these questions? Defrosting the freezer, and doing some betaing.

23. say 3 things about someone you hate

I really don't have anything, again - there have been plenty of people who annoyed me, and a few whom I have very strongly disliked, but I don't think there has ever been anyone I hated in the sense that I couldn't see something worth having about them, or that I wanted to hurt. Among the strong dislikes - I once had a team member who was outright unpleasant to the newer/younger/more junior members of the team, and when called on it would pretend that he'd meant it all in jest. He was also quite hard to get to prioritise the things I wanted done rather than the ones he wanted to do. But on the other hand he did all sorts of good things for charity, and was perfectly personable outside that work context. It was just that he was so terribly difficult for the whole of the team, and ate up such a lot of my work time with managing him.

33. any hobbies? On and off - cooking, sewing, jewellery-making, playing the flute, and all the fandom stuff ofc. And bridge, and crosswords.

[hewasaseidrbxy]

[Image description: Screenshot of anon that says the following, "Hi! I'm a fictive in a system, and I was wondering if you have any opinions on past life memories in a plural context? I'm a fictive of a certain character and have a lot of memories of another, previous life. Do you think it's possible I could be a type of a ghost? Would someone attracted to me count as a spectrophiliac??? So many questions. You seem to be an expert hehe. Thank you so much for your time, btw! You're a sweetheart. <3" End description.]

Disclaimer: I'm by no means an "expert" on spirits. I definitely am not knowledgeable on DID. I'm answering this as a pagan with a lot of experience in spirit work and as someone who happens to be otherkin.

If you weren't aware, I used to run a mental health-centered blog and I got my ass in trouble and deleted it after speaking about the difference between mental illness symptoms and real spirits so I felt the need to include that

Okay, so...

In my personal experience, it's very easy to have nonhuman pieces of oneself even though you're in a currently human incarnation. I don't know the entire ins-and-outs of how the hugr (soul-part related to consciousness) rebirths, if it's like in Buddhism/Hinduism where it's much more likely to be born as a nonhuman entity/being, or what.

I think it's much more likely that you have an ancestor that's nonhuman, and now that's being expressed.

I mention in my bio that I'm jötun blooded. I feel that I have an ancestor that is the hybrid of a fire etin (giant) and fallen angel. (It's my UPG that Múspellheimr, the realm of fire in Norse mythology, and the Christian Hell, are one in the same.) I was a Mare, a type of demonic entity in Germanic lore that's like a sleep paralysis demon. This is why, in my opinion, I feel so at home working with both the Demonic Divine and the jötnar.

Now, this is only one way to experience being otherkin. Maybe I have my facts wrong and I'm not even otherkin, but one of the other types. I know I'm constellic when it comes to cats and the Cenobites from Hellraiser, and I'm also an archetrope.

As for the attraction, yes, you could consider a partner a spectrophiliac for being attracted to you as a ghost kintype. There are also kin-centric attraction labels that you can find. The most common I can think of is Ah4Ah (alterhuman for alterhuman) or kin4kin.

I hope I answered this to your satisfaction.

[motorclit]

Stuff like what i’m about to type is something I can’t properly get off my chest unless I talk to someone about it irl, but the problem is only my muž gives a shit. (And there’s a high likelihood no one’s gonna care on here, either, just like on other social media platforms, but I’m used to it. It’s just a thing stuck in my brain.)

Anyway, this is about a memory unlocked about how I was treated as an unrealized/undiagnosed Autistic child.

I don’t know what all schools did this in the US, but my gradeschool (this was the 90s) had some students help out during lunchtime in the cafeteria. I honestly can’t remember how this was managed around the volunteer’s scheduling of when to eat and stuff, but from what I can REMEMBER, you could be the kid who rolled the cart slowly back and forth through the cafeteria that had the salt, pepper, and condiments and napkins and stuff (the cafeteria was an auditorium as well and the tables and benches folded out of the walls, so the cart-kid just went back and forth nice and easy in case anybody needed anything), the kid that accepts the tickets, the kid that hands out the fruit from over the counter in the kitchen, there were two other positions in the kitchen I can’t remember, and then there’s the dishwasher that washed the trays.

Back when I was a kid, I was weird, awkward, a bit rambunctious, and of course I was seen as such (with “annoying” accompanying any of these words) by both peers as well as teachers (yes, I’ve had teachers that came close to outright calling me annoying or weird; largely the phrase “acting out” was used and was definitely coded language in this context). I was also a social butterfly. The only socializing I’d had before kindergarten were family members (and it was mainly dad’s side, whom we were very close with). No family members gave me shit for being weird. They found my energy and carefree attitude endearing, apparently. So the only kids I saw were largely on TV.

I got a lot of info from TV. This includes the concept of going to school.

So when going to kindergarten, I was excited. ‘Cuz I was going to school. I felt like queen shit. I’m a big kid now; I’m going to school! I’m gonna see other kids my age! (I didn’t have---and still don’t---have any cousins close to my age) This was gonna be awesome! I’m gonna have friends and stuff!

Until I actually went to school...

So kindergarten is when we were figuring everybody else out in testing the social waters. It wasn’t until first grade that I started having a teensy bit of trouble. That’s when I started getting called “weird” because apparently(?) your way of acting should switch with each grade?

I can’t remember what grade I was in (I wanna say maybe third grade or later) when it came to my turn volunteering in the kitchen. I was fucking stoked, too. This was some real community-feeling type shit. And after my dad became disabled at the steel mill and us becoming too impoverished to do anything beyond a bit of church stuff, I felt like I was finally doing just... SOMETHING.. that wasn’t watching more TV.

And I wanted to be the cart-kid so bad.. Much like everybody else did. The cart-kid was this... weird social status of being “the cool kid” for the day. Even the quiet kid who became cart-kid was greeted with smiles and stuff. My back-up position would’ve been the ticket kid because there was a bit of chatting going on and it was all around pleasant.

I didn’t get to be the cart-kid or the ticket kid.

I was a dishwasher.

Now, don’t get me wrong; dishwashing is just as important. I knew this even at a young age. But at this point in my life, my so-called one and only “friend” at the time was already treating me like shit. The bullying was just beginning to ramp up, and I already had some problems with teachers just because of how I acted (I also talked back a lot when something seemed completely illogical to me).

I was tucked away in the corner of the kitchen where everybody, including the cooks, could barely see me. The edge of the deep sink-tub dully pinched into my ribs as I struggled to lean forward to get the hose or to get more soap onto a rag so large that I mistook it as some weird towel. I struggled to wash these trays for the very first time in my life because my parents had never made me do dishes. My dad didn’t want me nor my brother to ever have to do them and my mom would rather busy herself to distract her mind from the stresses of poverty.

So naturally, due to my size and complete lack of experience, I didn’t do a very good job. It also didn’t help that nobody asked how I was doing, nobody was happy that I was doing the thing. And there were quite a few students in the school to be volunteered for to get this sort of experience. I don’t think you could do this twice. And I got tucked away in the back.

This wasn’t exactly the position of shame, either. Because afterwards, each student would be personally thanked by some figure of authority (I can’t quite remember who aside from the teacher), been told they did a great job helping out, etc. I definitely remember a teacher doing this (usually whoever was on duty), I just can’t remember if I was in her class that year or not.

So when we excitedly went to meet up with the teacher after hanging up our aprons, the teacher personally praised each student for a job well done with a big encouraging smile shared by all of them. Until she got to me.

While she kept that smile, the moment she looked at me, she IMMEDIATELY looked away and said nothing to me, maintaining that smile as if she got everyone, as if I wasn’t there.

As I was making my way to get in line so we could return to class, I got approached by one of the cooks. I don’t think she was exactly mad, but the negative feedback I got from her still made me feel like shit. She told me I didn’t do a good job at all with washing those trays. I said I had never done dishes before, that I could hardly reach where the soap was being kept, and the rags were hard to work with (making me still wonder to this day if I have maybe some case of mild dyspraxia or something, because my tiny hands had an awkward time working with a large, heavy rag doing a task I’d never done before).

Now, I wasn’t getting an attitude. I was calmly responding, and my teacher told me to stop talking back. 

I can’t remember if this was one of the few incidents I can barely remember where my teacher would ask another school authority figure if I acted out or not, so I can’t really say if that was the end of that little thing or not. And come to think of it, I’ve noticed the other students doing volunteer work when I did were allowed to talk to one another, but when I tried talking, I was told by one of the cooks that I should be washing and not talking. And none of the students looked at me or talked to me during or after lunch that day.

I really wish I could remember the details of what all was said. All I remember were the facial expressions, the position I was in, feeling overwhelmed doing a task I’ve never been taught how to do, not allowed to feel like I was allowed to exist that day, the tones in the teachers’ and cooks’ voices, a few key words, and how alienated I felt.

This tore me up because my logic as a child was if you’re hated, then it’s because you’re a bad person. I felt hated that day, and I could not figure out how or why I was considered a bad person. I never bothered pursuing answers on that matter either, because I would simply catch shit for “talking back” or “acting out.”

That event wasn’t quite the start of my decline from a happy, energetic kid to a kid who just tried to psychologically survive (I think that was 4th or 5th grade). But it helped build up to that decline, only for it to spiral in middle school, and get even worse throughout my first 3 years of high school.

I wanted to be the cart-kid because I wanted to feel needed, and when I helped someone get a simple thing, I’d be met with kindness and happiness, a way to remind myself, “See? Stuff ain’t so bad. You’re not a hated kid, and you can show the teachers how good of a job you do!” Instead, I got tucked away doing something useful that could also keep me easily isolated from the other kids, doing a task I was never really taught how to do, and caught some shit for not doing a good job as a result, making me feel like I don’t belong there (or even in this world).

Normally, this isolation feeling is something I felt at home a lot, because my brother was the favorite, but with me? No time for bonding with me, because dad’s tired or mom’s too exhausted from being the breadwinner. But as I progressed throughout gradeschool, so did the social isolation I experienced outside of home. And for some reason, the teachers all loved to make it into a massive spectacle whenever they could.

Catching that tone from the cook, and then from the teacher, was all done while the line for our class was still waiting to go back to our classroom; we were the last one as another was beginning to leave. So not only were classmates in my class staring at me like I’m some problem child, but so did the lingering last half of students in the other line in a different class just before they began to leave the cafeteria.

There were asshole teachers in middle and high school, but my gradeschool teachers (except for my first grade teacher who is still my favorite to this day; I hope she’s alright) had this sick enjoyment out of making sure that if I had a flaw, they would exploit it. If I made a mistake, they made sure everybody knew about it. 

And it took until very recently for me to realize that what I experienced is a similar story to other Autistic people’s experiences as kids.

Similar other events at school include being 1 of 2 dragons in our little Medieval Week in 4th grade, where the other girl who was a dragon was wanted to play some cool parts in our improv skits, but they wanted *me* when they needed a dragon to “kill” (and by “kill,” I mean lots of kicking... on a stage... in front of an audience.. can’t remember if it was an audience of parents or students though), being picked last in gym class with the team that ended up with me complaining that they had to have me on their team (or not getting picked at all and then getting bitched at by the gym teacher for not participating), and either never being cheered on or being completely laughed at (depending on the context of how I fucked up) during the olympics our school held every year.

And after pondering for a moment, aside from a couple of Pokemon fans a grade below me when I was in 5th grade, I don’t even recall actually playing with anybody at recess because nobody wanted me to play. I just sort of did my own thing when I didn’t find anyone to play with.

I’m gonna end my little ramble/rant thing here. I just felt like I had to get this off my chest or else not saying anything in any format would eat away at my brain. (Journaling hurts my hand so I don’t do it much.)

[ganymedesclock]

Ooh ooh ooh, how about your version of Sonic for the powers thing?

You see, Sonic is fast, because if he doesn't keep ahead of his problems, he'll have to actually think about them, and then he'll have a crisis.

This is partially a fun opener joke and it's also not. I'll let you decide how much of each it is. In the meantime, I'm going to talk about what my reads of various canons inspire in me, and how that informs Worlds AU, a bit more than talking about Worlds AU itself.

So Sonic in the initial game canon, started out with an extremely simple conceit. You can see this mirrored across all of the non-Amy classic characters: Sonic runs, that's his thing; Tails flies, Knuckles punches, Eggman makes robots and also problems, which sort of condenses into one thing considering the role robots have in the classic games.

(that damn caterkiller has cost me SO many attempts at a chaos emerald...)

This sort of got to be a problem as the games advanced. In particular, the Sonic game I started on was Sonic Adventure 2, which pitted Sonic very prominently off of Shadow. At this point, character concepts are no longer about simple capabilities, and every other member of the cast has grown up. (even Amy... though not too much. sorry Amy). Tails is now building robots to go with how his flight allows him to reach unconventional 'tricky' routes; Knuckles is now more of an adventurer, explorer, and even a mystic given his history and relationship with the emeralds. This earthly pugilist sense grounds him in a more versatile skill-set.

Sonic... basically his gimmick was remaining true to the classic formula- he was still the one going fast, popping those shuttle loops, and tumbling through a chaotic universe. Yes, they absolutely polished this and put flourishes on it- now he's grinding rails and flipping on poles, this sense of street-smart parkour that carries him cheekily through any environment...

But he's played off Shadow, where the thing about Shadow, especially in the first game, is Shadow is a person who suppresses most of his personality for his context. Not in an inorganic or badly written sense, mind- but he outright says to Rouge at one point that it doesn't matter if anything he remembers is fake- in essence, that it's more real than he is, and a dead person's wish is more important than his life.

Shadow is a soldier, is an alien, is a bioweapon, is a teleporter and he shoots lasers. We are beyond the days of simple conceits; if he was conceived in the classic era, he'd have probably been either only a jet-skater or a teleporter, and that one conceit about how he moved through the world would've been through everything.

Sonic picks up the chaos control from Shadow- in direct reaction to Shadow- and this is commented on. In this scene, Sonic not only rejects Shadow's unhealthy obsession with context- that where he came from was everything- but mirrors it with an attitude that, frankly, to me, rings just as unbalanced- Sonic basically denies having a backstory whatsoever.

"What you see is what you get!" he says.

And that flew in the classic era. We didn't really have a consistent or strongly-drawn backstory over why Sonic was fast. Most continuities around that era point it to either an accident or a happenstance synergy with an outside force. But we didn't really need a story over why Tails can fly or why Knuckles had spurs on his fists.

But in the modern era... there's context. Many characters have superpowers. And more and more, there was a sense that those superpowers had context and history, whether the outright spelled, like Shadow (he was engineered to be capable of this; if you look at him, he has most of the abilities you'd expect of a boss fight in Resident Evil, minus the squelchy, infectious sorts and the Black Arms imply he could well have those and just not use them)

...or the simply alluded, such as Blaze's ominous comment that her flames are the reason she was always alone.

Sonic... clearly has powers. He's been reframed to keep up with he setting as it changes. But that exchange between him and Shadow- where Shadow looks at what Sonic is capable of, looks at him, and asks, verbatim, "what are you," and Sonic delivers a non-answer so naked and so certain that there's not really anything to say to that.

To this end, while I think it's highly intuitive that they picked the wind as the motif to spice Sonic up to- with its sense of freedom, and with its association with speed- I think there's also something about air in general that connects to Sonic.

Air is... omnipresent. It has an extremely complex seething system high overhead. Enormous paths and belts and spirals of wind curl over us all the time, pushing clouds the size of entire states around like it's nothing. When you look at the sky, it looks stationary. But wait, squint- it's actually moving. It's actually moving really fast.

One of my absolute favorite characterizing moments of Sonic is in Archie Comics, specifically the post-reboot series. To keep context minimal, Tails confides in Sonic that he's losing his memory of a certain incident that affected both of them, and he's worried; Sonic reassures him, typical hero big brother best friend, and gives him a big hug. The scene is warmly lit.

The very next panel is literally in the shadows, over Tails' shoulder and behind his back. And Sonic's expression is... troubled. Telling. We immediately understand from that alone he just lied, and has no ability to 'just remember for Tails'.

Sonic is not a vacuous person. He's not empty, he's not innocent, and he's certainly not just your same good nostalgic friend who never changed or got complicated so you don't have to reevaluate all of those things- the guy you can always count on, just like the sky is always there- but he sure pretends to be all of those things, and tries to keep the stormy weather as far away from other people as possible.

This is given another heroic-sounding-but-actually-concerning context in Sonic Unleashed, one of several games in which Sonic shows a maybe suspicious but profound aptitude for darkness where he guzzles and serves as a very powerful conduit for the energy of Dark Gaia, who is strongly connoted with rage, despair, denial, and other states considered bad for your health.

Sonic asks Chip- who he's just found out is Dark Gaia's counterpart- if it was his protection that kept him from losing his mind the entire time. Chip denies this, and states instead it's that "you never let the darkness win."

The thing is... anger and sadness are actually pretty important to feel. And it's actually not true that Sonic as a character doesn't feel anger- there's a few rather notable scenes in which he really loses his cool, some of them within Sonic Unleashed itself (he actually scares Eggman at the culmination of the Egg Dragoon fight) and in the game Sonic and the Secret Rings he actually achieves a super form powered by negative emotions- and that game also ends on a surprisingly melancholy note, where Shahra, when leaving Sonic, specifically gives him a bunch of tissues, a nod to how they met, and specifically "So you can cry as much as you need to."

Sonic is a good person. But Sonic is also... kind of a liar. He has this powerful connection to these highly destructive and dangerous entities- Dark Gaia, Chaos- and this is a thing he, pointedly, doesn't wonder about. And it's not arrogance, or an inability to consider the possibilities- in Sonic Colors he is very real with himself that he can't outrun a black hole, but only admits that once Tails is out of earshot on the one safe ride away from it- and while gearing up to try to do so anyway.

Wind is a contradictory thing. In the sky, we consider the possibility of ultimate freedom; flight and wings are often depicted as symbols of enormous power and efficacy because the very notion of being able to go wherever you want to captivates us.

On the other hand, though, a state of freefall is terrifying. In the unparalleled freedom of the sky, absolutely nothing can catch you if you fall.

(you know, except Tails, if you're fighting Eggman in Marble Garden- I'll leave)

We can talk about a bolt from the blue, a sudden storm or a just-as-sudden clear blue sky... the mechanisms of the air around us are often very hard to perceive for their superficial simplicity. And on sunny days when the wind lazes slowly through the leaves, it's hard to think of it as capable of hurricane forces.

I guess the note I want to leave this on is, it's pretty interesting how Sonic genuinely likes running, but he also tends to either outrun or fight anything that stresses him out- and "what he is" and "what he's capable of" is something he really doesn't like talking about even if he's happy to show or compete it.

[newswcanonprompts]

Anakin is sent to negotiate with Gardulla the Hutt bc of the success of the Jabba mission (no one in the Council knows Gardulla used to own him)

editor’s note: there is actually a fic that came from this, by the lovely @primeemeraldheiress! here is the link

this one is SUPER angsty, sorry in advance, i missed the original conversation about this prompt and when i got back online everyone was yelling about it, when i read what they did i was in *shock*. like ow. anyways have fun

After being so helpful in rescuing Jabba the Hutt's son, Anakin, Ahsoka and Obi-Wan end up being sent on a mission to help Gardulla the Hutt because Anakin hasn't told anyone about his history with her

Possible reactions from Gardulla:

"Skywalker? I owned a human like that, her brat always caused trouble. Good riddance!"

What if she decides that since he's back in her territory that means he belongs to her again

.....gardulla hears him try to call obi-wan master and tries to buy anakin from him (Gardulla asking if obi-wan is anakin's master and anakin being in such a messed up mental space that he says yes, trusting that Obi-wan won’t let her buy him)

Obi-Wan wondering why Anakin is being so specifically arsey with this Hutt. "Force you're worse with her than you were with Jabba."

"Oh yeah, she bought me and my mother. I think I have a reason to dislike her."

The council meeting afterwards where obi-wan rails on the council...

Obi-Wan suddenly getting a horrible feeling whenever Anakin calls him master because he's known the contexts were different but now it is real and in his face

Like it's a different thing for Obi-Wan to know his padawan used to be a slave compared to looking his padawan's former master in the eye and seeing her current slaves.

Anakin manages to control himself in the throne room but the whole way there and back he can't help worrying that one of the really old lash scars that curls around his shoulder will be noticed, that his identity as a former slave will be exposed

anakin not being able to call obi-wan master on tatooine like. point blank. he starts addressing him as master and just. flinches.

anakin usually wears his heart on his sleeves right?? always shows his emotions, feelings, all that. Well, the closer they get to gardulla's palace the blanker his face gets

Ahsoka calls Anakin master and Anakin just grits out a "Please don't call me that, not here."

Obi-Wan suddenly realising why Anakin comes across as arrogant as times. He's spent his entire life trying to up his value because there's safety in value.

Anakin telling them not to use the name "Skywalker" while they're in the palace

Anakin's accent shifts so entirely to the point where it almost sounds like Obi-Wan's because he's so determined to not slip into old roles

Anakin having to be physically held back from getting into a physical fight. Not even using his lightsaber, he just wants to fight

Or, alternatively, all the fight just going out of Anakin because he knows, here, it'll just make everything worse. So he's almost.... compliant and it freaks everyone out

Ex. from @youngcreativenerdgoddess: Obi-Wan is terrified. His former padawan is the most resigned he’s ever been. He looks so....defeated. A look one would never expect on the vaunted “Hero with no fear”. All the fight was gone from him, and that scared him more than anything else in this force-damned war had.

Obi-Wan actually being the one about to lose his temper and then Anakin just puts a hand on his shoulder and tells him there's no point.

Consider: instead of anakin being angry he was sent on the mission, being resigned because of course he was, he knew Gardulla bes

Anakin comes across as an almost perfect Jedi for once in his life and in the context it is horrifying

Anakin’s report to the council is so matter of fact because he thought they knowingly sent him on the mission because of his past experience with Gardulla

Obi-Wan finds Anakin writing what he thinks is a CV then he sees the numbers next to it and it is his estimated value--"for the gardulla mission, if she finds out who I am she'll try to rebuy me"

After the mission, from @jasontoddiefor: "Failed you, we have," Yoda said, his voice full of grief, and Obi-Wan watched in horror as Anakin only titled his head, for once looking his age and not the years the war has aged him. 

"What do you mean?" Anakin asked, not understanding.

Examples of bits and pieces from this prompt:

Ex. from jasontodiefor: Anakin in the corner of her palace having a breakdown because he remembers memories he had thought gone, his mother's shouting and the tearful begging and the pain, pain, pain and he hadn't meant to break the vase, it had been an accident, please stop it hurts, Mom-

jasontodiefor: "A game of chance." 

"What?" 

Anakin doesn't look up from his hands, doesn't meet Obi-Wan's eyes. He hadn't since they'd arrived here. "I'd still be here like them if not for a game of chance. I'd be worth more than just a few credits too. Force-sensitive, young, good with mechanics, pretty-"

Ex. from Ro: Obi-Wan has never seen Anakin this silent before. There were nights before, when they were both younger, Obi-Wan himself still trying to heal from Qui-Gon's death and Anakin trying to get used to the temple. And Anakin would get quiet, but he was never this stone cold silent. Never this blank. He's so emotional, Obi-Wan's former padawan (his child), so open with his heart on his sleeve. There is none of that here, none of that bright boy. Anakin doesn't fight it, and that is the thing that worries Obi-Wan the most, because when Anakin doesn't like something he fights, he lashes out with teeth and sticks his heels in. But in this, he is resigned. (Anakin doesn't let Ashoka off the ship. She fights and argues but Anakin doesn't move, doesn't joke. He stands firm with it and Obi-Wan watches.

"Master, I—" 

Anakin flinches, "You're staying on the ship, Ahsoka, that's final." She huffs and leaves, and the only thing Obi-Wan can see is how relieved Anakin looks. There is something wrong here, but Anakin has never liked talking about Tatooine, and Obi-Wan has never pushed.) Obi-Wan has never hated a mission more.

Another ex from jasontodiefor: "But-" 

"You're young," Anakin interrupts her sharply. Ahsoka hates it when he cuts her off. It doesn't happen too often, mostly on the battlefield when he's barking orders at everyone. If anything, he lets her speak out of tune more often than he should or other Masters would, but right now his voice doesn't leave any room for agreement. "Young, underage actually, and female, that's the first 10K. Extra five if they don't sell you as inexperienced, and only stupid slavers would do that, but as a virgin."

Ahsoka pales. Anakin's voice is harsh, but there is an almost easy flow to his words, as if he had recited them in his head over and over again. "Force sensitive, that's next. Another 8K regularly, but you're a Jedi, so that's 20K. A Padawan, mind you, but you're a known face next to mine and Obi-Wan's. Obi-Wan would fetch 40 for his status as a Jedi and councilor alone. And you're a Togruta, you sell better than a human girl. I'd add another 6 for that."

You sell better. Not you would, there's nothing hypothetical about this, Ahsoka realizes. Anakin's narrowing down what would happen to her if somebody just managed to grab her lightsabers, to put a collar around her throat and cut her off from all that she had ever known. "Now, that's just your base value," Anakin continues. "You're also a pretty good mechanic and pilot, though the latter makes your flight risk much higher. Given how dangerous you are, let's say 10K. You're a strong fighter, so you could probably get another 8K in the arena, perhaps a little more depending on what planet you're sold on. Your political value also can't be overlooked. You fight at the front and know much more about the war effort as a whole and that's worth much more, probably another 15." Anakin holds up his fingers like he's counting apples and now how much people would be willing to brand her as theirs. "So we're roughly at 70. That's not bad at all. Not as much as Obi-Wan or I would get, but it's more than enough. You're not coming on this mission. End of discussion."

[flagellant]

i don't necessarily think believing you were some type of something other than human in a past life and feeling connected to that in this one and even feeling slight feelings of dysmorphia bc of differences bt how you physically felt then vs how you feel now is something to conflate with full blown body dysmorphia. i also think you insinuating that people believing in forms of reincarnation in which they remember their past lives vividly and then openly discuss their connection with it is something that is promoting or feeding into forms of psychosis or delusion is like Kinda Shitty. That isn't directly in regard to the alien person, i don't necessarily think what they were doing was appropriate either, but implying their connection with non-humanity is delusional when it's spiritual feels really rude?

I'm coming from a place of both being a person that believes in reincarnation and has past life memories and has existed as non human before AND as someone with body dysmorphia due to an eating disorder. I sometimes feel slight "dysmorphia" when i think about my physical form from my past lives that are different to my body now, but that's not like A Disorder. it's not unhealthy. it's not causing me any real distress. the dysmorphia i felt at the height of my ed was disordered and unhealthy. you see why i say claiming anyone that feels the way i do about their connections to non humanity is true dysmorphia or worse saying it's delusional is shitty right?

sorry if i articulated this not the best i have trouble with that sometimes. im not trying to attack ur character or anything, i just want to simply express that i think the way you speak about this and your conceptions about this do come across as pathologizing aspects of spirituality you don't understand, which is kinda hurtful. i'm open to understanding more how you think about these things, and i hope you will be open hearing my perspective as well

As was stated in a previous person who said this

You are taking this entirely out of context and I was not referring to religious or spiritual aspects of reincarnation beliefs often found in Eastern faiths

I was explicitly talking about "I am a reincarnation of an alien trapped in a human body" and "I am Literally Shinji Ikari from an alternate reality reincarnated wrong"

You know

The things that were being dealt with as considered problems in the context of the conversation being had

[everysongineverykey]

I'M DONE. HERE. TAKE THESE CHAPTER 2 THOUGHTS AND RUN, BABY.

so i'll try to go in order here. uhhhh... there's a LOT i have to say. first: toriel giggling sprite my beloved

on that note, ALL THE NEW SUSIE SPRITES MY BELOVEDS

NOELLE YOU'RE SO GAY. I THINK THIS IS PROBABLY JUST BECAUSE I TOLD HER TO IN CHAPTER ONE BUT SHE GAVE SUSIE THE LUNCHBOX FULL OF CHALK!! I LOVE ITTTT

ralsei's, uh... kinda sus. the whole "recruiting" thing REALLY sketches me out. and he looks kinda... smug, all the time, like he knows what's going on.

LANCER JOINED! ROUXLS JOINED EVEN THOUGH NO ONE WANTED THAT! STARWALKER JOINED, TO EVERYONE'S JOY!

LIBRARY PORTALLLL

so before i entered the city there was that pre-city area? that looked very much like the city? except it had different music? and i thought they'd cut welcome to the city and i was SEVERELY disappointed. but then they didn't! just something i wanted to mention

NOELLE!!

throughout this game i went from despising berdly to feeling bad for him to not really liking him again, but not hating him as much as before. he'd better stay the fuck away from susie though

the queen is the best villain. she's the kind you love to hate! she's literally so funny AND her boss battle is actually tough (rip to the king but he just. wasn't a formidable enemy at all lol)

THE GANG CHARLIE BROWN DANCING TO WIN A FIGHT! SUSIE GAINING THE POWER TO ACT THROUGH SHEER FORCE OF WILL! SUSIE FORCING RALSEI TO LEARN TO ACT EVEN THOUGH HE DIDN'T WANT TO! THAT ENTIRE BATTLE WAS AMAZING! THE "BATTLE WON" END DANCING SEQUENCE! GOING INSANE GOING INSANE

the puzzles in this chapter were genuinely really impressive! i especially loved the word search puzzles and the ice-ee undertale word search reference💙

that being said. the mouse puzzles were SO fucking infuriating. i caused poor noelle a LOT of grief with those and i feel bad.

SPEAKING OF NOELLE!! the scene where she and kris are walking through the puzzle, the one that spells "december", and she's talking about when they were kids, how she loved sneaking out? beautiful. the cinnamon tography <3 also i guessed dess's full name was december a while ago and while i guess it was obvious, it's nice to have that confirmed!

also, i love that susie and ralsei are real friends in this chapter! he taught her a healing spell!!

ugh. fucking berdly. so smug and pretentious. i love queen's desire to be as far away from him as possible though

i also like his backstory. it gives his behavior, even if it's still annoying, at least some context. i get the feeling of feeling like if you're not smart, people will forget about you, and that's scary.

ALSO ALSO. GAMER BERDLY. LITERALLY EVERYTHING ABOUT THAT IS PERFECT. "I THOUGHT YOU WERE A GAMER!" "i only play mobile games, berdly." "NOOOOOO!" like i ADORE that

anyways. time for me to talk about the only thing that matters in this world: suselle. i mean, did the gays win in this chapter or DID THE GAYS WIN IN THIS CHAPTER?? THEY RODE A HEART-COVERED FERRIS WHEEL AND HAD A HEARTFELT, TENSION-FILLED CONVERSATION!

"did you ever wonder why the real susie never picked on you? well, maybe it's because... when you were both new to class, you lent her one of your pencils, like... maybe a dumb one with candy canes on it or something, and... even though it didn't actually taste like candy, she... remembered your smile." okay god thanks toby it's not like i needed my heart or anything

SERIOUSLY. TOBY "i'm gonna give the gays everything they want" FOX IS BACK WITH ANOTHER BANGER LADS

QUEEN'S BOSS BATTLE! ACTUALLY TOUGH, UNLIKE KING'S! AND GIGA QUEEN! I'M GOING INSANE THAT WAS SO SICK AND SO HARD

the way my heart BROKE when lancer turned to stone good god thank GOD our boy's okay

AND ROUXLS KAARD IN HIS PIRATE DUCK!! WITH HIS LITTLE HAT! DEMANDING THE QUEEN MAKE HIM BUTLER SUPREMETH! I LOVE HIM MORE THAN LIFE ITSELF

also!! kris and ralsei's little moment on the swan boat💙 i wasn't a kralsei shipper before but uh... that may be starting to change

it's hard because ralsei's still suspicious but at the same time i love him and want him to be happy. i don't know how to feel

also, if darkners outside of their dark worlds turn to stone after a while, why didn't ralsei? that's, uhhh... VERY sus. very weird. mr fox i need ANSWERS

WE FINALLY HAVE A WAY TO SAVE AFTER WE'VE FINISHED MOST OF THE EPILOGUE LADS. REJOICE!!

seriously the thing that peeved me about ch1 was that the last save point was on the battle stage and if i wanted to play the epilogue again, i had to. do that entire battle all over. BUT NOW THAT'S BEEN FIXED!!

UNDYNE AND ALPHYS HAVE MET UNDYNE AND ALPHYS HAVE MET THIS IS NOT A DRILL UNDYNE GAVE HER A BOX OF CANDIES EVERYBODY SHUT UP THEY'RE IN LOVE ALL IS RIGHT WITH THE WORLD

ALSO! NEAR THE BEGINNING! I FORGOT TO MENTION THE LITTLE WHITE DOG DOING DONUTS IN A TOY RACE CAR AND BACKING UP TRAFFIC! THANK YOU LITTLE WHITE DOG!

on that note: "looks like a car. this one has a man in it. he waves at you happily." AND THEN THE MAN'S GONE??? HEY TOBY???

ALSO. THE SEGMENT WHERE THE ANNOYING DOG HELPS US FIND THE KEY THROUGH THE POWER OF WANTON DESTRUCTION. THE BEST PLOT DEVICE!

TORIEL TEACHING SUSIE TO MAKE PIE STOP ITTTTT

and yes yes i KNOW kris slashed toriel's tires. that was extremely troubling. but THEY MADE PIE TOGETHER!!

"leave the chalk alone, kris" TORIEL!!

sans and toriel making egg puns and asgore running in and going "don't forget me, your eggs-husband!" is the FUNNIEST sitcom moment type thing ever. GOD.

on the other hand sans let me meet your brother god dammit i'll kill you

METTATONNNNNNN

RUDY... "who got you these flowers?" "is it weird for a married man to get flowers?" "so your wife did?" "oh, no! kris's dad did!" "...not even gonna try to understand this..." TOBY STOP ITTTT YOU'RE GIVING THE ASGORUDY SHIPPERS FALSE HOPE. YOU KNOW YOU'RE JUST GONNA KILL RUDY. YOU'RE JUST RUBBING SALT IN THE WOUND!

NUBERT! MY MAN!

seeing kris repeatedly they-themmed by multiple characters makes me so happy <3 poor kid... "college summer vacation when" "you opened the door with your eyes closed. you saw nothing" kris....

KRIS...

fucking. BLACK FOG STORM IN THE LIVING ROOM KRIS STOP IT. HOW'RE THEY GONNA REVEAL THIS WAS INNOCENT? THE KNIFE IN CHAPTER ONE WAS EASY BUT HOW WILL THEY EXPLAIN THIS

the staticy tv appearing in the dark and a toothy smile slowly fading into view in the center and lingering there ominously for far too long >>>>>>> every hollywood horror movie ever god. GOD

snowy and monster kid checking out the red door. implying there's something in there. something that kris knows about. knowing we won't get any more deltarune content for 5+ years does NOT fill me with determination

also. gaster's symbolic theme being mus_smile. and the final image in the game being a smile. god. gaster's COMING lads.

onionsan hears a song at night... a familiar song... memory, perhaps? or maybe a certain... four-note arpeggio that's hidden in a sound test room in undertale? who knows? guess we'll just have to wait for chapters 3/4/5.

this concludes my ramblings for now, but don't get it twisted- this is FAR from the last post i'll make about ch2. this whole chapter was absolutely amazing! brilliant! showstopping!! i'm genuinely soooo super impressed and excited for the chapter 3/4/5 bundle!!!

[stxleslyds]

MY TOUGHTS ON THE END OF RED HOOD BY CHIP ZDARSKY.

Dishonour! Dishonour on you, dishonour on your cow! 

Well Jason Nation, it happened again, fanon wins over canon. The amount of bullshit that DC made Zdarsky write in this issue is insane, I have never seen this many fanfiction tropes shoved in a single issue in my life.

This book has been a constant insult to Jason’s character and his Red Hood “persona” since the very first issue but I never thought it would end this badly. It’s incredibly sad.

I will go ahead and say it, this tumblr and this post is not “Batfamily” friendly and it definitely isn’t fanon friendly when it comes to Jason Todd.

Fanon is destroying canon for Jason Todd. I am sorry but that’s how I see it, fanon doesn’t belong in canon, I would never get tired of saying that. But here is the thing, DC latches on to Jason’s fanon version because it fits their narrative of “the Batman is all that is right and all must follow his rules or they shall disappear”.

DC has been dying to make Jason bland and flavourless just like Batman. And now here it finally is.

Let’s be honest the story in this book, the new drug, Cheer, Tyler and his mom, none of that shaped this story, none of those things were the support beams for it. It was all about this never ending “daddy issues” thing that DC pretends is going on between Jason and Bruce.

It was all about those two fighting because they “think differently” so in the end they can push Jason towards the “no killing rule” being also the Red Hood’s modus operandi.

Its utter bullshit.

From the moment that Jason had to put a bat suit on I knew that this was going to be a mess. Luckily like I predicted they didn’t make a big deal out of him wearing it but the “Jason admires Batman” feeling was very present in the issue.

I will not talk about how easy it was for that one thug to land a punch on Jason while he was distracted and I will also not talk about Jason being a dumbass for not securing his dumb mask better when he knew the fight will involve gases. I will not talk about it.

Anyway, let’s talk about the Cheer Gas induced illusion, shall we?

In Jason’s illusion he finds Bruce at the manor looking at the picture of Joker’s death (?) and even though that is strange what Bruce says next is even weirder, he says this: “I did it. He was the last one, but I did it…Joker is dead. I am done.”

Now what the hell was that? This is Jason’s illusion, and by the looks of it in his illusion Bruce has killed every baddie in Gotham and left the Joker for last? Am I reading that right? Is this this a joke?

I understand that this is an illusion so the gas is making “real” things that Jason probably doesn’t know he wants, like wanting Bruce to go on a killing spree, which Jason never wanted because he said it himself, do you guys remember the iconic “I’m not talking about killing Cobblepot and Scarecrow or Clayface. Not Riddler or Dent…I’m talking about HIM. Just him.” Because I remember and it’s so important to Jason’s character, Jason never wanted Bruce to go on a killing spree, he wanted Bruce to kill the clown who had killed him when he was only fifteen. Is that so hard to remember DC?

And then it gets worse! Since WHEN has Jason wanted a perfect family life with the people that he has tried to kill, harm or looked down to? Why is “being with a bunch of people who NEVER get together for anything other than “help” the Bat in a fight against a fucking clown” the idea of happiness to Jason? Has this man ever interacted with any of these people in a positive way without the intrusion of a Batman/Robin event in the way? I will give you the answer, it’s no, the answer is no.

Jason Todd doesn’t care for your “Batfamily” bullshit DC, why would it matter to him? Because he was Robin? He was killed by the Joker when he was Robin, and he was killed because the man in charge of him didn’t pay enough attention! Jason Todd who was written as Dick Grayson’s number one hater for so long (and fandom loves that) is now having an illusion where he enjoys happy times with him along the others? Cass and Stephanie? What? Am I missing something, is this actually AO3, is this fanfiction?

I think Zdarsky got confused, this illusion is what would happen if Jason were dosed with fear gas. That must be it, I solved it everyone! Zdarsky just got confused by his own writing!

I wish.

Let’s go back to the sad reality, Jason has a moment in which he actually puts all his training in motion and shakes of the gas’s grasp on him. He does that but he is grabbed by so many people (who are this people?) and he is unarmed and I believe that’s the only reason why Cheer is still alive after saying that he has someone in Tyler’s mom’s hospital room ready to kill her if he doesn’t join him.

(If this were the real Jason, Cheer would have dropped dead instantly.)

But this is not the real Jason and this is not a *real* comic, it’s fanfiction! So just like that time in Batman #100 when Dick was fighting alone as Nightwing (for the first time since his “family” left him alone after losing his memories) the rest of the “family” shows up to fight Cheer and four random thugs.

Yep, its like the MCU had considered having Cap say “Avengers Assemble” when they were fighting a couple of robots instead of Thanos.

What a mess.

Also having Jason say, in real life (not illusion world), “You know what happiness is? It’s knowing that others have your back.” about this group of people is the perfect recipe for a big OOC moment for absolutely everyone. I cannot believe they have dragged Jason back to this awful concept and that they have sank him so low. It’s quite honestly, disgusting.

But the horrors don’t end there, we have a wonderful moment after Jason gives Batman the antidote, Jason stops Batman from punching the living shit out of Cheer. Because I am not stupid. There is no way in the world that you can convince me that Jason just stopped Batman from killing Cheer.

How incredibly delusional do you have to be to write Batman finally killing someone and that someone being Cheer, a guy that was introduced to comics two months ago?

Yes, later its said that between the gas and the antidote Bruce was a little too crazy and couldn’t help himself BUT I call bullshit once more, because Bruce has gone completely bat-shit-crazy on people before! I remember two recent instances in which that happened. Batman #57 in which Bruce beats the living shit out of KGBeast after he shot Dick. And the other one is Batman beating up Jason more brutally than he ever beat up Joker in RHatO #25.

DC cannot fuck with me. I might has bought this digital comic for 8 dollars but I am not buying that bullshit.

ALSO, there was no need for Zdarsky to do Jason as dirty as he did him when he made him say: “If you are going to come down from mount judgement to MY level for once… he’s not the guy to do it for.”

Zdarsky, why did you write a Red Hood story when you hate Red Hood? Couldn’t you have just told DC that you wanted to write a love letter to Batman? Once again, I am reading a Red Hood story for RED HOOD content not Batman content. Is it really that hard? I bet that if Zdarsky had asked DC to let him write a Batman story they would have said yes, there are like 20 Batman stories, they wouldn’t say no to one more!

Can you tell I am mad? And salty?

This post is so long and so full of anger, I am truly sorry for that but I have to write these feelings down or I would explode. And I am not even done, our suffering, Jason Nation, continues.

But first a little break from the pain, Tyler. Thank you after all the pain this book has given me Tyler is back and just like I predicted his mom is fine and he will stay with her, they both have been given a place and money to rebuild their life (not given by Jason nor Dick but I was close enough). The only happy ending that Tyler could have, he had and I am thankful for that, we even got a little adorable moment between the Red Hood and the Blue Hood.

I am weak for these little glimpses of a good Jason take in the middle of an incredibly awful/OOC story. And just to live in my own fantasy world I will headcanon that Jason promised himself to keep an eye out for Tyler and his mom. He would have wanted to know about their life and that they are still out of trouble.

Jason is a good man, don’t you forget that DC, I don’t care how much you twist it. Jason killing Tyler’s dad wasn’t a horrible act, it was fair game. That man was a horrible person, he drugged his child and made his wife (?) almost overdose. You never gave context as to why that man was working as a drug dealer but you told us those things so Jason should never feel like he did something wrong. As far as we know, Tyler and his mom are better off without him.

Having said that, lets go back to the pain of what is reading a Red Hood story.

“I’m giving up the guns.”

You know what, fine, as long as DC doesn’t pull another “I will stop being Red Hood for you Barbara” I will be fine. He can kill people with other things, he used to have the all-blades, he had normal swords and he had crowbars.

I will sacrifice Jason looking hot as hell when he pulls out his guns just to keep him as the Red Hood, all DC has to do is not give him that stupid… bat… symbol… oh no…. oh my god I can feel it… that thing, that horrible thing is making a comeback! NO!

Jason and Bruce’s talk is basic and it doesn’t do anything for anyone, in the end saying that Jason isn’t changing his ways for Bruce but that he is doing it for himself is more of the same. We know he is doing it for Bruce and we know DC is doing it because they cannot handle good, complex and interesting characters. We know that and sadly we have to live with it.

About Bruce’s illusion, well, Bruce has said that he wanted to kill the clown for a very long time and in the King run it was basically said that if Bruce were to be happy then the idea of Batman would die.

Listen, between me and you, sometimes I think that the Joker isn’t that big of a problem for Gotham as a whole, that clown has beef with the Bat and no one else. If Bruce has killed the Joker Jason would have been happy with Bruce all those years ago but killing the Joker wouldn’t make Gotham a safe place and any of his kids happier.

Bruce needs to care for his children, but he won’t do that, he has Dick for that. Taking care and raising Damian? No, thank you, I will not do that. Giving a shit about my son who lost all his memories and is alone? No thank you, I won’t do that and then I will lie about having watched him over. Tim? Oh, never heard of him, sorry.

The last page of this story is the one of Jason arriving home and finding a new suit that Bruce gave him with the bat symbol on it. That symbol that he had ripped off of Jason’s beat up body back in RHatO #25 (nope, I am not letting that one go).

Oh, and Bruce leaving that suit in Jason’s home gives me the same exact vibes as the time that Bruce was like “Long overdue. This is where you belong. As one of us. One of the family” in Nightwing #74 a second after Dick had regained his memories.

I don’t know why but they make him sound incredibly cold and like these people are just his pawns that he needs to rope back in every time they get away from him. It’s very disturbing.

Anyway, that’s all from me, I obviously LOVED this book, best Jason Todd/Red Hood characterisation ever! 11/10 would recommend to everyone including my enemies!

🙃

[ouyangzizhensdad]

Perhaps you'd like a an ask that's not discourse related? If so, then I wanted to ask you if you know what jin zixuan thought of jin guangyao?

Hi anon,

I appreciate your non-discourse-related ask 😉. Your question made me realise that the novel seems to explicitly avoid giving us any real sense of what Jin Zixuan thought of Jin Guangyao, or how he reacted to the ways other people treated JGY. It seems that JZX remained unaware at the time that Meng Yao came on his birthday--and literally got kicked out. At Phoenix Mountain, JZX stops being mentioned after JGY appears and while his mother mistreats him--he’s only brought back into the narration at the very end to scream at JYL. JZX is also absent the night that WWX goes to Jinlintai to confront the Jins about Qiongqi path and in the direct aftermath. But let’s dig for crumbs and make sense of gaps, and let’s see what we can infer from them.

We know that, originally, Jin Zixuan was the epitome of the proud Jin: “The ways of the Jin Sect were proud, and Jin Zixuan inherited every single drop of this. With his high standards, he had been unsatisfied with this engagement since a long time ago.“ We could wonder if the circumstances of JGY’s birth would have been something JZX would have judged him for. We know that he took offense to WWX’s persona, although it is not spelled out exactly what offended him specifically: “Because of this engagement, Jin Zixuan had no positive impressions of the YunmengJiang Sect, and had frowned upon Wei Wuxian’s behavior since some time ago.“ However, it’s unclear whether the circumstances of WWX’s birth influenced how he perceived his behaviour. All we know for sure is that two other Jin family members--his father and Jin Zixun--never forgot about it and brought it up. We also know that in the past, JZX felt comfortable ignoring people’s good will towards him if he felt he was motivated in his view of them, as he did with JYL in the past:

Jin-furen had brought him to Lotus Pier a couple of times. Neither Wei Wuxian nor Jiang Cheng liked to play with him; only Jiang Yanli wanted to feed him the food that she made. Jin Zixuan, however, didn’t really like to pay her any attention.

At the same time, we do know that JZX had a sense of righteousness, what with him standing up against Wen Chao at Dusk-Creek Mountain. Likewise, we see with the soup incident that at least when it comes to a low-level cultivator who is a servant, a good deed done towards him without trying to gain his gratitude is enough to earn his respect, and for JZX to take action to raise the standing of that person:

Cleverly, the woman never acknowledged anything, but instead denied it ambiguously, her cheeks flushed, making it sound as though she was the one who did it, but didn’t want Jin Zixuan to know how much trouble she went through. And thus, Jin Zixuan didn’t force her to admit it any longer. However, in action, he had began to respect the cultivator. He began to pay attention to her, even raising her from a servant to a guest cultivator.

JZX even tells JYL: “Don’t think that just because you come from a powerful sect that you can steal and trample other people’s feelings. Some people, even if they come from poor backgrounds, their character are much better than the former’s. Please watch your conduct.” This underlines that, regardless of his upbringing, and perhaps even views that he might have held at some point in his life, at this point JZX seemed to want to judge others based on their character rather than their background. Of course, we can wonder if that reserve of good will would have extended to his half-brother, especially one that could try to take his place as the heir. However, considering the circumstances, from JGY’s birth to JGS’s decision to give him a name that did not align him with the same generation as JZX, we can wonder if anyone ever perceived then JGY as someone who could potentially become the next sect leader, as seen in this exchange between WWX and JC:

Jiang Cheng smirked, “Don’t carry your sword, then. It doesn’t matter. But don’t provoke Jin Zixuan from now on. He’s Jin Guangshan’s only son, after all. The future leader of the LanlingJin Sect will be him. If you beat him up, what should I, the sect leader, do? Beat him up with you? Or punish you?”

Wei Wuxian, “Isn’t Jin Guangyao here now? Jin Guangyao seems so much better than him.”

Jiang Cheng finished wiping his sword. After he scrutinized it for a while, he finally put Sandu back into its sheath, “So what, if he’s better? No matter how much better he is, no matter how clever, he could only be a servant who greets the guests. That’s all there is to his life. He can’t compare with Jin Zixuan.”

At Phoenix Mountain, while we do not see JZX say anything out of line to JGY, he is present while his mother and Jin Zixun disrespect him: and we get no reaction written for him while that takes place--he’s mostly licking his wounded pride. We also know that this disrespect by his family towards JGY was the norm, so we have to assume that JZX would have been a witness to it in other situations. In the context of that specific scene, it’s difficult to to infer something concrete from that silence: is it agreement? complicity? a certain indifference to JGY’s situation? an unwillingness of rock the boat or to seem to publicly challenge his mother? or simply him just being too self-absorbed by his romantic woes?

The next scene that would have made for an interesting case study is the night WWX comes to confront the Jins about the camp at Qiongqi Path. However, JZX is absent that night. Conveniently, or as a means to maintain a sense of ambiguity between him and WWX, we thereby do not know how JZX feels about what happened. He is also absent during the aftermath:  “At midnight, in the Golden Pavilion on JinlinTai sat over fifty sect leaders from sects of all sizes. Jin Guangshan sat in the foremost seat. Jin Zixuan was away [...].” (interesting that CQL added JZX to that scene). Which means he is not there to react to the mistreatment of JGY by others or to react to the way JGY is clearly lying for the purposes of manipulating the general opinion on WWX and save the Jin’s reputation.

We also do not get to witness the conversation that leads JZX to come to Qiongqi Path to try to stop Jin Zixun. All we get is a sentence of dialogue from JZX explaining that he thought JGY looked strange which prompted JZX tp questioned him questions (we of course know that JGY was purposefully acting that way to get JZX to go to Qionqqi Path, so it’s hard to take that as a sign of clear familiarity between them that would have allowed JZX to read hidden emotions from him). Did JZX ask out of specific concern for or suspicions of JGY? We don’t know! It is interesting to note though that, in this scene, Jin Zixun refers to JGY as “A-Yao”, which the narration contextualises by telling us that Jin Zixun started calling him in a more intimate manner despite the original contemps he had held for him. However, when JZX mentions JGY to Jin Zixun, he calls him “Jin Guangyao” (for reference, Jin Zixun calls JZX “Zixuan”).

All in all, we get very little from looking at JZX. However, there is something to be said in the absence of any specific grievances expressed by JGY towards him in terms of framing how JZX may have acted towards him when they were both at Jinlintai. Indeed, when Jin Ling asks JGY why he arranged for his father to go to Qiongqi path, meeting his death, JGY mentions the unfairness of the situation of both sons, but never brings up anything JZX did specifically to him. And we know that JGY has a great memory which allows him to hold grudges.

Suddenly, Jin Ling screamed, “Why?!” He stood up from beside Jiang Cheng. Eyes red, he rushed toward Jin Guangyao as he shouted, “Why did you have to do this?!”

Nie Huaisang hurried to pull back Jin Ling, who seemed as though he wanted to fight with Jin Guangyao. Jin Guangyao returned the question, “Why?” He turned to Jin Ling, “A-Ling, then could you tell me why? Why is it that even if I face everyone with a smile, I might not even receive the lowest form of respect, while even though your father was extremely arrogant, people flocked to him? Could you tell me why we were born from the same person but your father could relax at home with the love of his life playing with his child, while I never even dared be alone for long with my wife, shivering out of fright at first glance of my son? And I was ordered to do such a thing by my father as if it was natural—to kill an extremely dangerous figure who could flip out and conjure up a bloody massacre with his corpses anytime!

“Why is it that even though we were born on the same day, Jin Guangshan could host a grand banquet for one son, and watch with his own eyes how his subordinate kicked his other son down Jinlintai, from the first stair to the last!”

He finally revealed the hatred hidden deep within him. It wasn’t directed at neither Jin Zixuan nor Wei Wuxian, but rather his own father.

As a result, we might infer that, at the very least, JZX never directly acted towards JGY in a way that reflected how JGS or Jin Zixun (at some point) treated him. At the same time, it’s difficult to suggest that he stood up for him when other people disrespected him, and we know that JZX’s mother disrespected JGY in lieu of directing her anger toward the real culprit, her awful husband. Little seems to suggest that they grew intimate after JGY came to Jinlintai. It’s really hard to divine, as a result, what JZX might have thought of JGY.

The most interesting thing to take away from this is that it seems absolutely deliberate on MXTX’s part to show us as little as possible in terms of interactions between JZX and JGY. We can speculate as to why that is: to separate JZX from the machinations of this sect? to avoid giving us more ammunition to guess that JGY was behind JZX’s death? to ensure that WWX remains ambiguous towards JZX? or just as a means to avoid having to figure out how to work this dynamic into already complicated scenes and character relationships? etc.