#emphatically point

[dustedbooksandreadingnooks]

Ishi was prattling on about something in their inn room, more than used to filling the silence and knowing Kizuna preferred it and was always listening. His presence was elsewhere, until it suddenly wasn't- heat radiating against her back like a low fire as she jumped at the touch. His forehead pressed against her shoulder, hands reaching before they twitched back to hover uncertainly around her. Ishi could feel the hotness of his breath as he exhaled a frustrated-sounding huff. "Kizuna....? What's wrong?" She asks, voice soft as she reaches back to pet his hair, soft and fluffy and still free from their recent visit to the hot spring. She can hear-feel the way his teeth grind together before another hot sigh seeps into her sweater, fluffy white ears pinning back in the corners of her vision. Ishi waits- ears swiveled back to listen while her eyes watched his hands. It took a while, Kizuna's hands moving wordlessly before they both synced up. His middle fingers come forward, hands flicking in her direction and back again before he clenched his hands (More uncertainty- not a sign-). Ishi can feel him lean against her a little further, the next sign more shy as he crooked one pointer finger a couple times.

[Touch.... can I?]

---

Kizuna has lots of trouble initiating touch himself, even well into their official relationship when Ishi touches him freely.

I actually really like writing sign, as difficult as it is sometimes. Kizuna is so expressive in his body language it's a much more accurate way for him to communicate as well as being more comfortable for him.

He also asks questions like this a lot, especially ones he's anxious about. It reads as rather "cute/shy" to me, since he just signs one word [TOUCH] and then indicates that he's [ASK]ing a question, the second sign always very small.

I do use brackets to indicate that [Kizuna is signing,] but its just in replacement of "someone is speaking," and I write it out as it would be translated as opposed to what he's actually signing. It's mostly for rp purposes to keep my thoughts organized, and to know if someone is using sign immediately rather than typing X signs, every time.

[kradogsrats]

I'd Do Anything (... But I Won't Do That)

This started out kind of weird and petty but then turned into an actual thing about the relationship of Viren's character arc(s) to the Arc 2 "I'll do anything for you" theme, because that's actually pretty important for the context of how both Callum and Claudia will have to confront the same conflict.

Pictured: Do NOT take a shot every time we get a callback to this line, you will die.

Basically, the petty part is that I think evaluating Viren's Arc 1 decisions through the "I will do anything for my family" lens is... disingenuous is too strong a word, but maybe simplistic? The "Viren doesn't reveal/offer the egg to save Harrow's life because he's too preoccupied with hanging on to his own power" take has never sat right with me because the real core problem of Viren is a lot more complex than just "he's lying (to himself)," it's a whole pattern of denying his own agency in doubling down on his mistakes. He'll make one bad/selfish decision, and it becomes a cascade of subsequent actions that he sees as being unavoidable, but that aren't necessarily even informed by the same reasoning or values as the initial decision. Like everything else in Viren's dream, Kpp'Ar's take that his choices are all oriented toward power is both accurate and not necessarily as literal as it seems.

Because, like... Viren's not actually a manipulator or even much of a planner—he's a very skilled opportunist. That's why all his choices wind up being based entirely on the context of past choices, and frequently make no sense when you look at them from a "hey buddy, where exactly do you think you're going with this" angle. It also contributes to why he's so desperate for control all the time, in that he acts primarily in a reactive way rather than proactively, which is always an inherently less secure position.

Pictured: The kind of statement that definitely always leads to things going super well.

Even taking the egg in the first place is a reactive decision—not that he doesn't make a choice there, or that he doesn't choose power over the threat he believes the egg poses, but he did actually walk all the way up the Storm Spire, fight five or six Dragonguard, and get kicked down a flight of stairs with the intent of destroying it. He didn't argue with Harrow about destroying it while secretly planning to take it for himself. He only even thinks of it as a weapon because Tiadrin planted the idea in his mind—as an opportunist, the temptation to leave an avenue to power open rather than close it off is what he can't resist. He sat on Sarai's last breath for ten years waiting for a chance to weaponize it to maximum effect, he can sit (figuratively... or literally, I'm not gonna stop him) on the egg for as long as it takes for an appropriate use it to appear. Tiadrin even specifically encourages that he not "waste" it, both specifically by destroying it now, and implicitly by using it too quickly and foolishly.

Pictured: Smart mom, dumb ass.

Tiadrin's angle, of course, is that the longer Viren hangs on to the egg without actually using it, the higher the chance it can be recovered. She doesn't know that Viren will leave things in a state where the assumption is that the egg was destroyed, meaning no one will think to try recovering it, but that's not really her fault and it still pays off.

The gamble Viren makes, on the other hand, is that the opportunities the egg affords will be worth the risk of it somehow falling back into Xadian hands. If the egg returns to Xadia alive, he's back to square "his name will be vengeance" in the game of We Killed the Dragon King. So yeah, you could say Viren values keeping the egg over Harrow's life, but in doing that he's actually operating largely on the exact same values and beliefs that made him argue for destroying it in the first place. It's just that his prior choice of risking humanity's security for the sake of potentially world-altering power has backfired in the context of an immediate and direct threat to Harrow's life. Really, the entire rest of s1 and s2 are him doubling down specifically on keeping the egg from returning to Xadia while also milking the opportunities coming from that course—e.g. the egg cannot go back to Xadia, therefore Callum and Ezran cannot return to Katolis either with or without it (knowing their goal is to return it to Xadia, which it will be difficult to stop them from doing once Ezran is king), and that means someone has to take the throne. If the egg can't be recovered, their only hope is a decisive first strike against Xadia, so someone has to mobilize the Pentarchy immediately. None of them are things he planned in the sense of "well, if Harrow dies then I can get his sons out of the way and make myself king, and then conquer Xadia." It's all reactive to the situation with the egg. You could argue that he'd do the same things if the egg wasn't a factor, like it's possible he's always been kind of lying in wait to push Harrow's sons aside and seize the throne... but if that was the case, he'd really do much better to make a bid for regent like any normal evil advisor would.

Anyway, all of that does still undermine the statement that he'd do "anything" for his family (which includes Harrow), and it is ultimately because of that initial choice he made to take the opportunity of power over the certainty of securing humanity's future. It's just not as simple as, "Viren says he would do anything for his family, but he won't sacrifice his own power and ambition." In the wake of his critical failure to prioritize humanity in destroying the egg, he's making choices that do prioritize humanity (from within his worldview that Xadia is an existential threat barely held at bay)... but they're still bad choices because they're all reactive to that original bad choice. It's not that he's working at cross-purposes to what he says his goals are, it's that he genuinely thinks digging his hole deeper will somehow work out positively, or at least better than the alternative would.

Pictured: Another statement that for sure indicates you're doing totally great.

Really though, I don't think you can (or are supposed to) look at the trifecta of self-individuals-world and point to one that Viren—or really any character outside of Callum, Rayla, and Claudia—puts at the top. Part of the whole point here is that elevating one of those at the expense of the others is never going to be the right choice all of the time. Obviously always putting yourself first is shitty, but we get multiple examples of over-prioritizing one of the other two as being self-destructive and dangerous. Consistency isn't supposed to be positive, here—a core part of this arc is likely to be Callum grappling with that, and that's without even looking at what's going on with Claudia.

The other thing is that "I will do anything for my family"-Viren is actually on some level a different character than Arc 1 Viren, such that evaluating one based on the context of the other doesn't actually make sense. We don't get even a hint of the "I would do anything for my family" in the series until s4, after Viren has died and been revived. Yeah, we had it earlier in the novels, but in there it's really about Claudia and her relationship with Viren, not Viren's values or actions. Arc 1 Viren and Arc 2 Viren inform each other as characters, but most of the point is the ways they aren't the same. And while Arc 2 Viren is understandably preoccupied with the concept of sacrificing for family—given that he's been stripped of everything that was in his life except Claudia, who went to terrible lengths on his behalf—Arc 1 Viren is actually quite consistent with how he's laid out in his Tales of Xadia character sheet:

Like, check out those Liberty and Glory statements—not even close to the same ballpark as Callum's "I value those close to me more than anyone or anything" Devotion and "I'm beholden to my inner circle, not some silly kingdom" Liberty, but quite accurate as the through-line on his s1-s3 actions. There's nothing in there about family, because Arc 1 Viren isn't actually meant to be associated with "I will do anything for my family," and he's not lying to himself by not acting consistently with it in Arc 1.

Arc 2 Viren is then a kind of emotional reboot back to a particular point earlier in his life—not necessarily the point before he first did any dark magic at all, but before he did his ill-defined "anything" to save Soren, which is implied in multiple places to be the point where he started in on a spiral that had tangible and fairly rapid effects on his personality and outlook. That's further emphasized by the contents of his dream in s5—seeing him behave in a genuinely loving and joyful way with Soren is shocking, and immediately raises the question of what the fuck happened and why.

Pictured: Healthy coping mechanisms.

Part of what still distinguishes Viren's "I will do anything for my family; however dangerous, however vile" from Callum's developing "I would do anything for you" is that Viren is always deliberately addressing the "things that are so unforgivable, you will never forgive yourself" facet while Callum leaves it implicit because he doesn't really understand and/or want to acknowledge that yet (and also Rayla would probably twist his nose again, which fucking hurts). In how Viren describes it to Terry, he is using that up-front acknowledgement to then essentially abdicate any emotional responsibility for... well, anything at all. The entire "however dangerous, however vile" mantra is another way of denying his own agency, because if he'll do anything, then he doesn't actually have to go through the difficult emotional process of making those decisions and dealing with the aftermath.

Pictured: H-healthy coping mechanisms?

Terry correctly pegs this questionable excuse for philosophy as "not having feelings," and generally not the best approach, because it will do things like lead to a default state of emotional unavailability to your children—oh, wait. I think it's not unlikely that Viren's emotional distancing from what "I will do anything for my family" meant contributed a lot to the degradation of it as his core value and his ensuing Arc 1 state. A lot of what's going on in his s5 dream is that he's being confronted with the consequences of "I will do anything for my family," specifically. He's being forced through an emotional speedrun of what it has cost him and everyone around him, and what has he got to show for it? Claudia, corrupted beyond recognition, proudly repeating his own words back to him.

Pictured: Whatever the opposite of daddy issues is.

Because the whole point of Viren's "I will do anything for my family" in Arc 2 is the challenge of whether he would/will do it all again. If he holds to that value the same way he did before, he'll do whatever it takes to save Claudia—however dangerous, however vile. Most of Viren's moral and emotional stuff has been based on his self-serving resignation to having "no choice." He's so tragically trapped in a chain of spiraling consequences he can never break... except oh wait, he totally can. S5 is all about Viren recognizing the dark magic feedback loop and that he has the agency to break it, and his best and only chance to avoid doing further harm to Claudia is to not be willing to destroy himself that way again, even it it means his death will cause her terrible emotional pain.

We'll see how that works out. Because let's be real: Claudia's gonna Claudia, regardless. However it goes, there's an important narrative precedent being set for both breaking free from dark magic/Aaravos and evaluating the "I will do anything for you" impulse in a more nuanced way.

[dreamaze]

[OFF THE RECORD] Kanghyun's O! NEW E!volution Ⅲ concert reflection

[fujii-draws]

idk whats funnier: Ribbons not realizing she's in love until she evolves into a Sylveon, or evolving into a Sylveon and still not figuring it out for like a week

too busy being fae and stealing humus

HEEEEELP. TOO BUSY LEADING POKEMON INTO HER MUSHROOM CIRCLE WHERE THEY WAKE UP AT 4AM WITH IRON DEFICIENCY. She can figure out her qp feelings towards Aimilios LATER. She needs to steal people’s IDENTITIES.

[corpusdiem-seizethedead]

Alastor: If violence isn't solving all of your problems, then you simply aren't using enough of it

[pastelalleycat]

Clown had some... pretty creepy ideas with beta Barnaby, I'll say that much, but one thing that really interests me about the beta is that though he seems to have always been the jokester of the Neighborhood, beta Barnaby was grumpy. He was melancholy. His (again, beta) color palette was very muted compared to the other neighbors. Goofing off in a depressed sort of way.

Meanwhile, the Barnaby we have in canon is vibrant, both in color palette and personality. He's boisterous, he's cheerful, and most of all, he's so chill to the point of being seemingly unflappable. I don't think we've ever seen canon Barnaby express genuine frustration or anger. When Frank tells him off or Julie gets riled up over a failed joke, it's water off a duck's back.

Canon Barnaby's role is as Wally's best friend, and he takes the job of supervisor and teacher quite seriously, but he also cares- in a roundabout way- for his other neighbors, like joke-loving Howdy and even Julie, who he (I think genuinely) wants to teach how to tell jokes. As long as he can tease his buddies and have a jazzed-to-the-nines hot dog at the end of the day, everything's hunky-dory.

To be clear, Clown has stated that beta Welcome Home art/concepts and everything off the WHRP website should NOT be considered canon. Still, I can't help but wonder- how long will Barnaby's chill last? He puts up a fun-loving front, but something's going to have to make him snap eventually.

And when he does, it's going to tear my heart open.

[tinseltownie]

Been watching The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel and hats off to Jenny Nicholson, you have a new forever fan. I am in awe you are a filmmaker like no other

[hotchipsauce]

WE BEAT THE TACO BELL CURSE BABYYYY

[queenlucythevaliant]

So I've heard people give other etymologies for the name "Maugrim" in LWW, but to me it seems clear that it's derived from Managarm, the wolf who eats the moon in Norse mythology. My reasons for this are (a) Lewis was a noted Norse mythology enjoyer and also friends with Beowulf translator JRR Tolkien and (b) he had the name changed to Fenris Ulf in the American version.

Fenris Ulf is the name of Managarm's much more famous brother/father (?) in Norse mythology. So my theory is that this is basically a Philosopher's Stone situation in which Jack didn't think his American readers would get his obscure Norse mythology reference and thus replaced it with a more mainstream one. I am not an expert and could very easily be wrong about this, but as far as I am aware from reading Lewis's letters and stuff, no one can disprove me.

[shorthaltsjester]

being a huge fan of tlou but also like. thinking that certain stories are built for certain mediums. like the entire theme of tlou2 is grounded and fresh because it’s a railroad/story video game that still affords you mechanical choices in how you navigate the world. i just don’t have a lot of confidence that presenting that story in a tv show with the minimal adjustments that they did in s1 will be fulfilling or compelling in any comparable way. because with tlou1 some of the like. beauty of that story was simply that it was such an emotive story contained in the medium of video games. and some of that was retained just by hitting similar or expanded emotional beats in the show, like the episodes that expanded on the life of the characters and the realities of that world. but truly so much of tlou2 emotional depth and ‘why does this story matter’ rests in the fact that’s it’s your hands on the controller, continually choosing to go forward in the story and have hope that it will work out in your-as-ellie-or-abby-or-somehow-booth’s favour. and you simply cannot get that in a non-interactive medium like television. like i do think tlou2 is a good story but it’s a good story because of the investment required by the player to keep pressing buttons and keep returning and to feel the adrenaline like responses of high intensity moments and be jarringly shifted into backstories that only increase the frustration. in general i’ve been thinking a lot about cross-medium adaptation and on the one hand i am glad that season 1 makes the story of the last of us more accessible to people who wouldn’t pick up a video game but it’s also like. maybe instead we can destigmatize video games as this inaccessible and dangerous medium a bit more instead of just . implicitly agreeing . like no maybe your mom won’t pick up a video game controller and play the last of us . but maybe you can play the game in the living room. sometimes the mediums that stories are told in aren’t just important but are actually foundational parts of how the information of a story is conveyed and that’s not only okay but is fucking fantastic. we should be happy actually that there are so many ways to collect a bunch of themes and ideas and put them together and hold them out to someone else and say “won’t you consider this with me. won’t you feel these emotions and care about these characters with me.”

[sk-yay-sk]

I remember seeing someone say that Stan(ley) broke the cycle of abuse and i was so fucking confused. Like, are we talking about the same character? The same show even??

Like don't get me wrong i like stan he's a good character, all that, but i feel like sometimes i'm the only one who remembers him literally hitting dipper?? On multiple occasions???

Stan is not a good uncle, he's not a good guardian, it doesn't matter that he does actually care for dipper or that his horrible treatment of him is explained in 'dreamscapers', none of that justifies his shitty actions.

[wonder-worker]

Thomas Penn writes about 500 year old dead historical figures like they're celebrities in a gossip column

[izutsoupmi]

if we assume that the story takes place in 2019 then from oldest to youngest we have:

Holy - fucking uhhhhhh 1990 idk

Michiko - January 27, 1999

Momo - September 28, 2001

Randa - December 11, 2001

Matama - April 8, 2004

Haruka - April 30, 2004

Nemo - June 23, 2004

Kiwi - July 6, 2004

Kaoruko - August 17, 2004

Sayo - September 1, 2004

Utena - November 14, 2004

Korisu - February 8, 2010

[existennialmemes]

Eggnog exists because someone looked at a bowl of custard and thought "Ok, but what if I could just drink that through a straw"

[telomirage]

I thought I was going to have to convince the delivery/installation people to finish disconnecting my washing machine from the wall for me, but I was able to get all the hoses off AND move it nearer to the doorway on my own just now

[lordofthestrix]

Is the slow death of cursive an ongoing phenomenon that I somehow failed to notice until now?

Today I had to handwrite some instructions to a recently of age 'youngster' and I can swear that he looked at me as if I had handled him Egyptian script before the discovery of the Rosetta stone.