"Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
Larys does what no one has done for Aegon: he's teaching him. he tells him the harsh truth, which hurts. Otto and Alicent did it too. but the difference is that Larys also demonstrates to Aegon that he is not alone in his path and he will have his support, he is here to help, not harm. He doesn't look at him as useless, even when he's lying in bed unable to move. he sees potential in Aegon - a combination of the ability to listen and the desire to return what is due - which is why he gives him a weapon "your mind is all that remains to you", rather than a finished result.
Larys can manipulate, using his own experience and genuine pain, and sympathize with Aegon's situation at the same time, these are not mutually exclusive things, especially when Aegon showed him his respect by giving him a position on the council ("i should be glad of your talents") and when their fruitful cooperation will bring victory to both of them. Aegon will become Larys' greatest creation if Larys continues to teach him inner restraint and cunning.
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I'm bad at math, but is Bruce theoretically 38 years old when he goes into the time stream?
Hear me out (and canon likes to fluncate their ages, so this is my best guess without trying to account for birthdays):
Bruce becomes the legal guardian of 9 year old Dick when he's 23. That's a 14 year difference.
Jason becomes Robin when Dick leaves at 18. Jason is 13. That's a five year difference.
Jason dies at 15, and Tim becomes Robin at 13. That's a two year difference.
The age difference between Tim and Bruce would thus be 21 years.
Tim becomes Red Robin to find Bruce at 17.
That means that Bruce had to be 38, right? Why was I imagining him closer to 50?
Adopting so many kids must have aged him
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Ghost : Ok, why do you baby Gaz so much, you do know he's a grown man, right?
Price : Oh come on, first off I don't baby him, second, jealousy doesn't suit you, third, he's the youngest of us, it's only normal that I watch over him a bit more, he's basically a baby, he just turned 27 last week!
Gaz : Damn, don't remind me, I feel old. But also like, maybe it's because he's the youngest sibling, but I do feel older than Soap most days, to be honest.
Price : Well yeah, you two are very close in age, but Soap's actually gonna turn 29 later this year, right Soap?
Soap :
Price : ... Soap?
Soap : Yep, sorry, yeah, wasn't paying attention, sure, I'm gonna be uh... 28? Wait no, that was last year, 29 right, ahah...
Ghost :
Gaz :
Price :
Soap : *avoids eye contact*
Price : How old are you son?
Soap : 29?
Gaz : Aren't you supposed to be 28...?
Soap : Ahah, yeah, that's what I meant, I'm 28, I'm gonna be 29... right?
Ghost : You're lying aren't you. You look like you're lying. Price, he's lying.
Price : What's your birth year?
Soap :
Price : ....
Soap, visibly counting on his fingers : 1994 !
Ghost, staring at Price with his look(tm) :
Gaz : Wait, you don't know your birth year by heart?
Ghost : No, he just doesn't remember the lie he said.
Soap : Come on, LT, what do you mean, a lie, I'm just your average 29 years old man, born in 1994, what do you want me to say?
Ghost : Johnny, you'd be born in 1993 if you were 29, I mean, if you didn't also lie about your birthday.
Soap :
Price, having had enough of today already : Okay, how old are you really. What's your real birth year.
Soap : ..... 1996 ?
Gaz : I'M NOT THE FUCKING BABY ANYMORE THIS IS THE GREATEST DAY OF MY LIFE !!!
Ghost, concerned : You're 26 ?? But your file said you've been in active duty for 10 years !
Soap : Yep 😁👍
Ghost :
Soap : Funny story, I was actually 15 when i enrolled, cause it was before my birthday, but yeah.
Ghost :
Soap : Don't look at Price like that, he knew all about me ~allegedly~ kidnapping a military officer and still wanted me, he's not gonna push me out because my joints are gonna hurt two years later than he originally thought.
Gaz : Wait, no, back up, you did what to a military officer?
Soap : Oh, I never told you? Yeah, he was really pissing me off, you know how it is-
Price : I'm going back to bed.
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people being like "hunter needs structure and stability" respectfully hunter DOES need stability - in that he needs an environment where he's no longer afraid of the people around him & is confident that he'll always have a safe place to stay n safe people to call - but the kid absolutely DOES NOT need structure. if anything hunter needs LESS structure. this is mister "teens are probably into the same things as me, like authority and rules" please be nice to him.
my absolute favorite hunter darius dynamic is one with like, hunter asking to stay out late on a school night or whatever bc luz has some cool-as-shit event happening in the human world that he wants to attend & darius is just like "you can do whatever you want forever" & hunter's like "aren't you...??? going to....??? give me a curfew????"
darius: why would you need a curfew?
hunter: because i-! what if i'm TIRED before SCHOOL
darius: then you can skip a day.
hunter: [HORRIFIED GASP]
darius: kid. look. you already extensively weighed the risks and benefits of going to this thing on a school night. right?
hunter: ......i did make three charts.
darius: and you determined that the benefits outweigh the risks. with your three charts
hunter: .....yes
darius: ok.
hunter:
darius: so.
hunter:
darius: in conclusion. you can do whatever you want forever.
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secretly afab jiang cheng poll
(someone once wrote a post about a similar scenario but i cannot find it. if someone finds it please send me the link)
consider the following scenario:
yu ziyuan gives birth to two biologically female children. her second birth in particular is difficult and renders it impossible for her to have any more children. determined to have one of her children inherit, however, yu ziyuan lies, and announces to the cultivation world the birth of a son, jiang cheng.
jiang cheng is raised as a boy. only yu ziyuan and a handful of trusted maids know the truth. jiang fengmian never finds out. jiang yanli never finds out. even wei wuxian somehow never finds out.
as time goes on, various other parties discover the truth at different points in jiang cheng's life--wen chao and his men after jiang cheng is captured in wei wuxian's place, wen qing and wen ning during the golden core transfer, possibly jin guangyao as well--but, due to various circumstances, everyone who knows dies before they can spread the information. eventually, the only person left alive who knows the truth is jiang cheng himself.
jiang cheng leads his sect. jiang cheng purposefully gets himself blacklisted by all matchmakers. jiang cheng raises jin ling. somehow, for the entirety of the 13 year timeskip and beyond, jiang cheng is able to hide the truth of his body from the entire world. wei wuxian returns after 13 years of death, the present half of the plot plays out exactly as it does in canon, and somehow this specific information just never comes up. even after wen ning's return, wen ning somehow never brings it up either, because he assumes wei wuxian knows already.
then, some time after the end of canon, wei wuxian finds out the truth: that jiang cheng, who he fully believed to be biologically male, was in fact biologically female this entire time, and also that jiang cheng managed to hide this information from him all the way up until now. maybe wen ning finally spills the beans or something.
how does wei wuxian react?
things to consider:
how does jiang cheng think of himself in this scenario? as a woman pretending to be a man? as the ancient fantasy chinese version of a transgender man?
how does jiang cheng wish to live in this scenario? does he wish to live as a woman? does he wish he were biologically male?
have jiang cheng and wei wuxian reconciled?
how would wei wuxian react to learning that there was a huge chunk of jiang cheng's life he had zero idea about?
what kinds of attitudes towards women has wei wuxian exhibited in the text?
what kinds of attitudes towards women has mxtx exhibited in the text?
explain your reasoning in the notes!!!
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Louis' "You're boring!" Could mean so many things, but I think what's most apparent about that line is that Armand takes no initiative just for himself. He's not really anybody, because he never goes out and finds himself or gets attached to anyone but Louis. Without Louis as his guide he's literally just sitting on a couch picking lint! That's the thing.
He orbits constantly around what would make Louis happy, and never really fully going what would make me happy? Ultimately that drive to please Louis is what drives him to torturing Daniel, not so much that he'd care to just do it. Ultimately, not giving proper care to Louis is just a way to make sure Louis knows he has to orbit around him as well, with shoving Lestat onto him just that other nail on the coffin. So, even if he fails to figure out how to make Louis happy with him, he still knows what Armand is good for, and better than.
That dependency is what drives Armand's abuse. It really just comes down to that. Armand doesn't even realize how suffocated he is by his own dependency. This is just how life is to him. (It shouldn't be lost either that dependency is a theme considering this episode also deals with addiction).
Daniel's fascinating because he's just so driven to be somebody. He's largely independent, he seeks things because he wants them. It's his drug to poke and prod at all the things that he shouldn't. Daniel's exciting because he lets Louis in to something different, lets him in to all this potential in another person that he can also do the same with for himself. It's a real connection. A two way street. It's easy to tell how Armand can be smothering then because he's never introducing him to anything really new, and most the ways both of them connect are all painful and traumatic. It's never just fun because there's always that layer of that pain. Fun died with Claudia.
50 years on they've gotten to a lot better place, both of them, but it's still that same shit. No seriously, "How is this any different from last time, Louis?"
Well... Because Armand's going to be, at the very least, making one [1] decision only for himself - and that's to hold power over Daniel's life. Fucking sick foreshadowing.
They aren't driving each other to the brink anymore but "The vampire is bored" STILL. Maybe it's even worse, despite being in better places, because Louis' sort of just been defeated by it. (I mean, can he even really leave this either?). He's accepting the dependancy cause he kind of has to. He'd literally ended up letting all the enjoyment be up where he can't reach [The book shelves]. Armand so desperately wants Louis happiness but what really ends up happening is that Louis ends up having to give Armand all his own. He's got no one or anything else to get it from. But like an iPad and an over the top eating ritual. Two extremes of what's just more lint picking.
This whole relationship is one I find just tragic inside and out. You have to just pity it, really. There's ways in which you can find yourself feeling bad for both of them. But you can only really be mad at Armand for any of it. Armand, who isn't even 'free' in any sense, having so little concept of his own independence, but is at the same time so controlling over other's. It's a tragic cycle. It's an infuriating one.
Louis at least has the mind to know when enough is enough. If just needing that extra push to get there. Armand's too scared of it being over to even try.
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