#how rich people get rich

[whatthehelloh]

[neuro-psyche]

I think Dick and Jason would have multiple “what the actual fuck are you saying right now” with Tim and Damian when it comes to quality of life/monetary differences. Sure, Dick and Jason got used to Bruce’s “is $100 a good enough tip on a $30 bill?” shit, but hearing Tim talking about a new laptop he bought for $5000 literally is like a punch in the gut.

If they ever went on a cruise (which they totally wouldn’t because cruises are floating death traps), Jason and Dick would be in awe of the fancy amenities, where as Damian would be unsatisfied with the quality, since he grew up with every single amenity known to man. Tim would just feel like it’s all normal since the Drake’s were extravagant and travelled all over the planet.

Jason : My bedroom is bigger than my fucking apartment.

Dick : I could do a full gymnastics routine with the space in my room.

Tim :

Dick :

Tim : My room is normal sized…

Jason : You grew up in a mega mansion. I hardly think you’re the benchmark of a normal room-

Damian : I must agree with Drake. This room is frankly underwhelming.

Dick, staring wildly at him : What do you mean underwhelming- Dames there’s an aquarium wall in your room.

Damian : Yes. Underwhelming.

Jason :

Dick :

Jason : Do you want to-

Dick : Jump off the boat? Yes.

[swiggity-swexual-i-am-asexual]

We all know the semi-canonical ‘all the Robins know to hide/duck inside of Batman’s cape, even as adults’ thing.

We also know that Danny ‘is LITERALLY a ghost’ Fenton sucks at remembering his own intangibility while ALSO forgetting to look ahead of him.

All I’m saying is, Danny Fenton (or Phantom, if you’d really like) would absolutely SLAM into Batman on accident while running on roof tops and Bruce ‘Brooding Instinct’ Wayne doesn’t even think twice about letting the kid hide and scanning around for danger before there’s a record scratch of ‘wait who tf is this?’ kicks in.

[aq2003]

twelfth night main plot: haha bisexual love triangle that is gay in both directions! haha mistaken identity and gender fuckery haha

malvolio side plot:

[unknown-cold]

THE MANIPULATIVE PARENT FIGURE HAPPENS AGAIN!!

It's sad to see so many people not understanding the complexity of what we have seen in Act 1 between Caitlyn and Vi. There's no fucking reason to hate on Caitlyn, she's a victim of the big whole, just like Vi.

Her grief, overwhelming and the manipulation of Ambessa is clearly shown in several scenes. Jinx kills people in every fucking Scene, she's literally a terrorist, noone bats an eye. Caitlyn breaks down under the weight that was put on her from one day to the other and snaps? Everyone's hating.

"Make it make sense" Of course it's wrong what she did. But almost no one would have been able to keep being rational after all this. And I'm sure will understand this soon.

No one can't make me hate her. Everyone who has gone through hard times knows that you've done things you realized later that they were wrong, or stupid or whatever.

(I trust the writers and the progress of the story.)

The show’s creators are known for nuanced storytelling, and Caitlyn’s redemption will likely involve acknowledging how her pain altered her actions and how she must make amends, especially with Vi

These people are too stupid to understand a complex character development with ups and downs.

Ambessa:

Plots the entire war escalation between Piltover and Zaun

Is behind the attack at the Memorial for Caitlyn's mother, to make her rage even more and put even more pressure on her

Uses her as a puppet in her plan by putting her in a position of power she's not ready for

Those people: Caitlyn is the problem 🤡

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 185

No one could get into contact with Constantine. 

Now usually that wasn’t that big of a deal, the man constantly disappeared for a few days at a time doing something or other, but he’d been completely silent and unseen for months. Usually he’ll at least answer a call to tell them to fuck off or something. 

And they really need his expertise and are getting incredibly worried for their grumpy team member. Yes he’s an asshole, but he’s their asshole, y’know? And he has a habit of getting into Situations (sure he also usually gets out of them, but what if he didn’t this time?!) 

So they’re desperate. Kind of really desperate. Desperate enough to use the summoning sigil they found on his fridge. They’d checked it, multiple times, and it should summon the hellblazer. 

“You’re not Constantine.” . 

The white-haired teen in the circle yawned, stretching and blinking at them blandly with familiar blue eyes before sighing. “Actually I am,” he stuffed his hands into his hoodie as he looked down at the summoning circle. “Well, technically just one of the many Laughing Magicians currently in the Realms.” 

He gave a grin, looking more amused than annoyed. “Pretty much every one of us is in the Realms right now for family reunion lol. (Did he just say lol out loud??) So like, you’re gonna have to specify which of us you’re tryin’ to summon. Honestly perfect timing for me thanks, the fruitloop keeps flirting with John and it’s horrific so.” 

… That was probably their John, wasn’t it…

[bitchthefuck1]

I actually really love that we see Helena's palpable hesitation about going back to the severed floor. We know that this has all been a publicity thing for her and it's about helping Lumon, so she's really invested in the outcome, but like. from her POV, she's literally letting someone who actively hates her and everything she stands for, and also has a proven willingness to hurt herself if it means hurting Helena, who now knows who she is and her significance to Lumon, pilot her body for 8 hours every day in an environment where they've repeatedly failed to control her. If I were her, I'd be genuinely surprised to wake up with my limbs intact.

You already questioned why on earth she'd come back after Helly's suicide attempt, and the identity reveal explains the reasoning, but on a human level that's still a wild thing to have to think about. This person (who is you but also isn't) almost succeeded in killing you, and like a week later you let them pilot your body again like nothing happened. How could you not be terrified?

[consultingfujoshi]

absolutely certain that helly is in fact helena is in disguise by this point and it was not a difficult thing to work out frankly but what absolutely knocks me on my ass is the REASON she's down there. after 2x01 we all assumed she was trojan horseing herself to spy on the rest of MDR and dissuade them from causing any more trouble. makes perfect sense right the fate of this company is in her hands. but NO!!! helena with her incredibly privileged spoiled brat outlook on everything, who has been told she's part of the most important lineage that's gonna save the world her whole life, sees a version of herself she heretofore did not even see as HUMAN forging the kinds of connections she has never had once in her life, and you think she's just gonna keep sending her down there and letting her have that? when she, the heiress of lumon and great granddaughter of kier, doesn't? she wants to experience what it's like to have no one expect anything of you, where you can express yourself however you want and kiss people just because you feel like it!! she views her innie as so far beneath her and yet she's so desperate for a taste of what it's like to be her! so much she's willing to KILL HER!! she's down there because she's fucking jealous of her innie!!! girl oh my god!!!!

[starcurtain]

I wish everyone collectively understood aventurine’s character like you…things would be so much easier! I genuinely don’t understand how people keep getting his motivations wrong??? Could it be because some of the most popular Aven fanfics were written prior to his release? That could have contributed to some of the takes we tend to see about him…thoughts?

I struggled all day to come up with a concise way to answer this and couldn't think of one, so here, have a long-winded ramble:

I don't think early fic writers have much impact in the situation with Aventurine's character now, since most people can look at when a story was posted and go "Oh, this was before we had ____ information."

I think that Aventurine's problem is being a male character in a gacha game. Gacha game characters are designed to sell. Hoyo can sell female characters very, very easily. Give her huge tits and a visible underwear strap and you're good to go. I love all my guy friends, but I'm not gonna sugarcoat it: straight men are not the hardest audience to please. Hit a particular fetish (feet, spandex, dommy mommy), and you're gucci.

Nah, we all know why Jade's trailer is Like That.™

Male characters in gacha are harder to sell because women as consumers are a little harder to predict. Does every woman want a tall, ripped hunk? Shit, no, small cute boyish models like Aventurine are selling better now? Why?! Would a bad boy be more popular than a nice guy??? It's harder to account for women's tastes, especially because they are often (a little) less visually-oriented.

Hoyo is good at what they do though, and they've figured out that male characters sell very well when they possess at least one of two specific traits:

Endearing vulnerability/helplessness

Gay ship tease

Give a character both, like Aventurine? They might as well be printing money.

That sound you hear is Hoyo's stock prices rising.

So, from the very beginning, Hoyo is incentivized to create a character that appeals to people, a character people will want to crack their wallets open for. And they achieved this, first and foremost, by giving Aventurine traits that female players (in particular, but men too), find especially appealing: emotional and physical vulnerability.

We see Aventurine's pain. We sympathize with his grief. We identify with his struggle to make meaning of his difficult life. He's our woobie, blorbo, babygirl, whatever the hell they're calling it now.

He can't hide his suffering anymore. He's on the very edge. He's a dude in distress. He's surrounded by enemies! He misses his mama! He's been betrayed! No one understands him like you do, dear player!

The ultimate feeling evoked is: He needs to be saved.

When people talk about male power fantasies, I think they forget that women can experience them too, and "Emotionally vulnerable man that only I (or my favorite character) can fix" is actually a female power fantasy.

And from there it's really easy, right: the people who shell out cash to buy warps for their harmed-husbando feel like they've saved him; the people who are into mlm ships look for the nearest hot dude to be the savior Ratio was waiting for his time lol.

Morally and intellectually, this type of deep-down-golden-hearted, emotionally-wounded male character is very easy to digest. There is nothing to dislike about this type of character or role in the story: this character is a good guy who has just gone through so many terrible situations, whose victim status makes him endearing, and whose lack of agency means that any of the questionable or downright bad things he does are always the result of someone else forcing his hand, and never something he would have chosen himself.

His motivations are always clear and consistent: get free, heal, and live happily ever after.

Insert the Wreck-It Ralph meme: "Do people assume all your problems got solved when a big strong man showed up?" But to be fair, a big strong man did kind of solve Aventurine's problem, so--

Anyway, it's simple. It's straightforward. Morally, it's pretty cut and dry, black and white: Aventurine is our hero, which means everyone dictating the course of his miserable life is evil.

Hoyo is not remotely discouraging people from literally buying into this emotional appeal.

And trust me, I get it. I'll be the first to admit that hurt-comfort is its own entire genre in fandom because it is so appealing. People eat up Aventurine's tragic backstory like candy! The idea of watching a character go through hell at the hands of bad guys just to finally find a happy end is like the definition of everyone's favorite story.

In fact... people love Aventurine's suffering so much, they have invented whole new ways for him to suffer that aren't even in the game.

This is where we get all the headcanons that Aventurine was a sex slave, every single person he meets hates him because of his race, the Stonehearts are executioners holding knives to his throat, Jade enslaved him to the IPC with a lifelong contract, his material possessions belong to the company, the IPC is forcing him to take only the most dangerous missions where he is being required by his evil jailers to continually put his life on the line... You name it and I promise you, I can find a fanfic where Aventurine suffers from it. 😂

Bro can't even sleep in on his day off; life is so hard for this man.

Being serious: if the game is telling us that Aventurine is a victim... Why not make him the perfect victim?

Why not envision an Aventurine with no freedom, who bears no responsibility for any of the horrible situations he is in or any of the dubious things he does?

It's so natural to like that version of Aventurine, so appealing to see a totally powerless underdog use his own wits and charms to claw his way up to freedom. Or, if you're the kind who really relishes angst: It's even appealing to see Aventurine lose more. To delight in fics where he loses his wealth, where the IPC punishes him for past crimes while he's powerless to stop them... (I assure you, this is many people's cup of tea and the fanfics prove it!)

Ultimately, there's nothing wrong with liking characters who are exactly this straightforward! It's completely fine to embrace characters that are intentionally written to be morally above-board, whose primary role in the story is to generate angst by being a good person who suffers, or those characters who never show unlikable traits, bad decisions, or contradictory actions.

The problem is that that's just not who the game is telling us Aventurine is.

Hoyo may be capitalizing off people who love to envision poor Aventurine still living his life as a slave... But the game also needs to tell a complicated enough story overall to appeal to people who don't care about this specific husbando--Aventurine's role in the actual game's plot has to be interesting enough for almost everyone to appreciate it, not just Aventurine's simp squad. (Don't get mad, I'm in the simp squad with you.)

So his character doesn't stop at just being a pure-hearted victim who is still waiting to be saved.

Aventurine is not that easy to label, and I think the biggest struggle in this character's fandom right now is between people who prefer the even-more-angsty, still-a-slave Aventurine versus people who want a morally grey, self-destructive character instead.

To me personally, while I greatly understand the appeal of fanon!Aventurine and the joy of a really juicy angst fic where characters lose it all, I think that missing out on the depth that canon is suggesting would be a real loss on the fandom's part.

The character motivations that Aventurine shows in the game are complicated. They cancel each other out. They're basically self-harm! He makes almost every situation he's in worse for himself--on purpose.

He is a good person, but also a person who has done unspeakable things. He does have morals, but he's not above allowing those who don't have them to use him to their advantage.

He's both the victim and the victor. He's his own worst enemy. He's a lost little boy who's been making terrible decisions for himself since he was like eight years old, and a grown ass man who is barely managing to fake his way through an existence that destiny is not letting him quit.

This kind of character is a lot harder to embrace. He's done things that most people would find appalling--like willingly joining up with the organization that let his entire race be massacred. He's invented a whole new peacock persona to frivolously flaunt riches he doesn't even care about (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 101). He actively plays into racist stereotypes about his people to manipulate others through their preconceived expectations. He's made a mockery of his mother's and sister's hopes and dreams by endlessly trying to throw his own life away.

He has flaws! He bet everything he had on a ploy without doing his homework to find out if the people he was risking his life for were even still around. (Maybe he already knew, and couldn't bear to admit it, even to himself.) He's intentionally off-putting and obnoxious to everyone he meets (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 102). He terrifies everyone who gets close to him by (seemingly) carelessly throwing himself into the jaws of death without the slightest provocation.

He knowingly allows the IPC to exploit his power and talents for profit. Did everyone forget that his role in the Strategic Investment Department is asset liquidation?! Like, his actual day-to-day job is ruining people's lives. Canonically, Aventurine kills people when his deals go bad.

His motivations change off-screen in two lines of story text. We're told in one line that his biggest reason for joining the IPC was to make money to save the Avgin, then in the next line we find out that's impossible. And... then what? What motivations does he even have now? The whole point of his character arc from 2.0-2.1 is that he was on the edge of giving in to utter despair and nihilism because he couldn't even perceive a single reason to stay alive. He has no purpose in life before Penacony, and that didn't start with the Stonehearts at all??

People keep saying Aventurine was held in the IPC by golden handcuffs, but how do you tie down someone for whom profit is meaningless? What can you offer to a man whose only desire is to bring back something already lost forever? How do you imprison someone whose only definition of freedom is, canonically, death?

Working for the Stonehearts is obviously not healthy. But that's why Aventurine was doing it--because taking dangerous missions allowed him to put himself at risk. The job that he originally pursued hoping to save his people became a direct means to self-harm, and the IPC's only real role in that was just happily profiting off the results.

The journal entries for Aventurine's quests are there deliberately to tell the player what is on his mind, and none of it has to do with escaping from his job:

Like... Work is the least of this man's problems.

At really the risk of rambling on too long now, he's also just a massive walking contradiction:

Aventurine is among the most explicitly religious characters in the game, yet he's one of the only people in the entire game that we have ever seen actively question his people's aeon.

You might be tempted to think Aventurine's risky gambles with his life as an adult are a result of giving up after finding out about the Avgin massacre... Butttt no, Hoyo makes sure to tell us that even at knee-high in the Sigonian desert, Kakavasha was already willing to risk himself in a fight to the death against monsters because even back then he found his own life to have less value than a single memento.

He's the "chosen one" who will lead his people to prosperity... except they're all dead.

He's explicitly suicidal... andddd also a pathstrider of Preservation.

He wants to die... He doesn't want to die. He wants to make it end, yet goes to staggering lengths to continually survive. (Every plan risks his life on purpose--but every plan's win condition is also to live.) He life is the chip tossed down, but his hand is trembling beneath the table. When faced with an otherwise unsurvivable situation, Aventurine literally became a winner of the Hunger Games. He beat other innocent people to death with his own chain-bound hands just to come out alive.

He knows the IPC failed the Avgin and left them to die... and he still willingly sought out a position of power in their organization. Maybe he really is after revenge... but maybe not.

He starts his journey in the IPC with a truly noble goal in mind: to help his people using his newfound wealth and power. He's a good guy who did genuinely want to save the Avgin and repay all those who helped him. But once it became clear he was too late, once it was obvious he would have no use at all for that monetary wealth and power he risked his life to get... What did he do with it? Unlike Jade, we don't see him over here donating to orphanages. (I'm not that heartless; I'm sure he does actually do a lot of good things with his money on the side, but the point is that the game does not show us that--it shows us, over and over again, Aventurine putting on a wasteful, over-indulgent persona toward wealth. We've supposed to feel how meaningless money is to him, how meaningless everything is becoming to him.)

He outright refuses to use underhanded tactics or to cheat at gambles, which is meant to show us that's he's more morally upright than his coworkers. There's an entire exchange where he says that he'll never stoop to using manipulation the way Opal does. But... he doesn't have any issue fulfilling Opal's exact agenda. He was never remotely morally conflicted about denying the Penaconians their freedom by dragging Penacony back under IPC control.

He's willing to risk his own life, which is one thing--but he's also willing to risk other people's well-being. Topaz accuses him of constantly egging their clients on into dangerous situations; we've actively seen him shove a gun into Ratio's hands and pull the trigger with no care for how Ratio would feel about that on their very first meeting... Dragging the Astral Express crew into the entire Penacony plan in the first place was exceedingly dangerous...

To me, I just think it's vital to understand his character through the lens of these contradictions because they demonstrate the extreme polarity of Aventurine's life: from rags to riches, from powerless to empowered by multiple aeons, from willing to kill to survive to killing himself... He has quite literally lived a life of "all or nothing," and while he is the victim of many terrible situations out of his control, his arc as a character involves facing the truth of himself and the future his own actions are hurtling him toward.

Frankly, the Aventurine that canon is suggesting is a little annoying. You want to grab him by the shoulders, shake him, and say "Why are you like this?!" And he won't even have an answer for you, because he doesn't even know why he's still alive.

In the end, to me, this is so, so much more interesting. I can read an endless supply of hurt-comfort fics where Aventurine escapes the evil IPC and Ratio is there to fill the void in his life with the power of love and catcakes and be a perfectly happy clam online, but I want canon to continue to serve us this incredible mess of a man who constantly takes one step forward and two steps back.

Who is fully aware of his role as a cog in the grotesque profit-wheel of cosmic capitalism and still manages to say he never changed from the rags-wearing desert rat of the Sigonian wastes.

Who over and over again flirts with nihility but, ultimately, even if he has to wrest it from the grip of the gods themselves with bloody, chain-bound hands, chooses life.

[psychopomp-namine]

the way everyone has a dislike in their profile that actually says something integral about their character. lu guang doesn't like plans getting messed up, cheng xiaoshi dislikes loneliness, xia fei with owing favors, vein with lying...

and then you have liu xiao, who dislikes... cilantro. and fish mint.

(shakes fist) (putting him in a glass jar and shaking vigorously) learn to be vulnerable!! tell me something about yourself!! I guess him liking movies lines up with the theater metaphors, and there's him liking chess, but that. doesn't count methinks

[fromtheseventhhell]

I love how people are only ever interested in defending Arya's right to be weird-looking. It's never defending her intelligence from people who claim she's incapable of thinking for herself, highlighting her importance to the plot and refusing to see her as just a prop, acknowledging how much of her story gets stolen and given to other characters, talking about her trauma or how often it gets erased and overlooked, seeing her as more than just an attack dog/bodyguard, etc. Nope. It's just a "why can't people let Arya be ugly/unconventional looking? :(" post every other week because people are, for whatever reason, obsessed with how Arya is visually perceived. One of the most misinterpreted characters yet the issue is only ever with her being portrayed as "too pretty" or the wrong "type" of pretty. This fandom will entirely rewrite a character's motivations, values, and role in the story to the point that they consider references to canon "hate" but! The true injustice to canon is we acknowledge that she is described as pretty several times. Arya simply existing as her pretty, important, and non-conforming self is too complex and confusing for people to comprehend 😔.

[respectthepetty]

The way I be watching Jack & Joker and Peaceful Property every week

[jellogram]

reblog to kill it faster

[lunarharp]

the ghost

[gurggggleburgle]

the reason why Luo Binghe and Shen Yuan can't attic wife each other in there house and never leave is that they don't have internet or anything else around to help keep them moving. I think we chalk too much of Shen Qingqiu being a super productive person post transmigration often too much to reading into things and treating his unreliable narration as fact.

But like, what is he supposed to do all if not actually go outside and talk to people and get a job. Luo Binghe needs to do things other than be a housewife for his own sanity so he doesn't cabin fever. He can't live focusing his day around a singular person being in the room its not healthy and would drive him insane. These are not overly productive constantly doing things people. These are people doing things to make sure they aren't malaise slugs feeling nothing in their day to day drudgery.

This is just what a healthy post/pre internet mental state kinda looks like.

[canisonicscrewyou]

My thing about "they are artists charging for their work" as an artist who has charged for their work, albeit in a MUCH different context and scale.... Like. Yeah. I guess we aren't entitled to free work , that's so true. Just like they are not entitled to an audience and they can price themselves out of their work too. It sucks. That's what market research is for. Dropping a complete change like this with little transitional period is, what I would call, a bad move.