#i like it when i can use significant things like that to add weight to simple actions

[zarvasace]

Mini fic: "warm" or any variation of that word. Vidow and it doesn't really matter the AU

Fluff! Fluff! Fluff! 💜🖤

---

Vio heard the front door open and close, then the jingling of a sparse key chain and the thunk of shoes. The light in the apartment kitchen stayed off, so Vio slid into the corner of the couch. Though his poetry book remained a comfortable weight in his hands, he lifted it to give Shadow room to slide in. 

Like so many nights, Shadow curled up like a cat on the couch, but tonight, he pressed a little closer. His arms wrapped around Vio's waist, and his face squished into Vio's stomach. 

"Warm," he muttered, muffled by the couch pillows that were more comfortable than decorative. 

Frowning just slightly, Vio shifted his book to one hand, index finger trapped between pages. His other hand settled in Shadow's hair. They should do another dye party in the coming week. "Long day?" 

Shadow nodded as best he could. "Was I that big of a brat in middle school? Don't answer that. I just need a hug." He peeked up at Vio, a slight smile tugging at his lips. "Read?" 

Vio's frown vanished, and he settled back more comfortably to rest the book on the couch arm. "Of course. This one is Longfellow, Divina Commedia, I'll start it over. 'Oft have I seen at some cathedral door A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat, Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor…'"

[little-miss-dilf-lover]

HI SWEETIE I HAVE A REQUEST!! i hope you dont mind!

so, bucky and f!reader, maybe married and they have a baby together. after that time of recovery reader is a bit shy of her own body cause it's been a while since they did it and she isnt back at her pre-pregnancy weight and bucky is absolutely like mind blown by her beauty? like, nearly drooling? and please can you add body worship on this?

i seriously hope it's okay for you, but if it's not please ignore this!

HII BBY!! I love love love it. thank you for requesting, hope you like it💌

DEFLECTION.

​bucky barnes x fem!reader (married & parents) — comfort

word count. 1031

disclaimer. the hair colour and type has no significance to the writing. the gif just suits the theme of this fic. also please read the ask carefully

Only a few short months ago, you gave birth to a healthy baby girl - a daughter you shared with your husband, Bucky. Very quickly she became the sole focus of your attention, neither of you having much time to do anything like you used to. 

Consequently, your sex life had taken a hit, and not because of the significant decrease in quality time, but instead something far more complex.

So far, motherhood has been a slight struggle to adjust to - the differences in your life between then and now are almost stark. You've been trying to adapt to all the changes that come with it, the main being your new body. You've been feeling shy and insecure with your new shape, often feeling like the weight will never drop off to what you looked like before.

It was hard to digest the change.

You were in the bathroom to freshen up, your eyes looking back at you in the mirror almost pitifully - your gaze travelling down, honing in on your stomach through your once baggy tee.

"They're here," Bucky calls from the other room, his voice putting a hold on the thoughts in your mind.

You step out of the bathroom, meeting your husband and daughter by the front door, a pink baby bag slung over his shoulder.

He notices the downcast direction of your eyes, seeing the way you tried to pull away from his attention. "Everything okay?" he asks you, rocking his little girl in his arms, bouncing her when she makes a noise.

You hum, walking closer to say goodbye to your baby - running a finger over her soft cheek. 

He doesn't believe you, though he waits for it to be just the two of you before he can question it. He doesn't want to create a situation before your parents arrive to pick up your daughter. They offered to have her for a few hours to give you both some respite.

The second the door closes, and it's just the two of you again, he turns to look at you - his brows curled up inquisitively.

"Now, what's really going on?" he asks, referring to all those times you shut yourself off from him - primarily that one a few minutes ago.

You turn away, heading to the kitchen to get a drink. "Going on with what?" you deflect, trying to avoid the topic.

He follows you, standing behind you at the sink - his arms wrapping around your middle, chin resting over your shoulder. 

But he's too close to where you don't want him, so you flinch at his touch, moving his hands away from your tummy and stretching the hem of your top - pulling on the fabric.

Bucky rips his hands from you, your avoidance of his touch making things whirl in his mind. "You don't like that anymore?" he asks, stepping aside to face the side of you.

"I do... just— just not right now," you reply, taking a quick sip of water before moving across the kitchen - heading towards the fridge. "Tired, feel gross," you shrug, trying to ease the tension you accidentally created. 

"That's not it," he softly shakes his head, eyes focused on you even though every glance goes unreciprocated. "It's something else."

"Just need a nap and shower," you partially lie, pulling out two apples, handing him one.

He doesn't accept your attempt at deflection, instead turning it down. "No, it's something else," he continues, his eyes glued to the side of your face. "And you're afraid of saying it."

"I'm not," you softly protest, voice quiet.

"So it is something else," he mutters, the unknown confession of you making things easier for him, harder for you.

You're cornered. You sigh and nod faintly, closing the door of the fridge. 

"What is it? Please talk to me," he reaches for your hand, fingers wrapping themselves around yours. "It's just the two of us, no distractions... what's been going on?"

"It's hard to get used to," you start, pausing to think of what to say next.

"What is? Being a mom?" he asks, noticing your focused gaze on the baby stuff on the counter. 

You nod, pausing once more. "Not just that," you exhale, shrugging. "Everything's changed."

"With us?" he asks, hand tightening in yours. 

"With me," you correct, looking down at your hand in his. "I've changed, and I'm not used to it... I don't like it."

"How have you changed?" he questions, trying to prompt more answers from you. 

"My body has," you softly reply, trying not to squirm at your confession. "My boobs, tummy, my hair. The weight is taking longer to come off than I thought, and I feel— I feel like a..." you go quiet, not wanting to finish your sentence.

However, Bucky's not done coaxing words from you. His face softens when you finally meet his gaze, his features inviting and knowing. "Feel like a what?" he whispers.

"I don't know," you shrug again.

"'You are not your thoughts'," he says, reciting those words you've said to him countless times after his nightmares. Though now he's repurposing them to someone else who needs them, you. "I repeat that saying in my head all the time. Do you know who taught me that?" he asks, his gaze honing in on you - trying to stop you from looking away.

"Me," you whisper. 

"That's right," he nods, bringing his spare hand to cup your cheek. "You need to use that same kindness to yourself. And right now," he starts, pressing a kiss into your lips. "You have never looked more beautiful to me."

You softly frown, the rest of your features relaxing.

"Your body gave us a daughter," he smiles. "You made her. You may or may not get your ‘old body back.’ But the one you have now is perfect too.”

"Thank you," your voice cracks, the sweet words of your lover soothing all the doubts in your mind. You envelop him in an embrace, arms hugging around him in the ways you've recently longed for. "I mean it."

His arms wrap around you just as tight, one hand running up your spine. "So do I.”

[emelinstriker]

☆ A Few ESAU Headcanons ☆

Art drawn by me + the AU itself is mine.

We literally hit the 1k follower milestone only like 5 days ago, how tf did y'all bring it way beyond and made it 1022 followers this quickly- I couldn't even make a special in time- I love y'all but how dare you- So I'mma just lovingly slap you guys with these headcanons- hfgnhfgnhfg

Also, these are supposed to be dating/romantic headcanons, but half of them count more towards general relationships with your champions within the AU.

☆ ~ Headcanons ~ ☆

☆ Wukong

>Doesn't talk much, but loves to show his affection towards you with his actions.

>Has a habit of wrapping his cape + tail around you when hugging/cuddling you.

>Much like his LMK counterpart, he is still lazy in his own way. So he rather lazily snuggles against you when cuddling. He's like a blanket with some extra weight to keep you trapped in his arms.

>His kisses are very gentle for his rather emotionless attitude. Mainly because he doesn't want to overwhelm you or accidentally hurt you with his strength.

>Very protective of you. Of course he was already protective before, but if you're in a relationship with him, then he takes his jobs of protecting you a lot more seriously. That's not just his Master in danger anymore, but also his significant other.

>Casually picks you up with his tail and holds you close when he craves kisses or cuddles. Won't do it in public though. In public he just holds your hand.

☆ Macaque

>Talks a lot and practically won't shut up about how much he loves you.

>Most openly clingy out of them all. You better get used to him literally hanging onto you at times.

>Hope you don't mind him accidentally getting blood on you when hugging you. Don't worry, it's not his.

>Might show slight yandere-ish behavior when you're in a relationship, but it's really not that noticeable when comparing it to his regular behavior. Just take his usual somewhat unhinged vibe and crank it up a bit.

>Dramatic over-the-top flirt. Unironically has done the draw-me-like-one-of-your-french-girls pose while shirtless on the bed before, and he wouldn't hesitate to do it again.

>Lots of PDA. He not only won't verbally shut up, but also physically won't let you escape his love. He tends to initiate a lot of passionate kisses even in public. But if you don't feel comfortable about making out in public, he's also fine with just little pecks on the lips.

☆ Nezha

>He was just supposed to act like your guard. How dare you make him feel this way. Not that he's actually complaining, of course.

>If you have kids/have to babysit kids, he's your best helper. He doesn't have a problem dealing with them all day and will make sure they don't accidentally get hurt while playing.

>Has a tendency of kissing the back of your hand when on-duty. Doesn't mean he isn't sneaking in cheek kisses here and there before you can even react.

>Out of all of them, he's the one with the highest probability of suggesting going to Megapolis or another city for dates. Though, you can expect him to wear sunglasses with his disguise. For obvious reasons.

>Tends to act more like your bodyguard than your boyfriend, so you have to basically teach him to loosen up a bit when on a date, and remind him he's not on some mission.

>Generally needs more time to just relax, so a recommendation would be to have a lot of dates, or even little vacations with him away from the palace. It also just adds to the time spent together. (Whether or not you'll actually be fully alone with him away from the others is another thing. Especially when they can transform/disguise themselves to act as bonus bodyguards without your knowledge.)

☆ MK

>He's an absolute sweetheart. Until he isn't.

>Let me rephrase that: He's an absolute sweetheart towards you and his fellow champions, but will not hesitate to rip off someone's arm if they try to flirt with you. Even if it's playfully/jokingly flirting, clarify that to him before he targets the person that was just joking around.

>He usually asks for kisses first by either silently wrapping his tail around you and leaning against you, or just flatout asking you directly. There is no in between.

>Surprisingly remembers when you plan a date. Also remembers your anniversary. What he usually doesn't remember is to bring whatever little gift he packed up for you, so you sometimes have to pick up your gift in his room.

>Pretty sure that's part of the plan and he just wants to have you alone so no one could disturb you two, but it's hard to tell whether or not he's doing it intentionally or is just really forgetful about specifically that.

>Sometimes offers you his bandana to wear, and you get to see his hair in a slightly different style.

☆ Red Son

>If you're ever hungry and have little to no experience in cooking or baking, he gotchu. He can also teach you how to cook/bake if you want to learn. Or if you already know how to work the kitchen, he wouldn't mind letting you prepare meals with him as bonding time.

>He is too embarrassed to wear his favorite apron in front of others. His favorite apron has "Kiss The Best Cook" written in bold on it with little burning hearts all over it. The "Best" part was added by you. But he enjoys wearing it when it's just you around him.

>If you're one of the unfortunate souls to have been born with monthly shark week, he offers himself as your heating pad when cuddling.

>Doesn't usually initiate kisses, feeling like he's bothering or distracting you in the moment. But that gives you all the more reason to shower him in them.

>Would rather spend his dates alone with you around the palace, including cooking you something for said date. However, he also doesn't mind going out to some restaurant and would most certainly pay for it all.

>But don't even dare try pay for your own meal. Or literally anything you ever wanna try pay for with your own money. He will stop you. And he will pay for it himself.

☆ Ao Lie

>Your personal air taxi in form of a dragon.

>He gives you more cheek kisses and generally short kisses, but a lot of them.

>Can be found lazing around outside in the field a lot. Be it in human or dragon form. 

>Because of this, his suggestion for a date would also be outside, like a picnic.

>Tends to offer you his over-sized clothes. Yes, most of the things in his wardrobe are really big and comfy.

>Almost as physically clingy as Macaque, but will mostly just rub himself on you before letting go. So at least you don't have to worry about trying to pry him off you like a certain monkey. Cough.

☆ Azure

>Your personal bed... No seriously, he's so tall he just straight up becomes your bed when cuddling.

>Most awkward flirting out of them all. Like, second-hand-embarrassment levels of awkward. But he's trying.

>Sometimes accidentally licks you like an actual cat instead of kissing you, which ends up in him feeling embarrassed over it and quickly apologizing. He does let out a quiet purr when licking you though.

>Likes to carry you around, if you will let him. Usually either in his arms or on his shoulders. You can just hold onto his fluffy mane when you're on his shoulders.

>He's very attentive and will try make your day just a little better with small gestures. Such as silently pulling you close if you need comfort, but don't need as much as when every other champion can feel it.

>His standpoint on outdoor vs indoor dates are 50/50. Really depends on the time, day, weather, etc. Just make sure he actually fits wherever you wanna plan a date. His tall stature makes sitting in normal-sized seats at restaurants uncomfortable for him.

☆ Mink

>Ironically the most normal-feeling relationship.

>Like, despite being physically the least amount of normal, he feels the most like a genuine relationship with no prior biases towards you, despite you being labeled as his Master. Mainly because he absolutely avoids treating you like one and refuses to put you on a pedestal in any way that isn't necessary.

>He's very skilled at flirting. Even if some of the pick-up lines reek of cheese, he saved up quite a lot with the help of the scroll- Some being more unique than others.

>Kissing him is a bit complicated due to him literally being, well, goopy ink. Or rather mostly goopy ink mixed with the other black goop.

>He likes to wrap his ink around you and keep you at least somewhat covered in it though. It's like his personal way of showing off his claim/mark on you.

>Dates are most certainly happening in the Scroll of Memory. He knows about some great locations to spend time in there.

[ Masterlist ]

[kelocitta]

In honor of the @rw-ship-showdown I wanted to write about Artihunter as someone who jokingly slapped them together pre-downpour and still thinks they are actually very compelling. Just not in the super soft love wins kinda way (Although I get why people like that more) And the only way I know how to do that is talking too much so heres a far too long slug essay-

Obviously the slugcats don't offer a ton of characterization but theres not nothing to work with. Their stories, whether by their roles in it or the overarching themes do provide a backbone to work with. Even gameplay itself can provide a bit. (for some more than others) Hunter, to me, is ultimately a story about selflessness. The goal is to revive Moon, which is very much an act of kindness from both Hunter and NSH. But the weight of that action is much more significant for Hunter- Hunter is deeply sick. They're on the clock, and for all their skill in combat none of that will ultimately help them to survive longer than their body can hold out. Moon is a close friend of NSH but that means little Hunter- Hunter really gets next to nothing out of helping them, and ultimately pays quiet a bit spending their limited time alive fighting to deliver that neuron so that someone else can live.

To spend ones limited days on helping another, in a game that very much stresses the unwavering cruelty of the world and nature- is pretty notable. (And you could even say that Hunter being the Hardmode of Rain World adds another layer to this)

And then we have Artificer. A storyline that very much stands out to people as more… villainous (so to speak) than the other slugcats. Artificer's story covers a lot of things. Trauma, violence, revenge, etc. Revenge is a bit of a selfish desire- That need to see someone hurt as they have hurt you. A punishment that ultimately does not fix whatever harm was done- but feels good to see because you were hurt and now those responsible share that pain.

Artificer's actions are founded in that need for revenge, their pups killed for overstepping boundaries they didn't know existed. Is it not fair for them to be angry at that, to punish the scavengers for their violence with their own? Why should the scavengers ever be forgiven when they and their pups were not? And that's how you get that loop- Harm for harm over and over.

The original action has been lost in a spiral of violence for violence. And here stands Artificer- their very spirit scarred. Not just because they sought revenge, but because they never ceased trying to scratch that itch for violence as an answer. Artificer only has two paths for their story- killing the scavenger king (Someone who, really, has little to do with the original 'crime' of the scavengers, but represents an important individual to them- as did the slugpups to Artificer), locking themselves as karma one for good and spending the rest of their life chasing creatures that no longer even fight back in a warped sense of closure- or to dissolve themselves in the acids of the void sea because they're too far gone to find any real peace.

They can't meaningfully recover from that state, not alone, twisting in on themselves. Even if they halt their actions, they've been using violence as a feeble defense against their own pain- violence that no longer has any real direction or basis. Artificer gets no real closure from killing the scavenger king. All they can do is continue the cycle, or try to scrub it away. No real peace in a prison of their own making. So you have a creature, who even with a strict timer on their life- a body that will crumble to disease, spends its last bit of time on saving another. And another who was so caught up in the pain of loss that were eaten alive by their own anger, poisoned their own soul on such a deep level even self-proclaimed gods have no solution for them. What peace can they offer each other? For Hunter, its only a fleeting moment of happiness- of selfish love, before their own body fails them. A bit of indulgence in something for themself. For Artificer, its a single, comforting thread to ground them again, something tangible to protect and care about again. But thats a thread that will ultimately be snapped under the cruel indifference of the world. Hunters timer will tick down regardless of if it takes another with it. Its a tragedy- its doomed to end badly. Whatever good it offers to either of them to find each other will only provide the fleeting comfort of a band-aid that will be ripped away too early. But all that can be worth indulging in anyway, if only for the moment. It doesn't change the ending, but the ending was never going to be happy. Its can so yuri

[theresstillgrowinghere]

I don’t often find I have much to say during chronic illness awareness months anymore. I’m tired. My words feel tired. I don’t feel like I have anything new to add. Sometimes I worry though that that in part comes from my having been in various digital chronic illness spaces for almost a decade. Of course it feels tired to me. There are things that rattle around my brain that feel so obvious and commonplace (and that have been said much more eloquently by others before me) but may still be worth expressing, just judging by the ways people in my life haven’t been able to understand

So for gastroparesis awareness month this year, there are a few things I want to note from my experiences (tw for food/eating, weight without numbers, medical trauma)

1) My relationship with food is so scarred and multifaceted. It is messy and thorny, conflicting and complicated

(I am scared of food. I miss food. I hate food. I want to eat so badly. I never want to think about eating again. Tell me in detail about how it tasted. I love food. Please don’t ask me to join you for a meal. I don’t want to miss the communal aspects of eating. I feel so disconnected and other and separate just because I don’t eat. Sometimes I do try to eat and it makes me sick. Don’t comment on it, please; it’s not helpful to scold or encourage - I feel shame either way)

2) There is no cure. There is only management. I think people understand this in theory more than actuality, because when I say this I mean please, please stop expecting any management option to be The Thing. Please don’t expect something to offer substantial improvement, even if it is a life-saving dramatic change. As I have tried to explain to people in my life, those types of interventions are often complicated and risky and, in our broken healthcare system, very difficult to access until the situation truly is dire and life-threatening. Which can mean that the body takes significant damage before getting there. Sometimes by the time you access the intervention, that damage is irreversible and the goal is just to stop further decline. It’s not making me better; it’s keeping me from getting worse. For some reason that’s difficult for people to understand

(But sometimes people do find what for them is The Thing or are The Things, and that’s an important piece of the whole picture. The problem is the persistence of unrealistic expectations among people around us)

3) My relationship with healthcare is vital but fraught and heavy. I rely on it tremendously just to stay alive. It is also my only in-person access to the world and to people, which is a weird kind of mindfuck. But I am also deeply afraid of it after so many years of trauma. I am terrified of hospitals and medical professionals. I’m sorry for the way that fear makes me irrational, makes me assume, makes me protect myself. I know so many medical professionals are so caring and kind, but it is very, very hard to go into a medical setting trusting that that will be the case

4) There are some things I wish truly were obvious. Like don’t comment on someone’s weight, ever. Don’t say you wish you could “have a little of that” to change your appearance. Don’t try to convince me to “just try to eat a little.” Trust that I know my body best. Don’t offer me unsolicited advice or recommendations. Don’t say “when you get to be my age…” because I will point out that, based on the amount of damage to my body already, it is very possible I will never reach your age. But more to the point, I am not too young to be this sick. It happens

Anyway, these are my 3am-notes-app, camped-out-on-the-bathroom-floor thoughts. It is also important to note that they exist in the context of my gastroparesis being born of and coexisting with my other chronic illnesses, and they all become so deeply entangled

Wishing everyone well. Hoping your August is kind and gentle

To everyone with gastroparesis (and other digestive disorders, really), I’m sorry your tummy hurts, and no, you actually don’t need to be very brave about it. As I heard someone say recently in a different context but definitely applies here as well, “We weren’t born to be fighters. I don’t want to be brave. I want to be okay.” I just want all of us to be okay

[asksythe]

Is there any cultural significance or reasoning for Xiao Xingchen giving both his eyes to Song Lan, instead of just one?

I can certainly see there being plot and/or thematic reasons for it (like it makes a better parallel with Wei Wuxian who couldn’t give just half his golden core; it’s necessary for Xiao Xingchen to be completely blind for the Yi city tragedy to play out as it did; etc.) but I’m wondering if there is more to it then that.

Your insights on other bits of MDZS lore have been really interesting!

That’s a tough question. The short answer is: yes. It’s a cultural thing. 

The longer answer is that I’m not sure I can adequately answer your question... because I feel that I'm not qualified. It goes deep. This is reaching the DNA of Chinese culture and the value system itself. I would say it’s probably better if you read more Chinese classics or immerse yourself in the culture. This is one of those things that are immensely difficult to put into words. The best way is to experience it.    

But since you asked me, I’m going to at least give it a try. 

The reason that Xiao Xingchen gave both eyes to Song Lan and the true root of the Yi City tragedy includes three different cultural concepts: Jishi 济世 (the Chinese ideal of saving the world), Enyuan Yinguo 恩怨因果 (Karma and Karmic Debts), and the quest to find Dao 道 (truth). 

1/ Jishi 济世 

济世 Jishi is a Chinese term denoting a philosophical ideal pursued by certain classes or castes of people since ancient times in China. It means to sacrifice and save the world. It’s self-sacrificial heroism in the most ideal and purest sense of the concept, similar to our modern-day Doctors without Borders.   

This is Xiao Xingchen’s higher calling, his chosen purpose. Xiao Xingchen came down from Baoshan Sanren’s mountain at 17 years old with one purpose: to make the world a better place. He rejected no one who needed his help. He went out of his way to reject the invitations from the cultivator Houses to join their ranks and enjoy the wealth and privilege it might bring because he didn’t want to be distracted from a higher calling.

Using modern Western vernacular, Xiao Xingchen is a hero. That’s his religion and identity. That’s on top of a personality that already holds high self-responsibility. So is there any wonder he feels he’s responsible for Song Lan’s loss and must give Song Lan both eyes?  

2/ Enyuan Yinguo 恩怨因果

恩怨 En Yuan. Yuan is resentment, spite, hatred, grudge. But En is a lot harder to nail down in English. It’s commonly translated as favor, but ‘favor’ has none of the cultural weight and encoded social obligation of En. The pure meaning of En is ‘a good deed done from the heart.’ A kindness. A mercy. A gift. 

For example, Jiang Fengmian taking Wei Ying into Jiangshi is En. Wen Ning saving Jiang Cheng and Wei Ying is En. Wen Ning reclaiming Jiang Fengmian and Yu Furen’s corpses and artifacts is En. Big En, comparable rebirthing an entire household. Wen Ruohan teaching Zhao Zhuli (later on known as Wen Zhuliu) and granting him a chance to prove himself is also En. Nie Mingjue doing the same to Jin Guangyao is the same level of En (granting critical knowledge and opportunity to completely change one’s life). Jin Guangyao taking in Lan Xichen and hiding him from Wen pursuers before the Sunshot campaign is En.   

因果 Yinquo = Karmic Bonds, the fruits that bloom from the seeds one sow. It’s also understood as a link between people’s life. Our lives collide, intertwine, and diverge like threads on a tapestry. We are each bound to each other by the threads of Karma and our debt to each other. This is yinguo. 

There is a deep-seated belief in China that a person’s life is a ledger. To live is to constantly add to and take away from the ledger. When other people perform En for you, that means you take from their ledger and add to yours. When someone takes from your ledger, a yuan/grudge is born. From the moment you were born, you were granted the greatest of En, the gift of life from your parents.   

In Chinese culture, it’s believed that one must try one’s best to square the ledger. One must repay En and reclaim Yuan. Entangled Enyuan eventually leads to tangled Yinguo, and that’s just a big headache nobody wants because it directly impacts your afterlife, your next life, your descendants, and sometimes even your ancestors that are already dead. 

To strive your best to repay En is seen as a virtue. Of course, not everyone is capable or even wants to reach this ideal. Like when we say it’s good to be honest, but being truly and completely honest in daily life is… a task, shall we say. Sometimes, it’s very hard to truly repay what you owe. And sometimes, your Enyuan with a person or with a House is so entangled that it’s either hard to really say who owes who, or hard to admit to the fact that you are the one in the reds.  

You are seeing parallels between Xiao Xingchen and Wei Wuxian because they both embody this ideal to the extreme. Both would take it upon themselves to repay. Xiao Xingchen paid with his eyes. Wei Wuxian repaid Jiang Fengmian’s En by giving Jiang Cheng his jindan, helped Jiang Cheng rebuild Jiang Shi using Guidao (Path of the Dead), gave up all his war achievements for the rebuilding of Jiangshi and left Jiangshi without a penny to his name despite being a major contributor to victory, and then… repaid Wen Ning, Wen Qing’s En to Jiang Cheng and Jiangshi in Jiang Cheng’s place when the other didn’t.  

In some ways, you can say that both Xiao Xingchen and Wei Wuxian are flawed in that they underestimate their own value and well-being and overestimate what other people do for them. You can even say that they are foolish because they pay for En that isn’t theirs to pay, and that eventually leads to their suffering and death. But this is just the kind of people they are. They are true idealists who genuinely believe in a Truth greater than mortal squabbles. They are pure, uncorrupted Daoists, the kind that holds the founding precepts of Daoism in their heart.  

In the novel, there are many examples of different people and how they see Enyuan Yinguo and how much value they put in them. 

We have Su Se, who was saved by Wei Wuxian twice but didn’t even acknowledge it. Instead, he saw that as a Yuan because he probably hated the fact that it showed how weak and insignificant he was. Yet Jin Guangyao merely remembered his name and gave him some support to create his House, and he was willing to be Jin Guangyao’s attack dog, going so far as to abandon his own House members in Fuma Cave when Jin Guangyao’s plan failed and using his life to buy time for Jin Guangyao in Guanyin temple. 

We also have Jiang Cheng, who was well aware that he owed Wen Ning and Wen Qing, but didn’t want to acknowledge it because he was poisoned with trauma and hatred at the hands of Wen Chao and felt that because of his relationship with Wei Ying, he was entitled to Wen Ning’s En. And yet he is rational enough to understand that admitting to owing this ginormous En and not repaying it is a huge stigma on House Jiang, and so even when he answered Nie Mingjue, confirming that the Wen remnants did have En with him, he answered in such a way that downplayed the enormity of En. Answering truthfully would have exonerated Wei Wuxian and the Wen remnants because the laws regarding Enyuan are so foundational that no one could have blamed the Jiang for saving the Wen remnants. But answering truthfully would have been admitting to his owing the Wen, setting House Jiang against House Jin, and turning House Jiang into a target of ridicule for other Houses because such an En should have been paid long before Wei Wuxian had to take drastic measures and jailbroke the Wen remnants from Quiongqi Path.   

We also have Lan Xichen, who effectively compromised his entire House and compromised his own judgment because he saw Jin Guangyao as having granted him a huge En (which is not wrong, per se). 

And then we have Jin Guanyao, who killed both people who bestowed En on him (Wen Ruohan and Nie Mingjue both gave Jin Guangyao critical knowledge, opportunities, and elevated him above his station. And yet when it came to Lan Xichen, despite his effectively pushing the Lan to death in the second Burial Mound Siege, Jin Guangyao still acted like Lan Xichen was in the wrong for not paying Jin Guangyao’s En even more than he already had. 

Then finally, look at these Enyuan and consider the way it binds the various characters in both good and bad ways. 

So it’s a deeply embedded and very nuanced concept that manifests differently in different characters.  

3/ The Quest for Truth 道 Dao:

Dao/Tao 道: the truth, the path, the knowledge, the faith, the ideal, the natural order of the universe, that from which everything comes and that from which everything returns. 

What does Dao have to do with Xiao Xingchen? 

Well, because Xiao Xingchen is a Daoist. Remember when he reminded A-Quing to address him as Daozhang? That. 

He’s not the only Daoist in MDZS, either. The man who created Dao as a philosophy and spirituality, Laozi, is also the man who created the concept of cultivation in the first place. So every single cultivator in MDZS, indeed every single cultivator in xianxia genre, treads in Laozi’s footsteps, takes from his wisdom, and stands on his shoulders in their quest for heavens. 

The first sentence in Laozi’s definitive work on Dao, the Tao Te Ching, says: 

‘Dao that can be told is not Dao. Truth that can be named is not truth. Path that can be walked is not the right Path.’

The Tao Te Ching is a foundational Chinese Classic. It is the shortest but also the most complex and hard to understand. 

This first verse of the Tao Te Ching means: truth is not something that is fixed. Truth is nuanced. Knowledge is not something that can be given to you by words only. You must find this knowledge by yourself. Path is not something that anyone else can tell you. Your path must be walked by your own feet. Faith is not something that can given to you by someone else. You must find faith in yourself.  

So then, apply this sentence to Xiao Xingchen’s journey. Do you see it? Xiao Xingchen choosing Jishi is his journey to find and prove his Dao. Jishi is Xiao Xingchen’s Dao. 

Yi City is not a tragedy. Yi City is Xiao Xingchen’s tribulation and the unavoidable consequences of choosing to remain pure to the founding precepts of Dao while the rest of the cultivator Houses, including Nie and Lan, have long betrayed their origin. 

Even if, by some miracle, Xue Yang and Xiao Xingchen never entangled with each other, there will always be a Xi City or a Zi City for Xiao Xingchen. Because it is a consequence and a price to pay to find the truth that he desires. And he did find that truth. Song Lan, who he had left in a decisive gesture of severing their Karmic Bond, returned and would likely spend decades if not centuries walking Xiao Xingchen’s path, waiting for the day Xiao Xingchen awoke. And A-Qing never left Xiao Xingchen, never gave up on him either. 

   

Ugghh, such a heavy topic. I usually don't like to write too much on such topics because... it's hard to write and it's hard to read, and most people don't really have the patience to read. But it is a question. So I tried. In any case, have this fanart I commissioned from Nguyen Linh.

[theepisceswriter]

JJK characters comforting a stressed out/overworked significant other ( Gojo, Nanami, Toji, Mei Mei)

TW: none really apply, GN!reader, headcanon format

GOJO SATORU

He's QUICK to notice the signs when you're under distress, any slight change in your mood and he's on the case like Olivia Benson.

It's during times like these that he really clings to you and is an attentive partner because he's seen what the weight of stress can do to people close to him and he REFUSES to let them succumb to it if there's anything he can do to stop it.

He becomes so soft and vulnerable with you the moment he notices your eyes are a little too bloodshot

"What's wrong baby? Do you want to talk about it? We can lay down if you'd like."

He turns into your therapist for the day and purposefully clears his schedule for the day so you can rant to him for as long or as little as you'd like. You can take it all the way back to drama from grade school if you wanted to and he'd listen genuinely to try and come up with solutions for you.

Did I mention all of this is happening while you're laying on his chest and he's stroking your hair? V U L N E R A B L E !

The moment the source of your stress is identified don't even worry about it anymore, he's most definitely going to take care of it and you.

Oh and he's going to throw you a stress-free themed party with the jjk kids that seems so silly but actually helped all of you in the long run.

NANAMI KENTO

Nanami is a stressed out and overworked man in general so you would do your best to hide the fact that you’re stressed out to not add on to his stress, but Nanami isn’t falling for any of that “I’m okay, I swear (:” nonsense when it comes to you. He recognizes those bags underneath your eyes all too well. Not to mention that he can hear you typing away on your laptop and shifting around in bed checking your email at god forbidden hours of the night when you should be sleeping.

He moves in silence for real unlike the people who post those quotes on their IG stories, so you most likely wouldn't even notice that he knows how stressed and overworked you are. You should absolutely know better than to think you're tricking him, when this man gets partners he STUDIES them to a T!

You'll just come home from work and he'll have dinner already made for you along with special pastries that he prepared himself and a night of self-care prepped for you to complete; he's big on acts of service as a love language.

"But Nanami I have wo-" "You didn't ha-" AHT! He's not hearing that, he'll just gaze at you and then motion to the table with his head. You have no choice, this man is going to make sure you're stress-free for certain by the end of the night.

And yes, you are going to get a lecture on the importance of mental health and self care and no you cannot tell him about himself.

MEI MEI

“Darling, why do you work yourself so hard when I can just take care of us?”

Mei Mei is a sugar momma and you can’t convince me otherwise. Half of that money she finesses out of others? Yeah, it’s going towards you and your expenses.

The first sign of distress and she’s sending gifts to your house that she knows will cheer you up. New shoes, a couple of new expensive outfits, some roses, etc, etc.

I also feel like she's a master baecation planner too, so don't be surprised when she sends you that "pack your bags" text at 8pm and the next thing you know you're in Aspen skiing with socialites.

Though, depending on how much she likes you and values you this could be a good or bad thing. If she's not really vibing you like that but thinks you're cute enough to keep around then she's doing all of this just to get you to shut up about ranting to her.

"Stress is just a mindset and one that causes wrinkles so knock that off."

BUT, if she reaaaaallllyy likes you then these are genuinely just the perks that come with having Mei Mei as a girlfriend. Best believe she'll find a moment in the midst of spoiling you when you two are alone to get to the bottom of your stress and help you figure it out.

TOJI FUSHIGURO

He don't give a FAWK what you got going on baby !

I'm just playing yall, he cares but because he's emotionally unavailable its very hard to tell that he cares sometimes.

Hit him with a "I've just been so stressed lately" and he'll hit you with a "So stop stressing 😐" he means well I promise.

It's when he sees it take a toll on your mental health that he gets concerned, or as concerned as someone like Toji can be. Once he notices the fatigue, lack of eating, and dark eye circles his protection instincts kick in. As someone who's traveled into the deepest and darkest parts of his mind, the last thing he wants is for someone he cares about to end up in a place like that because he knows how it feels.

Just like Mei Mei, his acts of service and the amount of support he gives you depends on how far along and serious you two are as a couple.

If you're casual he'll just give you verbal reminders like; "Don't you think you need a break?" "Go eat you look like a witch" "I would suggest a nap to help with those dark circles." He's apart of that sassy man apocalypse we're.

BUT, if you two are locked in then he'll go out his way a lot more to make sure you're comfortable like buying you comfort food, watching a movie or two with you, and fucking to keep your mind off of it.

He'll physically take your work laptop away from you and put it on a high shelf purposefully so you won't be able to reach it. Your job keeps calling you in on your off days? He'll pickup the phone next time and let them know the Toji way why you can't come in. Boss irritating you over a project? Don't let toji see him in person or get ahold of any office numbers!

[howtonerdoutovereverything]

Fairly Oddparents: A New Wish Season 2 Predictions

OK, OK, OK, I know this topic has probably been discussed to death, but considering I'm new around these parts, and also considering I've been thinking about this for literal weeks, I figured I’d just spill all my thoughts out. If I forget anything or if I think of new stuff, I’ll just reblog this post and add it.

Anyways, let’s start by looking directly at the end of the Season 1 Finale.

Hazel’s friends (and brother) now know about the existence of fairies

So this is probably the biggest thing to come out of the finale. With her one rule-free wish, Hazel wishes that her friends (and brother) can keep their memories of the craziness that just transpired, meaning they now know about the existence of fairies and the fact that she has fairy godparents. This has the potential to open up a lot of interesting dynamics.

Seeing Hazel and Dev interact after they found out about each others’ fairy godparents in Battle of the Dimmsonian was so fun, as it’s not a dynamic we’ve seen a lot of throughout this franchise (at least to my understanding; I haven’t watched the OG show in a LOOOONG time). So now that the group of people “in the know” has expanded, and considering they all have a much different relationship with Hazel than Dev, a ton of wacky shenanigans could ensue. For example, Hazel and Antony now both have to keep Cosmo and Wanda’s (and I guess also Peri’s) existence a secret from their parents, which I can definitely imagine being used for gags. Also, I’m sure Jasmine, Winn, and Antony are going to want the fairies to grant wishes for them, meaning they’ll have to ask Hazel to make those wishes. I can totally see an episode where Hazel is constantly making wishes and gets super exhausted/frustrated. But in general, I think that the fact that Hazel doesn’t have to keep her fairies a secret anymore means that her friends can be involved in more episodes, or at least be involved in a more significant way. Jasmine and Winn, while being great characters, definitely deserve more development. Perhaps we could meet their families. And with Antony, perhaps we could meet his girlfriend?

But if we’re going to talk about friends, there’s one person in particular we have to bring up…

Dev Dimmadome (and all of his shit)

So…here’s the thing. Dev 100% remembers everything that went down in the finale. I know this is a fairly common theory and people have been discussing it, but just in case you’re out of the loop, here’s why I think this is the case.

When Hazel makes her rule-free wish to Jorgen, she specifies that she wants her “friends” to remember the events of the finale. And while, in the moment, she’s definitely thinking about Jasmine, Winn, and Antony, it’s made clear throughout the past few episodes (specifically in Best of Luck, if I remember correctly) that she still considers Dev a friend despite all the disagreements they’ve had. She even spells out in Lost and Founder’s Day that friends can have arguments and still be friends, so unless that belief of hers has radically changed (which I doubt), it would make sense if Dev ended up getting lumped into the wish purely because she still views him as a friend. As others have pointed out, this could explain why Jorgen freaked out so heavily when Hazel made her wish. Why would he react like that if there wasn’t going to be some big consequence?

And speaking of big consequences, I think Dev remembering his attempt to take over Fairy World and the loss of Peri as his godparent is going to have a big impact on him and affect the direction in which his character arc goes. At the end of the finale right before Hazel makes her wish, Dev straight up says that he thinks he deserves his punishment, and seems extremely dejected. The weight of his actions is clearly affecting him, and when you add on his realization that the fairy godparent he treated so horribly still cared about him even when he was on the verge of death BECAUSE OF THAT MISTREATMENT, I feel like Dev is going to be starting off the season in a pretty bad place.

I feel like for the first episode or so, Dev is going to be wallowing in his regret and just generally feeling like trash, but not knowing how to deal with it. He knows what he did is wrong, and seems convinced that Hazel isn’t going to forgive him or that it isn’t worth pursuing a friendship with her any further. Hazel will probably notice this and attempt to talk to him, as she’s not used to seeing him like this (and also is probably assuming that his memory being wiped would mean that he’d be “back to normal”, because remember, she doesn’t know he remembers). Dev will keep avoiding her, some shenanigans will happen that force them to come together, and Hazel will push Dev into admitting what’s wrong. He’ll finally spill that he remembers what he did and feels horrible about it and there will be some sort of reconciliation (I imagine Hazel saying that she doesn’t fully forgive him, but doesn’t want to see him be miserable because, at the end of the day, she’s still his friend and wants him to be better). This will set the two of them off on a good note for the rest of the season.

But that doesn’t mean that everything will be fine and dandy with Dev…

Peri’s role

So given the fact that Peri has swiftly become the fan-favorite character of this series, I have a feeling that, if Season 2 is greenlit, the team behind the show will want to give him a more prominent role than he had in Season 1. I remember being a bit disappointed that we didn’t get as much of him in the show as I was expecting, but then again, I doubt the team could’ve anticipated just how popular Peri became.

With that being said, let’s consider where Peri is right now. He’s just lost his first-ever godkid, whom he cared about despite the fact that he wasn’t very appreciative of him. Given that Peri was very clearly trying to prove something through his godparenting of Dev (mostly that he could “make it on his own”), losing him is going to absolutely DEVASTATE HIM. I can picture him crashing in his parents’ apartment, crying on the couch while eating ice cream and having absolutely no self-confidence. But I can also see him attempting to secretly help out Dev even though he’s not his godparent anymore. I’ve seen plenty of artwork of Peri disguised as a babysitter that Dale hires, and I think that would be a great way to get more Peri and Dev interactions as well as provide a fun twist on Timmy and Vicky’s dynamic from the OG show. Dev will likely be a bit conflicted by Peri’s attempts to help him out, and I can see an episode of them sort of reconciling. Given that there was originally going to be an episode centered around them in Season 1 that got scrapped, this could be a good way to reuse that old idea. Plus, if I’m honest, I just want to see Peri’s human design.

Plus, having Peri essentially go undercover at Dev’s place will give us an opportunity to check in on a certain character…

Dale and Project H (and the Pixies…?)

Ah, yes, everyone’s favorite bastard and terrible father, Dale Dimmadome. The last time we saw him (besides the finale), he was obsessing over Project H, AKA his attempt to figure out why Hazel didn’t buy anything on Founder’s Day. We saw Cosmo and Wanda essentially (and inadvertently) feed Dale the answer he was looking for: Hazel has fairies and therefore doesn’t need to buy things. When Dale inevitably discovers this, we know there’s gonna be a plan that involves fairies somehow. But what?

Personally, I think the most likely answer is that Dale is going to want to utilize fairy magic in some way so he can essentially play genie and bring himself more fame and esteem. Or perhaps he’ll create some uber-expensive device that allows people to wish for things, but the catch is that people have to pay in order to make wishes. Given how powerful fairy magic can be, I can see this being super successful, and Hazel, Dev, and their friends will need to find a way to rescue the fairies who have been kidnapped and had their magic taken (including Cosmo, Wanda, and Peri). However, there’s another wrinkle that I think could also be interesting and possibly a bit more unique…

So originally, according to the series bible, the Season 1 finale was going to involve Dale teaming up with the Pixies. Given that the Pixies are very business-focused, Dale would likely get along with them and be willing to team up with them in order to satisfy his greed. They could easily reuse this concept for the Season 2 finale, as the Pixies seem like an interesting and fun group of villains to have the gang go up against. Plus they would probably pose a formidable threat and invite some creative scenarios and solutions in order to defeat.

There’s also one more possibility I want to discuss in regards to potential villains and season-long arcs…

The Galax Institute

In “Crock to the Future”, we’re introduced to the Galax Institute, where Hazel’s father works. It’s revealed that A.J. is currently the head of the institute, and Crocker has been attempting to land a position there. We know that the Galax Institute studies paranormal phenomena, and it’s hinted at in the first episode that fairy magic could very well be one of those things. This could potentially be a great set-up for a season-long conflict.

I feel like A.J. being the main villain of this season would be a really fun twist. He doesn’t even have to be a mustache-twirling villain or super conniving, but having him serve more as just an inconvenient and unknowing antagonist would be interesting. He could be leading an effort to study increased supernatural activity in Dimmadelphia, and after finding out that a good amount of it is centered near the Wells residence, he could assign Marcus to investigate. Hazel and Antony would then have to try and hide Cosmo and Wanda from their dad and find a way to stop the Galax Institute from learning about the existence of fairies. Having Marcus technically be on the side of the “bad guys” could lead to some really interesting dynamics. Hazel might have to eventually tell her dad about her fairies in an effort to get him to help her protect them from the Galax Institute wanting to kidnap and study them. And considering Dale will likely still be playing a large antagonist role, perhaps he could be funding the Galax Institute’s research after taking part in a board meeting with them and noticing similarities between the phenomena they’re describing and what he’s found out during Project H. This could lead to some more complex conflicts that would be really fun to watch unfold.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand that’s about it for now! Feel free to share any of your thoughts/predictions with me, as I’d love to discuss possibilities for this season!

Oh, and most importantly: STREAM THIS SHOW WHEN IT COMES OUT ON STREAMING SO WE CAN GET A SEASON 2

[britt-kageryuu]

A video of clips from VTurtles! Streams.

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

Another compilation is uploaded to the Purple_Wyvern channel. Now considered the official VTurtles! Clipper channel.

Title: The Random/Unhinged things the Turtles said!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Donnie: It's only Bulletproof until you obtain a higher caliber weapon. Evil Chuckle.

Raph: Dee No!

Donnie: Dee Yes!!! Evil Laughter!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mikey: I don't know how well this cooking experiment will work, but as a Great Chef once said "When in doubt add more butter, and if that fails more seasonings!"

Leo and Donnie both raise an eyebrow at this.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shelldon: I totally miss being an only child. I didn't have to share my games with anyone.

River: You accidentally override a save file once, and suddenly you get disowned.

Shelldon: I was almost at 100% completion! That last achievement is impossible!

River: Can't you just continue on a new file?

Shelldon: The achievements are attached to the save file, Brah!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Leo: Why did they make the robots voice so, so, what's the words that I can use on stream!?

Leo let's out a dramatic sigh.

Leo: I would listen to this robot do ASMR! And I don't really like ASMR!

(I will not confirm which robot he's talking about)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Raph: It's not that I hate libraries, it's just the last time I went to one... I ate my phone in a moment of panic, because I didn't want the bats to attack me!

Leo: Well I didn't like it because Mandarin took over the kids room and forced me to be his servant!

The visible chat is very confused. Many ?????? What??? WTF???

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mikey is trying to catch an enemy that's running away from him.

Mikey: Stay! Still! You! Little! STUPID! MOTHER-!

Raph: MANDARIN DON'T YOU DARE!!!

Leo: Let him swear Red.

Raph: But he's baby! He shouldn't swear!

Mikey: I AM 19 YEARS OLD! I AM NOT BABY!!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Donnie: Now we just need to add the 5 secret ingredients that I am legally not aloud to tell you, or tell you how to obtain.

Donnie then pours something from a ductape covered container into the mixture.

Donnie: I know I promised to show you how to make this, but I was informed that it would be what legal calls an air quotes 'bad idea' and 'legal nightmare' end air quotes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The brothers are just letting out random turtle sounds though is sounds almost like they're singing a song.

The chat on screen is a mix of confused and amazed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Leo and Donnie are scream singing off key at the top of their lungs.

Raph: Dear Pizza Supreme, please let them lose their voices.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shelldon: Dad you need a significant other.

Donnie: Okay. Enlighten me on why you believe so.

Shelldon: We want someone who can balance you out Dude.

Donnie: Good luck with that. My Type tends to be a bit short tempered, but intelligent.

Shelldon: So we need to find a shorter you, that'll be easy. Infact I know just the-.

Donnie mutes Shelldon before he could continue. Blush emojis in the chat.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Raph accidentally dropped a weight on his foot.

Raph: You son of a Goat!

Raph moves to the side to check his foot while muttering about eating the weight.

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

Masterpost

This was just a random thought in my mind while working on a different idea, then grew from there.

And Purple_Wyvern is infact Kendra, being paid extra to do this.

[denimbex1986]

'If Peaky Blinders made the Irish actor a household name, will Christopher Nolan’s nuclear blockbuster send him into the stratosphere? He talks about extreme weight loss, hating school and why his next character won’t be a smoker.

Cillian Murphy is struggling with what he can and can’t say about his title role in Oppenheimer, the latest Christopher Nolan epic, such is the secrecy surrounding this film. Murphy is under “strict instructions” not to talk about the content. Which is awkward when you’ve flown to his home in Ireland to interview him specifically about playing the physicist who oversaw the creation of the atomic bomb, later detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It’s not clear who issued these instructions. Nolan? The studio? The US government? All I know is that as well as Murphy being gagged by hefty NDAs, I am not allowed to see it (“bit unfortunate”, he concedes).

So, yes, here we sit in an empty upstairs room of a restaurant near his house in Monkstown, Dublin, working out how to do this. The room is dark, the sun shining through a solitary Velux lighting his features like a Géricault. The only background noise is the low hum of a wine refrigerator. Murphy loathes interviews, looks visibly tortured at points. But he relaxes when I ask if he’s pleased with Oppenheimer. “I am, yeah,” he says. “I don’t like watching myself – it’s like, ‘Oh, fucking hell’ – but it’s an extraordinary piece of work. Very provocative and powerful. It feels sometimes like a biopic, sometimes like a thriller, sometimes like a horror. It’s going to knock people out,” he adds. “What [Nolan] does with film, it fucks you up a little bit.”

Nolan wouldn’t disagree. The director recently told Wired magazine that some of those who’d seen it were left “absolutely devastated … they can’t speak”. Which sounds like a bad thing, but is related perhaps to the thought of the 214,000 Japanese people, overwhelmingly civilians, who lost their lives when the bombs were dropped. Kai Bird, the historian who co-authored American Prometheus, the 2008 biography of J Robert Oppenheimer upon which the film is based, said he was still “emotionally recovering” from seeing the film, clarifying that it was “a stunning artistic achievement”.

Murphy’s portrayal is said to be astonishing (“Oscar-worthy” is the buzz). This is not unbelievable. While Hollywood might not know him as a leading man, this quietly intense actor has long been celebrated in the UK and Ireland, most notably for his nine-year stint as Tommy Shelby in Peaky Blinders. When he first appeared on our screens, looking like a renaissance painting of Saint Sebastian – chiselled head contrasting with translucent blue eyes – it was impossible not to be distracted. He appeared first on stage in Enda Walsh’s Disco Pigs, then the screen adaptation. Then 28 Days Later; Intermission; Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley. Previous collaborations with Nolan include the Dark Knight trilogy, Inception and Dunkirk, “significant milestones in my career,” he says, adding that Nolan “might be the perfect director”.

It was Nolan’s wife, the producer Emma Thomas, who called Murphy one afternoon at the home he shares with his wife, artist Yvonne McGuinness, and two teenage sons. Nolan doesn’t actually have a telephone, or an email, or computer for that matter: “He’s the most analogue individual you could possibly encounter.” So, Emma said Chris would like a word and passed the receiver, then the director came on the line. “Cillian, I’d love you to play the lead in this new thing,” he said. Murphy tries to recreate his response to this news. “I was lost for words. But thrilled. Like beyond thrilled.” It is characteristic of Murphy that the modulation of his voice barely changes as he expresses this. He was so stunned, he had to sit down. “Your mind explodes.”

In the absence of the three-hour feature, I scrutinise Oppenheimer’s three-minute trailer. It’s a rush of snapshots against the crackling of a Geiger counter. There’s Murphy, short back and sides, lifting 1940s eye goggles; blue and red atoms coming at him fast; orange light; white light; blackout; silence. Massive explosion against the backdrop of space. Overlaid is Murphy’s narration, “We’re in a race against the Nazis / and I know what it means / if the Nazis have a bomb.” There’s Matt Damon looking porky as army general Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project: “They have a 12-month head start.” Murphy, pointing with cigarette: “18.”

He has put back on some of the weight he lost for the part, I’m relieved to see; his skin isn’t quite so taut over his skull and there are freckles over those eagle-wing cheekbones. He was determined to nail the scientist’s silhouette “with the porkpie hat and the pipe”, testing himself to see how little he could eat. “You become competitive with yourself a little bit which is not healthy. I don’t advise it.” He won’t say how many kilograms he lost, or what food the nutritionist told him to cut out. NDA? “Ach, no. I don’t want it to be, ‘Cillian lost x weight for the part’.”

Then again, the hurtling speed at which Nolan worked, crisscrossing the US, made it easy to skip meals. Murphy began to forget about food in the same way he began to forget about sleep. “It’s like you’re on this fucking train that’s just bombing. It’s bang, bang, bang, bang. You sleep for a few hours, get up, bang it again. I was running on crazy energy; I went over a threshold to where I was not worrying about food or anything. I was so in it, a state of hyper …” he gropes for the word, “hyper something. But it was good because the character was like that. He never ate.” Oppenheimer subsisted on little more than Chesterfield cigarettes and double-strength martinis, rims dipped in lime. “Cigarettes and pipes. He would alternate between the two. That’s what did for him in the end,” Murphy adds, a nod to the scientist’s death from cancer in 1967. “I’ve smoked so many fake cigarettes for Peaky and this. My next character will not be a smoker. They can’t be good for you. Even herbal cigarettes have health warnings now.”

I raise method acting and Murphy tilts his head and frowns. “Method acting is a sort of … No,” he says, firm but with a half smile. Oppenheimer had many defining characteristics, not least walking on the balls of his feet and a vocal tic that sounded like nim-nim-nim, but Murphy didn’t want to do an impression. Nolan was obsessed with the Brillo-texture hair, so they spent “a long time working on hair”. And the voice. The real question for Murphy was what combination – ambition, madness, delusion, deep hatred of the Nazi regime? – allowed this theoretical physicist to agree to an experiment he knew could obliterate humankind. “He was dancing between the raindrops morally. He was complex, contradictory, polymathic; incredibly attractive intellectually and charismatic, but,” he decides, “ultimately unknowable.

“Listen, it’s not like a spoiler,” he says, checking himself before he leans in, “but there are incidents in his early life that were quite worrying; very erratic.” They are in the film and the book, he steers. I suspect he is referring to Oppenheimer’s postgrad at Cambridge in 1926, when he placed a poisoned apple on the desk of a tutor towards whom he harboured complicated feelings of inadequacy and jealousy. Arguably, this was attempted murder. But Oppenheimer’s rich New York parents rushed in to bundle him into psychoanalysis. He was diagnosed with “dementia praecox”, a term describing symptoms associated with schizophrenia.

Murphy likes these complex characters; they’re his meat. People that don’t necessarily follow the – yawn – traditional transformative arc of storytelling. Not villains, exactly (although he’s played a few, including Scarecrow in Dark Knight and Jackson Rippner in Red Eye): “Villains are good if they’re well written, but if it’s one note or a trope, then they are dull.” He likes a script to stretch leisurely into all corners of the human condition, “all the shades”. At the same time, you have to understand his exceptional ability to portray interiority, physically manifesting intense human emotion without a word, radiating fierce, consuming energy. Which he does today, actually, when I stray off track.

Although Nolan is usually, shall we say, antiseptic in his approach to romance, Oppenheimer represents a significant shift. He told Wired the love story aspect “is as strong as I’ve ever done”. It features prolonged full nudity for Murphy and Florence Pugh, who plays Oppenheimer’s ex-fiancee, as well as sex, and there are complicated scenes with Emily Blunt, who plays his wife, “that were pretty heavy”. Murphy turns coy: “I’m under strict instructions not to give away anything.”

He asks if I’ve heard of chemistry tests. “They put two actors in a room to see if there’s any spark, and have all the producers and director at a table watching. I don’t know what metric they use, and it seems so outrageously silly, but sometimes you get a chemistry and nobody knows why.” This is a roundabout way of saying his scenes with Blunt and Pugh conjure this magic. His established bond with Blunt (they co-starred in A Quiet Place II) meant “the audience gets something for free”, he says. “You can be immediately vulnerable and open, and try stuff. There were moments where I remember saying, ‘I couldn’t have done that if it wasn’t with you.’”

Murphy, 47, grew up the eldest of four in Cork. His father was a civil servant, his mother a French teacher. They were a middle-class family, musical; his father “can pick up any instrument”, his brother played piano, and they regularly got stuck into “traditional Irish sessions”. Bookshelves were stuffed with literature, the radio often on, the “shitty” TV set not so much. Home life was busy but his parents taught him French and Irish, and sent him to an all-boys academic, rugby-playing private school. “I got all the education” he says, drily.

The story of how much he disliked the Presentation Brothers College, the hard-drinking masculine emphasis, how he found solace playing guitar in a band, is much rehearsed and he says today he doesn’t want “to slag the school off. I hear it’s great now.” Something about this experience seems nonetheless unsettling. He had one friend, who is still his best friend, “so I wasn’t, like, an outcast”. He played rugby for the first couple of years, but abandoned it “because everyone was all of a sudden towering over me.” Was it an unhappy time? He shifts. “It was OK. I was a bit of a messer, like I’d get in trouble and say nothing. It wasn’t the ideal school for me.”

He enrolled in and dropped out of a law degree at University College Cork, which created some friction with his parents (when I ask if his own sons will go to university in Dublin, he says, “Whatever they want”). He continued with the band, his first creative love but the one that got away. When they were offered a contract with Acid Jazz records, he turned it down for a number of reasons, he says, crucially that he didn’t feel good enough. He still writes and plays at home but, no, you won’t be hearing any of his recordings, ever, he says.

It’s a funny thing talking to Murphy. He’s at once garrulous (on the craft, or literature, or ideas) and reticent (pretty much anything else). I sense in previous interviews that he skates over issues close to his heart – such as the expression of emotion in Ireland and the need to teach empathy in schools. But when I try to drill in to these topics, get to the root, he clams shut, emitting energy like a nuclear reactor.

Later, in a different context, he will tell me a truth: “I’m stubborn and lacking in confidence, which is a terrible combination. I don’t want to put anything out that I don’t think is excellent.” But he clearly hates the pantomime of publicity, asking why I am returning to certain topics and repeating lines I’ve read elsewhere. I can almost see him at home with its views towards the Irish Sea, complaining to his wife as they tuck into supper: “Another one, asking the same fucking questions.”

If he could get out of going to Cannes, of standing on red carpets, dressed as is his habit for a funeral, hair shellacked, hands in pockets; if he could turn his back on the coloured-foam mics thrust in his face, he would. He really would. No, it dawns on him now, there’s something even worse than the red carpet; there’s the talkshow rounds. The very word “talkshow” comes out of him like a pain from his ribcage, as if the parcelling out of amuse-bouche anecdotes, offering them up to the forced laughter of that false god of show business, the studio audience, is in itself the most cheapening experience known to mankind.

“I do them because you’re contractually obliged to. I just endure them. I’ve always found it difficult. I’ve said this so many, many times.” Then there’s the double wince of realising that, yes, he’s done it again. He’s laid into the industry that feeds him. His hands raise slowly in surrender. “I want to just caveat this by saying, I’m so privileged. I’m so happy to be doing what I love. I’m really lucky. But I don’t enjoy the personality side of being an actor. I don’t understand why I should be entertaining and scintillating on a talkshow. I don’t know why all of a sudden that’s expected of me. Why?”

There’s an awkward silence. I say that he reminds me of Naomi Osaka, the tennis player who refused to talk to journalists after the French Open in 2021. He says he feels “100%” sympathy with her, “because why should she have to perform?” Then he relents. “But I get it. I get it’s a kind of ecosystem where the film feeds the publicity which feeds the talkshows which goes back and feeds the film, so, like, that’s how it works. I suppose I’m just not good at it. At interviews, at this stuff,” he gestures at me. He says after he leaves me today he’ll be going down the stairs thinking of all the things he’s said and worrying it’s come across all wrong. “Do you know what Sam Beckett said? ‘I have no views to inter.’ I love that. That should be the interview.”

We return to his art, the tension falls away and he’s back to his charming self, charged air evaporating. Since Oppenheimer, he’s also wrapped Small Things Like These, an adaptation of Claire Keegan’s brilliant novella set in 1985 in a small Irish town on the edge of which is a convent and “laundry”. Murphy is a huge fan of Keegan. He remembers reading her 2010 novel Foster on a train and having to pull his hoodie over his face because he was crying so hard. Anyway, he’d wanted to work with the Peaky Blinders director Tim Mielants and they were throwing ideas around in his sitting room when Murphy’s wife suggested Small Things. “No, there’s no way,” Murphy said. “That’s going to be gone already.” But when he called the agent, he found it was available. “I went, ‘No, you’ve got to be fucking kidding.’” Murphy pitched the idea to Matt Damon, who has set up a studio with Ben Affleck. “From there it all just happened really quickly.”

Murphy plays Bill Furlong who, funnily enough, is a man of few words. Keegan’s light-touch writing is everything he loves in art – the sense that you are not being bashed over the head by an idea. That’s how he tries to act, he adds. “I’m always trying to cut lines in scenes, because I feel like you can transmit it. Like when you see a person on a train thinking, or driving a car, and you are purely observing someone and feeling the energy that is vibrating from them. That’s the sort of acting I love. In a lot of film and television, they want to cut those bits to go to the action. I like films that pose the big questions and then leave it to the audience.” Perhaps this is at the heart of his reticence in interviews? That he doesn’t feel the need to explain.

He still finds it “nuts” that the last of the Magdalene laundries closed in 1996, that it was illegal to buy condoms in Ireland until 1985, that divorce was made legal only in 1996. He remembers vividly thousands of people still going to see moving statues in Cork when he was growing up. “Crazy. But, like, how far the country has come since then, we’re so socially advanced now compared with where we were. But you must look back. And art is a better way of doing that than reading all these reports [into the laundries].” (Afterwards, he emails me: “The nation is actually dealing with an unresolved collective trauma. Who knows how long this will take to heal, but I feel strongly that art, film and literature can help with that process. It’s a kinder and gentler sort of therapy. I hope that our movie can help with that in its own little way.”)

Because he’s a nice man, because he doesn’t want me to feel bad about our encounter, and because he’s generous and hospitable, Murphy finishes by telling me some of the best places to visit in Ireland. He and his family are staying here for the summer. They’ve had it with air travel and his home town of Cork is only a couple of hours away. He supplies me with other recommendations: a great book he’s just read, Brian, by Jeremy Cooper, oh, and there’s the Francis Bacon studio exhibition I should catch on my way out.

But before I go, what has he learned from playing Oppenheimer? Foremost, he says, that scientists think differently. He knew this already from playing physicist Robert Capa in Danny Boyle’s Sunshine (2007) and hanging out in Cern, home of the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, for research. “I had dinner with all these geniuses. I’ll never understand quantum mechanics, but I was interested in what science does to their perspective.” He sought their opinions on subjects that matter – love, politics, our place in the universe, “infinity, or whatever the fuck. Because they have a completely different way of taking in information than we do. I remember one scientist saying, ‘I don’t believe in love. It’s a biological phenomenon, the exchange of hormones between the female and the male. That’s all. Love is a nonsense.’” Murphy taps the table with his hand. “I couldn’t go along with that, obviously.”

[daily-rayless]

15 Years of Minako

It's time for another character appreciation post – the last of 2024 – and we've come down almost fifteen years to the day for a very, very special character. I first played Persona 3 in 2008, and I enjoyed it, but it was in 2009 when Persona 3: Portable was announced that my interest in the game rocketed up through the roof and into the stratosphere. Because, guys -- we were going to get a female protagonist.

September 2009

I don't know what my earliest art for Minako/Hamuko/Kotone was, but this is the earliest I could find. She had no canonical name yet. Her game hadn't been released in the States. As you can see, I wasn't even quite sure what her hair was supposed to be doing back there. But I was still excited.

December 2009

I've talked before about why having a female protagonist matters so much to me. The short version is that in an ideal world, where male protagonists weren't such a continuous majority, maybe it wouldn't; but that world doesn't exist, so it does matter, it matters to me. Minato has always been a fairly take-him-or-leave-him character for me. Minako? I was into her before the game was even released.

March 2010

I was intrigued by her design, her bright red eyes, her fluffy curls, the way her vibe was so different from Minato's. And, actually, her vibe is somewhat at odds with the game itself. P3 is a game of sad blues and sickly greens and grungy reds. Minako is all bright reds and pinks, tropical orange, soft yellow, warm brown. They could have taken the easy route and just done a gender-flipped Minato, a blue-haired girl, quiet, rather closed-off and antisocial. They didn't. They gave us someone new, somehow who visually contradicts the status quo.

September 2010

And, once I played the game, I saw that not only was her design very different, she had a different personality – different dialogue choices from Minato, a different mood. As far as the major plot points went, she did the same things as Minato, but she felt like her own person, not a gender-flip. She does change the status quo. You can diverge from Minato's narrative in some small but significant ways, but even if you choose not to, playing as Minako still feels different from the original version.

December 2010

And, miraculously, playing the game lived up to my own dangerously hyped expectations. Getting new insights into the female members of SEES without the tropey baggage of being a male hero romancing them; Social Linking the male members while getting the option to romance them or not. The original Persona 3, with Minato, is a great game, but Minato had to romance all of the girls and he couldn't even Social Link the guys. Minako's route gives you a deeper, broader experience when it comes to the core cast.

February 2011

Her being female adds nuanced conflict to her rivalry/friendship with Junpei, brings introspective weight to Akihiko's protectiveness, complements rather than undercuts Yukari's attempts to assert herself and not be dependent like her mother. Mitsuru doesn't have to step down as SEES' chagrined leader and cede her authority to this new boy – she cedes it to another girl. Tropes can be done badly or well, and these aren't inherently better than Minato's route, but Minako's tropes are often less typical, thus they feel more original – thus, to me, they're more interesting.

May 2011

I want to make clear that while I prefer Minako over Minato, I'm not arguing she's the better character or should be the default. And I'm pausing to say this because, unfortunately, ever since Minako first arrived on the scene, she's brought her own tension to an often already combative fandom.

December 2012

“She's not canon!” You used to hear that. As if the protagonist of a game that had been made and published and could be played wasn't canon. “Yeah, but she's not really canon!” It felt like there was a push within parts of the fandom to devalue Minako as a character, delegitimize her.

February 2013

Unfortunately, it feels as if this attitude is somewhat shared by Atlus itself. While Minako got a game route, a stage play, and is featured in promotional art, her absence in the Persona 3 remake is glaring. I'm not sure what I think Atlus is trying to say by omitting her, if anything. I'm just so disappointed that Minako's route, the route that gives you the most variety in plot points and character exploration for the main cast, wasn't deemed worthy of remaking.

January 2014

Minako, that brave, funny, smart, defiant protagonist, wasn't deemed worthy.

January 2015

Like many silent protagonists, Minako's a character open to a lot of interpretations. Broadly speaking, the game allows you to pick dialogue options for a reserved Minako or a more forceful Minako. But whichever way you go, if you've played the game, you know she's a character with pain buried deep inside her.

November 2016

Her fandom, her specific fandom, often sees her as a girl who smiles and sparkles and fights to cover that pain. Looking at Minato, you wouldn't be surprised to learn he's troubled. But Minako will make you believe she's confident and happy for a very long time until something breaks that illusion and you realize there are secrets in that smile.

August 2018

Minako is passionate, enduring, stubbornly brave.

October 2022

But she's not canon, right?

June 2023

She's not really a character. She's just a theoretical scenario Persona played with briefly, then discarded.

September 2024

Too bad for us.

[super-amogio-64]

Did anyone else find the ending to the Disney+ Percy Jackson series really unsatisfying?

The show wasn’t bad overall, though some of the acting felt a bit stiff and I didn’t like some of the changes. They removed a lot of the Cerberus stuff where he is neglected by Hades and just wants to play with someone. Percy and Annabeth were a lot quicker on the uptake about a lot of things, which was fine but removed a bit of the suspense from things like the Lotus Casino (I’m still disappointed they didn’t all get sucked into it like in the book - also, removing the taxi driver calling them Your Highness made me a little sad, though Percy learning how to drive the taxi himself made up for it) and Procrustes (they knew he was Procrustes from the start, and as such never got tricked into trying one of his beds). Other changes I didn’t mind so much (like the scene with Echidna) though I found it really odd how the had the whole thing around Medusa where it was like “don’t judge a book by its cover, not everything that looks like a monster is one” only to then turn around and go “actually yeah she is a monster”. It felt like it undercut the message a bit. Anyway, the main two issues I had were:

1.) Removing the scene where Percy makes the gods swear to claim their children by a certain age. It REALLY felt like a lot of the show was building up to that scene (Sally making Grover swear to protect Percy, emphasizing the importance of a sworn oath; the MULTIPLE conversations about how unfair it was that the gods treated their children this way; and the fact that it was solidly established that the gods have to obey certain rules) only to have Percy turn around and tell Luke, “hey, the gods are trying their best, okay?” Percy standing up to the gods had a lot more weight in the book, because he made his anger with the way they treated their kids clear to them, whereas in the show he did stand up to Zeus but then actively defends the gods’ actions in his subsequent confrontation with Luke.

2.) Perhaps my biggest issue in the show: Gabe Ugliano. When Percy entered his apartment, and Eddie said “I’m going out, you’re coming in. I should be apologizing to you,” I was fully bracing myself for a scene depicting how abusive Gabe could get. Instead, we got a Gabe Ugliano who is moderately annoying at worst. He’s an asshole to his wife and stepson, but SEVERELY toned down from the book. He’s mostly just kind of a jerk, who Percy and Sally have no trouble standing up to as he doesn’t really do anything but get annoyed when Percy stands up to him and quickly backs down when Sally stands up to him. They even removed the bit towards the end where it is revealed that he had been physically abusive towards Sally, leaving just about everything that makes the character so hate-able out of the show. He’s just… dislikable. That’s it. I couldn’t really bring myself to hate him because he’s just a dumbass. Now, from what I understand, the reason he was toned down was because Rick Riordan himself said that when they first tried to adapt the scene (in a more faithful way) it was uncomfortable to watch, which is fair: I don’t really like watching depictions of abuse (I had to walk out of Love Lies Bleeding, it’s a great movie but it was a bit too much) especially against children. Plus, I understand that this was meant to be a more kid-friendly show. But removing Gabe’s abuse means removing Sally coming into her own by killing him. Instead, Gabe’s death doesn’t feel as deserved, and it happens accidentally. Plus, even though they established that bad smells can mask a demigod’s scent from monsters, they didn’t include the reveal that Sally stayed with Gabe because his scent hid Percy. Again, I understand why they may not have wanted to keep the “woman sticks with her abuser” narrative for a kid-friendly show. But at that point, why even have him in the show? All of his narrative significance has been stripped away, leaving us with a character who adds nothing to the story. He’s just kinda there. They even made him unemployed, meaning the bit where Percy says on live TV that Gabe is giving away free appliances is gone too. TLDR: he isn’t as evil, so it doesn’t really feel like he gets deserved comeuppance when he dies at the end, and on top of that his plot significance is removed, leaving him as sort of a vestigial tail of a character that no longer has any purpose in the story but is still visibly there taking up screen time.

Idk, I liked a lot about the show, but a lot of aspects felt rushed. I wouldn’t mind waiting longer for season 2 if it meant it would be a more complete adaptation of the book it’s based on.

[parkjayist]

ESSENCE OF ROMANCE: THAT OLD FEELING - CHPT. 2

sum park jongseong is in denial, but the truth is undeniable: he's hit a dead end. how can he maintain his title as a world renowned chemist if he can't even advance his own research? meanwhile, you, an aspiring chemist, have faced constant belittlement from your male colleagues as you pursue your own groundbreaking research in isolation. when jongseong finds you conducting experiments in HIS own lab, he's enraged. he's enveloped in fury when he realizes that you two are trying to research the same topic. yet, buried beneath his rage lies a deep sense of desperation, and he's willing to do anything to finally finish his research he's been putting off for so many years. perhaps you're the missing piece in his research (and life).

pairing chemist!park jongseong x female chemist!reader

genre written series, slowburn, angst, fluff, " enemies " to lovers, coworkers au, 1960s au, smarty pants x smarty pants

warnings mentions of past trauma, swearing, gender stereotypes(misogyny), more arguing!!!

an FINALLY this is starting to go somewhere!! i actually enjoyed writing this chapter, ty for all your support so far.. it really means a lot! btw i forgot to add this to the first chapter, but here's a music PLAYLIST you can listen to while reading this series... enjoy!

wc 2k SERIES MASTERLIST

as the days passed, jongseong's encounter with you faded into the background of his mind. he was preoccupied with his own work, determined to make progress in his research despite the setbacks he faced. but like always, he never made any significant progress – deep down, there was a burdening feeling of guilt and embarrassment for the way he had treated you.

meanwhile, you were focused in your own experiments on abiogenesis, delving deeper into the mysteries of life's origins. the incident with Jongseong lingered in the back of your mind, a faint annoyance that you pushed aside to focus on your work.

it was another late night in the lab for you, the hum of equipment and the soft glow of the overhead lights providing a sense of comfort in the otherwise empty space. you were in the midst of cleaning up after a long day of experiments when the door creaked open, and he stepped inside. the atmosphere in the lab was tense as jongseong cautiously approached you, his footsteps echoing in the quiet space. you could feel the weight of his presence as he drew nearer, and you resisted the urge to look up, keeping your gaze fixed on the task at hand.

"i'm sorry," his voice broke the silence, tentative yet filled with sincerity. "i've been thinking about what happened, and i realize i was out of line. i thought maybe we could put it behind us and...maybe even be friends."

your grip tightened on the beaker in your hand, the glass feeling fragile and delicate beneath your fingers. if you pressed any harder, it would definitely shatter into pieces. friends? the word echoed in your mind, bitter and mocking. after everything that had transpired between you, how could he even suggest such a thing?

you turned away from him, your jaw clenched in frustration as you continued to busy yourself with cleaning up the lab benches. "friends?" you scoffed bitterly, unable to keep the edge of contempt out of your voice. "after you accused me of trying to steal your research in front of everyone? you've got a funny way of making friends."

jongseong winced at your words, his expression pained as he struggled to find the right response. "no, it wasn't like that," he protested weakly, but you weren't finished.

"are you taking me for a fool?" you spat, your voice trembling with restrained fury. you started to feel lightheaded from all the anger you were trying to contain within yourself. "you waltz in here with your half-hearted apology, expecting me to forget the humiliation i endured? if we were to work together, do you honestly believe it would be an equal partnership? no– you would take all the credit, leaving me to toil in obscurity as the ‘lowly lab technician’. don't delude yourself into thinking the world would acknowledge a woman's contribution in a man's domain. you’re not stupid. you know that's not how reality operates."

jongseong's brows furrowed in frustration, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. you were just as intelligent as any other chemist, probably even more, and this was an opportunity to showcase to those people who doubted you. he hated this. he hated having to argue about this. because he knows you’re right. the world is a cruel place – and he wishes it wasn’t that way. but he’s so desperate that he can’t back down now. 

 "but we can show them that it's possible," he insisted, his voice pleading. "you can be my co-publisher, we can share the credit."

your laugh was bitter and mirthless as you scoffed at his words. "co-publisher? what does that even mean? people will still think i seduced you, or gave you money, or had an affair with you. none of which is true. the title of co-publisher doesn’t matter in this case, i'll forever be seen as the woman who rode your coattails."

the tension in the room was palpable, thickening with every passing moment as you stood face to face with jongseong, the air crackling with unspoken resentment and bitterness. you searched for any emotions in his face, the only ones you could detect was defeat. you should’ve felt triumphant that you “won” against him, you convinced him of your own beliefs. but honestly, you were disappointed. disappointed that he didn’t fight harder. but of course, what were you expecting? it’s not like you guys are friends anyway.

"if you have nothing else to say, i'm going to go now. good night dr. park." you said coldly, turning away from him, but before you could leave, jongseong reached out and grabbed your wrist.

shit. nonononono – 

your heart hammered against your ribcage like a prisoner demanding release as jongseong's hand closed around your wrist, his touch igniting a firestorm of emotions within you. panic surged through your veins, a chilling reminder of past traumas that left you breathless and trembling. with a sharp inhale, you recoiled instinctively, your body tensing as if preparing for a fight. every nerve in your body screamed in protest, urging you to break free from his grasp, to flee from the danger that his touch represented. 

"d.. don't touch me," you stammered, your voice barely a whisper as you struggled to regain control of your trembling limbs. the words escaped your lips in a breathless rush, choked with a mixture of fear and anger.

with a surge of adrenaline, you summoned every ounce of strength you possessed and pushed him away with a force that surprised even yourself … the air crackled with tension as jongseong stumbled backward, his expression a mixture of shock and remorse. for a moment, time seemed to stand still as you stared at each other, caught in the throes of a silent struggle.

of course – you let the weight of your past experiences bear down on you like an oppressive burden. memories of previous encounters flooded your mind, each one a painful reminder of the trust betrayed and the wounds left unhealed. you couldn't bring yourself to meet jongseong's gaze, the fear of rejection and disappointment eating at your insides. you knew that if you dared to look into his eyes at that moment, you would see the disdain reflected back at you, a silent condemnation of your insecurities and vulnerabilities. the thought of jongseong turning away from you, of seeing the disappointment etched into his features, was far too much to bear. 

jongseong's eyes widened in alarm at the tremor in your voice, his own features contorting with worry. "i'm sorry," he murmured, his tone heavy with regret. "i didn't mean to scare you. i just... i wanted to talk."

"i'm fine," you forced out, your voice strained and unsteady as you struggled to regain your composure. no, clearly you were not fine. beneath your ‘brave’ facade, your shaky voice betrayed the fear that still lingered beneath the surface. “i… i should get going. i’m telling you this now – no. i’m not working with you.”

with that, you slowly turned and walked away, leaving jongseong standing alone in the empty lab.

"please consider it!" jongseong's voice called out from behind, his tone desperate and sincere.

with a heavy sigh, you turned back to face him, your eyes meeting his in a silent exchange of uncertainty and longing. for a fleeting moment, you allowed yourself to be drawn in by the warmth of his gaze, the sincerity in his eyes melting away the barriers you had built around your heart. but just as quickly as it had come, the moment passed, replaced by a surge of determination and self-preservation. with a firm nod, you tore your gaze away from his, steeling yourself against the pull of his sincerity.

curse him for his good looks, a voice in your head said.

"i'll think about it," you replied, your voice tinged with a hint of hesitation. you turned on your heel and walked away again, each step carrying you further from jongseong and the strange emotions he stirred within you.

back at home, you reclined on your bed, gazing upward as your mind churned with a flurry of conflicting thoughts and emotions. jongseong's proposition lingered in your thoughts like a persistent melody, stirring a quiet curiosity within you. despite the lingering frustration from your encounter, a subtle flicker of interest danced at the edges of your consciousness. however, mingling with that delicate spark was a cautious wariness, a quiet voice of doubt echoing in the recesses of your mind. you couldn't shake the memory of jongseong's accusatory words, the sharp pang of skepticism that had pierced through your defenses. it left a lingering unease, a shadow of uncertainty casting doubt on the possibility of collaboration. as the minutes slipped away and the city outside settled into a hushed lull, you found yourself ensnared in a silent struggle, torn between the allure of partnership and the fear of vulnerability. on one hand, there was the luring prospect of joining forces with someone as driven and capable as jongseong. yet, on the other hand, there was the apprehension of being let down once more, of opening yourself up to potential disappointment. with a heavy sigh, you closed your eyes, attempting seeking solace in the quiet embrace of sleep. in the depths of your dreams, questions wandered in your mind, uncertainty wove through the fabric of your thoughts. you hoped to yourself that the repercussions of working with jongseong wouldn’t be too bad.

………… _______ 

the next morning dawned with a gentle warmth, casting soft rays of sunlight through the windows of jongseong's apartment. with a determined resolve, he rose from his bed early, the events of the previous day still fresh in his mind. determined to have at least some sort of control in his life, he laced up his running shoes and ventured out into the quiet streets, the rhythmic patter of his footsteps echoing in the stillness of the morning. 

his life philosophy was whenever something was going wrong in your life, you just kept running until all you could think about was how tired you were.

as he ran, the cool breeze brushed against his skin, invigorating him with a renewed sense of energy and purpose. with each stride, he felt the weight of his worries begin to lift, replaced by a quiet contentment for the day ahead.

upon returning to the lab, jongseong was greeted by a small yellow sticky note. he furrowed his eyebrows, irritation starting to bubble up at the thought of someone entering his lab again. however, when he read the note, its message was a beacon of hope in the sea of uncertainty that had engulfed him.

i'll do the research with you. don't make me regret it.

the messy handwriting made him chuckle a little bit, but a surge of gratitude washed over jongseong as he read the words, his spirits lifting with each passing moment. finally, he had found someone willing to join him on his journey, someone who believed in his vision and was willing to lend a helping hand. with a newfound sense of purpose, jongseong wasted no time in embracing the moment. he turned on some Chet Baker, the soothing melodies of jazz filling the air with a sense of joy and anticipation. with each beat, he allowed himself to lose control, his body flailing around like a penguin, and his head bopping so fast that it seems as if it would fall off.

outside the lab, jaeyun sim, a friend (and the only friend) of jongseong watched with amusement as the man danced with abandon, his laughter echoing through the glass door.

"what the hell is this man doing?" jaeyun muttered into the glass, his voice slightly muffled, but tinged with amusement.

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

tagged: @sophiko22 @minseongsworld @enha-stars

[kiame-sama]

Nen abilities I have given my reader characters and my inspiration/thought process behind creating them. Might have mild spoilers for my various series.

Manifesting Rage

Force of Nature: Specialist/Enhancer

A gambit style nen ability. It can only be used for extremes, either extremely weak or extremely strong, there is no in between. Like the storms and geo-weather patterns it influences, this nen is a force of nature. The only limiter on the unusual influence and strength of this nen is the user's humanity and conscience. The more humanity and conscience the user has, the stronger the nen shall be, but the likelihood of this nen being used goes down. Why make a storm that kills thousands when other means could reach a more peaceful end?

Inspiration: I wanted an ability that was rather powerful and perhaps even over powered but handicapped by the genuine care in the users heart for others and the value of life. This ability would be disastrous in the hands of Chrollo but is a testment to non violent confrontation unless completely necessary as it is serious to take a life and my general reader character in this series is motherly and values the lives of others. This value of life is the primary limiter of when or how reader uses their nen.

Night and Day

Home Is Where The Heart Is: Specialist

The user has Nen that changes their surroundings to their desires to take control of a building and get what they want from it as if the building itself were alive. Furniture will move, layout of rooms will change, the desires of the user are reflected in the building itself as if projecting the user's subconscious into the structure. This projection of the user's subconscious is a result of the user feeling vulnerable or unsafe, often leading to the building changing to hide the user away in an effort to protect them. The building reflects their comfort level and can become hostile towards others if present in the building. Best paired with a user who has a significant other that can act in that protector role and make them feel safe which brings comfort and soothes the hostile architecture.

Inspiration: a mixture of Monster House and my own interactions with overstimulation and panic attacks. When in a panic attack I often want to hide away from everyone and everything, to isolate and curl up in a corner to panic/sob. The subconscious would rule the building while the conscious part of the brain is in a vulnerable state. My panic attacks last hours unless I have something or someone to help me calm down, so the idea of having a living building protecting the user was quite appealing.

Bunny

Pocket Dimension: Conjuration/Transmuter

Able to store things- both physical and metaphysical- in a pocket like dimension for future use. Nen can be stores, items can be stored, energy can be stored. The stored material can be summoned by the user back to the material plane. Non-physical items cannot be used by user but need to be 'gifted'/passed onto another to use. This storage can be unintentional and occasionally automatic meaning even some unwanted items or substances will be stored until future use. Such unwanted items can be like fat in the body as well as nutrients and even some vitamins. Even energy is taken and stored, usually leaving the user rather tired or in a tired state as the energy their body produces is partially being stored.

Inspiration: I wanted to create the best companion type nen possible, and what is better for a companion to have than infinite storage where weapons and clothes can be kept with none of the added weight. Of course, I did have to add negative effects and parts because I didn't want it to be too op, but I liked the idea enough to hold onto it and it helps me explain why Bunny winds up having octuplets that are all genetically related to all three of their fathers.

28 Years

Ethereal Galaxy: conjuration

Used in limited ways to create/summon forth celestial bodies (stars/planets/meteors/ect) in miniature form around the user. These items are present so long as nen energy is being used. In extreme use can create a space-like area around user mimicking the appearance of a galaxy centered around user including the usual lack of gravity in space. This area of projection is dependent on focus and emotional state of the user.

Inspiration: 28 years reader has been trapped for over 28 years with only one window she can never reach despite how she tries. I thought it was only fair to let her have free reign over seeing galaxies when she can't even leave her cluster of rooms. Not a particularly powerful nen ability, but one meant to soothe regardless.

The Price of Freedom

Soul Stealer: Specialist

A collecting type nen that leaves the victim catatonic and effectively brain-dead. Requires a level of empathy from the user to understand the emotions behind the creation of outside nen. Takes the nen from other users, effectively stealing the other user's soul, and transfers those abilities to the user of Soul Stealer. Most victims of this nen die quickly upon losing their nen.

Inspiration: I wanted a nen ability similar yet opposite of Chrollo's. In the sense of how it leaves the victims, it is stronger than Chrollo's nen, but because I wanted a more parental behaving reader I decided that the nen should have more severe consequences for those it is used on and can't just steal the way Chrollo's nen does.

Sweet Death

Reaper: Specialist

Nen takes the form of an grossly deformed, stretched, and emaciated humanoid covered in a sheer black garb wielding two sickles. The entity will act as a protector and guardian to the nen user, shielding them from harm/danger at all times. Though independent physically from the nen user, the Reaper will not act on its own accord unless the user is in the direct path of danger.

Inspiration: As a child that was often bullied and labeled a 'weird kid' due to my- then undiagnosed- autism, I always longed for a protector of sorts. This ability is that protector who is like a guardian-angel but appears much more sinister than the typical 'guardian-angel' trope. An angel of death that protects and shields the user all while only interfering if truly needed.

Empathic Hearts

Empathic Transmission; Emission

The user's nen takes the user's emotions and turns them physical in a mist/fog around the user. Those who enter the mist are overcome with that emotion and can become incapacitated by that emotion if they are in the mist for too long. Physical contact with nen user has a similar effect of transmitting the user's emotions and physical sensations/injuries to the one touching the user. Any injury/physical sensation inflicted upon the user will be inflicted upon those touching the user as well.

Inspiration: I am on the emotionally sensitive side of autism and I often can tell when a person is in a low mood or even just low energy without being told. I wanted an ability that basically forces that empath feeling into a physical manifestation. Emotions are contagious (to an extent) and I toyed with the idea of the saying 'do unto others as you would like done unto you' which is where the shared physical injury/sensation comes from.

Little Spider: Little Spider has access to nen, but has never actually used the nen available to her, so she has never made an ability. Chrollo uses her nen like a tether to attach his own nen to her, effectively working as regular ten to protect her from Nen attacks and keep her nen contained. This tether allows Chrollo to keep track of his little spider (mostly) and gives him a sense of control over his beloved.

Inspiration: I did originally toy with the idea of an hourglass kind of nen that shows how much life a person has left, but it never seemed to really fit the way I wanted it to, so I decided this instead. It gives Chrollo a sense of control over his Little Spider all while protecting them.

[canmom]

Indika (title puns? sorry i got nun)

I played that game that got a bunch of hype a few months back! Created by exiled Russian devs Odd Meter and published by the absolutely on top of their game right now 11Bit Studios, it's a uniquely AESTHETIC orthodoxcore meditation on religion and nihilism that has more than a little Tarkovsky flavour. If you've seen any review of this game you probably know the score: splendid writing and blending of aesthetic registers, spaced out by rather more orthodox (ha ha) game puzzle design.

It's very much a setpiece driven game, leading you through a series of absolutely gorgeously rendered snowy, industrial environments of increasingly surreal size, all carrying a three-way dialogue between Indika (a nun who hears the voice of the devil in her ear and seems to be experiencing some kind of psychosis), Ilya (an escaped convict who's convinced God is leading him to some great purpose, if only he can heal his rotting sepisy arm) and the devil (who only Indika can hear, cutting in with sardonic commentary every so often).

So it's a story about becoming disillusioned with religion and shaking off moralism, about desperation, about ostracisation - and a very confident one at that, full of great presentation and acting choices and provocative events.

I think the interesting question with this is like, what does it gain from being a game, rather than e.g. a movie or even a play - or for that matter a 'walking simulator' game with no challenges at all? The puzzles don't really factor into it, they mostly function as a speedbump... except, of course, that running into blatant videogame puzzles adds to the sense of unreality that is given by the strangely towering architecture and giant fish and so on, acting consonant with the chiptune/EDM in the soundtrack, the 2D pixel-art flashbacks and especially the mechanical representation of Indika's faith as a pixellated point tracker which incrementally ticks up for every religious act, a device which pays off in the final scene.

So - much like NieR, it likes to play around with the imagery of previous eras of game as symbols. The benefits of being a game are then in a sense mostly aesthetic invocations - but it does make interesting use of them, e.g. a monster-chase sequence unexpectedly seguing into an argument with the devil about the different motives of humans and animals as the camera rolls to follow the defeated boss around a water wheel.

Honestly, the camerawork in this game is really something special - making all sorts of clever uses of curved lenses and striking compositions that really allow you to feel the weight of the environments. Besides the well-shot cutscenes, you can sit on benches in various places and switch through a series of striking camera angles. But equally, you get a far stronger sense of the moody setpieces when you are walking through them to figure out a path, compared to if you simply saw them in the background of an establishing shot.

There is also the matter of taking the characters and environment, which you might take for granted in a film, and drawing them into the realm of something constructed. To film a real convent covered in snow is one thing; to meticulously build snow shaders which respond to footfalls and perfectly convey the sparkling mushy texture of melting snow is perhaps a different statement, much as animated a movement and filming it conveys different emphases. Perhaps this is just the tech artist talking, but a significant part of the expression comes in walking around as Indika and observing the wind catching her wimple and the carefully designed ways she stumbles and fidgets. So yeah yeah, the medium is still the goddamn message.

Environment design and rendering seem to be real strong points for Odd Meter - sure, anyone can take the off the shelf engine features of Unreal, but it takes a lot of skill to really make it sing cohesively. Their previous game is a VR archery game called Sacralith, and while it doesn't seem to have the same artistic ambitions as Indika, I'm terribly curious to try it out now.

Definitely recommend giving this one a look. It's a pretty digestible four hours to play, so basically two movies. Which feels appropriate for this type of strongly narrative-focused game - very much for short focused games these days...

[open-hearth-rpg]

Don't Roll: Great RPG Mechanics #RPGMechanics Week Ten (finale)

(author circa 1990 pictured with tie)

This is maybe more a technique than a mechanic, but it represented a significant change in approach and play for me over the years. This has two components– the first is “don’t roll if it isn’t important.” I know this sounds simple, but it wasn’t always the approach in systems and play. 

Like many others, I started with D&D, but very quickly I moved into other games. A large swath of games added on to D&D/AD&D’s approach by including skill systems. They usually had the same emphasis on combat, but included mechanics for handling other kinds of tasks with a discrete roll rather than a saving throw or attribute test. So we had the chain which came out of Traveller and Basic Roleplaying which spawned my early favs like Fringeworthy, Top Secret, Champions, Rolemaster, and GURPS. 

You needed a skill to try something, with the unskilled being given arbitrary big failures by the GM when they made their attempt. Players had invested in their skill choices, spending precious points and advances, so they needed to roll those checks regardless of circumstance. So you got rolls for the dumbest, small things– with the action grinding to a halt for plot crucial roles or moving to escalating violence for other things (like a failed social roll). 

Basically if there was a task and the game had a skill related to that task, you always rolled for it. Some games, like GURPS, recognized a sliding scale of circumstance with a host of modifier tables which could be applied to tests. Usually those got forgotten in play. While we had some handwaving, we rolled a lot of tests. I saw this in my local play groups and at gaming conventions large and small. 

I don’t know which game explicitly said don’t make a test unless it matters, but it shifted our play. It moved skill tests from being gotcha moments and “roll til you die” sequences. We were young and stupid– raised by a generation of punishing GMs who delighted in catching players out when they hadn’t selected the right skill during character creation. 

F*ck the good old days of roleplaying. I wouldn’t go back to the play culture of the 80s or 90s for anything. 

In any case, over time the game advice not to roll for every damn thing took hold. Low difficulty tasks could be assumed to have been handled successfully; more room emerged for play. Of course everyone still rolled perception checks, which remained the last refuge of gotcha gamemasters. 

Which brings us to a refinement: “don’t roll if failure isn’t interesting.” At first this sounds like pretty much the same thing, but there’s an important distinction. Instead of judging whether it affects the plot or moves the story, we’re looking more seriously at the context of the action. What does a failure here look like? What would make that moment have weight and stakes? We begin to consider what kinds of pressures can be there: use of resources, race against time, alerting the opposition, starting a countdown. 

So when a GM calls for a roll, they’re implicitly saying that failure will have some consequences– things will happen. It’s pushing them to make clear to the player that there’s a potential cost. Both the GM and the player have to think about the circumstances now. Which means generally that we’re more likely to cut to the action and have dice rolling moments outside of combat actually add to the game. 

It’s a short step from that concept to Fail Forward, to Success at a Cost, and to player-driven or collaborative choices for costs. It changes the nature of the game– and I think it changes the relationship between the GM and player. That relationship might still be adversarial, but the GM has to back that up by making gotcha moments worthwhile. 

I’m not sure when and how this new play praxis developed– it probably isn’t the result of a single game. I know over time I handwaved more and more– and eventually felt justified in that when I saw it explicitly mentioned in the game rules. There’s been an invisible evolution of play culture over the decades and that’s been generally for the greater good. 

Here’s the thing: I know how stupid this sounds. I know how obvious this appears these days. I thought back to consider if this was just something in my game group at the time. But it was across the dozen different groups I played with and there at every game con I went to (Gen Con, Origins, Michicon, Griffcon, etc.). I can recall sessions where the pressure of rolls added to the tension and drama, but I remember more sessions where the constant rolling wore things down.