#ik it’s not deep but my god

[vogelmeister]

trying to figure out if i really just hated bughead from riverdale or if i was mad because he’s canonically ace in the comic

[abd-illustrates]

I might’ve spoiled the plot of Natlan | Genshin Impact THEORY

In which I read so much lore that I gained the power to see the future (maybe) This ended up being a real challenge to make - but it was also really fun! Please do lemme know what you reckon of these ideas, and whether y’all wanna see me pattern-recognition my way into several corkboards worth of theories about any other topics sometime down the line! (^^)/

(also: HAPPY NEW YEAR! 🥳🎉 Here's wishing y'all every good thing for 2024)

[pokimoko]

The fact that Main-verse Ooo is as good and as kind as it is (relative to the other universes shown so far, at least, it's obviously not perfect) all because of the same character that starts off as the OG series' antagonist, the person we were made to see as the bad guy (albeit an often ineffectual one) for several seasons, is making me lose my mind.

Imagine finding out the guy you spent your childhood beating up and saving princesses from is in fact a driving catalyst behind you being able to exist, and not only exist but also live in a world that knows what kindness is. All because that man, the same man who you've witnessed do terrible things, once met a little girl and taught her how to be good.

Simon's story really shows us that even if you lose your way and forget how it is to be good yourself, the world keeps the memory for you. That act of love Simon showed Marcy by protecting her and seeing her as more than the monster she thought herself to be created ripples upon ripples, small at first but eventually enough to help give their wreckage of a world—a world that easily could have been forsaken, its goodness overlooked because of its inhospitable remains—a chance to grow into something beautiful. Because of those very same ripples Simon created, the people of Ooo grew up in a world where they know enough about kindness that they were able and willing to spare the 'bad guy' some, to see beyond the wreckage and allow him to grow too.

In saving Marceline, Simon helped to not only to save the world, but also himself.

[all-too-unwell-13]

just finished the creeping shadow

and wow. i loved that book so much.

(i have several lines from the book that i'll post about and talk about later lmao)

i knew lucy would end up joining l&co again, but when i tell you i nearly screamed when i read the line!!! so good.

once again, the locklyle crumbs omg <3<3<3

ugh i loved reading them. especially when they had that deep conversation in the iron chain circle and lucy rejoined l&co!!! and them holding hands ??? and blushing at each other ??? and their shared smiles ??? oh my god.

also i really liked how holly and lucy got on better terms by the end of the book, though holly kind of pissed me off at the beginning, i kind of liked her towards the end.

and george!!! omg. i loved how he and lucy interacted for most of the book — especially when they had that argument at the end of the first case together (at the beginning of the book); because they honestly both needed to have that argument. like it was needed.

kipps was also absolutely hilarious in this book, i've grown to like him a lot lmao

overall i really loved this book!! i've been trying to take it slow so i can savour the books, and i'm on the last one now 😭😭

anyway yeah i really loved tcs, it was so good.

[camellcat]

you guys I'm losing my MIND

I have NEVER seen this sort of thing in any other fandom I've been in and I LOVE IT

[batsplat]

from the stuff i’ve heard marc’s former honda teammates (dani jorge and pol in their media careers but joan also i guess) say about him now that they’re racing is generally quite positive, both on a professional/riding level but also seemingly on a personal level? i’m wondering what you make of that given that, yeah, marc doesn’t seem like a very good teammate (unless you’re alex who i’ve left off this list). like MARC wants to separate on and off track stuff and it seems like all of these guys are willing too at least in retrospect, so he can’t have truly burned bridges with them. do you have any thoughts on that

(x, x) most riders are quite good at not burning bridges with each other! it's not like marc's competitors don't know that this stuff is kinda part of the game. I mean, all of marc's past teammates were also trying to assert themselves within the internal hierarchy... you can say that certain teammates engage in 'worse' behaviour than others, but, like, these people do understand they're supposed to be fighting each other! a baseline degree of nastiness is factored in and will be accepted to a greater or lesser extent by your rivals - especially when it comes to asserting yourself in intra-team power struggles. you might hate the other guy in the moment, but generally speaking once the active part of the rivalry is done with... you will probably get over it. marc's fellow riders are aware of how ultra-competitive marc is - and to a certain point they do respect it, not least because they're aware that this is part of the reason why marc has ended up with all those titles. it's like dani said, right, it's marc's strong suit. and in general, you do have to say that there's relatively few teammate pairings that devolve to the level of toxicity that it completely destroys the interpersonal relationship. you might need some level of preexisting animosity... most of the purely competitive sins can be healed with a little time

on the 'separating on-track and off-track' thing... well. this is kind of a question of how you define these things, you can say that marc generally speaking isn't going to massively hold grudges over isolated on-track incidents or whatever... but he doesn't just leave his fighting to the track, and personally I've also never felt he can entirely separate these things out in his mind. can you really say his professional and private relationships with other riders are completely detached from one another? mostly, he's opted to be pretty disengaged from his fellow riders as a collective, and obviously that's a good way to not take things too personally... it's all part of the game, isn't it? sometimes it's good to go with the straightforward approach: marc tells you he will make your life hell, he does indeed make your life hell, and then you both move on with your lives and can maybe actually have a pretty amiable relationship with him in years to come. he's not really defying your expectations at any point here, is he now? it's still a question for each of them as individuals as to whether they think that kind of behaviour is above board and acceptable or not... but everyone by now knows that marc plays these games, so it's not like they're going in blind

and it's not like other former teammates are constantly badmouthing each other. I mean... look, let's just cut to the chase here and bring in valentino as our reference point (as he is for the sport as a whole, which by the way does also help create a certain baseline of acceptability for marc's antics - maybe goated riders are just supposed to be dicks who knows). vale's premier class teammates were 1) nobody (2000-01), 2) tohru ukawa (2002), 3) nicky hayden (2003; 2011-12), 4) carlos checa (2004), 5) colin edwards (2005-2007), 6) jorge lorenzo (2008-10; 2013-16), 7) maverick vinales (2017-20), 8) franco morbidelli (2021), and 9) andrea dovizioso (2021). of these eight men (let's just exclude 'nobody' for now), do you know how many had serious complaints at any point about valentino as a teammate? that's right, it's one guy. one. some of valentino's other teammates, like hayden, checa and edwards, were even quite actively positive about their whole experience. this is the thing - you do need some specific circumstances for teammate rivalries to escalate from 'being kinda bitchy every other month' to 'actively fantasising about stabbing each other'. not accounting for natural interpersonal animosity, let's list some circumstantial factors that you need to get a bridge-burning-worthy level of feud:

you need a competitive bike. it is possible to beef about development direction when you're in the trenches (cf late 2010's yamaha, 2020's honda)... but generally speaking this is going to be quite low-level petty stuff, not actual war

you also need something that approaches competitiveness between teammates. if one teammate is unquestionably stronger than the other one, then it is very unlikely that you are going to get any open hostilities. the tension comes when the two sides are close enough to each other for the internal hierarchy to actually be a contentious issue (this is also basic self preservation... if you're the far weaker teammate then you do not want to make the situation troublesome, because then you will be the one to be fired)

following on from those first two things... well, it doesn't hurt to have a title fight in the mix. there are also other ways you can generate competitive stakes, like, for instance, if you and your teammate know that one of you will be out of a job soon. basically, it helps to have something to squabble over

it is maybe easy to forget how rare it is this century for teammates to be fighting directly for a title, let alone over the course of multiple seasons. only two 1-2's since the year 2000 and they're both for the factory yamaha's (though 2006, 2011-13 and 2017 did all prominently feature two factory hondas). which means that for valentino, the prerequisites were met just the once in his premier class career... and yes, the results were pretty memorable, but (topic! for! another! post!) it's worth pointing out that even that relationship was pretty much 'fine' whenever there was a sizeable disparity between the two of them performance-wise (2008 and 2013 are the most clear cut examples). I think the way I'd frame it with marc is that he has a bunch of mildly dubious strategies up his sleeve to assert himself within the team, which don't really deviate that far from what you'd expect from a rider of marc's calibre and only need to be escalated under specific circumstances. that doesn't mean he doesn't have the potential to be ruthless, but up until now it's mostly been a fairly 'acceptable' level of ruthlessness on the intra-team level... and not something that is likely to make other riders actually hate him

taking marc's teammates one by one... dani was the closest to meeting the bridge-burning prerequisites, though he was only a title rival in marc's rookie season. and marc did go further with him than he did with anyone else, and dani has made some pointed comments about marc's style as a teammate... but yes, he is fonder of marc these days. partly I'd just emphasise again that this is a fairly natural progression when you've stopped directly competing for long enough, and partly it's also just a question of individual personality - dani's not massively into holding grudges. then there's jorge, who... I mean, they might as well not have been teammates, given that jorge was either too slow or too injured to even be sharing any track space with marc. you have to put that one down primarily to circumstance, seeing as jorge's own track record on the teammate front isn't exactly spotless. marc and jorge beefing in 2019 would have been pretty dumb and also a massive waste of everyone's time in a year in which marc singlehandedly won the team's championship. even those two needed more to get things going

moving on to the dark years, pol and marc had an extremely stop-and-start partnership on a honda that was generally pretty uncompetitive... so the only stuff they could get ever so mildly irritable about were riveting incidents like 'marc saying pol wasn't the biggest championship threat' (neither of them were) or 'pol saying he'd copy marc's set up' (which proved entirely useless). not exactly title decider territory, is it now, and marc very much had pol covered as a challenger throughout their partnership. also, those two do have a longer history! they've known each other since they were kids and hold a pretty significant place in each other's careers. now that pol's more or less retired, it's natural there'll be quite a lot of sentimentality there - which will paper over any small cracks that appeared during those two years. and joan was a one year teammate at a time in which the bike was consistently close to offing them both. they only managed to start a sunday race together as teammates on thirteen occasions. it would take some serious effort to engineer a feud with that little opportunity, and, really, why on earth would you bother. maybe if honda had gone for rinsy rather than joan for the factory seat, it could've been a bit more prickly, but it's unlikely that it would have escalated beyond that

this is the thing, right, the only one of these partnerships that would have been worth burning bridges over was dani, and even there marc pretty much had him handled after the first season. in general, marc has been pretty clear on how he's not interested in making friends with the other side of the garage while the teammate relationship is ongoing... which is fine! there's some prominent-ish teammate pairings that are actually good friends, some teammate pairings where one of them is actively helping out and advising the other one, but some riders prefer to just keep their distance. it would have been a little silly of marc to start a feud with a teammate who is galaxies away from being a competitive threat, let alone a title rival, but generally it is possible to toe the line between 'attempting to suppress your internal rivals enough to stop them from becoming a problem for you' and 'taking radical enough action to make your internal rivals despise you'

especially in the post-dani era, marc never really had any need to push things too far... and, let's face it, how many of your teammate relationships end up with burnt bridges is also quite frankly a question of luck and circumstance. do you want to guess which top rider on paper has the worst track record this century with premier class teammate feuds, in terms of a) how many they've had, and b) how little public reconciliation there has been since the end of the rivalry?

yes, that's right, it's the first name that comes to mind when you're thinking of toxic and conflict-prone riders: andrea dovizioso. that old devil, constantly causing trouble. just couldn't stop undermining his poor, innocent teammates. can somebody please stop this ruthless bully before it's too late

I think you get the point. I would personally suggest that dovi is not in fact the worst teammate it is possible to have in a motogp top team. he just happened to find himself in a situation where he was teammates with two separate guys he did not click with at all, in situations that involved a pairing of riders who were (or had the potential to be) competitive with each other, as well as some proper stakes attached to the rivalry. in general, situational factors are going to determine this stuff more than anything else... and marc more often than not does have a reasonably good feel for picking his battles. he's flirted with the line, but he's mostly avoided crossing it. he hasn't had to

[todayisafridaynight]

no one understands the whiplash i get sometimes looking at chairman daigo fanart cause sometimes he's really pale or his hair's messy and drawn a particular way and i think its masato but nay .... im so sorry sixth chairman please forgive me i dont mean to compare you to that freak

[standing-flowers]

the evil wizard (me ex) just sent me a pigeon (a text message) telling me that he's learning the spell I crafted (he's watching the thing, my spi) and i cant decide if i want to scream, cry or cast explosion on myself (kms)

[bangcakes]

.

[elegyofthemoon]

Hsr for the ask game thing! Or if it's been asked then hi3 :)

YAAAAAAAAAAAY RAMBLINGGGGGGG

the first character i ever fell in love with:

sampo :) i actually started playing hsr because of sampo! he just seemed like a silly little dude and i do tend to like the "goof but has some big lore potential going on". it took like a day of resisting to actually download the game lmao

a character that i used to love/like, but now do not:

Himeko..... I was actually really excited to get to know Himeko more when I had first started off. I mean come on: she's so beautiful! But laksjdfh I think overtime she eventually stopped standing out for me that I lost interest. That plus now that I've played HI3, the reason why I like HSR! Himeko feels like it's only because of HI3 Himeko and the importance of Himeko in the HI3 plot and for many characters' developments 😭 Sorry Himeko

a ship that i used to love/like, but now do not:

I guess KafHime tbh? I think aesthetically they're a very very pretty couple, but I just can't get behind it at all. Or I just have no reasons to get behind it since I'm not exactly invested in either characters. Though Kafka is definitely growing on me because I built her (accidental pull) and she's been doing such massive damage so like you know.

Even then I don't have anything to say about either characters aslkdjfa

my ultimate favorite character™:

surprise to no one it's Dan Heng ALKSJDFAKLSJH I can go on about why I like him, but tldr: I just got attached to him at a very very crucial point in my life and he's just a nice comfort character to me ^u^ I loved being able to get to know him further on the Luofu and all things about the High Cloud Quintet ! So... yeah :> also I miss him --

prettiest character:

IM STUCK BECAUSE I THINK DAN HENG IS SOOOOOO PRETTY BUT ALSO ARGENTIIIIIII ARGENTI IS SO BEAUTIFULLLL RADIANT KNIGHT WHO COMES WITH HIS OWN SPARKLES AND OURGHHHHHH

it's hard T _ T its very hard to tell T _ T

my most hated character:

I don't really have a character I hate. Just more disinterest towards. Dr. Ratio is definitely up there though (I ramble about him later lmao)

my OTP:

listen.... i know it has been a while.... but I still really love Serval/Cocolia. I rarely read fanfics aside from if its written by my friends but Servalia had me clawing through AO3 and Tumblr just to search for more fics for them. No one posts about them much anymore but I sure love them so much okay.

my NOTP:

i'm not going to say which ship but its one of the dan heng ships.

favorite episode:

I'll write this as "favorite update". Penacony has been suuuuch a fun ride honestly. So I'll say that entire section has been tons of fun. As of now I still haven't finished it in its entirety, but I can sense 2.2's story will probably be my favorite because I've been waiting to get to know Robin more and the Watchmaker!! But 2.1 has been fun because I just love seeing Acheron's section of it heheh :)

saddest death:

UHHH as of now, I think Aventurine's death in 2.1 was really sad :/ Hoyo did a really good job writing Aventurine and his story that once you get to the finale of the 2.1, I found myself kinda torn on how it ended. Aventurine who placed his bets on his own death because that is what his good luck is good for - winning against all odds. The epilogue scene with Aventurine walking off into the Nihility's shadow kinda got me too. And this is coming from someone who is like very.... meh on Aventurine? I can't really bring myself to get super invested in him but objectively, he is a really well thoughtout and well created character. I just have no feelings towards him.

favorite season:

I'll write this as "favorite area". It's still Penacony askldjfahlsk There's sooooo many things happening in Penacony and I loved being able to put the pieces together to figure out what's going on. It's also the first area that I had nearly read all the readables in because I'd make it my goal to finish reading every readable and 100% every area before the next update in Penacony :> I want to better understand the area I'm in and give myself ideas for where the story can go. The second area would have been Belobog because it's the only other area I was trying to 100% and read all the readables for (are the readables important in Belobog? no but some of them sure made me cry a bit LMAO)

least favorite season:

"Least favorite area" Honestly... Herta's Space Station. But that could also be because when I first started HSR, I was still orienting myself to the new world, so the space station is the least i remember. It's not that I hated it; it's trying to orient you into the new world and I was just confused for majority of it. I just don't remember enough about it nor about the people within it to care for it.

character that everyone else in the fandom loves, but i hate:

Objectively: I'll say he's interesting and I am interested to see his development. But Dr. Ratio. I don't get it. I've seen people talk about him wanting education to be accessible to ALL which is GREAT but personality? Can't stand him.

my ‘you’re piece of trash, but you’re still a fave’ fave:

Ruan Mei my most beloved. I want more of her and I feel like we didn't get enough of her. She's just so interesting as a character and while she may not be the most caring of characters - and reasons why people shit on her - I still feel like her view as a character is interesting. And even her motives of wanting to become an Aeon. I want to understand her better. Why? What drove her to want to become so? I WANT TO UNDERSTAND YOU MISS

my ‘beautiful cinnamon roll who deserves better than this’ fave:

not a beautiful cinnamon roll but she sure is beautiful but i love Jingliu 😭😭😭 one reason why i don't like interacting with majority of the fandom is because of their viewpoint on Jingliu's companion quest. I had way way clearer thoughts on the quest when it was fresh on my brain, but I actually liked it a lot more than the fandom let on about it, and I know that people were kinda shittalking about Jingliu afterwards and that made me Mad on her behalf because I think she's a really nicely thought out character. But then again, if you know me: white hair character who is defined by mourning and grief. you know the deal LKAJDHFALKJD

idk. I just feel like she deserves better than how the fandom treats her.

my ‘this ship is wrong, nasty, and makes me want to cleanse my soul, but i still love it’ ship:

I mean whatever the hell Rondo Across Countless Kalpas had going on, Black Swan/Acheron sure kinda has me feeling a way (in which i'd risk wanting a dance with Acheron. me too Black Swan LAKJDFALKS). Also in a way Servalia too I mean. You know.

my ‘they’re kind of cute, and i lowkey ship them, but i’m not too invested’ ship:

No one asked but I actually kinda lowkey ship Firefly/Robin. Like very very lowkey. My only reasoning is when 2.0 was fresh and i was in Mourning over Robin, I once sent a very giant and long essay to my friend N about me late night perusing and overanalyzing Firefly and Robin's deaths. like why specifically them ? Why did they have to die?

I took it in a very symbolic matter. I thought too much about Firefly's monologue about her answer to "Why do people slumber?" and her answer being "Because people are afraid to be awake" or something like that. And about how it was "If I can stop one heart from breaking" that played in the background of all this - a song that praises the comforts of a dream in the face of bleakness. In both cases, in my view, it felt like having both of them die at least in that update, the deaths also seemed to signal the idea of ceasing this concept of a dream and to face reality etc.

And that's something I'm super excited about based on where i am with HSR with arguing with Sunday over the concept of comfort vs freedom.

BUT BACK TO THE POINT OF THIS QUESTION: this concept and me fixating on their meanings, it gave me a reason to kinda put Firefly/Robin together. It's kinda nice parallel with each other in a way haha

[paintingspaceghosts]

I forgot how dramatic the ending to Who's there is

[earanie]

.

[big-urchin-energy]

i fuckin hate that i-say-ok blog it makes me insane i'm always seeing good posts and then there it is saying ok like fuck off you smarmy cunt

[lavellane]

i feel so so so bad for elspeth coming back to ferelden and finding out half her fucking people went and got themselves blood sacrificed for a fucking darkspawn magister :/

[scatmaan]

wish there were more movies that give off the feeling that event horizon, hellraiser, and annihilation give off

[shivasdarknight]

A random wolqotd from my train ride today- In your story, how did Thancred/Estinien feel during That Scene at the end of EW as the only ones that can’t use healing magicks?  Especially curious for ThanWoL and/or EstiniWoL but would love to hear from anyone (spoilers in answers)

YEAH FUN THING ABOUT THAT SCENE.  So it’s Surkukteni that’s the subject of that (specifying since I do write a multi wol story, but she is the Main Wol), which means both of them are In A Situation just differing situations. (more below the cut)

With Thancred, that’s one of her closest friends.  Of course he’s worried.  Of course he’s frustrated he can’t help.  He’s angry that she’s done so much to help him and he’s useless in this situation - more so because they’ve a second connection: her twin, Katsuro, is one of Thancred’s lovers.  Damn well might as well be a sister in law at this point and someone he’s known for seven years - that he’s useless?  It’s a terrible offense, he feels.

And as bad as the stuff with Thancred is, it’s ten time as worse for Estinien.  One of her fiances.  Leading up to her body being dropped off with them by her voidsent, he’d gotten into it with an absolutely irate Katsuro since - as usual - her brother was making himself the center of the issue.  Making it out like he had it the worst off due to his concerns about the soul connection bullshit (fair point, but the patches literally make you two independent people so shaddup).  And obviously this really pissed Estinien off since he had been sitting there dealing with a distraught Ysayle, knowing that they’d have to tell Aymeric about this, that they’d have to tell Allie - their newly adopted daughter - about this, and that their infant children would have to grow up without ever knowing Surkukteni.  He’s knowing he has to be the bearer of bad news and already thinking to how they’ll have to cope without her and how many more people this affects with her being gone.

Estinien is the one who intercepts Diarmuid to keep the Scions from immediately attacking the freaky voidsent out of habit.  Estinien’s the one who rushes Surkukteni into the Ragnarok, immediately confronted by the reality of her condition and how utterly useless he is there.  Why’s he not as close to her as he wanted to be?  To not get in the way and so that those who are capable can have full access to help her through it.  He’s not distant.  He’s not sure she’s coming back from this.  He’s giving people space to work while he’s trying his damndest to console Ysayle and keep her and frankly himself from acting rashly - talking her down is a distraction from his own feelings winning over.  And yeah, for once in his life he’s finding himself praying to whoever may listen - the Fury, Twelve, whoever is out there - that they don’t have to return with a lifeless body and they can uphold their promise to Aymeric.  So needless to say when Surkukteni does pull through, he’s not leaving her side for the rest of the trip as it’s...really all he can do.

And fun addition because I’m deranged: Ysayle’s there and in the same fucking boat as the other two.  She’s a thaumaturge and gladiator canonically; even if I have her hone those skills further and take up Red Magic, there’s nothing she can do in that situation and would be equally as much of a burden as Thancred and Estinien and it fucking ruins her.  She’s inconsolable, she’s despondent, she’s a fucking wreck.  She’s still not fully convinced that this isn’t all some elaborate torment from one of the Hells - considering the trauma of very nearly dying twice combined with the conscious dreams I put her and Surkukteni through - and there’s not a lot people can do to convince her otherwise as it’s a paralyzing fear.  She finally was beginning to feel as if things would go well, and then this?  Worse is that she’s feeling this all so much more intensely because she and Surkukteni are quite literally soulmates, which isn’t anything either of them are aware of.  A connection tying them together as far back as their ancient selves that fucking shatters them should something come of the other, be it separated by the rift or premature death - see Surkukteni’s STB-SHB depression; see Ammut’s violent reaction upon Macchi’s death that made the voidsent that then killed Ammut feel so guilty about it that he carried it with him three-thousand years later; see Philomene’s despondence when Zirnghota was ripped from the Fourth to the Source; see Saoirse’s vicious campaign of her trying to find those that were close to her; see Cylva’s request after the role quests (that thank god you can only outright deny) and own issues in combination with Saoirse’s “disappearance”, her brother’s “disappearance,” the destruction of the Thirteenth, etc. - and of course, see the rampage Charon went on when Khione died, leaving them a broken and vengeful mess that consumed them during the End Days.

So when Surkukteni pulled through, Ysayle was on her immediately.  There was no separating them, not that anyone had the heart to.  Even if it did physically hurt to be crushed in her suffocating embrace, Surkukteni couldn’t say anything about it to stop her and remained like that until they were moved somewhere private so the three of them - Surkukteni, Ysayle, and Estinien - could have some time alone after all of that chaos.

...Yeah needless to say, no one’s okay and there’s a lot of guilt, frustration and anguish.