#just ignore me I'm rambling

[teaboot]

Sometimes at work it's not my place to tell people the things I want to say, and I find I often go home at the end of the rougher days to stand blankly in my shower and tell myself over and over what I wish I could pass on.

This accomplishes very little, and mostly just gives me a tension headache, but through it all I think I've narrowed myself down to a few solid things I'd like to tell people the most.

You can't change people. Not permanently, not for anythig. You can support them, encourage them, love them, give them tools and opportunities and resources, but you can't make them change. They can change themselves if they want to, but they have to want to, and they have to want it for themselves, because they're the only one that's certain to be with them forever.

For better or worse, you make your own choices, and blaming bad choices on others doesn't only work to absolve you of responsibility- it also robs you of control. Because if you say you only did something because I did something, then you arent only shifting blame- you're admitting that you cannot control yourself, that you cannot truly make choices for yourself, that other people can control you- and as long as you truly beleive that, you'll keep facing the same problems over and over. You'll keep letting others dictate your choices, because you'll beleive that they can, and you'll never be free.

White knights on horseback are from fairytales. Nobody can help you if ou're not willing to help yourself. To try, to put the dirty work in, to belive you're worth that effort- Act as though nobody is coming to save you. From a struggle, from pain, from bad relationships, from yourself. And when you do save yourself, because you will, because failure here isn't an option if you want to survive, you'll never find another dragon that can keep you prisoner.

Don't say anything to anyone that you wouldn't want them remembering forever.

Doing the right thing in bad circumstances is hard. It's the hardest thing. But if you make the choice to do that hard thing anyways, despite your fear, you'll go on the rest of your like knowing that you're the sort of person who did something.

The present only seems the hardest because the past I over and the future hasn't happened.

There's so much joy ahead of you, the kind you can't possibly understand until you see it yourself.

The responsibility of consequences is often disguised as the power of permission. "I won't do this if you help me", "I'll work on my anger if you do this for me", "I promised you I'd quit, but can I have just one?". The unspoken question is, "Can it be your fault if this goes badly?"

You cant make someone love you the way you need to be loved. Someone can love you very much and still be bad for you, even if you love them very much in return. Two people can love each other very, very much, and try their very best, and still be wrong for each other.

Sometimes being near to someone changes you, even in good ways, and the people you become don't fit together as well as the people you were.

Caring takes work. Even if it's real. Especially if it's real. And the most important gestures aren't the grand, poetic, songs-and-flowers-and-tears moments; they're getting out of bed even though you don't want to. Paying attention to things you don't enjoy. Scrubbing pans, or opening a window, saying "thank-you", or helping carry groceries into the house. The small things fill the big things- without the small, boring, mediocre things, big things feel hollow.

Thrre is honour and dignity in humble work.

If you are a cruel and spiteful person, then you will find every place you visit to be full of the same cruel, spiteful people. This is not because the world is as cruel as you, but because everywhere you are, you will be disliked. This is the curse that comes with being persistently cruel and spiteful.

If you are a kind and ppsitive person, you will repeatedly encounter kind and positive people, because as they grow familiar with you, they will be happier to have you near. This is the reward of being a kind and positive person.

When splitting paths with loved ones, briefly or forever, aim for your last words to always be "I love you".

[pr0cyon-lotor]

AU where instead of Shen Yuan being obsessed with Luo Binghe, he's instead obsessed with the scum villain himself. I mean we all know Bingge is Very Not Good Person™ but you know who else a Very Not Good Person™? Say it with me: Shen Jiu

Like just imagine a timeline where Shen Yuan is writing paragraph after paragraph about how Shen Qingqiu might actually be a good person but Airplane is wasting his potential. The other commenters are saying he's delusional because he abused the protagonist and as all these TERRIBLE allegations towards him. So he's a clear cut villain.

But Shen Yuan is defending his fav with the vigor of a devout worshipper. He's constantly siting parts that are obvious plot holes and how they could give much needed context to Shen Qingqiu's character.

Other people are demanding for worst things to happen to Shen Qingqiu to spite him. Airplane caves. Shen Yuan actively commissions art and fics where Shen Qingqiu is happy. People tell him "Shen Qingqiu won't fuck you bro"

Shen Yuan isn't interested in that. He's a freaky little man with freaky little likes. He'd gladly take Shen Qingqiu's cold glares and even volunteer to have tea poured on him.

When he finishes PIDW, he's been outraged that Shen Qingqiu was killed off a while back. He's even more outraged that Shen Qingqiu wasn't given any mention at the end.

Now, imagine with me that he gets transmigrated into some NPC, literally Unimportant Character No°5. Probably as the head disciple for drama reasons. And as soon as Shen Jiu is brought in, scruffy and hissing as he is. He immediately hugging his thighs and saying he'll be peak lord for sure.

Please follow me into this suspicious alleyway as I continue to explain my vision fueled by sleep deprivation.

So now imagine your Shen Jiu. You're a former street rat and demonic cultivator, you aren't expecting to be liked or respected. You're expecting it, you've come to terms with it a long time ago. What you weren't expecting was for this random ass guy you have to call da-shixiong is immediately insane about you.

He met you first day, literally saw you bite a guy, and immediately started spouting out how you'll be the next peak lord and the absolute envy of Cang Qiong Mountain. You conclude he's missing a few screws because he said it in the most disgustingly sincere way.

You try to continue on with your life, trying to beat him and he looks almost... Excited about you beating him. So he's an M, you think to yourself. But then you see someone trying to beat him or you on something, and this guy immediately gets aggressive. Okay so he's just weird with you.

You continue to deal with him. He's weird but also weirdly respectful. He leaves if you tell him to leave. He defends you like it's his very birth right. He's always there to tend to you as if you were a god. He doesn't touch you and only sits around like a dog waiting for a command.

You eventually get strong enough to beat him, and this absolute buffoon is over the moon about it, already spouting about your supposed success again.

When you actually become peak lord, it isn't surprising. Your hype man has been saying it since day one, he was expecting it for some reason. He continues to spout out nonsense about how he just knew you were going to do it.

So what now? You obviously desire him carnally. What is the next step?

Okay so I know this wouldn't fix them. Almost without question this would make they both worse. But, hear me out, it would be funny. (Especially since just know Shen Yuan's entire inner monologue would be him saying he's just being a good friend as if he isn't being the gayest man in the sect and Shang Qinghua is there. That's an accomplishment to outgay the author)

[whathorselegs]

Hot take but Dazai and Chuuya do not have to be solely opposites in everything.

Just because Dazai can't do/isn't good at something doesn't mean Chuuya automatically can do/is good at that same thing. And Vice versa.

They are as similar as they are opposite, their dynamic doesn't have to just be boiled down to opposites attract.

As an example, I think Chuuya is given way too much credit for how put together he is in terms of domestic chores, especially when he's a teen! This boy was technically homeless until the mafia took him in. He was a child on the street, with no memory, who was taken in and raised by The Sheep. Who were other children living in a sewer! For at least some of the time Chuuya was in The Sheep he lived in a sewer. It probably took him years to actually learn how to consistently keep his home in order.

Yes, in Storm Bringer we are given a passage about how neat Chuuya kept his new apartment, but that was also because of how bare it was. He literally didn't know how to fill an apartment with anything but the bare necessities. I don't think we were supposed to read that passage and go "Wow, Chuuya's so neat!", we were supposed to go, "Wow, this kid has no idea who he is."

Dazai living in a shipping container is the worse scenario, but neither of their living situations reflect a stable one. They both have no idea how to make a home for themselves at that point. Chuuya is as proud of his own barren space as Dazai is of his. The real difference is Chuuya was given his apartment by the mafia, whereas Dazai picked his container. Chuuya is integrating himself into the mafia and Dazai is separating himself from it.

Their living situations are mirrors of each other as well as opposites.

Anyway, all this to say, skk (teen skk especially) should get to be as dumb as they are competent together.

[silverware-is-interesting]

i've never really made a comic before, well, i have, but nothing i had intention to show anyone else

[vanmarkus]

gotta be real for a sec before i drop this whole discussion entirely but... i am glad we got the deleted scene and that abc continues to promote the authentic queer rep they've given us this season, but i am not very keen on it having reignited the same exact discourse we've been having since Tommy's return

just cuz you don't like a character he's not problematic and even if he was who the fuck cares? he isn't real.

the queer people in the fandom seeing all that active rancidness and hate you could keep in your dms and gcs are very real though, but that doesn't matter when big mean fictional man is fucking your woobified fictional guy instead of the other dude, now does it?

[rainhadaenerys]

Unpopular opinion, but I really do not see Dany as this "oh so tragic" and "oh so full of trauma" character. She has bad things happen to her like every other ASOIAF character, but she isn't really super traumatized or unable to deal with what happens in her life, and the tone of her story isn't really one of tragedy: on the contrary, her story is full of her overcoming hardships. It's full of triumphs. Even the low point she hits at the end of ADWD is just setting up her journey to finally crush the slavers and become the Stallion who Mounts the World. And then when she goes to Westeros, she will be one of the people to defeat the Others.

I find it a little bit annoying when I see people reading her character purely through the lens of "oh she suffered to much, she was raped by her husband, she was abused by her brother, she doesn't have a home, she is so tragic, etc" (I'm not saying people can't discuss these topics, by the way, I'm just saying that it annoys me when this is the ONLY thing people talk about when it comes to Dany). First, because this isn't the majority of her story, this is mostly part of her early story or backstory, and the main part of her story are the things she does after that, her triumphs and hardships trying to lead her people, fight a war, fight the status quo, and so on. It's a little annoying to see a character who has such a great complex political and magical storyline, a great adventure, all be reduced to "she is just an abused girl who suffered", with all other aspects of her story being ignored. But most importantly, I think this reading of Dany as this tragic character, by Dany stans and Dany haters alike, gives fuel to a bunch of other annoying readings of her character: the neutrals use the "oh so tragic" narrative to argue that her story has to end with her dying and she has nothing else to contribute to the main story other than sacrificing herself and be a tragic hero. Meanwhile, the antis use the "oh so tragic" narrative to claim that they sympathize with Dany, but her trauma is going to make her crazy, paranoid, a villain, etc. Or, when they don't say that her trauma is going to make her a villain, they claim that she was always a villain and use her "trauma" to claim that they sympathize with her and that her "trauma" makes her such a complex villain.

[softiedingo]

everytime i remember that my future depends on me:

[athousandbyeol]

tianwang and colours

teaser photos of this week's episodes were released and i couldn't stop staring at jiang tian and sheng wang's clothes.

@respectthepetty shared a brilliant post on the drama's colour theory, especially pertaining to the colours jiang tian and sheng wang are wearing or associated with. [thanks so much op for the insightful and beautifully written post ^^]

so, in this photo, jiang tian and sheng wang (maybe) are having a study date outside of school (and they look so domestic and cute and UGH). however, i do notice that jiang tian wears a darker shade of brown while sheng wang wears something lighter.

directly quoting from op's post, "One is light, and the other is dark. One is the sun, and one is the moon. One is warm, and one is cool."

we're so used to seeing jiang tian in dark-coloured clothes (black, grey, blue) while sheng wang always wears something light/bright (orange, white, red, yellow). i think it's such a nice detail to be added in this drama and also jiang tian and sheng wang's characters, considering the progress of their relationship.

i guess, it's showing us how sheng wang has brought light into jiang tian's life, and now he's no longer drenched in only darkness. he still wears darker colours than sheng wang, but it doesn't have that usual gloominess. i think sheng wang balances jiang tian's darkness, and it's just so beautiful to witness this in the upcoming episodes.

[jiang tian's fit: darker brown t-shirt with light-coloured jeans and black high-cut converse; sheng wang's fit: light brown t-shirt with dark blue jeans and yellow converse and socks. they're balancing each other with colours/shades opposite of them.]

and don't get me started on the matching bracelets.....

if my eyesight isn't deceiving me, jiang tian is blue and sheng wang is yellow/brown? again, op uses the motif 'the sun and the moon' to represent jiang tian and sheng wang and i think it's the most accurate representation of their personality.

even though the sun and the moon don't collide, they still belong to the same sky.

i honestly can't wait to see the shift in their relationship. since the walls between them are no longer high, will they finally be united? will there be more than just this feeling of wanting to be closer? what will happen in episode 7 that leads to them wearing these matching bracelets?

so many questions are left unanswered. we just have to wait and see.

[typing-catastrophe]

random X-Men headcanons

erik can cook very well

he learned it while travelling to other countries, using it as a sort of coping mechanism, to take his mind of off things for a short while

logan can't cook for shit. he couldn't make a decent meal if his life depended on it. man forgets to eat for days on end sometimes and is only reminded by someone else asking if he's hungry or when he ate last

charles will try to survive on coffee while staying up late (very late) while doing research or working on his thesis etc.

erik has to literally drag him away from his desk

peter once chugged a pot of coffee and immediately went to sleep for a whole day

erik had to patch himself up so many times that he can provide the best first aid you could get from a civilian/non-doctor or nurse

[secriden]

so i wonder if anyone else has thoughts about mame's choices regarding sky vs tongrak's stories and how she tackled the complexity of loving and being loved.

when i first heard about love sea, i saw a lot of people say that fortpeat were just re-cast as sky and prapai but with tongrak being older and richer than mahasamut. personally, i think that's a pretty reductionist view because mame explored the idea of being afraid to love and be loved from very different angles and perspective in these two stories.

i will give that there are some similarities on the surface - peat's character does that whole 'pretends to hate it but secretly loves it' thing; the cat-like 'push and pull' thing and fort's character is still a overly excited, loveable golden retriever of a human being with a strong sense of self; also both sky and tongrak have had experiences which make them both fearful of 'love'.

but i think while sky's main fear is being loved, tongrak's is very much a fear of loving.

like, sky's story is very... raw. it's an exposed nerve, tender and painful and present. sky's fear is so immediately tied to his trauma which he's still in the throes of. the betrayal he faced was from the one who claimed to love him and it's telling that sky's first flashback is not triggered by his feelings FOR prapai but by prapai expressing his 'love' for him. this trauma is intimate and physical and close, but that means that the start of his healing journey can begin because of an external force (prapai) giving him that safety but also physically removing the threat. when sky begins to feel safe again, he is able to begin healing.

in contrast: tongrak's trauma is relatively... hmmm, separated (? not the best word but...) on a physical level. it doesn't make it less or even less painful (or more, or more painful), but his fear of love largely stems from how he sees the people immediately around him being hurt by love. he's internalised the idea that love doesn't last. mahasamut starts confessing his feelings pretty early on; like episode 4 mahasamut straight up goes, 'well you can't stop me from loving you' and tongrak's disapproving but he's not triggered. what's the difference between this and episode 10, i think, is that tongrak's actively fighting his own awareness of his feelings for mahasamut. it's why his fight or flight response is triggered by vie calling him out about his feelings in episode 8 and also why he tries to force parameters back into their relationship (my take: i don't care if you love me but i won't love you) in episode 10. but it's also why his healing doesn't actually come from an external force - yes, vie kind of knocks him out of his depressed stupor by hiding the bracelet, but note that tongrak's has that breakdown realisation ('please come back, i'm sorry, i'm sorry, can't you please come back to me? i'm afraid you'll end up hating me (emphasis added) if you love me') before he has that chat with vie. he's already realised that the root of his fear of mahasamut's love isn't the love itself, but the fear that if he admits his own love for mahasamut, it will eventually get betrayed. it's also why even after he resolves that he wants to try at a relationship with mahasamut, he still can't say it. at this point, his father's a non-entity in terms of the fear of him going after his loved ones - he's already been proven a weakling and a coward and also they're physically on the island so removed from jak that it shouldn't be an immediate fear anymore. no; this struggle is completely internal and it's why we linger on his heartbreaking attempts to confess (also, love sea had some pacing issues but i'm so so grateful they took time to show this part; bless fort for insisting on it!). tongrak's afraid to love but he pushes and pushes himself, and finally breaks through and its entirely on his own terms because of his own strength.

i'm not saying sky's weaker for (in a sense) needing someone else to rescue him before he could heal, but i think it just speaks to mame really telling quite a different story of healing with tongrak.

like... have you ever thought you'd healed from something and then it comes back in an unexpected way but then your response to the trigger is also different? the pain is there but it's... at once deeper but also more distant? a deep pulse rather than a high pitched shriek? and the way you go about beginning this new phase of healing is also different? i think that's whats happening here.

it's fascinating how us humans can fear vulnerability in so many ways, so many forms, on so many levels but i think the lesson mame's stories tell is that sometimes it really is worth it to become vulnerable. not with everyone, and not all the time (goodness, that would be foolish). but also, keep holding onto hope. keep looking for that right person, keep being kind to yourself and others. know that it's ok if your healing feels different, if you didn't catch it some point in the past, its not too late.

you'll be ok.

[lnkedmyheart]

This one is in response to @fizzytastic asking

"I would LOVE to know what you mean regarding the light novels."

Dazai in the light novels has been down BAD since the day he met Chuuya.

I know the whole "must be because I love you" can be viewed as a joke but my man actually "whispered with a look of regret" at being shot down.

He also proceeded to cheat during the game by tampering with the machine to ensure Chuuya would lose the bet and become his dog. He was also stated as being in awe of Chuuya's fighting ability, repeatedly refering to him as "incredible". Dazai also flat out admits to wanting to try out living because "Chuuya convinced" him.

He is even described as having forgotten how to breathe watching Chuuya fight.

Moving on to the events of Stormbringer, Dazai spends too long exposing his obsession with Chuuya, telling the big bad that he spends all his "days and nights thinking about ways to annoy Chuuya".

He further proceeds to insist that Chuuya is human because of how strongly he hates Chuuya and due to a specific word it can be viewed as him saying Chuuya would hate him less if he wasnt human as was stated in the stage play of the same.

Furthermore at the end of Stormbringer he offers to come up with a new plan to give Chuuya an out if he needs one when he has to use corruption as a last resort. And he fully intends on coming up with a new plan within 2 minutes.

In general Dazai does a lot of staring at Chuuya throughout the light novels. On a lighter note Dazai jokes about wanting Chuuya as his personal maid at one point and demands that Chuuya let Dazai look inside his head and know everything there is to know about him.

But then we move onto the dragon head conflict as mentioned in Dead Apple where after making light of an executive's death and getting punched in the face by Chuuya, Dazai is so shaken up by Chuuya implying he's inhuman, he actually pulls strings to try and bring the conflict to an end. He also stops corruption by touching his cheek and pulls Chuuya's head into his lap while he is unconscious after his fight with Shibusawa. The following is from the manga.

Now everyone knows about the whole Snow White and Prince reference but in the light novel its clarified that Chuuya's ability was not affected by the fog and Dazai knew this but he still forces his head down. Even more telling is that Dazai cradles Chuuya's face for no real reason because Corruption had already been nullified when Chuuya made skin to skin contact when punching him in the face.

And of course that was how their expressions are drawn in the manga panel

Then we move to the present day and you have Dazai saying this to Sigma about Chuuya

But then his comment about Gide has him claim the exact same behaviour is romantic in his messed up troll brain

Basically Dazai has a history of staring at Chuuya in awe since 15, "jokingly" confessed at 15 and then got somewhat upset about the rejection, cheated to be able to keep Chuuya as his, repeatedly makes remarks that imply he is vaguely obsessed with him at 16, tends to let Chuuya rest his head in his lap post corruption, has nullified him twice that we have seen by touching his cheek (as per the movie and once as per the ln). Is actively affected by how Chuuya views him (which was shocking to me).

Aside from that he has also talked about Chuuya to the ADA off screen because Yosano knew about Chuuya and his ability (though this could just be a random update about the membera of the mafia to watch out for during meetings) and I heard he talked about Chuuya to Oda in The Day I Picked Up Dazai ln.

This is not counting any of the seriously insane amount of wan content because I dont view it as canon or atleast entirely canon but there Dazai admits to keeping 27 journals detailing things about Chuuya and its an exaggeration of the canon fact that Dazai prides himself in being a Chuuya Nakahara Encyclopedia. It also plays with how close they both actually are with several character refering to them as besties, Chuuya being forced to admit he doesnt actually hate Dazai.

(Oh and this is not even considering just how much Dazai touches Chuuya, like in the manga there is a part where Dazai keeps tugging at Chuuya's hair and refusing to let go while complaining about how much he doesnt want to touch him. Just let go dude...)

So yea, I would not be surprised if Dazai has his vows prepared by the time the last pre defection ln drops. Ofcourse this is mostly a lighthearted joke about Dazai being down bad but in all seriousness, Dazai genuinely cared about and still cares about Chuuya and its made extremely obvious throughout the novels. Its actually worth noting that it was actually Chuuya who seemed to be more vitriolic towards him until the end of Stormbringer where Dazai actually gives Chuuya a choice and shows open concern for Chuuya's needs. Hell Dazai was also the one insisting on Chuuya's autonomy, while he keeps insisting Chuuya is his dog, he hates the idea of people using him like a tool, its why he always gives Chuuya a choice. Chuuya always actively chooses to go rescue Dazai in Dazai's plans of getting kidnapped. Chuuya can always go, "nah, I dont wanna use corruption" but he doesnt because he knows since the events of stormbringer that Dazai will always give him a choice even if corruption seems like a last resort.

Chuuya has good reason for trusting Dazai. Its cause Dazai has in fact proven to him that he can trust him. Its why he went in to fight a dragon despite being told Dazai was possibly already dead.

(And yea I know the current arc would have people go "lol he tried to drown Chuuya, he clearly doesnt care" and you know what? That's so dumb. Dazai tried to drown Chuuya, yes. But we dont actually know what is happening with this arc rn and what he is doing or if Chuuya is in any way involved in whatever he is doing. Dazai said all those things and there was no need for him to say that but the fact that he even remembered several moments they shared, yea no, he was clearly affected by it. Maybe I am wrong and Asagiri decided to yeet out all of Dazai's characterization we saw with his behaviour towards Chuuya in 2 entire novels of his past but IDK I think I'm gonna wait till this arc ends and everything unfolds before making a conclusion about how Dazai is such an asshole he tried to drown his partner.)

Seriously, vows are like the least they could do at this point.

[da-birb-writes-sometimes]

I'm not sure if your event is open just yet (potential time differences) but may I request Lilia, as the ghost, with the prompt 6.Bump in the night with romantic, fluff and maybe a bit of horror cause we know Lilia likes to scare people please?

I'm so sorry if I didn't do this right 😅

Bump in the Night; Lilia Vanrouge

Content; Gender-neutral reader, implied romantic feelings/pining

Content Warning; Swearing, light fear

Word Count; 700+

A/N; I hope you like what I came up with, Lilia will always be a little imp. And don't worry about formatting, you did everything perfectly!

Please do not put my work into AI. If you would like to see more of my work check out my masterlist!

You were grumbling to yourself as you lit some candles while holding a flashlight under your chin.

The power had gone out due to a blizzard, right when you were in the middle of catching up on your favourite show. But the weather didn’t care about the plotline or the barely warm soup that was now sitting sadly on your stovetop. No show and no dinner, you were shit out of luck tonight by the looks of it.

So instead, you grabbed all the candles you could find, a small horde of blankets, and hunkered down.

You fidgeted around, picking at some loose strings, and tapping to the beat of the battery-operated clock. 

… bored bored bored THIS SUCKS bored bored bored …

You dragged your hands down your face. Why couldn’t the power go out while you were asleep? Why did it have to go out on one of your only quiet nights to yourself? Why couldn’t the power wait until you had your dinner? 

The wind howled outside as if it were mocking you.

The hairs on the back of your neck stood on end, and the candles snuffed out, one by one. Not by a draft, or wind, but as if someone was pinching off the flame. The room was cast into darkness, only the pale blue light from outside lighting everything up in a dim silver cast.

Face the issue at hand that had all levels of nope nope NOPE written all over it? Or, hide under the blankets like you were a kid again?

… you hid under the blankets. You reasoned it wasn’t from fear, but rather to conserve your body heat, since hey, the candles died out due to some unforeseen and totally normal reason.

But then you smelt something burning.

There was no power though, nothing was working so why was something burning?

You shuffled to the kitchen and peered out from your blanket cocoon.

The soup, which was barely lukewarm, was now a charred mess of black sludge.

“The hell,” you hissed, eyeing the baffling liquid. Part of your brain was screaming DANGER DANGER DANGER!!! And the other part? It was mourning the loss of your dinner.

A breathy chuckle was in your ear.

You wanted to move, but you couldn’t. You were frozen in place by some unseen force.

You felt delicate fingers trace the back of your neck before they came to a stop at a pulse point, which was easy enough to find since your pulse was beating like a trapped bird trying to escape a cage.

“You always look the same,” the voice whispered, the chuckle and playfulness long gone.

The voice flitted closer, and you could make out a hazy figure in your peripheral vision, but just barely.

The figure, a petite figure, came to a stop in front of you. The only thing about them that felt physical, that was the most clear, were their magenta almost red eyes. They bore down on you with a weight; of knowing, of countless years, of longing, and a mix of grief and mischievous — an odd combination.

“What do you want,” you asked, fighting your mouth to spit out the words.

The man, you assumed the spectre to be a man at least, gave you a soft smile.

He took your face into his cold hands, or at least tried to, and rubbed circles into the apple of your cheeks. “Many things, dearie,” he sighed softly, “but only if you want them too. I’ll leave if you want me to. I just want to see you happy.”

An odd thing to say when you nearly gave me a stroke. 

Despite that near stroke though, you didn’t sense any malevolence from the ghostly figure who held you softly. And despite his cold touch, he was nothing but warmth, but in the sense of a weak candle.

One must just take care of the flame to see it grow.

Time after time, Lilia would find you, his spirit drawn towards yours.

I love you.

Never really said, but it would end in the same way. Him quietly loving you from the sidelines until he found his opening. An opening into your life, and your heart.

~~~~~~~

Taglist; @afunkyfreshblog @bloomstruck @eynnwwyjth @identity-theft-101 @ithseem @lucid-stories @moonsoup01637 @ryker-writes @twistwonderlanddevotee @xxoomiii

[pestilentbrood]

VERY long Ramble incoming

honestly now that I'm looking at the auraboa lore situation, I'm just disappointed. There was such POTENTIAL in the idea of the Loop and the horror of a new generation inexplicably being disconnected from it, forcing the newly hatched children into a world totally separate from that perceived by their parents (I mean, hell, they perceive TIME differently!).... but then the writer(s?) just fell ass backwards into Icky Tropes.

I feel like I can see what the idea was, especially with the recent alterations to the Encyclopedia entry... It seems like staff fundamentally understands the true Horror potential here, but... Instead, through the short story, they proposed it through the lens of a condescending outsider character, turning the fears of the older generation into something trivial. And also weirdly demeaning the Auroboa's situation by portraying them as overreacting.

Why... why would you do that? Like, from a storytelling perspective? What's gained from that? Why not embrace the true horror and even Emotional significance of that disruption? Why instead go for "ohh we NEED outsider help we NEED to be saved because we are so helpless and it is so Silly that we, creatures who have never experienced such things, do not know what sleep is"????

And if they WANTED to have a condescending outsider, I feel like they COULD have done that, but it would have to have that character realize the horror at some point. And make it obvious that their attitude towards distressed parents and children facing Eldritch Shit and the Sudden Deconstruction of it was not cool!

(or at the very least be a bit more...idk. Consistent with said outsider character? Juniper just goes from "omg I am so honored that the fascinating creatures of the behemoth have chosen me to speak to" to "oh their wasting my time because they don't know what sleep is. I'd rather be sleeping!! 🙄" like girl... c'mon now. Why are we trivializing it like this. Do you want me as the reader to be invested in their plight or not.)

I mean come on. They're beings connected through one networked hivemind-like system, yet each still maintains a silver of individuality that allows them to move freely throughout the Behemoth that they care for. And they've got an eldritch understanding of time that no other dragon could understand. They're seeing the future, past, and present unfold simultaneously. They're witnessing the birth and death of the world at the same time, and have no way to communicate it to other dragons. The best they can do is maintain their home, and even then, they see its roots spread and decay all at once.

And then the newest generation is suddenly disconnected. An inherent link between parent and child and all dragons in-between, that has existed since the creation of their species, is just suddenly GONE for the newest births. With NO explanation for it. The children have no easy way of communicating with their parents. The children are experiencing time in a way that was not meant for their species. They've forcefully been shoved into a circadian rhythm that they are Not! Built for!

The only way a parent could communicate properly with their child would be when the latter is sleeping, something that is also completely foreign to this species. It would be terrifying for all involved!!!

They are literally experiencing eldritch horror from the perspective of the eldritch being forced into the mortal.

Like why WOULDN'T there be panic!!! And why would that panic be trivialized! Why are we only shown the perspective of an outsider who looks at this situation and goes "Oh the silly tree beasts are being so silly over nothing, it's no big deal!"

That and the way the auraboas talk to outsiders. Like. There was such potential there. Real opportunity to explore how ancient, time-bending beings would communicate to someone who couldn't even BEGIN to understand the intricacies of it.

Instead we got what feels more like baby talk (even described as though they were hatchlings enunciating their first words, which... I dunno man, maybe we don't want to compare them to children like That) and less like... Beings that experience all of time at once. I mean, the hatchlings and the adults speak the exact same way, and that doesn't make any sense given the literal time barrier going on.

I totally get why people thought there was just a language barrier and that auraboas had their own language, thus causing the disjointed speak, and not that it was because They Do Not Experience Time Like We Do. And I feel it would've been far easier to get it across by just... I dunno. Do anything else?? I saw someone on here suggest they speak in the "wrong" tenses, or using multiple tenses in the same sentence, which I think would've been far more clear.

Like, as opposed to "saplings wilt! saplings silent!" just "the saplings will wilt in silence, they've wilted in silence, they are wilting silently." Said all at once like all things are true simultaneously. And if we're going for hivemind, have each auraboa speak in a different tense, all at the same time, and have them switch it up every time. Have our outsider get confused and be like "which is it? are they wilting now, or have they already wilted?" and the cluster of auraboas respond in a cacophony of yes's, no's, and maybe's all at once.

Would've probably gotten across the "alien" vibe they were supposedly going for far better than wide-eyed desperation for an outsider's guidance conveyed through disjointed, in-world described as baby speech.

And also maybe would've had less accidental connotations. Because as it stands, I completely see why people have made the connections to the real world where they have. This doesn't read like eldritch timey-wimey intrigue, or even a respectful look at how younger generations can become detached from their families' cultures over time and the struggles that come with it. It reads like a culture being perceived by an ignorant outsider who (despite supposedly respecting these dragons) scoffs and rolls their eyes because the tree beasts with their funny words are being silly again, and that Hey, isn't it actually a great thing that the children are fundamentally different in all manners now? Because now they can join the rest of us in the "real world."

Yknow. Ick.

(I Personally think it would've been better to have the perspective be one of the Auraboas themselves, especially one of the children, to really understand what was going on here. Give us the full brunt of the mind of a creature experiencing all of time interwoven as one shape. The waters fall and the oceans crash with waves. They've now fallen to drought. The ocean has yet to be born. Caves have been carved out through the waters' currents. And when I break from this timeline, I open my eyes to see a child, the child not yet born, the child born now, the child born yesterday. Why can't I hear it? Why couldn't I hear it? Why won't I ever hear it?)

I dunno. People more qualified than me to speak on this matter have already torn the lore apart, I'm just... dropping my own two cents. Potential got weirdly squandered and we ended up instead with unfortunate implications and tropes that could be connected a liiiittle too awkwardly to irl situations.

*Also, before anyone points out: Yes, I know the hatchlings aren't COMPLETELY detached from the Loop and can join it when they sleep. But the fact is, these thangs never had to sleep before. That wasn't in their species' nature. So that's still weird and foreign for them on both sides. And since the hatchlings now have a circadian rhythm, they can't stay connected to the loop permanently. And also Also, seeing as the previous generations aren't experiencing time linearly, who's to say they even recognize when their child joins the loop? They'll speak with an echo of their child when that child was last asleep ages ago, not knowing that it's not them presently, because there is no 'present' for the older generations.

[glacier-shrimp]

Done with our favorite Spider-Boy! Spiderling? Spider... What was his name again?

Avengers paper cutout 6/?

[pr3ttypumpk1n]

Okay, but have you ever imagined a scene where Vere asks (forces) the MC to brush his tail? He just pulls the MC into his room and makes them brush his tail while sitting on the bed. He just doesn't want to admit/show that he just wants us around🤧

[leopardmuffinxo]

i thought i had escaped the post that tried to take a statement on discord out of context, about durge and astarion being a 'canon ship' or w/e, but alas it showed up on my dash. i don't have the energy to go through this kind of bs w/ bg3.

THERE. ARE. NO. CANON. SHIPS. IN. BG3.

i don't care how much more dialogue a character has w/ another character. i don't care what you think is implied though a vague statement made by a writer or VA. shit like that is what caused a lot of people in the DA fandom to get harassed by so many braindead people in the fandom because their ships were "not canon". the fact that it was also added in because of crunch is a huge disappointment. it's allowed to be your canon but it doesn't make it canon for the game in general.