#probably also a byproduct of the incident

[applepies-and-starlight]

Hi hi it's 1am here and the thoughts are Not Great so scroll past if you don't want to see the pettiest vent in your life 'k thanks ♡

So you know that post about me being scared about sharing my work if it isn't the popular opinion or anything generally commonly appealing? Yeah so as I was typing out the tags my brain threw a core memory at my face and went "you absolutely know why"

Anywau basically like, i was an undertale fan during the undertale renissance (is that how you spell it?) And i was fucking OBSESSED over glitchtale (until early season 2 + before camila was outed to be a shitbag) and thought glithtale was very very cool

Ankther thing is that i was a chronic deviantart scroller at the tjme (also on google images) and i love lovr loooooved looking at people's art

So i was like "hey i could do that too!" And started making fanart for glitchtale, specifically that final battle part where they're in The Orb™ in s1

I was doing it in school because at this point everyone was basically just hanging out (my elementary's system was 1st grade to 6th grade (i was... 5th grade iirc) And also had this weird systen where the younger half of elementary would go home 2 hours earlier than the older half (1pm), idk why) and like, because there was literally just 4 people here because small school, i showed my wip to the other 3 people present in the area

They made fun of it

Yeag,,

They made fun of. Basically Everything.

The thing that primarily stuck with me was how they teased about frisk's posing and the overall edginess of the piece, but mostly how frisk looked stypid (which, 1. Y'all play fnaf and brag that you're cool though kids you don't have room to talk; 2. It was The Orb™ fight,,, of course it was gonna be edgy,,,,)

It's somewhere in a landfill now, i threw it in the trash and never fished it out... probably decomposed by now, it's been 8 years (holy shit it's been 8 years)

I... think they apologized? Idk i just know they had a "wait shit no-" moment when i threw it in the trash but i was already mad about it so, yeag

Like... i like to say that it doesn't affect me that badly anymore but i'm pretty sure it still is? I literally can't look at my art anymore without thinking of how bad it looks compared to everyone else's and i also am physically unable to Not agree with others (i literally forced myself to hate homura akemi pmmm because a friend didn't see the nuance in her character and just relegated her to "bitch" lmao) and Good Lird i have crippling perfectionism because if 1 person hates it then everyone does right??? Lmao

Deadass nowadays i just can't bring myself to make or share any ideas or pick up anything creative because i HAVE to get it perfect in 1 go otherwise i'll be ridiculed for it; I'm Trying to outgrow these problems but it's jist So Dicking Hard akfjshdjdhr and it seriously doesn't help tjat there was a seperare (smaller) incident where i found one of my drawings crumpled on the floor by someone

Man i'm kinda fucked up am i?

[parakaryote]

The Weird Microorganism Iceberg

I basically made this on an impulse, please don��t take it too seriously. Feel free to suggest more organisms!

Explanations under the cut.

Tardigrades: You probably all know this one. Commonly said to be polyextremophiles, but this isn’t actually true; while they can survive extreme conditions, they don’t thrive in them. Something you might not know about them is that all of their body segment genes are equivalent to arthropod head genes — meaning they are basically walking heads.

Demodex: Eyelash mites.

Diatoms: Geometric silicon shell creatures.

Nylon-eating bacteria (Paenarthrobacter ureafaciens KI72): Exactly what it says on the tin.

Myxozoa: Single-celled parasitic cnidarians. Lack digestive systems, circulatory systems, gonads, and even muscles in some species. Also may or may not be autonomous cancer cells.

Thiomargarita: The only macroscopic bacteria. Honorary microorganisms for the purposes of this image.

Wolbachia: Parasitic / mutualistic bacteria genus that has created numerous insect species through their effects on reproduction. (Infected females can become capable of parthenogenesis, while infected males are either killed, turned into females, or limited to reproducing only with females infected by the same strain.)

Deinococcus radiodurans: A bacterium which unofficially holds the title of “most extreme extremophile”. Can survive incredibly high doses of radiation, as well as high acidity and very low temperatures.

Dicyemida: Symbiotic (once mistakenly thought to be parasitic) animals that live in cephalopod kidneys. Have alternation of generations and used to be known as “Rhombozoa” (“rhombus animals”).

Facetotectans: Parasitic crustaceans with an unknown adult form. Attempts to artificially induce metamorphosis only produce another juvenile stage, as far as anyone can tell.

Metal-breathing bacteria: Bacteria which use nanowires to accept electrons from metals.

Limnognathia: One of the smallest animals, and has 15-part extensible jaws.

Disulforudis audaxviator: The only known organism to comprise a single-species ecosystem. Lives over a mile underground and feeds off the byproducts of radioactive decay.

Salinella salve: Possibly nonexistent simple animal, allegedly cultured by Johannes Frenzel in 1892 but never found by anyone else.

Warnowiids (Warnowiaceae): A family of dinoflagellates which have modified some of their organelles into an eye… which somehow works well enough for them to aim their stingers at prey, despite them having no brain (or even other cells) to process the images.

Haloquadratum walsbyi: A square that lives in salt.

Dicopomorpha echmepterygis: The smallest known insect, a parasitoid wasp smaller than a Paramecium.

Hemimastigophora: A group of organisms recently discovered to be an early-splitting branch of the eukaryotes.

Monocercomonoides: A genus of “excavate” “protists” (both terms are polyphyletic, lol) that lack mitochondria… or even the genes for them.

Parakaryon myojinensis: The only complete incertae sedis, for which not even the domain is known. Has an odd mix of eukaryote and prokaryote-like features, leading to speculation that they represent a second incidence of endosymbiosis (aka Eukaryota 2.0). Also my blog’s namesake.

Collodictyon: Considered unclassifiable for a long time. Not really that weird in and of itself, tbh.

Kamera lens: Continuing the theme, this is an alga that has proven weirdly difficult to classify despite having been known for centuries (though it’s been narrowed down to the Ochrophyta). Its funny name makes it a pain to look up.

Jeongeupia sacculi: Recently-discovered multicellular(!) bacterium. Unlike everything else on here, it doesn’t have a Wikipedia page (yet).

Meteora sporadica: “Protist” which moves by rowing with a pair of arm-like appendages. Another difficult-to-classify organism, although a study from earlier this year suggests they are related to the Hemimastigophora.

Kakabekia barghoorniana: Apparent Paleoproterozoic living fossil that looks like an umbrella.

Magosphaera planula: A sphere which splits apart into amoeba-like cells, observed by Ernst Haeckel in 1869. Also possibly nonexistent / misidentified.

[fitzrove]

1, 5, 7, 31, 32, 37 for the cynical ask game :-D

1. How did you first get into musical theatre?

I guess I've always liked music, plays/theatre, and plays with music in them >:) My parents took me a lot to Cultural Events as a kid. I've also always been into doing music myself, like piano lessons (for years kdkd) and also singing (just for fun, then in school choirs etc.), which probably made me Susceptible to liking musical theatre hahah.

The timeline on Musicals proper is a bit fuzzy, but te "inciting incident" so to speak is either 1) my mom taking me to see Finnish Wicked, or 2) my music teacher (he doubled as the "homeroom teacher" or class teacher whatever) showing my primary school class POTO 2004 xD. I loved both (and ÅST Les Mis when my mom also took me to that pretty soon after Wicked), and all of those shows are still quite near to my heart heheh.

31. Is there a musical that means a lot to you that isn't one of your favourites? What made you feel that way about it?

Hamilton skksksks. It's really well-made throughout, and despite Lin-Manuel Miranda selling out and having done questionable things and the disney plus proshot being kinda bad, it was world-changing when it came out and the way it's constructed still holds up!! I saw it recently and had a good time >:) It also reminds me of being a teenager (only the good parts) :')

32. Talk about the worst production of a musical you like that you've seen.

I have talked plenty about Elisabeth Schönbrunn 2022 on this blog KFKDLDLLD.... didn't see it live but the impact of that trashfire (or I guess, of the 2019 original concert version... or maybe we have to go all the way back to the Dutch concert idk) almost killed my love for the show and nearly destroyed musical theatre as an art form xD only half joking... I'm so glad two people are single-handedly saving us right now

37. Is there a musical lyric, line, moment, etc. that lives in your head rent-free?

when they decided to use the spiegel melody for elisabeth act 1 revamped finale because it's a convenient pre-existing pre-fitting countermelody... but as a byproduct accidentally made the ominous words be todolf foreshadowing 😌

(already answered others!)

[citynewsglobe]

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[rhysdasior]

Roland’s waspish responses to be expected in a time of heightened emotional vulnerability and though the urge to respond to every jagged remark with an equally embittered response out of an instinctual passive aggressive need that Rhys could only thank his mother for inheriting and passing down the family tree, the witch kept his jaw clamped shut as he listened, going as far as consciously keeping his expression compassionate so as not to stumble any further into already rocky conversational territory. As Roland’s hand settled into place over his, Rhys felt himself relax by the slightest amount; a reciprocation of the gesture was always a good sign.

Listening closely as Roland divulged the messy details of a more strained siring bond, Rhys tried to empathise and sympathise with the plight presented as best he could. Of course, he couldn’t claim to understand the intensity and complexity of the relationship between a sire and their fledgling, nor could he claim to be thrilled about some hanger-on apparently now wanting to cling to Ro after having more decades on this earth than Rhys had been alive spent having, apparently, minimal contact. Rhys’ hold over Roland’s heart had tightened without him even realising and he loosened his grip on Roland’s shirt with a faint noise of embarrassed realisation at such a clear display of his emotions getting the better of him – the only godsend (and potentially the only time Rhys would consider it as such) was that Roland had been so entrenched in his recollection that he’d failed to notice a second of it. Or, at least, Rhys could hope such observations proved correct. Sharing wasn’t a concept the witch had ever been fond of; whether that was a byproduct of being an only child or the fact that for the first time in a long time, Rhys had found someone he was genuinely scared of losing, of becoming dull to– he was getting ahead of himself. Stay in the present, Dasior. 

The purposefully vague ‘other reasons’ were concerning by themselves and the nagging pull of Rhys’ clairvoyance was growing stronger by the second – he couldn’t pretend the news wasn’t concerning in its own right and the need to see the problem for himself so that he could begin to figure out a workable strategy for all involved felt almost overwhelming. Taking another breath to steady himself, Rhys let himself be pulled closer as Roland’s account came to an end, the defeated words and pleading stare that followed fully exposing just how much the entire ordeal had worn Roland down over time. “You know just as well as I do that sweeping things under the rug for the time being isn’t dealing with them, Ro,” stroking a soothing circle against Roland’s heart, Rhys’ expression softened as he considered his words carefully. “And as much as I’d love to suggest you hold the tw– Aneirin to his word and see how long he crumbles considering you both have eternity at your disposal, it’s probably not going to last as long as you think it will – grand declarations in heated moments usually don’t carry the weight they seem to. Also, he’s your fledgling. Histrionics run in the bloodline.” 

With a tense sigh, Rhys averted his gaze to focus his attention on the wall behind, pleased to be met with a vast expanse of nothing as opposed to the emotional agony still present in Roland’s eyes. As unfortunate as the Aneirin and Gwyn-related incidents had been, Rhys was struggling to tap into the full depths of his empathy – whether it could be blamed on the stressors of balancing two exceedingly demanding jobs, the lack of consistent sleep, the come down that refused to shift (and that he stubbornly refused to heal through any magical means) or whatever, Rhys couldn’t be sure, but what he did know was that it wasn’t making a discussion of this nature particularly easy to have. Returning his gaze to meet Roland’s, the witch gave him a small, reassuring smile and mentally willed his tone to sound as upbeat as he needed it to. “Probably for the best if we call it a night on the topic, though. Instead, why don’t you continue tidying the bedroom, maybe neaten up a few things around the kitchen, empty a bin or two? I’ll be done in here by then – then we can turn in for the night. Tomorrow’s a new day; we’ll deal with the finer details then. That work for you?”

Reassurance always seemed to work wonders on Roland. No matter how wounded, angry, or defensive when Rhys reassured him of how strong their bond was or that he'd lashed out unnecessarily, it almost always seemed to soothe Roland. Such was the case as Rhys promised that it hadn't changed anything between them and Roland finally felt like he could truly let it go. What a relief it was, too. It was unlike him to hold on to such a sickening feeling of guilt. The regret and self-loathing was practically foreign to him and he was only too eager to toss it away and go back to normal. He wondered, again, how Rhys somehow operated with that feeling on a daily basis. It was stifling. "I'm glad. Consider it forgotten, then. I'm happy to let it go." It did make him feel lighter, knowing and believing that it hadn't poisoned anything between them. It was a mistake and it wouldn't happen again.

If only the good feelings could've remained for the rest of the evening but that apparently wasn't to be. The Aneirin problem was distressing in a different way than his recent transgression with Gwyn. Roland recognized it was his fault, that he'd made a mess of things, and he desperately wanted to fix it but could still see no way around or through it. Aneirin demanded things he couldn't give, wanted him to bend the few boundaries he had around his relationship, and Roland didn't want to do that. More and more, however, he was wondering how much it would really harm him to just...let Aneirin adore him the way he seemed to want to even if Roland couldn't return it the same way. Rhys' callousness certainly hadn't helped, though the witch seemed to realise that almost as soon as Roland reacted to it given how quickly that apology came. "It was most certainly uncalled for." The vampire confirmed, rather more sharply than he'd spoken before, though it was very much in his nature to lash out when he was hurt and Rhys should've been familiar with it at this point. Rhys tried to comfort him suddenly and Roland was torn between letting him and pulling away more. Being called 'uppity' certainly didn't incline him towards the former.

"How fresh can it be when it happened weeks ago? This was before you left, just before, in fact." That certainly hadn't helped matters, that he'd argued with Aneirin, been seemingly cut off, and then had Rhys abandon him practically the next second. "Your name calling isn't helpful either." Roland's tone was peevish but he sighed when Rhys touched his shoulder, melted even further when the witch's hand pressed against his heart. It was second nature to put his own over it to hold and keep it there. "It wasn't, not in the least. Our contact has always been sporadic and I hoped that with us now in the same place it would be better. I've missed him. But....it became an argument, partly to do with you partly for...other reasons." Their history that had no closure. Perhaps he should've told Rhys that Aneirin still loved him but he feared how Rhys would react to that and he truly didn't want more strife between them, not when Rhys had just gotten back. Roland closed his eyes and leaned into the hand on his jaw even as he shook his head minutely at the advice. "He'll take too much time. I need to fix it somehow but I can't see a way through. He's already said he wants nothing more to do with me and whether that's really true or not he's stubborn enough to keep to it." He opened his eyes but kept his gaze downcast, though he did drift closer and wind his arm around Rhys again, the other still holding Rhys' hand to his chest.

Letting out a slow breath, he looked up and met Rhys' eyes again, something like a plea in them. "I don't want to discuss it anymore. I'm so very tired of pain, cheri, it's been constant for weeks. I just want to be happy that you're back, to enjoy our reunion. Can't we do that instead and leave all this for the time being?" There'd already been too many painful interruptions to what should've been their joyous reunion and Roland was sick of them. His heart had ached enough these past three weeks, he wanted it to be light again.

[o-wyrmlight]

Am I misunderstanding context or something or is White Lily suggesting 'Let's steal a piece of the Headmaster's soul' when it's very strongly implied that said headmaster is likely a being made entirely out of magic not like. Low-key sound like a suggestion to kill them, if nothing else? How else would you typically get somebody's soul? Because the way Pure Vanilla reacted sort of led me to believe that he thought White Lily was planning on killing the Headmaster, you know?

Also, I don't think that I was clear when I was talking about White Lily and the scenario around the school. I was by no means implying that she wasn't traumatized by the actions she took or the resulting aftermath--I was asking whether or not trauma was what led her to perform that action in the first place. I absolutely wouldn't be surprised if she were traumatized because of that experience, but initially I was referring to the concept of the Academy incident being a byproduct of either a non-existent trauma or a trauma that we are unaware of yet.

Because I've seen a lot of arguments where people use their trauma as a weapon to excuse toxic behavior, and I generally don't think that's acceptable nor should be normalized.

As for the entire incident being treated as if it were no big deal, I don't believe that. The immediate aftermath of the academy was catastrophic and White Lily spent years rebuilding the Academy from the ground-up as comeuppance. If we're going under the assumption that White Lily and Pure Vanilla were children or teenagers in their Academy days, then that means that an indeterminate amount of years must have passed in which Pure Vanilla crossed the Sugar-Free Road and found himself in proper standings to establish a kingdom.

The Academy itself isn't even used by students anymore. It's largely populated by ghosts. And if you ask me, Bachalomoth in particular always struck me as a rather ghost-like figure who came to accept what'd happened many years ago.

Granted it's been a while since I've seen the cutscenes, but to imply that the entire incident wasn't taken seriously is incredibly incorrect. White Lily had to spend years repairing the damage that she caused, accident or no accident. She suggested stealing a piece of Bachalomoth's soul, and while she might not have intended on killing them, would she have done so if killing them were necessary to do what she wanted? Because either way, stealing someone's soul probably requires letting that soul be free in the first place. And ghosts do exist in Cookie Run lore.

(By the way. Dark Enchantress and White Lily are literally the same cookie. White Lily is not Dark Enchantress, but Dark Enchantress is White Lily. Just because Dark Enchantress has changed over the years, it doesn't erase her identity as White Lily, and it's something we've literally seen her struggle with in the Vanilla Castle. And I think that's awesome and much more interesting than associating White Lily and Dark Enchantress as being two completely separate cookies or beings to begin with.)

[weaselandfriends]

Evolving to Go Back into the Ocean: On the Fantasy Genre

In a week or two I plan to begin writing an epic fantasy story that I'll release serially, probably starting in August. The path to developing the idea for this story was long and unusual, so I thought I would talk about it a bit, as well as my thoughts on the fantasy genre as a whole. Fantasy is not a genre I am an especial fan of. I have read, watched, and played fantasy media in various forms, but I wouldn't consider myself particularly enamored with fantasy in particular. As such, my perspective is probably quite different than people who have totally immersed themselves in fantasy as a concept.

Over a decade ago, I had an idea for a fantasy story where the characters would come to learn that they were characters in a fantasy story. The author of this story, Ian West, was desperately trying to write the final installment of a successful trilogy, under pressure from his publisher and his agent Maximillion, but the characters would grow resentful of their roles and start to act "off script." The concept was similar to the film Stranger Than Fiction (a film I resented because I only learned about its existence after I came up with this idea). The desperate author would try to guide the story to its intended conclusion despite the unruliness and outright rebellion of its principal actors.

Enamored with metafiction at the time, I came up with an onslaught of ideas for how Ian West and his characters would interact. I had big, bold plans: an unintended incident would leave most of the main characters dead or missing halfway into the story, and the author would frantically attempt to cobble together a cohesive plot by ascending what had until then been minor background characters into leading roles. I thoroughly developed this idea and even attempted to write it five or six times.

The problem was I could never get far. For me, that was unusual; I'm usually good at finishing stories that I start, and this was a story that I was particularly excited to write. I wasn't even sure why I wasn't able to finish my drafts at the time. In retrospect, though, it's pretty obvious.

All of these subversive, metafictional ideas that I was so excited about necessitated that the actual story without those elements be as generic as possible—you can't subvert audience expectations without operating on a baseline level of audience familiarity with what you're subverting. And so in the early parts of the story―prior to all the big twists I had planned about the author, the ascended minor characters, and so on―I was trudging through a bog standard fantasy tale that I had absolutely no interest in writing. I would be both bored to death describing a big fantasy war with a hero and a dark lord and also unhappy with what I was writing because I felt it was dry and lifeless as a byproduct of my boredom.

As I started over again and again, I progressively attempted to limit the size and scope of those early parts. I pushed the author reveal forward and forward until I was basically writing half of a chapter of "typical fantasy" before pulling the rug. And yet skipping directly to what I actually wanted to write didn't make anything better, because now the big twists weren't twists. They were just the premise. There was no way to convey that the story was "going off the rails" from Ian West's perspective other than simply saying it. The minor characters who became major characters were just major characters from the beginning of the story.

So I never wrote the story. Years passed.

Writing Modern Cannibals I needed a fantasy author and an agent, so I repurposed Ian West and Maximillion to that end. MC wound up being more relevant to Ian West's story than just that, however. In earlier drafts of MC, I coincidentally encountered a similar issue to the one I had with Ian West, although in a completely different context. In these drafts, Z. was obsessed not with Faerie Endless, but with a game called Gryffonquest, which I depicted as an utterly generic JRPG similar to Dragon Quest. The problem was it was difficult for me to write about someone being so passionate about something so boilerplate. The elements of Z.'s fandom were constantly dry and banal, and I was never happy with how I depicted her in that context.

Around this time I saw a video called "How to Recognize a Terrible Anime (in just one episode)". The video was about the JSDF propaganda isekai, GATE. While the video's complaints about GATE's first episode were numerous, one of the first points was about the main character's otaku fandom for a generic, Dragon Quest-inspired JRPG. The video posited that by making the character so passionately a fan of something so boring, it made the character seem boring too.

I think I would actually delve a little deeper than that. It's not necessarily that it makes the character boring. People can relate to a character who is obsessed with a piece of fictional media, even if the particular media they're obsessed with isn't interesting. That's how relating to a character works, it's never a 1-to-1 "this is exactly me" type of situation. I think the main problem is that by putting almost no passion into the piece of media that the character themselves is passionate about, the author is in some way being dismissive or insincere in their depiction of the character. It's glib, even condescending in a way, evoking the concept of an otaku without being earnest about believing in it. Reflecting on my own Dragon Quest-obsessed otaku character, I found that was at least the case for my perspective on her. In those earlier drafts I wasn't just disengaged from Z.'s boring fandom, but I looked down on Z. herself. I was emotionally distanced from her, because she was passionate about something that I was desperately uninterested in. It made it a challenge to write her in an authentic way.

For the final draft of Modern Cannibals, I changed Gryffonquest to Faerie Endless, gave it a more unique aesthetic, and interjected offbeat oddball twists like "everyone goes to Hell" (thank you for the inspiration Final Fantasy II and Super Paper Mario) that made it seem like something for which someone really would have a niche but fervent passion. In fact, probably my favorite part of MC to write was the description of the game's plot. Making that change, I was able to more earnestly depict Z.'s obsession with the property, and thus more earnestly depict Z. herself, making her a significantly more effective character than previous drafts. (I would take this approach to the fictional properties in CxC, too.)

Modern Cannibals does not describe Ian West's stories in as much detail as Faerie Endless, but I did drop a few lines in there that painted his work as a gruesome, adult dark fantasy series that gave it a bit more dimension than a completely generic fantasy. With that buzzing around in my head, I revisited my earlier idea of a metafictional work featuring Ian West, this time with the (perhaps obvious to everyone except me) idea: "What if the fantasy world WASN'T generic?"

I started coming up with more unique ideas for the fantasy world. The main character went from a generic hero to a morally-ambiguous philanderer who began the story by being exiled from his community for cheating on his wife with the mayor's maid. Instead of a standard medieval European fantasy world, I developed a world modeled on colonial America, with muskets and hunter-trappers and Age of Reason philosophers and firebrand revivalist preachers. A world that was as of yet untamed by man, without grand castles or kingly lineages, where (taking cues from the transcendentalists) capital-N Nature was a wondrous and brutal thing and the true power over the realm.

It was a world I at least thought was cool. A world I was eager to write. Only I discovered a new problem instantly.

The subversive elements that were fundamental to the plot were now a betrayal rather than an exciting twist. If you actually LIKE a fantasy story, want to see where it goes, care about the main character, how are you supposed to respond to a big metafictional twist that causes the story to "go off the rails" and random background characters to replace the main cast?

My subversive metafictional twist was dependent upon the reader not caring too much about what came before the twist. But not caring about what came before the twist made me incapable of writing it with enough earnestness for the twist to work, either.

So why not eliminate the metafictional elements entirely? After all, that stuff's all been done in Stranger Than Fiction anyway. Just write a non-meta fantasy story with a cool world. But when I try to envision the story in that light, I start to wonder what the point is.

Fantasy is by far the most escapist genre of fiction. Science fiction is the only genre that comes close, but even then the genre is often overtly speculative in nature, depicting possible or theoretical avenues humanity might take in the coming decades or centuries. (There are some science fiction works, like Star Wars, that are in no way speculative, but these works are generally blends of science fiction and fantasy to begin with—science fantasy, as it's called.) Every other genre is generally grounded in the world we live in, and is meant to engage its readers via the portal of a familiar reality, even if a story is set in a fictional location featuring fictional people. Classical myth, for instance, which is in many ways the precursor to modern fantasy, is framed as historical record, the foundation of the culture that produced it, and even the romances of Arthur or Charlemagne follow this blueprint despite how blatantly anachronistic they often are.

But modern fantasy can take the reader to a world that doesn't exist, in a time that doesn't exist, where the rules of reality are not as they exist. (Urban fantasy excluded―which is why until now my fantasy writing has been urban fantasy in nature.) This freedom seemingly allows for endless storytelling potential, but also forces a problem to the forefront: How do you make it matter? How do you make the reader care? People respond better to stories to which they can relate in some way, but in a genre where you are encouraged to eliminate as many elements relatable to human experience as possible, how do you keep them engaged?

The early history of English-language fantasy stories (mainly late 1800s to early 1900s) skirted this issue either by being set in a "lost continent" somewhere on Earth or being basically isekai where a person from Earth travels to a fantasy world. That way, the story was experienced via a fundamentally relatable protagonist, and thus all non-relatable elements of the story were compartmentalized within that framework. As the genre started to develop into its own, however, and there became a cultural consciousness of "fantasy" that was in and of itself relatable to real people, these framing devices became increasingly superfluous. The Worm Ouroboros (1922), for instance, begins with a frame narrative in which someone from Earth travels to a fantasy world (set on Mercury); but both the frame narrative and the Earthling disappear from the story after the second chapter. By Lord of the Rings (1954), it had become commonplace enough for fantasy stories to simply be set in fantasy worlds, without any framing device at all. (Lord of the Rings was not the first English work to do this―that would be William Morris' The Well at the World's End in 1896―but it certainly popularized it.)

My point is that it took a certain culture-wide level of genre-savviness to develop fantasy as a genre to the point of Lord of the Rings, with a fully immersive fantasy world. This isn't even mentioning how the "seemingly endless possibilities" of the fantasy genre were in actuality highly limited to slight deviations from the mythical underpinnings of the culture. Almost all early fantasy in English drew upon one or more of the following: English fairy or folktales, Celtic myth, French chivalric romance cycles, or Norse myth. English culture, language, and ethnic identity itself being a weird potpourri of all of these backgrounds, these inspirations were generally familiar in the English cultural landscape even prior to the earliest modern fantasy works.

As such, authors were able to plunge readers into entirely fantastical worlds that were nonetheless relatable by drawing on relatable cultural myth. And as fantasy as a genre itself became more popular, the general level of cultural familiarity with the subject matter an author could expect their reader to have rose as well. You never have to explain to a reader what an elf is, especially not post-Tolkien; everyone knows what an elf is. And a dwarf. And a dragon. And now we've gotten to a point where fantasy is such a prominent genre that the baseline cultural comprehension of all this utterly fictional stuff has reached levels where it is starting to become an impediment to itself. A lot of elements of fantasy are no longer just familiar, but are taken for granted.

Consider a traditional, Tolkien-esque fantasy story. Although this story is set entirely within an immersive fantasy world with no overt tie to our real world, the main character is a humble provincial fellow, probably one who has never stepped foot outside their little village until the events of the plot kick in and they are forced onto a grand globetrotting adventure. (The first Wheel of Time book, published in 1990, starts this exact way, showing just what a long shadow Lord of the Rings cast over the genre.) This starting point is commonplace but maintains the "fish out of water" protagonist that an Alice in Wonderland-like isekai has, which is necessary for easing the reader into a world utterly unlike their own. Frodo has never seen an elf before, so when he sees one, his reaction is much more aligned with the reaction of the reader than had he simply shrugged and said, "Nothing special."

The problem is that as the fantasy genre has become increasingly ubiquitous and its readers have become increasingly savvy to its techniques, the reaction of the reader to seeing an elf or dwarf or dragon HAS become to shrug and say, "Nothing special." (Admittedly, this was true also for some of Tolkien's readers. One of his compatriots in his fantasy group The Inklings, upon the introduction of an elf character, shouted, "Not another fucking elf!") Tolkien and the forebears whose shoulders he stood upon are now "generic" despite their groundbreaking novelty in their own time, despite innovating an entirely new type of fiction completely divorced from the "real world." And the genre has adapted the way its audience has. Many fantasy stories now will go out of their way to indicate how different their elves/dwarves/dragons are from the Tolkien mold, while others eschew the fish-out-of-water protagonist outright and steep readers immediately into fantasy worlds where elves and the like are treated as nothing particularly special.

As part of a fantasy arms race whereby authors continually try to set themselves apart from the crowd, more and more unique fantasy elements have been injected into the genre, to the point where if you can think of it in even your wildest dreams, it's probably been done in a fantasy novel by now. To be more unique, these elements have strayed further and further from the Anglo-Saxon mythical heritage that underpinned the early English modern fantasy genre, either by introducing elements from other cultural heritages or by introducing complete neologisms. It was this logic that led to me modeling my proposed fantasy world on colonial America instead of medieval Europe.

I recently read Marlon James' fantasy novel Black Leopard Red Wolf (2019), which depicts a fantasy version of ancient Africa instead of ancient Europe. Although I'm not sure if I liked the novel on the whole, it was undoubtedly a creative and unique experience compared to my understanding of the genre. I have no doubt I could write my colonial America fantasy novel with a similar level of creativity and uniqueness and put forward a work that stands out among the genre as a whole. But then I look at the wuxia genre, or the onslaught of anime and manga set in a fantastical ancient Japan, which have themselves reached a level of genre saturation on par with medieval European fantasy thanks to the gigantic Chinese and Japanese pop cultural spheres. I think: Is this just another element of the fantasy arms race? Mining the whole of human culture until every cultural tradition has been done to death within the escapist non-real template of fantasy? And then what?

For a look at the "and then what," you can jaunt on back to the Western fantasy sphere and see what's successful now that the genre has become so saturated even people who aren't media poisoned are sick of it. Consider the recent explosive success and influence of George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones, in which fantastical elements are downplayed in favor of a more "realistic" or "historical" setting. Game of Thrones is a cultural juggernaut thanks to the  HBO adaptation, but even in the more niche world of fantasy literature, you can look to the popularity of Brandon Sanderson, who takes fantasy elements like magic and presents them in a more science fiction-like "speculative" way, with complex logical rules. Essentially, fantasy is now striving to get closer and closer to the "real world" it initially broke away from.

Western fantasy evolved to leave the ocean, and after being on land long enough to get tired of it, is evolving now to go back into the ocean.

It's conceivable that in a decade or so people will be sick of the Game of Thrones or Sandersonian style and suddenly you'll see a renaissance of Tolkien-esque high fantasy―evolving to go back on land. Rinse, repeat, rinse repeat. It reminds me of the fluctuations in epochs of Western literature; moving from the Age of Reason to Romanticism to Realism to Modernism to Postmodernism to Post-Postmodernism, a constant cycle between more "realistic" modes of writing and more "unrealistic" modes of writing, each mode arising out of boredom with whichever mode came before.

To write something that isn't just part of the current wave or a pigheaded reaction against it (because if you are simply trying to do the opposite of what everyone else is doing, you're as beholden to the zeitgeist as anyone else)―how do you do that? As I thought about it more, that was the core problem facing me whenever I set into my head to write a "fantasy" story at all. So I decided to stop trying to write a "fantasy" story and just try to write a story. That happens to have fantasy elements.

I'm far more confident in my plan now. Writing serially will lock me into my plan, so it'll be up to me to execute consistently on a week-by-week basis without the benefit of a pre-established world like my previous serial works, but what I've got here is exciting. I'm excited to write it, at least.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the genre. I'd love to hear from someone who has a broader interest in fantasy, who perhaps is more directly familiar with its works and historical trends and specific examples that adhere to or reject the hypotheses I've come to. What’s the best way to write a unique story that isn’t either following the trends or pushing against them? And what is the purpose of fantasy as a genre that is striving to move closer to the “real world” that it initially broke away from? Is it that people are simply so enamored with the idea of “fantasy” as a genre that they will enjoy fantasy stories that are deliberately trying to be unfantastical, or is there some real merit to depicting more real-world themes and topics from the lens of a fictional world?

[pianostarinwonderland]

Ooh just read ur timeloop theory post and I've always been a fan of the theory, and the details in ur two possibilities sound pretty solid to me, and also allows the story to smoothly continue in a way that let's us explore more of the world and characters. (Like the story would feel complete once chapter 7 is over and we defeat OB Grim, there wouldn't be much for Yuu to do other than going back to their OG world or staying and starting a new adventure). Plus, with the new lore dump from the chapter 6 part 3 release, there's a good chance of the time loop theory acc being true. (I found this theory from twt) but basically, in the new update Idia reveals that in the last 100 years only 10 NRC students have been recorded to OB, and yet in less than a year 5 incident shave taken place. So the theory goes that those 10 OBs from the past r acc from our 5 OB problem children from two previous loops, which was somehow saved into the Shroud system records. Also, another thing I noticed the lines from the beginning have a deeper meaning. We found out that the phantoms have been preserved in ice for centuries, which is likely a reference to "ice that freezes time" line from the prologue. And then it got me thinking of the first line Crowley ever says to us in the game, "my beautiful flower of evil". While blot is a byproduct of excessive magic use and negative emotions, I noticed that the process of OB to phantom is a lot like a flower blooming and how the flower that Crowley mentioned could refer to our 5 problem children, since we know that the phantom will keep consuming energy from the OB person, like the roots of a flower getting their nutrients from the soil, until it has enough and essentially blooms and becomes a complete phantom. I wanna say Grim too but he's a strange case since we don't see a little Grim anywhere with the beast, unless he's already been consumed by the phantom, but I can't help but think that may be bc he's a monster that he OB differently. It's interesting that Grim has eaten 5 little condensed versions OB and is fairly lucid when he isn't in the presence of blot, can't wait till we get more info on him.

[From here!]

Awww thank you!! 🥺🥺🥺 I honestly am proud of that theory, probably my most favorite thing I thought of to this day. I posted it on Twitter as well, and it has slightly more details.

I heard that theory on Twitter as well! It’s the main reason why I reblogged my time loop theory again. XD The idea of Ortho causing a time loop is really interesting, especially because of the reset feature of games. Frankly, though, I don’t think that the “less than 10” overblots in the past 100 years are the boys either who were somehow recorded despite the resets. I think that in such a magical academy where students generally don’t get along, overblots have a pretty good chance of happening compared to the rest of the world.

WAIT A MINUTE 👁👄👁 I LIKE THE ANALOGY YOU MADE ABOUT THE BEAUTIFUL FLOWER OF EVIL!!!! That’s so smart actually, that’s really so head in hands. That’s really really likely, and it’s scary to think about because how exactly then is Crowley controlling the circumstances of their blotting? Is it because he does indeed have the ability to reset time? And if he does, does he reset it all so that he can find out how to make these mages overblot?

[shihalyfie]

Shounen anime character archetypes, and how the Adventure and 02 characters don’t entirely follow them

Adventure is a kids’ show, and so it’s only natural that its characters would have certain surface archetypes common to others in the genre, like “the impulsive leader” or “the cool-headed rival”...except it actually doesn’t, really! It was actually a deliberate decision to make the characters go against their archetypes, and even the ones that did toe closer to it still had a number of nuances that distinguished them greatly from what you would usually expect from these kinds of characters. A lot of this was a deliberate attempt to make the characters relatable, so that it would allow each and every one of them to have their own unique strengths that their usual archetypes wouldn’t generally allow them to.

To be clear: tropes are not a fundamentally bad thing, especially since fiction very much relies on them to communicate (Adventure and 02 sometimes being so contrary to media expectations that they often frustrated viewers for not apparently making sense), and moreover, there are tropes that still are very true to reality (for instance, although the archetype of the “crybaby child” wasn’t in this series, many people have stated that Tomoki in the significantly more conventional Frontier was no less a realistic representation of what a child his age might do in an unfamiliar world). It’s also quite foolhardy to claim that Adventure and 02 never indulged in tropes at all, of course. However, things that fall outside the conventional mold are much more difficult to find proper representations of, and there’s an unfortunate trend of many (especially those in the mainstream who don’t quite remember the series well, or mainstream press) often pigeonholing Adventure and 02′s characters back into those tropes because that’s what you’d normally expect of them, sometimes to the point of negatively comparing them to other things -- and that’s just something that really isn’t fair to the series!

Disclaimer: Note that the following post works first and foremost off of the original Japanese version, so if you’re coming purely from the American English dub, there may be some substantial differences in what’s described (most noticeably in regards to Mimi and Daisuke).

Taichi

While shounen media has been a lot more willing to change things up a lot since Adventure first aired in 1999, the general idea you get of a shounen protagonist is a hot-blooded one who charges recklessly into everything on impulse. Taichi definitely fits a handful of the traits on principle in that he’s a passionate sports boy, and one who takes an “action-first” philosophy and often acts on impulse, but there’s a lot more nuance to that than you might expect.

Firstly, it would be very off to pigeonhole Taichi as the belligerent type to like fighting and to charge into everything thoughtlessly, because while Taichi does get cocky in the midst of battle while riding the adrenaline, he’s not the kind of person who likes fighting enemies just for the sheer sake of fighting and defeating them (and, in fact, it would probably be incorrect to say this about any Adventure or 02 character). As is pointed out by Koushirou even when Taichi is at one of his most haphazard and reckless in Adventure episode 16, Taichi’s actions are still always out of consideration for others, and he’s the kind of selfless person who in fact only hits his most reckless points when he’s cracking so much under the pressure of needing to do things for everyone’s sake that he even throws himself into the fray out of self-sacrifice. Even during the late points of the series in Adventure episode 45, he felt that the method of “pushing forward despite everything” was the best way to repay the sacrifices their Digimon friends had made for them -- he has a tendency to advocate for actively doing things because he firmly believes that sitting around doing nothing won’t solve anything, or would result in more victims. He has had introspective moments of weakness (see Adventure episodes 17, 20, 21, etc.), and it’s specifically because he has to reconcile the facts that he knows nothing good will come out of being a sitting duck, but he also has to figure out a way to do it that won’t accidentally cause collateral damage.

Taichi is “impulsive” in that he tends to play things by ear, but that doesn’t always mean he advocates for the most aggressive solution -- in fact, there are times where he’s often too chill and is picking the simplest and least complicated thing to do for now while he tries to figure it out later. Plus, it’s not like he recklessly charges into battle against everyone’s wishes -- the few incidents he does are explicitly marked as his moments of weakness, and in fact the reason he gets into conflicts with Yamato so much during the early part of the series is technically because he’s taking the time to argue back at him and try to make his point instead of just going ahead and doing it anyway.

Taichi doesn’t have that much of an ego! Adventure episode 28 reveals that he’d never even thought of himself as the group’s “leader” to begin with, nor did he necessarily think he should have the position (by all means, despite how unreliable he was at the start of the series, responsibility belonged to Jou as the oldest in the group). But Taichi has a remarkable knack for seeing things on the bird’s-eye view, and that’s what makes him suitable as a leader -- not in the traditional shounen sense of just aggressively pushing everyone forward into battle, but looking at the full picture and making judgment calls, delegating jobs, and bringing people together. It’s a much more true-to-life description of what a “leader” needs to be beyond what media (or even real life resources, honestly!) would usually suggest, and Taichi being someone naturally suited to this position encompasses most of his personality -- it unfortunately makes him not very good at seeing the little things in front of him, but he’s capable of assertively and firmly making decisions for the sake of everyone’s welfare.

And even when Taichi does hit the general shounen lead trope of being on the argumentative or irritable side, a lot of it has to do with the fact he’s a bit of a playful troll who doesn’t take things seriously enough, not that he’s brash and wants to start a fight -- he sometimes makes insensitive remarks because he was under the impression others shouldn’t be taking it so seriously (”it was just a joke!”), or he gets defensive when someone (usually Yamato) calls out his plan for not being that great. But on the flip side, the fact he treats people equivocally and without distant weirdness allows him to have a sense of charisma to bring people together (it’s the very reason Koushirou was willing to approach him to begin with), and because he has a priority of pushing everyone forward productively with a sense of firmness, he’s able to conclusively make judgments and decisions during times others would hesitate. Even if they turn out to not be great decisions in the end, they’re still decisions that he consciously thought through to at least some degree, made for the sake of helping everyone and pushing them forward.

Yamato

Yamato’s archetype is one that goes down to appearance -- the cool-looking, bishounen rival who advocates for a more “rational and cold” approach in contrast to the lead protagonist’s hot-bloodedness, who looks down on him for being stupid and irrational, and refuses to get near anyone due to looking down on them (or the concept of having friends in general). This is to the point where his own voice actor saw his design and immediately expected him to be this archetype to the point of worrying that he might not be able to pull off this role, only for himself to find out that Yamato is the exact opposite.

Yamato is, in fact, one of the most openly emotional and compassionate people in the entire original Adventure group, and given that Taichi is actually someone who often is too chill and doesn’t take things seriously enough, Yamato is actually the one who actively instigates fights with him and escalates things to physical levels, because he perceives Taichi as being inconsiderate. His first focus episode (Adventure episode 3) has him completely go off his rocker for Takeru’s safety, but while Takeru definitely elicits the most extreme reactions from him, he really does escalate fights immediately the moment he feels sufficiently offended on others’ behalf. So in other words, “rational and cold” are just around the last words you should be ever using for Yamato.

Moreover, what seems to be detachment from the others ends up ultimately just being a byproduct of awkwardness -- even as early as Adventure episodes 6 and 18, he had no problems openly laughing and smiling with the others, and it was just his prior lack of friends beforehand that made him unsure of how to open up to others. Adventure episode 51 has him directly say in words what his actual reasoning for his awkward behavior and friendless background was: it wasn’t that he didn’t want to be near others, he was just so obsessed with being independent and self-reliant that he felt that he shouldn’t be dependent on others. He liked others’ company, and he didn’t look down on them at all -- he cared a lot about the others’ welfare, he was just averse to the idea of actually being emotionally dependent on others, until he was able to be snapped out of that mindset and able to understand that relying on others doesn’t indicate a personal failing.

These kinds of characters usually are fueled by some kind of pride or condescension, but in fact Yamato doesn’t have that at all (in fact, you could more accurately say that it’s insecurity more than anything). Even when he openly breaks down into a crying mess in front of everyone (he has the highest cry count in Adventure, at that!), he doesn’t seem to have any shame about having exposed some of the rawest parts of himself to the others -- think about how this archetype would usually get embarrassed about people finding out they’re “soft” -- and there’s no evidence that he has any sense of superiority whatsoever.

By the time of 02, since he’s portrayed as having become openly sociable and cheerful, for all intents and purposes, the only thing he has left in common with the archetype is just the fact he seems to be really into a sort of edgy aesthetic. Otherwise, he’s just as emotional as ever, makes even some of the funniest facial expressions in 02, is on fantastic terms with Taichi (it is very important that the single punch he lands on him is purely in a sense to snap him out of it and not made out of anger or condescension), and, really, if you want to say that he has a responsibility of reining Taichi in, considering Taichi’s penchant for being a little too assertive about his decisions, it’s just in the sense of lightly reminding him not to get too ahead of himself, which is not any worse than keeping an eye on a cat with a track record of getting into willful trouble. This is especially because, after all, Yamato is someone who has compassion for others’ welfare and feelings -- and that includes Taichi, too.

Sora

This kind of character is usually thought of as the “badass action girl”, especially since Sora is established as also being rather physically active much like Taichi, but one thing that often comes with this sort of character is that they often “have it together” all of the time and are seemingly implacable in personality. Adventure goes out of its way to indicate, even as early as episode 3, that while it is true that Sora has it together and is capable of pulling her own weight, she is also not a saint -- that is to say, she’s capable of having moments of pettiness, poor judgment, or irrationality like any other flawed human being. In fact, her first focus episode (Adventure episode 4) has her outright look down on Piyomon for being, in her mind, overly mushy and clingy and not really up for the job of protecting her, only to be proven very wrong at the end of the episode.

One thing Adventure and 02 don’t shy away from is the concept of “selflessness to the point of self-destruction” -- it’s good to be kind and considerate, but at what point are you doing so much for other people that you’re not properly taking care of yourself? In Sora’s case, the problem is defined as compulsive -- even when, in Adventure episode 26, she claims herself to be an inconsiderate person who doesn’t care about anyone and is incapable of love or affection, it’s revealed that, despite consciously thinking that, she’d still gone out of her way to help everyone behind the scenes in the last few episodes because she still couldn’t stop wanting to help people. Even her own flashbacks (and rather inaccurate testimony) about her past with her mother have a constant thread of her working for others’ sake more than she’s doing anything for herself.

In other words, being this image of a perfect, well-behaved, reliable person whom everyone can depend on no matter what is actually pretty unhealthy for her, because she’s capable of cracking under the pressure and not being allowed to be, well, a normal human being once in a while. Being that sort of person requires constantly catering to obligations (real or perceived) to others, which she’s unfortunately capable of falling so deeply in and not thinking of herself at all to the point she gets self-destructive. Because her problem with this is so bad, Jou and Yamato reaching out to her in Adventure episode 51 literally just involves reminding her about the sheer concept of personal will and volition, because without that, she’d basically considered herself a piece of the situation who does everything she does because that’s what she has to do.

And yes, indeed, a “lead” female character in this position would usually be played up heavily with the main lead male character, because media traditionally loves to hint that the sheer existence of a male and female lead with any kind of relationship whatsoever means that they have to be fated to be in love, but given the philosophy of not wanting to apply tropes unless there’s an in-universe rationale for it (of which “pairing the main male and female leads” is directly cited as one potential such trope), it is true that just because Sora knew Taichi from the soccer club and is usually the first-listed female character in Adventure doesn’t really necessarily indicate she should be obligated to fall head over heels in love with him (especially because they don’t interact nearly as much as you’d expect two characters with that kind of backstory to, and Koushirou, who’s also from the same club, hangs with him much more prominently) -- and in fact, when the issue of her love life does come up in 02, it’s treated as a very non-dramatic issue that becomes a background element of the narrative, which is not how you’d usually see the issue of romance or a love life usually treated in the kind of media that loves to bring that front and center most of the time. While the fanbase loves to treat it like it was some kind of love triangle, that kind of reading actually requires an extra dose of interpretation from a very ambiguously portrayed situation that ultimately isn’t given much fanfare by even the characters in-universe, because, really, two fourteen-year-olds dating is...rather commonplace and not actually that big of a deal, especially when compared to something like preventing monsters from blowing up the city.

Koushirou

Adventure actually has two plays on the traditional “nerd” character, separating the archetype into one who’s good with data and random trivial information (Koushirou) and one who’s good at rote memorization and doing practical calculations that are good for school environments (Jou). So already, there’s a bit of subtle nuance in the fact it makes this distinction at all, in that there are different ways to be “smart” -- Koushirou’s depth of knowledge is significantly less practically applicable than Jou’s in most ordinary situations and isn’t tailored well to institutional expectations like school and exams, but he has a much wider range of things he knows about and ends up more directly pertinent in regards to his knowledge about computers and data analysis.

In any case, a “smart” character would often have an angle of being condescending, i.e. lording over others that they know so much more than them and knowingly being showoffs as a result, or actively disliking people and considering machines to be superior. In the case of Koushirou, however, it’s established that while he does have a certain level of intimidation around other people and find himself more comfortable around his computer, and while he can get absorbed in gathering information or rambling off about things because he’s passionate about it, he doesn’t actively dislike nor look down on others (rather, he’s actively intimidated by them, according to Adventure episode 38), and he states outright in Adventure episode 10 that he doesn’t want to spurn Mimi nor does he care about his computer more than he cares about others, he just genuinely thinks that what he’s doing right now will benefit even Mimi in the long run, too.

Koushirou may not be experienced in dealing with other people and may be a bit uncomfortable in high-pressure social situations, but at his core he’s a very kind and compassionate person who cares about others! The fact he’s constantly polite to others isn’t just out of awkwardness, but also out of a genuine desire to keep courtesy and distance, and as the series goes on it turns out he really is as polite and humble as he sounds -- he’s doing it because he’s shy, not because he considers himself above the others, and by Adventure episodes 38 and 54 he says that he would like to be able to speak more casually and be closer to others, it’s just that it’s going to take some time for him to do so. And even if he does mess up a social situation, if he’s informed he’s messed up, he’s easily capable of taking this to heart and trying to do better (which makes up all of Adventure episode 10 when he eventually realizes he went too far with Mimi). Just because he may not be fantastic at handling the fallout doesn’t mean he doesn’t fundamentally care or want to minimize harm to others. Not only that, he’s also one of the youngest in this group, and for all it’s worth, he shows every indication of being properly respectful of his elders from his position.

Moreover, while Koushirou is so heavily associated with his computer, the series doesn’t take long to establish that the computer really is not the focal part of his character as much as it’s the concept of “gathering and analyzing information”. However much knowledge Koushirou had gained prior to the series, and whatever tech skills Koushirou may or may not have (if you look closely, his tech feats aren’t actually that impressive within the scope of Adventure and 02, and a lot of what he does in terms of tech feats is heavily outsourced), are considered relatively unimportant in comparison to his actual attitude about it, which is that he never stops wanting to learn more or dig deeper into things whenever something’s piqued his curiosity. The conflict in Adventure episode 24 that establishes the true, functional meaning of the Crest of Knowledge has very little to do with computers at all, but rather Koushirou insatiably pursuing more about the Digital World itself and Gennai, and, really, the topic could be anything as long as it’s new and interesting -- it’s just that computers (especially ones connected to the Internet) are a convenient place to gather and analyze different kinds of information, and the Digital World happens to be an absolute treasure trove of new things to discover.

In other words, Koushirou knows a lot of things not because it gives him some status of superiority over others for being “smart”, but rather because he’s genuinely passionate about exploring and learning about things, and you can also see it in the difference between the way he approaches “gathering” information versus “disclosing” information. During times he’s focused on gathering or analyzing information, he focuses on it and tends to shut others out because he wants to make sure he’s uninterrupted and can get every little detail out of it, and whenever he’s talking to himself, others might sometimes get lost in his rambling, but whenever he’s put in a situation where it’s of importance that he explain to others (examples being Adventure episodes 19, 28, and 42), he clarifies when people have questions, sometimes checks to make sure everyone’s still following, and, in general, has no sense of condescension about the fact he knows more than them, with the implication that wants the others to be able to understand and appreciate the information he’s passionate about.

Koushirou is also one of the most visible seniors in 02, because as someone whose defining trait was “curiosity and inquisitiveness”, it stands to reason that he’d be the one most curious about what his juniors are getting involved with, what’s going on with the Digital World, and anything else to do with it (hence why he occasionally asks his juniors to test things for him, such as in 02 episode 17, and hauls himself all the way down to Tamachi to pick Ken’s brain about anything he knows in 02 episode 33). Again, like in Adventure, his character portrayal actually has very little to do with computers, despite what the imagery and archetype would suggest -- it’s more about how he’s now become able to take a leadership role like that of the computer club and start coordinating and organizing people to be able to figure out even more things, while also being able to personally unravel more of the mysteries behind the Digital World and the story itself.

Mimi

Coming from a background of being a bit pampered and spoiled, Mimi aligns a bit to the “pretty girl” archetype that generally has a few things associated with it -- someone who might be a bit materialistic or fixated on appearances, and someone who’s a bit condescending or high-horse in compared to others. So it’s interesting that Mimi is actually portrayed as, for the most part, not that absorbed about appearances or materialism (it’s not to say she doesn’t care at all, but any references she makes to appearance are vanishingly rare in the series, and she’s even willing to warm up to the Numemon or Scumon/Chuumon and not hold grudges against them), and in fact all of her “complaints” that she makes in the early parts of the series are meant to be in line with what an average child would have in her situation. Complaints like “I don’t like this” in reaction to little things like having to get dirty or endure something tiring aren’t complaints she makes because she looks down on it as much as she’s just had a very sheltered upbringing that hadn’t involved a lot of hardship, so now that she has to grit her teeth and go through a lot of difficult things, she simply has low tolerance and high sensitivity and is having difficulty coping.

Beyond that, Mimi is consistently portrayed as likeable and devoid of malice or condescension towards anyone -- so much to the point that even at the beginning of the series, she saw no reason to look down on Koushirou or make fun of him when her classmates did, because she didn’t see why she should. Mimi is said to be someone who is so naturally likeable that she has no problems making friends with anyone, which is why she’s the one who’s able to gather together allies at the end of Adventure -- because she lacks condescension or malice, and is compassionate enough to never get on the wrong foot with anyone, everyone ends up able to get along with her with no problem. As one of the youngest in the group, she’s polite to her elders and uses proper honorifics on everyone, and moreover any lashing out she does is purely defensive and not aggressive towards others. She lashes out because she doesn’t like herself or her friends being hurt, but otherwise she doesn’t care to do anything cold or rude towards others, nor have a grudge; her first focus episode (Adventure episode 6) involved her having absolutely nothing but "they don't seem like they're having fun" towards everyone making fools of themselves in front of her, and she even goes as far as to outright call them her “friends” at a time in the series when everyone barely knew each other! This is also why 02 depicts her as having already made a ton of friends in America (such as Michael, or the attendees of the huge party in 02 episode 14) despite having been there for only a year; she’s that likeable to the point she can get along with people from even an entirely different country easily.

Mimi is “extremely empathetic”, which means that she won’t cause harm or pain to others because she herself feels their pain when they’re in trouble or hurt -- the closest she got to being on a power trip was her “princess” mental health crash in Adventure episode 25, which almost immediately led to her having nightmares about everyone feeling betrayed and potentially hating her and turning around in less than one night. Hence, she won’t do anything to hurt others’ feelings, because she herself feels hurt if she does. However, that means that once the Dark Masters arc kicks in and many of their friends are hurt and killed in the process, her feeling every bit of that makes her the first to take it the hardest and become unable to fight (and, by extension, is very tied to that “extra sensitivity” that made her so sensitive to pain or unpleasant experiences at the beginning of the series). Mimi is consistently portrayed as a pacifist, and while many other shounen battle series would portray this as a weakness, Adventure episode 50 establishes that while it of course isn’t good for her to sit around doing nothing, it would be inhumane to force Mimi to personally participate in something that causes her so much pain, and instead may be better channeling her abilities to bring people together by amassing allies and contributing to the struggle in other ways. While Mimi does eventually get herself together enough to participate in the direct fighting in Adventure and 02, she never gets portrayed as someone who enjoys it for the sake of it besides the end goal of protecting others, and in 02 her ability to bring people together and not hold grudges is a much more significant influence on her juniors (especially Miyako).

As a side point, this kind of “pretty girl” character is often also stereotyped as being rather lacking in common sense or airheaded, but while Mimi certainly isn’t the paragon of intellectuality compared to some of the others in the group, she’s never portrayed as particularly lacking in common sense, and in fact her sense of empathy and sensitivity makes her very able to “read the room” and say things or act in ways that are in fact extremely helpful to others. “Emotional intelligence” is a fairly prominent character trait for many characters in Adventure and 02 (particularly in regards to Digimon partners), and, especially in a narrative where the characters are dealing with a lot of stress and emotional issues, is no less important of a role in terms of figuring out what’s going on and figuring out the best possible solution for everyone going forward.

Jou

Jou’s got two archetypes going on here: one being the “studious nerd” type (touched on earlier in Koushirou’s section), and one as “the oldest and therefore most responsible” -- except we quickly find out that Jou is extremely stress-prone, often high-strung, and not particularly put-together (especially because, as it turns out, he’s actually the youngest of his own siblings, meaning he’s not particularly used to being in the role of the oldest). Nevertheless, he takes his role as the oldest very seriously, but the way it’s played is interesting: while he initially seems like the type to hold his position as “the oldest” over everyone and act as if they’re obligated to treat him with respect, Jou actually doesn’t have any indication of caring that much about status or esteem as much as he considers himself obligated to fulfill the role of the oldest and take care of everyone. Hence, why he’s willing to even throw himself recklessly on a Unimon in Adventure episode 7 -- he’s a very selfless person whose main drive is to protect others and help people more than he cares about his own status.

That extends to his role as a “studious” person too -- someone like him who comes from an “elite” family of doctors would often be portrayed as someone who themself cares about the prestige and honor of being a doctor, or at least is proud of being an honor student over everyone else, but there’s no indication in Adventure or 02 that Jou has any interest in the act of studying itself or the status that comes with it as much as he considers it part of a “comfortable routine” that’s integrated into his life, especially compared to the stress of being in an unknown world (Adventure episode 6 even has him preface his statement with “don’t laugh at me,” acknowledging how unusual it would normally be to miss something like studying). Adventure episode 35 has him be mostly rather unfazed about getting a bad grade, past an initial (understandable) bout of disappointment, hinting that this whole affair is actually him going through the motions moreso than he has any real attachment to this lifestyle. Jou doesn’t have a condescending bone in his body, and in fact a lot of his behavior has heavily to do with high stress and a feeling of obligation to help others.

Eventually, via his brother Shin, Adventure episode 38 clarifies the reason for Jou’s behavior of being the “studious type” yet also not really being into it all that much -- Jou’s doing this out of his obligation to his family more than he even personally cares about it, and the “elite” track of being a doctor was never something he personally wanted as much as something his father wanted of him. So in other words, Jou had no personal investment in status and thus can’t be motivated to do something with passion unless it’s something he personally has a reason for wanting to do. He certainly was very motivated to throw himself recklessly into situations where he could sacrifices himself for others in Adventure episodes 7, 23, and 36, because it was a no-brainer that he wanted to help people, but something like the status of becoming a respected member of society is comparatively nebulous and vague to him, especially since, as per Adventure episode 38, he has a phobia of blood that makes the profession outright uncomfortable to him.

Because Jou is the kind of person who wants to do his best for others’ sake and help others, it’s only when he rationalizes that with his father’s desire for him to be a doctor that he’s able to form a desire for it -- namely, the Dark Masters arc has him witness pain and death, and combined with him outright coming to terms with the fact that he's not that great at fighting to begin with (in Adventure episode 50), he decides that the Digital World is rather lacking in healers and that he needs to be there for them. Hence, why his goal to become a doctor is still “unexpected” in its own way, because he’s not doing it for the status of becoming an “elite” doctor the way his father wants him to, but rather one specialized in helping the denizens of the fantasy world that society isn’t all that aware of. It’s also why, in 02, he seems to be fairly unfazed by the prospect of having to temporarily ditch his studies in order to get Gomamon or his juniors out of a pinch -- because if he allowed there to be casualties on his road to becoming someone who can help people, that’d be pretty hypocritical.

Takeru

The “designated kid character” usually manifests in one of two ways: one who’s an immature brat who often causes a lot of trouble, or one who’s much weaker than the others and holds the others back from constantly being emotionally overwhelmed. While neither of these are really things you can blame a child for being at this kind of age for being (especially in such a stressful situation), Takeru is nevertheless neither. Mainstream media, and sometimes even people in the fanbase itself, will talk about him being a “crybaby”, but Takeru’s moments of breaking down into tears or having extreme emotional reactions in Adventure are actually quite uncommon (Yamato’s moments of such outstrip his by a landslide, and almost all of the situations Takeru ends up that way aren’t particularly more unusual than any of the other characters in this cast, especially Mimi).

In truth, Adventure episode 43 makes it clear that Takeru detests the idea of being a “ball and chain” holding everyone back, so, as a result, he’s going out of his way to be “put-together and well-behaved” -- hence, why he, as one of the youngest, keeps on his best behavior in front of his elders and has a constant sense of responsibility. Moreover, there are multiple indications that he’s covering up his own emotions to unhealthy extents as part of his attempt to be so “put-together” -- he has moments where it’s obvious he’s thinking about the impact of his parents’ divorce (a freeze-frame in Adventure episode 3, his reminiscence in Adventure episode 12, or his talk about dislike of “family” getting separated in Adventure episode 26), but constantly tries to veer away from the topic or even lie about it (see Adventure episode 12 where he basically pretends he doesn’t remember anything at all about his young childhood despite the fact that we as the audience are shown that he very much did).

The fact that 02′s incarnation of Takeru has him show a lot more viciously negative sides of himself may catch one off-guard, and it’s sometimes been said by observers that he seems to have taken a mysteriously nasty turn in his personality, but, in fact, Takeru’s habit of being dishonest about and hiding a lot of negative emotions had existed as early as Adventure -- observe him blowing a complete irrational fuse at the well-meaning Tokomon/Patamon in Adventure episodes 22 and 33, just because things had hit him a little too closely (the latter episode is especially notable because Patamon’s statement had been completely innocuous for the most part, only for Takeru to suddenly get angry at him). Such a thing isn’t something you would have expected from an eight-year-old child, given that the archetype is usually portrayed as “innocent”, but it had remained largely unaddressed by the end of Adventure, and it’s only natural it would have gotten worse over the three years in between Adventure and 02, especially as Takeru became older and more independent. When Iori points out the strange “duality” between the kind and cold sides of Takeru in 02 episode 34, he’s really just directly stating what had been going on since the very first episode of Adventure.

That said, it’s also not like Takeru’s trying to be dishonest or guilty of subterfuge -- it’s just that his coping mechanisms are very poorly developed and that he’s constantly trying to keep the peace and come off as pleasant while suppressing all of his negative emotions under a smile, only for things like anger and personal grudge to explode all at once at inopportune times (his punching of the Kaiser in 02 episode 19 being the most famous, but you can see traces of it emerging even beforehand in 02 episodes 11 and 13 whenever things get a bit too personal, to the point it almost jeopardizes his ability to help Hikari in the latter). Hence, why the positive development for Takeru by the end of 02 involves him becoming someone who’s better able to express his thoughts and feelings with the help of Iori, who, despite being younger than him, is also significantly more blunt and straightforward.

Hikari

Being tied to a Crest that’s linked to “life itself”, Hikari comes off as the sort of saintlike figure who has purity of heart all the way through and has nothing but peaceful thoughts about everything. However, a lot of her appearances in Adventure were heavily impacted by context -- other than the fact she was sometimes held back by illness, Hikari was otherwise portrayed as an ordinary playful and cheerful young girl, and there are multiple layers to her character added or enhanced in 02 that indicate that she’s not quite the saint that her archetype would suggest.

For one, like with Sora, we again see how “excessive selflessness” can actually lead to self-destruction if left unchecked: Taichi states outright in Adventure episode 48 that Hikari’s penchant for putting others before herself means that she won’t do anything for herself even if it results in self-harm. Hikari herself confirms this in 02 episode 31, stating outright that she compulsively cannot express her own feelings even if she wants to, to the point she’s outright jealous of Miyako for being able to do so. Because she’s so inclined to not burden others and to work for others’ sake instead, when something bad is about to happen to her and only her, such as the Dark Ocean-related incidents, she can’t bring herself to do anything and is forced to either rely on others’ help or simply resign herself to her fate.

That said, Hikari is also not characterized as someone who’s passive in general; because this passivity is tied to “excessive selflessness”, anytime the issue has to do with anyone else’s sake, she doesn’t hesitate and will even be firm in taking a stand. She’s so assertive that she even momentarily freaks Miyako out in 02 episode 18! In the end, it’s a textbook case of “it’s easier to do it when it’s for other people, but harder to do it when it’s for yourself, especially when doing it for yourself means bothering others,” and this is also something that had dated back as early as Adventure, when she’d made a lot of fairly independent decisions about things she felt strongly needed to be done, like giving herself up for everyone's sake in Adventure episode 36 (very much against her friends' will), or standing up for the Numemon in Adventure episode 49, or even being much quicker to accept the inevitable need to kill an enemy than the emotionally wrecked Miyako in 02 episode 44, because they’re all things she truly and strongly felt needed to be done for the sake of others.

Plus, it’s also not like Hikari’s such a pure-hearted, saintlike person who can do no wrong even at the base level -- 02 episode 6 indicates that she’s not above toying with Daisuke’s feelings for her in order to get what she wants, and in general, the fact she’s aware he likes her but isn’t doing anything about it has both the nuances that she probably doesn’t want to hurt his feelings but is also capable of exploiting an extra level of leverage over him as well. The fact that Hikari is seen as “charming” gives her a certain degree of power of persuasion to get her way, and it seems she’s quite well aware of it...

As the younger sister of Adventure’s lead protagonist, Hikari’s often also stigmatized as having some kind of unhealthy fixation on her brother, or a brother complex (also a rather common anime trope among “younger sister” characters), but this kind of reading requires a huge amount of exaggeration and extracting the relevant lines out of context; at no point in Adventure or 02 is Taichi and Hikari’s relationship portrayed as particularly unusual relative to a reasonable level of concern a pair of siblings that get along should have, especially since any behavior that is particularly notable or unusual or dependent is strongly contextualized as having to do with the above issues regarding Hikari being potentially self-destructive if left to her own devices, and how both Taichi and Hikari react to it (hence why the problem is ultimately addressed most effectively by Miyako, who has no real personal stake in the siblings’ relationship).

Daisuke

Daisuke has been stated outright by Adventure and 02′s director Kakudou to have “the most anime-like personality”, and it is true that even going beyond his base profile, a lot of his characteristics are much closer to that of an idealistic shounen anime protagonist than Taichi’s are, including (as the article in question points out) that he’s a lot more “hot-blooded” on principle but suddenly loses his head when around a girl he likes. Past that, however, there’s a lot of depth going on that reveals that Daisuke is in fact quite the deceptive character.

The first thing you might realize after watching Daisuke closely enough is that while he may initially seem aggressive, he’s actually not very assertive or aggressive at all, especially in the earlier parts of the series. It's very common for the others to shut him down or overturn his opinions in the earlier parts of the series, no matter how much he may ostensibly seem argumentative about it -- he very quickly backs down, at worst seeming a bit irritated, or even going into full-on disappointment with “Oh...okay...” Hence, why Kakudou refers to him as being “prevented from doing very much in the first half,” because for the most part a lot of the decisions made by the group in said first half are made by the entire group in agreement more than they’re made by him specifically, and becoming someone who can make more firm statements is a major point of his growth throughout the series. The first major moment he’s able to do such a thing is 02 episode 20, where, despite everyone’s opposition, he continues to assertively put his foot down that he doesn’t want to pull back when doing so could result in more victims -- and that ultimately becomes the start of him starting to be more confident about doing things even when others disagree with him. Even when he does become more assertive, at no point is Daisuke ever said, in-universe, to be the “leader” of the 02 group as much as he’s simply the one giving them the drive to move forward while they all work things out as a group.

Beyond that, another point that comes out of this is that Daisuke is actually a very deeply emotional person, which means that he has very strong emotions in every direction, including those of empathy and kindness. In fact, similarly to Mimi, Daisuke’s “abrasiveness” and “lashing out” are more defensive than him ever going on the attack, since he usually does this when he feels like he’s being put on the spot, or insulted, or is suspicious. There’s a reason I like to compare him to a puppy with a louder bark than its bite -- said puppy might bark at anything it doesn’t like or understand, or get pouty and offended at times, but also will immediately switch to open adoration or genuinely wanting to make you happy, and that’s also Daisuke in a nutshell. You may notice that he never, ever says anything condescending towards others nor does he dunk on them without reason, and 02 episode 7 indicates that if he realizes he’s stepped over the line, he won’t hesitate to apologize -- something that Taichi, who often veered into the insensitive, was rather bad at doing. Moreover, whenever something deeply hurts him, he also becomes genuinely, truly upset about it -- see him openly weeping over Wallace’s problems in Hurricane Touchdown despite having just met and bickered with him, and him being very audibly on the verge of tears during the situations in 02 episodes 20, 26, and 43 (Kiuchi Reiko’s acting especially brings this out). He’s a dramatic person with an extreme emotional reaction to everything, and that often means blowing small things out of proportion, but it also means that he really, truly does feel for others and care about things with large stakes.

In addition, someone who’s this sort of “hot-blooded” would usually also be portrayed as self-absorbed and arrogant, but Daisuke reveals as early as 02 episode 8 that he’s actually extremely humble -- he knows when he’s out of depth, acknowledges when others are better than him (such as knowing even from the very beginning that he was likely to lose against Ken and the Tamachi team), and actually just enjoys being around others on sheer principle. Read between the lines and you’ll realize that a lot of his behavior actually comes not from arrogance but rather insecurity -- he doesn’t expect anyone to adore or respect him, rather, he ends up running himself in circles trying to impress others (especially Hikari) because he wants the validation of them considering him cool. Hence why he never looks down on anyone nor insults anyone, because he’s much more confident in their awesomeness, and every time he’s around elders or respected seniors, he immediately takes a much more well-behaved and respectful tone in general. For all it’s worth, he’s a pretty deferential person, and has a genuine appreciation for even the little things in life, which is why he’s okay with running a ramen cart in the future -- sure, it’s not super-flashy as a career, but it makes him happy, and that’s all he wants.

So in other words, Daisuke likes people, and he likes his friends a lot; it’s just that his tendency to need validation from others, combined with his emotional tendencies to get really dramatic about everything, makes for a surface temperament where this isn’t immediately apparent. Even his original motivation for fighting comes not from liking fighting, but from his frustration that he wasn’t strong enough to protect others three years prior (also reiterated in the Adventure novels). In the end, pretty much everything he does comes from a desire to protect others and help them, which means that he of course resents those who hurt others, and it’s why he takes Ken exploiting his otherwise admirable abilities for harmful purposes so personally in 02 episode 8. Hence why Kakudou described him as having no evil in him, and that “the only thing bad about him is his head” (i.e. he’s not very smart) -- because once you get past the initial abrasiveness, he’s extremely friendly, all-loving, and loyal, and he isn’t malicious nor does he hold significant grudges.

Even Daisuke’s penchant for being “an idiot” is played a bit differently from the usual, because it’s consistently shown to be a byproduct of the fact that he’s “simple-minded” and doesn’t do well with complex thinking or overthinking, which, in many ways, is an asset as much as it’s a drawback. It means that he doesn’t do well with complex problems and isn’t very intellectual, and it also means that he gets overly suspicious at things that aren’t what they seem or aren’t being straightforward (which is why he initially gets so antsy around Takeru and Wallace, especially the latter, whom he was suspicious of before he started flirting). But it also means that he won’t easily get distracted by platitudes or overthinking, which, during situations where the simplest answer is the correct one, will sometimes conversely result in him being the smartest person in the room. Being so simple-minded gives him a certain degree of pragmatism; while everyone else is getting caught up in moralistic issues of forgiveness or non-forgiveness, Daisuke, who doesn’t get hung up on things like grudges, becomes the most open-minded towards Ken because he practically observes that Ken is not causing problems anymore and thus should be allowed to take responsibility for his mistakes, and also successfully dissuades Ken from recklessly throwing away his life in 02 episode 26 because, as “symbolic” as that kind of penance might be, it’s also very unproductive and will make things worse for everyone. It’s also why he’s one of the first to emotionally come to terms with the potential necessity for killing enemies in 02 episodes 25 and 43; it’s not like he enjoys it, but he’s the first to point out that if they hadn’t done it, even more victims would have been taken.

And as for Daisuke’s interest in Hikari: it’s basically there as a character note as to how Daisuke will completely lose his brain cells and bend over backwards when he’s trying to impress someone he has on a pedestal, and it becomes completely irrelevant to the plot and not even brought up after 02 episode 35, so while it’s not something that vanished completely (especially since it makes a return in post-02 material), it’s also treated as an example of one the many weird hangups that Daisuke will put aside when other things become more important, and an ultimately fairly shallow thing that he hasn’t thought through very clearly (he never directly asks Hikari out nor verbally expresses having a particular crush on her at any point in the series because he’s so wishy-washy about it, which is why she’s so easily able to dodge it), rather than a guiding part of the narrative or his character.

Interestingly, Daisuke’s unusual position as a shounen lead is hinted at even in franchise meta; you might notice he’s the only lead Digimon protagonist to be so heavily associated with blue instead of the warm colors of orange or red, and when you think about it, despite having Taichi’s goggles and supposedly having the “hot-blooded” personality, you could draw just as many parallels between him and Yamato, who’s also friendly behind all of the initial awkwardness and is also a passionately emotional person.

Ken

Really, the single most unusual thing about Ken’s character and his character arc is the fact that such a plotline even exists in the first place. How many series would take the main antagonist of the first half (not an underling, but the actual primary antagonist) and not only reform them but also turn them into the best friend of the protagonist for the second half? And not even in a “begrudging edgelord rival” sense, but legitimately the person who becomes a straightforward best friend with no standoffishness and full-on social-life supportiveness to the protagonist?

In any case, the entire concept of the Kaiser and his story is unusual even from the get-go -- we’re initially introduced to him as an “evil genius”, which is a common villain archetype because it’s very terrifying to have an enemy who’s one step ahead of you, but the Kaiser ends up being rather pathetic -- he’s constantly losing territory to a group of elementary school students, his “tactical abilities” have no real sense of scale beyond a soccer field sort of affair, he’s incredibly petty and will make irrational decisions just because his pride was wounded (see 02 episode 8), and seems to have no real long-term goal besides conquest for the sake of it. Eventually, 02 episode 20-21 reveals that he’d been doing this entire thing because he’d thought the entire thing was a game -- in short, he wasn’t taking this seriously at all, and the entire affair had been tantamount to an eleven-year-old throwing a tantrum.

The point being made here is that the facade of the so-called “evil genius” is significantly less brilliant than it’s made out to be, and, actually, when you think about it, Ken’s initial reformation is mostly kickstarted by himself and Wormmon moreso than it is the other Chosen Children, because while they’re there to drive the nail in, Ken had already been emotionally falling apart and realizing he wasn’t cut out for this for the entirety of the last handful of episodes, and it was ultimately his own realization and mental breakdown that did the honors -- the other kids were really mostly doing cleanup duty at the time, and Daisuke’s influence on him is more important to his process of healing than it was the initial calling it quits. Moreover, as we get to see Ken more in his proper element in the latter half of the series, it becomes apparent that the “true personality” of Ken is actually the more assertive, level-headed one, whereas the Kaiser was the childish and fragile facade; Ken is significantly more comfortable being in his normal element to begin with, and he’s not standoffish or edgy because he doesn’t even like being condescending. If anything, the Kaiser was a manifestation of him forcing himself into an uncomfortable mold in an attempt to emulate his brother, so of course he isn’t going to feel comfortable doing that once all is said and done.

While Ken in the second half does initially express some traits that can be misconstrued as standoffishness, because he’s significantly more level-headed and assertive in this state, it becomes clear that he’s not doing this because he looks down on the others or anything; it’s just that he has very strong opinions on what he thinks needs to be done, and he doesn’t hesitate to explain why he feels this way when he’s asked (he says outright in 02 episode 25 that he believes they shouldn’t be responsible for cleaning up his mess). 02 takes a stance of favoring the concept of “taking responsibility for one’s mistakes” over “penance and punishment”, so even though Ken himself does have moments of devaluing his own life due to his sins (such as in 02 episode 26), ultimately, he states that his primary goal is to fix the mess he started, and he’s not averse to working with the others for the sake of that goal. If he does initially push the others away, it’s simply because he thinks he’s burdening them too (and, likely, that he doesn’t feel he has the right to be around them), but even when he’s at his most irrational about this in 02 episode 30, he turns out to be fairly capable of being reasoned with in pretty short order. So he’s not standoffish or “edgy” just for the sheer sake of it nor for drama, and it’s why he ends up on a very conciliatory relationship with Daisuke and the others by the end of the series, with very little, if at all, in common with the usual “rival” archetype you’d expect in this kind of series.

Considering that Ken is characterized as “kind” and “soft”, it’s easy to not realize that he’s actually one of the most assertive people in the group, and more so than Daisuke (note that he never seems to be all that easily intimidated even when the universe seems out to get him, and in 02 episode 29 he even offers to do the “dirty work” of potentially having to kill an enemy in lieu of the other kids if push comes to shove because he knows they’re uncomfortable with it). Although the issue of the Dark Seed makes it ambiguous as to how much of his turn into the Kaiser was supernatural interference and how much of it was himself, either way, the series doesn’t try to absolve Ken of his sins just because there was something extra pushing him over the edge -- again, the series operates less on “fault” than it does “responsibility” -- and when you look at these kinds of traits, you realize that the Kaiser existed because Ken had always been capable of this kind of aggressiveness, he just doesn’t do it because he doesn’t want to unless it’s necessary, nor does he like it. It’s also why he banters so playfully with Daisuke in most post-02 material -- like many of the other characters in this narrative, being “soft and kind” doesn’t mean he’s necessarily a saint, he’s just someone who willfully chooses to be a good person for the most part.

Miyako

Miyako is a character who has a lot going on with her at once, having a ton of traits that you normally wouldn’t see combined into one character because they usually occupy separate archetypes (and, in a textbook case of reality being a lot less clear-cut than fiction, she’s the one character out of this group said explicitly to be based off a specific person). The fact she’s outwardly aggressive may make you think of the “badass action girl” type, but she’s also the kind who gushes over hot guys and fits the stereotypes of the “materialistic girly-girl”, and on top of that she’s a computer specialist working under Koushirou who begs the image of a “nerd girl”, and, unlike all of these archetypes, she’s a rather sloppy mess of a person who ends up loudly running her mouth, being prone to panic, and spitting out the first thing on her mind without restraint. On top of that, these traits tend to mix easily, so as much as she’s in-your-face about trying to physically fight things, she’s also the kind who’ll aggressively hug or dote on anyone she likes (which is a lot of people). Miyako is closer to the shounen brash hero archetype than even Taichi or Daisuke are, and yet is also closer to the “materialistic girly-girl” archetype than Mimi is at the same time.

Much like Koushirou, the part about being good with computers is much less of a prominent part of her character arc than you might initially think -- she herself doesn’t actually bring it up much during the course of the series, and, much like computers are an outlet for Koushirou to follow his thirst for knowledge and insatiable curiosity, Miyako’s connections with computers and tech have a lot to do with how she constantly goes out of her way to be helpful to others, such as being helpful to Koushirou as his junior, or helping out Iori’s mother with their computer (02 episode 1), or helping Yamato’s band (02 episode 29), or getting to do something helpful for the group in general (Diablomon Strikes Back). She’s not particularly show-offy or even all that fixated the actual subject as much as she’s proud of the fact she got to do something helpful and useful, and it ties deeply into her personal struggle with how to be capable of doing good for others when she’s actually not the striking image of a mature, put-together person who would usually be good at that kind of thing.

Miyako is consistently portrayed as having a complex about her “aggressive” tendencies -- she negatively compares herself to Mimi (02 episode 14) and Hikari (02 episode 31), on the grounds that she’s less put-together and more insensitive than them, and labels herself a “bad partner” for being such a sloppy person (02 episode 18). She does not want people to get hurt because of her actions, especially because whenever she loses grip on herself like this, that’s something that’s very liable to happen (which is exactly what happens with Hawkmon in 02 episode 18), and her tendency to be judgmental or to have no brain-to-mouth filter means she can be occasionally insensitive (see 02 episode 31). She even ends up fostering an idea that Hikari must be thinking of her badly, while she’s at it (02 episode 31)!

The end result of Miyako’s character arc is that, while she ends up needing to adjust the more negative aspects of her personality that involve causing trouble for others and being insensitive, that doesn’t necessarily mean that she has to completely change her personality to accommodate that. Hawkmon assures her in 02 episode 18 that he likes her the way she is, and, as it turns out, Hikari and Miyako both realize in 02 episode 31 that Miyako’s in-your-face, aggressive personality is very helpful when dealing with someone who’s so closed-in and repressive like Hikari, because it means Miyako has the right temperament to go out of her way and reach out to her despite how high of a hurdle that would normally be. On top of that, a consistent thread from the beginning of the series is that her over-the-top antics bring the group proper cheer, with the kids genuinely enjoying the vibrance she brings with her dramatic Digital Gate entrances, and multiple significant scenes indicating that her being dramatic and silly will make people laugh and be happy. So in other words, Miyako is capable of being emotionally supportive and helpful while also being her aggressive and messy self, and there’s no need for her to have to change herself drastically to resolve the supposed “contradiction” that one might initially think this poses.

Miyako’s also generally the first female character billed in 02 (mainly because Hikari’s returning from Adventure), but she isn’t particularly teased as having any romantic relationship with Daisuke; not that they don’t have a compelling rapport, but any idea of them having any real feelings for each other isn’t exactly stated to any significant degree over the course of the series. Miyako herself comments on multiple people being attractive over the course of the series, and it’s interesting in how this is played; the earlier parts of the series involve her completely losing her head and getting weirdly hung up and fixated on her targets of attraction to the point of getting derailed over more important matters (see 02 episodes 6, 8, 14), whereas she’s later able to express this in a lot more straightforward of a manner without being weird about it (02 episodes 38, 39), and so in the end, it’s not exactly a fundamental sin for Miyako to be open about the concept of attraction, especially as it ends up not really having a huge place in the overall narrative, which is consistent with Adventure and 02 not really treating romance or attraction as if it’s such a game-changer for these kids at this point in their lives.

Iori

Iori is the youngest in this entire group of twelve, and yet carries himself with a sense of maturity that goes far beyond his age, to the point he even comes off as one of the most mature in the 02 group despite being younger than all of them by a significant margin. Even taking into account the concept of the “precocious kid”, however, Iori’s not only polite but also very stoic and stern, meaning he often can come up with some really passive-aggressive or stern remarks (completely in polite Japanese). Of this entire group, the youngest one is the most likely to completely roast you with some well-timed statements.

However, one important fact to keep in mind is that Iori isn’t doing this because he’s “naturally” stoic or emotionless, but because he’s deliberately suppressing himself in an attempt to be well-behaved. (A really big clue in the Japanese version that Iori’s facade is “slipping” is that he ends up losing his composure and using casual Japanese instead of the polite form that he so constantly adheres to.) This is something that partially comes from his upbringing from his family, especially his grandfather, but even said grandfather is concerned that he’s a bit overkill in this regard (see 02 episode 6). By all means Iori should be allowed to express himself a bit more freely, but he keeps restraining himself and trying to be well-behaved in front of all of these elders that he develops a complex over the one time he allowed himself to act excited and cheerful in 02 episode 16, to the point the episode ends with Submarimon basically dragging him out on an undersea trip so he can enjoy something for once, dammit.

Iori is described as “clumsy at expressing himself as a child”, and 02 depicts the problem that comes out of the flip side of a young child being so mature that they have more comfortable company with older kids than kids their own age: Iori is outright isolated from his peers because of how different his mentality is from theirs (02 episode 3), and moreover, his stubborn insistence on doing things a certain way to the point even his grandfather thinks he’s overdoing it is, in fact, his own way of being “childish”. He’s basically trying to follow the honorable principles he wants to follow from his family, but taking them to their logical extreme because his view of the world is too simple-minded from his lack of life experience. Hence, why he develops such a black-and-white view of morality trying to categorize people into boxes of “good” and “evil”, and why he ends up trying to follow principles to pretty impractical extremes such as thinking that a single white lie is going to send him on a path to moral debauchery. In short, he’s a young child trying to deal with very abstract concepts much bigger than him, and dealing with it in a very simple-minded, overly reductive way befitting that of someone his age.

However, one thing Iori does acknowledge is that he’s probably not going about this the right way, and that he needs to understand more about others if he wants to do better. From the very beginning of the series, Koushirou (02 episode 2) identifies him as someone who has a “curious mind” like himself, but while he initially expects Iori to be like him in terms of being curious about the Digital World, Iori’s “curiosity” ends up manifesting more in terms of wanting to know about how humans work and what’s the right thing to do. This is how he ends up breaking through to the very convoluted and repressive Takeru, because he has the drive to poke through Takeru’s many layers and figure out what’s going on with him, and it’s how he eventually manages to become more open-minded about the issues surrounding Ken and Oikawa despite initially having been so hostile to them. All things considered, “understanding morality” is a pretty heavy burden for someone who’s supposed to be the designated kid character!

[lavenderclearwater]

Organic

Nico walked into his apartment and dropped his heavy backpack next to the door, not bothering to put it in its proper place. The smell of food cooking told him that Will must have taken the rest of the day off of work. The kitchen was a bit of a mess, brown grocery bags on the counter as well as utensils and ingredients that were being currently used. It was rare for them to both be home at the same time so early in the afternoon and even rarer would they have the opportunity or energy to enjoy a home-cooked meal together.

Will had graduated a year ago and got a job at a local hospital as a nurse while he was still taking classes to become an Anthropologist. He can't complain too much though, it was as normal of a life that they could hope for being demigods. Whatever Will was cooking, it smelled fantastic. If he hadn't followed through with his skills as a healer, then he probably would have ended up being a professional chef. He was so focused on the task at hand, he hadn't noticed that Nico was home yet. He decided instead of giving himself away, he would enjoy the view just for a little bit longer.

Will always looked so at peace when he was cooking, probably having to do with how it was a love that he and his mother shared ever since he was a child. It was only after meeting his mother a couple of months into their relationship that he realized that he may look just like his father but he acted so similarly to his mother. Will finally noticed his presence when he turned around to grab something off the counter.

He smiled, "How long have you been standing there?"

"Just short enough where it isn't creepy."  

He rolled his eyes at Nico's little joke and went up to him for a quick kiss. They have been dating for four years and living together for two but he still turned bright pink every time he kissed him.

"How was class?" Will asked, deciding to not tease him about how it was still so easy to fluster him.

"Mind-numbing as usual. I don't see why I have to learn all of this stuff when I can literally just ask the body what happened."

"Because it is wrong to abuse your powers like that. And you can't exactly put that on your resume," he was already moving back into the kitchen while Nico went straight for the couch.

"What are you making for dinner?"

"Chicken tacos. I saw the recipe online, thought I’d try it out.”

Another thing about his boyfriend was that he was a total health nut. It was probably a byproduct of being a nurse and being raised on healthy food. However, he was the exact opposite. Before they got together, he was living on microwaveable meals and junk food. He also had a crazy sweet tooth and was known for always having some kind of candy in his backpack. To say that Will freaked when he found all of this out would be a major understatement. Ever since he has been dedicated to getting him to eat better, which meant he tried lots of recipes that he found online.

Some of them were good, others still made him nauseous from the very thought of them. Either way, he promised Will that he would try everything at least once. While he was busy fixing up the tacos, Nico set the table for the two of them. His plate had two tacos on it, stuffed with chicken, sour cream, and spinach.

"They should be good. They had great reviews on the website, plus they’re organic."

"Doesn't that mean it's expensive and tastes bad," he asked when he thought back to what Leo told him some time ago.

"It means that is good for you. Now hurry up and take a bite, I want to hear what you think."

He cautiously took a bite of the taco, praying to Hades that it won't be a repeat of the tofu nuggets incident all over again. Fortunately for him and their bathroom, it was delicious. So much so, that he just kept on eating.

"I'm guessing you like them," he laughed a little as he watched him tear the tacos apart.

They finished their food and started to clean up the kitchen. Since he cooked, Nico decided that it was only fair if he did the dishes, but Will refused to let him do them alone.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/28804191/chapters/70640589

Which led to this question, "Does organic come in cupcake form?"

[kdramachitchat]

The Devil Judge - The Finale

A dystopian law drama w/a good concept that ended up underwhelming due to terrible writing. The star studded cast made up that fault with the likes of Ji Sung and Park Jinyoung.

Min and Jung has a previous conversation about the live show court trial. They team up so that they could stop this madness with the Supreme Court and with the SRF Foundation. Jung request that Min should keep an eye on someone and that someone is Ga-On. He requested Ga-On during their early meetings to be the Judas for Yo-Han. Min hated Yo-Han for ruining the country so he wanted to attack him by revealing his family affairs. He wants to drag Yo-Han down. He affirmed it when he was at the hospital and Jung visited. But Min didnt know how crazy Jung was and killed Soohyun. He said that Soohyun is like a daughter to him. Min said didnt he want to stop Yohan at all cost, that includes Soohyun too. Jung said that there's no going back now and they're close to ending the chaos, and questions if he wants to be remembered.

Min needed to become a monster to stop Yohan. Gaon then calls him a dirty hypocript and Min calls the security. Gaon is in pain that he just let Soohyun die just like that. Gaon was taken away by the security. Gaon tells Jinjoo that the foundation has set this all up and she wants to help.

The SRF team congratulates Jung for having Min to their side and Heo is in silence waiting for her instructions. He's literally her dog. They then talk about Yohan's mental mind now that he's in prison, he's out of his game. If he disappears quietly, they assume that everyone would be happy. Jung thinks otherwise, if he continues to say things she threatens him to step down. The SRF team continues to praise Jung. Jung discussses with her righthand woman on how Heo changed his personality completely and finds it fishy. She probably underestimated him and there's something else. She then request to check the status of the moving of the residence to the Dream Village.

Chief Ward meets Yohan to have discussiona t the office. Yohan disrespects the Chief  but the Chief warns him that this is not a live court show and that he's in prison.

Lawyer Ko talks to Gaon and how much of an idiot he is. He doesnt know if he can continue to trust Gaon with what he's done. Gaon is asking for help. Gaon wants to go expose the Dream Village and plans to go alone. Lawyer Ko warns him that there's tone of security but he can go to the Medical Center, but no way he can exit out. Gaon says just let him in. Also warns him that the media is on their eggshells and it's not anymore a free media. Gaon though has come up for something and request to get him 1 thing.

Gaon explains to Elijah in a letter that she didnt do anything wrong and promises that Yohan will return and that it wouldnt take long. He tells her to eat well to not get sick so that Yohan wouldnt worry. She then cries and eats her food to recover.

At the prison, Yohan and Juk breaks out a fight at the courtyard.

Gaon then enters through the Dream village by using the food truck inside a box. He then observes the restricted area and records using a small video device. He sees alot of people lying down sick surrounded by nurses and guards. He goes through the wards and surprisingly sees Ms. Han, the woman who sided with Yohan during the live courtshow. All of a sudden the President arrives at the facility. Theyre testing a new vaccine and the number of people that survived is 182. President requests about the behind payments of all the countries. Clinical trials are in high demand. President tells them when a person dies through the trials they collect all the well organs and export them as byproducts. Nothing goes to waste. Gaon silently watches them laugh maniaclly in disgust. The SRF and Heo talks about Jung behind her back, they plan to outs her. Gaon plans to escape with Han but was got caught with a nurse but saves himself that he's checking her vitals. The nurse recognizes him and actually helps him. She has been waiting for some help and said that their phones have been taken away. Also said that there's some sane people in the center too. She promises to help.

Breaking news that Yohan has been arrested for instigating murder is dead. He was stabbed by a assailant. Both co-judges are left in shock. Same goes to Jung. She's in shock but calms herself that it was done because of her. Jung will be President and Min would now be Chief Justice. He did a press conference instead of a inauguration. Oh was able to catch up with Min and tells him that Jung wants to meet him at her office, this is a set up. Gaon tells her to leave the building and requests her to go. SRF team celebrates at the live court set with Jung at the top of the judges seats. Gaon then captures Min and ties him up at the office with a bomb around his body. Since when did Gaon become so violent. Its a plant and the media will receive news about exposing the Dream Village with his name on it. Yohan suddenly appears and saves Gaon on time. The death news was fake and that Yohan had to dig out to save him. He reminded me of Batman at some point here. Yohan was able to get out by threatening the Chief with his corruption and crimes for the last 30 years. Mentions the Chief that the money is not with him anymore. Yohan tells him to save himself is by doing his specialty for swapping prisoners. Just give him 24 hours. Lawyer Ko enters and tells him that he couldnt tell Gaon everything. Yohan tells him that he was able to return the Chief a favor but not in the form of cash but through charity.

While the SRF is celebrating the lights and the screen suddenly went on with Yohan on the screen. Jung realizes that he is alive and so does the rest of the team. Its revealed as a solemn trial. Yohan starts a live trial and its the final trial with the entire SRF team being exposed with the Dream Home Medical Center. Looks like Jung doesnt know anything about it and asks the team about it. Even the conversation Heo had with the team regarding the citizens. They also show that Jung has killed innocent people in the way to fulfill her ambitions and to attack him. Min is attacked too as a betrayer.  Min is let go by Gaon but tells him that his name is tarnished forever and he will live awfully for the rest of his life. That's a better punishment and more realistically given too. 

There was a proper punishment given and Yohan announced that there's a bomb then leaves to go to the trial set. Yohan reveals that Gaon was the one who helped exposed and will testify to tell the whole truth. The bomb is planned and Yohan will sacrifice himself along with the foundation. Yohan asks them if the moment reminds them of the fire incident. All of them trying to escape. Only the fastest person survives. Jung calmly comes up from her seat with a gun on her hand. Heo complains that he is the President and Jung shots him due to annoyance. She also tries and aims the gun at Yohan. Yohan tells her that its the both of them till the end. Tells her to come with him till death. That's the only way she'll be with him, which is quite tragic. Jung says her final goodbye to Yohan and shockingly shots herself to death, like how Ms. Cha did. Gaon then appears at the end, tells Yohan to stop and think of Elijah. Gaon in the end will be the hero and Yohan pushes him out. Will Yohan survive the bomb explosion? He needs to be alive or Gaon will end up with nothing. Well he still has Judge Oh and Elijah at least. Gaon wents back to the mansion and ses the blueprint of the bomb explosion, there has to be a escape route for Yohan. Yohan tells him that Gaon must do something for him. Housekeeper tells Gaon that Yohan stopped by and tells her she's fired and asks for Elijah. Yohan tells Elijah that they're going to move out to somewhere safe and its a rehabilitation center in Switzerland. Gaon then finds out that Yohan is actually alive.

Gaon was set in a trial with the comittee. Gaon inwardly thinks that nothing has changed at all and is confused on what to do now that the country doesn't need Yohan. Yohan secretly bids goodbye to Gaon and he then quickly realizes it. Captures him on time from afar. The 2 men bid each other goodbye which then ends the drama.

Thoughts: If you like stories like Batman or The Hunger Games this would be the drama for you. The writer seem to took inspiration from both works. I think Yohan is like Batman/Katniss while Gaon is like Peeta. Oddly reminds me of the finale alot with the similarities of the characters. Or sometimes Gaon acts like Katniss/Peeta both. Just remove the whole romance aspect of The Hunger Games. There's quite a few angst moments of Yohan and Gaon. Gaon all of a sudden cares for Yohan. The writer tries to include those similiarities with the 2 characters. Yohan wants nothing more than revenge. Then the rest of the SRF are like the trial players or could be the government too. They try to copy the brutality of the hunger games the games itself with the fire incident and the finale of the drama. All trying to save themselves from death.

Messed up the ending. What I wanted most from this drama was for people to rise up to protect their country, because its the job of people to protect their country not the job of one or two people like Yohan and Ga On. Also they didn't even show the aftermath of the last trial. What happened to that dream house project and what was the people's reaction about the live trial? Assuming the whole time it was filmed. What did they think of Yohan after that? Alot of afterthought was left out.

Rating: Story: 3 (Great until episode 12 onwards) Production: 2 (Locations and the offices were ok but not meant for the dystopian feel they were trying to sell. Could've been more modern looking set) OST: 1 (BGM is spot on and fills the scenes well, dont like the rock portion of the OST) Acting: 4 (Mainly because of Ji Sung) Character Development: .5 (Main cast are 1 sided and no room or little improvement) Overall Enjoyment: 1 (The drama's tone is consistent throughout despite the bad writing) Total Rating: 2.5/6

[bartramcat]

CSI: Scuba Doobie Do and The Accused is Entitled

Been watching random CSI episodes this weekend, and I just watched SDD. I've always sort of wondered who and how a "witness" saw Sara touching Grissom "in a romantic gesture." The first time I saw TAIE I was a little taken aback at the notion anyone could have possibly seen that particular GSR interchange. So when I watched it today I decided to pay attention not to them but to what was going on around them.

I suppose the first thing we should take into account is that Grissom tells us he has 10 guys working around the clock trying to find the body. We know who 3 of them are, so that leaves 7 others we don't know. We also know where Nick and Catherine are, so the witness is not a member of team graveyard. (It's possible Warrick saw the interaction, but I doubt it, and, even if he did, he wouldn't sabotage further the case he was already being held responsible for torpedoing.)

When Grissom first goes out, there are headlights shining on him, and there is the sound of cars driving by. While he is discussing his pulse rate, we see headlights stop behind Sara. As they continue to talk, we see that first car pull away, more passing headlights, and then it seems another car slows down, shortly before Sara touches his face. From the editing, I couldn't determine if that car stopped or simply slowed, but someone in the car may have been able to see her touching his face, if they cared.

The thing is that we don't know if either of these cars belonged to others involved in the investigation, and, therefore, aware of who Grissom and Sara were, or if they were just passing motorists. I highly doubt a random passersby would have been the "witness." How on earth would they have been known to have been there for the defense to interview?

The other possibility is that another member of the wall breaking team could have peered out of an upstairs window while taking a break and seen them.

My theory is that Gerard picked up on Grissom's obvious reaction to the fact of Sara's involvement with Hank and made inquiries of other CSIs about Grissom's relationships with his team, some of whom may have been involved in the SDD case. We are well aware of the competition and sometimes downright hostility among the various teams. We also know that Grissom is known to everyone at CSI, while he seems oblivious to those with whom he doesn't interact. (Sofia knows who he is, but he doesn't know her until she is thrown into his orbit.) We also know there are a lot of criminalists we never meet. (In Bullet, there seems to be a small army digging bullets out.)

Whether this incident was relayed to Gerard out of malice or as a byproduct of common office gossip is also impossible to say, since we are never given the source. FWIW I doubt very much it was Ecklie. More than likely, if they had ever named the source, it would have been someone like the guy who told Nick he was a long shot for the promotion because of GSR "history."

There probably was office gossip about Grissom and Sara due to the fact he brought her in from the outside. There was also probably gossip about Grissom and Catherine. We know, especially early on, Sara could be a little too abrasive in the way she dealt with others, so it seems likely there were some who thought she would do anything, including making sexual overtures to her boss, to get ahead.

Of course the irony is that there seems to have been more gossip about Grissom and Sara before they got together than once they were together. In addition to the fact they were consciously careful, their dynamic was always a little weird to begin with, so the change in the way they related was more imperceptible than it might have been if they hadn't been in love all along.

[alitotechelamine]

Hen Bie - Chapter 2

Archive of Our Own

Chapter 1

It wasn’t long before the four of them fell back into their old ways of Zizhen and Jingyi teasing Jin Ling while Sizhui mediated, or Jin Ling and Jingyi teasing Zizhen while Sizhui mediated, or maybe even Jin Ling and Zizhen teasing Jingyi while Sizhui mediated.

There was a lot of Sizhui mediating. He was then promptly teased.

Jin Ling only held the group back long enough to tell Lei Xiaosi he was going out.

“Very well Young Master Jin,” The head disciple said, “Before you go, can I ask how Jiang-Zongzhu was when you left him?”

Jin Ling’s smile turned rather small and bittersweet, “He said he was doing better.”

Lei Xiaosi actually brightened at that, and he was happy to wave Jin Ling on as his friends called after him.

~

“What are they doing here?!” Jin Ling cried as he was pulled into the inn.

“Don’t be like that A-Ling!” Senior Wei cried, holding out his arms, “Come say hello to your uncle!”

“No! What are you doing here?!”

Behind them, Hanguang-jun stood passively observing.

“We heard about how much of a disaster the night hunt was, we wanted to make sure you boys were alright!” Senior Wei said, his grin turning a bit sheepish, “Everyone was so sad earlier, we were worried something happened to you!”

Jin Ling rounded on his friends, pointing an accusing finger.

“You led me here under false pretenses! You lied to me!” He cried, indignant.

“It was meant to be a surprise!” Jingyi protested, not quite managing to look completely innocent. Zizhen was grinning widely, no shame to be found anywhere.

Sizhui was the only one to bow in apology, though he was quick to say, “Now we’re all even.”

“Then that means I don’t have to buy dinner anymore.” Jin Ling sneered, earning a cry from the other three, “No, I was tricked and manipulated! I don’t have to do squat for you deceivers anymore!”

Senior Wei snickered, stepping back to hang off of Hanguang-jun’s arm, “Aren’t they so cute Lan Zhan?”

“Mm.”

“It doesn’t matter though, right? We’ll buy all of them dinner?”

“Mm.”

“See A-Ling, no reason to fuss!”

“That’s not the point!” Jin Ling cried, even though he wasn’t all that sure himself what the point was. Something about lying to him, maybe surprising him too.

Senior Wei and Hanguang-jun made themselves comfortable at one of the empty tables, waiting for the four juniors to join them. Only Senior Wei was allowed liquor, the rest sipping tea, but Jingyi promised he would get his hands on at least one cup next time before remembering who he was with and diving head first into his tea.

“Knowing what happens when a Lan drinks, I certainly hope not,” Senior Wei said as he smirked in Hanguang-jun’s direction, his husband staring at his disciple in disapproval, “Although I am curious as to what kind of drunk you would be Jingyi.”

Their food arrived before anyone could ask what was meant by that, but considering how giddy it made Senior Wei, Jin Ling had to guess it was nothing good.

“So,” Senior Wei eventually said, “What did happen? Why was everyone so upset?”

“No talking while eating.” Hanguang-jun stated.

“I’m not eating right now, am I?” Senior Wei argued, “And once A-Ling swallows, he can tell me.”

Jin Ling resolved to never swallow.

“Everyone was really upset over the results of the night hunt, and then they needed a nap.” Zizhen said.

“I’m sure your Uncle was furious considering what we’ve heard,” Senior Wei sighed, turning to Jin Ling, “How many legs did he threaten to break? Did he go through with any of them?”

Jin Ling couldn’t swallow fast enough to stop Jingyi, the idiot , from saying, “He wasn’t there. That’s probably why it went so poorly.”

Senior Wei blinked, frowning, “What?”

“Sandu Shengshou wasn’t at the night hunt,” Sizhui said, “In fact there wasn’t much of a Jiang presence at all. Only about a handful of senior disciples.”

“Oh?” Senior Wei looked towards Hanguang-jun, “I wonder why.”

“A few of the more minor sects demanded his attention,” Jin Ling said quickly, “He was more focused on that than another night hunt.”

“Still, it’s out of character for him to leave you to your own devices A-Ling, Wen Ning being there or not.” Senior Wei said, and he truly looked worried now.

“I may have… let him assume you and Hanguang-jun would be there…” Jin Ling muttered.

At that, Senior Wei burst out laughing at his “naughty nephew”. Hanguang-jun eventually had to place his hand over Senior Wei’s, silencing him.

Senior Wei pretended to wipe a tear from his eye, “It’s unfortunate that I seem to be rubbing off on you A-Ling. What do you think Jiang Cheng’s going to do when he finds out?”

“Probably actually break his leg,” Jingyi supplied unhelpfully, “Yours too just because.”

Senior Wei huffed, “I’d like to see him try. I may not be as powerful in this body as I was in my last, but I’ll still outrun him!”

The rest of the meal passed much like that, with the juniors regaling their seniors about how disastrous their hunt was, and their seniors responding with their own stories of failure. Jin Ling at first did his best to avoid divulging the parts that led up to his fight with Jingyi, but that simply allowed for his friend to tell his version of events first. Everytime he did so though, he made sure to look back and grin at Jin Ling, as if to tell him everything was still okay. Outside the sun began to sink, the streets slowly emptying out. Eventually, Hangaung-Jun stood, declaring it was nearly time for bed.

“Ah, but we should escort these juniors back to Lotus Pier first, shouldn’t we Lan Zhan?” Senior Wei said, nodding sagely to himself like it was an approval.

“We’re perfectly capable on our own.” Jin Ling snapped.

“But what if you’re not?” Senior Wei whined, “What if some nasty monster jumps out and kidnaps you four again? Jiang Cheng might actually break my legs!”

Jin Ling figured Hanguang-jun of all people would let them go alone, maybe even provide a distraction for Senior Wei so they could escape. He wasn’t a fan of Lotus Pier, his silent grudge match with Jin Ling’s Uncle alive and well if subtler than in the past. He always looked a little more sour if still expressionless when he visited, and in fact was donning such an expression now. There was no way he’d allow himself to be dragged to Lotus Pier tonight, which meant there was no way he was letting Senior Wei leave this inn.

Instead, the whipped traitor held the door open for everyone and brought up the rear of their group as they began to walk back. Senior Wei led the charge, and reluctantly Jin Ling figured he should match pace with him so that he was at least the first one through the gate.

Lei Xiaosi met them in the courtyard, bowing politely to Senior Wei and Hanguang-jun.

“I’m afraid I wasn’t notified of your arrival,” He said, “I haven’t had time to make up a room.”

“We have a room in town Lei-gongzi, don’t worry,” Senior Wei smiled, much calmer than he had been a moment ago, “We simply wanted to ensure the juniors got back safely, and to also say hello to Jiang Cheng.”

“Ah,” Lei Xiaosi smiled tightly, “I’m afraid Jiang-zongzhu is rather busy at the moment, but he’ll be perfectly free to entertain you tomorrow.”

“Is he sick?” Senior Wei asked, looking surprised.

“Earlier, yes,” Lei Xiaosi admitted, “However he’s feeling much better now and requires rest to make a full recovery by tomorrow.”

“Did anyone make him soup?” Senior Wei asked, “The special one?”

“I’m not sure Wei-gongzi.” Lei Xiaosi said, and then after a moment he asked, “Did you want to make it for him?”

Senior Wei’s entire face lit up as he looked between Lei Xiaosi and Hanguang-jun. Jin Ling had no idea how Hanguang-jun was possibly reacting to this, if he approved or not. Lei Xiaosi on the other hand looked somewhat hopeful, and Jin Ling had to wonder whether or not he was pretending to be polite.

“It’s not perfect, but I’ve been trying to recreate my Shijie’s soup as a gift for him.” Senior Wei muttered, “What do you think? Is it too late for soup?”

“I don’t believe Jiang-zongzhu has eaten yet, no.”

His Uncle hadn’t eaten? But it was past dinner time!

“That settles it!” Senior Wei declared marching past, “If I may?”

Lei Xiaosi gestured for Senior Wei to follow him and the two were merrily on their way.

Jingyi frowned, “I thought your Uncle was busy, not sick.”

“He was both.” Jin Ling snapped, feeling sullen. He could feel the guilt returning ever so slightly, remembering his Uncle sitting alone in a dark room. He hoped Fairy was still there.

“That’s not good!” Zizhen fret, “He’ll just get even more sick at that rate!”

“He could get a fever,” Sizhui nodded, looking grave, “Or end up bedridden if he’s not careful.”

Jin Ling swallowed, wondering how best to redirect his friend’s attention to something else.

“Bedtime.” Hanguang-jun declared, breaking up the conversation and staring the four of them down until they started to move. Somewhat relieved, Jin Ling followed his friends at a sedate pace, bidding each of them goodnight before turning in the direction of his own rooms. As he reached his door however, he stopped and decided to head towards the kitchens.

Jin Ling felt like he knew what his Uncle would and would not like most of the time. It came as a byproduct of being raised by someone. He liked it when the disciples he was training kept up or exceeded his expectations. He liked when Jin Ling bought him sweets or new calligraphy brushes from the market in Yunmeng.

He did not like to be seen as weak or foolish. He’d never cried in public, and up until the incident in Yunping, he’d almost never cried in front of Jin Ling.

If Senior Wei managed to barge into his rooms and saw what Jin Ling had, he was a little afraid his Uncle might actually try to break the idiot man’s legs.

It seemed Senior Wei had already managed to make a disaster of everything by the time he arrived. Not that it seemed to matter, Senior Wei was solely focused on the soup which he tasted here and there before throwing more spices in. Jin Ling blanched as he stood in the door and watched, feeling his stomach turn.

Hanguang-jun sat patiently waiting off to the side, watching his husband work.

“I think I’ve almost got it Lan Zhan!” Senior Wei declared, “Or… well, as close as I can get. Shijie was too much of a genius to imitate perfectly.”

“Mm.” Hangaung-Jun replied thoughtfully.

“I can’t believe Jiang Cheng went all day sick and didn’t eat anything!” Senior Wei continued, “Or that Lei Xiaosi let him!”

“Jiujiu was busy dealing with me, so they may not have wanted to disturb us.” Jin Ling said, causing Senior Wei to jump about a foot into the air.

“Jin Ling!” He cried, holding his wooden spoon like a sword ready for combat, “What are you doing sneaking up on people?!”

“I’ve been standing here for awhile! You just didn’t notice!”

“Because you didn’t announce your presence!”

“I made myself perfectly noticeable approaching the door!”

“Obviously not!”

“Wei Ying, the soup.”

Senior Wei turned to see his liquid monstrosity was getting ready to burn and he hurried to save it. Jin Ling stepped closer to watch him work, cringing at how red the stuff in the pot looked.

“It’s a good thing Jiang Cheng likes things spicy too,” Senior Wei sighed, “No one in Gusu appreciates spices like they do in Yunmeng. It’s rather sad.”

“That’s not spice, that’s suicide.” Jin Ling declared flatly.

“And they don’t appreciate it in Lanling either, apparently.” Senior Wei moaned, giving the glop in the pot another stir. Jin Ling rolled his eyes, watching Senior Wei work for a while before turning to raid the cupboards for anything actually edible.

“Didn’t you just have dinner?” Senior Wei snickered, reaching out to pinch at Jin Ling’s waist, “Are you really still hungry?”

“I’m finding something for Jiujiu to actually eat. He’ll take one bite of your poison and spit it out.” Jin Ling snapped.

“He will eat it.” Hanguang-jun declared from his seat, although when Jin Ling turned he didn’t appear to be annoyed or disapproving of Jin Ling, simply as serenely stone faced as usual, “He’s eaten similar.”

“He has not! Not like that!” Jin Ling protested. The offending food bubbled loudly as if to agree with him.

“Actually, we used to have contests to see how hot we could make the food before one of us had to bow out all the time.” Senior Wei said, reaching past Jin Ling to grab a bowl.

“And? Who won?” Jin Ling prompted as Senior Wei started ladling bright red soup.

“Well at first it was your uncle, but eventually I took the lead and I’ve yet to be surpassed.”

“Probably because it got to the point he didn’t want to burn his tongue off.”

“I still won.” Senior Wei sing-songed, setting the bowl on a waiting tray. He then turned and reached above the cupboards, having to jump once or twice before coming back with a large jar. He opened it to reveal several small pastries inside, taking three to add to his spread. He then winked at Jin Ling before jumping up to toss the jar back into its hiding place.

“Don’t let Jiang Cheng know I still remember his favorite hiding places, okay?”

“You must not be clear on where my loyalties lie when it comes to Jiujiu.”

Senior Wei pouted, “But if you keep quiet, then you’ll have access to it too.”

Jin Ling huffed, turning instead to pick up the tray, “I’ll let Jiujiu know you stopped by and made him… this.”

“Hold on! I want to see his face when you give it to him!” Senior Wei frowned, moving to block the path.

“Well he probably doesn’t want to see you, not when you’re making an attempt on his life!” Jin Ling argued, trying to edge past Senior Wei and towards the door, only to have his path blocked more aggressively.

“What’s wrong with him? Why is he working while he’s sick? That’s my destructive behavior!”

“I don’t know, you think he tells me everything?” Jin Ling sneered, “He said he was tired. He’s probably asleep already and all you did was waste your time making this.”

“Well then, let’s go find out.” Senior Wei smiled angrily. He turned to go and Jin Ling briefly considered throwing the tray at his back.

“Wei Ying, it’s late.” Like a deity coming to personally deliver a miracle, Hanguang-jun called out. Senior Wei froze where he stood, turning slightly to frown at his husband.

“I want to check on Jiang Cheng before we go Lan Zhan, it won’t be more than a minute.”

“He’s tired and needs sleep, you’re just gonna make him angry.” Jin Ling snapped, “Then he won’t sleep and I’ll have to deal with it in the morning.”

He hefted the tray up, “I’ll deliver your poison soup okay? And then he can tell you tomorrow how he threw it out when you come to drag Sizhui and Jingyi home.”

Senior Wei arched a brow, “So you’re telling me I should come by tomorrow morning? That you want to see me again?”

Sensing a trap, Jin Ling mirrored the expression right back and simply said, “I’m just stating what you were already planning.”

“And just got express permission for!” Senior Wei cried, twirling around and happily marching off…

In the direction of Uncle’s rooms.

“I told you to leave him alone!” Jin Ling hissed, chasing after him.

“I’m going to get the door for you!” Senior Wei chuckled, keeping just enough ahead that Jin Ling couldn’t stop him.

Playing his last, desperate card, Jin Ling hissed, “I left Fairy with him!”

That stopped Senior Wei short, meaning Jin Ling nearly dumped the tray all over him.

“And there’s no way she’d have gotten out?” Senior Wei asked, voice shaky.

“I ordered her to stay there.”

Senior Wei stood frozen, giving Jin Ling the opportunity to slip past him. Hanguang-jun stepped forward to take his husband’s arm, calling to him softly. Senior Wei was frowning into the distance, before heaving a deep sigh that Jin Ling took as conceding defeat.

“Then I really will just hold the door open for you.”

Dammit!

Jin Ling watched in disbelief as Senior Wei darted forward, Hanguang-jun close behind. Jin Ling debated just yelling at them to leave, or maybe getting Lei Xiaosi to throw them out.

Ultimately he just hurried to catch up, trying to keep the tray balanced so none of the demon soup sloshed out and burned something. He’d done everything in his power to preserve his Uncle’s dignity but it was all for nothing. At this rate, he could only hope he wasn’t on the list of people his Uncle might try to cause bodily harm when Senior Wei threw that door open.

He caught up just as they reached the door, Senior Wei hesitating with his hand raised ready to knock. The earlier confidence seemed to be fading, hesitation keeping him frozen.

“Go on.” Hanguang-jun said gently after a moment of nothing happening. Senior Wei shot him an indulgent smile before seeming to brace himself, rapping on the door before opening it.

Uncle looked up from where he was on the bed just as Jin Ling bustled into the room, setting the tray down on the small table nearby. Jin Ling watched carefully, waiting for an outburst but finding only confused disbelief among the pale shadows and drawn face. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have thought Uncle truly was just sick.

This wasn’t what he’d expected to happen, and he found himself for once wishing he might be threatened.

“Jiang Cheng!” Senior Wei whined, looking as far into the room as he could from the door, “Lei Xiaosi tells me you’re sick and not eating!”

His Uncle just raised an eyebrow, passively blinking as he waited for Senior Wei to continue.

“I made you soup! It’s not perfect, but it should still be good enough.” Senior Wei smiled, “You need to eat, or you’ll never leave that bed.”

His Uncle’s gaze dropped to his lap, where Jin Ling found Fairy fast asleep. His Uncle ran his fingers through her fur a few times, scratching behind her ears. Jin Ling was forced to simply exist in the silence, wanting to leave and yet feeling bound to remain as a buffer between Senior Wei and his Uncle. It’s not like there would be much he could do if an argument broke out, but he was still reluctant to just go.

Just as Jin Ling was becoming convinced the silence would last forever, his Uncle coughed awkwardly.

“Thanks.” He muttered quietly, not looking up from the dog in his lap.

Senior Wei immediately brightened, “You’ll have to tell me how close I got! Lan Zhan says its good whenever I make it, but he has to say that so I need an outsider’s opinion!”

His Uncle grunted, still not quite making eye contact with anyone in the room. Jin Ling feared another stretch of silence, but Senior Wei simply chuckled though his smile seemed to dim.

“Eat up Jiang Cheng! I’ll expect a critique tomorrow!” He turned to go, pausing only to turn back, “Feel better, okay?”

His Uncle just nodded, looking awkward.

Jin Ling tried not to fidget, growing more and more uncomfortable.

Senior Wei seemed satisfied though, and he skipped away from the room, Hanguang-jun presumably right behind. Jin Ling cast one more scathing look at the red death in the soup bowl before turning to look at his Uncle.

He tried to pretend he didn’t see the unnatural shine in his eyes, or how his Uncle seemed to hold Fairy just a bit tighter.

“I saw him dump like half the spice rack in, so I’d be careful.” Jin Ling said, if only to say something , “In fact, I’d just dump it out. I could go make you something else.”

“No... “ His Uncle sighed quietly, “I’ve eaten his poison before, I’ll be fine.”

Jin Ling bit his lip, giving in to the urge to fidget only a little . His Uncle made a passing swipe at his own eyes, breathing deeply before lifting Fairy up and rising from the bed. He crossed the room and deposited the dog into Jin Ling’s arms.

“Here,” He said, running one last soothing palm through the dog’s fur, “She’s a good dog, though I’d advise cutting back on the treats a little.”

Jin Ling sucked in his cheeks in an effort not to pout. Fairy licked his hand for his efforts.

“It’s time for you to go to bed,” His Uncle said, stepping past Jin Ling to inspect the goo in the bowl, “You’re still growing and need sleep.”

“I’m seventeen!” Jin Ling cried.

“So young, you must be so tired.” His Uncle nodded to himself, sitting at the table and stirring the sludge with a spoon. Jin Ling wondered how the wood didn’t burn on contact with all the red.

“Should… should Fairy stay here tonight?” He found himself offering, “She seems so comfortable here.”

His Uncle smirked, the one that meant Jin Ling wasn’t fooling him.

“I’ll be fine A-Ling.” His Uncle said, lifting the spoon and, horrifically, tasting the soup. His face twisted in discomfort and Jin Ling’s horror was assuaged, but then he swallowed and Jin Ling feared his Uncle might not be capable of processing taste or something. His Uncle stared at his mockery of a dinner critically, “It’s way too spicy, but it’s... a decent attempt.”

The shine in his eyes was just from all the spices, Jin Ling forced himself to believe that.

Jin Ling sighed, “Are you sure you don’t want Fairy to stay the night? She never gets to see you.”

“She saw me today,” His Uncle said dismissively, “Now go to bed before I have to order you.”

“You can’t order me around anymore! I’m a Sect Leader, same as you!”

His Uncle sneered and Jin Ling tried not to smile.

“I’m your uncle, and a Sect Leader with more experience than you,” His Uncle snapped, pointing a soup covered spoon at him, “Get going before I make you eat this!”

“If it’s bad I’ll make you something else!”

“Out!” The order was snappy enough, it almost made his Uncle sound like he was supposed to.

Jin Ling huffed in indignation, but quickly lost his annoyance to a smile. He bowed a goodbye, arms still full of Fairy, and slowly made his way out. He caught sight of his Uncle lifting the bowl to his lips as the doors closed and cringed.

The quiet around him seemed less oppressive now, less heavy with trepidation. Fairy snuffled in his arms, perfectly content to remain where she was. Jin Ling also would have been perfectly content to keep her pressed close to him, but his Uncle was right that she needed less treats. Jin Ling’s arms were beginning to burn.

He set his spiritual dog onto the floor beside him and she gave an indignant snort. Then her nose lifted and she trotted past him in pursuit of her own interests.

“Is it gone?”

Jin Ling whirled around to see Senior Wei peeking out from behind a column, eyes wide and shifty.

“The most perfect dog in the world is gone, yes,” Jin Ling huffed, “Probably to get comfortable on your bed.”

“Lan Zhan would never let that happen,” Senior Wei said dismissively, his confidence oozing back into him. He seemed to give Jin Ling a once over before asking, “Did he eat it?”

“Somehow.” Jin Ling wondered how much trouble he’d get into if he tried to check his Uncle’s mouth for blisters or scars tomorrow.

“All of it?”

“I hope not!”

Senior Wei pouted, “How’s he going to get better if he doesn’t eat all of his meal? If he actually was sick he’d never recover.”

Jin Ling swallowed, “What do you mean?”

The withering flat look he received brought a flash of heat to his face.

“I grew up with your Uncle,” Senior Wei said, “I’m not stupid. I know when he’s sick and when he’s not.”

“Maybe he was feeling better by the time you saw him.” Jin Ling argued, knowing it was a weak reasoning.

“A-Ling, we all know what’s going on. Let’s not lie to each other.” Senior Wei sighed, throwing his hands to rest behind his head and stepping past Jin Ling in the direction of the guest quarters, “I’ve seen your Uncle depressed before, but back then I was in a position to do something and only made things worse. These days I can only offer soup and hope it makes things better.”

“You could offer more…” Jin Ling muttered quietly, unsure if it was the right thing to say.

Senior Wei turned back to offer a brief and stilted grin, eyes shining as unnaturally bright as his Uncle’s had moments ago.

“Baby steps A-Ling. Your Uncle can’t handle more.” Senior Wei turned and took Jin Ling by the shoulders, “Until then you’re the one with the most to offer.”

“What do I have to give?”

Senior Wei’s smile turned sadder, “You’re giving him everything he needs, just keep doing it.”

Afraid this was heading towards a hug or some sappy moment between the two, Jin Ling ducked his head and wiggled free of Senior Wei’s grip, “Both of you like to talk in circles, you never make sense.”

“Oh A-Ling, you really are Jiang Cheng’s nephew!”

“Goodnight Senior Wei!”

~

“And that was when Lan Jingyi and Lan Sizhui came to assist me.”

Jin Ling stood in front of his Uncle in Sword’s Hall, his Uncle reclined on the nine petaled Lotus Throne as he skimmed through his own disciple’s night hunt reports. He’d been here for the last ten minutes giving a detailed oral report of what had happened, hoping his Uncle hadn’t yet noticed there’d been no mention of Hanguang-jun or Senior Wei anywhere.

His Uncle snorted derisively, handing the reports in his lap back to Lei Xiaosi’s waiting arms.

“It sounds like whoever organized this night hunt has never organized one before, let alone faced an actual enemy,” He sneered, turning to his Head Disciple, “Almost every account so far has emphasised how underprepared everyone was. If another one gets called, we’re going to assume authority. If another one doesn’t get called, we’re calling one. This is ridiculous.”

“Yes Jiang-zongzhu,” Lei Xiaosi said, “Shall I return these to your office?”

“Put them with the invitation we received, I want to send a message to the sect responsible.” His Uncle huffed, waving Lei Xiaosi out the door and turning his attention back to Jin Ling, “So the three of you managed to exorcise the pack you were fighting?”

Jin Ling nodded, “Yes Uncle.”

“Then what happened?”

“By then most of the fighting had ceased and we began tending to our wounds. Shortly after we decided our best option for rest and recovery was Lotus Pier.”

“And did Wei Wuxian and Hanguan-jun arrive from Cloud Recesses before or after you did?” His Uncle asked, tone low and flat.

Jin Ling felt his heart stop, “Eh?”

“You heard me.” There was a warning in that voice.

“I… I’m not sure, I met them at the inn last night.” Jin Ling admitted, beginning to shrink with guilt.

“Stand up straight and look me in the eye,” His Uncle barked, waiting until Jin Ling had done so to continue, “You led me to believe there would be someone there to watch out for you and that was clearly a lie!”

“Senior Wen was there!”

“Senior Wen can only be in so many places at once! I should break your legs and strap you to a chair until I’m certain you won’t run off to do stupid things!” His Uncle snarled, “I give you my trust and this is what you do with it? Lie to my face?”

“It wasn’t an… outright lie-”

“It was lie enough you brat! What, you become a Sect Leader and now you think you’re untouchable? Fierce Corpses won’t bother to consider your station as they tear into you!” His Uncle shot to his feet, thrusting a punishing finger in his nephew’s direction, “To the training fields with you! I don’t want to see you until the sun goes down!”

“You can’t punish me! I’m a Sect Leader!”

“How many times are you going to use that line of reasoning until it gets through your thick head that I am your Uncle! I’ll punish you all damn day if I like! Now get out of here!” His Uncle snapped, dismissing him with an aggressive wave of his hand.

With a stomp of his foot, Jin Ling turned and stormed from the hall. He caught sight of Senior Wei approaching as he left, only bothering to roll his eyes as a greeting.

“I see Jiang Cheng is back to normal.” Senior Wei chuckled as they passed each other, and the observation caused Jin Ling to stop short. Memory of the pale face with dark shadows, framed by limp hair. All of it attached to a listless body sprawled out in the dark. Sometimes his eyes were shiny with threatened tears, thought that was the only emotion the husk from yesterday seemed capable of showing.

Compared to just a few minutes ago, his Uncle up and walking around, red in the face with fury as he barks orders and sneers at incompetence. Full of energy - of life .

Jin Ling realized he was smiling as he hurried towards Yunmeng’s docks so he could say goodbye to his friends. Then he was going to train until his Uncle came out to yell at him to stop.

He’d listen to his Uncle yell forever if it meant he didn’t have to look like yesterday.

~

Wei Wuxian watched Jin Ling runoff in the exact opposite direction of the training grounds and snickered. He turned to enter the hall, lingering in the doorway until Jiang Cheng looked up from polishing his sword to notice he was standing there.

His former shidi sneered, though there was less heat in the expression compared to maybe a month or two ago.

“What do you want?” Jiang Cheng asked.

“I just came to say Lan Zhan and I are taking Jingyi and Sizhui back to Cloud Recesses.”

“Well good riddance then.” Jiang Cheng said simply, turning back to Sandu.

“How was the soup?”

“It did its job, I’d give it three points.”

“Only three?!” Wei Wuxian cried, “What kind of a ranking is that?”

“You really think you can compete with A-jie’s soup?” Jiang Cheng snapped.

“No! I just want better than a three!”

“Then learn to cook!”

Wei Wuxian pouted, falling back to lean against the doorway. The two stared one another down before Jiang Cheng gave Sandu one last wipe and seemed to deem the sword clean enough. He sheathed it and stood up, stretching until his spine popped.

“I have a lot of work to do,” Jiang Cheng said, “There’s a lot of cleanup and damage control to be done because some idiot in a nothing sect couldn’t do their job. If you don’t need anything else, leave already.”

Wei Wuxian snorted, “Alright, alright, Lan Zhan’s waiting at the docks anyway.”

“Make sure to tell A-Ling he needs to hurry to the training fields when you see him.” Jiang Cheng said, walking past Wei Wuxian.

“Jiang Cheng?”

“What?”

“I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

Jiang Cheng stilled, starting to turn around before aborting and remaining where he was.

“You and A-Ling… were an appreciated help… yesterday.” He said awkwardly before turning to glower, “Now get out! I’m busy!”

Wei Wuxian snorted, waving goodbye as he walked off. Jiang Cheng watched him go, the usually ragged pain in his chest whenever he saw Wei Wuxian not feeling quite as gaping and all-consuming. The thought of the soup last night, an awkward and timid but sincere gesture to show someone cared, managed to keep the sneering vitriol that usually ran constantly through his head quiet just a bit longer.

The phantom aches in his chest were still there, but they were lighter. As though the memory of his nephew lingering as close as he was able, refusing to leave him when so many already had, kept them soothed just a little longer.

He was feeling better. A lot better than he usually did after days like that.

It was nice.

[blazehedgehog]

Any thoughts on the whole Doom Eternal/surprise Denuvo thing?

I get the feeling it’s Bethesda trying to patch things up with Denuvo.

Because if you didn’t know, Doom Eternal shipped in a weird state. The game’s always had Denuvo, but if you installed it through the Bethesda.net launcher, it included a folder called “original” that included a raw, drm-free executable for the game, from a time before they applied Denuvo.

Just like how Sonic Mania went from 200mb down to 7mb, the Denuvo-less Doom Eternal executable was less than a tenth of the DRM-stuffed version.

This also isn’t the first time this has happened. RAGE 2 also shipped with the exact same “original” folder that contained a no-denuvo executable. These incidents were probably accidents, though it’s a bit weird to make the same mistake twice.

But now Doom Eternal has updated to require the most recent version of Denuvo, the most aggressive version yet, which runs as a kernel-level driver. For those of you out there who don’t know what “kernel-level” means, there are many layers of security in Windows, and it all depends on which execution level the program is allowed to run. The less security, the more a program is allowed to do, and it can do it faster. But less security also means it’s easier to conceal nasty processes as a byproduct of the software having more freedom. More freedom means more chances to cause serious damage to a system by doing something that’s normally safeguarded.

“Kernel-level” execution is about as close to bare metal (read: zero security) as Windows will let you get. Kernel-level execution is usually reserved for, like, very important hardware drivers (your graphics card, etc.) and ultra-essential core Windows functions.

A video game is not meant to run at a “kernel-level.” There isn’t really a need for it. It would be like sneaking in to Area 51 to hook up a PS4 to one of their TVs. Absolutely, absurdly unnecessary.

The argument could be made that a lot of piracy and cheating software also executes at the kernel-level now, and that may be true. But that’s often a one-time process during installation. Denuvo is just on, all the time, while you play the game. It’s constantly checking, every few minutes, just to make sure you aren’t doing anything naughty, even though it’s already checked 200 times.

In even the best case past scenarios, Denuvo had a performance impact. It uses a very complex system of data decryption so the executable can’t just be hacked to remove DRM checks. Decryption isn’t “free” in terms of computation, and will drag system processing speed down. Going back to Sonic Mania as an example, that game is so simple a toaster could run it, but Denuvo running in the background would still cause my recordings to stutter.

Now that the new Denuvo is kernel-level, it is effectively going right to the heart of Windows and squeezing all of its blood out. In other terms, thanks to this new version of Denuvo, users are reporting significant losses to performance, because your computer is too busy dedicating all system resources to Denuvo’s “guilty until proven innocent” way of doing business.

But Bethesda probably “has” to do this, because including two DRM-free versions of their past games was probably a breach of whatever contract they have with Denuvo, so this is them trying to repent by doubling down with an even nastier version of the software. It sucks, but there’s parts of Bethesda that also seem to suck, so the shoe fits.

And none of this even touches on the fact that letting software like Denuvo root around in the Windows kernel is probably an outrageously bad idea in general and a huge security risk. It effectively means that the security in Windows is only as good as Denuvo’s. If Denuvo’s security isn’t absolutely 1000% air tight, it becomes way easier for other people to gain kernel access to Windows, and that would be very bad for Microsoft, Denuvo, and Bethesda. Kernel access for software like this is a big risk.

I should also point out that the inventors of Denuvo also invented SecuROM, another DRM scheme, and one that has actually broken hundreds of games on Windows 10. Essentially, whatever loophole SecuROM used to maintain its anti-piracy DRM was closed by Windows 10, and now, even if you have legitimate game discs, they cannot be installed because the SecuROM check will always, always, always fail.

Denuvo is a ticking timebomb waiting to explode, essentially.

The thing is, I feel like this is how the DRM song and dance also goes, though. All of the nastiest anti-piracy DRM always reaches a kind of boiling point and then falls out of favor. I mean, nobody remembers StarForce these days, do they? I feel like we’re on the road to Denuvo going away, though that only makes it suck even harder when things like this happen.

[tyranttortoise]

Answered Asks Below!

*All right, so I got through some easy SSLL asks and general asks, so if you got a tag notification, it probably means you sent me an ask months ago, and I’m just now getting to it.  Sorry about that!

I’m gonna put all of them under a cut, with also just some thoughts on the past few months, too!

I wasn’t very active on here last year, and man, that sucks!  I really do wanna get back to it.  I felt like my words had been taken from me.  I’d get un-depressed long enough to write, and then something would happen to send me write back down the hole, all of my motivation gone.  

I came back last time, and a few days later, I wrecked a scooter and ended up bleeding all over the streets of Atlanta.  I’m not trying to be gross, but man, there was a lot of blood.  My glasses broke and cut my eyebrow and forehead, so that just poured.  If you guys ever wanna hear the full story just ask, but long story short, I ended up as a trauma in the hospital, got about 8 stitches for my trouble, and broke five ribs, my cheekbone, and my brow.  So that derailed things a bit, then some friends came and stayed with me for nearly a month, and then the holidays hit.  So there’s all the time from when you guys last saw me accounted for, ha.  

I’m still not doing fantastic mentally, but the other day, I was drunkenly telling one of my friends that I just wanted to write, that I wanted the words again, and that I was happiest when I was actively answering asks and talking to everyone on here.

And he said, “Get paper and a pencil or your tablet or you laptop -- whatever you kids use to write.”

“I can’t,” I argued, and he cut me off.

“I’ll help you.  Trust me and get it.”

And he ended up telling me what to write for some stupid UT crackfic that got me laughing and talking about the characters again, and the next morning... I just started writing until I found the words again. 

And now I hope I can keep sharing them with you.  <3

___________________

SSLL Asks:

I enjoyed this way more than I should’ve.  xD Well done!

@crazymadkatt  I’m so glad you enjoyed it! =D  I’d love to do a chapter like that.  It’s one of the tropes I’d been putting off because it was so common in the other reverse harem fics, but it’s been long enough now that I definitely plan on doing my take on it soon!

Oh, a real date’s coming, but let’s just say... I think you’ll like the new update. ;D

He’s a combination of both, I’d say.  The cool, lazy perception of Stretch, with the gruff flirtation of Red.  Wrap all that in a buried past, sprinkle in some extreme devotion to his brother, and mix in a healthy amount of low self-esteem and self-loathing that he tries to hide, and wham!  Rus!

@jukovon​  Hi there!  Sorry for the super belated reply!  8D  I’m so happy that you enjoyed the fic!  As for the Edge screen time... Hopefully, the latest update will help with that!  ;D  I don’t have a Twitter, actually.  I’m not entirely sure how it works.  I recently got into Instagram, and that’s been a weird learning curve, too.

Also, I just looked through your blog, and holy hell, your art is killer! <3

I know exactly what you’re talking about because I used to pretend those were real cigarettes when I was a kid.  I don’t think they’d be sweet enough for him!  Like, his version of the Grillby burger craving is a spider donut from Muffet’s, and he loves honey, so I think he’s got quite the sweet tooth.  I also see him as wanting to roll the sucker stem in his teeth or gnaw on it, and I see those candies as breaking down/ disintegrating too quickly for that.

As much as I’d love to include them, I think my head might explode if I give anymore cameos lol.  But thanks for your interest!

It’s the little details that matter. ;D  Right now, Q’s the only one that gets capitalization.  

Thank you so much!  In the case of HT, I’ve always thought that there was a deeper story -- and the comics have recently been shedding some much needed light on that backstory, too!  I’m a sucker for character development and figuring out what caused them to be that way, you know?

Also, I don’t know why, but I’m really against Crooks with braces.  I dunno, I just think it’d be harder to fix than that because of monster teeth.

@imonlymildlyinsane​  This made me so happy.  <3  When I first started writing him, so many people thought he was weird because he was kinda different from the other SF Paps interpretations, but now I kinda feel like he’s the norm.  He needed an endearment like Stretch and Red, so I went with darlin’ because it’s the one I use the most... because I’m also from the South.  xP  Sweet Home Alabama over here.  Sorry for such a belated reply, but thank you so much for sending this my way!  <33

If we’re talking general Sans and Paps, yes, but SSLL Sans and Paps... they used to be, and Papyrus still keeps up with them through text/social media/functions he attends as the monster mascot, but Sans has really pulled away from his friends after the incident with the machine.  Mostly because he doesn’t want them to find out -- and also wants to keep Frisk far away from Axe.

@desktopdinosaur​  Same skeleton time, same skeleton channel! ;D  

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General Asks:

@kawaiiplum​  Thank you so much!  <3  I’m so stoked that you’re still reading and still excited over the notification!  x]

They’re currently closed, but if I become active again, expect that to change!

Thank you, hun!  I’m glad to see you’re still around, too! =D  I hope everything’s been good with you!

@messedupessy  AHHH, I’ve missed you soulmate!!  <333  Sorry to hear your sleeping schedule’s fucked; mine’s about to be because I’m going to start nightshift and not get home ‘til 7:30am.  xP  I hope I’ll be around more for realz this time, and I’m really glad to see you again!!  <333  I love youuu!

@kuroshiro101  Hey Kuro!  I’ve been not okay, but getting better as a good way to put it.  =D  And I’m absolutely in love with your icon!  <3  How’ve you been doing?

@desktopdinosaur  Happy New Years!!  <3  I hope yours was a blast. =D

I’m stoked to see another x-ray tech Undertale fan!  =D  I definitely think skeleton love is a byproduct of our occupation; even before Undertale, I collected skeleton decor just because it related to my job lol.  Thank you!

I’ve got you!  It was this post, where I brainstormed a few scenarios.   If you’ve written it, let me know!  I think the credit would go to me, if you used that portion, but *shrugs* 8D  You know I’m always down for anyone writing anything about stuff I spit-ball, and I’d love to read it, so sent it my way!

Hanging in there, sweetie!  How about you? <3

When you’re right, you’re right. ;P

@literal-cacophony​  I’m sorry this response is like 3 months late.  8D  But thank you so much for sending this to me!  I wanted to make sure you saw that I got it.  You’re such a sweetheart, and I’m so happy that my writing’s been able to help you.  You guys definitely lift me up with all of these nice comments, and I appreciate it so much.  <33  I hope I can start writing as much as I did back then.

[radiantmists]

rhythm of war part two thoughts

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa  (spoilers through the second interludes under the cut, and at the very bottom some comments based on what i have to assume is a major spoiler for the entire book, or close to it, though i'm warning again beforehand.)

well, last things first: taravangian's working against odium! i'm super excited about this, and very happy about the support for the concept that Taravangian's compassion isn't his curse, it's just the division of his intelligence and compassion that's sthe problem.

so we've been able to talk to the sibling, who is mostly trying to help despite genuinely feeling that what navani is doing is wrong. except now they're locked away, and navani is under the direct scrutiny of rabaniel and messing around with her is going to be risky. that being said, we're on our way to some very interesting revelations about how investiture works on roshar:

the stormfather is purely of honor. the sibling is a mix of honor and cultivation. the nightwatcher is purely cultivation

the sibling should not be able to function on pure stormlight, because it's purely of honor.

lift may not run on stormlight at all-- we already knew she can't pull it from spheres.

adhesion, which is somehow a fake surge and purely of honor, is not totally cancelled by whatever rabaniel did to the sibling. from lift's interlude, neither is regrowth when she uses it, which if i had to pick is the surge i would choose to be purely of cultivation.

as far as we can tell, people can still draw in stormlight with no issue, they just cant use it to power surges.

windrunners, who bond honorspren, are less affected by the fabrial: this applies especially to kaladin and syl, and we know syl is different from other honorspren, older. my money is that she's in some way more fully of honor than the others. lift, who's been hugely modified by cultivation directly, is also immune. the edgedancers as a whole are not immune and apparently are reacting as badly as anyone else.

...syl notes in the last set of interludes that she's different from other honorspren, mentally. is this a byproduct of whatever she did to sneak out of shadesmar, or of her being older? interesting.

To me, this all implies that whatever rabaniel did interferes with how cultivation and honor interact. lift, who seemingly only uses cultivation's investiture, can power the surge that seems most directly associated with cultivation; kaladin, probably closest to honor, can do the surge that seems to be entirely honor. the regular edgedancers aren't immune at all because they run on stormlight; the windrunners are somewhat but not fully immune because they're almost fully of honor, but cultivation likely had some hand in the way honorspren were made after the shattering.

Regrowth really is a very odd surge, compared to the others, which seem to deal with much more fundamental physical forces.

the fused do have access to regrowth while powered by voidlight, though. interesting.

speaking of: did navani's weird sphere contain some kind of... cultivationlight? or maybe it's some kind of combination, and that's why the sphere exploded right around the time of rabiniel's experiments (or the sibling was drawing on it somehow?)

on a more immediate level, the current tower resistance is as follows: navani, under constant monitoring but she has the best chance to figure out how to fix this shit. kaladin, who's a mess, being hunted by the pursuer, and who's about to start getting suicide-baiting nightmares from odium, but he does know how to fight! lift, who's amazing and knows how to sneak around the tower but is being hunted by someone who i assume has to be mraize. and rlain, masquerading as a singer (im so worried about him i hope he's okay).

if this somehow ends with kaladin killing mraize to protect lift before he can give shallan answers, i'm going to fucking SCREAM.

speaking of frustrating things: lirin turn on ur location i just wanna talk. Kaladin was actually rebuilding himself until this whole invasion thing, and i don't understand how lirin can look at a man who's that committed to doing good, sees exactly what it is that drives him to kill, and then calls him a monster.

I loved Kaladin's efforts to deal with mental health care! He's in the unique position ofhaving way more political power than any medical professional, darkeyes, or mentally ill person could ever have hoped to have, and I really want to see him come back to this once the world is burning down a bit less again, especially because it genuinely seemed to be helping him.

navani's plots have sorta been subsumed into this whole plotline, but i enjoyed what we got-- the little episode with the other scholars taking bets on whether she'd use tomor's fabrial was adorable, and i also liked how clear it is that they look to her to make things work.

moving on, uh... shadesmar stuff.

adolin's making some progress at waking maya! she doesn't talk but she shows a clearly unusual ability to learn and make independent decisions. i love it.

...also the thing with notum's horse implies that ryshadium are sentient enough to imagine spren. that's fun, and also terrifying.

adolin offering to stand trial for the crimes of humanity is fascinating, but all i'm thinking about is the episode of avatar where he agrees to stand trial for kyoshi, except in this case we already know that humanity did actually do the thing he's in trouble for. it would be unjust to punish adolin for it, but... i worry.

especially because there are, apparently, new deadeyes. this isn't extraordinarily surprising as syl was two skips away from death (though, im curious, does it work differently if the spren's never been a blade prior to dying? or are there just deadeyes wandering around who aren't tied to blades?) but it is very alarming.

and then there's the other thing: pattern is lying to shallan. i frankly don't think it's as simple as him being a spy for the ghostbloods; we saw even here that he's a terrible liar, and to have concealed this he'd have to have been pretty impressive.

on the other hand there was clearly some shit going on between shallan, her family, and the ghostbloods when she first got pattern. he's admitted that he has more exposure to humans than most spren. it doesn't look great, honestly.

i also appreciate that brandon is acknowledging how fucking weird shallan's timeline is. hopefully we get some answers about this.

adolin and shallan's relationship continues to be adorable; the sequence with the starspren is lovely and i totally get why it's brandon's favorite chapter in this part. between this and part one, he clearly enjoyed how the shadolin came out in this book and i agree. the fact that his romances continue after the marriage, with issues beyond just jealousy, is one of my favorite things about sanderson books.

venli's whole set of pov's this part was about walking up to urithiru. i really do want to like her, but she spends a ton of time just following more dynamic characters around and observing in these first two parts, and if not for the juicy secrets rabaniel's been dropping, it would make me just want to get back to other characters. hopefully that'll change in the next few parts.

i was going to make a comment about how we havent even had flashbacks yet, but i just glanced at the POVs for the next part, so I guess those are coming. I do wonder if these eshonai flashbacks will be info venli knows, or what.

she did kill someone for the first time, and attuned the rhythm of the lost for the dead man. the whole incident disturbs her, and i appreciated that as the rest of our viewpoint characters are extremely accustomed to death. i'm interested in seeing how this affects her going forward.

the epigraphs are so exciting! sazed is writing to hoid again, but this time he's gotten his bearings and spoken to some new shards... ones we haven't heard from before! also he asks hoid to say hi when he's on scadrial, which, fair enough tbh. i dont remember whether hoid shows up much in mistborn era 2 but for some reason i have the feeling he is not going to oblige this request.

the epigraph where sazed mentions he wants someone who can both preserve and kill immediately made me think of kaladin. (i think this is what he ends up trying to do with wax, but shhhh) he and sazed would agree on a lot of things philosophically, i think. (omg au where kaladin ends up working for sazed?? i have no idea how this would work the idea just fascinates me.

...where are the heralds? did dalinar take them with him, or are they in the tower? if the latter, are they also passed out? probably not, since they're not radiants, right? although whatever they are is very investiture-dependent so who knows. vasher's probably alright.

why is odium afraid of nightblood? is he worried it could eat him?

lots of POVs for the next part, but no shadesmar crew, so i guess we'll find out whether adolin gets executed by honorspren later. i do wonder why so many pov's from the battlefront; i guess something more is going to happen along those lines than i'd really expected. crossed fingers for some actual insight into renarin, finally.

in light of said spoiler: holy god i hope that division (between taravangian's intelligence and compassion) doesn't continue, though I have the horrible feeling that it will. This puts sazed's discussion of the intent of a shard combined with the cleverness of its vessel into a terrifying light: a godlike being who is at his smartest when he's a complete sociopath is like, the worst case scenario,  not even taking into account that the odium shard is uniquely suited to make people act on impulses. this is so bad.

but i can't know the full extent of that until i read the context, so let's move on!