#put under a read more bc it's so long

[khytal]

and there was only one bed (oh my god there was only one bed)

extra:

[winnerkirkwood]

i have so many thoughts on alexander rossi and his new (over the past two years) popularity and the importance of a good social media strategy (and why indycar/indycar teams need to improve).

first off, rossi has always been a popular driver. that is a fact. however, i feel like he has had a lot of growth in popularity, mostly among 20-30 year old women in the past few years. i also think that he’s a really good case study for what a driver/team/indycar as a whole should do. because rossi has not significantly improved as a driver in the past two years, nor has his personality changed significantly. i think that a lot of the popularity is due to how social media coverage of him has changed.

so, i think that there are a couple of reasons rossi has seen so much growth in his audience. one part of it is the podcast with hinch. hinch is a incredibly personable guy, he could probably have a good conversation with a brick. add on to that the fact that he and rossi are genuinely best friends, and the podcast is obviously going to go well. rossi is able to show his personality on the podcast. and he has a kind of weird personality. so it makes sense that people are drawn to that personality, and have a fondness for off track, and specifically rossi. that is the first part of it.

the second reason is the arrow mclaren social media team. the arrow mclaren social media team is really fucking good. they know how to showcase their drivers personalities in short, consumable videos/reels/tiktoks. and because of this, people were able to really get introduced to rossi’s personality.

They also got introduced to Rossi in a very specific way. They got introduced to Rossi through his friendship with Pato, and the various tiktok trends that were created to make him look good. And I’m not saying that it’s fake, but it’s also i think a very different lens than how people were introduced to him in the past.

correct me if i’m wrong, but i kind of feel like there’s a certain pipeline for rossi fans (not all, obviously, and there’s some variance in the pipeline too): f1 fan —> indycar fan (often specifically a fan of arrow mclaren, as they have definitely set up their social media presence to be easy for beginner indycar fans to understand/learn about drivers personalities, along with transference in motorsport- if you’re a fan of mclaren in f1, obviously you’ll be a fan of mclaren in indycar) —> think ‘oh this guy is cool’ and check out his instagram (his and brian simpson’s ‘runoff’ series is helpful here too) —> listen to the podcast, maybe start listening to older episodes —> become a big rossi fan —> post about him —> more people become curious and maybe listen to the podcast/check out his social media/become fans

the arrow mclaren social media has been, in my opinion, really instrumental to the uptick in popularity rossi has had. obviously it’s not the only part of it, but i do feel like it’s regularly the first domino in the rossi fan pipeline.

now we have to talk about what this means for other teams/indycar as a whole. i feel like rossi’s arrow mclaren popularity shows how important social media/personality driven content is right now. it also shows how much andretti dropped the ball in terms of potential with rossi (that being said, over the course of the year andretti social media has improved significantly, becoming the 2nd best indycar team social media this season in my opinion). indycar social media has become much better in the last couple of years. however, i think that indycar needs to continue improving their social media strategy, showcasing the racing product of indycar along with the drivers personalities - personality driven content has become more important than ever, and with the variety of personalities/weirdness in the indycar paddock it shouldn’t be too hard. it’s just about making sure that indycar actually does it.

[13thdoodle]

bunch of Phantasy AU doodles n wip from earlier this year

Basically I just found out this year that ball-jointed dolls actually have strings in them and not just... magically attached by the ball joints themselves? And 31 in this AU is a ball jointed doll that were made out of Danny's energy so here we are :3c

I've been watching a lot of doll customization since earlier this year and found out from dollightful's video that no they are all connected by elastic strings inside so that's where the idea came from

...i was looking on google to find a good example to put here and clearly I'm not exactly paying attention to how the main body strings are actually.. pinned to?

the video I've been watching the most is dollightful n moonlight jewel and they have their bjd usually only to the bottom of the doll head instead of all the way to the top on the skull pin like the diagram above

Which is why 31 has his strings all connected to the 'heart' in the middle instead of the head kasjdnkasjnd

But yeah uhhh specifics aside...

----

Those ball jointed dolls made me think of 31, and then thinking about the clones in Phantasy AU and like.. the logistic of it

for 31, the idea is that during the circus gothica arc for this AU, Danny actually got kidnapped all the whole way into another universe/plane in which he met Valeska (Enn's oc) who unalive what his face the circus leader n break Danny's hypnosis

and now that Danny is essentially stuck in a whole other plane/realm/or sth he just following Valeska hoping she'll help him find his way back.

In one such trip, Danny got kidnapped (again) by another group/cult who wanted to use his power/energy as a gate keeper to the ghost zone to make their own gate keeper so they can open portals to ghost zones and maybe other realms too

31 is part of the experiments. He's a doll made with part of Danny's energy as his core.

And then it's.. uhh.. sth sth Valeska finally found out where they kept Danny and devour everyone there safe from Danny n 31 who helped him escape so now the three of them travel together~

The last pict is me thinking about clones and kingdom hearts :tm: so dramatic about Danny being the soul separated from the main body and 31 a clone made from part of the soul too and all that Not sure where I'm going with that but it do sound cool

And there's also Danielle but I'm not exactly sure.. how she would fit in? but it would be interesting if she was made from Danny's body somehow

so 31 made from part of teh soul and Dani from part of the body sounds poetic somehow

[sapphire-to-the-rain]

hi :') so because i make a ton of planymphia art and all my most popular posts are planymphia related, i just felt the need to say that i'm going to be taking an indefinite break from making art of them/posting about them, specifically plane jane. no need to read this unless you want to!!!

sooo yes this is partly because of her diddy tweet that IMO was very poor taste regardless of her stance on diddy himself but it's also just something i've been thinking about since the chappell roan incident earlier this year?

i don't believe plane is a horrible person nor do i believe someone is a horrible person if they continue to support her after this. this is way more about the fact that she has a very specific sense of humor that often tends to make light of things other people don’t consider appropriate (like the diddy situation or chappell roan's not wanting to be photographed without her consent) and i'm realizing i just don't like that very much, full stop. to be totally transparent it also doesn't help that SOME- not all!!!- of her fans will defend her to their last breath regardless of what she says/does and act like others are being overly sensitive for being offended by her humor. no one i'm friends with on here is like this as far as i know which i'm very grateful for but these people definitely do exist :/

don't get me wrong, it makes me sad to take a step back from planymphia because i've met so many amazing people through this side of tumblr and i really do like making content for them (i literally just finished a longterm art piece based off of a fic about them!! the timing could not be worse!!!). ultimately though i just can't justify spending all this time and effort making fan content based around someone that i personally don't even like that much at this point, especially when there are so many other wonderful queens/ships for me to support

in conclusion... i don't really want to associate myself with planymphia/plane for the time being. i don't know what i'll do with my in-progress and planned WIPs, maybe i'll either recycle them for another ship or come back to them someday, i'm not sure yet. in the meantime please do not come in my replies or my askbox arguing either in support of or against plane <3 thank you for understanding <3

[sugarwyns]

Why haven't you continued the builder drawing thing you were doing? I've been waiting for you to draw mine. 😑 It's kind of annoying, you only drew stuff for your friends...

damn ! LMAO

if ur referring to my sandrock rampage series, pls understand that i would pump out like 4-6 fully colored gifts of art at a time and that i started it when the community was a lil smaller ...

i have a forever growing list of ppl who i want to eventually get to and WIPs, i just havent had the time or energy to sit down and get another full round out recently 🥹 (and i also kind of only just started to draw consistently again anyways)

alsooo at the second part: when i started it i did not know anyone in the mtas community 😭 the rampage is how i ended up becoming friends with people since i just wanted to surprise ppl w art of their ocs + i dont announce who im drawing next u_u;

[akkivee]

Penny for your thoughts, but I'm wondering if the upcoming Kuko angst is going to be related to him getting true mic'd. Like one of the first things he establishes way at the beginning the importance of making your own choices, and how he wonders if coming back to Nagoya when he did was right or not, but is the choice he made. But he didn't. And like immediately finding out he complains of being shrouded in doubt during "when six colors combine" drama track.

i like where your head’s at!!!!!! love it actually lmao!!!!!!

idk how to try and support your ideas without breaking down each and every verse lol, but i’ll try to keep it short. i think in this song preview, we listened to kuukou question everything he believes in, but as the song further and further progresses, we see him reassert his beliefs and give them focus, quite literally saying to never waver again. what set that off is the big question and i do think it’s linked to that very verse

the only time he’s ever mentioned such a sentiment is towards ichiro actually; ichiro always wavered in his heart and it’s the one thing kuukou could not stand about ichiro, so there’s potential it could be about ichiro

but this is a bat track lol and besides, ichiro and kuukou are very similar people. what he hates in ichiro could be actually reflective of something he hates in himself for a past choice we aren’t privy to, or even that very ‘choice’ to have left ikebukuro

as for it being bc of true hypnosis mic thought, i don’t see why it couldn’t be!!!! esp since kuukou himself didn’t sound very happy with the way he was called strong for breaking free out of the true hypnosis mic in the six colours track. if he needs maybe we’ll get some insight as to how kuukou broke out of the true hypnosis mic???

something that caught my eye while looking over the lyrics was that both he and hitoya have a similar verse about ‘illusions,’ hitoya plans to unravel its lies and kuukou’s is about how those illusions became reality. idk lol!!!!! that kinda sounds like a nod to the true hypnosis mic to me!!!! plus!!!! we had hitoya accompany ichiro, jakurai and gentaro’s block party mission to find out about the hypnosis mics, so that gives bat another connection to the hypnosis mic lore, as small as it is rn lol

on kuukou’s end, he true hypnosis mic had the power to strip away the value of choice. kuukou’s talked about how the hypnosis mic can change your fate in glory or dust and fate for kuukou is directly linked to choice. choice affects karma and depending on the karma you accumulated in life would affect how kuukou faces the buddha at the end of his life. so where does a choice like his actions the true hypnosis mic made him do fall under??? what’s that karma???? maybe it’s why kuukou’s thinking at some point in this song that his heart’s conviction isn’t enough, as evidenced by that verse ‘even when closed, with unwavering resolve in our hearts / this belief itself extinguishes like a flame,’ if his will had been strong enough in the first place, maybe he wouldn’t have succumbed to it is his thought process and that’s very harsh for kuukou to put onto himself lol

and lastly lol, about hirono-san uncharacteristically tweeting about kuukou it was def a hint lol 🤭 our first hint was hayama-san’s post and pic with bimi in may, the second was hirono-san’s kuukou bday tweet and the third was the fact kuukou’s sukajan was falling off the exact same way hirono-san liked to strip tease and then, hirono-san posting that very pic himself after the drop lol

[vipervvitch]

Color Magic

What is color magic?

Color magic is utilizing the correspondences of a certain color in witchcraft/magic. It can help hone intentions in a spell, or establish the intent uniquely on its own. You can use it anywhere within a spell, especially to nudge it in the right direction.

What are ways I can use color magic in spells?

Commonly, you’ll see people use color magic in candle spells. People often recommend pink candles for beauty and love spells, because they associate pink with beauty and love, etc. What each color means, though, is up to the witch’s individual associations, alike every other correspondence. Since everything has a color, you can really use it anywhere. The color of the paper or ink of a petition, adding food coloring to a potion, using a colored rope for knot magic, literally anything. Even in the little things! The spoon you use to stir that potion, the body of the lighter you use to light the candle, the handles of the scissors you use to cut the rope, etc. Of course, as I’m about to say, you don’t NEED to pay attention to any of these things…

What if I have to use the “wrong color” in some part of a spell?

Say you’re doing a candle spell to attract new friends. You personally find a yellow candle ideal, because you associate yellow with happiness and friendship, but all you have is a green candle, which is a color you associate with money, and that’s not at all relevant to the spell. It’d also be best to probably ignore that correspondence with money, lest you attract friends who only care about spending your money or about the things you own, and not you personally. There are multiple solutions to this, some of them being:

1. You can ignore the color and focus on other aspects of the candle. You don’t need to account for every little thing in a spell, and if you don’t focus on the color of the candle and your correspondences regarding green, then it’ll have no effect.

2. You could overpower the color with other physical traits. Carving sigils and stuff into the wax might overpower the influence that the color has and give an alternative physical property of the candle to focus on that has a more relevant meaning.

3. You can consider other meanings of green and see how green COULD be relevant to your spell somehow. Green means go, right? You could say the green is allowing new friendships into your life that way. Nothing, imo, has a single use or correspondence.

4. But even so, if you only associate green with money, you could tie that in to your spell as well. You could attract friends who encourage you to have better spending habits, or have connections with people who could find you a better job.

5. You could look at the relationship that green has with other colors. Green, after all, is a mix of yellow and blue. You could therefore use it as a way to combine the correspondences of yellow and blue. If yellow means happiness, and blue means calmness, then green could bring you a friendship that’s both happy and calming. It’s also across from red on the color wheel. If red means angry, then being across from red could discourage fights in your friendship and make things easier.

These aren’t the only solutions, either. Witchcraft is largely about creativity. There’s an infinite amount of ways to approach spellcraft.

Subtle/easy ways to use color magic?

As a closeted and disabled witch, color magic is EXTREMELY helpful to me in my everyday life. I can start my day off with a little magic by deliberately choosing to wear a certain color in my outfit—even in places nobody else will see, like the color of my socks (which i like especially because I imagine them carrying me to that outcome that I want). If you paint your nails, put on makeup, or wear jewelry, that gives you many options for incorporating certain colors as well.

I buy things considering the color. I have a blue hairbrush because I want my hair to flow smoothly like water. I use a green mechanical pencil because I want to write down the correct answers.

If I can’t make an intricate potion, I can choose to drink coffee out of a yellow mug that morning to subtly enchant my drink to encourage a happy day.

Also, I have LED light strips in my room that I like to change to a specific color in order to paint my day and actions in my room with that magic as well. For example, when I’m studying, I like to turn my lights blue because I associate it with intelligence, memory, and calmness—and I don’t want to be any more stressed than I already am lol. I don’t do any chants or ritual work or anything special to “activate” or cast these “spells” aside from intentionally using these colors for those purposes, which makes it extra subtle. Nobody suspects that you chose to paint your nails pink because you’re using magic to attract more romance to your life. Nobody thinks anything about the fact that you chose to put on orange LED lights in your room because its the color you associate with your deity, and you want to include them some more. It’s super helpful, and extremely accessible.

[sincerelyandyourstruly]

#boyyuri

on xiaoven & yearning

—

so as we all know, "yuri is when there’s themes and motifs and yaoi is when there’s two blokes who do fuck all. if you reblog this you love trans people." (tumblr user dyggot, 2023.); that "yaoi is about entanglement and yuri is about yearning." (tags by tumblr user thyminesquared, 2023, screenshot and archived on this post.)

as should be clear from these definitions, this essay is not going to concern itself with whether a pairing counts as "yaoi" or "yuri" on the sole basis of the genders of the characters involved. although i understand the deeply gendered connotations of both of these terms, to ME, yuri is about the distance between one’s self and others around them (maybe people, maybe dreams and ideals), and the deeply-rooted desires that grow in that gap as a result.

as a post made to tumblr, put in the xiaoven tag, everyone reading this knows the basic lore surrounding their characters and world: that venti is the anemo archon, god of wind and freedom; that xiao is the last yaksha, who wields the power of anemo in battle to protect his homeland of liyue; that Visions are considered to be representations of a person's dearest wish, crystallized into physical form. but let's run over the basics again real fast, just to keep this piece from having external dependencies to understand, yeah?

venti is a wind sprite from mondstadt who ascended to godhood at the end of a rebellion against the at-the-time god of storms keeping his people in a cage made of windstorm thousands of years ago, and he chose his ideal of freedom to honor the bard who led said rebellion and died at the end of the final battle, but whether the nameless bard even got to see the clear skies he fought so hard to live under is currently up to interpretation. either way, venti took on the nameless bard's appearance so that his nation's people would never forget the true hero who won their freedom, but because thousands of years have passed the people have kind of forgotten by now anyway, and venti probably has a lot of identity issues about it!

also he's a bard who plays music in exchange for wine because singing to pass on the memories of heroes past and then drinking to numb the grief of people's forgetting is how he Copes™.

AND ALSO he will occasionally sleep for hundreds of years at a time.

Meanwhile, xiao is an immortal/"illuminated beast" from liyue whose true form is technically that of a bird, but he goes around in the form of a hot emo boy, ostensibly because he needs hands to don his mask, hold his spear, and do his dance to conquer the remnants of evil gods, the act of which literally taints his soul with their sins— his karmic debts.

anyway he was enslaved by an evil god in his youth because said evil god (probably) knew his True Name and because we're going by fairy rules this means he was forced to commit atrocities (namely eating people's dreams) against his will until the god of contracts geo archon zhongli killed his previous master, gave him a new name, and contractually tasked him with the job of subduing the demonic remnants of other defeated gods, which he has since proceeded to unflinchingly, unwaveringly, and unquestioningly obey for the last few thousand years. however, despite his unfathomable obedience and devotion to his duty, his Vision (his life's greatest desire) is that of anemo (of freedom).

also a few hundred years ago when he was about to succumb to the weight of his karmic debts, xiao's life was saved by the sound of someone (venti) playing the flute in the marsh where he'd been working, and so now his dream, the deepest wish he holds closest to his heart, is to someday "wear the mask and dance — not to conquer demons, but to the tune of that flute amid a sea of flowers." (xiao's character card, genshin impact, 2021)

…can you guys believe that the dihua flute moment was like all we xv shippers had to hold onto for like two years?! that, and xiao's extremely yearnful voiceline abt venti that's just like, "venti? is that what he goes by these days? his tunes are… nevermind." but the point of this recap i hope has become clear by this point: that the relationship btwn xiao and venti seen through these few snippets alone is just rife with potent yuri energy.

like, to elaborate on the opening of thie essay, yuri is specifically about the uncross­able distance between two people who are already sitting right next to each other, so close that only a single thread of wind could even hope to weave its way between them— although, as evidenced by the fact that such a thread of wind could weave its way between them, they are still shy of truly touching— and the painful yearnings of being unable to close that gap… even though you both exist so close to one another, so similar in both place and time, you are the only thing stopping yourself from reaching across that seemingly infinite distance.

as a result, i think that unlike yaoi, yuri— thematically speaking— tends to have a greater mutuality to it: whereas i understand being in a yaoi to be more about acting on one's impulses towards one another and passing along cycles of power, i believe that an important aspect of being in a yuri is the constant fear and anxiety of violating an unspoken boundary because you're afraid that you aren't actually on the same page about those.

deep down inside, you know that you're not supposed to want all the things you've built for yourself in all those private daydreams and self-indulgent fantasies you've created about yourself with the other person, because you know you're not supposed to have drawn your boundaries the way you have, such that the other person would be let in on the most intimate parts of your identity (if they were willing to see all that is ugly sleeping under­neath your skin.)

as mentioned in the paragraph summarizing his lore, xiao's youth was marked by the fact that his very autonomy was continuously violated in service of forcing him to violate others' boundaries, crushing their hopes and devouring their very dreams. his deep cultural ties to liyue as the land of contracts means that he carries within him a keen sense of obligation as inseverable as the need to breathe; thus, saddled with guilt and believing himself to be incapable of gentility, he has come to view himself as nothing more than a weapon for others to use.

in signing his contract with the geo archon, xiao went from a situation where his agency was continuously denied and his boundaries intimately violated to one where he relinquished his agency and had his boundaries delineated for him by his new lord.

he has no desires of his own; immortals aren't so worldly. (if that were true, he wouldn't have a Vision.) he is not an active subject in his own life; anything he does is the effect of someone else's will. (if that were true, he would have stopped protecting liyue the moment that he learned his lord abdicated his rule.) he does not let anyone near him; it is inevitable that his karmic debts will force his hand against them. (if that were true, he wouldn't have been saved by the sound of venti's flute playing nearby.)

don't you see? he places himself in a subservient role to everyone around him, rigidly obeys every ritual of propriety, because he is afraid that by asserting agency over a situation, he will end up violating other people's boundaries again. except that this time, the responsibility for doing so would fall squarely on his own shoulders.

during the main quest arc for liyue, zhongli literally fakes his own death as an archon so that he can finally retire and be free from his own contractual obligation to the nation. this gives us reason to believe that xiao's contract with the geo archon has thus been rendered void, meaning he no longer has any obligation to continue his endless suffering for the sake of liyue— yet he does so anyway.

i think a lot of fans tend to view this as xiao needlessly chaining himself down to his duty, something that's often framed in fanworks as something rather tragic in venti's eyes. however, as the god of freedom, venti feels very strongly about giving other the freedom to make their own decisions, even if he himself may disagree with them or wish they had chosen differently. others' autonomy is deeply important to venti, perhaps even so far as to call it sacred: to order anything from anyone would be a violation for the boundaries venti has set for himself as an archon.

and because we're all familiar with genshin impact lore, what i have to say next should go without saying, we are all so familiar with it: the element of a person's Vision will be directly related to the kind of ideal they strive to meet and uphold, and as such, can generally tell you a lot about a person's desires.

xiao wields an anemo Vision— the only known anemo wielder in liyue until the arrival of xianyun, presumably because that is how deeply ingrained the binding sense of obligation is in its culture— and wears it visibly on his person at all times. it would be ridiculous not to believe that venti knows, and intimately so, just how xiao desires.

and i think that a lot of fans can fail to consider the idea that to xiao, his duty of protection is a choice he made of his own volition when he was first set free, and is, in all likelihood, one he continues to make in canon. yes, this choice comes with a great many obligations restraining him in various ways— but do our choices truly mean anything if they are not bound by obligation? this is something venti would obviously understand and respect as lines drawn in the sand by xiao himself, and he would never dare even suggest they be crossed.

it's clear from the various scraps of in-game lore that xiao craves proximity to and knowledge about his savior in the marsh. yet, he refuses to go out of his way to attain these things and will even deny ownership of these desires altogether because in a sense, they are blasphemy: venti, although not his archon, is still a god.

might seeking venti out over zhongli not be considered a sign of detracting, or perhaps even failing faith in the unwavering sureity of the geo archon? or even if it turns out that's not so— who is xiao to ask anything of venti? the god of freedom must surely be a flighty little thing, following his every capricious whim. to ask him to stay would be akin to tying him down, no?

clearly, there is no need for xiao to call out for him. if venti wants to be with him, he will simply be there.

(and if he doesn't, then he won't.)

((after all, it is the duty of the servant to wait on the master's call.))

it's easy to imagine that these two immortals might end up in a sort of song and dance of propriety for a while, that at fight might be genuine, but eventually just becomes habit and custom. they both want, in some way, for xiao to lay down his duty, to be free of the strict hierarchy of master & servant or god & disciple. but for venti to say it so plainly would feel like he's trying to convert xiao to his ideals— a discomfort that would more than likely only be compounded by how seriously xiao takes the word of god(s), and how expressly venti hates being treated like anything but an equal— and so he would hesitate on his feelings; whereas for xiao to speak of his desires so plainly, it would feel like a betrayal of his duty— that which he chose to shoulder as his first act of free will.

you see it, right? the gap between these two characters, whose lives will otherwise touch and cross over and over through their long, immortal lives, and the mutual desires they can both plainly and painfully read in one another, yet never individually act upon due to their already-established senses of propriety, tradition, and boundaries?

these are the basic yuriisms of xiaoven genshinimpact.

[spacenintendogs]

FOR THE SHIP

WHO ELSE BUT FISHLOUT <333

BINGO. I LOVE THEM. they're my everything they're my pies they're my faves i want my faves 2 kiss kiss fall in love they're idiots snotlout pining is also always so fucking good and they definitely fucked between return of thor bonecrusher and dawn of destruction i will not accept criticism at this time thank you

it's so easy to say "fishlegs nerd, snotlout jock" and make them opposites or whatever but there's more to it than that for me but if i were to get into it we'd be here all day so <3

[greenmther]

when i think of alicent, especially as an adult, i don't think of her as a particularly happy person. the last time she was truly happy, actually content or care free feeling was in her youth when she was with rhaenyra. but, then all of that died when she was put in the position by her father to marry viserys and that relationship was effectively taken from her in the process. from the time she married viserys until time in her current adulthood ... alicent has never been fully content, never been totally happy. she gets moments of it, glimpses of it if things had been different but then once those moments pass ... the happiness or joy leaves her as soon as it comes. ( she experiences them most with helaena, with her children before jaehaerys's murder and then even that is tainted by a child being killed in his bed. ) which leads me into the idea of alicent and suicidal ideation and it's persistent present in her life.

there have been moments in her life where alicent had contemplated killing herself. more so after she married viserys, before she began having children. she was in such a bad state of mind for most of it because she had been pushed, maneuvered, into a position to marry someone she didn't want to .. which then spiraled into the responsibilities of being queen which she didnt want to be. it is not a life she wanted for herself and she felt extremely trapped in it, still does even after viserys is gone. its often this feeling of being trapped, unhappy, (among other things) which makes her contemplate.

and the idea she would be expected, forced, to have children by the same man who she didn't want to be with. didn't love. and a man who didn't even really ... see her as her. but, as a replacement figure for the wife he had lost was her first contemplation of it. and we know viserys views her as a 'replacement' of sorts because as much is evident by the robe we see alicent wearing in season 1, ep4 the following morning after she was called to viserys's chambers for the purpose of sleeping with him. that morning alicent has on a robe, aemma's robe we see in season 1, ep1. then, another time in season 1 ep7 during driftmark -- viserys called alicent "aemma" and even after he was corrected, loudly corrected, he didn't acknowledge what he had said. alicent didn't look shocked which leads me to believe it happens often. not only in day to day life, but more likely whenever he would sleep/sleeps with her. ( i think of cersei, again, when she says "i was a living girl and he wanted her [a dead woman] more than me" about robert baratheon and lyanna stark )

there are several other times, periodically, throughout her life she'd she'd considered suicide, however .. she never went through with it each time. why ? i often think about a quote from cersei in game of thrones when she said: " if it weren't for my children i would have thrown myself from the highest window in the red keep. they're the reason i'm alive. " and this is also very true for alicent. it's what held her back, made her abandon the idea every time and more when she had more and more children. she didn't want to leave them without a mother because she knows what it feels like to not have one. she did not want to abandon them via suicide with no one but the men around her to look after them, raise them, inform them because she knew they would likely turn out worse or have some misfortune befall them if that were the case. she sure as hell didn't want to leave them with viserys who didn't seem to show much care for them, not with otto who would use them as much as he could. she had to be there to protect them, to be there for them. even if she struggles to connect and understand them, to be a mother to them, she still couldn't do it because they need her in some capacity. because she loves them.

and another reason/person being rhaenyra. like in the one episode during season 2 when she goes out into the kingswood. she went there, as confirmed by showrunners, to drown herself in the lake. what stopped her ? seeing the bird flying overhead that reminded her of rhaenyra on syrax -- the one person that's always made her happiest. the person she was happy with last and whom she still cares for, loves (shipping aside even), and can't see herself leaving behind by killing herself.

[roscoehamiltons]

brocedes?

(send me a ship and i will tell you if it makes sense and if i find it compelling!)

brocedes -> makes sense, doesn't compel me

this might be one of the most controversial fandom opinions i have (or maybe not? idk i feel like there is actually a decent subsection of lewis fans who don't like brocedes lol). tbh i actually do like the idea of brocedes. like i said earlier, intense rivalry dynamics really intrigue me and compel me. there are ships with similar dynamics/trajectories that i really enjoy (namely rosquez lol, but also pierrestaban and prosenna). it seems like there's never ending lore about them and i love digging into lore. i love history. i love fandom meta. and ofc it involves my number one blorbo babygirl lewis, so in theory it should be something that i enjoy and eat up.

but i don't lol. for a couple reasons i suppose: the first being that valewis is the number one lewis/f1 ship of my heart. it is to me, what brocedes is not, which is part of why it works for me. the second reason, which ties into the first, is that i got into f1 relatively recently (2021) and nico was not on the grid then. i think the nostalgia factor is one of the key elements of brocedes, especially if you saw their relationship break down in real time-- which i did not, so i started off with very little emotional attachment to them and did not gain much. (also nico is not my blorbo lol although i do think he's an interesting person. i don't actually dislike him if we take him out of the brocedes equation)

the third reason, which is the most important reason, is that most of the shippers are extremely annoying to me lol. i'm not against shipping in general ofc (otherwise i wouldn't be doing this ask game) but the way they act drives me bananas. i hate how they make everything that lewis does about brocedes. if lewis goes on an interview show there's speculation about whether nico would be mentioned. if lewis does a side project then there's theories about how it ties to brocedes. lewis has so many accomplishments and passions and facets to him both with and without nico, and twisting everything about lewis into a delusional fantasy is honestly dehumanizing (not to mention annoying). obviously not every brocedes shipper is like this (and no one i follow is like this) but i see way too many people being weird and irrational about them in a bad way that it leaks into my enjoyment of the ship and the fandom itself. so it's ended up that the more people talk about them, the more i actively end up disliking it, out of some kind of spite perhaps. maybe it's silly to let others behaviour affect how much i like or don't like something lol but that's how i feel!

[crescentfool]

some scribs based on things i saw at kawaiikon 2023 last week, i had a lot of fun! (in which i use minato + my squidkid as stand-ins for myself)

bonus comic + some thoughts about the con under the cut!

gotta love when u think it’d be cool to cosplay but then completely forget to get anything for the cosplay (i forgot to go to look for yellow fabric for a ryoji scarf)!! so u just go as just some guy (my wardrobe has a few items that remind me of my faves).

ANYWAYS for the con itself, i had a lot of fun! something about it was very humanizing, just knowing that there were other people in hawaii who also like persona (and the other things that i am into). i got to pull out my beloved minato nui/plushie and share him with other people which was. fun!!

the cosplayers were super cool too! the femc cosplayer was super sweet and they had!! a p3 protag itabag and it was so ?? heartwarming and cool for me to see that?? and the akechi + kokichi cosplayers being in the same proximity was also very cool to me (idk i feel like they’re just both interesting characters).

and of course the artists were very lovely... i was very surprised 2 see so much persona 3 (thank you p3p for being put on modern consoles) there, haha. i paid the minato tax™ aka that’s what happens when your favorite character is like. the protag. i have so much beautiful minato art in my home now. i am so happy and normal about this. my heart is sold to him. he has such incomprehensible boy swag that transcends the universe. but anyway.

this is very rambly but um idk im just! grateful and appreciative! that other people are out there that enjoy media that i like especially since they were so scarce and far between (other fandoms showed up more frequently). would i go again? dunno, depends on what im into by the time next year rolls around. but i’m glad that i went this year, for sure 💙

[magnusmodig]

||. was browsing through tags of a comic thor post and found this beauty in someone's tags:

i love the acknowledgement of odin as a godking above father & how that’s hurt thor not just loki

obviously, I won't name the person's reblog on this blog but it's something I've always felt is largely true about the mcu odinfam situation, particularly where the father and the boys are involved.

Odin's parenting style (being strict, and the all-father above just a father), hurt Thor just as much as Loki. They were both hurt by their parents and especially in vying for their father's approval. (aka: his affections, because really any child desperate for their parent's attention, approval, pride is really just craving unconditional love.) People seem hard pressed to believe that this sort of pain was exclusive to Loki... which I fundamentally don't understand. (Need I remind everyone that Odin didn't just say "you're unworthy to call yourself a king and a hero bc you're being selfish in your ambitions"... which is true. He also got a good, walloping "you are unworthy of the loved ones you have betrayed" TO HIS FACE before being stripped of his powers and banished to some backwater planet for an indefinite amount of time...)

The reality of the situation is Loki always had Frigga to lean on, confide in, and be in his corner. Even if it was off-screen, truth is that he told Frigga what he learned about being a Frost Giant the first chance he got. He confided in her his worry for Odin's health ("i never get used to seeing him like this"). She actively expresses support and validation in front of him in a way that Loki at least positively acknowledges even if he doesn't always receive the words, and while I don't believe Thor wouldn't have gained the same solace from his mother, I am of the opinion - based on (this deleted scene from "THOR") in particular - that she would give support in the same way she would with Loki ... and it never landed with Thor. Because Thor is not Loki. And Frigga doesn't always know how to speak to Thor so Thor can hear her.

So, really at the end of the day, whether it was true or not, Thor only had himself to emotionally rely on. Coupled then with being primarily under the express tutelage of an extraordinarily strict father who was priming Thor to uphold his own legacy, (apparently not be anything like Hela despite the two kids being polar opposites) and 'never seek out war but must always be ready for it' and then you get a sentiment that ultimately can be summarized in Thor's words at the end of Dark World when he comments his reason for surrendering his birthright of his own volition: "I would rather be a good man than a great king." (which, sidebar, but I am entirely convinced is Thor commenting on his father's way of ruling, his father's way of parenting, his father's way of being. And quite frankly, no, I don't think the real Odin would ever let Thor give up his birthright to go live on Earth when Odin is old, dying, and the whole of Asgard is primed and ready to follow Thor as their new All-Father.)

alt., in the words of comic!thor his (extremely mixed) opinion of Odin:

"A hard god, my father, but one who would move heaven and earth for his children. And did , quite literally, on many occasions. From Odin, I learned command. I learned the ways of the worlds and the godly arts of war."

[electrical-banana]

Hey @maeve-on-mustafar, thank you for the ask! Unfortunately it's trapped in my inbox omfg so I guess I have to answer it like this instead. Functional website.

Anyway, I love to chat. ❤️

Up front, my answer to this is informed by my own take on canon, which may differ from some other interpretations bc I'm a Legends fan and not super into the Filoniverse. I feel like I need this little disclaimer bc I won't be discussing TCW, I'm mostly interested in what we see in the PT.

But based on that, I personally think the answer to the first question is yes, he is aware of that. Not to sound pithy or dismissive or anything, but I can't imagine Anakin not knowing that about himself-- if he knows anything, he knows that. I believe in the tags you're talking about here I make a reference to his comment in TPM where he says to Padme that he "wouldn't have lasted long" on Tatooine if he hadn't been so good at building things-- he was born into slavery, his entire existence violently delimited by the labor his enslavers could forcibly extract from him, and even the values Shmi instilled in him ("the biggest problem in this universe is that no one wants to help each other "), righteous and selfless though they may be, were predicated on this idea that your worth as a person is dependent on what you can do for or give other people. This is also a core tenet of Jedi ideology-- a giving over of the self to serve the greater good in the galaxy. "What can we do for each other? What do we owe each other?" seem to be questions that George was trying to explore in the six-film saga, and he grapples with this questions using a protagonist who spent his formative years hideously abused and exploited as a child slave. Insane btw. Insane man. In the PT, Anakin is flanked by two supporting characters (Obi-Wan and Padme) who both define themselves by their service to the galaxy. From his point of view, this is ALSO how he would describe Palpatine, regardless of our knowing that Palpatine was only ever projecting a false persona to pursue his own ends. And these are three of the four people who are most important to Anakin (the fourth ofc being Shmi, a slave, also inescapably defined by what she can do and give), the three people whom he idolizes above all others. What you can do for other people-- your usefulness, your utility, and how far you'll go to prove it-- is central not only to Anakin's sense of self, but the entire concept of goodness as it exists in Star Wars.

To get to the crux of it, do I think Anakin only "lasted as long as he did" with the Jedi bc he was especially useful to them?? Absolutely yes. Regardless of the actual validity of that, it's what he believed. This is a guy whose brain was borked from infancy into believing that his survival is dependent upon his exceptionalism, his productiveness, his cultivation of valuable skills and his ability to serve-- his personality formed around this, and it wasn't simply a "belief" to him, it was a fact, it was a component of the actual material conditions of his life on Tatooine, and he knew that if he failed to exceed the expectations of his superiors, there was always some worse fate waiting for him just around the corner, whether it was death or violence or being sold to a worse enslaver, and when I mentioned in my tags that his usefulness is a matter of existential security, it's very literal, this is what I mean. And a person doesn't shed this mindset just bc he goes to live with new people somewhere else-- no matter how nice the Jedi may have been to Anakin, you can't reset a child to factory settings, the only personality he has and has ever had is the one that formed under the horrific and violently-enforced conditions of slavery, there is no unfucked version of himself that he is able to fall back on or reconnect with once he's free. This is the identity he's got.

And what do we know about the Jedi permitting Anakin's training? We know that in the span of like 24 hours we go from Qui-Gon telling Anakin "I'm not allowed to train you" to Obi-Wan telling him "the Council has granted me permission to train you." What changed? No character ever outright states what made the Council reconvene on a settled matter, though we do know it must have been a controversial move based on Yoda's uhh dissatisfaction ("agree on you taking this boy as your padawan learner, I do not") with the outcome. I don't think Qui-Gon's death alone was enough to sway the decision, and I don't think it was done out of pity or a sense of obligation or doing right, I think we're meant to believe it was because of Anakin's participation in the destruction of the blockade of Naboo and the plausibility of the Chosen One prophecy coupled with the threat of the return of the Sith. Like half the time we see the Council, they're bandying about the question of Anakin's Chosen One status and the validity of the prophecy, we know they view him in a different light than they do all the other Jedi. After his initial assessment and rejection, Anakin certainly knows that he was only later admitted into the Order under extraordinary circumstances, having failed to pass the ordinary test. I'm not sure if as a nine-year-old he knew anything about the prophecy, but he definitely knew that destroying the Trade Federation command center ended the Naboo crisis and saved the day. And that is uhhhh one hell of a special exception to win over a group of people who wanted nothing to do with you the day before.

So he uses his Skills and decisively (explosively) ends a planetary occupation and the Council does a complete about-face and decides that maybe they can train him to be a Jedi after all, that the advantage of that may outweigh the perceived danger he poses to them (lol). This is setting a precedent. This is, to use extremely simplified logic, "as long as I can go above and beyond to solve other people's problems, people will want to keep me around." We don't know the conditions underlying Anakin's tenancy with the Jedi Order-- we don't know what would happen to him or where he would go if being a Jedi Just Wasn't Working Out; the one time he asks, Obi-Wan simply tells him, "You will be a Jedi, I promise you." Presumably they wouldn't just send him back to Tatooine to fend for himself but that still leaves a whole galaxy of alternatives lol, and when this character's path to self-actualization begins with "I had a dream I was a Jedi. I came back [to Tatooine] and freed all the slaves," any of these alternatives would be, from his perspective, the something worse that's waiting for him just around the corner should he fail to prove his exceptional value. It's a failure that threatens what he believes, with a child's conviction in fairytale heroes, is his only way of accessing a power great enough to overthrow the oppressive establishment on his home planet (appealing to the political process for justice is useless when the entire political process is mired in self-serving corruption, as the entire PT lays out) and heal the damage that was done to him and pretty much everyone he knows. This failure is obvs unacceptable. He can't live with himself if he's not a Jedi capable of saving the slaves (his mother), the moral injury is too deep. So he has to keep proving himself to these people so they keep wanting to keep him around. Certainly no Jedi ever said to him, "Anakin, if you don't become the best and strongest Jedi ever, we're going to send you to the glue factory and everyone you know will die in terrible agony and it will all be your fault," but it was nonetheless the reality imposed on him by his being unsalvageably clinically fucked up. Children exist at the behest of the adults who accept responsibility for them-- following a major life upheaval involving even a voluntary separation of a child from his only (and vital) support system, there is little stability in the knowledge that your new guardians (essentially strangers) could send you away on a whim if they suddenly decide you're too much of a burden to continue dealing with ("Qui-Gon sir, I don't want to be a problem"), especially when you have no recourse to appeal that decision. Therefore, it's up to Anakin to cobble together his own sense of stability the only way he knows how.

To address the second question, I guess it's difficult to imagine if Anakin would still feel the same in a galaxy without Palpatine bc a galaxy without Palpatine is unrecognizable to the universe as it was established in TPM-- Palpatine orchestrated the entire plot, he laid the whole foundation and set all the players into motion, how Anakin might have come to the Jedi Order without Palpatine is entirely up to individual fancy. But if what you mean is, would Anakin still have felt the same if Palpatine hadn't been involved in his personal life?, I still think the answer is yes. I don't think this was an idea planted in his head by Palpatine at all, I think it's an idea that pre-dates Palpatine as an influence on Anakin, even if Palpatine later exploited and manipulated it for his own gain. And honestly, I think the whole Jedi ethos probably did more to reinforce this idea in Anakin's brain than anything else-- the Jedi teach selflessness to the point of self-sacrifice, and it's easy to see how this teaching, while rooted in dedication to justice and public service, could feed into Anakin's pre-existing anxieties about needing to be useful, and how usefulness is analogous to goodness/worthiness. To say nothing on how self-sacrifice can tip so easily over into self-destruction, when pushed to extremes. It's not that Anakin's life as a Jedi is in any way equivalent to his life as a slave, and I def don't think the Jedi were demanding Anakin be their Super Specialest Boy or else they would cast him into the Outer Darkness, it's just that his worldview will always be impacted by his enslavement and the lessons he integrated into his lived reality during that period. This is exactly why training him was "too dangerous"-- he would never be able to "purely" assimilate the Order's teachings, they would always be filtered through the lens of his prior experiences in ways the Jedi could not anticipate or control.

HOLY SHIT. Sorry this got so long. There are a lot of half-baked ideas here I didn't fully explore, so sorry if my points aren't coming across. I just find this to be a huge and interesting topic and it's hard to condense all my thoughts down into something readable bc I've uhhh spent a lot of time thinking about it and trying to wrangle that into coherency is. Challenging. Lol. 💀 If you have any thoughts you'd like to share, or if I missed your point entirely lol, I'd love to hear from you!!

[nostalgic-bee]

Viktuuri Week: Day 7 Soulmates

@viktuuri-week

"In every universe i will choose you"

-

As they get off the ice after finishing their duet Yuuri felt overwhelmed with the noise around him, the loud cheering and yelling combined with the lights made his head hurt.

He felt a gentle arm wrap around his shoulders and he looked up, even with his blurry vision he could tell Viktor was grinning at him.

“That was beautiful Yuuri, a performance worthy of making history” Viktor winked at him and Yuuri only smiled at the praise.

-

A universe away a merman falls in love with a human, The human visits the merman daily. He walks along the shore towards the rocks and smiles at who he sees in the distance.

"Vitya!" He yells.

The mermaid looks up with a smile "Yuuri!" He calls.

As Yuuri closes the distance between the two of them he can see the necklace that Viktor is holding, one decorated with seashells.

"I made you this" Viktor says carefully laying the necklace on Yuuris neck, Yuuri looked down at it with a smile.

"Thank you Viktor, Its beautiful" he says.

-

Viktor stood among the crowd, though he didn't even register the people around him as he stared at Yuuri. His fiance stood on the stage, a microphone in hand. The only thing he could pay attention to was the song that Yuuri was singing, accompanied by loud electric guitar and loud drumming.

No matter how much of Yuuris shows he went to he was always amazed. The way that Yuuri sang the songs with such passion and emotion, how his voice perfectly suited the music around him.

Alternative music wasn't Viktors thing, but the way Yuuri performed it made him think differently.

-

Viktor looked at Yuuri, the two of them had been sat in silence reading next to each other.

"I love you" Viktor speaks up breaking the silence, he looks over at Yuuri who was giving him a fanged grin.

"I love you too Vitya" Yuuri says moving so he can give Viktor a kiss on the cheek.

Viktor returns the kiss to the vampire and wraps his arms around him so he can pull him closer, "Yuuri?"

"Yes?" Yuuri looked at him curiously.

"If the multiverse was real, do you think we'd still fall in love?" Viktor asked.

"I think so, i think in any universe i would find you and we would fall in love, because in any universe i would choose you" He responds, the answer nearly makes Viktor tear up and he immediately kisses Yuuri, when he pulls away he nods, "I will always choose you"

-

In every universe one thing always remains the same.

In every universe Yuuri Katsuki and Viktor Nikiforov meet.

And in every universe they fall in love.

[ofgentleresolve]

ferre's thoughts!

hi everyone! so sorry to have been absent ( or at least very sporadic ) here and across all my other blogs- i promise i never stopped thinking about my muses and all of the wonderful dynamics i have with everyone!! recently though, i guess i've been feeling a bit...meh about this blog?? so i'm just going to ramble for a hot second in these bullet points to air out my thoughts and hopefully i can get to some kind of conclusion here....feel free to throw your own opinions in here if you want to!!

this is my fault, but uh, i think i accidentally isolated myself on this blog?? like, these days most of my activity rp-related has been in discord, but i would like...to reach to ppl again if they are still interested....that being said, i know i say i love plotting with other muns, but i also know that truthfully, it takes me a while to open up and it probably doesn't help that i can take like weeks to get back to ppl ic wise....i dont want to get into the details but i'll just say that this summer was kinda...not great ( don't worry nothing bad happened, i'm just going thru a rough patch....) so that's been killing my writing mojo for a while ://

this also relates to the first point, but i realize plotting really does make a difference to me about whether or not i'm excited for a thread so i'll probably make a note about that when i rewrite & condense my rules....

ever since i moved patrick to his own blog, i've noticed that annie ( and since i gave him a connection to her ) and ga ram seem to be the most active on there...tbh there are some muses on my main muse roster that truthfully, haven't been used in months due to the lack of plots/active dynamics- i don't want to get rid of them bc nostalgia and i do intend to write them on occasion, but....if they aren't garnering as much interest then i might just have to switch around my rosters a bit....

this blog isn't nearly as much of a slice-of-life blog as it used to be....if anything, i feel like it might be better to call it a crime & slice-of-life multimuse considering that the muse who seems to come out the most often now is annie....as such i was wondering if....perhaps changing the aesthetics of this blog might help with getting into the mood for writing on here again?? if anything patrick and calum's blogs seem to embody this blog's current core themes more ^^'

this might also mean changing the username for this blog....although i will say, i am quite attached to this url as it's been my brand for YEARS... but on the other hand perhaps a url with a bit more...grit to it could help ( that and if it is change then better to accept than resist...right?? )

also saw lena on my dash ( WHICH WAS A SIGN OF A GOOD DAY FOR ME 🥺🥺🥺 ) and i lowkey?? wanna follow in their footsteps aka be more lax and free-flowing on here...so i might drop the formatting ( sans the small text ) bc that does, i will admit, take up more time to post responses than anything else :'D

okay if you read all of this, thanks for listening, i promise everything will be fine on my end <3 i really really just miss writing on here and being part of dashboard shennagans so....hope to see?? you all soon in the meanwhile, will try to get to some memes & maybe do the bingo boards for some of my muses here <3