#that are only thematically connected

[whetstonefires]

#this is a really good post #but also. I’m obsessed w the casual use of the phrase ‘Wei Wuxian piths himself’ #what a description (via @morethanwonderful)

thank you! and yeah i. ever since i generated that description i have not been able to unthink it. there is i believe no more efficient, correct descriptor of what he did in the English language, and yet what a fucking thing to say.

jiang cheng is a funny character because i fully support either liking him or not liking him, but i see so many takes (especially when he shows up in a supporting role in fic) that seem completely unhinged until i pin down which of what i consider the fundamental facts of his character are just not being applied at all.

it’s like:

1) this is not a mentally well guy, especially after Plot starts happening, and he spends the entire story getting less okay. the only time we ever see any improvement happen in jiang cheng is when wei wuxian piths himself getting the guy out of his suicidal phase, causing many more problems going forward but fixing that one. jiang cheng is not okay and it’s all downhill.

2) he cares so fucking much. like you can write a jiang cheng who is a deeply selfish bastard and you have an excellent textual basis, but it’s not because he doesn’t care about other people, at least the ones that are his; that’s a different kind of problem than the one he has.

he would in fact be less of a problem a lot of the time if he cared less, because he does not have the emotional management tools to be useful about it. also the narrative is conspiring against him but like.

(there are a lot of ways to be selfish and jiang cheng and lan wangji are actually remarkably similar in the basic type of selfish impulses they have. they just have very different childhoods and values shaping how they act about it. and then lan wangji manages to become a mostly functional adult, while jiang cheng is generously an electrified pile of bad coping mechanisms. he’s functioning! but like. at what cost.)

3) jiang cheng is dutiful. even the most selfish jiang cheng is someone who perceives and values himself in terms of his function and obligation; he and wei wuxian have different personalities and worldviews, and for that matter expectations placed on them, but they both learned that lesson, presumably together.

4) sort of an extension of 1 and to a lesser extent 2, Jiang Cheng is emotionally insecure as a base state. his parents made some major errors, at least half of which should have been avoidable except they would have had to deal with their own shit first.

it’s not out of the question, in a different lifetime where he didn’t get several years of compounded irresolvable traumas as his coming-of-age present and then left alone to stew in pain and denial for over a decade, for him to have learned to handle it better and even mostly get over it! that could have happened! it just didn’t.

to an extent he’s insecure about different things as a grown man than he was as a boy, life experience makes a difference. he’s built confidence about some things and become absolutely shattered about others. but he’s a person who is easy to wound, in all kinds of complicated identity-related ways, especially by Wei Wuxian specifically, and his kneejerk response to that is to lash out in reply, whether the wounding was intentional or not.

the fact that Wei Wuxian spent most of their lives giving every evidence of being completely immune to being harmed by this reaction masked its toxicity until things got real ugly real fast.

jiang cheng absolutely has the capacity to not do this! it’s a deeply rooted bad habit, not actually a fundamental of his character. but it requires self-awareness, will, and (if he’s going to keep it up) a lot of practice. it’s not the kind of thing that just goes away on its own, even with a bunch of alterations in context.

i don’t have like a closing argument here i just keep finding that takes on jiang cheng that don’t work for me, whether generous or condemnatory, always seem to disagree with me on one of these main points.

[valgeristik]

Ничего не останется от нас, Нам останемся, в лучшем случае, мы

hi. hello. listen to this song

i have so many thoughts about these two. oh my god. maybe i will write it out some day, but for now drawing it out will do

translation will be under the cut! knowing the words does add to the work so i do recommend reading it. or just enjoy the art <3

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heres the translation, color coded according to how i broke it up for the art. just in casies

first page:

Love is scarier than war

Love strikes more true than steel

second page:

More true, because of your own volition

third page:

You run towards all the winds

Let there be pain and eternal battle

Not atmospheric, not earthly

fourth page:

But definitely with you

caption:

There will be nothing left of us,

we will be left with, in the best case, ourselves

[rawliverandgoronspice]

given that seems to be the new popular take in the fandom at large since totk got out: let the record show that I'll gladly let myself get repeatedly manipulated by the wind waker speech and be foolishly moved by its implications over rejecting space for humanity and vulnerability in the monstrous and the dispossessed, and then feeling weirdly smug about severing that fleeting attempt at connection and deem it obviously insincere

[kvroii]

Poisoner's City, Chapter 14 - Marun is taken to Laboratory 12 to undergo a procedure to relieve him from the effects of a strange spell that's making him act strangely. But that spell was another of Marun's bluffs! Desperate to escape the machine and the consequence of his lie, he attempts to break open the lid before the procedure begins.

(Part of an ongoing project to illustrate each of the main scenes of the Myrios Series!)

[scroogemcducksbastardchild]

recently realized that the reason i’m so attached to angst and queerbait is because that longing is the closest thing i can feel to romantic attraction. romantic fluff doesn’t mean anything to me (if anything it makes me actively uncomfortable) and cutting a story off before it gets to that point is my way of.. living vicariously through the characters, i guess. grief is the closest i can get to heartache.

[hiems-incaelo]

the way that the shattered teeth is just longing for warmth.. the dolabos being captivated by fire, the ghost captain taking fearne's warmth, the strange necrotic spirits leaving laudna and orym cold -- I'm loving this theme

[salamander-crimes]

thinking about it, the simplest explanation for ralsei being able to show up even in dark worlds that aren't connected to castle town would be for his light world equivalent to be something kris keeps on them.... hm.

[navree]

wayne family adventures going "we're gonna make an entire season about the joker and center literally everyone EXCEPT barbara and jason beyond the bare minimum" is certainly a choice and lemme just say, it is Not a fucking good one

[some-creep]

Still thinking about how I, signalis name corrector guy, was actually wrong about a name 😔

[litres-of-cocaine]

all the losers who think donnie darko’s theatrical cut is better than the director’s cut should never watch a movie again, actually.

[valiant-portabella-pirkko]

"Don't you ever wonder what waits beyond the stars,"

"Where the sun we know is only a cinder in the sky?"

[girl4pay]

conspiracy theory if anything jons birth name would be brandon

[bravadoting]

Thinking about Tsugumi and how she fits into the Shinjuku Reapers’ story.

With the other members, it’s clear how their passivity in communicating with Shiba further enabled Shiba’s power trip. It was a dysfunctional team where people were hesitant, and later afraid, to speak their minds.

However, Tsugumi actively tried to warn Shiba and was punished for it by Kubo. This inclusion created a contradiction to the previous theme, one that I’ve been unable to reconcile until now.

I think Tsugumi’s communication failure may have been her medium, Trailer. She probably used it to covertly relay warnings to Shiba.

As seen in A New Day and NEO, Trailer messages can be confusing and disorienting for the recipient trying to parse out the situation. And even when the receiver does understand, they may be resistant to the message as Shiba was (especially since this ability is exclusively used for bad news).

While Tsugumi has a useful latent power, it could only convey so much information and shouldn’t have been her sole method of reasoning with him.

Finally, it would show growth on her part that she’s now able to emotionally connect with Shiba and get her message through to him in the finale.

[cavewolf]

can somebody get jaru out of the kitchen

[silentsockfeet]

wait okay new tlou hbo theory: each episode is structured to show a parallel between a specific character’s backstory and what is happening in the present. they’ve already flat out said that ep3 is gonna be about bill and frank so i think it would actually make a lot of sense for them to use that as a base episode structure, and it would fit really nicely with the overall story arc

first ep would be joel’s backstory of course, second ep likely tess’s, fourth ep maybe that hunter from pittsburgh that starts the revolt?, fifth - sam and henry, sixth uhh tommy and maria?, seventh probably ellie circa. left behind, eighth marlene or david maybe, and then the finale could be anna to parallel joel’s choice.

[elephantbitterhead]

Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, after realizing that I will probably never be able to do the splits.