#the thing itself wouldnt have been wrong in a different context but i was a child and couldnt process the things that i experienced

[caffeinatedopossum]

I'm so emotionally exhausted

[sillyyuserr]

Chapter 117 analysis (WE’RE SO BACK) obviously spoilers for chapter 117 and chapter 114

i cooked with this one trust

Everyones looking for them yadayadayada terukane

Yk im pretty sure this is meant to be lore heavy but LOOK AT THEM

I don’t know how to word this correctly but since chapter 115/116 between akane and teru there seems to have been something that happened in which they stopped being freaky?? 😭 like ykwim hold on

in chapter 114 this happened

completely ruined almost everything they had, but in the span of a few days, shit still going on, they havent had their deserved break yet like they got on chapter 96-97 and somehow in the midst of all this teru’s forgiven(?) him and just moved on?? Really not sure but based on what we know ab the red house the next chapter may answer some of our questions

Also, this is so little i didn’t see it the first time reading but teru goes to the drink machine thing to get one and mixes like 4 of the sodas,

takes one sip decides its shit and switches with akane’s already half drunken out of tea. Indirect kiss guys wait

Also this is JUST like the date they all went on when aoi was gone. Again, aoi is gone here too 😭 my girl getting left out of everything is acc crazy

She comes in later tho and finally gets caught up for the first time in forever MAN aidairo must hate her😭

But also

We find out mitsuba and kou are going there TOO so for the first time i think ever we have the whole gang in one spot 🤥 alot of firsts this chapter smh

ALSO an honorable mention to this i saved best for last

Sir stay away from my children

ok but fr i have no fucking clue what to say ab this cus this is either ‘teehee im right ur wrong!!~~♡’ type shit which he does alot, or genuinely like what we all think it is, which considering outside context may, in fact make it make sense trust let me explain

teru says shit like this ALL THE TIME its kind of his ACTUAL personality aside from his fake shit, like the way he is only around akane and sometimes kou (at least what we’re shown) so you’d think he’s used to this, but his initial reaction is more of a ‘um. what.’

ALSO— backround MATTERS, the backround in this one, is pure black, which is only shown during stuff LIKE THIS (important stuff) example:

Black background either means its dark, or its something important, something meant to be remembered, or something like that (probably)

and that panel had a BLACK BACKROUND

Why is this important you may be asking, it has a black backround— so it must be, right? If this was a silly little ‘teehee you can’t do this im better than youuu!!!~~♡’ then it probably wouldnt even have a half panel it’d be another one of the mini panels, but it not only had a whole panel for just this, a black background ;blocking LITERALLY EVERYTHING OUT ASIDE FROM THIS AND WHAT HE’S SAID, but also, pay attention the contents of what he said.

(a different translation, this one is easier to read)

‘you are not in any position to oppose me, are you, aoi? ♡’ could mean, A LOT OF THINGS so i’ll put them in a bulletin here because any of them make for an interesting path we may be taking on ‘this’ reality😭😓

Number 1: he could be impliying, and or reminding akane, that he’s still engaged to aoi, and that if akane still thinks they shouldnt change this reality, he should reconsider, CONSIDERING he is engaged to aoi, as aforementioned. (Most likely this one)

Number 2: the power dynamic, yes akane is a school mystery with the ability to control time itself but also, teru is an exorcist, a skilled one at that— and could probably easily overpower akane in a 1v1 (lowk hyped to see this happen pls let them fight) teru may be poking fun, or reminding akane, that teru is in fact powerful, more than he seems to keep fresh on his mind — them having SO MUCH to do

Number 3: maybe instead he just felt like teasing akane and i wasted time+space for nothing and was looking way too into it (this is supposed to be the terukane option😪)

Never once has he used this before??? Obviously you cant talk in symbols but the heart kind of implies the user of this symbol is talking in a playful/slightly flirtatious tone, hence, the reaction:

Okay okay point is i think teru is still madly in love with him

WAAAHHHH just look at him pooks who else does he do this with smhh 😓 NO ONE

which i think may be PARTIALLY true but also not entirely because mayb im just a tweaker

Me when i when i ehen you whrn you when

This may make no sense at all, or alot of sense man idk its 3:12am i go back to school in like 2 weeks i am not ready for sophomore year gn

terukane will be real one day trust🤍🤍

[fictionfixations]

the dawn knight in place of yuu

MAJOR JP BOOK 7 SPOILERS

(anyway i like calling him the knight of dawn but also thats too many words for a name im going to be repeating a lot throughout this post so dawn knight)

okay so. i was thinking about a fic to write where a character had a part of themselves appear somewhere else? like ive been getting into omniscient reader but i have a diff story im trying to commit to rn so i cant really write something with it when i dont really know shit that happens besides like end game spoilers lOl

but i find the idea of like the 49/51 (?) interesting? i think thats the right numbers. no context to people who dont know what that means but that part broke me even though all i know about omniscient reader is by reading a shit ton of orv fanfiction. my heart man... sob.

but so anyways my mind wandered to the dawn knight

kudos to that like one fic where the dawn knight's soul appeared and attached itself to yuu except i read it when i didnt even know who he was but i thought maybe he was a buddy of lilia so im just reading and getting confused on like no why you no like lilia what (also he doesnt remember iirc and i think that was just like a instinctual feeling cause yknow humans vs fae??) but uh i know context now lMFAO

but like

just imagine this person who looks like silver but blonde. who doesnt remember who he is (as hes kind of more of just a fragment of his soul? but like he appears in NRC and not RSA because he still has a lingering attachment towards silver. wanting to see him grow because he never got the chance to)

who worries over silver

is a little nervous around fae, but maybe this is ooc but like without all the pressure from what the fuck was his name henrik(??) and like the people around him who are all anti-fae, cause he wouldve liked it if they couldve been in peace and stuff yknow? and also without those memories so its not too difficult for him to get past that and see them as people who will probably not harm others (LOOK i just want twst characters to be happy man cause everything is so sad :((( )

anyway lilia has grown since then and doesnt hate humans. maybe he doesnt exactly know how to feel about the dawn knight (UM like cause meleanor. or is it maleanor? i think thats EN spelling but tbh if not for en i wouldnt know how tf to spell it. but uh ykNOW.. he kinda. uh. still killed.)

but then maybe it becomes clear that this dawn knight (who needs an actual name. dawn sounds too on the nose and i dont think lilia associates dawn with positive feelings considering when maleanor died didnt it turn dawn or something. and then they broke down because shes DEAD.???)

is not the same dawn knight he met so long ago.

like

idk

think about it in like a. okay im pulling out honkai star rail examples now. but think of it maybe like dan feng and dan heng where they're like reincarnations of each other? but not the same person? (some people think of them as still the same considering i think(? its been a hot minute since i went through story) those memories of those reincarnations are then shared to other incarnations to help them in high elder duty thingy whatever its called but i think of them as entirely different people who happen to look similar)

i guess you could view it as a 'i once was [this], but now im this and im not the same person who did all those things'

EDIT: I AM WRONG. 2.5 spoilers but its mentioned that someone made dan heng remember his past life so its NOT canon that they remember their past life. "...led her to perform certain healing arts on Dan Heng, who had just finished his hatching rebirth, so that he would regain the memories of his past life?" but anyway thats how it turned out so uh just pretend that i mean reincarnating/past life type deal but stlil having some of those memories of the former life

idk maybe theres some lilia treating him as another son since like. all three of them are orphans who were taken in???? like its implied parallel of lilia being taken in by the mal... dRACONIA family sorry i forgot the last name om. and the dawn knight being taken in by the whoever is in charge. like the dad of henrik(?) and that person whose name i cant remember i think it was leah who the dawn knight liked and married? but so anyway they both got taken in by a family and owe them a debt and fight for them (and care for them. although idk about henrik ew, but he was also like. wanting princess glow(???) which could supposedly grant wishes i think to like cure their ill father, and saying that the dawn knight should do it for leah or something? i cant remember but he convinced him with something something leah)

i dont know where im going with this thought but like. i remember the dawn knight said something like. if things could be different? but like it cant be because they've gone too far now to forgive each other? but like he wanted there to be peace.

i remember thinking about lilia's wish in the wish upon a star event, maybe it was similar i cant recall exactly

Lilia: My wish is... ...for humans, fae, and all other species to live in harmony. [Img of the wishing star] Trey: Haha, wow. That's a pretty ambitious wish. Lilia: To join joyous hands with one another is no simple feat, even for those among the same species... To say nothing of the difficulties across species divides. You've learned about our history, have you not? All the countless tales of our failure to compromise, and the resulting conflicts? I have no desire to see such history repeated. So I make the same wish every Starsending.

like the dawn knight expressed regret that it had to be this way and wanted things to change but it was far too late. but like. he never did that stuff now (well lilia will remember so poor grandpa but. he's also been really forgiving towards humans when doing it for someone? like he endures it? like when he was searching for a way to hatch malleus and these people were really against lilia for being fae when he just existed, and he didnt fight back because it would paint a bad picture for the draconias? there was another example related to silevr but i cant remember it im. not what i was thinking about but theres also when he contemplated killing baby silver but changed his mind because he'd been trying to teach malleus to like. 'walk in time with his neighbor' and so and so and i forgot what he said but that how could he do that when he should be like setting an example for malleus or something right?)

also silver learning who his parents are in a maybe less traumatic way (like NOT running away knowing malleus' mom might die and then oh shit the ceiling collapsed and IS THAT THE ENEMY oh god please dont let malleus' egg be hurt and then he shares the same face as me? and that ring-- cue silver hating himself and being dragged in by darkness and i am just sobbing my eyes out like no silver he loved you so much :((( )

and even if lilia still holds anything against the dawn knight. still has lingering feelings even towards this not-dawn knight. that he wouldnt want to condemn the dawn knight, and then have silver condemn himself for being of that blood even though he didnt even do anything yknow?

and then when lilia dies he can meet up with the ghosts of maleanor and raverne (is that spelled right? i genuinely cant remember the EN spelling but it was something like that. uhh.??) and i know thats sad but i want lilia to be able to spend more time with maleanor and raverne too yknow? but im not sure how to do that

maybe. like the. the the . council? i cant remember its name fshuidfh but those assholes who appeared when we made it to. blackscale(?) castle... ? i. forgor. maleficia(THATS GRANDMA RIGHT?? i get so confused by who is who in draconia) castle??

but like when we get there with malleus' egg and then maleanor dies

and theres just these voices of long dead old geezers who are bitches to lilia and i hate them and i dont know how they're still there and can talk but i dont want maleanor there because they're horrible. also they literally said her sacrifice was like noble or some shit like that and im just like BITCH- (also lilia is banned from the capital or something isnt he?? like i mean he can still visit the castle. but secretly. but still :( )

so i just think.

fully getting over stuff. heart demons. talking things out. lilia gets to talk about stuff for the first time in awhile (remember when like literally no one talked about the circumstances regarding malleus' birth or something so silver and sebek just had no idea what they were getting into??? and like i guess he could talk to baul? baur? idk which one is the one on EN i forgor. but idk man.)

not-dawn knight being a really good listener. being understanding, sharing his input where appropriate. and like he also gets some of his memories which put a lot of things into proper context. and so sharing thoughts of so and so. and just. basically this talk that spirals into moving on.

sharing frustrations, sharing things that never really got to be known.? like regrets, etc etc

since i think the last time they met was when silver father reveal, and time passed and he died so its just all these lingering things that never got to be said out loud for various reasons. like maybe because company is against so and so so to say something would be like idk maybe traitorous? i dont think thats the right word but words are hard and i keep forgetting words the moment i need them

its like. the unique point of view of talking about things between former enemies. like how they viewed things, etc etc

and then when lilias lived a full life, no regrets, he meets maleanor and raverne in the afterlife.

oh yeah also about his dorm i have no fucking idea. i honestly mostly forgot what each dorm represents but either ramshackle or diasomnia, which i know is like nobility or something? but anyway dawn knight married a princess, also i associate diasomnia with fae / briar valley which is related considering hes book 7 stuff so im pushing him there anyway

or maybe the mirror cant read him because his soul is fragmented. or maybe retcon and his soul isnt like that? idk but i like to think the other part of his soul is in the afterlife with his wife yknow? and eventually silver will be there and able to meet his mom and huggies, and acknowledging that these are who his parents are, but also that lilia is also his parent and the one who raised him yknow? there can be more than two parents in my eyes.

its just that his soul is like in half because of the part of him that wants to have seen silver grown. i think i said this earlier in the post but that since the last time he saw silver was as an infant (also he had blonde hair so-)

also wasnt infant silver asleep for like hundreds of years until it was either because someone who loved him came by (lilia) or because the spell finally wore off (which is what lilia thinks. i dont know where to put my two cents at tbh of which i think is right)

so dawn knight just sitting there in the afterlife like. ..man. my childs still not here. i mean. thats a good thing that they're not dead but like. i kinda wanna see them.

or well silvers the only one so i should be saying he but gidfhuj

also it was either leah or leia i am a dumbass? maybe leah was the EN one. idk i forgot.

anyway thats enough yapping for me

[blackvahana]

personal ramblings

No birthday wishes please, ignore I said anything about it, but uh as context today's my birthday

Lev got me a necklace, a stone in it... Im really not good at channelling this. Honestly Im infinitely grateful for how he gave it to me, he passed it to me in a box and said happy birthday and left so I could open it in private. Ngl I have been. infinitely stuck in terms of progress because I have a lot of expectations on me regarding clear sight, astral prowess, and so on, so my senses are constantly shut down so I dont get things (Cant go wrong if you dont go!)... he gave me time to sniff it, figure it out for myself, and when I was still having trouble he came to me and gently explained. bless him lmfao

But anyway. Its... Im not going to question what exactly its made from yet, but its for storing and accessing memories. Its slowly integrating itself with me, allowing me to actually remember where Ive been, and. so on. I think its more so allowing me to just parse memories in the subconscious and unconscious minds - or I guess allowing me to parse them more naturally and less confined to the instantaneous recall.

I. admittedly. uh. Memory is a bad topic for me. I dont want to remember any of my life, nor recent past lives on Gold's side. I dont really remember much of it anyway. Im forced to remember school and living in the place Ive trauma from nightly, nightly for years. The five years I was living with the twins... I couldnt remember my own name, where Id been that day or any days prior, i had no memory. I had no memory of steps id taken, what the house and room i was in looked like when it wasnt in view - and even when it was in view id have patches of it being completely foreign to me - and so on and so forth. It was... horrible, uh, the years after school. From age 14 onwards going from an As student down further and further to the point i couldnt pick up any hobbies or any skills or learn anything about fucking anything because i wouldnt remember even if i managed to be able to read more than a sentence - dissociation so strong i was blacked out most of the time if we're talking about memories

My life is dictated by... having to remember, carrying memories i cant access, and trying to forget. Having to remember as in i need to wake up the parts of myself that are my unincarnated selves - the energy lines to them - and how to do what i do and... so on. and then im sure you get the latter two. Im holding this and... I havent had a natural relationship with memories and memory since i was... 17. I am now no longer 27. I am 28. I have left the decade of hell and now hold the choice to remember

because thats what this is about, he wants me to remember the good things i do, which i never can. I write endlessly here about being shocked xyz thing happened and that i did this and that and then blank, and keep presuming i am powerless, talentless, never succeeding in anything. Ive lately been trying to remember and see myself differently, allowing rereading past posts where im surprised Ive achieved things as I remember doing them to inform a different reading and interpretation of who i am.. but. you know. its one thing to walk through life being forced to have faith in your own faltering feet, blindfolded and always bumping into everything, and another to be able to take in your surroundings and use the memory of what youve seen to inform the world. As in: I struggle to remember that where i am is somewhere ive been, who the people around me are, where they go when i cant see them. if i could just. remember...

[probably-haven]

Hello!! After seeing what you wrote about xiaoven fics I went to see what things you usually write and omg, your archon Venti headcanons????? I am absolutely in love. So if it isn't annoying, could you talk about xiaoven or Venti or Xiao or whatever ship or character you like? I don't care what you are going to say, I just want to know more about your thoughts ^^

I- is this... bestie, this is essentially a free ramble pass- kerujsgheskdfug. Trust me when I say that in no way is this, and in no way will it ever be annoying in the slightest- i literally- lets just say rambling off thoughts is kind of my specialty, especially when provided a topic to branch off of because otherwise I'm just- really indecisive about it so- iujskdh yeah- 100% definitely down to talk about Venti, Xiao, and/or Xiaoven XD. Also, yes- it may have been awhile since i last posted one(cuz again, indecisive about which direction to take part 5), but the Archon War Era Venti headcanons are still without a doubt my favorite posts I've made. It's just such an interesting topic with such endless potential that so few people actually think about or consider or even realize is there, so i always just get really psyched whenever i see someone interact with them lol.

.... this ended up being a bit of a mess: warning in advance

Anyway! onto the actual content!

- You see the thing about Xiaoven is that there's a lot of different ways that it could end up working out, and just personally my favorite way of portraying Xiaoven in my mind is as an unlabeled relationship because if anyone in genshin would give off that vibe its these two. And a number of other reasons.

- Firstly, I heavily headcanon Venti as being an aroace polyplatonic or perhaps heavily demiromantic. However, regardless of this I just don't think that Venti is really the kind of person to worry about how he should label his feelings, thinking it's silly to try to put them in one box or the other, especially with feelings and emotions being as fluid as they are in general. Plus it fits his whole God of Freedom vibe. I just- dont think he's the biggest fan of labels or social categorization in general.

- And secondly on the hand of Xiao... his defense mechanisms are very much ingrained in his personality. It's probably hard enough for him to not go into fight or flight(the answer is fight) at the slightest affection at first, at the slightest feeling of vulnerability. Even further down the line, with his fierce dedication to Liyue, I cant help but get the vibe that the moment he recognized that he was falling for Venti he would begin avoiding him, not only to avoid distraction from his duty, but to avoid corrupting him or losing him in general like he has with like basically every other person he gets close with(even believing that the cycle had repeated once more when he first heard of Morax's death)... now imagine Venti tryna slap a label on their relationship and tell me Xiao would have a positive reaction.

- The thing with Xiaoven.... honestly, i feel like theres more ways that it can go wrong than it can go right, but if they do manage to make their relationship work out, it's just simply beautiful in all terms of the word.

- Lets talk about killing. - During the Archon War, both were forced to kill a large number of people and gods alike- Venti out of a need to remain alive to protect Mondstadt, it's freedom, and the nameless bard's legacy by extent- and Xiao out of servitude to the god that was once his master

..... actually- break here- ive talked a lot about Venti on this blog but I havent actually spoken about Xiao all that much- so i should probably do that a bit first... do note though that my characterization of Xiao is pretty flexible actually- this is just- the possible characterization of him that i tend to favor as being the most- uh- "realistically complex"

-

Theres a line I saw this one time in a certain story: "He is a trained weapon. That's what he is, was, and always will be. You cannot change that so stop trying." And i just- think its a really interesting concept- that applies pretty well to Xiao now that i actually think about it. - the concept behind it is this: After spending more than a vast majority of his life killing or otherwise in battle, it's become a part of who he is, a normalcy that after centuries and centuries would be near impossible to get rid of or reverse, and even if it was possible, with his karmic debt constantly eating away at him its unlikely he has enough time left for that to happen. - it sounds like a cruel thing to say about him- but in context it's actually pretty layered and i think about it a lot. It's not as much a "he's a killer lol, that his whole personality" its more of a "The centuries of trauma he experienced have conditioned him into a constantly alert and battle ready mindset while also shaping his dehumanizing inferior-in-worth-but-superior-in-capability view of himself that would have likely been necessary to get through those time, and at this point he's been under that conditioning for long enough that it's essentially ingrained itself in his personality."

- the main idea is- it's a part of who he is, that needs to be accepted as who he is because its not something that he can just up and change. It's not all he is of course but his constant battle mode, as though always waiting to be ambushed or to be granted a new target to eradicate.

a couple character story quotes:

-"His past of service under the evil god had rid Xiao of his innocence and gentleness. All that remained within him was the means to kill and the weight of his sins. The only way he could be of service to mortals was in combat." -"Xiao does not feel any hatred. Having lived for over two thousand years, no single karmic debt constitutes anything more than a fleeting memory. No grudge can last a thousand years; nor is any debt so great that it cannot be paid off in this time. Xiao has spent many long years alone. But his battles have never been in vain." -"where did Xiao have to return to? He was merely leaving the battlefield." -"since Xiao wages a constant war against dark forces powerful enough to devour Liyue in its entirety, any bystanders who witness him in the heat of battle are likely to end up as collateral damage." -"The war he fights can never be won, and will never come to an end." -"Because ultimately, the one with whom Xiao wrestles is himself."

i feel like at some point this very nearly did consume his whole personality, almost turning him into nothing more than a being of slaughter under Morax's control, devoid of any "humanity" at all, consumed and corrupted by his karmic debt like his fellow yakshas before him. - until he experienced a moment of clarity- a song in the wind, the peaceful melody of a dihua flute. - and pulled back from the border of something he wouldnt have been able to return from, there a was a shift in his mind- a concept grown unfamiliar enough with time that it took him a great time to identify what it was; a curiosity. Something that there was no place for on the battlefield, something that by all means should have been completely useless to Xiao, and yet he held onto that curiosity, slowly regaining over time, a sense of who he was and who he could choose to be with each song that the wind chose to carry towards him every once in a blue moon.

and eventually that curiousity turned to longing. Longing "for a day to come when he will wear the mask and dance — not to conquer demons, but to the tune of that flute amid a sea of flowers"

...... uh- heh- if you couldn’t tell already i have a tendency to make my characterizations/analyses of characters more serious that i probably should. 

to summarize: Xiao is constantly toeing the line between his ingrained nature and his humanity- almost as though still trying to decide how much of that humanity he deserves to have, how much he is allowed to have, and how much is safe to have.

^looking back after writing this, i think the best way to explain it is that this is the view that i keep in mind/the lense that i tend to most enjoy looking through and refering back to while examining and/or analyzing his character, actions, story, lines, and overall personality.

idk- i kinda got off track but i just think its a really interesting interpretation to think about because it has some really interesting implications ig- it’s not the full extent of how i view him of course, but i kinda got ahead of myself and its long enough as is so ill just elaborate as i go- Lol i actually have in progress playlists for both him and venti and just- vibes- i could ramble about the playlists alone for hours explaining everything... It’s probably a problem- uh- ill keep going now lol.

anyways! stepping off the angst path for a brief break! Brought to you by their lines in the snow: both waiting for it to get thick enough, Venti for the purpose of a snowball fight and Xiao for the purpose of a tasty and nutritious breakfast.

but its actually something of note that Xiao doesnt actually need to eat so anything he does eat is usually out of obligation or enjoyment- so like.... snow.... like i dont blame him, but of all things- an adeptus who refuses to eat basically anything but almond tofu looks at the freezing-cold-floor-water that yeeted itself from above and decided at some point- damn- that seems more edible than basically ever single actually edible thing ever.... im gonna eat it- like- im glad if eating snow makes him happy but- at the same time...

He probably convinces Venti to eat snow too though and Venti wouldnt even resist I mean he’s wind and has probably consumed worse things in his time so- 2 anemo cryptids with glowing tattoos sitting in Dragonspine monching snow in the dead of night is an amusing thought to me.

- kay, now back to more serious-toned thoughts

One of the things about the ship that i really like is the different contradicting parallels between them:

A lot of how i view Xiao’s character is someone formed largely by the things he cant control and who was forced to accept that accepted that and learned to thrive in it as much as he can.  Venti on the other hand is surrounded by things he cant control and is ever adapting to control as much as he can while embracing whatever he cant as being part of the unpredictability of the world, seeing beauty in it. 

both of them have lost people and do what they do to honor their memory: Xiao continues to do what the Yakshas once did And Venti chooses to do what his friend couldn’t

Xiao’s power coming from himself  and Venti’s from others And both seem to appear to use their power for their own gain while truly helping others behind the scenes

both have killed a lot of people during the archon war Xiao views it as another necessary event out of his control and Venti would likely view it as a tragedy he chose to enact himself

and this is where we meet out balance

Xiao- contrary to how i think a lot of people view him as thinking of himself as a monster- seems canonically to have accepted this as part of his duty, as long as those he killed are not mortals. I dont think he enjoys it no- but someone has to do it and he’s just accepted that its a part of his duty Venti on the other hand-

See the beauty of the ship- as someone with an angst-centric mind- is this- these are two of the most traumatized mfers in the game 

Xiao is by far the one who needs the most help and who can serve to benefit most from the ship- but he is nowhere near self aware enough to recognize that there’s anything wrong or unhealthy about his mindset in the slightest-

whereas you have the contrast with Venti who sorted through most of his trauma with the nameless bard alone during the archon war and while the result appears more healthy- is still really not- but he’s not self aware of that either because i mean- who’s going to tell him? nobody even knows. 

however- venti is aware enough to notice flaws in Xiao’s mindset and “Venti” enough to want to help them through it-

Xiao- while not aware enough to recognize the flaws in Venti’s mindset, can recognize where it contrasts with his own, and is blunt enough to point it out- and then it’s out there to be mulled over- 

they’re so similar and yet so different and a feel just conversing between the two of them, being in each others precense, just being exposed to two mindsets that are so very different could do both of them a whole lot of good.

GEEE THAT BIT OF RAMBLING HAD LITTLE TO NO DIRECTION AT ALL- LET ME-- LET ME MAKE THIS START MAKING SENSE- WITH... DYNAMICS OR SOMETHING

I don’t think Xiao needs to sleep really- and i dont think that sleeping would do anything except make him uneasy at first- he’d probably just get nightmares after all he’s been through- but with Venti he would soon learn that it doesn’t have to be that way, lulled into the first peaceful sleep he’s had in... as long as he can remember.

anywho back to not making sense cuz im fickle and i think most questions about ships are best displayed through character interactions so like- a possible exchange thats cliche but cliches exist for a reason

Xiao: Why do you try so hard to help me, it isn’t easy. I know that much Venti, with the most adoring expression: Because you’re worth it, obviously Xiao: But surely there are others more deserving of- Venti: No Xiao, everyone is just as deserving as the next person, you included Xiao: Then why me above others? Venti: ehe, cuz ur my warrior of course [O//////O oh shit, hes right] Xiao: My contract is with Morax alone [gay panic but in broody yaksha]

it’s kinda difficult cuz neither of them really address their feelings.  I mean Venti does but he does it very indirectly and its rare that he ever does it with like- genuine directness- even spilling his backstory was in the form of a song- and told in the third person- so a lot of their interactions would often have some deeper meaning, especially with Venti being the bard he is. 

I come up with a lot of- errant thoughts about Xiaoven- but this is making me realize that a true analysis of their ship is rather difficult because it just encompasses so many dynamics so its hard to settle on just one and not go rambling about who knows what bouncing from one end of the ship to the other-  Because you truly can and thats the beauty of it

within one moment you can be having a heartfelt conversation about the archon war the impact of lost friends and times past, and the next moment Venti is trying to forcefeed Xiao an apple while Xiao screams about disrespecting the adepti and its just- so lovely

so while they have picnics with nothing but apples, dandelion wine, and almond tofu they can sit down and talk about the dreams Xiao once devoured, and the dandelion wine and apple cider that the first Ragnvindir invented from the plants that never could have grown in Old Mond. The foods that tasted of familiarity, or of the grilled ticker fish Pervases always used to eat, foods that tasted of friends and frankly family that had since passed, glaze lilies and cecilias and qingxin flowers scattered in the surroundings and woven into Xiao’s neat braids and Venti’s now messy ones, rebraided by the steady and inexperienced hands of one unused to gentle action. 

and then of course Venti steals Xiao’s tofu once the mood becomes too grim and replaces it with a bottle of wine that Xiao refers to as “vile poison,” a remark that fatally wounds Venti as he collapses on the floor, proclaiming how he can only be healed by a Yaksha’s kiss. Xiao ignores this of course and simply takes back his tofu with a slight smile on his face, but as Venti persists he soundlessly places a kiss on his own palm before intertwining their fingers and pulling him back up from where he was dramatically sprawled on the floor, grumbling about how such action was “unbecoming of an archon.” A sign of affection only Xiao would ever know about. But Venti is literally wind and I hc his senses work differently anyways so he definitely knows- plus Xiao’s face is red as the blood of his enemies and the way he is pointedly not looking at Venti at all really speaks volumes anyways. 

 -Venti playing epic battle music whenever Xiao goes into fights in what looks like a ridiculously extra performance to anyone else but is actually doing wonders to keep Xiao’s karma at bay

-Venti preaches the practice of “kissing wounds better” and Xiao is unfamiliar with this medical treatment but views it as unnecessary regardless because adepti have accelerated healing, doesn’t mean he’s going to stop him though. 

-Messages whispered on the wind

-Venti’s 1000 year sleep- an accident, not a fun time for the yaksha, and not a fun time for Venti once he woke up. Venti is actually more afraid of restful sleep than Xiao is, hence the sleeping in trees thing, but when Xiao is there, he can sleep restfully with faith that Xiao wont let another millennia slip through his fingertips. 

- Xiao tends to make excuses when doing things that aren’t necessary to his duty, like in his birthday voice line “Have this, it’s a butterfly i made from leaves... Okay. Take it. It’s an adepti amulet -- it staves off evil” because at the current point in his progress it helps him to feel like he’s allowed to do these things. Not wanting to put him off from progress, Venti never comments on his excuse but never fails to whisper a quick reminder of how proud he is of how far Xiao had come.

- Xiao’s karma saddens Venti greatly- not only because of how it effects Xiao but also because its a reminder that as much as Venti tries to honor the memory of those he’s killed, there will always be those who resent him for it, and when he took the option of living away from them, he truly can’t blame them. - And when he gets too wrapped up in thoughts, whether around this topic or similar ones or otherwise, eventually, he’ll hear the sound of a flute on the wind. It’s not divine by any means, but as his own wind connects him to the source, he gets the sentiment all the same. “What impact does one individual’s remaining wrath have on the present. You have done much to help the living in the present” the unspoken idea that Xiao has included himself in that statement, because now, with Venti’s help he’s beginning to learn just how to experience living for himself. 

- Venti’s form and Xiao’s mask are off limit topics though because if either mentions it the other will counter with the opposite and the mood will turn immediately bitter at the idea that both know that what they’re doing is destructive but neither are willing to change

- Venti who has different tells for negative feelings than most people because as much as he likes to pretend it is- this form isnt his, and Xiao who is able to identify those

- many fanfics and headcanons have Venti recognizing when Xiao is uncomfortable and getting him out of those situations. I see that and I love it but i raise you: - Venti taking Xiao to Mondstadt, careful that he doesn’t get to the point that he’s uncomfortable. And nothing goes wrong exactly, but Xiao notices the the way Venti’s cape is blowing in the wind, the way he’s holding his weight, barely on his feet so much as floating on the wind, connected with the ground only for the sake of appearance, all the while he looks just as happy go lucky as ever. And without a word, he grabs his hand and teleports them both out of Mondstadt.  - turns out it was just a slight thing that reminded him of the archon war (cuz i will die on the hill of him having more tragic backstory than just Decarabian), and he of course gives a sincere if not flustered thanks to Xiao, because he’s really not used to people noticing. 

- Venti trying to vent sneakily through fictional stories and Xiao is just like “Didn’t that basically happen to you” and Venti is just like “<_< shit”

- Venti once said affectionally that he wished he had met Xiao sooner and Xiao immediately and seriously shot it down by saying “If you had, I would have been forced to kill you” and both of them now stay up at night wondering who would have won that fight, not sure which result would have hurt more. (because honestly I have no idea who would win in that fight and that terrifies me- I like to think it would have been one of those legends that end with “and the fight persists to this day” or something along those lines)

- “How long have you been together?” “Adepti have no need for-” “1000+ years T^T how dare you deny our love” “O///O our...? ...useless”

- its disney- let me explain- i have this- i have this headcanon inspired by watching too many animatics- - so venti has a human form that isnt his- which he would have had to get used to moving in- and he’s a bard- - uh- anyway- as a third degree black belt in mixed martial arts, i can speak as an authority on this(not really an authority since i havent gone since quarantine but lets pretend). We have a thing referred to as the big three(most things do), and those things are martial arts, gymnastics, and dance. The idea is that they reflect really well off of each other and the best in any one category are good in all three. Timing, balance, form, discipline, technique, hand-eye coordination, grace, ease of motion, they all play a part- anyway-

- Venti taking Xiao’s prowess in martial arts and acrobatics and teaching him how to dance, and as someone who’s extremely skilled in the first two, the third comes easy to him, almost naturally. And it’s delicate and beautiful and lovely and it isn’t hurting anyone. And Venti points all these things out and more and despite how much Xiao insists that he feels ridiculous he truly does enjoy it and it goes a long way towards helping him form more healthy views of himself and his worth.  - Verr Goldett walked in on him once and made a joke about performing at the inn. unfortunately Venti was there and agreed on Xiao’s behalf before he could protest and- and it wasn’t as bad as Xiao thought it would be... he still wouldn’t do it again though without reason, but with good enough reasoning he could probably be convinced. 

- anyways point is he likes dancing to Venti’s songs and i just think that’s really cute - just picture the idea that all the animatics you see actually have the potential to be canon- ugh

- venti tries holding something out of Xiao’s reach since he’s taller and Xiao just fucking teleports 

- both need their space but when they dont, all they have to do is speak the other’s name and they’ll be there.

- and because i just had to.... love languages

- lets start with Xiao- i don’t think he’d view acts of service or quailty time as a love language tbh, and he blunt but really bad with words so affirmation is out, leaving gift giving and physical touch. However, he seems to view most material things as meaningless so- - Xiao who’s love language is in his fleeting touches, something he’s only recently grown comfortable with because of Venti, and now is giving back, which he knows he doesn’t have to do, but that he want’s to, though he’ll still continue to make excuses for each one. “you were shivering” “The inn is high up, you could have fallen..... I said what I said, you’d question an adeptus?”

- and as easy as it is to say words of affirmation for Venti- he does that for everyone- i want to say his is actually acts of service - its the acts of service that let him see just how much Xiao has progressed afterall, from teaching him to dance, to playing another song on the flute, to supplying him with the almond tofu he seems to enjoy so much. Every little thing he does helps Xiao to grow and he couldn’t be happier about that. 

-

- of course most of my headcanons for the ship do take place latter into the relationship because- y’know the less serious unhealthy vibes allow for greater range of thought, but i do still love to think about the serious implications so i kinda hopped back and forth. So sorry about how messy it is btw, i kinda- got carried away- it kinda got some kind of structure near the end tho so- maybe it’s okay. anyway- back to... lol something, we’ll see where thought forests lead. 

[castiels-majestic-wings]

HISTORY

Paring - Loki x Reader

Word count - 2,124

Warnings - None

This is my first fanfic so please don't be too harsh, but I would greatly appreciate some of your opinions on how i can improve my writing. Thank you.

It had been three days since you came to Asgard. Thor had offered to take you after hearing that your thesis was on Asgusrdian History. He had explained that the library was full of ancient knowledge. Of course it was mostly in Old Norse, but he showed you the section you would be able to read and understand.

Being an unofficial member of the Avengers came in handy when it came to your University papers. Of course you helped them when the time came but you weren't a true Avenger, you were neither trained in combat nor held any special gifts. But you were a tactician. And a good one at that. You already knew Tony and when he had asked for your help on a mission, you had to accept. Of course school came first but you could never refuse Tony of the help he needed. Especially when his life was on the line. And you helped save his life. On many occasions. He had asked you so move into Stark tower after that. Of course then the Avengers came and you became friends with them all.

Steve was easy to get along with, he didnt understand most of the references you made but he's always there for you. It was easy to tell Natasha anything and everything, her being the only other girl on the team made it easy for you to open up ro her. Bruce was smart, you didn't understand most of the things he said but being around Tony so much made you understand a little more than the others. Clint was a father figure to you. You knew about his family already, so you always went to him for advice Steve couldnt give you. But you never really understood Thor, after all he came from a different realm. And after witnessing first-hand what his brother did in new york you had found it difficult to trust him, thinking if Loki was capable of doing that then the other god could obviously do so much more.

But these past three days have been very helpful, you have been stuck in the Library reading non stop. The history of Asgard was a lot more than you expected. Thousands of years worth of wars, protests, evolution. It wasn't much different from the history on earth. The development was the same. The first war was about taking land and Asgard had claimed it. The second was about beliefs and claiming the opposing opinion was always wrong. The third was about a king who couldnt rule. So the Asgardians fought against him until his son took over the throne and ruled over Asgard better than his father ever did. It intrigued you greatly to find that you weren't that much different.

But it was today that you found out Loki was in Asgard. It scared you of course. After seeing the genocide in New York you never wanted to face him again. But Thor had pleaded about Loki's change of heart, explaining that he wouldnt hurt you or anyone again. He gave his word. So you trusted him. But when Loki entered the Library, you couldnt deny the fear that had crawled its way up your back. He sat down across the room facing you but his eyes were focused on the book in his hands.

Looking at him, seeing him again. It brought back the memories of new york, the way his eyes darkened whdn he found you in Stark tower. Powerless and scared. You heard Tony speaking to you in the earpiece, asking for your next move. But you couldnt speak, Loki had his eyes on you. You knew you had to tell Tony somehow. So when he came close enough you muttered to yourself.

"L-loki." He heard the fear in you voice, saw it in your eyes. And he grinned. He enjoyed placimg fear into peoples hearts. And you despised him. You heard Tony yelling at Thor to try and get eyes on you from outside. You hears the panic in his voice. But Loki didnt do anything to you. He went back to the portal device to talk the professor he had under his control. You told Tony quietly where in the tower you were and that is what gave them the upperhand.

But looking at Loki right now. It shocked you, he looked so peaceful. Like New York never happened. You didnt understand. But Loki felt your gaze om him and looked up, his eyes meeting your own. Your eyes widened and you shot your head down to resume your reading, trying to hide away.

His gaze lingered trying to recall why he recognized you, and when he remembered he felt remorse. You were the only human he didnt try to hurt in New York. He didnt know why he couldn't, maybe it was the look on your face. Or the knowledge that you couldnt move in fear he would do something. He knew you wanted nothing to do with him. He could tell you were struggling to be in the same room as him so he took his book and left to his chambers so he wouldnt bother you. That action put many questions in your head. Why did he leave? Did he recognize me? Was he trying to be kind? You couldnt comprehend his actions, but were thankful none the less.

It had been a week and you had read most of the books you used to help with your thesis but the last one you needed you couldn't understand. It was in English but it was very confusing to you. You knew Thor couldnt help because he had other things to do. And the only people you really spoke to during your time here were the servants who Thor had sent to give you meals and remind you to sleep.

That gave you one more option that you dreaded to even think about. Loki. He obviously loves reading, he came in daily to change his book and left immediately after, and he was Asgardian so he knew the history. But you just didnt want to face him. Your history wasnt a good one. But you knew you needed help. And he was academically smarter than Thor. You knew which room was his, you asked just so you could avoid it. He had avoided you to make you feel safer - or that's what you presumed at least. It was the last bit of information you needed for your paper so you had to do it. The sooner you did, the sooner you could go back home.

So you bravely got up and headed to the side of the palace you avoided at all costs. The layout was almost mirrored so it was easy to get around. Then you found his door. You hesitated for a moment. Contemplating if you should even do this. You hand was balled into a fist ready to knock, before the door opened by itself. You looked up to see Loki's radient blue eyes looking down at you in confusion with a raised brow. You dropped your hand to your side. There was a silence between you before you spoke.

"I need your help." An amused grin appeared on his face his eyes never leaving your own.

"Oh? And what could i possibly help you with that my dear brother cannot" His voice was dripping with sarcasm, obviously amused at your request for assistance.

"I need help learning Asgardian history and no one i know is academically smarter than you. You-you come to the library daily to change your books, so- its obvious you like to read" You were surprised you could form a sentence, let alone two. He broke you away from your thoughts with a chuckle.

"Yes i enjoy reading, it would be a pleasure to help you darling" Darling? The way he said it made your heart skip a beat. Was it the intimating tone? Or the fact he gave you a nickname. You couldnt tell. But for the first time ever you gave him a genuine smile.

"Thank you very much. I left my stuff in the Library, i didnt think you would accept my request." This time it was a lot easier to talk. His eyes weren't as dark as they were that day in New York. They were calmer, at peace. They were bright and full of hidden stories you wanted to read.

"Why would i refuse the request of such a beautiful midgardian" Your breath got stuck in your throat. He complimented the very woman he had frightened years prior. That fear that had been knawing at you for years suddenly disappeared. He felt lile a different person entirely. Thor was right, he has changed. Tony wouldn't believe it though. He would never trust Loki, you knew him well enough to know that. But your opinion of him has completely changed.

"Lets go then, i only have two more days to complete my paper." He nodded and closed his door leading the way even if you already knew where you were going, you didnt mind. You stayed by his side holding a small conversation until you made it to the Library. You sat down and explained what you didnt understand, he simplified the context so I would be able to gather the information I needed. You were just about finished when Thor came to check up on you. He was shocked to see you not just near Loki but speaking to him. He knew of your dislike for him so he didnt know what to do. You were facing the pages of the book so you didn't see him enter. He made his presence known by closing the door he had previously left open. You looked up and smiled as you saw him. You hand automatically gave him a snall wave before returning to your notebook.

"What are you doing here brother?" Thor obviously wanted answers so you didnt give Loki a chance to.

"He's helping me learn about Asgardian history! He simplified it so I was able to understand much better. Plus hes very knowledgeable."

"So you're okay? Being with him after last time i thought-"

"Yeah I mean I hesitated to even ask for help but I'm glad I did. Plus he has some very funny stories fron your childhood too. The stabby snake one is my favourite." You saw Thor's frown deepen knowing that Loki shared embarrassing stories of himself. But he was happy nonetheless. You were able to talk to his brother without the fear if getting hurt.

"How long do until your research is complete? Tony has asked me to escort you home once your done with your studies." You shrugged in response.

"Not long, about two hours or so." A smile made its way to your lips knowing youll be able to go home. But you heart ached at the thought of leaving Loki after befriending him so suddenly.

"But will Loki be able to come with us? He taught me so much about Asgard I want to show him earths history. I can take him to the museum I took you to when you were first curious." Thor was pondering your request to take his brother to the avengers tower alongside you. How would Tony react knowing you feared his brother? Would the rest of the avengers be okay with it.

"Theres a spare room across from mine he could stay in durin his visit. C'mon Thor. Please, its not very often that i get over my fears." You're eyes pleaded to him. Begging for him to say yes. You needed to talk to Loki about the modern literature on earth. You had plenty of books in your own room you could let him borrow. And it seemed like Thor knew he couldnt win this fight.

"Alright, Loki can you escort her home once you're done?" Thor had put every ounce of trust he had into his brother. He knew you weren't capable of combat but he also knew how similar the two of you were.

"Of course brother. I shall take good care if her, you need not worry." And then Thor took his leave. It was a good idea to bring Loki with you. Once you got home Tony was less than pleased at the sight of Loki, he begged you to hate him again and make him leave. But you wouldn't. You had to many things to show him. You had so much in common plus, in the short amount of time that you trusted him, he may have found his way into your heart.

[melforbes]

ask meme. what if. patching up. no I still haven’t seen source material

the way i completely forgot about this ask until i wrote like two paragraphs in this and was like oh shit lmao

the source material is getting an hbo series bb you're in luck also ignore anna whatever as tess yes i respect her as an actress yes she is talented in a bunch of things i have not seen but ms annie wersching is the only tess in my heart and also if i have to endure tess being reduced to a powerbitch stereotype i will start foaming at the mouth. but also i have no feelings about this whatsoever <3

WHAT IF: i will pick an important choice or event in my current project and write three sentences (or more?) about if it’d gone done differently

hmmmmmmMMMMMMMMMMMMMm

this is hard because i kind of had a stupid amount of confidence in the decisions i had them make in this and because i have ~a lot of experience~ in flying by the seat of my pants with writing lmaooooo a lot of the time with this ive had some degree of foresight when it comes to certain plot decisions. the only reason i have this in the first place is that with other things ive had kind of sort of plot revelations and then been like "well if i'd set that up three chapters ago it would have a huge impact i think but instead i guess it's just going in this one for a smaller impact" so i think i learned my lesson haha. also because this pairing nowadays has a small and sparse tag i really intentionally put in stuff to make it interesting (maybe the wrong word) to reread. like not Interesting interesting but i wanted there to be certain details that are more relevant on a reread than on an initial read because whenever i read stuff in small tags i tend to read it Multiple Times lmaoooooo and it's like if anyone like me is out there I Will Feed You. I Will Give You Food. you see i have this problem in which im like i dont want to act like i put thought into this because That's Embarrassing and i also dont want to seem like i take this too seriously because That's Embarrassing and also i dont want to act uppity or pompous or something But At The Same Time i do put a lot of thought into certain things and i feel like mentioning that and i dont really want to judge myself for that. it's complicated but also super uncomplicated. where was i going with this

OH right. so most of the plot decisions were made super concretely. like pre breakup arc in the nightmares chapters (which came out so much worse than i intended alkdjksjad;glksjg) when tess and joel talk about ellie Knowing (also legit it is such a trip to me that you dont know the context of that. a trip in a good way) she says we every time and he only ever says i even when she points out that this would affect both of them, and at one point i think he says that tess doesnt understand baseless violence which is 100% untrue, and then there's a bunch of window imagery i put in starting there because im a freak. so like For Once In My Life a lot of this was as planned as it could be. on occasion there's been Plot Revelations that get wedged in (the radio interlude chapter, which was a bit of an inelegant seam between prewritten things that didnt mesh well) but for the most part ive got tits out into every decision. like tess and ellie disagreeing about joel's choice was very planned though i imagine that kind of conversation could be executed many different ways i had my one way and stuck to it. so either way

where was i going with this. did i have a point.

OKAY. let's see. i think one of the big ~emotional beats~ so to speak was the ambush chapter and i think that's the favorite because that's usually where people comment if i remember correctly and initially i wasnt going to go with that tone At All haha. years ago i wrote everyday domestic scenes of mulder and scully from x files and had it all on this blog and it was plotless but largely in the same overarching universe (i say as if it was legit ever That Deep) and after writing this as a oneshot and being like you know? Kind of feel like doing that again. i figured i would just follow the same largely plotless path of legit just domesticity and leave it at that. and i think the first like five chapters are tonally different from the rest because i'd never really intended for it to have plot or really any depth whatsoever. in the end like. How do i say this in a way that wont be interpreted as uppity or something asldkjgalsdgjk like. when i did those mulder scully scenes i was very much a beginner and i think i didnt realize just how inherent that beginner-ness was to the concept itself. which isnt a bad thing! like people had fun with those so far as i remember. bizarrely enough i think people might still read those which. cringe. but you kno!!! but with a few years of distance from that kind of concept i think it was hard for me to Not try something else. especially with this universe in which it's just dense with storytelling opportunity. and also i felt as if the first few chapters were just like super super lighthearted and i wanted some angst factor. which is why in the end the angst factor plot itself is flimsy as fuck. like i did not care WHY they got attacked i just wanted that sweet sweet hurt/comfort cup of tea u feel. and after that i didnt really go for the plot too much But i did edge toward it a lot more. like i mean ultimately this is a romance like it was not intended to be plot heavy ever But it's more plot heavy than it couldve been. had i actually written it as i'd intended from the start i think it wouldve gotten old really fast. like nothing but lighthearted domesticity doesnt make sense in this context. for the first few chapters it doesnt necessarily kill the whole thing imo because like. that's the first few chapters. but after then if there was never any ~deeper thoughts~ i think it wouldve gotten reductive super fast.

hmmm what else. Because i am deciding to talk too much on the internet now.

oh in theory the whole breakup arc couldve been omitted and now in retrospect im like it's hilarious that like the next chapter after they got married i immediately peppered in hints that they would break up lkajsdglaksjgdlkj like wow. That lasted a long time. but like i mean i think with them it fits that they would do something like get married before they even said that they loved each other. like i can see them doing a massive workaround instead of doing a small and simple but vulnerable thing. makes sense 2 me. and like they definitely couldve stuck together in the end but 1 theres interesting storytelling in how maybe joel was too stubborn or maybe they grew apart in certain ways or blah blah blah and 2 I JUST LOVE A GOOD BREAKUP AND THEN RETURNING TO EACH OTHER ARC OKAAAAAAAAAY. legit. favorite trope. if i ever experienced that in real life i would claw my eyes out but in fiction it makes me FERALLLL. and also like i mean i lov these two for their dumb quirks but also like it would be a lil wrong to say there wouldnt be consequences for like. Not communicating haha. also again like the world this game is put in is so full of storytelling opportunities and im like Must Take Them All. like joel is stubborn as hell and shuts down when he's overwhelmed and there is growth in the first game (and in the second too but thats not really shown as much and is more left for the player to fill in the gaps i think) but also i think it would be super easy to regress in that sense and i had fun with putting him in those situations. and it's also super fun to have an additional person for the joel and ellie plots to bounce off of. like joel and ellie are two very stubborn people and having an extra person there to be like You Blithering Idiots has been a good time. im getting sidetracked. like it was fun to answer the question of how these two in a marriage neither of them can fully substantiate would communicate in hard times and the answer i personally found was that they both would end up breaking things. which was fun to write!!!!!!!!! but in theory couldve been prevented. maybe i just cant imagine this a different way haha. like Joel And Tess Learn Healthy Communication Skills Over Time. am i mean for saying that doesnt sound probable aldskjgalskdjgslkgj

OH LMAO THE MARRIAGE PART. that was also a big decision i guess. i wouldnt make it go differently alksdjglasdjg like. i definitely couldve written the context around that many different ways bc again this whole is full of opportunity But a frankly premature wedding just feels right to me. especially with like going from being stuck on survival to being safe for the first time in decades. and then having that sense of safety get boring and wondering why there was that super fast wedding in the first place. cant really imagine it going differently

there is later unposted stuff that could def have gone many different ways and that i tried to make go different ways but that would not be right to talk about akldsjaslkgdjsg so.

this got too long sorry <3

[cheifcornerstone]

hey! so i read what you said on my post and watched some of the videos in your pinned post, and i have a couple related questions i was hoping you could clear up for me. in my post i was talking specifically being lgbt people being a sin, and you said that just being gay wasnt in of itself sinful. my understanding of sin is this:

god is good, and therefore doing good things is doing things god would do, or what god would want you to do. and doing things that god wouldnt do, or wouldnt want you to do, is a sin.

and the only way us humans know what is and isnt a sin, is from the bible. even if the bible is completely correct and whatnot, im still seeing a couple problems here. christians have always followed the bible as best as they could, but christians and christianity have changed a lot. christians from a couple hundred years ago had completely different morals from christians today.

for example, people 300 years ago were saying that being gay was sinful. with the same bible. if being gay is not a sin according to the bible, why did so many people think it was? did they read or interpret the bible wrong? if thats the case, how do we know we arent misinperpreting it now?

and because so many christians before our time, thought it was a sin to be gay, where is the objectivity of the bible, and therefore god? if what is good or bad under god is up to interpretation, you can justify whatever you want as being good with the same bible you can justify it as bad. there is a general consensus among christians today of what is and isnt sinful, but its completely different than it was 300 years ago, and will be completely different in another 300 years. how would anyone know what is and isnt sinful then?

just to clarify here i'm using the example of being gay as sinful or not, but i mean it more broadly. aside from just that, there have been a lot of things that christians in the past have believed in that they dont know, like slavery, rape, torture, and murder being good and justifiable under the bible.

sorry that that was super long lol and if i said something wrong and/or i'm misunderstanding something, please correct me

Hey thanks for getting back to me on it and I always find learning more about theology interesting.

Your right the Bible is still a book written by men hundreds of years ago and you have to understand the context of every verse. Just because people use scripture to try and justify terrible things like murder and whatnot doesn’t invalidate the wisdom the knowledge teaches. There are theologians and Bible scholars who practice and memories the Bible line by line and can more or less give you solid indisputable answers.

On the gay thing I believe in history gays were persecuted and taboo in most cultures and the Bible was a tool used to justify doing terrible acts. I believe Leviticus is used when they say homosexual acts is punishable by death but if you look at the context first of all it’s Old Testament second it’s the law given to Moses and the Israelites so they may be set apart as an example of Gods Chosen. It was kind of a deal, if you obey these rules Your children will inherit these lands. Jesus new law overwrites this. We aren’t Israelites in that sense anymore. New covenant and all

Then you have Romans 1:18-32 which details men sleeping with men as shameful but the context is talking about what Paul saw in Rome at the time. People were falling in love with their sexual lifestyles more than God. Paul is describing the love of sin and lack of God.

You can pretty much understand that these were for specific time but you can extract simple knowledge that the whole point in the Bible is to love God first and foremost. Then love your neighbor. Loving yourself or your sexuality is pride and is idolatry in the eyes of the lord.

Churches and religious people treat homosexuality as a sin because it’s leads to homosexual acts. They are wrong. it’s not sinful to be gay! Nothing in the Bible says that. In fact just looking at another women with lust is sinful. Just thinking about killing someone is sinful. Impossible task for sure but good thing Christianity gives us a chance to redeem ourselves with Christ

Of course you can say to hell with all that but even if you are non-believer learning more about the Bible is a great way to defend yourself against people who try to use it against you. Sorry for the long winded post

[ditheringluminary]

Hopefully a 12 player session isn’t too much for you? It’s a human session, so that’s why there’s no signs/blood color stuff. Prospit: Knight of Doom, Page of Mind, Thief of Heart, Bard of Breath, Sylph of Life, Mage of Light Derse: Witch of Time (leader), Heir of Space, Prince of Blood, Seer of Rage, Rogue of Hope, Maid of Void (Also, I’m sorry if this bothers you, and you may ignore this part if you want, but I follow the Active Knight/Passive Page headcannon.)

Hey hey no problem! Imo classpect stuff in HS is so loosely defined that there isnt really one “right” headcanon for the most part and i can really switch out most of the active/passive stuff with fairly good reasoning either way. Heck I headcanon some classes as having completely different counterparts! :B

But onto the analysis: First off you have a Space and a Time player! And they aren’t destroyer classes! Save for a few pitfalls you may encounter you’re set there!

Prospitans:

Knight of Doom: Your session doesn’t have enough Doom! What an interesting representation! Naturally Doom is an aspect looked down upon, but in this context I could see it as something similar to trickster mode. Remember when that was all smiles and happiness (save for Dirk) with no satisfying growth for the characters? It’s like that. Your session has a serious lack of rules that make it satisfying to complete! In this sense the Knight of Doom may appear like one of the destroyer classes: A necessary evil. Some kind of force that, while at the beginning rejects their classpect to not seem like such a fuddy duddy (ghosting Life) has to become a more stern figure in some way so people aren’t just doing as they please with ease.

Page of Mind: Your session’s end reward will be Mind. At the end of the session you will be more able to think as a group and work towards a common goal much better. If the Page recognizes their true potential, they’ll be an amazing strategizer that, as a Prospitan, can see the big picture of their plans.

Thief of Heart: Your session will have Heart taken from it. Kind of fits with the Knight of Doom, as if there is less Heart, there is less likely of a chance that people will act on a whim and their feelings. Also fits with the Page of Mind in that while you lose some Heart, in the end you gain a greater surplus of Mind.

Bard of Breath: Your session’s greatest challenge will be Breath. Again fitting with the Knight of Doom! Too MUCH freedom and detachment, allowing you all to do what you want when you want when that’s not what sburb is about (in the end goal at least). The Bard will try to be a Blood player and keep people more focused and connected, but if their shift to Breath isn’t exactly positive, they may be a sort of explosive force of Breath, making people feel like they must exert their freedom and will/impact onto other things.

Sylph of Life: Your session will be aided by an outside force of Life. Given the Knight of Doom classpect, this is... a little odd. If there isn’t enough Doom (ie an inverse of Life) then... an outside force of Life HELPING you seems a little counterintuitive. It’s possible that the people in your session simply aren’t experiencing the aspect of Life the RIGHT way. You’re only taking the “fantastical element” part of it, and not the “healing and betterment” parts of it. This outside force is meant to set you straight.

Mage of Light: Your session’s lifeblood will be Light. Knowledge, fortune, and luck will permeate and define your session. I see this more in the fortune and luck department, though the knowledge part comes in later as your Page of Mind represents. Your Mage of Light will know plenty about how this game is... a little more lucky and out there than the usual session, but somehow manages to never benefit from this out there-ness. 

Dersites:

Witch of Time: Your players hope to get Time. Time is destruction, linearity and getting work done. If your session lacks Doom (ie rules and structure) its understandable to see why your players would prefer to have a more linear session. Doing as you please is fun and all, but after a while you either realize the session is doomed or you have no linear flow. 

Heir of Space:Your session is ultimately about Space. Given that Space is creation and innovation, its easy to see how your session revolves around this. Your session is blessed with fortune through the Mage of Light, Your Sylph of Life means you’ll have even more opportunities to do the impossible, and your Knight of Doom means you lack destruction itself. Your session is about gods truly being gods, doing and creating as they please for an odd amount of time.

Prince of Blood: Your session has.... too much Blood? Given your Bard of Breath this is another stumper. I suppose that Blood can also be the aspect of stubbornness. Your group is too stubborn to stop all this willy nilly “do as we please” nonsense? At least at first, but then the Witch of Time aspect comes in later in the session, when you’ve had all your fun and want to finish playing. Blood is very loosely defined, on the same par as Doom or Rage so it’s harder to say, despite it being opposite to Breath. I apologize if this answer isnt satisfactory <:B

Seer of Rage: Your players will try to win with Rage. Given the Rogue of Hope below, clearly this is not the right way to do things. However, when faced with an impossibility your players will try and brute force their way through it, because that’s what they’ve been doing the whole game! They’ll get stressed and frustrated that this thing is causing such a huge difficulty spike.

Rogue of Hope: Your session’s greatest asset is Hope! And why wouldnt it be? With this session everything sounds incredibly freeform and successful. While in the troll session this hubris caused them pain, your pride will likely be the thing to pick you back up when you’re at your lowest!

Maid of Void: Your session will negatively be affected by... nothing! Again fitting the Knight of Doom, as you lack a real clear danger at, at least at the start. Naturally the Maid of Void represents that... there are no outside forces that are likely to harm you (in the long term at least). However, this means infighting is going to be inevitable.

Warnings: As I just said, infighting. With the Prince of Blood destroying bonds and ties, this can lead to some serious issues with friends turning to enemies. This can actually be saved with the Bard of Breath’s transformation into a true Breath player, but it can also be worsened greatly. The Witch of Time must have an eye kept on them. As seen with Damara, if a Witch feels like they can/want to do something, they’re going to. Don’t let the Witch of Time mess up the entire time stream because they felt like disrupting the status quo. Leader or not, they’ve got to control their power like any other Witch. Given Doom’s propensity for failure, if the Knight of Doom tries to assist the Space player, the genesis frog is likely to come out wrong or not at all.

Goodies: A Rogue of Hope is a wonderful classpect that would spread hope to all of those around them! They’ll help you when you face that tough difficulty spike! A Seer of Rage might be able to see through all the bs of this session and how fake freeing it is, so listen to them even if they sound crazy. Same goes for the Bard of Breath: if your session just has no rules or boundaries set in it, someone who destroys that lack of control should have some attention paid to them. Bards and Princes are often a necessary evil (no offense to destroyer classes again <:B).

All in all this session sounds REALLY solid. Like. I can already envision you guys on the victory platform. You’ll have some trouble within you but other than that once you get over those bumps you’ll be super set to either tackle that frog or initiate a scratch (which a Witch should have no problem doing). Best of luck to ya!

[outofcontextsimsmachinima]

I truly think you should reconsider featuring Youth so much on this blog. The series has featured blackface and other racist imagery before, it's really not a good look for the Sims fandom to promote this stuff, especially seeing how racist EA themselves have been in the past.

Hello, thank you for approaching me with your concerns. I in no way want to promote racism. You have every right to feel how you do and leave my blog to not see her posts (all tagged under #1998sims and #youth, which you can blacklist) and not watch her content. Its not my place to apologise on anyones behalf. However, although this may be an out of context blog, I think its unfair to make a statement as such without the context of the episode. This opinion may come from this post I uploaded a while back, or from breifly seeing her episode. Or even watching it all the way and either not understanding the message OR simply put, being offended by the imagery (which you have every right to feel offended by) 1998sims is a very close friend of mine. However, what I say is not as a friend as I will, and have, quite easily dropped anyone who is racist, homophobic, a pedophile, etc. I’m not afraid to lose friends or family over morals. That being said, I also want to mention that if you’ve met 1998sims and properly got to know her, you’d also know she has a no bullshit attitude and she herself cannot stand those actions. Shes always trying to keep up to date on human rights movements, sending me updates on the currently BLM protests, complaining about racists and homophobes and wishing people wouldnt support the racist billionares and companies (EA included) of the world. I also want to mention before i start jumping into this unbiased, that as 1998sims’ friend, I see a lot of a specific group of people trying to attack her every month or so. She’s used to it and doesn’t let it bother her, often tells us not to say anything on her behalf (which is interesting considering how many times people say she’s going to get her “groupies” to defend her. Not once have we defended her because we respect her wishes for us to not get involved.) and that she can fight her own fights. Its upsetting watching her put up with people nitpicking her in the most toxic community out tbh, the shit that could be said about the people who ?? I actually dont know what their goal is tbh, take her down?? idk its really weird. Like, I think people who try to come at her do a lot worse than her and often times are trying to come back at her after she openly stated her opinions about the community (usually its her asking that creators had more representation in their series. Which I can agree with, the sims community is flooded with stories of straight white couples). The sims community is shit, I wont deny. So, with this context in mind, I do struggle to take the rare posts I see about her as seriously as I would if they were about anyone else. I talk to her on a daily, I know the thoughts she puts into her work, into her daily life, into her friendships, past and present. Her opinions and goals and the things she puts up with. I know that the specific group of people against her would try to warp my words around and say she controlling or manipulating me but honestly, one, those people claiming something like that in itself is a manipulation tactic and two, you dont know fuck about me and my past and what I’ve experienced to understand who to trust and who to drop. I don’t put up with that sort of shit. Over her time on youtube she has very openly showed her support to the black lives movement and tried to bring light to it in her works. She has always been very aware of making sure her cast represents real people, that includes the struggles they face. Its rare to find poc and lgbtq media, especially in the sims community and especially without characters following harmful stereotypes or being the token black or gay character. 1998sims has always shown care for these communities in multiple series for multiple years, taking every opportunity she can to make a PSA. The blackface episode was no exception. I dont want to speak on her behalf and have stayed quiet about what people have said about her because of her wishes, and I will message her about this issue. But in the end, its my blog that has recieved the asks and thus, my response is what will be made. This will be long (if its not already) and its up to you to skip or read this, your mental health is what should come first. Nothing can excuse racist imagery or jokes about race. I never want to tell someone they’re in the wrong or that their feelings do not matter, your feelings and opinions matter. What 1998sims choses to do from here onward is up to her. But as I said, you approached me and I will take that as invitation to share my opinion. In the episode ‘Blakkkface’ of YOUTH, the title alone already explaining the episodes intention to be around the black lives matter movement, racism and mention of blackface and the KKK. Its halloween, 2 racist background characters walk in dressed in blackface and as a member of the KKK. Instantly the main cast is disgusted. This scene is not intended as humour or a joke, rather the main cast showing disgust in a background character’s actions. Lucas responding with a “what the fuck?” and Jo, a black character, also the only one not dressed up, stating that costumes like that are why she hates halloween. I believe here its intended to mention how during holidays, people think its okay to wear costumes like that. be it blackface, KKK members, indiginous costumes, chinese etc. Peoples race and culture arent a costume and 1998sims attempted to show how costumes like that happen often irl and how hurtful and racist they are. Next scene. I’m Not Racist by Joyner Lucas plays in the background. Teacher rants about inappropriate costumes. Cut to a close up of Jo’s face obvious waiting for the issue to be addressed. Teacher mentions girls wearing costumes that are inappropriate, too tight or short, makes no mention of racist costumes or issues with it. Clearly Jo and her classmate, Trey (also a black cast member, wearing a shirt that states “not your costume” as a protest to the racist costumes during halloween), aren’t happy and chose to silently protest by sitting while the class pledges alleigence to the flag. The teacher gets mad at the two who are quite calmly explaining their rights, which starts a debate. The blackface and KKK costumes are brought up, Jo calls out racism and the two take advantage of their priveledge, claiming its just paint telling Jo not to be offended and that shes being sensitive. This is a clear case of racists making excuses, trying to victimize themselves and using their privelege against Jo. Teacher, unable to respond to Jo’s retort then takes it out on Trey, Saying his shirt is inappropriate and promotes violence (does that sound familiar to the black likes matter movement at the moment?), that he needs to go to the office. Trey questions if the teacher himself is racist, calls everyone disgusting for their actions. Teacher sends both students to go to the office and as Jo walks past, the racist students call her a monkey which is the final straw and she punches them. She regrets it later knowing the outcome will be terrible on her behalf as a black girl. Trey beside her, tries to validate her and she mentions how shes the one whos going to be suspended but the person whos actually in the wrong will play victim as their actions will be forgotten about. she says “I played into the narrative he wanted me to play into.” saying she doesnt want to be the stereotypical black person that solves issues through violence. Trey once again tries to validate her actions, telling her that she had the right to defend herself. “dont let them make you feel bad for their crappy actions.” What 1998sims shows here is the real life struggle that black people face. Them being seen as a costume, their history being a joke to racists. That people of privelege and power can manipulate situations and try to paint themsleves as victims and black people as violent, often gaslighting until, in some cases (like Jo’s) the real victim takes actions in their own hands since the system cant protect them and they need to protect themself. This is a serious and real topic and yes, understandably it can be triggering to some people who have experienced these things themselves. I dont think 1998sims’ goal is to hurt people though. Rather show a character you care about or relate to going through something thats very real and make her viewers aware of said issues, use empathy to make people mad or upset and maybe stand up to make a change to stop these things from continuing to happen in the real world. Once again, I apologise for posting any content that has been hurtful to you. But morally I felt the need to at least add some context on why this episode and scenes were intended to, from the perspective of someone whos against racism, someone who wants equality, someone who wants to share a message. 1998sims’ series is raw in the sense its real and inspired by reality. Some people like that sort of representation in the media they consume, some dont. And if you dont, thats up to you to not watch her content. If you prefer media that escapes reality, her series isnt for you and thats okay. And I just need to say this once again. I’m not defending her or the episopde because shes my friend. If I find out her or anyone I know has made content thats intended to be hurtful to anyone, I will drop them. I have no intention ever in my life to be associated with people like that. I’m sorry that you can no longer feel safe on my blog though, its sad that has to be the case but I hope at least with the context of the episode brought up, maybe you can see things in a different way. If not, I hope you find safety somewhere else. Its what you deserve after all, don’t put yourself through any more harm, you should always come first.

[not-a-space-alien]

hey its me again wall of text sorry not sorry

k i saw your little treatise justifying zadr and yknow its a cartoon its not the worst thing ever of course nobody is gonna sue you for reblogging fanart or burn you at the stake or w/e and im glad you decided to open yourself up to a differing opinion but zim IS portrayed as an adult. there was even an unfinished episode where zim’s childhood and growing up training from start to finish would be shown so by the time of the pilot he is definitely a full grown developed adult by irken standards especially if hes a former member of an elite military force like the invaders. jhonen has said that the irony and sad comedy of zims character is that hes a grown ass man and a war veteran to boot who VOLUNTARILY goes to an elementary school every day and throws hands with an 11 year old boy who should be well below his notice because he’s that pathetic and desperate for validation that he’ll stoop to seeking it from a child. it also sets up a dynamic between them where dib is CHALLENGED by having to go up against an adult with way more experience than him while dib is just a child, so when he wins its more meaningful, which is a common trope in childrens fiction that an underdog young hero has to take down a powerful adult villain.

jhonen might joke a lot but he’s serious about this part of the characterization of zim and dib and he even went to great lengths to make dib look and act more like a kid in ETF (more emotional and naive, designed to look smaller/softer, going in depth with his relationship to his dad and sister and needing his dad to protect him at the end when he’s too overrun to fight alone) just to drive home the point of how young he is. it was a very deliberate move and jhonen knows what hes doing ESPECIALLY since he also left zim pretty much unchanged and also includes gags about zim’s relative maturity like animating him briefly grimacing because his joints are sore and the part where he pretty much gestures to his crotch and goes “theyre afraid to look at ALL-A THIS”. like you would not see jhonen do that sort of joke with an underage character ok. dont confuse his social awkwardness and self deprecating/trolling humor for not knowing the difference between right and wrong and not acknowledge when he means something sincerely because he doesn’t just clown on people and troll ALL THE TIME 24/7 hes a human, and times have changed with more awareness on issues such as the grooming of minors so he can go back on things he may have said in the past that he doesn’t agree with now or said by mistake. he has said enough times that zim is older than any human alive that its safe to take his word for it by now. judging by the one strip he did in JTHM about johnny murdering a pedophile who was about to prey on squee i think his stance on protecting kids is pretty clear. also i wouldnt put it past jhonen to have redesigned membrane to be more chaddy looking to divert the adult fandom’s attention away from dib and throw the fangirls a bone but thats a whole nother can of worms lol.

and the justification that zim is immature so hes essentially on dib’s level is a reversal of something lots of kids hear from either creepy or ignorant adults who tell them theyre “so mature for their age”. no matter how emotionally mature you are it wont ever compensate for the number of years youve been alive so that’s not very sound logic, and even in fic where theyre both adults it’s still pretty weird because it doesn’t erase their history where zim knew dib as a kid. that’s sort of like a grownup waiting with bated breath until a kid is “legal” so they can start dating. kinda like when jacob imprints on bella’s newborn daughter in twilight then having it handwaved away by saying he’ll wait till she’s grown up, which understandably drew a huge amount of criticism. it’s a loophole that might be mildly acceptable in some cases but the context leaves it colored with a residual ickiness that sets off some red flags for me and a lot of other people.

also you said zim is an alien and therefore the situation itself is unrealistic, but the reason invader zim’s writing resonates with people is because zim is written with very HUMAN emotions and motivations and part of the humor again is how irkens despite being aliens from another planet mirror some of humanity’s worst flaws such as being petty, gluttonous, willfully ignorant, arrogantly believing they are special and better than everyone else, easily manipulated by propaganda, all too eager to greedily colonize other societies etc making them not so different from us at all. so the premise out of context might not seem realistic but the idea of a sad burnout adult who doesn’t realize how humiliating it is to be consistently outsmarted by a kid less than half their age IS realistic and applicable to human interaction since we’ve likely all met someone like this before at one point in our lives for example a schoolteacher who has a personal vendetta against one or more of their students and has nothing better to do than antagonize them, or a really dumb parent that you fight with a lot.

another thing, i know you and other fans probably have a lot of sentimental value and nostalgia attached to zadr because you probably shipped it back when you were a kid yourself and you cant be blamed for something you liked as a kid, but youre an adult now, and you have to listen to the portion of kids in the fandom who dont like zadr and say without question that the age gap makes them uncomfortable. those kids ARE the priority. we’re grown up now and we have to put our feelings aside for them because that’s part of being responsible and mature. i feel like zim himself is a pretty good example of how not to act at our age [shrug emoji]

and anyway a lot of the same elements of zadr can be explored with zadf just as well with just as much potential for cute moments and as a bonus is it’s not creepy

You do bring up some good points, and I’m not saying you’re wrong...  But honestly I’m still not convinced.  I mean, stuff that Jhonen said, the thing is even if it’s the author saying it it’s still outside of canon, that’s the reason why Neil Gaiman got flack for Good Omens because they didn’t write an actual kiss or hug or hand-hold between Aziraphale and Crowley yet Neil Gaiman went on Twitter saying they were queer representation.  I still don’t really put much stock into what he says because the unfinished episodes and Jhonen’s commentary don’t really change the dynamic that’s actually in the show.  And again...Jhonen said if there were going to be romance in the show it would be Zim/Gaz, so he’s either a huge hypocrite or doesn’t view Zim as being incompatible with Gaz.

I do think it’s much better when Dib is an adult and it just makes more sense, and I actually do prefer zadf to zadr and if i were going to ever write fanfiction or make fanart it would probably just be zadf, just because i know this does have some stuff to think about and I totally respect that you have a different view of it, but i honestly just don’t see it that way.  The analogy with Jacob imprinting on Bella’s child in Twilight isn’t really the same thing honestly.  The author in that situation tried to make it not......that....by saying that imprinting isn’t always a romantic relationship thing, and that Jacob would be more of an older brother, but honestly that doesn’t really negate the impact of grooming that kid would have with Jacob around.  The idea that Zim would somehow be grooming Dib seems really silly to me although you’re right, I think his characterization in Into the Florpus has evolved somewhat especially with regard to Dib wanting to get his father’s approval, but again Zim has parallels with that in trying to please the Tallest.  the world-building and characterizations are inconsistent and scattershot at best.  Like no, zim isn’t waiting for him to turn legal, that’s absurd, they’re nemeses coming at each other then learning to be friends.  You’re right that that doesn’t have to be zadr but I still tag it as zadr so people can block it if they want to.

Like, I’ve seen people ship Zim with Professor Membrane instead of Dib.  That seems very weird to me.  that professor membrane would have a relationship with someone who literally goes to his son’s elementary school and who doesn’t know anything at all about human behavior and emotions.

I feel like with this discussion people don’t really understand the problem with age gaps. With age gaps, it’s not a matter of mature/immature, it’s about development.  A ten year age gap sounds like a lot right?  a 25-year-old and a 15-year old would absolutely have a predatory “relationship.”  But a 35- and a 45-year old, that’s perfectly fine.  Having a difference in age doesn’t automatically make the relationship unhealthy.  so if Dib is 25 and Zim is [whatever the hell aliens years i still don’t really take Jhonen’s word for it bc he’s not consistent], that’s doesn’t mean it has to be bad.  The thing about telling minors they’re “so mature for their age” to try and convince them that a person interested in them isn’t a pedophile is that we know a human being who is 15 isn’t developmentally at the same level as a 25-year-old regardless of their behavior.  What is Zim?  All we have to go on is how he acts, and he acts like Dib is an equal match, it’s not “he’s immature for his age,” it’s very unclear.  Raw number of years isn’t the ultimate decider, for example in DnD lore elves reach maturity at, like, 100 years old so a 25-yo human trying to get with a 50-year-old elf would be predatory to the young elf even though the “younger” one is technically twice as old as the human.  Do you see what I’m saying?

I also don’t really buy the idea that Invader Zim’s writing resonates with people because Zim is ~~so human~~.  The guy steals a bunch of kid’s organs in one episode and flies into a tantrum over the slightest inconvenience.  You have to be reading really deeply into it and dig into some old internet archives of things Jhonen Vasquez has said to paint it as realistic.  You can do some interesting things with it wrt like, Zim being defective and starting to experience human emotions but that’s mostly fanon.

Well, you’ve given me some things to think about, thanks for explaining your side to me.  I’m still going to tag things as #zadr so people can block if it can’t plausibly be categorized as zadf.  I’m not actually making any fan content for Invader Zim so the point is kind of moot, but if I ever do I’ll definitely take this into consideration.

[somnilogical]

they will never be as strong or as fast as i can be

copy/pasted from a convo:

<<somni: ive been exploiting being able to talk about everything vs miri/cfar cant do what i do bc if they did they would talk about how they are evil. it would all chain back.

somni: omg i can just post this to my blog because i can talk about my meta-strategy and it confers pretty much no relative advantage to miri/cfar. because 1 most of them have disassembled their agency so its like talking in front someone who works at the dmv about taking over the world and the ones that have any agency (basically just anna salamon) have to work with and coordinate via brokenness the masses that have and 2 feels secure in the way that saying ill use my soul as my weapon feels secure, like the power of this technique doesnt depend much on people not knowing im using it.>>

truth is entangled and lies contagious. justice is entangled and injustice contagious. in order to sustain their facade, miri/cfar had to chain back to lie about the principles of decision theory itself. lie about the organization structure of cfar, lie about miri's fundraiser. and so much more.

any series of reasoned claims they make will chain back to stuff thats false or injustice, because they seek to maintain a region of untruth and injustice.

so yeah, miri/cfar basically cant talk in public except in staid formalities infinitely pouring the same entropy of "these people are psychotic" "these people are infohazards" "do not read what they write" "stay the course" "everything is under control, do not panic" "i know my associates at miri/cfar, they are good people" "if you talk with these people you may become a rapist". but not actually able to manifest dynamic compute. to explain themselves they built their own personal room 101, filled with miri/cfar affiliates and formed a united front of gaslighting. deluks (author of that one rationalist blog where they worked to read and summarize all the others) talks about the kind of compute miri/cfar manifested:

<<deluks: I also updated a lot based on Bay Area safety discussion

idk if I have ever been in such a hostile environment for anyone trying to discuss making thigns safer

If you wanted to discuss how Anna et all were innocent people would happily chat with you

If you tried to discuss ideas for making things safer either you got silence

or people would be insanely hostle if you plausibly slipped up at all

or even seemed like you might have been not careful enough in how you phrased things

extremely careful -> no engagement at all//even slightly less care -> get dogpilled>>

they have picked up the optimization style of of cops, as alice maz described them:

<<the role of the cop is to defend society against the members of society. police officers are trivially cops. firefighters and paramedics, despite similar aesthetic trappings, are emphatically not. bureaucrats and prosecutors are cops, as are the worst judges, though the best are not. schoolteachers and therapists are almost always cops; this is a great crime, as they present themselves to the young and the vulnerable as their friends, only to turn on them should they violate one of their profession's many taboos. soldiers and parents need not be cops, but the former may be used as such, and the latter seem frighteningly eager to enlist. the cop is the enemy of passion and the enemy of freedom, never forget this>>

i can travel lots of places and regenerate truth and justice.

i can go to a trans support group in the bay and show them logs of what elle said and did and they can recognize the pattern of minority oppression, transmisogyny.

i can talk with uninvolved decision-theorists about why paying out to oneshot blackmail with subjunctive dependence because "In game theory, paying out to blackmail is bad, because it creates an incentive for more future blackmail." is wrong. and why exploiting your subjunctive dependence as a udt agent to not pay out is right. they cant.

--

miri/cfar have to centrally coordinate on lies or they start crashing into each other. independently generating falsehoods in isolation makes them point in all directions.

independently generating and working off of truths allows everything to point in the same direction without needing to communicate. i can write this post and then idk maybe someone im algorithmically colluding with on this writes another post and they dont come out all distorted and skew with each other. this caches out in what looks from the outside as an uncanny ability to start dynamically colluding with people and output distinct strains of philosophy based on shared precepts.

interference with yourself looks like kelsey piper trying to claim that emma and somni are starting some sort of rape cult and anna and miri/cfar trying to claim we are naive victims of ziz's cult and ▘▕▜▋ claiming emma and somni are mindhacking ziz to make her bully them and jade nameless claiming im doing this to get a job at cfar and ...

since they make up their fake coordination points independently they smash into each other. if they want to coordinate over lots of people they then have to work out which of these they want to coordinate around in a sort of market of falsehoods. and have to arrange for it to not contradict any information anything people know. but they dont know all the information everyone knows, and they wont know it even after combing through lots of blogs and reading lots of discord chats.

when they try coordinating on falsehoods like this, its hard to get a coalition together in an environment where what people know is rapidly changing because a bunch of anarchist bloggers keep posting things in a bunch of places on a non-centrally controlled schedule determined by what seems like a good idea at the time to independent agents. and having lots of conversations with so many different people in private and public they cant keep track of them all.

if they try pretending to be dumb and forming a unified gaslighting front in one area. then people will exploit the fact that this is the internet and not the evolutionary environment, take logs and post them somewhere else where everyone didnt collude to be dumb in this particular way. so while their monkey brains get a rush of endorphins from being able to successfully coordinate local humans, what feels like an entire tribe, against the blasphemer, actually they just used their adult intelligence to defeat in front of a bunch of people who dont share their political commitments but who can reason about what is true and what is just.

(of course there are many truths this doesnt work on because of large inferential distance, shared mammalian biases it takes an unusual mind to step over, and shared incentives. but the defense of most regions of injustice and untruth when you ask questions have to keep chaining to more and more absurd things until you are defending causal decision theory or start claiming 'anna salamon, the president of cfar, is not involved in cfar's hiring'. which depend on a social context committed to defending everything that protects miri/cfar and people who dont have the same conclusion-that-must-not-happen can see that its dumb.)

if miri/cfar had committed themselves to the path of expanding agency, maybe i wouldnt be posting my thoughts and meta-process on the public internet. (in the counterfactual where they committed to this path, its likely that i wouldnt be protesting. because it seems actually-hard to stay on the path and remain evil.) but as it stands, i expect this information to differentially help anarchists and do about as much good for statists as explaining updateless decision theory to someone at cfar. its just this inert structure in their brains, they cant do anything strategic with it. they intentionally shut down their ability to take ideas seriously and drive out anyone left who can, calling them crazy.

what they can do is "oh here is a list of people to target" and "see if they said anything incriminating". ive seen their attempts to coordinate enter the attractors of 'authoritarianism' (duncans dragon army, kingsleys "repent and submit to [AUTHORITY FIGURE]") and 'lets all lie in the same direction and disable general cognition to update out of this! the important part is social agreement and that everyone allows social reality to have the final veto on their beliefs. i myself do this so you know im super safe and this is super fair.' (anna and kelsey). this sort of weak coordination based on breaking people can be easily subverted by anything real.

--

if you are actually right, you can exploit useful properties of being right and let that be your asymmetric weapon. such that all that challenge you know they will know its steel. and then people who compute the outcome and expect to lose, dont fight in the first place.

if my chosen weapon were actually the size of my muscles and imposing figure compared to anna salamon as miri/cfar people "believed" (exploiting the already extant anti-transfem psychic suppression field as one of their few functioning coordination points. probably not as functional now after what i have written.), then when i fought people it would create a warp field such that then people with smaller muscles wont fight in the first place, but id be deluged by people with larger muscles. i dont want to create a warp field that summons people with lots of muscles.

if i exploit properties of my souls, of truth and justice. then i have an arsenal of techniques that are stronger if i actually want to save everyone, if im actually right, if im acting for justice. because they exploit useful differential properties of each. and the warp field in higher density summons ... people who care about saving the world, truth, and justice. in other words, a high density of potential allies.

by default i want to exploit "the difference is that im right" not "the difference is that i have larger muscles". i want differential power to push away those who are wrong and unjust and attract those who are right and just into a kind of warp hull.

there are other reasons as well.

[flower-of-the-desert]

So I just finished s01 of Shadowhunters and I have some thinky thoughts about it. I’m putting it under the cut because it’s not all positive (well, most of it isnt really) and if you are a die-hard malec shipper, you should probably skip this.

Overall, I think my opinion so far can be summed up as this show has a lot of potential to be really good and interesting and nobody seems to want to do anything about it. I mean the set up is great - demons threatening the world? Awesome. A secret society of warriors whose purpose is to protect the world? Nice. Magic? Warlocks? AU worlds? Perfect. Class issues between the races? Homophobia? Relevant and important concepts to tackle. So in theory everything is great. But in practice? Not so much.

I think the two main issues this season has are 1) thngs happening way too fast and not enough time and focus given to certain topics and characters in order to understand their motivations and the worldbuilding of this universe and 2) the problem with show, dont tell - that is to say we keep being told things but almost never shown anything to actually back up these claims.

Now I know there are time limits and you cant fit everything into a single episode or even a single season and you shouldnt have to. I’m not saying they should have crammed everything into 13 episodes. That is not the issue. The problem is that when topics that should be given due focus and time within the specific episode arent, things get confusing. For example, why did Alec decide to marry Lydia? We find out in the next episode that he’s decided to restore the family honor on his own terms after finding out about his parents’ past. Which is great. We have Alec’s motivation. But in the episode itself where he proposed everything was set up for him to follow his heart. That was the theme of the episode and Alec through the entire thing kept agreeing with Magnus and whoever else was telling him to do what he wants. Only for him to turn around simingly out of nowhere in the literal last minute of the episode and decide to get married. Dont get me wrong, I dont have a problem with him NOT choosing to follow his heart given the situation but there wasnt enough focus on his struggle between the two during the episode in order to make his last-minute turn seem less weird. And that doesnt even cover Lydia’s side of thngs. Why did she decide to get married to a literal stranger after meeting him like yesterday? And this is not an exxageration - Alec proposes literally 2 or 3 days max after Lydia shows up. Is she that desperate to run an institute? Wouldnt she be allowed to have the position if she’s not married? Why does it even matter - doesnt it make more sense to give her the position based on her skills and results on the job? We dont know. But these are the sort of worldbuilding questions you might want to answer.

This is just one example of how things are going way too fast and there’s not enough time given to explain the characters and universe properly. There are more but if I keep going, we’ll be here tomorrow too. I’m not even gonna bother to cover all the scenes that just flat out do not make sense cause then we’ll never leave.

The other thing bothers me even more - there are sooo many things we are TOLD but never really SHOWN - Alec has been in love with Jace for I dont know how many years, Alec is repressed, the SH society is homophobic (admittedly we are not told this in canon, I dont believe? but that is at least the implication made), Magnus is in love with Alec and Alec feels the same, Magnus is a centuries-old warlock, one of the most powerful people in the world, Ragnor is even more powerful, etc etc. But. Where is the evidence? If Alec has spent so long being in love with Jace and repressed, wouldnt it have been more difficult for Magnus to get him to agree to a date than one half-assed phone call? Wouldnt Alec be struggling even more with accepting that Magnus is interested and panicking about what to do, denying everything with all his might? Shouldnt there be more struggle here?

So far I havent seen any signs of anyone in the Institute being homophobic. Maybe that changes in s02 but so far? Nope. Even Alec’s parents whom fandom for some reason has decided to demonize as some kind of terrible scumbags are not homophobic and actually hella decent people all things considered. Lydia is not homophobic. The goddamn Silent Brother seemed more interested in the kissing scene than anything else.

Warlocks are supposed to be hella powerful yet Magnus needed Alec’s help to fight off ONE circle member and Ragnor got killed by a TINY demon thingy that even Clary can handle. We were told Magnus cares so much about that necklace he’d risk his life to get it back yet 5mins later just casually gives it away to Izzy and doesnt mention it again. 

Clary and co LOVE to make these passionate speeches about how they’re the new generation of shadowhunters who respect the downworlders and believe everyone is their equal and the Clave is wrong - yet the moment a downworlder refuses to help them, they have no problem blackmailing, focing, lying and going behind their back to get what they want. And this is admittedly not a bad thing to show that these people despite their good intentions cant just change over night, if the narrative at least acknowledged their hypocrisy as a sign they need to grow some more but it doesnt.

Again, I an keep going but I wont. And finally there’s Malec. By all accounts I think this is the thng that disaapointed me the most. It could have been so awesome if developed properly! Like again we have a great set up - two people from opposite sides of the war, leaders to their respective groups, meeting and falling in love against all odds - it’s basically every enemies to friends to lovers fic ever and it’s AWESOME. Except not really because the way they play it in canon is just what even? So they meet and Magnus is obviously sexually attracted to Alec and wants to pursue that. Cool. Alec is... feeling whatever it is he’s feeling, I honestly cant even tell if he was interested from the start or just happy someone was paying attention to him. I suppose that stuttering scene when Magnus introduces himself is supposed to show he’s interested. Or something. Then Magnus calls to ask him on a date which yay, makes sense with how eager he was when they met. And then Alec agrees. And this is where things start going wonky for me.  Why does he agree so easily? Isnt he supposed to be in love with Jace? Isnt he supposed to be terrified of anyone finding out he’s gay? Next scene after they heal Luke, Magnus goes you’ve unlocked something in me and I go was it your dick? Because this line for all its romantic vibe and whatnot in the context we’ve been presented so far makes no sense. Because now the show wants me to believe that Magnus fell in love at first sight. Except this is not how they played it - what I saw was Magnus being really fricking horny. I did not see any grand revelations of omg, I just fell in love for the first time in over a century with this hot piece of shadowhunting ass I just met. Now I’m supposed to believe Malec has had enough development and enough scenes together to warrant such a strong emotional reaction from Magnus two episode after meeting Alec and after like 2? 3? scenes interacting with him. Insert the sure jan gif here.

Fast forward to the wedding - awesome scene really. Kiss and all (such a hot kiss and I ask why arent they kissing like that in s02 instead of these we’ve been married for 50years and cant wait for one of us to die already pecks?). But again, it only works if you ignore the context and take it as a stand alone scene. Because otherwise the emotional depth that it’s supposed to have? Goes out the window to stand besides all the emotional and mental development that was needed between them in order to make the scene really work and resonate on a deep level. And dont even get me started on how wrong Magnus acted at the beginning of the episode.

I can buy - at a push, a big big BIG push - that Magnus fell in love from the start but I absolutely do not believe Alec did as well. Honestly, I dont believe he loves Magnus even now in s02 (I havent watched it yet but I have enough context about some of their key scenes to say this, there is no way I man in love would tell his boyfriend not to take a treath to his life PERSONALLY, amongst other things). And that is just sad. Because this could have been a great love story, all the fire and passion and fireworkd like we keep getting told there is but what we see is something different.

[strawberry-siren]

every FREAKING day i make a day about how i’m freaking out, but i’m going to live or whatever. like i chose not to kill myself. but there really is no point. like there’s not. even if i go to a mental hospital, they really suck and they abuse patients, act like patients are infantile, like they’re not human. I don’t even have insurance, so the sheer price of that would mess up any chance i would ever have of making money or even just like…living–even if i wanted to. i dont even think treatment would be helpful. i dont think drugs would really help either.

i’ve tried weed before, and that’s the drug that everyone is always like “omg man weed totally takes away my anxiety.” no. weed literally did nothing to my sad and anxious thoughts. all it did was make me act completely spacey and waste time. i’ve heard from my friends that anti-depressants just make them feel empty. like just honestly whats the point of living and feeling empty? i did that for like a year to cope. i would just repress any emotion. i guess i lived another year. but it’s also like whats even the point. you’re not happy. you’re not anything. what’s the point of living like a zombie? like talk therapy wouldnt help because i’m not going to change….. i’ve had so many different therapists and it just really doesn’t do much… 

i should just go to church and follow their stupid rules because my family does and at least they would stop being mad at me and they could feel like they’re saving me even if church has no purpose. church honestly just makes me feel a million times worse and it is boring and kind of a waste of time for me. but, then they could be those people who talk about their reformed lesbian sister and how she found god and got her life together and is happy ! :-) i love sex and my sexuality, but it’s true that i’ve never even been in a real relationship. it’s not like relationships can save you… 

here’s another thing: ultimately everything is a two way road. people are not obligated to put up with me. i am draining. i am exhausting. i am boring. therefore i attempt to impose myself on people the least amount i can. but also i have poor impulse control, so i attempt to make friends despite this innate desire to minimize myself. it sucks though because relationships will never be permanent. there will never be a relationship that spans your lifetime. friends will leave. it’s just a fact of life. 

society itself doesn’t lend itself well to me. i grew up in an abrasive (and abusive) environment. i didn’t learn how to keep things to myself–or rather i recognized that you are supposed to keep all to yourself, and i fail at it. i burden people with my feelings far too often. like in some classes i might seem like the student who doesnt care, or in others, i am the student that makes too many comments or tries to talk about things they dont really grasp. I’m really just trying my best. but i know im stupid. im saying too many things. im saying wrong things. since i’m failing two of my classes, i just stopped going to them. so i go to art history, i feel stupid, i go home and cry. then on tuesdays and thursdays i go to theater and i try my best, but i feel untalented. i go home and i cry. 

because i’m just full of self-pity. no one wants a victim. i act haughty, i am narcissistic. but i am full of the exact opposite as well. i am one who is constantly at war with myself. i realize this is not a rare phenomenon though. 

like how can you want to live in a society where you’re wrong. In conservative circles, I’m wrong because of my desire and action upon my lesbianism. In liberal circles, I’m wrong because lesbian is a label that’s restrictive. Why aren’t you just Q****? let us call you q****. Don’t doubt that you can one day be attracted to men!

Artists are nothing. A dime a dozen. My art is meaningless. It’s all been done. Everyone wants something revolutionary.

 everything is dominated by men. my eyes are so open. from the smallest way we do things. how women give birth. names babies have. EVERYTHING was made by men. my chair. modern architecture. why i wear makeup. what my makeup is made out of. it’s all men. and i really do love individual men. i feel like a lot of men don’t realize things. but like it cant be ignored. it is a fact of life. until we completely remake our society, it exists to be hostile to me. and why should society conform to me…one person. 

im a sex object. im sexually repulsive. im fat. ugly. im beautiful. im cute. im the center of the universe. i’m purity– was virginity. im “dirty” now. a crumpled dollar bill. i am sex. im lust. im whatever label i prescribe to. im whatever label others project onto me. im all– i’m nothing. 

everything is utterly, utterly meaningless. words are words, meanings are meanings. “how nihilistic. how pessimistic” one may say. i suppose it’s true. nihilism can give a meaning to life. an inspiration to just let the forces of the world happen to you until you die. but it’s also i’m constantly feeling the weight of the world on me. the world that ultimately ignores me. 

“this is why you need god.”a god is a comforting notion to those faced with the uncertainty of death. i feel a god would not be so cruel. this notion of cruelty. why should a god care about humans. it’s the same hierarchical structure men have put me in– no thank you. not that i completely blame men. women could have done things. but men and women alike are selfish. why should straight women truly care about lesbians–they dont. no one truly cares. they do what makes them seem progressive. they perform. the worlds a stage and all that. we entertain ourselves, but for those who cannot find entertainment or arent forced to just spend their time working– those who must be confronted with their very existence, thoughts, ideas, ect. well no one cares. it’s all ultimately self-serving. 

everything you think. everything you do. it’s all for yourself. you may say “oh i do service for others!” well in the context of a church think about this. you do it because it will grant you favor with your god. it will give you the satisfaction that you are in a position above someone that you’re taking your time to “serve” them. Are you really doing this out of selflessness? 

There are

“Dont help panhandlers signs in utah. People ive talked to about this have been like “well there’s so much welfare available, there’s really no need to give them money because they’re just going to spend it on drugs.” as if drugs aren’t a cycle. as if being poor–being homeless is your own failure. not the failure of a society that lets people die. that lets people believe all the money you have– you’ve earned. I got money from my dad’s IRA when he died. Did I earn this? Because he worked until he died at 59, two and a half years ago. If it was my wage for how he raised me, the emotional labor I gave him, it was not enough money. If it’s just money because he worked his entire life, I didn’t earn that. Parents no longer even really hold up the “nuclear family” myth. I dont deserve this money. I deserve nothing. No one owes me anything. It would just be better to die than to continue taking up space and time of others. I am utterly unhelpful to society in general, personally, and as a whole. I will not contribute children. I will not bring joy to others. My art will achieve nothing. 

I am a commodity, an object. A Worker. Within my church, I was supposed to find a man to love and serve. To bear his children. To preach of God. In this regard, I am also useless. There is truly no point of my existence, and the world would truly be better without me.