#theres also the benefit of like

[ultjade]

personally i like to give jake a brain ghost aranea just because i think it would be really exciting and fun. for me not for him. it would be hell for him

[lovesickeros]

zhongli and neuvillette fighting over their reader 🤭🤭

scary dog privilege wherever you go, draconic courting gestures that would scare any regular person, they send each other deadly glares the moment you turn away,

stealing your clothes to just get a whiff of your scent, marking their territory all over your house - making it a battlefield basically, neuvillette (in my hc) is cooler and zhongli is warm so the cuddles are always so comfy ☺️😍,

they give you anything you want - you don't even have to lift a finger, they make you travel between the nations a lot though 😒 sooo clingyyy, extra gentle in their dragon forms as to not squish you, don't even get me started on the size difference 😍😍

just a little thought 🤭☺️

- 🐈‍⬛

Neuvi being colder is so real and canon. I see him as being colder + a lot more lithe, kinda lanky with smaller but sharper canines versus Zhongli who's warmer and a bit shorter then Neuvi + bulkier with bigger but not as sharp canines.

They've also got very different habits – Zhongli is very prideful not just of himself but his nation. He'll personally give your a tour and purposely drag it out as long as he can. Complimenting Liyue is basically complimenting him, checkmate Neuvi. Especially if he convinces you to try on some local Liyue fashion. Harmless and just a nice gift to anyone else but Neuvi sees it for what it is (since your wearing something from Liyue, technically wearing something of his. He loves his technicalities when it comes to staking a claim over you). Adds salt to the wound by touching you in totally innocent ways like to adjust you towards something he wants to show you or accidently brushing against you when he takes the bags of spoils he's practically drowning you in but really he's just making sure his scent sticks. He's just a sweet, nice gentleman with absolutely no ulterior motives trust.

Neuvillette does love Fontaine, but his habits are more about himself then the nation. He'll take you around if you ask or if the idea strikes him, but you'll probably stay around the making city area or the opera house specifically. He enjoys more personal time with just you and him then anything else. He values the immaterial to the material. Zhongli spoils you with gifts, but Neuvi tries to offer quality time irregardless of physical gifts (though he still gives them just not to the extent of Zhongli). He'll take you to see different operas if that's to your fancy, or leverage a bit of his authority to maybe see a few films since those seem to be hitting off in Fontaine recently. Bet that creaky old archon doesn't have those huh. He feels awkward if you want to watch a trial, but he'll reluctantly agree because. well. it's you. just don't wave or anything he's trying to work and he just Really wants to see you smile at him like that again and it makes him lose his train of thought. gets custom clothes designed by Chiori to replace your clothes from Liyue because they smell of Zhongli and it makes him sulky + he likes to match.

G-d forbid these two are in the same room as you because it's a war of attrition at that point. Constant accidental brush of the hand against your shoulder or elbow but it's just them trying to get rid of the others scent. they are side eyeing each other behind your back while being all smiles whenever your looking. If it's hot and you lean into Neuvi more he's practically GLOWING. not even smug he's just absolutely smitten and happy to be of service. immediately takes off his gloves and presses his hands to your face asking if your okay and if you want to go back with him. if it's cold out and you seek out Zhongli more hes smug as hell beneath the calm veneer. Offers you his coat and stay as physically close to you as he can under the pretense of being worried you'll catch a cold if he doesn't warm you up.

don't even get me started on your house either because you probably have tons of gifts from both of them accumulated everywhere. if Neuvi sees you use a tea set from Zhongli suddenly he had a fantastic gift idea he thought you'd like. he even got some tea included with it so why don't you let him make you some? Zhongli sees you using a goblet Neuvi gave you (totally a coincidence it's similar to his) and suddenly you have 27 square cups in your cabinets that you have no idea where they came from. if the goblet is mysteriously missing oh well. who knows :]

[dinozaurtual]

the woobification of hamas on this website is so astounding to me like. they literally filmed themselves murdering israeli civilians, including elderly people, children and even dogs, POSTED IT ONLINE, and tumblr leftists are still going "well actually there is no corroborated proof any of this has happened" like i have not seen this amount of stupidity in a very, very long time (maybe ever).

[bacchuschucklefuck]

Riz has counted four casseroles this week alone. Five, if one goes by the method of cooking, but Yelen's scary when she's crossed, and calling her burek by its proper name is important to her, so Riz does her the courtesy and doesn't include it in his mental tally.

He holds the tupperware over his head to keep it out if the way as he takes careful steps over the piles of notes in his path. The dockman case just closed, relevant documentations handed over to relevant personnels, evidences dealt with as needed; all he has lying around now is just record of the process and traces of himself thinking through it. Unsurprisingly they still haven't invented a surface more convenient for people under five feet who like to pace to put pieces of paper on than the ground.

Actual records go into the case folder with the other documents. Anything else with at least one side still blank is going to the school kids in the block - they chew through an astounding amount of paper just learning arithmetic. The rest is for the recycling basket.

Later. It's his mandated lunch break right now.

Riz sits down in front of the corner file cabinet. In an office often overrun with papers and strings and sometimes even thumbtacks, he's never really managed to clutter up this exact square of surface like every other ones. Ever since the bottom drawer rattled for no discernible reason a day long past, his eyes have always just kinda decided to slide across the space without acknowledging it.

It's years out, now. Riz doesn't know why he thought it such a big deal anymore, back then. He wasn't scared, he doesn't think. Not anymore. Maybe just uncomfortable with the idea that certain things persist despite all efforts to change.

He opens the tupperware. Dame Carabelle's experiment greets him with enough spice in the aroma alone to knock out a small mammal. When he chopped the vegetables for this casserole he couldn't really imagine the eventual heft of it, evident even through just these few ladles' worth, maybe weighing heavier for being still warm. His folk eat more through the smell and the textures and the aftertastes than the taste itself. His folk's meal is really the cooking rather than the eating. The eating is the meal's end.

"Hey," he tells the file cabinet's bottom drawer. "Um."

It's the anniversary. Riz doesn't know the exact date of his dad's death; nobody currently alive does. He and Mom both use the date of the funeral, though as he moved out to Bastion and then got more directly involved with Interplanar he hasn't really been going to Dad's grave as much. Doesn't seem like very efficient use of his time, catching a train or borrowing a car or spending a whole spell slot on going somewhere he knows Dad isn't at. They're sorta coworkers now. They talk on and off every other week between missions. When he goes now, it's just to clean up the place, keeping the landmark tidy and respectable.

Without that work to mark the date he doesn't really know what it serves anymore. But he still remembers it. Still takes note, absently or not, when it comes around.

There's not really a good way to tell the drawer that. Riz looks for another way to start the... conversation, hopefully. The question at play, he'd guess, is why he's doing this. He's been pretty content ignoring all the rattlings and the knocks from inside and the times it sits slightly ajar without him ever opening it himself; hell, he still uses the three drawers on top of it. Space is fucking precious in Bastion.

Precious enough to finally fix this damn drawer so he gets his turn to use it? Riz asks himself. Is that what we're getting to? Then he dismisses the thought - he didn't manage to fix it the times he actually tried, let alone-- now. When he doesn't really care that much to.

That's probably a good place to start. "'s fine if you keep being in there, turns out," Riz says.

The lunch hours are quiet in the block, sleepy and bright with the brief window of sunlight that manages to break through roof overhangs and extended balconies and laundry lines and climbing vines. Riz's work isn't loud here (the loud parts happen away from his office, if everything goes right), but the fragment of early summer heat reflected in the steady warmth his meal still carries compels him to lower his voice even more. It makes the words feel intimate, in a way he's never been familiar with - if he says something he just says it. He doesn't whisper. If he gives his friends something, he gives it open-palm. He's found out, along the way, that people usually don't think of rituals and courtesies the way he does.

Small voice for a diminished monster. "You know why I think so?" Riz asks. "Because almost two decades ago you kidnapped me and almost killed me, and now you rattle a drawer in my office."

It doesn't sound as much like a taunt as Riz wanted it to; the drawer has made a lot of noises again this morning when he checked the calendar, and he was definitely annoyed at it. Now, though, facing it like this after cooking the whole morning with more grandparents and peers from the block than he can count on both hands to cater for a tenant union meeting, he thinks the annoyance has morphed. Changed shape.

It has the shades of something like pity. Riz is not prone to pity, and especially not at these kinda matters. It's slightly maddening that he coheres perfectly outside of this one spot. That he commands his spaces, except for a drawer.

He puts the tupperware onto the floor between himself and the cabinet. "I know we're aware it's the anniversary," he says at the drawer. "You do this every year. You make a ruckus every time I decide to go do my job instead of mooching off my friends' aircon, and every time I get an invitation to some stupid social thing I want to turn down, and every time one of the old people tries to introduce me to a child or a nibling, because being a bachelor over thirty is weird," he pinches the bridge of his nose. "I have three fucking jobs. I love doing my fucking jobs. I'm forcing funds into infrastructures. You're never leaving, are you."

The drawer vibrates lightly. It's a very, very mild acknowledgement, considering the history of reactions Riz has gotten from this thing. Riz thinks it's emanating joyous agreement, or satisfaction.

It only sharpens the pity. Riz doesn't like that, but it's how it is. That's, ultimately, the lesson he's been taught over and over and over again, just by existing as himself, turned every which way by space after space that don't see him eye-to-eye: it's not like he'd quit living over any of it. It's not like any of it can sand off these fundamental pieces of him.

He's outgrown a lot of things, he's found out. Again, and again, and again. A childhood home, a yearly trip, a monster.

"'s probably scary for you, huh?" He asks. "Because I left."

He thinks he hears joints creak that sound like you did. Probably the way a scorned lover would say it, in a movie or a yellowback. He has no more connection to the idea than he did as a kid. Less, because it doesn't even scare him.

"That's what it is, right? That it's the anniversary, and I'll never be like Dad." He raises a knee from the floor, pulls it back closer to him. Slings an arm over it. "You love to remind me. The thing is, Dad also left. He loved Mom and he loved me, and none of us wanted it to happen, but it still did. Because love does fuckall to make anyone stay on its own."

He's long past being bitter about it. It's just the facts. Once upon a time he looked into the future and the specter of his friends' happily-ever-after casted lightless, fathomless shadow over him. Love, marriage, that kind of devotion, to a fifteen-year-old with more solved cases than friends seemed so eternal. Final.

But you can only watch your friends build up apps' worth of jilted lovers for so long before getting over it.

"You know what I learned?" Riz tells the drawer. "Love doesn't make anyone stay. Project management does."

He stands up, and picks up the tupperware of Dame Carabelle's casserole, that he helped make, that he helped share with a block's worth of neighbors and members of a community he's at home with, and goes sit at his desk to eat. "Last chance to get any," he drops an offer over his shoulder as he walks away.

He doesn't eat all of his share in one go. What he's spared he leaves on the desk when going outside for a smoke break. Baron looks the exact same as when he saw them last, when he catches a glimpse; they haven't grown at all. They aren't there when he comes back inside, but the leftover has gone days-old cold, like someone's sucked the future out of it.

[chesthighwater]

guy who wants to be emperor SO FUCKING BAD but isn't and has to actively conspire to get there. guy who is in cahoots with him and refers to him as emperor/your highness/my lord/other unearned royal titles in private- perhaps as a show of loyalty, or ingratiation, or certainty in their mutual success, or just 5d chess manipulation. and also it is a sex thing i mean you get me you see my vision

[stealingpotatoes]

Regarding the Acolyte ask and your tag about Master Bald Shrek (oh my gosh Bald Shrek 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭) and yeah coming from the High Republic books fandom with a 100 years younger Master Vernestra: we have no idea why she's like this either and personally I think it sucks. I was so excited to see her in live-action, why'd they make my girl change so much in 100 years to become that. Do not like.😭

omg what she was a canon character before the show??? you poor Old Republic fans you were done so atrociously dirty w the acolyte

[blaec-ynk]

i know some people are absolutely incensed that Arcane dropped the ball on the classism and discrimination and poverty and all those plotlines they had introduced but the truth of the matter is that Arcane always framed any type of Zaunite insurrection/revolution against Piltover in bad lighting and claimed that any fight/war for the freedom and wellbeing of future generations is ultimately evil because it gets people living right now killed

Vander is the most sympathetic Undercity leader/hot shot only because he is supporting Piltover's superiority and oppression of the Undercity. he has a deal with the cops to ensure that he will keep his people obedient and subservient to Piltover and the cops. he aids the status quo and thus Piltover's exploitation of Zaun; he never encourages pushing for change in any manner, violent or non-violent, instead always pressuring those around him (esp Vi) to just take Piltover's scraps and mistreatment because you wouldnt want to lose your loved ones, would you? (which is just like, a threat. an actual threat that figures of authority like cops make to their victims to keep them inline) Completely ignoring the fact that people in Zaun HAVE, ARE, and WILL BE losing loved ones to police brutality, disease, toxic/radioactive exposure, famine, poverty, gang violence, etc. BECAUSE OF PILTOVER.

Arcane is/(started out as) a great show but it was always most sympathetic towards Piltover and the status quo. it never pushed for Zaun's independence/freedom in any meaningful way--and whenever it did deal with Zaun potentially becoming its own nation? it didn't show the power of revolutions, of class actions, of uniting and protesting and fighting back--it just said that if you sit your ass down tight and let the oppressive government shit on you enough, you might eventually be granted some rights--unless you fuck it up with a rocket, of course. but that's not how real life has ever worked

not only that but any attempt at fighting back is literally shown as being plain violence for violence's sake. we dont see or hear anything about how silco or vander planned on rebuilding the Undercity/Zaun, how they wanted to expand infrastructure, how they would support the people and keep them safe--Arcane doesnt paint revolutions as the complex operations they are, they just show us the violence of them and nothing else. like really, all Silco wants to do is use Shimmer to scare topside--but that's not how revolutions or fighting against opressors works! because Piltover will be scared, yes, but that just means they will double down harder on all the violence and restrictions. that's obvious. not only that, but lets say Piltover gets scared and retracts from Zaun completely--Zaun seems to be heavily dependent on trade from Piltover to get what they need to survive. Silco doesnt mention anything about how to fix that. and that to me just plays on harmful stereotypes about any and all kinds of social movements. all of the real work is reduced to violence.

i dont have a closing statement im just so pissed at how theyre handling the classism in s1 now that im rewatching it

[penderbend]

going back to s3 malevolent and good LORD this shit is so good. forgot how absolutely insane it is. easily my fav season (though i do love me my medieval jaunts) this just has something mixed in it thats so damn captivating

[nesscel]

even though i love negativity i think the only way for ness to get over this kaiser/feeling useless slump is to be optimistic and romanticize his bleak life. like ykw yes that flower growing in the cracks in the sidewalk does symbolize perseverance and shows us that we can bloom even in difficult circumstances and isnt that magical. he’s sensitive he can’t handle being a doomer

[bug4932]

if you like the characters and picking out the parts that work ward is a lot of fun actually. there are genuine and valuable criticisms of it but the culture about it is getting kinda weird. love a solid post unpacking the problems or making jokes about it but if your instinctual reaction to seeing other people talk about ward is to feel upset and/or join the conversation to talk about how its the absolute worst you might want to consider if you would feel better blacklisting the tag

if youre curious about ward give it a try. its always gonna be a lot cooler and easier online for people to make fun of something; maybe you like it better than you expect. or maybe its awful. you can always stop reading

[citylighten]

the cc recolor dilemma of not knowing whether you should keep it to yourself or post it for download 🤨

[marklikely]

another thing that was crazy abt megalopolis is that theres a huge subplot (the main plot of the movie??) about how adam driver is just going around demolishing historic buildings and peoples homes to build his stupid utopian city and everyone is protesting this for obvious reasons but then in the last 10 minutes he just unveils his stupid utopian city and its presented like a huge grand triumph and the demolishings are completely forgotten so you have to assume the movie thinks that coming in and exploding peoples homes with no warning is a good and cool thing for him to do and they shouldnt have been upset by this.

[bucephaly]

It really is frustrating and a little funny how like... people will know full well that cherokee princess great grandma stories exist and aren't true. And that fake family stories in general exist. But people will be So sure that Theirs is the exception and is true for whatever reason, be it that they arent white, it doesn't say 'princess', it has a 'reasonable' story with it like 'they were adopted by a white family' or 'they hid and changed their names', they have photos of someone with tan skin, their family has 'high cheekbones, their dad went to powwows, etc etc etc there are so so many random things people use to justify these stories. Like ok, but do you know this ancestors name? Do you know where they were born? Do you know what year the trail of tears happened??? Do you know anything about cherokee history at all besides the trail of tears is an event that happened? Cuz honestly a chunk of these stories can be at least partially debunked with no genealogy just because the time period or location isn't right. Like 'my cherokee great grandma was sent to a residential school' she was born in Kentucky and continued to live in kentucky?? 'My great grandma told me she was on the trail of tears' the trail was 186~ years ago how old are you??? It's like. Can you do Any Tiny Bit of actual research into our history. If it's a big enough deal to you that you feel the need to talk about it whenever anything native or cherokee comes up, you can do the research I promise

[dailykugisaki]

Day 234 | id in alt

A page of doodles bc I'm thinking too hard.

[wormbloggign]

i love that brian is your favorite and you've immediately picked up that hes kind of a lame teenager who's prone to golden retriever behavior about the girl he likes and incoherent word vomit, because vast portions of readers 1. buy into his "i am a cool professional adult man guy, and not a teenager with problems" act and 2. underrate and ignore him. when you get to around arc 4 there's gonna some word of god from wildbow about his backstory you should read bc wb (probably due to the racism) fails to ever mention it in the story despite it being literally foundational for understanding his character in full

from what i've seen his family dynamic is honestly really tragic, especially his mums drug habits (ive had family who've fallen into that stuff and it really hurts seeing someone systematically destroy their life). its clear he was forced by the people around him into becoming the adult in the room from an early age, after so long it becomes second nature in him to take control of a situation, like you see in snare (act 13) where he begins leading taylors plan and forcing himself to be in harms way rather than others -he does this a lot actually, its harder to pick up on because we can see with taylors bug eye view system but whenever he shrouds his team in darkness for a tactical advantage, he functionally removes their ability to see, hear and smell which forces them to rely on him and follow his lead- the scene where he got fridged was devastating because the most effective thing he could do in that situation until divine* intervention was NOTHING, he had to take a passive role there.

its really disheartening how frequently he gets shunted in the story outside of the romance subplot with taylor (which i dont really see happening, because what he needs in a partner is clearly very different from who taylor is as a person, also lisa has way more romantic chemistry with taylor) which sucks because when we do get to see his story, its really fucking interesting

i do need to ask tho, where do i find the word of god from wildbow? ive been avoiding stuff like the comment section and most fandom stuff bc of potential spoilers

[natandacat]

My partner asked me to actually take the time to talk about the whole like if things continue getting worse at what point do I want euthanasia and how do I want to go about it and what to do if I cant do it myself and like. I should do it and its been at the forefront of my mind since august given how bad things got and how scary it was to be in this spot where i can envision a future where I cant even advocate for my own dignity. But damn I don't want to actually prep for it.