#this got philosophical

[misscrawfords]

Your top 5 fictional characters :)

This is from ages ago and I've been sitting on it because it is SO HARD. Only five??! How?!

So I'm going to try with massive apologies to all the many that I'm missing out and with the caveat that I'm not allowed more than one per author/show/book/film series/whatever. In no particular order:

Henry Tilney - the perfect romantic hero, proving that ice-cold and brooding is not, in fact, the way to a woman's heart

Mary Crawley - my home girl and muse, whose voice lived within me for most of my 20s

Viola Fitzgerald - my OC, who is part of my soul and I miss desperately and yes she looks like Hayley Atwell in MP. I have a mug which says "What would Viola do?" and sometimes I imagine her sitting by my side - and judging the hell out of everything I do. I need to find a way to carry her spirit forward creatively.

Odysseus - the ultimate trickster and my guy in the Classics. I'm a Classics teacher. I have to have a Classical character on here somewhere and I guess it's this bastard.

Jane Marple - providing me with gentle hope that I can stay single and be useful and appreciated and a valued member of a community surrounded by friends and family who care about me, even if I end up with no immediate family of my own. I'm so scared of that and Miss Marple gives me real inspiration and comfort.

[meloartist]

"i simply do not see it. i am looking away"

[took-my-breath-away]

art idea: icemav in the stands at one of bradley’s baseball games (elementary, middle, or high school — i feel like he played for a while). i would love to see them in baseball caps, cheering, with sodas and hot dogs and the whole nine yards.

i love icemav doing different activities (especially on romcom esque dates), so if that jogs anything either, i’d love to see it! thanks for making such great art.

he struggled for months to hit it right, nerves wracking through him.

but this time he waited... for the right moment. it finally came.

[dedalvs]

Valyrian is impressively complicated and difficult to learn, is it so complicated on purpose or did it surprise you with how complicated it turned out?

When it comes to complexity and language, any complexity you add to the morphology is complexity you take away from the syntax, and vice-versa. For example, when you learn all the noun cases of Finnish, it buys you having to remember fewer constructions with adpositions—or fewer verb augmentations, if the language went that way.

Syntactically, Valyrian is usually (MODIFIER) NOMINATIVE-NOUN (MODIFIER) OTHER-CASE-NOUN* (ADVERB) VERB. It's quite simple. There's not a lot you have to remember, and things can move around a little bit, if it feels right. You don't have to remember a ton of auxiliaries with different applications and slightly different usages. For the most part the heavy hitters (the nouns and verbs themselves) take care of things rather nicely. This is what complexity within the words themselves buys you: simplicity elsewhere.

The reason you get this is because all languages are doing the same thing: describing human experience. And humans are the same language to language. The other small tidbit is that when creating a naturalistic language—and it doesn't matter what method you use—you are, unconsciously or not, aiming for the lowest common denominator in terms of grammatical complexity. You don't have to do that, but generally if you're trying to create a language for humans with no other goals, you do. With a language like Ithkuil, John was intentionally pushing away from what is standard in human languages, and so there are needless levels of complexity that push beyond the boundaries of ordinary human language.

Now, when I say "needless", this is what I mean.

In Turkish, if you want to say "The girl is reading a book", you say:

Kız kitap okuyor.

Turkish is a language with noun cases, but you only see the nominative here. Why? Because the girl is reading A book. When the object is indefinite in Turksih you don't need to use the accusative case—in fact, you shouldn't. If you wanted to say "The girl is reading the book", that's when the accusative case pops up:

Kız kitabı okuyor.

Okay, with this in mind, you've introduced—just in the nouns—four possibilities:

Nominative + indefinite

Nominative + definite

Accusative + indefinite

Accusative + definite

In a maximally complex language, all of this would be marked. In Turkish, only one of these is marked. (Well, maybe two, if you were to say Bir kız for nominative + indefinite. Turkish has an indefinite article that pops up sometimes.) Certainly there are languages where all of these have some sort of marking, but then those very same languages will have other situations where maximal marking is possible but not present.

Human languages all have this in common. There are areas in the language where more categories could be marked but are not. It doesn't matter what the language is. This is because humans have limits for how much junk they'll tolerate in the language they're using. It isn't long before something that could be inferred from context is inferred from context. It collapses every so often (i.e. too little is marked and so marking pops up), but the unconscious goal is for the language to have a balance between morphological and syntactic complexity and also explicitness and implicitness.

A language doesn't have to do this, though, and so conlangs can be more or less explicit/implicit. Can they work? Certainly, but they may be more than humans will comfortably tolerate, and so humans may not want to use them.

Take Láadan, for example. Had Láadan been created later it might have had a better shot at being used, but this was 1982 before conlangers had started getting together. Láadan primary flaw is that it's trying to be a deep philosophical experiment while also trying to be a language a lot of people speak. That was never going to work. Suzette Haden Elgin lamented that maybe women didn't want a language of their own to use, and so the experiment was doomed from the start. A simpler explanation is she saw an ocean and built a train to cross it.

In Láadan, every sentence begins with one of six speech act particles (copied from Wikipedia):

Bíi: Indicates a declarative sentence (usually optional)

Báa: ndicates a question

Bó: Indicates a command; very rare, except to small children

Bóo: Indicates a request; this is the usual imperative/"command" form

Bé: Indicates a promise

Bée: Indicates a warning

And then in addition to that, every sentence ends with one of the following (also copied from Wikipedia):

wa: Known to speaker because perceived by speaker, externally or internally

wi: Known to speaker because self-evident

we: Perceived by speaker in a dream

wáa: Assumed true by speaker because speaker trusts source

waá: Assumed false by speaker because speaker distrusts source; if evil intent by the source is also assumed, the form is waálh

wo: Imagined or invented by speaker, hypothetical

wóo: Used to indicate that the speaker states a total lack of knowledge as to the validity of the matter

This is too much! Evidential systems in language exist, but they are so much smaller than this, and usually the markers pull double duty—and there's often a null marker.

Again, though, it's about the goals! This is fine for a philosophical language. And if it was simply a philosophical language, then how many people "speak" it is irrelevant. For example, John Quijada doesn't lament that after twenty years there isn't a community of Ithkuil speakers—indeed, he's baffled whenever he hears of someone who wants to try to "speak" Ithkuil. It's not designed for that, and so the metric isn't a fair one. Based on the structure of Láadan, I'd argue the same: the number of speakers/users isn't a fair metric, and shouldn't have been a design goal. Because while a language like High Valyrian looks more complex, with its declension classes and conjugations, Láadan is more complex in that it exceeds the expectations of explicitness a human user expects from a language.

Long answer to the question, but no, High Valyrian ended up as complex as I intended, and I don't think it's more complex than one would expect from either a natural or naturalistic language.

[frozen-planet]

Continuation of my human faced designs wuth some more alts and extra stuff ive scribbled + A quick face design for one of Js dolls that, in me and @literarybard's HC world, is Neon Js lost fiance (she is still alive dontworry) her name is Erika!!!!!!!!!!!

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 41, part three

(Masterpost) (Pinboard)  (whole thing on AO3)

Warning! Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

Brotherhood of Man

Somehow, after the multi-layered shit sandwich of betrayal that happened in Nightless City, Lan Xichen manages to convince his two besties to swear brotherhood with him and each other. Lan Xichen's Polyamory 101 class apparently didn't tell him that forcing a vee to become a three-for-all is a bad idea. Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangyao are bonded by only two things: 1. loving Lan Xichen 2. hating each other.

Nie Mingjue is great at letting bygones be bygones, as we can tell as he glares all the way through Jin Guangyao's skull.

Next we jump to Lan Xichen and Jin Guangyao playing the song of clarity for Nie Mingjue, with Lan Xichen in a particularly sexy set of ultra-fancy robes.

NMJ keeps his eyes shut so he won't have to see the extreme eye fucking that's going on right in front of his salad.

Check out his cool candle holders, by the way.

I can't help but think...is this how Lan Xichen is spending his time while Lan Wangji is in forced seclusion? Lan Xichen didn't attack any elders, so there's no reason he shouldn't be enjoying himself, but he's gone all in on the fuckboy life while his brother is seriously struggling. The Lan brothers seem a lot less close after Wei Wuxian's death interlude and I wonder if this is part of the reason.

(More behind the cut!)

We take a tiny break from empathy during this section so that Lan Wangji can check Wei Wuxian's qi.

He does, and goes to play healing for him. He does not react like WWX is lacking a core, despite doing the magic wrist check that would tip him off if that were the case, so I add this to the pile of evidence that WWX 2.0 does have a (shitty) core in his new body.

I like this little scene because Lan Wangji is clearly worried, emotional, upset - he's doing his little sour-lemon frown and he's intensely focused on Wei Wuxian while he plays healing - but he's not trying to wake him, and he doesn't say anything about his own concerns once Wei Wuxian is awake.

Grown-up Lan Wangji is still not a fan of these unorthodox cultivation activities, but he respects WWX's choices and focuses on supporting him, not stopping him.

Play Misty For Me

Next, empathy shows us Jin Guangyao playing for Nie Mingjue in a 1-on-1 session in JinLintai. I guess this is like dialysis, where Nie Mingjue has to waste a shit ton of time going back and forth between home and JinLinTai to get cleansed.

It seems like Lan Xichen could have picked a better person to train in playing the song of clarity. I know Nie Huaisang's wussy core might make him a poor candidate, but surely there's someone in Qinghe who could do the job? Or send a series of Lan disciples in an exchange student arrangement? But Lan Xichen would rather force these guys to hang out together.

Lan Xichen may seem like he's being wilfully blind, or plain stupid, but I don't think that's what he's about. He's aware that both of these guys are, from a certain point of view, bad people. Nie Mingjue is driven by rage and a rigid sense of justice and social hierarchy; Jin Guangyao is consumed with self-interest and will use any means to achieve his ends.

Good guys Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji will also use any means to achieve their ends - attacking elders, raising the dead, and whatnot. What all four of these not-Lan Xichen people have in common is that they go to extremes, too high or too low, there ain't no in-betweens.

Out of the darkness, into the light Leaving the scene of the crime Either I'm wrong or I'm perfectly right Every time

Sorry, but Billy Joel is part of my cultural heritage as a Gen X person.

Lan Xichen embodies a combination of Confucian and Buddhist values, I think; he wants the people he cares about to chill the fuck out and find the middle way, and also to be truly brotherly toward each other. He tries to achieve this through gentle nagging and also by modeling the behavior he wants to see, creating opportunities for peace and balance. Unfortunately at the time Empathy is showing us, he's unware how extreme and unbalanced his own feelings for Jin Guangyao really are.

At some point, Jin Guangyao starts playing the altered version of the music, and we have a series of kind of weird cuts where 1. the Song of Fuck You is playing on the soundtrack while Lan Xichen is teaching Jin Guangyao 2. NMJ starts to hork up some blood in the 1-on-1 session but finishes horking in the trio session. I think this is meant to show that it was a progression.

Meet Me Outside

Empathy jumps ahead to Lan Xichen trying to warn Jin Guangyao about Nie Mingjue's declining temperament, saying that if it wasn't for JGY playing for him every day, it would be super bad, or words to that effect. He is interrupted by Nie Mingjue showing up to yell at Jin Guangyao. Was Nie Mingjue eavesdropping so that his head could recall this later in Empathy?

I'm inclined to see the dynamic among the three of them at this point through a lens of domestic violence. Lan Xichen stands by helplessly while Nie Mingjue makes it clear that he's in a rage and wants to take it out on Jin Guangyao; JGY calmly tells Lan Xichen to stay behind while he goes outside to take a beating. That's not just optics; Nie Mingjue attacks him the moment they're alone. The fact that NMJ is drunk on resentment is only partly the fault of Jin Guangyao's musical poison; a lot of it is his own choice to do saber cultivation.

Lan Xichen may remember similar interactions with his parents. He's certainly having a trauma reaction instead of stepping into this situation from a place of strength. He's protected Jin Guangyao from NMJ before without any difficulty, but the changes in NMJ's temperament and possibly the loss of Lan Wangji's companionship have put him in a weaker state of mind, it seems. And he himself may have been the target of Nie Mingjue's anger at times, too.

The Ragening

After dodging the first swing from Nie Mingjue, Jin Guangyao asks him why he's mad. The gist of NMJ's beef is this: Xue Yang escaped from the unclean realm. NMJ (correctly) blames JGY. Now Xue Yang is imprisoned by Jin Guangshan after a trial or something, in which Chang Ping retracted his earlier accusation. So they can't execute Xue Yang because there's no evidence against him. (Why can they imprison him for life with no evidence, then? Seems sketchy).

Nie Mingjue says that Xue Yang has a piece of Yin metal, and that's why Jin Guangshan is keeping him alive. JGY doesn't affirm or deny this, but he has to obey his dad, so he can't kill Xue Yang just to please Nie Mingjue.

Nie Mingjue tells him to stop doing that thing he does.

You Doing that thing you do Breakin' my heart into a million pieces Like you always do And you Don't mean to be cruel You never even knew about the heartache I've been going through

Jin Guangyao has to intuit what Nie Mingjue is talking about, which is apparently that JGY is being calculating and manipulative.

He proceeds to rip NMJ a new one for believing that everyone can be as rigteous as him when he has his noble birth and high cultivation to depend on. JGY points out that he himself doesn't have early cultivation training or a good family background to draw on. He also gives us a little bit of specific info about his position in the clan, saying that Jin Zixuan's death didn't give him a clear path; Jin Guangshan would rather bring back another bastard son than allow Jin Guangyao to succeed him.

Presumably he's talking about Mo Xuanyu. Before you feel sorry for JGY, remember that he caused Jin Zixuan's death specifically so he could claim his place in the line of succession.

Nie Mingjue says, dismissively, that he's only refusing to kill Xue Yang because he doesn't want to risk his position in the clan. Nie Mingjue says this like it's a bad thing: like Jin Guangyao, who he fired quite a while ago and totally doesn't work for him, should go against his father's express orders and kill a guy, without evidence, because Nie Mingjue thinks that would be more righteous. I gotta say, Nie Mingjue is a real piece of work.

Nie Mingjue acknowledges that he himself has killed a fuckton of people, but never for his own advancement. Jin Guangyao challenges him with words that have a little flavor of Wei Wuxian's way of thinking: did everyone you've killed deserve it? Are your standards fair?

Then he heads firmly back into villain territory by saying "sacrifices must be made for greatness" which has Nie Mingjue asking why he doesn't sacrifice himself, instead of killing other people? (Shades of WWX challenging Wen Zhuliu) Jin Guangyao replies with an emphatic nope, which inspires Nie Mingjue to kick him down the stairs and attribute his poor character to his mom's line of work, for not the first time. If I was in charge of Jinlintai, I would put a safety gate up there.

The bottom of these stairs is kind of an important place for Jin Guangyao; he's been kicked down them twice (that we know of) and each time he stood up 100% ready to kill the guy at the top of the stairs. Although he took a super long time to actually do it in the case of his dad, I'm pretty sure JGS's fate was sealed in that moment....just like Nie Mingjue's is sealed here.

Side note: In the show, JGY starts musically poisoning NMJ while they are still ostensibly getting along fine, whereas in the book he waits until NMJ has kicked him down the stairs and insulted his mom. CQL Jin Guangyao is just more forward-thinking, I guess.

After fixing his hat, Jin Guangyao walks up the stairs calmly explaining to Nie Mingjue how he fucked with the song of cleansing. This causes Nie Mingjue to qi deviate while the Department of Questionable Visual Effects messes around with extra copies of Jin Guangyao in AfterFX.

Not to be outdone, the Department of Questionable Practical Effects has loaded up the front of Nie Mingjue's torso with exploding blood squibs, because apparently that is how they interpret "all his meridians were broken." (We won't talk about the various non-cultivation-aware translations that say "all his veins were broken.")

Nie Huaisang shows up - running up all of the steps at Jinlintai. From where? Did he run from Qinghe? How did he know Nie Mingjue was in trouble? If Lan Xichen told him, why isn't he here too? Presumably he is still busy checking the guest list for the next conference, per JGY's request.

Jin Guangyao grabs Nie Huaisang and holds him out of harms way while vigorously pretending to be upset while Nie Mingjue points his saber at them. Nie Huaisang interprets this as NMJ not recognizing him (and if you've seen Fatal Journey, you know this is a fair interpretation) but it might be that he's pointing it at JGY to encourage him to let NHS go.

This Is The End

Next we see NMJ all tied up on a table in Jinlintai, with corpse poisoning marks on his neck. Someday I will learn exactly when these happen, what they mean, and how everyone who has them gets them, but today is not that day. (Remember when Wen Qing got them while WWX was playing angry flute at the rocks behind Qinghe, and then they went away when he stopped playing? And how this was never explained?) Xue Yang is walking around him with Baxia and half of the yin tiger seal. He can't control him without the whole seal so JGY says to kill him.

In case all of Xue Yang's behavior seems super random, it's actually not; his project is turning high-level cultivators into controllable fierce corpses. Where Wei Wuxian controlled his fierce corpse Wen Ning with kindness and turnips, Xue Yang uses fancy brain nails. With Nie Mingjue, he presumably hadn't developed the technique yet, which is why they can't subdue him to use him. And he failed to get the nails into Xiao Xingchen or Wei Wuxian's heads. So basically the entire project was a bust, given that he didn't deploy Wen Ning for anything, and Song Lan just followed him around an empty town. This is what happens when you get too attached to a particular creative vision.

Camera Operator: hey now!

Xue Yang uses Baxia to chop Nie Mingjue's head off, which has to piss Baxia off. Xue Yang says Nie Mingjue is finally obedient, which is only sort of true, since he'll be coming back for revenge in sword-spirit form in the live action, or in naked dismembered corpse form in every other version of the story.

Friendly Neighborhood Paperman

This murder causes Wei Wuxian to snap out of empathy back into his paperman body, and accidentally pull NMJ's head's eye covers off, revealing eyes that don't look a goddamn thing like actor Wang Yizhou's eyes, but this head has had a rough few years.

Jin Guangyao is right there in the storeroom with him; it's a good thing he didn't think to have one of his chats with NMJ's head during the 30 minutes WWX spent communing with it. He chases Paperman around slashing his sword through the furniture and knocking shit over.

Among JGY's many evil traits, perhaps the worst is the way he wastes storage space. Look at all these shelves with 2 or 3 books on them.

Paperman makes his way over to Suibian where it's displayed on a shelf, and hops onto its hilt while JGY watches. He smirks at WWX's failure to draw the sword, but eventually Paper WWX does draw it, surprising JGY. Suibian fights him remotely for a bit while WWX gets away and makes his way back to Lan Wangji.

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji trade arm clasps while Wei Wuxian gives him a sitrep, and then they run off to find Nie Mingjue's head.

Because there is no limit to Wei Wuxian's sex appeal, Lan Wangji instantly beats up everyone who gets in his sweetie's way. Lan Xichen shows up, a little alarmed at the attacks on the guards but still on board with their plan.

Lan Xichen deploys his most dramatic stair-climbing flourish to show that he means business.

Eventually Jin Guangyao shows up, and they ask to see his secret chamber. Jin Guangyao tries to explain that it's not, like, a secret chamber any more if you let people come in and look at it.

Apparently there IS a limit to Jin Guangyao's sex appeal, because Lan Xichen puts his foot down for the very first time and tells him, not asks him, to open the room.

...while Wei Wuxian smirks like a kid whose sibling is the one getting yelled at for a change.

Before Jin Guangyao can answer, Su She shows up, saying it's not cool to demand entry to a clan leader's bed chamber, as if Lan Xichen didn't have his own embroidered bathrobe alredy hanging on a hook in there.

Lan Wangji and Su She greet each other nastily, and Wei Wuxian calls him out for copying Lan Wangji, which ends the episode.

Soundtrack: I Go To Extremes by Billy Joel, That Thing You Do from the movie That Thing You Do

Bonus: Liu Haikuan's beautiful hand

[justplaggin]

bsd wan ch. 181: shall we dance battle?

raws | translation by me

[ijustthinkhesneat]

I genuinely like to believe that Bruce’s natural state is Brucie. His resting persona. I think Bruce is smart don’t get me wrong, but you can be smart and ditzy. My citation is Legally Blonde.

I think the Batman persona for him is ultimately a flexing of the mental muscles. Like he read one article on how to be a serious adult and was like I’m gonna do that at 9000%.

I believe that after Jason died is when Batman stopped being the mask, at least for a while. And yeah trauma, dead kid. But it’s also because Bruce was in the reverse position to when his parents were murdered. He was the parent who outlived his child. So he couldn’t afford to not be on edge, the vulnerability it takes to be silly and mess wasn’t going to keep his other son safe. It wouldn’t keep Dick or Tim or Damian safe.

I think if they steered back to Bruce learning to be vulnerable around his friends and especially around his family the comics could be so much better and set the base for many more stories that weren’t a repeat of the same cycle of abuse. It feels like the comics have been hell bent on breaking these characters for so long. Chipping them down to the worst, darkest parts of themselves. And that’s fine. But the writers don’t know when to stop. They can’t see that there is nothing left to break anymore.

[firestorm09890]

Ventus didn’t even break top 10 in regular pat’s poll which I think really made it hit how I’m not getting the same thing out of this series as most others (I mean, obviously, look at everything I’ve ever made, but still). you’re not intrigued by the guilt of someone who found themselves in a position they’d always wanted… at the expense of someone else? the ramifications of those desires being carried out in the most violent way possible by something that mostly isn't you, but partially is? and what happens to a person when that darkness is forcibly removed, and the consequences of layers and layers of repressed memories? you gave Goofy 120 more votes than him???

[deliciousmicroplastics]

izutsumi has the right attitude when faced with saving her entire party herself

[strqyr]

...oh. yang has a literal hair trigger.

years of trying to think of reasons why yang feels so strongly about her hair, and it's a fucking pun for her short temper. goddammit.

[spikezonebby]

hi !! saw requests for song fics are open, may I request something angsty with fem!human!reader x megatron (idw) to ‘young and beautiful’ by lana del rey ? 🥹 <3 thank you in advancee

Young and Beautiful (IDW Megatron x Fem!Human!reader)

Word count: 1,070

Eighty years. Humans lived for a measly eighty years.

You change right before Megatron’s optics. Your hair grays, your skin sags, your bones grow thinner. Like the very universe was sapping you away from him. Vector Prime alone could grant him all the time he needed to write a poem about all of the moments he lived with you.

But how could he begin to write when every time he picked up his stylus, you were that much further from him? He longed to capture the feeling of you and immortalize it in a data pad, but then you’d touch your tiny, soft servo along his gray bottom lip plate and take him away. Remind him that you were his moment. Here for a second, gone in a blink.

You flare, you flicker, you fade.

You asked him once, if he’d love you even after you weren’t so soft. You weren’t so pretty. And your mind wasn’t as intact as it once was.

Megatron’s answer was immediate.

“Even once the spark of your life extinguishes, and I won’t stop even for a klik after.”

You may have lamented the way time and age changed you, but Megatron learns to see unique beauty in it. There was something beautiful in a life lived so long that you COULD age, it was a promise of peace and resilience. You lived, you fought, you came back again and again. A force so strong that it took time itself to put you down.

Megatron thought that was romantic. Not in the way of kisses in summer or dancing in the moonlight, but the cosmic way. In the way that atoms and space dust collect together and become new stars, or how he realizes, in the grand scheme of things, so, so many tiny and nearly impossible things had to happen for you to be his.

As you grew older, you grew more rapt by his poetry. You blamed it on growing old and sentimental, he argued you were always sentimental. You had always found it fascinating, but Megatron believed that perhaps you took some comfort in it.

“Do you think, because I love you… I’ll be there in the Afterspark waiting for you?”

You were resting against his neck cables, curled up between his shoulder armor and helm vents like a tiny glitch mouse. The ardent heat of energon pulsing up the lines of his throat felt good and helped soothe some of the arthritis in your hands. He had to rest his chin on his servo, propping his helm up at an angle to keep from squishing you, but he hadn’t the spark to stop you.

It’s a question that he’d pondered many times. For he who often pondered the nature of all things grand, the question of life after death was a philosophist’s energon and mineral tablets. 

“You do not have a spark,” He points out, shifting his helm minutely to a position slightly more comfortable for you to tuck yourself under, “So I would not expect you to be held to the same rules and expectations of Primus.”

“But, your God is real.” You raise as a counterpoint, “Any proof that various human gods are real could be considered dubious at best.”

“That is a point for the high queries of gods, but what of your lack-there-of spark?”

“What is a spark but life?” You offer, gesturing with your hands and making the round shape of a spark before your breast. Megatron loathed to move you from your warm perch, so instead he tips the data pad in his servo so he can see your tiny reflection. You look comfortable, hidden securely in his collar fairings. “Perhaps I DO have a spark, but it’s simply just a different form. After all, energy cannot be destroyed. It merely changes form.”

You chuckle, knocking your knuckles against his neck cables. “Julius Robert Mayer.”

“A human philosopher?” Megatron asks, setting his datapad aside to instead settle for reaching up and touching his digit to your lap. You take the hint immediately, and hold his huge digit between your two itty bitty hands. 

“Founder of the laws of energy conservation. Suppose most of us are philosophers in some way, though.”

You have to be, with lives so short and bright. Megatron keeps that thought private to himself, gently rubbing his thumb against the back of your hand. You were feeling thinner and thinner these days. He hoped you ate well enough.

“So, what have we come to the conclusion of in this conversation?” You prompt, bringing back your point, “That there is no true way to say I do not have a spark, and that it’s ultimately far more likely that Primus and his Afterspark wait for me than say… The Christian or Hebrew concept of God.”

“For there are too many to count.”

“For there are too many to count.” You agree, “But it is the most commonly applicable and the most similar to Primus.”

“But,” Megatron clicks his glossa, a smile coming to his face. He loved it so  when he could have these in-depth conversations with you. “That is also dismissing that humanity is a much younger culture than Cybertron was. Perhaps you will find proof that these things are indeed true, or perhaps something you had not even considered. Perhaps in the afterlife, you will have a veritable plethora of ‘heavens’ to choose from.”

“Then I’d choose to wait for you.” You say, “Or I’d choose some religion where I’d be reborn and I could fall in love with you again.”

“You could live again, redo all of the things you had missed. Unmake all of your mistakes.”

“You talk as if I considered you a mistake.”

He feels your tiny, cool lips press to the pulsing line of energon that is connected directly to his spark chamber. You laugh, giddy and sounding just as young as you were when he first met you. There’s a well of emotion there in his chest and, if not for millions of years of carefully cultivated control, he might have sobbed.

Instead, he settles for curling the whole of his huge, warm servo against your body, and recording this moment for all of time. The moment he writes on his spark that you wanted to be his in any life.

“I suppose it is not a mistake then, if you do not regret it.”

[fearforthestorm]

okay so. plates.

there's a post floating around on here somewhere about a ceramics class where half the students were instructed to make as many pots as possible no matter the quality, and the other half were instructed to make only one high-quality pot. by the end of the class, the students who had made lots of pots were making better pots than the ones who were supposed to make one perfect pot, and the lesson there was that you get better at things by making more things and letting yourself be bad at it, rather than trying to make one perfect thing.

you have to make shitty things because you have to make things, because making things at all is more important than making good things, because making shitty things is how you make better things.

a friend made the joke that "maybe not THAT shitty though, like that's not even a shitty pot anymore that's just a plate," and while i kind of agree (that's a whole different post), i also immediately went another layer deep with the metaphor: even if it's not a pot, a plate will still teach you things. a plate has its own purpose, independent of a pot - it's job isn't to be a pot, it's not going to teach you the same things that a pot would, but it has a purpose too. just because it's not what you wanted to make or meant to make doesn't mean it's not useful! nothing made is ever wasted.

[meowunmeow]

Ship of Theseus got nothing on Andy he's using his severed parts as save points instead of having an identity crisis about who's "real"

They're all him regardless, as an extension or not, hence why he doesn't have a hard time with regenerating from any part of his body.

People will change, people will adapt, but their essence - their soul - will always be them and them alone. Andy proves it well.

[alipeeps]

Oh man, I am once again consoling/comforting myself with behind the scenes videos and this is a good one... and it raises a point that somehow slipped my conscious mind while watching the show..

Chen Duling says it in the video: "After her master died, Zhao Yuanzhou sent Wen Xiao to the Demon Hunting Bureau, where she met Zhuo Yichen."

And I think I never really processed before that that was the sequence of events. Of how she went from being in the Wilderness with Zhu Yan to being at the Demon Hunting Bureau.

It was Zhao Yuanzhou who sent her there, to give her a home and a family to grow up with, to be with the grieving boy who was also now without a family, thanks to his own actions.

The family she has, the close bond she has with Zhuo Yichen, the support and confidence she has, these were given to her (to them) by Zhao Yuanzhou. He sent her away because he knew he couldn't provide that for her.

This is pretty much exactly what Zhuo Yichen was talking about in his metaphor about the roses with Bai Jiu.. that there is a kind of love that is picking a rose and wearing it for all the see and admire... and another kind of love that is watering the rose bush so it can bloom and grow well, even if that means you don't get to keep it with you.

[hylaversicolor]

peace of mind was not meant for me