#this isn't my main hc btw my main hc for him is that he grew up isolated

[lunar-wandering]

been thinking about the fact Wukong had to teach himself how to speak human and i have to ask. i HAVE to ask. did Macaque already know how to speak human by the time he met Wukong.

like. they definitely didn't meet until after that point. all scenes we've had of past!Macaque and past!Wukong interacting are definitely after Wukong went to the mainland and got his first immortality + the 72 transformations.

and it's seems like Wukong strictly only spoke human from that point onwards.

so i have to ask. when Macaque and Wukong first met, was Macaque just blindsided by this other monkey demon speaking what, to him, sounded like absolute fucking nonsense????

cause listen. listen. something about the idea of Wukong going "hello!!!" while Macaque just lets out the most confused monkey-chirp is so funny to me. the idea of there having been at least one interaction with some random person/demon where Wukong had to translate for Macaque is driving me a little nuts-

[thatshadowcomic]

Hello, op. I absolutely love reading comics and your recent one, The Toll, is something I look forward to read! :D

If it's alright to ask, what are headcanons you like to share about Shadow and/or Sonic?

Thank you!!! The new page will be coming soon, gonna shoot for this weekend! I'll be lockin' in to get more stuff done this month >:)

I have HC from 2002 until now hahaha--Here's a few sonic/shadow specific things that might be interesting?

I combine details from the Archie comics and Sonic X and mix them with the main lore from the games btw.

-Sonic ghost writes/secretly produces a lot music in response to the things in his life. "Live and Learn" was his direct response to shadow's presumed death.

-Shadow and maria are like siblings in my AU, but his relationship with her and Gerald would shape what he expects from relationships in his life, in the same way your parental relationships would shape your expectations for men and women.

-On the ARK, the scientists grew very fond of shadow, often petting him or scratching his ears. Maria would often fluff up his fur, like you would a dog's cheeks. He now understands this kind of affection is more of a human-pet thing and it's kinda inappropriate as an adult... but he misses it.

-Sonic jokes that shadow is like a dog a lot, because he likes being pet and laying on sonic's stomach...and one other reason.

-Sonic isn't as aloof as he seems and he knows how to read the room, and shadow. He once heard that shadow liked Doritos, so he got him a value box of all the flavors and left it at his house without telling him and never mentioned it, so shadow isn't sure if it's even from him.

-Shadow and Omega are like brothers, with Omega often trying to out do or impress him. Sometimes Shadow gets too competitive and they fight, with topaz having to break them up...Rouge just laughs and watches the carnage.

Some deeper stuff:

-It's hard for sonic to truly hate someone or refuse to help them, which has become a big struggle with people around him...and himself. He is certainly a redemption-oriented person and gives people a choice to be his enemy each time they interact, rather than label them as such.

During the Doom situation, sonic wasn't afraid of being killed by shadow, rather, he was afraid of shadow doing something he didn't want to do.

-Sonic doesn't believe that life has purpose or reason, instead he thinks people should find their own meaning and value. "It doesnt matter". He lives in the moment and enjoys as much out of it as he can, because he knows he could die any day.

-Shadow is horrified by the idea of life being meaningless and struggles to see how sonic can have a fruitful life feeling this way. The concept fills shadow with dread and gives him an existential crisis...He struggles with the idea of possible immortality because it means anything he gains will one day vanish, just as before.

Sonic thinks shadow should live the same as him because he'll outlive it. He wonders if shadow should document everything as a way to appropriate it...

A big part of sonadow for me is how they learn that different people need different things. Shadow doesnt want freedom in the same way that sonic does..

[genshins1mpact]

I've always had interesting dreams but last night's was very interesting 👀 to sum it up briefly, Xiao had a half adepti spirit baby 🤭

World building/oc lore:

Now for the long story, and bear with me cause I'll probably have to explain my oc and hc and try to tldr the world building behind this dream, bc it's far from the first time I've had a dream either as myself or as my oc hahaha. But anyway, so my oc Aerin kind of just showed up in Teyvat sort of how the Traveler does (Aether in this case), and she and Aether bond over missing their siblings/family. She has jobs in both Mondstadt and Liyue atm, depending on where she's staying or doing commissions and the like; either helps out at Good Hunter/Angel's Share when they get too busy, or helps out with paperwork at the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor. Uhh did I forget to mention she's one of 3 demigod(?) kids? Well yeah, it's her older brother (dendro), then there's Aerin (hydro/pyro), then her little sister (electro); they're Hades/Persephone's kids btw.

Aerin sort of got dragged along the incidents of the story, so she got to know the main characters pretty well, and is especially close to Venti, Xiao, the Liyue kids (including Hu Tao), etc. Basically, since she's one of Hades' kids, she can see spirits and they often come to her for help and she tries to help them get stuff done so that they can cross over to the spirit realm and all that stuff, hence why she's good friends with Chongyun and Hu Tao specifically. The archons being gods themselves get along with her and they all trust one another in this sort of wine book club tea-time kind of way, and even others like Ganyu show up sometimes. As Xiao comes to trust Aerin and they start to bond, the other adepti (like Cloud Retainer) start to kind of watch over them more, and even have an ongoing joke as to when either one of them will notice they like one another.

The dream itself:

And now as to how this all ties into the dream, which has a lot of technicalities in and of itself, I'll try my best to describe it without getting... too lengthy haha. Like I mentioned previously, Xiao and Aerin bonded, but in this case it seemed to work in an almost like a werewolf mate kind of way? Xiao essentially became so attached he imprinted on Aerin and some sort of mark appears at the back of her neck (it's Xiao's constellation lol), and so they kind of have to come to terms with the fact that they're unofficially officially together now. Xiao gets embarrassed and spends a lot of time "protecting Liyue" and so they're in this odd state of not communicating, until Aerin gets sick and then Xiao runs over to check up on her, and they sort of fall asleep huddled up together, that being the sort of catalyst of them really starting to get together. Aerin is very patient with Xiao, as neither one of them really have any relationship experience, but she knows he's been fighting for millennia on end and isn't exactly going to suddenly change overnight or anything. Hence a bit of a slowburn tinged with angst as they got closer (lots of timeskips in my dream), until they received some shocking news. Xiao's away for work that week and when Aerin goes in to work at the WSFP, Zhongli congratulates her (but she has no idea why). Later when she runs into Ganyu, the same thing happens, and it isn't until she visits the table to speak to Cloud Retainer that she finds out why. (This part is where it gets sort of weird, I know lol). But basically CR tells Aerin that the two have bonded so strongly that it basically created enough adeptal energy that was transforming into its own being; i.e. rather than pregnancy, it was like a spirit baby born from them... yeah. Anyway, she speaks to Xiao about this and of course they have to kind of deal with things all over again, they'd just barely become affectionate and all of a sudden there's a kid thrown into the mix. Some months later (might've just been a month idk, time skips yk), said spirit baby kind of just shows up one day when they're all at that table with seats for Morax, Cloud Retainer, Guizhong, yknow the one. And so yeah, Zhongli, Ganyu, Xiao and even the other 3 (Retainer, Shaper, & Carver) all showed up to congratulate the uhh happy couple. They sort of had to get used to taking care of their daughter, but she was "born" looking sort of like she was already months old or smth and grew up fairly quickly, like I guess that mix of yaksha adepti and demigoddess just made for one hell of a tough kid. SO she looked a lot like Xiao when she was born but when her hair grew out she looked more like that red beta Xiao design (in homage to Aerin's black/red scheme I guess?) And they had no idea what to name her until one day Aerin kind of looks at Xiao and goes "well, how about Mingxiao, like the lantern in lantern rite? that way you'll both be Xiao and Mingxiao like the lanterns?" and Xiao wasn't entirely on board at first but then remembering when they went to the festival together and everything the idea grew on him. Aerin always felt like the odd one out since she's an Outlander™️ and not a Liyue native, but everyone else treats her like family and she and Xiao became very close, and once Mingxiao's training began, the three were an unstoppable force to protect Liyue. Though somewhere at the back of her mind, this feeling that just as mysteriously as Aerin appeared in Teyvat she could always dissappear just as fleetingly... so Xiao wasn't the only one fighting off his own demons 🤧

tl;dr: my oc aerin and xiao basically had an imprint/bond mating thing happen and then that bond created a spirit baby that looked like beta (red) xiao and they named her mingxiao (bc of lantern rite) and they became "new liyue™️'s official future protection squad", with hopes that mingxiao would be a leader for the next generation of liyue/adepti in general.

(beta xiao design, for reference to mingxiao)

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