#this was a real roundabout way for me to say that i think he chooses to look like lester post-toa

[weatheringandweary]

Apollo's perception of Lester changing over the course of the series drives me absolutely nuts because it's one of the most emotionally impactful arcs in his character.

He see's Lester as a prison sentence initially. He's the husk that Zeus made of Apollo when he stripped him of his immortality, his domains, and his memory. Not a single thing about the mortal body he's placed in was his choice and he resents it. Apollo even refers to Lester as a distinctly separate entity at times. There is a clear disconnect between what he views as himself and his punishment, and the only times he acknowledges it as his identity is to be self-deprecating or dismissive.

Then halfway through his arc, at the lowest points in the narrative where he's lost nearly all of his abilities, he spirals into self doubt. Maybe this was all he really was. Maybe without the support of his powers and domains, this was all there is to Phoebus Apollo. He's accepting Lester's negative traits as apart of himself, vocalizing his fear of being useless and unworthy of godhood to the readers. While the first portion of the series developed Apollo's character in terms of him accepting responsibility, The Burning Maze is when Apollo's most significant internal changes take place.

He stops lying constantly in his narration by this point, and we get to see how he actually feels about himself and others. What he was hiding from the readers - most notably, was his feelings of inadequacy.

But by the end of the series, once he's rightfully Apollo again, he admits to us that it doesn't feel right. He suddenly realizes that he does miss being Lester; that the godly form he's wearing doesn't fit like he once thought it did. Despite the trauma surrounding his trials, being Lester was the first time Apollo was able to be authentically himself without fear of needing to put on a mask. He was braver, kinder, and more beloved when he wasn't putting distance between himself and others.

Because that's the person he wants to be.

That's the real him, Lester Papadopoulos.

[barb-l]

As a desperate lesbian who has been wanting a sapphic Wednesday portrayed for AAAAGES now, I still can't believe these things that the show gave me:

THE Wednesday Addams being shown jealous of a character that barely has any lines MULTIPLE times just because Enid mayyybe wants to choose said minor character as a roomie/bestie over her

BFFs Thing and Enid ganging up on Wednesday over her fashion sense and her pouting about it

Wednesday, who takes pride in her independence and relishes in isolation, admitting to have missed anyone is unthinkable. But she did! In her own way. Even if she was roundabout with her admittance, the fact that she got called out by both Thing and the goddamn villain shows how down bad she was during that fallout with Enid

"Thing said he missed you" and the way she visibly struggles against her nature to say "Skip the tape" with the tape symbolizing her breaking down her walls for Enid

something about Thornhill, who is played by an actress who also used to play Wednesday, telling this new Wednesday that she has to admit someday how much Enid has come to mean to her is just... ugh. Will never get over how much it adds so many layers to Wednesday's self-denial.

she held off all the insults in her bottomless vocabulary so she wouldn't completely offend Enid over the snood she made for her. She sugarcoated her words for Enid, which Wednesday NEVER does. In fact, it's the opposite of what she always does!

Enid VS Tyler bearing so much resemblance to that classic trope where the Love Interest saves the girl from the other Love Interest, even being a parallel to the fight between Gomez and Garret over Morticia

Enid lamented how she would never find a mate because she's not a real werewolf and would hence die alone, to which Wednesday remarks that it's a good thing in episode one. To emphasize Wednesday's apparent indifference to isolation, she is told that her nature as a raven means that she is fated to be alone like Enid feared for herself. In the finale, after Wednesday accepts that she doesn't want to be alone in the wake of her fallout with Enid, Enid finally wolfs out to save Wednesday. Enid made Wednesday realize that she doesn't actually like being alone, at least not when it meant she wouldn't have Enid by her side. In turn, Wednesday's life being threatened gave Enid the push to finally wolf out and, supposedly, now be given an opportunity to be eligible for a mate. I mean... I don't have high hopes, but the narrative is making it too easy to make it look like they were meant for each other

The heavy implication that Wednesday joined the Poe Cup because Bianca specifically said she wanted to make Enid cry over losing. The fact that she always deflected whenever Enid tried to confirm that Wednesday is doing it for her, but she never outright denied it!

"The mark you have left on me is indelible" and "I'll think of you" about Enid aksnnzzinsosnsj she gets sooooo sappy for herrrr

THE HUG. For people she's very very soft for, like her family, she only ever let THEM touch her. She's never show to start or reciprocate. SHE pulls Enid back into her. She holds Enid just as tightly, despite the injuries and despite Enid's pink coat. Enid toughens up for her but Wednesday is so vulnerable for her my god im so ill for them 💀

[mayhemchicken-varneyposting]

Varney the Vampire, Chapter 23: That Satisfaction Due From One Gentleman To Another

[Previous chapter] [Next chapter]

Charles sits his uncle down and tells him his secret plan: he intends to duel Varney. The admiral thinks this is a fantastic plan, to the point of wanting to also duel Varney, but Charles asks him not to, and to instead look after Flora financially if anything should happen to him. The admiral agrees; he also agrees to be Charles' second in the duel, and Charles writes out a formal challenge for him to deliver to Varney. The admiral leaves, along with Jack Pringle, on his errand.

While he is gone, Charles works himself up thinking about dueling Varney, including making plans for how to keep him from coming back in case he really is a vampire. He reflects that, based on the appearance of the portrait, Varney must be around 150 years old, and marvels at the thought of what he must have witnessed in that time. Finally, he resolves that his duel with Varney must surely be life or death - either Varney dies, or he does.

Admiral Bell meets with Varney and delivers the challenge. Varney casually insinuates that he will kill Charles if they duel. The Admiral now reveals his own secret plan, which is to offer to duel Varney in his nephew's stead. Varney points out that this is highly unusual, but agrees. He continues to talk as though the death of his opponent is a foregone conclusion, and insists on using swords, which the admiral is peeved by. Varney winds the admiral up a bunch with his usual brand of mannerly insults before sending him on his way.

Oh baby, the DUELS are here. Let's fucking go.

Charles' written challenge to Varney is the most hilariously roundabout way of saying "I want to fight you" I think I've ever read.

"To SIR FRANCIS VARNEY. "Sir,—The expressions made use of towards me by you, as well as general circumstances, which I need not further allude to here, induce me to demand of you that satisfaction due from one gentleman to another. My uncle, Admiral Bell, is the bearer of this note, and will arrange preliminaries with any friend you may choose to appoint to act in your behalf. I am, sir, yours, &c. "CHARLES HOLLAND."

This is so vague. The first sentence of this could just as easily be asking Varney out. (Imagine.)

The admiral is acting slightly suspicious as he accepts the letter; secretly, he's plotting to challenge Varney in Charles' stead. Once he's gone, Charles is left to stew in the pre-duel anticipation, which I imagine is about the same feeling I get when I have to make a phone call.

Rymer seems, at times, almost resentful of the fact that there's a vampire in his vampire story about vampires. It's the way he talks about the characters like they're being silly for believing in vampires, in his story he's written about a world which contains real vampires.

It was strange to imagine that such was the force of many concurrent circumstances, that a young man like Charles Holland, of first-rate abilities and education, should find it necessary to give in so far to a belief which was repugnant to all his best feelings and habits of thought, as to be reasoning with himself upon the best means of preventing the resuscitation of the corpse of a vampyre.

Yeah of course he should find it necessary to believe in vampires in your fucking vampire novel, Rymer, what do you WANT from him.

I'm convinced, by now, that the author has no conception of how long a hundred years is. First there was all that business about rates of decay, in which he was convinced that a coffin sealed in a stone vault for a hundred years would decay away to nothing, and now, well...

"That portrait," he thought, "on the panel, is the portrait of a man in the prime of life. If it be the portrait of Sir Francis Varney, by the date which the family ascribe to it he must be nearly one hundred and fifty years of age now." This was a supposition which carried the imagination to a vast amount of strange conjectures. "What changes he must have witnessed about him in that time," thought Charles. "How he must have seen kingdoms totter and fall, and how many changes of habits, of manners, and of customs must he have become a spectator of."

150 years is only about two lifetimes, it's not like he witnessed the collapse of the Roman Empire. What kingdoms are you talking about? (This gets even sillier if we assume the story is set in the late 18th/early 19th century, as is insinuated at one point, because in that case Charles himself would have been alive for multiple revolutions.)

It would be aside from the object of these pages, which is to record facts as they occurred,

Oh, is it now, Rymer? Is it really? What important facts were being recorded when you went on a tangent about construction projects in Kent? Or when you paused the narrative to soapbox about religion for multiple paragraphs? Or the entirety of chapter 19?

The admiral knew well he could trust Jack with any secret, for long habits of discipline and deference to the orders of superiors takes off the propensity to blabbing which, among civilians who are not accustomed to discipline, is so very prevalent.

This is just...patently not true about Jack. Also further revealing of Rymer's shitty beliefs, which we've seen earlier in the form of the Bannerworth's servants gossiping about the vampire attack to the entire surrounding countryside. This "poor people be gossiping" idea keeps getting worse throughout the story, too.

"Confound the fellow!" muttered the old admiral, "he is well lodged at all events. I should say he was not one of those sort of vampyres who have nowhere to go to but their own coffins when the evening comes."

An interesting statement coming from the guy who keeps getting vampires mixed up with mermaids. Many of the vampire superstitions raised in the story are not true within its worldbuilding, but I like to imagine there are indeed vampires of the coffin-dwelling sort in the Varneyverse, and Varney simply isn't one of them. (Or he is, and that's why he can never get a peaceful night's sleep.)

Now we reach a real treat: Admiral Bell and Varney interacting. You will recall that Varney loves winding people up until they snap, and that Admiral Bell is already perpetually wound up. A conversation between them, therefore, ought to be incredibly entertaining, and it does not disappoint.

"Why, he is a young man just, as you say, entering into life, and I cannot help thinking it would be a pity to cut him off like a flower in the bud, so very soon." "Oh, you make quite sure, then, of settling him, do you?" "My dear sir, only consider; he might be very troublesome, indeed; you know young men are hot-headed and troublesome. Even if I were only to maim him, he might be a continual and never-ceasing annoyance to me. I think I should be absolutely, in a manner of speaking, compelled to cut him off." "The devil you do!" "As you say, sir."

(First speaker Varney, second Admiral Bell)

Varney remains pleasant and good-natured throughout the conversation, which only serves to wind up the admiral all the more. He's also being an annoying little shit, of course, which doesn't help. Behind it all, however, is a fairly serious threat. Varney isn't simply confident in his ability to kill any challenger, he takes it as an obvious fact.

"Ay, with swords; but I must have everything properly arranged, so that no blame can rest on me, you know. As you will be killed, you are safe from all consequences, but I shall be in a very different position; so, if you please, I must have this meeting got up in such a manner as shall enable me to prove, to whoever may question me on the subject, that you had fair play."

Speaking of swords, we get more witty vampire insinuations from Varney.

"I cling to the customs and the fashions of my youth," said Varney. "I have been, years ago, accustomed always to wear a sword, and to be without one now vexes me." "Pray, how many years ago?" "I am older than I look, but that is not the question."

I never get tired of him doing this.

And now...okay, I know the purpose of this series is to keep people from having to read Varney the Vampire, and pasting in huge chunks of text is antithetical to that purpose, but goddammit I just enjoy this next part too much. I'll break it up with commentary so it's not such a huge wall of text.

"Is that all?" "Not quite. I will have a surgeon on the ground, in case, when I pink you, there should be a chance of saving your life. It always looks humane." "When you pink me?" "Precisely."

I love the line "It always looks humane." It really highlights his skewed priorities, and the way he treats the death of his opponent as a foregone conclusion not even worth fretting over.

"Upon my word, you take these affairs easy. I suppose you have had a few of them?" "Oh, a good number. People like yourself worry me into them, I don't like the trouble, I assure you; it is no amusement to me. I would rather, by a great deal, make some concession than fight, because I will fight with swords, and the result is then so certain that there is no danger in the matter to me." "Hark you, Sir Francis Varney. You are either a very clever actor, or a man, as you say, of such skill with your sword, that you can make sure of the result of a duel. You know, therefore, that it is not fair play on your part to fight a duel with that weapon." "Oh, I beg your pardon there. I never challenge anybody, and when foolish people will call me out, contrary to my inclination, I think I am bound to take what care of myself I can."

He may sound flippant here, but Varney really is mostly averse to violence, finding duels annoying and tedious and preferring to run from a conflict whenever possible. I won't say this is a consistent character trait of his, because there are a number of later chapters which blatantly contradict this characterization, but it does come up fairly often, and several times is milked for angst. That's right, Varney is the original tragic tortured unwilling monster vampire, and every adaptor who's ever done that with Dracula owes me 20 bucks.

"D—n me, there's some reason in that, too," said the admiral; "but why do you insult people?" "People insult me first." "Oh, nonsense!" "How should you like to be called a vampyre, and stared at as if you were some hideous natural phenomenon?" "Well, but—" "I say, Admiral Bell, how should you like it? I am a harmless country gentleman, and because, in the heated imaginations of some member of a crack-brained family, some housebreaker has been converted into a vampyre, I am to be pitched upon as the man, and insulted and persecuted accordingly."

"People insult me first," he says, grinning while showing all of his big sharp vampire teeth and constantly making little verbal jabs at literally everyone he talks to.

Varney voice how dare you call me out for being rude when I'm literally neurodivergent and a vampire

"But you forget the proofs." "What proofs?" "The portrait, for one." "What! Because there is an accidental likeness between me and an old picture, am I to be set down as a vampyre? Why, when I was in Austria last, I saw an old portrait of a celebrated court fool, and you so strongly resemble it, that I was quite struck when I first saw you with the likeness; but I was not so unpolite as to tell you that I considered you were the court fool turned vampyre." "D—n your assurance!" "And d—n yours, if you come to that."

Damn, roast him Varney.

After Admiral Bell leaves, so frothing mad that he kicks Varney's servant on the way out the door (uncalled for), he starts to worry about what he's going to tell Charles, now that he's arranged the particulars for his own duel instead of for Charles' like he was supposed to. Yeah, dude, maybe you should have thought about that beforehand.

Next: Varney asks Charles out arranges a not-at-all-suspicious meeting

[trying-to-get-somewhere-real]

okay so something i read today has me thinking once again about the significance of carm telling syd that she makes him better at this, and what a huge fucking deal it is. the extremely talented @bartonbones just updated their incredible fic, my hand was tied to yours, and it includes this bit (spoiler warning) where carmy struggles (but ultimately succeeds to a degree) to tell ebra that what he's doing at the sandwich window is important and he's doing a good job:

Ebrahem’s joy is real and present and wonderful, but it’s still kind of hard to look at, even with how much he leaned on it. That’s what a lot of this old shit felt like—the Beef, Mikey, even Chicago itself. He lived inside of it but he couldn’t look at it, he loved it and he hated it, he needed it and he could barely stand it. But that was his shit. Ebrahem was good, here. Everyone else was good. He needs to start fucking saying it before no one expects him to anymore—as hard as it is sometimes, as against his nature as it feels, he never wants anyone to have to look into his silence for answers. He wants to tell them. He really does. “Look, what you do here is really important, okay? It’s just as important as all the other shit, you know. It’s not, like, a bit part, or a plebe job, alright? This shit, it really matters. To me, and to Richie, and—and to fuckin’ Darius, right?”

and that example in the fic of carmy's struggle to praise his team— when i know he absolutely feels those feelings and knows they're deserving of it—made me think back on s2 and try to recall whether he was ever able to express praise/gratitude/pride in anyone verbally other than when he told syd she makes him better at this. his struggle to express himself here in the fic felt very true to canon for me because carm did all of these things all season to show he had faith in people: sending Tina and Marcus and Richie to places where they could grow, giving Tina the knife, giving Syd the jacket, etc.—but rarely (ever?) was able to tell anyone to their face that he was proud of them. we get claire telling richie that carm loves him very much, but it's not carm telling richie and we didn't even get to see carm tell claire! when marcus presents his new dishes to carm and syd, you can tell carm is impressed and pleased, but he doesn't really go all the way to saying that in so many words. you can see it and feel it but he doesn't quite say it.

i haven't done a close rewatch so i am probably missing something (please let me know), but i kind of think what he said to syd may have been the only time he told someone involved with the bear that they were good this season (even in the roundabout way of "your goodness makes me better"). that moment has always been incredibly powerful for me because the specific words he chooses feel so weighty and vulnerable and kind of unlike him, but i didn't really consider until this very minute that carm maybe goes the entire season without giving any kind of verbal affirmation to anyone else period? am i crazy?

[coiled-dragon]

Hi! I’m working on my Dracfield weeks fics now (i know…why start early when you can wait for the last minute! 😂) but I really struggle with writing Dracula, because he is suppose to be nasty, over the top, cruel and yet still care somewhat for Renfield. Do you have any tips for writing Dracula? Like, how to balance his personality, things to keep in mind, that sort of thing? Thanks for all your help!!!

Hi there!

Man I wish I had advice to help because honestly it is something that I occasionally still struggle with myself and Im at the point with writing these two where it sort of just comes naturally to me. Part of what helped me was absolutely watching the movie a lot, but also talking with some friends and breaking down why Dracula acts the way he does, and how that influences what he may do.

Like he is a creature that we would call narcissistic (note: I am not saying that narcissism is inherently bad or evil, I am saying that Dracula as a vampire who views himself above all other forms of life, has narcissistic traits and exemplifies them in all the worst possible ways). He thinks of himself first and foremost, and constructs how he cares for things around him based on how it will serve him in the end. If Renfield getting off is of some benefit to him, then he'll ensure he does. If not, then he'll focus on his own pleasure and drop Ren to take care of himself. This extends to things beyond sex too.

His cruelty is a mix of keeping Renfield in his place, knowing that Renfield has grown to enjoy it (if you like masochistic Renfield but cmon he's a beacon of 'please hurt and degrade me'), and not entirely aware of - or choosing not to be aware of - the way it can break a person over time. He can mend physical wounds, he can beat Renfield into behaving somewhat acceptably, and the negative ways it affects Renfield often serve him all the better. Again it loops back to serving himself really.

Another important personality point to keep in mind is that... As a vampire, a life of isolation was how he kept himself safe. He wont admit to his weakness or faults, but he's aware that having someone - Renfield - that close, and given as much trust as he is puts him at great risk. Which is why he goes to such lengths to ensure Renfield is completely under his control. To show too much affection, to let this human who he has given way more trust than he has given anything know the power he has, can be a fatal risk. He will, in his own roundabout ways, show affection, but to the average human its not going to look like affection. Or at least, it wont look like enough to deal with his heaps of bullshit. But its enough for Renfield.

This is less advice and more a small crash course in points of his personality that I keep in mind, but I hope it can help?? Also, worth noting this is my personal take on it inspired by discussions with my friends as we obsess over this movie. Its not necessarily canon or the only way to write these two, but its what I keep in mind when I write.

Self Serving, even when he seems to be doing things for another

Cruel, but as a tactic to keep the other in their place and sometimes to get the other off (or let off steam lets be real)

Very Little Affection, otherwise risking letting the other know how important they actually are to him

[vacantgodling]

author tag

thank you mj ( @mjjune ) beloved <3

i’ll do these for paramoiiiiii (which is pronounced para-MWAH bc i’m kissing it)

1) What is the main lesson of your story (e.g. kindness, diversity, anti-war), and why did you choose it?

oof. paramour has a lot of things going on in it, a lot of which are unintentional but evolved as i began to piece together the characters and the narrative. i don’t think paramour can be boiled down to a singular “main lesson” because i don’t think there’s really a lesson to be HAD. you can definitively read paramour for all of the deep thoughts i have about religion, masculinity, sex, gender presentation, and societal expectations, as well as like the horrors and suffering that greed can bring… or you can just read it as two guys who take the most stupid roundabout way to realize maybe the sex does have feelings. maybe the porn in fact has a little plot.

a lot of the messages woven into paramour have been marinating and maturing in me since 2020 tbh when i really started to allow me to be yknow. MYSELF. and so because i love them they got the projection beam as ya do.

2) What did you use as inspiration for your worldbuilding (like real-life cultures, animals, famous media, websites, etc.)?

paramour is inspired chiefly by steampunk, rococo fashion, and france. lmao. the entire universe that paramour is in (which includes wips like alizath, teardrops, and that one wip that is new and budding but doesn’t have a name yet) is inspired by me bastardizing and colorizing (aka making every mc and all the characters black) europe bc i’m tired of fantasy, mythology, and history and all the things that i enjoy as a person being dictated and delegated to white people. so a lot of it is also “writing the story that i want to see” etc etc.

paramour specifically was also inspired by (but has moved away from QUITE a bit): hamlet, crimson peak, beauty & the beast, gothic literature (that aspect has heavily stayed) and stuff like that. it’s original name was beauty and the crimson hamlet and it was more of a haunted house thing vs what it’s evolved into now lol.

3) What is your MC trying to achieve, and what are you, the writer, trying to achieve with them? Do you want to inspire others, teach forgiveness, help readers grow as a person?

hya is honestly trying to achieve being left the fuck alone and he doesn’t succeed LMAO. i’m not really trying to achieve anything with hya particularly (again you can read into all the things that i put into him and the narrative or he can be just some guy and both are correct tbh) — other than extreme wish fulfillment. though it may not seem this way because hya is a raging dick, he’s ideally what type of person i want to be like in Extreme fantasy land. i wish i was joking but i ain’t. and as such, he gets forgiven of a lot of the things that he does by the narrative or gets his own little happy ending and reasonings why he’s like this which i know some or many people will take issue with. him leaving a corpse in the foyer for example—many will describe him as cruel and callous and “problematic” and they’re right! love that for him 💛 i’m not trying to inspire anyone but myself like when i tell you that paramour is a wip written by me and for me i mean it LOOOOOL like idgaf about what anyone thinks of it 💀 (though i am so happy so many people love paramour as much as i do i didn’t think anyone would care about these assholes but many of my dear friends and other followers have proved me wrong and it’s validating tbh lol)

4) How many chapters is your story going to have?

current outline says 27 but i’m thinking it’s gonna lean closer to 30 just because as i write i realize i need to add in a filler chapter or two. so i’ll say it’ll probably end up being 30–at MAX 35 chapters probably.

5) Is it fanfiction or original content? Where do you plan to post it?

original 💛 and i still don’t particularly know where i want to publish it meaning idk if i want to go for indie which makes more sense or tryyyy to get trad published but. with the content paramour is and the way the publishing industry is i somehow highly doubt i can get it trad pub. so nothing but snippets online (tumblr) for now. maybe if i go indie i’ll make it readable on a website or whatever cuz i’m not really keen on putting it on amazon. but i may just for the reach. idk! i’m just trying to finish it first.

6) When and why did you start writing?

if we’re talking generally speaking i’ve been making stories since i was like 3 years old. paramour in itself however i made juneteenth (6/19) of 2021. i can’t remember WHY i started it so much as i remember just wanting a wip inspired by crimson peak perhaps? and we have gone WAAAAY off from that but yknow. we move lol.

7) Do you have any words of engagement for fellow writers of Writeblr? What other writers of Tumblr do you follow?

honestly just write for you. take all advice with a grain of salt and don’t worry about what others think of your writing/your ideas/whatever. there’s something for everyone and you’ll find your people.

other writeblrs/artists/creators whatever i follow and would recommend (and tag to do this if ya want no pressure) are: @kudzucataclysm @henrike-does-writing-sometimes @kazenokaori @magic-is-something-we-create @void-botanist @outpost51 @isherwoodj & consider this an open tag if you would also like to do this :)

[rosieuv]

College started

I had to wake up at 6:30 for the first time in like 2 months and dug up my blazer jacket that I bought for prom and paired it with a white summer shirt, a yellow hoodie, light grey jeans and a tie I nicked from my dad and had to watch a youtube video just to figure out how to tie it. I don't know why the blazer looks grey and crumpled in the photo, in real life it's turquoise and has less noticeable creases in it. Mum now sees what I mean when I say that hoodies, ties and blazers go well together. God it got hot while walking though but it was worth it in the name of style.

I also had a packed lunch for the first time as keyboard lessons were more expensive due to them being twice as long so buying hot lunches was chucked out of the budget. I made a cheese bagel sandwich with mozzarella slices and packed it in a bag with a little pancake, 4 crackers, a little brownie and a banana that I didn't eat because it had been waiting for so long that it was going brown. I didn't think about how all the food would sit so everything that wasn't in the sandwich bag (the sandwich) had a faint taste of banana. I also bought a packet of crisps at the college's cafe as I was still a bit hungry afterwards so maybe I should figure that out.

I walked 20 minutes and across a roundabout to reach my new bus stop and a new bus came every 15 minutes so I didn't bother mesmerising the timetable. Luckily I live quite close so the journey only took like 35 minutes and I was an hour early and didn't know what to do. Very few students were there and I was mostly looking for the library so I could vibe until I had A-Level Music. After a google search I found the building but turns out it's being moved to some other building (there's like 8 buildings across 2 sides of a road and it resembles a uni campus) so I just drew in the study centre by myself for about half an hour. Someone I knew (kinda) from my old school came up to me to say hello. I walked over to the building with music in but ended up a couple minutes late as I was washing my hands when the bell went off and I though "oh it's the warning bell" when no, no it wasn't. The teacher didn't seem to care considering it's the first day.

The lessons are so much longer here. So long that in the middle there was a 15 minute break. I didn't really have anywhere better to be so I remained in the classroom drawing. There seems to be a lot of emphasis on performance but I kinda suck at preforming. At least A-Level also has composition. I had to leave in the last half hour though to go to an orthodontist appointment and I left when they were talking about intervals and intervals are cool and now I have to do catch up work just because my teeth jewellery needed tightening.

I ate my lunch at a table all by myself in the student commons room and I don't know if all the groups already knew each other or if this was a case of extroverts having good social skills, but almost everyone was sitting in a group. One of the teachers talked to me when I was eating my bagel. Nothing deep just general new school small talk. He said I'll find new friends due to the way classes are structured around A-levels, which you choose yourself so there's a common interest, but tbh I'm probably just going to be known as that weird quiet kid that knows way too much on video game consoles. I don't mind not having any friends my entire time there, but when you've been stuck in an all girls private school since you were a toddler to now, it shelters you and I want to not be that as I'll have one hell of a shock once I enter the real world and/or act like a snob unintentionally. Eh, whatever. I bought the aforementioned crisps in beef flavoured and it was mostly air dammit. I then did my music homework in one of the practice rooms so I could test the musical dictation on the piano. I then just started playing whatever and some girl hovered around my door so I let her in and apparently she could hear me blasting my music because I have no dynamic control on a piano and she said that she really liked it. Then my music teacher appeared and I said I was doing my homework, and then they both left. Someone was playing some ballad piano song (I assume it's the girl as it sounds like it's coming from the other room) which would occasionally change to fur elise. Then I still had some time left but I was bored so after asking a history teacher for directions on where the mac lab is, I went into Music Technology like 10 minutes early and was just fiddling with the mac until everyone else came in. (Music tech is a BTEC which is a different exam board and is more DAW stuff while Music A-Level is performance and theory. I was supposed to be doing Computer Science but I fucked up my exam because OCR sucks the devil's ass while marking so I didn't have the qualifications so the careers people suggested music tech as the 3rd subject and oh god I'm so thankful as I'm certain my college uses OCR for it's A Levels and I would rip my wrists open and develop a caffeine addiction if I had to deal with OCR again).

The actual lesson was interesting but I was the only one putting my hand up most of the time and also I've already used a DAW before (LMMS) so I picked up on how to use Logic Pro quicker than the others (I think, idk I was sitting by myself on an empty row) but Logic Pro has cool sounds that I want in a soundfont, but is full of little things that makes it a bit annoying. And mac. Mac OS is annoying. I wasn't really following the instructions and was mostly doing my own thing in Logic Pro. Use this plugin to automatically augment a bassline? Nah I'm going to keep pressing keys with this acoustic bass sound until I get a cool bassline. I stayed for half an hour afterwards to finish the song as it was cool and this is what I did:

There was also theory stuff too. In groups we had to type out a list of places you find music and I just ignored the people in my group and wrote my own list. Also music kept randomly playing and the teacher couldn't figure out where it was coming from so I listed "the poltergeist from the mac lab" as one place music comes from. After that I took the bus home and now I'm going to watch the 2nd Deadpool film because I'm tired and don't feel like doing anything but sit in my chair and morph into it.

[videodrxme]

fuck this putting my ultimate dirk fic here. Meta, 4th wall break, degradation.

Honestly, this asshole is pretty fucking pathetic. 

I could go on about this but instead I will graciously choose to preface this with a warning that there is a non-zero, if not completely unavoidable, chance I will be abso-fuckin'-lutely butchered in this little rant. For all intents and purposes, consider me kind of like a Dirk-shaped hand-puppet Jack is using to 'jack' himself off here in a roundabout manner, or don't. Maybe the idea of a random author on Cohost, or I guess Hentai foundry in this case or TUMBLR NOW, channelling me like some kind of paranormal phenomenon gets you off, and who am I to deny you that?

Not that I can blame him, or you, for finding me attractive. I mean, look at me. I'm virtually a paragon of masculinity when people depict me artistically. Did you *see* my Pesterquest sprites? I was fuckin' toned, not to mention my sweet tattoo. Christ, he's salivating over that. Fuckin' weirdo. He's actually going back and adding to this because he saw my Pesterquest sprite again and is staring and wanted you to know. 

 Here's where it gets tricky. See, my erudition is far beyond this random smut peddler on the internet, so he has to look shit up in the Thesaurus, and use me to gleefully inform you of his cluelessness when it comes to literature. This is a new low for anyone, honestly. Using a fictional man to drag yourself through the mud, really? The worst part is that as he's writing me saying that, he's leaking through his underwear like a faucet. Honestly, if I was real, and I said near anything to this dude, he would trip all over himself like a clumsy high heel model in a tripwire factory. But I'm not, so this asshole has to make do with jacking off to the idea of me domming him using the narrative.

There isn't even anything in canon suggesting I might like guys like him, but he still gushes over me like a malfunctioning river dam. He even thinks about, get this, my *splinters* and *alternate selves* fucking him in different and novel ways. I would be flattered if it wasn't so disturbing. Really now, Jack, you pick the most scumbaggy versions of me to imagine fucking, probably because you know that they might not find your sexual proclivities as abhorrent. 

That's not even his real name. He chose another alias specifically to run this blog, or I guess porn account now, so he can jack off in peace. He knows exactly how much of a psychosexual deviant he is and continues to do it anyway, because he just can't fucking control himself, can he? It's why he gets someone like me to do it for him. What do I mean, you ask? Someone he sees as superordinate. Better than him, for those of you who can't read. He thinks my leaderly qualities and faux-stoicism make me better than him, and I'd be inclined to disagree if I wasn't also getting a sick kick out of it.

Yes, I am getting something out of this, if it wasn't already painfully obvious. I already told you to see me as the handpuppet he's using to masochistically smack himself upside the ass, and it's like that for a reason. I'm not real. Well, as not-real as I can get while still being Dirk, that is. He likes to think that in-character Dirk might get a kick out of this, which is something of a stretch, but I'll entertain it. Who knows, maybe the canon Ultimate Dirk really would humiliate and dominate him, and it would be entirely in-character the whole time, no flanderization needed? That would be a fucking sight to see. Imagine that happening for the rest of the time you read this whole thing. And humiliating you, too.

 Why are you still here, anyways? Do you get off on fictional characters degrading their authors in a glorious display of self-vitriol and allusions to moistened genitals, or are you waiting for me to take you down a notch like the sexually depraved individual you are? I don't know who's more loathesome, you by the virtue of putting up with this fascimile of a character you know and love so you can rub one out, or him for making me do this whole masturbatory rant in the first place. You're welcome for the amazing self-coitus, by the way. 

 You realize this was made on the seat of this dude's pants at 2 am, right? I'm unsurprised that you would spend this much damn time on this, knowing how sexual misfits are, but still disappointed. That's right, I'm disappointed in YOU, the one reading this, and I bet you're getting off on it. No need to lie to yourself. If you got this far, you take a frankly unnatural joy in degradation and being told off on your sexual habits. You're like the fuckin' Frankenstein's Monster of sex, and you definitely enjoyed me saying that to you, or rather the author saying that to you using my deliciously tang-coated text. Well, not orange anymore, this site doesn't let me color my text orange, but it's what fucking ever Oh, look, Tumblr lets me color my text orange. Great job..

 Speaking of the author, we should run down a list of his lecherous fantasies involving yours truly. What else are you even here for, more of me insulting you? You definitely clicked through a read more to see this, you fucking horndog. I bet you're humping your bed, or chair, or other lounging apparatus you're using. Let's take it from the top with a new paragraph, shall we?

 By the way, this bit was made after he slept. It's 9 am for him now. That's right, he worked on this shitty little sexual diatribe for multiple days, or hours, at the very least. Whichever idea gets you off more, really. But enough suspense. 

Let's see. We can do this from least to most bizarre. Only three, though, I got places to be and this terrible rant is taking up too much of everyone's time.

First, normal PIV sex. About a 3/10. Not novel or new in any way but I can see how it's an unmatched classic. A little breeding here, a little impreg there, definitely pretty vanilla. 

 For the next strangest sexual fantasy about me this dude's cooked up, we have me flexing my muscles and various assets at him. 6/10. Seriously, muscular dudes are hot, but come on, there's only so large those muscles can get before looking grotesque in new and horrible ways. Yes, it gets weird, and yes, it gets kind of gross. It will only get worse from here, so please do buckle your seat-belts and keep your hands inside the ride at all times, and by the ride I mean your pants.

The third time's the charm, but this one isn't even charming. Seriously, an older version of me in an age gap relationship? This is so played out that it isn't even funny. In fact, the way Jack goes about it is honestly mentally concerning. Who knows, maybe that's your thing, but I'm uncomfortable elaborating on it. 

Looking back on everything written here, this dude makes me look super full of myself and obnoxious in ways that I'm not. Thank whatever whims he's having that he's letting me tack on that this would all be out of character and at least 90% made up for some kind of awful BDSM routine. Later, you filthy degenerates.

[spanishskulduggery]

Hi can you help me figure out the different between present perfect subjunctive (e.g. haya reconocido) and imperfect subjunctive (e.g. reconociera)? Not those verbs exactly but when to use them? Thank you!

They're very similar, depending on how you use them.

Note: I promise this will come into play later but I just want to make something very clear. In Spanish, there are tenses and there are moods. It may be easier to understand them in Spanish - a tense is tiempo [meaning "time"] while a mood is modo [meaning "mode"]

There are 3 moods, indicative, subjunctive, and imperative [imperative are commands; not useful for this particular discussion]

The moods encompass the different tenses... so think of it like columns; indicative includes present tense, preterite, imperfect, future, conditional etc. And subjunctive includes present subjunctive and imperfect subjunctive.

The layman's explanation is that the mood says how the language works according to the "conditions" of the sentence/thought, and the tense says at what time it happens.

A very simple layman's explanation: the mood is the "conditions" of language. The tenses say whether it was past, present, or future in some capacity.

And there's usually a version of the indicative that corresponds to the subjunctive... present tense indicative happens at the same "time" as present tense subjunctive, for example

And perfect tenses [the ones that use haber] are a bit of a rogue time traveler; they can exist in any tense and can be either indicative or subjunctive, thus he reconocido happens at the same "time" as haya reconocido... just the conditions are different

No hemos reconocido... = We haven't recognized...

Es increídible que no hayamos reconocido... = It's unbelieveable that we haven't recognized...

So while they seem to express the same thought or idea, and though they happen at the same time [tense] the conditions of the second sentence necessitate subjunctive mood.

Keep that in mind going forward and it will make a lot more sense.

-

Present perfect just in general is used for placing something a little bit in the past, but since it's present it's still affecting the present:

Escribí. = I wrote. He escrito. = I have written.

Comí. = I ate. He comido. = I have eaten.

Pagué. = I paid. He pagado. = I have paid.

In the contexts of grammar, the simple past [preterite] in the first examples is just the actions "I wrote" or "I ate" etc. The action is done and completed and over.

Note: There are many people who will use the present perfect in place of the preterite tense because they do equate to largely the same thing in function. Though technically different, it's a colloquial thing.

But in a more grammatical roundabout way, present perfect brings that past action into the present, meaning it still has some bearing on the present in some way. Saying "I have written" is a way of just talking about past actions, but possibly bringing them into the present still.

I realize that doesn't make much sense but consider something like: "I've written a lot of essays, but I don't know how to write a poem"; or "I've read a lot of books but I've never read that author".

In those contexts, your past actions now have some bearing on the present situation. That's the basis of the perfect tenses.

With the haya here, that's the subjunctive form of haber.

In grammatical terms, it's the same idea as the present perfect... just with subjunctive phrasing:

No te has roto el brazo. = You didn't break your arm. Dudo que te hayas roto el brazo. = I doubt you broke your arm.

Lo has terminado. = You finished it. / You've finished it. Dime en cuanto lo hayas terminado. = Tell me as soon as you're done. / Tell me once you've finished it.

No se han equivocado. = They weren't wrong. No creo que se hayan equivocado. = I don't believe/think they were wrong.

Me han llamado idiota. = They've called me an idiot. Aunque me llamen idiota... = Even if they call me an idiot... [present subjunctive] Aunque me hayan llamado... = Even though they have called me an idiot...

In Spanish there are certain subjunctive phrases that activate, and they exist across multiple tenses.

Certain phrases necessitate subjunctive, so it can be the same information sort of, but they'll determine whether it's indicative or subjunctive.

-

Imperfect subjunctive is the equivalent of past tense subjunctive.

So just as an example real quick:

1. Quiero que pongas la mesa. = I want you to set the table.

2. Quería que pusieras la mesa. = I wanted you to set the table.

1. Sugieren que lo hagamos. = They suggest that we do it.

2. Sugieron que lo hiciéramos. = They suggested that we do it.

1. Es importante que tenga tiempo libre. = It's important that I have free time.

2. Era importante que tuviera tiempo libre. = It was important that I had free time.

1. Aunque me hayan llamado cobarde... = Even though they have called a coward...

2. Aunque me hubieran llamado cobarde... = Even though they had called me a coward...

Still subjunctive mood, just 1 is present, 2 is "past" so it's imperfect.

Imperfect subjunctive today also encompasses future subjunctive which can be confusing. This is normally done with contrary to fact states, hypothetical situations, and your basic if/then constructions with the conditional tense.

Si tuviera el dinero... = If I had the money... Si tuviera el dinero, estudiaría en el extranjero. = If I had the money, I would study abroad.

Si pudiera... = If I could... Lo haría si pudiera. = I would do it if I could.

Si me permitiera, señor... = If you allow me, sir... Si me permitiera, señor, podría ayudar. = If you allow me, sir, I can/could help.

Si hubiera otra opción... = If there was/were another option... Si hubiera otra opción, lo elegiríamos. = If there was/were another option, we would choose it.

Como si fuera la última vez... = As if it were the last time...

Me habló como si fuera idiota. = He talked to me like I was an idiot.

No puedo creer que nuestro jefe nos regañe como si fuéramos niños traviesos. = I can't believe our boss would scold us as if we were naughty children. [technically could be niñas traviesas if it the nosotros here were nosotras referring to all women]

You will occasionally see the future subjunctive forms, but really only in literature and contracts. It's not used commonly today; it'll look like imperfect subjunctive just with -e endings; tuviere, hubiere, hablare, llamare, quisiere etc.

For example: si fuere menester is a common thing in contracts and means "in the event of". Literally it's "if it were to be needed"

-

Important historical / regional note!

Once upon a time, the -iera/-ara forms were used as pluperfect, "had done", "had seen" etc.

You see it mostly in literature, particularly literature before a certain time period or things set in the middle ages or that have an old-timey feel (like Lord of the Rings has this)

So if you had come across llamara you might assume it's imperfect subjunctive, but it may read as "had called" which is pluperfect.

In other words for some historical contexts (and only for historical contexts, not for modern day Spanish):

me hablaran = me habían hablado = they had talked to me

les escribieran = les habían escrito = they had written to them

nos dijeras = nos habías dicho = you had told us

viera = había visto = he/she/You had seen

-

I'm not a historical linguist but I believe this is because haber in older contexts was not an auxiliary verb like this. In its original form, haber worked the way Italian did as "to have". You would see el hombre ha dos hijos "the man has two children".

haber didn't get used as an auxiliary verb until later on, and tener which now means "to have", was often used in the context of "to obtain" or "to grasp"

So in these older contexts, pluperfect [now done with haber in imperfect + past participle] was done with one verb.

Imperfect subjunctive would have been done with the -iese/-ase forms. So llamase read as "would call"; si me llamasen "if they should call me" for example

Just be careful when you're reading things like that! It's usually not too bad if you can recognize the verb because at least you get the overall meaning, but if it's not quite translating how you think it might be one of those more "antiquated" usages of a tense

...

Spain still keeps this distinction more so than Latin America. You will see -ara/-iera forms used for imperfect subjunctive [past subjunctive].

But in Spain you're more likely to see those contrary to fact statements or hypotheticals with the -ase/-iese forms:

Si lo hubiese sabido... = If I had known...

Si tuviésemos más tiempo... = If we had more time...

Como si fuésemos niños... = As if we were children...

My own Spanish leans towards Latin American usages, so I tend to use -ara/-iera forms for everything.

Spain makes more of a distinction between them, and that's why in most dictionaries or conjugation charts you'll see two different forms... like "fuera O fuese" for example

-

Importante Note: You will see the -ara/-iera forms used as pluperfect in some contexts, even in Latin America - above all in journalism, biographies, and publications

This is why you may see nació "was born" written as naciera "was born"...

But you will NEVER see it as naciese for "was born"

[crollalanzaa]

There’s a reason Martha Jones is my favourite Dr Who companion and it’s her parting scene where she talks about her friend being in love with a guy who doesn’t love her back and will never love her back, and Martha is talking about her friend in reference to the Doctor because she loves him and finds him extraordinary but he’s never going to feel like that about her. So, she has a choice to stay or leave and she chooses to leave saying something like ‘This is me saying goodbye’. She gives up her exciting TARDIS adventures and life with the doctor because as wonderful as it is, she needs to move forward with her life and avoid the ghastly crash of reality when the adrenaline leaves.

This is a roundabout way of saying that I believe I’ve written my last fic. I started writing fic around fourteen years ago and for a time it was the absolute pinnacle of my existence. Obsessive but also fulfilling, I’d finally found an outlet for my creativity and the frustration I felt with everything around me. It served me well and I honestly think it gave me a sense of worth not much else has (acting perhaps?)

But the fic crash after I post hasn’t changed and although I was able to push through that with more writing or the influx of kudos/comments etc, that has become so much harder in recent times.

(Behold the wangsty pity party starts below)

From first thought to actual posting, I spent two years on one fic. (Not the last one) Two years. Not that I thought about it every day, or spent as long writing but there was a process rumbling away and the fic was as near to the vision in my head as I could have got it. And it barely scraped double figures in kudos and hits. I did receive some lovely comments and I truly appreciate that, but I look at the two years and think, ‘wow, so not worth it!’

And there’s what I call my Hirugami moment where the realisation that no one will die if I give up, makes so much sense and the relief is immeasurable. But then again, Hirugami was an amazing middle blocker and I’m not in that league.

And other thoughts rumble in my head, because a few years ago, while I wasn’t a BNF by any means, there was a thrill of anticipation when I posted. Cake or Break was a wild ride, and Icarus was wilder. (I will absolutely never forget the Christmas Day when I posted a chapter which led to IwaOi reuniting - ahhhhh good times)

However most of that has gone, and even though the comments I can get are glorious, there’s a very real feeling at the back of my head and a thousand whispers telling me not that I’m a bad writer, but that I’m an unpopular. Not necessarily an unpopular writer - I’m probably too boring for that - but an unpopular person … and I’m finding that incredibly hard to face up to. Like, there are issues with friends in rl and issues with some ppl online and there comes a point where I’m either overthinking and that’s unhealthy or I accept that actually it’s a me problem and I’m the issue. Ah well, my dog loves me. (Ends pity party. Sorry for the wank but need to get off chest.)

My problem now is I have nothing to move onto. There is the possibility of more plays, but I’m one of many auditioning for a dearth of parts. So I think about going back to my old job, but have some health issues which mean my wrists are truly fucked and you have no idea how many times you need to use scissors, or paper knives, or pick up books in a school. They’d drop off after a week.

In the end, Martha Jones was a doctor, who then worked at UNIT and Torchwood.

In the end, Martha Jones is a fictional character and I’m not.

But I’m off the TARDIS for a while because as much as I love writing, it ain’t never loving me back but moves on without me.

Here’s my dog. I love her.

[see-arcane]

So like, THANK YOU for siding with Jon and his whole "I don't want to condemn several realities to the Fears" and his friends going "But then it's US who will have to deal with them!!" and... I may be overthinking this but with everything, it feels like a very abusive dynamic? Idk if you know about the Golden Child/Parent/Escapegoat dynamic, but it's common in disfunctional families to have a favorite for the parent to project on, and a escapegoat to put blame

You know what? We’re at the end of the series and I’ve been trying to be placid about this for a long time. But screw it.

I honestly do not enjoy 75% of Team Archive. At all. 

Because every last one of them is a hypocrite and a half.

The thing is, much as we as a fandom have been trying really reeeeally hard to project a familial/jagged friendship dynamic on Team Archive, the actual interactions we get paint a picture of just...coworkers muscling through a job they hate while grudgingly working together. I know, Jon and Martin call them their friends and they’ve had lighter moments once in a while, but really? I think they just don’t have enough options to be choosy about the term.

Georgie’s cool most of the time, and at least she brought up that, hey, yeah, she really shouldn’t have plugged her ears and slammed the door when Jon was in crisis mode back in s4. Only for her to join the Let’s Cross Our Fingers and Hope We Aren’t Dooming a Whole Multiverse For Our Convenience crew. 

Basira has at least graduated from ‘If you have any more Scary Meals I’ll put you down >:(’ to ‘Thanks for not dropping me while I was living up to the ACAB vibes :).’ While also conveniently forgetting her High Moral Stance on Protecting Innocent Strangers when she gets put in Jon’s shoes, suddenly turning around and snapping at Jon when he suggests the euthanasia move. YoU cAn’T kIlL tHe WoRlD jUsT bEcAuSe SoMeOnE eLsE [READ: ENTIRE MULTIVERSE] MiGhT sUfFeR!!!1!

Melanie is a dick. Dickish characters can be fun! I love a lot of dickish characters! But Melanie is a dick who refuses to grow out of her shit-on-Jon-athon setting well after the excuse of the Slaughter bullet got taken away. Yes, she’s gone through traumatic experiences. Exactly one (1) billionth of a fraction of what Jon’s gone through and is still going through. I laughed out loud when she dropped that ‘high horse’ line at him. Pot meet fucking kettle. 

And Martin? Martin I love. I really do. But they covered his issue pretty clearly in that chat between Jon and Helen. Hell, in 199 itself. Martin is very much an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ character. He wants a version of things where everyone is safe and happy, but the closest substitute he can see is just dumping the problem on their unseen neighbors--a potential infinity of victims he’ll feel distantly guilty about, but will never have to interact with. Which makes it as close to okay as he thinks they can get. 

This whole episode was a microcosm of why I feel most for Jon out of any of them, regardless of what reasons the narrative might come up with to excuse the others’ do-as-I-say-not-as-I-doisms. Jon is the only one who’s given the decision any real thought beyond ‘At least it won’t be our problem anymore.’ Not because he’s the Archivist with a bottomless well of painful knowledge, but because he knows this is morally the wrong thing to do. 

Every choice is a wrong choice, but this poor empathetic chew toy of a man knows Team Archive is choosing the option that’s most convenient for their world, not because the logic is sound, but because they’re desperate enough to throw away all those scruples they were so eager to bludgeon him with when he made the mistake of not dying in the Unknowing. 

Which is all a roundabout way of saying, yes, Jon is absolutely the unfavorite in their merry band. And after 5 seasons’ worth of hell this man has gone through for the sake of these same people who shat on him, deemed him a monster, alternately cut him out of their lives or used him as a tool, all topped with shouting him down when he dares to point out that the move they’ve decided on is a selfish one--the same choice they shamed him for in s4 when the choice was ‘be a good boy and starve or be a monster and eat’--I am amazed at how Jon hasn’t gotten one single moment in which he gets to chew them all right the fuck out for it.

So I will instead.

Fuck ‘em. They’re well-written, they’re believable people, they aren’t cookie cutter characters, all that good stuff.

But fuck ‘em. You deserved a lot of better things in your miserable life, Jonathan Sims. Friends who were actually friends being chief among them. 

[oh-boy-me]

Hot Take: There should’ve been a larger importance on the making of a pact.

I know it’s in the very beginning and all, but what do I mean by that? Easy - MC should’ve had an actual reaction to finding out what the pact was and does.

The pact is something we, as the MC, are encouraged to do from the start. This isn’t really explained too much and it’s taken in stride. HOWEVER - after the first use of MC establishing a pact (in day TWO) with Mammon, and being informed of what it does, why didn’t MC have the choice to react in a way akin to “How do I reverse this?”

The MC could still keep the pact as Levi assures them that “no, mammon deserves this and it probably won’t hurt him to feel a little fear.” Later, it could be brought back up with Mammon (as they’ve been shown to do with the TSL quiz) and then he could deny wanting to disband the pact (as MC is unfamiliar with magic and can’t do it themselves + now Mammon is attached and doesn’t want to get rid of their bond).

This already adds more depth to pact forming, and gives weight to the decision of making one in the first place since MC is made aware of its potential consequences. Plus! It can be brought up again with Solomon! Who can teach you how to and give you agency and the choice to retain these after your need for them is fulfilled (if you agree to help Belphegor).

Hesitancy is something forced upon the MC, but there should be a /choice/ in it, a choice to make it a cautionary hesitancy rather than just because MC doesn’t know what’s going on. Even if it’s ends up being forced that we end up in pacts with all of them for one reason or another (out of necessity or not) I feel like their should be a cloud of thought hovering over the MC as they’re forced to understand the weight of these actions.

So tldr: Either way, if we’re gonna make choices that don’t matter it might as well have meaning.

I also really wish that pacts were handled with a little more weight!

Like, very shortly after they explain it and you make one they instantly start treating it as kind of a joke?  A basis for humor?  Threatening to make Mammon “sit” becomes like a running gag, and the pacts kind of take a back seat plot point-wise even tho they’re literally the main focus of the plot.  I kind of understand what Lucifer meant when he complained about being “another name to check off your list,” because the way the game makes MC treat pacts it kind of feels like that’s actually the case.

So I think you’re right: the sheer power behind pacts IS discussed a little more in season 2, but they gloss over it way too much when the pacts are actually being made.  We should have had an option to not be 100% on board with it.  Some of them make pacts for horrible reasons, but it’s really serious?  And it ties you forever, so MC just.  Goes with it?  I get that Belphie’s imprisonment gave us a solid reason for doing it, but we should still be able to choose whether we accepted that reason.  Not just why we accepted it.

So yeah, even if they didn’t give us a real say in the end, it would have been nice for that to be something we can pretend to have a say in, lol.

Also, I think you've articulated really well something that we've been kind of lamenting over in a roundabout way. Because. That's it: none of your choices matter in Obey Me. You have three times where your choice affects the story that I know of. Who you go for help for in the TSL quiz, what sort of play you do, and who you go to the dance with. None of those choices change the flow of the story, though. There are no routes to branch into and no endings to unlock. The story progresses, and you're just along for the ride.

[derangedhyena-zoids]

You mentioned that Organoids don’t physiologically suffer from severing a bond, but would they psychologically? (I mean I guess not if they outlive their partners…) How would bonding to someone who has chemical imbalances (depression/anxiety/etc) work? Do they work like the anti-depression/anxiety medicine? And how do they choose their partner? Is it like humans going “aww look at this kitty” or more like car shopping, “I want one that has cruise control,” or is it harmonic like the neural waves of the human and organoid align?

Should I shut up? Sorry but not sorry, I love this.

QUESTIONS? ABOUT THE THINGS?? ANSWERS! LONG POSTS!  Re: psychological suffering... overwhelmingly the answer would be "yes, they'd suffer a lot", because that'd basically only happen if the Zoidian partner died. Organoids can easily outlive a partner (and the partner could also die early of injury or disease) - and the Organoid usually doesn't bond again. What they do though, is stay with the family/clan unit. So between the constant presence of their nearby colony and the presence of the other family members/their Organoids, that individual would be okay, relatively speaking. (a brief tl;dr aside: the extended lifespans of Zoidians, in an extremely roundabout way, are related to the longevity of Zoids/Organoids. it's... a convoluted thing that's too much to go into here, but yhea.) One is the main perpetrator of remorseless severing of bonds ... One basically just used people to think with. (the whole trinity setup and the very real benefits it brings  are part-and-parcel of the bond mechanic. which is another Convoluted Thing. tl;dr Minds Are Powerful Things)  One establishing then angrily severing bonds is a large part of why so many people (in the past, and in K&G) just straight-up died trying to pilot the Berserk Fury. Him “using them” was the problem, but him leaving harshly (out of either disgust/annoyance or lost control) was often the final blow. Really, any situation that'd prompt a bond being withdrawn mainly would have come up post-Zoidian-apocalypse. It just didn't have any reason to happen before. Because the organoid/zoidian relationship was far more like this:

(daemons, "you're an integral part of me") than any sort of "this is my best friend but we could potentially disagree" thing.

Which I guess is to say if it ever happened in Zoidian times, it would’ve been an entire story/groundshattering event in its own right. (This is one of very few areas I come into actual conflict with the anime canon. Because the Organoid/Zoidian relationship is presented as a really fucking illogical spectrum. So I just... made a decision and went hard with it. Works for the majority of actual canon.) Zeke and Zero are the only two other instances of an intentional withdrawal of a bond even coming up. Like a chapter or so ago in Echo, Zero temporarily did it to Bit and felt very bad about it. And Zeke liked having two bondmates so much he couldn't bear the thought of unbonding with Van. And in doing so, killed Fiona well before her time.  re: chemical imbalances:   I’m not entirely sure it’d be accurate to assume that the specifics of our human disorders would still be in effect for Zoidians and their weirdly shifted physiological baseline. they may well have issues we’d find difficult to contemplate, and *not* have some of ours.   that said, speaking in generic ‘imbalance’ terms - an Organoid’s going to go a long way to shore up behaviorally-deleterious deficiencies. The pair more-or-less shares a destiny once bonded: though an Organoid obviously isn’t aware of neurotransmitters and all related (they’re not Serenity,) them being caring, encouraging, empathetic, a permanent second opinion/shoulder to cry on/sounding board ... they’re essentially perpetual cognitive-behavioral therapy? Which has absolutely been shown to help correct chemical imbalance issues? So... yes, they would act as medication, in that sense? man wouldn’t that be nice. that said, it’s pretty likely Organoids have their own neuro issues to contend with, so it could easily go both ways...  re: CHOOSING THEIR PARTNER... it’s more of the latter, a harmonic thing.  assuming you mean “the way it worked in Zoidian times when everything wasn’t an entire mess”, it was actually a very structured process that’d developed over the ages. Happens young, young, young... The tl;dr is there’d be some ritualistic indication when a baby reaches a key development milestone for ‘sense of self.’  (I do not have details fully fleshed out for it, sorry. but I know it varied by clan) They’re then taken to their nearby Organoid colony, in which there’s always tons of Organoids of all ages. Then both the Zoidian baby and young Organoids would be encouraged by their respective parents to interact, until they found a good match.  and I know folks are gonna be like “are you telling me Zoidians put literal toddlers in amongst the goddamn chaos of an Organoid colony so said toddler could amble around in the literal mire and find a buddy” YEP, YEP THAT IS EXACTLY IT then you bring your merry little set of hellions home  pls no sorry, I’m glad people like my nonsense I guess. haha. have a baby Ambient.

[imaginethebeautifulworld]

prussia x reader: silly squabbles

Hello, lovelies~ I was plagued by images of this dumbass and his general ridiculousness, so of course I had to write it all out. This fic is pointless, but I hope you enjoy anyway.

"You are really annoying."

"And yet, somehow, I'm not detecting any real annoyance. Wonder why?"

His words hung lightly in the air, gentle and playful, just shy of taunting.

You did your best to ignore them, trying to focus on your book. But his fingers were moving again, trailing over your back in an inconsistent pattern, heavy enough a presence to register, yet just light enough to torment.

You were sure, in some long-winded, ridiculous, roundabout way, he would blame you for this predicament- for not reading as fast as him, for not paying him enough attention during a lazy day in.

Regardless, you tried to focus on the passage at hand, rereading the same paragraph for the tenth time now as he teased a particularly sensitive spot near your ribs.

He wasn't quite tickling you- not yet- but the shifting tempo and pressure all played upon the obvious threat.

Only mildly irritated- really, you were too familiar with his shenanigans by now to ever be truly annoyed- your focus landed on the bookcase, the only immediate target for your long-suffering gaze. "Do you mind?"

There was a hint of pride in his voice as he answered, a cockiness at successfully distracting you. "Nope!"

His fingers- now having tasked themselves with massaging more than teasing- paused between your shoulder blades. "Why? Do you?"

Rather than allow him another victory, you huffed quietly, pointedly making an effort to lose yourself once more in your book. "No... Not at all."

If he was amused by your answer practically being ground between your teeth, he made no indication of it. Instead, he resumed his massage, keeping his palm mostly flat against your spine, adopting a steady rhythm that lulled you into some semblance of security.

You allowed yourself to relax, turning your attention fully to your tale, praying he would at least let you finish this chapter in relative peace.

It was a hope to be short-lived alas, his posture shifting, bringing him near enough to read over your shoulder.

You were far too invested to truly pay him any mind, but then he was hovering near your temple, fingers drifting ever closer to your neck, once more dancing in that maddeningly light way which he employed solely in effort to agitate you.

You knew what he was doing, and you'd be damned if you'd let him win; summoning every ounce of self-restraint within you, you purposely, blatantly, chose to ignore him.

It took only a few moments for him to acknowledge your determination towards defiance (a few torturous moments where he had started tracing his nails against your hairline and whispered some of the passage aloud), his huff of displeasure bring you a small taste of sweet, sweet victory.

You would have been naive to think he had given up, knew it would be foolish to assume, to dare to presume, that he didn't already have other strategies in mind.

What you couldn't guess, regretfully, was exactly which plan he would attempt next.

When he sat upright once more, leaving you to lounge peacefully on your stomach, you unwisely surmised that he was actually finished with the whole affair, that he'd grown bored, that he would actually leave you to your novel in peace.

Feeling him shift back to the head of the bed, hearing him tapping away at his phone- these factors allied with his distance away from you all allayed your worries, letting you escape once more to the realm belonging to the pages before you.

The temporary tranquility was somehow less than simply fleeting; it had scarcely existed at all.

Not even five minutes had passed, and you felt teasing fingers once more, now grazing ever-so-softly against the bare skin of your ankle.

A jolt of panic fueled your reflexive movement away from him, your legs kicking, book falling to the floor in your surprise.

You shot upright and fixed him with a glare, hoping to convey just how furious you were with him. "I swear to God-!"

The villainous grin on his face revealed vanity in its purest form, and it did nothing to reduce your resentment.

Scowling now, and forcing yourself into an upright position, you narrowed your eyes at him. "What do you want, asshole?"

He was quiet for a moment, by all appearances still savoring his triumph. But then his smile shifted, the self-satisfied smirk falling slowly into something softer, fonder.

It took you by surprise, sent a stutter through your pulse, all irritation rapidly transitioning into confusion. "What?"

He shifted forward, leg bending beneath him as he drew closer.

Suspicious, but not too concerned, you offered an unimpressed expression, relaying your distrust. "Gil?"

There was a flicker to his smile, but it was soon replaced by something far more serious, his eyes languidly studying your features.

Briefly, more a passing fancy, you considered teasing him for his sudden quiet, yet there was something too tremulous tormenting him, and you dismissed the thought as quickly as it came, instead offering your concern. “Teuton?”

Whatever spell that had held him within its grasp was finally dismissed, his head cocking to the side and a considering tone coating his next words. “You love me, right?”

It sounded innocent enough, and his behavior certainly suggested no ill-intent. But you knew him, and knew all-too-well not to fully believe in it. “Is that a trick question?”

You made sure to keep your words only just on the side of playful, but tempered with enough sincerity to assuage any possible self-doubts that may be afflicting him.

It was clearly the right approach, the left corner of his mouth only just hinting at a smile, a familiar spark almost tangible in the air. “It’s a simple question, Liebling. No need to sound so suspicious!”

You felt your eyes narrow as you studied him, his wording only heightening your wariness. “You know- The fact you feel you have to say so really isn’t winning you any points here.”

His grin was back at that, disorienting in its intensity, just enough that you nearly forgot his previous grimness. “I’m just asking if you love me, mein Schatz. ‘Snot like I’m asking you to sell me your immortal soul or something.”

You neglected to point out how those two things were near one and the same, instead choosing to offer a faux sincerity. “Oh no, you’re right. I hate you so much,” you quipped, each syllable oversaturated in sarcasm.

He scoffed, melodramatically pressing a hand to his chest. “I’m wounded.”

You rolled your eyes, leaning down just long enough to rescue your book from the floor, marking your page and setting beside you on the comforter. “I’m sure your pride will be just fine."

“I dunno…” His words trailed off, and you could make out the distinct, irritating sound of him sucking on his teeth. “I think it may be mortal this time.”

You decided to play along, content to lose yourself in the absurdity. “Oh no,” came your reply, emotionless a tone as you could muster, in spite of the smile playing on your lips. “How could I possibly live with myself?”

He hummed, running a finger over his chin as if he were seriously considering it. “You’d probably take my fortune, settle somewhere warm.”

You fought a laugh, unsuccessfully. “Mm, definitely. Have sordid affairs with all the cabana boys and the waitresses.”

“Sing drunken renditions of Mamma Mia during karaoke night.”

“And I’ll adopt some ugly, exotic pet that I insist travels with me everywhere.”

“Only after your third husband disappears after mysterious circumstances, of course.”

He was only half-serious, and you couldn’t resist raising an eyebrow in mock offense. “Only three?”

Your question made him snicker, his eyes shining in amusement, but he didn’t continue the exchange.

Several moments passed, and with them the lingering ridiculousness of the “argument” faded away. There were many of these odd backs-and-forths, all somehow sillier than the last. The quiet was just as pleasant though, and you embraced the comfort it carried.

That was, until, he was biting his lip in thought, his amusement long abandoned.

Concerned, you shifted closer, studying his features carefully. "Gil?"

His eyes were glued to some distant place you couldn’t see, miles and centuries away from the here and now. “You do love me, right?”

“Of course,” you replied almost reflexively, still taken aback by the sudden shift back to solemnity.

“Really?” His eyes turned to yours once more, unguarded, open, a haunting fragility shining in them that made your heart clench inside your chest.

Wherever this insecurity came from, you wished you could rid him of it, tear all traces of it from his psyche, make it so he would never question his self-worth ever again.

As it was, you did what you could, lifting his hand to your lips and pressing a soft kiss to his ring, meeting his gaze as you lingered against the silver. “Would you be wearing this if I didn’t?”

There was a smile, the one you fell in love with: fond, slightly shy, just a little cocky. “Good point.”

You couldn’t help but feel as if something was still off about him however, something bothering him that you couldn’t even hope to guess. “Why do you ask, anyway?”

He took to studying your features again, his free hand rising to trace his fingers softly against your cheek. His eyes were warm and gentle, posture completely at ease. His words however-

“Sometimes I can’t believe this is real, or how lucky I am; some days I swear you’re just a figment of my imagination.”

His words carried an almost unbearable amount of loneliness, layered among disbelief and adoration. They triggered several different emotions within you, stirring them into a frenzied muss of affection and sadness, leaving you breathless.

Several potential reactions came to mind, but were all dismissed as you weighed his words, compared them to the relaxation of his shoulders, the familiarity as he languidly brushed his fingertips behind your ear, lightly teasing your scalp.

You could easily surrender to it, could already feel your own posture relaxing with each steady shift of his fingers. Still, you weren’t quite ready to abandon your prior playfulness, offering a haughty hum to prelude your reply.

“Unfortunately for you, I’m very real.” You felt a passing smirk flicker to life for a moment, blazing brightly before it was gone again, sober sincerity settling once more in its place. “You’re stuck with me, Beilschmidt. Forever…” you finished in an elongated stage whisper.

He breathed a laugh, the slightest hiss, his grin irrepressible now. His tone, however, mimicked nonchalance. “Eh. There are worse things, I guess.”

The tease was impossible to ignore, especially as that all-too-familiar deviousness was taunting in its own right.

You tried to keep your words accusatory, but they came out entirely too fond. “You’re a dick.”

He smirked, offering a half-hearted shrug.

“Guilty,” he sang, almost entirely too proud.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, he was cradling both of your cheeks, and before you could guess at his next move, he was shifting forward, gently pressing a kiss to your forehead. “But I’m a dick who loves you very much.”

Thanks for reading!

[perkynurples]

... May I ask you about the slow excruciating progression from Meng Yao to Jiggy?

also paging @holdmycaffeine and @cadencekismet, who asked me for the very same, and @acutebird-fics, who is my partner in crime deep philosophical discussions about these characters, and a great deal of this messy essay is informed by those

Tl;dr: JGY is a multifaceted character and the author struggles not to lose her mind trying to find the right words to describe that. Literally every single point of this rant is up for discussion, begging for it even, so please don’t hesitate to engage me, but, like... tomorrow, maybe. After I sleep it off.

Meta I used or referenced: THIS ONE explaining how JGS deciding to give him the name GuangYao is all kinds of wrong | THIS ONE talking about the red bindi-like Jin forehead dots, among other things | THIS ONE about his capacity for evil and his own recognition thereof

-

Alright, without any fancy preamble, here goes. Honestly, whenever I think about JGY for more than three seconds, it becomes painfully evident that there are two wolves inside me at all times - one wants to spend tens of thousands of words exploring his narrative, his choices, his abilities and his failings, his capacity for violence as well as his capacity for love...

And the other one just likes to call him a gremlin in chief in a fancy hat, and doesn’t want to go much further than that. I’m going to try and feed them both.

The thing that pisses me off about Meng Yao is just. The fact that he doesn’t stay Meng Yao, and we get to watch it happen in slow motion. You get a tiny little twink-ass kid who suddenly finds himself adopted into the Nie by the Sect Leader himself, and this is Meng Yao, the son of one of Jin Guangshan’s many mistresses, who doesn’t have a whole lot going for him aside from that, at that moment - his cultivation, weak. His opportunities, nonexistent. His dick, small. His political savvy, only just starting to show itself.

And this guy gets the chance of a lifetime presented to him on a Qinghe-silver platter. Like, we can argue about book canon and try and decide if he did anything at all to make NMJ notice him, but show canon makes it all the more hilarious (again, please refer to this gem of a post for a level of humor I’m sorely incapable of) - you’re seventeen, and the Batman of the cultivation world picks you up and elevates your status across swathes of societal norms, to a level you previously could have only dreamed of.

It’s interesting to me to try and imagine if this was the moment that Meant Something - in the grand scope of things, of course it did, because it started MY on the road to JGY, but also to Meng Yao personally, in terms of what he believed he could comfortably achieve. I do not for a second believe he started out wanting to murder people to reach his goal, or that he even had a good goal to begin with - being accepted by his father, maybe. Murdering the (at the time) greatest villain in the world, becoming a renowned spy, landing an incredibly beneficial sworn brotherhood, et cetera et cetera? I mean, the kid has wet dreams, but no way do they reach this far at this point in his life.

But so many things about him are unclear. Show canon changes his timeline, in that he met NMJ before he met Lan Xichen, and even accompanied NHS to the Cloud Recesses. Either way, his stint with the Nie is incredibly personally important to him. I firmly believe he loved and admired them, in his own way. He certainly flourished under NMJ’s tutelage and approval, but in the end, his motivations, his entire raison d’etre, clashed with NMJ’s too much. To Meng Yao, who’d gotten kicked down those infamous Koi Tower stairs for daring to ask for his father’s attention, murdering a guy for slandering him and his mother was a natural outcome of being slandered his entire life, and finally having had enough - to NMJ, it was unforgivable.

But this still isn’t where Meng Yao becomes Jin Guangyao, and it begs the goddamn question - how much of what JGY was perfectly willing and capable of doing to stay in power, had been present in Meng Yao that entire time? You see him make excuses that someone who isn’t NMJ, with his incredibly staunch morals and black-and-white view of the world, might have even accepted, but instinctively, you know - making excuses is just how it’s going to be with this guy.

Because Meng Yao, as well as Jin Guangyao, lies, and he is damn good at it. He is so good at it, that he lies his way to the very top of the Wen, all the way to Wen Ruohan’s side. His lying is what enables him to become Jin Guangyao. And like any good liar, he doesn’t only lie to the people around him - he also lies to himself.

And I can’t blame him, because - been there. Lying to yourself becomes absolutely necessary, when you want to keep everyone else around you believing in a mask you wear. You need to start believing it, at least a little bit, at least sometimes, for it to work.

At this point, you’re probably wondering - but Annie, what about the time he spent a year sheltering Lan Xichen? Did he lie then? Was he not just Meng Yao, a poor but cunning bookkeeper, then? I’m getting there, I swear. Slowly and in a roundabout sort of way, because honestly, I don’t know how I can start talking about the LXC of it all, without it turning into a novel.

Because whichever way you twist it, whatever canon you choose to follow, one constant remains - A-Yao’s feelings for Lan Xichen. I’m deliberately not calling him Meng Yao or Jin Guangyao, because it’s these feelings that divide the two, but also ultimately unify them, fatally so. But we’ll get there.

In one version of events, Meng Yao travels to Cloud Recesses at the behest of NMJ, and falls in love with a statue made of jade there. In another version of events, they meet during something LXC only describes as ‘the shame of a lifetime’. Both of those events lead to Meng Yao sheltering LXC, hiding him, saving his life and those precious Gusu Lan texts.

Whatever version of events you choose to see as the right one, one other truth also remains - Lan Xichen offers freely and without asking that which Meng Yao has had to struggle to attain, that which has been denied to him time and time again, based only on the circumstances of his birth: respect. Lan Xichen never looks down on him, never brings up his origins, and instead extends him respect and dignity in a way only he is capable of - no fucking wonder Meng Yao admires him. No fucking wonder, when this amazing guy, this perfect pristine handsome number one young cultivator, looks at him, smiles at him, and actually sees him, son of a whore or not.

No fucking wonder Meng Yao loves him, and Jin Guangyao continues loving him. No fucking wonder he never means to hurt him, but does so anyway.

But here’s the thing - lying to yourself to make things work only gets you so far. Do I think Meng Yao spends restless nights in cold sweat dreading who he’s becoming, thinking about all the lives he’s taken to further his goals? Absolutely not. Do I think he does good things, often even great things, because it helps him feel better about himself? Do I think he both loves Xichen and keeps him around because it’s beneficial to him, having the Lan Sect Leader in his pocket, but also personally speaking, having someone who so firmly believes in the goodness in him? You bet your overly adorned murderhat I do.

And frankly, reducing Jin Guangyao to one or the other - coldblooded murderer or a man plagued by his own insecurities, helpless and trying to be kind in a world that’s so evidently against him - is doing a character like him a huge disservice. You have to consider all sides, if you want to truly understand him. Hell, I myself am by no means claiming to truly understand him! He pisses me off daily, and I’m writing this stream-consciousness-y thing because he simply won’t shut up in my head.

This kid makes Choices, and here’s the catch - he doesn’t regret a whole lot of them. If anything, I’d like to think he regrets going along with his father’s plans for so fucking long before finally realizing that avenue won’t bring him what he seeks. Killing Jin Guangshan, by the way? Very sexy of him, that I’ll admit. Guy was a pig.

But even the obviously Good Choices he makes? Building those damn watchtowers? Letting Mo Xuanyu stay at Koi Tower? Seating Qin Su by his side at that same throne where his shitty father entertained concubine after concubine? (Frankly, please make up your own mind as to whether he was lying or telling the truth about learning about Qin Su being his sister before or after they’d consummated their marriage, I’m choosing to believe that he hadn’t known.)

How much of it really happens out of the goodness of his own heart, and how much of it happens because he wants to improve his own reputation, kintsugi away the minuscule cracks in his own image until he’s once again a perfect picture of Jin gold? Is he himself even capable of telling the difference, recognizing where his good intentions end and his desire to look out for number one begins? When you spend so much time crafting your own perfect mask, in your own head as well as others’, the lines blur real fast.

I think ultimately, he craves respect as much as he does pity, and those two never mesh well - the cultivation world never truly accepts him, his father certainly never truly accepts him, but Jin Guangyao is not Wei Wuxian, he can’t just look at all of these perceived injustices and slights, all of this gossip and slander, and say ‘Whatever’. No, Meng Yao takes one look at the world standing against him so very vehemently, and decides to fight it, fight tooth and nail for his place in it, until he comes out Jin Guangyao on the other side, gilded and pristine, ascending the stairs of Jinlintai to exact his revenge on anyone who dares not accept him.

The Guanyin Temple, in a way, is a perfect little vignette of his character - we observe him wildly oscillating between seeking out the aforementioned respect and pity, confessing boldly and laughing loudly one second, and pleading on his knees and clutching onto Lan Xichen’s robe the next. To him, that night, and everything leading up to it, is a series of footholds - the ground begins crumbling under his feet when he learns of the letter, and he has to act fast. 

He buys himself time, excuse after excuse, thinking on his feet, and here’s the thing - he’s not necessarily the best at that. Anymore. Up until that point, until the letter and Qin Su and WWX turning up, everything is going according to plan, and his plan at this point is, frankly, correct me if I’m wrong, sitting pretty at the top of his golden tower and making sure the truth about him never comes to light, which... Well, we all know the truth has a nasty way of coming around when it’s least convenient for you. 

And I think Jin Guangyao (not Meng Yao) is, at that point, unused to being inconvenienced. Everything he ever does, he calculates, he twists the public opinion of himself, he twists individual people’s opinions of himself, to suit him - nothing unexpected ever happens anymore, because he’s played the game long enough to foresee most things. Nie Huaisang beats him at that same game, not because he has a huge plan spanning decades of his own, but because he’s good at improvising, kicking the hornet’s nest and then knowing where to direct the fallout - but that is another essay all of its own waiting to happen.

For now, I feel like I need to wrap this up before I lose my mind. Personally (and please feel free to challenge me on this any time), I don’t feel like there’s a single defining moment, or even a handful of them, traumatic or otherwise, that irrevocably turns Meng Yao into Jin Guangyao. Sure, being kicked down the literal stairs leading to a better place for you a handful of times will have you feeling some kind of way. Sure, serving a maniacal warlord while playing an impossibly high-stakes game of spy poker will leave a mark or two. Sure, your sworn brother spitting in your face the very insults you’ve been hearing your whole life and never learned to shake off, will make one more vestige of patience inside you irrevocably crumble to smithereens. But.

Your whole life, you work very, very hard. You know to put your head down and get your hands dirty, but you also know that sometimes, the best way out of a hairy situation is turning on those puppy eyes and appearing just a smidgen weaker, a smidgen more frightened and helpless, than you actually are. And if, when you actually tell the truth and people still don’t believe you, lying becomes easier, becomes, eventually, so easy it feels as natural as breathing? Well. Might as well use that particular skillset to sneak your way through a war, am I right? Might as well use it to build yourself a nest among the very vultures who resent you, and whom you resent, and make sure that they have to respect you.

In the end, to me? Jin Guangyao is the guy who jumps from person to person, from callout to very personal callout, there in the Guanyin Temple, just to stall for time, just to regain some sort of foothold in the situation - he’s the guy who probably views losing an arm as a necessary sacrifice, shakes it off and still gets to work from there.

Meng Yao is the guy who wants to take his mother with, and who asks Lan Xichen the one question he’s dreaded knowing the answer to his entire life - not ‘will you stay and die with me?’, but the one that hides beyond that.

Is this what devotion is? Respect? Love? Is there, at this moment in time, enough of all of those things in your heart that you will, in fact, stay and die with me?

When Lan Xichen says yes, without words but still loudly enough to be understood without a doubt, Meng Yao is relieved, while Jin Guangyao is vindicated.

When Lan Xichen says yes, neither version of A-Yao needs to hear any more than that - the seventeen-year-old boy shooting a shot way above his station and loving a statue made of jade, who wants Lan Xichen to survive, and the man wearing the wrong name and the title of the first Chief Cultivator of his generation, who wants Lan Xichen to live with the weight of all his mistakes and misgivings, are both, for once, in accord. They’re both happy, and they both make that final push to save him.

In conclusion, if there even is one to this jumble of random thoughts... Jin Guangyao and Meng Yao are one and the same. Aspects of one can be found in the other, but neither feels remorse about his choices. Both of them, in turn, are capable of amazing things. Both of them are, in fact, capable of decidedly horrible things. One builds a wall around the other so thick, so impenetrable, you only catch glimpses, and only the ones he allows you to see. One learns very quickly that vulnerability is dangerous, unless employed proactively, and the other one perfects the craft.

Both of them believe they are perfectly justified in their actions. Both of them believe their own line of reasoning, their own excuses. Both of them want to be loved, for very different reasons, or for the very same ones, at the end of the day.

Both of them aspire to greatness, Meng Yao some vague idea of it instilled in him by his mother teaching him to believe his own worth, Jin Guangyao a more concrete vision of it, always one step ahead, one step higher up those gilded stairs. Both of them are willing to excuse a whole lot to reach it, too.

And when Jin Guangyao finally stands in Koi Tower, properly this time, wearing that coveted golden peony, wearing that red zhushazhi and a much nicer version of the hat his mother always told him to wear, but also wearing the wrong fucking name, one that barely gives him a spot in the family he belongs to by blood?

All he needs to do is take one look in the mirror to see Meng Yao staring back, always there with him, always ready to remind him where he came from. He’s seventeen years old, and he just buried his mother, and somewhere out there, the rest of his life awaits. His smile is all dimples, and that, too, they have in common.

Time to get to work, Meng Yao suggests, and Jin Guangyao agrees.

[mathewryf]

So if Asgore knows that Chara's plan was, do you think he disowned them and does not see them as his child? He speaks of Asriel as his son but never refers to Chara as his child.

I don’t think it’s quite like that. See, the thing about Asgore figuring out the fallen human’s scheme post mortem is that he’d have more than enough of a clue WHY they did it. Not to mention Asgore also must have known that both of those kids didn’t quite have the foresight to see that Asriel getting killed was a possibility. Asgore would have definitely understood how hard of a decision it was to choose to give up their life and newfound family for even a chance to break the barrier.

That said, this is an assuming Asgore started separating the first human from Asriel when discussing the two AFTER this all happened. I don’t think that was ever the case. If anything, it’s more likely Asgore always refered to them seperately.

See, here’s the thing, Toriel always has a habit of refering to those she’s raising as “My child.” We see it with the fallen human we play as in Undertale, we see it with Asriel, we see it with the first fallen human, and it’s heavily implied she did the same for the other fallen humans, too. We even see it with Kris in Deltarune. That’s not the only way she refers to them, either, we do see her refer to the player’s fallen human as “Small one” which is going to be important when we start discussing Asgore’s approach to the humans he interacts with.

On that note, let’s discuss that part. Asgore is never shown or even implied to refer to the few human children he interacts with as “my child”. The closest he ever gets is during a line of dialogue on a repeated Neutral run where he lets himself die to give the human his soul. He refers to the player’s fallen human as “small one” only in that instance, which is to say he doesn’t use that phrase the same way Toriel would. It’s not meant to be a term of endearment from him, but a means of approaching them gently in a conversation.

Now let me clarify: this does not me he didn’t love the first human with all his heart. He did genuinely care about them! He wouldn’t still keep a name-brand chocolate bar in his refrigerator all this time if he didn’t! Nor would he have planted so, SO many golden flowers. Nor would he have even gone to the trouble of mumifying their corpse (which is itself a very arduous task, it seems he might have been one of the few monsters aware of how to even do so).

I think what was really going on is that Asgore just didn’t feel comfortable calling them “my child”. He probably found it awkward in much the same way a child in the real world might have trouble refering to a step-parent as “mom” or “dad”. So he probably stuck to calling them by their name, or to using phrases like “small one”. To touch again on Deltarune, we see him do something similar when talking to Kris, only ever refering to them by name. Again, Toriel still uses “my child”, so the same principle is in play.

Thing is... this seems to be a mutual feeling between them Asgore and the first human! The biggest piece of evidence implying it, for me at least, is the sweater they knitted for him. “Mr. Dad Guy” is way more roundabout than just saying “Dad” or even “Father”, after all. But approaching it from the angle where it may have been awkward for both of them to refer to each other with the usual family honorifics, it would make sense for the phrasing to be awkward. They’re having trouble admitting that they see each other as a father and a child! And so to get around it, they just... don’t. It wouldn’t shock me if the first human refered to Asgore as “Mr. Dreemurr” both as a means of sounding like an adult AND avoiding the awkwardness of calling them “dad”.

To bring it full circle and back on topic... even though they got Asriel killed, I don’t think Asgore has it in his heart to disown them. Especially once he figured out WHY they did it. Also, it’s important to note that Asgore may not have been aware that the first human still existed in some form after their soul was absorbed, and also had split control over Asriel’s body. As far as he would have known, Asriel went out after abosorbing the soul, came back after being attacked and died. Without firsthand experience or even some kind of explanation from someone fused, nobody would know about the split control. As far as we know Asriel/Flowey only would have told the player’s fallen human, maybe Asgore after they first woke up (which would have been reset anyway) and maayyyybe Papyrus.

Anyways, long winded answer over!