#which is absolutely bonkers

[phoenixkaptain]

The comics always have Tim comment on how normal his childhood was, and I just don’t believe them.

Like, the name “Drake” was set up in comics for years beforehand. Tim Drake is a rich kid. His parents did own an entire industry and Tim’s introductory comic tells us flat out that he spends most of the time his parents aren’t home at boarding and private schools. His parents were gone a lot!

Tim Drake is stated to be so normal. This kid can still clearly remember watching Dick’s parents die, he was traumatized and had nightmares about the scene. Especially if you believe Tim’s never taken a picture of Batman before the events of his introduction, Tim is extra strange because why was his first instinct to take pictures of Batman getting beaten up?! Is that normal child behaviour?? Am I the weird one for not knowing where Dick Grayson’s girlfriend lived when I was thirteen?? How on earth is Tim Drake the normal one?

He’s a stilted talker, absolutely terrible at speaking about important things. He is the Robin who called the most alike to Batman more than once, Ra’s al Ghul calls him a detective on Batman’s level, are you REALLY normal if you’re similar to Batman??

Like yeah, sure. Tim didn’t grow up in a circus. Tim didn’t grow up raised on the streets. Tim wasn’t trained from birth to be an assassin.

I would argue that this makes him MORE abnormal! He doesn’t have Dick’s background or flexibility! He doesn’t have either of Jason’s backgrounds nor his grudge. He doesn’t have Batman to live up to for a father. And yet, he still decides to put his life on the line to fight crime! His parents weren’t even dead!! He just decided that “If Batman and Nightwing aren’t going to take care of themselves, I have no choice but to do it for them.” Sure, he tries to get Dick to help Bruce, but he realizes pretty quickly that that isn’t going to work out.

Tim Drake tried to fight Superboy. You know, Superman’s clone? Invulnerable? Boy of steel? Literally only had one weakness that Tim didn’t have on him at the time??

Tim Drake is absolutely not the normal Robin. The comics really, really want me to believe that the kid who grew up in boarding school while his parents were off on business, the kid who took to being a Robin akin to Batman (ie. invisible, unnoticeable, unknown, a myth), the kid who got beat up by Jason Todd and then went “whoa, Jason Todd is back :),” the kid who Ra’s al Ghul is obsessed with, the kid who built his own vehicle; this kid is normal.

Yeah, okay. He’s perfectly normal. His dad being hinted at as being neglectful and literally abusive with how he breaks his kid’s things? Normal. Tim Drake knowing how to photograph the most paranoid man this side of the Rockies? Normal. Tim Drake deciding that it would actually be neat-o to don a suit that another kid died in to fight against people and beings that could and would absolutely kill him in a heartbeat? Completely. Normal.

Okay, DC. Whatever you say…

[egophiliac]

GET LOVED, IDIOT

GET LOVED SO HARD YOUR KIDS HOLD HANDS AND POWER-OF-LOVE YOU BACK TO LIFE

sorry guys, this is just my brain now. this is going to be the only thing I think about for the next week at least.

oh and also this

FIVE YEARS IN AND IT'S FINALLY CANON 🎉🎉🎉

WE DID IT

[asgardian--angels]

keep fighting the good fight against this weird misconception that vik is somehow stoic and unemotional, bestie 🫡 cause idk where the hell people picked that up lol

thank you!!! fandom is always gonna fandom, reducing characters to two-dimensional tropes to make them mix-and-matchable. it's especially unfortunate when the characters we're given in Arcane are so rich and nuanced. the best antidote is to go back and rewatch the source material imo lol.

thanks for enjoying my tags also!! I used to write actual meta many years ago but at some point lost my nerve or lost the time. now it lives in the tags. I don't know many people in the jayvik fandom here, it seems mostly active on twitter, but I'm glad to be noticed by at least a couple people here :) your blog is great!!

[columboscreens]

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

pez dispenser update, yay!

I am Very Interested in the direction you're taking izuku here. He seems to have come out the other side of this breakdown going, "no look! I trust you guys! Here, I trust you guys so much! You can know about the severe injuries I had as a child that never got a police report!"

It's funny to read izuku's pov vs aizawa. Izuku is just like, wow this all needs to end so I can get back to being the Normal And Awesome Deku I have turned myself into, and aizawa is like thirty seconds from having his own panic attack at having a few months to turn this kid into a functional human being.

You can truly tell that with how izuku keeps insisting on that he's got this by himself, with no understanding how crazy it is to expect his friends and teachers to back out and let him take over, that he, still, still, STILL has simply 0 faith or expectation that his teacher is driven to help the little kid in izuku that he's buried so deep down there. That an authority figure who isn't all might wants to save him. I want to eat his unthinking, warped by trauma thought patterns, they are delicious.

Kinda touching that midoriya foresaw and tried to avert the all might conversation issue. Rip, dude really tried, but baby izuku is like one of those puddles in flooded old buildings you can find videos of people dropping a rock in -- it doesn't look that deep, but if you tried to put your foot in, you would be getting a whole lot more than your shoe wet.

Yeahhhhhh Izuku’s really not handling it the best.

Izuku genuinely didn’t keep everything a secret all these years because he didn’t trust his friends. It wasn’t that he thought they’d react poorly or hurt him with the information or spread it around or anything like that. This was purely due to his own internal issues around it.

But they’re three years deep into being in the fucking trenches together. And Izuku very much is considered a bedrock of the class. You can see it in their internal monologues—everyone trusts him implicitly. It’s Izuku. If one of them was going through something sensitive or painful, he’d be at the top of the list of people to turn to. For like, the entire class.

And while Izuku isn’t per se aware of the fact that the entire class views him as the best of them, he is painfully aware of the fact that they’ve opened up to him over the years. And that this is making it look like he didn’t tell them a single detail about his life before he came to the school. Which is fair, because he sort of didn’t.

So he’s overcompensating. He doesn’t need privacy because he trusts them so so much and this proves it, right?? They can totally know the sordid details of the past he’s in active crisis over.

He’s scared that he’s going to lose the people who have trusted him over the years because he seemingly didn’t trust them back. But they all trust him so much that they’re more beating themselves up than blaming him.

Todoroki and Mirio were in that scene like “uuuuhhhh you look like you’re a second from a panic attack we can totally give you space if it makes you more comfortable” and Izuku’s in a spiral like Why Would I Need Space I Trust You Both Implicitly Please Ignore The Obvious Distress.

Fundamentally, Izuku has never processed what happened to him as a kid. He didn’t tell them because he wasn’t ready to confront how bad it was back then. It wasn’t about trust. Telling them meant saying aloud what happened. He just wasn’t ready for that.

And from the path canon took, I don’t really see Izuku trusting adults. His childhood did absolutely nothing to make him think teachers would protect him. And for all Aizawa did right, I think this is one bag in canon he legitimately dropped.

I want to be clear—Aizawa was working at a severe disadvantage. He didn’t even have a lot to tell him the problem existed, let alone how to address it. But it’s specifically the Hero Killer Stain Arc that makes me think that Izuku only would trust Aizawa to a certain point.

After the Hero Killer Stain Arc, Aizawa canonically calls out Iida, Todoroki, and Izuku in front of the entire class. He doesn’t mention what it's about, but he makes it very clear that he knows what happened and that he disapproves. And his criticism is specific: In instances where you are out matched, it is better to run and get help. Iida, Midoriya, and Todoroki need to understand that

The thing is that Izuku and Todoroki both considered that as their first option and then correctly deduced that they'd be burying Iida if they did that.

I will actually die on the hill that is that Izuku and Todoroki did everything right when it came to the Hero Killer Stain. Iida caused the problem, but the fact that he made mistakes was the point of that arc for him. But Izuku and Todoroki?

They both reacted perfectly. And if they had done a single thing differently, they'd have two dead bodies.

When Izuku realizes that Iida's in danger, the city is on fire, Nomu are attacking the train, and his supervisor has fucked off to fight monsters attacking the city. He does not have an adult hero who is free to bring with him, and we know for a fact that he did not have time to hesitate or try to find other options, because he arrives the second before Iida dies as-is. When he's on scene, his absolute first instinct is to run. Izuku canonically clocked the fact that he was out matched, evaluated whether he could safely retreat, and realized he’d never be able to get out of there with Iida and Native. He’d have to leave one or both of them to die.

So he asked for help the safest way he could: sending out the mass text and stalling for time. And canonically, he wasn’t hoping a classmate would show up to the fight. He was hoping they’d report it to their supervisors and get him help, which is exactly what multiple of his classmates did.

Todoroki, for his part, correctly clocked that something was wrong with Izuku when he got the message. And he didn’t just fuck off without telling anyone where he was going. He evaluated the situation, realized the city was on fucking fire and there wasn’t a single hero free to go with them, and told the heroes with him that they needed to go to this exact location the first second they could. And he didn’t have a moment to hesitate or figure something else out, because he also showed up at the very last second before Iida took a sword to his spine.

Frankly, Todoroki and Izuku couldn’t have possibly handled the situation better, but they got absolutely shit on in the aftermath. I don’t recall a single adult who told them they did the right thing, except maybe Native. They had the fucking chief of police telling them they were no better than the guy who tried to kill their teenage friend with a sword and their teacher publicly calling them out in front of the class without the benefit of context.

If I was Izuku, I would have walked out of that entire thing having my preexisting distrust of adults affirmed. Like. There isn’t a world where Izuku realistically looks back on his actions and thinks “damn I really should have left Iida die.” He’s not going to change a fucking thing in what he did. Every single time, he’s going to go save his friend. The only realistic take away Izuku could have from Aizawa’s call out was “wow, that guy is not going to have my back if I have to make a tough call. So if I have to make one, then I’m just not going to him for help.”

Which is kind of where we're at in pez right now, and Aizawa's starting to realize it. Don't get me wrong, Izuku trusts Aizawa more than any teacher he ever had growing up. He doesn't think Aizawa is going to be actively malicious to him. But he also doesn't necessarily think Aizawa's going to have his back.

The crux of it is in chapter 4. Tiny Izuku says that Mr. Aizawa is already on Izuku's side, and Izuku's immediate reply is, "I promise you that Mr. Aizawa has never once been on my side." He back pedals fast, clarifies that he thinks Mr. Aizawa is fair and not on anyone's side, but his knee-jerk reaction is undeniable.

And to me? It's because Aizawa genuinely has not been on Izuku's side since he came to UA. And I don't mean Aizawa has been malicious to Izuku. Fundamentally, the issue is that he misdiagnosed the problem.

Aizawa has spent his entire time with Izuku mistakenly believing that the source of Izuku's issues was the same as Bakugou's. He is only now realizing that his issues were more like Shinsou's.

Fundamentally, Aizawa correctly recognized that Izuku's problems came from the fact that he was raised in an unjust system. But he misunderstood what Izuku's position in it was.

Here's what Aizawa knows, from the jump: Izuku and Bakugou came from the same school. Both have very powerful Quirks. Both have obvious issues with the other. Izuku specifically moves and looks like he had a professional trainer, meaning someone invested in his training as a hero. Bakugou talks like someone who's been told his entire life that the sun shines out his ass and never got punished for being a little shit. Izuku's more muted, but he came from the same school. Two kids with powerful quirks? Likely were getting away with the exact same shit.

When you have an unjust system, you have the people running it, the people benefitting from it, and the people being victimized by it. If the teachers at Aldera were letting kids with powerful quirks get away with murder, both Izuku and Bakugou were likely benefitting from that. And it is absolutely vital that Aizawa undoes that damage before they debut.

He doesn't even need to think Izuku, specifically, was abusing his position in this power imbalance. The damage is done from how the teachers at aldera were likely treating him. Teachers that produce kids like Bakugou tell talented, powerful kids that they're special, that they're above the rules, that they've got something so fundamentally important about them that they can get away with more. Even if you don't chose to abuse that narrative in the moment, that's a hell of a formative experience.

They're about to have a ridiculous amount of power. They are about to be in charge of enforcing the rules. And people who are in charge of enforcing the rules and think they're above them turn into Endeavor.

Aizawa's approached Izuku from a sort of tough love perspective from the jump. He didn't cut him an ounce of slack, and it's because he genuinely was trying to do right by Izuku. No, he's not going to get to smash up his body and make himself a hazard. Figure it out, or go home.

He's had plenty of time to learn how to manage his quirk, after all.

With Stain? I don't think Aizawa, if he knew the full circumstances, would genuinely say the right call is to have Iida's fucking funeral. I think he'd agree with the decisions Izuku and todoroki made. But he didn't have all the information, and, fatally, he didn't ask. He assumed.

He's got three powerful, bullheaded students who end up in a back alley in the middle of the night, having all separately ditched the heroes they were supposed to be joined at the fucking hip with. He absolutely thinks that they either planned it together or that, when they realized what Iida did, Todoroki and Iida went after him in secret to try to keep Iida from getting in trouble--and almost got them all killed in the process. There is absolutely no way Aizawa knows that they actually tried to run and get help at every turn.

Aizawa made assumptions. And a big reason why he felt comfortable making those assumptions was because he thought he knew what Izuku's problem was. He thought Izuku, like Bakugou, had been benefitting from teachers turning a blind eye to his misbehavior for years. But the problem was the exact opposite. Teachers had been turning a blind eye to his victimization for years.

He shouldn't have been treating him like Bakugou. He should have been treating him like Shinsou.

Aizawa's trying to correct the damage of past teachers. If they've spent years telling Izuku he's god's gift to mankind and it doesn't matter what he does because he's a hero and that makes up for it, Aizawa needs to hold him to the fucking rules. He needs him to understand that he's not special, he's not the main character, he's not intrinsically better or more important or above the rules in some magically important way. He doesn't want to hear excuses. He doesn't want to know why this time it was different. Izuku needs to understand that he has to live by the rules too, because he's going to be in charge of enforcing them soon.

But if they've spent years telling him he's worthless, that people can hurt him and it's okay, that he can never, ever expect help from them because he's not worth it? Then fuck, Aizawa needed to do the opposite. He needed the same end result, don't get me wrong--an understanding that the system equally applies to everyone--but he needs to make Izuku believe that the system will protect him again. That Aizawa will protect him. And Aizawa's combing over every fucking interaction they've ever had, and realizing that he hasn't done that, because he spent all his time trying to correct a problem that didn't exist.

I think Aizawa's been beating his head against the problem that is Midoriya Izuku for the past three years. Because Izuku's a hard-worker. He is brilliant. He is a natural leader. He is the fucking cornerstone of the class. He is shining so bright that it's going to kill him, because Aizawa knows how to recognize a star that's burning out.

For three years, Aizawa has tried and failed to get Izuku to realize he can and should ask for help. And he has failed because he thought the problem was that Izuku didn't think he needed help, when the problem was actually that he thought no one would give it to him.

In this last chapter, Izuku finally said aloud the reason behind the core issue Aizawa’s had with him his entire time at UA: Growing up, he thought that there was literally one man on the planet who would care enough to save him. He was the most hero-obsessed boy Aizawa’s ever met, and he thought All Might was the only hero alive he could count on to care if he lived or died.

There it is. The exact answer about every scrap of self destructive behavior that Aizawa’s been trying and failing to remedy for years. Why the fuck would he ask for help when he needs it? He’s spent his entire life living in a world where people wouldn’t piss on him if he were on fire. Aizawa needed every day of those three years to reverse that kind of damage, and he’s out of fucking time.

Aizawa is legitimately terrified that he fucked up and that it's going to kill Izuku.

Izuku’s Quirklessness is the missing piece of the puzzle that makes everything fall into place—which is why he’s so pissed at All Might for not telling him. Aizawa’s actually kicking himself for not noticing the obvious discrepancies in Izuku’s past. The fact that he grew up with a powerful Quirk was the factor that made him return to the same incorrect conclusion again and again. There were enough hints that he feels guilty for not figuring it out anyway, but if he had known about Izuku’s Quirklessness from the start? He would have figured it out in seconds.

Now that he knows, Aizawa’s changed how he handles Izuku. He doesn’t let there be a single doubt about what he’s doing or why. He makes Izuku explain himself, so that way there’s no more miscommunications around what he means. He makes sure to compliment him whenever he does something right—he’s trying to change courses, but he’s panicking that it’s too little, too late.

And now he’s got this goddamn criminal investigation that Izuku wants to bury, and it’s killing him. Because that’s his student, and he was hurt horribly. And his student just cannot comprehend why Aizawa cannot let it go.

And then there’s All Might.

All Might’s conversation with baby Izuku, for me, forecloses the possibility that explaining OfA is a solution here.

All Might really went in and knocked it out of the park with the best possible attempt at convincing Tiny Izuku that he’s himself. He immediately failed, albeit, but he honestly couldn’t have done better.

There he is, Izuku’s lifelong hero. And he’s there to say the things Izuku’s spent his whole life wanting to hear. All Might met him, and Izuku inspired him. He reminded him of himself when he was young. He thought he could be a hero. He was so impressed he offered to personally mentor Izuku.

And he loved him. Believe you are him, because I loved you too much to ever let anyone take you from me. There is a fundamental flaw in your theory that simply no one cared enough to notice or stop him, because I love you with all of me. I would have noticed. I would have saved you.

If there is absolutely anything that could have convinced Tiny Izuku, it would be that. This isn’t about quality of the explanation. There’s an internal issue that needs to be fixed before Tiny Izuku will believe any of this.

And I think Izuku recognizes this, on a level. As much as he and Tiny Izuku clash, Izuku gets him. He can typically predict Tiny Izuku’s exact responses to things.

But he’s never approached Tiny Izuku like someone he can explain this to. He’s spent this entire time trying to cheat code his way out of this situation. He wants Mr. Aizawa to erase him or to go find the Quirk user and find away to negate the Quirk. He’s never actually even considered explaining this all to himself as a solution.

Because he knows that there’s some kind of fundamental impossibility about it. Even if he can’t say exactly what it is, he knows that there’s an internal issue that means he’s not going to be able to just tell Tiny Izuku the truth.

Voice of God, he is dead fucking right about Tiny Izuku not buying OfA and being liable to tell everyone out of spite. Tiny Izuku would have that shit on the news.

Fundamentally, Izuku is aware that there is a deeper problem driving Tiny Izuku. He knows that it’s not about the quality of the explanation. There is something deeply, profoundly wrong because of what happened to him that makes him absolutely unable to accept that Izuku is him.

But Izuku has never known how to solve the mental wounds his childhood left him with. He still has them himself. He’s been burying them for years, and he can’t anymore.

When action opens in pez, Izuku himself is not okay. He’s just… bleeding internally. He knows how to hurt in ways people can’t see. But you can see how much his childhood is still bothering him in his defense of Mirio. He has never been able to let go of what happened to him. The wounds never healed.

And he doesn’t know how to go to these people he loves and tell them that what they’re trying fundamentally will fail, because he knows he’s been hiding this fucking shipwreck of his own mental health for the past three years but they don’t have a fucking clue at the scale of the problem.

At the end of the day, All Might went in there because he wanted to save Izuku. And Izuku told him not to because he cannot imagine himself being saved.

[ladyhoneydarlinglove]

{one piece ficlet, zosan} chocolate

so uh. the ficlet i posted yesterday got WAY more engagement than i was expecting and i can't thank everyone enough for the likes, reblogs, and tag comments!! they definitely made my day, so have this little ditty that i threw together last night in honor of valentine's day! Rating: G Notes: pre-relationship

~~~~~

“Oi, mosshead,” Sanji said to Zoro as the swordsman entered the Merry’s galley, no doubt on the prowl for some post-nap booze. “Come here, I want you to try something.”

Zoro paused, eyes narrowing as he turned to look at Sanji. “Why me?”

“Because it’s for you, dipshit,” Sanji snapped. “And stop giving me that look. I’m not going to poison you.”

Zoro’s eyes remained narrowed as he approached the kitchen counter, clearly suspicious of Sanji’s invitation. Sanji bit back the urge to say anything, reminding himself that he needed Zoro to be complacent if this little scheme of his was going to work. So instead of spitting out some choice insults like he wanted to, Sanji slid a small plate with a few dark brown squares on it towards Zoro and said, “Here.”

As predicted, Zoro scowled deeply, first at the plate and then at Sanji. “Why are you trying to feed me this shit, cook?” he demanded. “I already told you that I don’t like chocolate.”

Actually, what Zoro had specifically said was that he didn’t like chocolate because it was ‘too sweet’, a statement which had thoroughly baffled Sanji because sure, some chocolate was sweet, but plenty of it wasn’t. Sanji himself vastly preferred dark chocolate over milk due to the complexity of flavor, but when he’d asked Zoro about dark chocolate, all Sanji had gotten was an eye roll and a scoffed, “Chocolate is chocolate, stupid cook. Doesn’t matter what color it is, it’s all too sweet.”

Which had led Sanji to the hypothesis he was currently testing.

“It’s not chocolate,” he lied smoothly. “It’s cacao.”

Zoro blinked. “Hah?” he said, head tilting in confusion.

“Cacao,” Sanji repeated. “It’s actually a bean that’s been fermented, roasted, and then processed into something called cacao liquor—“ (He had the suppress a snort at the way Zoro’s ears perked up at the word ‘liquor’) “—that’s then combined with a few other ingredients and left to solidify into bars for easy consumption.”

He gestured at the squares on the plate, which Zoro looked down at with a more thoughtful expression than before. 

“Beans that get roasted?” he said. “Isn’t that how you said coffee is made?”

“Uh, yeah,” Sanji replied, surprised that Zoro had remembered that. “That’s why I thought you might like this, actually. You like black coffee, and cacao has a similar flavor profile—slightly bitter, but complex. And the notes change depending on how it’s processed.”

“Huh.” Zoro picked up one of the squares, squinting at it curiously. “So are you supposed to drink it?”

“No, although there is a powdered form that you can add to liquids,” Sanji said. “But this one you just eat as is. It’s good for you, too, in small quantities. Lots of antioxidants.”

Zoro’s nose wrinkled. “The hell are antioxidants?”

Sanji waved a hand dismissively. “Don’t worry your mossy little head about it. Just think of them as another kind of nutrient.”

Zoro glared at the word ‘little’, but didn’t set down the square. He turned it over in his fingers a few times as if trying to gauge it for traps before he shrugged, apparently satisfied that he wasn’t about to consume anything nefarious. 

“Yeah alright. I’ll give it a shot.”

Sanji had to press his lips together to keep back a grin as Zoro took a bite from the square, growing ever more pleased with himself as the swordsman’s expression shifted from a curious frown to what on Zoro passed for wide-eyed wonder, which was a notable absence of his usual scowl and a slight raising of the eyebrows.

“So?” Sanji asked as Zoro swallowed, barely able to contain his glee.

Zoro shrugged. 

“Not bad,” he said, and Sanji bit his tongue to keep himself from laughing in Zoro’s face. On the sliding scale of Zoro-ism’s, ‘not bad’ was equivalent to a normal person’s ’oh my god, that’s soooooo good!’.

“See?” he said, unable to quite keep the smugness from his tone. “Told you it wasn’t poison.”

Zoro rolled his eyes. “Whatever,” he muttered. Then his gaze dropped to the two squares still sitting on the plate. “So can I take these?”

Sanji had to turn towards the sink so that Zoro wouldn’t see the triumphant grin he couldn’t hold back. Because yeah, Sanji could have just explained to Zoro that dark chocolate referred not to the color but to the higher percentage of cocoa-to-sugar ratio instead of tricking him into eating ‘cacao’.

“Sure, marimo. They’re all yours.”

—but where was the fun in that?

[moxyphinx]

EDEN ESPINOSA & AMBER IMAN  "I Will Paint Her" LEMPICKA the musical

[godslush]

"Pain" being a thing in the files that's not really directly referenced in the game by either status ailment cafe patron is interesting...:

....but something that caught my eye more while looking for information on other skills (mainly looking for monster skills to apply to Remade Sam), only to find... these.

...followed by

and

Ummm....??????

[evelynpr]

Why the fuck are there roller skates, dubstep, stage lighting, an LED screen, and all kinds of modern technology in Xilonen's trailer??? I thought Fontaine had the most advanced technology next to Schneznaya and arguably Sumeru, and every instance of high-end technology we have seen leaned more towards machinations with gears, magic, alchemy, essentially fantasy styled sci-fi???

The disrespect towards Native American and African cultures is enough to piss me off already, but it even goes against Genshin's own consistency with its fantastical world design..and for what? Just so you can have this...pop and gamer aesthetic???

Just look at these two bubbly and optimistic characters for me okay

Yoimiya's design isn't the most respectful and accurate representation of a Japanese firework craftsman, but at least you can damn tell she is Japanese. The large ribbons, hair accessories, tassels, leg covering, tattoo design, shoe style, and fabric patterns all allude to this (I apologize for not knowing the exact terminologies for these, this needs further research).

Then there's Mualani who has...what? Please do correct me if I am wrong here, but her character must be inspired by the real Mualani, a Hawaiian Chiefess. Additionally, her tribe's specialty is in tourism and vacationing, which further leads into the idea that she and her tribe are based off of Hawaii despite the known issues regarding Hawaii and tourism (if there are any good sources that summarize the issue, please do lmk).

I am not too familiar with Hawaiian culture, but there really is nothing about her design that reads as Hawaiian, or even just traditional, to me. What about a 2 piece swimsuit with bows and tails, a bow + braids + ponytail hair style, combat gloves (?), and an entire neon shark, is Hawaiian???

The characters, their designs, and their trailers, are just so culturally disconnected from their real life counterpart that it's even disconnected to Genshin's own world building and design. How the fuck is the fashion trend in Natlan denim pants. I feel like the only parts of Natlan that feel like Genshin Impact and culturally inspired are the in-game music and landscapes (God bless Hoyo-mix and the world designers).

[everytimewetouch-dot-mp3]

having very normal bingliu(shen) thoughts abt luo binghe tearing someone limb from limb for daring to insinuate that lqg was weak just because he couldn’t beat lbh in his five year fight for sqq’s body. i just think it would be cute if he were surprised by how severely the insult offended him. it would be cute if he had this ‘nobody gets to call you weak but me’ thing abt lqg

and then when lqg gets hurt on a mission and turns up wounded at qjp—trying to hide his injury bc sqq invited him for tea and he didn’t want to miss it—that Thing lbh has becomes ‘nobody gets to bloody you but me’

and then when yan yixuan urgently calls sqq to qian cao because his shizun is wounded and affected by a poison that’s triggering a deadly qi deviation—poisoned by a demon seeking to ingratiate himself to the emperor, lbh learns—it becomes ‘nobody gets to kill you but me’

lqg almost dies and binghe seethes. lqg, he decided at some point he can’t really name, is his to hurt and kill and keep and fuck and—

[bowenoke]

[akai-anna]

Round 1

Round: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

[dustykneed]

pietà (*major spoilers for st:id! death cw!*) full image below additional spacer.

i like to think that aos bones has an interesting relationship with parenthood...

especially pertaining to his relationship with jim. not that he sees jim as his son, necessarily (i don't think they're deliberately portrayed that way in canon, nor do i headcanon them like that, but honestly fandom is fun because we all have fun in our sandbox, so if anyone happens to see them that way, neat!)

but when you're a parent, and at the same time a parent friend, it's easy to take the path of least resistance when it comes to defining the undefinable relationship you have with this guy you can't seem to live without.

is he your captain? your best friend? your patient? a command prodigy and a tactical genius? a sight for sore eyes? your personal nuisance? the one and only person you can't seem to get rid of, who drags you places you hate and points out everything beautiful to you and beams like he won the lottery when you can't help but grin just a little, who brings the light back into places you forgot could be lit up like the dawn, who saw you at your worst while actively at his own worst, and plopped his fool ass down and decided you were worth fighting for?

and that's a lot of things. especially many when you're fighting tooth and nail to keep his scrap-happy ass intact and also keep an eye on a whole starshipful of people. it's a lot easier to stick to what you know-- whatever is the least risky, the safest option, one that could never possibly backfire and bite you in the ass. sometimes you forget he could see you as anything other than a parent (give or take the friend.) but parenthood goes hand in hand with grief. parenthood has its own set of burdens. but it's easy to put yourself in that box and pretend to forget about all the other boxes, collecting dust in the closet, and sometimes he prods at the closet door with something pleading in his eyes. you pretend not to see that, either.

...you don't take it well, when he dies.

[rowyndodendron]

Odysseus is standing, alone, in the middle of the battlefield, and he's decided that now would be the perfect time for a little monologue, a speech aimed at himself to decide what he should do. A soliloquy of the soul, mayhaps.

Which is all well and good except: BITCH!? YOU'RE NOT IN A FUCKING PLAY RIGHT NOW!? YOU ARE ON A BATTLEFIELD. HOMER IS TELLING ME THAT AS YOU DO THIS THE TROJANS ARE LITERALLY SURROUNDING YOU!?

GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR OWN POETIC-BULLSHIT SPEWING ARSEHOLE AND DEAL WITH THIS SITUATION PLEASE!?!?!?

[tevos]

///

[boycritter]

gonna see if i can finish my book tonight and then maybe either finish my audiobook by tomorrow night OR read war of the foxes bc i keep forgetting i OWN THAT BOOK !!!!