#which is why I joined in the first place

[littleshysheep-at-da]

Full disclosure every time I look at the KumoDesu Fandom I see a lot of takes I disagree with strongly (Reddit what did I expect really)… BUT hating on opinions you disagree with is super wrong instead you should spread opinions you love! So yknow what let me post some of my KumoDesu Opinions unprompted.

Here’s one my biggest HC: Why I see the Demon Army as Family:

I will die on the hill of Shiro and Ariel as the parents to Mera (Oldest), Kyouya (middle child), and Sophia (youngest). But here's sort of why I see the coding that way.

Not gonna be defending/explaining why I ship Shiro x Ariel, it’s obvious.

Shiro and Ariel give the most advice and guidance to the three of them (they quite LITERALLY raised Sophia). Ariel giving the talks working through emotions and Shiro being the more action based parent. They also quite literally are responsible for sorting out all their housing, schooling, and helping with employment.

Mera gives the vibe of the sibling with a bigger age gap than the other two, thus why he takes a less sibling bickering and more sibling guidance role (he also has the self esteem issues of an eldest child ngl). I wouldn’t say he ever takes a parental role so much because he feels more on Sophia and Kyouya’s level as opposed to Ariel and Shiro’s. Mera says word for word that helping Kyouya feels like having a younger brother as well. And since Sophia was originally his responsibility to look after but after Shiro and Ariel join them they mostly take over it gives the feeling of “orphan who expects they have to parent their much younger sibling only to be adopted and now only have it when they’re parents are at work”.

Sophia’s thing with Mera is mostly due to the envy skill. I think her real feelings are deep proactive feelings due to having no one close to her in her past life and the fact that after knowing the truth (and seeing all her flaws) he’s still determined to stick by her side. She’s literally never had that ever, not even a lesser more fair weather version of that. I will also say Ariel, Shiro, and Kyouya fall more into a “do rather than say” kind of love language so Mera being very verbal about his commitment probably floors her. I don’t think she actually wants to date him, I would put it more into “child mistakes familiar affection for romantic and say they want to marry their sibling/parent when young but grows out of it” (yknow what Shun was PRAYING was going on with Sue). I do think Sophia strongly gives the vibe of “overprotective sibling who with “test” all her sibling’s potential dates” to Mera. She’s gonna “vet” those people to decide if they’re worthy and hopefully they’ll live.

Sophia’s relationship with Kyouya is strongly “I’m the only one allowed to bully him” which is just sibling energy 101. She constantly taunts him in any way that proves she’s stronger but if someone else did that to him she would call pathetic and beneath him. Just, if you have a sibling would know this behavior very well. I do think Sophia gives off youngest (and problem child) vibes as always starting shit and needing the most attention from their parents. Where as Kyouya gives of more of a middle child (has severe issues) vibe, where he’s calmer and practiced at not responding to the younger one starting shit (which honestly only pisses them off more). He also did have a ton of siblings as a goblin (that he babysat a lot) so he’s just very practiced.

I know the Puppet Taratect’s as actually Ariel’s (and by extension Shiro’s) children but is it horrible of me to say they give off more pet vibes. Pets are still kids and you can be a pet Mom. I own cats and I LOVE cats, they have that strong energy. Just the fact that they don’t really need to be parented/taught/guidance but do need someone watching them to make sure they don’t get into things they shouldn’t. And the fact that anyone in their group can do it it’s not really something that needs a particular experience/angle. The fact that they’re self sufficient on their own but hang around because they want to is also very cat coded.

[claraoswalds]

#mrs flood who are you: time lord edition

[raycatz]

I'm not including a situation where someone might be injured because in that case I'm thinking the bed goes to them by default or they are nominated for it. anyone who wants to be chatty goes to join the living room floor gang.

What are your thoughts and headcanons? Do you have thoughts on how the boys tend to approach assigning beds in inns? Who do the chain choose to sleep near when camping and why? What are their dynamics like when settling down for the night and getting ready for the day?

In "Mirror Vs Open Closet Door: Fight!" by Gintrinsic (here) Four refers to the chain's decision on how to split up between inn rooms as the "Link-per-room ratio" which I find very funny. He, Sky, and Time also talk about their thought process behind why they do or don't want to sleep in a room with some of the others which I find fun and interesting.

So! If you have thoughts and want to share them! *gestures to the post!*

[oceandiagonale]

Actually, Guzman is his spanish name.

OH YEAH some other folks pointed that out too, makes sense since it's an irl Spanish name (probably why I see it around a lot!) 😳

(normally it's a surname, I've only seen it used as a first name once in a blue moon -- but also in the pokemon world it's pretty clear that naming conventions aren't the same lol)

[evi4th]

religious trauma lifesteal!zam essay //lifesteal spoilers

call it projecting but like imagine the amount of religious trauma lifesteal!princezam has (presuming theres some sort of connection of the characters between seasons) like bro has had like 80% of his teamates become gods and watched them loose their sense of self in one way or another he himself started exploiting at one point then goes on to ban himself in season five theres something to be said their having reached the heart cap and having so much power after hours and hours of constant labour to achieve what he got handed to him by a divine like entity like just to ban himself something something sacirficing your life to a higher entity . something also about watching all of his loved ones betray him die or him having to betray them for his own self of moral justice which is very lackluster to his constantly changing beliefs and morality he will never find something that he can cling to (like religion) so. yeah.

[rxttenfish]

i absolutely cannot let myself get started on another fic until im at least onto chapter 5 of caecilian but the temptation to write something of aaravi taking miranda monster hunting and describing the entire EVERYTHING there is real

[fratalian-dinosaour]

the most fun thing about being under the trans umbrella is the name changes . whenever i make posts about me i would use "stories with asher" but now my names emmett . its actually so much fun bc i can see how long ive been on here . i dont remember the last time ive used the name asher but i still kept using it as my tag . no clue why but i kept it there . my first name was eren, then it was 2020 and i went down the noun for name rabbithole and it was fern, then i went to asher, then i started going by em in school (closest to b.n.) now im emmett because my friend grace started calling me emmett for fun and it sticked ! sometimes ill see friends who havent seen me in years and they'll call me asher and its HILARIOUS because its like a war flashback. i was crazy emo when i went by asher and now im fun and colorfull and silly and a major nerd! also i was obsessed with the lego movie as a kid and LOVED Emmet (first fixation) so . basically my life has made a full circle ! yay

beware of the yapping in the tags :3

[lgbtlunaverse]

Could someone tell me where the interpretation that, in book canon, the promotion Nie Mingjue gives Meng Yao made Meng Yao's life worse than it was before, came from?

I have seen that claim made multiple times now and I've looked at the text over and over trying to see where the basis for it is and I. Can't find it? Don't get me wrong, it absolutely spells out that it does not and cannot fix everything for Meng Yao, but the idea that it was actively bad for him?

Lacking other evidence, I kind of have to assume that it comes from cql canon being sort of projected backwards onto book canon. In cql canon, meng yao is suffering active and explicit bullying and abuse from the captain while under the nie, and does so because the capain believes he has risen above his station via nmj's promotion of him. (In book canon this... isn't happening. It happens with the captain in Langya instead) However, in cql canon he has also been with the nie for years and is openly close to both Nie Mingjue and Nie Huasiang, whereas in book canon he has only been working with nie mingjue for a few months (though has, in that time, apparently become close enough to him for Lan Xichen to explicitly state Meng Yao is able to calm nmj down in ways no one else can? Ofc he does this... Right after that stops being true. But. Food for thought. Not what this post is about tho.) So, if you project the much more explicit abuse from the nie sect captain in cql back on novel jgy who has a presumably much less stable position in the sect overall you get... a meng yao for whom the promotion only means a bigger target on his back and virtually no protection from nmj, who we must assume he can't trust to talk to his about because he never mentions it. (This also explicitly violates book canon when it comes to meng yao's general behaviour, we'll talk about that in a sec)

And look. We all do frankencanon in this house. I get it. And for fanfiction that is very fun. But for a serious reading of the character, his situation, and the actions that lead from that this... doesn't make much sense, in my opinion.

So. Why is that? Why did I say this was out of character for the novel? Because Meng yao spoke up about the jin captain mistreating him. Multiple times! It's just that none of it mattered because no one cared to listen to him. This is a pretty important line for his character because it flatly shows that meng yao is not and has never seen murder as something trivial. He's not trigger happy. He will only do it if he sees no other way out that doesn't end in himself being seriously harmed. (Whether he's right or justified in these cases is not the point of this post.)

If anything remotely similar was happening in the Nie sect, he would have said so. Cql Meng Yao doesn't do this because cql Meng Yao is a different character, and also the plot wouldn't work if he did. Cql Nie Mingjue, by extension, comes off as a fundamentally less trustworthy figure in cql Meng Yao's life because apparently for whatever reason, he cannot be trusted with the information that the deputy he has already publicly defended is still being harassed, and doesn't notice even when it is really blatant. The assumtpion the audience is given is that, like a middle schooler getting the principal involved when being bullied, it would only make the harassment more viscious.

This... actually has a somewhat solid basis in the book. Because after nmj yells at the bullies in question Wei Wuxian says this.

And it is important to keep in mind that this is Wei Wuxian saying this. Not Meng Yao, not an omniscient narrator. Wei wuxian is drawing on his own experiences, likely from the Jiang family, to conclude that if someone is angry at you and thwarted by someone defending you, this generally does not make them less angry at you.

This is leaving out two crucial things, though.

Firstly, this worry isn't about the promotion at all.

The promotion hasn't even been brought up. In the novel it doesn't ctually happen immediately, it takes another few battles where meng yao continues to do his job well and nie mingjue continues praising him for him to eventually go "yeah, you deserve a raise."

This is another aspect that is being projected from cql canon onto book canon I presume, because it does happen quite quickly there, and it's a throwaway line in the books so it's easy to miss. I can't be mad about anyone forgetting the difference, but it is important to mention for this particular analysis.

Which is the second point: change in status

Wei Wuxian couldn't exactly change status within the Jiang family. (And if he could, that would just fuel rumours that he was jfm's bastard even more and make madam yu even angrier at him, etc etc.)

This isn't comparable to Meng Yao. The worry Wei Wuxian is talking about is explitly about Nie Mingjue's initial very loud defense of him. Before he has any idea Nie Mingjue is going to promote him.

Promoting him would likely decrease his chances of cultivators coming after him because now he was in a higher standing in the sect than they were. If applied to that earlier metaphor of middle school bullying it's like if the bullied kid suddenly got hired as a teacher. Which. Doesn't work with the metaphor at all. Touché. But what I am trying to say is that any payback they would have planned for him relied on the fact that they could make sure that Nie Mingjue wasn't going to be within very convenient earshot a second time, and as a random disciple Meng Yao couldn't just go complain to him every time.

But as his right hand man? Who spends most of his time working directly alongside him? Lmao. Good luck. Oh, sure, it is very likely that they feel offended a son of a whore has been raised in status above them, and many will continue to do so as jgy rises through cultivation society (in fact, Wei Wuxian's observations are absolutely on point for how Madam Jin will be treating jgy later on). But as we can also see from the way jgy is treated and how he treats others throughout the story: you can be upset all you want, but if that person is higher than you in status there's jack shit you can do about it.

If I am correct and Wei Wuxian is basing this on his experiences with the Jiang family, it makes sense why he'd miss this. Madam Yu gets to be way angrier at Jiang Fengmian as his wife than some random disciples can be at Nie Mingjue. Insulting Meng Yao, suggesting that he didn't deserve his promotion or that he earned it through less than proper means (you know who is mother is) is also an insult to Nie Mingjue and the way he chooses to run his sect. They can't do that.

Another thing I see brought up in this regard would be the tea scene. There may be no explicit harassment like in the show, but cultivators still don't respect him! The disrespect is just quieter and more subtle.

Tiny detail: these are actually not Nie cultivators

They're cultivators Lan Xichen is escorting with him, making a pitstop in heijan.

The book confirms this by basically outright stating that this is the first time they see his face, and recognize him as Jin Guangshan's bastard son.

Now, just because there is no proof that it happened doesn't mean it definitely never happened. Mdzs is a novel that often leaves stuff out or up to interpretation. Similar stuff to the tea situtation could very well be happening in the background. But I do think it is pretty significant that there is no mention whatsoever of Meng Yao having any negative treatment from Nie cultivators betwen him and Nie Mingjue meeting and him executing them while spying for Wen Ruohan, and the most we get is Wei Wuxian's personal speculation, after which he immediately goes to wax poetic about how surprised he is that Meng Yao and Nie Mingjue are getting along super well.

And, again, novel Meng Yao would have said something. He doesn't say anything about the tea scene. - Or? Does he? Notably 3zun have some very long in depth conversations that Wei Wuxian zones out from because he's busy thinking about Lan Zhan again. But let's not rely on what-ifs. Let's say that neither he nor Lan Xichen find it worth bringing up. Major reasons for that would be that a) these are not nie cultivators, nie mingjue wouldn't really have the authority to scold them. Especially because b) it's such a subtle offense it could easily be handwaved as coincidence. "They just always brush their cups clean like that!! It's wartime you know, and they were traveling! They're used to drinking from vessels that aren't thoroughly washed everytime! It's just a habit!" And would therefore not be worth reporting.

But anything worse than that? A "price tens or hundreds of times greater" like wwx mentions? He'd report it! I do understand that "well if it was happening why didn't he say something?" would, in real life, be victim blaming. This is not real life, and I am not talking about this in a matter of blame. If Meng Yao was being mistreated in the Nie and stayed silent about it, it would still not be his fault. I am talking about this in a manner of character consistency.

His admission of seeking help in the Jin sect shows that at that time and prior to it (a very good argument can be made that he loses faith in this idea) he believes that if he is being mistreated and someone with the authority to say something about it takes his side, things can improve. If Nie Mingjue standing up for him in Qinghe only made things worse, he would not have tried to ask for help in an even more hostile environment. You can call Meng Yao many things, but naïve isn't one of them.

Meng yao's later habit of completely isolating himself and lying to everyone around him comes from the fact that revealing his suffering would mean explaining several horrible things he's become complicit in and he does not feel safe admitting to that. But he's done nothing wrong here!

The reading where he says nothing would imply an either correct or incorrect belief in Meng Yao's eyes that Nie Mingjue did not much care for his wellbeing or safety. Oh sure he defended him once but doing so again multiple times would be such a bother. This also contradicts his later behaviour, where he banks solely on Nie Mingjue's protective instincts to seal his qi and escape during the confrontation in Langya. After having been caught murdering a man, he is still convinced Nie Mingjue will immediately try to help him when he is in serious danger.

And even if you very badly want to characterize Nie Mingjue as a blundering idiot who is apparently less trustworthy in Meng Yao's eyes than the jin cultivators who had already resoundly rejected him by the time he tries to ask for help with the langya captain. He doesn't say anything to Xichen either! Lan Xichen, who has explicitly and exhaustively been portrayed as kind and understanding to Meng Yao's circumstances and very willing to talk to Mingjue if Meng Yao wants something from him he doesn't otherwise think he'd get. The conversation Mingjue overhears where Meng Yao's new position in the Nie is explictly brought up would be kind of the perfect time to go "yeah I've been promoted but I'm not treated well by other soldiers" aaaand. Nothing. So unless you come to the conclusion that Meng Yao trusted the Jin he told about the captain's abuse more than Lan Xichen you kind of have to conclude that Meng Yao's treatment after his promotion improved significantly. And that even if people still disliked him they could not openly do anything about it because he was high enough in status for that to be socially inappropiate. Which is, explicitly, one of his main motivators over the entire course of the story: Avoiding mistreatment by getting high enough on the social ladder it doesn't matter what people think of him, they can't hurt him.

And I'm not sure how to reconcile that character journey with the idea that he would, at any point, have preferred to keep his head down and stay where he was. When he was so desperate to crawl his way out.

[nerdyfangirlingbooks]

I've had a stupid merlin au idea stuck in my head for days now and I know I'll never get around to writing it the way I want it written but I kinda wanna try anyway even though I am 100% of the target audience

[firestorm09890]

if you were wondering how that batshit video game crossover rp I mention intermittently is going, right now Beat twewy (neo era) is actively pursuing the friendship of Zexion because he's smart and, quote, "so cool dawg", which has included Beat stealing a kill from him and then winking at him, so. it sure is going. btw i highly recommend doing batshit rps with your friends featuring your respective favorite fictional weirdos, it's been doing wonders for my mental health

[pleafyistired]

anyways, i think mo4 is just a really interesting case of when characters morality is based of their friendship, not really on whats actually good or right. Of course normally, media that revolves around friendship tropes like mo4 has characters that also do everything and anything to protect their friends and loved ones, and its just so happened that these people they called friends are nice and the people who are attacking them are bad. But in the case of mo4, the characters are actually shown to not care that much about the fact that their friends are fucking horrible and not even that remorseful about their actions, they say theyre remorseful but their actions never reflect it. They only care about the people they called their friends. Not the greater good. We felt so wrong watching them because theyre only stopping the “evil cooporation” (that was totally their fault) because their intention was simply their friends were hurt. If mcdr in this case hurt someone they dont know about and is an absolute stranger to them, chances are none of them are going to be pissed and stormed off to stop it. Maybe they’ll say something about that being bad, but its really doubtable theyll do something about it.

morality shouldnt just be based on protecting your friends. And mo4 really showcased it well :3

[thekimspoblog]

Demon trying to feed on my insecurities: "You're a bad driver"

Me: "Of course I am. I hate driving. Going 80 mph surrounded by tons of metal is nerve-wrecking. I try to do it as little as possible. Of course I'm bad at it"

Demon: "You're a bad writer"

Me: "Well that part's simply not true. I never claimed I was the greatest author of my generation, but when I put pen to paper I know what I want to communicate and I usually do it well. If someone isn't impressed with my work, that's unfortunate but they're entitled to their opinion"

Demon: "You're a bad leader"

Me: "Well I don't know about that! I mean there was that one time when... Ok look just because people don't see me as an authority figure doesn't mean... 😠 You know you can be a real asshole, demon!"

[maxellminidisc]

Silly but the DūnM3sh nonsense around the last episode has me thinking about how like idk mostly white autistic folks (of the vairety who are not in need of higher assistance) online act like ALL autistic folks exhibit the exact same symptoms and behaviors in social settings when like I find mostly other poc and a lot of women regardless of race have very different experiences with the sort of "stereotypical" reaction and behavior that's most often associated with autism. Which leads to a lot of you assuming we are neurotypical and then this line of thinking extends into your reading of autistic characters, be they headcanons or canon characters. Rest of this is going under a read more

Like idk for a poc, theres already very little grace given to us in social situations, especially when around white people. You guys dont realize but we are consistently aware that no matter what, when we enter a space with y'all there will always be an internal bias present in white people that will deem any behavior of confrontation as inherently aggressive or mean.

So we learn to navigate social situations with an already high level of need to analyze so many of the behaviors and cues of the people around us out of complete necessity. Neurodivergency or not, this becomes a matter of survival. And for some people, like me, the need to do this and possibly avoid and save yourself the pain of having people who's racism is a potential harm to you becomes a priority in your brain more than anything else you have going on. You cant completely shut everything else out about your neurodivergency but you learn enough to keep yourself safe. It's what I was forced to learn when I was like 5-13 because I was relentlessly bullied for my race and ethnicity, and later for my incapacity to not understand certain social cues or even break rules until I was about 12/13.

I'm not completely without symptoms and if anything some of them have gotten worse. I struggle now with knowing when to stop talking until I notice people start looking bored or annoyed and I sometimes dont talk enough for fear of being annoying to people I'm close to. Not to mention I'm ALWAYS double checking what I say in a way that's almost like a compulsion. Like constantly, to the point where before I say something with say like factual information, I like quadruple plus plus check everything on Google before I say it (and even then I might get shit wrong and my reaction to that is....oh boy). And even then I sometimes end up not saying anything because I'm too scared I said something wrong and mislead or upset someone. Or worse, this information is unwarranted and annoying.

If anything I'm someone who's neurodivergency made them OVER COMPENSATE the need to pick up on social cues, eye contact, sociability, etc because it was a way to defend myself (by making it harder to pick on me without push back) or keep myself safe.

But at the end of the day the constant need to keep up with ALL of this burnt me out by the time I was in college and it made me incapable of masking very many noticeable things anymore, especially my over sensory and stimming when I'm stressed (which isnt helped by the fact that I have synesthesia), the anxiety it produces, and ultimately that it leads me to having a panic attack and has me in the place I am now where that shame of freaking out in loud spaces gave me agoraphobia. Now my threshold for "neurotypical behavior" is like SIGNIFICANTLY shorter when I leave my house.

And I constantly apologize for sharing information when I do. Like I have it instilled in me now to say sorry for information I share because I think I'm bothering people. And my capacity to understand jokes is flawed if the person I'm talking to isnt someone I'm consistently around because I haven't completely been able to process the way they speak or their sense of humor. I sometimes take jokes that are lies, unreality, or sarcasm as literal and people have to say "oh no I was joking I made that up".

When I first meet people I'm actually told I'm way too quiet and kind of intimidating because I guess people can sense that I'm analyzing them like a lil computer and I look them in the eyes TOO much. Funnily enough one of my close friends in high school didnt like me very much at firsy because she asked me if I liked her after very little time of being introduced and I straight up said no without much thought as to why that would offend her alskdkdmkfkd but after a while of getting to know her more, we got close, and like most people, after a while they say I seem pretty "normal" and "nice".

And this isnt even touching on my emotional responses and my horrible rejection sensitivity. That would make this even longer. But the one thing I'll say is it's made my relationship with my family VERY bumpy, and especially tumultuous when young, and it's something they struggle to understand still A LOT.

And outside of situations where I cant mask anymore from exhaustion, I get why it's sort if unsurprising to me when I've met white autistic folks who mistakenly assume I'm neurotypical because I can just navigate conversations with a sheen of "normalcy" (and lol racism), until we talk and they're like oh shit I get it now (usually white people with ADHD can pick up on my neurodivergency much faster which is funny lol) where as other people of color with adhd/autism dont ever make that assumption, they just get it. They pick up on ME analyzing them and we just look at each other like 🧍‍♂️🧍‍♀️

[theophagie-remade]

I don't have much to say about Magne other than there was an Attempt, but. That time when Twice and Toga got angry with Overhaul for misgendering her was already indicative of what I'm going to get at in a sec, and obviously it was especially relevant because it was a direct show of respect and support from people who very clearly cared about her (and who called her big sis already as it was!!) (×2 imo because Twice was intentionally written to be the readers' insight into the LOV, and the character with whom they were supposed sympathise with the most at/since the beginning, so it's especially important that the first one who spoke up was him), but the story's progression (especially in recent years) is what most assures me that despite a rather poor execution (definitely not the best, but also certainly not the worst) Horikoshi did mean well with her. "People bound together by the chains of society always laugh at those who aren't" :(

[mabelsguidetolife]

so what happened is that i got slightly bothered by my mom interjecting and correcting me during the rare phone call from my sister instead of asking to join the conversation on speakerphone or asking for the phone herself; she then got angry because i was directly quoting her to my sister — verbatim — and apologizing for the interruptions

I went to my room to express my frustrations to my sister but she hasn’t lived here since she was eighteen or nineteen years old and has had extensive professional therapy so she just told me mom ‘wants to be included’ but by then she was too pissed

i had to end the call because i was afraid she would become violent and i was silently crying and trembling as i said goodbye

I’ve been quietly shedding tears for a long time but i went to apologize and after i went in for a hug, she accused me of degrading her……… i don’t know what to do or feel sometimes because it’s apparently never the right thing