#i have neither time nor interest in that

[alarrytale]

I know larries already do a lot of marketing for Louis, but do you think spreading knowledge of larrie would get more people on board? I’d never even heard of Louis until a friend of a friend vented about stunting in a discord server. That was 2 years ago and I’ve been here since, but i find that so many big blogs are cagey about trying to spread the truth to others. It’s like there’s this paradox of wanting Louis to be more popular but also being hostile to newer fans who don’t spontaneously know everything that’s happened in the past 10+ years. Like, we could just tell them. Heck I do believe and i still face hostility when i ask some blogs for clarification on ‘basic’ things the master posts gloss over because they assume everyone already knows.

“Um, don’t you remember what happened in 2012?”

No! I just got here!

I’m not saying we need a fandom missionary program, I’m just wondering why a community that claims to be dedicated to supporting two boys through injustice does so much gatekeeping of the knowledge of that injustice. I don’t mean to come off as bitter, but the longer I’m here, more more it feels like certain larrie blogs care more about feeling special for knowing the secret truth rather than getting the truth out there, even if it would help the boys they claim to love.

Hello!

So there is alot to unpack here.

I'm not sure it's a common goal for larries nowadays to spread the gospel of larry. It definitly was back in 2011-2014, when it was clear that the stunts were fake, HL worked actively against their closeting and the fandom as a whole were not split into fractions.

After Louis called larry 'a load of bullshit' and we got larry denials from both of them, fandom including larries started to tone everything down. Larries were scared of repercussions (from Louis mostly), repercussions from management towards HL (sometimes H og L had to stunt after larries were too loud and it got picked up by media). Larries' who were spreading the gospel also started to feel underapreciated because the loudest signaling from HL stopped. That was our fuel. When HL stopped fighting the closet, some larries took this as HL now willigly being in the closet to further their careers. Aka larries being loud now would sabotage HLs goals. So there are larries who dosn't think there is an injustice to fight anymore, if you understand what i'm saying. We have different views of what will 'help' them. None of us knows the whole truth. There are larries who believes in this and larries who believes in that. There isn't one common fandom lore either.

And to your part about treatment of newer fans. For us who's been here for a while it's like you've gone to first grade and progressed to thirteenth grade, but you are still in class with firstgraders who's asking firstgrader questions, didn’t do their homework and are taking up all of the teachers time. I think everyone expect newbies to read up on stuff before asking questions. If a google search can give you the answer, then google it. Explaining things over and over again can be tiresome and doesn’t make a good fandom experience. Also sometimes it's REALLY hard to explain certain things to people who weren't there when it happened. Things happen in context, and explaing why things that seems small now were really groundbreaking back then when it happened, is very difficult. Newbies also have a tendency to ask the basic stuff to bigger/older bloggers. It's like sending an e-mail to a math professor asking why 1+1=2. After answering that question several times a year for 13 years, that blogger might want to answer other more intersting questions. I always lose followers after answering basic questions, because i guess most of my followers knows the answer, have been around for years, and are tired of seeing the same thing on their dashes year after year. It's a difficult balance and i'm sorry you feel dismissed.

#i'm always happy to lead people in the right direction #like a librarian #but i'm not going to spoonfeed you the answer (the simple ones) #i have neither time nor interest in that #larries ftw #fandom #boyband politics

[textfromthelookout]

Did you hear of the news?

I have. :(

Everyone else has their tributes so, here, a summary of my experience with Dragon Ball.

I was in fourth grade art class. A kid had the February 2005 issue of Shonen Jump, back when Shonen Jump was still physically printed here. I recognized Atem on the front cover because the Blockbuster around the corner from our house had DVDs (I think they were DVDs and not VHSs then since I distinctly remember it having a menu and special features) of some of the later episodes of Duelist Kingdom and my brother and I watched them on repeat. So I was like oh, hey, what's this? They make books of that stuff? I don't remember the conversation but the kid ended up giving me that issue, and I took it home with me.

There were a LOT of significant, groundwork things happening in that issue, now that I think about it. We were just beginning to see Sanji truly in action against Pearl. The Dark Tournament was in it's early stages still with Roto fucking around and finding out against Kurama. Sakura shears off her hair in a move that rearranged sexualities the world over. The reason Atem was on the cover was because Yu-Gi-Oh Millennium World was just debuting its first and second chapter. Bleach wasn't even serialized yet. And Dragon Ball, of course, was also there, about a hundred and fifty chapters ahead of everybody else.

Keep in mind that this was my first experience with manga, period. So my very first experience with Dragon Ball opened on this:

and ended on this:

Yeah. Truth be told, at the time Yu Yu Hakusho piqued my interest more than Dragon Ball (a guy fighting with plants? how creative!) but I never did forget these chapters. I thought the art style was so different from the others.

At some point after this, probably between several months and a year and a half, the TV happened to be on one evening when Toonami was airing Dragon Ball Z. Oh hey, I said, I recognize that art, I know those characters. So I hung around and watched some of episode 281. Two things about watching that episode stick with absolute crystal clarity in my mind to this day. Firstly: Buu choking Vegeta out with his arm freaked me the FUCK out as a child. I could not tell you why I had a fear reaction to it but hey, there you go. The second is this:

Specifically I remember 'You died once. If anything happens to you now, you won't exist anymore. There'll be nothing I can do to bring you back.' Not precisely word for word over the years, but Schemmel's tone of voice on this particular lineread. If I had to guess I'd say it was because at that point in my life, uh, death was kinda permanent? So wait, what do you mean died ONCE. Doesn't that apply to everyone?

This still wasn't enough to get me super invested in it though, it just didn't seem like something that would appeal to me that much. So a couple years go by, I don't think about it all that much, and then of course, TFS hits the scene and drops DBZ Abridged. So you know. As a shithead middle schooler with a shithead sense of humor I thought it was the best damn thing since sliced bread. (My biggest character flaw is that I still think a lot of Season 1 is genuinely funny)

And that was really the extent of my interaction with the franchise for the next several years. Say what you will about DBZA but they did manage to put it all together such that someone who had a nonexistent concept of what the original context was could grok it with not a lot of effort. Some time in high school, I think I was around 15, I decided to bite the bullet and read all the manga, as much to increase the funny factor of DBZA as sheerly for the sake of being able to say I had. Stick it to the other weebs, y'know. Now they can't say I didn't know anything about good anime. This was unfortunately at a time when all that was available online were dirty poor-quality scans and questionable translations, but read it I did. I went 'yep, that sure is about what I expected', and proceeded to get on with my life. GT came and went, I looked up and saw Battle of Gods coming out and went 'oh hey that's still a thing huh', kinda was peripherally aware of all the divisiveness of Super as it was happening, didn't really pay it much attention, just stuck to DBZA and quite a lot of wiki-ing.

And then, this time of year about three years ago now, in the middle of conversation with @prophecydungeon, Dragon Ball somehow came up. Something to do with 'Even though I'm not hugely into DBZ's story or whatever Toriyama does have some great character designs' (yes I was referring to Vegeta and Future Trunks at the time, no i will not stop being predictable, yes i am a parody of myself). They eventually brought up the DBS Broly movie and said, and i quote: 'that was a solid 1.5h of unbelievably fun and wacky animation'. Having seen the Gogeta vs Broly part of it on twitter and been like 'damn that animation's kinda off the hook actually, good for them good for them', my response was to be like. Oh word? I've got a spare hour and a half to kill, sure, fuck it, why not, time to watch DBS Broly.

I think that movie was precision crafted to hit me in the hyperfixation, if we're being honest. Opening on a solid 20 minutes of Lore and Worldbuilding and then having most of the rest of the runtime being mindless slobberknocker fun by way of some of the hardest animation flexes ever? I was done for.

In summation. I have been aware of Dragon Ball for a lot of my life, in that its presence was pervasive and enduring as I grew up. I may have been late to the game of actually wholeheartedly enjoying it, but enjoy it I do. Dragon Ball is the roots of a vast tree of anime, and in reading it I began to understand why that is. I respect it for that, and I love it for that. My current fixation may have shifted, but as far as time devoted to one individual thing goes... it took me a year and a half to watch my way through all of the anime and read all of the manga. ALL of it. So there's something good in there, I'd say.

#rip to a legend #text from the mod #tangentially related: i am not actually dead #it's just that between school and my job and the pirate brainrot #(the previous four months of which was feverishly consumed with a 16k word project) #i have had neither time nor impetus to make dragon ball funnies #there is also the fact that my stupid autism brain is still fuming over the website changes #that have fucked up the Aesthetique of the text posts and made them much more annoying to get in a usable form #thus adding steps to what was a simple and comfortable process #and aforementioned idiot dumb brain has not stopped pitching a bitch fit over the inconvenience. #i know it's a stupid hangup. believe me i am fully aware. but there is so little i can do about it #so i am sorry about my long absence. i really truly am. #especially to the asks that have been chillin in my inbox for all this time now #it's just that they're interesting questions that deserve me giving 100% of my brainpower to them ya feel #i want to devote appropriate attention to these little funnies and not phone it in or half ass it LOL

[koipalm]

what if even tho sy is just an assistant sometimes disciples ask him questions bc he's weirdly well read for some dude who just spawned in one day and he'll just Answer shit if it's innocent enough. how does x demon fight? where would you find y monster? and his little hyper fixation brain just rears its head. just a weirdly helpful little scrunkly

RIIIIIGHT RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT. to the disciples hes just this guy that their shizun keeps around that knows weird obscure facts. disciples go to him like hes their personal xianxia google. i think it would be REALLLLYY funny if when sy realized his position in the sect hed be like "oh god im failing these kids. they need moral support they need 3 meals a day they need to know what kind of plant they can use to ward off Six Legged Snow Panthers" or smth like that. im not sure hes in a good headspace to really figure out how to take care of kids actually

#ask #sy attendant au #i PERSONALLY. PERSONALLY. think he was fairly good at being sqq #on account of his weirdly pinpoint memory of pidw facts?? #and a few other things like muscle memory from sqq's body #but aside from that i just think the moral quandary of him actually being a good replacement sqq is reaally interesting #bc it brings up a lot of stuff like how well people knew sqq and what sy would have to do #to accurately imitate sqq #that and also just i find the whole 'sy IS sqq (or a version of him)' take sooooo interesting. but i digress #ANYWAYYY i got off topic #for this au sy has neither the free time nor the mental strength to be a teacher #so hes just the guy that gives a disciple a weird plant and goes #'propogate those. no i dont know how to do it. you can figure it out theres a huge library right there. use it on burns. ok bye' #AH. i forgot to tag these as svsss #svsss

[mountmortar]

if any of you are nerds like me and find this whole "the-platform decay/enshittification-of-present-day-social-media" thing fascinating and want to read what other people have to say about it, these two posts written on dreamwidth in 2008 titled "why monetizing social media through advertising is doomed to failure" by synecdochic (part one here, part two here) are super fun reads; and, i think, pretty damn informative overall. they are decently long, though! and this one by phantomrose96 on here is a good read as well! for more bite-sized posts that aren't as detailed but are basically the same style of posting you would find on here, this one from six months ago and this one from six days ago on pillowfort are short, sweet & to-the-point.

#i think it's interesting to see this happen in real-time. and how determined people are to just (at least on here specifically) #to be like 'guyssssss just hit the opt-out button and you'll be fine' when the companies have no obligation to honor that button #the psychology of a userbase being taken advantage of by a corporation is just kind of fascinating to me #<-i think that's coming across as detached or cold and i don't mean for it to? #but also. i genuinely hope the plug gets pulled on this place. and all the other places too. if only to see what will happen #(personally i'm rooting for linkedin's demise lmao but that's neither here nor there)

[fictionadventurer]

The Heir of Redclyffe is teaching me that what Little Women really needed was for the March sisters to have a clever, witty, sharp-tongued, disabled brother who was BFFs with Laurie.

#charles edmonstone my beloved #he's so much fun #and his friendship with guy is one of the best parts of the book #i'm shocked to see a victorian book where the disabled person is neither a monster nor a saint #the disability affects his life and the household but it's far from the only thing about him #he's a great character in his own right #he even has a plot-relevant illness #but the plot relevance isn't 'oh no he's near death let's have drama' #but 'he's having a flareup and can't write letters so someone loses a vital correspondant at an unfortunate moment' #(charles does later lampshade the lost opportunity for a dramatic deathbed reconciliation scene) #but anyway despite my continued comparisons of this book and little women #they are different books #aside from the laurie thing and the general family atmosphere and the moralizing mother figure there's quite a lot different #for one thing the male characters are much more interesting than most of the female ones #the girls are fine but certainly not the main draw of the story #i do like the religious aspect of this one more though #at first it was giving me anxiety cuz they agonize over teeny little sins #but once we moved from childish concerns to more adult ones the faith aspect became much deeper #still clunky and eye-rolling at times but also surprisingly natural in some places #and i'm still holding my breath for whatever made jo cry over this book #66% through the book; it's gotta be coming relatively soon #books #the heir of redclyffe #little women #charlotte mary yonge #louisa may alcott

[onaperduamedee]

"Light, is there a story with an Aes Sedai where she isn't a villain ?"

— Robert Jordan, The Eye of the World

Based on Medusa by Laura Dreyfus Barney

#the wheel of time #moiraine damodred #moiraine sedai #wheel of time #greenawaying #mine: wot #no idea what tag to use #I hadn't done one of these in a while #I didn't pick the simplest painting to blend either but it's still as relaxing as I remember #insert spiel about Aes Sedai and narratives of women with powers #I am not far enough into the books to comment on why there is such a bias against Aes Sedai #but it is interesting how soon Moiraine addresses that Aes Sedai are just people #neither better nor worse #capable to be as petty and good and vile and mediocre as others #obviously there is the weigthy question of the White Tower as an institution #New Spring had very odd Diderot's La Religieuse vibes #and power as a source of madness for men but for women it's this #whatever this is in-universe and that I have complicated feelings about #on women and madness and monstrosity and religions

[randomwriteronline]

Perditus grunted a little as he adjusted his leg while laying down against the rock. It was a pleasant day, all things considered: the sun was warm without being smoldering, the winds were strong but not as harsh as usual, and he had something to make the pain a little more bearable.

With his eyes shut he fished a flint lighter and a medicinal sghitt out of the pouch under his thigh armor.

He didn't bother looking as he heard footsteps approach quickly; medication stuck between his teeth, he clicked lazily until he caught the telltale crackle of papery tissue catching fire, took the longest, deepest inhale he could, soaking in the acrid taste and familiar burn in the back of his head, and let an enormous cloud of septic-smelling smoke blow out of his mouth with a growling sigh.

His fellow debtor sat beside him nervously, scanning the horizon.

"Any news?" he asked.

"I was going to ask you," the Glatorian replied.

"None, then."

"None."

Hard nails tapped far too quickly against the rock.

Perditus took another drag. The numbing effect was starting to take hold of his anguishing limb.

"Do you think it'll be soon?" Atakus asked.

The Tapyri exhaled: "Maybe."

"Yes or no?"

"Maybe, I said."

"Maybe means nothing," the other said, glaring at him with his typical nervous anger, the fact that the larger being still wasn't looking at him inconsequential: "Will it be soon, yes or no?"

A shrug: "Probably, yes."

"You think?"

"Unless he wants to observe these freaks of nature do their merry little dance in a new environment for a while. But I'll bet a guy like him has already watched them long enough to get bored by now."

Another pause.

The hard nails were now scratching at the stone.

Another long drag and a puff of smoke.

"Do you think he'll kill us before or after the plan's done?"

"Who knows," Perditus answered lazily. He reclined his head to better bask in the sun. "Before would be a little annoying. For us, of course, he wouldn't care if we never saw what all this thankless work has been for. But then again we're his cannon fodder - maybe he'll wait till he has no need even for that."

He played with his sghitt, turning it between his fingers.

The knowledge that his eventual instantaneous murder would be inevitable had slowly but surely numbed him to the very same fact across the span of the many, interminable centuries that had passed since the day he'd started wracking up this blasted debt, and his only request (which he knew would never be taken into consideration) was to be allowed to die slowly, painfully, so that he could at least feel the life leave his body properly; but Atakus had never managed to make peace with the horror of their shared fate, and now that the moment was drawing near he was every day a little closer to losing his mind completely to the horror of his situation.

Frankly he was surprised the Potori had lived this long, with as anxious a disposition as he had. He'd always imagined he'd get out of his shackles with a stroke.

And yet here they both were.

Awaiting the second coming of a cruel god.

And while entire species were about to be massacred into heaps of melting, wailing scraps any second or day or month now, they were sitting against a rock under a pleasantly warm sun bathing in its light.

He could hear the Agori's irregular breath become louder.

"How's your leg?" Atakus asked in a fruitless attempt at changing the course of his spiraling thoughts.

"Hurts as usual." Perditus replied. "How's your heart?"

"Beating too fast," the Potori answered, "As usual."

The Glatorian's hand leaned over to the smaller being, offering the sghitt between his index and middle: "Take as many as you need."

The medicine was taken from his fingers by significantly shakier ones. He listened to the air slither with a long hiss into Atakus's lungs for the first time; the second was a little longer, a little less frantic, followed by a loud sigh; the third time was slow and deliberate, finally a little more at ease.

He listened to the sound of Skrall armor scraping against stone as the Agori laid back against the warm rock with him. A smaller hand placed the medication back in his palm, and he hummed gratefully before taking another drag himself.

The wind picked up slightly and dragged the smoke away from them.

He opened his eyes blearily, squinting in the sun.

Such a nice day.

Something far, far away, up in the clear sky, exploded. He saw the burst, a blot of bright hot color tearing apart the stratosphere, and long lines of white and faint red as pieces of whatever that was tried to land on Spherus Magna; but the destroyed body was barely above the size of a dot from where he was, and its meteors shriveled up into dust before coming anywhere close to the highest point available for them to strike, and in the end nothing of whatever tragedy had just transpired mattered at all.

The Glatorian hummed.

"Did something happen?" Atakus asked, eyes closed.

"No," his companion reassured him. "Relax."

The Potori did not respond, and got a little more comfortable.

Perditus glanced at him.

Maybe it made sense - he mused for a second, a second only - for Velika, of all cruel, paradoxical beings, to one day have complete and total control over this cruel, paradoxical world.

#bionicle #perditus #atakus #random writing #smoking tw #implied drug use #its essentially painkillers in the form of like a joint but im putting it there just in case yall want it #based on my hc of perditus having a fucked up leg prosthesis that hurts like hell so he needs medicine to have some time without pain #anyways ENJOY YOUR ALLEGIANCE W/ VELIKA!! YOU ARE NOW ENTITLED TO: lifelong debt; nihilism; the assurance that your boss WILL kill you #i dont necessarily care for atakus nor perditus but i like to look into characters' brains and their role as velika's allies is interesting #to me neither of them are properly 'loyal' bc that would imply they respect velika. which they fuckin Do Not #they are terrified of him and he has them in a chokehold bc he can kill them by looking at them slightly to the left if he so decides #but neither side has any respect for the other. theyre useful toys to velika and hes a volatile dangerous and powerful asshole to them #atakus n perditus are not necessarily friends?? either?? but theyre the only bitches on bara magna in this situation so theyre like My Man #just two guys enslaved by a sort of divine entity waiting to be fucked over by said entity. better than bein alone in this ig

[iratusmus]

honestly the thing that bugs me the most about the woobification of scourge is like. these people are somehow forgetting like 90% of his entire personality. namely that his greatest ambition is more or less to be the ultimate schoolyard bully who faces 0 repercussions for his actions. like he talks about becoming king of the multiverse or whatever the heck but he never really... theres no actual reason to it. he's got no real longterm goal. he's not interested in remaking the world in his own image, or enacting any sort of real agenda, or even being worshiped like a god. he just wants to be able to kick people while theyre down and face absolutely no consequences for anything he does. scourge is very much the kind of person who would go to a playground to kick children down the slides or push them off the swings or something because he's incredibly petty and immature and frankly a loser

like honestly speaking the "i want to be king of the multiverse!1!!!" crap really just reads like he took his brief knowledge of comic book villains and said "ok . sonic is a good person who wants everybody to be free. and i cant be anything like sonic. so i am going to be a bad person who controls other people" but on the most surface level humanly possible (aka in name only) because the truth is he has absolutely no real interest in becoming a ruler or a conqueror or anything of the sort. he's got nothing he actually wants to do with that outside of other people not being able to tell him he cant do whatever he wants. namely, beating the snot out of people he doesnt like. which is almost everybody to exist. something interesting to be said about him trying so hard to separate himself from being a derivative of prime!sonic that his identity still ends up looping back around to being a derivative of prime!sonic but in a different direction, but thats a discussion for another time. REGARDLESS back to my main point.

like. ok mb25yl!shadow becomes king of mobius to enact his incredibly skewed idea of the peace that maria wanted for earth, eggman wants to conquer mobius to remake it in his own image and also build a themepark, finitevus wants to burn everything to the ground because people were the real virus all along and nature is the only one that has it figured out and everybody on this rock is frankly too stupid to deserve to live, and scourge…. became "king" of moebius (read: beat up a bunch of gang leaders and called himself that) and for… what exactly. absolutely nothing. he has no grand ambitions or goals or anything he just wants to be a schoolyard bully and thats about it. hes just an incredible loser. this is also a key component in why hes so so funny. side note but if your redesign removes the inherent tackiness of his design that is no longer scourge.

tldr every day scourge the hedgehog wakes up and chooses to be an incredibly awful immature little brat/playground bully with an appallingly tacky sense of fashion and this is like 90% of his personality and if you dont like that, might i suggest... making an oc?

#sonic #sth #scourge the hedgehog #archie sonic #iratusmus.txt #like theres really no justification for his actions #no being (presumably) neglected as a child doesnt count #i would offer there is an incredibly interesting discussion to be had on morality in regards to moebius #and whether the people of moebius actually have free will to do what they want #or if they're bound to be the more or less moral opposite of their prime counterparts #or alternatively if that connection goes two ways and if a moebius character changes their mainline counterpart swaps appropriately #BUT that is a topic for another time. what was i saying originally... #OH YEAH honestly if any sonic would be justified in going completely ape and killing everybody i'd say that prime archie sonic is #the amount of crap he has to put up with on a daily basis... like man if i were in his shoes id just go completely feral #but thats neither here nor there. anwyays people stop uwu-ifying scourge thats not scourge anymore

[cluescorner]

Some people: Kaeya’s bio father is an abusive monster who abandoned his son in order to achieve his own selfish goals. He is an evil man who deserves everything awful that might happen to him. 

Other people: Kaeya’s bio father did the right thing and leaving Kaeya in Mondstadt was the only way to give him a halfway-decent life. He is a better father than he is given credit for and should not be as hated as he is. 

Me: Kaeya’s bio father is integral to the general ‘war is hell and bad choices can reverberate across time’ thing that Genshin seems to be going for. He made unethical choices, but mostly because the ONLY OPTIONS HE HAD WERE UNETHICAL. If our understanding of the Alberich’s role in Khaenri’ah is accurate, General Alberich (my name for him until stated otherwise) was suddenly in charge of a hopeless and dead kingdom which begged to be saved. Assuming that there was a reason Kaeya specifically was chosen for this mission, General Alberich was forced into a position where he needed to choose between the lives/future of every Khaenri’an vs the life and future of his young son. Abandoning either is an awful thing to do and a horrible decision, but the bad decisions of Celestia and Rhinedottir have led to a scenario where General Alberich can only make bad decisions. In the end, he chose to prioritize his people and made his young son into a spy. We do not know the process for this, but knowing how much Hoyoverse loves to torment people (especially Khaenri’ans) we can assume that this process was horrific for Kaeya and could definitely be considered abuse. General Alberich is effectively making his son into a child soldier for a war that the majority of people never wanted or asked for, and one Kaeya was likely far too young to understand. At least, until he was forced to grow up far too quickly in order to fulfill his duty. General Alberich likely loathed everything about what was happening and even in his last moments with his son he asks for forgiveness. He knows that what he is doing is wrong, but to turn back now is to both abandon his subjects and make everything that happened to Kaeya in order to turn him into a child spy be for nothing. So yeah, General Alberich is a terrible person who made horrible choices. But war and the bad actions of others have created a situation where he has nothing BUT horrible choices and where being a terrible person is the only thing he can be. And that’s without considering how the curse/abyssal corruption could impact the scenario. 

#idk #I just think that Kaeya's father is kinda an Asgore situation #where the only decisions he could possibly make were awful and unethical ones but choosing neither would create an even worse outcome #also I want to clarify that both of the other interpretations that I parroted before giving my own thoughts are valid #because we are working with such limited information and yeah no shit people are gonna have differing thoughts #people have differing beliefs and perspectives on things which are CANONICALLY CONFIRMED to be clear situations with lots of info about it #so of course people are going to go in like 80 different directions with his character #BECAUSE WE HAVE NEXT TO NOTHING TO GO OFF OF #and basically every interpretation of him I've seen is pretty reasonable #Like yeah man's son is a child spy who was abandoned in a far away country for the purpose of being a spy for Khaenri'ah's interests #thinking that he was an abusive asshole isn't exactly unreasonable #nor is it unreasonable to believe that he was actually a decent man who left his son in Mondstadt as the 'only hope' of Khaenri'ah #because he just wanted Kaeya to live on and have a life outside of the Abyss #and Kaeya was mistaken when he thought he was simply being left behind as a pawn #Genshin is no stranger to unreliable narrators and this wouldn't be the first time a character story wildly mischaracterizes something #so like...both of those interpretations are valid #and pretty fair ones as well #But I think that it really is like an Asgore situation where yeah this guy sucks and he is an awful person who made so many bad choices #But also was left with nothing BUT bad choices through war and grief and other factors that were genuinely outside of his control #Sacrifice your son's childhood and happiness by forcing him to be a child spy and abandoning him in the middle of a deadly storm #or let your people (including yourself) rot away into nothingness while facing a fate worse than death while they all but scream to be saved #there are no good options #kaeya's father #don't take this too seriously I just really liked Undertale when I was younger and I'm getting Asgore vibes from General Alberich

[johanthefriskiestofbits]

oooooo please tell me (who knows nothing on the subject) about orv swap au

hehehe. hehehehehehe. hehehehehehehhehehehhheheheh <- guy who is so normal

the premise of orv swap au (name has yet to be finalized) is this: what if kdj and yjh swapped narrative positions (reader <-> character) but very little else? what if a video game player enters a time loop to save his favorite character from dying over and over again and also to end the apocalypse?

admittedly it's not super fleshed out yet (a lot of the changes this premise would introduce are still not hammered out yet) but here are some points under the cut (novel spoilers ahead!)

orv swap au starts with pro gamer yjh who feels :/ abt his job, but hey, it pays the bills. despite (or maybe because of) his relative popularity as a pro gamer and networking with the agency/sponsors/people to impress, he's kind of isolated in a way that's detrimental, a facade of someone he's not whenever he's on camera

something to play around with is the idea of agency? maybe this yjh doesn't feel like he has any and has his hands tied between the lifestyle and being under public scrutiny and not having enough of a support system to leave everything behind. maybe he doesn't know what else he would even do. maybe he's aimless and drifting with nothing to hold on to.

his favorite video game is what i've been thinking of as World's Hardest To Play Indie Game (not based on difficulty but just on the experience of consuming it) a boring, exposition heavy, player-hostile, poorly designed, slightly buggy mess of a barely-playable game: twsa, a game that was not finished upon release and experiences with sporadic updates every now and then.

the ending tree to this game is so convoluted its insane. also theres no save states so if you die (very likely) u restart babeyyy.

twsa (video game) does have multiple endings, all of which happen when kdj, your main character, dies. some are farther into the apocolypse than others, some paths require meta knowledge of future events or character actions or items or whatever. the "true ending" is either analogous to the original 1863: kdj makes it to the end at the cost of everyone he loves, or hsy's modified 1863: kdj makes himself enemy of the scenario to secure a way out for the kimcom remnants.

there's branches on the choices tree where everyone dies and everything sucks and is bad forever and theres choices to make where kdj gets to make a family and they don't really get to settle down but they can get pretty close to it among the ruins of the apocalypse. through all his testing, yjh finds that these endings are nice but peter out - to get to the end of the apocalypse yjh has to claw his way there inch by painful inch, through betrayal and sacrifice, and he still cant fully get past it

i originally wanted to finagle a yoohankim 3 way swap but i couldn't figure it out. swap aus are a lot easier to work with when they're even numbers, at least to me, so this au features a ysa who is a video game company employee by day and by night she really has become god this time (and also a terrible indie dev). and this is how jungdoksang can still win !!!!

also yjh's coworker from Real Life hsy :) i haven't decided if she's like an employee for the same agency, or if she's someone else in the gaming circles that yjh interacts with sometimes (in my heart theyre in like some sort of discord server together), or something like that but she's around. whatever she does she is twitter cancelled for something. to me.

the only other character swaps are lsk and yma. yma is yjh's estranged sister (in broad strokes there's a vague bad parent situation going on here) (they used to be close until they drifted apart and slowly started hating each other [there is an abyss between them that neither of them can bridge]) (he feels that she betrayed him and threw him under the bus so he left [maybe he gets kicked out]) (she feels that he abandoned her to whatever situation they have going on [he didn't even try to take her with him]) and he has to find her when the apocalypse starts. yjh older sibling to yma gives us a whole different little dynamic to explore from kdj ysk (there's different levels of responsibility and guilt and blame when you're talking siblings that are soooooo interesting to me. sorry that i see any set of siblings and immediately try to figure out how to make them worse)

lsk is kdj's mom who appeared into existence at some point with kdj and they were both just adults. that's weird isn't it. oh well. i guess she can become a transcendent later too for funsies

everyone else stays in the same configuration of Real Person vs Character to me this is a very important aspect

this point has no precedent with the swap, nothing particular that would change to cause this, but it would be so funny if lgy was a little gamer boy who is an avid yjh hater. hates that guy. shows up to competitions to boo him. tunes into yjh's silent no-mic speedrunning streams to mald in chat but yjh +mods don't ban him bc its kinda funny.

anyways the apocalypse starts when yjh and his coworker/fellow gamer hsy are on a train to twitchcon and lgy is also there (also headed to twitchcon) and he brings bugs because he likes them but also to sabotage yjh specifically. its just funny if this happened. you understand

instead of having reader-related skills and abilities, yjh's skills are video game player based! he gets flavor text insight on people, location, and items, things like that. notably, he has the ability to reset, to bring himself back to the beginning of the apocalypse

orv swap proper follows yjh as the Player of the Game (Consumer of the Narrative) who lives hundred of lifetimes in this ruined-world-become-reality "replaying" [read: time looping through] the game to reshape it to save his fave character from self implosion (kdj with no dissociation is very prone to dying. all the time.). to revisit the idea of playing with yjh and the idea of agency, of creation, the only way to get past the apocalypse is to go off the beaten path, to choose options that weren't even there in the game. when in space, at his darkest point, yjh becomes a writer. in this story, at his darkest point, he has to become a creator too

please do not ask me how the epilogues go i dont know how the epilogues go (i don't want to throw yjh back into a train for milennia after he Just went through a thousand resets so i'm sending kdj for that but i havent fully planned how or why)

anyways, hope that helps!!! :)

#orv au #orvswap #i think i will main tag this. just the one tag tho. poorly planned au be upon ye. #orv #orv spoilers #<- for blacklists! #i only realized after creating this au that this is just how p//mmm goes except its videogame themed and hater lgy is there lol #anyways wheres that post that says time loops are about tragedy and theyre about saying i will make this right #and secret third thing time loops are about love #also each individual dynamic for the creater-player-character triangle in this is so interesting to me to explore like #you have the new kdj-yjh one (mostly similar tbh. was the crux of the au after all) which is a fun space to play in #but then you have a brand new kdj-ysa one to work with which is !!!! a writer and her character. a creator and her creation #and then you have ysa-yjh as the creator and her audience of 1!!!!!!! where is yjh that he needs to be saved? how does ysa answer that call #to love to the point of creation.... to tear the world asunder..... to create the worlds most unplayable rpg....... #lets meet again in another life. ysa reaches out toward yjh but cant reach him before she wakes up. cant quite tell him its not his fault #and Dont Even get me Started on yoo sister dynamics ill go insane #because theyre siblings but for a while (and def at the beginning of the story) it hurts to be around each other (its a betrayal #its a pang in your chest its a you were supposed to protect me and you were supposed to love me and i dont even know you anymore) #but also the swap means the 4th wall eats yma and leaves yjh begging for her back ('dont you hate her?' 'shes my little sister' #which is neither agreement nor denial but also both at once) #its ya boi #tango mango #anyways thanks for the ask im very normal about the ask

[hexados-on-a-string]

mylene is so interesting to me bc like. she just chucks elico out as soon as she gets a mechanical replacement with macubass. and i think she's the only villain so callous about their guardian bakugan???

most villains still care about their bakugan and usually actually share the same goals and are on the same wavelength, birds of a feather and all that. like even characters like kazarina, cruel as she is, still are fond of their guardian bakugan. and theres characters like spectra and barodius who's plans center around their guardian bakugan, and are actively encouraged by those bakugan.

even characters who's guardian bakugan dont necessarily get along with them all the time, like avior and mason's constant bickering, are still friends. meanwhile mylene just. throws elico out. and also takes brontes from volt and throws him out as well. i think whats also interesting, since the show likes to bring up spectra and mylene parallels, is how spectra uses machines to upgrade and evolve helios, while mylene outright replaces elico with a machine.

but it's not like she's shown to be like. completely heartless either. she calls volt her friend even though she threw out brontes beforehand. she stands up for hydron when zenoheld takes his anger out on him. she has some weird friendship with shadow prove.

i think she was the vehicle to show the general vestal opinion on bakugan, since mylene only sees her bakugan as weapons and when she loses she blames the loss on them. (meanwhile i think volt is supposed to show that not all vestals are THAT bad, even if they are part of the king's entourage of fucked up teenage celebrity theatre kids). and i think she's very interesting bc of that. anyways i love mylene.

#mylene farrow #bakugan new vestroia #lync and shadow prove can also be considered this to a lesser extent??? but they've never had a guardian bakugan #so the comparisons aren't as strong #they probs dont have guardian bakugan for the same reason mylene threw elico out #i think lync is more representative of nv's overarching theme of loyalty. as is shadow prove. #and obvs spectra gus and hydron too #obvs mylene and volt are too but like i dont think that's their main purpose #i think they're more supposed to represent vestal society as a whole #i feel like this went off on a slight tangent or something?? this is just how my thoughts work im adhd #interestingly i think the time when spectra is at his worst is when he steals drago #after he steals drago he kinda sorta starts ignoring helios a little?? kinda replaces helios with drago??? #so he replaces one bakugan with another thats seemingly more powerful and can only follow orders. sounds familiar?? #love that tbh. i love villains. they're so interesting. #also i could probably write a post even longer than this about nv's theme of loyalty regarding the vestals #but thats neither here nor there lmao. always happy to ramble #anyways also happy lesbian visibility day from ur local bakugan loving aro lesbian #also this post ended up being far longer than i expected but i have brainrot sooooo #ANYWAYS BYEEEEEEEEE might go watch nv i love that season if u cant tell

[llitchilitchi]

You can mute/blacklist certain words and tags. So when those people use certain tags you can mute it and you won't see it

I know, but unfortunately the way tumblr handles it is shit, plus it doesn't work if people don't tag this stuff.

plus, and I know this will sound petty, it does get really, really annoying when I'm scrolling through my dash and all the posts are just a grey square that just says 'POST CONTAINS TAGS YOU BLOCKED: DISCOURSE, QSMP' like that's nice but that's still 30 posts in a row that are greyed out and taking up space. I might as well just J past the posts after catching the first signs of it covering something I do not want to see

#asks #I genuinely hate how tumblr still shows us the posts we dont want to see but just slaps a sticker on top so we dont see it directly #theres a lot of jokes and memes about this topic as is like OOOH TEMPTING but honestly its just kind of a nuisance? #plus the filtering is just Bad #to give an example a few years back I had a mutual who got really into Thor. and I really dont like marvel so i blacklisted the word #however i am also a huge tolkien nerd and was following a lot of lotr/hobbit blogs. lotsa bagginshield especially #so every time there was a post about thorin it would be caught in the filter because yknow. THORin #plus again just the fact that people dont really tag this situation is just :// #I am neither too interested in ccs anymore nor is this a particularly pleasant topic for me so I want to stay away from it #for the record i do have muted/blacklisted tags and words. a lot of em #it just doesnt always work #and muting people for a week would just be easier

[thelaststarfalling]

just once i'd like to complete one (1) bigger project that i can actually be proud of

#hrrrrg met with my advisor for my thesis and it's Not Great!! #idk how i always manage to set myself up for failure #struggled so much with thinking of a specific thing to write about so now i have this super broad paper about everything which essentially #amounts to writing about nothing #cuz that's not how history works you can't just make a huge argument like that (at least not without much more extensive research than ive #done) #and im not saying anything novel or interesting anyway #but i already have a whole semester of work dumped into this thing so neither my advisor nor myself wants me to tear it apart and start fro #scratch #there definitely wouldn't be time to do that anyway #so now it's just gonna be yet another thing where i have no confidence in it while working on it and just eke out an end product thats #decent enough to satisfy others while i know inwardly that its really not good #the professor for the capstone class last semester said the paper was good and i was in a good spot to finish it this semester #but this is the first time my actual advisor has really looked at it and hes confirming all of the doubts i had about it :(((( #agh itll ultimately be fine i just wish i could do something to justify the 'oh youre such a good student!' im really not!!!!!!!! #i have no idea what i'm doing!!!!!! #p

[aeide-thea]

[witcherposting ahead—nb that this is all totally lighthearted and it's fine if you feel differently!]

anyway what i'd started to say before tumblr ate my post was that like. disclaimer that my approach to netflix witcher canon is that i fully reserve the right to cherrypick, because some of the changes they made were good but others were character assassination, and that obviously i get that if one isn't cherrypicking one does have to actually Grapple With Certain Things 🏔

but like. that said—the more 'Geralt Must Grovel for Weeks and Probably Scourge Himself, Look at What He Did to Poor Sad-Eyed Woobie Jaskier' fics i read the more i'm fucking grateful for the tiny handful where jaskier's just been like, yeah, i never bought that bullshit tbh, he was lashing out and he owes me an apology for sure but a single angry outburst does not in fact scupper an extremely well-established relationship of literally twenty years' standing in one fell swoop???

like i just. idk. imagine remembering that jaskier's a cheery irrepressible little shit and not actually as crushably low on self-esteem as all of us are. of course that would probably require *netflix* to have remembered that, so, you know, no actual shade to anyone who's been projecting that onto him! but just like. idk. they're obviously not siblings but they honestly do have that vibe in certain ways and it's just like. did you never say something overdramatic and shitty in the heat of a fight with yr sibling growing up and then after taking a bit of a breather just like. make a rueful face and apologize for yr respective roles in winding each other up and move tf on, without having, like, a whole extended OTT reparations process where you tell them repeatedly how perfect and sinless they are and how you know you're a miserable worm who doesn't remotely deserve their sunshiny presence in your life but would be so grateful if they could, possibly, somehow, see their way to forgiving you despite yr essential unworthiness—

#anyway. i think there are like. MAYBE like three of you reading this blog who give a shit abt this fandom‚ lol #so i'm mostly just talking out loud to myself here‚ which is fine‚ what's a perblog for if not that #but it's just like. yeah on the one hand you don't just get to yell at people without apologizing at all #on the other hand like. some relationships are strong and elastic enough that one (1) snip is not going to cut them #even a vicious one! #also like. jaskier DID handle that convo clumsily lbr. like. obviously geralt was not Justified but. #if i'd just had a vicious breakup and somebody came bumbling in making loud awkward small talk about it? jesus. #anyway. really ultimately this is just a 'have consumed much too much witcher fic and the Patterns are starting 2 irk me' thing #but it's just like. sometimes things are conflict between two imperfect people #and not a Good Woobie and a Sinful Meanie #anyway. time 2 go reread Sekrit Mutual's fic in which they actually keep in mind the fact that jaskier is a selfish gremlin #who despite himself really does love geralt and as a result is like. constantly torn between his nature and his urge to do right by geralt #but like. fundamentally he's a buffoon and a popinjay who yaps aggressively and then runs back behind geralt's legs #and joey batey leaning into his Soulful and Romantic side (that he does also have) doesn't actually erase that about him‚ nor should it! #anyway. this post is careening all over the place but i think it's just like. exactly the same weird terfish moral binary #that ppl have been talking abt with like. gender and kink and a whole range of things #where like. you always have Victims and Perpetrators #and so jaskier has to be like. the femme bottom victim which makes geralt the macho perpetrator totally undeserving of sympathy #and it's like. actually they're both imperfect people and neither one fits very well into their society's idea of what a man is #and what if we actually examined them as individuals rather than tropes and also remembered yennefer was fierce and interesting #and what if ciri weren't‚ like‚ a manhattan private school girl with her brows done while we were at it #getting a little overambitious with my wishlist there though i know

[itstimeforstarwars]

Tbh I’m having so much fun with the politics in galidraan. Everyone has an opinion on things and it’s a delight.

#chit chat #it’s too bad that the cody plot is mostly about kicking ass and not getting killed #because i could expound for days on the political situation surrounding the situation he’s in #but i have neither the time nor the friendly side-characters with which to do it #which hopefully makes for an interesting pov switch rather than a jarring one #lol #galidraan au