#just because theres like. 5 different layers of things going on that just. it just snowballs into one terrible horrifically sexist mess | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

definitelynotshouting · 6 months

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Okay, so, question I've had for a while but never got around to asking, what the FUCK is up with Grian's wings?

If all physical differences in players (like those particularly ascribed to 'Hybrids' in mcyt fanon) in Hunger AU are a result of conscious altering of your own code for the express purpose of achieving YOUR IDEAL BODY(tm) then what does that mean for Grian and his wings? No one seems to regard Grian's wings as "What The Fuck, You Can DO That?!?" so presumably wings aren't so big of a change from normal biology that players can't do that. If so, why is it not more common? Man, if I could have wings I'd jump on that in seconds. Especially with the sheer utility the ability to fucking FLY gives players. Are wings (and maybe other larger alterations) just like, REALLY HARD to code in? If so, that might add a really cool layer of "Oh wow! They must be a really good coder!" to players who meet people like that.

On a related note, Grian seems to have a positive regard for his wings, which is interesting because I would be willing to bet he didn't have that before *insert sounds of worm-bursting and non-consensual body modification*. I imagine seeing his wings would likely feel like a reminder of the Watchers and what they did to him. BUT, Watchers manipulate their own code when they change like Grian did to, y'know, not be a worm anymore so Grian probably specifically chose how he looked, right? So, unless he did so really rushed and somehow made a mistake while doing so (which he might not be able to risk the structural damage of correcting), keeping the wings was a conscious decision. Does Grian just not associate his wings with the Watchers or is it something else? Does he just really enjoy having wings?

HELLO I AM SO GLAD YOU'VE ASKED THIS BECAUSE I HAVE ‼️‼️‼️‼️ MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT IT ‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️

Okay okay so these are all SUCH valid questions, lemme go through them one by one. Wings are indeed something anyone could have if they wanted to code them in-- and in fact, i do believe many other Players have wings throughout the universe!!! As far as body mods go, i like to think of them as decently popular, so its definitely not anything too weird to see. In chapter 5, i even make a mention to Pearl having moth wings she occasionally codes in due to preference!!! So wings of many different types are definitely available-- but the catch is that they're real fiddly to code. You cant just give yourself wings, you have to code in the bone structure, the muscles, the tendons, etc etc, and then you have to change your entire body structure as well to work with and fully support them. They can be awkward and unwieldy, as ive tried to show in the fic itself, and i think that alone can be a big discouragement for Players considering coding in wings, along with the sheer coding effort needed to obtain them and make them functional

And the thing is, elytra already exist-- they're far more compact, they dont take up as much space, you can take them on and off super easily without having to mess with your coding, and they basically do the same thing. Sure, its a pain to get one, but a lot of Players really enjoy the sense of accomplishment, and i think theres a bit of cultural prestige too in that regard. Server milestones are a huge thing in Player culture, and getting your first pair of elytra is a big one!!! So it makes sense to me that people who just dont want to go through the effort of coding in wings (which can then in turn complicate how they code other future modifications) primarily stick to elytra.

And everybody is different-- some people prefer attributes that arent wings. I like to think everyone in hermitcraft generally is a mix of "jeez thats effort, i could be building my base instead of doing that" and "eh im fine how i am, i like it" and "well we have elytra shops everywhere so why bother".

So in short, yeah!! Wings are a bit complex to code in. They're still pretty popular, i think plenty of Players do choose to incorporate them, but it takes a lot of hard and thorough work to make sure they function right and wont bug you out when you use them. There are billions of Players scattered across the universe, so what you're seeing in the fic right now is truly just a drop in the ocean when it comes to Player body diversity :] and then, elytra basically already help Players achieve a form of flight without the hassle of recoding their entire body structure, so i think the majority of Players just prefer to use them instead.

AS FOR GRIAN'S WINGS IN PARTICULAR......

Well..... its complicated. Particularly his feelings about them-- in the fic, i referenced them as the only good thing the Watchers ever gave him, and thats how he sees it, i think: a thin silver lining. He's had many, many years to get used to them, and i think he goes through periods where he hates them and the memories attached, too. Ultimately, he's kinda stuck with them, so i think he hit a form of acceptance (as bitter-tinged as it may be) out of sheer necessity for his own sanity.

As for why he has them, and hasnt coded them out: i think of it as a particular quirk of biology/structural coding. Watchers have a more instinctive way of coding than Players, but a Player-minded Watcher is still going to think like a Player, and thats going to muddle things a lot. Grian essentially had to relearn how to code, in a way that satisfied both Player and Watcher-style coding, and the results at first were.... a little rough around the edges. Once he managed to finally take on his original former appearance, the wings from his true form just kind of.... stuck. I like to think it took a few increasingly desperate tries before he realized he just could not figure out how to get rid of them (bc of how different his new code was), and had to accept that this was just how he was gonna have to live for a while until he finally figured it out. And then, well.... you can get used to anything, if you're stuck with it long enough. I think after a while it just stopped being a huge priority, and then he reached a point where it would be more awkward to live without them than with them, and he eventually dropped the idea altogether. And i think sometimes, they function almost like a scar, to him-- a reminder of what he went through, yes, but a reminder that he did manage to escape. And, ofc, he also just really, really likes flying skdjskdjdj

So yeah, loads of complicated feelings there about his wings, and its stuff i do plan on exploring later in the fic!!! This got a little rambly, but i hope this makes sense and answers your questions!!!! :D its a fun little complicated knot that im glad someone has gotten curious enough to ask about!!!!

#shouting speaks #asks #hunger au #grian #watcher grian #watcher!grian #hermitcraft #ig like. basically its all abt human behavior at the end of the day #not everybody codes in wings bc not everybody wants to. grian chooses to keep them bc hes lived w/ them so long it feels better this way #also i do think it took several tries for him to regain his player appearance. like he glitched several times #while trying to modify his body to accomodate the Problem Wings™#kinda like... what was it. load bearing coconut in the tf2 games #you take it out the entire game wont start #he tried taking out his wings and it almost turned him into goo. atp it was better just to leave them until he gained more experience #and then when he got to that point it no longer felt like a priority/he'd settled into having them #so yeah fkwjdkekdk human illogic behavior. ur gonna see that a TON in the fic itself #long post #txt

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gender-trash · 9 months

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like the grand innovation of ros is that actually now 1) you don't have to rewrite your MESSAGING FRAMEWORK from scratch every time and you get a bunch of debug tools for free and 2) theres a bunch of prototype grade components you can probably plug together to get a demo if you know what you're doing

it's great but it's not like. whatever's going on in webservices world. and the webservices people and vcs who are used to it HATE this!!! i interned for a really crappy startup once whose entire concept was "hey, why is robotics not like webservices? clearly we need to reimplement ros but worse and dockerized lol what's hard realtime" and it so clearly had only survived as long as it had because it was The Baby of this VC guy who tried to sell me on javascript like it was an abusive boyfriend i should give ~another chance~, and right after i left they hired a new ceo and pivoted to having an actual product. theres ALLLL these guys coming from webservices land who want to pretend really hard that a malfunctioning robot is exactly as disposable as a malfunctioning docker container, and that gluing together preexisting robotics components (largely research-grade code developed on a completely different robot from whatever your product is) is exactly as easy as gluing together APIs, and it ends so badly for them every time. it's adorable.

relatedly my dad has this theory, which i think has a lot of predictive power, about how a company Makes It Big doing one thing (SAAS, or online ads, or B2B software, or like. making computer chips) and then that product cycle cadence/approach is baked into the company culture so hard that they completely flub it when they try to make something that necessitates a different approach. intel fucking sucks at making software because they inevitably drop support after 18 months because when you make a chip you design it and you send it to the fab and then it's out of your hands and there's no real way to "fix bugs" (you just maintain an errata sheet and add more tests so you can catch the bugs in the next chip you design). webservices companies who do continuous deployment or bust are often really really bad at coping with the sales and maintenance cycles of Big Businesses that a lot of b2b software is for. and software people in full generality have a ridiculously hard time with the concept that you can't exactly continuously deploy improved suspension for your robot chassis, because you have to actually crack the robot open on a workbench and swap it out.

in microservices world one of the baked-in cultural attitudes is "cattle not pets" -- your herd of docker containers is like a herd of cattle; when one of them malfunctions you take it out back and shoot it and spin up a new one, you don't waste energy on failure recovery. when you bring this approach to robotics land it inevitably fails! you have spent 4 or 5 figures minimum on a robot, that thing's a fucking pet! and also, when it malfunctions, it's flailing around potentially doing damage out here in the real world, which is... generally considered to be bad. there have to be layers and layers and layers of safety systems and fallbacks and failure recovery logic and everything needs to be designed to fail into a state that won't maim anyone, or it inevitably will fail, and maim someone. even just "if something goes wrong stop moving immediately" has some complexity to it.

webservices people are also big on "eventual consistency" and almost nothing in robotics is physically safe to do on an eventual consistency basis or else your robot will eventually (but consistently!) destroy itself and/or anything around it. the closer you get to low level control the more important it is to have hard timing guarantees and that's generally sort of antithetical to the philosophy that hardware should be as abstracted away as possible

#vc guy cornered me in an otherwise empty room with no windows for this speech too it was . bad #the trashcan speaks #robotics

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dootmoon · 2 months

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Some thoughts on Ex Astris

Okay so the TL;DR is: Go play it if you're someone who is mainly motivated by gameplay, it's one of the most enjoyable games i've played in like 10 years (im not kidding). the story is not bad, but it's very poorly told and leaves a lot to be desired. I should also warn that i'll probably spoil a couple of things, mainly on the gameplay side (because yes, I do believe some encounters are better if you dont know the gimmick).

Where do I even start, I only watched like 2 trailers before playting, i had 0 idea of what i was getting into, all i really knew about the game was that it was a full game release by the AK guys and that it was a turn based rpg. I legitimately bought it out of morbid curiosity, I was not expecting to find my favorite jrpg in a literal decade.

I'll go over what I liked the most and then explain the couple of issues I have with the game, it might sound like i loved it (which i did) but it's far from perfect and i think there's room for improvement. I think the combat is the real deal in this title, for those unfamiliar with it: it's a classic turn based jrpg but it has layers. The main 3 mechanics that make it stand out from other games is that each turn you have AP (action points) which limit what you can do each turn, however you can directly manipulate them with a combo system that gives you back AP. The second one is a parry system, during the enemy turn you can directly parry their attacks, you have 2 colors for parrying, both colors have different properties and there's certain attacks that can only be parried with the respective color. And lastly, theres a stagger bar, similar to FFXIII or posture bar in sekiro, although i think it's more akin to stagger in FFXIII. Once you break said bar you can enter hyper time for a few seconds where you have unlimited AP so you can combo them for massive damage. The combo system is very enjoyable, you will be blindly experimenting your combos for optimal damage each time you unlock new moves in the skill trees. Theres a very satisfying feeling to landing a big combo on an enemy that feels like it was entirely something you came up with. This sadly comes with a downside, once you figure out your big damage combos, there's not much of a reason to try anything different. It doesnt mean it stops being enjoyable but this is a wall most of games with combo systems have. Now the parry system, while it's fun, it sadly makes the game too easy. Sure theres enemies that will mix their timings to throw you off and a couple of unparriable attacks. But really, if you get good there's no reason to ever get hit. "But what about the unblockables?" yeah about that... Theres really just 3 enemies in the game that had them, and 2 of them were bosses, which you get a hard counter to the unblockable in the first boss that has it. I wish the game had more ways to work around you to make it more challenging. The only time the game REALLY tries to fuck you up is the final boss (this is a good thing) however it was still too easy. She really just makes the screen black and white and makes you parry based on the icon, then she makes you parry based on the color of the attack. This was sick and i wish there were more moments like this in the game. Now the dungeons were great, they feel like they belong in an older 3d zelda game. Sadly they dont get too crazy on the gimmicks, they were just box puzzles where you have to move them in the correct spots or point lasers to certain switches. Apparently this game has plans for DLCs so if theres something i wish upon to get explored more it would be this in particular. The rest of the game is the towns and the sidequests inside them, they're very usual stuff for a jrpg so you know what to expect, i cant elaborate much on it. Overall I think the game is meant to be replayed, by the end you're only able to fully build 3 characters out of 5 party members, sidequests expire and there's a bunch of stuff to mess around to make a playthrough different from the last one. The game changes a lot when you already know how it works or what really happens in the story.

Now the elephant in the room, the story: Yeah it's kinda just there, it's very poorly told. However it's HG and i can tell there was a lot of thought put into the wold building, it's very well made. It's just a shame that i could barely care about anything happening in it, even though I was kinda invested by the final hours i dont think that excuses the really bad storytelling. However starting my second playthrough is when I noticed it was indeed meant to be replayed. There's a bunch of stuff that feels so incredibly cryptic or really make no sense, once you go over it already having context it all makes sense and you just go like "oooh so that was they were talking about". I'm not excusing bad writing though, this is bad, but at least the story feels better on a second playthrough. Anyways, i'm kinda upset this was a mobile game, maybe if it wasnt, 10 people would've played it instead of just 5. I cant stress enough how this is a phone game that is way better than most of modern jrpgs in the market. it's like the devs went back and asked themselves what was the main appeal of the genre and what they thought made them fun to them and made an entire game around it. This is probably gonna be the biggest surprise of the entire year for me and i'm gonna have brainrot about this game for a while.

#ex astris #im just rambling because i havent had this much fun since fuckin smtiv and i must tell the world

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virtuallidol-archive · 1 year

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*GOOFY AHHH TUTUORIAL*

lesson 2: getting started on psds!!

hit "read more" if interested!

** NOT ALL PSDS ARE FILTERS, PSDS ARE USUALLY BASES THAT YOU CAN OPEN UP. PSDS ARE PHOTOSHOP FILES THAT YOU CAN OPEN UP AND EDIT WITH ALL OF THE LAYERS. THIS IS A TUTORIAL FOR A FILTER PSD (aka, making your OWN filters) **

hey there!! welcome to lesson 2. you don't need to tune in on lesson 1 to understand this, because it was just about finding editing programs and finding tutorials and motivation, so if you already know about all of that, you are basically prepared for this lesson.

this is a tutorial for PHOTOPEA, idk if this works anywhere else. also, this is INTENDED FOR A COMPUTER. (ex: dragging and dropping files and all of that stuff)

STEP 1: the first thing you may* see when going into photopea is this screen:

drag any image into the box that says "drop any files here" if you are a noob and don't know how to drag and drop files you can find a tutorial here. anyways, like i was saying drag and drop any image.

now it should look something like this (but instead of the hatsune miku image its the image that you prefer):

STEP 2*****: now that you have your image, look at the symbols at the bottom right corner. you should see this folder image (folder is circled in red)

you should click the folder button. now you have created a folder. this is going to be the filter.

now that you have the folder down, before proceeding further make sure that its HIGHLIGHTED

go a little bit above the corner, and you folder should be highlighted like this

if its not, just click on it.

now that its highlighted go back to that right corner and click this half circle button that i circled in red

once you click it, this should pop up

i usually hit the "selective color button" first

it usually presents you with this:

at the top of the image, you should see the "colors" button, thats the color you are editing. click it and choose the color you want to edit. you can edit how much a certain color is in a color lol. if yk what i mean.

now i spent a little bit of time editing the selective color, and you can see that the image looks a little different. scroll up to the original image on stop one to see what im talking about! you can add many selective colors until your satisfied!

as you can see, i've added another selective color!

now, right below selective color, (back in the half circle menu) you can see "replace color" this is what it looks like (i've already edited it but you get the idea)

you can choose a color to make FUZZY** and after you do that, you can change the hue, saturation, and lightness to your liking.

here is what my miku image looks like after FUZZINESS**, not a big difference but u can still kinda see it.

STEP 3*****: after you've done that, go back to the half circle menu and close to the top but not all the way, you can see "curves". they look like this:

now you can bend them and destroy them to your liking.

(the higher UP you make your curve go, the lighter it gets, the more LOW you make your curve go, the darker it gets. it also does some other stuff too***. just keep on breaking and bending it to your liking.)

now this is what my filter looks like

STEP 4*****: after your done with abusing and breaking lines now go back to half circle menu and find "color balance". it should look like this

its already edited but whatever (everyone thing should start at zero) but just move the circle more towards the color that you want there to be more of. also hit the range thing to effect more then just the shadows.

now heres what it looks like:

the difference is VERY small****, but you can see that theres more green and cyan + blue when you look closer.

Step 5*****: near the curves thing, you should see "brightness/contrast" you should probably hit that. and it should look like this

adjust it to your liking! its already been adjusted in the image as you can see but still.

Step 6*****: now if you hit the half circle button and look a little bit BELOW curves you should see "vibrance" it also has a saturation button but just drag the circle to your liking.

Step 7*****: next is "photofilter" its in the half circle button in the middle. if you want more of a certain color, click on the orange box to change it. here is what it should look like btw:

also the "density" is how much the color effects the image.

step 8: also, near the "photofilter" in that middle row a little bit above it, there is hue/saturation. its pretty explainable what it does, but just adjust the circles to your liking.

i have been editing this for the last hour, i hope atleast ONE person finds this post helpful. if you are currently reading this, thank you! if you used this tutorial, PLEASE send me the PSD you made!! (through the "request" button on my blog or @ me in a post!!) /nf

IF YOU FOUND ANY OF THE * SYMBOLS, THIS IS WHAT THEY ALL MEAN:

.. * i HOPE your photopea looks like that, it SHOULD. if it doesn't look like that your PROBABLY not on photopea.. your probably on some alien website or something. ** I honestly don't know what "fuzziness" means yet so i'm just as confused as you are. *** other stuff being: change of colors, making the image more red (making it look like it took place in hell!) interverting the image, making the colors more gray. **** honestly a lot of the options make the difference very small ***** you don't need to use ALL of these options if you don't WANT TO. i honestly don't use photo filter for most of my edits.

#not an edit #goofy ahh tutorials

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lord-shitbox · 5 months

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part 2 of this ask

📝Process for hurt mezu drawing

here are the steps i dug out of an art server's wips channel lol

1. initial sketch

2. refine sketch. thats lines now babey. (omitted "the sleeves are KILLING ME WAHHH" stage that led to this)

3. grayscale, to use with gradient map (this is a more polished grayscale than I started with, i dug the working file out to get better images)

4. find nice gradient map (ended up being the same one I'd used for the piece i made right before. the goal is to make what's essentially an underpainting, not to color the whole thing with one map)

5. tweak and add colors that arent in the map with hard light layers & also sneak in a layer for special effect and atmospheric/ scenic perspective while you're at it

6. shading & more finishing effects. pretty much all of the shading was done with hard light layers! the only non-hard light layers I used for the shading were the particle effect layers & like one faint glow layer to fix some values. blood was done with linear burn

✨Inspiration for hurt mezu drawing

the coloring method (grayscale -> saturated gradient map underpainting -> additive color adjustments) is something I tried out with the piece i'd made right before (the one where gozu is holding mezu from behind) & turned out really well, so I wanted to keep going with it

I also wanted to draw them angstily again because it'd been a very long time. like half a year at least. angsting them is very enriching for my soul so I try to do it regularly, this one was overdue

subconsciously referenced the poses in the initial sketch from this old thing (feb 2021). i love doing this. all my for-fun works recycle old elements in some way. my favorite game is "what old art reminds me of what im doing rn" im so good at digging stuff out of my archives for it. everyone loves when i do this

the gangi-kozou panel also

i went through a "shade in bold red-orange & dark blue with hard light layers" phase in like..april/may of 2021. i still like that stuff a lot so I wanted to revisit it

💚Things you like about hurt mezu drawing

repasting the link there but the sixth image in the process is essentially the final so you can just look at that

the colors are nice!! I'm real happy with using more saturated colors n I think the warm vs cool balance works really well

the sleeves (man being dramatic on the sand meme)

no like fr look at the 2021 piece's kimono sleeves vs the one I just did 2.5 years later. so satisfying

Gozu's expression came out nice

i think the claws and flash lines successfully added Emphasis to Gozu's expression & the piece overall

the poses … the drama …. the brush textures are also good

⏳Things you’d do differently with hurt mezu drawing

add in a liiitle more contrast...aka use a wider range of values. Some lighter lights and darker darks. I miss my 2021 hard neon lighting

a bit more distinction between the characters and the background also

the composition isn't bad but it could be better. Should've thought more about the way the eye would flow around the image in the drafting stage (solid b&w color block thumbnails are good for this)

Moar Sparkles. (I put a solid amount of large & low opacity light bubbles in there & some finer brighter dots especially around the claw stems, but I think more clusters of tiny bright lights on the characters themselves would've gone hard)

💌Some favourite feedback on art

as the wise man Austin Kleon once said: keep a "praise file" of all the positive feedback you get (if you've never read "Steal Like an Artist," you must). so. i am prepared for this question hold on

tastes like sugar glass

multiple people have told me my art is soft & dreamlike

jayce you reblogged my touchstarved art with nice tags on april 10th ive got that saved love uou

umm theres a lot...anytime someone keysmashes or feels emotional because of my art i get happy ,,, lys messaged me about the hurt mezu piece that made me happy also,,,,,there is so much joy in the world

#shitboxposting #asks #shitbox drawn #JM SORRY I FEEL LIKE THE FORMATTING ISNT EASY TO READ NO MATTER WHAT I DO....AUGH #all my class work with actual conecptual meaning is monochrome what am i doing...man.......#i need to post more art and i also need to make more art. aghhh. boots up ultrakill and magical drop again #im actually Not sure how im going to afford the next few years of my life 😭😭 a bitch gotta have time to do fuck all but i need money..!!!!#whatever its fine. i have time to do fuck all right Now and thats what matters

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hasarjunadoneanythingwrong · 8 months

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That Vritra drawing looks really good tbh!! I just wanna tell you that (oh I love women...)

Also, I'm curious as well about how you would do greyscale painting. Do you have any tips/advises about it? As I'm thinking I want to practice painting with that method, too

so idk if im the BEST person to ask given this is the first time i've used greyscale in like...idk 5 years? but basically the gist of it is to paint the image in monochrome black and white so your values stay clear. the program i used is krita so i'll explain how to do it there but theres actually more guides for procreate, clip studio, photo shop etc

for this, in order to make sure coloring later was easier, i made each color group (skin, hair, tail+bra, tie and underskirt, gold) a different layer. i dont usually label mine because i hate myself but you may fine doing so more useful. once you've colored each layer in the correct grey value just shade it normally.

i also wanted to make sure i got the values for her skin right so i tried this trick i saw the other day on a reference image i have of her, which is to make a second layer, alpha lock it and switch the layer setting to color instead of normal. this sets the image to monochrome with very little fuss so you can easily color pick values without much issue (although you'll notice i actually lightened her hair a bit bc og vritra's is pretty close in value to her skin)

once you've colored in the values you're bascially done. just make a clipping group and set the clipping layer to 'color' and it will fill in the layer to the color you picked. you may need to adjust the layer below a bit-i ended up having to darken the tie because the green wasnt coming out the right color. the other thing is that i actually set the gold to color dodge on a dark brown because i felt that made a better gold color. realistically, you would also further tweak the image but it was pretty late last night so i called it a day

this also gives you the ability to play with the color palettes a bit although you wont be able to go beyond the base values- like in this case, i cant really make her hair or skin darker than how i already set it, so keep that in mind unless you're good with other filter settings

#my asks

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zestyjesty · 6 months

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The Barbarian keeps rolling around my brain so I have many many thoughts under the cut

1. I saw someone talk about the house itself having layers and yes absolutely, the house and the different men we meet represent rape culture in a very literal sense. We start at the top of the iceberg in the house with Keith's "i wont take no for an answer" and not believing Tess about the basement because women who are upset just arent to be believed, and then AJs and then Frank in escalating worseness as we delve deeper into the house.

2. On the Mother ultimately being a victim but still being the monster who Tess has to kill, I actually think it does a lot about how you are raised and how that shapes what you think is normal and the harm you do. Again we start with Keith who is slightly traditional and says its "how i was raised", then we have AJ at the bar with a very old friend and went he tells him he had to "persuade" this girl and "yeah she said no at the start but like totally not by the end you know" his friend agrees and doesn't think thats rape. Basically, if you dont do the extra work to unlearn what youve been brought up to think is normal, you will absolutely inflict harm and be part of rape culture because thats how society currently is. (Clearly we dont hear about frank but if hes the type for 70s rapist/serial killer firstly is a very sexist society and secondly hes parents are 90% likely to be abusive, that combo is what made most serial killers from the 60s-80s). And the thing is despite being raised that way despite thinking it was normal AJ still deserves to be punished for harming that woman because he still did harm. And the mother doesnt know any better but she will still hurt Tess if Tess let her.

3. The final scene where Tess doesnt let her empathy stop her from thinking about herself for once is very important! Over and over she has thought about other people and got herself kidnapped and hurt for it over and over. So at the end when we still the Mothers incredibly human eyes for the very first time up close, and seeing how she cares, and its meant to pull on your heart strings, and Tess says I dont care what you want because Im going to think about me first. Clearly theres a gender gap not addressed (god i wished she got to kill AJ) but it works if we think of the Mother as the concept of distilled rape culture rather than a real person

4. I loved seeing the mechanics of the script happening in the real time. The story of the director writing himself into a corner 30 pages in and thats why the mother shows up in her first scene (i think thats why Frank shoots himself, like straight up wrote himself into another corner and goes fuck it Frank shoots himself).

5. I saw someone else didnt like the shift to AJs storyline but i really liked it, most horror movies have a hard time with pacing so they either start reallyyyyy slowly (peele) or just try to keep the suspense and terror up the whole time and theres always a flat bit in the middle and you get desensitised to it all and stop caring (halloween.....all of them). So i loved this take of doing it all again but from a completely opposite POV, normally they wouldve run the storylines concurrently so having it 1 and then 2 was just really interesting and pretty bold

6. I cannot tell you how many horror movies ive seen where the closing shot is a wide shot of the house/maze/town whatever of the final girl, and its all lit up with red/blue cop lights. Like thats normally when the film ends, when the cops show up we roll credits. So to have just the most unhelpful, apathetic, fucking rude cops cops instead was cool. I didnt even find them to be over the top (sometimes movies when theyre trying to do a 'cops suck' segment make them caricatures of villainy or bafoonery rather than making then real), but to have their very casual but unflinching demand of respect to themselves from everyone above all else, not seeing a filthy terrified woman with no possesions at all as anything unusual but a broken window thats for sure a crime. Yeah that was scary real, really well done.

7. It felt very classic horror with enough modern twists to keep it grounded in this year without being overbearing about it. Like when horror films are trying a bit too hard with that its just very sighhhhh (like in halloween 2018 they had a teen boy say out loud "i like you that means im gonna get some right??" Like no one talks like that whereas AJs version of events sounds like something a real person would say). And the house with a monster in its walls has absolutely been done before and yet watching this felt fresh bc it was playing on your expectations of the genre.

For a horror debut from a guy whose background is 2000s comedy I think he did really really good! Looking forward to what else he does

#the Barbarian #the Barbarian 2022

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the-blaze-empress · 1 year

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What are your favorite things abt c!phil? i want to know his character better :3

OH ANON I WOULD BE DELIGHTED TO ANSWER THIS

god where to START hmmmmmm

okay ive stuck it under a read more because my god is there a lot. for anyone curious, i list off 10 of my favourite things about cphil (with explanations as to what an why), 10 of my favourite quotes, and also cover some more common fandom mischaracterisations

1 - his character design it's basic, but i need somewhere to start. i LOVE phils character design, idk, maybe its just something to do with birds and green and me being a cosplayer. especially his new skin! it has details, anon, and they all have meaning. i love me some details with meaning. and bc its minecraft, and because minecraft is pixels, theres SO MUCH ROOM FOR INTERPRETATION. anyone can go COMPLETELY ham with the design if they want to and they all look SO COOL.

2 - EMERALD DUO okay so ill say it outright; im a qpr emduo sorta person. at the very least im an ‘old friends/war buddies/ex emperors emduo’ person. dont get me wrong, techno is the eldest child, but in the dsmp, he’s not phil’s kid, they’re just really old friends. AND OH MY GOD I LOVE THEM. ‘for you the world’ NEED I SAY MORE??? the emeralds, the phil risking his life to protect techno from the butcher army, the techno worrying about phil participating in doomsday, the complete and utter undying trust they have in each other. theyre not perfect, they still disagree and still have differing opinions but they sort it out and compromise and make sure each other is always okay!!! them!!!

3 - birb cphil is a bird we all know this. and this is leaning more into fanon not explicitly canon, but im including it because i can. phil is bird, he has bird brain. bird instincts and bird features, like hollow bones, chirping, nesting, preening, all the good stuff. it adds a layer of depth to his character thats so fun to play with when writing!! there’s so much potential for both angst and fluff and i love it so much. also i just love birds so yknow. win win situation for me.

4 - family, its messy phil is part of what i believe is the biggest canonical family on the dsmp. there’s four generations ffs. he has a son, a grandson, even a great-grandson. and it’s not perfect. wilbur is. wilbur, but even though he went mad and even though he lied in his letters he still cared enough to send letters in the first place, phil still cared enough to read them. phil still cared enough to drop everything for his son. it was messy and it was heartbreaking but that is what it is to be a father, i think. sometimes whats right is whats hardest and its phils love for wilbur that was forever just so clear. its the way fundy fucked up, its the way phil fucked up in return, its the way they made up without properly making up but phil was always, always there for fundy, always cared for him at least a little, because that’s his grandson.

5 - leading on from the above, kristin!! ANON DO YOU KNOW HOW COOL IT IS FOR PHIL TO BE MARRIED TO THE LITERAL GODDESS OF DEATH?? phil is a trophy husband and you cannot convince me otherwise. his wife is SO COOL and SO POWERFUL and he loves her SO VERY MUCH. yeah sure hes a het guy in a homonormative society but i can forgive him for that because his wife is amazing. also less cphil, more ccphil, but i think its SO FUCKING COOL AND/OR FUNNY that ccphil literally just. wrote his wife into the dsmp on a whim. THATS how much he loves her that even tho shes not involved in this thing hes doing she’s still there in some sense.

6 - immortality yeah cphil CAN die, but here’s the catch; he doesn’t. hes functionally immortal and godddd i love it so much. hes so fucked up from it, but i love that about him (more on that point later). cphil has lived through so much and he has known so much and he has gained and lost SO MUCH but he’s still going strong, hes still loving and living and trying. who knows when he’ll finally die, not him and certainly not us.

7 - WOO TRAUMA mans is SO FUCKED UP. god where to even START with this. phil has not processed a single emotion in 500 years and he does NOT plan on starting now thank you very much. his sons death? nah lets build a country instead. watching his best friend be executed? nope not processing THAT lets find somewhere else to live oh yeah also i almost died. phils favourite thing is avoiding emotions and busying himself with some Other Task for Someone Else (new lmanburg, training room, various farms for techno, just to name a couple) so he Doesnt Have To Think About Anything. also perception of time? hell no he’s gonna be working for days without realising it. this is not healthy. he does not intend to stop. he blames himself for so much and rarely ever accepts help from anyone at all.

8 - kindness dont get me wrong if you get on the wrong side of phil you will find out exactly why some know him as the angel of death, but if ur not on that side of him, hes just. so kind and so caring. that one time when ranboo was deliberately trying to trigger the enderwalk out, and phil ran in and got rid of all the splash water bottles because he thought ranboo was getting hurt? yeah. that. protecting tommy without hesitation or question when dream was chasing him? yeah. that. building new lmanburg because tubbo had enough on his plate and he needed something to do anything to do he needed to keep his hands busy then it would be okay it had to be okay he had to be okay? yeah. that. visiting techno even while he was under house arrest to make sure he was okay? yeah. that.

9 - hes such a chaotic little fuck this is something a LOT of the fandom seem to. ignore. phil is not this sophisticated, calm, rational father figure. he can be sometimes (at a push) but thats not who he is. he’s an absolute chaos machine, and a fucking deadly one at that. he’s bored and you’re in the general vicinity? bye living! i think its well summed up in that one clip of phil and techno in a village, and techno’s grabbing a couple supplies here and there, and phil is just fucking gutting the place even if he doesnt actually need those supplies. he will murder (for fun), he will explode shit (for fun), he will cause mass genocide (for fun), he will fucking. idk he’ll do it all for fun.

10 - history imo, phil and techno are some of the best—if not the most—fleshed out characters in the dsmp. part of this, i reckon, is because of the history they have. you cannot talk about dsmp cphil properly without acknowledging smp earth and hardcore at the very least. the antarctic empire is there, phil and techno carry its shields and wear its colours. the angel of death is familiar to most if not all, the love for fucking freezing temperatures is there too. phil did decanonise the connection to hardcore, but a) many people who care ignore that, b) i ignore that, and c) it was there for at least a little, it had influence for at least a little. cphil is and old character, he didn’t just blip into existence in the dsmp, he has real, solid, pre-established history.

---

and now for some of my favourite cphil quotes!!

1 - Things, buildings, they can be replaced! People can't be replaced. I'm not losing anyone else... I'm not losing anyone else. Not to this bullshit.

2 - (“Since when was this a Philza Minecraft thing?”) “Since I was forced to kill my own son, you idiot!”

3 - look i made this entire section to include One Specific Quote except i now cannot find that quote. fuck this fuck me. it was something phil said in chat at one point, he was talking to sam, saying how he [phil] was immortal, he had seen nations rise and fall, he had seen people like sam who craved power come and go with little consequence. its a good quote, trust me, ill put it here when/if i can find it.

4 - "I've seen this 'government', on this server... Everything to do with government has just been bad so far. (...) I've watched it completely destroy and tear down people's wills, and change people... I've seen it change the nicest people into complete and utter tyrants. So I think it's about time.”

---

okay quotes over now for some common fandom mischaracterisations, since u said u wanted to know cphils character better

1 - bad dad phil this one really gets me. i hate it, genuinely. phil was never and is not a bad dad. im not saying he was perfect, but he was not a bad dad. it is not his fault wilbur went mad, it is not his fault tommy was hurt so much in exile (more on that later), none of this is his fault. phil cares so much about his family and does everything he can for them, he was never neglectful or absent or anything of the sort.

2 - sbi family dynamics THESE HAVE BEEN DECANONISED BY LIKE EVERYONE IN SBI FOR THE DSMP. MULTIPLE TIMES. tommy was never phils son, he was just some kid phils actual son knew. techno is phils old friend, not his son. wilbur, however, is his son

3 - calm collected eloquent father SOMETIMES phil can have good fatherly advice. other times he really fucking does not!! cphil is shit with words, if you want someone whos always expressing their emotion in elegant prose, look at techno, not phil. he tries, he really does, but his perception of normality is warped, and sometimes he just doesnt fucking care?? hes chaotic and fairly independent, and yeah okay he may have taken in TWO stray kids (tubbo, when he was a child, and ranboo after doomsday) but hes not the like. serial adopter some people make him out to be

---

so yeah, thats cphil for you! im more than happy to go into more detail about any of the above things, just ask! that goes for literally anyone btw. ill happily talk about fanon and more fandom characterisations, but ive tried to keep it as close to canon as i can so far. what’s great is that despite what he claims, ccphil is an excellent roleplayer and general storyteller, hes always adding little details and explaining reasoning behind things, so theres so much nuance and so much depth to cphil and the section of the world he inhabits. can you tell that cphil is my favourite character perhaps.

#wisdom be uponeth ye #Anonymous #tha scrunkle <3 #dsm5 i meant dsm5 #anon i am so sorry this is almost 2k words #this probably isnt Quite what you were expecting asking me this but in my defence you asked and i answered #original thoughts in their natural habitat #tenobled #my favourite war criminals #giant woman #theyre fambily ur honour #i have spent like two hours writing this lmaoooo #deaths malewife

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ancientgoddessofegypt · 3 months

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Depressive Episodes : Owning up to my emotions and allowing the waves of depression to push me through my toughest battles.

One thing about me, is that I never give up.

Im resilient, even when I don't believe it.

I've never allowed myself to fail, even when at times I knew I was falling. Its just... not in me to let go. I just gotta breathe, man. I can't see myself allowing the world to dig me into my own grave.

But that doesn't mean I havent thought about it.

Sometimes when I can't see the future, I go crazy and can't stop myself from having a manic depressive episode.

Other times, I can see the future, or the idea of it, and still go into a manic episode. So of course.. it doesn't matter when, what or where, when that wave of depression hits.. it starts to get me down to one of those spiraling series waiting to be channeled into something else.

So far, I've learned to creative outlets for my depression. Being honest, and escaping into worlds of creativity like painting, drawing, poetry.. Im still learning how to paint my emotions and make it seem more meaningful. But hey, anything to cure the depressive thoughts. I can't live like this anymore.

But the thing is, depression comes through waves and tries to leave its mark on society due to a painful reality we seem to suppress within. We can't lie to ourselves anymore, things are getting worse, and it seems as if it has no plans on getting better.

Or so they say...

I have a feeling that depression in our society has a LOT to do with our needs not being met, but ALSO because theres something negging at us to be seen. And its love.

We live in a cold reality, where most people pretend to be in their ego but not in their hearts. The warmth we are needing is in community, but there hasnt been too many spaces for community to fondle in. Depression sticks due to some of the food we eat, the shows and news we digest, the constant negativity that is plastered in front of us day in and day out. You know.. this can tire out a lost soul, and distract you from the primary mission. So to say that depression can be easy to fix, isn't the most practical way of thinking, at least not on my end.

Its taken me 5 years to really get to the nitty & gritty of depression, anxiety, shame, guilt, fear.. etc... and I've come to the conclusion that this thing can be generational as well as something going on in the psyche and needs further analyzation in other to appreciate the whys and the why nots of depression so you can heal it clearer. In most cases, depression can find healing through the arts, but what if thats not your niche? What if theres something more you must succumb to and haven't figured it out?

One of the things I've learned is mathematics. Boy I hated math as a kid cause I 'sucked' and I kept failing, however as I've made it to adulthood, I realize I DO love math, just not the way it was taught. Over time, I've made time to study math and all its different layers, its like a universal code. It helped me remember some parts of my childhood that made it easier to appreciate it. I say this because it's been one thing that's lifted me up along side photography. On of the main things that lifted up my energies into higher vibrations and being able to relieve myself of any depressive wave that entered my energy. Anytime I do feel depression sometimes I sit with it, sometimes I go and find purpose.

Because depression is causing you to lack clarity, focus, drive and remembrance of your souls horizon. Your purpose. Your mission. What reason did you decide to come here, love?

So what I want you all to know is that when your feeling depressed, there is something in you that wants to be notified. Yes those emotions are deep and sometimes rather intense but the only way to get out of the mud is if you get to digging and remembering why you even started doing it in the first place. It's so you can get back to you.

So began to say good bye to your depression, your healing era awaits my love. Depression is only a wave of thunderstorms creating a destiny for you to see that rainbows are on the other side of that tired, daunting feeling.

#depressive episodes #depression #dealing with depression #challenging times #my thoughts #sharing my gift #compassion #needing love #blog #blogger #blogging #blogging into the void #bloggers on tumblr #engagement #deja's blog

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jbt7493 · 8 months

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I am playing df for the first time in a while (you know how hyperfixations are and all that) and this fortress has some antpeople in the caverns. and I have dfhack. now initially i just thought of doing this because i saw they had three shields equipped and i thought of the thing where spiderpeople adventurers could have 7 shields and be super defended. theres also some olmpeople and some reptilepeople but like. theyre just kinda regular guys.

but anyway like, i kinda wanna use the make-own command in dfhack to make the antpeople part of my government and my fort.

my concerns are that the antpeople apparently have a lifespan of only 5-8 years and from what i can tell of the wiki the weight of the different sexes is 10,000 on worker, 1,000 on soldier, 5 on drone, 1 on queen. and uh, I do not have a 10,000+ population cap on my fort... so I don't think I can successfully maintain their population for any length of time, which would be sad i think. so i think i am not gonna do it. just kinda sad that it is not very feasible.

more consideration about animalpeople citizens under cut :p

the appeal of animal people (to me) comes in 3 main reasons. more than 2 arms, flight (im not sure how well this actually works for citizens in fortress mode tbh, so maybe i should ignore this...), and being biglarge. theres also the secondary values you could care about of like, being amphibious for some extra convenience i guess? or being an egg layer because uh. well you can eat them.

so (in no particular order), the animal people im most interested in having as residents are like. brown recluse spider people(6!!! arms, immune to pain and stun!, uh. they can collect webs i guess), elephant men (theyre fuckin huge dude), saltwater crocodile people (puny compared to elephant people but still 7x the size of a dwarf, amphibious, uh they lay 20-70 eggs so your dwarves literally dont need to grow any food or keep any farm animals they can feed themselves and have a surplus lmao), and [any flying insect] people (flight, 4 arms).

as mentioned, idk how useful flight is. you're mostly indoors anyway and even if you need to go up and down fast stairs... exist. it could theoretically help get your guys out of danger from nonflyers if you intentionally designed your fort around that, though, but i think the wiki said that for flying to a given tile to work there needs to be a land path to that tile as well? not sure about that

more arms - straightforwardly valuable for combat, the person that did a huge test of how shields work didnt do a test for multiple armed people with multiple shields, but based on the stories people have told about playing as spider people with 7 shields, im preeetty sure it works. i dont think its good for anything else in fortress mode? but having stronger soldiers is still very good.

being biglarge- useful in multiple ways. combat is a breeze and speed will barely be reduced when carrying heavy objects, so theyll be more productive in certain tasks. i do wonder though, uh, can you make the right clothes for them? the small animal people are all still 35,000cm3 because its an average of the base creature and human, and thats kobold size, which you can make clothes for. but can you make elephantperson sized clothes and armor? if you can, no problem? (i would be surprised if the game actually made you use more materials to make the same items in a larger size, but i might be wrong)

egglaying- look, with like 30ish turkeys i was not only able to entirely feed my fort but also over the course of 5 years build up a surplus of nearly 20,000 units of food, and that surplus isnt counting how many lavish meals i used as trade goods (enough to easily afford everything i wanted from every trade caravan, the only "limit" on my spending being that when meals are put in a barrel you cant fetch them individually and a barrel full of dozens of lavish meals is only worth like twice as much). Egg laying people removes the need for a bunch of extra animals in your fort. Instead of needing to regularly let the babies hatch and then butchering the older ones, adding annoying overhead and lag from too many entities, the people will just... live a normal 60-80 year lifespan, and in fact if you have a normal fort population there will be more egg laying citizens than you'd have animals in a normal egg industry. My only question is like. The wiki says "females will lay (sterile) eggs if given a nest box to claim". How do you get actual reproduction of new baby citizens??

amphibious - even less useful than flying. very few of even the scariest monsters can fly, but literally all of the megabeasts are immune to drowning anyway. mildly useful for exploring the caverns maybe? but that is very mild.

also, immunity to pain and stun for the spider people is neat. bark scorpion person has that too, and having 4 arms is still good, but when brown recluse spider people exist and have two more arms why not opt for them? also theres jumping spider people but brown recluse spider people are identical save for being able to freely move through webs (a minor thing, but convenient if you have a silk industry, which is certainly a good thing to have), and the venomous bite (idk why this would really matter lol).

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ericahoganphotography · 1 year

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Saatchi Gallery (week 10)

This week, we visited the Saatchi Gallery and explored the new black vanguard, photography between art and fashion exhibit. i really enjoyed this gallery. the colors, the outfits, makeup, and poses all stood out as well as the way in which the photos were taken.

Photo 1: Untitled (boy in garden), Morocco, 2018

The photographer that took this photo is Tyler Mitchel. this photo consists of a boy sitting in what looks like some sort of garden or flower field. There are white flowers surrounding him. In the background, there is a tree and we can see part of the sky. I really like this photo. It looks like a photo I would try to recreate with my friends. There is something fun and playful about it. The boy in the photo is interacting with the flowers by holding some of them. His outfit is also different shades of green which looks good. The photo looks like it was taken close up or that it has been zoomed in because the boy takes up most of the frame. The photo may have also been cropped since part of his hand and the bottom of his legs aren’t in the photo. The whole picture is in focus which tells me a small aperture was used. So, we can see the boy, the flowers, and the tree clearly.

Picture 2: Joys of an Act of Resistance, 2018

The photographer that took this photo is Nadine Ijewere. The first thing that caught my eye in the photo was the bright orange dress. The dress is such a bright color and i really enjoy it. I also like how the dress contrasts with the blue sky behind it. The dress also adds a lot of layers to the photo. The way the model is flipping the dress, gives the photo a lot of dimension. the dress takes up most of the frame and takes up the entire foreground. The model looks like she’s standing behind the dress rather than wearing it which is interesting. i also really like that the background is just the sky which leaves the background plain. If there was something else going on in the background, it would distract from the dress. I also really like the lighting in the photo. The subject being the model in the photo, looks happy and bright.

Picture 3: Fire on the Beach, 2019

The photographer that took this photo is Dana Scrugs. Like the photo above, I really was drawn the the pop of color in the photo and how it contrasts against the background. My favorite part of the photo is the movement in the dress. The movement in the dress gives the photo more depth and dimension. Instead of her standing there, looking at the photo and posing, the model looks like shes walking against the wind. The lines in the photo are really interesting. There a straight horizontal line that almost cuts the photo in half. Then, theres the organic line her dress creates in the foreground of the photo.

Picture 4: Mirror, Mirror, New York, 2017

The photographer that took this picture is Adrienne Raquel. The photo is almost a photo within a photo when looking into the mirror. The picture also looks as though it was taken in a bathroom setting. How the photo was taken, it almost looks like it could be a self portrait. The photo has really interesting lines as well. Again, there is the straight horizontal line that cuts the photo which is in the background. Then, the round mirror breaks the straight, structured line. Like I said before, when looking at this photo it feels like a self portrait and something someone could try to recreate. there is more of a personal connection in this photo compared to the others.

Picture 5: Untitled, TK, no year provided

The photographer that took this photo is Yagazi Emezi. I was instantly drawn to this photo while looking at it in the gallery. This photo is of a model with green eye make up and there is something green in font of her, I cant tell what it is though. The Model takes up the entire photo. Because its so close up and has an emphasis on her makeup, this photo could be used in a makeup brands advertisement. The green in front of the model ties in with her makeup. it also adds a line to the photo as there wouldn’t be any without it. The lighting in the photo looks like its right at eye level with the model as it illuminated her whole face and creates a slight shadow behind her.

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mick-fly · 1 year

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the worst smell i ever experienced is when i was a line cook, the hotheaded startup owners were on the verge of firing the new (read: 3rd in 2 months) dishwasher because every couple hours the rinsewater would overflow and get everything in the vicinity soaked

the dishwasher was a bit slow and soft spoken so he was quick to be blamed, but luckily a couple of us had been watching him when these things happened, and he wasnt doing dishes any different than the previous ones or the “interim” dishwashers (us)

so the night finally ends and some more experienced cooks decide it’s time to just take the whole thing apart to see whats wrong

so im having trouble finding a diagram that specifically relates to the setup we had. but this is the closest. essentially, at the bottom of the dishwasher theres a screen to stop food from going in the pipes. french fries and stuff. nasty, stinky but quick to clean

but then, on the bottom right of the diagram is a little box called the grease trap. im not an engineer, but my theory as that the dirty dishwater runs through this bastard and it has multiple layers of sieves that catch liquidy-but-not-quite-watery stuff before it heads back to the sewer, and eventually, river systems. sometime in the 70s somebody must have struck a deal with the EPA to determjne just how clean that water has to be at the end of the grease trap.

so since the day the restaurant opened (mid may) to the time of this story (mid to late august) copius amounts of ketchup, barbeque sauce, salad dressings, aioli, and god knows what else had been building up and slow cooking in the 90 degree (32 degree) and up kitchen. this little grey box that was so unremarkarble and out of sight that i literally never noticed was keeping a secret that was the cherry on top of why im never going back to the food industry.

and i cant put an estimate on how many dishwasher loads went on in a given day but other than like, the fourth of july (everyone was on the lake) that thing was more or less constantly running from the lunch rush at 1 until the last tickets at 10, plus usually an extra 90 mins afterwards as the dishie first caught up with plates, and then cleaned up all the kitchen thingies

oh i forgot we served a bunch of soups, especially like chowders so when they finally cracked open the crypt, oh my fuck

i think previously the stinkiest things i ever smelled respectively were fresh deer stomach/intestines and shit

and then the deer that my sister shot through the stomach, which was maybe one order of magnitude above the previous

i would say the grease trap was in the range of two orders of magnitude worse than that

and the worst part of it was, the fucking thing was so densely packed it was standing up on its own. immediately my brain went “oh. lasagna”

and the only way to get rid of all of it was to glove up and throw it into 5-gallon pails by hand

but luckily most of the crew was like. delirious bordering on unhinged because of the hours we’d been working, so the mood was more “haha isnt this fucked up” than “jesus christ. jesus christ. jesus CHRIST”which is what i was doing internally

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basslinegrave · 2 years

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answers for the prev reblog (artist ask) because it looks fun

1. Art programs you have but don't use

💚 clip studio, i used it like 3 times in total because its not really for my win7 so its too buggy for me to use right now

2. Is it easier to draw someone facing left or right (or forward even)

💚 facing left for me

3. What ideas come from when you were little

💚 probably anything to do with bugs or dinos

4. Fav character/subject that's a bitch to draw

💚 certain clothes like tech wear and shoes but i still love it

5. Estimate of how much of your art you post online vs. the art you keep for yourself

💚 i post a solid 95%

6. Anything that might inspire you subconsciously (i.e. this horse wasn't supposed to look like the Last Unicorn but I see it)

💚 for human art its dmmd and bleach, at times pswg

7. A medium of art you don't work in but appreciate

💚 anything i dont do goes, animation, comics, sculpting (3d as well),...

8. What's an old project idea that you've lost interest in

💚 anything to do with 3d stuff, im not good with that (i could still learn though)

9. What are your file name conventions

💚 hfhshdhshhdh.png or the rare 0827464.png

10. Favorite piece of clothing to draw

💚 shoes? and tops like tees or hoodies.. but i also like drawing jeans, thanks to gorillaz

11. Do you listen to anything while drawing? If so, what

💚 anything im in the mood for, music, podcasts, true crime stuff, ... lately its yass stuff (like slay. bad bitch vibes. idont know how else to describe this music ✌️), nightcore, hyperpop and abba. yeah

12. Easiest part of body to draw

💚 is there one? ...ears? ik those are hard for some ppl but thats the thing i do in 3 seconds

13. A creator who you admire but whose work isn't your thing

💚 kinda beats the purpose for me or i just cant think of anyone here...

14. Any favorite motifs

💚 dunno if this is motifs, but first thing that pops up in my mind is wuxia theme... or funky angles, also anything y2k inspired

15. *Where* do you draw (don't drop your ip address this just means do you doodle at a park or smth)

💚 my bedroom pc 99%

16. Something you are good at but don't really have fun doing

💚 rn most furry anthro art? as i prefer doing sonic style anthros but i still like doing it its just connected to only work now for me. so i think that affects it as well cuz work = no fun

17. Do you eat/drink when drawing? if so, what

💚 rarely now, it taught me to only use one hand while drawing which i hate, cuz i rather click the undo button than go ctrl z. its either popcorn or fruit or nacho chips

18. An estimate of how much art supplies you've broken

💚 my main thing is digital But i have broken several promarkers on purpose to dye some stuff with the ink especially cosplay wigs etc

19. Favorite inanimate objects to draw (food, nature, etc.)

💚 hmm aside from clothes maybe nature background (if i can keep it messy) like shrubs, clouds. but i prefer characters. and hate anything geometrical

20. Something everyone else finds hard to draw but you enjoy

💚 probably hands and aforementioned (human) ears are easier for me

21. Art styles nothing like your own but you like anyways

💚 theres so many i cant even name, but to choose one, anything overly retro cartoony and like don bluth style... i would love to draw like that but i would have to rewire my brain

22. What physical exercises do you do before drawing, if any

💚 i should stretch but i rarely do :( sometimes i do wrist exercises

23. Do you use different layer modes

💚 if it means like like overlays and stuff, yes, i use those and shadow+light for shading bigger pieces, sometimes lumi if needed

24. Do your references include stock images

💚 if im lost on the idea then yes.. or i use my own reflection/shitty webcam photos, you know (but senshistock has a place in my heart)

25. Something your art has been compared to that you were NOT inspired by

💚 definitelly happened but i cant remember

26. What's a piece that got a wildly different interpretation from what you intended

💚 uhh if its meant from others, then one picture i drew of murdoc and noodle. meant to be harmles father daughter fun. but. people online are gross creeps and you can imagine what they said :/

27. Do you warm up before getting to the good stuff? If so, what is it you draw to warm up with

💚 i cant warm up as i will spend hours on the warmup and waste time and energy i could put into the main thing (and most of the time i end up liking the warmup more)

28. Any art events you have participated in the past (like zines)

💚 some collabs ages ago.. i would love to do more but people never bite when i ask around

29. Media you love, but doesn't inspire you artistically

💚 cant think of anything, i usually get inspired by everything, even if just a little

30. What piece of yours do you think is underrated

💚 many of my commission works but, as long as the customer loves it, its enough

#long post #answers #thoughts are being thunk

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probably-haven · 3 years

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Hello!! After seeing what you wrote about xiaoven fics I went to see what things you usually write and omg, your archon Venti headcanons????? I am absolutely in love. So if it isn't annoying, could you talk about xiaoven or Venti or Xiao or whatever ship or character you like? I don't care what you are going to say, I just want to know more about your thoughts ^^

I- is this... bestie, this is essentially a free ramble pass- kerujsgheskdfug. Trust me when I say that in no way is this, and in no way will it ever be annoying in the slightest- i literally- lets just say rambling off thoughts is kind of my specialty, especially when provided a topic to branch off of because otherwise I'm just- really indecisive about it so- iujskdh yeah- 100% definitely down to talk about Venti, Xiao, and/or Xiaoven XD. Also, yes- it may have been awhile since i last posted one(cuz again, indecisive about which direction to take part 5), but the Archon War Era Venti headcanons are still without a doubt my favorite posts I've made. It's just such an interesting topic with such endless potential that so few people actually think about or consider or even realize is there, so i always just get really psyched whenever i see someone interact with them lol.

.... this ended up being a bit of a mess: warning in advance

Anyway! onto the actual content!

- You see the thing about Xiaoven is that there's a lot of different ways that it could end up working out, and just personally my favorite way of portraying Xiaoven in my mind is as an unlabeled relationship because if anyone in genshin would give off that vibe its these two. And a number of other reasons.

- Firstly, I heavily headcanon Venti as being an aroace polyplatonic or perhaps heavily demiromantic. However, regardless of this I just don't think that Venti is really the kind of person to worry about how he should label his feelings, thinking it's silly to try to put them in one box or the other, especially with feelings and emotions being as fluid as they are in general. Plus it fits his whole God of Freedom vibe. I just- dont think he's the biggest fan of labels or social categorization in general.

- And secondly on the hand of Xiao... his defense mechanisms are very much ingrained in his personality. It's probably hard enough for him to not go into fight or flight(the answer is fight) at the slightest affection at first, at the slightest feeling of vulnerability. Even further down the line, with his fierce dedication to Liyue, I cant help but get the vibe that the moment he recognized that he was falling for Venti he would begin avoiding him, not only to avoid distraction from his duty, but to avoid corrupting him or losing him in general like he has with like basically every other person he gets close with(even believing that the cycle had repeated once more when he first heard of Morax's death)... now imagine Venti tryna slap a label on their relationship and tell me Xiao would have a positive reaction.

- The thing with Xiaoven.... honestly, i feel like theres more ways that it can go wrong than it can go right, but if they do manage to make their relationship work out, it's just simply beautiful in all terms of the word.

- Lets talk about killing. - During the Archon War, both were forced to kill a large number of people and gods alike- Venti out of a need to remain alive to protect Mondstadt, it's freedom, and the nameless bard's legacy by extent- and Xiao out of servitude to the god that was once his master

..... actually- break here- ive talked a lot about Venti on this blog but I havent actually spoken about Xiao all that much- so i should probably do that a bit first... do note though that my characterization of Xiao is pretty flexible actually- this is just- the possible characterization of him that i tend to favor as being the most- uh- "realistically complex"

Theres a line I saw this one time in a certain story: "He is a trained weapon. That's what he is, was, and always will be. You cannot change that so stop trying." And i just- think its a really interesting concept- that applies pretty well to Xiao now that i actually think about it. - the concept behind it is this: After spending more than a vast majority of his life killing or otherwise in battle, it's become a part of who he is, a normalcy that after centuries and centuries would be near impossible to get rid of or reverse, and even if it was possible, with his karmic debt constantly eating away at him its unlikely he has enough time left for that to happen. - it sounds like a cruel thing to say about him- but in context it's actually pretty layered and i think about it a lot. It's not as much a "he's a killer lol, that his whole personality" its more of a "The centuries of trauma he experienced have conditioned him into a constantly alert and battle ready mindset while also shaping his dehumanizing inferior-in-worth-but-superior-in-capability view of himself that would have likely been necessary to get through those time, and at this point he's been under that conditioning for long enough that it's essentially ingrained itself in his personality."

- the main idea is- it's a part of who he is, that needs to be accepted as who he is because its not something that he can just up and change. It's not all he is of course but his constant battle mode, as though always waiting to be ambushed or to be granted a new target to eradicate.

a couple character story quotes:

-"His past of service under the evil god had rid Xiao of his innocence and gentleness. All that remained within him was the means to kill and the weight of his sins. The only way he could be of service to mortals was in combat." -"Xiao does not feel any hatred. Having lived for over two thousand years, no single karmic debt constitutes anything more than a fleeting memory. No grudge can last a thousand years; nor is any debt so great that it cannot be paid off in this time. Xiao has spent many long years alone. But his battles have never been in vain." -"where did Xiao have to return to? He was merely leaving the battlefield." -"since Xiao wages a constant war against dark forces powerful enough to devour Liyue in its entirety, any bystanders who witness him in the heat of battle are likely to end up as collateral damage." -"The war he fights can never be won, and will never come to an end." -"Because ultimately, the one with whom Xiao wrestles is himself."

i feel like at some point this very nearly did consume his whole personality, almost turning him into nothing more than a being of slaughter under Morax's control, devoid of any "humanity" at all, consumed and corrupted by his karmic debt like his fellow yakshas before him. - until he experienced a moment of clarity- a song in the wind, the peaceful melody of a dihua flute. - and pulled back from the border of something he wouldnt have been able to return from, there a was a shift in his mind- a concept grown unfamiliar enough with time that it took him a great time to identify what it was; a curiosity. Something that there was no place for on the battlefield, something that by all means should have been completely useless to Xiao, and yet he held onto that curiosity, slowly regaining over time, a sense of who he was and who he could choose to be with each song that the wind chose to carry towards him every once in a blue moon.

and eventually that curiousity turned to longing. Longing "for a day to come when he will wear the mask and dance — not to conquer demons, but to the tune of that flute amid a sea of flowers"

...... uh- heh- if you couldn’t tell already i have a tendency to make my characterizations/analyses of characters more serious that i probably should.

to summarize: Xiao is constantly toeing the line between his ingrained nature and his humanity- almost as though still trying to decide how much of that humanity he deserves to have, how much he is allowed to have, and how much is safe to have.

^looking back after writing this, i think the best way to explain it is that this is the view that i keep in mind/the lense that i tend to most enjoy looking through and refering back to while examining and/or analyzing his character, actions, story, lines, and overall personality.

idk- i kinda got off track but i just think its a really interesting interpretation to think about because it has some really interesting implications ig- it’s not the full extent of how i view him of course, but i kinda got ahead of myself and its long enough as is so ill just elaborate as i go- Lol i actually have in progress playlists for both him and venti and just- vibes- i could ramble about the playlists alone for hours explaining everything... It’s probably a problem- uh- ill keep going now lol.

anyways! stepping off the angst path for a brief break! Brought to you by their lines in the snow: both waiting for it to get thick enough, Venti for the purpose of a snowball fight and Xiao for the purpose of a tasty and nutritious breakfast.

but its actually something of note that Xiao doesnt actually need to eat so anything he does eat is usually out of obligation or enjoyment- so like.... snow.... like i dont blame him, but of all things- an adeptus who refuses to eat basically anything but almond tofu looks at the freezing-cold-floor-water that yeeted itself from above and decided at some point- damn- that seems more edible than basically ever single actually edible thing ever.... im gonna eat it- like- im glad if eating snow makes him happy but- at the same time...

He probably convinces Venti to eat snow too though and Venti wouldnt even resist I mean he’s wind and has probably consumed worse things in his time so- 2 anemo cryptids with glowing tattoos sitting in Dragonspine monching snow in the dead of night is an amusing thought to me.

- kay, now back to more serious-toned thoughts

One of the things about the ship that i really like is the different contradicting parallels between them:

A lot of how i view Xiao’s character is someone formed largely by the things he cant control and who was forced to accept that accepted that and learned to thrive in it as much as he can. Venti on the other hand is surrounded by things he cant control and is ever adapting to control as much as he can while embracing whatever he cant as being part of the unpredictability of the world, seeing beauty in it.

both of them have lost people and do what they do to honor their memory: Xiao continues to do what the Yakshas once did And Venti chooses to do what his friend couldn’t

Xiao’s power coming from himself and Venti’s from others And both seem to appear to use their power for their own gain while truly helping others behind the scenes

both have killed a lot of people during the archon war Xiao views it as another necessary event out of his control and Venti would likely view it as a tragedy he chose to enact himself

and this is where we meet out balance

Xiao- contrary to how i think a lot of people view him as thinking of himself as a monster- seems canonically to have accepted this as part of his duty, as long as those he killed are not mortals. I dont think he enjoys it no- but someone has to do it and he’s just accepted that its a part of his duty Venti on the other hand-

See the beauty of the ship- as someone with an angst-centric mind- is this- these are two of the most traumatized mfers in the game

Xiao is by far the one who needs the most help and who can serve to benefit most from the ship- but he is nowhere near self aware enough to recognize that there’s anything wrong or unhealthy about his mindset in the slightest-

whereas you have the contrast with Venti who sorted through most of his trauma with the nameless bard alone during the archon war and while the result appears more healthy- is still really not- but he’s not self aware of that either because i mean- who’s going to tell him? nobody even knows.

however- venti is aware enough to notice flaws in Xiao’s mindset and “Venti” enough to want to help them through it-

Xiao- while not aware enough to recognize the flaws in Venti’s mindset, can recognize where it contrasts with his own, and is blunt enough to point it out- and then it’s out there to be mulled over-

they’re so similar and yet so different and a feel just conversing between the two of them, being in each others precense, just being exposed to two mindsets that are so very different could do both of them a whole lot of good.

GEEE THAT BIT OF RAMBLING HAD LITTLE TO NO DIRECTION AT ALL- LET ME-- LET ME MAKE THIS START MAKING SENSE- WITH... DYNAMICS OR SOMETHING

I don’t think Xiao needs to sleep really- and i dont think that sleeping would do anything except make him uneasy at first- he’d probably just get nightmares after all he’s been through- but with Venti he would soon learn that it doesn’t have to be that way, lulled into the first peaceful sleep he’s had in... as long as he can remember.

anywho back to not making sense cuz im fickle and i think most questions about ships are best displayed through character interactions so like- a possible exchange thats cliche but cliches exist for a reason

Xiao: Why do you try so hard to help me, it isn’t easy. I know that much Venti, with the most adoring expression: Because you’re worth it, obviously Xiao: But surely there are others more deserving of- Venti: No Xiao, everyone is just as deserving as the next person, you included Xiao: Then why me above others? Venti: ehe, cuz ur my warrior of course [O//////O oh shit, hes right] Xiao: My contract is with Morax alone [gay panic but in broody yaksha]

it’s kinda difficult cuz neither of them really address their feelings. I mean Venti does but he does it very indirectly and its rare that he ever does it with like- genuine directness- even spilling his backstory was in the form of a song- and told in the third person- so a lot of their interactions would often have some deeper meaning, especially with Venti being the bard he is.

I come up with a lot of- errant thoughts about Xiaoven- but this is making me realize that a true analysis of their ship is rather difficult because it just encompasses so many dynamics so its hard to settle on just one and not go rambling about who knows what bouncing from one end of the ship to the other- Because you truly can and thats the beauty of it

within one moment you can be having a heartfelt conversation about the archon war the impact of lost friends and times past, and the next moment Venti is trying to forcefeed Xiao an apple while Xiao screams about disrespecting the adepti and its just- so lovely

so while they have picnics with nothing but apples, dandelion wine, and almond tofu they can sit down and talk about the dreams Xiao once devoured, and the dandelion wine and apple cider that the first Ragnvindir invented from the plants that never could have grown in Old Mond. The foods that tasted of familiarity, or of the grilled ticker fish Pervases always used to eat, foods that tasted of friends and frankly family that had since passed, glaze lilies and cecilias and qingxin flowers scattered in the surroundings and woven into Xiao’s neat braids and Venti’s now messy ones, rebraided by the steady and inexperienced hands of one unused to gentle action.

and then of course Venti steals Xiao’s tofu once the mood becomes too grim and replaces it with a bottle of wine that Xiao refers to as “vile poison,” a remark that fatally wounds Venti as he collapses on the floor, proclaiming how he can only be healed by a Yaksha’s kiss. Xiao ignores this of course and simply takes back his tofu with a slight smile on his face, but as Venti persists he soundlessly places a kiss on his own palm before intertwining their fingers and pulling him back up from where he was dramatically sprawled on the floor, grumbling about how such action was “unbecoming of an archon.” A sign of affection only Xiao would ever know about. But Venti is literally wind and I hc his senses work differently anyways so he definitely knows- plus Xiao’s face is red as the blood of his enemies and the way he is pointedly not looking at Venti at all really speaks volumes anyways.

-Venti playing epic battle music whenever Xiao goes into fights in what looks like a ridiculously extra performance to anyone else but is actually doing wonders to keep Xiao’s karma at bay

-Venti preaches the practice of “kissing wounds better” and Xiao is unfamiliar with this medical treatment but views it as unnecessary regardless because adepti have accelerated healing, doesn’t mean he’s going to stop him though.

-Messages whispered on the wind

-Venti’s 1000 year sleep- an accident, not a fun time for the yaksha, and not a fun time for Venti once he woke up. Venti is actually more afraid of restful sleep than Xiao is, hence the sleeping in trees thing, but when Xiao is there, he can sleep restfully with faith that Xiao wont let another millennia slip through his fingertips.

- Xiao tends to make excuses when doing things that aren’t necessary to his duty, like in his birthday voice line “Have this, it’s a butterfly i made from leaves... Okay. Take it. It’s an adepti amulet -- it staves off evil” because at the current point in his progress it helps him to feel like he’s allowed to do these things. Not wanting to put him off from progress, Venti never comments on his excuse but never fails to whisper a quick reminder of how proud he is of how far Xiao had come.

- Xiao’s karma saddens Venti greatly- not only because of how it effects Xiao but also because its a reminder that as much as Venti tries to honor the memory of those he’s killed, there will always be those who resent him for it, and when he took the option of living away from them, he truly can’t blame them. - And when he gets too wrapped up in thoughts, whether around this topic or similar ones or otherwise, eventually, he’ll hear the sound of a flute on the wind. It’s not divine by any means, but as his own wind connects him to the source, he gets the sentiment all the same. “What impact does one individual’s remaining wrath have on the present. You have done much to help the living in the present” the unspoken idea that Xiao has included himself in that statement, because now, with Venti’s help he’s beginning to learn just how to experience living for himself.

- Venti’s form and Xiao’s mask are off limit topics though because if either mentions it the other will counter with the opposite and the mood will turn immediately bitter at the idea that both know that what they’re doing is destructive but neither are willing to change

- Venti who has different tells for negative feelings than most people because as much as he likes to pretend it is- this form isnt his, and Xiao who is able to identify those

- many fanfics and headcanons have Venti recognizing when Xiao is uncomfortable and getting him out of those situations. I see that and I love it but i raise you: - Venti taking Xiao to Mondstadt, careful that he doesn’t get to the point that he’s uncomfortable. And nothing goes wrong exactly, but Xiao notices the the way Venti’s cape is blowing in the wind, the way he’s holding his weight, barely on his feet so much as floating on the wind, connected with the ground only for the sake of appearance, all the while he looks just as happy go lucky as ever. And without a word, he grabs his hand and teleports them both out of Mondstadt. - turns out it was just a slight thing that reminded him of the archon war (cuz i will die on the hill of him having more tragic backstory than just Decarabian), and he of course gives a sincere if not flustered thanks to Xiao, because he’s really not used to people noticing.

- Venti trying to vent sneakily through fictional stories and Xiao is just like “Didn’t that basically happen to you” and Venti is just like “<_< shit”

- Venti once said affectionally that he wished he had met Xiao sooner and Xiao immediately and seriously shot it down by saying “If you had, I would have been forced to kill you” and both of them now stay up at night wondering who would have won that fight, not sure which result would have hurt more. (because honestly I have no idea who would win in that fight and that terrifies me- I like to think it would have been one of those legends that end with “and the fight persists to this day” or something along those lines)

- “How long have you been together?” “Adepti have no need for-” “1000+ years T^T how dare you deny our love” “O///O our...? ...useless”

- its disney- let me explain- i have this- i have this headcanon inspired by watching too many animatics- - so venti has a human form that isnt his- which he would have had to get used to moving in- and he’s a bard- - uh- anyway- as a third degree black belt in mixed martial arts, i can speak as an authority on this(not really an authority since i havent gone since quarantine but lets pretend). We have a thing referred to as the big three(most things do), and those things are martial arts, gymnastics, and dance. The idea is that they reflect really well off of each other and the best in any one category are good in all three. Timing, balance, form, discipline, technique, hand-eye coordination, grace, ease of motion, they all play a part- anyway-

- Venti taking Xiao’s prowess in martial arts and acrobatics and teaching him how to dance, and as someone who’s extremely skilled in the first two, the third comes easy to him, almost naturally. And it’s delicate and beautiful and lovely and it isn’t hurting anyone. And Venti points all these things out and more and despite how much Xiao insists that he feels ridiculous he truly does enjoy it and it goes a long way towards helping him form more healthy views of himself and his worth. - Verr Goldett walked in on him once and made a joke about performing at the inn. unfortunately Venti was there and agreed on Xiao’s behalf before he could protest and- and it wasn’t as bad as Xiao thought it would be... he still wouldn’t do it again though without reason, but with good enough reasoning he could probably be convinced.

- anyways point is he likes dancing to Venti’s songs and i just think that’s really cute - just picture the idea that all the animatics you see actually have the potential to be canon- ugh

- venti tries holding something out of Xiao’s reach since he’s taller and Xiao just fucking teleports

- both need their space but when they dont, all they have to do is speak the other’s name and they’ll be there.

- and because i just had to.... love languages

- lets start with Xiao- i don’t think he’d view acts of service or quailty time as a love language tbh, and he blunt but really bad with words so affirmation is out, leaving gift giving and physical touch. However, he seems to view most material things as meaningless so- - Xiao who’s love language is in his fleeting touches, something he’s only recently grown comfortable with because of Venti, and now is giving back, which he knows he doesn’t have to do, but that he want’s to, though he’ll still continue to make excuses for each one. “you were shivering” “The inn is high up, you could have fallen..... I said what I said, you’d question an adeptus?”

- and as easy as it is to say words of affirmation for Venti- he does that for everyone- i want to say his is actually acts of service - its the acts of service that let him see just how much Xiao has progressed afterall, from teaching him to dance, to playing another song on the flute, to supplying him with the almond tofu he seems to enjoy so much. Every little thing he does helps Xiao to grow and he couldn’t be happier about that.

- of course most of my headcanons for the ship do take place latter into the relationship because- y’know the less serious unhealthy vibes allow for greater range of thought, but i do still love to think about the serious implications so i kinda hopped back and forth. So sorry about how messy it is btw, i kinda- got carried away- it kinda got some kind of structure near the end tho so- maybe it’s okay. anyway- back to... lol something, we’ll see where thought forests lead.

#genshin impact #genshin xiao #genshin venti #xiao #venti #xiaoven #genshin analysis #genshin headcanons #xiaoven headcanons #xiaoven analysis #this is a mess i really shouldnt be putting all these tags but oh well #oh wow the grammar and spelling here is truly repulsive #sorry to all my english teachers i have failed you all

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