#that said

[aledethanlast]

For the last time Neil is not oblivious he's just so busy playing 5d chess with everyone he meets that the concept of regular chess baffles and bores him. Matt what do you mean I should hook up with a cheerleader can't you see I'm busy waging psychological warfare on a Frenchman.

#aftg #tfc #now in his defense #Neil grew up in a household where the default dynamic between all parties was 'barely restrained loathing' #and his version of the stranger danger talk included a section on how to be said danger #so for him this is like. the correct amount of effort you're supposed to put into your relationships #that said #post series i think Wymack starts getting a lot of REALLY weird complaints on his desk

[blue-mood-blue]

I’ve grown to appreciate the aus where Shen Yuan enters the story as “Shen Yuan” - same name, probably similar face, generally able to interact with PIDW as himself and change the story through his added presence. I like the sense of “if only you’d been here, things might have been better the first time around” of it all.

And I was thinking, it’s a funny coincidence in that scenario that someone named Shen Yuan gets put into… another Shen Yuan. What are the chances? What a weird twist of fate that Airplane would pick out the name that his most dedicated critic could slip into seamlessly.

What about a version where it’s not coincidence at all?

Airplane goes to school with a kid named Shen Yuan. He’s prickly and hard to approach and a little intense, but Airplane is persistent. In fairness, Airplane is relentless - and maybe it’s a good thing that they end up being friends, because they’re a little too much for anyone else to handle. They balance each other out. They’re the “weird kids” in class and they’re okay with that, because even when they don’t have any words for it, they know they’re not like their classmates, not really. That’s okay; they don’t want to be.

Recesses and breaks are consumed with the elaborate stories that Airplane wants to tell, and all the holes Shen Yuan pokes into them. It’s not mean-spirited, though, even though Shen Yuan isn’t the kind to temper his words. It’s passionate. He cares about those stories the way Airplane cares about them, and it can’t be mistaken for anything else when they lean together conspiratorially across the lunchroom table. They’ve both got notebooks filled with details and characters and monsters. Shen Yuan’s practically got a whole bestiary sketched out in wobbly childhood attempts at art, entries fervently scrawled beside them. Airplane prattles out plots nonstop, always with the promise of shining eyes and being asked “what happens next?”

They come up with a whole world together. Airplane’s going to write about it someday. Shen Yuan is going to read every word.

Shen Yuan misses school. Shen Yuan starts missing school a lot.

Airplane goes to the hospital room instead. He doesn’t think to worry, because Shen Yuan is okay - that’s what he says. He looks okay, and he’s a kid, and it doesn’t feel real that anything bad should happen to a kid. He doesn’t think to worry. He doesn’t think to say goodbye.

It’s one of the older Shen brothers who catches him on the way up to the room one day, in the hallway just outside - snaps at him to go the fuck home, and when Airplane hesitates, pushes him into the elevator and tells him not to come back. “Tells” is a generous way to describe the way the words come out - a growl, a hiss, the sound an animal would make when a hand got too close to a wound.

(It’s not fair to name a villain after him, even if the name never really comes up in the story. He wasn’t trying to be mean. He’d lost a brother minutes before, and he was getting his brother’s friend out of the way so he didn’t have to… see. It isn’t fair, but then, none of it is fair.)

Death feels very real after that.

The notebooks get shoved into a closet, and it’s not until Airplane’s moving out and one falls on him from a high shelf that he thinks about it again. He’s written things, lots of things, but nothing as ambitious as this - nothing as important. It could be good, he considers. He’d promised. Shen Yuan wanted to read it.

The problem was that no one else does, not for a long time, not until Airplane has whittled himself and his art into a corner and into such an unfamiliar shape that he has to wonder how it’s still his own face he sees in the mirror. He has to eat. He has to pay rent. Shen Yuan would yell at him, but Shen Yuan isn’t there to yell at him, and who cares. Who cares if it could have been better? The people who actually are here love it, and it’s paying his bills, and sometimes stories don’t go the way they’re supposed to and the world is fucking unfair. It doesn’t matter.

(It does. But he shoves that thought away along with styrofoam cups and soda bottles to the bottom of a garbage bag.)

Authors are not gods and their power is limited, but Airplane exercises just a sliver of what he’s been granted and gifts an inconsequential sort of immortality. He thinks about making him a rogue cultivator, maybe the kind that goes around documenting beasts and compiling his findings. He thinks about making him someone too powerful for death to touch, or too important to threaten, but when Airplane looks at the world he crafted and everything that’s become of it, it feels like the kindest thing he can do for Shen Yuan is a childhood where he’s loved, and a death that’s peaceful. What does it say about that world, that he’d kill off his best friend too early again instead of making him live there?

(The best writing he ever does is the only, shining moment of humanity that his scum villain ever displays: a lament about death that comes too early, about a brother gone too soon. The commenters praise him. The commenters flatter over how real the emotions feel. The commenters don’t get any response from Airplane on that chapter.)

Death is incredibly real when it comes for him too early, too, still hovering over his keyboard with the story technically finished and incredibly incomplete. Airplane could tell himself that’s because the written version can never be the version in the writer’s head, always shifting and with every possibility still on the table, but he knows better than that. The System knows better than that, with its condescending message about “improving” his writing and “closing plot holes” and “achieving his original vision”...

…and he’s a child again. He’s a child in his own story, he’s Shang Qinghua now without the benefit yet of a peak or cultivation or anything, and maybe he’s a little bitter, and a little scared, and…

And Shen Yuan - with longer hair, with robes, with a couple of older kids watching him from across the street, but undeniably the prickly little boy who used to sit down imperiously across from him and tell him everything that was wrong with the chuck of writing that had been handed to him last period, but with that smile that said he was only invested because he knew it could be better and they were going to make it better - marches up to him with a fire in his eyes and a frown that warns of a coming tirade.

“You told it wrong,” is the first thing he says.

Shang Qinghua wants to ask how him how he’s here, how this is possible, or maybe laugh because, yeah - yeah, Shen Yuan has no goddamn idea how wrong he got absolutely everything.

(Shang Qinghua wants to say “I missed you” and “why did you leave so soon” but he’s here now. He’s right here.)

“I know,” he says instead. “I’m sorry. It all kind of… spiraled out of control.”

Shen Yuan frowns, but then it dissipates the way it always does, and his eyes shine with ideas the way they always used to. “That’s okay,” he relents, grabbing for his hand. “We’ll fix it. We’ll make it what it was supposed to be.”

#scum villain self saving system #svsss #shang qinghua #shen yuan #airplane shooting towards the sky #this got more into the feelings than i thought it would #surprising no one #anyway just! childhood friends au! as a reason for a shen yuan insert! #obviously he is not going to die as a child in this version #shang qinghua would not have that nope not again #also pls consider poor shen jiu who looks at this child that shen yuan has picked out for a best friend like '...really? that one??' #(it's up to you if he's shen yuan's actual brother from his first life) #(put there's a part of me that likes the idea that shen jiu also gets a second chance to spend more time with his brother) #a second chance for them to grow up together! #THAT SAID #RIP TO SHANG QINGHUA #WHEN SHEN YUAN IS OLD ENOUGH TO LEARN ABOUT ALL THE PAPAPA #the LOOKS shang qinghua is going to get #anyway here have a thing because I CANNOT add another au to my drafts thank you and goodbyyyyye

[thewiglesswonder]

THE BOYS ARE BACK IN TOWN

#I have very mixed feelings on the trailer. doesn’t look *particularly* spectacular #biggest gripe is obviously chris hemsworth just being there. for no discernible reason #THAT SAID #d-16? adorable. love that man #am I excited? not particularly. #am I *intrigued?* mildly #tf #tf one #transformers #transformers one #maccadam #starscream #soundwave #shockwave #tfone

[neproxrezi]

finally using minecraft for its intended purpose: building the floorplan to a dungeon for a tabletop campaign i'm writing

#dibi #i wonder if i should make a tag for all my posts related to it #in case i add more of my drawings and writing and whatnot #>:/ #that said #i never really gave it a full title #hmm... #minecraft

[braxiatel]

at this point imagine how funny it'd be if Skizz was actually taking a nothing ventured nothing gained approach and joining the qsmp

#i have never watched any of the qsmp everything I know about it is through dashboard osmosis #that said #give that man an egg to parent #i think it would be very enriching for him #skizzleman #mcyt #hermitcraft #qsmp #the void collection

[coline7373]

#happy spring everyone #star wars #sw fanart #the clone wars #tcw fanart #fanart #commander cody #clone wars #tcw #clones and flowers #i got a reconditionned iPad for my birthday #looks like the family's ban on Apple is getting conditionnal #fine with me! #the moral permission I've been waiting for #now I can try procreate #that said #i have never used Apple before #it's been android + PC since forever #so please bear with me #it draws like a dream #this is incredible #T_T

[dreamologisth2o]

The thing about snakes is, and the thing I really like about cc!Dream’s metaphor, is that snakes don’t like to bite. Snakes don’t want, to bite. Especially those with venom.

Biting is risky, biting is a last line of defense. A snake will do literally everything else before that, to scare the danger away. They’ll puff up, flatten themselves, open their hoods if they have one, open their mouths, make themselves look bigger, more threatening. They’ll hiss and buzz their tails and make noise and back up. And when everything else fails, they bite.

And sometimes biting is the only thing that works. It’s the only thing that sticks.

And maybe a snake that just bites is a snake that’s learned that nothing else works.

How long did it take for c!Dream to finally learn that nothing else works? How many other things has he tried? How many other times has he failed?

When does a snake become a snake that just bites?

#food for thought #my thoughts #c!dream #Dreblr #my ramblings #that said #the scientific accuracy of the rest of what he said is up for debate lol #I have no idea if there’s a venomous species of snake that broods it’s eggs #but I think the hawk would rather have the snake for a snack #over its eggs lol #still #the metaphor works well for what he intended #and I think a lot of us would bite #to defend ourselves #or to defend our brood

[humblemooncat]

Finished the graphic, so I can finally make the announcement!

I'll be hosting a Heavensturn Art Party at my place on Saturday, the 20th of January at 8pm EST (7 CST / 5 PST)

Come dressed in your favorite Far Eastern or Dragon-inspired outfit! We have an onsen outside and in the basement for soaking in, so bathing suits are fine as well!

You can come to draw or just hang out, but any level of artist is welcome and encouraged to attend! Take it as time to practice on willing victims! :3c

I hope to see you there! Happy Heavensturn, and Happy New Year!

#Heavensturn Art Party #ffxiv art party #I hope the date is fine for everyone! #It's enough past the holidays where everyone can rest a bit! #And Saturdays seem like good days for most folks #That said #I hope everyone has a good New Year! #<3

[robotbirdhead]

the fact that we're getting the corporation rim version of Murderbot and that everyone is kinda bummed about it is a pretty ringing endorsement for the anticapitalist themes of the books

#the murderbot diaries #murderbot #im personally withholding judgment until we see some clips or a trailer or something #that said #very happy for martha wells #i hope she makes one murderbillion dollars and can keep writing murderbot for ages

[supernerddaniel]

OK, I know I've made the joke sometimes that Luke gives off, like, "cool new stepdad" energy, but the art you unlock for maxing out your bond with him in World Tour (and the conversation leading up to it) is NOT helping his case in that regard, haha

Like, "Yeah, come on over, we'll play some video games and eat some pizza and ice cream, it'll be rad!"

OK, Luke, whatever you say, doesn't make it any less weird that you're fucking my mom, bro

#street fighter #street fighter 6 #sf6 #world tour #luke #luke sullivan #drawing #art #video games #that said #shoutout to the darkstalkers reference here #also um new darkstalkers when capcom??? #darkstalkers #morrigan #morrigan aensland #demitri #demitri maximoff

[littlemisstrashcan]

tired of people unfounding my families

(i ate it up everytime the bittersweet ending is everything i fear)

#found family #guardians of the galaxy #six of crows #httyd fanart #how to become a dragon #that's a webtoon btw not httyd #that said #httyd #how to train your dragon #the avengers #honkai impact #im TIRED OF THIS #high cloud quintet

[androgynouspenguinexpert]

bout time i posted the og bc in the immortal words of yahtzee croshaw shit's about to get FUCKY!

also i like him :)

#redacted asmr #redacted audio #art #illustration #redacted vincent #redactedverse #this man is my roman empire #i would absolutely be upset if i were in his position like you cant just Not Tell someone that theyve been yoinked into a peudo family #thats real keen on murder and fraud and other things #i feel like theres no right answer here though #like i completely 100% understand where william is coming from on this one #porter is right #william is keeping vincent in the dark because he genuinely cares about him #and acknowledges (correctly) that turning him took away literally all of his agency basically forever #he's trying to do good by a stranger who he made a life altering decision on the behalf of #and it was a selfish one #yes he saved vincent's life but only by forcing him to throw away his old one #and in keeping vincent entirely out of shady clan business william is doing the best he can to give vincent a normalish afterlife #THAT SAID #you coulda told him #like yeah 20 year olds aren't known for making good rational judgements but this all could've been avoided #if william just sat him down and went look. this is what we're up to. i believe it's a necessary evil. you don't have to participate #but this is something you're tied to now based on a snap decision i made #i acknowledge that that was wrong and hope you can forgive me someday but if not that's okay #would it suck? PROBABLY! but vincent finding out through porter of all people is definitely worse #not to mention him feeling like he's the ONLY person who doesn't know and looked like an idiot defending the house at the summit #aw man i wrote another essay again

[schrondingers-dumbass]

Yet again Abria with the steel chair on the most fitting yet crushing character move. Many emotions this evening on the world beyond numbers podcast.

,

#What do you mean we are now finding out #we were only just fucking around the other day- who authorized this?? #Props to suvi for having the crushing feelings of giving and giving but never receiving #many cursed consequences this evening #worlds beyond number #the wizard the witch and the wild one #suvi my beloved #That said #yet another instance of eursulon captivating me body and soul #damn can that spirit make such compelling human narratives

[hazelcephalopod]

I love that the Wildmother has been talking to and clearly trying to reach out to Orym. But no. Orym knows grief. He knows death. He’s drawn to the Matron, he bumps into the Wildmother, he decides to walk up to the Matron. The Wildmother speaks softly and comfortingly. The Matron shows him sorrowful nightmares, wrapped around harsh truth.

#critical role #cr spoilers #critical role spoilers #That said #wtf was that vision?

[nanomooselet]

Episode Zero: High Noon At July

So anyway, Vash is right about everything.

Yes, I'm exaggerating. There are plenty of caveats to Vash's ideals. There are hard ethical questions surrounding humanity's relationship with the Plants, and those will have to be answered or neither species is going to survive much longer. But nothing's going to get better if all they have is Vash, busy getting shot at, and Knives, busy getting his brother shot at. What Vash has been struggling with from the opening minutes of the show is that he's been assuming all the blame for what Knives does, taking punishment and abuse from him and from humans without a word of protest, simply because he believes it's what he deserves.

And it's not. It never has been. He's never been to blame. It is, unequivocally, something Knives did to him.

From those same opening minutes, Knives has been the twin with agency. Never mind that he caused the fleet to crash and instigated the entire plot, or that he was also the one who actively sought to discover Rem's secret; I mentioned before that he offered Rem a choice before escaping in the shuttle. But what I noticed the second time was something equally crucial. Nai is the one piloting the shuttle. Vash is just a passenger, carried along as Nai steered, subjected to his decisions and forced to bear the consequences for his actions. And Nai didn't exactly... ask to be one piloting. He just sits in the chair and takes the stick, not a word said. He assumes agency for himself and for Vash both without room for discussion.

When Nai offered Rem a choice, and she refused, he resolved to give no one else he loved a choice, ever again. But Vash never got a choice, not with Nai. And that became a pattern.

When Nai told Vash: you're my accomplice, you're the one who gave me the program access code (I'm all but one hundred percent certain he means that when Vash accessed Tesla's records, Nai remembered the code he entered), Vash started to run. He fled. He couldn't bear the culpability - it's pretty much the instant he began to engage in suicidal ideation. He ceased to exercise his agency because he believed it lead to this unimaginable horror. The die is already cast: he's Nai's accomplice. It's decided.

Or rather, Nai decided.

Did Vash really keep running for a hundred and fifty years? Well, no, not quite - Knives (naturally) called time-out when Vash pointed a gun at his face. Just wait for a short while...a mere century or so. I promise I'll build a world of Plants. Even he, I think, realised slicing off Vash's arm was a bit of a dick move and had to regroup. But a hundred years later the game was back on and Knives's next move was founding his cult, stealing Plants, committing murders and framing Vash, and Vash was just as bereft of agency as before.

Vash the Stampede is a name that humanity gave him, but they gave it to him because of Knives. Note how it fits the naming scheme of the other members of his cult. Zazie the Beast. Elendira the Crimsonnail. Nicholas the Punisher. Livio the Doublefang. Monev the Gale. E.G. the Mine. A stampede is a herd of running animals too scared to think about the damage they cause as they flee for their lives. And that doesn't really apply to Vash, but it describes the twins as a combined force - Vash flees, Knives follows him bringing destruction. Vash is afraid of facing Knives; Knives is afraid of being without Vash. And between them, complete and utter ruin is left in their wake.

So what changed?

I said before that Meryl is the only other character besides Knives with agency, with a couple of exceptions, and I'll say right now that Vash isn't one of them. In this game, Vash's agency - really Vash himself, his power, his soul - is the prize. People want to have Vash. They desire him. And he doesn't think he has a choice but to fulfil those desires in order to make up for his sins, which is why he went to confront Knives in July - despite knowing, deep down, that his brother will not be convinced and he's walking to a hideous fate, perhaps his death. Vash is an Independent, but he doesn't seem to think he has free will. It's been beaten out of him so viciously he attributes all his hard-earned skills to luck and his compassion to some instinctive bodily urge, as though he's a trained animal. Which Knives takes just the most disgustingly cruel jab at - You need to smile, show your charm, and behave like a harmless pet./They only love your charm, your tricks, and the tightness of your leash. Imagine if Rem had ever heard him talk that way to his brother. (I'm curious how the translation worked there.)

Ah, Rem. We see so little of her. We know almost nothing about her, save that she was an imperfect woman who did her best, who loved both her children as hard as she could. Who chose to love them. Who told them that as long as you can make a choice, you can choose a better future.

I think that was a belief she privately struggled to hold, personally. Knowing that by her inaction an innocent child was subjected to a worse fate than death, it would have been hard to imagine there could still be a future for her. I hope that in the end she came to forgive herself, even if only a little, and not just because of the twins. But we'll never know.

And after Rem, Luida. Who told Vash he was a survivor rather than a coward and he deserved to live, and who survived herself because of Vash - the very last time he stood by, frozen, as Knives tried to take away someone he loved. Who, with Brad, showed that humans can change and learn, and that though they still need to rely on Plants they need not consume them. Who began to take real, practical steps towards that chosen future for both, who gave Vash his coat and built him his hand - a protective memory and the part of the body that reaches out to another that his brother cut from him. Because of them he found contact with his own kind, and began to bridge the gap that had always existed between the two species, and the two sides of his own nature.

And finally tiny Meryl. Inexperienced, sheltered, easy to knock down, easy to pick up, unarmed, all alone, and absolutely filled to the brim with rage. Meryl's way of caring for things is by getting righteously, furiously angry about them. I wonder how long it's been since anyone knew and cared enough about Vash to be in the position to get angry on his behalf, over what's been done to him. Knives didn't take the slightest bit of notice of her (except to dismiss her as "another parasite" because he's a bitch like that) until Vash responded to her. She wasn't even supposed to be there - Zazie just thought it would be funny. Zazie is the best.

(I always wonder if the song Vash sings was him trying to answer Meryl's frantic cries for him to wake up. If he somehow how meant to lift her closer or build the path she climbed to reach him. Conrad said he couldn't speak human language anymore. What if that was the only other way?)

These three women all shared faith in Vash and his ideals, and loved him, rather than what he's "supposed" to be or what he could do for them. All helped form him into the man he is now. Each of them had agency and made choices, even hard ones. And so in the end, Vash's victory over Knives's cruelty also belongs to them. Vash awakens because the connection forged by these women allowed him to pull himself free of the pit of corrosive pain Knives plunged him into - breaking chains of guilt his brother had forged to keep him by his side forever. When the question is asked, "Whose side are you on?" the answer is neither the side of humans nor Plants, despite what Knives thinks. It's the side of Vash choosing his own future, inspired and supported by the women who loved him, rather than being trapped and frozen in the past. Inevitably there will be mistakes, losses - even horrors.

And it'll still beat any future this asshole chooses for him.

#trigun stampede #tristampparty #trigun meta #meta: tristampparty episodes #mother is the name of god #i also have feelings about vash's angel arm #but it is past midnight #that said #it absolutely sends me that knives ACTUALLY GOT his lame cowboy planet #and he doesn't appreciate it in the SLIGHTEST #like. what more could you even WANT from the universe when you have a whole-ass cowboy planet #yes i AM sleep deprived how did you know

[whatbigotspost]

One of the all time worst replies to any version of “I’m not having kids” is “aw, you don’t like kids??”

NO I said I’m not having them…I actually DO like kids and I’d prefer to keep it that way 😂

#I’m literally obsessed w/ love for my niblings and I’d do anything for them #THAT SAID #being in charge of kids 24/7 would burn me out in ways that would hurt us all and I know it #child free #childfree