ambassadorheli1

[ambassadorheli1]

yanqing & being a child soldier.

So. Yanqing. When we first meet him, he's a sword-obsessed, semi-cocky kid who's got an appetite for victory and a sizeable ego - for good reason. When first encountered, he hasn't tasted real defeat before - there's been only victories in battle. He's been heralded as a sword genius from the moment he picked it up.

There is so much more to his character than simply 'a guy who got his ass handed to him and couldn't take the defeat,' and this is why.

Yanqing is prideful. And he's got a reason to be - he's grown up with his peers always telling him that he's a genius at swords. Growing up, being a swordmaster was not something only that he wanted for himself, but was something that others wanted for him, too. It's true that swords are his passion, but due to his inherent talent, the expectations set for Yanqing have always been high.

What happens when you've got high expectations from others, and even higher expectations from yourself?

Expectations are healthy, of course. You can't stay stagnant. And Yanqing loves what he does - I fully believe that wielding the sword is a passion - his first love. However, you can still love something and feel pressured by it.

I just simply can't look at a prodigy and say that they haven't been under stress. Yanqing has put himself under stress - he's set these goals for himself, these lofty dreams that he thinks he'll be able to achieve relatively soon. He's based his entire identity, his entire ego, his self-esteem - all of it, on how well he can wield the sword.

To Yanqing, the sword is an extension of himself. Victory in battle is what determines if he is worthy or not.

You have to understand that Yanqing's life literally revolves around swords, in a way. He doesn't have many friends, he has trouble connecting with his peers due to his talent and how others perceive him. His soul and anchor is his passion for swordplay, and his adeptness at it.

So, his first defeat at the hands of a swordmaster who was much greater at wielding it was like having his soul shattered in half. Meeting Jingliu and Blade and tasting bitter defeat two times in a row would've left him more than simply 'defeated' - it would have left him broken, in a way. Yanqing was so attached to the sword that he let it define him, and therefore, with only one such thing as his anchor to his self-worth, one true, utter defeat was enough to set him into a spiral.

I think even though, in later updates, he's seemingly gotten back on his feet, this spiral, this train of thought in the back of his mind isn't truly gone.

Okay, we've all seen the heliobus scene, and I think in there, Yanqing was genuinely tempted to take its offer. Before, he felt like he could take his time in getting better and improving, but after seeing how powerful jingliu really is, I think he would've been discouraged, but then encouraged to do more. However, it's not a healthy kind of encouragement - it's a desire to be better born of bitterness and anger, dissatisfaction and self-hatred.

Jing Yuan mentions that he needs time to be able to curb his strength and harness it properly. Shortcuts cannot be taken in learning something like the sword, and that is a lesson that he learns. However, I think that scene where Jing Yuan puts faith in Yanqing, and then Yanqing comes back to his senses is genuinely an important one. It shows that Yanqing has a lot of trust in Jing Yuan, but also that one of his greatest insecurities is letting the General down.

Although Yanqing's ego almost entirely relies on how good he is with the sword, he also relies on Jing Yuan's perception of him in order to have self-esteem.

Jing Yuan is Yanqing's father figure. Let's not beat around the bush - Yanqing is like a little bird taking refuge on a lion's back. Jing Yuan is the one consistent adult in his life that gives im guidance and that helps him grow - how wouldn't he see Jing Yuan as his dad? And, as all children do, we seek attention, and praise from our parents - which is a perfectly normal and healthy thing to do.

However, their relationship... isn't that linear. Yanqing may see him as his father, but Jing Yuan is also his mentor - and as a mentor's job, you cannot just praise your apprentices, but you also must train them and criticize them.

Unfortunately, I think the way Yanqing was raised - for the battlefield, seeking praise and validation from Jing Yuan, who could not only see him as a son, but also as a mentee - would've permanently impacted the way that he sees himself, and the way his self-esteem image was created.

What I mean to say is - Yanqing's self-esteem is fragile. All of this is just leading to say that Yanqing doesn't have a stable sense of self, and this was the first time that it was truly broken for him. And that's hard. It's really hard to pick yourself back up after being put down like that, especially because Yanqing thinks that he's failed the one thing that he was supposed to do.

So, we enter another arc. After the Heliobus, we come back to the Xianzhou, and Yanqing and Yunli meet. His ego's still bruised, and her telling him that he's unworthy of the sword was literally one of the worst insults she could have ever done, because, as I've mentioned before, his identity revolves around swords.

Of course, they bicker back and forth, and then, they have a conversation. Yanqing admits that after his defeats, he started to question himself, and he admits that it was so hard to find his confidence again and to continue on.

However, he also states something important - he wields the sword because he loves the feeling of giving it all.

This is incredibly important, because this basically states that Yanqing loves not just to fight, not just to win or to lose - but to really put himself out there. He loves to challenge himself, he loves to get better, and he just loves his swords. He loves what he does, even despite all the expectations.

Yanqing's sword is an extension of himself, and by loving the sword and what he does, I think, he loves himself. This puts into light the idea that when he lost, he hated himself. But he's learned that loss does not mean loss forever - it just means that he had to find a purpose, do some self-reflection, and to try and understand.

So, that's on how Yanqing sees himself with the sword, and how it impacted his self-esteem, his ego, and his self-perception - but there's still something else I have to tackle.

His age. Because that impacts everything I just mentioned.

Haha, did you think I was done? No. No, I'm not. I'll also be doing another post on Yanqing and PTSD. Because I'm a genetic freak, and I'm not normal.

Yanqing, canonically, is a teenager - a young teenager, which is why I choose to portray him from 13-15, so maybe around 14 years old. The thing is - Yanqing is very good at acting much older than he is, which I think is part of the reason why there was so much debate over whether he was an adult or not at first. This just goes to show that he is incredibly good at putting on a mature face. There's no doubt that Jing Yuan has trained him in the realm of politics and has taught him how to handle people much older than he is.

Despite Yanqing's position mainly involving battle, which he is good at, with power comes diplomacy. So, Yanqing had to learn to be diplomatic from a young age due to his increased level of skill.

This leads to a skewed vision or approach to how he should present himself. Jing Yuan even explicitly says that if you treat him like a child, he'll act like an adult - but if you treat him like an adult, he'll act like a child. This is all due to perception.

Yanqing thinks that acting childish is weak, but if someone treats him like an adult - mature, he will gain the feeling that people aren't underestimating him, and will allow himself to act more like hismelf. However, if you were to treat him directly like a child, it would make him defensive and it would raise his emotional walls towards whoever was treating him like so.

Yanqing, generally, just... doesn't really feel like he can act like a kid. He's always been alienated from his peers due to his talent, so he never had any real friendships or connections, which probably fucked him over socially. This just leads to him alienating himself from the idea of being a child - people people are expecting him to not be childish and mature due to his position.

Yanqing sees his age as a barrier. It's preventing Jing Yuan from putting his full faith and trust into Yanqing, and due to how young he is, it can sometimes make him feel like he's more of a burden to the General more than anything else, which isn't good. Yanqing owes Jing Yuan his life, and he knows this, so to let down the man who trained him would be - as mentioned earlier, due to it being a heavy insecurity of his - terrible.

This leads to an almost sort of bitterness when it comes to the topic of his age, so that's why he probably reacts in a way that makes him seem like a 'true adult' when he's treated like the age that he is.

Yanqing views his age as a hindrance. Nothing more, nothing less.

I think I covered basically everything that I wanted to in terms of Yanqing's self-perception and self-esteem, as well as how his age and his connection with swords create that development between him. Next post will be about PTSD. Thanks for reading! :)

[ambassadorheli1]

Mobei Jun mistakenly thinking that Shang Qinghua has been exposed to a sex pollen, and doing his best to temper his emotions. While they have been happily married for years without sex (Qinghua has no idea) and the pollen that (he thinks) Qinghua ingested is in no way lethal, Mobei Jun can’t help feeling a thrill at the thought that his husband might want to expand the bounds of how they show their devotion to one another (which mainly consists of Mobei Jun beating Qinghua three times a day in way that has the entire demon realm swooning, while Qinghua cowers in fear). He would never pressure his beloved though, and so resolves to simply spend the day lounging on Qinghua's bed to quietly signal his availability, watching the way that Qinghua's face reddens and his breathing grows labored from the pollen, Mobei Jun occasionally adjusting the way his robes drape over his chest, and indulging in fantasies of what would happen if he gave into the urge to lick the sweat off the back of Qinghua's neck.

Meanwhile, Airplane is panicking as he struggles to suppress a perfectly normal allergy attack, half convinced that today's the day Mobei Jun is finally going to murder him with the way he's glaring.

[ambassadorheli1]

Crazy how many people want characters in fiction to speak and act like they’ve had 20 hours of intensive therapy. Could NOT be me I want these bitches fucked up insane

[ambassadorheli1]

The cannon reason why Link doesn’t speak

[ambassadorheli1]

fable and dusk himejoshi book club

[ambassadorheli1]

something you can’t quite remember….

[ambassadorheli1]

would you ever make a page from your botw manga just to see what it would look like? im hella curious 👀

oh yknow. i definitely havent thought about this at all

[ambassadorheli1]

TOTK: Failure

[ambassadorheli1]

Now that you're gone

[ambassadorheli1]

Dear Big Brother

kind of a sequel to this comic

[ambassadorheli1]

young love, old wounds

[ambassadorheli1]

knowledge long forgotten

got really into reading item descriptions on this playthrough. anyway did you know the silent princess is one of the only raw materials with a cooking effect to not explicitly list that effect in its description

[ambassadorheli1]

GO MY BOTW-TOTK ISAT AU

closeups n stuff under cut

bonnie -> tulin

siffrin -> impa (NOTE: siffrin is purah aged, because rather than testing on herself, odile tested the age regressor on siffrin)

mirabelle -> link

stressed housemaiden -> yunobo

dog housemaiden -> sidon

claude -> robbie

nille -> teba

stylish one -> riju

odile -> purah (same note as siffrin, but in reverse: odile is impa's age (approximately), didnt use the age regressor on herself)

isabeau -> zelda

euphrasie -> king rhoam

[ambassadorheli1]

yeah man i've died before

[ambassadorheli1]

(click for higher quality!) draconified link concept ive been chipping away at this past week ..... here's my funny little compendium concept for him:

"A heroic spirit has taken the form of this bestial dragon. Unlike it's kin, this creature exhibits an extremely aggressive disposition. It appears highly territorial, and will relentlessly chase down those who disturb its skywide patrols - of which it seems to be endlessly searching for either a long-time vassal or foe. Unfortunately, it seems the spirit within has long since forgotten exactly who it was looking for…"

[ambassadorheli1]

i think rainbow dash should have a cloud tail

[ambassadorheli1]

the elusive samurai has no right to be as absurdist and funny as it is. Truly a story about a bunch of adults trying to find a kid they don’t know the appearance of and having said kid play tricks on them under the guise of childhood games to level up video game style.

A guy who may be god and is aware of PC culture gatekeeps, gaslights and girlbosses said kid along with a bunch of other children he collected and sets them loose on unsuspecting adults to murder them with the final destination being that somehow they’re gonna overthrown Japan.