reason-with-the-underdog

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Husbands i guess

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the subtle and delicate cuteness of the chickpea

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pride and prejudice

4/100

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haikaveh yaoing

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“Gods do not dream anymore. Dreams belong to human beings.”

slowly getting back into the swing of writing, working on the next update of the kazuha timeloop fic (over a year since last chapter, yikes!)

and i'm always just so struck by this quote, which i found in Hiroshi Araki's paper Reviewing Japanese Dream Culture and Its History: Where Ancient, Medieval and Modern Times Meet

i've fallen out of love with genshin in general, but i still think about my original intentions towards rewriting inazuma's AQ. at its core, i think i return back to that quote. i'm reminded of (probably fake) inazuma AQ leaks where the electro archon was dead & the AQ concerned finding a successor, eventually chosen to be ayaka

the (former) electro archon's shadow lingers over inazuma, regardless of whether interpreted to be makoto or ei. and ultimately, the weight of human dreams (Visions) determines the fate of inazuma as a whole

the inazuma AQ has a lot of good components, and i aim to reassemble them into a more satisfying (to me, at least) whole. let's see where this chapter takes us :)

anyways if you have good kujou sara fic recommendations, send them my way. she's going to be pivotal

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「 mourning flower 」

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doodles of my fav mirrors

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Morningg

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let's dance

~

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Hey everyone, I know it's going to be a busy day for a lot of people, but Google enrolled everyone over 18 into their AI program automatically.

If you have a google account, first go to gemini.google.com/extensions and turn everything off.

Then you need to go to myactivity.google.com/product/gemini and turn off all Gemini activity tracking. You do have to do them in that order to make sure it works.

Honestly, I'm not sure how long this will last, but this should keep Gemini off your projects for a bit.

I saw this over on bluesky and figured it would be good to spread on here. It only takes a few minutes to do.

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on alhaitham's character growth

in general, i think the bulk of alhaitham's character growth happened pre-canon, after the fall-out,

while kaveh seems to have spent that time more in avoidance (and also just being very overworked in general), so we see kaveh's development much more in real time (the difference from kaveh's introduction as being "troubled by reality" to his more recent birthday letters gives me life!!)

by contrast, alhaitham's growth over the same time period in canon is more subtle:

his attitude towards friendships and social interactions changed from the AQ

he learned how better to avoid arguments when kaveh's genuinely upset (distraction or deferral, ie "we can talk about this later" during the interdarshan event/PoP after round 2)

while he's still a bit of a troll in social situations, it's also clear he's doing it for amusement & isn't driving away people with his attitude as much (nilou trying very hard to make pleasant small talk with him as fellow co-judges during PoP was so delightfully awkward)

sometimes i think about how there were around 2 years of when alhaitham attended the akademiya without kaveh being around

(...not that it mattered, given they had their fall out by this point & kaveh was avoiding alhaitham)

we already know that he had rejected the akademiya years earlier as a child, and that kaveh thought he had been purposefully alienated by others. given his character stories, it doesn't seem like he got close to anyone else, but two years is a very long time to be in school "alone"

how much of alhaitham's earlier feelings about social interaction come from that time period?

not all solitude is lonely, but certainly the feeling of having found a close companion is hard to forget

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haikavetham & childhood finances, pt 2

(analysis of alhaitham's & kaveh's attitudes towards money, with a focus on kaveh since more of his character story is about financial struggles)

part 1 here

to recap, i'm outlining aspects of kaveh's current financial mindset that make sense if he knowingly experienced poverty as an adolescent

4. his belief in mutual aid

Kaveh’s expresses a belief in mutual aid (& shows it by giving money to unemployed shipwrights + referring them for a job)

basically mutual aid acts like an unofficial social safety net for poor folks. Pay it forward, be generous within your community, etc... do a favor for your neighbor and they might help you back, that kinda thing

It’s a mixed bag research-wise on if poor people are more generous than rich people

but anecdotally, i've seen many ppl saying that their experiences w poverty made them not care if they were getting scammed by a homeless person, the risk of not helping was much worse.

like yea that’s kaveh

5. inability to ask for help

Ok i admit this one’s pretty complicated and definitely wrapped up in kaveh’s own guilt complex

however an inability to ask for/accept help and gifts is definitely a character trait that many people who experienced poverty as children can relate to

6. couponing/discount-shopping but not buying in bulk

This one’s more a sidenote than “evidence”

Kaveh’s famous locally for being able to catch when high-quality wine gets discounted by 90%

buying in bulk has higher up-front costs even if the per-unit cost is cheaper, so it’s more of a middle-class habit (rich people don’t necessarily care, and poor ppl can’t afford it)

so onto the counter(?) evidence!

His teapot dialogue at first glance seems to have him talking about his bankruptcy and how it shocked him as an otherwise financially privileged and idealistic/naive student. But i dont think it necessarily contradicts my headcanon here

His teapot dialogue talks about abject poverty in relation to his bankruptcy period (living at lambad’s)

This makes sense to me bc homelessness is a uniquely harrowing experience& idt he’d consider childhood financial insecurity as “abject poverty” (again they always had a house)

+ he naturally has the desire to minimise any problems his mother had as a single parent

And being poor as a kid doesn’t mean he couldn’t still have strong ideals/pride as a student (and still does have as an adult)

Ok so that’s my case for why i think kaveh experienced being “cash poor” as a kid

Why am i so invested in this hc?

Beyond it explaining a lot of his financial habits/helplessness, it also makes for fun comparisons to Alhaitham!

Alhaitham is very much set up as a middle-class saver and spender. I think there’s a case to be made for him lacking insight into the struggles of the poor in a "hidden blindspots" middle-class kinda way

(the whole “free healthcare” comment vs dori’s backstory about her sister dying from being unable to afford healthcare, kaveh believing in the reality of kids in sumeru starving, etc)

here he gave decent advice (their skills are obsolete, they need to transition to more relevant industries/skills)

but at the same time… he’s asking them to leave their families behind for possibly months while they’re at sea, to invest a lot of up-front money for training, etc

ppl who grow up privileged (middle class/rich bg) tend to have those "blind spots"

good well-intentioned advice, but maybe not understanding that it may not be practical

Real life examples might be like “young and unemployed? Join the army” or “stop buying lattes/avocado toast”

(ok the latter advice may not be well-intentioned, but a lot of the rich folks saying “stop buying X” do seem to genuinely believe their words... but the problem is that if your debt is massive or buying a house is forever away, saving a teensy bit over time isn't going to fix things really)

if kaveh is set up as having experienced living as low-income, it makes sense why he’s more sympathetic to the craftsmans’ concerns and gives them what they’re actually asking for

(money for short-term needs & gigs to gain more mots asap w/o having to completely switch industries)

Anyways that’s my very long-winded soapbox. Hope this gave some food for thought on the implications the potential years of grieving faranak not working or being underemployed have for kaveh's childhood!

As a final parting shot, here’s dori in a nutshell

dori's interesting, she's more like kaveh's foil than alhaitham is (alhaitham being his mirror and sharing similar values/goals, just having different ideas and approaches to getting there)

in conclusion: there's a reason why so many thought kaveh's bg was underprivileged pre-lore drop. so many of his behaviors & ideals align with that sort of upbringing

reposted with permission, ty river!

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Warmth🌤️

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haikavetham & childhood finances, pt 1

(analysis of alhaitham's & kaveh's attitudes towards money, with a focus on kaveh since more of his character story is about financial struggles)

Quick note: speaking from US-based pov but imo many things about poverty can be generalised & ofc these are all my hc’s! happy to debate and listen to different viewpoints on this subject~

Lets start with alhaitham!

alhaitham comes from a family with multiple famous scholars (both parents + grandmother), making them at least “middle class”

He also inherited multiple properties + a book collection

He seems to have pretty healthy financial habits:

stable job,

buys household “staples” like alcohol in bulk as a likely cost-saving measure,

enough “financial freedom” to buy ugly furniture and pay Kaveh’s alcohol tab, etc)

so that's alhaitham: he was born comfortable and continues to lead that comfortable life through careful decisions and choices.

now let's move onto kaveh

my overall argument for the arc of kaveh’s financial status is:

Early childhood: middle-class, stable finances

Tween-early teens: asset-rich but not much income, possibly living off dwindling savings, unstable finances

Teen-late 20s: rising wealth (rising young professional, able to save money), stable

Late 20s: bankruptcy & homelessness

Late 20s (immediately post AQ): broke (no assets, high income, high debt), unstable but has alhaitham’s support

none of these should be controversial beyond pt 2, so i'll focus on explaining that stage:

Kaveh’s bg started out similarly (both scholar parents, faranak was a famous architect)

but i argue that his family experienced financial instability and poverty after his father’s apparent abandonment + eventual death

First off, kaveh’s dad left to help aaru village for what seems like at least a few months, during which time it would have been just Faranak & a young kaveh at home

He never even communicated with them, judging by that half-finished letter,

and was considered “missing”

Faranak was a trooper during that time of apparent familial abandonment

bc she only seems to have broken down after his dad died

She couldn’t draw or work on designs, so she stopped working as an architect for some time

quite possible they lived off savings + neighbors’ generosity for at least a little while

the timeline’s unclear for the time in between kaveh’s father’s death, when faranak’s grief subsided enough for her to start working again, and when he entered akademiya...

I think a reasonable reading of this timeline is:

Kaveh’s father dies, faranak quits working

Kaveh enrolls into kshahrewar at “schooling age”

Faranak visits fontaine, gets architecture job offer, & moves abroad (kaveh is “all grown up now & could live independently”)

The sticking points here are how much time passes between points 1 & 2 vs 2 & 3. Which honestly comes down to what “schooling age” means imo

I interpret his chara story as implying faranak’s fontaine travel to be soon after he started attending school (when he has less time with his mother)

It sounds like she only visited once before getting a job offer & wanting to move abroad permanently (aka 2&3 are close together)

Given that at pt 3, kaveh can argue successfully that he’s “grown up” he’s at least a teenager (13+, teyvat is rather loose on how much responsibility teenagers can hold, look at diluc being cavalry captain at 14),

this suggests kaveh entered school as a late tween/young teen

Which pushes the gap between pt 1 & 2!

Because at pt 1 kaveh is referred to as “young” and “child” (also he wanted to play with the diadem as a toy), i think his age at pt 1 (pre-father's death) is around 7-9

So that’s potentially 4-6 or so years between pt 1&2 (kaveh entering school)

We don’t know if faranak gets a job before pt 3...

Lets say that’s worst case scenario. still that's pretty extreme & they must've had significant savings given that kaveh credits her with “raising [him] as a single mother”

and kaveh kept his childhood house until he was an adult

their finances were ok enough to not need to sell the house to stay afloat (altho not being homeless doesn't mean that they didn't struggle in other ways)

There’s room here for a variety of hc’s on how well off faranak & kaveh were during those pre-school years

So here’s where i explain why i strongly believe he experienced financial instability verging on privation (what might be described as “cash poor”, where you have assets but not much money to spend on bills and needs)

I fully admit that this is just headcanon without much canon evidence but in my defense,

kaveh being poor as a kid (& aware of it) explains some of his financial behaviors:

1. His lack of saving / him being very fast to spend his mora

Despite him being a big name architect, he complains that he “can’t seem to hold on to it” “it just disappears..."

many kids who grow up in poverty and later earn more either:

become big savers (never want to go back to being poor again) OR

are huge spenders

think about it... when you owe some million mora to dori.... that 10k mora given to charity is barely a fraction of your monthly payment 🤷.... Might as well do the nice thing and donate it (even if its a scam, more on this attitude later!)

2. Making impulsive financial decisions

kaveh decided to sell every single asset he owned to rebuild the Palace in a single night, which has HUGE repercussions on his entire life

(later on he says he underestimated how hard bankruptcy/homelessness would be, but still. no regrets)

Growing up poor and then dealing with economic uncertainty (ie, the palace’s destruction) is associated with increased impulsivity

3. Not looking for better financial terms

Dori’s interest rates are “somewhat reasonable”

....according to Kaveh, a super unreliable narrator who's quite nice to Dori despite the way she treats him

AND kaveh is already factoring in that he’s a genius famous architect prepared to overwork himself

Personal loan interest rates vary a lot depending on your credit, but it seems like 20% is average, 30% for bad credit

when kaveh says “rates that high” he’s referring to fakhr charging rates higher than 30%

while we dont have a true upper limit, given that kaveh uses 30% as a standard, it could be that dori’s interest rate is around that much, which is rather high considering kaveh didn’t actually have bad credit when he got the palace loan from her.

he already had several years of financial prosperity as a successful architect and had built up “savings” along with his property in terms of assets...

But this is dori so its believable, and kaveh in general doesn’t really seem to think he can get better from her (or in general)

And that type of helplessness when it comes to getting better treatment from financial institutions is common to people who grew up in poverty

Middle class folks might know that they can call the bank to have an overdraft fee reversed, but poor folks often don’t have that option (and even after not being “poor” anymore, they won’t know that they can call and might get the charge taken off)

Another example of kaveh not seeming to think he can protest grotesquely unfair terms at all

(he might have been able to contest the contract, etc... the legal system isnt that well defined in teyvat but still, he gave up with barely a fight instead of exploring his options)

And yes, ik it’s bc he’s more focused on the good the library will do for the children of aaru village...

but i’m trying to paint a larger picture here about behaviors that suggest a history of being financial insecure as a kid

part 2 link here

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Intimidating your roommate gone wrong

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why must "bad at math" kaveh be such persistent fanon

y'all realise he's an engineer too? and that architecture involves a ton of math and physics to make sure the buildings actually work in real space?

people really be out here seeing that he cares about aesthetics and values art and think that means that he hates math and thinks its for losers 😭

(folks, kaveh is that loser. he does so much math for his job, which he loves)

kaveh successfully runs his own independent architecture studio, aka a whole business with expenses, material costs, tax burdens, liabilities, insurance, certifications, the whole works, to manage all by himself.

we see him literally calculate interest rates in his head during his hangout...

(side note: kaveh is the opposite of the "the risks i took were calculated. but boy am i bad at math" meme. the whole point of kaveh's vision story is that he did the math very carefully for what rebuilding the palace of alcazarzaray would cost him. he knew it would set him back financially for years. he chose to do so anyways, knowing full well the consequences. it sucks to live with, but he'll do it again every time)