#(which is definitely part of it)

[noodles-and-tea]

Just some more thoughts on that jayvik dbh au

[counting-stars-gayly]

I’m actually LOVING how Rick Riordan, and the other writers of the show, took his initial concept of a Percabeth rivalry fueled by that of their parents and kind of turned it on its head?

Now, instead of Annabeth being wary of Percy because he’s a son of Poseidon, he’s wary of her because she made a callous impression on him. They get off to a rocky start even before finding out who Percy’s father is, and when they finally do, Annabeth doesn’t care. Instead of them fighting because of who their parents are, they’re fighting over their own opposed worldviews.

Then, instead of them arguing over which of the gods is cooler and who was right in the story of Medusa, they realize that, just like Medusa, Annabeth is a victim of her mother and that, unlike Medusa, she is a far kinder and stronger person, unwilling to repeat the cycle of hurt. They realize that, like his father, Percy often acts without considering potential consequences and that, unlike his father, he is a far kinder and stronger person, willing to step up for someone he wronged and whom he cares about.

Instead of Percy and Annabeth’s rivalry being focused on that of their parents, it’s focused on who they are, themselves. But the path to friendship is still the same: a realization that they have each other’s backs, no matter what, because they’re not their parents after all.

[theoldkyokodied]

The Allegiance of the Ascended Vampire and the New God of Magic

[satoblue]

i like the thought of you never having been a sunglasses person before meeting satoru. not for fashion or for function.

before, the sun would be blazing overhead — and you’d still squint stubbornly rather than slide on the extra one you carry for him in your purse.

you used to say they made you feel like you were trying too hard to be cool, like you were pretending to be someone you weren’t (satoru definitely picks up on the way you inadvertently call him cool).

then, as fate would have it — satoru comes blazing into your life like the big fireball that is the sun itself. both blinding and impossible to ignore.

and of course, he wears sunglasses out like they are glued permanently to his skin.

but somewhere along the way, you find yourself wearing them too. you don’t know how — it simply just happened. maybe after a late night in bed when he wordlessly places his own shades on you just to see how they’d look and you’re too tired to fight it.

maybe then is when you finally start making use of the spare. and not just occasionally. always. and only bc it helped block out the annoying light. no other reason (you like to tell yourself).

and satoru notices.

he pretends he doesn’t at first. just grins with that usual cocky tilt of his head. but he definitely notices. especially when you pull an old pair of his from your purse mid walk and slip them on in sync with him.

the first time it happens, he pauses mid stride. blinks. then stares at you for a second longer than necessary before smirking.

“is that my influence i see?” satoru murmurs, failing to hide the swelling in his chest that is a mixture of pride and absolute joy — bc he already knows the answer.

“careful, sweets.” he points at your face with a serious tone like he’s warning you. “next thing you know, you’ll be walking around telling everyone you’re the strongest too.”

you roll your eyes behind the lenses, adjusting your purse over your shoulder. but the way you fidget with the strap betrays your nerves. you wonder if he thinks you look good in them. but you don’t ask.

instead you say, “oh, please. you wish.”

later that night when you’re asleep, he traces the arm of your sunglasses where they sit on the nightstand beside his. lined up perfectly — like they belong together.

and he smiles.

not his big, theatrical grin. but the smaller, softer one. the one meant only for you. bc you wear sunglasses now. and without ever saying it, you’re telling him he’s changing you in ways that stay.

and you’re letting him.

[welcometogrouchland]

I have a LOTT of sketches I could post rn but these 2 are recent and I'm fond of them <3 Steph costume ideas and Tim/Damian cringe bickering inspired by Batman: Brave and the Bold #18!

[chubbychiquita]

if you're a fat/queer/chronically ill/neurodivergent person with insurance in a metro area, pls pls pls look at the reviews for the doctors offices available to you and find one that is explicitly body positive/body neutral/HAES friendly. health care when they're not trying to attribute every issue to your weight or anxiety is literally life changing

[stars-obsession-pit]

Bruce Wayne had at one point been working on a device to guarantee Gotham would always have a protector. In the event of his death, the machine could grow a clone of him and implant a copy of his memories into them, creating a new Batman to succeed him.

He eventually gave up on the idea before it ever came to full fruition.

But even in its incomplete state, he had created just enough for Clockwork to hijack it.

Phantom’s soul was in a perilous state, unlikely to survive without being attached to a new body. And luckily, the device provided an ideal way to facilitate that. Plus, the Waynes would undoubtedly support his recovery too. Well, at least once they got over the panic at his existence they would.

[snarkspawn]

O displaced soul, where does your path now lead?

[sesamestreep]

it’s wild to me that like every modern adaptation of Sherlock Holmes (and by modern I mean “made recently” not “set in modern times”) is like Hell Bent on coming up with a Reason™️ that Watson stays with Holmes and trots around with him on adventures all the time despite the inconvenience and the danger and all, and so it’s like “oh, Watson’s a gambling addict, he loves uncertainty and mystery” or “oh, Watson’s an adrenaline junkie, he gets off on being constantly in danger from criminals” or even like “Watson’s atoning for sins of the past of BEING IN THE WAR by solving crimes with Holmes now” or WHATEVER. And it’s like, girl, maybe he’s just in love! Did you think of that?? Maybe he’s got a crush and it’s making him do stupid things. Maybe he’s just got bad taste and his type is guys who don’t know how to refold newspapers properly but can identify different types of cigar ash by sight, smell, and taste. And wrote a monograph on the subject. Maybe he’s down bad is all. I mean, Keep is simple, stupid!!!

[crow-caller]

One of the biggest cultural shifts I've somehow never seen anyone else point out, to the degree i feel like I'm going insane, is the meaning of kinning changing

I saw a poll here where everyone agreed kinning meant really really liking and relating to a character and all the tags and comments agreed. The other option of "believing you are/identifying as the character" was met with disbelief by some as 'get help if you think that'

............when and how did this definition change so radically, because when I was a teen a decade ago, kinning only meant "i am this character". Otherkin still means "i am a wolf", right??

We used to have wars over kin drama! Insane discourse over doubles and kin ethics! The notion it meant "i really like vriska" would be alien in 2013!!! What happened!

[lazycranberrydoodles]

english translation book 5 baby we are in the ‘people assuming kid form hua cheng is xie lian’s son’ era 🔥🔥🔥 / follow for more hualian silliness

[pollyanna-nana]

One of the most tragic and compelling aspects of Dunmeshi, to me, is that we’ll probably never know (unless Kui tells us lol) how Delgal actually felt about Thistle. I’ve seen people say that he genuinely cared for him as a brother and his journey to the surface was to save him from his madness as much as it was his people. I’ve seen people say that he saw Thistle as nothing more than a fancy accessory or tool that ended up going astray. Others I’ve seen (and personally agree with) say that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. But honestly, I think any one of these interpretations has the potential to be correct… and that’s just heartbreaking.

After all, Delgal is dead. Like, dead-dead. The very first chapter of the manga starts with his spirit leaving this mortal coil, taking that answer with him. And…

How he talks about Thistle here… it’s interesting. He does not ask for him to be talked down, or captured or imprisoned, but instead “defeated”. Which Mithrun interprets as asking for his death… which is reasonable, because that’s likely how the vast majority of adventurers interpreted his words, too. Obviously as he was crumbling to dust he probably didn’t have the capacity to be particularly verbose or explain the complex backstory to how the kingdom ended up this way, but the effect is the same no matter how he may have felt with it. He asked for Thistle to be killed.

But… even in situations where he wasn’t under any such time limit to explain what was going on, he still seemed not to. Most glaringly:

Yaad seemingly has no idea that it was Delgal’s fault that Thistle sought the demon’s power. Obviously he couldn’t talk to him about it because Thistle was, uh, a little out there by that point, but why didn’t Delgal explain? Was he embarrassed? Mournful? Couldn’t find the words?

Delgal was scared of dying. He wanted prosperity at any cost, and how could Thistle possibly refuse? Did he even realize that what he was the one who pushed his own brother— One who basically helped raise him despite being a child himself, and in many ways is still a child— down this path? Or was it like watching an overzealous employee misinterpret directions?

The way Yaad describes things here makes it sound like Thistle simply dug too deep in his studies and fell into madness, but we know that’s not true. Delgal didn’t “suggest” he learn magic, he wanted a mage who could help himself and his people defy death, which he admits to Thistle openly:

So, why? Why not tell his grandson, at least, the truth of the matter? Did he worry it might make the remaining residents more likely to upset Thistle, and therefore suffer the consequences? Did he just not care? For what it’s worth though, Yaad does suspect the truth from Delgal’s behavior.

He “always blamed himself” for his descent into the dark arts. This is just Yaad’s observation, and that’s without knowing that it was quite literally Delgal’s fault Thistle went down this path. So, why? Why was it all kept a secret?

Of course, this made things ripe for the winged lion to manipulate to its advantage. Clearly despite knowing he’d pushed him into using it, Delgal still thought the lion was a force of good that was misused by Thistle as a result of his madness. His face in that last panel is particularly haunting. He looks terrible, gaunt and pale with overgrown hair and missing teeth. Had he gone mad, with grief and sorrow, as well?

Could he no longer see Thistle the way he did when they were younger? No one can ask him, because he died long before the story even began.

To go back to the original question, well, how did Delgal see Thistle? None of the previous points make a definitive answer any clearer, and I think that’s just brilliant. And so, so tragic.

[e-b-reads]

OK this is an excuse for me to be a little pretentious/pedantic, but I figured others might also want the opportunity to be a little pretentious/pedantic, so I'm making a poll out of it!

My pretension: I like reading (duh!), and I'm OK with a little inaccuracy for the sake of artistry. I mean, there are definitely authors who never bother to google basic terminology in a field, or try to write convincing history (or fantasy) without actually knowing much history...but if an author I otherwise like gets a little detail wrong about some specialist thing, I'm not likely to even notice. Except! If the thing is about boats/sailing. Examples below, but first, the poll:

I'm sure there's some technical mistakes (especially related to boats I'm less used to, like tall ships) that still slip by me. But I've had a couple times recently (different books/authors) where I was reading and enjoying myself and was suddenly twitched out of the story by an inaccuracy. One book where someone was asked to secure the boom after a tack (on a nice 45-ft modern sloop) which already doesn't make a ton of sense, and then she moved to a strange place in the boat to apparently do this. Another where the author twice mixed up jibing and tacking in dialogue (on the lines of "Don't sail to close to the wind or you'll jibe!" At least once the speaker was supposed to be an expert sailor).

Anyway, I still enjoyed the books overall, but I noticed both times I literally had to stop reading a think for a second, like wait, was I imagining it wrong? No, it's the author's fault! So now I'm telling you all about it.

[serpentface]

Armored war utosai and driver in a parade ~300 years before present, during the late 2nd Imperial Burri period.

The use of armor for cavalry utosai occurred fairly late in their ultimately brief (on the scale of a couple centuries) stint as mounts. The animals had natural armoring in the form of thick osteoderm covered skin along their back and sides, which was difficult to inflict injuries upon and sufficed for a long time against foes unfamiliar with/terrified by these animals. The skin on their faces and neck, however, was extremely sensitive. If heavily targeted, the pain could drive the utosai into a panic and turn them into gigantic liabilities. The implementation of this neck/face lamellar countered this weakness and partly restored the utosai's image of near-invulnerability, but came at its own costs.

Even this partial armoring was ridiculously expensive (for mounts whose basic upkeep was already ridiculously expensive) and did little to counter growing fears that the shock and awe usage of utosai for heavy cavalry was more trouble than it was worth. Utosai had previously been driven by use of leg pressure and spurs on their sensitive neck, which was very efficient at commanding the animals while keeping the driver's hands free (often to perform archery). With the neck covered in armor, new driving methods had to be implemented. This was a trial and error process, with the use of reins seen here coming up as the most adequate substitute for leg commands (at the cost of the driver being able to go hands-free). It still was nowhere as intuitive to the animals, and no better solution was developed before the use of utosai cavalry died out due to being absurdly costly to maintain, taking a long time to breed and mature (and being heavily inbred and unhealthy due to their tiny founder population), and the discovery of surefire methods to panic them (setting mid-large animals on fire and driving them, screaming, in a utosai's general direction turned out to have a near 100% success rate). The utosai population itself died out in the aftermath, and they are now completely extinct.

Driving a utosai was considered a lowly position compared to fighting Atop a utosai (same went for chariot drivers) and was generally occupied by members of the sub-citizen caste that developed in the 2nd imperial period. Once utosai armor was implemented, drivers completely ceased to participate in fighting and their only additional function was reduced to bearing their unit's standards, though they were usually armored in actual combat and carried heavy daggers that could be driven through the utosai's spine in case of 'uh oh we're trampling our own troops' type emergencies (the neck armor put a wrinkle in this whole procedure too- there is an opening behind the back of the head but it wasn't easy to target in the heat of the moment).

The small population of Utosai brought to Imperial Bur roamed semi-freely and usually had to be recaptured as calves and hand reared before use. This was also the job of their drivers, who did the bulk of the taming, training, and maintenance for their mounts. Utosai were Fairly unaggressive for large non-domesticated herbivores and accommodated astonishingly well to handling and training, but this was still dangerous work that routinely claimed the lives of their caretakers.

---

The guy shown here is a feasible depiction of the historical poet Ünzhig ([ynʐig]) when he was in his early 30s. He had a very complicated life, starting out as a Hsem princeling taken to Titenegal as a war captive along with his mother when he was just a toddler. He wound up lacking use as a hostage but was spared, semi-adopted by a senior military officer who had grown attached to him, put to work as a stableboy but given the education of a nobleman, and eventually ended up as a full-fledged utosai trainer and driver. He was active during the fall of the eastern overseas half of the empire, though he himself never traveled across the sea and was mostly dispatched along the state's northwestern flank.

Ünzhig, having fallen out with his adoptive semi-father and growing fearful after nearly being killed in a (dangerously close to successful) peasant revolt, eventually deserted and fled to Hsemdan in hopes of reclaiming his birthright. He was immediately met with failure in this respect (few believed him and his blood father's line was no longer in power anyway), but found work as a scribe and eventually made a name for himself as a poet in the Hsem courts. On top of his formal work, he spent his twilight years extensively chronicling his life and the history he bore witness to. Most of his actual writings are lost three centuries later, but some transcriptions are still around and preserve detailed and accurate information on the now-extinct utosai. A great love for these animals is evident in this body of work, which provides a rare down-to-earth look at creatures that are otherwise mostly remembered as godlike and monstrous.

His most well known poem was written in old age, describing the memory of the utosai he trained and rode and her first and only calf (recounting her fierce defensiveness and gentle contact calls, and expressing melancholy at his own childlessness). It was a hit in the Hsemdan court and started being reproduced in song form by the time of his death. Transcriptions of the original poem are hard to find but many oral transmissions survive (though have been heavily changed by the passage of time) in the form of lullabies.

(Sketch layer of what's going on under the armor)

[fairsweetlonging]

it's long been a headcanon of mine that shen yuan either has ADHD or is at least on the attention-deficit spectrum, also because i love projecting onto fictional characters;

he shows an intense, obsessive focus on specific topics that interest him, like web novels, and PIDW in particular (remembering things about beasts, wife-plots and characters in great detail)

he's impulsive, jumping in front of luo binghe, blurting out things he doesn't mean to, making decisions on a whim, not considering or not realizing the impact his actions have on himself or others (like him self-detonating and then being surprised people didn't handle that well, or how he handles situations with luo binghe post-abyss).

he seemingly lacks an overall view of social expectations (though this one is more understandable given that he's transmigrated), often saying things that "shock" other characters or having his intentions be misunderstood because of the word choice and his obliviousness regarding intimacy.

he has trouble keeping track of his belongings, like losing his fans, forgetting he has binghe's jade pendant

he is easily distracted and forgetful, like when he means to be more of a "scum villain", yet sees luo binghe and immediately falls into the habit of praising him, forgetting his original intentions. whenever he sees things that interest him, he starts rambling in his head about it, to the point he loses track of time and forgets that others are in the room with him (the moment with six balls where he laughed and then slapped himself). also him forgetting who gongyi xiao was, despite rambling about him earlier.

he seemingly struggles to maintain interest in tasks that require constant attention, especially if they're not stimulating or rewarding to him (whenever it's plot-related or a beast he's the first one there), describing himself as "lazy" despite doing plenty of work and engaging in many activities.

he seems to have difficulty planning and struggling to meet deadlines, which was especially obvious about the Endless Abyss quest, which he had plenty of time to prepare for, yet forgot about.

especially the last one made me point and say "adhd", because seriously, that important of a deadline and my man just forgot while he was painting and reading. also him misplacing his fans and being able to ramble for hours about his favorite beasts.

[rochenn]

Gender and Etiquette

This confrontation between Luthen and Dedra is fascinating for many reasons, and I can't help but zero in on this handshake every time. To me, it holds deep gendered coding.

At least in the West, offering your hand palm-down in greeting comes straight out of (historical) women's social script. It's a very feminine gesture in the eye of the observer. As for Dedra taking Luthen's hand palm-up and holding it - it's the "man's part" of this interaction, and what follows in men's social script would be a feigned kiss to the woman's knuckles. This is what that hand configuration, downturned palm on upturned palm, is for.

Obviously, a hand kiss is not what's happening here. No illusions about that. It all just looks like the lead-up to one. But isn't it so INTERESTING that Luthen is the one performing the traditionally feminine part of the script while Dedra is performing the masculine one without missing a beat? In this sexist Imperial society, to boot? It implies that there is some sort of social script not just for the interaction of women and men, but for the interaction of gender on a spectrum.

Dedra isn't masc, but she reacts without a hitch to a feminine gesture by Luthen. And we've seen her shake hands with other people before - all regular handshakes where the thumb faces up instead of the palm. A "gender neutral" handshake, if you will. I might be reading too much into this, but it's giving me a taste of the gender-related nuance I've been wanting to see from Star Wars and I am Thinking about it.

Feel free to add on to this, I'd love to hear if I'm tripping or if other people are also seeing something here 👀

Grimy ass gif of the whole interaction bc I feel like the pictures don't do it full justice. There might also be a class aspect to this whole charade, with Luthen ostensibly being upper crust and Dedra being... not quite that.