#FOR REAL this time

[pearsandrust]

thanks to everyone who contributed ideas to this post omg. i convinced myself i wasn't gonna open tumblr today but i peeked at the reblogs and i had to reply :')

in honour of me deciding to appease my 2021 self by going to a genshin event this week, here's how i'd rewrite sumeru if i were given the chance. note that this is solely based off of the in-game themes and lore that i still remember, and i quit pretty early on. so. warning for canonical inaccuracy.

also, this is a traveller-less rewrite. i love aether/lumine, but i think their reputation as the "hero" often ends up taking away other characters' autonomy. the MC being capable of practically everything means that we don't get as many moments where other characters realize they have to step up. anyway, that's enough yapping. thoughts under the cut <3

PLOT

the general flow of the plot would be kept the same, but here's a list of points i want to include:

the sages don't imprison nahida by any physical means. instead, they take advantage of the fact that she's the first/central akasha terminal. the sheer volume of requests the sages send to the akasha causes her to be a) constantly overstimulated, therefore locking herself in the sanctuary of surasthana, and b) unable to use her mind for herself, which takes away her biggest source of power

another reason nahida is unable to communicate with the people is because the akasha is actively diminishing the population's cognitive capacities

the first person to realize that critical thinking is declining among the citizens of sumeru is, of course, alhaitham. he notices that a lot of people have stopped using figures of speech. instead, everyone seems to speak the same way, which he finds unsettling.

at the same time, the sages have enlisted kaveh to redesign the akademiya's buildings for "efficiency". that's right. they're making kaveh do minimalism. the horror ! the intrigue ! what did they do to get him to agree (i will cover this later when i talk about his character)

(this one is a WIP) as the manifestation of the withering in people, i'd want eleazar to have more notable psychological effects. distortion of memories/dreams would be my first instinct. since the withering is also linked to the remains of greater lord rukkhadevata, i think collei would be the first person to see irminsul and hear the words "world, forget me" (instead of the traveller).

i'd keep the samsara arc, but instead of having nilou host the dream, the host changes during every "reboot". the beep everyone hears at the end of the day isn't just the dream restarting, but also a confirmation that a new host has been found. of course, every person's dream would still have features unique to them. because i love kaveh, i'd like to write a dream hosted by him at some point -- with his dream's defining factor being that his parents are still in sumeru city.

the sages are still trying to make scaramouche a god btw.

i want the tale of king deshret's civilization and the introduction of forbidden knowledge to be basically lost history. it would be so interesting to have the characters wonder if the desert's mysterious machines hide the secret to defeating scara, only to eventually find out that the sages are just repeating deshret's sins. it would also be interesting to see people wish for deshret to return without knowing exactly why he fell in the first place

speaking of the desert, i'd like the conflict between the akademiya and the desert people to focus at least a little on the destruction of history in the pursuit of "progress". the sages are willing to overwrite the past whenever it's convenient for them, so there's no way they can be entrusted with the knowledge/culture of the desert. but then again, i'm actually not too sure why hoyo wrote the desert/forest conflict the way they did in the sumeru main story, so i could be missing something crucial here. let me know!

tying nahida's imprisonment to the akasha system does also mean that the cast needs to find a way to dismantle it before freeing her, which is something i haven't quite figured out yet (sigh). i was thinking of doing something along the lines of how alhaitham broke the hivemind in his story quest.

you know that theory that's like "nilou is the reincarnation of the goddess of flowers and [other character] is the reincarnation of deshret"? while i don't fully agree with it, i'd like to introduce some mechanism by which the main cast can draw power from the memories of those gods (perhaps using nahida as a conduit). memory is such a prominent motif in sumeru, and it would make such a perfect antithesis to how collei's eleazar was once suppressed using a dead god's remains, resulting in her having uncontrollable powers. useful powers through honouring the past vs terrible power through exploiting it. do you see the vision

CHARACTERS

okay, now for points relating to individual characters!

nahida

i don't have much to change about her personality, but here are a few points i'd like to add to her:

metaphors metaphors metaphors! i know she already speaks pretty metaphorically, but i don't want to just play it off for humour ("haha nahida why are you talking like that"). i want her to get weird and creative with them!! use symbols that people wouldn't expect !!

a core problem with nahida attempting to take control of sumeru again is that if the akasha has made everyone unable to learn for themselves, she can't really spread knowledge to the people. i think this could make for an incredibly interesting character arc. nahida initially tries to make herself seem more like an archon of wisdom and plays into the akademiya's stereotypes of wisdom/intelligence, using very specific language and explaining things literally to people (as the sages/traditional academics might do). in the end, she realizes that her personal style of teaching -- using fairy tales and stories as metaphors -- is far more effective

note: while the official lore doesn't confirm that rukkhadevata is the "ruler of yesterday and tomorrow morning" mentioned in one of the sumeru books, it's such a powerful idea that i'd like to make it the basis of her identity in this rewrite. it encapsulates the importance of memory -- how the past informs the future. this both connects back to irminsul and explains nahida's biggest weakness. she does not have nearly as much lived experience, and thus, she has less memories to draw power from.

kaveh

kaveh's my favourite genshin character, which is why this whole thing is a little biased towards him. but honestly, it's hoyo's fault for stating he's canonically the closest to nahida's ideal of wisdom and then not putting him in the story.

of all the sumeru characters, i feel like he'd be the most opposed to the akademiya defunding the arts and focusing solely on progress. in such an environment, i imagine that he'd feel like he never has enough time to process everything, which also plays into the concept of "debt". he feels like he owes the universe everything he has failed to preserve.

i'd like kaveh's mother to send him the occasional letter. in each one, she seems to get a little further from who she used to be, giving him the feeling that the past is slipping away. i want him to wish that he could stop or rewind time, and for this wish to eventually bring him to the orchard of pairidaeza (the time-stop place underneath the desert). i'm not entirely sure why -- i just think it would fit.

in a similar vein: the reason he agrees to help the akademiya redesign their buildings in a minimalist style is not because they offer him money, but because they threaten to destroy all the notebooks and papers his mother contributed to their library. you know, the last evidence that she was ever an architect.

alhaitham

hoo boy. alhaitham. while i love his current character, the sumeru story didn't really challenge him in any meaningful way. he kind of just. handled it all. and that's ... kind of disappointing? i'm not saying we should overstimulate him for sport or anything, but i'd try something like this:

have alhaitham be a parallel to scaramouche. NOW BEFORE YOU GUYS YELL AT ME. HEAR ME OUT

both alhaitham and scaramouche are heavily influenced by their respective pasts, but neither of them really acknowledge it. in scaramouche's case, he's actively trying to repress his memories. alhaitham is a bit different -- we know his grandmother had a big influence on him, but i cannot remember a single time that he has brought her up. i don't think he's actively trying to forget her, but i presume he usually just focuses on other things. at the beginning of the story, i'd characterize alhaitham as someone who usually neglects past issues in favour of current/future ones. he would think this is an efficient, more peaceful way to live. as the story progresses, he gradually realizes that neglecting the past is not a strength, but rather something that makes you more susceptible to repeating your previous mistakes.

he doesn't need to become excessively sappy or nostalgic to accomplish this. it would mostly happen through small, fleeting moments. for example, the sages get rid of some of the books in the house of daena because they're "old and redundant", and alhaitham realizes this makes him uncomfortable.

meanwhile, scaramouche becomes wrongly convinced that you can only be successful if you rid yourself of your past. even though both of them start with similar ideologies, they end up as vastly different characters. which would be !! so interesting !!

collei

COLLEI NATION !!! ILOVEHERILOVEHERILOVEHER.

collei is a perfect example of the importance of memory, if only because of how deeply she values amber. and the fact that she had to learn how to read after arriving in sumeru makes her a perfect addition to the story's exploration of language. also, the fact that her favourite stories are fairy tale picture books? which exactly aligns with how nahida prefers to tell stories? collei is the true main character of sumeru and none of you can tell me otherwise. i am dying on this hill

HEAR ME OUT. since there's no traveller, i want collei to be the one who defeats scaramouche in the end. there are a lot of more powerful characters, but her lore perfectly aligns with scara's. as an example, collei's doll (cuilein-anbar, named after amber) is a great parallel to the doll scaramouche's friend once made for him.

we can tell from collei's ascension voiceline (even if it's a life-or-death situation, i'll never need to rely on their power again) that she wants to develop her own set of skills; that way, she'll never need to call on the power that was sealed within her. this makes her a great character for the scaramouche fight. when the traveller does it, they use the knowledge of everyone in sumeru. similarly, we could see collei willingly learn different skills from different characters throughout the story. that way, it feels natural for her to tap into all of that knowledge during the climax -- just like aether/lumine does. do you see it. do you see the vision

candace

collectively we are sleeping on candace. this includes whoever wrote her character stories. they were also sleeping on candace.

like alhaitham, i'd also like candace to have a bit more of an internal struggle. her character stories don't offer us much ("candace was not depressed" -- ah. okay,,,?), but we do get the hint that she always has to have her guard up. she has to remain calm at all times. she can't really wear the cute trinkets she buys. i feel like there could be a really interesting conflict between her determination to protect everyone and her innate desire to be someone else.

there is a lot that candace can teach the other characters about language, which is a Core Sumeru Motif! the way she speaks in the story is actually really unique, given that people come to her for Divine Guidance TM. this could add to the ongoing idea that objective/academic language is not necessarily the best way to communicate with people.

dehya

not too much to say here -- her character works well as is!

i would lean a little more into the fact that she keeps returning to the desert, no matter what. this could directly conflict with her desire to obtain a position where she can help her loved ones live better lives. she wants them to break free of the restrictive mindset they've developed due to the harsh conditions of the desert. if she remains a mercenary, she may never have that sort of influence, but can she really tolerate working somewhere like the akademiya? this is especially interesting considering alhaitham asks her to join the akademiya himself at some point (IIRC).

i think she could have a really interesting friendship with nilou, though. they are vastly different people and yet they both have an appreciation for beauty. they both also want to live a carefree life. i think it would be so fun to see them bond, and we could have some cool scenes where they teach each other how to fight/dance :)

nilou

speaking of nilou,

i think it would be interesting to dive deeper into why the akademiya is defunding the arts. it could be because of their subjectivity, or because they don't really "advance the current state of knowledge" in sumeru. in any case, it would be fun to have the conflict stem from the sages' desire to intellectualize everything. it would definitely clash with nilou's carefree personality.

out of everyone, nilou would be most affected by the negative side effects of the akasha. it diminishes her creativity, leading her to feel burnt out. i would love to have an arc where nilou feels uninspired, but later realizes it's because her access to instantaneous knowledge has made her stop observing the world around her.

it would be really cool if nilou could see the aranara. for no particular reason tbh. i just think it fits her

unfinished characters: tighnari & cyno & faruzan & layla & sethos

i haven't read the lore for these characters, but if this idea ever comes to fruition, rest assured that they will be added :)

dori

no dori. i am so sorry dori fans but i genuinely do not know what to do with her. please enlighten me

scara

just one thing:

the dendro archon is the avatar of irminsul, which contains all the world's memories. this, in itself, is a form of "eternity". i imagine that's part of why he agreed to try and overtake nahida in the first place. it was another shot at holding onto "eternity".

aaaand that's it! that was such a long post. i'm never posting about genshin again (i say that every time i post about genshin). if anyone read the entire thing i love you.

[percydoodless]

ITS FINALLY TIME

[hiveswap]

[steggymus]

the current male fox lineup (sorry seth)

[ratbreadd]

backgrounds are NOT my thing so forgive me if this looks a little rough whoops

ermm but weird study thing from a few days ago!! think i’m gonna do all the little campsites eventually ::3

[wiseabsol]

The Ithaca Saga is banger after banger, but what makes me sob every time I listen to it is Athena's part in "I Can't Help But Wonder." Like DAMN is her arc amazing, especially in parallel to Odysseus'. And the gentle sadness of his response makes my heart ache.

[fairygothmotherisgay]

DC Social Media AU Part 7

I'm back

[abstractpenny]

What Cole actually saw in the tomb of the FSM

[gin-juice-tonic]

So, for Starters: Book Of Bill Spoilers warning. Another opinion from me below. This new one is about the lost journal pages again, of course.

Originally, I wanted to make a super big crazy essay about all the reasons I think the journal pages in BOB (The Book of Bill’s given name) are fake, and show off my super-cool totally completely sound deductive reasoning techniques in the process.  

Unfortunately, knowing myself I’m not sure I’m actually capable of accomplishing such a feat. You all know how I tend to post things in parts, sometimes out of order, often never finished. However I would like to share something in particular that’s been eating at me that I’ve seen… partially discussed, but only partially. And certainly not the part that I would like to discuss. 

It’s about the rats.

You know, the rats.

I saw these rats being talked about since before I was even able to have a look at the book myself. 

But before I get further into it all, I would like to start off with a joke: 

Why did dead rats, eggnog, a land orca, shrimp colors, It’s a Small World After All, and an Anti-Cipherite Suit cross the road? 

Well, that’s easy. To get to the other side. 

Of the book, that is. 

If you’re anything like me, you probably skipped right to the journal pages upon contact with the book. And if you’re even MORE like me, you were probably left a little confounded by them. Not only did they seem… wrong somehow. But they also felt random. Full of odd choices of subject that didn’t make a lot of sense. Could these pages really have come from journal 3? If so, why do parts of them feel so… completely out of context? 

And this is where the rats come in. As I mentioned before, I saw many people discussing them. In particular, they were noting a connection to this passage from earlier in the book:

Many of the related discussions also felt odd to me. Though I lacked the knowledge to be able to articulate why at the time. UNTIL, I read the book for myself from start to finish. That's when I realized something:  This is not the only time something from earlier in the book connects back to the journal pages. In fact, it happens many, many times throughout the earlier passages. (Here is a small collection of them for your perusal.)

And then it started clicking into place. The reasons the pages felt like they were so abnormally out of context… is because they WERE lacking context!

Now, before you can finish saying “Gin, you’re an idiot.” I would like you to ponder these three questions: 

1) Why, if these pages were taken from Journal 3, should they require context from outside of it to be able to be completely understood?

2) Why is it that this context can be found in what Bill Cipher has been writing in the preceding passages up till now? 

3) If you put food in a mogwai’s mouth at midnight EST but drive it over the CST time zone line back to 11PM before it can swallow, will it still transform into a gremlin? 

Okay, you caught me, that third one is unrelated. But the first two I believe require further thinking. So let’s delve a little further into the idea. Consider this the real third question: 

3) Are we to seriously believe that these, the only pages of J3 still lost to us, just so happen to tie into the new topics from the rest of the Book of Bill over and over like this?  

And since you’ve done so well thinking thus far, I’ll ask a fourth question: 

4) Are you aware of the concepts of Watsonian and Doyalist analysis? 

Assuming you don’t and you won’t google it, I’ll skip to the important part. Watsonian analysis is to analyze a story from within it, as if you yourself were Watson making deductions in a Sherlock Holmes novel.  

Now, from a Watsonian point of view, what happens when we try to answer our earlier questions? Why should it be that the Book of Bill provides so many of these points of reference to the journal pages? 

One possible line of thought could be that Bill wrote the earlier passages of his book *around* the idea of what was contained in the pages, but I think this doesn’t work for a few reasons. For one thing, the purpose of the book is to get the reader to make a deal, not to take a whole novel to set the stage for a 3 day mini Ford adventure. For another, not all of what I described prior is really fit to be called “context”, is it? The rats, the “Small World” cassette, and the Bill-Suit are one thing, but Eggnog? Shrimp colors? Land Orcas? I certainly wouldn’t define them that way. If anything, they’d be better suited to being called “references”. And unlike the more contextual ideas, there’d be no real need for Bill to sneak mere references to the pages into his grand story.  And lastly, there are a great deal of Bill pages that have nothing to do with the content in the journal pages at all.

So what exactly am I trying to say here? 

If we do intend to think of the callbacks outlined above as references, the only logical conclusion within the story is that the journal pages themselves are referencing back to the Book of Bill, not the other way around.

But… how? And why? Something Ford has written in the 80’s shouldn't be able to reference something Bill is writing post-weirdmageddon certainly. 

That’s because “Ford” isn’t referencing it at all!

And as for why… Well, have you ever noticed when you're writing a story on the fly, things you wrote earlier all come crashing back to you as you try to wrap things up? I believe personally that the journal pages are not pages actually written by Ford, but more a strange endcap on Bill’s crazy train of thought! That Bill is the one writing them, and the "references" are just fuel that further the pages creation. Almost as if, to quote someone much more knowledgeable than me on this subject…

(This single paragraph has been inserted a good deal after the original writing of this post.) I would like to clarify, I am not trying to claim the ideas presented in the pages have no basis in reality whatsoever. Ultimately, what I'm saying is I think Bill wrote them, and they should be taken with suspicion instead of as complete fact. "Did this event happen exactly this way?", "Does some of this feel distorted?", "Did this part even happen at all?" I think those are questions worth examining with the events detailed on these pages.

In the end, all I've described above (as well as other aspects of the pages I've not mentioned here) leave me with the impression the pages are not real.

As I stated only a bit earlier, the idea that these pages, the only pages of J3 purported to be lost, should be so connected to the rest of the book is beyond coincidence to me. Not to mention that in order to take these pages as total truth, you must give credence to several other passages of Bill's book as well. And I'm not too keen on having to trust him that much.

To all who have read this far, even to those who may have scoffed at the ideas in here or think I've only written up nonsense. Thank you for reading and considering my thoughts.

I am not saying anyone must agree with me on this. I know some people have found the pages to be important and meaningful to them, and I do not wish to give the impression that I think my view is the end all be all correct one, or that I think lesser of those who believe them to be Ford's own writings. I only want to share my own thoughts on them. And to anyone else who found the pages to feel "off" somehow, possibly validate their feelings too.

[frnkiebby]

now i’m very dead~🎃

[nerdynuala]

Damn it's getting angstier in here, I need to go back to stupid ass art before I accidentally hurt myself with feelings

I already have something cute prepared in my drafts, don't you worry

I just needed him to be openly vulnerable to Rosie and the angst was kinda inspired by the emotions in this fiction by @intel-ramblings

[ohithankyou]

chim calling ravi “ravioli”…….most adorable thing ever and he should do it again

[feral-geges]

Fangs of Fortune Ep.33 (2024)

I once vowed to protect the Wilderness until my death. I, Li Lun, live up to my vow and keep my promise.

[faiell]

favour

for @drarrymicrofic, G, 900 words

Malfoy isn’t expecting anyone. He's hunched over his work with elbows like two knife points stabbed into the desk, one hand threading through his soft downy hair and the other fidgeting on his face, knuckle running back and forth against his bottom lip. The yellow light from his lamp flickers temperamentally, barely able to offer anything other than a glow on Malfoy's cheek. Malfoy squints at the cascade of parchment before him, then pushes his fingers against his eyes. He inhales, slow. Blinks his eyes back open, exhales.

Harry's been standing there a while. "Sorry to interrupt," he says.

Malfoy's mouth parts in surprise. It takes a moment before he registers that Harry is a very real thing, and not some conjured spectre. Then every part of him straightens into place. The papers flutter as he sweeps them back into their folders, snapping the covers shut—away from Harry's prying eyes, presumably.

"What are you doing here?" There's none of the usual bite to it, not when the small hours have got Malfoy whittled down like this. He looks feather-light, blurred to softness in the midnight blues and greys.

Harry approaches the desk and sets down his peace offering. It's Muggle coffee in a nondescript paper cup--Malfoy's favourite order from his favourite café, though he doesn't know it yet.

"My shift just started," he offers, which explains nothing at all. He sees Malfoy beginning to think through it, mouth and brow curving towards each other. "Picked this up for you on the way."

Malfoy’s expression of bafflement is delightfully wide-eyed. All of his usual mechanisms don't seem to be working. Harry keeps expecting a switch to flip, for Malfoy to shore up and retreat into icy waters, but it doesn't come. Instead his pale hands reach for the cup and cradle it, fingers skittering against the paper texture, thumbnail underlining the scrawl of 'Harry' on the side. The steam tickles his chin. With the coffee clutched close to him, Malfoy speaks, voice flaky and uncertain, "I can't accept this."

"Don't be daft," Harry insists. "It's two in the morning, take it."

Malfoy's frown grows deeper as he contemplates this additional fact. "There's nothing open this late."

It's true. Harry's kept that coffee under a stasis charm for twelve hours now. "I got it for Ron, but he's not in today," he amends, and gestures with the cup in his other hand, "Got myself one too."

Malfoy wants the coffee, craves it badly. Harry can see it in the way that he holds the warmth of it towards himself, shoulders drooping as he savours the rich chocolatey aroma. He's about to give into it, has brought the coffee all the way up to his mouth when he stops, eyes trained on Harry, glinting like burnished steel. "You must want something from me."

Harry shrugs, nonchalance teetering on his shoulder. He takes a sip of his own, lets it sit bittersweet on his tongue before swallowing it down. Malfoy's gaze slides from his mouth and catches on his throat, before it scuttles back to his own hands again.

"No, I don’t. You don't have to overthink it, Malfoy. It's just a favour."

The word holds more tension than it should. Harry knows Malfoy hates owing him, and that's why he's gone to all this trouble, cajoled him so carefully. He’s been at it for weeks now, first out of kindness, then out of spite, and now because…—well, because he’s tenacious, probably. The room slips into silence as Malfoy considers, until both of them become invisible and there’s just the coffee on the desk, lit up by weak lamplight. 

Harry’s so hopeful he forgets to breathe. His pulse climbs from his chest up to his head until it’s deafening. He’s sure he’s about to burst when, abruptly, Malfoy gives in with a little jerk of his shoulders, the scarcest of shrugs. He drinks. His lips wrap around the plastic and he tilts it back, slow and delicate, taking the shallowest sip.

Malfoy's eyes widen just a fraction when he recognizes the flavour of it. His tongue works inside his mouth as he rolls the taste around, once, twice, and again, just to be sure. A small, pleased sound comes out then, and before Harry can even register what that means, Malfoy brings the cup to his mouth again and takes three big gulps.

He sighs, eyes closed, contentment chasing away the shadows dragging at his face, and suddenly he’s years younger. There's cream on his upper lip. Harry is transfixed. The flickering lamp grows a bit brighter, buoyed by Malfoy's magic and finally illuminating the workstation properly, bathing his washed-out figure in warm hues.

"Well thanks," Malfoy says, smirking, because that's what he does instead of smiling. A pointed tongue darts out to catch some cream, missing most of it. "You should probably go, Potter. You don't even work on this floor."

[clowniconography]

favorite ghibli movie poll except i left out the most obvious ones that dominate every poll because porco rosso is my favorite and nobody ever includes it. also not all of them are strictly miyazaki movies