#Learning Second Life

[fagtainsparklez]

so my younger cousin is flying in to visit from brazil on sunday, and will be staying here for like, the entirety of july. which, don't get me wrong, is super cool! i love the kid! but it felt like a super weird move, considering his parents are the SUPER strict and borderline helicopter parents. even the smallest prank/roughousing with him/his little sister would lead to a strict talking to from his parents, he couldn't ever do anything without their clear permission, that sort of stuff. so letting him fly at alone at 16 to a whole different country and stay there for a whole month seemed WILDLY out of character. additionally, it just felt like a super last-minute trip. it's not like we have any plans to do when he gets here, and the flight itself and stuff only got booked like, midway through june.

and i was talking to my mom about it, kind of trying to nudge some answers out of her, and after a while she went, "yeah, i think they're sending him over here to get away for his boyfriend. see if the distance breaks them off." which, first of all, surprised me because last i checked, they didn't KNOW he had a boyfriend. literally everyone in the family did EXCEPT for them because while that entire side of the family being semi-conservative, his parents (mostly his dad) are EXTREMELY old-fashioned. so clearly something already went wrong. and considering the only reason the rest of the family knew is because one person found out and it spread like wildfire, i have a sneaking suspicion he wasn't the one to tell them, either.

and second of all. they're sending him HERE. to try to make him forget his homosexuality. i couldn't do anything but just wordlessly gesture to the multiple pride flags scattered around my room, then to myself, because really? he has like two other cousins in the us and they're sending him to me? honey i am about to introduce this kid to queer scenes you have never even heard of. he'll be returning home with labels only shrimp can perceive

[justshipsandstuff]

The people want to see Mithrun’s second life (me, I’m people)

Inspired by this post. Mithrun having service animals is just perfect! Can’t believe I never thought of that. He always has a big team caring for him but in Melini, he needs to manage on his own at times when he’s not working and Pattadol is busy

[lemoneste]

Free my mind please

(Also full body of our King Gorgeous Freeman coming later bc I’m struggling fr but he’s in there pls forgive)

[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.”

[aethersflood]

Just don't say I didn't warn you. You're Cid now, and if anything happens to him, we're finished.

[napping-sapphic]

I wanna date someone who joins in to sing along when they catch me singing to myself

[blueskittlesart]

do you have any thoughts on zelda not staying as a dragon? me personally I like it and am very cool with it mostly because I think zelda should get to be happy forever (and because I'm smart enough to know she changed back because of recall and not some ambiguous power of love lmao) but a lot of people seem to dislike that it made the draconification inconsequential?

i think there's like. some valid concerns surrounding inconsequentiality/"curing" the physical problems characters have as a way of giving them a "happy ending" but I think those concerns don't necessarily apply to totk in the way people seem to be applying them, especially irt zelda's draconification and link's arm.

most of the time when the criticism of this "magic cure" trope is applied to media, it's because the trope is used as a cure-all to erase a character's suffering or trauma and make them "normal" again, and often ignores the character development or themes of the story in favor of giving the character a happy ending. I don't think that applies to totk, though, because the "curing" link and zelda experience is both within the realm of possibility given the worldbuilding present in the game (recall could easily have done it, as you mentioned) AND thematically consistent with the rest of the game. One of if not the most important central themes of totk is the idea of failure and second chances. we see a hyrule that has been given a second chance after link's initial failure with the calamity brought it to the brink of destruction. we see characters who were deeply unhappy and entrenched in the shame of their precalamity mistakes like purah and zelda become active, beloved members of their communities. we see the people of lurelin village take back and rebuild their destroyed home. we watch this kingdom and its people make an unprecedented comeback after a century of struggle and ruin.

Similarly, totk's gameplay is LINK's second chance, his comeback from the initial mistake of losing zelda, of specifically being unable to reach her with his injured hand when they fell. The consequences of that--the master sword's corruption, the loss of his arm, and zelda's draconification, are all supposed to SEEM irreversible, because that's how LINK initially sees them. he believes that he doomed both himself and zelda all because of that SINGLE moment in which he wasn't enough, a viewpoint which is obviously left over from the pressure he experienced to perform to an impossible standard of perfection pre-calamity. The story of totk is about deconstructing that belief and proving it wrong. the mistake he made caused harm, but it's never too late to repair things. he can fix the regional phenomena ganondorf causes and rebuild those communities. he can revitalize the master sword. he can GET ZELDA BACK, with his own arm, uninjured and able to reach her this time. no matter how impossible those things may initially seem, no matter the perceived finality of his mistakes and their consequences, there is always hope. there is always a second chance. no one person's single mistake can doom an entire kingdom for eternity. the fate of hyrule was NEVER resting on link's shoulders alone. he was never their final hope. there was always going to be an after. the whole POINT of the draconification and the loss of link's arm is that they AREN'T final. they ARE inconsequential, because they were born of one mistake and ONE MISTAKE IS NOT THE END ALL.

[the-lark-ascending69]

Watching ST1 and surprised by just how much Nancy lies. She lies even when she has no reason to, like when she's hanging out with Steve and his friends and wants to leave, she could have easily said something like "I need to do something" or "I'm tired" but she made up some excuse about her mom. When asking Barb's mom about Barb, she could have easily told her she was worried but she didn't. Girl just lies like it's second nature to her.

[nastiiuu]

Soft kisses

[elvencantation]

i feel like i get literal psychic damage when i think about capitalism too long

[miekasa]

gojo’s son calling him baby because he heard gojo calling you that. precious

HHHH I KNOW :(( Satoru always encourages infant babbling (speaks animatedly and listens with the same enthusiasm even when it’s just incoherent noises), and the kid has taken to incorporating some key phrases into his vocabulary—learning to ask for more when he’s hungry, asking for his dad to keep playing with him, saying “thank you” and “i love you” (Satoru’s personal favorite, because his L’s do sound a little like W’s and he coos every time)—but he’s also picking up on things you and Satoru say to eachother. So, it’s only natural that hearing his parents refer to each other as “baby,” makes the toddler believe that that’s a normal part of speech he can start saying.

The first time it happens, Satoru is coming back from work. He can hear giggling in the kitchen, and when he makes his way there he’s greeted with the sight of his son in his high-chair clapping happily as you scoop some of his dinner onto his plate. Satoru reaches to you first, and arm curling around your waist and his lips pressing to your cheek. You’re about to return the greeting when the words are spoken for you, a high-pitched and excited squeal from your toddler in place of your own voice, “Home, baby!” Satoru pauses and blinks, pointing a finger at his chest and observing as his son only grins wider, making grabby hands for his father. He repeats the phrase again, this time attempting a broken syllable version of the word “welcome,” that makes Satoru’s heart swell three sizes. He’s quick to scoop his son right out of the chair, twirl him around and press kisses to his cheek, “Missed you so much, too, baby!”

First it’s you and Satoru that get called baby as greetings, but soon it extends to other people. When Megumi comes over to babysit the following week, he’s met with excited squeals and raised arms (demands to be picked up), before his cheeks are squished between baby-sized palms and he’s formally greeted with, “Hi, baby!” The look on Megumi’s face is priceless—slightly red and embarrassed, but beyond fond—and he gives the kid a gentle pat on the head before telling him he missed him, too. When it’s time for Megumi to return home for the evening, he gets soft hugs and tired yawns, the words “Bye, Memi. Night, baby,” barely getting out.

Your son is a fast learner, it seems. He quickly realizes he can use the word outside of greetings and goodbyes, and tries it out with his uncle Nanamin the next time he’s over at his house. Nanami is leaning over the counter, watching carefully as the toddler eats his lunch. He reaches over to wipe some smeared tomato away from his mouth as he’s finishing up his food, and that’s when the baby grins at him, looking his uncle (godfather, really, but he doesn’t know that yet), right in the eye before saying, “Thank you, baby.” Kento only smiles softly, continuing to gently wipe down his cheeks, before cradling his head and musing, “You’re more than welcome.”

You and Satoru debate which one of you he’s been picking this up from. You think the obvious choice is your husband—Satoru’s always been the more affectionate one, and pet names comes easy to him. He argues that your son gets it from you, and that he listens more carefully to his mom. Your theory is proven correct when your son is curled up in your lap shortly after dinner time, hands reaching to be held against your chest and rocked to sleep. You think he’s finally dozing off when you hear a small, and tired, “‘Night, my baby,” from your toddler’s lips. You look up to Satoru, who grins, leaning down to kiss the top of his son’s head and then your forehead. He takes after this father, without a doubt; because while every body else was baby, only your boys had the honor of refer to your as their baby.

[puppyeared]

fuck it. plaguesona

[abirddogmoment]

Shaped

[goodsniff-m8]

I am dropping absolutely everything to live and die by this freight truck company motto I saw driving home after arguing with my nephew about skibidi toilet

[non-un-topo]

My Neekeys over the last two-odd years. I was curious to see the changes 🤔

[cute-pluto]

"bdubs was a watcher for an entire week" -martyn

 ...and hated it! and came to a pretty bad epiphany from the experience.

also inspired by this bdubs post by @bellshazes