#and everyone's profit

[askbloatedbellyblog]

I absolutely loved your headcanon for zhongli! If possible can you make one for Alhaitham?

First off, I'm just going to put this trailer here because I actually think this is a good primer on Alhaitham in general and I just think it's really cool. It shows a lot more casual side of all the characters there.

I will preface this in that, I'm behind and only just finished the Nahida Archon quest and this is before I've played his solo quest, so somethings could change or be outdated. I'm just going off of the information that I have.

In a lot of ways, Alhaitham has a lot more potential in the burp category. He's incredibly intelligent, short tempered, and full of sass. Others may think he has a lack of emotion but I don't think that's the case really. He's blunt and straightforward and would rather be left alone or relax so he can read or think. I laugh that his least favorite food is soup because it's hard to eat it and read at the same time.

But Alhaitham is sarcastic often or at the very least sardonic and can even be petty when it comes to his roommate Kaveh or others. He's often the smartest person in the room and while he may not look like he's having fun, he definitely enjoys some jokes or a plan going well. Even if he doesn't always express it. He's mostly a no nonsense, cut to the chase kind of guy.

So how does all of this affect burps? Well in a lot of ways. First off, despite having a background in linguistics, he is well read in all manners of science and more. Not only that, but Alhaitham is a thinker, easily able to access the situation and take the appropriate course of action. Not only would Alhaitham know a lot about the digestive system, but he would know about anatomy, acoustics, and construction. So if there was an occasion where he needed or wanted to burp, he would have wonderful control.

Alhaitham would be able to make them sound however he wanted to, be it to suppress them if he was in the appropriate setting or to suddenly surprise everyone with one that would echo through the halls of the Akademiya. If he knew you were into burps, then heaven help you because he would show he's the best belcher around and tease you relentlessly. Or if someone else was burping, then whoops, he'd let one fly louder than that. All eyes would turn to him and he'd just respond with "Is there a problem?" Seeing his abs and his knowledge, I expect that he'd be able to burp on command and even be able to control his gas well enough that he could say whole phrases as a burp if he saw fit.

But Alhaitham can be an absolute brat when he wants to be. He definitely doesn't like to be told no or above playing tricks on others. If he's told he needs to have manners and thought the request was rude, you better believe your night is going to be full of burps that are rude and crass and interrupt your dinner. Or burping and blaming it on someone else, especially with his control might make it seem like someone else did it. You can also better believe if Kaveh complained about his belches, he's letting it loose all damn day to spite him. For fun. He's definitely one to pull a belch that would wake the dead in their house (potentially doing it by sneaking up behind Kaveh and letting it rip) with Kaveh scolding him like "The NERVE. Where are your manners!? How would you feel if I told everyone that the Scribe of Sumeru was so crass and vulgar as to burp so monstrously as to knock photos off the wall?" Then Alhaitham would come up close, burp in his face and say "Nobody would ever believe you," before leaving with Kaveh getting huffy.

Believe it or not, I think because of his voracious reading that Alhaitham has quite a bit of knowledge when it comes to lewd acts and knows how to wield things as emotional weapons. Kama Sutra the scholarly book lol. So he would definitely know how to flirt and entice someone with belches or know when to let one rip after a big meal and patting his stretched abs. He'd know at least on paper about kinks and would appropriately know how to make someone melt, even if it's just for his own amusement (with probably full denial afterward when confronted). Alhaitham is also not a bad actor or above roleplay when required when he wants to.

The other thing to mention that we see from the trailer is that he's not afraid to drink either. I think Alhaitham doesn't like to party much, preferring smaller gatherings, and doesn't let his guard down. But when it's something full of friends, then I think he's liable to eat too much and get drunk. He probably doesn't get drunk often, but when he does, all of what I've said goes out the window. I think he's mostly a sleepy drunk, falling asleep when he feels comfortable. Stuffed with food and drink, he might fall asleep right at the table or in his chair. I do think in this case, he's more likely to have a severe case of the hiccups, but mostly he'll let out small burps, not knowing what he's doing or rubbing his belly and trying to get them out. he may remember he's in good company and try to cover his mouth to suppress the gas, which only makes them reverberate in his chest and sound even deeper. It's possible he may do even more irresponsible things in this rare state like participate more in a burping contest with less inhibitions and control but it's hard to say.

The big difference is his bigger burps are low and airy, usually deep and loud with a lot of force but dry unless he wanted to be wet or after a meal. His drunken state or overly stuffed state is when he has small short burps that are higher pitched but wet and from true intestinal distress. But you better have some evidence of this happening because Alhaitham will deny that he was ever in a kind of state, and potentially use his connections to make sure any evidence you have are promptly destroyed.

[chloesimaginationthings]

FNAF Mikes and Vanessas talk about money struggles,,

[sun-lit-roses]

Tom Paris' Brilliant Plan

[tippenfunkaport]

That viral post that's going around about how people who write "book quality" mlm fic are too "normal" to publish and have real jobs so only "weird" people publish their "shitty" fanfic is so completely out of touch with reality and I am giving a massive side eye to everyone reblogging it.

Not only is it completely, easily verifiably untrue (you cannot enter any professional writing space without tripping over a dozen grizzled scifi writers who got their start by filing off the serial numbers and publishing their Star Trek fanfic even going back decades ago??? it's a whole thing?? plus how can you look at the mlm category on Amazon right now and say with a straight face that people aren't publishing shitty Spirk and Stucky fanfic??? Oh, honey...) it's also the perfect example of this kind of sneering elitism that true artists would never sully themselves by seeking profit, they do it only for the purity of the thing that always somehow leads back to, "no one should be paid to make art, actually."

The only reason you're seeing more published fanfic right now has nothing to do with the idealistic purity of your hypothetical government employee written smut of the past vs the debased scribbles of those awful straights of today and everything to do with the fact that a) self-publishing has created a voracious readership that wants a ton of content so it's become a viable, flexible income stream for many, especially disabled people b) anyone can publish now with self-publishing tools so there are less gatekeepers and c) lockdown got a lot of people into fandom and therefore writing who never tried it before.

And if you really think there's no "shitty" published mlm and no "book-quality" m/f writing out there that started as fanfic, then you are clearly not a reader so why are you even talking about this?

[angelofsmalldeath-codeine]

Good Saturday, y’all.

Topic of today’s rant: PEOPLE PRINTING AND SELLING FANFIC & GENERAL FANDOM ETIQUETTE

Profiting from fanfic will ruin it for everyone.

I want all of you who gift us your stories to be safe from lawsuits and beware that your content might be stolen.

Not to be on a soapbox and preaching to the choir but here are.

There are many authors pulling their work off AO3 because people acting on bad faith are printing and binding fics to sell on etsy thus infringing copyright laws. Fanfic has always been a grey area and we are allowed to exist in this grey area because we are not profiting from it. The minute money is exchanged, every party involved is breaking the law.

Why am I complaining about this yet again? Because we might be deprived from enjoying fanfic with the freedom we currently have because the fanfic authors will fear getting sued. If third parties are stealing our work and selling it, publishers and studios won’t care to know who sold it. It is your handle (thus IP address) on the sold fanfic. Because, get this, they are doing downloads straight from ao3 with your usernames.

Manacled is being pulled from ao3 because the author will publish it as a book. People are putting the book at risk by selling printed versions of it on Etsy.

I believe many of us who fall on the 20 years of reading fanfic side rather than on the 20 year olds reading fanfic will remember the Anne Rice days. These are not fully over because her son is carrying on the legacy of suing everyone who writes fanfic of her work. And if I may say, she didn’t invent vampires and should’ve taken many seats. I digress.

I am not sure of the levels of awareness within this community and to what extent it can affect all of us. TikTok is a massive contributor to this problem (as it is to many other problems. Again, I digress) since booktok and the binding folks discovered ao3.

You might think, I only post on tumblr so my content is safe. Well, they are finding their way here too. They cringe because tumblr is for old people but they still make their way here with their bad manners and pillaging behaviour.

I want all of you who gift your stories to be safe, lawsuit free, not lose your content and not be afraid of sharing.

I wish I had a definitive solution to this problem but I can only think of small actions:

report the etsy accounts selling fanfic/fanfic commissions,

report the TikTok accounts selling binding for fanfic work,

go back to the days of putting disclaimers on your notes that you don’t own the characters and you are not profiting from the story.

Tagging some authors* here for visibility so you can cascade to more people. Absolutely no pressure tag.

@theywhowriteandknowthings @tightjeansjavi @diversemediums @goodwithcheese @nerdieforpedro @fhatbhabie @undercoverpena @thelightsandtheroses @ezrasbirdie @notjustjavierpena @javierpena-inatacvest @freshlyrage @5oh5 @wardenparker @endlessthxxghts @creedslove @sp00kymulderr @secretelephanttattoo @gnpwdrnwhiskey @whatsnewalycat @pedrostylez @thetriumphantpanda @toointojoelmiller @dancingtotuyo @agentjackdaniels @ladamedusoif @lotrefcp @wildemaven @musings-of-a-rose @justagalwhowrites @morallyinept @pedropascalsx @criticallyacclaimedstranger @pennyserenade @kteague @astoryisaloveaffair @moralesispunk @linzels-blog @metalnecklace

*I can remove the tag if you are not comfortable with being associated with this post.

[fisheito]

(3) remaining

[alicenpai]

believing is your magic! i made buttons for one of my favourite manga rn! ✨ in my store! 🖋

[too-many-blorbos]

Figuring out Witcher lore is so hard. You ask a question and there will be three different contradictory answers spread over the book series, and you never know which one is actually the truth because Geralt is a freaking LIAR and cannot be trusted to give exposition.

[treasureplcnet]

name your tav after francesca

????

profit

[kanansdume]

I've recently been watching these very interesting Star Wars video essays on YouTube (yeah I know, a rare breed) and it brings up these comments Lucas has made about how he views Star Wars as almost like a silent film in terms of how important the visuals are to him in comparison to the dialogue. But this essay also points out how important Lucas finds all of the "rhyming" moments in his trilogies and the way he utilizes them to remind you of something else for emotional or thematic reasons. And there's so many of them, both in visuals and in dialogue, and it's interesting to consider how important this is to him, the repetition for a purpose as well as the storytelling through visuals above everything else and then to look at Star Wars since the Prequels came out and realize how little has really been able to match up to those ideals since then.

The ONLY thing that's come out since the Prequels that I think really hits these two things the same way is, in fact, Andor. One of the things I noticed about the way people discussed Andor as it was airing in a way I haven't really seen for any of the other shows or films was the visual SYMBOLOGY. So many times I saw people noticing the Imperial cog everywhere, from the aerial shot of Narkina 5 as the prisoners escape to the architecture of Mon Mothma's house. There were people picking up on the use of items in Luthen's shop that are familiar from other things to give this idea that Luthen is from another time, he's attempting to preserve this world he lost, that if you're not looking closely enough you won't notice what he's really saying or doing with this shop. The color choices for the different locations and people got analyzed because the people involved spoke about how they intentionally utilized color to SEND A MESSAGE about the characters and the world. We know that the people who made the costumes and sets really worked hard to treat Star Wars almost like a period drama and study the history of the franchise as if it were a real place so that the things they came up with felt like they belonged in this world everyone knows so well even if it's completely new. And of course there were all of the myriad references to things from Rogue One, the constant repetition of "climb", the sunset on the beach, etc.

Nearly EVERY SHOT in this show was created with so much intention behind it in order to say something meaningful about the characters, the world, this specific story they're in, and the overall saga of Star Wars itself. It's insane how much greater impact this show was able to achieve through the incredibly careful usage of visual symbols and thematic repetitions, much like Lucas did before them. It feels like they didn't just study the history of the galaxy far far away, but they studied the history of STAR WARS and what Lucas was trying to do and say with this story. They peeled back his onion a bit more and were able to create something that really has that same visual feel even when it's not created for a child audience. It also is experimenting with its narrative style through its structure and through Cassian's character being allowed to be somewhat more reactive than proactive, and while that didn't work for everyone, it does feel like it's following in Lucas's footsteps of experimentation through Star Wars. Push the boundaries of what Star Wars is and can be and what you can say with it.

But this only works because they peeled the onion back enough to TRULY understand all of the messages Lucas was sending with it. They got the heart of Star Wars and despite its lack of space wizards, despite the lack of most major characters in the Saga, this was a show that honestly got the message more than just about anything else Star Wars has put out since the Prequels. The choices between selflessness and selfishness, the themes about how you always HAVE to make a choice even when it feels like you don't have any (sometimes ESPECIALLY when it feels like you don't have any), and how important it is to make sure to choose the path of compassion above everything else. The themes of connection to others, the symbiotic circle and the impact even the smallest person can have on world around them, it's RIGHT THERE and it's CENTRAL to Andor's storyline.

So yes, it experiments a little with narrative structure, but it's possibly the most Star Wars thing to exist Revenge of the Sith because it honestly truly GETS what Star Wars was about, both in its themes and in its filmmaking. A lot of people said that Andor didn't feel like Star Wars to them, usually because of the lack of space wizards and the fact that it's not a story aimed at children. But to me, Andor is EXACTLY what Star Wars is and has always been. They're stretching the boundaries of what Star Wars can be, but it's saying the exact same things Star Wars has always said, it's just saying it slightly differently. This doesn't feel like fanfiction to me, not really. Unlike things like the Mandoverse or the books, Andor isn't just taking some of the toys out of the sandbox and going to play with them somewhere else. Andor is IN that sandbox. It's building a slightly different sandcastle, but it's still within the sandbox, using the same sand that Lucas did.

[jemkha]

I started reading tgcf and he is so funny bro like he reads San Lang’s palm and the first thing he thinks about is how good he would be at choking someone. Like you just met this man apparently and all you can think about are his hands wrapped around someone’s throat?? I can’t tell if he should be in horny jail or just regular jail.

[serialunaliver]

TIL from my mom there's one ceo in biotech that is bankrupting all his competition through fees in lawsuits. like he doesn't just try to acquire the companies or w/e he straight up wants them gone 💀

[conkers-thecosy]

I’m very sad to see Tumblr is jumping on the ai bandwagon honestly, but also I’m not remotely surprised. It’s getting harder and harder to find a bastion of creativity online these days, which is a lot of the reason I don’t share my original work anymore (I used to serialise stories on wattpad and fictionpress, but it’s no longer safe to do that).

I work hard on my writing. I pour so much of myself, my time, and my love into it. It infuriates me that I’m running out of places to share it, unless I want to monetise on platforms like Patreon and such (which I don’t, really).

Fanfiction has been the only creative outlet I have left if I want to share anything, and even that is becoming difficult to reconcile myself with when I know there are people downloading and feeding that work into these programs too, so they can belt out “their own” fics with minimal effort.

I’m not sure what the answer is, but I’ll no longer be sharing snippets or shorts here.

[deathsweetblossoms]

I’m sorry but this is the fandom response to a stag being the wrong color? To Manon not looking how everyone imagined?

Okay now think about what’s going to happen when the next book is announced and it’s not an individuals preferred ship? Or when it’s a character they hate as the MC?

End of the day, this is not normal. Fandom is usually a crazy space but this is unprecedented and you really have to wonder why.

[aimasup]

sure i COULD ramble about how ai is one of the multiple things that check all the marks of humanity's seven deadly sins but would that be extreme

^^^ possibly insufficiently educated

[collieii]

i really like how trimax constantly emphasizes that vash's kindness is a choice, a deliberate and powerful one. it contrasts him so well to knives, who's so disdainful towards humanity as a whole. but vash actually interacts with people and is involved in society. and, by extension, he's been hurt by it so many times. but despite this he chooses love everytime and defends humanity.

meanwhile, knives has never participated, always seems to watch people from a distance. still, he makes claims about the cruelty of humanity, and he uses the idea of human cruelty to justify his actions, despite the fact that he's likely never directly been victim to it the same way vash and the other plants have. not to understate the whole tesla situation, but he assumes that he has the authority to decide the fate of humanity, even though out of every plant he's probably not the one who's in the position to make that sort of decision. (and frankly, it's not a decision any single individual should be making)

so this moment is so poignant, though vash might not be directly talking about himself we know it applies to him, we know how much violence he's suffered. it's written on his skin (his shirtlessness in that scene is very pointed). and we know that knives hasn't really experienced that. and knives is ultimately very self absorbed, he assumes he knows what's best for the plants and what they want, so he uses them to achieve his goals without consulting them. unlike vash, who as we see in the finale, has made efforts to communicate with the plants (communication and connection is such a big thing with vash!) he's familiar with them, and they him, and that's one of the reasons they seem more willing to follow vash's path than knives.

the difference between vash and knives is that vash sees everyone as an individual with inherent value. knives is unwilling to do this and he turns groups into monoliths, refuses to see individuals or nuance.

one of the big ideas of trigun is that conflict occurs because people don't see those around them as individuals. so what really saves the day isn't guns or firepower, but understanding between people. vash helps facilitate this understanding between humans and plants because they're all familiar with him, he's put a lot of effort into getting to know everyone! and with everyone he meets he embodies the idea of love and peace, helps them believe that cooperation is possible.