#because if i refuse to name him it's still abstract and if it's abstract i dont need to face it

[basementbotanist]

awake at 4am taking photos of my boyfriend while he sleeps and making a nightcore playlist to show everyone who follows me on spotify just how well im doing mentally

[cjonesjr]

・﹒・﹒・ why are ya avoiding me? [1]

Summary: You avoided him at all costs because frankly, he was an asshole, doesn't mean he avoided you though. He constantly flirts with you but you just take it as him trying to anger you. It works, but you start to feel like he's being serious, and you have butterflies in your stomach just thinking about him. However, he finally confronts you one day, and you don't know what to do.

Warnings: 15+, suggestive remarks, pet names

Pairing: Jax x GN!reader

Series: Part 2

Notes: I'm not proud of this writing at all, but I'll keep it as it is for you guys!

It was a normal day at the digital circus, as normal as one day can be in this wacky place. The adventure-of-the-day just finished up and you purposely made it so you weren't close to Jax at all, but he kept slithering into your personal space like you haven't set clear boundaries. You hate him, simple as that, regardless of how many times Ragetha claims that you must have a crush on him. The audacity. Jax is a bitch, asshole, shithead, he was terrible to everyone, who could like someone like that?

Well, despite making your status clear on the relationship between you to, he didn't get the memo- no, no, he just didn't care. At every single chance he got, that bitchass rabbit would flirt with you. It frustrated you to no ends because he obviously was just doing it to get a rise out of you and it was working. Every time you got upset, he would smirk and call you "cute", it set you off even more. Even though his body (and everyone else's including your's) was just a fake, digital avatar, you still found him somewhat attractive.

I mean who could deny that he was cute? His voice didn't do him any favors either, but it didn't get rid of the fact that he was a bitch. Every time you blushed at his flirting (which was shamefully more than what you would have liked), he would get closer and tease you about it. Pomni made it abundantly clear that you two acted like a married couple, which is so far from the truth.

So why did it feel different this time? Zooble was talking to you about how they never liked going on Caine's "adventures" because they were stupid, which is fair considering he only did it just to keep us from going insane from boredom and abstracting, they always felt like something that would be in a game for little kids. You tried to pay attention to her, truly you did, but your gaze kept moving over to Jax as he was conversing with Pomni about something you couldn't hear. You shouldn't be staring at him so much, why were you?

"You gonna tell him?" Her question caught you off guard. Tell who what? You knew exactly what she was talking about, however you chose to play dumb even though it won't work.

"Uh what do you mean?" You ask, head turning to her, feigning innocence as she sighed and rubbed her nonexistent temple, grumbling.

"Don't be dumb Galka, you like him even though you say you hate him. Everyone knows, I mean you look at him like you love him" Love him? As if! Far from it, you hate him.

"But I uh...I don't! He really gets my nerves Zooble! He wants to piss me off because its fun! That's why he flirts so muuuuch!" You whine as you look over to the one in question, but this time he stared back at you. Eyes widening, you quickly turn back to Zooble, however, its too late as he's already saunter over here like he owns the place with his shit eating grin loud and clear on his stupid face.

"Well hello there Galka, looking adorable as always" Immediately, you felt your face warm he flirts with you yet again, refusing to look back at him.

"Leave me alone @@#@$, what part of "don't come near me" is hard to understand?"

"Oh I understand fully. I just wanna know oooone thing" His voice pissed you off, especially when he spoke in that tone, one that reeked of smugness. Yet, butterflies erupted in your stomach as he spoke, his presence made you flustered, why? Out of annoyance most likely, only reason.

"Why are ya avoiding me, Cutie?" There it is, the elephant in the room that you refused to address and that stupidly cliche nickname that you loved from him out of his dumbass mouth.

"I'm not avoiding you, I'm just...coincidentally not around when you are" Shamefully looking down at the floor so he didn't see your face, you knew it was a weak excuse but it was better than accepting fate and saying nothing. That didn't deter him in any way as his feet popped into your field of vision. Shit, he is right in front of you. His arm came into view as his hand sat under your chin, soon lifting it up to meet his gaze, smirk ever present.

"Yeah, sure, likely story. Wanna explain why you look like you're having very dirty thoughts right now? Are they about me?" His statement made you scoff and step back, waving your hands to separate from him. The AUDACITY, again why was everyone claiming you liked him? How could you want to be with this person when he said shit like that?

"Oh please! In your dreams #%#@$head" Turning around, you started to make your way to your room, it was a bit of a walk but you didn't mind it. Plans sometimes were never made to be followed through as Jax appeared yet again in front of you.

"C'mon let me walk you to ya room at least" How did he know you were heading there? God he never fails to ask to be punched in the grion.

"I don't think anything here is going to put me in any danger #%@$ Bunny, leave me alone" You spoke firmly, not wanting any slips to happen, voice strong as you walked with a purpose, pushing past him to the one place that Jax isn't present. Well...physically at least. Ok maybe you did have a feeeeww pictures of the rabbit in there, but it was to remind you how much you hate him, yeah that's it. Nobody else knew because you never let anyone enter and since nobody else had a key, it worked out.

"Oh are you sure sweet thing? Don't worry your secret is safe with me of-" He holds your shoulder to stop you before leaning in close your head "all those pictures you have of me"

[liliaeth]

I was just thinking about something that keeps returning in fandom...

People acting as if Scott somehow thinks in black and white, while Stiles to them thinks in shades of grey, which they translate to 'is willing to kill'. And it's just such absolute nonsense.

A big part of the issue here that I've noticed, is something fandom often loves to ignore. Namely that from s1 on, Scott was most often the one being attacked, the one forced to deal with life or death choices. While Stiles, still got to keep seeing death as something abstract, something that happened, but wasn't a decision that he personally had to make. Stiles wasn't forced to resist the urge to kill, he didn't have some force in his head try to make him kill people, and in the early seasons, he was a foil for Scott. Someone who didn't have to face the choice between life and death. For Stiles that responsibility did not come until s3b.

Scott didn't have that privilege. Even as early on as s1, when Peter tried to control him, he was forced to feel what it would be like to maul and possibly kill someone he cared about. It might have been just a dream, but all too soon he had to find out it was a dream based on reality. the reality where Peter tried to make him kill someone. And it took all of Scott's will power to resist doing so.

And then not long after, Peter forced Scott's darkest instincts to come up, making him actually want to kill his friends. A experience that clearly horrified Scott. Because he'd already had that feeling in the first two episodes of the show, where his instincts made him go after Stiles, his best friend.

So when Peter sent Derek after Jackson, for Scott, that wasn't some abstract notion, it was reality.

It wasn't just people trying to kill him, and the fear of that, but the fear that he himself might kill others. Which is why in s5 to him, the worst thing to happen to Liam would be for him to have to live with having killed Scott. Not for Scott's sake, but for Liam's...

For Scott, killing isn't some black and white bullshit, it's real, it's a way of ending any and all other possibilities for a person.

When Scott refuses to kill, it's not because he believes in black and white, or good and evil, it's because he doesn't.

Because he knows that just because someone is an asshole, or does bad things, that doesn't mean they're evil, that doesn't mean they deserve to die. Because he believes in shades of grey. because Killing and Death are not just funny abstract threats, or exaggerations, it's something real, and it's not a decision that should be taken lightly.

Stiles can argue for killing, since he's never expected to be the one to do the deed. He can ask Scott to "consider letting [Derek] die," or to "kill Jackson, problem solved," because he's not the one who has to bear the responsibility.

Now admittedly, it's not that Stiles had no idea of how dark things really were, not after the end of s1. he'd seen dead people, Lydia’s mauled body made it more than real. His willingness to consider killing was more from powerlessness…he didn’t see many options to stop the killers without killing them. After all, in S1 his first instinct was to have Derek arrested and it didn’t work, so he suggests murder and killing, but still never has to actually make the choice to commit the killing himself

Not until s3b, and even then Stiles choice was 'lock himself up' or let the Nogitsune kill. The same choice Scott already had to make in s1.

Fandom likes to pretend Stiles could easily kill the bad guys, when the reality of the show is that when Stiles did accidentally kill, in s5, it devastated him. Because just like Scott, he came to realize that killing is final, killing is destructive, and doing so should never be a first solution.

Both Scott and Stiles had to make these choices, both of them came to the same conclusion, and that's something fandom loves trying to ignore.

[horizon-verizon]

This is about the show, not the book characters.

I've already expressed indifference towards this particular ship both bc Laenyra was right there AND bc I didn't feel it had the longevity I prefer in my ships. Well, something else troubles me for the integrity for this ship. Namely, Mysaria's intentions & Rhaenyra's habits (once again, this is all coming from how the show decided to write these characters!!!).

After reading this Variety article where Emma describes Mysaria and Rhaenyra's relationship thus far, it occurred to me that Rhaenyra has already done something like this before whenever Daemon has seemingly abandoned her:

First it was Criston Cole, who she slept with after Daemon left her at the brothel.

Then it is Harwin--she expressly says that Daemon abandoned her, and she's still talking about the brothel mess. It's also when he abandons her at her wedding after their whole "take me to Dragonstone to be your wife" challenege that could have been semi genuiune. Harwin was obviously a much better and longer lasting relationship than the non-one with Cole, but it is very clear that it began as a necessity, developed from proximity, she would have preferred Daemon, and the wound was still visibly sore when she met up with him again in epi7. There was still yearning on her part. Harwin, though she loved him and cared for him, was absolutely second place here.

Now Daemon has gone off to Harrenhal after the S2 epi2 argument that made no sense and Rhaenyra has no idea what Daemon has planned or if he will at all support her. She's feeling lost, unworthy, that she has lost him, and too helpless. Esp with her council and son all saying she should stay put to avoid losing the war altogether with her own death. Mysaria is also Daemon's ex...she and Mysaria both face struggles from being in a world catered towards and over-empowering men PLUS having been with Daemon. I saw another clip that included Rhaenyra saying she wanted to be a man period AND to be a man like Daemon. After Mysaria relates her story and why she thinks she can stay to support Rhaenyra--respecting her as an equal--Rhaenyra immediately reaches in for the hug, Mysaria seems to caress her neck, she kisses Mysaria. She kisses Mysaria right after she says she wants to be Daemon...is she trying to reach Daemon through Mysaria, or is she trying to "occupy" Daemon's space b/t them to borrow some of that "masculine" power? Both? IDK, I'm not sapphic or wlw.

Point is when she's feeling vulnerable, she seeks out comfort, as is her right...but it's also a pattern that the show somehow always centers around a lack of Daemon. And all her vulnerabilities and fears stem from her insecurities about her being a good ruler in the eyes of those who support her, which was men up until this point. With Mysaria, she sees someone who has faith in her being able to be a good, worthy queen, competence--what Emma has said was:

Mysaria really affects Rhaenyra’s politics. She has a powerful impact on Rhaenyra’s ability to see how a kingdom and its citizens are affected in the case of civil war. That was slightly abstract to Rhaenyra — until Mysaria somehow makes that more concrete. And I think speaks to different forms of power that, again, maybe Rhaenyra, in her eagerness for a masculine conflict-based power, sometimes overlooks. Gaining the will, and the belief of the people — I don’t know how much that was part of her political consciousness prior to Mysaria.

and Mysaria has demonstrated a sort of support she feels show!Daemon not only didn't but refused to provide. What Mysaria tells her to do, has all thus far worked.

Check, check, check, check...

Mysaria has always tried to be on the side of power. First it was Daemon, then it was Otto; though w/Daemon she hoped for it indirectly, with Daemon's protection with use of her body and with Otto she wanted to stand as more of an equal or as close as she can get to that by providing information instead. The last few episodes, however, we saw her decide to leave it all behind and preserve her life and sanity after some green burned down her home and ruined her life. We are meant to judge that Mysaria stays despite her previous plans bc she sees Rhaenyra as worthy enough to serve or bc she feels the most "equal" she has ever felt. But I wonder is what Mysaria if Mysaria still feels like she has to cater towards another "patron" not necessarily for/with sex and she is more concerned with getting an angle than a relationship. But then again, perhaps this is only a real issue for those who prefer longevity in ships? IDK.

Also, show!Rhaenyra is resembling Cersei too much with all this wishing-to-be-a-man shit. No, these were not the same "type" of women! this is what happens when you totally rewrite and dilute an original female character's pride for an audience who you think shouldn't be discomfited by a "bitchy" woman demanding her birthright because she claims it.

[gerardwayissexah]

WIP Wednesday - NejiTen Tattoo Shop AU

I'm procrastinating on something I need to do, so here's a short excerpt from one of my WIPs. Even though I'm open about generally disliking alternate setting AUs, I've written about 17k words of a modern AU fic inspired by some fanart I saw last year. To be human is to be a hypocrite, so sue me. :)

In what I have so far, Tenten is a tattoo artist/ninja weapons and gun enthusiast. Neji comes into her shop one day wanting a tattoo to cover up his mark - which she later finds out is a magical seal placed by his uncle. Intrigued and a little infatuated, Tenten gets sucked further into his orbit...and I'm still working on the rest. Here's a little preview! Let me know what you think, and please share if you enjoyed the excerpt.

“What brings you in today?” “I...you do tattoo cover ups, don’t you?” he said, his mellow voice airy with a slight nasal quality. “Uh, we do. Usually it’s cheaper than getting them removed.” Tenten lifted the corners of her lips in a smile, eyes upturned so she could meet the customer’s shifting gaze. Not even a hello, huh, she thought. Often customers who wanted their regrettable tattoos covered up came in on the heels of a recent breakup, when they found that their commitments in fact had been outlasted by their ink. Sometimes they showed up with a contrite expression on their faces, because she’d been the one who inked them in the first place. Tenten never commented aloud on their regrettable situation or probed, as was expected of good customer service. “That’s also what I’ve heard,” he answered. His jaw locked before he continued speaking. “Removal...also isn’t an option in my case. It’s not that I can’t afford it.”

She hummed, giving a single deliberate nod in acknowledgment. She didn’t want to pry on why it wasn’t an option for one who apparently had no shortage of resources at his disposal. The nagging interest at the back of her mind refused to leave, despite her repeated urgings to herself to forget them. The customer stepped forward to set a hand on her counter, then turned his head all around to survey the shop for anyone else around. Tenten wanted to tell him that he’d chosen a perfect time to visit, at the slowest hours of the week when only she held down the fort and the shop’s managers and other artists were absent. Maybe he’d even done his market research before coming, and intended to keep his request a secret from all whom it wasn’t absolutely necessary to involve.

Tenten pursed her lips and splayed her hands out in a shrug, to signal that there was little she could do at the moment. The first order of business when it came to covering up a tattoo was assessing what she had to work with. Some designs were easier to rehabilitate than others. Names of past lovers could be transformed into a patchwork of flowers, vines and thorns. Abstract geometric patterns if the customer favored designs of a less feminine bent. The sweeping curves and lines of a past lover’s name could be incorporated into the petal of a rose nested in a corona of thorns, or the arc of a Celtic knot. Turning heartbreak into beauty was among Tenten’s favorite challenges as an artist, one of the rare occasions where she had maximal discretion to exercise her creative mind. Other failed tattoos needed a coverup altogether, and the process of inking over entire patches or swaths of skin was often a painful one.

“Alright, that’s great to know,” Tenten said with a hint of sarcasm matching her dry smile. “Before I can do anything, I need to see what I’m working with. Won’t judge, promise. I’ve seen worse, guaranteed.”

The customer’s face turned even whiter, overprinting the few hints of color on his already pale skin. Tenten saw in his pallor the stark white of a fish belly, or a sheet of fresh printer paper. She knit her brows between her eyes while his lips parted, then he swept the tip of his tongue over his chapped bottom lip. Watching his struggle, she wished she could point to a line of other customers and tell him that she didn’t have all day to wait. Unfortunately for Tenten, the empty shop left her nobody else to draw her attention away, and she had hours left in the day before her shift ended. She weighed concocting some bogus task – restocking the back of house, sanitizing equipment – to break the heaviness in the air. But instead, she returned to her sketchbook and doodled a radial design of sweeping curls and intricate shading. It might make a nice tattoo to place on her shoulder blade or upper thigh, one of the few places where ink didn’t already cover her.

“If it’s an ass tattoo of your ex’s name in a pentagram, trust me, I’ve seen that.”

A breathy laugh met her joke. The idea of the uptight young man before her unveiling an ass tattoo brought a lopsided smirk to Tenten’s face. She hadn’t meant to make him laugh – the outburst of impatience was ill-advised, even when the tenor of her work environment was more on the casual side. Tenten’s supervisor would have rebuked her with a sharp word had he heard her mocking a customer, especially one who gave the impression that he didn’t take such offenses lightly.

“No, no. Nothing like that. I would never get an...ass tattoo of my own volition.”

“Most people with ass tattoos wouldn’t,” Tenten laughed. “Usually they’re under the influence of one thing or another. Not that I imagine a proper gentleman like yourself ever putting yourself in that position. And...what’s your name, by the way?”

[bookishbrewer]

Jax & the Tumblr Sexyman phenomenon - an opinion piece:

This is just my opinion. I may be misremembering, misunderstanding things. I'd love to have a civil discussion + be corrected if necessary.

So, The Amazing Digital Circus released it's 2nd episode and the reception was overall very positive. The episode was written very well and tackled sensitive subject matter such as existentialism, friendship, guilt, denial & abandonment with as much grace as possible within the limits of the story.

All of that being said, there was a new controversy in the horizon: the portrayal & arc of Jax.

In the pilot, Jax is portrayed as, well - a douchebag:

When Pomni first arrived, he essentially encouraged her existential crisis, mocked her for freaking out & made fun of her (in addition to making fun of the rest of the gang).

He broke Gangle's comedy mask, as she was crying over it being broken.

He uses Zooble's arm as a scratching stick (& gets choked for it, good for Zoobie).

He disregards Zooble being dismembered & taken away by the gloinks (even as they're literally screaming in agony as they're being taken away by hostile NPCs).

He (maybe) put centepides in Ragatha's room, even though it is "literally her only fear".

He deserts both Pomni & Ragatha immediately as they find out Kaufmo has been abstracted (Pomni is new & still horrified & he may know about the pain that glitching can cause to Ragatha if she's caught by Abstracted!Kaufmo).

He throws a bowling ball at Kinger after he lies to him about Kaufmo's mental state (which may especially worry him both because he is losing his own mind & because he may have lost someone to abstraction before, namely Queenie). Causing the 3 of them to fall down the "Zooble hole".

Allows & disregards Zooble being consumed by the Gloink Queen (right after refusing to help them because they were "rude").

He pushes Gangle after mockingly suggesting that she goes first.

He tells Zooble to shut up. For really no reason (after being rude & dismissive of them the entire day).

Mocks Kinger for not "even being relied on to abstract".

Moving on to episode 2:

After one of the mannequins gets run over by a truck Jax exclaims: "oh, violence!".

Jax wants to shoot the thief!NPCs "until they're unrecognizable" and shouts at Gangle for being uncomfortable with the idea.

He throws Pomni (who's on her first out-of-circus adventure) out of the truck.

He calls Gangle "submissive & agreeable" (I mean, it's funny. But still kind of a douche move, given how sensitive she is).

He blackmails Gangle over "the figurine thing" so she does what he wants (ram into the thieves' trunk because "it'll be epic").

He hints that Ragatha's hair looks like licorice in front of a candy-eating fudge monster.

Jax is later seem distraught over the fact that there was no "big final battle, bloodshed, chaos".

He left the kingdom's gates open so that there will be carnage in the candy kingdom anyway (even though he won't even be there to witness it. Sadistic a-hole xD).

He doesn't attend Kaufmo's funeral

So, in conclusion: Jax is an a-hole (to quote Pomni).

But, the fandom was incredibly, well, surprised. A lot of fans immediately latched onto Jax, shoving him into the "bad boy" in need of "fixing" archetype. Obviously, tons of ships started (FunnyBunny, RibBun, Jagatha, KingRabbit, ClownBunny etc), headcanons about him "actually being a sweetheart", Human!Fanart and much more.

Now, I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with being huge fans of barely developed characters & creating headcanons while waiting for more canon appearances, but that isn't the only thing that happened.

Besides comments like these:

There was also outright backlash against Gooseworx, including alledging she "retconned" Jax in accordance to the fandom's reaction to him (when in reality she predicted the backlash & divide over Jax over a half a year ago):

in addition to essentially blaming her for "Sexyman-bait".

Now yes, Jax does fit the bill of a "Tumblr Sexyman": tall, thin, douchebag, chaotic, sarcastic, cynical, implied to have deeper lore, shipped with just about anyone (well, maybe besides Bubble, wait... WAI-) & I'm sure there's other stuff that I missed. He even has his own Sexypedia page (which I didn't even know was it's own website but hurray! Research!).

He can definitely join the ranks of (reads from scrapped paper): The Ouncler, Bill Cypher, Sans Undertale, a lotta vivziepop characters (no shade!) & others.

But honestly, I think fans need to ACTIVELY try to pretend Jax was portrayed as anything else but a meanspirited jerk.

One of the most popular theories I saw is that Jax was in Kaufmo's funeral, but out of sight, even though we had 2 outward shots of the funeral, and Jax was nowhere to be seen:

Their basis for this theory? This:

That's right. A 2 second snap shot of Jax (still) looking salty & then leaving. You remember how this happened before? RIGHT BEFORE THE VERY SAME EPISODE?? Fans thought that this:

Was going to be some sort of "angsty" or "character development" scene, and even went so far as to theorize that this episode may be a "Jax Episode".

But then we found out the reason:

Not enough violence.

Jax's character essentially reminds me of a 13 year old with a copy of any GTA game, enjoying the freedom to destroy property & NPCs as he pleases through the limitlessness of a sandbox high-quality game. That's who he's actually meant to be, at least from my understanding of it.

I think Jax is a great SUBVERSION of the Tumblr Sexyman trope: he isn't some "bad boy" (shoo, Nifty, SHOO!), he's just, well. An a-hole. If my memory serves me right, Gooseworx did refer to Jax as "chaotic evil". Meaning: characters who are driven by their own desires and will do anything to achieve their goals, often disregarding laws, ethics, and the rights of others. They revel in chaos and destruction for their own sake. Though, granted, he was also discribed as a "troubled individual" about which the audience will learn more of. Also, he's 22. While technically an adult, he's still very young.

To conclude, I think fans of the "Tumblr Sexyman" trope/characters are really reaching with Jax, and it sometimes escalates way too much (to the point both the creator & VA are involved). I don't think Jax was written to be another "bad but sad boy" (if you'd pardon the Owl House reference), but I do think he's going to be interesting to watch unfold.

I understand that some people love their tropes, but let us all be mindful of each other as fans & casual viewers, and of the creator & team.

Thank you for reading 🙏

[oleever-does-stuff]

TADC Yapfest Timeee

As a certified yapper, the need to shove my random assortment of ideas down your throat has been tearing me apart. Therefore, I deem it yapfest time. Also, media literacy is apparently at an all-time low and I am nothing but a product of the environment I am molded in and I require you to understand that.

~♡~

Do you guys know that face Caine made when talking about mixing up NPCs and humans? What do you guys think that implied? Was it a red herring or hinting at something else? Because I so happen to have two things going on in my head.

Firstly and most obviously, I believe that some of the cast are NPCs in disguise. This first came to me with the realization that Jax, Pomni, and Ragatha all sound like real names (Jack or just...Jax, Penny, and Agatha) while Gangle and Zooble didn't (unless there are names similar in other countries I'm unaware of). Then I remembered that Kinger exists, and if Kinger is an NPC I won't recover. The idea that Zooble might be an NPC does seem likely to me for a multitude of reasons.

The first reason: Zooble's refusal to go on Caine's adventures. I doubt an NPC would like to go anywhere in a fake world after discovering what you were. Secondly, Zooble (to me) looks vastly different from the rest of the cast. She looks like she doesn't belong with the other circus members. I can't really find the description of what the rest of the cast looks like other than neat, while Zooble is just a jumble of objects and assortments. It looks like she belonged to a different world and ended up there. That might just be cool character design though and I'm an idiot. Overall Zooble just seems out of place but that might just be because it's episode ONE.

My second idea, one thats been lingering in my mind that Caine himself is human and just forgot after being there for so long. While maybe not as coherent or has as much supportive evidence as the previous it's still there. Perhaps Caine worked for the company that created the Circus, was put in there to run the first run-through, but never made it out. If he was the first trapee, maybe he would have been given host commands, and that would explain why he was the control of the circus (like a party leader).

~♡~

Within my no-sleep-filled fever dream of a mind, this led me to another conclusion. If people had been around this long, why was the game so unfinished? Why were people from the outside not helping. Now this is where my incompetency comes in because due to the Caine actually being human thing I had the idea, maybe the Circus project was abandoned, and that's why the game itself is so unfinished with people abstracting, no exit, things glitching in and out of the world so easily. After Caine they were just like "Oh shit, yeah let's not work on this no more", but people still end up finding their way in. (I also had the idea, as my boyfriend keeps trying to put random numbers in this paragraph, perhaps they queued too many testees. Every time someone abstracts, the next person in line joins but has no memory of that wait.) There's that one thing about Pomni working for the company that created TADC, +8and like I'm not well-versed in TADC theory and canon things I watched like maybe 2 episodes, saw a couple funny posts but...

The place looks run down, abandoned. What self-respecting office space would allow papers to litter the floor. Or a dusty, moldy-looking computer.

It looks like the company abandoned the workplace, this project, everything. Maybe Pomni got put in a queue of sorts, waited until there was an open space available to play. (Kaufmo. R.I.P)

~♡~

A different tangent. I saw something that mentioned TADC was inspired by "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream". Although I'm unaware how true that is, it does lead me to wonder what the end for Pomni will be like. Will she end up saving the others from the digital hell, but be stuck there forever in return? Would she end up as Caine or be stuck with him to live out eternity?

also this is 100% going to be a problem, look at all of them just chilling.

I wrote this tangent at almost midnight, please forgive me I will edit in the morning (Afternoon).

Edited: more well written

[iidylllic]

Restraint 🖤

Dark!Pantalone x reader | 1.8k words

Summary: You hold one part of yourself close- the ability to restrain your desires.

Reader specifics: GN, doll analogy used

Character specifics: If you’re reading when he’s released in game, he’s probably OOC, no nationality specified

Tags: DARK, non consensual relationship, blurred lines and unstable relationship, “colleagues” lines blurred, eula voiceline lore used, no smut

Notes: I think this is a little abstract

I am 18+ have read the above, and consent to seeing this content [yes ⬇️] [no ↩️]

You never wanted to get involved with the Fatui.

Hardly anyone does. Growing up around them, you’ve seen a blurred slideshow of changing faces- the ones coming back from their duty to the Tsaritsa, swapped out with the ones embarking. The lack of continuity shaped your young mind with a dream of stability. You wished for a reality shaped by consistency, where nobody was desperate for money or improvement of their rank.

That’s how you ended up with Pantalone.

He doesn’t give you his real name. Not yet, so he says. The level of secrecy is surfeit for someone who has nobody to tell it to.

And you see him every day. You devote your full attention to him. You’re a secretary, turned personal assistant, turned…

You can’t bring yourself to address it.

Initially, you had believed that secretarial work would be the no-strings-attached experience you needed. Take the money, go to Liyue, carry all your records and papers to avoid accusations of being a spy (apparently nothing gets past the Tianquan anyway) and settle down for a stable life.

If you left now, you wouldn’t choose Liyue anymore. Too many connections to the market.

“Ah, darling-“

You snap out of your haze. He’s stretching himself backwards on his seat, looking up towards the ceiling. Quickly and lightly, you get on your feet and walk over to him, going to his back so you can massage your fingertips into his shoulders.

“Mm…”

You press a little harder. He lets out a long sigh through his nose. A mild wave of nausea rolls over your body.

“You looked lost in thought there.” He says plainly. Across your time with Pantalone, you’ve learned that most of his statements are demands, and many of his questions are rhetorical. In your responses, you know better than to be vague.

“I was thinking of places I would like to visit one day.”

Not exactly a lie.

“Is that so?”

You nod even though he can’t see it. He brings his hand up and gently motions to the side, indicating for you to move out of the way.

“Try not to stall so much during work. We’ll always have plenty of time for discussion once it’s over.”

You hadn’t planned on discussing it, but Pantalone automatically assumes himself to be privy to your thoughts. It’s amusing how intensely professional he remains, given that he had offered that you stop formally working for him the month before, and become something of a “companion”. You had refused, because who would possibly accept a role so vague and unsettling? He had only chuckled, leading you to believe he wasn’t all that serious, but ever since that day he’s been very… rigorous … on the clock. It could be read as a display of passive-aggressiveness.

He stands up. You dread the moment he’ll lay his eyes on you. The papers you were working on sit at your own desk in neat piles, nearing completion. He wouldn’t be angry. He never is- or at least, never shows it. There’s more work than normal recently. But there’s still a fear that sits in your gut, constricting around your organs, a fast beating heart and shallow lungs.

But having some extra work to do isn’t a bother, especially if you can complete it after dinner-

“Finish that up for me, dear. I don’t want you preoccupied when we come back home.”

“Of course.”

You don’t miss the way his eyes glance to the side in restrained disappointment. He hates being called “Lord Harbinger” by you. And he’s stopped you from calling him “sir”. You believe he expects you to return with an affectionate nickname of sorts, to meet his constant “darling”s and “dear”s but so far you’ve been unable to muster one up.

Pantalone leaves you to the rest of your work, returning a few minutes later with your coat and boots. After sorting the last of the papers, you start putting your boots on, becoming startled when you stand up to see Pantalone ready to help you into your coat. He hums as you put each arm through its respective sleeve, and your hands race to do up your buttons lest he intervene before you. There’s a moment after you retrieve your gloves from the pockets where you look up at him, and he sweeps a hand across your cheek under the guise of tucking back hair. In his eyes there’s a sickening sense of admiration, like a child lovingly gazing at a porcelain doll.

You are his doll, you suppose. His toy sounds depraved, but it would be equally true. Dressed up and taken everywhere, introduced to strangers like a show-and-tell, cradled in his arms as he sleeps, a fragile substitute for a love he never once received. You watch with glassy eyes as he touches you with reckless abandon, your eyelids shut dully when you lay down with him, and when the string is pulled on your back, you tell him how wonderful he is. You commend his success and offer him reassurance you doubt he needs. Despite this, you are defective. He has never once managed to hear you squeak out an “I love you” from your battered voice-box. He treats you with a certainty that it is there, that it will manifest into reality if he simply persists. In this respect, you and his monetary treasures are similar.

-❤️-

Another dinner passes with him across the table from you. He’s started taking you out at least once a week, and you’re unsure if these count as dates. You would rather just believe he’s attempting to show you his wealth with his choices of restaurants.

Returning home brings him to his favourite part of the day. Time for recreation is a luxury in Snezhnaya, and though Pantalone can certainly afford it, he restricts himself (and simultaneously you) from indulging in it too much.

You don’t think you can run off to your own room like you used to do when work was finished. What you would give to fall asleep on the unused bed, to stretch out on the fresh sheets. The room is dull and grey, but it’s your own space, a guarantee of privacy. It’s a place you hardly ever visit, swapped in favour of the red and gold of Pantalone’s bedroom. The extravagance of his tastes has always left you uneasy.

Trying to stall making contact with him for as long as possible, you sit yourself on one of the armchairs and idly fiddle with a book from the table beside it. This doesn’t last long.

“Don’t be like that,” He chuckles, playing off your antics as a joke. “What’s wrong with sitting beside me?”

You reposition yourself next to him on the sofa, trying not to look like you’re clinging to the edge of it.

He doesn’t slide along, but his body tilts towards you. Magnetic attraction. Drawing him in.

Your mouth is dry and your fingers are trembling along a tattered page. The wine from the restaurant, offered but never received, is a faraway dream. He’s all too eager to buy your affections, and probably would’ve gotten the entire bottle for you if you’d hinted at trying a glass. Maybe every single bottle in the restaurant. But when it comes to intoxication, you restrain. To loosen up could be a great relief… or a fatal error. He has another glass of it in his hands, white wine, almost golden, and you could just as easily ask- but you never want to put yourself in a position of debt to him. He sees you glancing at it, and catches your eye in a way that captivates you. His eyebrow raises slightly before he begins speaking.

“You should get more comfortable asking for things from me.” His voice slices through the thick air, as if reading your mind.

You don’t know what to say. Instead, you just look at him, with eyes glassed over and motionless. Frozen. Silent rabbit in the mouth of a wolf. Fearing the crush. If you linger long enough, he fills the silence himself. Whether he realises it or not, he has the initiative of a desperate man. Unable to rest without getting in his words, his say, his influence.

“I’m not forcing you to, but I think we’ve grown rather close-“

You’ve grown rather close to me.

“- and it’s a dreadful sight to see you restrain yourself with the world at your fingertips.”

You swallow. It’s in this moment that you realise he’s still too prideful to simply invite you into a relationship with him. Instead, he’s coerced- no, swindled- you into a kind of pseudo-domesticity. You realise that after this, you’ll go and sleep in the same bed as him, and he will guard you and guide you like one of his investments, not stopping until he’s guaranteed returns. This is a dead end.

“Maybe it’s just my tastes.” You say sedately. A masterful facade borne of a childhood where you could never show fear.

“Mm…”

His eyes are transfixed on his wine, which he swirls lazily.

“When I was… not as financially successful, I used to refuse to drink anything except water. You couldn’t have convinced me to steal leftover tea leaves because I refused to get accustomed to the taste.”

When he glances up at you, his gaze seems to melt you down like frigid ice to malleable water. You nod.

“When I grew wealthier, I still drank water and chose to forgo other drinks. I had my tea weak and tasteless in business meetings, I refused coffee- I claimed it gave me headaches- and I restrained from alcohol. It wasn’t until an associate of mine insisted I try some of Mondstadt’s dandelion wine that I ever indulged in a full glass. They held an entire ceremony for the wine- they pour it into silver goblets, did you know?”

You shook your head. Fascinating. Distracting. Your tongue feels like sandpaper on the roof of your mouth.

“I didn’t know either at the time. And I thought that it seemed uselessly extravagant. They pour it out into the goblets, they let it sit, and then serve it with ice. But the taste was… incredible, unlike anything I’ve ever tasted. I finally looked around me, and darling, I observed that I was in a position to ask for anything I wanted, and get it,”

He raises the wine glass a little, not to his own lips, but outwards. Then towards you, until it hovers beneath your face and the sweet smell is almost enough to taste.

“But know that even from when I was young, I understood that ‘if you don’t ask, you don’t get.’ And perhaps others believe the opposite, that remaining distant and unobtrusive brings them the best in life,”

You grasp the wine glass gently in your hand, and his own retracts.

“Which frankly, I’ve never understood.”

You stare down into the glass. It feels like staring into an abyss. The golden hue shines like mora. Your breath hitches, and you finally squeeze out a high-strung, “May I?”

Pantalone nods, smiling gently with the eyes of a predator.

It’s bittersweet and reminiscent of a freedom you may never know.

[tinyinvadr]

So the tadc brain rot is so strong right now, and naturally, I had to bring g/t into it! Not sure how many parts there will be to this, but yeah!

Hide & Shrink

Chapter 1

I couldn’t sleep the first night. It wasn’t like I needed to. All that was once essential for living is now pointless. Trying to retain any sense of normalcy is a waste of time that could be spent trying to find a way out.

The exit door turned out to be a bust, but surely there’s another way to leave. I just have to keep trying, even if it drives me insane, even if I end up in the void again. There’s no way I can stay in a place like this.

But… if I keep this up, and I DO end up driving myself insane, I’ll just end up like Kaufmo and however many others before him who’ve been “abstracted”. Yeah, that’s what they called it. I’m not exactly sure what it means or if there’s a way to undo it, but since Caine has a whole cellar full of abstracted people, I can only assume that it’s irreversible. That, or this is all just a part of his games.

The others seem to trust him to some extent, but I can’t bring myself to. He has to be the one who’s keeping us trapped here, right? He’s insistent that there’s no way out because he doesn’t want us to leave, so that must mean an exit DOES exist, right?

The worst part is that no one else seems as eager to leave as I am. Clearly no one wants to be here, but they still managed to adapt to this world. They accept it, they play along with whatever Caine has to throw at them. It’s… normal to them.

No, I can’t reach that point. None of this is real, and I refuse to let myself believe that it is. I had a life before this. A real life that was taken from me. A face, an identity, a name. I can’t remember the details, but it’s enough to know that I don’t belong in this twisted program and I have to get back to the real world.

The entire night, my mind was racing in this vicious cycle. Do I keep trying? Do I give up? Do I have to just accept this as my new life from here on out?

I was finally snapped out of my spiraling when I heard a knock on the door the next morning.

“Hey, uh, Pomni? You okay in there? I just wanted to check in, make sure you’re still… here.”

Just hearing Ragatha’s voice hit me with an overwhelming sense of guilt. Why was she still bothering to help me? I abandoned her twice when she was hurt, how could she forgive me so easily?

I opened the door for her, and she just stood there, nervously scratching the back of her head. I guess it wasn’t entirely water under the bridge, but she still made the effort to reach out to me.

“Um… Hi, Ragatha. Thanks for checking in on me.”

“Oh, yeah, of course! I’m glad you’re okay. Yesterday was… a lot to deal with all at once for a new person. But I promise, it’s usually not like that here.”

We just stood in awkward silence for a minute. There were so many things I wanted to ask her, but I was worried I would make things worse. I didn’t want her getting hurt again.

“Anyway, the rest of us are having breakfast, so feel free to join us if you want. Don’t feel pressured if you don’t want to, just thought I’d offer, since it can be nice to spend time with other people.”

In all honesty, I really wasn’t up for it, but I knew I couldn’t lie in bed stuck in my own thoughts forever. Maybe leaving my room would help me focus. Or it would make things worse, subjecting myself to all of the chaos of the Digital Circus again.

No, I had to. Attempting to do something was better than not doing anything.

“Yeah… I think I will.”

I followed Ragatha down the long hallway, filled with unease as I remembered our encounter with Kaufmo only a day prior. It was terrifying to think that the huge, glitching monster that attacked us was a person deep down. I didn’t know him, but the others did. I couldn’t imagine how it must have felt for them to lose him in such a horrible way.

And any one of us could be next.

We arrived at the main area of the circus tent where everyone was already seated at the table, feasting on digital, artificial pancakes.

Jax was the first to notice us.

“Oh hey, Pomni. You’re not dead.”

Ragatha sighed as we made our way over to the table, sitting at the two empty seats.

It seemed like everyone had a preferred seat at the table, so I ended up sitting between Gangle and Jax again. This was all part of their routine that they’ve been keeping up for god knows how long.

“Good morning, Pomni! I hope you’re feeling better today.”

I was caught off guard by Gangle’s smiling mask and cheery attitude. She was crying the entire first day.

“I don’t know… but you seem to be in a better mood.”

She chuckled, touching her mask with her ribbon hands. “That’s ‘cause my comedy mask regenerated. It resets every morning.”

I was about to ask her how often her mask breaks, but my question was answered when Bubble suddenly popped up behind Kinger, startling him to the point where he fell back onto Gangle, pushing her over and knocking her mask off.

“Aw… it broke again.” She said with a sniffle as she collected the remains of her mask.

On the other side of me, Jax smirked, crossing his arms behind his head. “Never gets old.”

Man, what a jerk.

Breakfast carried on pretty much the same as dinner the previous night. I was trying not to let my thoughts wander to darker places and focus on trying to connect with the others. It was difficult, though, since everyone already knew each other pretty well and adjusted to the insanity of this world in their own ways, so I was just kind of there. But I knew I needed them. As long as we were all on the same page, maybe I could stop myself from going insane.

Of course, it wasn’t long before HE showed up.

Just as we were finishing breakfast, Caine appeared beside Bubble.

“Rise and shine, my wonderful performers! A new day of exciting adventure awaits!”

Everyone got up and followed Caine to the stage area. I reluctantly joined them, unsure of what would happen if I didn’t.

“The star of today’s adventure will be selected with…”

Suddenly, a huge carnival wheel fell from the ceiling and crashed on the floor next to him.

“The Wheel of Whimsy!”

Each section of the wheel had a picture of one of our faces on it. Mine was already added to it, even though I only just got there.

Zooble rolled their eyes at the sight of the wheel.

“It better not land on me again.”

Caine gave the wheel a strong spin, and I watched in nervous anticipation as it slowed down. I had no idea what kind of adventure he had planned, but I knew for sure that I definitely didn’t want to “star” in it, whatever that meant.

I let out a sigh of relief as it seemed like the wheel would stop just before it landed on me. But, with the last bit of force, the pin crossed over onto my section.

“Well, would you look at that! Our star today is our newest member, Pomni!”

Jax casually strolled up beside Caine, that smug grin never leaving his face.

“Still picking on the newbie, huh Caine? I like it.”

Caine chuckled in response.

“Now, now, you know I don’t pick favorites! The Wheel of Whimsy is completely random, and all of you have an equal chance of being selected! That being said, considering yesterdays events and the fact that Pomni is still fairly new here, I’m going to give her a say in today’s adventure! So, what’ll it be, Pomni?”

I looked around at the others, each with differing expressions. Ragatha looked optimistic, Gangle worried, Zooble annoyed, Jax amused, and Kinger… Kinger. Whatever I decided to do probably wouldn’t please everyone, but I had to accept that and just go with whatever I felt was the best option.

“I dunno, maybe… hide and seek?”

Caine froze in place for a few seconds, as if he was buffering, and then sprang back to life.

“Excellent choice!”

With a snap of his fingers, I was teleported to somewhere I didn’t recognize. I was floating in place in a void of some sort, but not the same void I got stuck in the day before. It was pitch black, and almost felt suffocating. It felt like the space itself was small, but I couldn’t move far enough in any direction to prove it.

Then, even stranger, I could hear Caine’s voice, though it sounded like it was coming from underneath me somehow.

“Alright, everyone! Today’s adventure is… Find Pomni! Your new friend is hidden somewhere in this Amazing Digital Circus, and you’ll have to work together to find her! But it won’t be easy! Make sure you check everywhere, she might be someplace you wouldn’t expect! Now, get to it, superstars!”

After he finished speaking, I was hit with a sudden sensation that felt like I was moving really fast, even though I wasn’t going anywhere. The kind of feeling I got when Caine was giving me a tour. But that didn’t make sense, there was no sign of him anywhere.

“Uh… Caine? What’s going on? Where am I?”

I didn’t get a response. Instead, I felt something grab me and drag me down. The endless darkness was replaced with the bright and cheery colors of the circus all at once, but my eyes immediately went straight to Caine, who was now massive and holding me in his hand.

“Would you look at that! I pulled Pomni out of my hat!”

My first instinct was to panic. Squirming, kicking, screaming, it was all useless, but I was desperate.

There was a combination of confusion and concern in Caine’s eyes as I struggled in his grasp. How did he not expect me to hate this?

“Whoa there, no need to panic! It’s just me, your old pal Caine!”

“I’ve known you for less than 24 hours.”

“Haha, right! But there’s nothing to be afraid of, Pomni. This is all just part of the adventure! You see, the others have played hide and seek before numerous times, and they know all the typical hiding places, so I thought it would make things more challenging if you were smaller and harder to find!”

I kept helplessly struggling, but he made no moves to release me. He just kept watching.

“C-Can you put me down now?”

It finally hit him that I didn’t like being held, and he complied, setting me down on the floor with a pat on the head.

“There ya go! Now, I’ll leave you to go find a place to hide! Good luck!”

He disappeared before I could say anything else, and I was once again alone in this nightmarish circus. Only this time, it was much, much worse.

I could feel my heart racing as I looked at my surroundings. The circus was already huge to begin with, but everything at this perspective looked 10x more threatening. Part of me wanted to be found as soon as possible so I could return to my normal size, but I also didn’t want to think about encountering the others like this.

All I could do was hide.

[marxism-transgenderism]

Working in customer service has really made clear how many women—nearly always white and rich—take their frustrations at misogyny out on those below them. I frequently talk to women who handle all of their husbands finances and records. The kind of women who get calls from their husbands to ask what their own social is because they don't have it written down.

But the thing is even though they handle their husbands affairs, they still frequently have to bow to the image of the husband as the head of the household. So they're made the secondary owner on bank accounts, loans, mortgages. The husband's name is used on titles and log ins. Which means they have to get their husbands permission to access their funds or even get logged in to their online accounts. Which is unfair. Deeply unfair. But the people they always yell at for these things is never their husbands for keeping them off of these easily fixable things, they yell at the service workers who she interacts with going about her day. The call center worker who tells her she can't access that account as her name isn't on it, the barista who takes her order before she drags her reluctant child husband to the bank or BMV, the receptionist who tells her she has to talk to her husband first before they can get that information.

They'll start yelling about how this is archaic and misogynistic, which it is, but refuse to accept that the only reason it is set up like this is because her and her husband set it up that way. Modern legal protections have freed her from that outright form of institutional misogyny, but they have not freed her from the institutional enforcement by her husband and by tradition, and accepting that it is your own husband you love that is responsible for your restricted access in that moment rather than some nebulous council of misogynists is a lot harder to accept. So they express their newly found feminist conscience by yelling at the low level workers she has power over in those moments.

But here's where we get to the real meat of my point here. Which is that I, understanding their frustrations woman to woman, will frequently guide them through how to change these things. How to put their names as the primary on their accounts and loans, how to make their own log ins to access their government and financial records, how to make sure their assets stay in their names.

And some of them listen, thank me, and go about their days. But I've found that in the majority of cases, after I explain that her accounts and documents are set up this way due to her own signature and that it can be changed rather simply with one or two more signatures, many of these privileged women don't even listen to me. They instead continue insulting me personally as if I am the cause of their problems. Saying I'm useless, misogynistic, unhelpful. They continue acting as if banks and governments still automatically make the husband the primary on everything and use that to justify berating me. And I had a woman the other day, after I explained this to her, let it slip that "oh my husband would never agree to that."

And that's the thing isn't it. I have shown them the exact solutions to their problems, but those solutions would require them to take action against someone above them instead of doing what they're used to doing: punching down. To no longer just be Facebook feminists railing against an abstract idea of patriarchy which their wealth and whiteness vastly insulates them from, but instead to directly confront the men in their lives about the unjust control they have over her. To tell her husband to either do more of the finances and record keeping or to remove himself as the primary. Or further, if he refuses, divorcing him. That's a lot harder to do than yelling at a service worker.

So they continue acting as if there's nothing they can do and talk about themselves as victims. But not as a victim of family tradition and those she's closest to. Instead she treats herself like a victim of all the random nobodies she knows she can scream and curse at and face no consequences to avoid doing the work to actually change her situation.

And it is those women who make my life as a woman who has to work 8-5 everyday hell on earth.

[lucianlhsystem]

Hot take (I think)

Everyone in the fandom would be like Jax if they got Isekai'd into The Amazing Digital Circus, like it's just so likely that we all would refuse to go mad and become a sarcastic piece of shit (I hate you Jax) (But also damn why are you a mirror bitch)

Like imagine being there for YEARS and slowly forgetting yourself, everyone who you knew and watching other people around you who are in that hell space also lose themselves, getting every day worse and ending up taking by force the role that Caine assign them with their stupid little names in his stupid little game, and seeing how even lovers get separated by the insanity of that whole scenario

I mean Kinger and Queenie in this case, like i'm sure where in a romantic relationship, but even if it was just a platonic kind of relationship, imagine seeing them love and care for each other, just to then seeing one of them get transformed into this fucking mess of a creature and the other be more and more lost in their mind until they are not the person you once met

Like fr if I was there for years I would not think it twice, either I get in a fist fight with Caine to be let out the place and FIGHT my way out with tooth and nail until it worked, OR just don't let myself get attached to anyone and screw every relationship that could be made with the other people in that place, making myself hate them or hate me to ensure I will never get any pain when seeing that they either succumbed to the madness and abstraction shit in this fucking nightmare

AND EVEN STILL Jax was actually horrified when seeing Kaufmo being abstracted, like yeah it could be "oh shit I'm gonna die" but I see it as a "Oh gods, oh fuck he actually went insane nonoononononon-" in a worried for the poor clown kind of way

(And abstracted Kaufmo like trying to grab his face and the mannerisms they showed with him moving his head like trying to snap out of it was so messed up, like holy shit I'm sure he was actually understanding what was going on and even then could not control anything he was doing he was just an spectator to his own body, but that's for another post)

Also that fucking scene

THE CAMERA ANGLE

The way they look so small and freaked out by the thing they are seeing (And Jax taking anything to make as an excuse to leave, the coward twink really just ditched lmao) (Honestly same I would run so fast)

Anyways, a tldr is; Jax is exactly the type of bitch all of us would become if we ended up there alone, scared and not being able to even remember who we were

Or also like Zooble, they are also a "Don't speak to me don't percibe me I do not care" but in a "I'm way too tired and don't/can't deal with anything don't push it b#t*h" way rather than a "I won't allow myself be affected by this shit, even if it means pushing someone else to die in my place (because I'm a coward)" kind of way that Jax has as a wee little bitch (Same dude)

Like no way in hell I would be as kind as Ragatha, like that poor bitch was throw around because of caring to help anyone damn

Anyways that's the take idk if I'm going to die to people who really really likes the bunny man or really really dislikes the bunny man for saying I think he ain't really good nor bad, just a bitch ass coward who has attachment panic like everyone and how we would be as shitty as him ey (pls don't kill me I have a family)

The other hot take I have it's that Caine is a bitch as mother fucker and he knows more than he let's on, let them out before I boil your teeth and cut your eyes like onions tuxedo man, but like it's not THAT big of a hot take u know

Anyways I think Pomni Ragatha and Jax should kiss idk about u people -crow noises-

-Leila (don't kill me please)

[bestworstcase]

So...

Fell from the sky into a "crazy world"... trying to get home... trying to get to the tree... tree causes ascension/rebirth/renewal... tree could be considered home... "we just want to go home/to the tree"... they literally need to ascend back to Remnant...

And at the risk of sounding very stupid, is this going to be some "you just gotta believe" magic? Is Ruby's Total Breakdown really holding them all back from getting out? I get that's kind of the narrative point here but still... ugh fuck, I'm just losing it right now.

NO BUT ALSO, YES! BUT ALSO, NO. mostly no but a little yes.

if you’ve never read the books (or watched the musical, which has proven to be a significant creative influence because they wrote this volume for !!!me!!!) the single most important thing you gotta know about wonderland in order to follow along with what rwby’s doing with the ever after, is that wonderland is about taking abstract ideas—metaphors, idioms, the null case, etc—literally and taking concrete things and treating them as absurd. the result is a very particular way of looking at the world. everything is sideways and stretched and turned inside out and also the same. the harder you try to understand it the less sense any of it makes, but it also makes perfect sense if you begin with the assumption that of course it makes sense. it’s very much like a dream.

the ever after nails this way of looking. absolutely knocks it out of the park. everything the cat says is true, but only if you know how to think like the cat. otherwise the words make no sense and obfuscate more than they explain.

for example: ruby asks the cat which of their names they prefer to go by, and the cat answers “oh, i don’t go by; that belongs to the days and years! but if you are asking what i am, i am indeed a cat most curious.” if you listen to that with regular ears it just sounds like the cat is talking cryptic nonsense and refusing to give a straight answer. but! in the cat’s perspective they’re not only being quite clear, they’re giving ruby a lot more information than she asked for: the days and the years go by, but the cat does not, because the cat is a cat most curious.

the cat cannot ascend because it is their purpose to know everything. the cat doesn’t, can’t, partake in the endless cycle of life and rebirth. all afterans change when it’s their time to change, but for the cat it never is and never will be. the days and the years pass them by, and they are always so. very. curious.

you see? they mean precisely what they say.

one of the things that makes 9.8 is SO COOL is that the cat code-switches to reveal their ulterior motive—they repeat all the same information conveyed by “oh, i don’t go by!” but this time speaking in ruby’s (& the audience’s) language. and then, while they do slip back into afteran speech a bit when they get irate (“it’s not a place you go, it’s a place you know!”) for the most part once they’ve made this switch they stick with it. and that’s really fun, because it pulls back the curtain to show off the machinery of the wonderland logic the ever after runs on. it’s not gibberish, it’s nonsense. there’s a kind of sense to it, if you feel around for it with your hands.

(a similar thing happens with the paper pleasers in 9.7: note the purple star explains the village’s desire for ascension in very clear, straightforward, unambiguous terms. now think about how jaune perceives ascension, the lengths he goes to to prevent it, and how the purple star says they keep trying to tell him that he’s wrong. they learned to speak his language and he still refused to listen.)

so, anyway, what this means for the tree and the way out is this:

the cat told them how to find the tree.

“you do not go to the tree.” the tree isn’t real. you can’t go to the tree—you can’t move spatially from point a to point b and expect to arrive at the tree, because it’s not something that exists as a spatial point. it’s something else. it’s an idea. it’s a metaphor. you do not go to me, i go to you; what am i? that’s what the tree is. it’s a riddle without an answer, except for all the answers it has.

“the tree goes to you.” it’s something more like the days or years, which go by; the tree goes to. it doesn’t matter where you are, where you’ve been, or where you’re going. the tree will be wherever you are when you’re there, because the tree isn’t tethered to any one point in space. the tree is everywhere and might be anywhere and certainly it’s always somewhere. (“it’s a place you know.” if you know where the tree is, you’re already there. if you don’t, you’re not. it’s very simple.)

“unless, of course, you’re me. you see?” this is two separate statements intertwined as one. just as the days and the years go by for the cat, the tree never goes to them—they can’t ascend. that’s the first thread. the second thread is a hint. how do you get the tree to be where you are? you need to be “me.” you need to be yourself, you need to know yourself, and you need to want to become yourself. the riddle is “what are you?” and the answer is “myself.”

(<- the you you wanted to be when you were still you.)

and this is exactly what happens when the tree goes to ruby. the first time, when the herbalist asks the question, she comes face-to-face with her younger self and has the shattering realization that she no longer knows who she is. the second time, the tree reaches out to her with the broken pieces that shattering shook loose, and ruby’s answer is “i’m fine. i can handle it.”—not quite an identity, but a belief about herself. and the third time, ruby says “i don’t want to be me anymore,” but then she realizes that isn’t quite true. she resists the cat, as much as she can, and the cat cannot become her. there is—waves hands—something in ruby rose that only ruby rose can be, and with everything else eroded away that something is what the tree goes to when ruby calls out to it by drinking the tea. there’s some narrative exploration happening here of what “myself” can mean, the different angles and layers of identity: the way ruby once saw herself, the stories she tells herself about herself, the essence of who she is deep down inside her heart. and ascension, of course, is about assembling all of these disparate pieces into a completed whole. you break, you rebuild.

BUT.

& this is the important part!

the tree isn’t the way home, it IS home. it is, specifically, the home of the ever after. afterans conceive of ascension as a return home to shed their burdens like an old coat, to rest, to heal, perhaps to dream for a while of what they would like to be next, in order to ready themselves for their return to the waking world. just as you can spend the night in a friend’s home, a non-afteran can rest for a while in the tree and perhaps be revitalized, but the tree isn’t their home. they’re houseguests.

could the tree get them home? open a door? help them find their way? maybe. if they look at it from the right angle, because all of these things can be metaphors for the healing and renewal the tree provides. but maybe not, because their perspective right now is all wrong. they still don’t GET IT. if they want the tree to get them home the first thing they need to know is that the tree can’t get them home: you don’t go home, home goes to you.

(home is where the heart is; it follows that if you find your heart, you’ve found your home—and found you’re home, too. if their path home runs through the tree, it’s a path made of metaphor and verbal sleight of hand. you see? it’s very simple once you get the hang of it.)

(this also, as a sidebar, elucidates why the cat cannot ascend; the tree is not their home anymore than it is rwbyjn’s. the cat is the heart of the ever after—they are the part that knows, the part that very rarely forgets, when they fill broken hearts with pieces of their own what they’re really doing is saying i remember, i remember who you were and are and will be, i remember the pieces you forgot, let me remind you of them now—but the cat’s heart is with their maker. they can’t ascend because they can’t go home and they can’t go home because their home is on remnant and their heart and their home will always be on remnant until they know why she left them here.)

(<- the cat thinks their maker left them to make humans. they don’t know, but the bubbling resentment behind their uncertainty suggests that the cat believes that she left them behind because she liked humans better. they are, accordingly, desperate to become human. finding their way to remnant as a cat wouldn’t do them any good if their maker isn’t interested in them that way anymore; it’s not enough to just find her, they need her to ANSWER THEM.)

…um.

so, the way to get home is to solve all the riddles—what are you looking for? where can you find it? what will you do? what will you be? what are you?—in, i would guess, roughly that order. the act of answering itself is what gets them home, because in the course of answering they will find what they’re looking for as a matter of course, because what they’re looking for really is where their hearts are.

(obligatory musical note: “home is where you keep your hopes and your memories/it’s more than where you sleep, it’s the place where you dream”—the essential mechanism outlined here, of finding your way home by finding where your heart is because wonderland is not about going home, is the central conceit of the musical; and i really cannot stress enough how much 9.8 set up for the next to episodes to resolve by following the same narrative beats. the characters are split up the same way with each group facing the same fundamental challenges in the same general circumstances, and the only piece not yet on the board is the mother-figure who arrives at the penultimate moment to protect alice from the defeated hatter’s wrath. which, um. UM! so, i think it’s a pretty safe bet that the thematic resolution of this volume will resemble that of the musical pretty closely, and the narrative workhorse for that theme is the getting home mechanism.)

the TL;DR here is, getting home is about—well, knowing. to get yourself home, you need to know three things: 1. what are you? 2. what is home? 3. where do you find it?

and once you know that, it’s easy.

ruby having a breakdown isn’t holding them back. (quite the contrary; ruby’s been the one finding the way home this whole time. she doesn’t know it yet, because she can’t see the whole picture, but she’s been the only one doing what she’s really supposed to do all along—letting the world guide her, turning her gaze inward and trying to see. she isn’t seeing clearly, so she thinks she’s falling behind, but really she’s still leading the way. just, in a much different way than she thought she had to.) nothing is holding them back, per se. they just haven’t learned everything they need to learn, and the things they know, they don’t know how to put together yet. once they know, they’ll already be home.

[vypridae]

HOPE YOUR HEAD FEELS BETYER!! HEADACHES SUCK

anywayys requesting mori or tecchou or fyodor for the character thing [or bc you don’t need to do all of them pick and choose <3]

DOING ALL OF THEM i cant do the doodles i dont have the motivation for art rn i lied about that BUT ILL DO ALL THREE OF THEM

under a cut because these got LONG

MORI

first impression

honestly i think when i first met mori in the anime i was like oh hes sweet i like him . then it was the whole "woah port mafia boss!!!!" thing and i was like oh hes sweet and deadly i like him .

impression now

i love him soo much did you know. hes so fun hes just a silly guy . silly !!!

favorite moment

honestly the moment (from the manga specifically) thats stuck with me the most was the frame that he like, put tachihara's hd hat on his head and was like "you dropped something" it just STUCK with me

outside of canon manga stuff tho i love the little intersection in wan ep 11 that hes like "WHAT DID YOU SEND ME DAZAI ... THESE ARE ... SCARY!!!!!" like hes just so silly i love him

idea for a story

genuinely i do not think about story ideas enough to have a solid one for him but if it counts i often think about him accidentally stealing one of fukuzawa's scarves from That Era i forgot how old he was at the time . and then just keeping it . and fukuzawa finds out somehow . i love them shut up

unpopular opinion

uhhh liking mori in general FSJKHASJKHASFJKG like have you seen this fandom . 99% of the people here fucking hate mori with a passion . and just liking him is super controversial . aside from that though ive seen analyses (tending to be like "mori and pedophilia" or something along those lines) and honestly they make me feel like hes just being really uuuh whats the word. really abstract with how he says things i guess? like one in particular i remember was a word in the original manga (jap) and he said a word that means both "wife" and "thing by my side" or something like that, when theres so many different words he could have used if he wanted to be Creepy specifically. idk theres my mori opinion its so controversial i know block me if u'd like but i love him

favorite relationship

HAHA zskk . easily . love those dumbass gayasses

favorite headcanon

uuuuuh . probably trans mori honestly FJKHASDFGHADFG maybe im biased (trans) but like ... idk i am very biased about this

TECCHOU

first impression

genuinely when i first met all of the hunting dogs i forgot all of their names immediately . as chapters went on though i think the two main things i remember thinking "hes adorable" and "hes in love with jouno 100%"

impression now

i . love him . so much . he is the silliest little guy ever and hes also me . also hes still in love with jouno btw

favorite moment

every one of them /j no but fr in specific i love the ant scene (it was one of the only ones i remembered from the manga after i read that chapter i think), the justice speech / kenji fight (GOD hes so cool) and when he gets hit by the car (that was THE FUNNIEST ever)

idea for a story

oh my god okay so imagine jouno is sick and tecchou is taking care of him . that is all

unpopular opinion

i dont actually think i have an unpopular opinion for tecchou . at least not one that i can think of???? like with tecchou i think most of my hcs line up with how a lot of the fandom talks about him

favorite relationship

EASILY WITHOUT A DOUBT ITS SUEGIKU OH MY GOD

favorite headcanon

he can cook !!!!! he can cook really well and i like to imagine even though he refuses to eat anything thats not the same color he likes cooking stuf he knows jouno likes and doesnt force him to eat any of his "weird" food combos because he knows jouno doesnt really like stuff like that so he cooks how jouno likes for jouno and how he likes for himself . UAHUAUAHGUA

FYODOR

first impression

i think i initially went "oh my god" when i saw fyodor . fell for him IMMEDIATELY and also initially hated fyolai???

impression now

still falling . now love fyolai . improvements !!!

favorite moment

YES. /j

in all seriousness, some of my favorite moments with fyodor are uuh

the dead apple scene where hes on the rooftop and goes "this is too much fun :)" because i think honestly that scene made me fall SO HARD . also he just looks really pretty there dont question me

time for happy group counseling hour !!!!!! hmm? hi everybody im your host fyodor dostevsky- okay hold up stop right there. whats the problem? exactly, what? exactly what what? ooooooooh . life counseling . < that whole scene

ALSO THE THE THE the tHE . WHERE HE KICKS NIKOLAI'S BOOMBOX IN THE MANGA. HSE SO MEAN I LOVE HIM

idea for a story

oh my god. ok so basically . connected oneshots but one member of fyosiglai is individually insecure for some reason and the other two are like FUCK NO YOU ARENT and love them and cherish and praise them until theyre like oguhgug

unpopular opinion

hes pretty i LOVE HIM hes SO PRETTY ive seen HUNDREDS of people say hes UGLY hes SO NOT UGLY i LOVE HI

(in all seriousness, ive seen a lot of people say he'd be like, an abusive manipulative awful husband / boyfriend / whatever, and i literally just cannot see that happening . like, i feel like he'd want the perfect world FOR his s/o, he fell for them for a reason sort of thing . idk maybe i just love him but hgjkahfjkahdfjk)

favorite relationship

fyosiglai. or fyodor and me /j (/hj)

favorite headcanon

UUUUUH UH UH UH UH UH OH MY GOD I HAVE SO MANY HCS ABOUT HIM I LOVE HIM hes a cat person thats one of my favorites . if there is a cat on his lap he will not move

i also love the idea that he cannot for the life of him play horror games because he gets jumpscared and screams and he HATES that bc "vulnerability bad" (nikolai likes when he plays horror games anyway he thinks its funny when he gets jumpscared and screams really loud)

actually scratch that . fyodor is just bad at video games because i love that idea . hes good at logic games but when it just comes down to "survive!!!" or "do this objective" or something i love the idea that hes just Dog Ass at it

[msviolacea]

The current Honkai Star Rail ghost hunting event is maybe the best one yet - I love hanging out with Sushang, Guinafen, and Huo Huo, the social media thing is hilarious (especially once you know which canon characters belong to which screen names - i.e., that Jing Yuan is on fake ghost hunting tiktok teasing Fu Xuan about how short she is, lol) (I may ship it, just a little), and the lore they're dropping is really interesting. In that way, I'm really happy with HSR's "permanent" event setup, that future players can get this content without the special rewards, because if this was a limited time event I'd definitely be unhappy about how much character stuff and lore would disappear.

But anyway, the biggest thing I've come away with so far is feeling a LOT of sympathy for Yanqing, and considering the folly of a civilization/government attempting to erase their own history. Like, here's a kid, he's a member of an effectively immortal species, but he's a teenager - either in actuality or in relative age to his centuries-old fellows. Yes, he's a swordplay savant and has earned a place as a military officer at his young age, but he's still stupidly young. He's the protege of the Arbiter General, the most powerful man on the Luofu, but Jing Yuan has clearly not told him anything more of what truly happened with the High Cloud Quintet than is public knowledge. And that public knowledge appears to be no more than "So, these 5 were heroes, until Imbibitor Lunae and his (boy)friend did something unspeakable with Vidyadhara magic and got themselves exiled permanently. Also we erased the entire identity of the greatest swordsperson in our history and pretend she doesn't exist, don't ask us why." And I'm sure that there are plenty of people who are either old enough to remember what actually happened, or have parents/grandparents who witnessed what happened, but Yanqing is not one of them.

So we have this teenaged kid, with a relatively high level military rank and an ego to match that his mentor has indulged up until now, and a strong sense of right and wrong. He sees what he believes to be a blind woman wandering through an active combat zone and offers to escort her to where she's going. Unfortunately for him, that woman is the aforementioned sword champion whose entire identity has been erased from history, so he has no idea that she's a) the person he high-key idolizes, b) his mentor's old mentor, and c) gone semi-batshit with mara and here to fuck shit up. So she kicks his ass and laughs at him, which is the perfect way to get under a teenager's skin, and leaves him humiliated.

And then Yanqing hears that one of the two most infamous exiled criminals in the Luofu's history, who had been caught coming back and imprisoned, has escaped and is once again running around free. So, he goes hunting, because it's the duty of a Cloud Knight to capture this criminal, and also it's maybe a way to redeem himself. But once again, he doesn't have the full information, which is that a) this criminal is nearly as good at the sword as the woman who just kicked his ass, because she brutally trained him, b) this criminal is even MORE batshit marastruck because he's a more short-lived human, which shouldn't even be possible, and c) oh yeah, Imbibitor Lunae is also here, hiding as a member of the Astral Express crew, so now he's gonna have to fight BOTH of the most infamous exiled criminals in Luofu history. But he refuses to back down, so that goes about as well as one might expect.

But Jing Yuan shows up! So the day will be saved, right? But Yanqing hasn't really thought about the fact that these two criminals were once Jing Yuan's best friends - which he probably knew in the abstract, because he knows that Jing Yuan is the last surviving non-exiled member of the High Cloud Quintet - but has had no reason to contemplate what that might mean until now. And, well, these are the worst criminals in his people's history, right? So Jing Yuan is here to back him up?

Wrong. His beloved mentor actually snaps at him to back off, and then lets them go.

I mean, no wonder this kid is messed up. No wonder he lets a heliobus get into his head with promises of making him better, stronger, more worthy of being a Cloud Knight. I'm so glad that something permanent, that every player can access, addresses the way he's feeling after all that. And I'm glad that Jing Yuan acknowledges that it's his fault, his failing as Yanqing's master for not properly preparing him for this eventuality, or helping him process it afterward. Not that Jing Yuan did anything wrong in his dealings with Blade and Dan Heng, but the man is constantly playing 5D chess with the entire universe and never lets anyone in on his thoughts, which is his primary failing. An understandable one, given his circumstances, but not one that particularly helps anyone around him deal with the fallout from his schemes.

So yes. I have more feels about Yanqing than I ever thought I would. Join me next time when I have almost the same amount of feels about Qingque and how actually good she is at being a diviner when she's not using her clearly stellar brain to figure out new ways to slack off, and how I hope she ends up being Fu Xuan's second in command and is forced to bitch about it for the next several hundred years.

[minicomics]

Meet the crew! 1/3

As promise, I shall tell you all of the characters of the amazing digital circus and what has happened to them. Let's start off with these three characters first.

Horror Pomni: Pomni used to be a shy girl, that is not much interactive type. But after Kinger became the leader of the whole game. She asks if she would be able to remember her name and more as she would think of an exit, but would go slow and ask for simpler as she was granted to remember the events and any memory that she has been left out, however when the horror-frication started she would remember events a bit too much then before as she would get small glimpse of her prey dying especially around others as this made her go insane, almost abstracting if you say. So, with a last-ditch effort, Pomni would make a promise to herself that she would never eat or sleep, as she would never want to eat any new players that has entered in this horror circus, but this also led her to being a bit lazy and sleep, so she tries to stay awake by talking to her friend or making a few jokes at times. She also has some scratches and wounds as her skin of her lower half of her face was torn off due to a VERY messed up hare. But hey it could made things brighter for her, as she would always show others that is quite a "happy gal". Pomni carries a throwing blade as to sharpen her teeth/stop any players from running away.

Horror Ragatha: Ragatha used to be a kind person, always there to help out others and support them. But when Kinger became the leader, she would soon relax and now somewhat relived as the trouble terror is done and that she could rest. But it still gives her some troubling memories due to the event of her friends being gone, so she asks Kinger to simply remove the bad memories from the past and keep some now which worked. She doesn't remember the past events and what Caine did to here or her friends anymore, she was free from the torment. Well, at least that is what she thought in the first place, as when the horror-frication began, her mind would slowly feel a bit light and hurtful as it seems that she would become a bit more human and doll like as her mind was more fluff and pillow stuffing as this made Ragatha to lose her memory a few times and also be a bit dull when it comes to solving problems and her button eye has fallen off as it could show her other eye as it was blind. For Ragatha, she would think of this as a curse and that her torment could never end and that she would be off like this condition. However, Pomni would refuse her friend to be like this, and that she could make it. Because she believes that Ragatha is a smart and beautiful doll to her own eyes and that she could help/promise her with whatever she wants. And so, Ragatha, with the help of Pomni now work as a duo as they would find and make players play Ragatha many games. Cause if Pomni believes that she is smarter than others then she could put it to the test and see what these new players can do by her amazing puzzle games. Oh, and if any of them were to..."fail" then Ragatha would have extra ingredients for her special "Muffins". Ragatha also have abilities to stretch her arms and legs but could make her stitches lose or open as she has to re-sew them again and her hungry is quite minimum as she prefers to play with her food them eating them, she also uses a clever to cut her ingredients to the perfect pieces.

Horror Zooble: Zooble used to be a sassy lady that always don't want to be part of others business. But when Kinger gotten control, she would think of this as a good opportunity to ask him to make her body not remove and that she could be different, which he granted and now she could not take off any pieces of her body anymore, she is now whole. However, when the horror-frication process began, she would feel the sudden urge to itch and feel unwell, but she ignores and tries to stay sane. which didn't last long for five to ten days as the itching get worse and worse so, with no other choice, Zooble would use a knife to stab/crave her mouth and eyes. trying to remove the itch away as her body slowly abstracts. Now she is by herself away from the others as her eyes would be shown only red and her teeth as well as she would now hunt the new players with her claw and dagger and use them as her necessary meals, as it helps keep her sane as well. This would make Zooble ashamed and guilt for this as she thought of hiding this issue from others would be fine, but it only leads her to her now own isolation of being alone.

[czerwonykasztelanic]

I'm very much aware that I complain about it every time I leave a bookstore (so: on an almost monthly basis), but popular perception of historical and contemporary events alike is a product of siege mentality.

In Poland, specifically: a keen but suppressed awareness of the West's decline and inevitable collapse, paired with a visceral fear of the nebulous Orient, leads the average citizen of this liberal Christian democracy to believe that he must seek out a Noah to build him an ark, lest the coming deluge drown him alongside the unenlightened. He sees the downfall of the prevailing order as a natural outcome of his class's social decomposition, of its descent into mindless self indulgence, and perhaps of its too-lenient attitude towards deviants and saboteurs. His fortress will succumb to the horde of infidels because its watchmen abandoned their posts and opened the gates to carriers of the plague; it is a conquest well-deserved. For all that, the impending catastrophe may still be averted, but only through the advent of a Great Man, this long-awaited tyrant Noah, an individual force capable of delivering the ingenuous townsfolk from the Mongol swarm, rallying a holy legion against the rotten of the Earth. He will be crowned patron saint of the enterprising and lord-protector of industry. And he will reign over the besieged with an iron fist, turning boys into men and men into machines, crushing underfoot anyone who refuses to bow before him, paying no heed to the cries of the destitute, weeding out the weak and lathering himself in gold. All this - in the name of an abstract freedom. Triumphant! Order prevails in the Western world. The citadel becomes an empire.

And so the bookshelves are lined with the works of the prophets du jour, variations on the theme of Why China is going to destroy us and War with the East; right next to them, the biographies of Hitler, Mussolini, Churchill, Bismarck and Bonaparte. Voilà the free market.