#but it will be discussed

[justaghostingon]

In Which Kaeya and Kaveh Have a Horrible Missunderstanding

It starts at a bar in Sumeru. Kaeya is technically on buisness, but really he’s just having “fun” if fun is meeting another khanrian who drops a lore bomb, steals Kaeya’s company (traveler), and leaves without paying the bill.

Somewhat shaken up, kaeya walks up to the bar where he meets Kaveh, who is bemoaning his strained relationship with Alhaitham.

And maybe Kaeya’s feeling nostalgic surrounded by all this wine, maybe Dain’s words about the Alberichs made him want to reaffirm his place in the family that wasn’t crazy (if u count Diluc’s Darknight heroing as sane) but he finds himself emphasizing with Kaveh, and begins to tell his own story.

The two quickly realize their stories are quite similar. Kaveh talks about how his mother left him and Kaeya tells him about how his dad left him too. (Kaeya does not mention he was a very small child at the time, and not a college student, he thinks this is obvious. It is not. Kaveh doesn’t make that connection and it will come back to bite him later)

Kaveh bemoans how he found himself someone he thought he was going to make a new family with, indirectly talking of his secret college dream to marry his first boyfriend Alhaitham (he’s not direct because how embarrassing would that be? Kaeya gets it right?) kaeya emphasizes with his own hopes with diluc and master crepus (both who he uses first names for because he feels like he doesn’t deserve to call them brother/father. But it’s fine, it’s implied right?)

Then kaveh gripes about how it all fell apart and they had a big fight ( “Same” kaeya goes) how it emotionally destroyed him and Alhaitham is now letting him live in his house and that has to mean something, right?

This is when Kaeya, drunk and very much a busybody, (and projecting hard) offers his services. He wants to help these two brothers reconnect

Because kaeya has come to the mistaken conclusion that alhaitham and kaveh are brothers

Kaveh meanwhile, thinks diluc and kaeya must have been dating

Both are very, very wrong

Kaveh takes one look at Kaeya’s fashionable clothing with its daring V neck and thinks Kaeya must be a suduction master who’s taken pity upon him

He agrees

Kaeya starts with reconisence, since Alhaitham is still letting Kaveh live with him, it can’t be as bad as him and diluc, but it never hurts to know ur target

He stalks alhaitham’s schedule, and figures out what he can gleam about his personality.

“The first step is to be where they are,” Kaeya starts, “You’ve got a huge advantage because u share a house. Be useful. Remind him that he needs your support, even if he doesn’t like it”

“I already do the interior decorating! And cleaning! I even cook sometimes!”

“Excellent!” Kaeya claps his hands. “He relies on u, now u just need to figure out what his biggest secret is.”

“I …what?” Kaveh blinks “why? U aren’t seriously suggesting blackmail?”

“It’s not realllly blackmail.” Kaeya waves his hand. “U just want him to know u could, if u wanted too, but u don’t.”

“That’s not going to work on alhaitham, he doesn’t really have secrets” Kaveh says, privately thinking that maybe Kaeya’s not as good at this as he previously assumed.

“A shame,” kaeya sighs “ur sure he’s not moonlighting as a vigilante? Keeping a secret like that is a great way to force them to begin to trust you again.”

“…No” kaveh now definitely thinks Kaeya is not as knowledgeable as he though he was. And might be a little crazy.

Hopimg to change the subject Kaveh goes, “all i really want is to know how to have an open conversation with him wjthout our stupid pride getting in the way”

“An open conversation?” Kaeya looks serious. “That’s going to get physical.”

Physical? Kaveh thinks to himself. Is that really all we need?. Could he really be that bold?

“Does he have a vision?” Kaeya asks oblivious to kaveh’s shock

“Yes? What does that have to do with anything?”

“Is your vision a healing or sheilding one?”

“I can self-heal, yes” kaveh crossed his arms “what are you getting at?”

“That’s good” kaeya nods, lost in his own thoughts. “We’ll need a flat area then, mostly private but close enough to call for help when things get violent…”

“WHEN?” Kaveh shouts.

“I’ll stay by to act as an emergency aid. I can sheild when people closeby are close to death…”

“CLOSE TO DEATH?” Kaveh throws up his hands, breaking Kaeya out of his thoughts “What the F are u talking about?”

“Worst case scenarios.” Kaeya frowns. “You’ve had this fight before, you know how deadly it can get.”

“Deadly? Alhaitham and i had a verbal argument! With words!” Kaveh grabs Kaeya’s shoulders. “What happened to you??!!!”

“He tried to take me out with a flaming claymore.” Kaeya crosses his arms defensively. “It’s how i got my vision.”

“And you still want to get back together????”

“Yes? He’s all i have left.”

Kaveh opens his mouth, and closes this mouth, realizing for the first time in his life he’s to angry to speak.

Wordless, he leaves kaeya and goes straight to Alhaitham

Alhaitham looks up but before he can say anything, kaveh gives him a big hug and buries his head in his shoulder.

Alhaitham is shocked, but hugs back. Kaeya is shocked, becuase he’d never take a risk like that! But Alhaitham was hugging back! Should Kaeya try that?

“Thank you for just being a bit of a dick and not a psychopath”

“Are your standards really that low?” Alhaitham snarks, trying to cover how confused and offput he is by this all.

Kaveh just smiles and kisses him full on the mouth.

Kaeya who at this point, is convinced kaveh and ahaitham are brothers, promptly faints.

When he wakes, he doesn’t talk to anyone, just walks himself home all the way to mondstat in a daze before sitting at thr angel’s share.

Diluc takes one look at kaeya’s disleveled and dazed appearance and demands to know what happened

“He kissed his brother.” Kaeya says. Staring into his glass like it contained the secrets of the universe

“Some cultures do,” diluc points out, cleaning a few glasses while he waits the bar

“No,” kaeya shakes his head. “Not like those cheek kisses they do in fontaine. He was full on making out! With his brother!”

Diluc drops the glass.

“Diluc…” kaeya looks at diluc with big, watery eyes. “Diluc we aren’t thr most f-ed up pair of brothers. There are actually worse cases”

“Why are you telling me this?” Diluc asks, knuckles white on the counter.

“Because if i have to have nightmares about this, so do you,” goes Kaeya.

“Ass” diluc replies, “if u tried anything like that i’d have you reported to the church for the crime of incest.” but he relaxes.

Kaeya hides a smile. In a weird way, it’s reassuring to know that Diluc considers the idea of kissing him as incestuous. It means deep down he must still think of Kaeya as a brother.

Bonus

Meanwhile in Sumeru:

“How to you help someone who’s trapped in an abusive relationship?” Kaveh asks alhaitham

“I’ve found staging a coup most effective,” alhaitham says, thinking of nahida.

“Great,” kaveh pulls out the blue prints to the dawn winery “get the gang together Alhaitham, we’ve got a Wine tycoon to take down.”

The end

[ratsbypaulzindel]

when they got "character who made an undeniably terrible decision but man i dont know what i would have done either" at the function

CHARACTERS THIS POST WAS ABOUT

GO HERE NOW.

[rivetgoth]

It's honestly crazy that discussion around testosterone HRT skews so much towards the beginning stages of it (to the point that you have dozens of guys thinking their transition is "failed" if they don't pass by like a year in lol) and what the initial changes of the first couple of months to years look like, like the classic laundry list of those early basic changes like bottom growth, voice drop, etc, when IMO literally none of that compares remotely to the depth and intensity of the long term total masculinization you start to experience like 3-5+ years in.

[orchidvioletindigo]

The state of Georgia did what with voter registrations?!

[veramitar]

Young overlords ready to paint the neighborhood red.

Minimaniacs Artboard 1 | 2

[dogboyboyshorts]

"ummm you know the writer only included that because they have a FETISH right?" is always so funny to me as a disparaging comment, because imagine if people spoke that way about nonsexual interests. "the lord of the rings? didnt the author only write that because he was interested in linguistics? thanks, i'll pass" "yeah, i used to love spongebob as a kid, but i can never see it the same after finding out stephen hillenburg is a marine biologist :/"

[inkskinned]

how do i contact apple bc actually i am currently going through an internet story but i don't have twitter.

which is to say that 3 weeks ago i was on vacation to the Azores with my family. due to girl pockets (iykyk) my phone fucking jumped into the ocean literally only because i lifted my leg above a 30 degree angle to avoid a wave. the phone was black. the sand was black. it was night. i had waded in about 2 feet deep. i think my guardian angel just closed his eyes.

i immediately reached a state of peace about it. maybe it was a sign from god or the universe. don't we all need to unplug. let's live in the moment or whatever. also, let's give the crabs technology, i just think it would be funny.

i come home. i haven't backed up my phone in a while (lol since 2022) and the shitty replacement i got is literally useless. i lost pictures of newborn babies. i lost contacts. i have to wrangle things together that need 2-factor authentication with a phone that's in the fucking ocean.

and then today i got this notification.

What in the everfuck. are you kidding me. this thing was IN THE OCEAN. like the ACTUAL OCEAN. like originally "find my phone" was reporting it as ABSENT.

and then i get this email:

she found it while she was SNORKLING. at the bottom of the actual ocean. it's been there for 3 weeks.

IT STILL WORKS.

which is to say. like how do i get her anything she wants, forever. i don't have any money but i would buy her a fucking boat of iphones to thank her. how do we get apple to give me a commercial. if nothing else i just want people to know that someone found my phone at the bottom of the ocean because how fucking fake of a story does this even sound.

what's going on. hello????????

[apollos-boyfriend]

we have GOT to kill tiktok/twitter self-censorship i just witnessed a grown adult say the word “smex” out loud to our professor

[hamletthedane]

I was meeting a client at a famous museum’s lounge for lunch (fancy, I know) and had an hour to kill afterwards so I joined the first random docent tour I could find. The woman who took us around was a great-grandmother from the Bronx “back when that was nothing to brag about” and she was doing a talk on alternative mediums within art.

What I thought that meant: telling us about unique sculpture materials and paint mixtures.

What that actually meant: an 84yo woman gingerly holding a beautifully beaded and embroidered dress (apparently from Ukraine and at least 200 years old) and, with tears in her eyes, showing how each individual thread was spun by hand and weaved into place on a cottage floor loom, with bright blue silk embroidery thread and hand-blown beads intricately piercing the work of other labor for days upon days, as the labor of a dozen talented people came together to make something so beautiful for a village girl’s wedding day.

What it also meant: in 1948, a young girl lived in a cramped tenement-like third floor apartment in Manhattan, with a father who had just joined them after not having been allowed to escape through Poland with his pregnant wife nine years earlier. She sits in her father’s lap and watches with wide, quiet eyes as her mother’s deft hands fly across fabric with bright blue silk thread (echoing hands from over a century years earlier). Thread that her mother had salvaged from white embroidery scraps at the tailor’s shop where she worked and spent the last few days carefully dying in the kitchen sink and drying on the roof.

The dress is in the traditional Hungarian fashion and is folded across her mother’s lap: her mother doesn’t had a pattern, but she doesn’t need one to make her daughter’s dress for the fifth grade dance. The dress would end up differing significantly from the pure white, petticoated first communion dresses worn by her daughter’s majority-Catholic classmates, but the young girl would love it all the more for its uniqueness and bright blue thread.

And now, that same young girl (and maybe also the villager from 19th century Ukraine) stands in front of us, trying not to clutch the old fabric too hard as her voice shakes with the emotion of all the love and humanity that is poured into the labor of art. The village girl and the girl in the Bronx were very different people: different centuries, different religions, different ages, and different continents. But the love in the stitches and beads on their dresses was the same. And she tells us that when we look at the labor of art, we don’t just see the work to create that piece - we see the labor of our own creations and the creations of others for us, and the value in something so seemingly frivolous.

But, maybe more importantly, she says that we only admire this piece in a museum because it happened to survive the love of the wearer and those who owned it afterwards, but there have been quite literally billions of small, quiet works of art in billions of small, quiet homes all over the world, for millennia. That your grandmother’s quilt is used as a picnic blanket just as Van Gogh’s works hung in his poor friends’ hallways. That your father’s hand-painted model plane sets are displayed in your parents’ livingroom as Grecian vases are displayed in museums. That your older sister’s engineering drawings in a steady, fine-lined hand are akin to Da Vinci’s scribbles of flying machines.

I don’t think there’s any dramatic conclusions to be drawn from these thoughts - they’ve been echoed by thousands of other people across the centuries. However, if you ever feel bad for spending all of your time sewing, knitting, drawing, building lego sets, or whatever else - especially if you feel like you have to somehow monetize or show off your work online to justify your labor - please know that there’s an 84yo museum docent in the Bronx who would cry simply at the thought of you spending so much effort to quietly create something that’s beautiful to you.

[fubblers]

To younger broke adults getting into sex work here’s some common scams:

“I’ll pay you $ every week for feet/genital/fetish pics” they start a long conversation about this. Then they convince you to send some sample pics. They will try to get you to enact their fetishes with promise of later payment. Then they cut and run. They will be kind, promise large things, but become aggressive when you refuse. Lesson: never give things for free unless you’re specifically doing it for marketing. Personalized fetish content should require payment upfront.

“I want to be your sugar mommy/daddy” These are insanely common and will use a variety of tactics. They prey on vulnerable broke people who are desperate for stable cash. They may try to use a BDSM dynamic to make you feel sexy and submissive. They’ll start a long flirty conversation that makes you feel good and desired and confident. Then they might send a link…. Don’t click it! Or they might ask you to “prove your loyalty” as their sub/babygirl/whatever. Proving your loyalty will probably involve sending them money in some way. The most common way is to buy a gift card and tell them the code. If a stranger ever asks you to buy them a gift card that’s pretty much always an instant block.

The same thing goes for “pay pigs”. There are very few people out there actually into financial domination. Chances are people promising you access to their bank accounts are liars trying to get dommed by a stranger, or scammers trying to get money from you.

There’s essentially two main categories of scams in sex work: 1. Traditional scams (trying to get money, personal info, account access) and 2. Freebie scams (trying to get your SW content for free)

Freebie scams can involve someone trying to piss you off so you curse them out and they can go jerk it to being rejected by someone hot. You can just block people being weird.

As a new or established SWer you literally don’t owe anyone anything unless they’ve specifically paid for a service you offer.

[aethiriarts]

Remembering that one embarrassing thing you did 50 years ago.

[cursedgamerchild]

"internet historian's alt-right anyways" "great day to have never liked james somerton" "never even heard of illuminaughtii before this lol"

that's great buddy but don't go around thinking you're immune to this. if you're not looking for plagiarism, you likely won't notice it unless its egregiously obvious. hell, you've probably consumed plagiarized content without even realizing it. even hbomb pointed out that these people disguised what they presented pretty well as long as you didn't try and dig deeper. don't come away just thinking of this as a callout piece, take this as an important lesson about vetting your sources. if googling scripts in quotes was enough to expose the original, we should all start doing that shit!!

edit: it got a little too doomer-y a little too fast so one quick addition

this is hbomb's curated playlist of queer creators, many of whom were victims of plagiarism

this is producer kat on reddit calling for any more plagiarism discoveries and for queer content creators to be uplifted

please take some time to uplift these creators and recommend any you know! if you can help uncover more of the original creators whose work was lifted that would be great too :)

UPDATE- From Hbomb's twitter: "We're in the process of cataloguing everyone James Somerton plagiarised and finding their contact information. Which is quite a task, so to help us out: If you see this and happen to be one of the people Somerton stole from, please email us at contact@hbomb.zone"

edit 2:

[thottybrucewayne]

I don't think people realize that critiquing the media you enjoy is fun too.

[nyancrimew]

can you explain the ai thing to me as though I were a small child I am in fact very stupid and don't understand what the point being made was supposed to be

the point i am trying to make it that ai is fundamentally a labor issue (and just more broadly a capitalism issue) and should be treated as such, any attempts at trying to classify what makes something "not real art" is a slippery slope leading towards fascism and fundamentally irrelevant in the fight against unethical (uses of) AI. the same goes for any attempts at just making copyright laws more strict, this has never helped any independent artists and never will, at best it'll make any sort of derivative art (including fanart, remixes, collages, etc) basically impossible to do unless you're a massive corporation with an unlimited legal budget.

[quillyfied]

One thing that Firefox can’t do is allow me to access my telehealth therapy appointments. Three different platforms now have rejected my use of Firefox. I use Safari instead bc that’s what works and at least it isn’t chrome, but for folks who rightfully use Firefox, be aware that many, if not all, telehealth platforms will not work on Firefox (something about the encryption/security not being up to their standard, I believe; if there are hacks that Firefox gurus know to bypass this, please share with the class?).