#preferably from Xishan

[harocat]

Get domesticated, bitch.

[tragcdysewn]

@mvsicinthedvrk asked: for xiao lanhua: luo bingge: do you think you are the best version of yourself, the worst, or somewhere in between? do you ever think about how one small thing in your life might have changed you in a big way?

she definitely thinks she's somewhere in between. she's grown a lot from the naive little fairy she was in shuiyuntian, but they are very aware that there's a lot of potential that she hasn't touched on yet, now that they're also the xishan goddess. it's a lot of power, and it could do a lot of good, but it does frighten them a little bit suddenly having that much, especially when the only thing she's consciously done with it is kill someone she cares about. they do definitely think a lot about who they'd be if she'd grown up as xi yun, if ronghao hadn't destroyed her clan, but considering what xi yun was like while her memories of xiao lanhua were still muted, she definitely thinks they prefer being xiao lanhua, that their experiences as a powerless nobody made her a much better person overall than they would have been had they grown up with near limitless power and an inescapable destiny

[a-shoebox-named-meap]

mountain&moon time!!

which realm/location do you think you would be most suited to (provided it was at a time of peace)?

OOOOOO what a question. you have great questions.

i’m gonna ignore the mortal realm for a sec because that’s just. that’s our world, that’s where we live already. and it’s less magical and i want magic >:D

hmmmmmm! i’m gonna say cangyanhai at the top, then xishan, then haishi, then (much further down) shuiyuntian. shuiyuntian’s at the bottom because the vibe just reminds me of like,,, toxic hierarchical workplaces or high school. but maybe that’s an unfair assessment because we didn’t see much Daily Living or their version of an urban/community space like we did with the other major locations. we mostly saw xiao lanhua getting bullied and some distasteful politics. so.

haishi is next but with a much higher-up preference because i Do like urban environments. i hope in peacetime it would get a little less like.. antagonistic?? (idk the right word.) seems like it’d have good shopping and food. but while living in a busy urban space is fun and i enjoy it, i’m Not generally a street-smart person, and that would probably be disadvantageous in a place like haishi. i would get scammed so easily smh

xishan next. as a general rule: i love Water, Trees, and Mountains. if a place does not have at least two of these things it’s hard for me to imagine living there (shuiyuntian.. water, cloud, sky. hm. no). everywhere i’ve lived in my life has had all three in reasonable abundance. xishan doesn’t seem to have many trees going for it, but it’s got the other two and that’s great, lovely, delightful, i’ll take it

but cangyanhai! triple whammy! the panoramic view of the sea whenever they show the moon palace — god i love being on boats and that inhabited water zone looks Perfect for ferry culture. and bridges, i also love being on bridges. and we know they have a lot of forest. and we know they have mountains. like seriously 12/10 it checks all my boxes. AND it has fun markets?? i love fun markets. i want to be a silly little artisan living in a nice little forest with all my family and neighbors who i love very much and i’ll craft some silly little things and take a little boat ride to the mountains where the fun bridges and markets are and i’ll sell my silly little things and then at the end of the day i’ll cross the bridges and descend from the mountains and hop on another boat and return to my village in the forest. i would say i’m very well suited to this extremely idealized vision of living there in my head

thanks for the question though, i’ve honestly never thought about it before. but now that ive thought about it i’m very passionate about my answer haha

[enderexplorer1212]

Decided to go over the books I’ve picked up or have been reading, just because I’m in a good mood and classes start in a week so best not squander my time and actually read stuff! These are all nonfiction because for some reason I’m just not very interested in fiction books, I tend to read that sort of stuff online, and instead buy books to learn about stuff I wouldn’t from Wikipedia.

Now, without further ado:

American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin; I watched Oppenheimer recently, and I liked the movie, pretty good, so my Mom decided to buy this book because she thought I’d be interested considering I like biographies. I haven’t read it so far, and honestly I don't know if I will because I have several other biographies that I already have to read that are about people I’m interested in a bit more. I already watched the movie as well. Still, it should be interesting, maybe around a year or so down the line when I’ve forgotten the movie.

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell (AKA Eric Blair); I’ve already read 1984 and Animal Farm as part of the American Education System, so I thought to myself “why not read Orwell’s (maybe) third most famous book?” So I picked this up at the bookstore recently, and I haven’t started it yet, but it should provide an interesting look into both Orwell himself, and into the Spanish Civil War and how that whole ordeal went down. Not too much to say about this one because I obviously haven’t read it yet, but hopefully it’s interesting.

Shanghai by Harriet Sergeant; The Warlord era of China was a period from 1916 to 1928 where China basically fell apart, which was followed by the Nanjing Decade where the KMT gained power. These periods of Chinese history are some of my most favorite to read about, because of just how interesting it is to me, and I picked this book up so that I could read more about the era. There weren’t any books solely on the Warlord era, and in the future, I hope to get a book on Chen Jiongming or Yan Xishan, but for now, I’ll settle on this.

Painting as a Pastime by Winston Churchill; By far the smallest book I’ve obtained recently, this is a very short book by Churchill that details his interests in painting. My mom picked this up for me because she thought I’d be interested in it. I have painted a few things, although I prefer filling in the colors rather than drawing something out, but who knows, maybe Churchill was like Bob Ross in a way? I’ll have to read this soon, as it should be an easy thing to knock out quickly.

How to Survive History by Cody Cassidy; I picked this up in a bookstore upstate because I thought it looked interesting and was similar to a few XKCD books that I own. The book is a semi-humorous detail of roughly how to survive several historic events, which I should keep in handy when I get my physics degree, in case I somehow violate most of the standard model. Haven’t read it yet, but it’s a smaller book and not exactly a feature length biography so I should be able to pick it up sometime and read through it.

We Had a Little Real Estate Problem by Kliph Nesteroff; I also got this upstate in the same bookstore because I was drawn to the analysis of Native comedy. The book goes over the history of comedy amongst Native Americans, the nature of Native comedy (lots of dark humor in my experience), and also how we tend to be sidelined by much of popular culture due to the low amounts of us, meaning that we aren’t a very big demographic to focus on unfortunately. Also because of racism, because people were historically (and currently tbh) kinda racist against us, who’da thought? But seriously folks, I like comedy, I like the Indians, should be an interesting book. Little on the longish side, so maybe I’ll spend a few days in between larger books to read this one. Maybe it can me give tips on how to break out into comedy, you know?

Roosevelt Sweeps Nation by David Pietrusza; I visited the FDR library while upstate, and I picked up this book there. The book details the 1936 presidential election, one of the most lopsided in American history. Now then, I’m a U.S. election nerd, I like this kind of stuff, so this is exactly up my alley. Reading about FDR and the decisions made on the campaign trail and what he did and also what Landon did, this is my bread and butter. The book’s somewhat large, so I’ll have to figure out what books I want to read before and after this one, but it should be interesting at least.

The Years of Lyndon B. Johnson: The Path to Power by Robert Caro; This book is a huge book that I picked up… somewhere, I don’t actually remember. Regardless, this book is a biography of LBJ, kinda good, kinda bad president of the U.S.A. I find LBJ to be a fascinating politician because of how high his highs were, and how low his lows were. This book goes into detail about his early life up until his first bid for Senate. This is actually just the first volume in a 4 (soon to be 5 [hopefully]) volume set, of which I actually own all the rest. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to read all of these volumes, but it should be interesting. Currently reading this one right now, kind of the only book I am reading right now actually. So far I learned that the Apache one time tricked the Spanish into building a fort in the middle of nowhere claiming they wanted to convert, only for the fort to get sacked by the Comanche. Pretty smart.

On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller by Richard Norton Smith; I visited Nelson Rockefeller’s house during my trip upstate, and so I decided to pick up this biography on him there. His house was actually much more interesting than I anticipated, first because of all the modern art lying around (of which I’m a pretty big fan), and because our tour guide was actually very invested in the place, so I enjoyed listening to him talk about it. Highly recommend. Anyways, Nelson Rockefeller was an interesting guy, last of the liberal Republicans, maybe could’ve saved Humphrey in `68 if he wanted to, may have died because he had sex with his mistress (happens to the best of us). Overall, interesting dude, and I will admit I don’t know many details of his life, so hopefully this book can shed light on it. I think I’ll plan to read this after I finish at least volume 1 of LBJ.

Also, I didn't pick this book up because I couldn't find it, but I do hope to get Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson soon. Talks about 1972 election, and Thompson's a pretty funny guy to read, even if he is a little, you know, weird. Hopefully I can get it soon!

Anyways, that’s all the books I’ve gotten in the past ~2 months or so, hope this inspires others to pick up these books and give them a try! Also I'll take book suggestions, don't know if I'll be able to get to any of them, but suggestions are appreciated :)

[silverloreley]

Part 2 of the outline of my LBFAD x TTEOTM crossover idea (which I need now more than ever given how the series ended).

Part 1 here. We were left at the Nehter River. Now, I think the reason the disaster demonic duo couldn’t find the Devil Fetus for 500 years is because TTJ was in the river while the Evil Bone was with Susu, who timeskipped to her own time so, in those 500 years, there were no Evil Bone nor Devil Fetus to find.

[Which means that having TTJ dive in the Nether River was actually a good idea to prevent/delay the end of the world, or at least to spare him five centuries of tortures from the demons who’d try to awaken their master (not that he didn’t suffer plenty in the Nether River, but that was his choice, you see)]

That said, the 500 years disappeareance could happen, in this fic, also if the very worried immortal family decides to take a risk and bring TTJ with them in the immortal realm, preferably Xishan or Cangyanhai. In fact, in Xishan he could recover from the wound of the Nails in his heart and cultivate better his new immortal soul. They’d also explain him the nature of Susu’s sacrifice, once given the chance, and XLH would beg him to be patient and wait for LSS to be back in a new life, like she waited for DFQC.

But we know TTJ is a stubborn freak (who we love) and I think more likely he dived in the Nether River anyway, “bye family, come pick me up in 500 years” sort of.

This got even longer than the other part.

Shangque basically adopts Nian Baiyu. Aka: Nian Baiyu doesn’t fall prey of the demons and gains immortality thanks to his new dad shifu. They were close before too, since Shangque saw the poor lieutenant interact with TTJ and had flashbacks of himself with DFQC. Jieli insists on taking in Nian Baiyu’s sister too when their mother dies in the demon attack (this isn’t plot-relevant, I just liked this idea). The Yiyue tribe passes under Shangque’s protection and of the Moon Tribe by proxy, therefore no one is taken hostage or stuff.

Qingyu and Pian Ran get married and rule the empire together, although they make to history as they created a new tradition about the emperor wearing the mask and the empress must never be seen, the latter only to let Pian Ran be free to do whatever she pleases. After 300 years or so, they plan to find a good-hearted, strong, righteous and smart kid to adopt as their heir for when they plan to retire and travel around the world.

That said!

When the Nether River spits out TTJ, he does end up near the immortal sect, while his family was waiting for him near the Yiyue tribe’s settlement. It causes a bit of a delay in them meeting again.

No one remembers he had been a disciple over 500 years before just like no one remembered Xiao Lin, which is curious but true because most people forgot, have died, or just are too young to have met him in those 3 years so long before.

Master Zhaoyou still puts TTJ to test because “a disciple who had not cultivated any art in five centuries is as good as a newbie” or something (he dissipated most his cultivation in the Nether River so Zhaoyou is pretty much right). That’s when Zhaoyou finds out a few things that he keeps for himself about TTJ, including the fact he’s the Devil Fetus but without the Evil Bone, that he was raised by actual immortals, and there’s something else he can’t quite figure out and breaks his head over.

The first thing XLH does upon finding TTJ again is slap his arm and chastize him for making her worry for other 500 years, as if she had not suffered enough being parted for so long from someone she loved before. He apologizes and she cries and obvsy forgives him. DFQC gives him the cold shoulder for the grand total of a day, then he caves in too. Changheng and Shangque can’t even do that and hug him right away. Once they arrive, Danyin and Jieli are much worse, they go on a tag-team two-hours long tirade while Xunfeng is just, like, there watching and gloating with this judgmental face that ends up being worse than everything else put together.

Nian Baiyu and Changheng offer to stay in the sect with him if what he wants is to stay, everyone else will come back from time to time, like they used to do in his childhood.

None of them had the chance to meet Susu yet or even hear of her name, at least until the competition comes and, whoops, there she is! The Lady of Spirituality, who would have guessed? And she saved TTJ again, just in case someone had doubts it was her.

Before that, though, the immortal fam offer their help containing the demons during the competition, since that’s not an interference with mortal fates. It changes everything and nothing: they manage to trap the two big demons for a while, but those two are very strong and manage to escape.

XLH is very happy to meet Susu again, although Susu tries to pretend she doesn’t know any of them, XLH laughs and tells her she tried the trick too and it never works in the long run.

(TTJ knew that part of the story and he pulls a DFQC and kisses Susu instead of only tricking her into revealing herself. Yes, that’s a scene I loved in LBFAD and I expected one like that in TTEOTM, damn it!)

He still ends up following her to Jing and being baited by Si Ying and Jing Mie, use the Crossbow, find out Susu has the Evil Bone and so forth because that bit was solid.

Since TTJ told his parent(s) a through recollection of Bo’re life (save for some, ehm, more private bits), they all know that Di Mian is a lying liar who lies, who did not kill the (D)evil God - the previous Goddess of Xishan did - and that he was the real cause of his beloved wife’s death. It discredits him a lot, especially during the trial (Changheng basically moved in the Xiaoyao sect at this point and was already there to help, DFQC and XLH arrive later for reasons).

Although, it’s undeniable that TTJ is the Devil Fetus and used to have the Evil Bone and still has the Crossbow so it only helps so much.

DFQC crushes the Pillar to interrupt the punishment (and gets real scary) while XLH starts to chastize the sects for being unable to see past their prejudice. Susu adds to it with her retelling (and the lie about the Evil Bone being gone) just like in canon because that scene is epic and almost made me cry so it must stay as it is.

Incidentally, the trial is also when TTJ finds out his family adopted him to prevent the end of the world, which is pretty devastating interms of trust, but the love they have for him is genuine and so is his for them, so everything is later resolved with a shoutfest and lots of tears.

Zhaoyou is unofficially dragged in the loop of the immortal family after that. He admits he had perceived/noted the Devil Fetus’ nature from the start but wanted to give his student a chance. They’re all very touched by that, and grateful (and Changheng developed a bit of a crush on him, no I accept no criticism here).

They end up sharing all they know: in the 500 years, they made researches on the Devil Fetus and how to separate its destiny from that of Tai Sui, but aside from removing the Evil Bone and keeping the artifacts far from each other since none can be destroyed, it seems like there’s nothing more to do, not without killing TTJ and make him regenerate in Xishan’s soil. The only problem is that without a soul vessel (like XLH’s seed or the moon bone orchid) the new life would be completely new, so not TTJ, and that’s not a viable solution, so TTJ needs to cultivate enough to create a soul vessel for his primordial spirit to be preserved if he wants to get rid of Tai Sui’s influence for good. It’s a lenghty procedure and the demons, along with Tai Sui, give them no time for this to happen.

There is, nevertheless, a moment of respite, while they start to plan the wedding. The immortal family almost goes overboard with the engagement gifts.

TTJ asks LSS’s fathers to let some of the immortal family assist in the removal of the Evil Bone (he doesn’t trust Di Mian. in. the. slightest). Di Mian wouldn’t want to, but has to cave in to avoid suspicions.

During the procedure, Di Mian manages to near-fatally wound Qu Xuanzi and DFQC with the Sky-Slashing Sword to the point of rendering them comatose and manages to put the blame on TTJ, he also plans to completely kill them but he’s stopped by LSS figuring out what happened. Qu Xuanzi very nearly dies (maybe he doesn’t. I just decided this can be an everybody lives au, all things considered, with XLH being there it can be).

Di Mian still flees with the Evil Bone, followed by Zhaoyou and Changheng.

TTJ is lured out by Si Ying and Jing Mie who kidnapped Susu thinking she still has the Evil Bone or at least can bait TTJ. She manages to escape mostly on her own because she’s more badass than the show allowed her to be.

Danyin and Xunfeng fight against Si Ying and Jing Mie because I say so to cover Susu’s escape and her start looking for the entrance of the Devil Palace.

(Eh, that means the Spider Demon won’t appear here, nor there will be her fight with Nian Baiyu. Whoops)

After the fight with Di Mian, Zhaoyou is about to devilize but Changheng uses half his immortal soul and near so of his cultivation to stop the process and save him. Unfortunately, this also means they’re both out of commission and seem to be dead on the outside eye.

The All-in-Distress-Way is opened, cue the sect people being stupid (the red master whatshisname tries to use the Crossbow which backfires and kills him LOL), Susu facing her shit dad once more, and so forth.

TTJ saves Susu from Di Mian, but he’s forced to devilize. Of course, he surrendered only on surface, because he 100% intends to weaponize the chance he’s given to destroy Tai Sui from the inside, a true suicide mission (it’s nice that I started to write this outline days before I saw the final 5 eps and I still got it right, that part of the plot makes perfect sense, if you ask me).

This starts an internal power struggle between TTJ and TS to control the body, the whole speech about all things sad and evil feeding the Devil God and all that drill.

After GYJW calls back all the sect people, including LSS, he finds out Zhaoyou isn’t dead and Changheng tries to make him see reason. Idk where this may lead until this dialogue is written though, but I feel this must happen because GYJW is a bad cheap copy of Changheng (and XL wasn’t that bad) he could have been a much better character, so perhaps he’s salvageable here.

The sects still have to intervene to stop the All-in-Distress Way because stopping the end of the world is the right thing to do.

Susu will have none of it, of course, and goes to speak with her (almost) husband, consequences be damned. So do XLH and DFQC, although he’s still wounded by the Sky-Slashing Sword.

Changheng stays behind in the sect to help the planning, Danyin and Xunfeng decide to return to the Immortal realms to mobilize Shuiyuntian and Changyanhai to try block the All-in-Distress Way from above.

TTJ ends up having to fool not only LSS but also XLH and DFQC, and actually manages to get the upper hand on all three because Tai Sui started to gloat about how he tricked the Goddess of Xishan and the great Yuezun by taking the primordial spirit of their future child and turning him into his vessel. Basically, in the river of reincarnation, he swiped their future child’s soul and forced the Evil Bone onto him, and then made sure he’d be born in a mortal’s life of suffering to break him down to his will for good. He planned to reveal it near the end of the world to make DFQC and, most importantly, Xi Yun unable to kill him (whether this is the truth or not, it’s debatable, it all depends on the message we want to pass thorugh with this rewriting).

Unfortunately, it works, and TTJ is left to apply his initial plan of having himself killed by Susu after the Celestial Punishment Array will hit.

During the Bo’re life, though, Susu sees through his lies, three lifetimes gave her a good enough grasp of his tellings. The fact she figured out most the plan does little to stop it, at first, since both play their parts till the end.

XLH is conflicted for a while, but eventually agrees to the plan, although for her it’s another heartbreak and repeating history. She says this much to TTJ who falters for a moment, revealing his true feelings but he has to push trough.

The Celestial Punishment Array is made by the sects and supported by Shuiyuntian and Cangyanhai, which once again joined forces to defeat Tai Sui. It’s a pretty big thing because it’s the first time in 30000 years the Immortals descend among mortals to help them (and will mark a new alliance for the future).

LSS ascends because that’s what she has to do and, in the “godly council” there’s also Xi Yun, who promises to be by her side. Chu Huang thanks her.

Tai Sui is ultimately erased for good by the combined efforts of TTJ, ascended!Susu and Xi Yun, but this effort claims TTJ’s life, as he expected, and Susu’s, who sacrificed her godhood to turn the Scale into a soul vessel for him to come back when she realized he intended to die for good.

XLH is left to pick up the pieces: given her phoenix nature, LSS is back as an egg, which her adoptive father (if he survived, otherwise Ye Qingyu and Pian Ran) will take care of until she’s back. As for TTJ, the Scale-turned soul vessel will allow, with time, to fix and restore in full his primordial spirit, so XLH and DFQC take it to Xishan and wait.

Qingyu and Pian Ran had been using their combined energies to protect the kingdom, but since they had each only half her original demonic energy/life, they end up consuming most of it, at which point they agree they had had enough of being rulers, and retire to the countryside.

Time skip to a few centuries later, when the taizi dianxia (crown prince) of Cangyanhai meets the Lady of Spirituality of the immortal sect. Neither remembers each other, again, until they touch by accident while bickering and then it all comes back to them.

And, for fuck’s sake, this time they get married decently and are happy with their daughter and extended family and all is well.

THE END and holy shit, if the outline is that long, this could become a monster fic.

[mitigatedchaos]

Ah, hmn...

During World War 2, liberals, Fascists, and Communists fought each other to the death in Europe, in the process reducing large tracts of European cities to bombed-out rubble. While some number of the soldiers, officers, and officials would have been "non-ideological" (in practice, participating out of simple particularist loyalty or fear of punishment), a number of them would have fought and died out of legitimate ideological belief.

Many of these participants would have been white, European, and male, acting to kill other white, European males.

Likewise, ideological movements are hardly limited to Europe, and people have made ideological allies and fought alongside each other across ethnicities and races. (If you're Yan Xishan for instance, you might recruit Japanese soldiers who had previously invaded your country, who subsequently fight to the death against the Communists of your own nationality, a position that doesn't make sense if the only thing that matters is race.)

That is, the total range of opinion within a race is greater than the difference in average opinion between races.

What are the implications? Suppose we're setting out to construct a body of work to understand society.

If we only include works written by people of one specific race (such as, say, Asians), this means we're probably leaving out some information. However, because race is dominated in opinion by things like ideology or individual character traits, knowledge, and beliefs, after adding only a few works for race we would cover more differences in perspective by switching to something like class, occupation, or ideology.

(Or to put it another way, there's a rapid decrease in the marginal gain in information, in representing the perspective space, from adding more racial works as opposed to competing ideological works.)

The goal of racial representation being to increase viewpoint diversity (as otherwise it would simply be a particularist project better served by racial national separatism, particularly if own-race content is for some reason a psychological requirement) and thus gain a broader understanding of whatever situation is being studied, race should therefore be only a small element for consideration when selecting works, and only a small minority of works should be selected specifically on the basis of race.

For the intention to capture the general opinion held by members of a racial group, it would be more appropriate to 1) use polling, rather than selecting written works which represent the opinions of individual authors, and 2) note the minority disagreement within a poll - there are few things "all" members of a racial or ethnic group agree to, and no ethnic group is a monolith.

How is that?

I don't think the wording is right for the particular audience that needs to shift away from standpoint reduction (skipping author content in favor of reducing them to a handful of identity categories, particularly race, sex, and sexual orientation - implicitly e.g. "all books written by men are automatically the same") because I'm much more rationalist (in the Yudkowsky sense), so someone would need to rephrase it to help them better save face and maybe "own the chuds" somehow (even though it has nothing to do with them).

If they're the kind of people we need to reach, they're not going to talk about "marginal information gain" in "representing the perspective space," because nine times out of ten, if they did, they would already be us and we wouldn't need to formally spell out the argument.

But the rephrasing needs to be careful not to compress down into intersectional mush with no effect. It needs to cut through the protective haze.

Obviously all the worst offenders of standpoint reduction aren't doing it for upright moral reasons; you're not going to convince someone whose paycheck depends on identity being the sole reason to prefer their work over someone else's. Likewise, I expect a lot of "um, that's what we already believe" from people who don't believe that; but in a group that makes decisions primarily by social consensus that may also be the means by which they pivot to a new position.

[theroyalthrones]

The Kingdom of Glimmer

The Kingdom of Glimmer has been ruled by the Linh family for its whole existence. The succession of the throne is inherited through the oldest Legitimate child. Adopted or Illegitimate children are not able to succeed. The Empire has recently changed from male-preference primogeniture (oldest male) due to the efforts of late Empress Aia. Making it easier for female descendants of the Linh Imperial family to become the Empress without having to take a husband.

Head of the Kingdom: Empress Emi Linh I

Official Royal Family Residence: The Potala Palace

Royal Family: House of Linh

Kingdom official Colours: Red and Orange

Capital: Xishan

Former Monarchs:

1. Emperor Matthew Linh I and Empress Mae

2. Empress Aia Linh I and Emperor Chris

Current Monarch

4.Empress Emi Linh I and Emperor Consort Omari

The Current Line of Succession:

1. Crown Prince Haru Linh [son of Empress Emi]

2. Marchioness Olivia Popov [daughter of Princess Dulce]

3. Lord Ben Popov [son of Marchioness Olivia]

4. Lord Raymond Popov [son of Marchioness Olivia]

The House of Linh Familial Tree

House of Linh Tag

House of Linh Official Portraits

[dangermousie]

I love this point!

Orchid is nice but she’s not a fairy saint. And the self-absorption fits because she’s both sheltered and very young by immortal standards - she’s what, a teenager? Yes, she’s actually goddess Xishan who is ancient but she obviously doesn’t remember that so her actions and reactions, from crush to lack of interest in things that don’t touch her preferred view of the world match her supposed age not her real one (she is in the inner sanctum of the evil overlord from literal myth and she has NO interest in it - from curiosity OR fear. She wants to get back home thank you very much.)

And her being an emotional teen actually is still more emotionally mature than Toddler Supreme who might be a gazillion years old and have insane magic power but emotionally isn’t just frozen at whatever young age his father removed his emotions (and he looked like a kid in that flashback) but because of not having any emotions for millennia has regressed even past that original kid age and is well…a toddler. A possibly universe-destroying toddler but still. I don’t think he even realizes he feels genuine emotions so!

The spell is dragging him to feel kicking and screaming like a cat needing a bath but a spell alone may not have been able to - the spell and Orchid’s personality both, and it’s glorious!!!!

re: Love Between Fairy and Devil, episode 10

it was wicked cool that Evil Overlord and Orchid's failure to communicate boiled down to him being unable to comprehend why a sterile replica of her home could not give her the same sense of comfort, welcome, and security... and her unable to comprehend that he DIDN'T KNOW what was missing: she doesn't spell out to him why it matters that what he gave her is lifeless and missing her real plant companions, and as soon as she realized that her joy was gone. She assumes he MUST know. She may not even be able to articulate in words why the "perfect" imitation is not the same as all.

It's absolutely tragic if you are read into his backstory: after bad daddy cut away his ability to love, hate, feel saddness and fear... how would he know you are missing the emotional components of "home" when the physical are present? So of course he is frustrated and confused and a hot mess about it (omg! emotionz!)

And is she going to gently & patiently explain and teach him? LOL NO. tbh Orchid is not super empathetic as a character, actually. Which is interesting about her - she is indeed very kind and gentle, but also self-involved. She's sincerely not terribly interested in what Evil Overlord is up to, what his dreams and pains are. She doesn't want him dead, but beyond that she's not terribly interested in his inner life. He's been forced to consider what will make her happy; in contrast she's likely spent little to no time considering the same about her temporary 'roommate'. Orchid's besties are plant spirits with limited lives, so she actually is almost as terribly socialized as he is -- just with the benefit of no magical spiritual surgery. In most interactions, we see Orchid focused on her own goals and desires, and on the dreamy #1 war god she admires. Far from a selfless martyr or passive. The fact that she is extremely underpowered, and so has learned to bend & scrape when needed, should not be confused with passivity. She is quite focused on her own objectives and desires. She likes the boy she likes, she is determined to cure her immortal root, she keeps her eye on the prize of passing the qualification to be assigned a fairy position. It's established in plot set-up that she's been bleeding her friends of the little money they had, to buy potion after potion in pursuit of her ambitions lol