#the age restriction on experience isn't real.

[hungersauce]

i get 'ohh the youngins dont know how we had it' sometimes but like you realize you will inherently be excluding people from both their own age group AND yours by basing it entirely on time right. Time is linear but the human experience does fucking loopty loops. You know that right

[guwix]

Is Caine human or is it AI?

I've seen people bring up this topic more than once. Also, Gooseworx replied to people that Caine is AI. Therefore, I want to sort everything out on the shelf, what we currently have.

Pilot

Caine was demonstrated to us with human emotions, which is completely indistinguishable from the NPCs themselves (Candy Carrier Chaos!). And if we take the real existing facts about AI, it is because AI does not know how to: feel, experience emotions, understand the meaning of text and images, be aware of itself.

Let's take the same Moon, Sun and of course Bobble.

They have a completely different level compared to Caine.

Even if he created them, if he cannot understand the empathy of people, then why does it make it difficult to understand other characters "created by him". For example, Bobble, he doesn't understand his actions.

AI has many advantages, but Caine has absolutely NO control over the situation, despite the fact that he is the "creator". Why would he need a "Watch" if all the information should be in his mind?

At the same time, he tells us himself that he has many eyes, but at the same time, he was not aware of what happened to Kaufmo.

I understand that the animated series is far from real life. But, in fact, AI cannot be insane. Also, Caine cannot emotionally feel "lonely". And all this tells us the opposite, that it is completely different from AI.

If the director of "C&A" creates AI to help order in the Digital World, shouldn't the company come up with a name for the "administrator" itself? And according to Gooseworx, Caine came up with a name for himself.

It turns out that people "allowed" AI to run amok in the Digital World without fear of consequences? Strangely, Caine should have restrictions, but it looks exactly as if he is completely free.

It is not the first time that the creator answers us that Caine is not a person and he does not have the age given to him. But, isn't the fans' question a strong spoiler for the plot? If we were told "You'll have to wait and see", that would raise quite a few questions. That is, it would immediately be clear what Caine is like.

You can also recall a video where a human body is transferred to a computer. Whether this was done for the sake of the fan, or intentionally, we have only to guess.

And one person had the most interesting question. Whether he is the boss, which we were told, we will have to wait and see. If Caine is an AI, then he cannot be the boss, we would have been told that he is another AI.

2:Candy Carrier Chaos!

As an AI, he is "obliged" to know who is an NPC and who is a "human". Everything must be programmed for him. But, he doesn't know how to "distinguish" them.

Whether the situation is worth turning against him, he immediately avoids it. Although, he is not forced to run away, because for AI, he must be smart enough to come up with a sedative. But, Caine just comes up with an excuse that he needs to "drink some water." Genius.

Since NPCs do not realize that they are characters of the computer world, they think that they are alive. If Caine is also presented as a God (and God is so-so with him), then what is the probability that Caine will think that he is an AI, for the entertainment of people? After all, the main characters do not remember everything from their current life (they only partially have upbringing).

[amelie-sama-blog]

homegirl. bffr.

chawty over there made an essay of 31 minutes talking about the "ROMANTICISATION" OF VIOLENCE in a popular BL manhwa.

looking into the comments also almost made me have an aneurysm. "romanticisation" and "normalisation" of xyz gotta be the most popular buzzword in the anti world, cause i saw it at least 20 times and i barely scrolled. what i also saw is them shaming the author for making such a vile, disgusting, morally unacceptable story, "normalising and romanticising" violence, toxic relationships and rape, and that "fEmAlE BL aUtHoRs nOrmAliSiNg rApE sHoUlD bE a WhOle cAtEgOrY oN iTs oWn aT tHis pOiNt".

girl. be for reeeeaaaal for a second. i read BL manga, lots of it. and i didn't even know about this manhwa until i saw this in my feed. i knew the name cause i saw it somewhere, but uhm, in which world are you living? is someone actively forcing you to go on the internet, go on a BL manga site, search "jinx", click on the link, click on the first chapter, read for a bit, DISLIKE IT, and then CONTINUE TO READ EVERY CHAPTER OF THE WHOLE THING?

i doubt it. i doubt it very much. "if you don't like it, drop it" ALWAYS WORKS. anything else is you admitting that you read shit you don't like just to get mad about it.

uhm, wake up call girlie, fiction is exactly *THE* TOOL to "have fun" with toxic relationships or other dark themes. imo, she BETTER have fun with it if she's creating fiction! and i also bet that the author knows damn well what she's doing.

if this "actually terrifies" you, you shouldn't be on the internet. there i said it. I SAID IT.

if the reality that fiction is on a separate plane from reality and thus it can be anything you want, terrifies you, then respectfully, go on youtube kids and age restrict your own device. because your media literacy is literally in the gutter, and your ability to curate your online experience, is non-existant, as well as the basic understanding that people can like shit you hate.

hmm... i wonder why that is... hmmm.... i wonder why people are soooo adamant about avoiding terms such as "rape" "toxic" "noncon" "dark". now hear me out, MAYBE... just MAYBE, it's because liking dark themes in fiction has become completely unacceptable these days, and every single piece of media one consumes must be inspected thoroughly by the anti-police to be approved for consumption. and thus, people make loopings in their own heads to justify their media consumption and trick their minds into believing that what they're reading isn't "that bad".

because... if it IS bad... then boy do i have bad news for you: it means you're a filthy filthy human that just "promoted rape culture", "anti-victim mentality", and "propaganda for sexual violence", and is thus deserving of death threats and equal to an offending rapist or pedophile.

their words, not mine:

but noooo, that has nothing to do with it.

all jokes aside, the way anti culture and censoring is becoming the default, and heavily policed and enforced under fear of ostracisation, THAT truly makes me sad. remember everyone:

thought crime is not real.

thank you for reading all of this, i didn't plan for this to reach essay size but here i am. i hope this was a good read and soothed your proship heart <3

[daisys-reality]

your consciousness is like a billion+ years old (if we ignore the fact that time isn't real lol) and you would still date someone that is close in age to your CR age... does it make you a weirdo? no. it would be normal here in your CR to be attracted to someone close in age. because your mind/awareness of this reality is as old as your body/brain here !

and when you shift to reality where body&brain is idk 10 years old - you will have the perception and emotional/mental capacity of a 10 years old kid !! (ok well... unless you actively choose/script to be an otherworldly adult trapped in a childs body but then again... i would wonder about your intentions for doing so.... ?)

but back to the topic, here are some examples:

do you know conan from the anime detective conan? because of some type of drug he was forced to take his body turned into his 6-7 years old self while he kept the mind of his 17 y/o self AND EVEN THEN: he needed more sleep, became more quickly drowsy, his attention span was less good and he overall felt the needs of his child body daily because he WAS a child again, even if his mind wanted to do more, his body wasn't as durable to do so, he felt restricted by his own body.

also, if you've read some webtoons that talk about regression or transmigration etc. where the main character turns back in time or just wakes up in a body that is physically younger than their former self - even there you can see that they feel the limitations of being a child again (weakened body, need for more sleep, stronger emotions & mood swings, struggles with speaking and forming difficult thoughts, shorter memory capacity etc.)

if hormones & co, the stage of development of our brain, and all the positive, traumatic,(...) childhood experiences influence our mind and body from childhood/teenage to adulthood - why would it be different in other realities? especially those that are so similar to our CR human world... so, in that sense, once you shift, you kinda take over an already limited and different-wired body and your mind adjusts to the situation your DR self is in ...because you ARE your DR self in that moment

i hope that makes sense ♡

[blueflipflops]

Blessed is The Fruit of Thy Womb

tw: pregnancy, violence, dissociating

Inspired by @cyrwrites 's prompt which is just too good to not write about Talia being pregnant from the exposure from the Lazarus Pits. Saw the tag about "Damian having a complex due to danny's whole "Child of Lazarus" thing he's got going on" and ran with it. Also the religious allegations thing was inspired and I am so here for it. Ended up longer than i planned tho. Would probably add more to this. Enjoy.

Next

...

Damian Al Ghul was born a prince. An heir. The blood son of Batman and Talia Al-Ghul. The grandson of the Demon Head.

He is to have the world presented to him in a silver platter even before he reaches his majority.

And yet... that's not quite right, now, isn't it?

Because for all the gift of genes he has in his body, for all the training he has ever endure ever since he learned how to walk... that is all he'll ever be.

A genetic experiment on how to get all the appealing genetic material from both parents and make it into a child.

His mother did not even bear him!

Pregnancy is too much of a hassle, too restrictive, too dangerous for her line of work. She need not be bothered to undergo the burdens of pregnancy when she can create a perfect child in a test tube.

Yet for all her complaints and stilted explainations, why...

Why does it seem like she cared more for the Child that grew itself in her womb?The one that came out of nowhere. The one she birthed herself. The one that Damian seemed to keep losing everything to.

Ever since his mother's womb grew with child with a distinct energy only felt in the Lazarus Pits, she has became estatic and raving. She had claimed that the Lazarus Pits has Chosen her to bear the fruit of its power. The one true heir. The Incarnate of Immortality and Power.

She claims all the honor and the pains that came with it. She became obssessed with the Child even before it was born. Even more when it was born male and familliar feeling of power emanating the infant. The Child opened its eyes with glowing Lazarus green eyes and the scent of death clinging to its blood covered flesh. It did not cry when it was born but just opened its eyes seemingly judging the worth midwife's life in the mortal realm. It must have deemed it unworthy as it is said that the stare looked straight to her soul and drove her mad. Damian never really knew who did the final blow. Was it his mother, the midwife herself or if it was his... brother just as rumored. Damian did not care to know any of that only that the midwife and several other helpers did died that day screaming and bloodied. Their corpses dumped over to the Pits as an offering.

The first time Damian had looked upon those cursed eyes where the first he had ever felt real fear in his life. In the very young age of 10 was he formally introduced to the Child. It looked like a human but distinctly not at the same time. Like an entity thats trying too hard to appear human but forgets what humans look like half the time.

The Child unsettles Damian.

It began its training about the same age as Damian did and unsurprisingly took on the skills easily as breathing. With abilities that seems to only get stronger with time and added training. It is not as perfect as his Mother praise it to be as it is said to go off in bouts of mad rage that seemed to only calm after blood has been spilt. This stopped being a problem after they found out that constant baths in the Pits have a similar enough effect without thinning their forces from the whims of the Child.

Slowly, no matter how hard Damian trains, no matter how successful he is in each obstacles or tests thrown his way, he will never get that Honor he was raised to believe was rightfully his. He was put to the side. Once a future leader now in a role of a follower.

Damian Al-Ghul is a prince. A warrior. An assassin. A spare. A bargaining chip against his father.

For all that the Child is younger than him by a mere year, Damian, with his obvious superior combination of genes, is less than the Child of Lazarus himself.

No matter.

There is one thing the Child cannot claim over him.

He is the blood son of Batman. Not him. Never him. Batman has no claim to the Child either as his mother ravingly repeated over and over again. (As if to remind him of his place.)

He is the only blood son of Batman after all. Not him. Damian need not share what is rightfully his.

No. Of course not.

That is why when his mother told him that he is to pack up his belongings to live and train with his father, Damian did not hesitate nor did he looked back.

His father will be different, he knows this. He will value him more than some demon child from the pits, he is sure. Even if he has to prove himself for it.

...

Danny is dissociating most of the time and feels like this is a very detailed hallucination post vivisection and cannot (dont want to) accept to awknowledge what is happening. He doesn't know what to do with himself if this was real. He has killed people here and sometimes in blind rage too. His core is very fragmented which means his memories are all over the place. Add that to his willful ignorance of the development of his apparent reincanation, he is very Messed Up.

To him, he is Danyal Al Ghul. Heir to the Demon Head, son of Talia Al Ghul, and Child of the Lazarus. But he is more than that, isn't he? He sees flashes of life before this. Of flight and action. Of family and friends. But that can't be right, can it? He feels like something else. Like someone else. But how can that be?

He emanated death energy all over because he can't control his emotions and powers as much as his teenager self. The ectoplasm in the air in the LOA's lair comes from the Lazarus Pits which is so corrupted from the amount of death, corpses, and heavily concentrated emotions, that it messes with Danny's head. He tried to get as much distance from the Pits as possible but Danny can't survive without ambient ectoplasm especially with his core being fragmented like this. When the stress got too much (which was often) he ends up in blind rage that only stops when someone dies and he hungrily absorbs up the ectoplasm from the freshly new corpse. And it goes over and over again until Danny decides that enough is enough. He doesnt want to not have complete control of his body nor does he want to kill more than what his new family is already making him to. He just has to suck it up and get his ectoplasm from the nearest available source: the Lazarus Pits.

After that, he stopped randomly killing people whenever he gets pissed. Being so hungry all the time, the ectoplasm from the pits started to become delicious to Danny but still. He tries to limit his consumption to the very minimum because it messes his head a bit wheter he notices it or not. So like 2-3 times a month. He stopped being deathly hungry.

His apparent "skill/genius" is just a abnormal one up from a normal child who had not lived half a lifetime growing up with a black belt ghost hunter mom who trains them to fight as mother-son bonding time. He didn't really go about it easily either. (Damian is just an unreliable narrator) He just instictively knows the basics and the theory but had to relearn how to do it in his new body that the League just polishes and sharpens to the max blinded by the idea of Danny being the Child of Lazarus. (Them being a cult and all) His hair becoming flame-like wisps and glowing eyes when angered did not help this theory. Nor did his inhuman strength and ghostly powers or his sharp teeth either. He seems to be able to use his powers even in his human form but ra's pissed him off so much one time he reverted to his ghost form...which became so twisted as the years has passed from all the trauma he has experienced and turned into a giant eldritch monster with way too many eyes and teeth, a cloud-like expanse of space and stars, and an Aurora Borealis encircled above his head like a crown. Ra's learned some lines drawn in the sand that day. He is overcome with both fear and poorly contained greed. His eyes dilated from the show of sheer power from this Child. Oh, how he hungers for it.

Danny, despite his nonexistent efforts, became a momma's boy. How can he not when his new mother showers him with love and affection near obssessively? His core subconsciously purrs in satisfaction from the attention despite the overall creepiness of the situation. His core imprinted on the woman already. Who cares if she's a bit crazy? His mother has always been a bit crazy. His memories of past!Maddie (pre-discovery/vivesection thingy) get muddled over and mixes up with memories of Talia which makes him latch onto her more. (Which Talia definitely encourages.) Because his mom is finally paying attention to him again :) she says she loves him :) and she doesn't want to rip him apart molecule by molecule :)))

(He knows. He asked! Although the words may have got tied up on his tongue and the question may have sounded more like a threat than what was intending to ask. But its all good! Surely his mother understood what he was trying to say because she immedietely hugged him and told him that she loved him very much and asked very nicely not to kill her. He is sure that they became closer after that. Talia is just thankful that her Child continues to recognize her as his Mother/Bearer and spared her from his usual rages. She is, of course, worth more than these other lowly mortals. Danyal is hers and hers only after all.)

...

Damian, on baby's first crisis: I am the blood son of Batman. The ONLY son of Batman. Surely I don't have to share him with others :)

Me, nervously looking over my shoulder to see a line of robins and robin-adjacent children that had at one point dressed up as a caped traffic light or another: ...uhhh...

Me, looking at the other side seeing Terry Mcginnis and Helena Bertinelli/Wayne playing rock paper sissors : yeah... about that...

Damian is very biased here. Because how the fuck is he going to compete with a fucking demon pit incarnate??? He's got a lot of thoughts about being replaced here which ha! New flavor of trauma for my baby bird. :)

Love giving Damian a complex :) Wanna put him in a jar of pickles and shake it :)

Also would love to see Damian will arrive ready to prove his worth only to find out that Batman is dead/missing/stranded in the timestream and how it will affect his new flavors of complexes and issues. Lol Oh to be a fly on the wall of the batcave when that happens. Wait dont they have bats there? Flies would get eaten—

Lol someone calls Damian a demon child once and he gets geniunely offended. He hisses back that he is not a Lazarus Pit Baby and thats how the batfam finds out about danny. They all panic at first thinking that not only did Bruce have another secret child but said child is apparently still with LOA. And boy would that do wonders to Damian's buried insecurities. Damian is going going to experience some Emotions and he's going to make it everyone's problem.

Like mother like son.

Talia and possibly Ra's POV next

Anyways, here are them tags:

@emergentpanda-blog @skulld3mort-1fan @rosecinnamonbun @ver-444 @learning-to-fly-on-my-own @dannyphantomphan @yasminerd00 @blep-23

[olderthannetfic]

Ok so I'm thinking this could just be because of the online spaces I'm surrounded with and the absolute shit algorithms, but where does the assertion come from that white people are the ones who have super high standards for POC writing?

Ok I know, traditional publishing. Yeah, that's one side of things. The professional realm of US publishing is definitely high and staked against POC authors. No need to argue about that.

But I mean like, as readers. Because after seeing some people talk about that POC written "Wicked Gods book" I went on an age old online pastime of drama and tea spills in incognito mode, and the main people who seem to put POC writing to super high standards are... other POC people. Staying on topic for Wicked Gods, on that GR page of Wicked Gods there are tons of POC/BIPOC (they state it in the reviews) who're throwing out accusations that imply the writer is a traitor, hates POC, fetishizes colonialism, the impact of it, feeds into the WMAW trope etc etc. Even some who go full attack on the author saying their grandparents would be ashamed of them if they were still alive or that the author doesn't care about the people affected by history.

Then went to youtube, and while most of the POC reviewers are good at staying constructive, there are those who just immediately go to drag the author and do the same shit as some of the GR reviews I mentioned.

Anyway went down the rabbit hole of checking "controversial POC authors" or just some more reader bait books and yeah, a lot of the actual "high standard" talks come from a lot of POC reviewers. Though the standards are mostly POC having super high standards for other POC people on how to represent POC authors, writing and experiences, and culture. Anything that could be "bad" like colonizer romance, gets a lot of angry reviews from POCs about that, and some other tropes. Even in the cases where the POC in question isn't even of the same race as the author. The only real "white ppl standards" thing is that on average there seem to be more white readers on some books, but most of the white people deliberately reading POC books don't seem to actually have that high standards for the POC novels, they're actually kinda boring. Either it's very touristy, very nothing, just parroting some POC reviewer, or it's actually just a normal review with no commenting on accuracy or expectations, just taking the book for what it is and criticising what they do know, eg poor depictions of feminism, or just poor writing..

--

I suspect the actual pattern is 50% the "How it works" thing where a minority person is anomalous and memorable while a "default" person's bad writing/actions/etc. are forgotten and not treated as part of a pattern we should pay attention to...

And 50% people being more sensitive to portrayals of their own group or a minority group they relate to or whatever. I know bad depictions of women annoy me more than those of men, and my standards for f/f are unfortunately higher than my standards for m/m.

I do see white people signal boosting pseudo-activist stuff they clearly don't have enough context for and should probably not be signal boosting, but I'd say the actual white person bad behavior in this sphere is more often abject indifference.

As for where the assertion comes from... I presume it's the usual "My enemies must be of the demographic I dislike!" idiocy. You see this fallacy in every type of argument put forward by every type of person. It's certainly not restricted to POC bitching about white people.

[windienine]

YOU. Kicks my legs like we're at a sleepover. Who was the character u were posting about in the tags.. spill..

kicking my legs back, ready to paint your nails at any time soooooo

okay i already dedicated a whole 2k word post to his partner goddess weird animal who bites him sometimes personal jester friend (?) Ysmé, so this time I'm going to spill about Loïc Ard from Soul of Sovereignty (prelude), an hour-long adult fantasy visual novel preview (< link here) that arrived on itch late last year courtesy of webcomic artist GGDG (if you're familiar with Lady of the Shard or CQ, you know their work)

So. This idiot.

look at this character design. the people hunger for men with strong cheekbones and glasses. look at the robes that attach at the fucking fingertips to draw attention to the position of his hands.

He's very soft-spoken and sweet. He knows a lot about the history of his world, as well as the biology of what lives there. He's staggeringly generous to others, even complete strangers. He's good at cooking. He knows how to sing.

He's the viewpoint character for the lion's share of the story atm, we get to look into his brain a little more often than Ysmé's for reasons that Will Become Rapidly Apparent As You Play.

Loïc is a middle-aged guy (late 30s? early 40s?) who works in an unofficial capacity at an inn in bugfuck nowhere (Tarn, a northerly village miles from anywhere else and regularly frozen solid by blizzards, with a population of Not Enough To Maintain Infrastructure), helping to cook, clean, and care for its mostly non-paying clientele, who his friend Alma, the proprietress, is allowing to stay for free. It's become a glorified sickhouse and shelter. No one is paying to stay in Tarn, but Alma can't turn her back on what she considers her hometown and Loïc can't turn his back on Alma (and he's here for other reasons too) so the inn is just kind of slowly decaying as conditions get less and less profitable. This sucks.

Especially because Tarn was built less than a century ago as an adventurers' hub for treasure hunting squads looking to uncover temples and relics right nearby, and the inn used to be full of good people and good food and fire and light and Alma wants all that back so bad it hurts and she refuses to say it's cooked and move back to the big city (in this case, the Mosaic, an ark-like vertical metropolis that housed humanity for hundreds of years after their world's apocalypse. After the outside was deemed safe again a century back, many people wanted to try and make a living documenting and salvaging stuff... but most of it turned out to be decayed, empty, and/or worthless, after so much time had passed.) The Mosaic is bright and lively, but it's a restrictive place to live for a lot of people-- cultures outside the dominant (very fantasy-Catholic) one are suppressed and the focus on making money to survive is exhausting.

But Loïc makes things a little less miserable. He's got a calm and pleasant bearing, he brightens up the place with flowers and greenery he manages to get growing even in this climate (he's a florist), and he's someone to talk to. He's witty, he's thoughtful, and he's almost a little too willing to dedicate all of his time and energy to helping people, and overall he's this mundane nice fella... with one big caveat you learn real early on.

Loïc is a mage, and a really unique sort.

The floristry bit isn't just his job or a characterization quirk, it's the whole basis of his magic. Species of flowers in this world each hold a unique concept-- fire (pallisia), calm (lavender), light (white dawn's eye), mundanity (dandelion), memory (cloud sage), you name it, there's probably some obscure botanical species that represents something in the ballpark of it. A god of language (Fayim) allegedly imbued a meaning into each, and if you can commune and reflect and experiment around hard enough to unravel the concept of one, you can turn that concept into something real.

Think of it like magical linguistics -- [correct flower] + [expressed meaning] = [physical effect], like [correct phonetics] + [contextual meaning] = [language]. You can even chain a couple of them to make a more complex spell, like turning words into compounds, phrases, and sentences, but you do have to understand what it actually means to do so. You're forming a connection to Fayim's power by talking. This burns up the flower, but Loïc's extreme dedication to botany means that he's got a regular supply of the spells he uses most often.

Loïc can hand you a golden pallisia blossom, start waxing poetic about the nature of warmth, and the firelight kept inside will radiate out and keep you comfortable even in Tarn's frigid weather. It's rare and potent stuff, doubly so because worship of Fayim is dwindling-to-nonexistent in the Mosaic, where the only faith and magic most people are familiar with at all are those revering the Builder, the creator deity who erected the Mosaic and saved humanity from the apocalypse in the first place. Everything else? False gods. Loïc himself doesn't worship Fayim or the Builder; he uses Fayimic magic but is pretty disconnected from his own background + faith in general. He's interested in the theology but doesn't use prayers in his invocation if he can help it.

Magic's not foreign to this world (most people in this world know at least a little artisanry, a more logical and physical approach to magic which lets you stitch together bespoke objects out of thin air, used heavily in both art and industry), but flower reading is a rare and dying language. Loïc's cute little flower shop back in the Mosaic was also a spell broker for people in need of small miracles. Given that the Mosaic worships a creator deity, I guess this implies that magic, generally, is something humans tap into extant divinity to borrow.

So, Loïc is holed up in Tarn studying magic and using mending spells (yellow rose) to cure people of minor injuries, but everything goes to hell when a certain sickly blonde washes up at the inn's doorstep begging for help escorting her to a nearby temple please please you gotta, she'll die from turbo tuberculosis otherwise, god (not the builder, some other guy, don't ask who) said so. Oh my gosh, you will? Thank you so muchhhhhh

[paraphrased very hard]

alma: this is definitely a scam of some kind. please just talk her out of this so she doesn't get eaten by mutant wolves.

loïc: oh for sure but you don't try for scam this obvious unless you're really desperate. idk what she even wants here, let me feel her out. i have nothing worth robbing. maybe this is a trauma thing or a money thing and i can talk to her about it.

alma: loïc, that's literally not your problem. loïc there's this weird pattern where you prioritize the hypothetical wants of strangers over your own proven needs. loïc no.

loïc: loïc yes

So, of course, it ends up coming out that Loïc is in Tarn specifically because he is a single father with a daughter named Lelia who is comatose from an unspecified illness. Her prognosis is extremely grim (low chance of survival that dwindles the longer she stays out, probably terminal.)

Specifically, he's on a hopeless little snipe hunt for a rumored species (the glass bell) that could act as a panacea for any illness, if harnessed correctly in a spell, and it might either be extinct or entirely fictitious.

He knows he can't find it alone. If it even exists, it is a needle in an impossibly massive haystack. He is consumed inside-out with a compulsive need to do something about it, and when that proves impossible, it starts spreading into a compulsive need to do something for anyone. The grief of admitting that Lia is already in a prolonged state of death would eat him alive, so if he can transfer that feeling of purpose onto anything else he can buoy himself. He is spinning his wheels because confronting the fact that he has outlived his own daughter and has to go on without her is impossible.

But like... he's dying slowly, too, in this state. Like Lia. Like Tarn. It's only a matter of time before there's nothing left of himself to give, and at the impetus of the story that's basically what he wants. There's nothing left for him.

... Unless...!!

OTHER THINGS:

would give blessings to his daughter every day before she went to school

apparently has a puppy and a kitty back home

loves lavender and sunflowers most

sometimes casts so hard he passes out

including other people and making his casting into a conversation is a quirk he does and that's just super cute

carries pictures of his daughter around in his spellbook maes hughes style

besides his suspiciously alb-and-chasuble looking mage robes, wears an apron and skirt around the house + gg regularly draws him in cute dresses. this is a known victor's weakness.

the in-game glossary has botany notes from him, usually paired with him waxing poetic about each species' meaning. this nerd shit is a known victor's weakness.

you see his general bearing and a lot of people assume he's kind of this easily-flustered anxious disaster type, but he's actually very serene and difficult to get a rise out of. he'll play along with most jokes you try to throw at him. if he does actually freak out at any point, you know something is up.

we don't know what happened between him and his ex, but there are dialogue clues that point to it being weird and messy. he's played very interestingly as far as divorcee characters go (conflict-avoidant rather than desperate for love, wants to be the better person at every opportunity), what with being a man who has primary custody of his kid (and a good relationship with her!) and taking on a position that the audience would probably identify as more motherly than fatherly, in terms of western gender roles. there's this fun contrast where he's very confident in his looks and presentation and bearing (very charismatic guy!!), but a lot of that is traditionally feminine. he's just very genderous.

(all of this tragically forgoes the meat of his special connection to ysmé, but that is the core premise of the prelude and if i got into that here it would really and truly give away the whole plot. i need you to experience her for yourself. (for ten dollar.) if you do not have ten dollar i will stream the game for you and give GG an additional ten dollar. this is a threat.)

(what i WILL say is that if you read lady of the shard, looked at the "sexualized mind control" tw beforehand and went "well now i want to read it more and not less," there is a delicious taste of that here and it once again intersects heavily with themes of control and coercion over the self, skewed power dynamics, and the emotions that arise from them.)

whatever horseshit this confluence of circumstances makes you assume he will pull, i guarantee you it is not the full picture of what actually happens.

[venvellan]

There ARE valid arguments to be made about "playersexuality," especially if a character is written/heavily implied to be gay/lesbian but given a straight romance. That specfic scenario isn't something I'll get into in depth right now to make this as brief as possible, but "it's ridiculous that every character is bisexual" is NOT one of those arguments. I saw it for Dragon Age 2, and I am annoyed but not surprised to see it for Baldur's Gate 3.

This will feature reclaimed use of the word queer. Tagged below, but thought it might be good to mention.

Dragon Age as a franchise is significantly less committed to queerness than BG3. Thedas was built, intentionally or otherwise, to be heteronormative and gender conforming. To a lesser extent than real life, in that same-sex attraction in Thedas is generally considered unremarkable, but oppression and othering of queer people in-universe DOES exist and it isn't hard to find. (The biggest examples: Dorian's experiences in the upper-class Imperium, the framing of Krem's trans-ness as uncommon or atypical). And DESPITE that, the bisexuality of DA2's main cast does not feel forced or ingenuine to me. The party doesn't remark on or make political statements about each other's sexuality. Sexuality is, at least to this group of people, entirely apolitical, and they all just happen to be a similar sort of queer.

PLEASE consider, then, a world built entirely void of the widespread social culture surrounding sexuality, as Baldur's Gate 3 has tried to create. Where bi or pansexuality is the "common" or "expected" orientation, or more appropriately, where the concept of orientation is absent entirely. This person just cares about personality in who they date, this one doesn't really want to date anybody, this one wants to be in a polycule, and those are all completely neutral positions to hold and inconsequential to their greater character as an individual.

In this world you could easily pluck a half dozen or so random people out from the millions and find that they all desire sex and/or intimacy with any gender equally. If there's no erasure of queerness, it follows that open queerness is more abundant. Sexuality is fluid and various as gender is fluid and various and neither are reflections of someone's personality or morals. Being gay doesn't make you effeminate because there's no preconceived notion that straightness is manly, etc etc.

That's all true in the real world of course, but the difference is that it feels like Larian has tried to craft their narrative around it being the cultural norm. YOU might think it'd be ridiculous for a half dozen random people to be bisexual, if you haven't spent the time in queer spaces to learn that there are gay people everywhere. Even if you have, and there are more queer people in your life than straight ones, you might think it'd be unlikely to pick 6-8ish random people on Earth and find that they're all specifically bi or pansexual. You may even be right, because all over the world there are restrictive dominating cultural narratives that alienate, suppress, and persecute queerness. BG3 doesn't take place on Earth, though, does it? So sit down and think about it for a minute, please.

Of course there'd still be variation. You'd find people that fit the definition of straight or gay or asexual, but there's no expectation of straightness. Sexuality simply is. If you're interested in somebody, either they're interested back or they're not. You find out, you move on. Githyanki even reproduce asexually, so they don't have any flimsy biological reason for straightness, though if you're resorting to "biology" to debate sexuality, you're too far down the pipeline to have read this far anyway. Lae'zel wants a warrior, not a man. You might happen to be both, but it's not your gender she's lusting over.

Also, bisexual men deserve to exist freely without you policing exactly how gay or straight they get to "act." And you aren't somehow less biphobic for invalidating them just because you yourself are gay, so don't think that absolves you. Yes this is about Astarion. He's a bit more overtly queer-coded than Gale or Wyll. He's not gay. Bisexual men are evidently only valid to you if they "act straight." Fuck off.

Gay people exist! Let's put that lukewarm take to rest now, please. If gay people live in a culture that allows them to exist, they exist in much greater abundance. Who would've thought? Left-handedness over time graph my love. The single greatest refutation to Straight People Whining.

Look, you can just say that you're jealous you aren't in an all-bisexual friend group. It's okay. All-bisexual friend groups are awesome.

[nothorses]

ive seen a few posts talking about gender socialization as a terf idea, and im not sure I understand... I was wondering if you could help? I understand gender essentialism is a dangerous tool they use, and I see how "socialization" gets used as a more acceptable way of framing hatred of trans people.

but also, im a trans man and I do genuinely feel like my being raised "as a girl" affected my personality and interests, especially in childhood. particularly things like being taught to be quieter and more polite than my classmates and stuff. is there something im missing here?

The term "gender socialization" generally implies that socialization relies strictly on gender, and I've seen this defined either to mean AGAB (trans women are socialized and men, and trans men are socialized as women), or the gender you actually are (vice versa). Either way, it's an extremely reductive and restricting view on what is, yes, at least related to a real phenomena.

The thing is, "socialization" is different for everyone. The factors that play into it can range from the gender other people think you are, the gender you think of yourself as (which might change over time), the gender you actually are, to things completely unrelated: race and ethnicity, disability status, religion, the culture you grow up in, and so many others.

What's being discussed is essentially the impact of one's culture, and their culture's view of gender, on the way they think of themselves. Boiling that down to "male or female", even if you're not calling trans women "men" and trans men "women" to fit them into that model, is still a massive oversimplification that denies any possibility of variation in experience.

For example: I also internalized a lot of misogynistic ideas about myself growing up. But I was raised by a single mother who believed in some feminist ideals, and in a progressive area, and without the influence of religion in my family; so some of the ideas I grew up with were "you're a bossy bitch who talks too much", and some of them were "Never Rely On A Man". And while I didn't know I was a trans man yet, I also felt dysphoric about things like crying; not because I believed men couldn't cry, but because my mom encouraged me to fake cry because crying (white) women get their way.

That's not really a comparable experience to one that, say, a Christian cis woman in the US south might have.

The other flaw in this theory is the implication that "socialization" is static. Once you reach a certain age (which is never really defined), you magically stop absorbing messages from the world around you, and become cemented forever as Socialized Male or Female.

Aside from the fact that this obviously isn't true, you have to wonder: what about trans people who transition when they're children? What are they socialized as?

This isn't just an inaccurate view of the way people develop. It's a form of gender essentialism- the idea that gender determines certain immutable qualities in a person- which is itself related to, and supports theory underlying, sex essentialism; i.e., TERF and otherwise transphobic ideology.

Buying into the same idea that "man" and "woman" are stagnant categories with no overlap isn't good when you allow trans people to be categorized by their actual gender instead of their AGAB. It's still the same core philosophy, and it's still just as damaging- to intersex and nonbinary people in particular, but also to all trans people. The gender binary doesn't serve any of us.

Trans liberation means understanding, or at least leaving room for, the nuances and complexities. It means allowing people to exist in complicated ways, and to define and categorize themselves. The strict, static, and binary understanding of gender presented by "gender socialization" theory only works against that.

[chewing-drywall]

SKIWSGAAR HEADCANNONS

-secretly prefers they them pronouns, very occasionally she her but otherwise he's just disconnected from what even gender is outside of what he's being told he is (thinks *they* is cool in like a God way, it's sort of an ego thing)

-autistic, music and guitar being his special interest, I could go ON AND ON about this but I won't for this post

-at this point he just has as much sex as he does to keep up his image, he's pretty bored of it honestly, you do even the best things enough times and it becomes mundane

-nipple piercings, dry heaved and almost passed out from the pain cause his dumbass forgot to eat beforehand

-wants a dick piercing for the aesthetic but he pussys out every time there's an opportunity for him to get a piercing

-he canonically fucked 400 chicks in the course two weeks, that's about 28 people a DAY, give or take, and he said he wasn't even trying so god bless if he DID try

-more tattoos than canon

-mostly hairless, gets it lasered and NO chest hair, arm Nad leg hair super fine and pale

- so used to every person expecting the best experience of their life he actually isn't usually on the receiving end for stuff, it's pretty shitty honestly

-he honestly is so disconnected from actual, real intimacy that things like hugs and cuddling without sexual/flirting intent is foreign

-mommy kink, doesn't know WHAT it is but having some hot curvy women act all dominant makes him fold like paper

-sort of plays into his gilf thing, having some hot older women calling him sweetie while ordering him to do something gets him hot under the collar

-vaugly addicted to stimulants, he likes the productivity it brings but not the paranoia (not including the meth bender)

-has A LOT of stds, like he actually has a really restrictive medical schedule for everything he needs to take and what he has to do to keep everything in check. Who knew having casual sex with an incredible amount of strangers over the course of your life would cause this. Shocker.

-cannot parallel park. I mean he never drives himself anyways but still it's so embarrassing, 20 minutes in he's sweaty and flushed, people are side eyeing him and is STILL crooked holding up traffic

-he's like. Beautiful. Sort classically handsome but very pretty features thrown onto a more masculine frame, think grave yard angel

-as he ages he's noticing how his face is getting more gaunt and sunken in, not quite in a unsettling way yet but it really sharpens his features to an extreme extent

-it's because he's so fucking iron deficient his skin would be totally fine if he took a few supplements and STOPPED IT with the fear of sun, getting a little tan never hurt nobody dude GOD. Your not gonna get skin cancer from 20 minutes in the sun girly your so pale your REFLECTIVE

-related topic; at the beach he wears the HUGEST most RIDICULOUSLY large floppy sunhat, the borders of it goes past his shoulders and he always gets roasted for wears it by the band

-has the best skincare and haircare routine out of the band, used to get bullied for it by the guys but he usually just ruthlessly points out every dermal flaw he can find on them BOOM problem fixed

-INSANE calluses, he just doesn't have sensation in his fingertips anymore from the amount of blisters and split fingertips over the years, otherwise very soft hands

-perfect punctuation and spelling over text, no idea why in some fics his accent carrys over into his writing?? Types very deliberately to make sure what he's trying to communicate makes grammatical sense, actually prefers having emotional conversations over text because he can get what he's trying to say across easier sometimes

-doesn't actually let a lot of people touch his hair, and it's uncomfortable when people try and play with his hair without asking

-SKIWSGAAR IN THOSE 80s MOM HAIRCURLERS

[shizukateal]

Grimm Variations - Episode Three Review: Hansel and Gretel

(Buckle up, everyone, this is the call-back episode.)

Hansel and Gretel live a pretty routine, gray life at their orphanage/boarding school, with their fellow classmates and their mama and papa- wait a fucking second, that's Sakura's great-grandfather from Card Captor Sakura!

Jesus Christ, CLAMP, I know designing old men isn't your wheelhouse, but that's no excuse to be lazy! Anyways, their life is pretty boring and restricted, so Gretel usually acts out and Hansel gets swept up until they're both grounded. Finally, one time after too many antics, their "parents" decide to spice up the punishment by leaving them to sleep outside in the forest. They're warned that they can sleep near the fence if they want to, but of course that's too boring for Gretel, so they go on a walk until they find a small wooden cottage, although it does have two ca- Yuuko.

...

I never really finished XxxHolic. I only watched the two seasons of the anime, so I didn't really experience Yuuko's death, I just spoiled myself. Still, it gets me unexpectedly emotional. To see a version of her blessed with the ability to age.

So the Dimensional Witch and the kids get to talking around some cocoa, and Yuuko incites the kids to find out about The End of the World. Her words, not mine. That's silly! reply Hansel and Gretel, the world doesn't have an end, it's spherical! They would know, they've been taught a lot of suspiciously advanced scientific stuff in school. So Yuuko proposes them to do a little empirical research to settle the debate. Next time someone loses a ball during a game they should go pick it up themselves, instead of letting their "parents" get to it first. Hansel does that at the first opportunity he gets and indeed, he finds a forcefield, proving Yuuko correct.

This discovery sparks a fire in Hansel, so he gets himself deliberately sent out to the forest again and Gretel does the same to accompany him. He reaches a bargain with Yuuko: she'll help him discover what's real and in return he will help her grant her own unspoken wish. She tells him to look for unusual things in his school and gifts him a tube filled with what could be candies or gems, saying that they'll help guide the way, but to not eat them or they'll run out of it.

Hansel and Gretel start paying attention to their surroundings and finally the weirdness of their situation starts to stand out to them, like how their classmates keep disappearing out of nowhere and nobody bats an eye, especially when there's photographic evidence about their numbers dwindling in the school group pictu- Syaoran.

And 2/3 of the Clamp School Detectives!

I find it hilarious that Nokoru and Akira are here, but Suoh had to be deleted from existence because his blue hair would've stood out too much. RIP, lmao.

Anyways, Hansel decides to try to see if he can find a way out through the forest and obviously his sister goes along with him. Before they can properly set out, however, one of the candies acts up and opens up a portal. The siblings go through it and they find themselves in a mysterious space station of all things, with data of all of their classmates. Soon enough their "mother" finds them sneaking around and they run away from her, using up the candies to open doors. But when Hansel almost gets squished by a closing door, Mother sacrifices herself to save him, confirming to everyone that she is, in fact, a robot.

Naturally, this leaves Hansel with more questions than answers, so after coming back to the school he and his sister straight to Yuuko, who gives him the Matrix choice of taking a pill to forget everything or learning the truth. Hansel chooses the latter and Yuuko takes them back to the space station, explaining that the earth has long since become inhabitable and that the school is teaching the children how to restore it until they deem them fit to go there. Her previously mentioned "wish" is to send them all safely there. Hansel is apparently fit to travel already, but he starts dithering about the choice, especially because the space shuttle only has one seat, so where is Gretel to fit?

That's when the curtain is lifted: Gretel doesn't exist. She's a mental projection for cowardly, dithering Hansel to act out decisively on his own impulses while mentally excusing himself for following along, but now that he has come this far on his own accord he doesn't need her anymore. Hansel, with Gretel's encouragement, chooses to leave, but he still cries tears of bitter regret at loosing his "sister" to the truth instead of taking Yuuko's offer to forget.

Alas, however, he arrives at earth, where his lost classmates have grown up and welcome him with open arms. Yuuko eulogizes the mom-bot, congratulating her for raising the kids and then welcomes Syaoran to her hut...

Oh boy, ok, this one's a doozy, let's see where to start.

Ok, I'm gonna start with the blatant Revolutionary Girl Utena references and work up from there, because if I don't it's gonna drive me insane. Here's the thing people, it's not a sin to reference RGU; in fact I'd encourage it, but if you're gonna pull iconography from there of all places, then you'd better be really fucking conscientious about The Themes™️ and what you say with them.

So this episode presents us with a school in which time is apparently bubbled, constricted by The End of The World it represents, supervised by two figures emulating the heteronormative family structure, contrasted by a witch who at first seems like an outcast but is actually essentially powering the whole thing (maybe), and where students disappear without anyone properly remembering them because if they dare to figure out what lies behind the curtain of the system, just like Ohtori Academy. So far so good... kind of.

The implication is that the school is deliberately set up as this secret test of character thing so, like Hansel, the students learn to be independent. There's even some clever hints that disobedience and figuring out the mystery gives them the passing mark before we watch our protagonist. But then like... why do the students forget whenever one of them leaves? In Utena that's implied to be the magic of whatever time bubble Ohtori is in keeping everyone ignorant to perpetuate itself without objections, but more important that the explanation itself is the metaphor it's in service of. Ohtori students forget because the system wants to present a narrative about itself without any blemishes, so tragedies get trivialized into gossip, victims swept under the rug. Even if you assume that this schools timeloop or whatever is also passively mindfucking with the children, why is there so much focus on the dadbot and especially the mombot keeping things like the forcefield hidden? What is the purpose of that? What commentary is it making? What does breaking the cycle of apathy and blind obedience mean in this setting?

It might sound like I'm doing a pointless nitpick here, but trust me when I say that the viewing experience is already too confusing because of the tone and its use of the imagery. The school really is portrayed like if Othori met the orphanage from The Promised Neverland met an oscarbait period flick about world war II. Like, you genuinely expect that the twist is that the school is farming the children for their brains or something. It took me until I was writing this review to actually put the pieces together as to what the robo-parents motivations are, because their secrecy and strictness is completely antithetical to them wanting the children to grow independent!!!

The truth of the matter is just too soft for the themes its exploring and the imagery is presenting. Hansel created Gretel because he's afraid of taking responsibility for his actions, the same way a character in Utena projected a Rose Bride to not acknowledge the fact that he killed like a 100 people in a fire on purpose. So one would assume, based on how fucking creepy the school and the parents are, that he has some real good fucking reason to reach that extreme of cognitive dissonance, but no!!!!! Even the parents sending them out to sleep in the forest lands like mere chiding!!!!

But going back to Gretel, the usual initial portion of the episode is about how Charlotte doesn't seem to like her character in the original fairytale. How she thinks Gretel should be punished for getting Hansel into trouble which... istg I have NO idea how this show is trying to engage with its source material at all, because that is NOT a conclusion anyone would reach after reading the fucking fairytale, but whatever. It's fine. Or rather it WOULD be fine if there was a smidge of actual feminist commentary in this script which goes OUT OF ITS WAY TO REFERENCE ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL FEMINIST PIECES IN ANIME, but noooooooooooo it's all so bittersweet. On the one hand I'm glad he chose to grow up, and since I don't believe in punitive justice I don't think he needs to be punished to get there, but I'm still upset the character of Gretel gets reduced to this when she was an active heroine in her own story. Guess Charlotte succeeded in her purpose then, although it is curious that she casts herself as the twins.

Like, am I evil for expecting Hansel to straight up die in that oven-shuttle? In her original universe, Yuuko was an agent of karma. If she was scary it wasn't because she was evil, but because she would give you exactly what you want and not shield you from the consequences. It would feel weird to me if she were to endanger children the way she does some of her customers, but it would not have been completely out of place in this "grimm variation" that is about our protagonist literally deluding himself to avoid taking responsibility for his choices to end up with those consequences catching up to him in a terrible fashion.

Guess I shouldn't have expected all that much better. Although I am surprised that they didn't just straight up turn Subaru and Hokuto from Tokyo Babylon into Hansel and Gretel. Alas, to be a CLAMP fan is to suffer, and it seems that these past 20 years have not taught them much about theming. This is why I'm still terrified of reading Clear Card Arc, even though I should.

[dearweirdme]

https://www.tumblr.com/dearweirdme/742957241461800960/hi-ive-just-become-an-army-last-year-and-a-tkkr?source=share

JK is a couple of years below the mandatory enlistment date so him enlisting via the companion system was the only way to ensure that he actually got in the year he wanted to. Otherwise, any recruit of mandatory enlistment age would have been prioritised before him and with knowledge that so many members of BTS were due to enlist, that recruitment year would have been stacked and JK's enlistment would have been held until there was space for him or until he reached the mandatory requirement age. (Application always goes up when a popular idol is enlisting in the same year)

By enlisting with a member who is of that age, it effectively means he puts himself under their enlistment bracket and requirement rather than his own. It's probably the best hope of legitimately jumping the queue and securing a place that he had.

As for why not Tae, it's simple. Taehyung wanted to join SDT and the companion system is not in play there. This isn't something Tae would have decided overnight. He would have had to have spent a while preparing, he probably had some long talks with Hyungsik etc. Like nobody walks into that kind of recruitment process without some solid preparation beforehand.

Maybe JK also applied for SF (since he did mention wanting to. I think the unit he wanted to join was the same one Lee Seungi completed. The name escapes me) and either didn't get in or was told that he would have to wait a few years since places for those units are much smaller--and that could be why he seemed kinda disheartened and laid back about his MS when everyone was expecting him to be the most upbeat and gung ho about it.

I do feel like there's an element of going through the motions when it came to how JK approached MS but for Tae, he has spoken about how much of a positive influence his father found doing MS and Tae has a good network of male friends who have already competed their service to an accomplished level so he seems to have viewed MS as a self growth opportunity rather than just a task that needs to be ticked off (and either approach is fine)

Hi anon!

I definitely think you are right. I think members enlisting the way they did was very calculated. We basically only have to go six months with all members gone. I think BTS is priority to all of them (and Bh ofcourse) so Jk enlisting before he has to makes sense to me. The army isn’t something he want to make a career of, and he has to enlist anyway.. so doing it now only makes sense.

I think there was never a real chance of Tae and Jk enlisting the way Jk and Jm have… for obvious reasons. But Tae also really seems to make this a good experience for himself. I was under the impression that Jk’s tattoos also restricted his options a bit?

[unclefathersantateddy]

what are your thoughts on teddy's relationship with his family and how they were abusive? what about his younger sister?? and his relationship with his ex wife where he was also abused by her 🤔 how do you think these affected his personality and relationships. sorry this is an English essay ass prompt but im genuinely curious lmao i love analyzing family history (obvs)

Light coming in with the big gun from the get-go!!! Hahaha thank you for a great question!!!

So from what we know about Teddy's mom, she's a bit of a Wild Card™. Likes to do what she wants, when she wants, isn't exactly your traditional grandma.

But given the majority of people become docile with age (rather than more adventurous), it stands to reason /why/ she waited until retirement to do all the things she enjoyed? Could that be why her and Teddy's dad always used to argue?

Teddy's age places his parents as either dating or hooking up around the 70s/80s. Assuming they've never left the US, this wasn't exactly a pinnacle time for women's rights.

So we have an oppressive timestamp, a turbulent relationship, and then an extinction burst (Teddy's mom doing ALL her interests in retirement) post-breakup.

These factors together connote that teddy's father may have been restrictive/disapproving of teddy's mother's interests, hobbies, passions - or may be indicative of teddy's father's disdain/nonchalance towards his wife in general. (I'm assuming they were married because 'merica). Which would be an apt representation of Boomer relationships, the whole "can't live with them, can't live without them" (totally healthy /s).

But on the flipside to a potentially controlling father, his mom IS a wild card lol. If she's still up to mad shit in retirement, WHAT was she into in her prime?? Was she Fully Unhinged™? Given her, "muchness" (for lack of better words), it stands to reason it may transfer as "feisty" or "fiery" during arguments with teddy's dad, so whilst his dad may have been authoritarian, his mom may have been inflammatory and antagonistic.

As for his sister GIVE HER SOME GD SCREEN TIME!!!!!!! WHO ARE DANA AND DAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I wanna see if she's exactly like Teddy or if she's his antithesis, are they both so interested in learning about the lives of every stranger they meet? That's beautiful bro. I hope so. I both want her to be an almost identical twin to teddy, and to look exactly like her bf Dan (like the Van Houtens in the Simpsons). I think I want Dana to have the spunkiness that teddy lacks. I love the "anxious older sibling, feral younger sibling" dynamics, like what Tina and Louise have. I want an episode where Teddy's in therapy talking to Dr Marjorie about his childhood whilst Dana's out back wrestling a bar fly for his teeth or smn. Same trauma but dealt with in VERY different ways. I need it!!!!!!!!! I deserve this!!!!!!!!! LOL.

Moving onto Denise, FUCK Denise. Fuck any single individual that makes you feel like you have to change your core sense of self in order to feel accepted and/or loved. You KNOW she's that slimy level of manipulative that easily gets her own way in every situation. The type that rarely gets called up but if you call them up everyone else around will take their side. The GOOD manipulators. Real piece of shit types. The type to push you so far into a corner you come out crazy. So crazy noone believes you and they all side with the charismatic one. (These people boil my soul into an angry black jus, I become one of the 4 biles). IIRC we don't even get a full line from her, I'm pretty sure she only says "teddy?" (But please correct me if that's false), but that's still enough to solidify her as a shithouse in my mind. Questioning his name like don't pretend you don't know or recognise him you shitcunt, he gave you so much of his life. Eat a dick.

As negative as all these experiences are, I do think they shaped teddy for the better! I mean, he is a lil anxious and awkward and doesn't have the best self-esteem/confidence. BUT, he's incredibly emotionally intelligent for an old white guy. He's SO full of love, for EVERYONE. Every single person he comes across or meets (as exampled by S12E4 Driving Big Dummy), he fundamentally enjoys experiencing. They're not just people to chat to, they are experiences to be had. They are characters you've never heard of to stories you've never read. His approach to people is polar opposite to how most of us perceive other people, most of us are like Bob, he doesn't /hate/ people, but he doesn't /like/ them either. Teddy DOES like other people, he REALLY likes other people, he put the work into his trauma so it didn't taint the rest of him. I'm not gonna speak on behalf of everyone with PTSD but I know for a lot of us we fester on our trauma and victimise ourselves, often resulting in self- alienation and isolation, teddy shows no sign of that. S8E5 Thanks-Hoarding picks up on teddy being a handyman so he can "fix" his parents relationship (simplifying), but it doesn't address the fact he is CONSTANTLY putting himself out there. Handymen are a word-of-mouth trade, to be a successful handyman you HAVE to put yourself out there. To meet new people is to be vulnerable, and to be vulnerable with PTSD is like a rabbit exposing its belly to an owl yknow? Throughout the entire show we see teddy consistently putting the work in. Into every part of his life, he's making the effort to improve his life. I know healthcare in the US is a privilege that only the capitalists can afford, but it is so refreshing to see an American go to therapy instead of just complaining about how much they need therapy lol (no judgment, again I appreciate it's a nigh impossible situation to escape).

Thank you for the incredibly stimulating question, light!! (Sorry if I didn't answer all the questions fully! Will edit or update later!🤍)

[loetise]

character interview.  ˎˊ˗

basics.

name: valentine "allie" hope fleur. 

nicname/s: allie, al, als, allie cat, allie pie, allie belly, tiny, teeny, little flower, little fairy, little cupid, little dove, dove, little fae, little wing, angel, angel dust, angelfish, doe eyes, starfish, sunshine barbie, mouse, birdie, sweetheart, darling flower, princess, sunflower, fairy baby, ladybug, chickadee, lotus, cupcake, lamb, tinkerbell, pocket fairy, pretty girl.  (yes these are all rp ones and real i made a list of them like 2 years ago)

age: 18 - 22.

species: half-fae / half-human.

personal.

morality: lawful / chaotic / good / neutral / evil / true

religion: whatever the fae got goin on.

sins: greed / gluttony / sloth / lust / pride / envy / wrath

virtues: chastity / charity / diligence / humility / kindness / patience / justice

known languages: english, minimal fae.

secrets:  she really isn't a person with any secrets, and is a very open book besides keeping her full name close to her. she's kind of scared to talk about her trauma in fear of bothering people. at least, she doesn't talk about the trauma that she knows is trauma. she's very frequently dropping concerning information about her childhood without thinking of it.

physical.

build: scrawny / bony / slender / fit / athletic / curvy / herculean / pudgy / average

height: 4′11″

scars / birthmarks: two scars down her back, in line and along her shoulder blades, where wings should be, though she's very insecure about them and she covers them with magic treatment that puts a glamour over them to hide them. she also gets little scabs and bruises a lot because of her clumsiness and frequent time spent in the woods among sharp branches and thick roots. / she has one on her left hip that she swears looks like a heart. (it does not actually look like a heart but you will break her heart if you tell her that, she’s very proud of it.)   

abilities / powers: magic affinity, being able to detect magic without meaning to, affinity for nature, communicating with plants and animals, somewhat unconscious allure, especially to humans (ex: she's harder to refuse, normally very easy to be drawn to in a crowd, unnaturally charming), she has somewhat of a temperature resistance, or at least she has one on feeling alone. (meaning, her body may suffer from the effects of the temperature and her not realize it) she also has a high alcohol tolerance and strong immune system (both due to fae blood as well as her experiences) for human alcohol and human diseases.

restrictions: iron and silver, though she really tries to stray from metal of any kind. iron and silver, specifically, poison her and her skin, making her feel ill and burning her. her senses are heightened and more sensitive than the average human, and while that alone isn't a weakness, allie finds that harsh smells and sounds bother her to a point of almost pain. meat also makes her ill.

favorites.            i'll let you know right now this was a flop. there are hardly any favorites just vibes, she so rarely has favorites.

food: she kinda just loves food and trying new things, there aren't really any flavors that she doesn't like, besides she just doesn't eat meat and actually doesn't enjoy any substitutes that claim to taste like meat. no favorites here i think but she loves fruits and sweets always and forever.

drink: sweet and fruity things <3 again <3.

pizza topping: i don't think she really has favorites for this but she doesn't eat meat, otherwise she likes everything.

color: she loves pastels, and pinks and greens and yellows and oranges and greens and purples and blues. she does not care for red, black or dark colors. 

music genre: she enjoys pop n dream-pop but she'll listen to anything. very much a top 40 girlie by default just because it's what is always on.

book genre: she's not a book girlie 😔

movie genre: rom-com's/chick flicks primarily i imagine, she just loves fun movies. not a big fan of horror movies but she's never Opposed to anything. you will just need to hold her hand. 

curse word: she really doesn't swear. she doesn't even like,, fake swear. 

scents: flowers......

fun stuff.

songs: matilda + harry styles, you're on your own, kid + taylor swift,  wildest dreams + taylor swift, cry baby + melanie martinez, all you wanna do + SIX, aimee atkinson, 13 beaches + lana del rey, sober + p!nk, nonsense + sabrina carpenter, because i liked a boy + sabrina carpenter, hey blondie + dominic fike, what was i made for? + billie eilish, earthangel + the penguins, moonlight + kali uchis

aesthetic: dainty jewelry, friendship bracelets, dancing in the rain, parties, loose curls, hair ribbons, cuddling with your friends, sundresses, kicked off shoes, meadows filled with flowers, fun patterned rolling papers, playful love, barefoot in the grass, colorfully painted fingernails, glitter everywhere, baked goods, forest floors covered in blossoms, intense feelings said casually, holding hands, petting wild animals and cradling them like babies, talking and singing to your plants, lots and lots of kisses, sparkly lipgloss.

sings in the shower: absolutely!

likes puns: yes! she thinks they are so fun and clever and will always laugh. 

tagged by;   stolen <3 from nearly an actual year ago &lt;3 tagging;   you, steal this and say i tagged you!

[sam-glade]

9. Are there cultural or lore specific aspects to their identity? If applicable, does their species affect it?

Give me an infodump >:3

15. Do any of your ocs use neopronouns? Which ones?

Thank you, Feather 💜 Answering in reverse order, since the info dump will get lengthy ;)

(For the Pride ask game)

15. Do any of your ocs use neopronouns? Which ones?

None at the moment, unless you count the Sun King using He/Him as opposed to he/him (or They/Them, depending on the time period), analogously to the Judeo-Christian God ;).

9. Are there cultural or lore specific aspects to their identity? If applicable, does their species affect it?

Tl;dr: the Sunblessed Realm has always, throughout its history, been a queer-normative society, so the idea of a 'queer' identity doesn't exist in the same way as in the real world - i.e. defined in opposition to the allocishet norm.

Sexual orientation:

The assumption in the setting is that you're pansexual/bisexual unless otherwise specified (and that's a fair assumption for my characters. Being attracted to a particular gender is pretty comparable to simply having a strong type, so letting someone down by saying 'sorry, I'm not into men' is polite enough, though of course people can still get salty and disappointed ;)

On a personal preference note, I like to define my characters as having a preference (strong or weak or none at all) for masculinity/femininity, so a character who in our world would consider himself a gay man isn't going to have second thoughts about having some fun with a drag king or a very masc woman. He may decide he's not 100% into that, but hey, it was worth a try.

And yes, there are no gender restrictions on marriage or on adoption. We also have at least one example of a polycule on page from a recurring character (Renna of the Sixth Tree), though I didn't need to figure out how the wedding ceremony works then. Yet (eyeing The Truth Teller warily)

Relatedly, given the in theory indefinite lifespan, averaging around 270-300 years, during the period from reaching adulthood at 35 to the cusp of their first century people are free to experiment and decide what they want out of life. Family? Adventure? Are they more of free spirits and don't want to settle anywhere? This also covers what sort of relationships they want.

Gender identity:

I'm using the baseline of 3% of people being genderqueer - it's really hard to find reliable statistics, since it's impossible to tell if the respondents are being honest. That still means that if you live even in a small rural community of 70-100 people, you will probably know a couple of genderqueer folks, so while it's rarer than being cis, it's still fairly common knowledge. It certainly helps that Anthea, a head of state, is trans and that's public knowledge.

Children (up until the age of 35) are considered genderless. Only when they reach adulthood, they choose a name for themselves, which tends to be gendered, thus declaring 'hey, I'm a man/woman/something else/both/neither'. As a rule of thumb, feminine names end in -a or -is, masculine in -m or -n, though it's just a custom, not a requirement, and people from other regions (e.g. Nikols) won't follow it. More on the coming of age ceremony here.

Fashion is also different between genders, in that it tends to highlight the physical appearance and characteristics people tend to find appealing about the given gender. Hence, women's gowns will be slightly cinched at the waist, emphasising the hips, while men's will make their shoulders look a little broader. This also means that trans women can easily add rolls around hips and pad their bodices to have more of an hourglass silhouette, while trans mascs... 🥲 *Cries over a bust too big for a binder*

Ehm, anyway. Gender non-conformity is also considered not scandalous, so we've got e.g. Erya, who's by our standards a butch, never wearing jewellery, and if you tell her to put on a skirt you run a serious risk of ending up with a knife in your gut.

Other than that, the current (as of Days of Dusk) fashion is that men are clean shaven. Hair length is correlated to digital status more than gender, not none of these are hard and fast rules.

Aromanticism and asexuality

Again, it's hard to tell how common these identities are irl, but I wager that more than 9 in 10 people enjoys romance, and so we've got some courting rituals as you might expect. It's not impolite to try flirting with someone and be told 'no' without an explanation (not into you? not into this sort of relationship at all? just not looking for anyone right now?), but it would be rude to press the advances further.

As for anyone ace, there are at least two notable figures who haven't entered into a long-term romantic relationship even once over their millennia-long lives (the Prince of the West and Claren the Nightingale, Ianim's tutor), so that hopefully sends enough of a message that you don't need to pair up with someone to have a fulfilling life. Also, given the long lifespan, I imagine a lot of people (e.g. parents who want grandkids) accepting that there's no need to rush to get married and have children. Maybe their child will change their mind later in life. Maybe they'll form other bonds and e.g. become the glue that keeps a community together.

It's also worth mentioning that sex work is legal and regulated by a guild, much like any other trade, so if anyone is wondering 'do I like sex at all' can easily go to a brothel to find out. Similarly, aromantic allosexuals (*cough* Gullin *cough*) may be frequent clients.

[heartlilith]

Guidance and Advice Readings (example reading)

Natal Chart - General Advice Reading for HeartLilith

(Using Placidus System)

Sun in Leo in the 7th house: 

Leo Sun natives are known for their friendly, confident, and dramatic disposition. Ruled by the Sun, you are known to light up a room effortlessly. Being placed in the 7th house, your focus in this life tends to be on creating harmonious and meaningful relationships with people. So much so that sometimes you sweep problems, especially in romantic relationships, under the rug to keep the peace. You would rather get along with people than have petty arguments, unless you feel some real injustice is taking place. Having the Sun, which represents the self, the ego, and one's pride residing in the 7th house can mean you prefer to experience life with a partner. Without a partner, either platonic but more so romantic, you can feel like you have a piece missing. With the Sun being in the 7th house of others,  you tend to over identify and seek identity in relationships.

Moon in Virgo in the 8th house:

Virgo Moon people are well known for being overthinkers, they tend to struggle with nervousness or even anxiety. They're self sacrificing individuals that would give you the shirt off their back and are very analytical in their emotions. Emotionally, Virgo Moons try to figure out and make sense of the way they feel instead of just feeling. With Moon placed in the 8th house of death and rebirth, transformations, inheritances, obsession, and all things taboo, the Moon here can take on some intense traits. Even Virgo, who values logic over reason, isn't exempt from the deep emotions the 8th house holds. Since Virgo Moons are known for their overthinking and nervousness, being in the 8th house could make them obsessive over certain things. Rumination, paranoia, and overthinking are all themes here. Since Virgo is ruled by Mercury, you could even struggle with OCD and phobias as well. The beneficial side to this aspect is that you are a great listener and advice giver, you’re extremely caring and can put yourself in other people’s shoes. Your psychic abilities could manifest as gut feelings, deja vu, or just knowing things aka information downloads. 

Rising Capricorn / Chart Ruler in the 5th house:

Having your rising sign in Capricorn can make you responsible at a very young age. A lot of Capricorn risings don't remember having a childhood like everyone else does, I mean they do, but usually they were worrying and taking care of others the whole time. Having a Capricorn Ascendent can indicate having rough experience after rough experience growing up, emotionally and financially. Whatever hardships, it makes a person ambitious, hardworking, and serious in their dealings. Coined as "the mom friend", they have one of the strongest backbones of the zodiac and have a deep sense of responsibility; they know that their decisions affect everyone. BUT, Saturn, the chart ruler, doesn't do so well in the house of fun, romance, creativity, and the inner child. Here, Saturn poses restrictions; you can never let loose completely. You’re the definition of "all work, no play", you won't do much if it's not productive. Hopefully, if you can learn to move past those traits, you could focus more on being silly and connecting with your inner child. It could be the missing elements in your life that make you feel whole. 

ASC trine Moon:

People are attracted to your warm and compassionate nature. You may find that people open up to you very easily. You wear your emotions all over your face and people don't have to guess if you're happy or sad, they can see it! You have very feminine-like qualities which can make you a magnet to little kids, they love you. People probably think you’re much younger than you are, a “baby face” look. But with your Capricorn rising, it may override that quality. You could become drained easily from being in large crowds since you soak up the emotions around you. You take on others' energies easily which is why it's important for you to be around the right people. You may appear moody to others; sometimes you’re happy and friendly and other times you don’t want people to talk to you at all - you change like the phases of the moon. Even though people may see you that way, they know you have a heart of gold. Your eyes and look scream innocence even if that’s not the case. Your pureness can also attract the wrong people who want you to “fill their cup” and give nothing in return. Be aware of energy vampires.

Moon square Pluto:

This could indicate being a victim of abuse, especially from your mother. Your mother could have struggled with mental illness and unfortunately you could've ended up being the scapegoat and received the backend. Your mother could've been careless one second and the next they could become obsessive and care too much; the obsessiveness usually shows when the native leaves home and creates space between them, then they cling. This leads to you having trust issues since the care you received was there one minute and gone the next, and usually it was not the care you needed anyway. You could dislike and distrust women especially and fail to give them the benefit of the doubt. Moon square Pluto can mean you cling onto any sense of control because you grew up in utter chaos. Unfortunately, you may deem self destructiveness as "normal" since it was what you knew throughout your whole childhood.

Advice: 

Learn to take life a little less seriously. Work, responsibility, emotions, and hard lessons are all a very real part of life, but so is fun, letting loose, creativity, traveling, and self care. They’re both equally important. You need to find a balance between intensity and light heartedness. Don't let life turn you hard and mean, smile in the face of misfortune. What goes up must come down and vice versa. No one is exempt from the hardships life brings. These are cliches for a reason!!! You are appreciated because people know they can count on you. You're the person they go to for advice or emotional support because you're comforting but at the same time you are honest. Learn to be there for yourself too. Listen to your body, let it relax, treat it like a temple because it is! Tune into your psychic gifts and intuition to ease the anxiety and overthinking. Lean into trust and if someone betrays you, get back up and punch em in the face! Then start again. Life isn’t as serious as you're making it seem. By worrying about the “what ifs” you’re mentally putting yourself through situations that most likely will never happen. Find hobbies that you like, just because their hobbies doesn’t mean they can’t be productive. Knitting, yoga, exercise, reading, and collecting things are all compatible with you. Meet yourself half way. Most importantly, HAVE FUN! I challenge you to not worry for one night, go out, be spontaneous, and do something you’re scared to do. Live!

This is the same length/outline for all guidance readings (general, love, and career). All three options focus on 3 placements of the chosen chart, some aspects, and overall advice. The readings are 2-3 pages long, single spaced, and size 12 font.