#tl;dr: Yes

[dubylou-draws]

Namu Amida Butsu

[whinlatter]

What’s something about Ron Weasley as a character that you think is underrated?

That Ron is really, really funny, and that his sense of humour isn't a sign of immaturity or gratuitous comic relief for the reader's sake, but an absolutely essential part of what both Harry and Hermione value in Ron as a character as an antidote to their own tendencies (moodiness and seriousness/anxiousness, respectively). Ron makes bad days bearable to get through for the people around him. I think people mistake Ron making jokes for a lack of emotional awareness, but I actually think it’s the opposite. By the series end Ron is literally the most emotionally well-adjusted of the central canon characters. That line about Peeves’ poem right at the end of DH when the war is won (“Really gives a feeling for the scope and tragedy of the thing, doesn't it?”) is a) brilliant and b) such a great manifesto for how Ron’s outlook on the world — not humour as emotional avoidance, but humour that sits within all the grief and pain and suffering, and makes it that bit more bearable. So yeah Ron Weasley’s love for chuckles is Important and Overlooked and I will keep saying it til I am blue in the face

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

I used to despise Eridan and think he was the absolute worst character (barring Cronus ig) but you have shown me the light and completely turned my opinion around and now I think he is such an endearing little freak <3 I read your whole blog already but if you've got any more thoughts on eri or anyone else then I hope you post them bc I'd love to hear more abt it!

i have sooo many controversial opinions about the dancestors you have noooooo idea

[lazylittledragon]

Feel free to ignore if this is intruding but I remember you posting about dealing with caffeine addiction and I hope you're doing ok <3 Addiction is really hard to deal with so I hope everything is going alright for you!

!! thank you for checking in <3333

i haven't cut it out completely (i really don't think i'd be able to) but i'm still doing much better, i've cut down from 6 shots per cup to only 2. i've also changed my sleep/eating habits so now i don't feel like i need the caffeine as much because i just don't feel as shit anymore.

it's been very nice :3

[rongzhi]

Hey i just wanted to ask something about Chinese language (not sure which dialect/language you use/are familiar with)—do you use terms or are there terms for family members based on birth order? Specific terms for "second eldest brother", or "third uncle on mom's side" or "fourth aunt on dad's side"?

In my family, the Hokkien we use has terms like that. I tried looking it up for etymology reasons but it seems other Chinese dialects/languages don't have it, and I was wondering if those terms came from another culture (we're SEA diaspora) or if it's something that had been preserved from older Chinese languages.

Yes, in mandarin, there are pretty specific terms for family members just like in Hokkien I suppose. My understanding is that Hokkien and some other dialects are descended from Old Chinese, so I suppose it would make sense that a lot of family terms would have already been set, and that's why we all have such specific terminology.

For Mandarin, using your examples:

second oldest brother ... 二哥

Third uncle on mom's side ... 三舅

fourth aunt on dad's side ... it would depend on if the aunt is the dad's fourth older or younger sister and where in that lineup she is. 姑姑/姑妈/姑母/嫲嫲/嬷嬷 (regional variances) would be his older sister and 姑姐/姑姑 (regional variances) would be his younger sister.

There are regional variances, but you can go pretty far out with this stuff, e.g, paternal grandfather's older brother is 伯公, or 外曾外祖母 is your maternal grandmother's mother. If there are multiple of something, you just count them off by number with the oldest being 大-whatever (e.g, 大姑妈 = oldest of your dad's older sisters) and the youngest being 小 （e.g, 小姨 = mom's youngest sister)

All your maternal cousins are 表 and all your paternal cousins are 堂. Your maternal ancestors are 外/曾外, and your paternal ancestors are 祖/曾祖. For great-great-grandwhatevers you stick a 高 in there. E.g: 高祖母 would be your great-great-grandmother (on your dad's side). Your grand-descendants are all 孙-something or other, e.g, 侄孙 (grandnephew).

you can find some terms here. there are a lot of regional variances in terminology, though, and there are varying levels of formality. a lot of people might not even have some of these relatives so there's no need to remember all of them.

[brookheimer]

roman is free in the sense that he is free from waystar, but he is not free in the sense that he has 'escaped the cycle.' roman realized everything is bullshit and left, but that's not what actual meaningful freedom would be for roman. what rome needs is for business and family to finally make a clean separation, for him to be allowed to love his family without molding himself into an image of logan that he isn't. waystar has always been the only way the roys know how to interact with one another, and it still is. in that sense, nothing has changed. roman's declaration about the nothingness of waystar is not actually a change, because he still marries waystar to family, and thus believes family is nothingness as well -- functionally, there's little difference between that and the opposite belief that both waystar and family have meaning and are 'real.' what the roys need is to realize waystar is bullshit and family is real, but roman went from thinking both have meaning (family has meaning thus waystar has meaning) to thinking neither do (waystar is bullshit thus family is bullshit). nothing changes, the cycle keeps on cycling. finally family has been severed from waystar (what he's needed all along -- he's never really cared about the business, only his family, and the business was the only way he could be with his family, so he tried and failed time and time again to mold himself into the businessman his dad wanted him to be), and while this is a good thing, it's coupled with his realization of the hollowness of the family itself. in hindsight, this was inevitable, i think -- if waystar royco was the beating heart of the roy family (which it was), there's no conceivable severing of the two that would allow the family to maintain functionally intact.

i do think that roman will have relationships with his family after the finale (shiv is definite, con is likely, kendall is also likely because roman is incapable of not being around his family and can't imagine a world in which they don't return to each other somehow), but he's aware for the first time of the nothingness of their bonds, something that everyone has already known except for him -- something, i think, that isn't even entirely fair. they do love each other. there is something there. and now that waystar is no longer part of the equation, maybe there's hope for real relationships beyond transaction, beyond business, beyond logan. but none of them believe that to be possible. roman always used to, but for the first time, i think he's not sure. he's free of waystar, but the roys never managed to functionally healthily uncouple family and business, so being free of waystar also means being free of family -- it has to mean that. he's convincing himself it's all nothing and he doesn't care, and that won't last. but, in my opinion, neither will the distance between the siblings. i think it'll take time, but they'll come back together, albeit in varying degrees (i doubt shiv and ken will ever have quite the same relationship again, for instance). roman is free of waystar but not because he realized it's not necessary for family -- because he 'realized' family is not necessary, that family is nothing too, that everything is nothing. it's an empty sort of happiness, unsustainable and hollow. but i do think there is hope. i think it'll be okay for rome in the long run (family-wise, at least). i just don't think nihilism is a salve capable of healing deep cuts, only a bandage allowing them to stay hidden for a little while longer.

in life and in death, waystar royco and the roy family are eternal partners, inextricable from each other -- and so long as the two remain conceptually married, it'll be hard for roman to find legitimate happiness: if one is dead, then the other must be too. he ends the series the same as he started it, believing fully in logan's conception of family as a business unit (meaning now that both are bullshit), people as economic units (meaning now that both are bullshit), and roman himself as the son who couldn't be the heir and thus was never much of a son at all. logan dominates his worldview just as much as it always has. sure, roman acknowledges that everything is bullshit now, but that's even more logan than his previous viewpoint which was a naive sort of belief in family. now, it's all just bullshit. everything's bullshit. it's logan with nihilism as the dominant frame (rather than capitalism), but regardless of roman's thoughts on the meaning of things, the structure of the world is the same one that logan taught him. he is free from waystar, but he is haunted by its ghost and always will be.

[lucreziaborgiagf]

i don’t talk about bridgerton on here but just to clarify. i will not be having ANY eloise hate on this account. i will bite.

[beelzeballing]

youre all sick of me but i dont care. you KNOW i hate that they killed izzy and i hate that he died in ed's arms and i hate that he seemed content about it. you KNOW THIS.

but.

i think it could have worked. fuck, i think that they could even RETROACTIVELY make at least the latter 2 things work. but they'd have to unpack them. and, most importantly, acknowledge them as the backslides they are.

i want izzy in the gravy basket, reminiscing about how he died and being conflicted and not knowing how to feel because he'd felt happy to be dying cradled in ed's arms, even though he had struggled so hard to find himself outside of his captain. i want him to grapple with that. he got a glimpse of who he could be, a hint of being part of a community, but in his most vulnerable moment his words werent for the crew that he had begun to grow to love. under his laboured, last breaths, his plea was so heartwrenchingly, tragically that of first mate hands:

"sit with me eddie."

[uncaught-coolfish]

every time i remember the “people hurt me long before we met. all sorts of people in all sorts of ways” line I start seeing spiders

[bitterflames]

Hello Langya friend - Your answer to question 4 was correct - Xiao Jingyan is the best! Full credit. For question 5 I noticed you are a Jingsu shipper, so, would Xiao Jingyan feel some angst about kissing MCS before the reveal?

omg, i love this question, thank you anon! i, uh, have A Lot Of Feelings about jingyan and his lin shu-related grief and how all of that colours his relationship with mcs and... for reasons i ended up writing out my response as an r/AmITheAsshole parody. as you do.

Posted by u/WaterBuffalo 3 minutes ago

AITA for still being hung up on my first love?

I (31M) lost my best friend/cousin/first love (it's complicated) to a tragic incident twelve years ago, and was convinced I would never feel the same way for anyone else. I'm basically married to my work anyway, so it's never really been an issue.

Until I met this guy (30?M) - I guess you could say he's a work friend? We see each other regularly; we practically live in each other's back pockets, and I don't think I'm being delusional when I say there's a spark there.

Except… I don't know why, but whenever I'm around him, my thoughts keep going astray. They don't look alike, they're opposites in every way - one was outdoorsy and full of energy, a little fireball even in the dead of winter; the other is a fragile scholarly type who's always cold. But all these little mannerisms he has, the way he clenches his hands in the hem of his sleeves, they remind me of my first love so much I think I'm going crazy.

And last night, one thing led to another, and I kissed him in the secret tunnel between our houses (don't ask). It was just a brief kiss, but I could tell he was into it - the way that he shivered and clung to me with those long, elegant hands, even called me by name (which he never does).

And then he left in a hurry. Since last night he hasn't returned a single one of my messages, and I'm alone with my thoughts, and worst of all I can't stop thinking - they even kiss the same way.

I know it's not fair on either of them. Not to the memory of my first love, or to my new friend. Maybe it's just wishful thinking; maybe I'm just seeing the ghost of a dead man in places where he doesn't belong, because I miss him so badly. I don't know.

AITA?

[shivunin]

Hi, I just wondered what your favourite part of the Fenhawke romance was? Like, a scene/moment that really made you fall more in love with him? I love your writing so much!!

Oh, that is very kind of you to say! 💗I'm glad you enjoy the things I've written. I've really been enjoying writing for this ship, especially the past few months c:

As for your question...

Man, that's tough. I have a hard time picking one thing---I mean, *gestures to all the fic* you know? But I can narrow it down to a couple of scenes/elements:

The fact that a romanced Fenris still calls you "my friend" even after the act 2 romance scene. This is just...the bedrock of their relationship to me. Yes, that night went very poorly (understatement, I know), but at the core they are friends and he trusts Hawke in a way he's likely never had the cause or opportunity to trust someone before. I believe he never stopped loving Hawke, and it was a matter of laying those feelings out and understanding them one at a time. Romantic love not replacing platonic love or eclipsing it, but building or twining together is just... *chef's kiss* that's the good stuff.

The moment during the romance conversation in Act 3 when you can see Fenris go from hoping (painfully hoping!) that there is still some way he and Hawke can be together to actually believing it will happen. There is a shift in his body language that I could watch (and...have) over and over.

The element of choice? This is not going to be coherent, but the fact that he is learning for the first time what it means to have options and preferences, and he spends a lot of time exploring and understanding himself...and after all of that, the thing he keeps coming back to is Hawke. I think it's gorgeous. A song with refrains of pain or fear and choruses of decision and hope. He's loyal to a fault, in many ways, but understanding how much of himself exists to share and then still choosing to share it is just...man. I said this wasn't going to be coherent lol, so there you are. "If there is a future to be had..." like he doubts its existence but he's willing to chance it for Hawke. Man.

But, honestly? I've played DA2 a lot of times and never romanced another character, even though I've played through multiple romance storylines in each of the other games. I can't shake the Fenris romance. Every time I open a new playthrough, I tell myself that this is the time I'm going to romance Isabela, and every time Fenris rips that dude's heart out and I just......alright, yeah. Okay. Here we go again.

[ahundredtimesover]

Hi 👋🏽 I’ll be going on an indefinite break that may (or may not) be for good.

Writing fanfiction was an escape for me these past 2 years. It was a way to express my love for the tannies in how I wrote them as comfort characters, and it was a way for me to make sense of my own experiences and emotions. These fics have always been very personal, with a bit of me in every OC, my pains reflected in their stories, and words I wish someone told me growing up expressed in the dialogues. And I’ll always be so thankful that many of you related with them, found meaning in them, and found comfort in them. That will always be my favorite part 💜💜 stories are so powerful! They’ve allowed me to connect with so many people and make memories in this (mostly) lovely part of the site.

But the process of writing has also been draining, not as cathartic as it used to be, and not as fulfilling. So much as I find myself going back and forth with the numerous stories in my drafts, I can’t bring myself to continue with them. Not anytime soon, at least. Maybe one day the itch to write will be so intense, or JJK1/KTH1 drops and I’ll lose my shit (Untitled and Belong were born out of Indigo and D-day after all), or after rereading my stories, I’ll miss writing so much. The thing is, I’ve never loved BTS as much as I do right now; perhaps I’m content with screaming about that love to myself in the meantime.

I’ll be lurking around here, maybe pop in every once in a while (so plagiarists, keep off my work, pls). My stories will remain here as your comfort 😌 and I’ll do my best to put out the PLM drabbles I promised! Other than that, all the stories are complete for you to enjoy (sorry to those waiting on TLA 😔 I hate that I’m unable to continue). I also have Twitter (jmimi_mi). I’m also just a lurker but say hi if you want! 😊 we can talk bts and fics and whatnot over there (I’ll try, I promise).

Please give love to the authors who are still lovingly putting out work for the community! 🥰

[revasserium]

my favorite thing about stories, be it books or manga, tv shows or movies, or even epic poems and recited songs, is that they never really end -- the part we tell might end: there will always be a last page, or a last episode, a list minute, or a last line, but not really -- because even if it ends here, the story itself keeps on going -- in your heart, in your mind, in the hearts and minds of everyone who's read it or watched it, listened to it or sang it.

and the best part of all that is, even if it does "end", you can go right back to the beginning and start again.

because yes, stories end. the ending will always be there.

but then, so will the beginning.

[pharawee]

"tawan would have lived an ordinary but good life if he didn't meet kinn" excuse me Jane? Making me feel for that hoe??

No but seriously that's making me think and I think it's more of korns doing than kinn. Because everyone says kinn was soft until tawan betrayed him and yeah my brain doesn't have enough cells to be more coherent

Ohoho! I'm so glad you sent me this ask. I have so many ~thoughts~ about Tawan.

I mean, let's face it. Tawan isn't a good person. With the way he kidnapped and then kicked an unconscious Chay he might not even be redeemable (if he didn't, you know, die).

I have this headcanon that Tawan (in the series - in the book he's just ?? ???) led an ordinary life until he met Kinn. I mean, they met where? At uni? I bet Tawan was cute and flirty and ambitious, and Kinn was pretty much Mr Perfect. His lifestyle must have seemed so glamourous and appealing to an outsider like Tawan (because I don't think he was part of that whole mafia thing at all).

And I believe Tawan when he says that it all began to fall apart when some rival mafias started threatening his family (because all the best lies are told when you add a bit of the truth to them). I don't think Tawan meant to betray Kinn. I think he was just way in over his head and panicked. Which of course made him a liability and a threat. So yeah, you're right, Korn would have realised right away and made sure that his empire Kinn is safe. He probably thought it a kindness to let Kinn think that Tawan had always been a mole and that shooting him was the only choice left to him (because we know Kinn is too soft and would have never done so otherwise).

So, yeah, it might not have been Kinn's intention, and perhaps his only fault lies in being too naive and too blinded by love but, in a way, Kinn loving Tawan was Tawan's downfall.

And of course, that's when Vegas swept in and gleefully manipulated what was left of Tawan further until all that remained was blind devotion. Who in their right mind would even believe all of Vegas' sweet nothings? All it needed was a ring - which is such a simple and sad and very un-mafia-like thing. I feel like not even Vegas fully realised that Tawan was never cut out for all of that mafia stuff. In the end, it turned him into the loose cannon that we meet in the series.

That isn't to say that Tawan is a victim only. He's more like... collateral damage. Weak and very human. A tragic villain, at most. A very pretty and unhinged and amazingly acted one at that. He totally stole the show for me and sometimes I still make up little fics in my head about him before I fall asleep lmao

[magichats-fr]

Speaking of all of the neopets drama

I can't believe the main neopets tag forgot about the snowball that Jungle_Boo caused which ultimately led to where we are today with Conversion 2.0 and bringing back unconverted pets

[darth-sonny]

You said that the family would have treated Kirby better if he hadn't been born from rape, but what about Leo's mental health, would he have gotten better faster if Kirby had been born a different way?

in all honesty??

Kirby wouldn't have been born at all if Leo had the choice to have kids

maybe if everything that happened hadn't happened, then yeah. Kirby probably would've been "born" from some sort of cloning accident or a mystic mission gone wrong (in my mind, wee little Kirby would've never been 100% turtle. they're always half something else to me forever and always)

if they had been born in any other way, Kirby's life would've been incredibly different

but to answer your question, Leo's mental health would've progressed much... well, it still would've progressed the same way, but he would've kicked himself into gear much faster than in "canon"