Yknow, I think this passage really captures how Ouyang views Esen, especially in contrast with how Baoxiang views Esen. Ouyang geuinely believes the best of Esen, he genuinely belives that Esen is good and pure and kind and that it's himslef that is taining him into being otherwise. And while Ouyang is right in that he's technically responsible for Esen’s current emotional state (he did very much kill Esen’s dad and frame his brother for it, that is very much a thing he just did), for once it isn't his fault for the everything else going on with Esen?
I do think Esen is generally good-natured, and tries to be kind and generous to those he loves, but it's very clear that Ouyang has reduced him to JUST that in his head. He only sees Esen’s best qualities as inherent to him, and all the bad ones are Ouyang's fault somehow. He blames himself for Esen not understanding him (because there's something wrong with him, and even when he's mad at Esen for not caring enough to notice certain things he justifies it in his head by making it about his own unmanliness or whatever and Esen is just to perfect for that), for any failure in battle (yeah you're the general but Esen also approved this hes your boss dude), and generally for any moment where Esen exhibits less than stellar behaviour/capacity/etc. When in reality, we have a lot of moments where Esen is just sort of a dick, many of which are pre-ouyang (courtesy of HWDtW wbx flashbacks, which, granted, are also biased but my point still stands). We see Esen's constant and usually unjustified frustration with wbx and sometimes Ouyang, we see him be dismissive of the things they tell him, in the pre-order reward its pretty much stated that he makes a habit of dumping Ouyang outside brothels for hours while he goes inside to get laid, in one of his first scenes we see how much he enjoys it when Ouyang spends the whole morning tormenting Altan (altho tbf he kinda deserved it, altan suuuccckkss), and in general Esen just kinda treats people like crap sometimes. He's snapish and short-tempered and stubborn and imperious, loves whining about stuff, and is a shitty brother and best friend. He's got a lot of good qualities too, like how he's one of the few people that treats Ouyang with respect and tries to treat him as an equal, how his first reaction when wbx is insulted is to come to his defense (even if wbx usually foils his attempts by immediately clapping back and storming off), how we see him recognize he gets frustrated witj wbx too easily and tries to hold his temper back, how he immediately self-sacrifices to save Ouyang from his dad, how even after thinking wbx killed their dad he does really want to forgive him.
My point is, Esen is trying, but he's a very flawed human being, and Ouyang just can't seem to grasp that. He looks at him with rose-colored glasses. And it's so interesting that amongst all the shitty things Ouyang has done (and this duology really just is Ouyang and WBX fuck up yuan dynasty china to truly Epic proportions), the one he feels worst about is the one that isn't actually his fault (sorta). He may have killed Chaghan and been the catalyst for Esen's emotional blow up, but he isn't responsible for Esen having the capacity to burn WBX's books. That was Esen's decision. He hasn't somehow manipulated Esen into an eviler, crueler version of himself by virtue of existing evil-y and eunuch-y and revengefully im his vicinity. Esen was always capable of this, even if we take out Ouyang's actual manipulations, and I think this whole I-tainted-hin mentality really encapsulates how fucked up their relationship and Ouyang's mental state are in general. After all, Ouyang doesn't feel bad about the murder, or the framing, and he feels guilt about causing Esen pain, but most of all, he feels absolutely terrible that he's shattered what he sees as Esen’s purity, which in reality is mostly just the pedestal he himslef put him on. Man, what a fucked up little guy.
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the rwd season 4 qna inspired me to start thinking about college au headcanons except a lot of these are gonna be really specific to my school and y'all are just gonna have to deal with that <3
Kyana feeds some of the school cats. she would feed all of them if she could
Dani smuggled Plug (the scrawniest black cat you've ever seen) into her dorm room illegally and somehow management hasn't caught her yet (based on a true story) (Kyana visits to see Plug all the time)
Finbar keeps an updated tier list of every canteen in the school with breakdowns of the best stalls/dishes for each
A senior from the school of engineering once said to me 'all the engineering people dress like rats cuz our classrooms don't have aircon' (context: tropics) anyway that's Dani
Kyana would probably be involved in a lot of freshman orientation events from second year onwards. she just likes talking to the new kids and giving them advice like she would be the kind of orientation group leader who'd get messages from her freshies asking about all kinds of random nonsense because she's made sure they know they can always contact her with questions
VR-LA is The Guy you go to for textbook pirating resources
(this is more of a 'wouldn't that be funny' but VR-LA is just Veerle's discord handle)
Docent is the name of VR-LA's old laptop that broke down so he gave it to Cassimere (computer engineering major he met once at a networking event) to fix except Cassimere got everything off the hard drive and then somehow managed to fuck it up Even More so he had to get a new laptop (and named it Emi)
Roy has gotten food poisoning from his dorm meal plan at least once (based on at least one true story)
The heap trio + Mandy would be those friends constantly playing majong in the dorm lounge and if all the majong tables are taken they just play in one of their dorm rooms on a towel to dampen the tile shuffling noises (it was Mandy's idea)
Every morning Dani goes to the drinks stall at her faculty and orders one iced coffee to the point where the stall owner starts preparing an iced coffee whenever they see her approach (based on my true story)
Roy would be one of those people who goes clubbing every other week and every time he tries to drag the rest of the heap trio and Egan almost always goes and Dani would go if she didn't have a good excuse but always begrudgingly. anyway Roy would always be the only one having a good time until Egan gets drunk enough to start having fun
Finbar actually uses the dorm kitchens instead of just buying canteen food and it always makes the hallways smell really good
Vhas also uses the dorm kitchen sometimes but like. one time i walked into the pantry on my floor and someone had left cut sweet potatoes and 2 eggs in an inch of water in a pan on the stove. that's Vhas
Kyana's constantly applying for overseas exchanges and international summer/winter school programmes. the world is large and she wants to see it!
Maxim's the definition of a hall phantom. you know he lives on your dorm floor because you pass him by in the hallways sometimes and literally nowhere else. sometimes you're not convinced that he actually exists
VR-LA and Maxim's friendship stems from them being from wildly different faculties (VR-LA's in STEM, Maxim's doing anthropology so arts/social sciences) but also having lots of weird interests they cant really bug anyone in their home faculties about
Elyse is in student government and every once in a while Finbar receives a series of angry texts about the newest idiocy she's had to put up with
MR-SN and AS-TR start a stargazing club together. other notable members include AS-TR's girlfriend E-DN, MR-SN's friend C-RA (the one who always volunteers to carry the heavy ass telescopes) and MR-SN's friend K-LB who he pestered into coming to fix one of the wonky scopes even though K-LB's actually in electrical engineering but he's the only engineering person MR-SN (an arts student) knows
oh and of course VR-LA joins because he genuinely just likes space (developing a crush on his club chairperson was not on his bingo card)
Kyana and E-DN were MMA sparring buddies at one point which is how she found out about the stargazing and joined immediately
honestly i can probably think of more but this post is fuckin long LMAO
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I gotta say the tags you left on that reblog on why you followed me are by far one of the best collections of tags I've ever gotten.
but you've awakened my curiosity. What was the Twitch chat that started this? What did I say???? I'M SO CURIOUS BECAUSE BOY HOWDY I'VE SAID SOME INTERESTING THINGS-
I couldn't remember exactly, so I went back and searched Discord for images I sent and apparently it was just a super tame message.
The thing that made it significant, however, was the fact that I had never heard the Diggy Diggy Hole song before this year... despite having watched minecraft youtube videos since 2012. Somehow I missed that. A month or two ago I mentioned something from a different Impulse stream about diggy diggy and my friend @bibliobasilisk forced me to watch several iterations of the song (which I'm grateful for. It's a bop. As you would know).
So anyway I sent that screenshot to her like "hey look someone in chat said this" because i thought it was hilarious and then I was like "also I recognise their name from tumblr. unrelatedly". And then she was like "ah swedish tumblr, just looked them up" and then, being half swedish myself, I got hella excited:
And then I proceeded to scroll on your tumblr for like 20 minutes before unpausing the Impulse vod to continue watching. And I've been following you ever since then.
So a combination of me recognising your name, and my friend sussing out that you're Swedish (and the fact that diggy diggy is still relatively new to me) and bam. I'm here now.
Also in looking for that screenshot, it turns out that I screenshotted a second message of yours from a different stream:
Because Hermitgang my beloved
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