Ten Leagues Beyond the Wide World's End

“But the up-climbing is painful, and from high places it is easy to fall low.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Children of Húrin

I’m sorry not sorry that one of the elements of this story i am most obsessed with is how a foundational relationship got torn apart and left two people who wanted nothing more than to continue loving one another two people who first and and always wanted to protect each other in this tragic place where they couldn’t do that and all that love had to go hide - via @cerusee​

jiang cheng is a funny character because i fully support either liking him or not liking him, but i see so many takes (especially when he shows up in a supporting role in fic) that seem completely unhinged until i pin down which of what i consider the fundamental facts of his character are just not being applied at all.

it’s like:

1) this is not a mentally well guy, especially after Plot starts happening, and he spends the entire story getting less okay. the only time we ever see any improvement happen in jiang cheng is when wei wuxian piths himself getting the guy out of his suicidal phase, causing many more problems going forward but fixing that one. jiang cheng is not okay and it’s all downhill.

2) he cares so fucking much. like you can write a jiang cheng who is a deeply selfish bastard and you have an excellent textual basis, but it’s not because he doesn’t care about other people, at least the ones that are his; that’s a different kind of problem than the one he has.

he would in fact be less of a problem a lot of the time if he cared less, because he does not have the emotional management tools to be useful about it. also the narrative is conspiring against him but like.

(there are a lot of ways to be selfish and jiang cheng and lan wangji are actually remarkably similar in the basic type of selfish impulses they have. they just have very different childhoods and values shaping how they act about it. and then lan wangji manages to become a mostly functional adult, while jiang cheng is generously an electrified pile of bad coping mechanisms. he’s functioning! but like. at what cost.)

3) jiang cheng is dutiful. even the most selfish jiang cheng is someone who perceives and values himself in terms of his function and obligation; he and wei wuxian have different personalities and worldviews, and for that matter expectations placed on them, but they both learned that lesson, presumably together.

4) sort of an extension of 1 and to a lesser extent 2, Jiang Cheng is emotionally insecure as a base state. his parents made some major errors, at least half of which should have been avoidable except they would have had to deal with their own shit first.

it’s not out of the question, in a different lifetime where he didn’t get several years of compounded irresolvable traumas as his coming-of-age present and then left alone to stew in pain and denial for over a decade, for him to have learned to handle it better and even mostly get over it! that could have happened! it just didn’t.

to an extent he’s insecure about different things as a grown man than he was as a boy, life experience makes a difference. he’s built confidence about some things and become absolutely shattered about others. but he’s a person who is easy to wound, in all kinds of complicated identity-related ways, especially by Wei Wuxian specifically, and his kneejerk response to that is to lash out in reply, whether the wounding was intentional or not.

the fact that Wei Wuxian spent most of their lives giving every evidence of being completely immune to being harmed by this reaction masked its toxicity until things got real ugly real fast.

jiang cheng absolutely has the capacity to not do this! it’s a deeply rooted bad habit, not actually a fundamental of his character. but it requires self-awareness, will, and (if he’s going to keep it up) a lot of practice. it’s not the kind of thing that just goes away on its own, even with a bunch of alterations in context.

i don’t have like a closing argument here i just keep finding that takes on jiang cheng that don’t work for me, whether generous or condemnatory, always seem to disagree with me on one of these main points.

#jiang cheng is my son and i accept all his rights and his wrongs (via @paint-music-with-me)

well then you’re doing a lot better than his actual parents 😂 draw up the paperwork

I hate it when I’m trying to look up a good golem recipe and the rabbi prefaces it with ten paragraphs about his life in 17th-century Prague. Like, I feel for you, Maharal, but there are anti-semites going unsuplexed while I’m searching for the ingredient list

When I made my needle felt golem the Cantor told me how to make him come alive and then said “now don’t do that”

actually that would be a super cute middle grade or younger chapter book… kid makes a little felt golem (or more traditional clay golem) in an art class, ill advisedly brings it to life, now tiny golem is trying to protect the kid’s jewish community even though it’s only like four inches tall

it really would

i have seen this post on my dash 7 times now and every time i think more loudly, 'this is what Batman villain The Penguin's dialogue sounds like when they let him be fun to watch.'

Specifically, to “swash a buckler” referred to the act of pounding a buckler (small shield) against one’s own chest as a sort of macho display.

someone help him

what if everyone referred to him solely as "princess diana's ex-husband"

we take you now live to the shamefully expensive spectacle: the coronation of princess diana's ex-husband

maybe if garreg mach invested in an actual guidance counselor instead of letting byleth attempt to solve everyone's problems in 30 seconds or less none of this would have happened

we COULD get sylvain and dimitri a therapist but consider: it's really funny to make cyril draw out his problems to put them in the Problems And Issues Box bc he doesnt know how to read

Look, I know facile trope inversion is for weenies, but I still really want to see a JRPG-style game where the shouty teenage boy who gives long speeches about the power of friendship is the fragile healer and the girl with the gentle piano-and-strings theme song and self-sacrificing “must save everyone” attitude is the melee tank. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable here.

I’m not even being ironic – I honestly think it would work better that way. Like, let’s put power-of-friendship boy in a position where he actually needs to rely on his friends to get anything done, rather than just talking about how they’ve inspired him while he solos the final boss. And as for Little Miss Messiah Complex, well, tell me you can’t perfectly picture how the standard tank protagonist move where you intercept a blow meant for a critically wounded party member, facetank a fucktillion points of damage, then get back up again with one hit point and a voice quip about how the baddies will have to do better than that would play out under her idiom. You can see it, right?

People in the notes are looking at the second one saying “that’s just She-Ra, that’s just–” no, it isn’t. Gentle piano-and-strings theme song, remember? It’s essential that each archetype’s stock personality remain intact, and only the role changes.

She’s sweet. She’s humble. She wears homespun dresses and grows pretty flowers in her free time. She has that vibe that says “I’m going to die halfway through the game to make my boyfriend sad”, except that doesn’t happen, because the baddies don’t have a big enough gun.

I want to see the obligatory scene where the bad guy’s army is burning down her Beloved Peasant Village™, and she’s standing between the evil commander and a group of soulful orphans, begging with tears in her eyes for him to see that there’s already been enough death – except when he callously rejects her entreaties and moves to backhand her out of the way, she catches his armoured fist mid-swing, without even the faintest tremor of effort, and in a tone of infinite patience informs him: “You misunderstand, sir: it’s not our lives I’m pleading for.”

And then she punches people until all the soldiers run away and feels conflicted about it afterwards.

i don't care if a trans woman hasnt "done the work". i dont care if she doesnt shave. i dont care if she has short hair. i dont care if she has broad shoulders. i dont care if she has a flat chest. i dont care if she has flat hips. i dont care if she has a deep voice. i dont care if she wears "mens" clothing. she's a woman because she says she is. she doesn't have to "do the work". she doesnt have to do anything, actually. she's a woman regardless of how she looks, acts or sounds. she's a woman because she is one.

I made a post like this and people managed to miss the point because I said not everyone was going to be or wanted to be an UwU Catgirl. You’re doing god’s work.

You want to know why Inigo Montoya remains such an iconic and beloved character even 35 years after the Princess Bride came out?

It’s because he’s one of the few characters in fiction who has a story where he has dedicated his life to revenge, his whole motivation is about getting revenge….and he gets it! and then he isn’t empty or despairing! he doesn’t regret it! he’s totally satisfied!

because so many stories about revenge or rage are about characters “seeing the futility of their actions” or learning “their desire for revenge has only made them the monsters they hated” FUCK THAT.

Inigo Montoya kills the man who kills his father, is allowed to live in the narrative after and be happy about it and it is so satisfying. it’s fantastic. it’s iconic.

let more characters rage against the world, bring it down with bloodied hands, and let them be FUCKING RIGHT about it. Let them celebrate their success with sharp grins, and let them live happy, full lives where they always remain proud/fulfilled for what they’ve done

Another thing that set Inigo Montoya apart from other characters with vengeance arcs is that Inigo’s vengeance drove him but it didn’t consume him. He was wronged and wanted - needed that injustice to be corrected - but his vengeance was focused. Rather than taking his pain out on the whole world, Inigo was a charming, pleasant, good-humored person that treated everyone respectfully, even folks he was fighting. He even asks politely to people he meets about any extra digits they may have.

Would a bitter, angry, vengeance-consumed man swear on the life of his father and help a guy he was planning to duel, then give him time to catch his breath? Would he hand his sword over to his future opponent to lovingly show off his late-father’s skill as a swordmaker?

“You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you.”

I think part of what makes Inigo so iconic and beloved is because while vengeance was his story, it wasn’t who he was, so when he achieved his vengeance it was less an emptiness and more of a satisfaction, a story completed, a wrong made right, and a man suddenly baffled at the possibilities before him, not sure what his next story would be.

whenever i think about playing stardew valley i realize i don't really want to play stardew valley, what i WANT to play is harvest moon another wonderful life lesbian edition but that doesn't exist

ahem

I WIN

Do ya'll ever think about how every character in MDZS is living in a radically different genre of story?

Cause yeah, sure Wei Wuxian is living in a danmei fantasy novel with strong romantic comedy elements, but if you slide over a bit Lan Wangji is living a serious and heady drama about regret, loss, yearning, the passage of time, and ultimately atonement.

Scooch on over to Xichen and your in a straight up Greek tragedy, right down to the parable about hubris and trust. Jin Guangyao is living meanwhile in a political dark fantasy al'la Game of Thrones, Nie Huaisang is in a Gothic moody Monte Cristo-esque reflection on revenge and deception, and while Lan Sizhuhi and Jin Ling are living in two VERY different YA fantasy books ('magic boarding school/secret orphan of destiny' and 'Steven Universe style coming of age/discovering all your family are some flavor of evil and magic' respectively).

Everyone connected to Yi City is living inside a dark psychological thriller/horror flick, except for Xue Yang who is in a Found Family/Enemies to Lover fic right up until he isn't.

Jiang Cheng's entire life has been one long soap opera, and it is showing no signs of stopping anytime soon.

the fact that at the council of elrond glorfindel is like “just throw the ring into the ocean” is so funny to me after reading the silmarillion just because it feels like the subtext is him being like “yeah let’s try maglor’s patented and tested method: Just Yeet The Accursed Fucking Thing Into The Water”

#in fairness they do do literally the other fëanorion approved method of magical item disposal #glorfindel: we could do like maglor and throw it in the ocean? #elrond: no we’re doing like maedhros and jumping into a volcano via @lesbianlanval

*at the council of Elrond*

Elrond: Alright, everyone listen up. We elves have 4 methods of dealing with Accursed Fucking Objects™, as demonstrated by my four parents. 

Number 1, the Elwing Method or Mom Method. This is to hide the accursed fucking thing away and keep it safe and close. This is highly not reccommended if the object can take over its user like the ring can, and Sauron will be searching for it, so this method is out of the question. 

Number 2, the Earendil Method or the Dad #1 Method. This is, send the accursed fucking thing across the sea or to some higher power. According to Mithrandir, the Valar will not take it and Tom Bombadil wants nothing to do with it, so this is also out of the question. 

Number 3 is the Maglor Method, or Dad #2 Method. This is to yeet the accursed fucking thing into the ocean. In this case, it is not a good idea as Ulmo will be very upset and we will still have to contend with Sauron. 

The last method is the Maedhros Method or the Dad #3 Method. This method is to yeet yourself into a volcano while holding the accursed fucking thing, and also the method we will be using. You will not have to yeet yourself into the volcano, only the ring, don’t worry, Frodo.

Those…those really are the four methods aren’t they?

@procrastinationonvacation how dare you hide this in the tags

i laughed too much at this.