littlestarbeam

[littlestarbeam]

I recently had surgery, and at the time I came home, I had both my cat and one of my grandma's cats staying with me.

- Within hours of surgery, I wake up from a nap to my cat gently sniffing at my incisions with great alarm.

- I was not allowed to shower the first day after surgery, and the cats, seeing that The Large Cat is not observing its cleaning ritual, decided I must be gravely disabled and compensated by licking all the exposed skin on my arms, face, and legs.

- I currently have to sleep with a pillow over my abdomen because my cat insists on climbing on top of me and covering my incisions with her body while I sleep (which is very sweet but not exactly comfortable without the pillow). She also lays across me facing my bedroom door, presumably on guard for attackers who may try to harm me while I'm sleeping and injured.

That's love. 🐈‍⬛🐈❤️

[littlestarbeam]

So that I understand, Velaris is known by:

All of its citizens who never leave

The women in the library who never leave

The mortal queens because they were shown it in the orb

Keir and all of the court of nightmares who never tell anybody like Beron

Eris knows/will see it

Bryce/Ember/Randall

Varian - who would never tell Tarquin and Cresseida because he's more loyal to the NC

Helion - who kept quiet during UtM even when Rhys was ~evil~ (did he know it was an act or what?) and never tells anybody from his court because he is more loyal to the NC

You're telling me that not one of these people blab about the city?

[littlestarbeam]

It's so funny to me that it's possible to have verbal misunderstandings with animals.

This morning I made Ripley (a parrot) a foraging toy, as I often do before I leave for work, by putting a bunch of paper shreds in an old tea box with some peanuts and dried cherries. He hadn't touched it by the time I came home so when he was wandering around the living room restlessly looking for something to do I picked up the box and told him "hey, there's a peanut in here. You can get it out" and then I went back to my office.

After a couple minutes, he walked through the kitchen to where I was sitting at my desk and looked up at me and whispered "I get peanut?"

I said, "Buddy. I think you misunderstood me. The peanut is still in the box."

He tapped his beak on the floor, said "oh" in a really disappointed tone, and then helpfully suggested, "I step up get a peanut?"

[littlestarbeam]

katara is one of those impossibly cool people who “has a guy” for everything. like run into any sort of problem and she’s just like “hang on i gotchu. just contact this number and they’ll know what to do.” but half the time that guy is just sokka

[littlestarbeam]

Jason: I have never broke a law :)

Thalia: you’ve murdered people-

Jason: that doesn’t count bc execution isn’t murder silly :)

Thalia: yes… never mind

[littlestarbeam]

born to be a creature in the woods with a musky, woodsy, masculine scent.

forced to shower. with strawberry shampoo.

[littlestarbeam]

On Azula burning turtleducks...

She doesn't.

That's it, that's the meta.

Of course that's not all, I have proof.

Some antis used Azula in the Spirit Temple as "proof" of her burning turtleducks because of her flashback from when she learned how to firebend.

And that's stupid.

Azula most definitely did set a turtleduck looking thing on fire. But it wasn't an actual turtleduck. You can tell by the way it's drawn.

It's laying down unnaturally and it's not trying to get up despite the fact that it should be startled by the person approaching it, especially if the person approaching it is someone that hurt it.

Despite the fact that is has been picked up, it doesn't react at all, doesn't try to escape and doesn't turn to look at the person that picked it up.

A new person has entered the picture and the turtleduck has no reacted with curiosity or fear caused by the new presence and motion, when other living creatures in the panel (Azula) have.

The turtleduck is literally on fire and isn't making any noise of pain, it's not trying to escape, it's not writhing, it's not reacting at all. It's just sitting there like "Is it hot in here? Are you hot?"

The turtleduck is making no attempts to nurse it's wounds of escape from the grip of the person that had set it on fire. It's showing no fear or pain or any emotion at all.

The mother of the little monster doesn't give a fuck about the turtleduck. You'd expect a woman that wants her children to treat animals and plants with respect, would stop her daughter from harming a turtleduck. Realistically, if it was real, Ursa would remove it from Azula's hands and try to nurse it to health or return it to its mother, but she doesn't. She doesn't even care. She only pays attention to Azula, because Azula is the only living thing in the picture. The turtleduck is not real. All Ursa cares about is Azula's firebending and it's what she's disappointed at. She can't exactly lecture a kid for developing naturally, so she stays quiet. But she very much can lecture a kid on setting an animal on fire, so if the turtleduck was real, she'd be scolding Azula.

To try and villainize Azula by painting her as a turtleduck burner is dumb when the turtleduck isn't even real. It's probably a toy of hers or Zuko's. Probably hers, since Ursa isn't saying anything about Azula stealing from Zuko, but it could be Zuko's too, considering we know Azula burned his toys.

She did do that, right?

Wrong, possibilities are she actually didn't.

But that's for another meta.

Anyway, Azula doesn't burn turtleducks, she only throws bread at them.

Thus proven.

[littlestarbeam]

anyways i hope y’all know fmc’s should still be fmc’s even after they become mothers…. like tell me you know that pls

[littlestarbeam]

current feeling; borzois with fancy collars.

literally me /srs

[littlestarbeam]

The warm feeling in your chest when you read fic abt neris where Eris constantly compliments Nesta and fights for her.

That's... These are my fav bedtime stories

[littlestarbeam]

Something about dancing being Nesta's favorite thing to do ever, and something about Eris being the only one who can keep up with her on the dance floor...

[littlestarbeam]

The chunky TV, the MySpace emo, Ouran highschool host club… those were the days.

[littlestarbeam]

“If you have time to watch Netflix you have time for a side hustle” my side hustle is relaxing so that my body and brain can heal from by this nose-to-the-grindstone bullshit. I refuse to feel guilty for being a human with the need to relax sometimes. my side hustle is no.

[littlestarbeam]

being a student during peak pandemic was so fucking surreal like. "it's not an excuse to fall behind" I cannot stress enough to you how much A Worldwide Plague Upending Life As We Know It is literally one of The Top Three Reasons to fall behind

[littlestarbeam]

as much as i love corruption arcs, there's just something so sexy about a character that can't be corrupted, to the point that he un-corrupts you instead

[littlestarbeam]

I have a Robotics competition today. Wish me luck guys🫡

#Robotics

[littlestarbeam]

Lunari Heritage in Zaun

This is gonna be a reach, but from the little we've seen of Vi and Jinx's mom and younger Silco, I'd guess they were both from the same ethnic group.

In a place like Zaun, where the people are left with scraps, any piece of jewelry sticks out. Vi's mom and Silco are both wearing similar pieces of jewelry. Silco's bracelet could likely be fitted as a necklace since it twice wraps over his wrist. Neither are wearing anything of high quality, but the necklace and bracelet in their respective pictures seem decently maintained if not worn. That's when I thought, these are probably heirlooms.

In fact they looked pretty similar too, but in smaller scale of the princess's own pendants. I wouldn't bring this up if it weren't for the fact that Piltovans prioritize elaborate art-deco aesthetics, the more elaborately geometric the better (Councilor Shoola). So you would assume even the simplest jewelry would be a square pendant or a straight line. But no, big plain circles, and then I remembered we saw that before, on the princess Ambessa killed. Big bronze circles.

And when we look at young Vi , you notice that she's wearing jewelry too. A simple necklace with a green (it looks green) gem. And I realized that the princess's necklace was also adorned green gems.

I'm pulling from scraps, but it's interesting that small things these Zaunites have to adorn themselves (though not for long with the time skips) are similar versions if not simpler version's of the princess's.

At first I thought this meant that many of the cast were actually of Ionian descent. But then in the Princess's scene a thought kept coming back to me, "Why is Mel wearing purple?". Mel, a skilled diplomat from a young age, typically wears the main colors of the nations she hosts and is hosted by. White for Piltover, Black for Noxus (Ambessa), and always with her signature accents of gold. So if Mel followed her mother to Ionia ,where green is a culturally significant color, why purple? It's because Mel and Ambessa weren't in Ionia, they were in Targon fighting the Lunari.

The Lunari are Rakkor tribal people in the Targonian region who worship the moon, and are persecuted for it by the Solari, the religious order that worships the sun. While technically Mt. Targon is influenced by Mt. Olympus and Greek mythology aesthetic, that's more the case for the Solari. Overtime the Lunari aesthetic has been mixed it's originally nomadic culture with East Asian influences. The prominent colors of the Lunari happen to be turquoise, silver, black and purple. It was such a little thing to remember but it made me see connections I hadn't thought about.

Suddenly everything starts to connect. The bronze coins represent the 3 moons that exist in Arcane's Runeterra. How do we know there are 3 moons, because the Valdiani piece Jinx stole was depicting their planet. In the Valdiani there are 3 orbits circling the Earth, meaning 3 moons (or satelites). Now the engraving on the gold of the princess's necklace makes sense, because it's supposed to resemble the gates at the peak of Mt. Targon. The pendant itself is shaped like the mountain with the gates fitted at the top.

Frankly, it works for the Princess to have been Lunari and waves of descendants of the Lunari to arrive in Piltover and end up in Zaun. In Arcane, Piltover was created as a safe haven to escape the Rune Wars 200 years from the start of the show. Even after the Rune Wars ended the shipping port has likely seen waves of migrant labor and refugees from the ongoing crisis that occur in Runeterra (*cough*Noxus*cough*). It's likely that many of the current generation of Zaunites are of mixed heritage of the various fleeing people's.

It creates a whole new dynamic of the ways in which Piltover's laws, their Ethos, strips the people of Zaun from their identity and reducing them to tools for the mines. Magic is inherently a part of religious ceremonies and religion in general in Runeterra, especially for the Lunari. How do you practice your religion in a place that has banned the means by which it's conducted? There must have been more people like the Lunari who didn't have a problem with their magic, their problem was that they were being persecuted.

The remnants of family keepsakes brought over as communities fled were clung to as best as possible especially as they had to let go of part their spiritual identity. But even that doesn't seem to have lasted either. Vi doesn't keep her necklace, her mother is dead, so lost is her necklace, and we never see Silco wear his bracelet. They could have been stolen, or at best, hidden for safe keeping, maybe Enforcers get suspicious at the hint of mysticism and suddenly they want to talk.

Finally, maybe a little less related, it is interesting how prominent Piltovans and Zaunites take on day and night aspects. The sun shines over Piltover at their best, begins to set at times of uncertainty. While in the cover of night with moon above, the strongest Zaunites strike hardest. One more thing, it is interesting how Arcane's Jinx has taken on darker tones of purple rather than stick with neon pink. I always have to go back and look at a reference to remember that her pants are purple-er than I recall.

Update: I wanted to include that the large doodle Jinx made on her cup actually looks similar to the Lunari's sigil. And the sigil remains on the cup into the timeskip, also the center moon is made smaller within the crescent like in the necklace. I also noticed Jinx's cup later has more violent bomb imagery around it.