there is a diluven headcanon that i love incorporating into most if not all of my works:
Venti being allergic to Diona
Now, Venti being allergic to cats is canon - and Diona being a cat is basically canon (despite her repeated and enthusiastic disagreements) and y'all should know that Diluc, in all his brooding, Batman-like glory is a father figure just waiting to drop adoption papers at any unsuspecting child left alone by their guardians for more than five seconds. He may not know it yet, but this is nonetheless the truth
Now, picture this: Diona finally getting to talk with Diluc, just once - usual 'bonding over their mutual hatred for alcohol' commences - and thus, a catgirl becomes a more permanent fixture in Diluc's life. Is he complaining? No, he is more horrified with why a ten year old has a job in a tavern - but that is a problem he is still working out how to solve. At least she eats well whenever she comes around, and she also likes Kaeya's old room, so-
Yes, Diona is now a permanent fixture in Diluc's life. Which means, as another permanent fixture in said life, Venti eventually runs into her - maybe even while being a tad bit tipsy and reeking of wine... (Master Diluc always takes such good care of Venti tho, so why shouldn't he come stumbling to Dawn Winery?)
And so... The legendary meeting goes as the following:
Diona Kätzlein - nose fine-tuned to smell even the faintest whiff of that bloody-terrible alcohol all grown-ups are insistent of dying of (don't ask why she is suddenly brittish, i dunno either) - can barely b r e a t h e due to the stench of a bard who has a rather hard time getting drunk with anything less than a whole barrel of mead. It is a rather unfortunate side-effect of being a God of Wine, but hey, when your pseudo-boyfriend owns a winery that problem is mostly easily taken care of...! That is, when you are not faced with the only thing that causes you true trouble in your long, immortal life-
A screaming, hissing cat-child.
When, despite all the possible shortcomings you could have had, you possess none other than... an allergy to cats.
Venti, of course, is quite plastered at this point - so his reaction to a cat-child yelling bloody murder at him, being also yelling bloody murder back at the cat-child seems quite reasonal and logical, at the time. Tho his words slur, he can't help but get into a verbal battle of wits, even as his eyes grow watery and he begins to sniff and sneeze.
Diona, on the other hand, is red-faced and shrieking at the top of her lungs - also quite unable to smell things properly, because somehow, this one bard smells worse than the Cat's Tail on the busiest nights and Diona is choking on the stench.
She makes sure to throw this barb at his head, too.
And this is how Diluc, summoned by all the screaming finds them; two people, both very important in his life, but also, where do they get all this air to keep screaming for so long?!?!?
And his arrival brings something unexpected:
Silence.
Then, the duo whirls on him as one.
Diona is loudly questioning who and how and why this random drunkard is here and makehimgoaway! - meanwhile Venti, matching the cat-child in volume reminds the redhead that he is highly allergic and what the hell is a cat-child even doing here at Dawn Winery?!?!?
Cue Diluc calmly (trying to) explain the situation to both, at first somewhat patiently, but then getting annoyed af by all the loud noises and simply using his dad voice™ to make them both fucking listen
And thus, the first encounter does not end bathed in blood - instead, Diona gets to go up to her room, while Venti is forced to stay away for the night and then wear a nose-clip to keep him from having much of an allergic reaction again. Diluc certainly doesn't bring him to his own bed that night, despite all the griping of the bard.
But alas, this is only the first encounter.
Many more follow, as both Diona and Venti are prominent figures in Diluc's life - especially these days.
Each meeting, each narrow-eyed glare and biting comment makes sure the air between the two feels like a ticking bomb tho; one you are never quite sure when will go off.
Because go off it will, at the slightest chance it can.
But at the end of the day, altho Diluc would clearly be better off without one of them in his life - the redhead is a common ground between the two. They can make nice, against all appearances, for a scarce five minutes.
And tho neither will ever admit it, they might be growing on each other more than they care to acknowledge.
Welp. Not sure i wanted to go ahead and write out a whole scene like that, but... lol xD
Just - frenemy Diona and Venti. the good shit
I L I V E for the character dynamic that takes two otherwise mostly normal characters and turns them into rabid dogs frothing at the mouth when they see each other. just. Good shit
Also, why does Diona canonically hate Diluc (i mean i get why, he is kinda the poster-boi for the wine industry) when VENTI is there??? These two have the perfect elements for a mean-banter relationship, one even greater than the one Venti and Paimon share!!!!
Maybe we will get in one day, in canon
Until then, this still lives in my head (plus across many of my wips) rent-free. Thanks for the read <3
40 notes
·
View notes
you're in the habit of denying yourself things.
if someone asked you directly, you would say that you love a little treat. you like iced coffee and getting the cookie. you drink juice out of a fancy cup sometimes, and often do use your candles until they gutter out helplessly.
but you hesitate about buying the 20 dollar hand mixer because, like. you could just use your arms. you weren't raised rich. you don't get to just spend the 20 dollars (remember when that could cover lunch?), at least - you don't spend that without agonizing over it first, trying to figure out the cost-benefits like you are defending yourself in front of a jury. yes, this rice cooker could seriously help you. but you do know how to make stovetop rice and it really isn't that hard. how many pies or brownies would you actually make, in order to make that hand mixer worthwhile?
what's wild is that if the money was for a friend, it would already be spent. you'd fork over 40 without blinking an eye, just to make them happy. the difference is that it's for you, so you need to justify it.
and it sneaks in. you ration yourself without meaning to - you don't finish the pint of ice cream, even though you want to. the next time you go to the store, you say ah, i really shouldn't, and then you walk away. you save little bits of your precious things - just in case. sometimes you even go so far as putting that one thing in your shopping cart. and then just leaving it there, because maybe-one-day, but not right now, there's other stuff going on.
you do self-care, of course. but you don't do it more than like, 3 days in a row. after that it just feels a little bit over-the-edge. like. you can't live in decadence, the economy is so bad right now, kid.
so you don't buy the rice cooker. you can-and-will spend the time over the stove. you can withstand the little sorrows. denial and discipline are practically synonyms. and you're not spoiled.
it's just - it's not always a rice cooker. sometimes it is a person or a job or a hug. sometimes it is asking for help. sometimes it is the summer and your college degree. sometimes it is looking down at scabbed knees and feeling a strange kind of falling, like you can't even recognize the girl you used to be. sometimes it is your handprint looking unsteady.
sometimes it is tuesday, and you didn't get fired, and you want to celebrate. but what is it you like, even? you search around your little heart and come up empty. you're so used to denying that all your desires draw a blank.
oh fuck. see, this is the perfect opportunity. if you had a mixer, you'd make a cake.
30K notes
·
View notes
I love how on Tumblr, "media literacy" has become "Um, just because someone writes about this doesn't mean they're endorsing this. I hate all these media puritans ruining everything."
I'm sad to inform you that knowing when and whether an author is endorsing something, implying something, saying something, is also part of media literacy. Knowing when they are doing this and when they're not is part of media literacy. Assuming that no author has ever endorsed a bad thing is how you fall for proper gander. It's not media literacy to always assume that nobody ever has agreed with the morally reprehensible ideas in their work.
Sometimes, authors are endorsing something, and you need to be aware when that happens, and you also need to be aware when you're doing it as an author. All media isn't horny dubcon fanfic where you and the author know it's problematic IRL but you get off to it in the privacy of your brain. Sometimes very smart people can convince you of something that'll hurt others in the real world. Sometimes very dumb people will romanticize something without realizing they're doing it and you'll be caught up in it without realizing that you are.
Being aware of this is also media literacy. Being aware of the narrative tools used to affect your thinking is media literacy. Deciding on your own whether you agree with an author or not is media literacy. Enjoying characters doing bad things and allowing authors to create flawed or cruel characters for the sake of a story is perfectly fine, but it is not the same as being media literate. Being smug about how you never think an author has bad intentions tells me you're edgy, not that you're media literate. You can't use one rule to apply to all media. That's not how media literacy works. Sorry! Sorry! Sorry! Aheem heem. Anyway.
14K notes
·
View notes
it is totally okay to be hurt and tired and fed up with the american schooling system but i need you to understand that we need to be better about loudly and routinely defending public education.
yes, many teachers suck, many schools utterly suck. i also got bullied and was absolutely not given the right support for my needs. i am not defending public education because it was kind to me. i am defending it because it needs to exist.
right-wing republicans do not want an educated population. they want kids to be homeschooled or in private school. there is a huge religious undertone to this.
the most common argument is that despite high costs, the "result" is not "good" enough. they point to failing schools as proof that public education is just never going to work out. there will be arguments made here that you actually agree with: that teachers can be bullies, that we taught online for 2 years and still charged the same amount of tuition, that we have no recourse for students to actually have agency or a voice, and that schools are now unsafe for kids due to risk of illness and gun violence.
these are all placing the blame in a fraudulent way, one intended to get your parents to homeschool you. the less kids in a school, the less federally-awarded funding for that school, the less any school succeeds. they will not mention the fact it is their legislation that takes away important funding opportunities, that teachers are living at or below the poverty line, that buildings are not kept up to code, that administration is overpaid and forces specific curriculums, that corporations like (my personal enemy) Pearson Education control certain classroom goals because teachers can't afford other options. they pretend to be ignorant of the gun violence and say "oh just get a gun" - but these are the same people who will be sending their child to a private school with a bulletproof backpack. they don't care if your kid dies, though. they "don't believe" in covid, but they did get their kid vaccinated, because of course they did.
it is a closed loop. conservative parents hear the fearmongering and remove children from the system. frequently these parents are also deeply religious. the kids are raised without access to other media & learn to parrot their parents. you have now created a new generation of conservatives. additionally, one of the parents/caregivers must stay home and homeschool the children, usually for free. i will give you 1 guess which parent tends to stay home to homeschool the children. these parents are encouraged to have many, many children. those children are most likely not getting access to safe sex ed.
we might laugh at fox news suggesting teachers are forcing children to use kitty litter but: first of all, there is kitty litter in the classroom. it's part of an emergency kit in case children are locked in due to a shooter. so that's fucking dystopian, and the fact they've completely reimagined the scenario to somehow make the teachers look bad when it's instead a fucking huge symbol of our failure as a country to protect our children.... it feels a little intentional.
secondly: don't just dismiss the situation. because, yeah, obviously, no teacher is encouraging kids to be a catboy. but the actual undertone that fox news is trying to sew is an outright distrust of teachers and of public education. they rely on the dehumanization of trans people as a common touchstone to hide the fact they're pushing two agendas at once. (which is ironic. because the thing they accuse teachers of. is pushing. an agenda.)
whenever someone tells you they want you to read less, you should be suspicious of that. when someone tries to separate you and your education, you should be suspicious of that. i don't even like incel rhetoric nor would i want my kids exposed to it - but i would not take away my child's (age-appropriate) access to the internet. i would just provide more educational materials, not less. the difference here is that i believe we can resolve ignorance with knowledge; whereas conservatives believe that ignorance is bliss.
they misappropriate funding and demonize teachers. they pull the same trick each time - the same thing we are seeing with anti-trans rhetoric. they do not want you to have access to safe sex ed, so they act horrified, claim sex ed teaches you how to thrust deep, claim that we have no idea what "age-appropriate" means. since the mid-nineties, the united states has spent at least 2 billion dollars on abstinence-only education, even though to quote the above link: "a preponderance of studies has found no effect of abstinence education at reducing adolescent pregnancy". conservatives want you to think less of any person struggling with addiction so they can continue their racist "war on drugs", so they spend up to $750 million dollars a year on the DARE program which has absolutely no effect. acting like teachers "must" be "grooming" children is just the same thing - so they can demand that funding either goes to their causes or the funding doesn't "exist" ("i'm not paying for our kids to learn that thing!")
and they want you to feel uncaring about this. they are aware that you will hate some parts of your school experience. pretty much everyone does. they want to lean into the parts that you hate so that you don't put up a fight about it when they take it away for not being "good enough."
i know i maybe sound like a conspiracy theorist. but truly. truly. it is beneficial for conservatives to reduce your faith in the american public schooling system.
one of the explicitly stated campaign promises of the conservative party: to axe the Department of Education in 2024.
i know we are all tired and burnt out and there is so much else wrong with their entire platform. but maybe just - pay attention to this one.
5K notes
·
View notes