#meta ish?

[burningthegallows]

Love Like the Galaxy and Names, pt 1

So I've been doing a bit of research for the monster fic, and I figured I would put together some name lists since I had so much trouble finding the names/titles/characters of certain characters.

This is very much incomplete and google translate helped a lot, so ... take that with a grain of salt. (all pinyin and characters from googlet)

{I kinda think this goes without saying, but just in case, if you see errors, take issue, or have questions, please correct me/reach out!}

Chengs:

Grandmother Cheng 程 (maiden name Dong 董) has three sons:

Papa Cheng

Second Uncle Cheng

Third Uncle Cheng

Papa Cheng is Cheng Shi (程始) (Shi 始 = beginning). Lieutenant 校尉 in the army (translation, google; i have also seen this translated as general, colonol, and captain). Marquis of Quling 曲陵侯 (Marquis in this sense = Duke. Word used: Huo 侯 has variations throughout history; common nobility title; different translations tell me different things); Qu Ling 曲陵 is ... i actually have no idea. is it a place? is it a concept? is it just a name/title not attached to a fief?

Cheng Shi is married to Xiao Yuanyi 蕭元漪, who i could not find out much more about. Her name uses these characters: 蕭 : mournful and 元漪 (元 first 漪  ripple). personally, in light of her relationship with Cheng Shaoshang, i think this is a banger choice.

Second Uncle is Cheng Cheng (程承) (Cheng 承 = bear)

Third Uncle is Cheng Zhi (程止) (Zhi = End). First he was made Hua County Magistrate (驊縣縣丞 = huá xiàn xiàn chéng). Then he became 郡守, which google tells me is 'Sheriff' but also means Governor? So, I am assuming that this role is a magisterial one at either the prefecture (1 step up) or province level (several steps up).

{To overly simplify, provinces (省, sheng) (34 total) are made up of multiple prefectures; prefectures (州, zhou) (339 total) are made up of multiple counties (Xian).}

Cheng Zhi is married to Shen Shunhua 桑舜華, Csh's 3rd Aunt. She married down, because her first fiancé (whose name is ... Huangfuyi, 皇甫儀 ??) was a negligent jerk. She is Daughter of the Mountain Lord (山主之女), the lord of Bailu Mountain Academy (白鹿山)

{Note that the character for Hua here in her name 'magnificent'; it also appears as a radical (wc?) in the character to Hua in Huaxian}

Next generation: Cheng Zhi has no kids yet; Cheng Cheng has Yang Yang, and Cheng Shi has Cheng Yong, Cheng Song, Cheng Shaogong, and Cheng Shaoshang.

Cheng Yong is first brother. 詠, Yong: chant, song, tune 

Cheng Song is second brother. 頌 Song: praise, song of celebration 

Cheng Shaogong (少宮) and Shaoshang (少商): two different strings on an ancient instrument, a qin (i have read better explanations of this, but I haven't been able to find any recently. Any recs?)

Cheng Yang (程姎) is daughter of Cheng Cheng (2nd uncle) and Aunt Ge. I was unable to find a good translation of Yang 姎, but the character does feature the female radical. Cheng Yang is also 程氏三娘子 (cheng third lady) which brings up an interesting question of mine... how df does numbering work in these families?

Cheng Shaoshang is 4th lady, which makes sense to me because she is forth child; cheng yang is third lady, which ... ok, maybe makes sense, but then, who are the first two cheng family ladies? are we to assume that their two older sisters died? Is the numbering consistent across all families? i.e., is it the same numbering done by the imperial family?

{genuinely all this research started to figure out wtf they were calling each other}

I'd also like to add Lian Fang, 蓮房, lotus pod. She's exceptional.

And that's enough for now. i think. let me know if you want more... i have done a lot of research for this monster.

#love like the galaxy #lltg #lltg meta #meta ish? #this is NOT an area of expertise #please correct me if im wrong #this time period has fascinated me #so ill happily plot and plot and plot

[aufredpratt]

🙃 - “Oh god, I didn’t mean to sent that to you and I am mortified now” Text

(I didn't have one prepared for this specific one ack, also I'm new to writing fake texts)

Fred: (accidentally sends cordy a verrry saucy message meant for Spike) shoot sorry that was for Spike

Cordy: yeah I figured how did you even mix the two of us up?

Fred: cus he's "My love" and you're "my bestie" and I just typed "my" without thinking.

Cordy: no worries I'll forget it even happened.

#asks answered #meta ish? #it didn't happen is what im saying

[dalishious]

I think it's entirely fair to compare Baldur's Gate 3's rise in success to the Dragon Age franchise's downward spiral. Same goes for all other big name RPGs, for that matter.

What BG3 has just proven is that people do still love single-player, character driven roleplaying games. What BG3 has just proven is that studios do not need to fill their games with trash like micro-transactions, loot boxes, etc. What BG3 has just proven is that player-engagement can be used for the betterment of your product, and that people care more about feeling valued than potentially “spoiling” something.

But to circle back to specifically comparing BG3 to DAI…

BG3 has consequences to your actions. If you want to be evil, you can be really, really evil, and part of that experience is having the characters and world actually react to your wrongdoings! It’s so fucking refreshing to experience an RPG that has completely gone off the railroad track, unlike DAI which only offers what feels like the illusion of choice in comparison.

The way the player interacts with the all BG3 characters actually affects the course of their journey, as they all potentially change as people. I can only say the same for like, less than half of the DAI characters.

I think the biggest difference though, to me at least, is that BG3 has themes that anyone can relate to. DAI relies so heavily on the single theme of faith, without much else to offer, that it excludes anyone who doesn’t subscribe to that. But BG3’s multiple themes of trust, autonomy, power and corruption, etc. means that it’s far more likely for the player to feel personally invested in the story.

So, yeah. Baldur’s Gate 3 is everything Dragon Age used to be, and maybe that’s why it’s my new favourite game.

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #dragon age #dai #meta #ish

[lenaellsi]

so you're anthony j. crowley, long-time exile from heaven and recent exile from hell, and you've finally figured out that the mess of overwhelming and infuriating and intoxicating feelings you've been harboring for the only being in the universe you've ever been able to rely on might, whoopsies, be something a little bit like love. but not love the way you remember heaven loved you, or the way they told you god loved you (they lied), but love like the humans do it: messy, and awkward, and incongruously infinite, and so, so fragile.

and, well. okay, you think. this'll be horrible. embarrassing for both of us, probably. but i'll tell him. you've never been a coward, no matter what the other demons might say. screw your courage to the sticking place, or whatever. macbeth. aziraphale loved that one.

so you talk yourself into it, you gather every scrap of courage and honesty you've got left, and you say, all right, angel, i've got something to say, only aziraphale's got something to say, too, and--

aziraphale doesn't love you back.

or. he does, but he loves the ghost of the angel you used to be, not the person you've made yourself since. he loves you, but he loves you like god did--loves you good, and quiet, and dull. he loves you without your grief, or your anger, without even that first bite of the apple. he wants you like that again, he says. defanged, like the Antichrist's domesticated hellhound.

(you worked for hell for a long time, and for god for a long time before that. you're intimately familiar with what it is to offer someone everything they've ever wanted, and then to twist it, to mutilate it, into an unrecognizable hell of their own choosing. you're not sure why it surprises you anymore. you're not sure why you keep letting the surprises hurt.)

and so you do the thing you've done since the beginning, because you've never been able to stop yourself: you push. you push hard, and you grab him, and he's so angry and you kiss him and you don't think about it, don't think about it, this is the most important temptation of your life, the only one that's ever mattered--

and he forgives you.

so you leave. at least that way you can do it before he does. you've always been a step ahead and to the left; stupid to think this would ever be different. stupid to think he might choose you, with all of heaven and earth spread out in front of him. nothing lasts forever, not even the stars.

he told you that a long time ago.

#good omens #good omens 2 #good omens season 2 #good omens spoilers #good omens season 2 spoilers #gos2 spoilers #good omens s2 #good omens meta #ish? #aziraphale #crowley #oh god. crowley #is that all the tags. i dont know. ive slept 3 hours in the past 48. #how we feeling. i for one would love if michael turned me into a pillar of salt.

[riot-of-robins]

Lots of jokes get made in modern comics and fandom about the pejorative double entendre of Dick Grayson’s given/chosen nickname for Richard, and it IS funny, but I want to give a moment of appreciation for the other, kind of brilliant, double meaning that’s unfortunately fallen out of common modern usage, but would have been way more common when he was first named in 1940.

He’s literally named “detective” you guys, there is no way the World’s Greatest Detective’s partner wasn’t named this way on purpose.

Add to this the way the fandom loves to explore the 21st century reveal/retcon of Dick Grayson’s Romani heritage, and the possible etymology of the word, and you have a goldmine of largely untapped, to my knowledge, discussion of thoughts from Dick Grayson and the people around him about the relationship between his identity, the life he chose, the things he chooses to honor/remember, and the persistence of a nickname that has fallen increasingly out of favor in most other modern contexts.

I love when it’s as simple as “it’s his name and there’s no reason to change it”, but I also think there’s just lots of room for him to also have Real Thoughts about it throughout his life.

#just something I think about a lot #dick grayson #dc #Robin #nightwing #meta #ish #the perjorative use also already existed when he was named btw. since like 1880 #people weren’t like. unaware. #lots of other uses were just still really common so that wasn’t the *first* thing people thought of the way it is now.

[thesherrinfordfacility]

it has taken me until today to interpret the story/moral of sodom and gomorrah within aziraphale accepting jim into the bookshop and giving him sanctuary. and in his decision to return to heaven. are you serious

#ignore this i barely know what im saying. but aziraphale. your abraham is showing #good omens #s2 meta #...ish. just tagging for posterity tbh with you

[mikuyuuss]

Ok, not only did Moon Dong Eun avenge the villains of this story. She found love afterwards and was able to pursue architecture like she always wanted to. She now dresses freely with her tattoo, proudly showing her scars. She's no longer confined to her trauma. Dong Eun got her revenge AND her happy ending!

Even though she was so convinced that she's a terrible person for wanting revenge, she actually managed to touch the lives of the people around her through simple acts of kindness (empathizing with them for being victims) and those same people came back to support her as well.

It's usually "revenge is bad" this "you got revenge but at what cost" that, but no, she got her revenge AND her and other people's happy ending. Even though it's a dark story about how victims suffer, there's always the underlying message of hope, where they also understand and help eachother. Even if they had to bend the rules to get it, The. Victims. Won. Oh. My. Goodness.

In the end, it wasn't exactly just "revenge," it was also about bringing justice to the victims.

#the glory #the glory season 2 #kdrama #moon dong eun #song hye kyo #me speaks #also I love how it also shows that its never too late to pursue what you love just like what Dong Eun did #sometimes things happen but when its time to heal and live your life then its never too late #also I love her tattoo and her newfound confidence shown with the way she dresses #shes just free and not ashamed anymore #tr #meta #ish #my post

[three--rings]

"Izzy is to blame for Ed going off the deep end"

"No, Stede is the one who broke his heart and made him go nuts."

I have a radical proposal which is that actually Ed is a person who just had serious pre-existing issues that were triggered by a long series of blows starting with betrayal by his former first mate and old friend (meaning two people here), surrendering to the English, giving up his identity of years, rejection by his love, mockery by his new crew, and harsh words/more rejection from his oldest friend/subordinate.

It makes sense for Izzy and Stede the CHARACTERS to feel responsible for Ed's downward spiral, but we don't have to treat what they say as fact.

We the audience have the ability to see the larger picture and say "actually, Ed was teetering on the edge of this since we first met him after a lifetime of trauma and this probably needed to be addressed before he was ever going to be stable and happy."

#ofmd #ofmd meta #ofmd discourse #ish #my meta

[westwing19]

Nice night for a flight

Wanderlust [1/4]

#kirby #meta knight #quick-ish thing I did to get to push some colours around :) #meart

[self-spaghettification]

a lot of elves have markings under their eyes- and on their face in general.

interesting, isn’t it, that dark magic does the same thing to humans?

focused around the eyes :)

#the dragon prince #tdp meta #ish #banger #200

[saintbleeding]

[ID: Transcript excerpt from MAG 142: STATEMENT GIVER: "No! No, I’m not! Of course I’m not – It felt like – Like I was throwing up all those feelings again, and I wanted to, to scream, but instead I just sat and calmly told him my life story, and he just watched me. His eyes, like – His eyes were li-like drinking in every fragment of my misery. I can’t – It – (pause) And then it was over. And he looked – He looked at me like he’d just eaten, like, a perfectly cooked steak. You know what he said, he said “Thank you.” Thank you, just like that, like – like reliving the worst parts of my whole life were just a bit of a favor that I’d done him. And then he left, and, and I-I just sat there, and cried for a while. (sniff) That wasn’t the end." End ID.]

the argument can and has been made that maybe jon tells jess tyrell he works at the institute as a mechanism to maybe accidentally-on-purpose get caught or externally stopped. and that is tasty and i dig it. but also i cannot help but think that there is a distinct possibility that he says this, like this, as some sort of internal coping device: you don't have to face up to the full scope of the ramifications of your actions if you don't explicitly acknowledge that you think it's wrong what you're doing. (after all his grandmother likely a) never apologised and b) seemed to sleep just fine) like. this just feels like such an attempt at distancing and compartmentalising and turning it into a sterile little transaction.

augh babygirl you are so unwell

#tma #the magnus archives #tma s4 #jon sims #jon jarchivist #mag 142 #saint meta #sorta? ish? #described #no UR procrastinating on actual work!!! #jonblogging

[hylialeia]

I've really soured on the whole "if these female characters end up in any position other than one of feudal power and influence it means GRRM is perpetuating the harmful idea that women should be punished for their ambition" because while I am aware that is a rather disappointing and common takeaway in fantasy (and other) series in general, I am ALSO aware the strongest most consistent hammer-you-over-the-head-with-it motif across asoiaf thus far has been "FEUDALISM BAD" which is sort of hard to keep impactful when your endgame is "and then they ruled happily ever after and were so good at it nothing bad ever happened again". y'know.

#asoiaf #which I also think of irt kitn bran because while I find that a likely endgame #I also am unsure how positive of a thing it will be or how well it might mesh with this particular theme otherwise #something to chew on for sure #asoiaf meta #ish

[chuckwon]

I simply don’t like when people act like what happened to Jack is what should have happened (as if the show didn’t deliberately spell out it would be Bad beforehand!), or like we can hand-wave GodJack as being fine and good in a continuation as long as other ~more important topics~ like destiel are eventually addressed.

Jack’s fate is the crux of the tragedy of the finale. Supernatural is a show about parents and children, and that cycle of violence remains unbroken. Jack was forced to become like his grandfather (the cosmic Father of the universe) because that’s who his fathers needed/wanted him to be. Jack shouldn’t be seen as an afterthought or a side note. He’s the thematic center that ties everything together, including the queer family structure of destiel.

So here’s my hot take: whether or not they go fully explicit with any kind of Chuck won concept (and they don’t necessarily have to)… any continuation must address that what happened to Jack isn’t a good thing — for him, for their family, or for the universe since the show stated God shouldn’t have personhood — in order to truly be fulfilling.

#I meant to post this the other day and it was in my drafts #my meta #I guess??? ish #Chuck won #but you don’t even have to see it that way specifically or explicitly to know this is true #I’m just really side-eying so many of people’s so-called ‘sequel ideas’ that basically think of destiel and nothing else #I don’t want that and we SHOULDNT want that because that’s not all this show is. and that’s also why it’s so good #supernatural #spn revival #spn sequel #Jack Kline

[dduane]

This is not a question but yesterday at work the jigsaw needed some adjusting and as I was fixing it up I was patting it like a horse and whispering things like 'it won't be much longer' and 'you'll feel much better soon' and I absolutely blame this on Young Wizards showing me how to anthropomorphize everything.

(grin) We have a motto around here: "It's wiser to treat matter as spirit than spirit as matter."

The response behind the principle (for me at least) isn't about some kind of animism as such, or about anthropomorphism per se. It simply feels positioned about halfway between caution and common courtesy... and is based on my repeated experience that things just behave better when you treat them kindly and with respect. Especially when the question of where (and how) consciousness inheres and resides, even for human beings, remains... well, vexed.

I've never gotten useful results out of any machine I've treated angrily. I've routinely got good results (and sometimes ridiculously good ones) out of devices I've been courteous to while interacting with them. I spent a good while trying to figure this out, years back, and finally decided it wasn't worth it: no reliably verifiable answers were ever going to come back. Naturally, other people's mileage on this subject will significantly vary. But meanwhile, who cares if I'm sometimes seen as the daftie who carries on one-sided conversations with kitchen appliances and never fails to pat the plane "hello" while boarding? (shrug) Who knows what's listening, and how? Let's just classify it as a "quirk" and move on. :)

If you get around to My Enemy, My Ally at some point, though, you'll find this YW-based attitude has slopped over into the Rihannsu cultural outlook, which rests considerable weight on the idea that merely physical things inherit a basic dignity from being part of the structure of the universe... and that speaking respectfully to things with their right names matters, as those names have power in their own right to influence the world around them. ...LeGuin was down this road long before me, of course. But she left plenty of room for me to drag the occasional starship down it. :)

Meanwhile, I'm glad you and the jigsaw worked things out. Mind those moving parts.

#Young Wizards meta #-ish

[bidisasterevankinard]

Wait, wait, wait . I CONNECTED THE DOTS

In Hen begins the other guy I forgot his name(Sal?), made a joke about Tommy's orientation, implying he's gay, and Tommy was shocked and uncomfortable, but then joked (send a kiss to the guy). But it was the times of homophobia and "alpha male" of firefighters. Soooo. Tommy was in the closet, in his late 20s- 30s, and was scared to come out. But then this guy and their asshole captain wasn't there, Tommy became friends with Hen, Chim and Cap and what if finally let himself be queer?

So now, we have Buck, in his early 30s, starting to questioning himself about who he is and who he loves. Yes, Buck wasn't in such a toxic masculinity community in the firehouse as Tommy, but I'm sure still was in the academy and in the gyms he went to, in the frat house possibly too. So, Buck is questioning himself being partly a mirror of Tommy and what if Tommy will be his friend to whom he will come to talk about late life coming outs? Hen ofc is his lesbian friend, but Hen was out since teenage years, she knew who she is. Buck is not sure. He needs someone with close history, and Tommy goes perfectly. Slightly older, beautiful man to whom he feels attraction(possibly but I hopeful) and who can talk with him about not knowing you are queer till 30s

So, Tommy might stay exactly for this. To be important in Buck's arc as a queer friend who knows the struggles of late life coming out and possibly as a first queer relationship

more about it

#evan buckley #911 #evan buck buckley #911 spoilers #911 speculation #tommy kinard #tuck #911 season 7 #911 abc #911 on abc #tell me you see the vision please #my 911 thoughts #911 meta #ish #Michael is out and all other queer characters in 911 implied to be out since early years #Buck doesn't feel such a connection to them to talk about it

[thesherrinfordfacility]

so @theeminentlyimpractical and i were yodelling at each other in the DMs last night talking about general time-fuckery stuff in s2 and trying to riddle it all out, and i mentioned that i had noticed something that only now seems obvious from the s1 scriptbook (and im sure that someone pointed it out in 2019 but im wondering how relevant it still is):

everything is running late.

working backwards chronologically in s1, we have when newt arrives at jasmine cottage:

unfortunately the line isn't in the show, but in the interest of pooling all resources, the scriptbook says the following:

NEWT - I swerved to avoid Tibetans in the road. At least, I think I did. I've probably gone mad.

ANATHEMA - If you have, noone's going to notice. You're twenty minutes late.

we then know that crowley was late for arriving to collect the antichrist:

which the scriptbook doesn't elaborate on/give a timeframe, and may be extraneous to the previous and next example, but the antichrist is reportedly part of the Great Plan, so im including it for the moment.

but the kicker is agnes nutter, right?:

a precise and accurate prophetess who doesn't foresee that pulsifer would arrive late to execute her? how?

so when it came down to it, i started to wonder where something might have happened that has shunted the timeline along, between 10-20 minutes... maybe something in eden? but no - laure cracked it:

GOD - Archbishop James Ussher claimed that the Heaven and the Earth were created on Sunday the 21st of October, 4004 BC, at 9:00 a.m. This too was incorrect. By almost a quarter of an hour. It was created at 9:13 in the morning, which was correct.

now. all of the times don't match up completely, but the general sense is that the world may be running a little behind schedule, compared to what it should be - ie. the timeline that agnes predicted, and ussher/his team calculated.

we know that adam reset everything at the end of s1, but:

given that he's not omniscient, would he know that the world is 15 mins behind schedule (and therefore, when s2 starts, are we still running late)? probably not, so does he revert things back but keeps the world on the original clock, so to speak?

alternatively, did he reset the clock, and is the universe that we see in s2 actually on the correct time?

this might not mean much, if anything at all (see: it's just all for The Bit), in the grand scheme of things... but im now starting to wonder if it does. because what would have happened if everything had run on time? because maybe it's not so much thinking about individual events, and how they would have played out otherwise if the world had been on the 'correct' timeline all along, but maybe just the sheer possibility that there is an 'alternate reality' in which those 10-20 minutes meant things played out very differently?

ive talked about the chair (x), and ive talked about the sideburns (x), and ive talked about how crowley somehow seems to be existing at a different time to everything else around him (alternatively - whickber street itself is running in a different... reality? timeline?), as well as the random moments where time seems to disappear entirely/the clock swaps its hands around in ep6 (x). about crowley's comment about it being "too late", and how he seems to act slightly odd just before aziraphale tells him about the metatron's offer (x)... but is it all somehow interconnected? and connected to the 13-minute delay?

and if it is... what caused it? what might have delayed god by 13 minutes, or what might have gone wrong to cause the delay, that has then had a hypothetical knock-on effect, whether it be because adam did fix it, or didn't fix it?

#i ran out of steam to keep speculating but i will be adding to this #good omens #time-stop theory #ish i just dont have a better tag #s1 meta #s2 meta #s3 narrative spec