" Thanks For Your Crossbow, Boy. "

Matthias, what was your first reaction to Louis? Did you immediately dislike him?

I think I just didn't figure out my feelings about him until after I realized the French language barely suited my mouth; I studied daily and nightly under various tutelage - including my Father's, but it was always.. inadequate.

Everyone was happy... Except for me. I.. struggled to make friends even when I'd lived in Prague, and what few friends I had made - I suddenly had to say goodbye to.

... Sometimes I find myself wondering if I would have been more fond of him if we'd never moved to Paris. If I could have been just as happy as this imposter.

Or if this really was the walking, talking nightmare by my parent's design - a reminder of my imperfections, or simply wishful thinking on their part.

I think it was the day I found a poster of him that I finally realized how I felt.

How I genuinely felt.

Sick burn bro

I would really love it if Charlie saw Alastor’s pointless beefing with her dad and took it as an opportunity to force him to be more social.

Like she’d make a comment about how happy she is that her dad gets along with her friends, and she really appreciates that, and then Lucifer would give Alastor a smug look so Al would immediately start aggressively getting along with everybody else.

And Charlie is essentially manipulating Alastor into being a nicer person, and he is perfectly aware she’s doing it and it makes him even more angry.

Because there’s nothing he can do about it; either he accepts defeat to Lucifer and has to deal with his smug looks, or he plays nice with Charlie and has to deal with Charlie smiling at him brighter than usual, and there’s an obvious choice between the two of those.

And Lucifer of course has no idea any of this is happening. His daughter is using him to perform psychological warfare on his dad-nemesis and he’s so blinded by her compliments that he doesn’t even notice.

“No matter what I do, how many bodies I put myself in, I’ll never escape this god forsaken planet.”

I haven’t explained much lore between these two, but I like to imagine them with a villain/hero dynamic that chill together once in a while. Though it’s also not exactly like that, since both AM and BE are doing morally correct and incorrect actions as time passes by (in their own way). I don’t rlly mind spoiling stuff from this AU since I’m not planning to develop it as a fic or anything, so I might as well take my time to explain at least what my drawings are meant to represent. Later on I’ll continue posting stuff to connect the dots correctly.

In this situation, AM is devastated to realize that despite achieving to create a body for himself to go to the surface he simply isn’t able to escape himself as he needs his cables to be bound to the ground. He is still able to cause destruction of course (and he does as he hates BE for a few reasons), but both of them try to understand eachother whenever they get the chance to. These small pauses and talks are important for the relationship they hold later on.

Edit: [THIS LORE IS NOT UPDATED]

Imagine trying to be General Mahamatra Cyno when your three closest friends are just:

- Forest Watcher "I don't know what you're talking about; Karkata is a dog" Tighnari

- Scribe "No, I didn't find this canned knowledge on my unauthorized research trip to the desert... I bought it on the black market like a reasonable person, duh" Alhaitham

- and Kshashrewar's "How I was I supposed to know seeking inspiration in King Deshret's ruins apparently qualifies as 'trespassing on forbidden territory' and creating a sentient suitcase to wield weapons for me is 'illicit research into mechanical lifeforms' all the sudden?!" Kaveh

Cyno: I see why none of you ever laugh at my puns. It's because I'm the joke to you, isn't it?

Lineage Isn't My Cup of Tea Masterlist

Alhaitham has many things about himself he keeps secret, one of them is his direct relation to the Scarlet King. He soon will see the importance of the strength he hides and how he should honor it. Finding the true meaning of his would-be title, "Alhaitham, Firstborn of the King Deshret," impacts his morale and mood towards the life he lives in the modern days of Sumeru. All the books in the world can't answer the coming of his birth and purpose before the death of his mother and father.

TL;DR: Alhaitham has mini identity crises because his parents died a long long time ago.

(Enjoy the story, ciao)

Ok, Childe as a wuxia/xianxia trope. It's honestly a bit embarrassing how well this fits.

(blame @a-yarn-of-purple-prose for this post and if anyone here is a wuxia fan feel free to correct me, I'm new to the genre)

Wuxia is a Chinese martial arts fantasy genre you are all familiar with. An adjacent genre is called xianxia, "immortal heroes", it ramps all the fantasy elements up to eleven and skews tropes a bit (we'll get back to that).

A common trope is some kind of unorthodox school/sect or technique, allowing to achieve greater power without the usual decades of training. It could be straight-out evil or just revolving around chaos.

Such a martial school is usually called an evil/demonic sect (sect is more like a clan in that setting, not the modern concept of sect) and their techniques tend to drive practitioners to insanity. Either because they are inherently corrupting or because getting too much power without growing as a person is really not the best thing for your mental health. They are also often cast from hp points.

And then there's the archetype of a demonic sect heir. The best pupil or simply someone who has inherited a lost art. Proud, always greedy for more strength, often noble in some weird way.

*points to our calamity of a boy*

Common elements of such stories include:

Falling into some weird realm or meeting a weird person who teaches the hero a Forbidden Technique

Learning a technique too quickly through some sort of magic/alchemy/memory manipulation

Some people are so singular in their pursuit they become insane (走火入魔)

Ambition bad, loyalty and family good

Conflicting loyalties, generally a conflict between a chosen path and personal weaknesses/attachments (could be both ego and familal love, and this is more of a xianxia trope)

Fits like a horoscope so far but wait.

There's a very interesting case of Korean murim genre (their version of wuxia) where sects are less varied (I recommend this post for a basic introduction) and we get three paths:

Justice/Righteous/Orthodox/Light — theoretically they keep the Evil Faction at bay, and protect innocent people, but usually are corrupt to the core

Evil/Unorthodox/Dark — these try gaining as much power as possible and attempt ruling the whole world

Demonic Cult — usually dont take part in evil and justice battles, follow their own code of conduct based on their religion, value strength above all else.

(I'm sure there's a similar distinction in wuxia too, I just can't find it in the deluge of lore)

"Demonic" is closer to "pagan" or "heathen" than Christian idea of demonic here, their beliefs are often based on Zoroastrianism and worshipping a sacred flame. Do you remember all the Persian themes used for Khaenri'ah? And Surtalogi being the flame on Surtr's sword in Norse mythology. I also had the impression that Genshin gnostic references are based on the Zoroastrian-flavoured branch of Gnosticism.

In murim the trope of demonic sect heir is called "heavenly demon" (I believe, a more correct translation would be "supreme heathen"), they are utterly badass, live for the glory of battle, seem more like forces of nature and follow a very strict honour code often conflicting with normal human ethics.

(do I need to spell it out)

TvTropes also says this about Korean stories:

(do I need to spell it out pt.2)

I'm not sure why a Chinese studio would focus on the Korean version of this trope but I'm sure something like this exists in China as well or maybe there's a popular manhwa that inspired authors.

Xianxia extends the fantastic element further, focusing on Taoist concepts and practices and adding all kinds of magical realms (celestial, demonic, etc) and magical beings and making immortality achievable. I still need to read more about it but if I understand that right, demonic heir trope turns into a demon prince in this case. An actual visitor from the demon realm or a practitioner who achieved immortality through dubious means.

These are fae-coded in a way very similar to Childe and have a certain nonchalance towards things most humans would consider traumatic. They are simply not bothered by them, having a different set of morals or faring from a realm that is much worse.

Our boy isn't that (he's still very much human) but he's aesthetically coded like one, same as Scaramouche is yokai-coded, despite not being a yokai.

So. When people say Childe's arc is a reference to Journey to the West, it's not entirely untrue, JttW is the classic of xianxia genre and Childe does belong to the same genre. He, however, is not Sun Wukong but a different, darker trope.

This also explains why he has that "shonen anime protag but not quite" vibe. Shonen was heavily influenced by wuxia but this trope never quite made it to anime or maybe never became popular enough. It's not a deconstruction, it's a different story. Or perhaps a deconstruction of that different story.

Broke: Dr Ratio and Alhaitham would get along

Woke: Dr Ratio and Alhaitham would hate each other for being ‘exceptionally arrogant’

Bespoke: Ruan Mei and Dottore are the real crossover academia duo that we should be talking about

Hello I’m back after months 💀💀 (Legit deleted the app)

More Arahaitham content just dropped. Istg even doodling their outfits is difficult I wish the designs were more simpler 😭

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For those who don’t know; Arahaitham is an AU where Alhaitham is Nahida’s familiar and an aranara that can talk and have mannerisms of a human. Being granted a human form, his job is to be the middle man between the Dendro Archon and her people, being her set of eyes and first responder. Nobody knows he is an aranara because not only will jeopardize their plan if people find out.. It’s just his aranara form is embarrassing! His friend group doesn’t know, the akademiya doesn’t know, not even the traveler (Lumine) knows… until later on…

im coping