The Earth is a Spherical Everything Pie-Soup Fridge Magnet

Hello! You all can call me Waffle, and I mostly intend to ramble about headcanons, AU's, and original stories I'm working on. I intend to keep this (mostly) PG-13. Idk I just have to many brain blorbos and I needed somewhere to chuck them at. Also if your wondering here are the fandoms I am sort of apart of: Hermitcraft, Life Series & Other Incorporated & Related MC fandoms How To Train Your Dragon Percy Jackson / Heroes of Olympus (+Trials of Apollo bc that's nearly a seperate fandom lol) Pokemon Genshin Impact Batman / DCU The Hunger Games

[acupofwaffies]

Hello!!

You all can call me Waffle!! I’m an aspiring author / story-creator with far too much time spent contemplating ideas and daydreaming and not nearly enough time spent actually writing said ideas.

I will mostly post my random thoughts and opinions on stuff (usually opinions on the creation and consumption of fictional stories). I will also post art from time to time, things from AU concepts I have for the various fandoms that I’m apart of, and occasionally stuff for my original stories that I’m working on.

Anyhow some fun things to know about me!

I’m demiromantic asexual and also do not care what pronouns you use for me as long as it isn’t it/its

I live in the northwestern quadrant of the Earth

I have a pet cat (she’s a ragdoll)

Fandoms I am a part of:

PJO/HoO/ToA (though sometimes ToA feels like it’s basically it’s own separate fandom lol)

Pokemon

Genshin Impact

The Owl House

Gravity Falls

HTTYD

Batman / the DCU

The Hunger Games

The Life Series / Hermitcraft, and Empires SMP… basically a bunch of heavily overlapping Minecraft fandoms

Anyways, send me asks about story stuff!! They make me incredibly happy and I will always do my best to respond as fast as I am able.

[acupofwaffies]

Hey so would anyone want to hear about my goofy spooky-paranormal-mystery town story, where the teenage photographer nerd main character’s parents and younger siblings die in a fire and afterwards he moves with his older cousin to a small town called Aspenfield?

The main character’s newfound friendgroup in the town consists of the theater kid drama queen of all time, her anxiety-riddled tween younger half-brother who doodles on everything ever (mainly with chalk!), his life-loving and recklessly optimistic best friend who aspires to be a fashion designer, and the pottery guy who works at her family diner and spends more time talking to trees in the forest than people.

Also Features:

the siblings’ epic Knows-More-Than-She-Lets-On grandmother

lots of fire symbolism

the befriending of a grim-reaper-esque entity

The Fae

goofy teenage strangers-to-bickering-to-friends-to-best-friends-to-awkward-crushes-to-lovers romance written by someone who doesn’t understand romance and will be using their undying platonic love for their friends as a reference

the local witch coven aka magic-knitting-club(???)

found family

Rabbit the Maine Coon

demonic summonings

regular high-school shenanigans

small town paranormal-murder-mystery vibes

The Great Raccoon Empire

lots of hurt/comfort

dumb teenagers blogging about their crazy adventures on the internet

an ancient prophecy scrawled onto the outer wall of a park restroom

And me doing copious amounts of research in an effort to (at least) semi-accurately and respectfully represent the folklore and magic of dozens of cultures from around the world, with the largest number of these being folklore and mythologies from the native tribes and cultures and kingdoms of the Americas.)

[cranberry-branflakes]

hey you. yes you reading this.

i love you! :)

[archiveofimmortality]

Welcome to the Archive of Immortality! Here we'll post concept designs and development updates as we continue to work on this show.

These are the main characters of the show! In the middle, we've got the protagonist, Hesper, surrounded by his friends: Sunny, on the left; Wisteria, on the top; and Amare, on the right.

We're so excited to introduce you to these guys and watch them as their designs develop to their final versions!

(Art credit goes to @faewryn on Instagram!)

[acupofwaffies]

Look here we’re doing it!! Go go go!!! I’m so happy to finally introduce this to the world go check it out! :D

[pistachi0n-deactivated20170826]

Sometimes when I go hundreds pages deep into people’s Tumblr archives, I find really funny posts and I weigh the pros and cons of liking/reblogging them.

Pros: I’ll have access to them later because they’re fucking hilarious

Cons: They might think I’m creepy. Despite the fact that it’s public and on the Internet, it is not socially acceptable to let anyone know the extent that you creeped their archives.

[taymonbeal]

I hereby extend blanket permission for anyone to creep on my archive, and to like and reblog posts from it if they want to. It’s really quite flattering.

[brennacedria]

“it is not socially acceptable”

Wrong. It is not only acceptable but expected here. Adhere to whatever “etiquette” you will on other sites. Share and be shared here.

[alarajrogers]

Yeah, this isn’t a Tumblr thing. Everyone here loves it when they wake up to 97 notifications and they’re all likes and reblogs from the same person of shit you posted five years ago.

[gold-rhine]

Sumeru Archon Quest Analysis

Okay, so. First thing we need to address about Sumeru is Hoyo’s colorism. Most Sumeru characters should be brown, and it’s an undeniable, racist travesty that they aren’t. Keep that in mind when I say that some of the anti-racist story beats are actually well-done and subversive—because, honestly, they should have been even better. But no media is perfect, and we have to evaluate the narrative on its own terms while acknowledging its flaws.

Second thing you should understand about Sumeru? It’s cyberpunk. The moment you arrive, you get Google Glasses™ (the Akasha). These glasses let you search everything on the internet… except not really! There’s censorship—you’re not authorized to look up info about the Dendro Archon. That’s why the Traveler starts seeking alternative sources of information, just like in any good cyberpunk story.

And, like in any good cyberpunk, corporations control the government. The Akademiya is heavily corporation-coded. They’ve usurped the legitimate government (Nahida), they control Google (and its censorship), and most importantly, they decide where research funding goes. A huge theme in Sumeru is scientists being forced to abandon their passions and take on military projects just to secure Akademiya funding—exactly like the real world.

So, the Akademiya are the undeniable villains of Sumeru, established in Act 1, and we should view the entire narrative through that lens.

When we see the Akademiya persecute religious minorities, artists, and desert people, we’re meant to see it as straightforwardly bad. Especially because we meet and befriend members of all these groups—Dunyarzad, Nilou, Dehya—while from the Akademiya, we only get Alhaitham, who’s sus as hell and standoffish (and later defects from the Akademiya). I’m specifying this because I’ve seen some frankly insane sinophobic takes claiming that Hoyo showing this persecution means they approve of it—because they’re Chinese, so they must be pro-religious persecution (??). Never mind that all the persecuted groups win in the end.

The point is, the corpo-Akademiya is trying to enforce homogenous obedience on its citizens, and as players, we’re set up to sympathize with everyone fighting against that.

The Samsara dream time loop—where the Traveler and the people of Sumeru get trapped—is LITERALLY corporations exploiting the dreams of common people to extract resources from them. It’s an incredibly on-the-nose metaphor. The same day repeating over and over? That’s capitalism trapping us in the hopeless, monotonous loop of routine, grinding us down with no promise of change. And just like in real life, the most vulnerable—people like Dunyarzad, who’s disabled and chronically ill—are the first to pay the price, because they don’t have the physical stamina to survive the system’s brutality.

And what breaks this corrupt, soul-crushing cycle? An artist.

Nilou, a dancer—someone whose entire existence is dismissed by the Akademiya as "frivolous" at the same time as they try to use her as foundation of their propaganda loop —is the one who shatters the illusion. Because art does that. It exposes truths that rigid systems try to bury. The Akademiya, with all its cold logic and "progress," can’t comprehend something as intangible as creativity, so they never see it coming. But when Nilou performs, she disrupts the Samsara, proving that the human spirit expressed through art can’t be fully controlled, even by the most oppressive structures.

It’s chef’s kiss storytelling. The Akademiya thinks they’ve perfected their dystopia, where everyone is a docile, productive cog in their machine. But they forget that people dream. And dreams—real ones, the messy, emotional, human kind—can’t be commodified forever.

But then it only gets better. Because breaking the Samsara loop isn’t enough to bring down the whole system. That would be too easy, too cheap. What Nilou’s rebellion does is ignite a spark—something that shakes people awake, makes them question, but doesn’t magically dismantle centuries of oppression overnight. Real change takes more than one defiant dance.

Now, let’s talk about the desert people in Sumeru.

The Akademiya built a literal fucking trump wall to keep them out. They oppress them, demonize them, and treat them like second-class citizens. And the first time we see desert people in the story, aside from Dehya? They’re religious fanatics confronting Alhaitham—which, at a glance, plays right into the most tired Western stereotype: Middle Eastern terrorists. But let’s put a pin in that.

Because then we meet Setaria, a desert woman who had to abandon her religion and heritage just to fit in. This is the Akademiya’s imperialist assimilation in action—desert people are forced to conform, no matter how brilliant they are. And Setaria is brilliant. She’s a genius, and that’s the only reason she got as far as she did in the Akademiya. But even then, she had to erase herself to survive.

Then comes the entire quest about reminding her of her roots, urging her to embrace her people again, and, most importantly, using her privilege to help them. And here’s the kicker: it’s Nahida—the Dendro Archon, a god the desert people actively oppose—who pushes Setaria to reclaim her heritage. Not out of some patronizing "enlightened savior" nonsense, but because Nahida, despite being the figurehead of the very religion that marginalizes them, values truth above dogma. Because desert ppl don't know Akademiya traps and supresses Nahida herself!

Nahida doesn’t demand Setaria convert or assimilate further; she tells her to remember who she is. Because liberation isn’t just about tearing down walls—it’s about refusing to let your identity be dictated by the people who built them.

The game doesn’t just show the oppression—it shows the way out: reclaiming your history, refusing to be pitted against your own, and leveraging your position to lift others up. And the fact that it’s Nahida of all people who facilitates this? That’s the narrative acknowledging that justice isn’t about which god you worship—it’s about whose humanity you’re willing to recognize. So accusations of Sumeru narrative somehow being pro-oppression of opposing religions is not only sinophobic, but missing the entire, very obvios point.

And then—just when you think the Akademiya couldn’t get more villain-coded—we learn their endgame: They’ve been using the energy drained from the Samsara dream cycle to build an artificial god. A corporate-made deity, designed to replace Nahida entirely. And who’s helping them? Dottore, a foreign warmonger exploiting Sumeru’s resources for his own ends.

I mean, come on. If you wanted a more blatant anti-imperialist, anti-corporate metaphor, you’d have to start handing out pamphlets in the streets. The Akademiya isn’t just content with controlling knowledge—they want to manufacture divinity itself, outsourcing the labor to a foreign power that couldn’t care less about Sumeru’s people.

And then—Nahida sacrifices herself.

After everything, after being imprisoned, erased, and treated as a figurehead, she still chooses to give up her freedom to stop Dottore from harming her people. Not because she’s a martyr, not because she’s blindly selfless—but because she understands power. She knows the Akademiya’s artificial god won’t save Sumeru; it’ll just put a new face on the same exploitation. So she takes the hit. Voluntarily.

This is where the narrative really sticks the landing. Because Nahida’s sacrifice isn’t framed as some tragic inevitability—it’s a strategic move. She’s playing the long game, proving that real leadership isn’t about control, but about knowing when to step back so others can step up. And in doing so, she forces Sumeru to confront its own complicity. The Akademiya’s downfall doesn’t come from some outside force—it comes from the people they oppressed finally rising, because she gave them the space to do it.

And so, of course, in the next act, we move to the desert—where the narrative flips the script entirely.

We meet Alhaitham, who’s already defected from the Akademiya. Then we confront Cyno—and this is critical: people misread him as a "cop," but he’s not. The actual cops of Sumeru are the Corps of Thirty; the Mahamatra (Cyno’s former role) are the corporate enforcers, the Akademiya’s private security. And here’s the thing: Cyno was *promised* justice, but when he tried to audit the Akademiya’s artificial god project, they shut him down.

And what did he do? He didn’t comply. He defected.

This isn’t just a character beat—it’s a thematic one. Cyno’s entire arc is about choosing justice over institutional loyalty, even when the institution claims to serve justice. The game wants you to question who the "law" really works for.

Then we arrive at Aaru Village, where we meet Candace and the other desert people—all portrayed as good, kind, and suffering under Akademiya oppression. And in a lesser story, this would be the endpoint: "See? Not all brown people are evil terrorists! Some are noble victims!" (Which, admittedly, is still more nuance than most Western media manages.)

But Sumeru’s narrative isn’t satisfied with that. It doesn’t just want to humanize the desert people—it wants to contextualize their resistance. Because the next step isn’t just proving they’re "good." It’s asking: What made the Eremites into ‘fanatics’ in the first place?

And that’s where the story gets really bold.

t doesn’t just tell you the desert people are oppressed—it forces you to confront their reality. They have no chances. No fair trial, no voice, no future under Akademiya rule. And when Dehya—a desert-born warrior who’s spent her life caught between worlds - risks everything to broker peace, the game doesn’t give you a choice. You have to negotiate with them. No "both sides" compromise, no patronizing "maybe if they just assimilated harder." The narrative makes you stand with them.

And then—the revelation.

Deshret, the god of the desert people, was never Rukkhadevata’s enemy. They were friends. Allies. And when disaster struck, Rukkhadevata—the very goddess the Akademiya claims as their own sacrificed herself to save the desert people from extinction. The history the Akademiya taught was a lie.

And the narrative never walks this back. Later world quests double down: Deshret wasn’t some mad tyrant. He was a beloved, fair ruler. His people’s faith isn’t some backwards fanaticism—it’s legitimate, as sacred as Nahida’s. The game refuses to frame desert culture as something that needs to be "fixed" or abandoned.

This isn’t just subversion—it’s narrative justice.

And the entire Sumeru finale is about exactly that.

It’s not a lone hero’s journey. It’s not a divine miracle. It’s every marginalized group—artists, desert people, religious minorities, Akademiya defectors—coming together to overthrow their oppressors. The narrative makes this collective struggle the centerpiece. Azar, the Grand Sage, is a deliberately bland villain because he doesn’t matter. He’s not some complex tyrant—he’s just another greedy man at the top of a corrupt system. The real story isn’t about him. It’s about who rises against him.

And at the heart of it all is Nahida—not as a traditional archon dispensing wisdom from on high, but as a child god who connects people. Her power isn’t in domination; it’s in unity. She doesn’t command an army—she links minds, letting Sumeru’s people see each other’s struggles, dreams, and defiance.

This is the ultimate rebuttal to the Akademiya’s ideology. They believed in hierarchy, in control, in a world where only the "worthy" (read: those they approved of) had a voice. But Nahida proves true wisdom isn’t hoarded—it’s shared. And when she breaks free, she doesn’t just liberate herself, she gives Sumeru back to its people.

And crucially? They couldn’t have won without the desert.

The desert people weren’t just "allowed" to help—they were essential. Their knowledge, their strength, their history became part of the resistance. The narrative doesn’t frame them as "redeemed outsiders" joining the "real" fight—it says their fight was always legitimate, and Sumeru’s freedom depended on them.

The finale of Sumeru’s arc isn’t just a victory—it’s a reckoning.

The wall dividing the desert and the rainforest crumbles. The Akasha—the internet turned tool of control—shuts down forever. The narrative makes it clear: technology should connect and empower people, but when it’s weaponized against them, it deserves to die. And Sumeru doesn’t mourn its loss, because freedom is worth more than convenience.

But the real triumph isn’t in what’s destroyed, it’s in what’s rebuilt. Desert people are welcomed, not as tolerated outsiders, but as equals. The Akademiya’s chokehold on knowledge is broken. Artists, scholars, outcasts, and visionaries—all of them—have a voice now.

This is the core message: No one fights alone. Corpo tyranny falls when the oppressed stop competing for scraps and stand together. Not out of charity, not out of pity, but because liberation is collective or it’s nothing.

This is why Sumeru storyline rings true.

Yes, it’s simplified. It’s a fantasy, not a political manifesto. But the core idea is real, and that’s what matters.

Sumeru’s revolution works because it understands something fundamental: Oppression isn’t defeated by lone heroes or divine intervention. It’s defeated when the people no longer accept their own erasure. When artists, outcasts, racial minorities, and even disillusioned enforcers realize they’re stronger together than they ever were apart.

The Akademiya thought they could control truth by rewriting history. They thought they could commodify dreams, exploit faith, and wall off the "undesirables." But in the end? They underestimated the one thing they couldn’t algorithmize: solidarity.

Is it idealistic? Sure. But the best stories often are. Because they remind us that the fight isn’t hopeless—just unfinished.

[justalittletoaster]

Few things bother me more than the need to work on different passion projects and my brain being indecisive about it.

Work on my DDLC Mod? Banned. That one cartoon storyboard I wanna finish? Not another pencil stroke. How about that original platformer game I had in mind? That's rough buddy.

I don't mind all the fun stuff I wanna finish up and do, I just mind when I wanna do it but my brain actively refuses to let me do it cause suddenly it starts brain rotting on a whole new ahhh project 😭🙏

That or I'll be actually be working on one of my current projects when it decides to hit me with a wave of inspiration and motivation to do one of the others or straight up makes me wanna do all of em at once

Its actually a nightmare

[acupofwaffies]

This is so incredibly real. Like why actually complete this story project when I can procrastinate on videogame lore and come up with 7 new story concepts instead?

[mikkeneko]

the whump fan’s dilemma

[mikkeneko]

the notes on this post really do paint a picture of the psychology of fans, don’t they

[rogueofcrows]

[clarityofhatred]

YES. YOU GET IT.

[acupofwaffies]

I created some doodles and finally remembered that I am capable of sharing my art with the internet.

So. Have some doodles of a few of my characters lol

[cheshire-cat-lenalee2]

[zerozerozio]

bring back tumblr ask culture let me. bother you with questions and statements

[boimann]

reblog to let people know it's ok to bother you with questions and statements

[holmesandtheroman]

NOTICE: As more and more fanfic writers are using generative AI for their works (you uncreative dweebs), I hereby swear on everything I hold dear that I have not and will NEVER use generative AI in ANY of my written work. Everything I post will be organically and creatively my own.

[darkesttimelinesblog]

Spread the word.

[rainofdauwuand0w0]

Its time to be a neighbor

http://foundation.pbs.org/ways-to-give/

http://protectmypublicmedia.org

http://pbssocal.org/support/donate

[daysleftofsecondterm]

Be a neighbour for the next 1,352 days

[acupofwaffies]

Okay but one of my favorite character tropes out there is Spite. Now, when I say Spite, I don’t mean characters who are vengeful or petty or bitter at the world or any of that. I mean characters that were told by (almost) everyone in their lives that they would never achieve their dreams and goals, and then did it anyways.

And you could theoretically interpret this as characters who were assumed to be weak and then whipped out their super cool strong powers and proved everyone wrong, or who somehow turned out to be the chosen one, but that isn’t really what I mean either.

What I really mean by characters with Spite is characters who were told that they weren’t special. That got told that they were weak. That got told that they would never succeed at anything. Characters that then despite that, kept going. Characters who were shunned and who didn’t get fancy powers and had a genuine disadvantage when it came down to it, but they still went and achieved their dreams.

A wonderful example of this is Luz Noceda from The Owl House. She was told by everyone around her that humans couldn’t learn magic, and even the people who were on her side, such as Eda, had their doubts in her abilities to achieve her goal. Did Luz let that stop her? Of course not!! In Spite of all of their doubts, she went and learned magic anyways. She was incredibly innovative with it too, and she ended up even going on to save the boiling isles as a whole—even if she never originally intended to.

A character who COULD have been an example, but ended up falling short, is Midoriya Izuku from My Hero Academia. (Note: I’m not apart of the Mha fandom, and I’m not an expert either, but I do know a good amount about how the beginning goes) Midoriya is a quirkless, powerless kid who desperately wants to be a superhero. He has big dreams, but he gets bullied for having dreams when he is, in the eyes of everyone else, a weakling who will never amount to anything. In the actual anime, he ends up meeting number 1 hero All Might, who offers to train him to recieve a special quirk. He eventually does in fact receive this powerful quirk, and then goes on to be a student at the local superhero school. But this isn’t really Spite in my eyes, because he was simply just… given the tool that he lacked (even if there were some pretty heavy drawbacks at first). If it was a TRUE story of Spite, then Midoriya never would have received a quirk. He would have been quirkless, but would that have stopped him from becoming a hero? Absolutely not. If it was Spite, he would have gone and worked and done his darn best to become a hero in Spite of his disadvantage on the field due to being quirkless. But alas, it is not the case, so it doesn’t really count in my general definition of Spite that I’m using here.

A more subtle example of this, on the other hand is one Ash Ketchum of the Pokemon anime. Now, you might be a little confused by this one, considering how incredibly powerful his Pikachu is, but he does fit into the trope. He’s a kid with big dreams who everyone in his life doubts. His mom is supportive, yes, but she doesn’t quite ever seem to believe he’ll ever achieve that goal of being a Pokemon Master. His peers (mainly Gary) practically bully him for thinking he’ll go anywhere, and Professor Oak doubts him as well. He’s given a small electric rat that kind of hates him (at first) as a Pokemon, and gets chucked into the world with no real guidance on what to do. He meets Misty and Brock, and they become close traveling companions of his, but even they don’t completely believe he’s going to ever get anywhere at first. Ash Ketchum begins his journey as an arrogant, snarky, and reckless kid with no idea what he’s doing and everyone around him saying that he won’t make it to the top, and he tries anyways! He goes out, and he learns, and he gets humbled, and he fails over and over and over again, but he never gives up. In Spite of basically the entire world standing in his way, he pushes through, and after traveling across EIGHT regions, and saving the world several times over, finally makes it to his goal. And even if it isn’t quite defined, you know that in the end, he’s done it. So, yes, Spite.

I need more characters that are unspecial and have no powers and aren’t the subject of the prophecy, and everyone doubts their abilities, but they have big dreams and they’re gonna try their hardest to make those dreams a reality. Characters that, eventually, manage to change the world in Spite of everything.

[descendant-of-truth]

I think the other reason I don't really get into ships as portrayed by fandom culture is that it seems like the mindset is more like. "I want these characters to be in a Romantic Relationship(TM)" instead of "I want these characters' relationship to be romantic"

What I mean here is that, so often I see pairings enacting romance tropes to the point of heavily altering or downright replacing their original dynamic - as if the people behind it only understand romance as a series of checklists to tick off. Couples like to kiss and sleep in the same bed and flirt with each other, so it doesn't matter who the characters are, if they're a couple then naturally they'll do those things, right??

And that's where the whole thing starts to lose me, because I would assume that the appeal of shipping characters is, y'know... the characters? Rather than just, the idea of a couple? If I'm thinking about how it'd be cool for them to be in love, my first thought is always "so how would they show it," because just like everything else about a person, the answer is going to be different on a case-by-case basis.

Maybe the characters involved aren't really into kissing, but they like arranging date activities. Maybe they aren't committed to the structure of dating at all, and just want to be around each other whenever they can. And even if they are the types to like doing traditionally romantic things, that doesn't suddenly erase whatever else they had going on before they started adding that on top of it.

I'm not saying that the more typical romance tropes and activities are bad, just that they're applied kind of excessively, regardless of whether or not they actually work for the characters involved. I want to see my favorite characters having relationships that are true to who they are, not what the stock depiction of a couple says they should be.

[chestersbraincell]

“You and your wife are basically one creature”

Well that brought me a mental image. Not a great one. Amalgamate style

[acupofwaffies]

…okay but genuinely giving me thoughts. Y’know that old idea about how “soulmates” happen? About how humans used to have four arms or whatever but they were too powerful so the universe cut them in half into two beings? That.

That is what they are. I believe in (somewhat eldritch) soulmates shadowbeans supremacy.

[ithseem]

Get Bat-Catted

Reblog to pass it on

or vibe for 5 minutes