soupserum @soupserum - Tumblr Blog

obligatory introduction

Hi! I'm Soup. Originally an AO3-only author, now expanding to Tumblr for the first time! My pronouns are she/it/fae and i use monstrous/fem terms (such as creature, etc) :] As of right now my only planned fics are Yanqing-centric and HSR based. They will be listed below! None of these include any future one-shots or drabbles, only multi-chapter fics. This list is subject to change and will be edited as time goes on! finished fic list ao3 acc tag list

victorfreakenste1n

The Alchemical Symbolism of Mortenax Blade‧˚ ꒰🍷꒱༘‧—﹒⌗﹒🦇﹒౨ৎ˚₊‧

The four stages of alchemy (nigredo, albedo, citrinatas, and rubedo) are represented by the respective colours black, white, yellow/gold, and red. Blade’s original form is him…

#souplovebeam✮

anyacad0

With Evanescia's character being more fully explored in 4.2, we can figure out more about something that I've been thinking about for a while which is the difference between 'natural' immortals and humans who were made immortal. I've said before that High Elders are just Built Different, by which I mean that they process the experience of immortality in such a way that it can never break them the way it breaks Xianzhou Natives, Foxians and even normal Vidyadhara. Given our total lack of information about the other High Elders it might even just be something unique to Dan Heng that prevents him from succumbing to Mara or any equivalent erosion.

But either way, we now have Evanescia, a character who is similar to Dan Heng in that she was created immortal, has remained sane for an impossibly long time, and, most crucially, a character who doesn't really act her age. Don't get me wrong, she's absolutely more mature than she appears, but she's not exactly fully grown either. Compare her to the likes of Jing Yuan and Blade- both of them are much younger than Evanescia, but you'd never guess it just from meeting them, because their age shows in their wisdom, their jadedness. Because that's just what happens to humans as their experiences accumulate. And it seems like natural immortals don't quite do that. Evanescia only truly comes to understand the nature of a 'mask' when Yao Guang explains it to her, even though she's watched the Phantasmoon Games for years. There's a certain degree of understanding of the world that her nature makes her unable to have. She's grown over the years, but only to a certain point.

Something else Evanescia and Dan Heng have in common is their detachment. It's more obvious with Evanescia, who's witnessed the Games since their beginning, only intervening when the rules are broken and allowing all other manners of violence. When the Trailblazer meets her in 4.0, she helps because she finds it entertaining. She seemed mostly interested in fulfilling narrative tropes and adding plot twists rather than actually being helpful. With Dan Heng, it's harder to notice, but probably most evident in his attitude during the early patches of Amphoreus. He wanted to leave after Aglaea's interrogation, and according to PT's character stories, he spent most of the following time researching ways to leave, and then researching ways to save the Trailblazer after it was revealed they were dead. It was only over the course of what's implied to be a year that he realised he'd become inspired by the Flame-Chase and could no longer bring himself to stand by.

The other important similarity is a combination of being stubborn, and being good at letting go. It's sort of paradoxical, especially in Dan Heng's case, but to hold on as tightly as the Permanence demands requires sacrifice. Think about how easily Dan Feng turned on the Xianzhou, and how he didn't feel any way at all about his lack of loyalty afterwards: He cared so much for those close to him that when push came to shove it was easy to let go of everything else. Evanescia is more straightforward in this; she's come to see the whole world as something fleeting, and change as an inevitability. She doesn't seem particularly attached to anything- she'll take whatever stance helps her win favour. It's only the Games themselves that she seems well and truly attached to- they're her purpose, after all- so it's only when the Games are threatened that she gets serious.

In short, the secret to immortality is being sort of childish, being unaffected by most of the world in a way that's not quite possible for a human being. Evanescia's title of 'eternal schoolgirl' is probably the best way to sum it up.

#souplovebeam✮

anyacad0

I think what keeps bringing me back to the high-cloud quintet is how they've all hurt each other so badly and yet none of them can truly be considered an antagonist. There's no world where any of them could realistically have chosen differently. Each one of them is both victim and perpetrator in one way or another and it makes for such a beautiful tragedy.

On the surface and I mean realllllly on the surface, Dan Feng is the antagonist. Because he's the one who made the choice that screwed up everything else. Except did he have a choice, really? He straight up said in 3.6 that knowing everything that came after, he still wouldn't choose differently. That's not him being dismissive, there was just no possibility of him letting Baiheng die while he might have had the ability to save her. He was so lonely before the quintet and no one ever taught him to let go because no one ever thought he might be human enough to struggle with it in the first place. It is literally his Aeon-designated nature to want the things he cares about, forever, and it's kind of impossible to treat Aeons as true antagonists because THEY, too, are slaves to THEIR nature. It would have been impossible on a philosophical level for Long to create something that knew how to cope with loss.

From a thematic standpoint, you could maybe argue that Jingliu is an antagonist. In a story about moving on, she's the one who clings to the past the hardest, who forces her ideals on the others. She wants to punish Dan Feng and Yingxing for refusing to let Baiheng die, but in doing so she's also refusing to let Baiheng die. And yet. When was she afforded any other opportunity? She was never in a position to empathise with them because between the Cangcheng disaster and dedicating her life to the sword, loss had become an inevitability to her. The Hunt was entirely her way of life; transgressions should be met with punishment, that was simply the way of the world for her. She had dedicated her life to vengeance long before the quintet was even formed. Coupled with the fact that she was already nearly mara-struck, she never truly had any other choice. In theory, maybe, she could have chosen forgiveness, but her past experiences had already removed that possibility.

I don't think anyone will argue for Blade being an antagonist but let's talk about him anyway: Yingxing was so desperate to prove his existence a meaningful one that I don't think he was ever particularly morally sound. And as a craftsman, he believed that everything could be fixed. He could never bear the idea of not taking action because he ended up being emotionally dependent on proving that being a short-life species, the thing that the Xianzhou treated him as lesser for, was actually what made him better than them. If he did nothing, treated immortality as a taboo without even trying to fix things, then he'd be just like a Xianzhou native. Are we noticing a pattern yet? The world had already shaped him into the person who'd try and help Dan Feng because he didn't feel like the Xianzhou was something worth obeying. And then, past the point of the Sedition, his actions are tainted by Jingliu's 'training' which she also had no choice in not only because she was mara-struck but because punishment and vengeance were all the world had taught her to depend on.

Jing Yuan is... interesting. He did have choices, and he made some pretty good ones. He was the only member of the quintet with healthy experiences to fall back on and it definitely shows. He did hurt the others in that he moved on, he dealt with Jingliu, he did his job as general. He says as much when he's borderline emotionally blackmailing Dan Heng to get him to help with the Arbor Crisis: he puts the Xianzhou before his feelings. Technically, yes, he had the choice, but he also had the wisdom to know that nothing good would come of intervening. It's not as if he did nothing- he fought to get Dan Heng released from the Shackling Prison, he let Blade go after the Arbor crisis- and some of it was due to his feelings, sure, but he's always acted in the interest of causing the minimum possible disturbance. The safest thing he could do was bear the burden on his own, bury his feelings, and try to get on with his life on his own, and that's not something he deserves to be faulted for.

And then finally we get to Dan Heng, who unsurprisingly inspired this post. How much easier could things have been for him if he had accepted from the start that he was Dan Feng, and that he'd hurt people but he'd done it because he was just so painfully human and he loved too much? If he'd recognised Blade from the start instead of constantly running from him? If he'd been able to share his past with the Express Crew from the beginning? We'll never know the answer because between the amnesia and the growing up in prison and the self-hatred inherited from Dan Feng, that was never a possibility.

There is just so much tragedy in how all of them are so helpless to their own natures and how technically everything was preventable and yet in reality all of it was completely inevitable. Nothing is fair and nothing can ever really be made right. They were all just people doing the best that they could with what they were given.

cyrene <3

oh man it's been a time since I did some art for the boy! Remember who's this?

#souplovebeam✮

hatbabo

life of a fighter be like

#souplovebeam✮#AAUHGAGHAGHAH AUGHAUGHWUGHUGH #AUWHAUGHRUGHRUGHRAUGHRAU #AURHAUghAUGHUghAUghUrghAUghURghRg #GHRGHRGHGH #RGRRRRHGGHh

sometimes-wardance-trio

Day 1: bohemian..... wardance........???

BOO did anyone perhaps ask for a wardance trio drawings account‼️‼️

START THE WAVE (keep it going idk)

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(bru ok - time to tag ZE MOOTS)

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(nf btw)

@m-ozzy @dickgraysonoffical @timothydrakeofficial @nightwingdickrider (imma save y'all the rest of the gang to tag)

and @acestar87 @limerenceinred @midnightmusix @erraticsunflower obvi

timothydrakeofficial

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@friendlyghostsandmonsters @gh0stly-t0x1ns @th3-b1tch-cam3-back @hopeful-soapbat

+open tags 💕💕💕

friendlyghostsandmonsters

🖐🏾🖐🏾🖐🏾

I really don't know why we're doing this, but...okay?

@crowningsarcasm @halfmouse @astracaedes @cobalt-draws-stuff @xoasong @thedragonwithoutfire @jello-the-frog @entr0pye @passing-through-bd

astracaedes

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@skepticalvoidhedgehog @dramatic1nlyf @the-one-and-only-piper-offical @lightsabersandbluecookies @autisimyfoxerronii @shogun-midnight @thedogbard @ayane-chan-loves-water @jello-the-frog @skeletal-spire-man-aka-overfit @irvnwithsciss0rs @mjthesilly @ninahufflepuff @kingkit7734 @evyyy77 @youngjusticerulez @roseisgoat @jel-e-ton-officalz @algae122 @obsess-over-ink-on-dead-trees @towel-offical @do-not-u-dare @mushroompie @gaster-wd @positively--voodoo @do-not-u-dare @themosteclecticwitch @instant-yuri-machine @marshmallow-dust @la-femmerouge @paper-stars-still-glow @kermitthebomber-offical @no-one-offical @deductivelogico-offical @null-the-void-monarch-offical @zeta-finnish