The Group Project That's Been Taking Most Of My Time Is Finally Over! Still Have Finals Exams Left, But

Venti and Diona's interaction in the alchemy event is so special to me... because Diona is someone who really hasn't had any reliable parental figures in her life at all. Her father is a drunkard who barely has any time for her. She got her vision because she walked into the pouring rain as a child, all alone, terrified, to look for her drunk father in a forest full of animals and monsters and bring him home. Her father takes better care of Razor than her. She was so lonely she talked to a spring in the hopes that the rumours were true and there really was a fairy inside, listening. And then the voices that used to answer stopped, too. Leaving her with nothing but a curse- any drink she mixed would be divine. She's only twelve at most and she works in a bar. Her employer exploits her skills for profit. There's advertisements around Mondstadt advertising Diona's drinks specifically. Everyone loves them. Diona hates them. Everyone tells her how lovely her drinks are. Diona herself, despite despising alcohol, is proud of her skills. That's so fucked up. That's all so fucked up.

There's so many jokes about "haha child wants to destroy the wine industry but works in a bar" and while I can see why people find it funny they're honestly...so tasteless. Diona is a child who villainizes alcohol because she can't bear the thought of her father being at fault for his actions because she loves him so much. That he could drink less and he could spend more time with her and he could help her with her emotions but never does. That he could spend time with her and immerse himself in her interests but he never does. That he's willing to do all this for other people instead, but not her. That he chooses to do these things for other people, but he almost never chooses to do them for her.

But Venti does. Venti chooses to do all these things with Diona. He calls all residents of Mond his children and that's Diona too. He takes the time to search Dragonspine for an ingredient she might like, he chats with her and accompanies her to the location of the alchemy event, he presumably spends hours with her as she searches for ingredients and mixes her drink, keeping her company and making sure she's safe.

He doesn't have to do this. He doesn't have to patiently endear himself to her because he knows she hates people who drink, he doesn't have to bother going all the way to Dragonspine to find her something unique because he knows she's proud of her creations, he doesn't have to spend hours in the company of a lonely child who he has nothing in common with-but he does.

So many people would think he's doing it for the drink, but they all lack reading comprehension skills because I said so. Diona wants to create a drink which keeps people sober. Venti isn't going to get drunk and he's not doing it for the drink. It isn't pity either, it's affection- he loves his child and he wants to spend time with her and make sure she's safe. That's all. They're so special to me <3

Oh and another thing that I forgot to add- the Spring Fairy Diona talked to, Callirhoe, only found the spring in Springvale thanks to "a gentle breeze guiding her." The person who listened to the cries and rants of a lonely child was also coincidentally someone guided there by Venti. Still girlie why that specific blessing 😔

In regards of the Trump government scraping all trans inclusion in its queer information portion of its websites I have made this thing. Spread the word. Don't let them pretend we never existed.

P.S: Don't like! Reblog! <3

EDIT: Well this got a lot of attention! I got a few users asking to print or repost my art and I am unimaginably grateful to everyone's interest, especially since it's a really simple drawing I made on a whim haha! Anyone who is looking to print these out to hang or hand out or repost on another platform is free to do so, although I ask you to credit me and let people know it's from my Tumblr profile! If anyone wishes to do anything else with my art or post and wants to clarify what I consent to then they can message me privately and I'll explain! <333 all my love to my queer siblings

EDIT: I made an LGBTQIA+ version with a focus on trans and intersex folks, it's on my pinned if you prefer this version of the acronym.

Yuno

This is weird but I’m going to speak as a person right now just generally, rather than as any kind of professional or anything. I’ve hesitated to say this for a while, and to speak on Yuno at all, because of my own complicated feelings and because I fear the fallout. But with the new cover and everything I feel like I have to, or I have to get it off my chest. So if you read this, I’m sorry in advance for indulging in what is undeniable projection and bias. I have to put a content warning for harmful sexual relationships and violence here.

I’ve never admitted this to anyone beyond those who already knew, or with my actual public profile or name/ID attached. At age 17, I’m already fucking cringing, I was involved in a sugar-daddy situation. Me, age 17, and a man who was about 40. He had a daughter two years younger than me. I met her. We were friends on facebook. We would eat dinner and I’d have sex with her dad for money after she left to go to her mom’s house. No, I did not need the money. I can’t begin to go into what motivated it at this time because it’s like scratching a barely healed scab. God, I feel gross even thinking about it. Engaging in things like that is unsafe for ANY high schooler. No one stopped me though. My parents didn’t know, and it was shockingly easy to conceal from them, but my friends and siblings did know. Some simply shrugged. Some asked to see pictures of the guy, encouraged it. Some even asked me to ask him if he had friends who wanted to do the same thing with them.

This was obviously disgustingly predatory, but also, just disregarding our ages, it was an extremely violent sexual relationship just generally. Any ‘I worship my sweet sugar baby’ shit when we spoke was significantly outweighed by the things I had to to do. But I did them and even managed not to feel dehumanized at the time because I literally hated myself. So his depreciation fed my own self-hatred. It became very out of control, very quickly.

Predictably, I got pregnant after a little while. Again, I was 17. It was legal, so I had to get an abortion myself. I was pro-choice my entire life- still am. Guess what? Despite that, I felt like shit about that abortion for years. Sometimes I still feel like shit about it. Does that make me getting an abortion less forgivable?

I ask because it seems to be how some are framing their view of Yuno’s innocence or guilt. And I’ve been nice about it or I’ve ignored it up until now, but it’s gotten to a point where it just makes me realize that a lot of people are selfishly self-imposing their own opinions on the character without taking the time to understand what the character themselves needs to heal- like it doesn’t matter to you whether she’s mentally well, or safe. If this doesnt apply to you I hope you take no offense. Is the abortion a huge part of her character? Of course. But it is far from her entire character, and I can’t help but feel like we failed her by not even considering other aspects of her mentality, even if our votes wouldnt change.

To the extent that she regrets her choice, I get that. For the great many people (mainly on twitter) who seem to think abortion is something you can “girlboss queen never cry” your way out of feeling anything for, you’re so woefully wrong that it’s almost alarming. First, being that Yuno’s seemed to be self-inflicted by throwing herself down fucking STAIRS, i can’t even begin to imagine the level of pain she felt. Even when I took that goddamn pill I felt like shit for a week. But more than the physical pain, there IS an emotional pain and a mental pain that just dulls everything else around you. Its more than just societal, the actual biological impact, the abrupt halt of natural processes and jarring hormonal shifts, it literally fucks with your body and your head. I did not want a baby at 17. I did not regret the choice. But I can fully see how some people do once they get an abortion because even for me, it literally felt like a part of me was missing. Gone. Like a part of ME was ripped out. I genuinely hope no one reading this ever has to go through that. And I can’t fathom how much worse that mental pain must be when the abortion is nonmedical.

Is that a reason to make abortion illegal? Fuck no. But I have to make that clear because even saying that has gotten me bombarded with accusations of being prolife, when I’m not.

And you know what, everyone was so kind to me about it, I’m so lucky, really, in retrospect I see that. But when I was SEVENTEEN, it became something that made me so blindingly mad- “its not your fault, youre just a kid, you didnt know.” Yes, I was a kid- but I did KNOW. It felt like that part of me that I killed-because yes, thats how it truly felt-also took my agency with it when it left. Like no one gave a shit enough to tell me that I made a shitty call insofar as getting into that relationship in the first place, and now I’m sitting there with this immeasurable feeling of self-hatred and guilt over something that I did willingly and knowingly (from my POV), I’m feeling this insane emptiness and pain and numbness and I have no one around me to blame so I internalize this self hate even more. Because I couldnt even be angry and upset without simultaneously feeling MORE guilt when the people around me weren’t lashing out at me. I don’t know how to describe this. It felt like no one was holding me accountable for hurting myself, and it was alarming and driving me insane to toe the line between being a victim of my own exercise of choice, and to have no one hold me accountable for the exercise of that choice, even though I myself would not hold anyone else accountable or call them guilty for making the same choice. It felt like no one gaf because those absolving comments designed to make me feel better also somehow felt like I was also being deprived of recognition for the somewhat traumatic experience that it truly was. And even now I really struggle to call it trauma because I still grapple with the idea that I cannot exercise a choice and call it trauma. But its like, no one is angry at the perpetrator (me) for what they did to the victim (also me). And if thats the case, do you really care about me at all? I don’t know. It’s hard to put into words. But that’s where I’m like, we have kind of deprived Yuno of her own victimhood by insisting her actions were victimless.

That said, seeing the line “I wanted you to care enough to scold me and tell me I was wrong” actually hit me pretty hard. I don’t blame Yuno for wanting people to care. Because it truly doesnt feel like it in this instance sometimes.

Double it and pass it to the next person if Yuno really did kill herself when she did it. Because at that point, we’re telling her two things- 1) abortion is okay you didn’t commit murder- okay, fine. But ALSO 2) its okay that you killed yourself, no harm done. No wonder she thinks we don’t give a shit about her, we were too busy politicizing her to consider the fact that we were telling her she didnt err when she fucking offed herself.

And I want this part to be absolutely, abundantly clear: I do not say any of this to demonize SWs. In a manner of speaking I was one. I’m not sure how similar it is to Yuno’s situation but broadly speaking, we live in a world that is generally unsafe for women. Particularly young women, and even more so teenage girls. And we shouldn’t be indifferent to a high schooler showing us that she was having sex with grown men for cash. We shouldn’t demonize her for it, but we shouldve cared enough to probe into what caused her to think this was something she should do. Her friends and parents didnt. I wasnt mentally well when I did it. And call it a girlboss queen shit thing all you want, it fucked me up monumentally after. I still cant think about it without feeling disgusted with myself. And I dont want Yuno to he disgusted with herself but I also dont want to affirm a belief that its genuinely not a problem for high schoolers to do this. People can scream about “well 18 is legal!!!!” all day- its a shitty argument to begin with, though. (If the law said 12 was the age of consent, would you feel comfortable saying “Well its legal!!!” to a relationship between a 12 year old and a 30 year old? No, right? Because the law is not always the baseline of morality). But- and again this is in no way designed to demonize sex workers- situations like Yuno’s are undeniably dangerous.

Is it her fault that something happens if she is attacked? Absolutely NOT. But I still wish someone had given a shit enough about me, my friends, siblings, anyone, to tell me to stop putting myself in a position where it could easily occur. They didnt even tell me that after I got the abortion. Its not that I wanted them to scold me for the abortion-I wanted ANYTHING, but if I’m specific, I wanted them to scold me for what led to it. I wanted them to yell at me for even getting into the sugar daddy situation, which I engaged in willfully because of my OWN self-loathing and need for some form of attention, my OWN warped perception of what constitutes positive attention and what I had to be of value and worthy of that attention. Because I was 17 and I knew that most every time I was yelled at by someone or scolded it was because they cared about me in some form, even if yelling was inappropriate in a given situation. Its weird- without giving too much away here, I managed to keep my abortion from my parents despite being a minor. Maybe half a year after the fact, I told my mom, and only because she was expressing this deep concern that I was suicidal, telling me I wasn’t myself. She wasn’t wrong, of course, I was completely different, idk about suicidal, but certainly depressed. When I told her, she cried, not because shes prolife or anything, but because she was so distraught that she didn’t see what was happening. Frankly she couldn’t have, with the way I went about it and how our lives are structured. And I hate when my mother cries, I love her to death. But her crying felt good. Not like weird masochism good, but like vindication good. Because I knew something was wrong but no one else seemed to think something was wrong for so long, and her weeping over this confirmed for me that yes, I’m right, something- anything- was materially, truly, WRONG with this situation. And when she probed for details I cried too because I forgot how good it felt to have someone who cared enough about me personally to go deeper than superficial opinions on political things, to actually form a personalized opinion or seek more detail as to me specifically. She begged me not to keep up the sugar baby thing, and she was right to do that, and it simultaneously fed my need for care while also maintaining my agency. I am truly lucky beyond words for getting to be my mother’s child.

Anyway, that said, I see how Yuno probably also wanted that from us. To care about the why, and not the what. It didn’t seem like her parents were super involved. Unless I’m missing something.

But that’s the thing, its complicated. I’m pro choice but I hated my choice, but I dont regret my choice, but I do regret it and don’t hate it- I literally can’t put it into words. Its not so black and white. And I think demonizing Yuno for maybe wanting that or harboring the same complicated feelings about her own situation is antithetical to the entire purpose of pro-choice ideology. Is her exercise of choice somehow less forgivable because she might regret her choice?

The answer should be no. To me, anyway.

I would like it if people gave Yuno the same energy that they give any other character. She is a person. She is not just a medium to express any given ideology. And give her the courtesy of trying to understand how it feels to be forgiven for something that you don’t forgive yourself for. Because it doesn’t feel good. I’m in my 20s now and still cannot forgive myself sometimes.

I’m not saying we should have voted X or Y or advocating that Yuno is some kind of monster for what she did. That’d be pretty hypocritical. I’m not unilaterally placing blame on Yuno for her actions either. I’m also not pretending we’re the same person- though the timeline conversation with Shidou where he tells her she’d be good as a healthcare professional, is alarmingly similar to something that happened to me. And that same “Haha, quit playing around,” that’s exactly what I did too. Because I hated myself too much to think it was true. And it took a lot of work to crawl out of that hole. Like, yeah, I’m a lawyer now. I have a different life. I do not require validation from sexual partners to feel joy, I understand the difference between good and bad attention. But part of me will always be partially submerged in it. I think ignorance to the reality that even something that isn’t itself immoral can have dire consequences on the actor goes unrecognized sometimes.

If someone called me a girlboss after my abortion, knowing the circumstances that gave rise to it, or not even bothering to address them, I would’ve blown my fucking brains out.

sorry yeah ive got a bad case of Thinking About My Friends. im afraid its incurable. symptoms include happiness and love and wishes that they will have the life they want to live.

# 263 Can't wait for more mr. reca! ^-^

Had to finish the painting after my tears dried :,)

Cant get over the thought that prosekai characters are easy to kin/relate to because the devs and stuff wanted to connect with us and tell us that "hey you're okay, you're not the only one who feels this and that's okay because we're here for you so here's this character that you'll relate to and eventually gets better in hopes you'll get better too" cause pjsk wants to reach out to us and stuff augh i hare you sega and colorful pallete/pos/aff

Miku and the virtual singers r the devs, Sega and cp , you're the main chars cuz miku is always wanting to reach out to them

Everyone be happy!! Remember that ichika saki shiho honami minori airi haruka Shizuku an kohane akito toya emu nene tsukasa rui mizuki ena mafuyu and kanade were made for you! :)

Final reblog

Screenshots of the final round I took to cope

Posting more so Till fans COME GET YOUR FOOD

ROUND 7/FINAL SPOILERS

TILL DIDNT DIE RIGHT???? PLS TELL ME HE LIVES