#3 whole sentences

[unreachedgalaxy]

some anastasia the first for your tl today. i have always thought anastasia's was the first tongue to be sewn and her jaw-only facepaint is why the ninth house skull is jawless. anyway can't wait for alecto the ninth to release and prove me wildly incorrect

[zephyrchama]

You're in your room in the House of Lamentation, held down by the Avatar of Lust. He's got you secured in place just the way he wants you - back against the bed, face up towards the ceiling, eyes closed for the moment. He sits on your stomach with a brush in hand. Two heavy pouches are on your chest containing everything from basic moisturizer to specialized lip oils in a rainbow of colors.

"Just going to blend this a bit here," Asmodeus murmurs to himself. He adds another layer of eye shadow while returning to his story, recounting the time he watched a Little D try to rob a pastry shop. Absolutely hilarious, it was like a comedy sketch. You feel the gentle yet purposeful dab of the brush tugging at your skin and wonder if Asmodeus can see you blushing under the foundation he applied.

Every couple of minutes, he rakes his nails over your head as if moving hair aside. Powder is sprinkled on your face, making your nose tickle. You twitch and sniffle.

"Ah-ah! Patience!" he chides. The weight on your stomach shifts and the offending dust is blown off by a warm gust of Asmodeus' breath. It smells like berries. The sensation lingers on your mind more than the setting powder.

"Just leave everything to me. Your eyes are done now, so... Part your lips a little?"

His thumb is already on your lower lip, the rest of his fingers cupping your chin. You hear the clinking of glass as he roots around for something in the makeup bag. His pinky finger taps against your neck to the unmistakable rhythm of his favorite song. "That's my dear. Juuust like that."

His story now done, Asmodeus moves on to talking about his plans for the rest of the week. He's expecting a package from a new brand deal that's already been delayed twice and the company refuses to apologize. "Can you believe that?"

Your lips are wet and sticky from a fresh coat of... something artificially sweet. You don't respond, but his question was rhetorical anyway. On a whim, you flutter your eyes open. Asmodeus is leaning over you like a master craftsman lost in the trance of work. He's so close that the ceiling is totally obscured and you can almost make out your reflection in his pupils. It takes until he finishes swabbing something on your philtrum to notice that you're focused his way.

The instant he meets your gaze is obvious. He cracks a stunning smile, his face softens. He sets his tools aside, lining them up next to you. You feel his legs tighten around your ribs and he chokes back a giggle.

"Aah! I can't take this. You're so kissable, but that'd ruin all the work I just did! You're a sinful human, you know that?"

Asmodeus seems to be mulling over something in his head, but the way you smirk in response sends him over the edge. His lips are meeting yours. His palm hoists up the back of your head so he can make more skin contact without smearing your cheeks. The bags in his way prevent him from going overboard, but there's pressure on your chest as he pushes down to see just how far he can go.

With a final "mmph," he pulls away so you can breathe again, taking pleasure in the way your body moves to gasp down air. You wonder exactly what he's painting on your face, as his lips are a bright pink reminiscent of his sin color.

"There! Now we match."

[spider-whoo]

YOU’RE TELLING ME AUNT MAY DIDN’T RECOGNIZE SPIDER-MAN’S VOICE AS PETER’S KMS

either option 1 (silly) Peter makes his voice deeper while he’s spider-man or option 2 (devastating) Peter has become irrecognizable to the person who raised him.

[shaunashipman]

I've just had the best thought. so tommy arrives having saved chimney, buck kisses him, most ppl are too focused on chimney and Maddie, but the buckley parents see, and you know they're trying!! they really are!! so later on, buck's off helping maddie with something and the buckley's see tommy standing off to the side and go introduce themselves, cause they're understanding!! it's been a hectic day, buck would have obviously introduced them immediately if things had gone to plan. and then during the conversation tommy just innocently says "I'm really glad evan invited me" or something, and the buckley's are trying dammit!! so margaret just gently goes "oh he doesn't like being called evan, he prefers buck" and now tommy's confused, he knows everyone else calls him buck, but evan never corrected him, never made it seem like he had a problem with it.

then buck sees them and rushes over to save tommy, and since tommy obvs likes directness and besides he got the impression from eddie earlier that evan doesn't have the best relationship with his parents, he just says "hey evan" and the buckley's wait for buck to correct him and he doesn't! he just smiles and ducks his head and makes some proper introductions and the buckley's have to stand there and deal with the fact that this man who's known buck for 2 months is allowed to call him evan when they, the people that gave him the name! aren't allowed to

[see-arcane]

Having just finally listened to the new The Magnus Protocol and getting introduced to Needles the 'What Do You MEAN I'm Not Scary Enough!?' Avatar of Sharp Poking, I have to say right now that I know in my heart of hearts that he must have so many terrible nicknames among the other avatars

"Hey, Pinhead, how goes the phone spam?" <- stings because originally he chose 'Pinhead' on purpose to reference Hellraiser, but absolutely no one got it until he spelled it out and by then the name was ruined

"What's up, Prick?" <- lowest effort, but still goads him into raising a single massive darning needle middle finger in response

"Kebab, can you hold onto this for me?" <- said before having assorted foods speared on him; fruits, sausage, cheeses, etc. Takes forever to pluck everything off. Even worse when someone just ambushes him with a down comforter and pillows

"This you?" <- no name involved, but always a prelude before being shown a picture of a porcupine

Just. There is no way this faintly jingling pile of pointy things has any respect among the rest of the bogeymen in this universe. I love it

[stuckinapril]

i think i officially set my sights on a therapist and i'll be contacting her very soon?? therapy was legitimately not on my 2024 bingo card (or in the cards for me at all) but here we are????

[notbecauseofvictories]

I think it's fascinating how in The Bear, these are people with jobs, doing a job, as adults and professionals; not a single one of them goes on a long monologue about their feelings except for Carmy at the very end (not even with his coworkers! in his support group!) after you've basically pieced together what he's about to tell you.

everybody else just handles their shit, and addresses it slantwise if at all (eg, Tina shows off her new professionalism to Ritchie and Carmy, not Syd; Ritchie talks about Ceres and the Chicago Board of Trade rather than the way his world is passing away.) As much as I love actors getting a chance to fucking gnaw on some scenery, there's something about the obliqueness of it all that strikes me deeper.

[searchingforserendipity25]

emperor covered in linens

lan wangji has been searching for his brother for three months, long enough to lose his faith half a dozen times, if lan wangji were someone who lost his faith.

lan xichen returns to cloud recesses stumbling, staggering up the mountain. the guards on duty before the feeble new wards barely recognize him, at first.

lan xichen returns - bruises beneath the eyes, startlingly thin, and without a golden core.

the first gentlemen of the cultivation world, the first in generations to challenge wen ruohan's goal to cultivate to immortality: of course wen ruohan had sent his son wen chao with the core-crushing hand to hunt him down, bring him down from the arrogant heights of power and admiration the lans sought to achieve. to diminish him, the better to humiliate the lan sect, and all their possible allies.

lan xichen kneels before the elders and apologizes for losing the treasured books of the lan sect, and all the effort put into his abilities.

he is, lan wangji thinks, hollowed out in a very true sense. an empty house of a man, and empty face with two coal-bright eyes, staring up at the elders, at lan qiren, at lan wangji. it hurts, hurts to look at him.

there is naturally no longer a place for him at the head of the sect: lan wangji must succeed him, under their uncle's guidance. lan xichen apologizes to all their ancestors. lan xichen requests to be permitted to dwell in seclusion, and not bring greater shame to their people.

he apologizes to lan wangji, too. bows lower than he ever has to his younger brother, for altering his life so sharply, failing to protect him as he had always striven to.

"brother should not bow," lan wangji says. he holds his brother's arms in both hands, presses his tongue against his teeth to avoid biting out something too sharp about their lightness, the narrow slant of bones beneath the light seclusion robes.

"there is no need for bowing, between brother," lan wangji says: and lan xichen, zewu-jun, the first gentleman of the cultivation world, lays his head on his brother's shoulder, very silently. makes heavy with salt lan wangji's brocade robes, and shakes, horribly.

there is nowhere in him lan wangji can lay a gentle hand without causing him pain; he feels sick, sick with it, all the comfort he does not like to give and would burn nightless city whole to be able to offer now.

something hardens, grows terrible and dire as steel, all through the next days and months, watching how the grass on the way to the hanshi remains untrodden but for his feet most of the day.

the lan sect, so proud of its first jade, so quick to beat and whip and punish him from first childhood into his immaculate manners, his faultless talents: they turn their back on him so quickly.

cloud recesses is burned, barely standing; all hands are needed, and his uncle chides him often for spending too long with his brother, in a room that ought to belong to the sect leader, and which lan wangji refuses to occupy. lan xichen will not be moved from the hanshi to the infirmary, will not be exiled from his house, the one he decorated with such care for feng shui of on his fifteenth year.

lan wangji does not know how to ask, how to question: but he knows the sect principles, and all the disciplines that call for some better righteousness than this.

if the healers are not inclined to continue their care strigently, then lan wangji will do it himself. brings his brother salves and pills, plays healing songs until the ache in his muscles eases, his fever lowers, his weeping eases.

lan wangji does his sect heir duties, which are more plentiful, and less suitable to his temperament; and then he does what he can, every day. brings his brother ink from the place in caiyi he favours, and tea. brings music and company, and sits with him on the steps to the garden their father planted, when lan xichen cannot lift liebing from his lap to his lips, cannot bear to produce beauty without usefulness.

there are wounds on lan xichen that take so much longer to heal than they ever had before.

lan xichen does not know how to move inside his skin, how to account for the long healing of broken bones. he is too ashamed to ask for help from anyone, to heal anew the injuries he opens again: lan wangji has to insist. it is not a burden. brother is not a burden.

he does not know how to ask - only learns how to walk a little louder, and more more slowly, so lan xichen will not startle. it is not hard, only different. they have always been careful with each other. they hace always been gentle - lan xichen taught him how, at least.

lan xichen is all out of gentleness for himself, now. he strives to meditate, shaking with pain to attempt to be upright; tries to punish himself for the weakness of the body he cannot escape.

it frightens lan wangji, in a more concrete and visceral way than his disappearance had. he does not know how to do this. he does not know -

lan wangji does not ask how his brother escaped the wen's custody. what they did to him. for how long; how badly. when he was questioned, lan xichen spoke of an abetter, a conspirator; but would name no one, refused that if nothing else to the elders.

lan wangji's brother bleeds, bleeds through his linens. it was a magical sword that struck him, many times: his leg is brother, his back. his sword arm is broken, and was to be cut; wen chao had meant to do it just before he presented him as a spoil of victory wen ruohan's throne room, as a filial gift.

wen chao had meant for the limb to be fresh, without need for conservation talismans; for the smell of blood to be that much more vivid. it was, wen chao told lan xichen many times, his father's favourite fragrance.

lan wangji knows these things, now. learns them through many long vigils. his brother speaks without being asked, without clarity, on nights when the pain sweeps through him without reprieve, and none of lan wangji's exemplary musical cultivation can seep through his ruined meridians to bring some reprieve to his fever.

wei ying, he thinks, a dozen and a hundred times. helpless, helplessly swallowing back tears, anger, tears again. wei ying, wherever you are, please live. please be well. do not leave the world, be safe.

a hundred and dozen times he nearly writes to lotus pier. lan xichen's condition has been determined to be a sect secret; lan wangji puts brush to paper, lets it blot out the empty space where his words do not exist.

a summons comes, the threat implicit in every character, the mocking derision mortifyingly clear. lan wangji is to attend a gathering of young cultivators in nightless city: wen ruohan kindly excuses his older brother from attending, being as he is no longer one such.

lan wangji burns it with a flare of barely restrained spiritual power. even lan quiren cannot scold him for it with any conviction.

"i shall tell brother," lan wangji says, and leaves before barely excusing himself. all things considered, he does not think he will be punishing himself very badly for his lack of courtesy.

it is early enough to find his brother steeping his first tea of the day.

the order has been for a screen to be raised in front of the hanshi's door, for discretion, to keep out the cold air from his sick lungs, to keep out stray eyes to his unsightly form. wangji can see him, very clearly, in the first light of the day, uncurling a hidden scroll from the bottom of his kettle, where a cluster of leaves has opened with the heat to reveal a rare blossom.

do not sow discord. do not say one thing and mean another. do not break faith and abandon right.

lan wangji hesitates. his feet over the cool grass grow damp before he walks to the other side of the screen.

the message his brother is holding up to the light would be indecipherable to him, even if the papers were not stained by tea and enchanted to confuse the eyes of those it is not written for. he can read the quick, keen light in his brother's eyes much more easily.

"i will miss you, wangji," lan xichen says, very softly. "please take care. please keep well. we shall see each other soon."

lan wangji does not ask how his brother knows of the summons. he has not asked, very carefully.

he does not ask now, either. his brother had been made into the image of benevolence, which is to say wisdom, which is to say he acts only deliberately, from a distance, a height, with a careful image of effortlessness.

the best leader, the principles agree, ought not to act, to act only as if he were doing nothing at all, unperceived. lan wangji has not done well, in becoming his brother's successor. it is very, very difficult. his brother had been an excellent cultivator, a great gentleman.

lan xichen lifts his face to him. it is early, the early hour lan wangji has carved out of his horrible schedule to visit his brother in the morning; the sky over the mountain is charchoal-dark, smudged, loose around the edges.

cloud recesses is burned, repairing itself slowly, warily waiting another attack. no other sect has reached out to them to offer aid; they have not asked for it, not permitted it.

it would only cause them to be targets to the wen's violence, all the quicker. nonetheless, the nie have written. addressed their letters to zewu-jun, all of them; lan wangji has been glad, selfishly glad, for the excuse to force the world a little further inside the hanshi, lest his brother truly close his doors to it without regret.

lan wangji ought, perhaps, not have worried. this house, that was once his father's, has been his brother's since he was fifteen.

zewu-jun looks up. smiles his flower-blooming smile at him. for the first time in months, a faltering thing, achingly slow beneath the whip marks marring the lovely lines of his cheeks - but it is a kindness lan xichen can give them both.

and lan xichen has always done best with some kindness to give. lan xichen has always been lan wangji's older brother, the one who apologized for failing to be able to protect him, broken fingers gripping tightly at lan wangji's robes.

he has no spiritual energy to burn his spy report, but there is an incense burner at the ready beside his teacup.

the smell of the sodden paper burning is thick in the air, a little cloying, ink-dark. they sit down together, the twin jades of lan, letting the tea grow cold to watch the steam rise over their heads.

something eases in lan wangji's shoulders. he breathes in, a little easier.

"i will take care," he says. his heart, pressing against his throat, is immense and alive with pride, a burning faith. in this, if nothing else; in him, if no one else. "wangji promises."

he bows low, on his way out. a vassal to their sect leader, a filial brother to his elder. lan xichen taps him lightly with the side of his crutches, lifts him up, gives him his blessings.

wen ruohan's deputy cuts his arm off, before killing him. lan wangji wraps it carefully, to send to gusu, the very night of victory.

[c-kiddo]

finished ep86 and 87 in my cr2 rewatch and tbh some of the best episodes in the show. so cinematic. yasha's back . so many good cathartic story moments. also them entering the hall with king dwendal is so tense and cinematic too , besides the cathedral . like its so crazy . so legendary

[jesse-pinko]

“Andrea couldn’t have survived bc of the running theme in the show of deconstructing the brodude crime genre through devastating fallout” “Andrea couldn’t have survived bc Jesse taking her and Brock to Alaska w him would have been too saccharine” first of all idc nothing excuses the show treating their only woc character that way and second of all BET okay so after Jesse gets busted from the compound he either immediately goes to Andrea’s house to make sure her and Brock are actually okay or he goes to Skinny and Badger’s like in El Camino bc Jack making explicitly detailed threats against her and Brock to keep him in line made him realize exactly how little protection he could actually offer them, but she shows anyways either bc she saw the news and knows who his friends are or bc Skinny and Badger called her. She offers for her and Brock to come with him to Alaska, so they could be a family again, bc the foundation of their relationship (they have one onscreen in this au) is a desperate, scrabbling longing for a functioning family. She is either estranged from her parents or they are dead, her little brother is dead, she thought she’d finally gotten her storybook ending with Brock’s father, but that didn’t work out, to put it mildly. She knows Jesse isn’t a bad guy, because she knows a thing or two about bad guys. None of them ever treated her so well.

So Jesse tells her about Tomás. He tells her, like Walt telling him about Jane, that he is responsible for the death of someone she loved. But unlike Walter, he doesn’t tell her this to make her feel helpless against him or to decide her fate for her, but to give her the freedom to make an informed choice. And she rejects him, because that was her brother. She rejects him and she tells him that, unlike Tomás, he’d always had a choice, he didn’t have to end up here, he could have gotten clean and landed on his feet because he was never eleven years old trying to make ends meet for his family, was he. He accepts this and her rejection with grace instead of trying to reel her back in. But she lets Brock hug him goodbye and give him the drawings he’d been making for him all those months apart, and when she hugs him goodbye at Brock’s prompting it doesn’t feel forced at all and he cries because he hasn’t been hugged like that in he can’t remember when, and she watches him limp his way back to the car as though trying to make sure he gets in safely.

[pup-pee]

im kinda just curious--i have 2 middle names myself((4 literally NO reason))

[capybapybara]

Artists rendition of the Presidential debate

[concordewillfly]

just shaped up my shag and it turned out sooo cute... i still think hairdressers are a sham. she might be a little uneven but shes beautiful

[everyoneonthenormandyisgay]

James who knows Shepard is Commander Shepard but doesn't really know what that means yet "so uh how do y'all know so much about Galaxy relations between species?"

Garrus and Shepard who sat through Wrex's weekly power points on the genophage and why every race in the galaxy (including the krogan) sucks ass "oh y'know just been around I guess"

[figofswords]

anybody remember the stephanie brown essay I was working on under a research grant fully last summer? yeah it’s not done yet it super needs to be done and I’ve been avoiding working on it for weeks. someone tell me to just do it already

[hourcat]

piarles + bow!! for me!! 🎀

It's never been weird between them, Pierre swears, not once: they've been friends since they were small, growing up together on the same street, playing in the same parks as they'd agreed to be paleontologists or astronauts or footballers, and it'd never mattered once to him that Charles was a girl in all that time--even when they'd gotten shipped off to different high schools across town, it hadn't changed their relationship.

But now...now, as Pierre stands out in front of Charles' house waiting with his shitty Honda parked out front, all but trembling in this oddly-tailored suit for prom, he thinks the line of weird may have finally been crossed after all these years.

It's finally been crossed because Charles in her dress looks beautiful--not covered in dirt or wearing ragged clothes she'd stolen from her older brother, or even in her usual baggy jeans look, but really elegant in a way that Pierre had never even imagined her in before; red fabric that has to be satin spilling down her legs, tapering off at her ankles, a bunched up flower nestled in the perfect center of her chest. Her hair is curled intentionally and not just from humidity--ringlets spilling over her shoulders, a stunning red bow peeking out from behind her head to tie some of it back, and oh.

"What are you looking at," she deadpans, but her mouth is curved up in that usual smirk she gives him, and Pierre realizes that her lipstick matches her dress; he clutches the corsage case tighter and shakes his head, trying to play it off, but it's no use--she's caught him red-handed as she starts making her way towards the car, and when her smirk stretches into a full-on grin, he knows he's doomed.