#EDIT: and part of the reason he's Like That is bc hes 13 and Repressed

[cantalooprat]

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation

What I Liked

actually good enemies to lovers even tho idt it was ever explicitly mentioned that it was enemies to lovers. but like. wangxian past dynamic of cocky hotheaded wwx n strict rule-adhering lwj n how they just...clash, bc wwx is naturally so boisterous and annoying and he just keeps bothering lwj, and how lwj was like nonsense but he??? does he like wwx???? and he just! gets so annoyed!! and when their ideologies stayed the same but their methodologies clashed and how lwj still wanted to save wwx but can't quite get it across. man, that part hurt.

ok but like im a huge sucker for the "even if the world is against you, i'll always be on your side" trope and the siege against wwx at nightless city w lwj defending him n attacking his own sect's ppl is like the epitome of that trope n im so in love oh my god. n then... how lwj recognized him as mxy n like. protected him from jc as if hes trying to make up for 13 yrs ago.

jin ling's uncle

jin ling lowkey reminds me of sun xiang n i love sun xiang

tangentially related: season 3 ending song "wuwang" is soo good, i love the lyrics, it's so tender and the imagery the lyrics paint is so beautiful and vivid

the plot is tied together so well! the cause and effect and the world wwx and lwj live in r so, so vividly described. like everything makes sense in the bigger picture, no one's fully right or wrong, everyone has reasons for behaving the way they do and they all receive the consequences, whether good or bad.

oh!! the xiao xingchen flashback!!! i think that was the first moment that rly sold me to mdzs. it was like watching a trainwreck and i mean it in the best way possible, the way one knows the ending is sad but that it's inevitable bc it's in the past, but even knowing that doesn't help the sadness.

What I Disliked

i want so badly an extra chapter dedicated to lwj. lxc mentioned how he wanted a flute with such a lost look on his face, branded himself with the same brand wwx got in the xuanwu cave incident n like. i want to read abt his emotional turmoil during that period of time. he's so emotionally repressed!! let me read more abt his feelings!!!!!

the way the story interweaved flashbacks n present events give me so much whiplash

more abt the donghua but the sheer injustice jiang cheng’s characterization faced at the end brings me so much rage

Notes

THE INCENSE BURNER TRILOGY LMAO that shit was Wild icb wwx used bichen as a dildo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i honestly dont know if its a pro or a con it was so wtf

ok i just imagine lwj eventually quietly moving on with life but like. he wont ever fall in love with anyone else. he will keep remembering wwx. n im so. idk. i just imagine stoic and icy lwj, keeping emperors smile in his room for wwx but wwx never returning. lwj and his song wangxian. lwj raising lsz as the last remnant of what wwx had dedicated himself to protect. im so. god. 

i literally went from "this wn is ok n i understand why its so popular" to "CRYING OVER WANGXIAN" (edit: now i am a jiang cheng stan)

i felt intense dugeuns rewatching the clip of wwx playing lwj's love song for him when he was subduing wn in the beginning he was walking backwards n then crashed into lwj n i was like,,, omg,,, lwj recognized him from the beginning bc of this,,,

i started mdzs expecting the emotional outcome of a regular danmei novel, and ended up a crying jiang cheng stan, and i think that says a lot abt mxtx as a writer

Quotes

He wasn't scared of falling. All these years, he'd fallen many times. But falling on the ground still hurt, after all. If someone was there to catch him, it'd be more than wonderful.

[khrmutual]

hfjhsddjd it’s so hard to pick a favorite character tbh. i love enma a lot but i also love hayato bc i feel like his character potential wasnt fully realized in canon u know??? also haru i like haru but dont like how she was always just “so quirky lolz” instead of actually having her character explored more?? ALSO. ill die mad about kyoko only being tsuna’s love interest and occasional ruined fighting deterrent smh!!!!

khr is funny bc it’s literally all wasted potential. it nudges at the important stuff before delaying and eventually forgetting about it. it never actually gets there, just alludes to it and goes back to fucking around with all the skeletons in the Vongola’s closet. 

enma and all the stuff that came w him......... if u remember that khr quiz i did sometime in the last couple weeks, this was a problem i ran up against almost immediately. amano introduced an entirely new set of flames and said “I will not elaborate<3″, thus sidelining an entire FAMILY of new and thematically important characters.

OOOGH DONT GET ME STARTED ON HARU!!!! I LOVE HER BUT HER CRUSH ON TSUNA BECAME THE ENTIRETY OF HER CHARACTER, SO MUCH SO IT GOT IN THE WAY OF HER ACTUALLY HAVING AN ARC. which lead to amano using her to develop TSUNA’S character instead. ma’am does gymnastics and is shown to be incredibly agile and strong, with a diverse range of skills.... and yet. also she’s a lightning and should have been tsuna’s lightning guardian

my hot take on the tsuna/kyoko subject: tsuna only crushed on her because she was the only person who was even remotely kind to him for a VERY long time, and with time and friends that crush should have disappeared as his idolization wanes and his number of friends grows

[nihilismdan]

hey 🖤 finished your fic last night. cried my heart and eyes out as it hit pretty hard and close to home. i wasn’t sure to tell you but i saw your last reblog tags so here we are. i lost my childhood friend 4 years ago. it was his first year at the army-living his dream- and it was my 2nd year at uni when it happened. we thought we were all good that year except he came to home unexpectedly for a week bc apparently he was dealing with crippling depression so they send him home for a quick rest +

+ + all of us was so shocked that he was going through this bc he was the strongest at our perky little group. that week that he supposed to get his mind together, never ended in our heads. we spent those few days swimming in the middle of the night and drinking and eating the foods he missed when he was at the mountains. like the old days. then that night happened that i repressed for months to remember the details of it. i made him a coffee, his last one in this fucking meaningless timeline +

+ it was really late and he said goodbye to me and my cousin( one of his best friends too) and he said he was going to straight to home, said that he was so sleepy already, i regret that i let him go that moment. he didn’t go home, we learned in the morning. he wanted to see his friend who is in town, and grab a drink, he didn’t take his car he took his motorcycle. i still hate that he chose the motorcycle. he couldn’t meet his friend, he crashed into a car on his way, no one knows how it happened +

+  i still feel guilty. i’m so angry at myself. at him. we will never know how it happened, maybe he drove into the car because he wanted to die maybe it was all a fucking meaningless accident i will never know and i feel so stupid. i was so blind i couldn’t saw his aching mind. he was in pain and we didn’t notice. we didn’t help him, save him. i never tell these to anyone, never write this down. not even in my language. sorry for this btw i just wanted to pour my heart like your dan in the story

+ (this is the last one) i never get help for my trauma. i think i never healed because of that. i don’t know you, i don’t know if you lost someone, but damn. you have emphaty. you see things and you feel them and you sew them in your stories. that amazes me. i think i’m going to get help. i’m sick of trying to heal my wounds by covering them by myself. that doesn’t help at all. i have to share my pain, my guilt, my anger. i don’t know how i keep up with life. i’m living but is this living?

i’m going to answer under readmore bc it’s long 

(tw // suicide mention)

i’m going to tell you a story about one of my friends i had when i was thirteen, she was beautiful, she wrote amazing poetry, her prose was like pretty fucking amazing given how old we were. we weren’t friends right away, but that was okay, i was pretty determined to be her friend (lol), and eventually it happened naturally, we started to tell things to each other, things were good between us. i think the reason why we were such good friends was because we knew that we could talk to each other about things that was going on in our life, she didn’t have a great family life, and her childhood friend committed suicide, everyone was kind of worried for my friend because they were afraid that she was going to commit suicide too. i tried to be there for her more–but i was only thirteen. (she was a couple years older than me), i didn’t understand what she was truly going through because there are just some things that we don’t know when it comes to the people around us–even the people that we love. it’s not our obligation to feel this way, but we can’t help it. we want to help the people that are in our lives, but depression is an ugly, ugly thing that can be hidden in plain sight. we don’t always see it, and it fucking sucks. my friend committed suicide despite having so much help and loving friends. because she had sooo many friends that loved her. but sometimes that’s just not enough. and i’m so, so sorry that you had to go through that. i think you’re incredibly strong and that guilt feeling??? its awful. because it stays with you and it leaves its mark. i felt incredibly guilty when my friend died, i had to hear that she died online when her mom posted about it. the thing was? i was camping. i didn’t have service (because i was 13 and the cell phone i did have wasn’t even really mine i just used it if i was going somewhere and my parents needed to contact me), i remember my last conversation with her was me telling her that i was going camping and that i’d see her when i got back.

i think the best thing that i can tell you is that, he knew that you loved him, and that you cared for him and always wanted the best for him. regardless of how he died and if it was intentional–i hope you find peace in knowing that he knew that. and it’s okay to feel angry about it. i was angry about it. sometimes i still get angry about it, and i get angry about what happened at my school, i get angry about the other things that have happened in my life, it’s okay to feel angry about it because it fucking sucks. it fucking sucks and it never should have happened. you’re not stupid or blind, you just didn’t know. you can’t put that on yourself. when i would talk to my therapist about my guilt she would always have to remind me, ‘its not your fault. you were not in control of that situation. and even if you were it still wouldn’t be your fault.’ and its hard to tell yourself that it wasn’t your fault. but it wasn’t. 

one of the things that helped me cope was remembering the good stuff. because so often i find myself focusing on the negative and just kind of reopening that old wound because it’s so much easier to live in the guilt and live in the hurt because in a weird way its comfort–its what you know best, but i’ve been (still) trying to remember the good things about a shitty situation. like: she was so good at poetry. she for some reason loved white polo button down shirts, she loved putting on just eyeliner and pink lipstick, she really loved pizza, her favourite kind of skirts were checkered.

and yeah–its superficial stuff about a person, but those things are what make up a person, it was part of who they were, and that’s how i try to remember her. sorry this is so long i guess i just wanted you to know that i get it, and i’m sorry that it happened, and i’m sorry that you’re living with this guilt, and i hope that you find peace with the situation–and above all find peace with yourself soon. you deserve that. thank you for telling me and if you ever want to talk more you can definitely private message me and i’ll answer. i hope you’re doing good.

Edit since i didn’t see your last message: im really glad that you’re getting help. its really hard asking for help and talking about the things that are really difficult but im proud of you. and i hope that everything works out for you. my message above still stands--if you want to talk about it more, im always available. (: have a good night/day wherever you are!

[sinfulblueberry]

Sing Sweet Seraphim

a prologue of sorts to the vague as fuck hint on what im working on that i dropped on this blog the other day, bc what else would i do when i haven’t actually studied properly in the last 3 months and it’s less than 13 hours at the time of editing this until my first exam

[a southern gothic-based fic with a hint of murder mystery]

It was an accident, Mark swears. An accident. An unfortunate incident. An unintentional incident, if a variation in words is an option. He’s not a murderer, he tells himself. He’s not a murderer, he insists, he didn’t do it with the intent of killing. He didn’t intend for anything to happen at all. He’s not a murderer.

The boy he knows from his french class had started yelling at him for being out of dorms after lights out, insisting he go back to his room or Mr Edwards would be informed of his “late night trip”. Mr Edwards always had it out for him for whatever reasons that those in teaching positions do. One more phone call home and Mark would be sent straight to a military training camp.

(What was the boy himself doing out of his dorm as well? It’s not uncommon for people to sneak out after hours, especially with the mistake of the male and female dorms being in the same building. But he’d just been in the corridor as if waiting to catch the ones that do leave their room.)

The last thing Mark remembers after that is the hushed tone he tried to coax the other student into instead of getting them both into trouble, the brief scuffle between them, and the spindly limbs that had flailed rapidly approaching the cobblestone floor below the windowless gap.

“Oh fuck,” Mark’s voice had croaked when the initial shock slithered its way from his stomach to his throat. “Oh fuck, fuck.” He’s an asshole, sometimes, but not a murderer. He’d never purposely wield a weapon against one of his fellow students, never plot their demise for any reason, never push a boy barely scraping 17 years old out a window under the watchful eye of the Lord he’s quickly losing faith in.

He feels sick when he scrambles down the stairs to the raised, short staircase outside. One of the more religious students or teachers at the school would probably wax poetic, unaffected, about the boy’s wine red blood spilling out his skull, compare it to the hard candy his mother used to buy him on a Sunday afternoon. Spill lines about how he fell with grace, if they had witnessed his fall, his murder, his execution, his slaughter, and recite a line from the Bible about the Lord leading them beyond death, calling his death beautiful beyond anything else you could bear witness upon.

Instead, he feels sick from how the blood does spill from his skull, too much of it to let the boy walk away at all. How it mats his hair into sticky, twisted strands and travels thickly onto the cobblestone stair beneath his head, to stain the faded stone. How pale he is already, due to the cold and the brunt of the fall shocking his own body, how his face is tense with an expression of pain yet relaxed with the quick release of muscles. Mark feels sick that this happened under his own hand.

There’s a constant prattle in his head as he numbly drags the body through faded dirt and grass of the unused sports field, a chant of how it’s not his fault, not his fault the boy had fallen to his own fate. How even under the eyes of God, he is forgiven. It doesn’t help the block in his throat and the weight in his stomach.

Despite being a boarding school, natural landforms like the firm ground and pristine grass shifting to a marshy waste devoid of any grass at all during the winter season were something that can’t be helped. This part of the field was only used in summer and autumn when the dirt is piled back over before winter and spring can flood it with constant downpours again. Mark feels his skin crawl when he initially thanks God for the strange tip in the land, where the soaked, slippery mud turns into a drop in on itself and into a slope, leading to a fenced area of a nearby farmer’s land. It’s unused during this time of year and people rarely risk the slip of watery earth to sneak into the field, good for hiding a mistake like this.

The body tumbles, limp and lifeless, down the slope and near the barbed fence of the separated land. It gets packed with mud, previously pristine clothes clumped with the stains of its own blood and dirt. A tense shudder is repressed when he takes a parting glance towards the slope before moving on.

The blood beginning to stain the stone is still there when Mark treks back to the dorm building. (Where would it go anyway? Would God forgive him? Would he make this mess disappear as forgiveness for this admittance of sin?) He has enough dirt on his shoes to cover the whole damn stairs, let alone the two steps the liquid had spread onto. It’s messy and doesn’t help the nausea in his throat, but at least now it’s more suspect to somebody actually wandering after lights out instead of falling from the floor above. (Groundskeepers are tasked with keeping dirt off the stone, and if blood is somehow mixed within the copper-toned mess after being scrubbed down, Mark doesn’t hear a word of it.)

The incident doesn’t slip Mark’s mind once during the next few weeks. The body is still there when he checks it every week - sometimes more than once a week at first when the paranoia and talk of the boy missing from french class is rapidly spreading - and higher authority within the school assure the boy is with his family after a close relative’s passing.

It’s painfully obvious what happened when police from a few towns over are leaving the gates of the school, painful enough that Mark’s throat clasps up when the urge to yell open admittance about how he had killed the boy, pushed him out a window, begged for forgiveness with no answer from the Lord that is ignoring his prayers for the act he had performed. He turns to listen to Tyler’s bitter musing about the missing student instead and tries to swallow down the urge to throw up.

It’s fine. The boy is assumed to have actually ran off somewhere when no body is recovered. It’s fine, nobody goes near the fence in winter, it’s fine. Then suddenly it’s not. Prime suspects gathered from student information are questioned, the slope is fenced off with pegs and rope, corridors are occasionally seen with police officers now. It’s not fine anymore, Mark’s committed murder as much as he denies it and nobody knows who the culprit is but him, only know of the body.

A week comes and goes with the bustling gossip of the investigation. Mark’s on edge almost every minute when he’s not sleeping, and even then he’s plagued with his dreams of consequences, his mother’s disappointment, the boy’s family’s tears shed over their sweet child being murdered ruthlessly by one of his fellow classmates. If Tyler notices how often he escapes to the bathroom to throw up, he doesn’t say. The guilt racks him cold and flushed with a sweat at the same time, invisible needles prickling along his skin and meagre tears slipping down his cheeks when his throat burns and he tastes the bitter acidic remnants in his mouth.

He doesn’t know why they can’t just take the body already and help keep it from racking his thoughts. Surely that’s asking for the guilt of God to be pushed upon their shoulders for not paying proper respect to the dead. (He tries not to think too much about that reasoning.) But investigations are investigations and only the priest from the school chapel has the nerve to speak against leaving the body in the dirt for the wildlife.

Mark’s never felt worse for wear in the whole 17 years of existence and it only got worse - until the constant titters about the boy from french die down to hushed whispers. It was getting better. Forgiveness still wasn’t there, but he felt less queasy when anything but water passes his lips. He could sleep easier and lived without Tyler asking if he’s okay when morning comes.

It’s just getting better and the guilt is finally wearing away from the front of his mind when the uproar of the missing boy is brought back among the students again. The urge to throw up there and then at the breakfast table they’re sat at is becoming more and more of an urgency.

The body was reported missing from the scene at the early hours of that morning, and it’s certainly not like the boy can up and walk out of the situation, as if he can walk at all, can breathe at all, can only lay there in the mud, caked in dried dirt and blood and-so Mark tries not to think about the new information at hand and instead focuses on actually swallowing the mouthful of grainy porridge that sufficing as his breakfast.