#I think he's been grieving for years and has rationalized it to himself

[rejectedfables]

I think often about Jin Guangyao’s “[I murdered] my father, my (older) brother, my wife, my son, my teacher, my friend” quote. I think about how Jin Guangyao, a man known for self effacing politeness to the point of taking blame and shame onto himself to alleviate the tempers of others, in this moment takes complete responsibility for "murders” that he absolutely did not commit. And I think about how the audience both in the story and outside it, take his words at face value.  

I think there are multiple ways of interpreting who this quote is about. Obviously Father = Jin Guangshan, Wife = Qin Su, Son = Jin Rusong, those are clear. I think (older) Brother could either be Nie Mingjue or Jin Zixuan. I think "teacher” could be Wen Rouhan or Nie Mingjue. Friend could be Nie Mingjue, Su Minshan, or Xue Yang.

So I think the ONLY options for [brother, teacher, friend] (in that order) are: 

NMJ, WRH, and SMS

NMJ, WRH, and XY

JZX, NMJ, and SMS

JZX, NMJ, and XY

JZX, WRH, and NMJ

JZX, WRH, and SMS

JZX, WRH, and XY

I also saw a translation where he said “friends” plural, which would reduce the list to:

NMJ, WRH, XY and SMS

JZX, NMJ, XY and SMS

JZX, WRH, SMS and NMJ

JZX, WRH, XY and NMJ

JZX, WRH, XY and SMS

However, given the importance of his relationship with NMJ, I feel like we can safely eliminate any that exclude NMJ entirely. Similarly, there cannot be characters mentioned here who are unnamed or unknown to the reader, as that wouldn’t make any Doylist sense. We are left with a list that consists of Nie Mingjue, either WRH or JZX or both, and possibly XY and/or SMS. 

Regardless of which of those combinations you use, he did not directly OR EVEN DELIBERATELY murder everyone on that list. Let’s go through them:

Jin Guangshan: Yes, he deliberately ordered and orchestrated his father’s death. Outstanding, earned, poetic, no notes. (Okay maybe SOME notes, but like, listen. Listen.) 

Qin Su: Qin Su killed herself. In the animation, Jin Guangyao used the skull-piercing nails to force her suicide, but this is not canon to the novel. Bicao claims that Jin Guangyao must have killed her to silence her, despite her suicide having many witnesses (including us! the readers!), but Wei Wuxian (who WAS THERE) speculates that she couldn’t handle the reality of her marriage, as illuminated to her BY Bicao, or the prospect of societal shame if it got out. However, even IF “your actions drove her to suicide” were the rubric here, that’s still not quite the same as “you murdered her”, nor does it seem to be the outcome he was hoping or planning for. “JGY murdered her” is factually inaccurate, and a blatant propaganda tactic being used against him-- but perhaps it felt emotionally true to HIM because he’s grieving his DEAD WIFE and he FEELS responsible.

Nie Mingjue: JGY spent something like 5+ years suffering physical and verbal abuse and explicit threats of death by Nie Mingjue, then was tasked with killing Nie Mingjue by his father. He did so in a sneaky way, so as to not endanger himself further or get punished for (or perhaps cause an inter-sect conflict/war by) killing the leader of a rival sect.

Wen Rouhan: JGY stabbed him in all adaptations, A+, war hero.

Jin Zixuan: JGY, on his father’s orders, orchestrated a situation that led to Jin Zixuan’s death. We cannot know for SURE that JGY wasn’t aiming for his death but we CAN say that “Wei Wuxian accidentally compelling Wen Ning to kill the ONE GUY PRESENT Wei Wuxian did NOT want to kill” (OR “WN killing JZX of his own accord against WWX’s orders”) would have been a weird bet to make. This seems highly unlikely to have been JGY’s goal, but it was certainly caused by a situation he created. He also did not actually literally kill the guy.

Su Minshan: Su She died to protect Jin Guangyao from Nie Mingjue’s fierce corpse. Jin Guangyao is only “responsible” for this in the vaguest or terms and worst faith of interpretations. Technically Su She wouldn’t have died there if not for JGY on multiple levels (wouldn’t have had to protect him, NMJ’s fierce corpse being JGY’s fault, wouldn’t have been present at all if JGY hadn’t summoned him there, etc.), but if Jin Guangyao describes this as “I murdered him” that’s... a stretch. Again, like with Qin Su, this feels like something he might say because he FEELS responsible, rather than because he actually is.

Xue Yang: JGY ordered Xue Yang’s execution (or possibly ordered a fake execution, but this seems less likely) directly before he fled, injured, to Yi City. He did not die here. Later, after reconnecting and while still following Jin Guangyao’s orders, Xue Yang was killed by other people in opposition to Jin Guangyao’s wishes and plans. Again, TECHNICALLY Xue Yang would not have died when he did were it not for Jin Guangyao, but describing it as “Jin Guangyao murdered him” is QUITE a stretch. Due to the title of the “Villainous Friends” extra, which is about JGY and XY specifically, XY seems the most likely candidate to me for “Friend” in this quote, which is bizarre because I think his death is actually the LEAST connected to Jin Guangyao. Jin Guangyao wasn’t even present, nor did Xue Yang die FOR Jin Guangyao-- just on his payroll. BUT perhaps he still felt guilty for ORDERING his execution, and simply his willingness to HAVE Xue Yang killed counted enough to make the list.

I’ll get to the last one, but I’m pausing here to say: What all of this means is that no matter who is or isn’t on that list, it is NOT an objective list of factual murders. It is a list of people who’s deaths Jin Guangyao FEELS RESPONSIBLE FOR.

Even before we get to who counts as teacher, brother, or friend, even JUST his wife solidifies this. But it isn’t JUST her either-- even if we cut SMS and XY (the other two BIG stretch candidates) from the equation, that leaves us ONLY with NMJ(friend), WRH(teacher), and JZX(brother). And Jin Zixuan is the other one that really should not make the list of people JGY “murdered”.

This is a list of people who’s deaths Jin Guangyao FEELS RESPONSIBLE FOR.

Which brings us to the last one:

Jin Rusong: The quote (I believe this is a fan translation, but not sure) "One of the opposing sect leaders lost the arguments [about the watchtowers], and went into a murderous rage, killing Jin Guangyao and Qin Su’s only son. The boy had always been a good child and the couple had loved him dearly. Under resentment, Jin Guangyao tore down the entire sect in revenge” is, to my knowledge/memory, the only real account we’re given of what happened. “Lost the arguments and went into a murderous rage” doesn’t sound like the child was found dead some time later, and they had to investigate. It sounds like it happened in public, with witnesses, immediately. 

In the same scene where Bicao convinces an audience that Qin Su, who famously killed herself on screen in a room full of people with a (now) known motive for suicide, “must have” been murdered by Jin Guangyao-- in that same scene others speculate that Jin Rusong, who was famously killed by a political opponent in a “murderous rage” most likely DURING A CONFERENCE, “must have” been murdered by Jin Guangyao. 

I think "I angered an opposing sect leader so much that he killed my son" being translated by JGY into "I killed my son" is EXACTLY IN LINE with the rest of his list. How is that different than "I ordered Xue Yang's assassination, and later put him in a situation that caused others to kill him" being translated to "I killed my friend"? Or “Su She died to protect me” being translated to “I killed my friend”? Or “I didn’t anticipate my brother’s unwitting involvement in a covert operation would get him accidentally killed, which no one wanted, not even the guy who did it” being translated to “I killed my brother”? Or “I tried to protect my pregnant fiancé/wife from a horrible secret I only just learned, which would ruin her life, and when someone confronted her with it TO HARM ME she couldn’t live with it and killed herself” being translated to “I killed my wife”? It’s the same!

I do not believe that Jin Guangyao killed Jin Rusong. I believe “I murdered my son” is an example of the way that Jin Guangyao speaks about himself-- always taking the maximum responsibility onto his own shoulders. If he was in any way responsible, than he was completely responsible. If he FEELS responsible, then he MAY AS WELL have murdered them.

The context of when he says this quote also matters towards how we interpret it’s meaning. He was already attempting to flee the country, aware that the cultivation world was actively turning on him for crimes that he did AND DIDN’T commit. He was surrounded by people he thought cared about him, all of whom seemed determined to stop him from achieving a safe exit. He had had all the horrible things he felt responsible for (regardless of how directly or deliberately he was involved in those events) thrown in his face by said loved ones, while they looked at him with horror. Su Minshan had just been killed trying to PROTECT HIM, and now it looked like it had been for nothing anyway. Huaisang, who he is shown as doting upon throughout their decades long relationship, has just manipulated Lan Xichen (do I even have to go into how important Lan Xichen is to him? Please say no, please say this much at LEAST is universally understood) into BEING THE ONE to STAB HIM. 

In this moment, he believes that he’s going to die, and be reviled in death by society and his loved ones alike. He knows there’s nothing left he can say or do, he hasn’t had time to process Su She’s death, and Lan Xichen has JUST (accidentally) betrayed him (which he also hasn’t had time to process). 

And also, notably, he had very recently been IN POSSESSION of the TIGER TALLY. 

AND HE’S BEEN STABBED! To my memory this scene happens while he’s missing an arm and LAN XICHEN’S sword is still INSIDE HIS GUTS. His emotions and reasoning are probably NOT the most calm or rational right now (blood loss, pain, fear, grief, influence of the tiger tally, etc.), and this “confession” should be taken with that in mind. 

I just think a lot about how “I murdered [everyone I’ve loved except for you]” is such a raw and telling line, given the context. Even if it’s more like “I murdered [everyone I’ve owed devotion to except for you]”, that’s still so painful. He blames himself for all of it. All of it! The world celebrated Wen Rouhan’s death, but Jin Guangyao added it to his personal list. Jin Guangshan is arguably the most reprehensible character in the entire story, and ruined every part of Jin Guangyao’s entire life, but he’s on the list. He did everything in his power to protect Qin Su, and when she found out the truth he continued offering her ways he could protect her, but she chose to kill herself, and she’s on the list. He tried to improve the world with the watchtowers, and someone retaliated by murdering his son, and he claimed responsibility for that too.

He knew he was being blamed for their deaths, knew it was propaganda and slander and bad faith, but he blamed himself too. So he just... accepted it. I did it. It was me, I murdered them.

And so, so, so many people, in his world and in ours, were so, so eager to agree

[kess-in-the-perthchimzone]

In defense of Kang

Deep breath. I know it probably won’t help if you already hated him but I’m going to tackle it.

This line is horrible. It’s inexcusable. I am writing this also still angry at Kang.

But Kang does not truly mean this. He is deeply grieving. Call it bargaining, call it anger, I don’t know exactly what stage this is, but he is not thinking rationally.

He’s already in this episode been reminded of his mom whose death fundamentally changed him as a person — left him hopeless for many years. Now, when he’s finally thought he might be able to connect with his dad again, he’s been told his dad may never wake up.

He’s also broken up with his boyfriend who he loves deeply, who he just slept with for the very first time, who he bases a significant portion of his self esteem on. I fully recognize this is on his initiative— he is the one who told Sailom to go — but Sailom didn’t fight for them either. He walked away, he didn’t knock on the door. I say this not to justify Kang’s actions but to explain how easily in his low state this can warp — Sailom never needed me the way I do him, look how simple it was for him to pack up and go, look how he hasn’t tried to get in touch even once.

Kang in part has to embrace the narrative that Sailom was never fully invested in their relationship for his own mental stability. Because we see later that the moment he admits to himself the truth of what he did to Sailom by throwing him out, he completely breaks. He can’t handle knowing he did something so horrible to the person he cares about most in the world. He’s saying those awful things to Grandma Ging to keep himself from drowning.

She is saying “what if Saifah is innocent?”. He is at his very core saying, Saifah can’t be innocent because then I threw Sailom out over nothing.

It doesn’t help that usually Kang regulates his emotions WITH SAILOM. He had become ‘dangerously’ (no pun intended) dependent on Sailom and is now spiraling without him there.

No matter what Kang says aloud, at the end of the day, he answered this call. And he came to rescue Sailom.

He starts crying here first. He is sobbing so hard he is shaking because he knows he was wrong. He knows he hurt Sailom. He knows he was just as cruel if not more so than the debtors.

He is a 17 year old boy who is struggling with a traumatic event and the fear of becoming an orphan. He handles it in the worst possible way, by pushing away the person best positioned to help him, but that is grief. It never manifests the way it should.

It’s covered up by the music, but I’m very certain in that room that he is whispering things like “I’m sorry” and “I love you” to Sailom over and over again.

He made mistakes but he knows he made them. He was wounded and lashed out in protection, and now he has two episodes to make up for it.

[clusterbuck]

leaning against them & hugging them from behind (they go hand in hand) <3

buck is numb as he unlocks the door. his hands shake, so much it takes him three tries to fit the key into the lock, and he has to pause and take a deep breath before he can turn it and pull the door open.

you just have to get inside, he tells himself. open the door, go inside, take your shoes off and put your stuff down, find eddie. that’s all you have to do.

he spends another few moments staring at the door before he makes it inside.

the house is quiet, the way it so often is when christopher is off somewhere with friends. the lights in the living room are off, but there’s a soft glow and the faint echo of music drifting from the kitchen. buck doesn’t turn on the living room light, just leaves his bag and shoes by the door and shuffles through the dim room until he gets to the kitchen.

eddie’s standing at the stove, humming to the music as he stirs something on the stove. he hasn’t looked up, yet, like maybe the music is just loud enough that he hadn’t heard the door. buck doesn’t say anything, just crosses the room until he reaches eddie, pressing his chest against eddie’s back and wrapping his arms around eddie’s waist.

“hey,” eddie says, leaning his cheek against buck’s. he doesn’t has how buck is; they both know where he’s been. “how bad?” he asks instead, and buck sighs and rests his chin on eddie’s shoulder and concentrates on the feeling of eddie’s five o’clock shadow against his cheek, of eddie’s pulse thrumming strong under his skin. his arms tighten around eddie’s waist, and eddie covers his hands with one of his.

“bad,” buck mumbles. “she’s—eddie, i think my mom is going to die.”

eddie turns off the stove and turns around, gathering buck into his arms. “baby, i’m so sorry,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to buck’s cheek.

“it’s—i don’t—” buck starts, sighing. eddie’s hand traces soothing patterns along his back, the other holding him close. “it doesn’t make sense,” buck finally mutters. “why i’m—we were never close. she never—why do i feel like this?”

“she’s your mom,” eddie says. “and she’s dying. that changes things.”

“i barely even talk to her,” buck says around the lump building in his throat. “maybe once a year. it shouldn’t—it’s not like things are going to change.”

“maybe not,” eddie says. “but if she’s dead, there’s also no hope of them changing for the better. maybe that’s what you’re grieving.”

“that’s stupid,” buck mutters. eddie inclines his head as if in question, and buck huffs. “not you. just—she’s been like this my whole life, it’s not like she was just suddenly going to change.”

eddie hums, the sound a comforting vibration reverberating through his ribcage and into buck’s. “and human emotions, famously, are extremely rational.”

buck laughs out loud, then, and pokes eddie in the ribs. “shut up.”

eddie pulls back to look at him, settling a hand on his cheek. buck leans into the contact.

“i’m here for you,” eddie says, leaning in for a kiss. it’s soft, gentle and quiet, well-worn and familiar like an old favourite t-shirt. “whatever you need, rational or not. i love you.”

buck sighs, pressing a kiss to eddie’s mouth, his cheek. “i don’t know what i need,” he murmurs, leaning in close, pulling eddie against him. “but i love you, too.”

snugglebug prompts 🐞

[mayawakening]

I can't and You're finally home for the WIP game pretty please ✨

Okay, so 'You're Finally Home' has been haunting me for months, involves Major Character Death. Basically, Zeb went out on a personal mission YEARS ago and lost contact with everyone. Kallus spends every day relentlessly searching for any trace of him, and finally find whats left of him. Theme of the story is grieving and closure. I'm literally crying just thinking about it.

-Kallus didn't know what to feel when he saw them, a swirl of grief and anger. Numbness that shook his hollow soul. And yet, as he cradled the fanged skull, tears streaming unwanted, but needed, he had only one unbelieving thought. 'I /found/ you.' A startling crash of relief flooded him. 'After all this time, you're finally home.'--

-----------

'I Can't', basically Kallus has spent the vast majority of his Imperial life barely eating real food, opting for nutrient paste and ration bars (which is encouraged by the Empire) for the sake of efficiency and convenience.

When he sits down with the Ghost crew for a celebration dinner and is confronted with a mountain of real food, he just feels nauseous.

Ezra, having grown up with food scarcity, clocks in on his problem immediately and gets the rest of the family to help ease him into real food so he doesn't make himself sick. Lots of Kallus and Ezra bonding.

--- Ezra's eyes widened with sudden understanding.

"You can't eat."

Kallus grimaced, "It LOOKS fantastic, I should be grateful. I don't want it to go to waste."

"That's not the problem though, you can't eat, like your body won't let you."

"I can't." He sounded defeated.--

[1shirt2shirtredshirtdeadshirt]

For Jim

“We are all hostages to what we love. The only way to truly be free is to love nothing. And how meaningless would that be?” - Q (Picard S2E05)

“There’s had been the touching of two minds which the old poets of Spock’s home planet had proclaimed as superior even to the wild physical love which affected Vulcans every seventh year during pon farr.” -- Jim Kirk (Star Trek TMP Novel)

What a joke! Vejur was everything that Spock had ever dreamed of becoming. And yet Vejur was barren! It would never feel pain. Or joy. Or challenge. 

Spock laughed again. Then he saw Kirk’s face. He reached out weakly and found Kirk’s arm, then his hand, and took a startled Kirk’s hand in his own. “Jim,” Spock said.

McCoy looked his astonishment at the visible and unashamed emotion on Spock’s face as he clutched Kirk’s hand.

Kirk returned the pressure and brought his other hand to cover Spock’s, holding it between both of his, signaling Spock that there was no shame in either giving or in answering fully.

“This simple feeling . . . “ --- Spock struggled for strength --- “. . . is so far . . . beyond Vejur’s comprehension . . .” -- (Star Trek TMP Novel)

With stunned understanding, Kirk stumbles to the door, sees Spock on his knees, hands blackened, face cracked with radiation lines and scars.

Spock shakes his head. With a feeble hand he reaches the intercom button: filtered communication.

KIRK: Spock!

SPOCK: The ship -- out of danger?

KIRK: Yes --

Spock is satisfied; he fights for breath --

SPOCK: Don't grieve, Admiral -- it's logical: the good of the many outweighs --

He almost keels over. Kirk has tears streaming down his face.

KIRK: ... the good of the few...  

SPOCK: Or the one.

He props a hand on the glass to support himself. Kirk's hand reflexively goes to match Spock's on the other side of the glass --

SPOCK: (continuing) I never took the Kobayashi Maru test -- until now. What do you think of my solution?

KIRK: Spock...!

SPOCK: I have been -- and always will be -- your friend... Live. Long. And. Prosper.

Spock falls. Bones and Scotty react.

KIRK: No...!

SAAVIK'S VOICE: (intercom) Admiral, you've got to see this! There's new life -- a whole new world, a Genesis world -- !

But Kirk is past hearing or caring. He is huddled up against the glass, destroyed. Bones looks on, helpless. -- (Star Trek: TWOK Script)

KIRK: Even if there's a chance that Spock has an eternal soul . . . then it's my responsibility. MORROW: Yours? KIRK: As surely as if it were my very own. Give me back the Enterprise! With Scotty's help I could... MORROW: Out of the question, my friend! The Council has ordered that no one but the science team goes to Genesis! Jim, your life and your career stand for rationality, not intellectual chaos. Keep up this emotional behaviour and you'll lose everything. You'll destroy yourself! Do you understand me, Jim? KIRK: I hear you . . .I had to try. MORROW: Of course. (as Kirk leaves he is joined by Sulu and Chekov) SULU: The word, sir? KIRK: The word . . . is no. I am therefore going anyway. SULU: You can count on our help, sir. KIRK: Thank you, Mister Sulu. I'll need it. -- (Star Trek: TSFS Script)

SAREK: He entrusted you with his very essence, with everything that was not of the body. He asked you to bring him to us . . . and bring that which he gave you, his katra, his living spirit. KIRK: Sir . . . your son meant more to me than you can know. I'd have given my life if it would have saved his.

SAREK: Forgive me. It is not here. I had assumed he mind-melded with you. It is the Vulcan way . . . when the body's end is near. KIRK: We were separated! He couldn't touch me. SAREK: I see. . . Then everything that he was . . . Everything that he knew . . . is lost. KIRK: Please wait! . . . He would have found a way! If there was that much at stake . . . Spock would have found a way! -- (Star Trek: TSFS Script)

Picard: You’ve brought him home, then?

Spock: Yes. I know it is illogical, and yet . . . he did the same for me. And at such a terrible cost. How could I not be equal to his sacrifice? . . . I have no regrets. -- (Spock Reflections: IDW Comics)

For Jim - Spock

Theirs is my favourite love story of all time. 

(Source: Spock Dedicates his autobiography to Jim -- Star Trek: Picard)

---

Spock Reflections Scans Part 1: Spock Remembering Jim | Spock Reflections Scans Part 2: Picard's Message For Spock |  Part 3: Spock Carries Jim Home to Iowa | Bonus: The Kirk Family Farm + Spock's Visit   | Bonus II: T’Pring Confronts Spock Circa TMP  

Source: Star Trek: Spock Reflections Comic Series by IDW (personal scans)

[distort-opia]

you and your anons discussing intellectual questions and here i am asking: is Bruce a dog or a cat person? ( lets ignore the very obvious joke that can be made here 😭) i really wanna know. and is there a panel of him petting a kitten.

A very valid question, and I’m glad to get an ask regarding Bruce! By his choice of romantic partners you might think he'd favor cats, but he's quite famously a dog person. He's had Ace, a German Shepard, for many decades, who's also the Bat-Hound. (I used to love his adventures with Krypto as a kid.) And, he's also got Titus, a Great Dane, though Titus is technically Damian's. Bruce has shown a lot of affection for Titus too, though.

The Wayne household does also have a cat called Alfred (...and a cow, and whatever Goliath is, and a turkey). But all of these pets are Damian's, who's quite famous for his love of animals. And in the end, it was Alfred who took care of these animals the most; Bruce hasn't interacted a lot with the cat, at least not on the page.

...That's the short, rational version of this answer. I somehow ended up going into Ace and Titus' backstories, plus I went on a tangent about Golden Age Bruce and cats. So I'm putting the rest under the cut [sigh].

In current continuity, Ace has quite the interesting origin; he was an attack dog, first found and named by Joker (as shown in Batman: Urban Legends #15):

But, as shown in Batman (2016) Annual 1, Ace was the only attack dog to survive one of the fights Joker arranged, and was left behind by Joker for dead:

It's actually Alfred who wants to keep Ace, and tries to train him. Bruce says that Joker broke the dog, and that it cannot be saved. But he clearly warms up to Ace, and becomes quite attached, after Ace proves himself to be loyal and valuable:

Later on in, in Batman (2016) #40, he even says he misses Ace while looking very sad about it:

Sorry for the unwarranted paranthesis, I really like Ace's current origin :)) But to hammer it in, Bruce is also the one to gift a dog to Damian, his son -- as shown in Batman and Robin (2011) #2 and #3:

Damian also takes a while to warm up to the dog (much like his father with Ace), eventually calling him Titus.

After Alfred's death, the animals become quite the bittersweet companions, since he'd been the one to take care of them the most. in Detective Comics (2016) #1018, Bruce finds comfort in having them around, but he's still grieving:

And in Detective Comics (2016) #1033, he takes all the pets and moves them to his new place, even Bat-Cow. It's all extra sad, because Damian (the original owner of most) left, not wanting to be Robin anymore.

I guess my point with this is... Bruce chooses dogs as companions, most of the time. He's shown petting them and playing with them, but I can't recall any instance of that with Alfred the Cat. In current continuity, he associates the dogs with Alfred especially, which gives them extra emotional meaning. After all, Alfred was the one to insist he give Ace a chance, and once Bruce stopped being closed off, he ended up very attached to him -- and with a love for dogs in general, I suppose.

...This all isn't to say Bruce doesn't like cats at all. He's dating Catwoman, and I just have to show you these panels of Bruce saving one of Selina's cats from gunfire, in Batman: Year One #3:

The faces this poor cat makes are hilarious. Sure, he saved her, but at what cost.

Also, I guess Golden Age Bruce wasn't terribly fond of cats, and it's really funny. Catwoman sicks tigers and all sorts of felines on him, and one time she leaves him tied up with cats crawling over him -- as shown in Detective Comics (1937) #203:

Love that he keeps catnip in his utility belt, and that he ends up using the cats to escape. Holy adaptability, Batman!

Also, while going on this unhinged search for interactions between Bruce Wayne and cats, I have found... the funniest thing on the planet. Apparently Superman tried to get Batman executed for witchcraft in World's Finest Comics (1941) #186.

Yeah. They travel back in time and then Bruce makes out with some hot babes which gets Clark jealous and he decides to frame Bruce as a 'servant of Satan'. And he does so... by using his power of super-ventriloquism and "throwing his voice" within a black cat:

So. Another reason for Bruce to not like cats, I guess, if they got used to frame him for witchcraft??

(I've been laughing for 5 minutes straight, oh my god. Fully recommend reading this.)

So. I don't know this turned into an insane hunt for interactions between Bruce Wayne and dogs & cats, but I hope this was entertaining, anon! No panels of Bruce petting kittens, but hey, he saves one from being shot. Though obviously, if anyone has any other additions, please feel free to tack them on.

[aphelea]

burning on (bronte & oralie)

Hello @axels-corner! I was your Secret Santa this year :) Happy holidays (if you celebrate any) and may your new year be filled with plenty of angsty Councillors!

I offer you some Councillor Bronte and Councillor Oralie friendship (and hurt/comfort), set just after the burning of Oblivimyre. Bronte and Fintan are brothers in this one because I couldn't resist.

Thank you to @song-tam for organizing this event!

Warnings: Discussions of death. (Kenric's and Fintan's)

Bronte locks himself in his castle the next day. 

The rest of the Council are drafting the announcement, a scroll to send to their concerned citizens. Members of the elves Nobility are invited to mourn; the rest, left to wonder about the state of their world in the chaos. 

He wants no part of it, the impersonal funeral or the whispers that are bound to follow all of them, but especially him and Oralie. 

After all, everybody knows who killed Kenric. 

Bronte wishes he didn’t. 

He doesn’t sleep the night after the incident. He only returns home at three in the morning, after all of the Everblaze has been put out and his glittering holy city is half-ashes. But even then, he doesn’t retire to his rooms—he can’t, not when they are ripe with memories of a man whom he should not grieve, with photos on the wall of a family that could never be satisfied. 

So Bronte spends the night pacing, and pointedly not thinking about what he has lost. He pushes away every memory of his friend, every gala spent dealing with Kenric and Oralie’s antics. He suppresses every stray thought of his childhood, of being twelve years old and Fintan fifteen, both unable to control the raging power within themselves. 

He drinks tea. It’s not what he needs to drink, but he figures that he ought to maintain some sense of decorum. 

(That feeling falls apart, come dawn. He needs the strongest medicine that his crystal castle can offer.) 

The next morning, when he knows that he’s expected to show up to the Council meeting, he can’t bring himself to get off of his couch. 

How unprofessional, the weak, rational part of himself says. 

But what is professionalism worth anymore, anyway? Miss Foster had only days ago proven with her Inflicting session that he is far beyond unfit for his position.

(Maybe that’s why he can’t stop grieving a murderer. Maybe the dark matter that controls his brain is making him evil, immoral.)

(Maybe villainy runs in the family.)

So Bronte skips the Council meeting, that day, and waits for someone to scold him. 

Nobody comes. 

He takes a nap on the floor of his kitchen. It’s not comfortable, but he doesn’t deserve comfort. He needs pain, to force him out of his grief. 

It doesn’t work, unsurprisingly. But the slumberberry tea does drown him in darkness. It’s made poorly, but he still manages to sleep an hour, dreamless. 

Until the shrill ringing of his doorbell wakes him, and he lies on the hard crystal tile for a moment, wondering why he ever chose to make his doorbell human music, of all things.

After about five minutes of pointless lying on the ground, he forces himself up and to the foyer. He expects that his colleagues have sent someone to retrieve him, likely believing that he’s overslept or some other, equally forgivable reason for missing work. 

When he opens the door, he finds Oralie, in the same, rumpled, ash-covered gown as yesterday afternoon. 

“Oralie?” Bronte asks. He’s tempted to slam the door in her face, because he can’t deal with her, not now. Not when he still can’t shake the grief and empathy for the man who killed her lover. 

…Almost lover. In everything but name. 

Oralie stares at him from the doorway. Her eyes are wide and red and Bronte can’t help but remember when she’d first been elected to the Council, how Kenric had sworn that she was unfit for the role. How the two of them had spent the next five years arguing over every little thing, firmly believing the other to be an incompetent fool. 

Look at them now, he thinks. So lost in each other’s eyes that they forget their surroundings, all too often. They had been one of Bronte’s few sources of entertainment during tedious meetings. 

“Bronte,” Oralie replies, after a long moment. Her voice is rough and broken, accompanied by a sniffle that she seems determined to hide. 

Bronte stares at her, wondering why she, of all people, would pay him a visit during the working day. “Did they send you here?” he asks. When she frowns, he clarifies, “To attempt to convince me to come to the meeting. I won’t, before you try.”

She laughs, though without any real amusement behind it. “I didn’t go,” she tells him frankly. “I have no use for their pity. They all know what he was to me, I don’t need to hear their condolences.”

Bronte can say mostly the same. But he doesn’t, because he doubts that much of the Council knows of his… unfortunate family relations. 

Though, with the fire went the last of his family, it seems. 

Now Bronte is officially alone. 

Alone, except for his best friend standing in his foyer with bloodshot eyes. The last remaining disgraces. 

“I understand,” he tells her. “And I’m sorry, for what it’s worth.”

“It’s not worth shit,” she replies curtly. “You know that as well as I do.” 

Bronte stares at her, daring her to say more. “Do I, now?” he asks, as calmly as his voice can muster. 

She pauses. “Kenric was your friend as much as he was mine.” At his raised eyebrow, she amends, “Well, you were friends.” 

“Of a sort,” Bronte replies. “His death is tragic, of course, and I grieve his loss like all of us do.” Except you, he doesn’t say, because Oralie hardly needs a reminder of the love that she’s lost. 

Oralie glares at him. “I don’t need your press answer.”

“Then, pray tell, why are you here?” 

“You have the keys,” she tells him, and he’s not sure whether she’s being literal or metaphorical. 

“What?”

“The keys,” she repeats, “to Kenric’s castle. I need—” She stops, overcome with a heaving sigh. “I need to see it. One final time.” 

Bronte raises an eyebrow. “He didn’t leave any spare keys with you?” 

She snorts. “How do you think that would’ve looked, Kenric leaving me the keys to his private rooms? Especially with our feelings being so blatantly obvious.”

…She does have a point, Bronte has to concede that. They hardly need any more fuel for the wildfire of rumours that spread about them. 

He doubts that people will be kind enough to stop the rumours even now, when it is only Oralie left. They will scrutinise her appearance at the funeral, at the next crowning, at every occasion for years after today. 

Bronte’s sure of it. He’s seen this happen before. 

“Let me get them,” he says, and turns to retrieve the spare keys from his drawer. He and Kenric had exchanged spares, in case of emergency—although Bronte had never imagined that this would be the emergency. 

(To be honest, he’d always thought that he would die first, out of all of them. Murder, probably. Old family problems coming back to bite him.) 

He’s grateful, though, that Oralie isn’t pressing for an answer as to why he’s holed up in his castle, looking just as messy as she is. 

How can he face her and tell her the truth? That his brother, his blood, had committed such a dire act of treason that the entire elven world is teetering on the edge of chaos not seen since Atlantis?

When he finds the smooth crystal, he hands it to Oralie, who smiles gratefully. But her smile doesn’t reach her eyes, and Bronte understands. 

Nothing can be happy, in the wake of everything. 

She reaches over to grab the keys from Bronte’s hand. As she does so, her fingers brush Bronte’s exposed wrist, and she immediately jumps back as if she’s been burned.  

“Oralie?” Bronte asks, stepping forward. He freezes as she scrambles back, staring at her fingers as if she’s grown a third thumb. 

Oralie is mumbling curses under her breath, he realises, and he wonders whether he should call a healer. Maybe the grief has finally gotten to her. 

(It’s only a matter of time before it gets to him, too.) 

Oralie finally looks up at him, after a moment, a deep fear in her eyes. “Guilt,” she murmurs, and his heart stops. 

Guilt. 

Oralie’s an Empath. She’d touched his arm. 

How could I be so stupid?

Oralie steps forward, back into his foyer with a firm expression. “Are you guilty, Bronte?” she asks, and her voice begins to waver. 

“I—I’m not—”

She continues forward, and Bronte has no choice but to back away lest he be trampled. Oralie’s determination has given away to anguish, and what seems to be anger directed towards him. “I’ve felt a broken man’s emotions before,” she says, “all those who have succumbed to the weight of their guilt. And what I just felt, Bronte…you’re far beyond them.” Quietly, she adds, “I don’t know how you’re still sane.”

“I don’t know, either,” he admits, but truthfully he has his suspicions. He can feel Miss Foster’s lingering positivity, in the corners of his mind, keeping his memories together like glue. Someday soon, it will fade, and his guilt over who he is will finally take him. 

He won’t tell that to Oralie, though. 

“I can’t lose both of the people closest to me,” she says, and her grief shines through her eyes once again. “One to a sick, twisted pyromaniac and the other to the weight of his own, misplaced guilt.” 

Sick, twisted pyromaniac. Is that the man he knew? The man he grieves, the man whom he had loved through all of his childhood?

Maybe evil is all that runs through the blood in their veins. Maybe he and Fintan were always destined to be sad, sad men. 

Oralie notices that her words have the opposite effect of what she’d intended, and she freezes. “What?” she says. “What did I say?”

“Nothing,” he tries to tell her, but she’s too quick. 

“Fintan,” she murmurs, eyes wide. “What, do you think it’s your fault?”

No. He knows it. 

He and Fintan had their arguments, as young men. None so bad as the one that drove Fintan out of their childhood home for good. 

And then the Everblaze had rained down, and Bronte knew that his brother was unsalvageable. 

“That’s…not quite it,” he replies. “But I guarantee you it’s nothing important. My mind will not break, Oralie. I have kept myself together for so many years yet.” 

“No,” she replies, steely. “No! You’re obviously locking yourself up in this castle for a reason, and you’re obviously beating yourself up over something and it’s killing you!” 

“I miss him,” Bronte blurts out, and immediately wishes he hadn’t. 

Oralie pauses, obviously waiting for him to clarify. 

“I miss Fintan,” he says, and it’s like a weight lifts off his shoulders. 

The words seem to confuse Oralie. “You…what?” There’s something akin to anger in her voice, and Bronte’s guilt returns at full force. 

“I wish I didn’t,” he tells her, pleading for forgiveness. “I thought I had resigned myself to his death, before. But he was the last of my family, and apparently I have yet to resolve myself from that attachment.”

Oralie’s eyes widen. “Family?” she repeats. 

He almost can’t say the words. “My brother.”

Bronte turns away, just as Oralie says, “And you’re afraid that you’re just like him.”

“What?”

She breathes in sharply. “Kenric told me what happened in Sophie’s session. You think you’re irredeemable.”

That’s exactly right. “No.”

She curses under her breath and steps into his line of sight once again. “Your guilt is going to crush you,” she tells him frankly. 

“I’m not guilty!” he proclaims, and sure, it isn’t true, but now certainly isn’t the time to work through millenia of unresolved family trauma. 

Oralie grabs his arm, and he expects her to jump away as she had done before. Instead, though, she only drags him to his couch, silent. As they pass the kitchen, she raises an eyebrow at the blanket on the tiled floor, but still says nothing. 

Finally, once Bronte is sufficiently confused, Oralie asks, “Did you actually sleep last night?”

“Did you?” he retorts. 

“No,” she replies, honestly. “I doubt any of us did. Watching him go up in flames….” She shudders. “Part of me wants to make the whole thing a Forgotten Secret.”

Bronte can’t disagree.

He wasn’t in the room, he didn’t have direct view of the healing like Oralie did. But the scent of Everblaze—the familiar scent—had reached him before any of the rest of the Councillors standing outside.

Bronte had known that Fintan was unstable, before. But there was a part of him—a part of him that still lingers—that genuinely believed his brother to be good. Perhaps it’s leftover from their mother’s endless, unfounded optimism, her firm belief that her sons were good men who would grow up to change the elven world.

And change the world, they certainly did. Just not for the better. 

So forgetting the fire, forgetting his brother’s entire existence….the idea sounds enticing. But Bronte has a duty to his people, to himself, that he cannot forget. 

And the only Telepath he would have trusted to wash his mind is dead, now, anyway. 

“You know,” Oralie says, after a long moment, “we’re quite similar people, the two of us.”

Bronte raises an eyebrow. “Don’t put yourself down like that.”

“Oh, please. I’m no saint, either,” she replies. “But what you’ve done and what I’ve done are no matter, now.” She looks away, pensive. “What I meant, before, is that we’re in similar situations here. Your brother. My…Kenric. No-one else here understands, not like we do.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Bronte concedes. “But Fintan—”

“—was only broken because of us,” Oralie interrupts. “It’s the actions of the Council, both past and present, that led to what happened yesterday. We’ve spent these years believing him to be a great man, until the blaze…but maybe that was just our own willful ignorance.”

“Careful,” Bronte says, an almost teasing lilt to his voice. “You almost sound like the rebels.”

Oralie freezes, for a moment, an action so small he almost misses it. “Very funny,” she says, but her joking tone falls flat. 

Bronte frowns. That’s mildly concerning, but he’s not going to waste time worrying about Oralie’s rebel sympathies. He certainly hasn’t spent his time as a Councillor only following the law. 

(Neither did Fintan. Or Fallon. Or anyone, honestly, other than poor Terik who very clearly does not want to be here.)

(Come to think of it, that does speak to the corruption in their system. But that hardly matters right now.)

“Look,” Oralie continues, clearly eager to shift focus from her previous slip-up, “what matters is that you’re obviously brimming with guilt and I…I don’t know what I’m feeling. I won’t judge you for your family connections anymore than I expect you to judge me for my romantic ones.”

“Thank you,” Bronte says, and it’s the most honest he’s been all morning.

Her hand brushes his wrist once again, and she sighs with obvious relief. “Don’t shatter on me,” she tells him. “Please. Promise me.”

The last thing he wants is to go out like his brother. 

“I won’t,” he says. “I promise.”

[warwickroyals]

CHAPTER XLVIII: HARSH TRUTHS

Beginning | Previous | Next

Transcript under the cut - Click for HQ photos

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I hate writing Louis's scenes! He's so hard to write. Doesn't help that he's basically gaslighting Phillip here

All likes, comments and reblogs are greatly appreciated! Thank you for the support 💜

[LOUIS] While I admire your conviction, my decision is final. The boy needs order and discipline, two

things he’s evidently been lacking for years. Despite whatever it is he might think, I’m doing what’s best for him. He’ll get leave and holidays, I’m not permanently separating him from his child or her. My only regret is not acting sooner.

[LOUIS] You’re still here.

[PHILLIP] We need to talk about James.

 [LOUIS] Why?

[PHILLIP] You know why.

[LOUIS] You may take a seat, Phillip.

[PHILLIP] I’d rather stand.

[PHILLIP] I had the most interesting conversation with Tatiana yesterday.

[LOUIS] I assume this is about why certain members of this family don’t know the true circumstances of James’s passing.

[PHILLIP] Certain members. I’m talking about his own children. And mine too, by the way, which—Thanks for that.

[LOUIS] None of my grandchildren know currently, nor will they ever know. The public narrative has proved sufficient.

[PHILLIP] I don’t care about whatever bullshit narrative you fed the public to protect your ego. I want to know the truth.

[LOUIS] It’s not about my image. You’re upset, I know James’s suicide left a mark on you in particular, but you have to understand: James spent most of his life hiding whatever it was that was tormenting him. He hid it flawlessly from the public, he hid it from his family semi-successfully, and when I realized that he could no longer go on hiding that side of him, he took his own life. I’ve probably taken years and years off my own life wondering why he did what or if it could have been prevented, but I still can’t make sense of it. In some ways, James’s tournament has become my own.

[LOUIS] If I can’t make sense of it, or even cope with this . . . horrible tragedy, what makes you think that a twenty-year-old child will? If Nicholas and Alexander knew the truth, everything they thought their father to be would be destroyed, it would be like killing him all over again. Especially for Nicholas, he wouldn’t know how to process that and remain. . . sane.

[PHILLIP] It’s not our right to hide this from them . . . I don’t know how to even explain this because you’re not going to listen.

[LOUIS] Whether you’re here for it or not, they will find out the truth and hate you for it. I don’t think you’re protecting anyone, you’re just preventing your grandchildren from properly grieving their father.

Do you honestly think their grief would have been easier to process had they known? Don’t be ridiculous, it would give them no comfort to know that their father shot himself in a drunken haze. How do you make sense of that? How can you rationalize—

[PHILLIP] Rationalize? How could you not rationalize any of this!? It’s the logical conclusion to what this family does to you! 

[PHILLIP] Everyone here is either miserable or gone. This family sucks the life out of you until you’re just a shell and then . . . and then it goes on. God help you if you have anything resembling human emotions once you’re in. You’ll be spat on, and laughed at, and profited off of, and harassed, and made to loathe every painful, hellish moment of your life.

[LOUIS] Of course you would find it reasonable, Phillip, you have a bent for self-destruction.

[PHILLIP] Don’t you dare do this shit to me! You’re not going to cast me as an over-emotional crazy this time. I’m trying to get better, I’m inching myself forward, I’m trying to protect the people I care about. I might not be a good person, but at least I’m better than you, I haven’t spent the past fifty years never facing the consequences of my actions.

[LOUIS] Oh, so you’re a reformed man now? Explain to me how gallivanting across the southern coast with a woman almost eleven years your junior is helping you inch forward. You’ve been saying “I’m trying” for your entire life, Phillip. You’re in no position to grandstand—

[IRENE] That’s enough, Louis.

[PHILLIP] Mama, you knew about this, too. You kept this from me.

[IRENE] Darling, you need to understand that we’re doing none of this out of malice. We only want to protect the children. You most of all have suffered terribly after James’s passing. You relapsed. Your marriage fell apart. Honestly, Phillip, what concerns me is your eagerness to have your own nephews join you in that suffering.

[PHILLIP] I get it. I really do, you two are in denial, but this is craziness.

[IRENE] When you were a baby, James was terribly jealous. He cried incessantly; the nannies told me he’d pinch you when they weren’t looking— [PHILLIP] Mom, stop—But the older you got, the sicker you grew with depression and anxiety, the more terrified James grew that something horrible would happen to you. He wanted so badly to protect you, and seeing you in pain hurt him more than he was willing to admit. Phillip, you knew this. Sometimes harsh realities do more harm than good.

[PHILLIP] You resent me. Both of you. You hate the fact that I’m still here and James isn’t.

[IRENE] Of course not. I love all my boys, but right now, you’re holding us back.

[PHILLIP] I’m holding you back by being honest?

[LOUIS] Look around, Phillip. It’s a truth no one wants to hear.

[desnas]

!! pls ! 👀

from this ask prompt!

HI SAM!!!! ferne told me you also play pathfinder: wotr so i felt it was only right to talk about one of my ocs from that universe... though, i suppose she's existed long before that and i've also ported her into WoW naturally so...

meet nyxana nightbell, AKA the nightbell witch

this is the first drawing i've ever done of her, and though her design has changed significantly over the years, a lot has also stayed the same

so here we have nyx, the blood witch & hexer -- once in a campaign as a "spiderfolk", i've since evolved her into a kaldorei vampyr (from WoW) and a dhampyr with snow elf lineage (in pathfinder)

pinterest | spotify

heavy cw for blood, cannibalism, body horror, family death, and cults under the cut 🧍‍♂️also there's so much backstory i'm sorry in advance

we'll start with nyx's warcraft rendition, because it's ultimately a little bit more fleshed out.

nyxana nightbell was born alongside her twin brother to her single mother in a remote village somewhere within winterspring, kalimdor. food was scarce, and the nightbells had to savor every crumb, ration every meal. nyx's mother was fiercely protective over her children, and through the years, nyx came to find that she had an older brother. MUCH older brother; one of the original druids of the pack tucked away in a secret burrow. food was not only scarce to begin with, but nyx's mother was always primarily concerned for her slumbering son's health, smuggling food into his burrow to ensure he did not starve in his sleep

miserable, nyx turned to the druids of the silk, a homebrew druid circle created by the lovely erikailustra!!! she spent many years keeping her head low, keeping out of trouble; but when she was around 200, nyx's slumbering brother awoke in a lycanthropic rage and slaughtered their mother.

nyx has never been comfortable with rules or conformity, but i think for her this was the nail in the coffin. she ran off and got wrapped up in a nightmare + blood magic + drust cult of night elves worshipping the black widow loa shadra. this cult was called The Brood (my own homebrew!), and cannibalism/vampyr and blood sacrifice was rampant.

nyx flourished amidst the cult, as any blood-thirsty and repressed individal might. all seemed well as she moved up through the ranks to reach ascension (vampyrism except better, because you have six arms now instead of two) until they attempted to force her to sacrifice her own twin. though she'd never struggled or hesitated to kill before, she could not fathom harming her own blood. so it was the rest of the brood who fed upon him, deeming her a failure to the cult. nyxana completely snapped after this and went on a very violent rampage. no one among the brood was spared from the grieving sister's wrath-- not eve the leader himself. upon killing and feasting upon the broodfather, nyx achieved ascension on her own terms, permanently transfrmed.... and stole away into the wilds.

she now lives as a hex witch, taking satisfaction in proxy revenge, and she feeds just a little bit more ethically than she had before. the people of duskwood know of her as the nightbell witch, a masked hag who provides curses, hexes, and jinxes to the common citizen if the price is right, and should you cross her, you'd never be heard from again.

so yeah. witchy hut lady girlboss. also luthais is her neighbor now.

as for pathfinder... things do get a little bit different! they're mostly similar but i'll do my very best to summarize.

on golarion, nyxana was born as a dhampyr to a winter witch in a small village north of irrisen-- much like in wow, food was scarce, and fresh blood for a young and blooming dhampyr set of twins was even scarcer!!!

nyxana followed in her mother's footsteps and practiced the ways of the winter witches for many years until her mother's unforeseen passing after a mysterious werewolf attack. it was then that nyx abandoned their home in irissen and became twisted up in... you guessed it... a pathfinder version of The Brood located somewhere north of the sarkoris border in the rimethirst mountains. probably just a good old demon blood sacrificing cult.

i'm still working out the details, but i want to say they were probably urgathoa worshippers or something idk. maybe baphomet worshippers? i need to brush up a bit more on my pathfinder lore before setting that in stone.

well, one way or another, nyxana's twin brother winds up getting captured by the brood, and nyx's test of loyalty is to sacrifice him. she refuses, same deal happens. blah blah blah, nyx gets fed up with the brood's bullshit, kills their leader, and eventually finds herself in mendev, probably only a few days out from kenabres. this is what drives her to eventually join the crusade-- while she is kind of insanely fucked up, i think she truly resents and blames the demons, as well as herself, for the death of her twin brother.

while nyxana is not my canon commander, ferne and i have been talking about her being a "companion" in commander luthais' backstory. aka she kisses him and daeran

the more i play pwotr, though, the more i get excited about the idea of her being my more... evil leaning, cruel knight-commander , here's the art i used for her portrait, from a magic the gathering card by greg opalinski (i edited it just slightly)

i haven't quite decided what mythic path i'd be doing with her, but i do know she's hellbent on closing the worldwound by whatever means necessary. ideally she'd probably romance both wenduag and daeran. maybe even a little camellia on the side....

ultimately, nyx is not a good person, but i don't believe she's pure, unfiltered evil. she believes in respecting nature, and in karmic justice, but has an aversion to chaos. she likes to do what she wants, when she wants, and if anyone gets in her way, she won't hesitate to smite them down.

she feels extremely passionately, though this is tucked away with a mask of her smooth and flirty facade. she enjoys playing with her food, and she can be quite manipulative and terrifying. but she is always loyal to those she loves. i think that she would be a pretty fucking awesome commander

[owo-shenanigans]

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#5

Xiao deserves something nice, I think.

Gen. Xiao Dating headcanons

He is always exceptionally careful when touching you- while he doesn’t have massive superstrength, constantly fighting for thousands of years will leave you able to crush fingers if you aren’t careful. No matter how capable you are, he treats you as if you’re made of porcelain.

I think he would prefer you to be an exceptionally strong fighter or someone who holds little interest in exploring the world. He can’t always be around to protect you, so if you can protect yourself or don’t go places that you’ll need protecting he’ll be able to rest easier.

More likely than seeing him every week or every few days is that you two take a weekend every month or so to hang out; while he could push himself in his battles to make it to you more often, you hate seeing him collapse from exhaustion and his wounds.

He likes it when you play with his hair; he’s very on edge when others get in his personal space, so he does need you to announce your intentions and what you’re doing.

No idea how to cook, but he’ll probably learn through dating you. Whether you enjoy it and want to share it with him, or if you abhor it and ask him to do the cooking when you have your weekends together, he’ll learn. And he enjoys it, overall. Somehow having the smells come together slowly and him knowing how they come about help them not be so overwhelming and awful. You tell him about a drink from Snezhnaya, that they make with milk so cold it freezes and other flavorings; you’ve been wanting to try it, as it sounds incredibly refreshing for the summer, you admit.

A few weeks later, he’s brought milkshakes for you to try. He enjoys the texture, himself; it doesn’t weigh heavy in his stomach and he can put in a light flavor that he’ll actually enjoy.

He knows that he’ll grieve when you pass- he has for the others he’s loved and lost. But he’s learned to keep the sweet memories, and not attempt to avoid it. Better to be happy now then in a constant haze of murder and numbness.

206 notes - Posted July 2, 2022

#4

Happy birthday to me. Had to write something for my favorite feral man. Using a headcanon name that i saw and rather liked. Wrote this fairly late in one sitting the night before. Favorites are specified and the reader is more clarified as a person as this is written for me first, but it’s still kept very open.

-

Birthday Delights - Il Dottore x reader

Word Count: 1.8k

⠀⠀⠀

For once, Dottore wasn’t in his lab.

You even checked under the tables and in the closets- while he would usually drag himself to the cot he kept a room to the side of his lab, there were a few rare times that he would collapse to the floor after finishing one experiment, then checking on the development of another ongoing test, making sure the beakers were properly washed after Wilson had done such a sloppy job all those weeks ago, and, and, and until he collapsed.

Pursing your lips, you rung the bell to summon his personal assistant; you thought her name was Anya, or something along those lines. Apparently she had been caught stealing extra rations during base training, and was sentenced to being Dottore’s direct assistant for a few months as punishment.

It took ten minutes for her to finally arrive, white hair tied in a braid crown and covered in sweat. She took half a minute to catch her breath, finally gasping out, “Y/N! I apologize, I had to run all the way here. What do you need?” Dottore had told her to treat your orders as second to none but himself, and you felt a tinge bad for how it manifested at times.

“I was wondering where Dottore is? I checked his rooms as well and there wasn’t a sign of him there.”

Anya hesitated, squeezing her hands together, and you frowned. “Where is he, Anya. If he’s doing something bad, I want to know.”

“Oh no, it’s nothing bad!” Anya hastened to reassure you. “It’s rather sweet, actually. I just… Wasn’t. Supposed… to tell you.” Her voice trails off as she realizes what she revealed. “Please don’t tell him, I’m almost done with my service and I don’t want to be experimented on!” Her vomit of words is paused when you hold your hand up.

“I won’t tell him. Don’t worry.” The relief in her face and her shaking knees led you to the decision that you would need to have another talk with him about how to treat his assistants. “However, can you lead me to him? Even if he’s busy, I want to at least see him today.”

She squeezed her hands together again, brow furrowed as she thought. “He should be done by now…” She mumbled to herself. “Yes, I can. Let’s go- slowly, though. To give him time to finish up.” You nodded, and she turned to lead you to your boyfriend.

-

Half an hour later, you can understand why Anya was so out of breath. Dottore’s lab was in a far flung tower, far from the rest of the palace, but she was leading you towards an area you had never convinced yourself was worth the time and energy to explore. “Wait here, please, I’ll check if you’re allowed to come in yet.” She directed you to wait behind a pillar, out of view of the large, decorated with fine detail wooden doors. Cracking one open, she slid in and you amused yourself by staring at the oak statues in the halls, wondering how long they had been here.

It was a few minutes before Anya came back out, and by the look of her Dottore had been too busy to be annoyed at her delay, likely only demanding her help with the finishing up.

“You can come in, Y/N.” She had a small smile on her face as she held the door open. You stepped through and a gasp escaped you.

This had obviously been the work of a few people. The large, ornately decorated room was pristine, windows that nearly reached the ceiling clean and uncovered by curtains, showing the thick snow that always surrounded the Tsaritsa’s palace. The reds and oranges of the sunset bled through the glass, covering the room. There was a music player in the corner of the room, playing soft classical music. In the center of the room was a table with a white tablecloth covering it, and Dottore standing beside it.

He looked even more handsome than usual, his usual simple overshirt and undershirt exchanged for a white suit with black accents and blue tie. The only thing you could think, other than wow, was how glad you were that you had decided to wear your favorite nice outfit that morning.

“Perfect timing.” Your feet carried you to him and he picked up your hand to kiss it. He usually wasn’t this affectionate, and you couldn’t help the blood rushing to your face. “Happy birthday, mon désir.”

“This is for my birthday?” Your face lit up, and his grin widened.

“Why yes, yes it is. I cooked you a full course meal. I wouldn’t trust anyone else for your birthday dinner. It should be incredible.”

And there was his ego. You couldn’t even pretend to be annoyed; when you loved him, you loved all of him. “I’m excited. I know it’ll be great.” You slid into your seat and he tucked a napkin into your collar.

The hors d'oeuvres were already on the table under a metal cover, and he revealed them to be sliced apples and raspberries drizzled with honey. Anya had left once you were fully through the door, and Dottore took his mask off to rest on the side.

Chatting let the fruit be eaten quickly, and he called the next dish in, bringing his mask back up as Anya brought the cart in. The amuse-bouche was next, followed by the appetizers, which were an array of small sandwiches. The main courses were a dizzying array of favorites. Multicheese macaroni and cheese accompanied by a perfectly seared slice of steak, delicate pasta that almost didn’t need to be chewed, to name a few. He had obviously spent hours and hours preparing everything, even with the help of kitchen assistants you knew he would have needed.

“I can’t believe you went to all this effort.” You wiped at your mouth with a napkin, taking a sip of wine. While you would never call yourself a wine connoisseur, the flavor was incredible. “This is so… So amazing.”

“It’s simply because you’re worth it.” Dottore spoke like it was no big deal, but you could see the smile on his face grow. “I wouldn’t do this for just anyone.”

“No, I mean it Nicolas.” You used his first name and reached across the table to cover and squeeze his hand. “I love it. Thank you.”

The number of times you had seen his face redden from an emotion other than anger or drunkenness you could count on one hand, and now you could add to that tally. It wasn’t a blooming blush, but you knew it wasn’t from the sunset lighting.

See the full post

216 notes - Posted April 18, 2022

#3

wait hi i saw ur pjo requests were open can i ask for a nico x reader platonic and they’re just mlm and wlw solidarity maybe and perhaps reader has a crush on annabeth or piper

I love this idea so fucking much omg (also this is an au where Bianca doesn’t join the hunters and die bc canonically. He’s barely at the camp)

Nico having MLM WLW solidarity with reader (PLATONIC)

You just kind of sit beside him and say, “So…. Percy and Annabeth, huh?”

He rambles about how cool and awesome and amazing and cool Percy is for ten minutes, with a few hastily added but still genuine comments about how Annabeth is fairly nice and smart.

“So- uh, what do- you think about them?” He stammers out once he’s done, trying to direct the attention off of himself.

And you proceed to talk about how pretty and amazing and wonderful Annabeth is and you wish you could talk to her but every time you try you just get so tongue twisted and can barely stammer out a hello-

You two don’t exactly become friends, not yet, but when your activities line up you can usually be found hanging out and gossiping about what’s been happening at camp. He’s a lovable kid that gives off serious little brother energy, so people aren’t quite as sealed with their secrets as they should be when he’s around. As long as you don’t spread it around, he likes talking to you!

Honestly, the moment you two seriously bonded is when Percy and Annabeth officially got together. You’d known that they were really into each other, yes, but seeing them kiss under the watery surface cracked your heart. The two of you cried under your bunk for an hour, demolishing a box of tissues and three trays of snacks Bianca brought over once she heard what the issue was.

After that you two were almost bonded at the hip. You both helped each other get over your crushes and started hanging out outside of activities as well.

Once you hit 16 and puberty started hitting y’all HARD, you started taking trips out of camp together, officially to deliver packages too big for Iris’ delivery service, but really to people watch people who you hadn’t grown up with and seen with drool tracks on their faces in the mornings their cabin had been too late to get into the bathrooms before breakfast. People were a lot more attractive when you didn’t spend years living with them, you both found out.

Nico is a lot quieter about it, half his formative years having been during the 40’s keeping him from being open about his attraction to men. You try and make an effort to stay on the downlow too- you hate making him uncomfortable.

When Piper came crashing down in that chariot, you could feel your heart doing ten flipflops as she got thrown onto shore. Eagerly offering to show her around, you ignored Nico’s snickering. Piper was polite, if heavily confused, and you were down BAD. You took revenge on Nico’s kissy faces by throwing your arms around him and his crush and loudly asking if they were dating, refusing to take a hint with a shit eating grin on your face.

277 notes - Posted January 31, 2022

#2

Had to write this to get it out of my head. Can be interpreted as either platonic or romantic- it's very ambigous. I don't plan to open requests for Encanto, but if enough people like this and say so. Perhaps I'll write more. Gender Ambiguous reader.

x Camilo - ghost stories

Word Count: 470

"And then, the girl was never seen again." Your fingers spread out and your eyes widened. "Some say that if you go to the lake at four in the morning, close your eyes, bring an offering, and ask for your fortune, she'll tell it to you. But if your question is deemed beneath her, or your offering is deemed as such too, she’ll drag you beneath the water, never to be seen again.”

Camilo shrugged, leaned back on their arm. “Eh. 7 out of 10. The start was good, the middle had too much detail and the ending was too specific. Good effort though.”

“Oh come on! Will anything come up to your standards?” You flop onto your blanket. “It’s no fun if I’m the only one getting scared.”

“Get better ghost stories and maybe you’ll have the honor of scaring me.” He snickers and turns into an old man. “Come now, (Y/N), scare these miserly old bone-”

You swat him and he turns back into himself, cackling. “Okay, okay. My turn. Once upon a time, in a place not far from here….”

-

“And she said, in a crooning voice, ‘oh, won’t you be a dear and help me out?’ The young man agreed, and leaned down to help her out of the well. With a frightful shriek, she pulled him in! Her transformation began, and the man backed away out of fright. For she looked just… Like… This!”

Camilo twisted and when they faced you their face was utterly grotesque. A gnarled nose paired with boils all over, covered in clumps of hair with something rotting in the larger patches. You couldnt even describe the rest- you were too busy screaming.

Something also screaming scrambled into your lap and only your extreme self control helped you not shove it off.

“Wh- Antonio?!” Camilo’s voice shifted from crackly and aged to his regular one as he shifted back to himself. “What’re you doing here?”

Antonio was scared out of his wits however, and once he took a breath from screaming he let out a sob. “I wanted to be part of the fun!” He wailed. “Your story was so scary, though!” His tears were staining your shirt, but you weren’t about to push a ten year old out of your lap, especially if they were terrified.

“There’s a reason we didn’t invite you.” They scowled at the boy in your lap.

“C’mon Camilo.” You patted the boys head (and his curls were really bouncy, lord–) and sighed.

“We can finish scary story night later. Let’s get some hot chocolate now, hm?”

Antonio’s head bobs up and down shakily and you manouver yourself up, taking his small hand in yours.

“Fine.” Camilo pries himself off the floor, but he can’t hide his excited smile at the mention of hot chocolate.

307 notes - Posted January 4, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

*bangs hand against the table* i love this man so much im going to cry. (this has been ini my drafts since september i literally forgot abt this)

General Sniper Mask Dating Headcanons

He has a huge hand fascination. Whether he's playing with yours or you're playing with his, he's happy. Or just whenever you touch him with your hands. Brush his hair and he'll be putty in your hands.

Sit in his lap. Just sit there. He's comfortable. C'mon, it's a free chair, all for you. He just loves having you within his reach at all times. He looks a little ridiculous whenever he pats his lap but you gotta love him.

He's not much for PDA, though. Before the manga he was just a pretty shy kid so he'd burst into flames if you did anything more than hold his hand in the busy public. During the manga, he's really busy trying to survive and he doesn't want you to be able to be used against him. In private, he's all over you.

He would likely only date someone he's known for quite a while, so once you've been officially dating for a few months you'll know that he's a huge fan of cuddling. Spooning is likely his favorite, but anything that feels like he's protecting you is his ideal.

If you pull him down by his tie he’ll melt. Do it. Do it. Just do it.

His love language is likely a mix of acts of service and physical affection.

He really likes looking cool. While in a serious fight his entire focus will be on destroying the enemy as fast as possible, once it’s over and he’s checked the perimeter for hidden enemies, he’ll be sneaking you glances almost asking if you thought he looked cool.

I care him deeply i need to find the time to read this series again

383 notes - Posted March 2, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[kisses-4-loki]

Why Endgame Thor wasn't a shitty mockery of him + fit his character (in my opinion)

Tw// mentions of disordered eating, depression, suicidal ideation, alcoholism/ alcohol abuse, death and grief.

DISCLAIMER; this is all my personal opinion and is in no way fact! It is based heavily on canon, using references to scenes to prove my point,  but this is mostly for fun/ character analysis- do not leave me hate comments about how I've misunderstood Thor/ elements of the films, bc I will not listen if you are hostile :)

Thor during Infinity War is presented all the way through as a man grieving, full of rage and self hatred for his own failures to kill Thanos twice. (“He is anxious, angry, he feels tremendous loss and guilt”- Nebula, infinity war.1) Once aboard the Statesman, at the start of Infinity War, which led (in part) to his brother’s death and the loss of even more of his people, who were already strained and damaged. Again at the end of Infinity War, when he hit Thanos in the shoulder and didn’t do enough damage to prevent him snapping (likely due to the recent loss of his eye, and though partially rectified by the fake one given to him by Rocket it is likely in no way a perfect match for his eye.) As well as these losses, of his brother and his people, as well as actual losses in battle, he has also lost his father and all of his friends (though we find out Sif is alive in Thor 42, he doesn't know this at the time and thinks they’re all dead), as well as Heimdall.

He lost to Hela, he lost to Thanos, and this is all directly impacting him as it is all recent, within the space of possibly a week or two at most. At the beginning of Endgame, it's established that it has been 22 days since the snap (thank you Tony3), so 3-4 weeks since Loki, Odin, Heimdall and the warrior three’s deaths. Thor is likely not in the best mindset, you could say, and that's putting it lightly. Again, he’s shown to be angry, rageful at his loss, because he is Thor, of Asgard, and Asgardians are not shown to be a very emotional group of people. “He’s pissed. He thinks he failed.”4 is how Rocket puts it when we see the rest of the Avengers. Thor has lost. Twice. There’s a rather large precedent put in place by the Thor trilogy that Thor isn’t used to losing, or at least not losing alone. He isn’t powerless, and he’s never alone, except he now is alone. 

“He has the Avengers,” you may say, and I say “No, he doesn’t.” After CACW, the Avengers are not getting along, and Thor has also been in space dealing with rebellions on foreign worlds, he doesn’t know anything about the changes. Regardless of what side he’d choose, Thor isn't informed of the disagreement- Bruce also didn’t know until recently, Tony was in space, Nat has been working, Clint is lost in the winds, and Steve is trying to help with damage control with SHIELD. There’s no one that he knows properly left in the world, any Asgardians are lost and he doesn’t know where they are.

Here we come to the ‘disordered eating’ section- and you may be thinking ‘Thor? Disordered eating? That seems more like a Loki thing.’ But what else do you call Thor’s stress eating? He’s been in space with crappy space rations, so I'm sure he could be just eating to fill himself after not eating properly for a while, but that’s not necessarily the case. It’s somewhat established (thanks to the end scene of Thor 1) that they have feasts in honour of the dead in Asgard. Post Loki’s death, there is a large banquet5, and I'm fairly sure that they wouldn’t be celebrating his death even after what he’s done. After all the losses Thor’s had, a large feast would be in order, most likely, but there’s no one to share the burden with. It comes to Thor to grieve for all of his people. (The drinking comes from a similar place)

In Endgame we see him eating when Carol arrives, and even if this is normal, he clearly gains weight after 5 years. It could be a beer belly, and that’s what it's meant to represent, but it's also more than that. Asgard's cuisine is different to Earth’s- they eat a lot of meat, sure, but less carbohydrates and sugars (Loki hasn’t had a proper sweet, just grapes and candied nuts6) and we know that Thor enjoys the more processed earth foods. (He eats a box of poptarts in Thor 1.) It's partly a change in diet, partly feasting in honour of his lost family and friends, but most importantly it's Thor’s isolation. He’s always had Loki as his walking impulse control, and when not Loki, likely Fandral or Volstagg (as they speak against going to Jotunheim in Thor 17) so he’s never really been alone with his own decisions before, and it's a large, sudden change that he clearly cannot cope with. 

When they go to fix it at the start of Endgame, Thor’s temper bubbles up again. He’s angry. Thanos has taken everything he had left from him, taken his brother for a third and final time, and Thor can’t fix it any other way than he knows how- kill the bastard that did it. Repeating what Thanos said to him clearly shows his self hatred, and how he blames himself for not being able to do it the first time- “I went for the head”8- he doesn’t fail again. But it doesn’t bring him satisfaction, and he’s still alone. There’s still no Loki left, right when they had reconciled, there’s no father to offer the head to, no mother to heal his wounds, no Heimdall to watch from afar, no Asgardians to revel in his victory. It’s hollow. 

They set up New Asgard, but Thor was alone until then, thinking he was the last left of Asgard. And then they timeskip 5 years (lazy of me, i know, but blame the Russo’s not the innocent victim) and Thor is a MESS. He’s an alcoholic, he’s isolated, barely speaking to people, and has gained a significant amount of weight from both eating and drinking. If he were a human he’d likely be in liver failure. He's managed to repress things by not speaking about it but is still struggling. And not ONE person helped the poor man. He’d not seen Bruce since Thanos was killed, Tony was separated from them all, Clint was out living his assassin best life, Nat was working to fix things and Steve was doing the same. But they didn’t visit Thor. He had Korg, sure, but he and Korg were acquaintances in Ragnarok and no more than roommates now. With no family left but the Avengers, you’d think they might help him a little bit. (Valkyrie has a solid excuse- she was literally being the king of New Asgard)

Had they taken Thor even a tiny bit seriously in this film, he’d be so upsetting to see in the scenes where he’s drunk and talking to Bruce. (“Why would I be scared of that guy? I killed that guy, remember? Did anyone else kill that guy? Nope. Didn’t think so.”9- he’s basically justifying why he can’t possibly be scared of Thanos, he’s THOR he’s of ASGARD, he KILLED Thanos, so he can’t be afraid.) But instead they make endless amounts of jokes about his want to prove himself by fixing the world. (“Just let me do it, let me do something good”10) and his celebration at still being worthy of Mjolnir11. (Another important aspect of his character arc in Endgame that they barely brushed- he’s still worthy as an unhealed mess of a man.)

The Russo brothers made so many jokes at the expense of ‘fat Thor’ that it massively negated why being sad and depressed was something he needed. Thor didn’t often dwell on being sad- he mourned for Loki, he mourned for his Mother, but he’d never really been heartcrushingly sad in the way he had to be after Infinity War. It was all new for him, and regardless of if he wants to do it, he has to. Thor NEEDED to be sad in that way- it helped him heal from the loss of everything he knew. Thor has changed since Thor 1, he’s no longer the arrogant bastard he once was, and it’s a change finalised by his depression in Endgame that leads him to give up the crown and go travelling.12

Ultimately, I think it was the excess of cruel jokes about Endgame Thor that made me mad- he’s just being endlessly bullied for being depressed and fat by people that lost less than he did. (Sorry Rhodey- this is aimed at you. The character assassination of you in Endgame was so unnecessary but like,,,) Everyone lost something, and you cannot compare trauma in a world where 50% of life has been snapped away by some purple dickhead, but Thor lost everything all at once and ended up alone for his troubles in trying to save the world, and I will always be sympathetic towards him for that.

Thor meets the Guardians- 1:26-1:33

Thor and Korg find Sif -0:34

Tony's message for Pepper 0:44

"He's pissed"- Rocket- 0:39

Asgard banquet - 0:27

Grapes, Nuts- 1:23

Fandral, Volstagg and Sif - 1:46-2:05

I went for the head- 2:24-2:27

Why would I be scared of that guy- 2:39-2:56

Let me do it- 2:34-2:38

I'm still worthy- 3:41-3:46

There's no need to evidence this- it's canon, I just want to appreciate how his new arc mirrors Loki- deciding he doesn't want to be king (as Loki appears to be when not being changed every few seconds) and travelling as Loki does mythologically/in the comics. And his adoption of Love at the end of Thor 4 mirrors Odin adopting Loki, so hopefully he does it right :)

[desafrey]

sanguinelupus asked: “ can i ask… what happened? ”

‘ the consequences of my own actions coming back to be one of the worst days of my life when it wasn’t supposed to be. people like us can never have happy things when we don’t deserve them. ’ hands are moving to push strands of her hair behind her ear, eyes looking away from him for a moment. klaus has only heard bits and pieces, of their original wedding. she doesn’t like to talk about it. but getting julian to talk about is even harder. she doesn’t think he’s ever taken the time to grieve over who they lost that day. while desdemona was unable to leave her bed, and he was comforting her, never taking a moment for himself. she wonders if julian would talk to klaus about it, if not her. hand is gently coming to rest on her stomach.

‘ it’s my fault. but i think he’s rationalized it in every possible to make it his fault. ’ her fingers are moving idly to the ring on her finger. ‘ not being strong enough, not being tapped into his witch heritage, sometimes i don’t know what goes on inside his head. ’ she’s moving to wipe her face before tears threaten to spill. she’s been doing far too much of it recently. either upset, or unexplained anger. she has appearances to keep up. ‘ i used, manipulated someone, and thought nothing of it. played his heart like a fiddle, really. ’

‘ i’ve been a terrible person. i am, a terrible person. there’s no changing that. i’ve had four thousand years on this rock to be a better person.  but almost every girl dreams of that picture perfect wedding. i suppose getting the exact opposite is what i deserve. but not him. he didn’t deserve that. ’ julian’s suffered for almost all of his life, and for what ? because he happened to be the first born of three heritages ? so he must suffer terrible life event after another ? she has to wonder if he regrets ever meeting her.  surely there was someone nicer, someone better. someone sweeter. she’s had her heart pulled out of her chest before, and there’s no denying just how black it truly is. she can dress it up in pretty clothing, lies, manipulation and pretty words, but it doesn’t change it. 

‘ this one can’t go wrong, klaus. less so for me, and more for him. he doesn’t talk about it, but i know the very thought of this has both of us replying the past all over again. ’ desdemona knows she does not deserve him. julian isn’t perfect, he’s done terrible things just like she has. but she’s never felt so loved, and safe by a person’s side in her entire life. and that’s what makes him different to her. she’ll change. she’ll try. she is trying, anything. anything to keep him. but can she really tear down the bricks of who she’s become over the years ? isn’t she just a terrible person now, down to her very being ? has she not rotted out anything good in her ?

‘ your presence this time will make him happier than you know. you didn’t see his face when he realized you weren’t there the first time, by no fault of your own.  the entire time he’s thought you didn’t care about him when it’s been person after person keeping you from him. ’ including herself. 

‘ i’m sorry i - ’ that she’s gotten severely side tracked. poured her heart out a little bit to someone who hardly asked.  ‘ i think those flowers would be great, thank you. ’

[rhaenyras]

I am a 19-year-old orphan. When I was growing up, my father was my rock, a gentle, caring single parent. He struggled with mental illness (I found out after he died) but would do anything to protect me and my siblings. Our mother died of AIDS when I was 5.

I was nine when my father died. My brother and sister were teenagers. On the day it happened, my father had just had a fight with my brother; he stormed off to another part of the house, but didn’t see me follow. Then, he killed himself. I ran towards him, screaming, but he died before I reached him. The police and ambulance arrived and took my father away; we never saw him again. My siblings and I slept at the hospital that night and moved in with our grandmother soon afterwards.

That day remains the most traumatic of my life. Sometimes I still cannot believe it and think he is alive. I blame myself. I did nothing, paralysed by fear. I could have saved him, but didn’t. I don’t know how to get over this. I left school because I just didn’t go, and have been hospitalised twice. It has ruined me more than either of my siblings (though they are sad) because he was my hero. I grieve and miss him every day. My nightmares are haunted by him dying over and over again. I barely sleep. Even ten years later, I am becoming ill with grief and hardly eat. I don’t know what to do.

oh dear... i truly see where you´re coming from, i understand the trauma and the unhealed wounds you carry inside you, i even understand the sense of guilt stemming from your own helplessness back then... but rationally speaking, how could you ever have saved him? you were NINE. what is a 9 year old child supposed to be if not helpless? ordinary kids at that age don´t even know how to look after themselves, how is it fair to expect of your 9 year old self that she was supposed to thwart and prevent her own father´s suicide attempt? it´s not only unfair, it is simply irrational and needlessly cruel. so don´t torture yourself so. you´re young still, and life is a long streak of losses. you´ve already known the first, so you know what to expect. but you must survive through all of them nevertheless. it´s what your father would have wanted. it´s what you owe yourself and that little helpless 9 year old kid. also i believe you would benefit from some therapy. hopefully with that and your loved ones´ help, you´re gonna be able to forgive yourself and move on from an event that, as traumatic and painful as it was, you could have in no way prevented

[x-heartofthecards-x]

@numberoneduelist

Seto follows the other man in.

“That’s why we came. Nobody looking for an autograph is going to find us here.”

The place is fairly peaceful - soft music playing from a speaker in the ceiling and the sounds of the kitchen lend themselves to the atmosphere well. He feels calm already.

Yugi pulls out his chair and he snickers, one corner of his mouth pulling into a sort of amused half-smile. How chivalrous.

He shrugs off his coat, drapes it over the back of his chair, and grabs a menu from the edge of the table. He looks it over only briefly, then slides it over to his companion. He already knows what he’s going to get; the same thing as usual.

“All these years later and you still surprise me.”

The feeling is mutual, but he doesn’t say so. It’s always been difficult for him to know what Mutou is going to do next, what he’s thinking. He can make approximations, but it’s rare for him to be spot-on. He supposes that’s why it’s taken so long for him to come out victorious in a duel.

“I frequent said ‘swanky joints’ more regularly, but there are days that they’re just… too much.” He leans forward and folds his arms in front of him, elbows on the table. An original-run duel disk hangs on the wall over one of the windows and he gives it a thoughtful look. “I like the quiet. As for the bar… Sometimes it’s nice to be somewhere where nobody recognizes me. You must know the feeling.”

Sometimes the weight of being a public figure can be daunting. He has to keep up appearances, make sure he doesn’t give his company a bad name. He has to be high-powered, he has to be one step ahead of the game, he can’t show weakness. While he’s able to skate by most of the time without caring and fit the bill just fine, there are also plenty of instances where he’s unable to relax. Sometimes… he is tired.

“Get whatever you want. It’s on me.”

Once he was handed the menu, Yugi glanced over it as he listened to Kaiba speak. It was easy enough to find something he would like, a simple cheeseburger. Once he had that in mind, he set down the menu and looked up at the other man with a sympathetic smile.

People, crowds, and recognition being too much was something that he definitely understood quite intimately.

Right after his final duel with Atem, he was still a household name of celebrity. He was recognized everywhere he went. It had made grieving incredibly difficult and it was a large reason why he became such a recluse in recent years.

"I do understand. I became a big fan of oversized hoodies and big sunglasses for a while," Yugi replied with a nod. He let out a sigh and then added, "Eventually, it just became easier to not go out at all. I started feeling like I was having panic attacks every time I stepped out my door and I couldn't deal anymore."

And that was exactly how he let himself get into the state he had been. Initially, he thought he was pulling back from the world as a matter of self-preservation. He had rationalized it and convinced himself he was okay and it was temporary until he was too far gone to care any more.

He worried at his lip for a moment in thought before he was able to push that train of thought down. When he had, he then looked up to the other to say with a little chuckle, "This is nice though. Thank you for dinner, Seto. If you hadn't offered to pay, I probably would have dined and dashed on you anyway. So I am glad you're showing me the effort."

[plan-d-to-i]

Heyo comrade, I come with your opinion of this comment on a fanfic. (Going off the show only) the scene where she Brough him back to the house when he wanted to run away really hit me to say she was standing in as his mother. The actress did such a fantastic job conveying those emotions and making it understood that she’d love him unconditionally. And that’s the thing: she did! Right up until the very end she was supporting him and believing in him.

pt 2 Even knowing he couldn’t go to her wedding she made a way for him to see her in her dress and made him soup. The fact that someone who carried a sword and was taught cultivation (although it’s mentioned she is very low level) the fact that she just runs onto a battlefield unarmed to get cut down? That she doesn’t do anything to ensure her survival? Even grieving I can’t believe she’d run in basically knowing she’d get cut down that’s just a suicide mission and she was too strong willed for that!

... they lost me at "the actress did such a fantastic job". I want whatever soup this person has been sipping...

Ok, she didn't run out into the field "to get cut down" on a one woman "suicide mission" to save WWX (in fact her presence is arguably what put him in more danger because he had to go down into the fray). She hardly knew what she wanted herself other than to see him one more time... a desire that I guess she had previously been able to set aside while he spent all that time in the Burial Mounds and she was happily chilling w the Jins...

"Jiang YanLi managed, “… A-Xian. Before… why did you run away so fast… I didn’t even get the chance to look at you, or say something to you…”

Hearing this, Wei WuXian’s heart beat fast. He still didn’t dare look at Jiang YanLi’s face. Right then, the face was the same as Jin ZiXuan’s back then, covered in dust and blood. He was even more scared to hear the words she was about to say.

Jiang YanLi, “I’m… I’m here to tell you…”

To tell him what?

That it’s fine?

That I don’t hate you?

That everything is fine?

That I don’t blame you for have killed Jin ZiXuan?

It was impossible.

But she couldn’t say anything that was the opposite either. And so, she didn’t know what else she could say to Wei Wei WuXian, under such circumstances. It was just that she felt like she had to see this brother of hers once more.

Jiang YanLi sighed, “A-Xian, you… you should stop first. Don’t, don’t…”

Wei WuXian hurried, “Yes, I’ll stop.”

It's somewhat ironic that YanLi and her husband both ask WWX to stop fighting in a situation where he was the one unfairly being attacked by an overwhelmingly larger force...

Wei WuXian’s chest heaved up and down. His eyes were red. Jin ZiXuan and Jin ZiXun were cousins who had known each other well ever since they were young. With almost twenty years between them, at this point, it was indeed difficult for him to defend an outsider. And, in truth, he didn’t like Wei WuXian as a person either.

Collecting himself, he spoke, “Tell Wen Ning to stop first. Don’t let him continue his rampage and make the situation worse than it already is.”

Wei WuXian’s voice was coarse, “… Why don’t you make them stop first?”

As for what was going through her mind, It's hard to say: 1. she's not acting rationally abandoning her child, and crashing into an active battlefield 2. it seems like she herself doesn't know what she's thinking and is probably reacting from a compromised emotional and physical state/on impulse. I doubt that she appreciated the extent of the danger she was facing on that battle field. I think the same as Zixuan and Qiongqi path. They don't quite appreciate the full danger of the situation because it's "their side" leading the conflict - but this is just an assumption.

Honestly, It's hard for me to appreciate why fandom is so obsessed with this character. She has her place in the book but XuanLi has to be the least interesting thing in the entire story - not in a bad way! for what it's meant to do it functions beautifully (conflict!angst!Jin Ling!), it's just has its moment and then it's not really worth dwelling on? And I believe it's meant to be that way. It would be illogical for the reader to get so caught up in the loss of these characters that the focus is taken off of the mains...

Wei Wuxian's relationship with YanLi was good in Lotus Pier when he was growing up, especially considering the other relationships he had there aside from JFM... but as life moved forward and the issues they were facing grew, there was already a sense of distance growing between him. There was no way to keep things the same.

When he ran into Lan WangJi in the streets, he recalled many things from when he was studying at the Cloud Recesses. On a whim, he stopped Lan WangJi, wanting to direct their conversation toward those days as well. But, Lan WangJi reminded him that everything was different from how they were back then.

Yet, when he returned to Lotus Pier, to the Jiang siblings, he’d be under the illusion that nothing had changed at all.

Wei WuXian suddenly wanted to find the tree that he once hugged.

He stood up and walked out of the training grounds. The disciples along the way nodded at him in respect. All of them looked unfamiliar... (Chapter 71)

I think this is such an interesting moment in the story. Unlike the Jiang siblings, LWJ can observe that there's something off about WWX but he doesn't quite know how to comunicate his heartfelt concern. It's uncomfortable for WWX who's trying to relive the dynamic they had when they were young in the Cloud Recesses and WWX could challenge LWJ on the same level. But at the same time returning to Lotus Pier, there's a vague air about WWX of an outsider looking in. He bickers with jiang cheng, he acts like a silly kid for YanLi, but there's a performative quality to it. He's seeking to maintain that illusion for himself that things are back to the way they were, but he's not the same anymore. No matter how much Wei Wuxian can leave behind his losses and hurts, he can't change the fact that he has no core now, and that cultivation path is closed to him. How long can one maintain an illusion and what can you build on it? So he wishes he could go back to that moment when he fell out of the tree, and finally gained a sense of belonging in Lotus Pier. Only that's not possible either. Not with the Jiangs. Not in this life. In the end it's only with Lan Wangji that he can safely jump into his arms and into a life where he can be wholly himself.

[calliecat93]

Hi Callie! In your opinion, what are the top ten best Mccoy centric episodes in TOS? You don't have to answer if you don't want to, thanks for reading anyways! ❤️

Ooh, good question! This is a little hard because McCoy, compared to Kirk and Spock, didn’t get a lot of centric episodes. Actually I think he only really got like… two out of 79 episodes (depending on how you view it). But he DOES have a large prescence in others, so let me see here…

1. The Empath Technically it’s a Triumvirate episode, but this has McCoy’s best moment in the entire show. Like if you want to understand McCoy’s character, this is the episode that you turn to. I already blabbed about why once so I’ll let that go into it for me.

2. For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky: While some of the execution is a bit iffy, this is still a realy excellent episode. Mainly because DeForest Kelley plays McCoy here with everything that he has and just nails everything, McCoy’s sadness, loneliness, and invevat le fate of dying in a year, masterfully. The episode would be NOWHERE near as good if not for De Kelley.

3. The Man Trap: This and the last one are the only two McCoy-centric episodes, at least that I recall. This one often gets overlooked since it’s first so I think that the emotional impact gets lost. But God McCoy in this episode is just outright tragic. I wrote a whole post about it because it felt so unfair that it was overlooked because there is SO MUCH there. Also mrke amazing De Kelley acting

4. All Our Yesterdays: While McCoy does spend a good chunk of it passed out from hypothermia, he is freakin’ excellent in this episode. He’s not only hilarious (“He means it’s cold!”, De’s delivery made me burst out laughing) but when he’s finally awake, he’s just freakin’ awesome. He put himself at GREAT risk to snap Spock out of his mental state and then went ‘screw it’ and tried to find the portal home cause he wants his life back, with or without Spock (but preferably with Spock). He’s just great~!

5. Return to Tomorrow: This whole episode is super underrated. It’s the one where the alien beings posess Kirk, Spock, and Lady of the Week’s bodies. McCoy is the ONLY rational person in the episode and the one who has to deal with the majority of the problem. He has to both worry about everyone’s minds in the orbs and what the aliens do to their human bodies and is VERY concerned throughout. It also demonstrates how devkted to his profession and oath that he is. He even outright risks Kirk dying for good, as painful as it is for him, because it would mean allowing another to die and like Hell is he doing that. Seriously, this one is so freakin’ overlooked.

6. Bread and Circuses/The Immunity Syndrome/The Tholian Web: Yeah three way tie cause they all have one thing in common: they feature his complicated relationship with Spock. The first one I wrote a whole meta about already. It’s a Spones analysis, but it reflects why McCoy himself is great in this episode along with all hos geneal grumpy snark throughout. Oh and the ending with him throwing a mattess at a guy… and he wins IIRC. Best underrated comedy moment EVER. With the second, he’s not at all happy with Spock being picked over him to examine the amoeba and that Spock may die. Their whole interaction in the hangar, McCoy waiting until the doors close to wish Spock luck, Spock’s seeming final words, and of course “Shut up Spock! We’re rescuing you!”. The last one of course has Kirk gone and McCoy is angry, grieving, and stressed with everyone losing their minds and Spcok pressuring him to fix it all at the same time and he takes it out on Spock. Then they see Kirk’s final message and we all know what happens after. All three do such a great job showing how much McCoy cares about Spock and showcasing how great they really are together, and not even just the shippy sense. Only reason they’re at six is because of how closely tied to Spock he is in those episodes instead of being the central character, but he IS still central in them and showcase some of his best moments. So I hope I got my point across XD

7. A Private Little War: The episode’s message is kind of… questionable. But ignoring thay, McCoy is the real freakin’ hero of this story. It’s only because of him that Kirk survived and he’s more than willing to contront him on his questionable decision making. Which is the very thing that Kirk brought him for to begin with. It’s one of the best episode to show how much he cares about Kirk and the lengths he’ll go for him. Oh and he kept Spock from dying along with Chapel and M’Benga. Thank God he has competent medical staff who can do the job without him XD

8. Journey to Babel: Okay yes this is a Spock episode, but McCoy is VERY prominent throughout. He’s both hilarious in the cold opening and we all remember his reaction to Spock’s ‘teddy bear’ XD. But he managed to conduct a VERY risky surgery that put Spock and Sarek at great risk if he screwed up. A surgery he’s never really conducted. And during a battle that causes frequent rattling to boot. He succeeded and the episode appropriately rewards him by allowing him the final word. It’s not only oen of the best episodes showing why he’s the CMO, but he’s just freakin’ great the whole episode.

9. Amok Time: Again it’s a Spock episode, but I repeat what I said about Return to Tomorrow: McCoy is the real hero. He’s the one who recognizes that something is horribly wrong, puts up with zero excuses, actually usus logic to get Spock to comply, and of course it was him who saved both Kirk and Spock’s sorry butts. They’d both likely be dead had McCoy not been there. He may have had the least screentime of the three, but he damn wel made up for it.

10. Operation: Annahilate: It has one of the saddest but strongest McCoy scenes. Through the whole episode he’s super protectice of Spock, running various tests to get rid of the parasites and trying to keep Kirk’s kid nephew alive all at the same time. Then he gets made by Kirk and Spock to risk blinding the latter… and DOES blind him. Then his face when the test result revelaed that he didn’t need to use an jntense light and being outright unresponsive when Kirk calls him later… just ouch. It’s one of those moments I wish it had gone more in depth, but upseide is we have haply McCoy by the end. Want proof of how much he cares for Spock and others? Here you go

And he has really good scenes in other episodes despite varying levels of prominence (Miri, Space Seed, The Galileo Seven, This Side of Pradise, The City on the Edge of Forever, Mirror, Mirror, Friday’s Child, The Ultimate Computer, Spock’s Brain… no seriosuly he’s the biggest bright spot in that and for certain S3 episodes tbh). It’s a HUGE shame that he was treated like the third wheel both in series and the films, and even now gets the raw end of the deal in popular media. But I hope that this was a satisfactory list Anon. Sorry it got all wordy and long, I can’t help myself sometimes XD

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