#but boy howdy they did and they are!

[greentrickster]

Oh! Oh, Yue Qingyuan has a qi deviation thanks to not quite knowing how to handle the energies of a female body properly (note: this isn’t a ‘haha, man turns into woman and discovers how hard a female body can be to deal with’ situation, it’s a ‘this man has been holding on by his fingernails for forty years and sprinting towards his breaking point since Tianlang-jun got dug up and this was one detail to keep track of too many’).

Fortunately (for a given value of fortunately), it’s not one that has him baying for blood or on death’s door or anything, it’s a relatively mild one that just leaves him feverish and a bit delirious, with Tianlang-jun swearing and doing his best to replicate the meridian-cleansing YQY has been doing for him with that big ol’ well of spiritual energy his plant body has to make sure this idiot doesn’t die on him or anything. Because everyone would probably blame him and also he hasn’t even fixed the guy enough yet to get his revenge via petty bullying yet. This man is getting such an earful when he’s lucid enough to understand it!

Except when YQY does finally wake up enough to get complained at, he’s still not fully in his right mind or aware of his surroundings.

Oh, and he’s absolutely convinced that Tianlang-jun is Luo Binghe, in spite of the fact that Tianlang-jun is currently woman-shaped.

Tianlang-jun: About time you woke up! You know what I-!

YQY: (dazed) You?

Tianlang-jun: Yes, me! Now-

YQY: Why are you helping me?

Tianlang-jun: What?

YQY: Why are you helping me? It’d be better for you if I was dead.

Tianlang-jun: (mental gears grinding because um, what now, it’s been pretty established at this point in the forced-bonding exercise that they both need each other very very much if they’re going to survive this...?) ...what?

YQY: (curling up on himself a bit) We both know it’s true. You know I love him, and he hasn’t noticed he’s in love with you yet. I’m just another obstacle to get through. Even though he doesn’t remember why I call him ‘Shen Jiu.’ Even though he doesn’t remember that he hates that name and hates me calling him by it and hates me. He doesn’t even remember that I love him, or why he should hate me, he doesn’t remember-!!! (starts crying, not big and noisy or showy, just soft and quiet and utterly heartbroken)

Tianlang-jun: ...

Tianlang-jun: (So, on the one hand, he’s emotionally vulnerable, doesn’t realize who he’s talking to, and in no mental state to consent to doing or saying anything)

Tianlang-jun: (On the other hand, juicy sect gossip about the sect leader, that guy my son’s in love with, and probably my son)

Tianlang-jun: (in his best Binghe impression) Please explain, Sect Boss Yue, perhaps this shizhi can help.

On the one hand, it works! Tianlang-jun is the first person to ever hear the full story of Yue Qi and Shen Jiu’s shared history! Getting all this out there even helps calm these long-time heart-demons enough to get him out of qi deviation and to sleep - success!

On the other hand, it works! And Tianlang-jun gets to stare at the surrounding forest for the rest of the night processing the experience of, “Damn, you live like this bro?!” mixed with “That’s so tragic and romantic, someone should write a play about this!” along with a healthy dose of, “What the hell am I supposed to do with this information? You know, besides tell him to tell that idiot he’s in love with when we get back to the sect. And maybe force him to do it. Purely because this is the main issue this man has and if I can fix this then I can finally start getting him to respond to my teasing properly, and not at all because I relate to this situation in any way, shape, or form and miscommunication tragedies have kinda lost their appeal to me since I discovered everything bad in my live for the past twenty years has been the result of one. I don’t like him or feel sorry for him. I don’t.”

[ourstaturestouchtheskies]

Summer – Thomas Dewing // The Hermit Thrush – Thomas Dewing // The White Birch – Thomas Dewing // seven – Taylor Swift

[krashlite]

Millie Warm the Kettle,,,

i thought too hard abt bigb's POV and how in both 3L and DL he's caught between two alliances- one with grian and one with ren

something something damned if he does, damned if he doesn't

[clownsuu]

How do you feel knowing you converted most of the welcome community to Howdy lovers

The howdy propaganda

W O R K E D -

[mini cw link has mini caterpillars in it]

[t00thpasteface]

[haropladraws]

my gift for @aliencatart for tokuholiday 2023!! the prompt I decided to follow up on was for nico to frustratedly try to teach taiga how to play a fighting game. I drew on my own experiences trying to both learn how to play fighting games and use a fight stick, and combining that with how to inject more of their personalities into this made for a really fun draw!!

[shield-and-saber]

i have.... so many mixed feelings

on the one hand, i really really appreciate that sol is someone who is flawed. i love the fact that you can compare brendok sol to jecki's master sol and see how he has matured over 16 years, how he's found more balance, maturity, and certainty in the force, and i truly love seeing that growth

on the other hand, i quite honestly feel betrayed. which i'm realizing now was kind of the point, but i still hate it. you mean to tell me that not only was he reckless and selfish, but he didn't stop to consider another culture's practices, or to consider that maybe he didn't have enough context for the things he saw? he's a grown man, a fucking knight, and he didn't stop to even consider any of that??

i guess it's an extension of the theme that the jedi are not perfect and they are flawed, though still well-meaning, and i do like that approach. idk. anyone else kind of reeling or is it just me?

[puckpocketed]

not enough is being said about celebrini’s little :| face

:|

and thats his smile btw thats his media grimace !!

HOWEVER it must be noted when he grins he looks like he has a few too many teeth ! which hits on three different levels: disturbing and delightful and VERY on theme for a shark <3

bonus: the world is an AWFUL and cruel place, they (the evil craft of orthodontics) took everything from us when they closed his tooth gap

WE USED TO BE A COUNTRY. A SOCIETY.

[forgotmynametag]

That one time the wholeass sun came careening down

[starrystevie]

hi can I request the valentine prompt for steddie with: I could marry you right now

thank you :)

"i could marry you right now."

steve freezes, his fork halfway to his mouth, and looks at eddie over the candlelight. he has his eyes closed while he comically over-chews to show how much he loves the pasta with his curls bouncing around every time he turns his head for dramatic flair. eddie grins and opens his eyes, flashing a wink over to his boyfriend before taking another bite.

he knows his own eyes must be as big as the dinner plates on the table with eddie's words bouncing around in his now empty head. the ring box that's felt heavy in his pocket through the whole evening feels even heavier now.

"i take it it's good?" is all steve can come up with, muttering out the question before shoving his own forkful of fettucine into his mouth. it is good, he knows it is, he's been working on perfecting the recipe for weeks now. this whole valentine's day has been in the works for the last 4 months, starting with the dinner plans and ending with finally paying off the silver band that's currently burning a hole through his slacks.

"good? steve, i would have your babies if i could and tell them as soon as they're old enough that they are only here because of this pasta."

eddie slurps up a noodle and steve chokes on his own. something burns bright and fierce in his chest, like his last bite held a star that found a home in his heart.

he can see it, is what it is. he can see them with a couple of kids running around their too-small house, eddie chasing after them, curls of all different colors flying in the wind. he can see eddie shushing a tiny little thing in his arms while steve helps another with math homework at their kitchen table, something bubbling over on the stove. he can see all of them piling into their bed one stormy night, someone tucked under his arm and another curled up on his chest with eddie telling tall tales to scared faces in an attempt to distract them from the thunder booming outside. he can see it, and it's all he could ever possibly want.

"i love you," steve blurts out, suddenly a bit more teary than he expects. eddie looks up, his teasing face smoothing into something softer, something lovely.

"i love you too, baby."

steve's fork drops onto the plate with a loud crash as he fumbles to stand up on his hopefully still functioning legs. eddie startles and flinches but steve's there just like he always will be, a hand on his shoulder to sooth him back down. he bends down and places the smallest of kisses to eddie's lips, thumb stroking over the bit of skin at his collarbone that he can reach.

"i hope it's not just the pasta or the wine talking," he starts as he lowers himself to one knee, his free hand tugging out the velvety box from his pocket. it's now eddie who's eyes grow big and beautiful and god, steve could stay on his knees like this and look at him everyday for the rest of his life if eddie would just keep looking at him like that-

"steve," eddie breathes out, watery smile and all.

"you said you could marry me, so i hope the offer still stands."

the band is small, shiny silver with a few miniscule diamonds for eddie and alexandrites for steve inlayed in the vine going though the center of it. the candle light gleams off the gems sending broken specks of shimmering light to dance over eddie's flushed cheeks. the ring shakes in his hand as he pulls it out, holding it up for the love of this and every life to see.

the small but there nod eddie gives steve is the only answer he needs as he grabs eddie's hand, slipping the band onto the only finger it could ever fit, sealing it with a kiss that starts the rest of their lives.

[nikkidrawsstuff]

[rosieofcorona]

I'll be real with y'all I did NOT understand the Varric thirst until the Veilguard gameplay reveal and then it hit me like a fucking train

[simmonsized]

hi idk how to talk about this, especially on my main blog, but I wrote a post-season 19 rvb fic for my partner, @docdufresne

it is called Red Letter Days and it is a red team-centric (Simmons and Donut centric) fic that finds its companion in that sad blue team comic I drew a few weeks ago.

no pressure, but I had a lot of fun and it is much longer than I was expecting it to be! I'm really proud I finished it :)

[royalarchivist]

Whether it's already the 1st or still the 31st for you, Happy New Year everyone!

I've updated the QSMP VOD Timestamp Archive to include a section for 2024 timestamps. It's wild to think I've done this for (nearly) a year.

[alchemistc]

goon | chapter one | bucktommy

check out the hockey glossary here read from the beginning or read chapter one here

It takes Tommy a few breathless seconds to remember to skate in and hug the rest of his team, and another five to realize that technically the assist is his. He stopped caring about stats so much the second year his time in the box exceeded his time on ice for more than five games out of the season, but it sits there, in the back of his mind, his name next to Buckley’s on the score sheet.

There’s a rush that comes with division rivalry games, a certain something in the air when the crowd noise rushes in after the anthem, a call for blood and guts and gore and glory.

Tommy’s been in the league for almost two decades. He’s played for every division in the league, at one point or another. This isn’t even his first time in the central, although the configuration of teams is different than the last time.

Sometimes one team is shit (more often than not he’s on that side of it) and the other is on a tear. Sometimes they’re battling it out in four-point games to keep their points lead in the division — or knock the other team down to second. Sometimes it’s a scrape to pull out the wildcard spot. Sometimes the game itself is meaningless but they’ve played each other often enough that there’s friction. Sometimes there’s just one fucking guy on the opposition that the fanbase harbors some deep resentment for.

And this one actually means something — there’s some extra bad blood between these two teams, a star goalie with a grudge on the far end of the ice, three first round matchups in the last ten years, a run of wins that was bringing tonight’s opponent a little too close for comfort to the Avs divisional points cushion.

Tommy shifts his weight and settles the nerves, accepts the smack to the back of his helmet, and watches Binnington throw a fit between the pipes when the stripes don’t whistle the play dead and call an icing when the puck trickles in behind his net.

They’re five minutes in and everyone’s getting testy. He can feel it.

This is where Tommy does his best work.

It’d been a task, ten years ago, a part of the job he’d accepted because he was good in a fight and fully capable of taking a few punches. Under the thumb of the old boys club it’d just been expected of him — the ability to throw his weight around was what had kept him from complete obscurity in a lower league that would have worn him down much sooner. Tommy’s fists and his ability to drop his shoulder just in time to knock a guy flat on his ass were the only things that mattered when his agent settled him down with two offers, a few years into the league, and he’d chosen the team most likely to make his dad proud.

Never mind that his dad had come to three games when Tommy was a bright eyed rookie, seen Tommy get his ass handed to him by a man twice his size, and stopped bothering to show up.

He’d turned that around, in recent years. Longer stints with the affiliate teams, less time under the microscopic eye of the national press (even as a role player he’d had his moments under that eye) — he’d learned when to pull his punches, when to turn the other cheek, and when to lock his ankles and aim for the fucking chest. He had friends up and down the continent who knew him as the guy who’d take them all out to dinner after a bad loss, find something stupid and entertaining for them to do after, and then go into the next game with a chip on his fucking shoulder.

There were three kids with insane star power in the league who had him on speed dial even though he hadn’t played with them for a year or more, because for some fucking reason he had the ability to talk them off a ledge when the pressure drove them towards it.

He’d never tell a soul that Crosby still sent him gym selfies so they could compare the relative size and plumpness of their ass during the offseason.

There was still a reverence for real enforcers, in the league, even if they’d fallen by the wayside as teams got smaller and quicker. They were more a deterrent than anything else these days, but that usually meant Tommy got to lumber around on the ice for a few minutes a game, remembering what it had felt like the first time he’d laced his skates and stepped out to a roaring crowd, before he took another dumb penalty and spent the next forty-five minutes riding the bench. He’d been instructed not to take any dumb penalties, tonight, because St. Louis didn’t tend to get sloppy until the game was on the line.

Thirty-six minutes in, Schenn takes a chop at Diaz’s knees under the guise of a poke check and the home crowd gets loud, and ornery.

Nash smacks him on the shoulder on their way back down the tunnel for the third, eyes a little wild, and Tommy immediately recalls the old highlight reels of Nash shaking hair out of his eyes while he squared off against a guy twice his size, motor-mouthing his way into getting the other guy to take the first swing. Minnesotans and their right hooks weren’t something to fuck around with. Too much time in the cold not to have a little crazy in them.

Tommy rolls his tongue over his teeth, tilts his head to where Diaz and Buckley are bent over the boards together on the bench, already prepared to hop out the moment Bannister tries to get a matchup that’ll tilt in the Blues favor.

Nash sends him out with the rest of the fourth line, and Tommy doesn’t waste any time.

It’s immediately clear that they’ve all been warned to keep level heads. Schenn won’t engage, Buchnevich barely acknowledges Tommy when he hip checks him into his own bench — he goes ass over tea kettle and Tommy gets nothing more than a few shifty looks and some smack talk from the guys sitting.

There’s an easy way around that, though.

Tommy clambers back over the boards and waits out the next shift, practically vibrating with it when a shot pings off the crossbar and Greenway skates right through Binnington’s crease chasing after it.

Kyrou tries to take out Buckley against the boards, looks livid when Buck skates just free of it, and Buck does some ankle breaking in a rush to the goal. It hits the post, and when the whistle gets blown fifteen seconds later Tommy watches level heads not prevail when Binner says something snippy to Kyrou that has him rolling his eyes on the way back to the bench.

It takes another minute and a half for Nash to set up the line matches the way he wants them, but as Greenway skates off in relief and Schenn’s line stays stuck in their own zone spinning their wheels, Bobby smacks a thick hand down on Tommy’s shoulder. “Kinard, you’re up!”

Tommy takes an awkward pass once he’s past the blue line and goes full tilt towards the net. Full tilt for Tommy isn’t anything special, but it’s not what the Blues are expecting, and most of them have been out for two plus minutes at this point, hemmed in by their third and fourth lines just shoveling the puck back in every time it nears the blue line.

The snow shower he aims at the goal, half an inch into the crease when he fully stops, isn’t anything to write home about, but it has it’s intended effect. Already short on patience, Binnington watches Schenn intercept and send the puck careening down the ice — a third icing in a row — and lashes out with the butt end of his stick, a glancing blow Tommy laughs at as the rest of the players start to circle up at the whistle. Tommy’s laugh pisses him off. The laugh pisses him off so much.

It’s so fucking easy to rattle him when he’s already two goals down. There’s some shoving, a few hockey hugs to keep things from escalating, but Panikkar has apparently cottoned on to Tommy’s plan, and he says something under his breath that has Sundquist in his face, and Binnington skating around behind the net in irritation while the zebras break up a few of the more reticent shoving matches.

Tommy wins about one face-off out of every fifty, but that’s not the reason he’s bending across from Schenn now at the circle.

“We could end this before he loses all his cool and breaks his stick on the pipes,” Tommy goads, and the linesman with the puck rolls his eyes towards Schenn expectantly. The other man shifts, readjusts the grip on his stick. “Or I could just keep taunting him for something that isn’t even his fault, this time.”

Schenn’s not a particularly bad dude, just a little gun shy about fighting when his coach has clearly told them all not to engage.

Tommy wants him to fucking engage.

Schenn waits for the puck to drop, and miraculously, it’s Tommy who scoops it up to a fresh-faced Buckley just in time for the man to wind up and sneak it through about four bodies on it’s way over Binnington’s shoulder.

It takes Tommy a few breathless seconds to remember to skate in and hug the rest of his team, and another five to realize that technically the assist is his. He stopped caring about stats so much the second year his time in the box exceeded his time on ice for more than five games out of the season, but it sits there, in the back of his mind, his name next to Buckley’s on the score sheet.

And then Schenn gets sloppy again, a check into the boards that has Panikkar limping back towards the bench while the crowd boos the refs — no call, again, which is fucking typical and normally Tommy’d be in his face about it, ready for the unsportsmanlike just ready to tumble off the refs tongue, but not tonight, tonight he’s got other plans — and Tommy doesn’t give Schenn any time to think about it when Nash sends him out in the immediate chaos.

He catches Kyrou mid-ice with his head down, a shoulder right to the chest that sends him reeling back, skates leaving the ground as he crashes backwards, and Schenn is on him in the next five seconds, gloves off and a resigned look in his eyes. Tommy grins and shifts his weight back, tossing his own gloves and reaching for the neck of Schenn’s sweater.

In the heat of the moment, man to man, the noise of the crowd always dies away, blood pounding in his ears and his entire focus on keeping his weight balanced and his fists loose. He’s been a heavy-weight for over half his career, and Schenn knows he’s outmatched but someone has to answer the bell.

There’s a ref circling them, and Tommy gets three right hooks in before Schenn can even get a hand out to hold Tommy back.

Hen’s gonna be pissed when she sees the state of his hands, but Tommy doesn’t really care, all that much, as he tightens his grip and yanks him close enough for an uppercut aimed at his ribs.

The refs break in before Schenn gets a hit, and the roar of the crowd rushes back in, loud, raucous, the mob appeased as Tommy skates his way to the box with a grin on his face. He’s a little disappointed that they’d broken it up so quickly, but — he’s probably got twenty-five pounds on Schenn, so fair enough.

Diaz scores a shorthanded goal three minutes into the major and Chim holds the line through the deluge of pissed off Blues who are now down four goals.

Tommy spends about ten seconds out of the box before the refs assess him a game misconduct for tapping his glove along the visitors side gate, and he accepts it with all the grace he can muster, smacking his fist into a screaming kids palm as he heads off down the hall.

The cool off doesn’t take him as long at it used to — sometime in the first ten years of his career he’d figured out how to shake off the hotheaded temper that made him so fucking good at getting under people’s skin, and by the time the rest of the team returns with a victory on their shoulders he’s relaxed and loose-limbed again.

Diaz makes a beeline for him, smacking his bare chest, hands curling over his shoulders so he can shake him a little, and he gets a few hoots and hollers as the rest of the team trickles back in. Someone names Tommy third star, but Nash has a rule about keeping up appearances, and he had technically been tossed from the game, so. He keeps his seat and waits until Buckley and Chim both return from taking their bow.

They’ve got a tradition, going back a few years now, a game puck tossed from player to player throughout the season for whatever the hell the previous recipient wants to acknowledge someone for. Tommy’s spent a few weeks hyping up the recipient with the rest of the team, but tonight Diaz calls for silence and every eye in the room swivels towards Tommy.

“Next time we’re getting you the full Gordie Howe,” comes the concise speech, and Tommy chuckles when Diaz leans in for a half-shake, half-hug where he admits in an undertone that Binner had definitely done his best to hold on to this particular puck at the game horn, so Tommy had better appreciate his efforts in acquiring it.

It’s not even March, but there’s a string of tension running through the whole group of them, a line of unspoken expectation as their home record extends to fifteen games — but as they trickle off to the showers with pats on the back and the giddy adrenaline of another win, Tommy can feel something brewing in the room.

He’s halfway through stretches, twenty minutes later, when Panikkar parks up next to him and knocks his knee against Tommy’s.

“That was some pretty decent work, Kinard,” Ravi says, like he hasn’t spent two weeks annoyed that Tommy can’t keep up with him when he’s on a breakaway, barely holding his tongue when Tommy lumbers down the ice after him. Diaz has made some noise, in recent days, about running suicide drills at the start of optionals, and Tommy is absolutely gonna get his ass handed to him. He’ll be there with bells, but he’s gonna be feeling that shit for weeks.

“Not so bad yourself, kid,” Tommy tells him, and Ravi ducks his head around a grin.

“Hen’s pissed I didn’t keep my mouth shut,” he admits, and gestures to his ribs, where Tommy can already see some nasty bruising. Tommy cocks an eyebrow.

“I’d have gotten them there on my own.”

Ravi’s grin brightens, and when he stands, Tommy can’t quite help the way he wants to stand as well, maybe give this kid a noogie, tease him about the height difference for a second. He’d grown up without brothers, but he’s found about a million and two in his time playing up and down the continent. “It’s more fun when you’ve got the whole team to move it along.”

He’s halfway out the door when he spins on his heel to give Tommy another look. “Hey, you know Gardiner’s had it out for Buckley for like, four years, right?”

Tommy shifts. Panikkar doesn’t need to know that he’s had the calendar date circled in his mind for three weeks, now, since the moment he’d hopped on the plane to Denver. He’s not going to admit to knowing every single guy in the league who’s ever set their sights on 18. He’s certainly not going to admit to spending most of his first evening in his rental watching highlight reels of Buckley (and Diaz) until he’d fallen asleep on his surprisingly comfortable sectional. He knows enemy number one for every game from now until the end of the season, but he knows Buckley’s best of all.

It’s what they’d brought him over for, Tommy rationalizes, again, and if he spends the drive home thinking about the wide slash of Evan Buckley’s smile when he’d skated in to celebrate Buckley’s goal, no one but Tommy has to know.

[yo-yo-yoshiko]

Full on cried during the Donbros ending waaaahaha! Maybe one of the weirdest pieces of television i’d seen in a while but i adored every second of it✨