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razorblade180 · 4 years

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Twin Snowflakes 22: Ground Zero

Part 21 -> here! <-

Bad luck has been a part of Qrow’s life for as long as he could remember. It manifested in a variety of ways but there was one in particular that was absolutely the worst, travel. Flat tire on a road trip, inconvenient. Plane delay, well that one was probably not his fault, but it felt like it! Certain cases like that were always a little iffy on if it was him or life. As the veteran huntsman stood on the deck of his son’s boat in the pouring rain with a Kraken raising from the depths, Qrow was sure of one thing. This one had to be his fault.

“I didn’t think grimm this big were still around. We’re in the middle of the ocean for crying out loud.” Qrow sighed, grabbing harbinger.” It’s cases like this he’d usually leave. Two big problems though. Problem number one, Sparrow was already firing cannons at it. Problem number two, it was waving Oscar around like a toy. He seemed okay though.

“CAN I HAVE SOME HELP HERE!?” He screamed, louder than the roaring winds and rough seas. “THIS GUY IS REALLY SLIMY!!”

“Slip out then!” Sparrow shouted in earnest. Oscar might’ve been far away but Sparrow could tell the man was not amused by that response. “What!? Do you want me to shoot that arm with you in it!? Penny will have a fit if I shot you!”

“PENNY WILL HAVE A FIT IF I'M EATEN!!!” Oscar wiggled and squirmed before finally managing to create an orb to push the tentacle off, then dispelling the orb to drop straight down. Cannon fire rained down on the center mass like grand finale fireworks, but only angered the beast. More tentacles cut through the air to reclaim its lost hostage.

“Give me a break.” The rain continued to pour down and sting against Oscar’s skin. He paid no mind to the whirlpools forming or the ship deck quickly approaching. Oscar simply closed his eyes. “Hey it’s been awhile. Mind lending a hand?” He called, subconsciously to his old friend.

“Hehe Oscar, do you even have to ask?”

Oscar smiled, opening his eyes and seeing Oz smile back through the reflection of the rain drops before seeing his own again, complete with white hair and golden eyes. “Let’s get to it shall we?”

xxxx

Nick remained quiet as Weiss drove back home from school. He was happy he made it back in time. A gigas dragging him away after his fight with Valerie would’ve made the entire incident worse. Though if he was being honest, fighting a gigas sounded cathartic in a way. He gently pulled up the window switch over and over, repeatedly.

Weiss took note of her son’s unusually sad demeanor. “Alright, wanna tell me what happened in there? You were full of energy before getting your work, and I doubt the workload has spooked you.”

“Nothing I’m not used to.”

“Ah, Valerie troubles.” Weiss glanced over and saw Nick glare at his own reflection. Looks like she was right on the money. “Take it from me, I’m sure whatever happened had more to do with her own personal feelings and not the feelings you have for her.”

“You say that with such confidence.”

“I was a teenage girl once too, you know? One with plenty of personal hurdles I tried to associate with other people instead of myself. It doesn’t ever really stop truthfully. You just get better at accepting the fact the problems fix itself when you decide to change how to respond to it.”

“Do you think I have a problem I should change? Loving a girl who pushes me away, it probably makes me look like a joke.” He tried rolling down the window again but found the switch had been locked. Yet another thing to make him sad.

“I think it’s not the wisest thing you’ve done, but it’s definitely the most normal teenage thing about you. Joke or not, feelings are feelings. They’ll work themselves out. Just don’t force anything and before you know it, you’ll see things a lot clearer.” Weiss reached over and ruffled his shaggy hair. “Who knows, maybe you’ll see this dew of yours needs to finally change.”

“As if!” Nick laughed, “I look too much like uncle if I cut it, and any longer makes me look like dad.”

“Not if you style it. Oh, or grow it out even longer. Like when you’re little! “Weiss cooed, “You and Summer were really hard to tell apart then.”

“Yeah, and people kept calling me ‘she’ and stuff. Nooooo thank you!” He folded his arms in protest.

“That won’t happen now that you got your father’s looks. You’ll just be a pretty boy. Then if you get facial hair!? Nick, let me make you gorgeous! I have Coco on speed dial!”

“This is why you had a boy and a girl, mom! So I can escape this torture.”

Weiss pouted, “Summer likes doing her own makeup and hair. I should be proud considering it’s my old look from waaaaay back, but I still wanna change things up. I’d give this entire family a makeover if you all weren’t so whiny about it.” Weiss looked in the mirror at neck length hair. She remembered how free she felt the first time she cut it. Having twins meant twice the hair pulling, three times if she counted the one person she wanted to pull her hair. Thinking back, there was a good chance it was one of times Jaune pulled it that gave way to the discussion of kids in the first place.

“Hmmm, maybe I should grow my hair out. I miss the old length sometimes.”

“Summer would be so upset.”

“Good, then she’ll change it. That’s one family member down.”

Nick playfully rolled his eyes. A makeover didn’t sound too annoying actually. Maybe after the tournament? He’d think about it. “Hey, mind if we train again today? I got a lot of pent up energy and new ideas.”

“I suppose. Someone has to make sure you don’t overdo it. Winter is coming over too, so it’s for the best I warm you up anyways. I’m positive after your recent school events that she has a few words for you.”

Nick gulped, knowing he was in for a workout. “Well now…guess I’m dying today.” He could already feel his muscles ache.

xxxx

Meanwhile in the woods, Summer and Veronica had crossed into unfamiliar territory, casual conversation. It wasn’t going well. They both agreed to chat but neither of them were actually talking! They were just walking with Veronica taking the lead, leaving Summer awkwardly following a few steps behind.

The girl had finally pulled herself together after her little episode. In truth, she was a little embarrassed to say anything after it. She hated looking weak, especially in front of Veronica, a girl who manages to look strong against even the harshest of critics and peers. It was quite envious, her attitude. Summer would give just about anything to have it. Summer looked down at her scroll for what must’ve been the tenth time. Still no missed messages.

“Expecting a call?” Veronica finally said, noticing the Schnee’s gaze consistently drifting. “Got a boyfriend or something I don’t know about?”

Summer felt like that might’ve been a jab but chose to ignore it. “Nick always calls me if Shiva gets out or nearly escapes. He’s always had a sixth sense for knowing her moves. It’s unlike him to not immediately call, even if he’s doing something urgent.” Summer put her scroll away. “Him not calling is odd.”

“Are you telling me she almost got out earlier? I didn’t really smell anything.” Veronica looked back to see the girl look at her confused. A fitting look honestly. “The one time Shiva was out and even when we argued yesterday, I smelled peppermint, a disgusting amount of it. The diamond dust smells the same.” Veronica pointed to her nose, “I didn’t smell that earlier.”

“Oh.” was all Summer could say. It should’ve been a relief, but it wasn’t. “Great, my panic attack was just unhinged. Even when she’s quiet, she’s ruining my day.”

“Are you saying Shiva tries escaping when you’re hysterical?”

“Apparently not, or at least not all the time? Agh, it’s impossible for me to tell.” Summer was even more perplexed than before. “Just when have I been talking to her? They’re not all fake, but...they’re not all real either? I can’t afford not knowing the” Her train of thought was broken when a snowball thrown by Veronica hit her coat. “Hey! Wh-”

Veronica quickly covered Summer’s mouth. “Shhh! Grimm.” She pointed several yards into the distance where two sabertooth grimm were roaming. “Alright, do your thing.”

Summer looked at the grimm, then back at Veronica, who gave a casual thumbs up. “Wait, you’re not helping?”

“Nope.”

“Whhhhyyyyyy exactly?” Summer questioned.

Veronica sighed, because one of the reasons I wanted to be out here is to better see you in action. Why else would I tell you to bring your blade?”

“You lead me here under the assumption of a fight…” Summer deadpanned, “Couldn’t you have looked up old videos of me? I didn’t see you drag Nick off to fight grimm so you can make his outfit.”

“Nick has double the videos of him fighting, as well as him figure skating. Also, I pay more attention to him than I do you.” It might’ve been rude, but it was the honest truth. Summer didn’t even seem surprised. She just looked at Veronica with judgment. “What?”

“Nothing, much.” Summer drew her blade and put a glyph at her feet. “Any requests for data purposes?” She could not believe this was happening.

“Just handle them how you would normally, oh huntress in training.” Veronica teased lightly.

Summer pointed her sword out with her right hand and her right foot forward, then took off. The distance between her and grimm was closed in a matter second. She leaped over one, slicing it’s head off through the back of its neck. Another glyph formed midair behind her. Summer used it to kick off right after the attack and thrust her blade through the second grimm’s eye socket. Not even a snarl was heard before it died instantly.

Summer looked back at Veronica. “Cake walk. You’d get more data out of a video than th-”

“BEHIND YOU!” Veronica shouted.

Summer looked over her shoulder to see a third one already pouncing. With a subtle breath, Summer slowed its approach and then back stepped to safety. One more glyph was put under the paws of the beast and pulled out like a rug to trip it. Summer spun the chamber of her Myrtenaster and threw into its ribs like a javelin. The chamber landed on flame dust, setting it ablaze.

“Phew! That was...unexpected.” Summer said, coming down from a surge of adrenaline.

Veronica ran over to Summer, surprised. “How did you do that, the breath thing?” Veronica asked, “That’s a trick I’ve never seen.”

“ Oh that? Well…” Summer took her left glove off and focused. Little snowflakes started floating upward from it in place like a snow globe. “I’m not too good at it, but I can control a bit of Shiva’s powers. Only when I’m cold though, or freaked out, but that second one is more involuntary.” Summer put back on her glove, “considering the potential risks and conditions, I don’t use it in fights. Explaining it to officials would be a pain anyways.”

That made sense. Veronica could smell a hint of peppermint coming off Summer. That was Shiva’s power alright. This also explained the mass amount of ice she saw Summer create in her video fighting the Paladin. “Permission to touch you?” Veronica asked, like she always did. Summer nodded. Veronica reaches out and places two fingers against the pulse in Summer’s neck. “Any other Shiva related tidbits to share?”

“Ummm, we share a subconscious, sort of? More like a neutral ground.”

Veronica paused momentarily, “what?” She said, annoyed by all this cookie cutter information. “Gonna need more tidbits?”

“It’s hard to explain. I don’t understand it either.” Veronica looked at Summer, unblinking. Apparently that wasn’t a good enough answer. “Look, imagine something like...an ocean, just water and the sky above. Now flip it upside and make that ocean completely frozen. That’s more or less what the subconscious looks like. There’s ground to stand on, but I can’t really see. Depending if I’m actually dreaming or in a certain place, then that’s what the subconscious can look like. The only constant is that ice ceiling.”

Every sentence from this girl felt like a fever dream to Veronica. “Summer, I doubt you're lying to me, but do you by any chance also do drugs? You know, the hard kind.”

“As if!” Summer swatted Veronica’s hand off her neck. “First of all, drugs and I don’t mix. Second, be serious!”

“It was a valid question. Rich kids do a lot of things. If Nick told me he tried it before I wouldn’t be surprised. Saddened, but not surprised.”

“While I would be hounded by you no doubt?”

Veronica crossed her arms, “I’d berate anyone who would do drugs.” Her tone was stern and cutthroat, “It’s an ugly slope that goes down fast.”

The way she spoke about it was rather serious compared to what Summer was used to. “Have...you done drugs?” Summer asked cautiously.

Veronica thought about her answer carefully for a moment. “For a brief time, yes. I’m past it however, totally clean. I thought it might help control my instincts.” Veronica slouched over with a sigh, “Unfortunately, noooo dice. Come on. Let’s keep moving.” Veronica continued to walk.

Summer stood quietly for a moment, then followed as well. She wasn’t expecting to get to the topic of Veronica’s genetics in such a personal way. Then again, someone’s very birth is nothing but personal. Curiosity began to get the better of her. They did make a deal after all.

“V-Veronica…?” Summer stuttered, “I held up my end of the bargain. The only other thing that may be worth mentioning is Shiva only knows what I know when she tries escaping, and I only know what she does if I’m conscious. Other than that I think all the dribble about the state of mind would make you snore. So…..”

Veronica could tell where this was going. “Relax, I’m not about to break a deal that I proposed in the first place.”

She reached for a nearby branch and plucked a silver flower off of it. It’s five petals were spread wide Veronica placed it in her own hair. “I take it that even your school isn’t bold enough to ignore basic faunus knowledge and history, despite their…questionable place in said history?”

Summer nodded, “Hey, Atlas isn’t the kind of place to bury the leads. Older society and its people simply do what they want, how they want.” Summer cringed, “Not that doing so is exactly better in the long run. Besides, you think rich tycoons wouldn’t tell their heirs and shady dealers how they amassed their fortune? Atlas’s people might know too well the benefits and contributions the faunus play in our history and in a work capacity.” Summer felt sick saying that. “It’s disgusting really.”

“Couldn’t agree more. With all that said, how much do you wanna bet there’s aspects glossed over?” Veronica wagered.

“I could’ve sworn you made it clear that you have no interest in money?” Summer quipped.

Veronica let out a humorous breath, “Tah, a girl can change her mind can’t she?” Veronica watched Summer reach in her pocket and pull out a hundred lien casually, giving it up. Veronica was surprised. “We didn’t even make the bet yet.”

“If I knew everything, then I wouldn’t be curious about this in the first place. Odds of you teaching me something new about your people is a given.”

Maybe it was the fact that Summer was made of money, or had good intentions for learning more, but Veronica couldn’t take the money. She could only waved it away. “Geez it was a joke. Making you pay would look bad.” She said, in a forest with nobody but themselves around. “Qualities Like night vision and other adaptations aren’t the only animals traits given. It’s fundamentally built into everything about us. Disposition, personality traits, social skills, everything; the animal you are influences all of these in a variety of ways in varying amounts.”

“Like how faunus with nocturnal animal traits tend to take night jobs?”

“Veronica nodded, “Yes. A bird faunus might choose a home at high elevations, even if they don’t have wings. A deer or rabbit faunus may have to work harder at public speaking than let’s say a wolf faunus. The subtles can get even tinier; or as obvious as a feline faunus loving fish.”

Summer never really thought about it, but that made sense.“What you’re basically telling me is for a faunus, nature vs nurture takes on an entirely different level of complexity? Nothing stops a rabbit faunus from being a motivational speaker, but it would be more work, unless their parents or even their environment had predisposed them to be apart of a more vocal and outgoing lifestyle?” Summer’s eyes lit up. “That’s actually really fascinating, sowhere do you fit in with all of this?” She asked, wanting to learn more.

Veronica was taken off gaurd by how interested Summer was. “For a person who apparently hates school as much as I do, you look eager to learn.”

“School sucks because of social pressure and redundant information.” Summer deadpanned, “Anyone would get bored of learning material that is forced upon them and is as quickly discarded.”

“Well, I guess that’s true. I wouldn’t say I’m in love with any aspect of school, but learning is the least problematic part of what I had to think about it. Anyways, what I’ve told you so far applies to all faunus. With the way the world is and all the kinds of possible traits, finding a place to fit in isn’t difficult. Those animal instincts are very much submissive compared and don’t hinder our ability. Like you said, a rabbit faunus can do public speaking. A bat faunus can absolutely walk around in broad daylight. However, there’s a minority among faunus that have their animal gene act way more dominant than the majority. Roughly 13 to around 18 percent of the faunus population, if I remember correctly. This group, my group, are easily recognized by having exaggerated or extra features. Extra large wings, skin more animal than human, cold blood-”

“Ears and a tail?” Summer interjected, “appearance wise, you seem to have gotten off easy. You covered in fur or having whiskers would be a little distracting. Not gonna lie.”

“Externally, I’m just a tick higher on date lists for everyone with disturbing cat girl fantasies. Make no mistake though, I’m not the average faunus. Super faunus, the minority, have their animal qualities cranked up and deformed. I can’t see in the dark, but my nose is keener than any dog I’ve encountered. All those little traits I mentioned before? They tend to manifest in my people aggressively and often. To put into perspective, I have more in common with my grandpa than I do my mom, on an animal level.”

“Wow, that’s…intense. Your grandpa roars and gets all apex predator on people when he’s pissed- oh! Wait, your temper is shit because of your genes!?”

Veronica inhaled, ignoring the insult for the sake of conversation. “To a degree, yes. I cannot pin the blame entirely on my DNA, unfortunately…” she added that last bit quietly. “Despite what people write online about my family, we aren’t just cats. We are big cats. I’m a panther for crying out loud.”

Summer squinted, “Well, seeing how you’re mostly blonde, aren’t you technically more of a jaguar or a leopar-”

“Panther.” Veronica said, this time with feeling. “I could dye my hair red and that doesn’t change my DNA, Summer.”

For her own safety, Summer wisely chose not to make a very easy pink panther joke. She thought about it, but this conversation didn’t need to fall apart for the sake of Summer wanting to be a smartass to Veronica for once. “Fair enough, continue.” She said, still thinking about the joke.

“My athletic ability is exceptional, hearing too. My tail gives me balance more than other faunus. Despite the term super, anyone with the mutation would tell you how daunting it is. The type of animal, like everything else, determines what the faunus might deal with. For me it boils down two major things that contradict each other. Problem number one, not eating enough meat.”

“What happens?”

“Same thing that happens to any starved predator. I become impulsive, irritated easily, confrontational, my senses get...sensitive, adrenaline makes me dizzy-”

“So you’re super hangry?” Summer said without thinking. She immediately tucked her lips in and accepted the “you are an idiot” look that Veronica gave her without mercy. “Why the hell did I say that?”

Veronica groaned, “Minutes ago I heard you bring up nature vs nurture for comparing and explaining what I’ve said. Now you compare things to being hangry? It’s not even about how full I am, it’s the nutritional and instinctual part of devouring meat that my brain wants. It’s no different than your body craving milk for calcium. If I’m not careful and reach my limit, I tend to lose sense of reason and even blackout into a haze of instinct. Essentially, I go feral. Your brother can tell you that it’s not a pretty thing.” Veronica frowned.

The bruises on his face that day after school started to make a little more sense. No way he’d just let Max and Darren get clean hits in! He was dealing with an enraged Veronica. It actually put a lot of things in perspective. Summer couldn’t count how many times Veronica looked like she wanted to actually claw a person’s eyes out. She might’ve actually been thinking it over! That...was a scary thought. “What’s problem number two?” There was no way it could be just as bad.

“Eating too much meat. That’s when I’m an apex.” Veronica said, giving a thousand yard stare. Summer immediately took her statement back. That sounded way more problematic. “My attitude shifts. My fuse isn’t as short as when I’m starved but let’s say I can be very...demanding. Yeah, let’s go with that.”

Summer raised a brow, skeptical of that statement. “Are you saying-”

“Better think twice before saying I’m already demanding. Neither you or Nick has seen me when I’m caught up in the euphoria of being what I am. I’d put that girl Amber to shame, and my physical prowess are even better. I’m wild in a completely different way. Filter, broken. Can’t even put that state into words. So yeah, that’s my genetic mishap in a nutshell.”

“You being a food snob and all of your diets make a lot more sense now. Why keep this to yourself for so long.”

“Simple, it’s not anybody’s business what I’m dealing with. It’s handled, and doesn’t need to be explained among faunus. Living normally isn’t hard when you know what you’re dealing with, which is why I’m shocked every resource hasn’t been poured into figuring out your problem.”

That stung a bit. “Oscar is currently crossing the sea to potentially find answers, I have you know.” Summer said defensively.

A scoff came from Veronica. “No offense, but that sounds like a waste of energy.”

“Saying no offense doesn’t make me feel less hurt.” Summer folded her arms. “How would you know? Unlike you, my affliction has no prior information to go off of, and isn’t a genetic thing at birth. Any move could be closer to the truth, or a shot in the dark. For all intended purposes, you were born and live normally like anyone else.”

“Hate to make you sound stupid, but a test tube baby isn’t normal in most circles. Two moms, remember?” Veronica said, coldly.

Summer stopped walking. For some reason, that didn’t sit right with her. “Isn’t that name...an insult?”

“Yep.” Veronica kept walking, “Keep up. I’ll leave you out here.”

Summer listened. Maybe it was her imagination, but that atmosphere between them felt like it changed again. They had both held up their end of the bargain. Now things felt cold between them like before. Summer wasn’t expecting to learn as much as she did. Many things were answered today, so why did it feel like she knew less about Veronica. Blanks were filled into a picture she never knew the true size of, and still didn’t. One of those pieces felt out of place. The piece that helped put build up to this situation in the first place.

“Veronica…?” Summer uttered, “By any chance, does any of what you told me having anything to do with the torn pages in your-” suddenly, Summer’s words were stuck in her throat. Veronica had turned around to look her dead in the eyes, coldly and without care. Summer felt herself become small and beneath Veronica yet again, inferior.

“Never bring this topic up again, got it?” Veronica had to stop herself from balling up her hands, or she’d cut them with her nail. “Got it?” She said again, doing her best not to blow a fuse.

“S..sorry. I just...thought-”

“You thought wrong.” Veronica said. She turned around and kept walking. “We’re not friends.”

Heat rose to Summer’s face. It was impossible to know if she was feeling embarrassed, upset, or anything. All she knew was for a moment, she felt tears well up before vanishing. She breathed through her nose and bit back. “Yeah, I’m well aware.”

xxxx

“Sloppy!!!” The commanding voice of Weiss’s sister cried, knocking her nephew into a bush for the tenth time today. “You’re unfocused! Surely you can do better?”

Weiss witnessed her child stumble back to his feet, hair messed up and panting. He stabbed his sword into the ground to brace himself momentarily. His aura was still high, and yet… “Winter, he’s still under the weather. Ease up.”

“This is me easing up. You simply coddle him too much. Nick is more than capable of continuing. I don’t remember going as easy on you when you asked for training all those years ago. You turned out fine.”

“I wouldn’t exactly use our relationship as a standard.” Weiss mumbled.”

Nick raised his sword quickly. He channeled a fire ball to the tip of his blade as fast as he could, but was still too slow. Winter had already rushed towards his left. He had no choice but to abandon the fire attack for a block that barely withstood his Aunt’s blade. Nick slid backwards on the stone ground.

Winter shook her head. “Once again, you waste aura and energy not because the attack was a bad choice, but because you simply cannot use your semblance fast enough.”

Winter shot off a fire ball not even a second later. She waited closely for Nick to raise his block, then used a standard glyph to propel herself forward. Her speed surpassed the fireball, and Winter was able to position her blade behind him as the flame made contact with his.

Nick looked over his shoulder at her, frustrated, but not willing to yield. He pivoted around with his blade held out to direct hers away, then put a glyph between them. By the time he did so, Nick already knew she was on the move again. “Don’t count me out!” His left hand pulled a summoned sword from the glyph. Nick swung it out to the left and around to his back while his actual blade was swung right. The weight to Winter’s attack came from back and was blocked, perfect. He leaned his body left with his blade as he felt Winter shift that direction to his opened side.

Winter could only smile as she went in to strike. Nick just played her and she knew it. Her blade still clashed with the summon weapon, leaving his right blade free to use the momentum from the lean and make a clean stab with no chance for her to block. Winter did the wise thing and jumped back, abandoning her assault. His left side was never really opened. It was bait. Both swords were used to block wherever she came from. The right one only stopped short because the left one did the job of making sure she aimed for his back by swinging outward. Winter would have either been hit or blocked if she immediately attacked left or right, and the glyph protected the front. By making her attack his back, he all but ensured she would aim left next because it was the only unguarded spot, a spot he was ready to defend and attack from simultaneously. It was this kind of quick thinking and reckless style that separated Nicholas from anyone else. Even his sister. Especially his sister. Winter loved Summer to death, but the girl was quick to panic if plans fell apart.

Normally Winter would hear him say something self-indulgent. Nope. Just a quiet stare and a fireball he had to fire off thanks to the distance between them. Still…

“Nice effort.” Winter said, knocking it away with ease. “But no. The simple fact you can summon the sword of an Arma Gigas so easily yet remain sluggish with more basic functions of your semblance is a baffling talent. If it wasn’t for your unconventional swordplay that you somehow make work, I’d say getting a gold medal would be impossible. Still might be. It only does so much.”

“Well it’s a little late to change my style now. This is what I know best.” He dropped his sword and slowly let out a breath, filled with irritation. “I know I’m lacking.”

Winter raised a brow. She looked at Weiss confused, “What’s wrong with him? The usual?”

“No. Well, yeah, but he’s been stretched thin in general recently.”

“I’m not stretched thin. I just...nothing feels like it’s enough. Training in particular. Like you said, I can make swords in my sleep. All the other things our family is supposed to be good at, I’m average!”

Winter turned off mentor mode for a moment. Clearly this is more than about training, but she’ll play along. It was time to be an aunt. “Nick, you are in a class of your own. Sixteen and this skilled by no means is average. In regards to us, your family, no one here was perfect. Nobody here is perfect. Your mother still over extends her strikes from time to time and your father definitely wasn’t a genius by any means.”

Weiss narrowed her eyes, “Hey, I’m free game but be nice to my husband. You’re right, but be nice.”

“Like me, you choose to wield two blades. Unlike me, it’s your go to stance.” Winter informed, “Our semblance works best when we have a free hand. That’s why shields aren’t a good option for us. The choice to use two blades isn't bad by normal standards. I’ve faced many foes that pressured me with similar tactics, even beat me. Though only one is real, another sword has made it harder for you to use glyphs. At least it should be, but summoning and a video of your exam says otherwise.”

Nick looked at his summoned blade in frustration. “I still don’t know what I did differently that day. I was faster and more in control than I have ever been. Not only did I actually make a gigas, but even all my other glyphs felt on par with Summer’s.”

“Remember Nick, You and Summer excel at different things.” Weiss reminded him. “Yes, her fundamentals and use of dust are better, but she has a knack for it. That’s her edge. In a fight, Summer’s wide range of dust and glyph combinations always means she’s never out of range to attack or control a fighting space. You may not have that but your speed, stamina, and reflexes make up for it. In close quarters, no one your age matches you in Atlas.”

“That merit just so happens to have made you neglect the need to sharpen your other talents. Do you know how dangerous you could be with-”

“Time dilation? Yeah, mom told me.” He interjected, “something about those other things simply don’t click in my head. Can’t even get a fireball right.”

He sat down on the ground and took another breath. “The way I fight, it isn’t like I built it to be the most versatile. My offense is my defense. The use of momentum to add power behind my strikes helps keep in moving. It’s why my stamina and speed is good, to push my body for relentless attacks.”

He didn’t say it out right, but he didn’t have to. Nick made a style that didn’t make him good against a variety of people in mind. No, Nick thought of style against Shiva. In the end, that’s the only fight that matters. Beating others with it was a way to refine it for the moment it mattered. Abandoning it was not an option. Only improving.

Winter could only look upon the boy's face and see someone who only ever has the best intentions for others slowly begin to waver. Her teenage years were long gone, but no one ever truly forgets the confusion they went through during that time. Winter walked over to her young nephew and sat in front of him, legs crossed. “Why is it always the most caring of people who can never give themselves the break they give others? Nicholas Schnee, you are a kind, hardworking young man that never doubts himself often. Much like your mother, you take hold of what you want and clench it tight.”

“Lately holding on seems to hurt more than letting go. Nothing...feels right. Not just in training either. I feel like a gap between me and everyone else has been growing, like I’m out of a very important loop. Val, Vee, even Summer.”

“This time of year gets people stressed. It’s possible every one just needs a breath. I can speak much on a gap, but I’m positive time will mend it. Despite my feelings towards the young Belladonna, it is pretty clear the two of you get along. Confide in her.”

Weiss and Nick went bugged for a moment. They both looked at each other and then back at Winter.

“Wow.” Weiss spoke, “That’s pretty big, coming from you. Anytime you see that girl, you have nothing but disappointing looks.”

“Yeah Auntie, I’m shocked.”

Winter turned a little red, “I don’t see why. I may find her a bad influence on you and your sister, but my opinion is one of many. With you, Veronica is a welcome distraction to break up your daily routine. I’ll give her that much.”

“How generous,” Nick said sarcastically. Veronica was starting to sound more like a battle tactic than a person. Though she probably wouldn’t mind if it meant spending time with him. Regardless, “I appreciate the suggestions, but my time is better spent training at the moment. If I can be half as capable as I was during my exam, then I chalk that up as good progress.”

Winter hit his head. “Fool, you’re not getting it!”

“Ow! What!? All I said was- Ow!” Weiss also hit his head, much lighter though. “Stop hitting me! I thought this was a pep talk!?”

“It is.” Winter stated, “It’s also a lesson. The way you are now, you can’t progress much further. I urge you to really think about what made that day different from now; what made your last attack against me different even. That is all the hints I will provide to him. I do hope your mother keeps quiet as well.”

“Hey! I get I’m a little...lenient with him, but I would never skip an opportunity to watch him grow. Besides, telling him wouldn’t mean he could do it any faster anyways.” Weiss teased. She could hear Nick’s ears practically buzzing.

“If that’s the case then say it!” He asked eagerly. He was given no answer. Winter and Weiss walked away from him like they didn’t peak his curiosity. He assumed training was about to resume like normal. However, it didn’t. A look of shock came to him when both of his elders faced him, blades drawn.

“What, both of you at once.” He said nervously, grabbing his sword and rising quickly to his feet. “What happened to me being under the weather, mom!?”

Weiss smiled, “Hey, you wanted fast results. Until you find the answer to your glyph problem, we’ll double down or swordsmanship. Brace yourself. I’ll hold back.”

“I will not!” Winter smiled.

Nick didn’t even get a chance to blink before the two of them came after him. He gulped, “Should’ve stayed in bed.” Nick prepared himself when suddenly, a cold chill went down his spine. Weiss and Winter immediately recognized the look of fear on his face and stopped their approach while he pulled out his scroll to call his sister. “Pick up. Come on Summer, pick up!” He muttered.

xxxx

Summer felt like an idiot. Of course nothing has changed. Why would it? A talk didn’She walked faster, out pacing Veronica.

“Hey, slow down. I haven’t told you where we’re going.” Veronica said, but Summer didn’t listen. “Hey!”

“Leave me alone! I may not come here often but I live here. I’ll find my way without you.” Summer said, grunting as she forced her way through dense branches and bushes.

“Can you not act like a child for once!?” Veronica yelled, running after her. “And stop ignoring me!” Veronica was near her wits end.

“.........”

And then she reached it. Veronica’s tail and tensed up. “Summer!” Veronica yelled again, going through the bushes. “I said stop ignoring-” the potent odor of peppermint invaded her senses out of nowhere. Veronica looked around the area, seeing nothing. Nothing, but a frozen lake, shimmering with diamond dust below the surface; and Summer standing in place, shivering.

“Summer…?” She said, concerned this time. Her words didn’t reach, not immediately. The scent wasn’t only coming from the lake. Veronica didn’t dare to move as she watched a finger point across the water. Her eyes looked in that direction to see nothing but scared trees and large rocks that had been chipped rather deep.

“A fight?” Veronica thought. She looked closer. All the markings looked to be going outward and from one spot. A spot several feet off the lake. Even with all the dust, it was clear that spot smelled the most foul. “No, an explosion.” Her attention went back to Summer. “A dust explosion.” Veronica yelled again. “Hey! Summer! Answer me, please!?” She could no longer be calm. Veronica ran to the girl screaming her name.

Summer might as well have been deaf to Veronica’s voice. All she heard was laughter. Her laughter, coming from Shiva skating on the ice.

“Hahahahaha! Oh wow! We haven’t been here in ages Summer!!!” Grinning and filled with joy, Shiva extended her hand, “Summer, come join me!” The glow of her eyes grew more dazzling, as well as her smile. “Just like before….”

#rwby #rwby au #sparrow branwen #rwby twin snowflakes #weiss schnee #winter schnee #nicholas schnee #summer schnee #qrow branwen #veronica belladonna #oscar pine

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flowerflamestars · 4 years

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Darlingg, (can I call you that? I'll stop if you don't want me to) have you seen the latest sneak peak? With Eris and all? I crave your thoughts on the sneak peak and I honestly have no idea what to think about it

Hi!! I have, and let me say, my feelings are mixed.

You know that sound, when you’re in a coffeeshop, and the espresso machine expunges steam? Like a muted, nicer, kettle shriek? That’s the noise my brain made seeing the sneak peek.

List, because it sparked a whole wildfire:

1. Nesta glowing!! Nesta dancing! Nesta, who conquered Death! Just the implication that she’s okay, that she’s feeling strong again? Hope, reignited.

2. Cassian on the sidelines actually makes me...very happy? I want them together eventually, but the fact he’s just watching? So good. So, deserved? He can’t go from creepily following her, telling her she’s unlovable, being complicit in her banishment to Partner. He’s got to earn it, and frankly? I hope it aches.

3. Autumn. When the cover came out there was that whole, orange = autumn court thing? The other covers in that style aren’t super plot indicative, but it did seem weird that it wasn’t red. Repeatedly, red is Cassian’s color. (Hello, love triangle Morrigan wearing nothing but the color of his siphons and power, never, ever Azriel’s blue or black).

Nesta sticks to cool colors: purple (feeling strong as a mortal, going toe to toe with Cas), blue, black (severe and powerful against the high lords), flat grey (in the depths of misery), silver (for her power).

SJM does use consistent color for character cues in acotar so it seems...off? Interesting, at least.

Which, just to divert into setting, are they in Autumn in this scene?? Are we somehow going to go from banishment > fight/healing > Nesta, being the actual Night Court emissary after they threw her away?

The plot is not what I thought, and that is both intriguing and confounding. But yes! Nesta finally...doing a thing? hopefully of her own volition? Devouring the moon? Gimme, that’s the Nesta that was always there, finally out.

4. Eris.

Okay, so before I even talk about how I..don’t really care for this character, let’s recall what is actually canon, about Eris:

He was engaged to Morrigan. They...I think, never met before that? Mor tried to escape the betrothal by sleeping with Cassian, invoking the ire of her family who brutally tortured her and left her for dead with a note NAILED to her body on Autumn land.

From canon, with specificity that I think implies some kind of understood rules between Courts: Eris did not touch her.

We seem to be meant to understand that if he had, he would have been forced to take her in, to bring her into the Autumn Court. He doesn’t do that- which is perhaps both a single moment of kindness that kept them both from being trapped and, conversely, QUITE LITERALLY, leaving her for dead.

He was aware of, if not directly involved in, the death of Lucien’s lowborn lover. There’s some handwavy detail stuff over who did the the murdering, but Lucien seems to hate him for it and the feeling is definitely mutual. We don’t know what he actually did.

He wants Beron’s throne. He’s not??? Heir?? (there seems to be some sense that since Lucien was the most powerful it was feared he’d inherit because Lordship = magical destiny) But he also seems fairly sure that with proper allies and Beron dead he could seize control? We don’t know enough for this to make sense.

What we DO know is that he hates his father. Sound familiar?

He’s on his second round of alliances with Keir, and now assured by Rhys, to come after Beron. (Which makes the Morrigan marriage thing even more suspect. If shes ‘the most powerful of her bloodline’ how does marrying her out benefit Keir? If Eris just wanted her power, why did he reject the marriage? My nascent theory is switchroo? Keir helps Eris take Autumn, Autumn helps Keir reclaim Night for his bloodline. Mutual heirs inherit two newly crowned kingdoms...so again, WHY did Eris not want Mor?)

He’s a bastard, a villain, a fucking rat...and we actually know nothing about him. HMMM?

He’s the monster in Morrigans nightmares. Because she saw him, when he found in the forest, and watched him leave? Because marrying him meant, in a very real way, doom? He makes it easy: he’s rude as hell to her, and clearly despises her right back for ??? reasons.

It would have been SO SO easy to leave him there, the monstrous asshole son of a particularly monstrous, hated High Lord.

But the books keep bringing him back. Rhys is willing to make deals with him. Our entire main cast is now tied in with an Autumn coup in the making.

Why?

Because sjm loves nothing more than taking a bad, bad man, and cracking him open like a walnut to say: look, I’m a monster. I know I’m a monster. But I did it to survive. For love. For a just cause. Because a greater power made me and I wanted to live.

And it’s echoed by a female character going: no, you are, but I see you.

And wiping it all away, even if the bad actions continue, because it was a Mask. A Game. See: Rhysand. Tamlins shitty forgiveness plotline. Az and Cassian’s Court of Nightmares cosplay.

And Eris just...is not the character I’d have ever picked for redemption? (Or fucking Tamlin, for that matter) Because a weird thing happens where male asshole characters are Redeemed Through the Gaze of Love feat. inappropriate flirting and female characters who aren’t nice (not even villians! just, you know, not nice), need to apologize. To change.

Yes, I’m talking about Nesta. Because this is her book!

It’s a wildcard, but retrospectively, it’s set up in the text? Not my fav. At all.

When we all said hey, wouldn’t it be really, really good if Nesta had a friend separate from the IC, maybe from another court? We did not mean the catchall IC boogeymen everyone maybe? justifiably wants dead.

5. Canon outside canon. Sjm has been previously, totally open with the fact that in the original/early drafts, Nesta was actually meant for Lucien. See: the fire on her drawer. She’s always been interested in an Autumn matchup for Nesta.

We know that the villain of Nesta’s story is the Queens.

Does Eris come in because of Lucien, who is spending all his time, hey, with one of the only Queens who isn’t evil? Does Nesta get dragged into the coup? Does Nesta involve herself in the coup because there was some question as to whether Beron might have been colluding with Hybern + ish the Mortal Queens?

6. Guys, I love a ball scene. I love this simple show of power and grace- does Nesta trust Eris or does Nesta simply, finally, trust herself? Either way, she’s killing it, and it is FUCKING CASSIAN UP. This who we always knew existed- Nesta who can play the game. Who can do the courtly bullshit, even if she has no time for it. Who is beautiful and powerful, and I hope, wearing the Most Incredible Dress. (I hope it isn’t red).

The more I think about it, the more these Nesta, Eris lines in the text revoltingly add up? Ugh. The Older Vilified Sibling who was doing their one Rebellion Against the Shitty Parent, misconstrued. Team: wow, Mor Hates Us, huh?. Team: You don’t know me, or what I’ve done. Everything We Did in War retroactively Doesn’t Matter Because We’re Assholes. Fire and Brimstone. Maybe we were fucking trapped and You Don’t Get to Judge the Escape.

Cool cool cool, I kind of hate that. Please let it be a spite dance.

In sum: the snippet both wildly renewed my interest and also I keep going ERIS?? ERIS?, but maybe it won’t be as bad as it seems. It is, after all, a very short little section and it proved at least once thing: Nesta’s going to be strong again, seemingly healthy again, and that’s all I wanted.

p.s. (Darling is the nicest, of course you can. I call everyone kind of any iteration of ‘lovely’ or babe’, but if that ever makes you uncomfy let me know!)

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agentjoannemills · 4 years

Note

How did supercorp decide on the name scylla?

another interesting question omg hmmm

ok so both the luthor and el bloodlines are old magic, right? however, their magics are diametrically opposed. the luthors are more involved in the darker practices such as necromancy (the luthor manor’s graveyard is there for more than one reason, after all), true names, and hexes, while the els are more into the lighter side, including healing, controlling weather (many els are blasters for this reason! including kal el lmao), and divination (hence why kara is one of the most powerful knowers in the world and why tally would totally freak out upon meeting her).

they used to tease each other a lot about the opposition of their magic earlier in their relationship. lena’s family also has a thing for greek myths and kara would totally call her hecate because magic and the dark-side-of-the-moon aesthetic. lena would retort that that makes kara phoebus apollo because light side and healing and prophecies. and then when they had a kid, well, they named her scylla because she’s hecate and apollo’s kid according to hesiod and they thought it fit, anyways.

alex: my niece would totally hate you for naming her after a monster. i am totally hating you for naming her after a monster.

kara: scylla was not a monster!

alex: she literally was, kara, what the fuck are you saying

lena: i think what kara meant is that it’s not scylla’s fault that she got turned into a monster: it’s circe.

alex:

alex: as in the barracks in fort salem

kara: our daughter is going to reclaim this name, you know? i’ve seen it. she’s going to fort salem and she’s not going to be the monster the army would try its damned best to turn her into.

alex:

alex: that’s totally poetic and all but it’s too much a burden to give to a baby

kara: i know that, alex. but ignoring destiny isn’t something i can do

lena: if it makes you feel better, we did give her a middle name, which we’re going to use in the meantime.

alex: and that is?

lena: lorelai. her name is scylla lorelai l. danvers.

---

ok the convo went something like that! hope this makes sense!!

[i can’t believe i’m already delving so deep into the “mythos” of this fic even tho it doesn’t even exist yet ajshjdhjsf hELP]

#ask #answered #motherland: fort salem #motherland fort salem #motherland freeform #scylla ramshorn #supergirl #supercorp #kara danvers #kara zor el #lena luthor #scylla luthor-danvers #mfs x supergirl

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paintedrecs · 4 years

Note

For the fandom talk meme thingy: C (not trying to start drama I swear), I, K, R, and X. =D

C - A ship you have never liked and probably never will.

Hmmm, there are a few ways of answering this. One is by listing all my NOTPs, which would be excessively long and ultimately boring because it essentially boils down to “anyone else with either member of my OTP.” I monoship my primary pairings, so I’m pretty strict on what I do and do not like.

(With the way fandom is now, I should clarify that NOTP means that I personally do not like a ship and I therefore go out of my way to avoid it - by muting terms, carefully filtering tags and search results, curating my own space, etc. It doesn’t mean I think the ship is badwrong or that anyone else should stop shipping it. It just means I do not ever want to see it.)

This feels a little less specific on that front, though, maybe more just: people like this and I’m meh about it?

So Allydia comes to mind. I don’t hate it, and if the Sterek’s good enough I’ll still read a fic with them as a background pairing, but I don’t ever like it as a romantic ship. While I ship Lydia with lots of different characters, including Cora, I’ve always seen Allison as straight, so I suppose that’s part of it? And I love Lydia & Allison as bffs - I see them as entirely platonic, like Scott & Stiles, so introducing romance just doesn’t work for me.

Another one is Sheriff Stilinski/Peter Hale. I...I don’t understand it. Unlike the last answer, this background pairing will prevent me from reading a Sterek-central fic.

I - Has Tumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?

This turned into a complicated and kind of roundabout answer, so I’m putting the rest of the questions under a long-post cut!

I stopped frequenting tumblr for two main reasons:

that whole weird purge thing that made me think everyone was leaving, so I just gave up, which might’ve been premature cause it seems like folks are still going strong on here

the emergence of antis, specifically within the Voltron fandom (although they’re everywhere at this point)

There’s a saying in fandom now:

“Why is the younger fandom generation like this?!??” “Tumblr raised them.”

For me, for years, tumblr was a really wonderful space where I had a lot of great conversations and read very thoughtful threads that helped me to learn some important things about myself, other people, and a world much wider than my own.

But I was an adult when I joined this site, and it really does seem like there’s a whole new crop of kids who have no actual context for ideas like social justice, the need for canonical representation in our media, and a lot of other things that eventually got folded into a big ball of disconnected rhetoric that they now fling as hard as they can at the heads of fandom creators who are committing the ultimate sin of creating content for ships they don’t like.

It’s late, and I don’t feel like getting into a whole Essay Rant about all that.

So on an entirely personal level, I quit running appreciatejack (my Check Please/zimbits/Jack Zimmermann blog) because someone sent me really vile hate for daring to ship Shiro/Keith from Voltron (two unrelated adults in a cartoon). It’s why I turned my ask boxes/anon/chats off on most of my blogs, and then eventually just...got tired of running them.

When I started up appreciatederek, I got a couple asks from people who wanted to know if it was going to be multiship or just Sterek, and when I said it was Sterek, they presumably went off to find other things they were into, because I never heard from them again. Y’know, the reasonable reaction. And then the rest of it was wonderful: finding content for it, and getting responses from people who enjoyed that content.

I thought appreciateshiro would be similar, but it was all so messy from the very start. The Sheith tag was FULL of hate. I was initially checking it every day, trying to find artists and writers and gif-makers to reblog and encourage and support, like I’d done in Sterek fandom, but instead I’d spend literal hours blocking people who came into that tag just to talk about how much they hated the ship.

Every day, I’d look for content for my OTP, and every day I’d come away from it angry and sad and frustrated. I never seemed to run out of people to block. And they never, ever seemed to run out of hate.

It was exhausting. It made me reluctant to go on tumblr at all. And eventually I just...sorta stopped.

So the answer to this question is more, I guess, “fandom made me stop liking tumblr, and in the process I stopped liking most fandoms.”

I’m sure you can kinda tell from the fandoms I’m currently the most invested in.

I love Sterek, and I will always love Sterek. Part of that’s the ship itself, of course, and part is because I had an incredible fandom experience with it. People within this fandom are still really great - always so welcoming and super excited about new content, even so many years on.

Otherwise, my current fandoms are kiiiiinda tiny:

Xanatowen (Gargoyles), which currently consists of exactly 2 people and 12 fics (3 of which are mine).

Trevorcard (Castlevania), which only has ~200 fics on AO3.

Taibani (Tiger & Bunny), which is an oldish fandom with only ~600 fics on AO3.

Remember, I came from a fandom that has SIXTY THOUSAND fics.

So while I feel very lonely and very sad about the low content levels in these fandoms, they’ve also given me the space to let go of some of my fandom hurt & anger and remember what it’s like to just...peacefully love something. I really miss just loving things and talking about loving those things and searching for other people who also love those things without running into....thousands upon thousands of people who HATE that you love that thing.

(Until I wrote all that out just now, I actually hadn’t realized how much this had still been hanging over me, or why I was so hesitant to come back to “reclaim” a space I’d once been super active and happy in. Essay over! Next questions.)

K - What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc?

Answered here!

R - Which friendship/platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?

Answered here!

X - A trope which you are almost certain to love in any fandom.

Found family. This is probably a big part of why Sterek was my first real fandom, because the idea of Pack makes it incredibly natural to build out relationships beyond just the central romantic pairing.

It doesn’t have to be a werewolf thing, though. I’m honestly not hugely fond of the whole puppy piles concept - I’m less interested in “biological urges make characters literally physically all snuggle up together in bed” than I am in the actual build of the friendships, and the concept of choosing people who will become the family you’ve been missing for whatever reason.

Maybe it’s reconnecting with biological family, or maybe it’s discovering that your friends have been filling that space for you all along, without you even fully realizing it. (The concept of “home” is another big one for me. Home is where your heart is etc etc.)

And hey! Now I can pull back in another question from earlier: about “pairings” that I might not have initially considered. As I suspected, I do have more! Mostly platonic.

For instance: Derek and Sheriff Stilinski becoming bffs. I thiiiink I can probably tie my ABSOLUTE LOVE of this concept back to HalfFizzbin’s can't be hateful, gotta be grateful. And then Cupboard Love really has to be the source of ALL my alive!Hales feels, which also includes folding Stiles into their family.

Fic is largely responsible for building out Derek’s relationship with Boyd, Erica, Isaac, his sisters...making them into an actual pack and friends and family in the way the show never bothered. And frankly while I don’t like canon!Scott at all at this point, I love his friendship with Stiles in fics, and I absolutely believe Stiles and Lydia would be amazing friends once he got past his crush on her. I’d point to another fic here, owlpostagain’s will to follow through, as the ultimate source for major Team Human feels.

So yeah. I’m always going to be drawn to stories about family, in whatever form that takes, particularly if it’s one that’s a little bit off the normal white-picket-fence path.

In Tiger & Bunny, it’s Barnaby joining the Kaburagi family, and learning how to be a dad and a friend to his new husband’s daughter.

In Gargoyles, I’m completely obsessed with the (canonical!) idea of a family that consists of a man, his wife, their son, and the chaotically loyal fae babysitter/tutor/third parent. It is not a stretch to tweak this the tiiiiiiniest bit to turn it into a nontraditional family structure of a man, his wife, his son, and his fae boyfriend. Honestly.

In Castlevania, the fic that made me sob my eyes out at one point does something the show would absolutely never. It gives Alucard the time to rebuild his physical home while befriending the people in the little town that crops up around it. It’s about Trevor and Alucard falling in love, but it’s also about them making a place for themselves in a world where that kind of comfort and stability and friendship is so badly needed.

I think we all kinda need that in our world right now. So I love being able to find it in fic, for the characters who’ve grown to mean something to me.

#meme #fandom talk #long post #littlerosetrove #did tumblr seriously break my read more and stick it up in the ask section #i don't even know #thanks tumblr

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vaguely-concerned · 4 years

Text

The Untamed Liveblog

Yes hello I watched the whole thing and wrote down some of my thoughts and feelings along the way so I wouldn’t fuckign EXPLODE! Only look under the cut if you’re prepared for a truly outrageous amount of rambling (...no really)

- I am elated to find that so far every adaptation I’ve seen has faithfully preserved the absolutely bizarre structure of the original book, I am appreciating the dedication haha

- the actor lends this version of lan wangji such an edge of youth and vulnerability right from the beginning, it breaks my heart. I don’t care how good he is with a sword, you can’t expose this pure sweet boy to the horrors of war!!!

- I am so glad I already know who all these characters are and wtf is going on, I can’t imagine watching this first time without that knowledge lol

- I love how they’ve made nie huaisang look so small and soft next to all the other cultivator, he looks like a floofy and eternally confused baby birb ;______;

- nhs citing the goldfinch as the reason he doesn’t want to die (presumably because no one will know to take care of it) TOT ur meant to be comic relief in this part of the story buddy you can’t make me cry like this yet!!!

(also the actor for wwx effortlessly sliding into being protective and reassuring and Good in a crisis. wonderful!)

- the actor for xue yang has chosen to go with the sexy baby school of evil acting normally associated with female villains and for that I can only applaud him

also setting up characters who are going to be important later on is something this show is doing better than the original haha, both the extra wen quing & ning and song lan & xiao xingcheng content is appreciated. (especially the latter suffered from ‘oh yeah those two -- actually wait who the fuck are these two again’ syndrome for me when I read the book. additional note: I am very sorry but clearly they are gay there’s no other explanation here)

- poor jiang cheng, they really haven’t given him much help in this huh. I would sort of have preferred it if they let him be ever so slightly less abrasive in the beginning, like in the book and the animated version; I’m not feeling quite as devastated over this relationship as I did in either of those.

- lan xichen’s soft knowing smile is a blessing every time. just a nice man. did not deserve this. protect.

- kudos to the actor for jin guangyao for the instinctive creeping unease I feel whenever he talks, even at this stage. he’s a wrong ‘un sir he’s a wrong ‘un

- y’know both the fact that nhs spent three days catching a bird and kept it with him undetected and that he’s the friend you go to for the good porn and managed to not only smuggle it into the cloud recesses but did so without getting caught... some wonderful subtle foreshadowing here (to make up for the very blatant visual foreshadowing that’s already been given out I assume lol)

- anyway lan ancestor lady and baoshan-sanren? gay. sad and gay. (I love how thoroughly wwx is getting to meet the in-laws btw lol how often do you have to meet your future spouse’s family from like three generations ago and take care of her rabbits for her after she’s gone, all before you even get to second base)

- fkadshfkasjdlhfsdjkfh the sheer consistency of nhs wistfully commenting on all the beautiful men surrounding him fsadfkjsdhfksd I think they might oh so subtly be hinting at some stuff here. HILARIOUS that this version, which has to maintain at least the veneer of some plausible homoerotic deniability, is a lot more overt about it than the book, which is free to be balls to the wall as gay as you please

- oh no nie mingjue just showed up my entire heart is on fire. BIG BROTHER!! so stern yet fair, so righteous, so worried y______y also can we talk about how his ‘hmmm I think imma stab it?’ approach to evil in general and xue yang in particular would have saved everyone a lot of grief later on? and he tells wwx the whole necromancy thing is probably not a good idea? (I really like how he does it too, he has so much Older Brother Energy it spills over when he talks to other kids around huaisang’s age lol. it’s good that they show his temper isn’t indiscriminate at all, he’s not angry at wwx even though his idea is provably incredibly dangerous) sole ornery voice of reason nie mingjue, also did not deserve what’s about to happen, I cry and my tears are blood

- ‘yeah okay I get that you’re mad but have you maybe considered... I didn’t do it?’ is an unusually weak opening move from jgy considering nmj literally did just see him absolutely 100% do it

- there should be a WARNING at the beginning of episodes where nmj cries so one could be PREPARED for the emotional devastation!!!!! tollest & stronkest man of the cast also stupidly pretty and heartbreaking while crying, it’s not fair

- I love how every cultivation sect’s home (except for the wens b/c they’re cartoon villains) is refined and beautiful and luxurious, even when it’s in a restrained way like the lans’... and then there’s the nie place which is like ‘please understand that this is a fuckn fortress’

- aww this doomed jiang cheng/wen quing thing is cute! too bad about... everything that’s about to happen happening huh

- oh wen ning. very hilarious that he’s known as the ~*ghost general*~ forevermore when actually... he is baby... cinnamon roll baby... too good for this world, too pure...

- how is this cgi turtle somehow less egregious than the one in the animated version lol. I quite like this bad little friend! long neck.

- oh NO lan wangji finally letting himself show that he’s in pain when they’re in private... i’m uwu

this beautiful boy is so long and lanky tho, I must admit he triggers my parental instinct more than the hot boy alert at this stage (but that’s fine I’m not the one who’s going to smooch him that’s wwx’s job lol)

the look of absolute disbelief and despair lwj gives when wwx thinks he’s in love with mianmian... this show is a cinematic masterpiece and I will hear no other opinion

- lwj looking at the love of his life completely missing the point: are you a joke to you (the answer is yeah)

- okay we’ve officially hit the point where everything’s about to go to hell for real, pray for me I’m not sure I can handle this again

- jiang fengmian acknowledge your other son who desperately wants your attention and affection challenge (unfinished)

- watching this scene knowing exactly what this promise means to jiang cheng and that wwx is going to break it... this is fINE

why the fuck did I do this to myself I know what’s about to happen when will I learn to quit while I’m ahead lol

- the change in subtext from the novel that EVERYONE sees wangxian coming from day one is so painful from jiang cheng’s side. this poor boy really has abandonment issues pelting him from every direction huh. tfw your idiot genius brother doesn’t even fucking realize he’s basically announcing he’s leaving your clan and your side to get married one day ;______;

- man mxtx is just so GOOD at peppering in the small private tragedies that somehow sting even worse than huge atrocities going on. the fact that madam yu and papa jiang never manage to reconcile and communicate except possibly in death... oof my friends. oooof.

- WAIT WHAT NO DON’T SHOW ME THE CHILDREN WHO’RE ABOUT TO DIE WHAT THE FUCK YOU MONSTERS

- like we’re right at the worst part now and she is an asshole... but damn madam yu’s last stand is epic tho. like a champ to the end

- wen zhuliu’s actor being able to uphold a look of tremendous boredom at all times regardless of what’s going on around him is Poetic Cinema Bitches

- jiang cheng and wei ying are holding hands on the boat... stab me in the heart... end my suffering

- you know what in this version we get to see that madam yu knew her husband came back for her and they died holding hands and not everything’s on fire yet, so far this isn’t quite as harrowing as the animated version. the dead children are fucking me up but the tone of the animated version is like a nightmare, this is less disturbing to me

also can we talk about how madam yu fought them off the whole day and night and her husband gets his ass owned within five minutes 😔 oh papa jiang

- oh okay turns out jiang cheng’s ‘I want my mom and dad’ gets to me in every adaptation good to know

they’re so young they’re bbs I don’t want to be here anymore haha

- wen ning. a sweet angel. just the goodest of boys. his sister raised him so well ;______:

- wen quing is so ethereally beautiful and also looks like she could stop a train with the force of one glance. like she’s my height but her presence is immense

- oh I see we’ve arrived at the tiny adorable flashback bbs part of this journey, let me just... just lie down somewhere huh

- outside of the central romance this is a tale about people who love their brothers very very much and it’s real sad for everyone involved

- me watching nie mingjue kicking down the doors to reclaim his own dang fortress: YEEEEAAAAH GO OFF DAGE!!! i um love him and his very handsome face

- jiang cheng dreaming about his family is EMOTIONAL WARFARE!!! how fucking dare!!!

- y’know what this isn’t a bad way of adapting the burial grounds thing! also pretty cost effective I imagine, gotta think about the budget when so much of it goes into fabulous wigs and robes

- credit where it’s due, the actor for wen chao makes his face do some shit I didn’t know human faces could do and he’s enjoyable to watch in the capacity as your friendly neighbourhood hate sink

- lwj consistently using wwx’s personal name even when talking to total strangers now... mhm this is also fine

- I can’t beliEVE this show is somehow less subtle about the gay stuff than the book, jin zixuan basically just asked lwj if he and wwx were... y’know... I guess cultivation partners would be the way to go here lol. between that and nhs more or less asking them if they were off fucking after the whole cold cave debacle... what a time to be alive even if they’re not going to kiss on-screen

- huaisang I hate to have to be the one to tell you this but your brother is an entire snacc. and yet I respect him way too much to ever proposition him, I know he is busy winning a war and being Righteous and slowly being driven mad by the ghost in his sword on top of raising his little brother, I’m not here to complicate things for him any further

I love this version of nmj so much though. this sense that he also sees the stuff that is genuinely good in jgy and has a real moment of grief that the dude just can’t seem to get away from his basic insecurity that causes him to do horrific things, even when handed other opportunities... the fact that he seems regretful and worried when asking jin zixuan how jgy is doing with the jin....... everything to do with his little brother...................... oh no he’s Soft in his private life this is awful

- poor lwj’s ‘I have a bad feeling about this’ face in this scene haha, he’s staring at this talisman like ‘I only know one person smart and dumb enough to pull this off’

- can’t wen quing just get one nice thing. one nice thing just for her. hasn’t she been through enough. give her her brother back and a nice quiet place to practice medicine and maybe some soft romance with jiang cheng eventually this show is kind of selling me on this.

- unexpectedly my favourite part of the revenge scene is just the camera switching back to lwj and jc watching in horrified silence like ‘...O___o dude this is fucked up tho right?? it’s not just me that’s messed up??’

- one is forced to wonder about wen zhuliu tho. this version reads as pretty explicitly depressed/suicidal to me, he’s kind of an interesting villain since his main traits are unquestioning loyalty mixed with unending indifference and also seemingly not too pressing a will to live

- oh nhs desperately trying to keep it together and pretend nothing’s different ;_____; this version is really driving it home that wwx is a lot of people’s only friend -- jiang cheng is mentioned to not have anyone but his sister to play with before he arrived, lwj was raised primarily on books and rules and his brother is ELATED that he has one (1) friend now, from the sheer depth of the attachment I’m willing to bet nhs hasn’t had many real friends in his life either. wwx gives and gives of himself and doesn’t know how to take help in return.

- foreknowledge is a beautiful thing; if you look at nhs when it’s revealed wwx didn’t bring his sword you can visibly see his brain kicking into overdrive haha. smart boy.

- big sister ;_______; I am an older sibling so I haven’t really had the feeling of having an older sister to look to, I see why it might be comforting now

- oh this is some real uruk-hai shit!! honestly the special effects in this aren’t half as bad as I’d been lead to fear, some of you guys just weren’t forged in the crucible of shitty sci-fi channel cgi at an early age and it shows

(honestly the weird fight stuff threw me much worse in nirvana in fire, because that series has such intricate, credible and realistic political world building and then people are flying all over the place through wire fu and it is so disorienting haha)

- oh nhs looking up at his brother like a puppy during the war council T______T baby bird boy

(between this point in the main story and fatal journey it’s very interesting how clearly nhs needs the emotional stability and safety of his brother -- who also seems to be his parental figure -- to function properly, even in his late teens. it looks like he needed more time to grow up than the rest of them even before they were all thrown into this awful bullshit. well he does have a lot of murderkitten brain to grow I guess that’s fair enough lol. wwx has some of the same thing with his sister too)

- whenever lxc and nmj look at each other it feels like the only two adults in the room meeting each other’s eyes like ‘...oh dear’

- aww lwj getting some advice from his brother. this poor kid really hasn’t been raised to handle the moral complexity of the real world huh, good thing lxc is here to lend some nuance to lan qiren’s unforgiving dogma

- oh lan zhan

- nmj’s plan to just idk somehow go in alone and fight the wen overlord mano a mano to avoid any more casualties... a spine made of steel, a heart made of gold, a head made of wood :’) truly a perfect man, good thing his brother got the brains in that family and he has some more sensible people around him

- in the face of inevitability I plead... jiang yanli... please don’t marry this asshole your son is going to be predictably insufferable

wwx has suffered through so much the last four months or so and yet his real breaking point is seeing his sister cry and can I just say -- relatable content

- NO! NO STOP HURTING HIM HE’S JUST GOOD AND HANDSOME AND DOESN’T DESERVE THIS

(could be applied to like 98% of these characters but in this case it’s nmj b/c I love him)

I do find it very funny and oddly comforting that nmj is literally so fuckn mad that it takes three times as many attacks for the evil sorcery stuff to take him down than we’ve seen used on anyone else fsdkfhasdkj too angry to die

wHY has my brain chosen for me to attach so deeply to perhaps The single most inevitably doomed person in this entire cast, at this point I’m just being cruel to myself lol

- I can’t describe how much I love the fanficiness of this story, in the best ways. the emotional fallout from the destruction of the lotus pier gets more screentime and attention than the entire sunshot campaign, and that’s exactly how I want it to be.

- they’ve been doing some great work to establish that the jin are also jeeeeeerks for such a long time, how’s that for foreshadowing

- equal opportunity traitor jgy gets his stab in lol one must respect the grift, though, he’s set himself up pretty darn good

*lxc stops nmj from killing jgy, hello darkness my old friend starts playing in the background*

fatal journey builds nicely on this fundamental thing that the nie boys take their responsibility to their people extremely seriously, it seems to be the fact that jgy so blithely talks about them as necessary casualties that really sets him off

- adlfsdfhsdkjh lxc and nmj meekly being like ‘...we could maybe... not commit war crimes? if that’s at all possible? no?’

*slaps ‘I don’t think you even tried at all’ stars on both of them* (I mean I actually do kind of see where they’re coming from a bit, they just came out of a pretty costly war and I wouldn’t feel too comfortable getting right back into it with arguably the wealthiest faction, who’s also been keeping back a bit and thus kept a lot more reserves. well played jin bastards well played)

- I could stop here. if I stopped here everything would basically be as okay as they could be and the world full of hope still. I suppose the question here is... do I love myself enough to quit while the going is good. and the answer is no I already started the next episode

- I think one incredibly endearing aspect of this version of nmj is that he has a look of faint but permanent worry about him. he walked onto the screen with a vibe of ‘...oh boy I don’t like where this is going’ and he’s just kept going ever since

in the book he’s kind of a flat character (whose one trait is Mad), I love that they’ve given him some depth and nuance here! probably partly down to the actor doing a great job, but this version has a real sort of warmth to him and also seems downright uncertain at times -- he thrives when there’s a clear goal and black and white sides, and is probably not t h r i l l e d with the weird tentative political situation after they take down the wens lol. thank god he has his little brother to make ‘bitch please’ faces over his shoulder when the jin get weird about things

anyway I’m always on the ‘nhs you are SO valid’ train, but in this version nhs is quadruple valid, in fact only mianmian is more valid in this entire world

- one of my favourite parts of this show is when wwx enters a situation and the camera takes some time to zoom in on the faces of his family and friends to convey their sense of ‘oh god what the fuck is he about to say now’ dread

- jiang yanli asking her little brother if he doesn’t want to stay with them anymore while crying is emotional kryptonite, help

this poor woman, she had to put all her points into emotional intelligence b/c god knows no one else in this family did

- hell YEAH lan zhan go break some rules!! treat yourself my guy

- hey sis if, theoretically, one hypothetically found oneself in -- for the sake of argument -- love with, as the case may or may not be, someone... how would one tell?? asking for a friend

- the whole summary of this fucking show is just ‘weaponized sibling feels’ everything hurts with foreknowledge why did I keep going

- aw no blindfolded kiss scene but here’s a scene with real earnest emotional intimacy stuff going on instead... I will joyfully take it your honor

- I do value and respect the translators giving us these subtitles so much... but they did also force me to read the words ‘bosom friend’ with my own two eyes right there and that was not very cool of them

- why oh WHY must jiang yanli, best person in the world, have been cursed with the horrible fate of being in love with the dumbest man on the planet

*jiang yanli juggling all the idiot men in her life* oh god my little brother is causing an international diplomatic incident again time to bUCKLE UP

oh ho ho you know shit is getting real when big sister gets mad I LOVE HER. suddenly you see she definitely her mother’s daughter after all lol

wwx crying because his sister just fiercely defended him in public... im uwu

- I hate jgy with all my heart but I do feel bad for him too. his barely faltering :) look while all his asshole relatives gang up on him sdfhskahf

- again the jin are dicks but when it comes to aesthetics they do go off, that’s such a beautiful shade of blue

- dsflhsdakjlfhsdakjfl sd this shot of lwj and nmj right before lxc drinks is the funniest framing imaginable b/c lwj is wearing a look of complete stonefaced

-___________-

and meanwhile nmj, who presumably has seen lxc drunk before since they’re longstanding bros, looks worried as fUCK

- awwwww I do love nhs capitalizing all of jc’s attention so the others won’t start shit with him/so he won’t get to say something publicly he’ll regret later because he’s (understandably honestly) mad at his brother for making his life even more difficult than it has to be (I have every sympathy with wwx but buddy... buddy must you make everything more complicated for your bro every darn time this is a real delicate political situation and he’s not suited for that even without your antics)

it’s a very nhs move because he comes across as slightly boorish and rude and thus leaves jc blameless and thus protected, you can get so far if you have no self respect lol

- showing us exactly how wen ning died is honestly a little too mean this is not fun

- good god this poor grandma has been through the wringer hasn’t she

- oh. oh wen ning, who never meant hurt anyone in his entire life :(

- listen okay the end is in sight just a couple more horrific tragedies to get through and then it’s the weird romantic comedy buddy cop antics of the current day timeline to ride to the end

- it cannot be overemphasized how much this lan zhan is Baby, I so desperately want to help and protect him

- I’m going to stop shouting out individual actors on this show they’re all goddamn brilliant haha (but am I tho)

- most valid person in the cultivation world mianmian

also enjoying the exemplification of nmj’s character that is ‘not sure how I feel about this dumb kid with the big mouth digging his own grave ever deeper but that girl’s got guts and I respect that’

- wen quing is getting a taste of the dangers and pitfalls of having wwx as a little brother dfhskdalfhsdaklj she and jyl should compare notes (he’s so good tho T-----T)

- how does wwx’s actor have such natural dad energy at such a young age, too powerful

- people give so little thought to how fucked up jc’s situation really is here, like he’s just being an asshole for the sake of it. spend three fucking seconds looking at it with some realpolitik in mind and realize that the clans around him have just shown that they can and will wipe out an enemy clan together if need be, and that his own sect hasn’t even gotten back on its feet after the war that almost wiped it out. like wwx is unquestionably morally right but has gone about it in such a way that it’s real fucking hard to support him without going down with him and how do you calculate that risk when you’re responsible for so many more lives than your own

also so sad about jc being so afraid this entire time that wwx would leave him like everyone else... and now he has :( jc doesn’t handle it well but then who would at this stage

- there is something so pure about a quietly horrified lan zhan getting Dad Advice from these guys (well he’s going to be needing it soon enough so)

oh the utter softness of his face looking at wwx and ah yuan ;_______; thank god, some fluff to bolster my heart before we set off into the last harrowing ordeal here

LAN ZHAN’S ENTIRE FACE LIGHTING UP AT WEI YING ASKING HIM OUT thank fuck there’s still some joy left in the universe

this poor love struck man, someone help him

lan zhan conscientiously grabbing ah yuan’s toys is fskhdfksjdlfhskjdhf

- lan zhan looking around the demon subduing cave: babe I love you more than life itself but this is tacky as hell

- crying because wen niiiiiing

- crying because sibliiiiiings

okay this is the last time the three of them will be together and nominally happy, need to appreciate it through my tears

- actually I take it back please just let the bad thing happen now so I don’t have to live in suspense anymore lol (...this probably says a lot more about me as a person than I’m strictly comfortable with)

- the fact that none of wwx’s little adopted wen family are AT ALL intimidated by him anymore is just... it’s too much to bear

again tho this book/show is so willing to let you dwell in the emotional stages of things in a very fanfic sort of way, I think it’s what makes the sad parts so much worse (and makes you feel so incredibly attached to these characters)

- I gUESS it’s a testament to jin zixuan’s character that he has any decency at all, considering who his dad is and where he was raised

I’m cracking up at their dad being the one who still doesn’t trust jgy tho lol snake recognizes snake

- jgy’s faint look of ‘are you fucking kIdDiNg me rn’ whenever all these jin douchebags talk is very entertaining. if he didn’t go on to do all that murder and incest and (probably) infanticide I’d sort of cheer for him no matter what kind of sociopath he is

- not to be a downer or anything but isn’t one month a little premature to be celebrating the survival of a baby in fantasy old timey china tho

sometimes I feel like looking back at history is just seeing a whole lot of dead children (and this is why I think that even if god did exist it would be morally inconceivable to worship him! sorry just a quick detour into my personal grudge against the inherent cruelty of the world there, let’s move on)

- it’s uncomfortable to watch even the outlines of the jin sect’s slow insidious stranglehold on power. even these random shopgoing nobodies know that nmj is Not Happy about these watchtowers and that it’s probably going to happen anyway. the jin are snakes but at least they’re clever about it and I do kind of respect that

- oh everything’s about to go so wrong I hate it

NOOOOO don’t make the zombie baby fight, nothing good will come of this

- man this is hitting me worse than lotus pier actually I’m just... crying haha

it’s almost cathartic tho... there’s something about wen quing’s dignity and certainty that really helps? I just really wish they hadn’t brought the whole little group, god I want them to be okay so badly and ah yuan will be all that’s left and. and just throw me into the ocean and let me sink tbh

- I know this is all so much black cgi smoke (pls let us see the red version again at some point btw that was cool as shit) but the emotional metaphor of wwx that you can’t take on more and more of other people’s suffering and trauma and not care for yourself because you will lose control of that at some point is just. very nicely done. (he’s a bit of an odd serial codependent for a lot of the story, isn’t he. thank god lan zhan is not a quitter)

- jin zixuan’s mom is breaking my heart a little here. this lady has been married to THAT GUY all this time and now this as well. sorry lady, I guess jgy probably Took Care Of You at some stage after this

- a) this is just real good acting for wwx. this is the perfect level of unhinged for this, even though I’m always like ‘just. just shut your mouth for one time in your life and stop digging this grave any deeper six feet should be enough for anyone huh’ at this stage of the story and b) I am cackling inappropriately at the shot-reverse-shots between wwx, jiang cheng and jgy. jiang cheng looks like everything he ever loved is falling apart around him and jgy is like ‘oh wow I didn’t even have to provide him any rope he’s doing an excellent job at hanging himself without me’

I love wwx so much but it did take him an unconscionable length of time to realize that when you set big enough things into motion you will not be able to control who it crushes along the way or who might steer it in the wrong direction. other people exist and have agency and a lot of those people are bad honey :(

- ah yes lwj being stopped by a barrier made of the physical manifestation of wwx’s trauma when he tries to reach him :’) this is okay and cool and fine

- it’s admirably obtuse of everyone to look at wwx at this stage and still think he’s in control of uh anything lol

- oh okay that went better than expected I don’t know if I’m just inured to sadness at this point

jiang cheng looking like a little boy clutching his big sister’s body is tugging at my heartstrings a bit tho

- ooooh this battle hardened intense lwj!!! I guess I can sort of see it now

- oh lan zhan 2, electric boogaloo

- finally! time for some comfort up in this hurt

- my man nmj still so fucking angry in the afterlife that anything even remotely connected to him is shaking with rage in sympathy in the real world. a mood

- fdsahfsjdklfhsdajk wwx being like ‘I can take everyone saying I was evil but how DARE you not mention I was also a snacc’

- when do you think nie huaisang really realized that his brother wouldn’t have children and that he was up for the sect leader seat next? nie mingjue seems to have known pretty far in advance himself and tried to prepare his brother accordingly, but that kid really didn’t want the job so I imagine he’d try to live in denial as long as possible

vaguely related: no other family is ever mentioned by either brother or anyone else, and nie huaisang straight out says that he is the only main disciple (I seem to remember and with the caveat that I might have misunderstood the translation) when there’s the talk of them being sent to the wen as hostages -- I suppose you sort of have to be very selective when your ancestral cultivation method is sketchy enough that you should keep that shit on the down low and you know people die young from it. so I think it’s possible if not probable that huaisang is the last of his family. isn’t that a fun little thing to think about? haha. ha. help me

- this random street vendor is an unexpected strong comedy performance, every face he makes is pure gold

- fkshafkjsdhfasd best introduction of adult nhs

- the quiet luminous love on lwj’s face whenever he looks at wwx in the present... give this man all the awards. it’s nice that wwx gets to be scared and childish and vulnerable with someone who loves him no matter what too, he’s been through some shit

- oh okay I see so the reason they chose to make fatal journey the way they did was because they already had the set built

- *nhs dropping one set of robes like that one gif from anastasia to reveal another even more luxuriously dandy-ish set under it* oh wow what a surprise to see you two down here, coincidences amirite (anyway here’s the testament to all the sins of my ancestors & a trail of breadcrumbs to lead you to the murderer of my brother)

no wait that’s slightly later isn’t it. well the point still stands

- dead!nmj is truly a mood -- “I don’t know where I am, who I am or what the fuck just happened but I do know that I am PISSED OFF”

(actually in the book I found that almost comforting -- at least the dude got to spend his afterlife doing what he loved (i.e. being angry), but this more nuanced and sympathetic version being trapped like that just. makes me very very sad)

nice of him to stick around to play a few rounds of hot or cold with his little bro’s friends tho lol. I mean from what I understand of this take on canon it’s actually the spirit of his sword and not him in person? but close enough, let me keep him as long as I can okay

- jin ling getting his dumb ass cask of amontillado’d within ten minutes of entering the tomb smh

look at your ROBES young man what is your (other) uncle going to say??

- hAH what did I say. pedagogic mastermind jiang cheng at it again

enjoying the fact that they chose the floofiest most benign-looking of dogs to play this ~*terrifying hound*~ so much

I have a lot of sympathy for jiang cheng, and the actor is doing a good job at aging him up here (not as good as lwj’s but then you can’t beat perfection). the way he’s calcified into bitterness and anger b/c he can’t express his emotions in a healthy nuanced way feels very... real I guess, people get like that sometimes

- I am somehow really endeared to this version of jin ling. a dumb baby, but a baby

- poor lan zhan lol “I LEFT YOU ON YOUR OWN FOR TWO HOURS AND YOU ALREADY MANAGED TO TAKE ON SOMEONE ELSE’S CURSE??? BABE!!!!!!!”

he consistently uses jiang cheng’s personal name too huh. well it is his brother in law I guess ETA: actually I’m an idiot ignore/forgive me, that’s jiang cheng’s courtesy name isn’t it. lan wangji is being salty/maybe-deliberately-maybe-not-(but-definitely-tho) distant/polite with him I think

- y’know... as I watch lwj carry the love of his life around on his back with all the tenderness in the world and I see people in the comments yell about why do you always need everything to be gay they’re just good friends you’re all crazy... I realize all over again that there really is no level of queerness they’ll ever find legitimate or acceptable. which like. feels bad, but there’s also the freedom in remembering they are always going to be assholes no matter what I do, there’s literally no need to listen to them at any time.

- I am CRACKING UP; watching this episode right after seeing fatal journey sure is a treat hahaha. nhs really must enjoy the acting on a deep level because he is hamming it up and I am living for it

“It’s nothing at all like unorthodox demonic cultivation methods!” he protests with his big innocent doe eyes, having yelled the exact same accusation at his brother within ten seconds of finding out about it dsfdskjha

- awww that’s such a sweet way of telling nhs who he is while both of them still get plausible deniability :’)

this show is making it a LOT easier to figure out nhs’ deal earlier just through visual storytelling and his reactions when lwj and wwx aren’t looking, but I guess you sort of have to do that without the benefits of selective POVs that you can do in written stories

- lan zhan’s little smirks are such a blessing

- can we talk about how INCREDIBLY rude lwj and wwx are being barging into other people’s ancestral tombs like they own the place. I know I said break some rules lan zhan but there’s such a thing as common decency too at least wipe your feet at the entrance or something

stop being big bullies!!! (nhs actually sounds a little salty at how debonair they are being lol he’s like yeah you’re doing what I want you to but you don’t have to be such dicks about it)

- nooooooo nmj don’t die ur so sexy ahaha (I jest so I do not cry godddddd my heart big brother come baaaaaaack)

I’m honestly finding it very hard to live with knowing that the last thing nmj saw in life was jgy having his little brother in his clutches D:D:D: looking at it like that... of course he came back mad as fuck, I’d probably do the same thing

- boys boys I love and support you but could you maybe not stand around talking about how this was totally a horrific murder like the murderee’s little brother isn’t standing right there?? i mean it’s useful for him but it’s kind of mean of you, I know neither of you were raised in a barn

okay there’s wwx irrepressible protective instinct that’s better. I just... nhs standing there looking small and sad and soft and lonely isn’t the whole truth but it is part of the whole truth, it’s nice to see wwx being like this even after all those years. (the physical closeness in their friendship in their youth in this version is so gooood. outside of wwx the only two people we see nhs consistently allow close or seek out closeness from is his brother and MENG YAO, who can frankly burn in hell even more than usual for the flute thing in fatal journey.)

- lan zhan contemplating the inherent impermanence of everything good in the world and then immediately getting blackout drunk -- MOOD. also I have never seen a scene where someone so obviously was about to press a soft kiss to someone’s forehead or cheek, don’t worry wwx I see you through the censorship lol

(it’s incredible how well they’ve adapted the love story considering the fact that they technically uh can’t)

- wen ning: shambles, zombie-like and disheveled with horror movie monster eyes, into frame

all of us: omg a BABY ToT

- live action drunk lan zhan is living up to the hype I am d y i n g

this poor repressed man

fjskdfsdkjhf he could do sword fighting in his damn sleep probably

I will say that leaving ‘wei wuxian was also here’ is going to scare the crap out of these poor people whose only crime was keeping well fed chickens

- they r so in love someone hold me

- this nmj!kid I am LOSING IT, this is so cute I want to lie face down on the floor and cry

- the yi city arc is my least favourite part of this story, so I’m fortifying myself to get through a couple of hours of sexy baby xue yang here

- Dad/troll teacher!wwx is in fact everything

- oooh wwx has the same weird crooked fingers as me when they’re extended! just some small Facts About Your Friendly Neighbourhood Blogger there

- this is not at all a bad take on ah quing! she qte

- ‘what’s your husband look like?’ song lan, crying: beautiful

- xxc you didn’t think it was a little weird the dude wouldn’t tell you his name -- even a name -- all this time. honestly

I know you’re in a bad place and this is sort of a rebound thing from your actual true love but stop letting him gaslight you like this buddy :(

- time for some MASSIVELY FORESHADOWING PARALLELS my friends

- I don’t know if I’m just a heartless monster but I honestly don’t care that much about anyone but ah quing in this little sideplot lol (probably my complete disinterest in xue yang tainting everything else)

- xue yang and jgy: the ‘sad backstory dude still inexplicably extra mass murder’ club

- godddd I’m so bored I’ve listened to this guy cackle ~*madly and evilly*~ for three episodes now when will it fucking end

- lan jingjy you are VALID

- fhsdkfhsdkj can’t get over baxia being like ‘OI you two stop gazing soulfully into each other’s eyes for five seconds and get on with avenging me’

must be annoying spending your afterlife in a pouch third wheeling the two most obnoxiously in love people in the world, I think this spirit sword is being admirably restrained and patient all things considered

- big brother I am so sorry you had to hang out under there all this time while this boring bullshit plot happened above you ;________________________;

I’m actually not clear on what the nie sect does with the bodies of the dead -- the saber tomb seems to be exclusively for the weapons/we see that some of the cultivators will go down there while they’re still alive to sacrifice themselves... maybe they go in the walls? I guess nhs is breaking tradition in a lot of ways tho so who knows!

- ‘from what I’ve seen he’s not so bad’ wei ying he smilingly asked you to use POWs for target practice I’ll allow lxc to be this dumb but you really have no excuse

- this duckling in red is a gentleman and a bro, one to watch

- wwx seductively arranging himself in the open window to cover his panic fsdkjfhsda

- lot’s wife WISHES she had the level of salt jiang cheng does

- ‘if they ask me any weird questions I don’t know the answers to I’ll have to pretend to be a total psycho’

lan zhan, dragging his husband with one deadpan face: I’m sure that is going to be a huge feat of acting for you babe

- NIE HUAISANG FALLING INTO FRAME AND LAUNCHING HIMSELF FROM ONE PERSON TO ANOTHER LIKE A GORMLESS WET RAG, I STAN ONE (1) BOY

‘but new problems appeared’ how is he such a mood

again tho you can give your unknowing accomplices so much space to investigate if you just don’t bother with self respect or dignity at any stage of the journey lol

- fjshdfkjlsahd that beat of lan zhan clearly taking a moment to contemplate the idea of wei ying confessing his love naked in public there

- uncle and nephew bonding time T________________T

- fsakfhsadkjlfhsad I can’t deal with this mission impossible ass music in the background as a little paper gingerbread man scoots around the palace

whoever animated this was clearly having a lot of fun, I love the little details like his dangling legs and him rubbing his lil paper bum after landing

- poor qin su, one of the most screwed over people in this whole show. at least in the book he didn’t mean to

- ah su, you’re being very unreasonable about this, what is a little incest between friends

- straight culture is this being chill to keep in the adaptation but god forbid anyone got a loving queer kiss at any point (not blaming the showrunners at all, they’re clearly stretching the limits as far as they will go and maybe a bit more at a few points)

- YES SISTER CALL HIM THE FUCK OUT I always felt like she’s known something was a little off for a long time but never could put her finger on what exactly

- ‘can you still not let me go’ hey jgy you piece of shit who’s keeping whose head in a weird serial killer cabinet here

- THANK YOU FOR BRINGING HIS HANDSOME ALIVE FACE BACK TO MY SCREEN IF ONLY TO MAKE ME SAD

- he’s so beautiful and righteous and strong 😭😭😭😭 dage come back to us

(makes even more sense that he’s so pissed off about what jgy did if he’s already shown clearly that he’ll shut down the people fucking with him if it’s brought to his attention. he gave you every opportunity you little oh-it’s-never-really-my-fault worm of a man)

- another nmj about to cry warning needed here help me

dON’T FUCKING TOUCH HIM YOU SLIMY FSKJLDHFKSJDHFSKDJLHF

the nie traits are undying loyalty, rage, and the intergenerational trauma of watching your parental figures succumb to death and madness through the same cultivation path you practice

- my cause of death: nmj’s eyes shining with unshed tears

this version has that edge of vulnerability to him, you suddenly do realize he was once just a kid watching his dad die a horrifying death and then having to take on all that responsibility and raising his brother

nie boys unfailingly devoted to the people under their protection I’m gonna go bury myself under a tree or something

- I’ve had to turn the volume down so I can barely hear anything b/c my emotions are too big to for my dumb body to contain already I can’t listen to this

- extremely sad but also a little funny that part of the reason nmj died was that he had no interest whatsoever in the arts. ‘music is music right?’ says local jock

- I’ve just been whimpering the last twenty minutes this is awful

- huaisang’s voice breaking on ‘big brother, it’s me’... sdlakhgsdjklfhsadjkghsdkjlfhdskljhgsdalkhgsdklgjhsdjklhgkdjslhgjskd I’m going to the bottom of the mariana trench and I’m staying there goodbye

- I can’t wait to watch nie huaisang end this putrid trash man’s whole career in the most devastating way possible tbh

- I’m just so SAD T______________________________T I hate jgy so much my heart burns with it I’m so glad he’s about to get some dramatic irony shoved up his -- but I digress

- haha poor jin ling standing there watching all this messed up shit like ‘O.O thanks i’m nine’

- I wish I was as good at passing the fuck out on command as nhs, I feel like it would solve a lot of my problems

- just some low key soulmate shit no biggie

- wwx is basically fantasy old timey naked again here the SCANDAL except no scandal they’re clearly married

- wwx is being so much more patient with lxc than I would have found it in my heart to be at this stage. he’s like ‘lxc you are my brother in law and I truly appreciate you and everything you’ve done for me but it’s sadly up to me to gently confront you with all the ways you’ve been a dumb ho just b/c you think jgy has pretty dimples 😔’

- “You’re not qualified to talk to me” oh lwj I love you so much. I thought committing murder was forbidden by the lan sect rules but there you go

- it honestly baffles me that some people think nmj would be the strictest parental figure in this universe when a) everything about huaisang suggests otherwise and b) lan qiren is right there

madam yu has that ‘super unforgiving to her son’s face but will also tear anyone criticizing him a new one’ mixed energy too

- lqr: I raised a perfect obedient righteous cultivator

me & wei ying: you’ve ruined a perfectly good boy is what you did look at him he’s too repressed to breathe

- well their dad clearly paid enough attention to worldly matters that two kids resulted from it, I’m not quite sure where we’re going with this lxc

one’s an accident two’s a pattern etc.

- wow I was so confused about ‘confidante’ being used here b/c it makes absolutely no sense in context, and the comments helpfully informed me that it’s more accurately translated to ‘soulmate’ or something like that; that does make a whole lot more sense yeah

- bb!lan zhan kneeling in the snow is more than anyone’s supposed to have to live with tbh

- lxc being like ‘so yeah my brother will keep loving people long after they’re gone and unable to give him love back! just a fun fact there, something to think about anyway here’s wonderwall’

- soft, ever-so-slightly messy haired at home lan zhan deserves the world

- oh wwx’s shift away from thinking the truth doesn’t matter at all to realizing the truth of you being held fully and with love by one person in your life is enough as lwj plays their song ;______________________________; this is almost more romantic than a kiss scene would be honestly jesus christ

- little apple is the best of us tbh

- apologies but they have 100% started to fuck off-screen at this stage, the looks wei ying is giving him dsafasdfhsjkd

- I take it back mianmian and little apple are the best of us

- imagine just finding the light bearing lord, second peerless jade of lan in his immaculate white clothes, peeking out from between your hay bales one day

- the exponential increase in lan zhan’s blessed little smiles lately: my oh-they-fawking thesis is validated yet again

- wei ying lying through his teeth: of course I remembered your face at once who do you take me for

(lan zhan: smirks in quiet satisfaction)

- walejhgskdjhgsjdaklfhsadjkflafhsjakdsf wen ning is so cute I don’t know what to do with myself

- wei ying this is where you first asked him out of course he remembers

- lan zhan is like ‘oh shit I forgot to tell him about our son and at this point I’m kind of embarrassed to bring it up’

- I am NOT thinking about the lotus pond they made for him here, you can’t make me

- ‘the worst time in their lives’ yeah, but there was such love there too. it h u r t s

- the actor for wen ning is so good at making his expressions look deeply earnest but also a little uncanny, like moving his face doesn’t come naturally to him anymore but his Good Boyness shines through

- DRAGGED in public by his own son. rip wwx he had a good run of it before his untimely murder

- wow thank goodness sect leader yao survived all this time, his death would as we all know have been a huge loss to society as a whole

- “I’m just here to round up the numbers” I love him more than I can convey to you in words

I’m a simple person, I hear nhs’ chronically befuddled voice and a burst of pure joy is released in my heart

sdfhjksadhfsad his soft little 😕 face peeking out from behind people’s shoulders fkjsdhfsdjal

- will I ever get enough of nhs masterfully manipulating a situation through his own apparent cowardliness and uselessness? no is the answer to that it’s always entrancing to watch

nhs as a teacher, nodding sagely as his disciples exchange glances: it’s never too late to go home instead of going big. saying ‘fuck this i’m outta here’ is always an option

- also nhs seemingly doesn’t use a saber at all anymore, where he at least used to have one back in fatal journey times. I’m very happy he’s trying some new things, time to break that very sad traumatic chain of dying young and furious

also him getting someone else to do the work of fixing the ward or whatever fskdfhaskdlf

teacher nhs, waving his pupils away b/c he’s busy painting or something: class dismissed. and remember, if at all possible, get someone else to do your homework for you. as long as you don’t get caught that’s an automatic A

- wwx is literally the cat surrounded by knives meme here lol

- lol lol lol wwx just removed his outer tunic thing to reveal lan zhan’s undershirt still under there and you can see lan qiren silently seethe with ‘that little hussy has seduced my nephew away from the righteous path’

(do I personally believe in slut shaming of any kind? nah it’s dumb as fuck. do I think lqr does? yeah)

- hahaha I can’t tell if nhs’ slightly glazed look here is b/c wwx did something he didn’t plan for him to do or if it’s because he’s for all intents and purposes half naked in front of them. (tbh I think there’s a case to be made in this version that he has a sort of wistful would-never-act-on-it-for-a-million-different-reasons-lan-zhan’s-furious-jealous-stare-being-foremost-of-them crush on both wwx and lwj from back when they were teens)

- WOW all these dicks inviting themselves to lotus pier!!! r u d e

- lan zhan flexing on lan qiren by raising a happy well adjusted child even while he’s mourning the love of his life: what like it’s hard

- wen ning kept that toy for sixteen goddamn years don’t touch me

- I’m crying about jin ling give me a moment. he is baby okay he’s even younger than ah yuan by at least four years

the image of him hugging the only thing he’s got left of his dad... fsdalkfhasdjlkfhsjdakhfsjdk

- lan sizhui has a crowd of good uncles/dads and poor jin ling has a crowd of utter disaster uncles and it’s very unfortunate (yes wwx is on both of those lists)

it is very sweet that it’s jiang cheng who consistently actually looks out for him, even in his feelings-wtf-are-feelings sort of way. the least disaster uncle, but only by comparison lol

- I think this ouyang kid might be duckling in red from before? LOVING the interspersed nhs reaction shots to him, anyway fsakdfh (I’m going to make it sad: how many conversations like this do you think he had with his brother as a kid? that’s fine we can both cry now I don’t want to be alone in this)

- ‘mr ning’ im Y___________________________________Y

- extremely Here for yet another full costume change from nhs hahaha (he’s changed at the boat already, god knows how he pulled that off but I’d expect no less from him)

- nhs must have been a sect leader for at least a decade at this point, and he still manages to exude such a powerful ‘kid at the adult’s table’ aura. incredible. mindblowing, inspirational

- ...oh they went with the same version of the previous jin leader’s death huh (but GOD FORBID that anyone should be openly gay amirite lol) O___O again though WHY is jin ling here, jiang cheng??????? he’s like sixteen, he’s never going to dare to even kiss anyone after this

- nhs has the look of a man who’s had to sit on this disgusting knowledge alone for years and finally gets to share that icky burden around, merry christmas everyone if I have to know about this so do you

- I don’t know if this is just me imagining things or reading more into it than what’s there, but I think nhs is actually sitting in the same pose his brother used to a lot in this part of the scene (the upright posture with palms resting at the top of the thighs/hips, fingers turned inwards/towards each other; it looks sort of... solid and self-contained, I guess)

- I would call jgy knowingly committing the incest character assassination if he’d had enough character to assassinate even in the book, I would never have put it past him

- y’know... god knows nmj had flaws (I think my immense depth of love for him in this version comes precisely from how hard he tries even while being deeply flawed. him dumb but him always trying :’) well actually he’s not dumb at all, he’s shown to be pretty darn politically savvy, I’m just having a hard time finding the right word here. ‘inflexible’ is maybe closer ), but the big defining difference between him and jin guangyao (and consequently xue yang) is that both of the latter are completely open about the fact that they see themselves as more important than anyone else -- xue yang considers one of his fingers worth more than fifty people’s lives, jgy kills twenty sex workers as a mere afterthought to his own revenge on his father. meanwhile nmj gets Messed Up by people dying under his protection to the degree that he came up with one of the dumbest plans I’ve ever heard just so he’d be the only one at risk, just so no one else would get hurt anymore. hmnghsjhfs.

- wen ning, proudly: my sister was the best doctor in the world

me, openly crying: she sure was buddy

- wwx: hey lan zhan are there any sweet patient lan ladies with an open mind around

lwj: ...why

wwx: I just think our zombie son should start thinking about getting friends, maybe even a real home

lwj, subtly relieved: oh

- JIN LING BABY BOY NOOOO D:D:D:

- nhs I need you to come in and end this man I cannot look at his awful face anymore

- ugh this garrotte sound effect is really unpleasant actually well done

- THERE HE IS!!! conveniently swooning his way into the scene again, my guy ;_______; smol and soft-looking and about to utterly obliterate a man on every conceivable level

I love every moment of the camera dwelling meaningfully on his innocent vulnerable face, this is going to be so great

it’s too bad he’s a behind the curtain sort of dude, I would kill for a poirot-style ‘I’m sure you’re all wondering why I’ve gathered you here in the library’ moment here lol

- tbh jiang cheng’s got a point about that whole ‘making huge sweeping decisions about someone else’s life and never telling them about it’ thing

wwx has sort of structured himself as a person so that you’ll never be allowed to really reciprocate his dedication and sacrifices (unless you’re lz lol), and while that is a very sympathetic trauma reaction essentially it is sort of a dick move interpersonally.

- the weight and wisdom that comes along with the scars of older wwx... you love to see it

- nhs, with effortless grace, rousing from his disney princess slumber just as the real drama’s about to begin... your honor he is simply the best

- T__________________________________________________________T big brother

- the tinge of coldness in nhs’ eyes while he watches jgy through this whole scene even as he keeps up the ‘im baby don’t worry about me’ act.............. fashdfjlksdahfslkadj, not to say askfksjhafkjsldhfkjsalhfksjaldhfkls

- to say that jgy has perhaps ‘gone overboard with this’ might be the biggest understatement of any century lxc

- watching him kneel by his brother’s coffin here I’d like to propose that Nie Huaisang has exactly the same capacity for all-consuming rage as the rest of his family, except he can’t just vent it by hitting something real hard with a haunted murder saber so he has to get creative and that was real unfortunate for Jin Guangyao

- one thing that’s always tickled me is that nhs did give jgy the choice. the people around him -- the people he claims to love -- could have been left out of it, no dishonor being brought to either his name or any of theirs... if he’d been willing to sacrifice himself. (probably a gambit where he knew that was never going to happen, but still!)

- nhs standing there in the background like ‘yeah yeah we all have horrifying family legacies buddy, we just don’t knowingly marry our sisters or arrange for mass murders over it’

- arguably killing the previous jin leader could actually count as a good deed if not for the horrifying way he did it lol. jgy all over, he could have done something helpful, *john mulaney voice* and then he didn’t he just killed nineteen innocent women while he was on a roll instead

- while it’s sort of bullshit that some responsibility is taken away from wwx in jin zixuan’s death here it’s also making a bit more sense to me like this -- seems like an uncharacteristic gamble from jgy to just idk hope wwx would lose control at exactly the right/wrong moment. wwx is still at fault for how casually he treated wen ning as a weapon when he didn’t know what the consequences could be, I’m okay with this

- jin ling and the terrible horrible no good very bad week :( protect him

wow lan xicheng let’s stand around some more letting this awful excuse for a person tell this sixteen year old boy that his parents deserved to be murdered basically, I’m sure there’s a lot more fruitful discussion still left to be had here

- talk shit about nie mingjue’s brother get hit su she hell YEAHHHHHH

big brother still looking out for him I’m fsdklfhajsdlhf 😭😭😭

- I’M SO FULL OF FEELINGS ;________________________________; at least in this version the implication feels more like he’s finally at peace? (hilariously wwx managed to purge/cleanse the saber spirit, which is the entire conflict of fatal journey haha, nhs really did get his best friend to do his homework for him yet again, INSPIRATIONAL)

- HELL YEAH FINALLY GET REKT YOU PIECE OF SHIT! PRESS F TO PAY RESPECT EXCEPT JOKE’S ON YOU I’VE GOT NO RESPECT TO PAY

They did do away with any and all ambiguity around nhs here and I’m totally cool with it, that was awesome

- I’m playing the world’s tiniest little violin right now, wow much sad fuck you and your dumb hat

- may I just say that the fact that jgy uses his last moments on earth to make lxc, a person he proclaims to love, feel as bad as possible about his now inevitable death even though it clearly wasn’t really his fault... is just proof that he has never actually loved anyone at all except possibly himself

contrast with wwx, who tells jc that he’s sorry, dries his tears in the here and now and says to let the past go because there’s nothing either of them can do about it now and there’s no point in hurting themselves over it again and again anymore. jgy has the opportunity to give a similar kindness here and instead twists and twists the knife, so lxc will be in as much pain as possible when he’s gone. he’d rather be kept alive in lxc’s suffering than let him, someone he ‘loves’, ever heal and be happy. anyway I hope hell is real shitty for you jgy

- jgy you absolute piece of shit you couldn’t let my man have TEN FUCKING MINUTES to nap in peace? after sixteen years of your fuckery? urgh bye

- nhs looking at lxc sadly when lxc can’t see him... one last ‘I don’t know’ finally closing out his arc... I love all of this so much, there’s such a nuance of... he is genuinely a bit sad about causing lxc pain but he also doesn’t regret what he did At All. (I guess most of what he’s done must be pretty easy to rationalize/justify to himself, since the vast majority of his work went into finding the horrible shit jgy has done and showing them the way home to roost, rather than creating fresh suffering from scratch. and then there’s also the whole mo family but uh well eggs omelettes amirite lol)

- lan qiren telling people not to run or talk loudly b/c they’re at a temple, even under these circumstances fhakjsldfhkjsdafhkjsaldhf

- god the casting people for this show have a perfect track record of finding heartwrenchingly cute kids my GOD

- jfdsafhaskdjfh I love how they’ve done the moment with the hat -- the way the flashback sort of indicates that nhs does recognize on a deep level that the dude he just killed was someone’s son, was after all once an innocent child, like anyone... and again, it doesn’t make him regret it. he looks tired and sort of empty, but not like he’d take any of it back. he’s seen jgy for all that he was, good and bad, and made his decision. his reaction to seeing his hands ever so slightly stained with blood is mostly ‘...eh sure’ (and he knows none of this will ever bring his brother back and I am HURTING) . just. I love him so much what an interesting character

- lan zhan raised a child who can talk about his feelings, unprecedented & wondrous

who’s chopping onions in here

- never getting over ah yuan being the best person in the world at roasting his dad

- okay okay okay I’m going to have some incoherent feelings here -- the expression on nhs’ face right after wwx asks him if he intends to be chief cultivator is just... hm. how do I describe this. it looks almost like he’s thinking ‘oh yeah I forgot you don’t actually know me anymore (yeah okay that’s my bad)’? the previous scene is about lwj and wwx, The symbolic representation of true love in this world, naming each other/knowing each other for exactly who and what they are. that’s the thematic victory in this story; to be truly known, accepted and loved for the entirety of who you are, if only by one person in your whole life. (notably all sorts of love, parental, familial, platonic etc., not just romantic/sexual) and to get his victory, nhs has had to completely forsake that because his whole plan hinged on it; he hasn’t been emotionally honest with anyone for well over a decade at this point. no one really knows or understands him, and if someone ever did he’s long dead now and never coming back. and in this one moment both wwx and nhs seem to come to the quiet understanding that neither of them are who they used to be as kids and it’ll never be like it used to be again, and reach a sort of live-and-let-live truce about it. d u d e this goddamn story

(after all part of the reason jgy is so incredibly terrified of nmj is that he’s the first person to see straight through his bullshit to who he is behind it, and that it’s u g l y back there. jgy + nmj = being known without being accepted or loved (b/c honestly he doesn’t deserve to be loved or accepted yeah there we go I said it), jgy + lxc = being accepted and loved without being known, which turns into disaster all around.)

- man this was actually a really solid adaptation, it was excellently done! they did rush a bit towards the end there (it was never explained why jgy didn’t kill sissi along with all the other sex workers in this version, for example, leaving a rather substantial plot hole, and they never reveal why exactly lan zhan had to take over as sect leader which breaks off lxc’s arc at the end), but all in all that was wonderful and even added some stuff I liked better than in the book! now please god never let mtxt write a sequel, just let them be in this happily ever after, all of them have been through enough ;________;

- also the music was truly epic! I don’t even begrudge them using some parts more often and blatantly than what’s probably necessary, I want to wallow in this love theme as much as the next person lol

- what am I going to do with hours upon hours of my life now? I don’t know either, I suppose I will just have to find some way to hobble on

#the untamed #mo dao zu shi #wangxian #nie brothers #(b/c predictably that's what most of my feelings boil down to lol)#meta #I think I might have outdone myself with this; this is a new height of aimless unproductive nonsense even for me lol #I did this instead of working on the edit of the fic I've got nearly finished because... I don't know either guys I just don't know

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thearcanaartificer · 4 years

Note

i am curious about numbers 14, 17 and 18

Sorry this took a while, I meant to write this earlier today but I had to come to some hard decisions (which “paid scene” to describe since I am writing a story on AO3 about these two).

14. Describe a “paid scene” with your character and their LI

This was hard to choose. Especially since I am writing my own version of Julian’s route and anything I write here might be prone to changing. But I will choose something.

It was the first time Odelia had ever seen or experienced snow. Vesuvia has a warm climate year round, only slightly cooling during the winter months with how short the days could get. She had read about snow, but to see it, to feel it, to experience it.

It was marvelous.

She was still marveling at how it blanketed the woods around them when it happened

Bam!

A flurry of cold white exploded a part upon impact

She shrieked in surprise, leapt a bit into the air as she spun about

Were they being attacked?!

Julian’s laughter warmed her heart as her eyes landed on him and then his smile made her insides do flips.

That unadulterated smile. That adorable laugh!

She wanted to see it everyday for the rest of their lives

Then it struck her that he had thrown that orb of snow

Oho ho? So he wanted to play? Two could play this game.

In fact, he challenged her to a snowball (snowball- that’s what it’s called) fight, winner gets a wish granted

He was on.

Odelia is competitive and Julian quickly finds out that he’d have to get serious if he didn’t want to lose right out of the gate.

Shenanigans ensue

A few stunts are pulled that are dubbed as ‘cheating’ by the victim

A dramatic death scene plays out after Odelia throws a magic infused snowball to create the perfect curve shot right to Julian’s face

Odelia, in return, laments the death of her darling man

Pounces on him while he’s too busy guffawing on the ground at the delivery of her monologue to protect himself

Squeals and writhes when she shoves snow down his shirt

In fact, just outright scoops the snow from around them on top of him

Grabs her arms to keep her from burying him any further

“Serves you right for unbuttoning your shirt all the time!”

“But I hate how stuffy it gets! Let me be free to choose a life of unbuttoned shirts, nah, a life without buttons at all!” He dramatically drapes an arm over his face. So Dramatic. She loves it.

“Seems like my darling man likes his tiddies on display at all times. Foul tempter. How dare you, hmmm, tease me- distract me- so.”

Sits on his lap and kisses him stupid

After a good long while, she concedes to letting him up, only because he’s starting to shiver from the snow

Climbs onto his back, pronounces him her steed as her boon, and, with a squeeze, beckons him forwards

“Come my majestic steed! Go forth! To reclaim my magic realm!”

He had to lean against a tree to prevent himself from falling over as he just lost it. It took him a while to recover from all the laughing, but Odelia didn’t mind the time lost. It was nice to see him so happy and carefree.

She promised herself that she’d make sure there would be more days like this after all was said and done.

17. Describe the wedding

Ahaha, this is a loaded ask. To be honest, they can’t describe the original wedding to anyone. Not because they wouldn’t like to, but, uh, they, um… can’t remember. They may have been sorta, kinda, very, extremely inebriated. Like, woke up in their inn with wedding bands on after a drinking binge while on a trip to Praka to get their licenses (His doctor’s licenses finally and the various licenses that Nadia told her she now needed to have to run her various businesses). At first, Julian panicked because, honestly, this was not how he had wanted to ask her. Besides that, they had only been courting for two-three months by this point. He knows he’s prone to leaping over a ton of important steps (breaking up with people he’s not even dating), but this? This was not how he wanted to do it.

It took Odelia a good while to calm him down from his hysterics. However, when Julian suggested going to get the marriage annulled- Odelia shot him down with a ‘Why? Then I’ll just have to get my name changed on all my licenses when we do get married again. No thanks.’ His heart just about melted at the word ‘again’. Besides that, if they got married in Vesuvia, Odelia was a hundred percent certain that everything would be overtaken by the others. It would be expensive and stressful for one dumb day where they had a huge party that they would never be allow to properly participate in because they would be on display and expected to behave a certain way. He agreed that didn’t sound fun. Later, though, he comes to find out that the rings they were wearing were made by Odelia and she had been waiting for him to ask shortly after he moved in, already certain that she wasn’t going to change her mind about him.

Sweet, yes? Well, these two knew they come back married that there was going to be hell on earth with their family. Portia especially would be angry because there was no wedding and she didn’t get to be a part of it at all. Also, they really didn’t want to hear about making such a big decision drunk (’typical Julian’ they could hear almost everyone say and Odelia wasn’t really up to hearing it either since she said yes, thankyouverymuch), so they just didn’t tell anyone that they got married… for three years. It came out on accident. In fact, it was after Nadia and Portia had gotten married and signatures for a land purchase had to be written in their legal names and… well… busted.

So their vow renewal that they were forced into was loud, excessive, stressful and completely planned by Nadia and Portia and the two of them were merely dragged around, like Odelia had foreseen. Julian did like her dress though and loved taking the garter off, but for the most part would have rather just had a wild celebration at the Rowdy Raven with the scoundrels there. Odelia would have preferred to just keep going like they had been, but she will admit, Nadia has an excellent eye for men’s lingerie.

18. Any babies?

For the longest time, when people asked these two about if they were going to have a baby, Odelia would look at them and tell them ‘Julian’s the baby’. And, to be fair, when people asked Julian, he had no shame telling them ‘I’m the baby’. Or they would just defer to their multitude of pets as their ‘babies’. No intention of actually having children. However, because Odelia’s tribe are a close knit community, when a baby girl was born with some serious health issues that the mother couldn’t keep up with due to her own weakened state after the birth; it was the Devoraks to the rescue. The two of them were there for that baby’s every need until her mother was capable of taking care of her again.

The whole thing changed their thoughts on their current lifestyle. Without getting too into it, the two of them decided that if they had a baby, then they had a baby. They weren’t going to try for it, but they happy if it happened. They ended up with two boys pretty close together and got a huge surprise way down the line with a little girl. Dimitri, Nikolai, and Odette.

Though the two of them have taken other children, plucked out of the streets usually by Julian, into their homes and called them their own. And fostered a few children too. There were also a few newborns they adopted from Odelia’s tribe when the mothers died from complications in child birth. Julian loves babies, so even years down the line, when Odelia and him are too old to be having or raising an infant, he goes and helps babysit babies when their parents need some rest.

#apprenticeapril #julian devorak #Julian The Arcana #julian x mc #julian x apprentice #The Arcana Game #ask response #Odelia the Artificer

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bellatrixobsessed1 · 4 years

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The Final Agni Kai (A Terrible AU Fanfic that literally no one asked for!)

This was totally going to be the battle between Sie and Zuko in the cabbage fic but I couldn't pass having the fire siblings do this.

Summary: Agni Kai AU where instead of actually fighting the Agni Kai, Zuko and Azula play a monoply-uno hybrid from Hell.

The sky is heavy with smoke and an odor of sulfur. Sozin’s comet paints the mid-afternoon sky a shade of orange-red. Azula, stares up at said sky--she is daydreaming about just leaving everything behind to become a J-pop idol.

“By decree of Phoenix King Ozai, I now crown you Fire Lord…” But it is hard to do that when the fire sage keeps blabbing on and on. And it is twice as hard when a wild flying bison swoops into view. Suddenly feeling as though she has run out of time, she turns to the sage and asks, “What are you waiting for? Do it!”

Azula had been rather vague so he isn’t sure what he is supposed to just do. All he knows is that he can’t let his dreams just be dreams. Just do it! Azula’s voice echos in his mind. But in his mind she sounds more motivating than angry.

Appa lands in the courtyard and Zuko dramatically jumps off of him. “Sorry, but you're not gonna become Fire Lord today. I am.”

Azula laughs, “you're hilarious.”

“And you're going down.” Zuko informs her.

“That was my line.” Katara whispers.

“Sorry.” Zuko replies.

The fire sage, recalling Azula’s words--just do it!--begins to ignore the interrupting duo and brings the crown closer to Azula’s messy topknot.

She lifts a hand and then the rest of her body. “Wait!” And then to Zuko she says, “You want to become Fire Lord? Fine. Let’s settle this. Just you and me, brother. The showdown that was always meant to be. Monopl-uno!” She whips out a game board and a deck of cards and slaps them onto the ground.

“You're on!”

“What are you doing? She’s playing you. She knows she can't take us both, so she's trying to separate us.”

“I know. But I can take her this time.” Zuko declares.

“But even you admitted to your uncle that you would need help facing Azula.” Katara protests. Also she does not want to have to wait through a game of Monopoly, that game is boring as hell even if it is mashed together with Uno.

“There's something off about her, I can't explain it but she's slipping.” Zuko rubs his chin as he takes in the disheveled sight of his sister. Her hair is a mess and her eyes are tired. “Hmmm...can’t quite put my finger on it.” She flashes him an uncanny and feral smile. “Nope. No idea.” He makes his way across the courtyard.

He and Azula stand on opposite ends of the courtyard, kneeling as you do before beginning a game of monopl-uno. It is always best to start any board, card, or any kind of game by kneeling before your God and asking for protection lest the game transform itself into Jumanji and you find yourself stuck in a jungle forever.

This is what had happened to Jet. He has been stuck in the Foggy Swamp, which is also a jungle, ever since. He is now a backwater redneck. But this is no surprise being as he already liked to chew on straw prior to being transported into the jungle to live out the rest of his fuqboi existence.

“I'm sorry it has to end this way, brother.”

“No you're not.”

But she really is. She actually hates monopl-uno, in her foggy state of mind, she had momentarily forgotten this. But she cannot back out of this now. “I am so.” She whispers quietly.

“Are not.”

“Are too.”

“Are not.”

“Are to.”

“Are…”

Luckily Katara is there to get them back on track. The only thing more boring than Monopoly is reading approximately six pages of ‘are not’, ‘are too’. Even more boring than that is pre-algebra. Thank Raava, that math does not exist here. “Will you two just get on with it!?” She asks.

Azula passes out five uno cards and a fat stack of monopoly cash. For every green card, the player receives $500. For the blues the player gets $100. Yellow cards earn the player $50. And red earns the player $20. 10’s & 5’s are a free for all, Azula and Zuko snatch as many as they can. 1’s are distributed by wiping out a Candyland, whoever draws Queen Frostine gets to steal all of the 5’s. Azula bites Zuko as he reaches for the last one dollar bill. He retracts his hand quickly.

It settles in that Azula is losing her shit.

If no one draws Queen Frostine by the game’s end then the 1’s burst into flames and are claimed by the void that manifests itself as a third player in the form of a sentient piccolo, that plays truly awful covers of Rammstine’s Du Hast and Smashmouth’s All Star the whole time.

With dread, Azula notes that, “Colonel Mustard has murdered Mrs. Scarlett with a candlestick in the billard room.”

Zuko grips his head in stress, knowing that this means that Azula has to move her gingerbread man to the next purple square. This ends the game.

No one has drawn Queen Frostine.

The 1’s burst into flames and a piccolo rises.

The first notes of Du Hast echo through the courtyard, terribly off key.

Katara has a wicked urge to puncture her own earholes just to end the madness.

Why did Colonel Mustard have to murder her with a candlestick. If he would have just used the wrench then they might have had a chance to draw Queen Frostine!

Far, far off in the distance Sokka, Suki, and Toph fight a different kind of battle. They play Battle Ships, but they use actual ships. Except the ships are not water ships but airships and they are in the sky and the bombs are real.

Suki is uncomfortable with this.

It is Toph’s time to shine. She can use echolocation to cheat.

Aang and Ozai also fight. But their fight is different. It is a battle of wit. They have chosen several popular debate topics including women’s rights, religion, which economic model to follow, and whether or not pineapple belongs on pizza.

Pineapple does not belong on pizza.

Neither does cheese, because cheese is gross.

In fact, pizza does not belong on pizza because pizza is gross and no matter what Aang is still a vegan and Aang is not sure if a good vegan should be eating pizza.

Iroh finds himself a tall mountain and yodels atop it until the militia stationed at Ba Sing Se submit.

But none of this is as important as Azula declaration, “go fish!”

Zuko cusses and picks up a goldfish. He curses again. Drawing a goldfish means that he has to pull a block from the jenga tower and that rickety thing is already very close to collapsing. Azula smirks as he nears an old and vacant house in Capital City. It is the same one that they have been stealing boards from since they were children.

It is on its last legs.

A bead of sweat drips down Zuko’s forehead as he tugs at the board. The whole house bobs precuriously. Azula and Katara take several huge steps back. They, in fact, stand approximately one-hundred feet from the building, which is a safe number when practicing social distancing.

Zuko yanks the board free and the building groans. He clenches his jaw. But the building remains up right.

“Ha! Take that, Azula!” He says loudly. The building shakes at the sudden noise and it topples. He has done this to himself. Now he has to draw six more uno cards and one more go fish card.

“So, how have you been?” Zuko makes small talk as they walk back to the coronation courtyard.

Azula thinks that it is a stupid question, she is obviously in a state of mental torment. “Oh, I’m fine.” She replies nonchalantly.

“Yeah, me too.” He replies. “I read this really cool book the other day.”

Azula hasn’t, she has been stress eating cherries and pacing around her bedroom. “I read one too.” She lies.

“Which one.”

“Oh...you’ve never heard of it. It’s a really underground novel.”

They reach the courtyard, Zuko draws his uno and go fish cards. It is still his turn so he rolls the dice. “Yahtzee!” He declares and Azula flinches. She moves her gingerbread man to an orange square and picks up a trivial pursuit card. She relaxes a little, upon remembering that she is a trivial pursuit expert.

“What’s the tallest piece on a chessboard?” Katara reads the card.

Azula rolls her eyes, this is an easy one. “It is the King.”

Zuko Googles the answer just to be sure that Azula isn’t lying again.

Katara winces, “correct.”

Azula flashes a smug smile as she passes go and collects $200. She is glad that she did not have to answer a Guess Who question. Those always throw her off.

Zuko stands up, it is his turn. He throws down a green skip. This time Azula curses. He then throws down a green reverse card so it is his turn again. Azula snarls. He realizes that he has no more green cards so he picks up a Go Fish card. It is an angelfish. Angelfish act as substitutes for yellow cards so he is stuck with it. Having none of her own, but having the mindstate of one, Azula literally turns herself into a wildcard and flops down onto the deck. She changes it to blue.

She always changes it to blue.

She has no blue cards, but she never changes it to anything but blue.

She reclaims her human form and draws a Go Fish card.

It is a clownfish.

Which makes sense because she played herself (clownfish substitute red cards only), she is the clown in this situation.

Zuko smirks and throws down a blue seven.

Azula is about to throw down a blue three, when Zuko brazanly shouts. “No draw fours today? What’s the matter, afraid I’ll reverse it!?”

“Oh! I’ll show you a draw four!” Azula shouts. She lifts her blue drawfour as well as four scrabble tiles--one for each letter of her name, except she is missing the ‘u’ so instead she has Azla--and powers her draw four up with them.

A is the first letter of the alphabet so Zuko has to not only draw four cards but another two extra. And since Z is the last letter he also has to draw twenty-six extra cards. By this time the deck has run low so he has to pick up a twelve of spades which amounts to twelve green uno cards.

To figure out what number each represents they must spin the twister spinner and consult the magic eight ball.

“Nooooo!” Zuko screams as she throws the cards down.

Katara bites her cheek. She doesn’t like cheating to win, but she is pretty sure that Azula had swapped out her ‘u’ scrabble tile for a ‘z’ while Zuko was messing with the Jenga tower. So she doesn’t think too much of it when she completes Zuko’s Connect Four line.

“Zuko!” She yells. “You forgot to say, ‘I’ve united the four!’”

Zuko pumps his fist and says. “I’ve united the four!” This nullifies the power up Azula has used on her draw four. It balances out so he only has to draw four uno cards.

Azula’s face bunches up in disgust as she gives the twister spinner a flick.

Right hand on blue.

She places her right hand on blue and the twister board tells her to move her top hat to the chance square. Katara picks up the chance card and reads “go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.”

Azula blinks several times. She is trapped, with nowhere to go. She sadly makes her way over to the grate, overwhich they have constructed a jail out of a cardboard box. The word ‘JAIL’ (though Zuko accidentally spelled it ‘JAYL’ at first so that was crossed off and ‘JAIL’ is written beneath it) is written in big red marker. Katara doodled a star under it in pink gel pen.

Azula sadly lifts the box and sits under it, clutch her knees to her chest as Zuko passes go, collets his $200, and uses it to buy a candyland card. A smile lights up his face, he has drawn Gramma Nut! That means he gets to discard exactly three uno cards.

He sets them on fire and shouts “uno!”

He throws his remaining card, a blue five, onto the deck.

From within her jail cell, Azula shrieks. She sets the jail on fire, marches up to the unused chessboard, flips it over, and throws the pieces at Zuko “I hate this game! This is a stupid fucking anyways!”

Zuko and Katara slap each other high five. Unbeknownst to them, Momo swoops down. “But you forgot to play Bop It before saying uno, which means that your victory is null.”

Zuko slaps his forehead.

Azula’s eyes grow wide.

This means only one thing…

One terrible thing…

Azula swallows as she removes Don’t Wake Daddy from the box. The siblings stare at each other. If at any point, daddy wakes up, Ozai will materialize before them and win the game. “Here, you do it!” Zuko says to Azula. She very carefully takes the tweezers and as steady as she can, attempts to extract the wrench representing the funny bone.

But Azula is already shaken from her loss and the stress of losing her friends. She accidently touches the rim and the game buzzes.

She and Zuko weep as they both take turns pressing the alarm clock. Daddy springs up and Ozai appeared before them to reclaim his Fire Lord crown. In leaving his debate, Aang has automatically won. Ozai’s bending yanks itself from his body, as he had bet it before the debate started. Aang cheers!

Another airship explodes as Toph cackles.

Ozai begins to weep for he might be the Fire Lord again, but he has no fire.

Neither Zuko nor Azula are the Fire Lord. They both hug each other and cry as Katara plugs her ears.

The piccolo still plays Rammstine.

Ozai also cries because, even though he is Fire Lord in title, no one is going to listen to him since he is a non-bender. The Fire Nation will fall into anarchy unless the siblings can work something out.

Aang also weeps because her realizes that, Ozai is still the Fire Lord so he is still going to have to defeat him somehow.

Truly, nobody has won here.

Nobody except Iroh and Toph.

#Avatar #Azula #Zuko #Agni Kai #Katara #Alternate Universe #Fanfiction

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bunnyblooms · 4 years

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OKAY FUCKER ALL THE QUESTIONS FROM THAT ASK MEME THE LGBT ONE

1. Identity and pronouns.

I'm agenderfluid and they/them pronouns. My sexuality is aroflux and asexual.

2. How did you discover your sexuality?

Pretty much at 14 was like "idk i don't relate to everyone else i don't find celebrities hot or sex remotely something i want. If i could reproduce without sex i would. Oh. I'll just call myself asexual, like a sponge!" (Which asexual is incidentally what the creators of Spongebob were going for, fun facts. Spongebob is ace rights.)

3. Have you experienced being misgendered? How do you overcome it?

Mmmm I am constantly misgendered bc I'm nonbinary and live in a binary society and the way I compartmentalize it is basically just dressing how I want and not making an attempt to pass as anything tbh. The only time I feel misgendered is when someone knows my pronouns and doesn't use them anymore tbh. So basically. Letting go of how I want to be perceived helped. I will say tho, I refuse to come out to my dad bc he won't respect it and it'll be more painful hearing him misgender me knowing how I identify, but. That's certainly a privilege I have since I'm not transitioning. (ATM at least.)

4. Who was the first person you told? How did they react?

I technically didn't come out as ace. My ex-best friend knew bc I talked about it, but neither of us knew it was an identity. So the transition upon finding the label was virtually nonexistent and all of my friends were LGBTQ as well so it wasn't stressful or shocking. It helps that around the time I discovered the label I'd met two friends who were ace and felt the same way I did. My experience with my asexuality is definitely the model that should be the norm with the community and what we as a society should aim for.

As for my gender I'd made comments in the past that I wished I could just be genderless and it really kind of sat with me when my ex-best friend came out as trans bc I was like "Oh? You don't have to be the gender you are at birth?" Belial from Angel Sanctuary was a character that resonated with me at the time, and this was right around the time I made my ace friends. It wasn't until a year later that I discovered the nb community and one friend who was genderfluid that I decided to start trying different pronouns. And basically I came out as questioning and transitioned to nb without a formal declaration, which I also feel should be the goal for society.

I was at a con with my best friend at the time who was trans and he'd come out with my now ex-best friend while they were dating. And I was really anxious bc I felt like ppl would assume I was a transtrender and shit, and my friend said something about gender and I kind of awkwadly implied I might not identify as female and he was really great about it! He was like "If you wanna talk about it or try different pronouns you can." :D

5. Describe what it was like coming out.

I pretty much did this im question 4 hehehe.

6. If you're out, how did ppl react?

I'm not out to family, that I know of. They found my facebook which has my identity listed in my about, so I'm in limbo with them where none of us talk about it so idk if they register it as an LGBTQ thing or not.

My friends were all supportive! It helps that I have like no cishet friends lmao.

I also came out to my class on TDOV two years ago for a project where we step outside our comfort zone. I'm luckily in the social work program which has social justive built into the tenants of the profession so it was pretty positive! People still misgendered me after and were more concerned with "but i'm scared of ppl getting angry at me what should i do to talk about this with them" which. 9__9 Not surprising. But there was a mom whose kid and her kid's partner are both genderfluid and bigender so it was a good experience and I had an ally which made me comfortable in sharing it in the first place.

7. What is one question you hate ppl asking about your sexuality?

Inevitably when I say I'm ace, non-aces assume I have no interest in dating which. Way to conflate being aroace with ace and ignore that there are aros and aces who want relationships. That's my biggest pet peeve.

8. Describe the style of clothing you often wear.

I wear flannels and ripped jeans or shorts mainly. I basically dress like a butch lesbian. I'll wear dresses and stuff but I do not like dressing femme and prefer to offset softer things with hard things. Like. When I wear dresses I have to wear clunky combat boots with them or have short hair or something.

9. Who are your favorite LGBTQ+ ships?

Hmmm. Depends if you mean canon or not. Canon, it's probably FigAyda from D20 and Catradora from She-ra. Shion/Nezumi from No.6 is also one of my faves. There's also Chie and Ai from Virgin's Empire. Blupjeans from The Adventure Zone and JonMartin from The Magnus Archives.

As for Not Confirmed ships, I like Flick/CJ from Animal Crossing, Tsuna/Enma from Katekyo Hitman Reborn, uhhh. Reigisa from Free!, Kanji/Naoto from Persona and Chihiro/whatever the fuck his name is Mondo? Or the other guy I forget, from Danganronpa. Also RenLaw, RenStrade, and VinceLaw+VinceFarz from BTD.

(I am including straight relationships involving trans ppl obv.)

10. What does makeup mean to you? Do you wear any?

I hate how I look with make up it makes me dysphoric. But to me makeup is a good expressive outlet and bomb as hell, so when I do wanna wear makeup, I prefer wearing eyeliner and lipstick (esp in black or blue or green or purple) and glitter.

11. Do you experience dysphoria? How does it affect you?

I experience what I refer to as Silhouette Dysphoria a lot. I experience chest dysphoria but a lot of times it's less about me having them at all and me not liking how I look with them. The same goes for my hips and overall shape. Hence silhouette. I also experience genital dysphoria to a lesser degree, and when I do it's less hating my genitals bc they should be different but more just having any at all. Luckily I was born with internal genitalia so I don't have to think about it as much. Social dysphoria I also experience, but I've talked about that already.

How I deal with it is binding and stuff.

12. What is the stupidest thing you've heard said about the LGBTQ+ community?

Hmm. The ppl who genuinely argue that accepting the community means you'll be forced to accept pedophilia or beastiality. Like. Lmao no?

13. Favorite thing about the community?

I just love how great it feels to be in it tbh. It can be so positive and loving and just genuinely make you feel good about yourself.

14. Least favorite thing about the community?

Exclusionists.

15. Have you ever been to your city's pride event?

No, but I went to Pride in Des Moines!!! IT WAS GREAT!

16. Favorite LGBTQ+ celebrity?

I don't really follow celebrities, but probably Ian McEllen and Tim Gunn.

17. Have you been in a relationship and how did you meet?

I was in a relationship for a while with a friend of mine and it was wonderful tbh. We met in a server and started talkng more, and started out as qpps then became partners and like we broke up, but I still enjoyed the experience and wouldn't go back in time and stop it from happening. My other qpp tho. That's something I would do lmao.

I also have a bf but that's a secret~

18. Favorite LGBTQ+ book.

I haven't read a lot of books, so I guess I have to say The Raven Cycle bc that's the only one I remember reading.

19. Have you ever faced discrimination?

Mmmm the only time I have experienced direct discrimination I was giving a friend valentines chocolate in high school and some kid called me a d*ke when i walked past him.

The other stuff is like. My therapist telling me to check for a hormone imbalance when I said I was asexual.

20. Favorite LGBTQ+ movie/show?

She-ra, "To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything", The Runaways (the movie not the show), No. 6.

21. Favorite LGBTQ+ bloggers?

I don't have any lmao.

22. Which slur do you want to reclaim?

Queer, bc it's already been reclaimed and it fits me.

23. Have you ever gone to a gay bar or drag show? How was it?

Nope. Never, but it'd be fun!!

24. How do you idrntify your gender?

Already answered this lol.

25. Interested in having kids?

Nope. I'd be too scared of screwing them up.

26. What identity service would you give your younger self?

I wish I'd known there was an ace community before I was older tbh. So that, probably.

27. What do you think of gender roles in relationships?

I personally like playing a feminine role, but I also think gender roles are unecessary, so like. As long as I'm an equal I don't care what role I play lmao. If you wanna treat me like the handmaiden, as long as you're not doing it bc you see me as a woman I don't care.

28. Anything else you wanna share about your gender?

Nah. Just. I don't bother trying to pin it down anymore bc the more I analyze it the less I understand it.

29. Something you wish ppl knew about being LGBTQ+?

Hmmmm not really. It's fun outside of the systemic oppression?

30. Why are you proud to be LGBTQ+?

For me it's less about pride in being LGBTQ+ and more being proud to express myself authentically. 🤷

#lemonadelyric #lgbtq ask meme #long post

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bbclesmis · 6 years

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The inside story of the BBC adaptation of Les Misérables... by the man who sexed up War and Peace

On a summer’s morning in a park outside Brussels, one of European literature’s most wretched characters is having a laugh. In Victor Hugo’s gargantuan 1862 novel Les Misérables, the naive young Parisian seamstress Fantine is dealt a rotten hand: she loses her wealthy boyfriend, her daughter, her job, her hair, her two front teeth and her life – all within the book’s first act.

If you are one of the 130 million people to have encountered Fantine in the world-conquering stage musical (or 2012’s big-screen incarnation of it, in which Anne Hathaway enacted the character’s misery through an Oscar-winning outpouring of tears), you will know her as a figure of abject tragedy.

Yet here she is in the Belgian sunshine, as played for the cameras by Lily Collins – the 29-year-old daughter of musician Phil – bonnet off, flirting on the lawn with her lover, Félix (Johnny Flynn), while her giggling girlfriends lark about on a swing, like a Fragonard painting come to life.

In her pale empire-line dress, hair plaited with flowers, she looks almost bridal: untroubled and in love. Later this month, you’ll have a chance to meet this unfamiliar Fantine for yourself, in the first episode of the BBC’s lavish new six-part series. With a screenplay by Andrew Davies, it attempts to show us an aspect of Hugo’s classic we’ve never seen dramatised before; one that is, well, less miserable.

Until last year, the director – 50-year-old Tom Shankland, best known for the lost-child drama The Missing – was ‘one of those few people in the universe who didn’t know much about the musical or the film’, he says. But after receiving Davies’ screenplay, he plunged into the novel and found a story bristling with ‘so much life and drama and violence and tragedy that the label “costume drama” just can’t contain it’.

Setting out to make a version that would ‘bring a level of 21st-century psychology to the realm of 19th-century melodrama, keeping one foot in then and one foot in now’, his spiritual guide would be David Lean, who, in cinematic masterpieces such as Lawrence of Arabia, proved ‘so brilliant at judging when to be intimate and when to be epic. I think that was always going to be the game with Les Misérables: how not to lose our heroes against this vast historical canvas.’

It’s day 79 of the 89-day shoot and sitting in front of a monitor – headphones clamped to his ears, an approving smile on his face – Davies is the first to admit to being no fan of the musical. ‘I hated it,’ he tells me, ‘couldn’t bear it.’ Yet when he first read Hugo’s book six years ago, he was struck by a sophistication that, he felt, no adaptation had come close to capturing.

In the sprawling saga, set in a nation discombobulated by Napolean’s defeat at Waterloo, Davies says he found ‘such a lot of resonances with our time now. There are the haves and have-nots, the extreme strata of society in terms of riches and poverty. I thought how good it would be to show that on television.’

At the moment we join the narrative, in 1815, he says, ‘France thought it’d had a revolution, now it’s got a monarchy again and it’s back to the bad times. So while people like Fantine can have fun for a bit, they are always in danger of dropping through the cracks. There is no safety net, no welfare state. If you take one wrong step, you’re f—ed, basically.’

To anyone else, the prospect of reducing Hugo’s 1,500-page leviathan to six hours of primetime drama would have been daunting. But to Davies – who, at 82, is British television’s undisputed doyen of the literary adaptation, as the brains behind such memorable series as 1995’s Pride and Prejudice, 2005’s Bleak House and, in 2016, War & Peace – it was an itch that just had to be scratched. ‘I felt it had never been done properly before,’ he says. ‘But then I always think that. “Hmmm, you need my version of it.”’

His first step towards reclaiming the story from the musical (‘a very partial version of the book, more concert than drama’) was to introduce the viewer to Fantine not when she is plummeting into the abyss, but, as Hugo does, before she has the slightest inkling of her fate. ‘As for Fantine, she was pure joy,’ writes the author early on. ‘Her magnificent teeth had clearly been given her by God with one purpose only, and that was to laugh.’

During a break in filming, Collins, towelling dressing gown now slung over her dress, tells me she spent her childhood summers in Switzerland (‘where I would dream in French’) and begged the filmmakers for an audition the moment she heard the project was in the pipeline – with Davies’ emphasis on this happy phase of Fantine’s story part of the appeal. Not only did it free her from the spectre of Hathaway’s portrayal, it also deepened her sympathy for the character. ‘Because you get to see just how in love she was with Félix; it heightens the heartbreak.’

The result contributes to a telling of Les Misérables that the bullish Davies suggests may rank as ‘the most psychologically satisfying version there has been so far of the book’. Having set out to improve upon the musical, he now finds himself wondering if, in places, he’s also surpassed the novel. ‘We tell Fantine’s story more fully than I think Hugo did,’ he says. ‘We’ve explored the Javert and Jean Valjean relationship more deeply, too.’

If Fantine is the book’s emotional heart, then the intense cat-and-mouse struggle between Jean Valjean – the convict who serves 19 years’ hard labour for stealing a loaf of bread before rehabilitating himself as the mayor of Montreuil – and Inspector Javert, his jailer-turned-stalker, is its moral centre. While the lawman is a monstrously rigid incarnation of the unbending principles of justice, Valjean, who works his way back from brutal to beatific, represents the possibility of grace.

As Javert, David Oyelowo, the British actor who made his name in BBC drama Spooks and forged a Hollywood career with such acclaimed performances as Martin Luther King in Selma (2014), was the first cast member to sign up for the new Les Misérables, on which he also served as executive producer.

‘Partly why I really wanted to play Javert is that, having read Andrew Davies’ script and then the book, he remained enigmatic to me,’ Oyelowo says, speaking over the phone from his Los Angeles home about a character often dismissed as more archetype than man.

‘I didn’t see him as a simplistic villain, but as a very complicated human being. I felt there was a lot of work for me to do in order to explain some of what one might call his malevolence, his drive, his ambition and especially his attention towards Jean Valjean. I found something primal in his fastidious, continuous, inexorable need to get hold of this man.’

Back on set in Belgium, I spot that man – or at least the actor who plays him, Dominic West – loitering in his breeches outside Vilvoorde prison. With its brick-vaulted ceiling and cracked paintwork, the abandoned 18th-century building south of Brussels is an atmospheric kind of place. Shankland says it has a ‘melancholic aura’; a production assistant says it smells of ‘dead rat’.

Inside, in a recreation of the book’s Montreuil bead factory, Collins’ Fantine is sitting with her fellow grisettes (among them Lily Newmark and Erin Doherty) at long wooden tables strewn with black beads, waiting for make-up designer Jacqueline Fowler to give them the once-over. This seems to involve her making sure they haven’t washed behind their ears. ‘I like to see sweat,’ she explains afterwards. ‘And neck hair. None of the girls have make-up on today; it’s a very natural, realistic look.’

Later, the costume designer Marianne Agertoft says that she, too, favoured a pared-down style, so historical pedants had better beware. ‘We’ve kept bonnets off the women quite a lot of the time, even at moments when they would have worn them then,’ she tells me. ‘Why? Because they can very much get in the way.’

Outside, West (also an executive producer), who slotted in Jean Valjean between shooting seasons four and five of American melodrama The Affair, admits he found Tom Hooper’s 2012 film of Les Misérables so ‘bloody awful’ that he walked out of the cinema before it had finished. So when he was first approached for the new series, he hesitated. ‘I thought, “It’s a musical, it’s been done, we’ve just seen the film and why do it again?”’ he explains, while Fowler (previously seen applying her make-up brush to the abs of Poldark’s Aidan Turner for his notorious topless scything scene) attends to his stick-on sideburns. ‘Then I read the book and it just knocked my socks off. Best thing I’ve ever read.’

West is similarly enthused by his character, whom he describes as ‘the greatest superhero in literature, a strongman who spends the whole time rescuing children and saving entire communities’. He treasures Valjean as an anomaly in television drama: a public servant celebrated as a figure of high moral standing. Isn’t it also pretty rare, I suggest, for West, a 49-year-old Old Etonian who sealed his reputation playing a morally dubious Baltimore cop in The Wire, to be the good guy? ‘It is,’ he says. ‘I’ve played a lot of villains and I don’t want to do it any more. [Portraying] Iago and Fred West in one year was annihilating. To live with Valjean, as I have for six months, is invigorating: it opens your soul.’

Oyelowo acknowledges that there will be those surprised to see him cast in ‘the kind of role which, to be perfectly frank, even 10 years ago probably would not have been afforded me’.

Born in Oxford in 1976 to black Nigerian immigrants, he says, ‘Something I have found problematic with period drama over the years, in terms of what we have done in Great Britain, is to deny just how long people of colour have been part of the fabric of British life – and European life as well, as it pertains to Les Mis.’

To those viewers who struggle to reconcile him with Hugo’s ‘slimy spook’, Oyelowo would say, ‘I am sure a lot of French people think it’s not right to transpose Les Mis on to British culture, which is what we’ve done by having the characters speak English and talk in London or posh English accents. But if you are going to make something that doesn’t stink of mothballs, you’d better be speaking to the world that we live in. And I think the show that we have cultivated absolutely does that.’

For all that the series strives for contemporary relevance, it also remains an epic feat of historical reconstruction that required a roving six-month shoot across Belgium and northern France, a principal cast of more than 100 (which also includes Olivia Colman and Adeel Akhtar as the dastardly innkeeping Thénardiers, and Sir Derek Jacobi as the irreproachable Bishop of Digne), a tapestry maker, a horse handler and 3,000 extras.

For producer Chris Carey, the high point of the process – its literal pièce de résistance – was the episode at the barricades, inspired by the 1832 French uprising which, in Hugo’s words, ‘turned the centre of Paris into a sort of colossal, impenetrable citadel’. To shoot those scenes, says Carey (whose last production was the thriller Apple Tree Yard), ‘We used a real street in a real French town, Sedan in northern France, which looks how Paris looked pre-Haussmann. And we blew it up over the course of two or three weeks. You can imagine the complications of keeping the town happy and on side when you are running through the streets at 5am with bayonets and cannon firing.’ I can also imagine such an operation burning through the kind of budget of which most BBC dramas could only dream. ‘You can’t do that stuff on a shoestring,’ concedes executive producer Faith Penhale, ‘but I won’t tell you a figure.’

West gives a less guarded assessment. ‘In terms of American budgets, this is nothing. This whole series is probably costing less than an American pilot would cost,’ he says. ‘We do these things very cheaply, which is not a good thing… For what we have to do, it’s peanuts.’

Does he in turn receive a significantly smaller fee for a drama like this than for something like The Affair? ‘I couldn’t possibly tell you,’ he says. Perhaps because they’ve blown a sizeable chunk of the budget on the services of a certain Mr West? ‘No, they have not,’ he yelps, before offering an answer to my previous question: ‘Yes, I do, very much less.’

If money is in relatively short supply in Les Misérables, then so too is sex. One of the most curious aspects of Hugo’s book is that, although it was written by a man known for his erotic appetites (it is said that on the day of his funeral, on 31 May 1885, the brothels of Paris pulled down their shutters as a sign of respect to a valued client), sex scarcely gets a look in. ‘It’s odd,’ says Davies. ‘We had this sudden realisation when talking about it that both Javert and Jean Valjean appear to be virgins.’ You might have assumed that Davies, who has long since had a reputation for sexing up the classics, would set that right – he is, after all, the man who injected incest into War and Peace and whose Pride and Prejudice planted the image of Colin Firth’s Darcy in a figure-hugging wet shirt in the nation’s consciousness – but no.

‘I don’t have to have sex all the time in things,’ he laughs. ‘I’m an old gentleman now.’ And indeed, although Fantine is taken to bed by Félix more than once in the first episode, their scenes together are characterised by a coyness that borders on prudery. In fact, the only real nudity to speak of in the drama’s first hour – which opens with jaw-dropping aerial views of the battlefield of Waterloo, a grim patchwork of uniformed corpses and dead horses – is a disarming shot of Valjean’s bare bottom. ‘Yeah, when I leave prison I get stripped off and thrown my old rags, so we thought it was a good excuse to get my ass out – somebody did, anyway,’ West tells me with a wolfish grin. ‘Let’s hope they can CGI it all right.’

Talking of ideal forms, before I leave the set I ask Davies if at any point in the process he felt the story of Les Misérables had already found its perfect expression in Hugo’s pages, and that the act of wrestling it on to the screen was always doomed to feel like a succession of compromises? ‘No,’ he says, with unwavering confidence. ‘It’s just finding its perfect medium now. If TV had been around at the time Victor Hugo wrote, I believe he would have made it as a six-part television show.’

Les Misérables starts on 30 December, at 9pm, on BBC One

Benjamin Secher, The Telegraph, 08.12.2018

#les mis bbc #bbc les mis #Interviews #Lily Collins #fantine #david oyelowo #javert #dominic west #Jean Valjean #Andrew Davies

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