#i left out a lot of other stuff bc some of it would maybe require a mature label. im insane abt him but im also gay abt him | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

babybluebex · 2 months

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imagine being in a movie with dom, and you have to film a *special* scene… like the aftermath???? the chemistry???? dying 😩😩😩

oh ok. walk with me for a second here. (the good stuff's under the cut, so if you don't care ab my little schpiel about how these scenes are filmed, just go straight to under the cut)

so here's a Film Industry Tidbit: before love/sex/whatever-you-wanna-call-it-scenes, there's a rehearsal process that involves an intimacy coordinator, and like their WHOLE JOB is choreographing and rehearsing and blocking scenes like this, it's becoming more and more prevalent on film sets to ensure all parties in these sorts of scenes are being treated fairly and with consent and there's also certain garments that are required of actors to wear in filming these scenes, little like strapless thongs and pouches and shit, like NEVER on a film set will you just be expected to be completely naked and left to your own devices to simulate sex

anyway. off my soapbox. you and dom have to film one of those scenes, and you know this before you sign onto the movie, and you two meet at the table read and he's warm and friendly, you instantly feel like great friends

and you rehearse for the movie and everything, costume fittings and screen tests and things, and even though you're smiling and laughing with dom, The Scene is starting to weigh on your mind bc like, aw hell you're starting to actually like him a lot and you don't know if you can be normal about this scene

and it comes time to specifically rehearse The Scene, and the intimacy coordinator is very nice, understanding that you're both young actors who haven't filmed something like this before and don't know what to expect, and she starts with some "easy" icebreaker questions "what are your boundaries during sex?" and dom is a little red in the face but takes it serious "i guess i don't love when a girl pulls my hair... not my favorite" and then it comes time for you to answer and you're like crap and sigh "i, um, i've never had sex, so i don't really know..." and you feel dom's eyes on you but you can't dare to look at him

the scene is supposed to be very passionate and gentle and romantic, but you don't have a CLUE what that looks like, but dom sure seems like he does, because he's figuring out where to hold you and how to naturally do the scene, and you're doing what you can with what you know, touching his face and cupping the back of his neck, and dom throws out a suggestion "maybe you can, like, drag your nails down my back? would that look good on camera?" and you're Confused "why would i do that?" and he's not cocky, it's a very genuine answer, but his words still make you run hot all the same: "because it's gonna feel good"

you leave the rehearsal and dom's his usual self "wanna grab a drink? there's a little bar close to here i've heard about" and you have to be like "i, um, have— my-my call time is really early tomorrow, i gotta—"

"nah, i got you, don't sweat it, it's fine" he chuckles "maybe we can grab that drink friday night... i'll probably fuckin' need it"

"what's on friday?" and you immediately regret asking because you already know the answer, you remember the schedule

"we film the sex scene on friday" dom tells you and you're like right, right, but pretty quickly flee the scene and go home

and then friday rolls around. it's a closed set, as you requested, and your director was more than happy to work that out for you, and you're in the makeup trailer, kinda halfheartedly chatting with your makeup girl as she gets you ready, a very naturally pretty no-makeup look for what's supposed to be an early-morning-just-woke-up sorta sex scene, and you're about to divulge to her how nervous you are to film, and then the door opens and in he strolls wearing a robe, biting into a peach as he settles into his chair

and you don't really talk to each other, both obviously nervous as hell, and he finally mumbles "this fucking thing..." and shifts in his seat and you're like "you good?" and he goes pink and chuckles "yeah, they've got me strapped in here and it doesn't hurt but it's not comfy" and you're like ??? strapped in?? and he's uncharacteristically bashful "they've got me wearing a pouch... it covers everything... i feel so exposed and yet totally covered at the same time" "yeah, like when you're naked with only socks on, suddenly you feel way more naked than if you just weren't wearing socks" you tell him and he nods enthusiastically "exactly! nobody's gonna see my dick, but it feels like everyone's gonna be looking, and that's somehow worse than if my dick was actually out" and you laugh and like whew ice broken thank god

you get on set and take off the robe and quickly slip into the bed, and you hope he can't see your heartbeat through your chest as he does the same, and your mouth goes a little dry at his body, pale freckled skin, tattoo on his belly, bony hips and bandy chest (and that god-awful flesh-colored sack around his dick) but fuck his arms feel so strong as he hugs you into his body to start the scene, and you know that you won't survive if you have to do it multiple times so you resolve to nail every line and movement so that it's a one and done sorta thing

your director calls action, and you and dom "sleep" for a few moments before you start, shifting your legs under the sheets as you "wake up", and you hear him make a soft noise from behind you as he too wakes up, and his strong arm tightens around your waist, and when he speaks, his voice is low and scratchy, the sexiest morning voice you've ever heard "you awake, honey?"

"mhm" you hum, and your skin prickles as he starts to set kisses on your back and shoulder

"good" he says, and all of your rehearsal for the scene has prepared you for this, but doing it on camera, for real this time, is no match for being fully clothed and sorta miming through it, and when he moves you onto your back and smooths his rough hands up your thighs, it's suddenly so hard to breathe, especially when he hits his blocking and starts to kiss down your body and looks up at you with those dark eyes through his eyelashes, and you manage to get out your line "baby? will you make love to me?" and he laughs "anything you want, honey"

a camera shift for a different angle, an awkward few moments of waiting, and then the part you're SERIOUSLY nervous for comes, and your director calls action, and dom doesn't waste a second to kiss you like his life depends on it and to start moving his body between your thighs, acting his little heart out, and you're doing what you rehearsed, the wrinkled eyebrows and stuttered breathing, and pulling your nails down his shoulderblade, and then he deviates??? like motherfucker this is NOT part of the plan!!! when he whines a little "harder" and you're like "huh??" "nails, in my skin, harder... mark me up, make me yours, baby" and you instantly roll with the punches "you're already mine"

and you swear you see god as you film that scene, it's the most sensual thing you've ever experienced in your life, best sex ever and it wasn't even real sex, and you finish filming earlier than scheduled ("what can i say, i'm a pro" dom jokes) and you start to go to your trailer after getting out of costume because what the fuck just happened to you, and dom's like "hey! you promised me a drink tonight" "i promised no such thing" "well, indulge me?" and it's those SAME doe eyes from earlier and you sigh "one drink, dom, then i'm going home"

three rounds of shots and half a jack and coke later, and you're divulging to him what was going through your head during his little improvisation that day, "no, because you saying to do it harder? i was like 'what the fuck is he doing'??" and he laughs and rolls his eyes, but leans into you all the same "eh, whatever, that's how i like it" "you like getting hurt? that doesn't sound sexy at all" "not 'getting hurt' exactly" and he's tracing his pinkie on your knee as he thinks "but like... being marked, showing people that you're owned by someone... not in like a weird way, but... i don't know how to explain it..." and maybe it's the jack in your drink plus the three green tea shots you had, or maybe you're just sick and tired of being nervous, because you say "show me" and now it's HIS turn to be confused and go "huh?" "show me what you mean. you don't have to use words if you can't find them" and he breathlessly laughs "honey, please" and he's never called you that off camera before "you can't just say that to me" "well why not?" "we're both drunk" he starts and hits you with those eyes again "and if anyone on set knew that we came out to a bar, and then spotted us going into the same trailer together... people'll talk" "oh c'mon, i know you don't give a shit about if people talk" you said "what's the real problem?" and his pinkie goes under your skirt and sorta curls in the hem for a moment, and he bites his lip and slowly releases it "well... for one... i'd like for you to be able to walk normally tomorrow, because if i get you in my bed... honey, you got me so worked up earlier, it's a miracle i didn't get hard, and i don't think i could stop myself from doing some very bad things to you tonight" "oh?" and you're trying to be cool and calm but youre FREAKING OUT inside "like what?" "jesus christ" dom whispers "i also don't want your first time to be like this, a drunken mistake with a coworker, you deserve better than m-that" and you hear what he stopped himself from saying, you deserve better than me, and you put down your drink and cup his jaw and make him look up from your lap "it won't be a mistake" you tell him and he swallows hard and his eyes are locked on your lips, silently begging for you "dominic..." and that gets him to look you in the eyes "i think you should take me home"

and he gets you in his trailer, and the bed's not huge but it's good enough for the two of you, and suddenly his kisses and touches feel more natural than if you had rehearsed it a thousand times, the way he kisses your tits and travels down and helps undress you, down to your socks, and you start to go for them but he's like "no, no... keep em on" and once again you're confused by him but he's like "you said you feel more naked like this than if you're actually naked... i want you to be exposed for me, vulnerable... spread out... begging for it..." and he's steady kissing your inner thigh, waiting for your okay to go further and you think you just might burst into flames, and your legs open for him and he doesn't waste a second to put his mouth on you

the night lasts until it's nearly dawn, laying together, talking in hushed tones, fucking, unable to keep your hands off each other, and he looks like a god, his skin all golden and supple with sweat, messy hair, red puffy lips, and his gaze is so soft and gentle at you, holding you and playing with your fingers, and he says "do you regret this?" "no" and you get a little scared "do you?" "no" he tells you "i was just worried that... i don't know, i somehow failed you or something, being the one to..." "you didn't fail me, dommy," you tell him, and his cheeks twitch with a smile "i couldn't have asked for better" "i just feel like—" dom starts but you kiss him to shut him up, and his hands go to your face, holding you close as his tongue claims your mouth for the millionth time that night "dom" you break the kiss "did i cum?" "did you—" and he furrows his eyebrows "yeah. a few times. i mean, right? you did, right?" "i did" you tell him "you made me cum, a couple of times, on our first night together, and i don't know a lot about sex, but that seems indicative of a pretty good night together, right?" "i just feel like i could've done more to show you how i feel about you" dom mumbles, and you shake your head "i don't need all that" you say "big romantic gestures or whatever, that's not me... i'm telling you, this was perfect" "ok" dom whispers and you can tell he's not exactly satisfied, but whatever "as long as you let me make it up to you someday" "how would you do that?" you ask, and he leans in and kisses your neck, slowly moving between your thighs again "i'd get you a nice outfit" he whispers "something that really makes you look just gorgeous, something that makes every guy in the room look at you and wish you were theirs... take you to dinner, wherever you want... fly you to paris if you'd like..." "oh yeah?" and you wanna be playful and flirty, but god you're so turned on you can't think straight, and it takes very little maneuvering for him to slip inside you again, and he sorta trails off his thoughts as he fucks you, touching his forehead to yours, and you do what he asked of you and dig your nails into the skin of his back and make long claw marks down his back "dommy?" and he grunts in response as he works "i think i wanna be your girl" "god, please" he whispers "i wanna be your guy so fucking bad"

and when a PA comes to dom's trailer for his wake up call once the sun's up, you have to untangle yourself from him, and you bid him goodbye with a big kiss, and he says "don't think we're done here, okay? more's coming tonight. remember those bad things i said i wanna do to you? still want that" and he winks and god yeah you're a lucky gal <3

#bex answers #anon ask #dominic sessa x reader #and i guess i'm required to tag this #dominic sessa smut

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blackinquisitors · 2 years

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Dutch is such an interesting and compelling character. and I think a lot of people don't realize that he's the true villain of this entire game and Micah is just a red herring. Micah didn't make Dutch go crazy or anything, he just told him what he wanted to hear and allowed him to do all the insane shit he's always wanted to do. bc previously, Dutch had Hosea and Arthur as his moral compass telling him "no Dutch you can't kill people" and I think Dutch started preaching that as well bc it goes along w his desire to the smartest, most moral man in the room. but that wasn't really him. then Micah joins and tells him "yeah Dutch maybe we should kill people maybe they deserve it maybe we're stronger than them" and it opens the door for Dutch to lose that facade he's been mastering all these years, and that comes out in blackwater

then Arthur and Hosea start doubting Dutch, start criticising him, but Micah is still there telling him everything is fine and he's doing a wonderful job. and Dutch loves that because he needs to be the big man in charge and he does NOT tolerate feeling stupid or weak or wrong. so he stops listening to Arthur (if he ever did in the first place, judging by how jaded Arthur is and how easily he kowtows to dutchs guilt trips, I'll say no) and half listens to Hosea. then Hosea dies and Arthur criticises him more, and Dutch truly reveals his colors

what tipped me off on his character the most was how he treats women. miss grimshaw was his girl, and now she's older and the matriarch of the gang, but I think all her stuff abt how vanity fades and how she's hideous etc is partially bc of how Dutch cast her aside. Molly says "am I getting too old for you? thats usually how it works with you isn't it?" which is what made me think that. Molly is also in her mid twenties whole Dutch is 44, and she left her life in Ireland bc she loved him while he only wanted her as a thing to fuck. then he started chatting up Marybeth who, if I had to guess, is about 20-22. quite literally old enough to be her father. so he's a dirty old man on top of all of this.

and also hes a closet racist since his grand plan was to paint a target on the wapiti tribes back despite the chief asking him to leave them alone. meaning he didn't give a shit if that whole tribe was massacred (which would have been the punishment for all the shit he made them do) as long as he and his loyal followers escaped. despite all his pro native talk, about how the Europeans are the true savages, how they destroyed this land, he still participates in that genocide gleefully.

he's nothing but a greedy, selfish megalomaniac but he's a damn good showman and that's how he's gotten everyone wrapped around his fingers. saved them, cared for them when no one else has. typical gang emotional manipulation, but also with cult elements like the requirement for faith in their way of life, the set of beliefs Dutch has constructed from the miller books. there's really nothing redeemable abt his character bc all the good bits were just acting, or they were something to hide how truly rotten he is

ofc it's nice to imagine Dutch as being the dashing rogue, father to everyone in the gang with Hosea his best friend at his side. but that's exactly what he wants you to see him as. and a lot of people don't look past that, so they do believe he went crazy bc of Micah or grief from losing hosea, or got a brain injury, or some other thing. but even Arthur says that he just became more of himself, the self he hid all these years

#long post #meta #dutch van der linde #SUCH a well written villain its crazy

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harlowhockeystick · 11 months

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okay here is what I have to offer (pt 1) (totally not projecting anything)

so like a couple months into this whole situationship flirty friends-to-lovers thing brock and reader have going on he notices she starts to seem a little… off? she’s tired and not as chatty or funny as usual, never wants to come out with the group for drinks or even really make small talk with anyone etc etc and he’s in his head like is it me?? did I do something?? and maybe he makes a comment to her closest friend at the office that like hey… has she seemed weird to you lately?? and the friend is like yeah this happens every once in a while it’s just mental health stuff she deals with she’ll get through it but it kills brock to think of you going through something like that alone, he realizes he wants to be there for you not just when you’re making him laugh so hard he can’t breathe, and smiling that pretty smile at the dumb note he left on your desk, he wants to be there all the fucking time no matter what. so the next friday when you again turn everyone down for drinks and head home he’s just like, no, I’m going to Do Something. so he texts you (and maybe y’all have done this a few times but haven’t in a while bc … depression) and is like “hey wanna have a movie night tonight?? I can bring food over or come pick you up and we can grab something on the way back to mine?” and she’s like a little caught off guard bc she hasn’t really been much fun lately and was worried maybe she was losing him but she was too caught up in her depression/anxiety to really do something about it but she tells him to come over and he does and brings so much food and way more snacks than are required for one night because “hey I didn’t know what you’d want!” and they watch some cheesy rom com or something and slowly snuggle towards each other on the couch until she is like fully on his lap and she’s like “hey um, thank you for doing this, I’m sorry I’ve been a little distant lately” and he’s like “it’s no problem, I wanted to, (friends name) told me maybe something was up and I thought I could maybe make you feel a little better at least for one night” and she thinks she could kiss him and cry at the same time but they are not There yet so she opts to place a kiss on his like jaw/cheek and is like “you really didn’t have to do all this but it means a lot to me, thank you” and he just shrugs and says “I like doing things for you” and kisses the top of her head and at this point her heart is BEATING out of her chest and she pretends to check the time on her phone and is like “hey it’s getting kinda late, (it’s like 9:30 but if she doesn’t ask now she never will) do you wanna stay here tonight maybe?” and hes like I would love to but I can’t leave coolie and milo alone for the night, wanna come sleep at mine? and he’s like you can bring your dog and they can all have a sleepover too and she’s like oh we’re having sleepovers now? are we 12 year old girls? and hes like it was your suggestion missy and she’s like good point let me pack a bag and the whole drive to his place she’s giddy like she is a 12 year old girl going to a sleepover and she’s been to his place before but she’s never slept there let alone done All of This so when she goes to get out of the car she’s like wait oh my god what if he just feels bad for me what if he’s just doing all of this because (friend) told him I was depressed and he feels like he can’t say no but as if on cue he just goes “don’t move” and comes around to her door and opens it for her with a cheesy smile on his face and it makes her laugh and god he loves her laugh and then grabs her bag from where its sitting at her feet and holds his hands out to take her dog so she can get up (I’m imagining its like a fairly small dog that can chill on her lap, active enough to hike and whatever but not as big as brock’s dogs) and he hands her back the dog and takes her bag and leads her to the elevator and while they walk down the hall to his place she’s like “thank you for doing this, you really didn’t have to but I like spending time with you” and hes like “you think we’re having a sleepover because I don’t?”

pt 2:

and she giggles at his use of the word sleepover again and goes “I guess not” and he opens the door and milo and coolie come running up to them and he’s like “plus I knew they’d be excited to see you too” and she’s like “they’re probably more excited to see (her dogs name)” and hes like fine maybe a little of that too and then is like brb and goes to put her bag in his room and when he comes back he’s like “wine??” and how could she say no to that and they’re drinking and giggling and talking about their lives and her feet end up in his lap (this is a maroon by taylor swift reference obv) and his hand is on her knee and his thumb is rubbing back and forth and the lamp behind her is making her look like she has a halo and he sets his wine glass down and puts his other hand on her waist (does that make sense I can’t tell) and she’s like Oh it’s never been There before and and he goes (in his shy adorable suddenly nervous little way) “um hey?” and she quirks her head like “yeah?” and he says “can I kiss you?” and she bites back a smile and nods and he thumbs her bottom lip out from between her teeth and pulls her face towards his and kisses her so softly and kind of without thinking her hands are in his hair and neither of them wants to come up for air because god is this everything and she swears she doesn’t mean to but she tugs on his hair a little bit and she feels the hand that was on her knee come underneath her other one to pull her legs apart a little and she takes that as her cue to swing her leg over and straddle him which based on the situation she can now feel in his crotch area was in fact the right move but she has to break their lips apart to do it and she takes the opportunity to take in his messy hair and flushed cheeks and the smile that’s plastered across his face before he’s pulling her back in by her hips because how could he stop kissing her and they makeout a few minutes longer before they are pulled from their moment by the sound of barking and brock is too focused on the way her body feels pressed against his like this to care but she pulls away with a confused face before she looks around to see coolie at the door wanting to be let out to pee and turns back to brock who’s also now realized what’s going on and is letting out a dramatic groan and she throws her head back with a laugh at his theatrics before meeting his eyes and saying “we should probably do something about that” and he doesn’t miss the way she says “we” like it’s their place and their responsibility to let the dogs out before bed and he’s like “I guess we should yeah” and pats her thigh gently before helping her off of him and standing up and she starts to gather the wine glasses and figure out how to shut the tv off and he’s like “don’t do all that I can do it in the morning” and she protests like “well I will at least help you in the morning” and he’s like fine fine now put this on it’s cold out and takes his hoodie off and hands it to her and she’s like “won’t you be cold then” and he honestly had not considered it because he wasn’t really thinking about himself right now and he gets this cheeky smile on his face and goes “guess you’ll have to keep me warm then” and she just laughs and rolls her eyes again and their moment is once again interrupted by dogs barking, this time all three are getting impatient by the door and he’s like “yeah yeah we’re coming” and she slips the hoodie on and follows him outside and tries not to get too lost in the fantasy of this, him and her and the dogs, maybe a few kids later if she really wants to get ahead of herself, being the rest of her life

ANON THIS IS AMAZING!!!!!!! I LOVE THIS SM!!!!!

#my asks #j's hc #nhl imagine #office!brock #brock boeser

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sparklecryptid · 2 years

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lols, who realizes Anordil has no idea that the other two have been under the impression that the THREE of them were courting first? Like, THEY'VE EXCHANGED GIFTS probably?

Oh wait, waitwaitwait, Anordil left with her mother when she was still a child, right? And like, she was barely an adult when her mother left, and post apocalyptic Beleriand was a nightmare so some talks might not have been had amid survival. And her Ada is, well, kind of nuts for a very long time, so not someone Anordil probably considers asking about this stuff.

Is- is she perhaps missing some key points of Elven social culture? Like, she has memories of Tolkien, and presumably at least skimmed the deeper lore like LACE? So she has vague memories of Elven society being one way, when in reality Tolkien got the broad strokes right but also surely made up bits to fit his own cultural upbringing.

Intellectually she knows not everything matches up, given she's helping two male elves get together and has possibly had lovers of her own here and there (MOAR angst bc her past lovers FORGOT her bc she's the 52 Hertz elf) and knows the 'sex is marriage to elves' thing is phooey, but she has no idea the emotional INTENT behind some of whats been going on between the three of them is in any way COURTING.

Erestor: Is this on us? Were we not clear? I gave her that lovely blank book. She gave me those three inkstones from the east and you that lovely tooled utensil pouch. You gave her BOOTS!

Glorfindel: I thought the new boots were overkill even. Naneth would have twisted my ear for being so forward if I'd done that in Valinor! (Note: Boots would ABSOLUTELY be like a stage three courting gift normally, stage two at the earliest. Shoes of any kind are hard to make, require precise fitting, and a skilled craftsperson. Glorfindel, if he didn't make them himself, would have dropped a LOT of coin on them. But Anordil has traveled so much, so hers were probably worn, and he'd seen her trying to fix the unmendable wear in them so-)

So like, maybe Elrond and Celebrian watches this and do a little math, and it slowly dawns on them that Anordil is MISSING CONTEXT. Oh, dear, they're going to have to have a TALK with her when she gets back, aren't they. Elrond is going to have to explain noldor social moors to his older sister. (Celebrian: It will be lovely practice for the twins one day? XD)

(*facepalm* I meant this to just be a jokey two paragraph thing but my brain must WORLDBUILD. It would not stop going, "wait and what about-" as I typed! Ugh, sorry!)

no that's exactly it! Anordil ~~logically~~ knows that she is missing bits of culture that she /should/ know considering who her parents are and what she is it's just-

her mother never really had time to teach her about things like 'courting 101' amidst the whole 'we are on the precipice of morgoth killing us all' and 'oh. the land is literally sinking beneath our feet as armies fight it out. okay' thing and anordil never gave it too much thought so she just sorta shrugged and went on with life!

and all of her other brief encounters with what could be called lovers were over in less than two years (most of them were with Men, but there was that one very cute dwarf lady that Anordil had a lot of fun with. there were a few elves too, but she always left or broke things off before they got too serious)

Anordil: *Comes back a year later* i have gifts!!! :D this is for the twins and this is for arwen and this is for elrond and this is for celebrian. and OH i got a pretty quill from a scribe for erestor and glorfindel has a new hair clip for reasons-

Elrond: you do know the gifts they gave you were courting gifts right?

Anordil: *drops erestors quill back on the table where she was showing off her haul to Elrond*...thats a thing?

Elrond: yes. its a thing.

Anordil: *error local elf does not believe that anyone would want to seriously court her let alone the two people shes had eyes on error*

#anordil has a case of low self esteem from being the 52 hertz elf #she does not BELIEVE that they would want her so the fact that they were trying to court her breaks her brain a bit #the light of dawn verse

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fuddieduddies-art · 9 months

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🐷 💘 💛 🖤 🍝 🧐😞 🤔🍛 🎶 🩹 FOR TONY AND HILDEGARD

omg hiiii bestie. once more let's get some read more action cause this is a lot lol.

🐷 PIG FACE — what is your oc's favorite animal?

hildegard. again, certified bug liker. probably weird stuff specifically like spiders, centipedes, anything with like weird long ass legs and million eyes and pincers. tony will see a falcon and be like wooahh sick The Maltese Falcon (1941) reference.

💘 HEART WITH ARROW — what and/or who do(es) your oc consider the most important to them?

hildegard. the fact i do not have a immediate answer makes me so sad. probably some people at the circus who they still write to on their travels. it will become tristen god willing. tony. steph one million heart emojis and zivah :) and also dire, yes, but he would never say that to his face lol.

💛 YELLOW HEART — how many languages does your oc speak? what language(s) are they learning, if any?

hildegard. they speak common and elvish :] tony. english, some italian. fluent in talking shit.

🖤 BLACK HEART — has your oc killed or seriously wounded anyone before? have they broken someone's heart and/or broken someone's trust?

hildegard. somehow she hasn't lmao. definitely has caused a few accidents with their powers that have gotten people hurt, but nothing that serious. they don't strike me as a heartbreaker tho tony. iman you know this. yeah like a handful. whoops lmao. broke steph's heart with The Incident.

🍝 SPAGHETTI — what is/are your oc's favorite food(s)?

hildegard. stews and soup and meat pies and whatnot. tony. i bet his mom makes really banging risotto and It's That.

🧐 FACE WITH MONOCLE — is your oc more logical or emotional?

hildegard. more logical in a way people find maybe a little cold or uncomfortably clinical. tony. ohhh he is so emotional honestly he needs to chillax.

😞 DISAPPOINTED FACE — does your oc attract others, or do they tend to be left alone?

hildegard. tragically their weird and off-putting swag is too much for most, and they tend to be left alone. creatures don't mind, though. monsters don't mind. tony. everyone either wants to climb him like a tree or is immediately intimidated by him. so like jury's out. until the time of the campaign he's been very reluctant to make any sort of deeper connections with people. because of the curse.

🍛 CURRY AND RICE — what does your oc's typical dinner look like? do they usually eat dinner

hildegard. since he travels around a lot, he tends to eat stuff that can last longer and that's easy to have on the road. bread, cheeses, dried meats and fruits. tony. well. he has a notable and unfortunate dietary requirement, so generally speaking he just kind of does a Snake Meal of human flesh and whatever he has on hand, either leftovers or takeout or something he makes himself, and that keeps him going for about a week. girl dinner.

🎶 MUSICAL NOTES — what type of music does your oc like? do they listen to music very often?

hildegard. god what music do they have in dnd. spooky music from the sims 4. i think they'd like stuff that's pretty upbeat and intense, and songs that have a story. tony. dad rock and jazz. perhaps he peeps some more musical theatre bc of zivah. he likes to have something on in the background pretty often.

🩹 ADHESIVE BANDAGE — does your oc have any physical and/or mental disabilities?

all of my characters are autistic even if they're neurotypical because they are made and played by me. hope this helps.

#ocs #dnd #castles forlon #motw #hildegard perot #tony bancarella #ask game #arkcore #sorry for answering one million of these. jk no im not.

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honeymedusa · 2 years

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the need for comfort vs. learning to live with my own issues

my bf went to a festival to which he was asking me to join, but I’m not really comfortable and fond of sleeping in a tent, not having access to proper hygiene, I despise/fear all insects, etc. and it’s overall an experience that I never had, and with all the shit I was taking care of, I decided not to go, but now that he went, I’m feeling so incredibly lonely... I’m genuinely happy for him enjoying his summer with his friends and having a few days when he can really stop thinking about stuff and just enjoy some music... but somehow I’m here, at a family member’s flat where I’m currently alone for two nights, and I feel so sad and lonely, all I want to do is text him all the time and talk to him, but at the same time I don’t think it’s fair to him, bcs we’ve spent so much time together this summer and I don’t want to impose on his time with friends, and I don’t even believe it’s right to do so... initially my other reason to not go to the festival was that my family would need my help this weekend with tidying up a flat after a reconstruction (if not for this, maybe I would challenge myself and try to get out of my comfort zone, try something I’m scared of), but like two hours after my bf left, I found out, that the reconstruction got extended, so there is no use tidying the flat up now... at first I was like okay whatever, the reconstruction requires my family and I to be flexible with our time and schedules so I was aware that this might happen, so at first my mood was okay, I even tried this makeup eye look and I made it work really nice so I was sort of happy (I never did much makeup on myself, so as I moved into my twenties I started experimenting, and from time to time I try looks to figure out what looks best on my features, and when something looks good, it just feels good), but as the day goes on I’m just crying it away... I’m aware that I depend on my bf a great deal, we both have our own mental issues, but unfortunately my attachment style is anxious which results in also projecting a lot of my issues on him... and in moments like these especially I don’t want to transform his happy experiences into my therapy session, because I just don’t find that to be fair... on the other hand, I miss him so much it aches, and I want to get better, I want to learn how to deal with my issues on my own, with my own set of tools, but he is the biggest source of comfort to me in this world, he was relentlessly there for me in the truly worst times of my life, numerous times... and I guess this is just an another case/example of how the process of getting better is not linear, and in their moments the ups are just sort of satisfying, but when you’re down, the down feels so painful... and overall you can see the progress, and you’re happy with it, but withstanding the downs really really tests you and said progress...

I’m also writing this here, rather than unloading all this shit onto my bf and seeking comfort, maybe I’m just trying ways to comfort myself or at least learn how to get through the downs responsibly... bcs just bcs I have my own set of mental issues and shitty experiences, does not allow me to suck out other people’s happiness when I’m feeling like shit... bcs I don’t want to be that person, I want to get better... fingers crossed this is at least one of the steps on the way there

(also note: we r both uni students, and study in different countries, so the only time we can truly spend time together is over the summer and the winter break)

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mybrainproblems · 3 years

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nephil!cas?????? please elaborate!!

This is almost 2k words so most of it is under the cut. I did not include every single detail of canon in this but I'm very good at smashing things together and can probably talk my way around other details I've left out or forgotten. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to actually argue for this batshit idea. I left out everything with Anna bc this was getting too long and linking her in requires a lot more words. I hope all of this makes sense because I cannot edit it any more......

Part of my current (very slow) rewatch of spn is jotting down some notes to see how plausible this theory actually is. So far? I’m only at the beginning of s5 but I think it’s actually a relatively plausible theory/headcanon! I don’t think Cas is a nephil the way that Jack or other nephilim we’ve seen/heard about are. But the way they explain nephilim in canon is that yes, they are the product of an angel and a human reproducing. But what makes them so powerful is the fact that they are a human with a soul while also having angelic grace. A soul and grace are required.

Some of this may not age well as I continue my rewatch and actual canon might contradict me but as of right now, my argument for nephil!Cas (and a tiny fix-it at the end) goes something like this… (also, fuck canon)

So “nephil!Cas” is a little bit of a misnomer, but it's kinda the best I can do using the limited toolbox of spn canon. Also my working knowledge of Christianity is largely limited to whatever is in pop culture. Until I was 18 my knowledge of Christianity largely came from the His Dark Materials trilogy and having to attend my cousins’ Catholic church stuff. Anyway, my headcanon/theory is that somehow Cas ends up with the teeniest tiniest wisp of a proto-soul at his creation. Maybe it’s an accident, maybe Chuck was experimenting and forgot about the Chuckov’s gun he was creating (eyoo). We’ve been told multiple times that souls are tied to morality (also sleep, but we’re setting that aside) and if Cas has that tiny wisp of proto-soul, couldn’t that explain why he needs to get lobotomized constantly compared to other angels? Why he’s the infamous spanner in the works? Why his problem has always been that he has too much heart?

We're told that Cas is completely unique in his ability to exercise free will (the only being in the multiverse!) and is the only version of Cas who was able to fall in romantic love with Dean. Which is made out to be a VERY human emotion within canon. He’s an angel who is in love with humanity in a way that few others seem to be. (I have a way to link in Adam and Serafina but much like Anna... too long to include.) So like, there’s certainly attraction and tension and friendship between Cas and Dean in the first couple of seasons after his introduction but it's only after he becomes human that I think it really becomes less like charged sexual tension and more like romantic yearning on his part. (Love and light but I’m a “Dean knew he was in love with Cas in s8” truther) Which! The fact that he loses his grace and becomes human then catalyzes the change of this wisp of proto-soul into an actual fledgling soul.

You might think there’s a contradiction here because when Jack burns through his grace it ends up being fatal because it is so integral to his being. Why doesn’t this happen to Cas? First off, I think the biggest difference is that Jack is at his base level, a human with grace. Cas on the other hand is an angel with a very tiny wisp of soul. We’re going to get into some psedo-science here so buckle up for this being about as nonsensical as canon. There’s an offhand line that even though Lucifer stole Jack’s grace, it would be able to recharge over time but they don’t know how long it will take and he will die before this happens. Which! That kind of sounds like an immune response! Nephilim are not naturally occurring so to speak, so it makes sense that they need to have their grace and soul be in balance in order to survive.

Which, going back to s6 we know that souls contain an enormous amount of power. So if there’s a tiny bit of grace left that might be trying to recharge, then a soul would see that as a foreign body and much like the immune system raising body temp to kill an infection, or attacking healthy tissue due to a genetic disease (eg Crohn’s), the soul tries to attack something that is a part of the body but that it sees as foreign. Cas on the other hand, has his grace completely removed. There is nothing for his soul to attack. Plus, his body is fully his own at this point and no longer just a vessel. Jimmy died and his body was destroyed, but Cas is brought back with an identical body that is essentially his own. So:

human!Cas -> has a soul but no grace, no immune response

Jack with depleted grace -> has a soul and a small amount of remaining grace, immune response that kills him

Jack using his soul to “create” grace -> has a soul and grace, in balance

soulless!Jack -> no soul, possibly a wisp of grace, no immune response

revived!Jack -> no soul, gaining grace back, no immune response

unity!Jack -> new soul and recharged grace, in balance and at full power

But why does Cas’ power begin to wane in late seasons besides writers not knowing how to write around a powerful cosmic being retaining his cosmic powers? Let’s get weird and justify the writers’ laziness:

Cas’ vessel is fully his and is a part of him as a finger puppet extension of his trueform, it’s not really a vessel in the traditional sense anymore. His human form was molded with his angelic being and is also why Lucifer is able to share it. It's not just a strong vessel, it's one purpose-built for an angel.

Now that we’ve covered that… nephilim produced through the union of a human and an angel are basically human + grace, Cas’ trueform is a wavelength of celestial intent. Two possible explanations for why Cas’ grace has not attacked his proto-soul in the past few hundred million years are: a) a tiny little wisp of soul is negligible to the immune response of his grace or b) heaven is powered by souls and this relationship makes it so that an angel’s grace does not react to the presence of an incomplete/fledgling soul. Cas getting sick from having stolen grace also makes sense because he has a soul but it isn’t his grace, it’s a fully foreign entity. Kinda like an organ transplant: you have to keep taking immunosuppressants otherwise your body will reject that organ. But then once he has his own grace back, that fledgling soul still isn’t “big enough” to trip off the immune response of his own complete grace.

But Cas’ power begins to wane over the years. It happens as his soul has grown large enough to be recognizable as a foreign object in his angelic “body” and is now activating that immune response. However, while it has grown, it still isn’t large enough to be fully in balance with his grace. Since Cas’ general existence, massive trueform and sense of relative time are so different to that of humans, it stands to reason that unlike Jack dying relatively quickly from having his soul and grace be out of balance, Cas’ decline would take much longer. So by s15 he is oh-so-human and oh-so-angelic and his grace is fighting so hard against this soul that shouldn’t be there. But he loves. And it’s so human. The Empty can see that fledgling soul in him when he makes that deal and it’s glad because when this nephil dies or is taken, there won’t be any confusion. Cas will go to the Empty, Jack will go to heaven, the Empty can sleep and not think about it.

It really is that Dean stabs him when they first meet and it just takes years for him to bleed out. But wait, how do we bring Cas back from the Empty? I AM SO GLAD YOU ASKED.

Reminder: it is canon that beings that do not have grace and/or have a soul can go to and be kept by the Empty. Billie explicitly tells Dean that him and Sam are going to the Empty in s11 and they are both fully human.

But Cas triggering the deal doesn’t just drag him into the Empty, it also balances him. This is moment is the culmination of a journey that started hundreds of millions of years ago. This is him speaking his truth and accepting himself and stitching together that final bit of soul. This is death; it is also genesis.

Now, this balancing of Cas doesn’t cause the Empty to automatically spit him out, and because of the deal there’s no confusion in whether he goes to heaven vs the Empty. No, Cas is there in the Empty. And being a nephil and the infamous spanner in the works, he does keep waking up but doesn’t fight the Empty when it puts him under again. He is satisfied with the fact that he saved Dean and that makes this worth it.

But then Dean ends up in the Empty. Whether it’s by choice or because all of the reapers do still want the Winchesters to go to the Empty doesn’t matter. He also keeps waking up but unlike Cas, he fights going back to sleep, especially when he’s able to wake up long enough to realize he’s in the Empty and this is where Cas is. Eventually he pisses off the Empty enough that they sit down to have a chat. And I genuinely think that the Empty is so angry about being awake because it’s lonely. Would you want to be conscious when your only companions are the husks of angel and demon trueforms crying out from nightmares? Of course the Empty is pissed off about being awake. And so they talk, and Cas wakes up.

There are a couple of different options here; the bittersweet one is that the Empty puts them both to sleep and allows them to share the same consciousness. The dreams are still not pleasant but they’re together for an eternity and are able to do this because they both have souls and souls are a key part of sleeping.

The completely happy ending is that Cas wakes up and the Empty knows if it came down to it, the both of them could force their way out, but the Empty is petty and angry at this point. The Empty wants to sleep and forget the pain and suffering around them and is ready for a fight but what Dean offers completely throws them both for a loop. He offers to make a deal. The final deal.

He sees the loneliness and pain of the Empty and offers a standing invitation to Sunday brunch with their massive found family.

It’s an ending about seeing that you could fight your way out and choosing compassion. It’s about love and understanding, rebirth and genesis. It’s about Dean not raising Cas from perdition, but them walking through that door hand-in-hand and the Empty not far behind.

final note: i’m actually working on a fleshed out fix-it fic of this! i'll link it here as well once i'm done.

#renu thank you for giving me the opportunity to be an insane person about my nephil!cas theory #i left out stuff bc i haven't rewatched late seasons but also like. fuck canon. this makes enough sense.#certainly better than anything fuckleming ever came up with #if i can convince one other person about this i will be thrilled #if i can get this to be an actual fandom headcanon that a couple ppl take on? i will go bonkers in fucking yonkers #guys. i fixed the whole fucking ending with LOVE AND KINDNESS #i powered UP cas pulling him out of the empty #fuck sacrifice they've sacrificed enough. the brunch deal isn't even cosmically binding #spn #supernatural #castiel #destiel #mbp writes #fic idea #except it's actually getting written but i'm flagging for organization #also he gets his wings back #so jot that the fuck down #spn meta #nephil!cas

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waynedunlaptheorgandonor · 3 years

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watched s11ep1

i will provide you with a quick review before i disappear back into the ether of twd avoidance

lots of spoilers under the cut. also i wrote way too much and i worked all night and haven’t slept so i didn’t bother to reread literally any of it, so it might be completely nonsensical, tho if you don’t expect that from me by this point idk whose blog you’ve been reading

enjoy:

hokay, first off, i’ll start by saying that i enjoyed it more than i expected to. i’ve been avoiding any sort of discussion about stuff, but my google algorithm is so fucked at this point that i still get recommended articles and stuff every now and then, so i was already pretty aware of what i was walking into, and was expecting it to be eh, but actually i prob enjoyed it more than i enjoyed the finale

(don’t get too excited tho, the finale was rly boring lmfao)

anyway

episode starts off with a tense scouting mission

it takes .005 seconds into the episode for caryl to exchange a look of longing, establishing that they are still having weird conflict and are both too fucking stubborn to do anything about it even tho they hate it desperately

i imagine that will continue for a while

rosita, kelly, carol, maggie, what’s her face with the bad hair, and lydia (i think that’s everyone?) lower down to some army bunker or something, where a bunch of walkers are taking a snooze, and the girls are very respectful of walker naptime, and do their best not to wake them up

obviously they eventually wake up, but i’ll get to that in a sec

as they’re tiptoeing through the walker tulips, there’s this split second where carol spots a machine gun, and looks at maggie with a face like, “can i plzzzz, i am mad horny for that machine gun,” but maggie tells her no. (i 110% expected her to defy orders and accidentally wake up all the walkers, but she actually behaved herself for once. well. mostly)

never fear, tho, after the girl gang collects a bunch of MREs they go back to wait for the dudes waiting up top to pull them up, and bc men ruin everything, one of the ropes break, and daryl catches it before it falls, but then a slow motion drop of blood falls on a walker’s face, and just like that, walker naptime is over, and carol uses her bow and arrow for two seconds before she is like “fuck this” and whips out the machine gun

yes, she is super hot using it

yes, daryl watches her do it

anyway, all the other girls get rescued, and carol is about to be pulled up, but bc she is a #girlboss, she first makes a beeline for one more crate full of MREs. daryl covers her while she gets the loot, and when she gets back up top they have another charged moment as carol hands him back his knife

just fuck already, jfc

titles!

cut to alexandria where everything is still not smilestimes

BUT, we do get to see uncle daryl run and hug rj and judith (and dog), and FUCKING HERSHEL JR, LIGHT OF MY LIFE is also there

istg, they could not have casted a better child, i a d o r e him

oh, and some friends of maggie’s show up too, idk

cut to a staff meeting where everyone is like, whomp whomp, we’re all gonna starve to death unless we figure out something quick

cue maggie going, “oh, i know where food is, but it requires me to tell you my tragic backstory, in case anyone didn’t watch my bottle episode”

she tells her dramatic backstory about all her friends getting slaughtered by the reapers for no apparent reason, and then she’s like “anyway, let’s go back there!”

no one thinks it’s a great idea, but a group of people decide to go anyway, including daryl and gabriel. rosita is super pissed that gabriel is going, and carol doesn’t go, probably partly bc it’s a shitty fucking idea, and also bc they have to keep caryl apart bc otherwise they’ll fix their problems ahead of schedule and they won’t be able to drag out the needless angst

daryl looks kind of annoyed that carol doesn’t volunteer to go

bitch, i thought you wanted her to stop putting herself in the line of fire! make up your damn mind!

moving on

cut to a thunderstorm, where, if you look closely, you’ll notice daryl is wearing the STUPIDEST hat i’ve ever seen. just get an umbrella, jfc

for some reason negan is with them, bc ig he knows his way around washington dc, and no one in six years has bothered to figure out how to get around the city and/or get a map, and he is like “hey guys, maybe we shouldn’t try to walk in this fucking hurricane,” and everyone is like “FUCK YOU NEGAN, YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF US!!!”

this will be a common occurrence

but eventually daryl is even like “actually, it’s rly unpleasant out here, and my hat is mad stupid, can we go inside plz?”

so they go inside an old metro station, which is actually a rly cool cinematic choice. i rly like the idea, and they executed it rly well

speaking of executions

there are some fucking RULL CREEPY walkers. idk why they bothered me so badly, but they were what they at first assumed were corpses wrapped up in tarps, but turns out none of them had been properly put down, so they go through killing these rotted bodies that had supposedly been there since The Fall, and it’s very gross and cool

this entire time, btw, negan is like “hey, i know i’m a shitty person, but i have some rational arguments about why we shouldn’t be doing this right now,” and everyone is like, “FUCK YOU NEGAN, YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF US!!!” and he’s just like “god fucking damnit”

(i forgot to mention that at one point, when they’re headed into the metro station, negan is trying to warn ppl of the potential danger, and everyone is ignoring him, and he tries to talk to daryl, and daryl is like “fuck you, you think we’re BUDDIES?” and negan is like “oh, ok, so you’re gonna be like that too? fanfreakingtastic” and it’s very funny)

anyway. a fat monster zombie escapes its tarp at one point, and tries to eat some npc, and negan saves him, again is like “hey, anyone else realize that this is a FUCKING BAD PLAN?”, and everyone is like “we don’t care, you’re still shitty and we’re not listening to you, and you don’t actually care about random npc i would literally not be able to pick out in a lineup bc his face is so generic, you’re not the boss of us!!!”

it’s at this point that negan finally is like, “why am i even here? bc i know how to get around washington dc? do none of you have a map?” and i was like, “right?! that’s what i said!”

it’s then revealed that maggie only brought negan along to murder him under the guise of “oops, he got hurt in the line of duty, it wasn’t my fault,” and daryl has this look on his face that says, “i seriously need to stop hanging out with lethal women bent on revenge bc it’s gonna give me high blood pressure,” and maggie has a badass moment where she points a gun she has for some reason at negan and is like “i have like, one shred of human compassion left inside of me, and if you keep pushing me i will fucking kill you without a second thought, so shut the hell up”

(in her defense, negan had just dropped glenn’s name to purposely antagonize her, which was rude as hell)

(for the record, i’m completely on maggie’s side here, but negan still is right that trapping themselves in a metro station is a bad call)

anyway, moving away from that briefly

i think this jump cut happens sooner, i don’t actually remember, but whatever who cares, point is, we get to the part of the show that actually matters, and that’s anything involving my love, juanita “princess” sanchez

and also eugene, yumiko, and ezekiel

they are being asked increasingly invasive questions by commonwealth ppl, some of which i wish they actually would of answered (what do they use to wipe their asses with?? surely toilet paper has long since become extinct)

zeke, who is so much more tolerable as a character now that he’s not larping as a king, has this incredibly weird and sort of sexually charged moment with a dude in an orange stormtrooper costume, where he’s like, “i bet you were an asshole cop back before The Fall, you stupid fascist, #fuckthepolice, mb literally? idk, this moment has a lot of pent up aggression that could easily translate to hate sex, it might just be the intense eye contact, but w/e, let’s just move along,” and then he has a coughing fit to remind the audience that he’s currently dying of cancer, and orange stormtrooper is like “lolz, loser, drink some water you dumb piece of shit”

cut to the wholesome foursome sitting at a picnic table in a guarded courtyard eating gruel, and yumkio, who finally has a personality, and princess are like “hey, this place fucking sucks, can we leave?” and zeke is like, “yeah, i met this orange stormtrooper who i think might be dtf and/or murder, so we should probably bounce”

but eugene is like, “but i want some hot stephanie ass, and also some bullshit excuse about how mb commonewealth will save alexandria” which, they left before things went super downhill, right? idr. it was after hilltop fell, but they don’t know alexandria got fucked either, if i recall? w/e, not important

two seconds after he says this, they talk to some people who are like “we’ve been here for four months, or maybe it’s been nine, i don’t actually remember, i’ve stopped processing the passage of time,” and the wholesome foursome takes this as a bad sign, tho that’s just the life i’ve lived as a night worker during a pandemic, so i was like #mood

but then they watch some guy get dragged away screaming to get “reprocessed” and eugene is like “ok, nvm, let’s bounce”

(my theory on what “reprocessing” is, is that they’re stuck in a room and have to watch hours and hours of customer service training videos on vhs from the 90s)

i definitely got my jump cut scenes mixed up bc i think the negan accusing maggie of a murder plot thing happened in between this scene and then the next commonwealth scene, but w/e, i’ll just finish what happens in the commonwealth arch

the wholesome foursome are trying to hatch a plan to escape, except princess, my love, is distracted watching some stormtroopers flirt, and the other three are like “wtf, dude, how can you even tell any of them apart?” and princess then tells them every stormtroopers backstory bc she is brilliant and pays rly close attention to shit, and the other three are like, “this is useful information, thank you for being an insane person”

their plan involves yumiko and eugene dressing up as stormtroopers and leading princess and zeke out of the place, which works fine actually, except on their way out they come across the Depressing Wall of Probably Mostly Dead Missing Loved Ones

they’re about to leave, when princess is like, “wait, yumiko, you’re on here, that’s weird huh?”

sure enough, yumiko is on the wall, with a note from ig her sister

the scene ends with yumiko going, “guys...i can’t leave...i have tragic backstory to unveil”

tragic backstory to be continued ig

back in murder metro town, npc and some other npc have stolen all the supplies, there’s a train blocking the track, and a horde of walkers are coming towards them, so things are not going fantastic

they horde is too big to take down, so they start to climb on top of the train car to get away

but dog runs away!

and daryl, being every pet owner ever, is like “gotta go get my dog, guys, try not to get killed while i’m gone, c u soon!” and he ducks under the train and disappears

#priorities

the episode ends with maggie climbing up the train car but getting grabbed by a walker and dangling off the edge, and negan is there and they have a lion king moment where maggie is like, “scar! help me!” and negan is like “long live the king, bitch” and walks away into the shadows, leaving maggie to a potential death

which, while i know isn’t actually going to happen, would be a really fucking funny move on the writers’ part

like, “look, lauren’s back! and now she’s dead, bet you didn’t expect that!”

anyway

my assumption is negan will actually end up helping her up or something, continuing his ambiguous morality bullshit that actually isn’t ambiguous bc he BEAT GLENN TO DEATH WITH A FUCKING BAT WRAPPED IN BARBED WIRE IN FRONT OF HIS PREGNANT WIFE

the maggie/negan arch is kind of dumb, but whatevs, i’ll tolerate it, as long as my boy glenn gets justice in the end

anyway, cue credits!

final assessment: good episode. i’m much more interested in commonwealth than the reapers, tho i am hoping that daryl’s personality-less ex turns out to be a monster killing machine with no conscience, that’ll be fun. princess is a gift from god. hershel jr needs his own tv show. needs more carol (and caryl)

the end! going back into my walking dead free chamber! see you next episode!

-diz

#i didn't mean to recap the entire fucking episode lol #sorry #it's to make up for my lack of content lately #or something #anyway #caryl #twd s11ep1 #twd s11 spoilers #dunlap tp

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retsuunohana · 3 years

Text

*dusts off my frontal lobe* bleach 687 theory spitballing & observations (specifically wrt kazui & the general theme this arc is setting out to explore)

this was c/ped from a disco convo so sorry for formatting!

MAIN DRIVING POINT--

in the context of this story and what information is presented to us in the first chapter, i read the little goldfish bit like this:

the bigger more powerful fish died

as a result, the smaller one grew stronger

so after all, maybe it was a good thing the bigger one died if the little could become stronger

as this correlates to what we're presented with in the chapter it comes off like:

the bigger more powerful captains all died

giving others room to grow stronger, OR --as a result, an event will be brought about in which everyone will grow stronger against a powerful enemy

so after all, maybe it isnt such a bad thing if others can grow strong in the space left behind by the strong ones before them

i think this interpretation is much closer to what it means when u also factor in that the fish appears again here during a panel describing the loss of the "bigger fish" that were more powerful. i think what its getting at is that for anyone to stand a chance amassing power in this new era (specifically kazui and ichika), it means removing these powerful players from the board to give them room to grow at all. too much power can be a bad thing, stunting the growth of other characters-- though this isnt my favorite example, we see this in the main storyline in unohana and kenpachi’s shared past.

--segue into how i also took some time to search for “twin fish” in mythology bc kubo loves using mythological figures in reference to his characters. but then i realized when i typed "twin fish", that this theme is already present-- in ukitake's zanpakuto! i dunno if its related, but since this chapter obv had such a strong ukitake focus, it makes me wonder if the twin fish is maybe referencing that ukitake had to die so kazui could become stronger? or maybe ukitake had to die so the soul king could become stronger, then die at the hands of yhwach, then yhwach is stronger, then kazui destroys the yhwach that comes along in the final chapter 686?

which seems like super insane and convoluted to think about, and i doubt its kubos meaning but its fun to just spitball... but paired with the above information, it doesnt seem too unlikely! either way, ukitakes zanpakuto is literally "law of the twin fish", he had a huge presence in this chapter, and he literally died as per the requirements of what was being said "its good he died so the other could become stronger" so it makes me wonder

AN ASIDE WRT KAZUI’S POWERS --

--you know how orihime's powers are creating barriers, but she can also step into OTHER peoples barriers (see: when she went through hachi's to find ichigo training w/ the visoreds). what if kazui has the power to create gates? like into the other realms? it would explain why the hell butterflies flock to him, and also why he knew the technique for creating a gate, and also his familiartiy w/ the technique-- maybe he just can create gateways and portals and traverse the realms?

additionally, the gate kazui opened-- while kubo drew the subsequent panels to misdirect and make the reader think he was going to SS, this is NOT a senkaimon (gate specifically used to go from living world to SS)

versus senkaimon (i couldnt find a manga pic im sorry): which always is a clean opening w/ some sort of paper sliding door imagery

i believe instead kazui opened a garganta (gate used by arrancar to travel to/from HM), which is visually identical to what’s depicted:

OH AND ANOTHER THING KINDA RELATED TANGENTIALLY--

the matching eyeballs

that i believe are looking down on kazui at the chapter’s end!!!!!!

--so just a lot of interesting stuff in play. nothing concrete yet but these are just some observations and theories :)

#bleach shit

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bshmatthews · 2 years

Text

Saw Everything Everywhere All At Once yesterday. I didn't know what it was about, just heard that it was a good and my friends wanted to see it. But it really wrecked me, in a way that I wasn't expecting, because of some other stuff that happened this weekend.

I was first diagnosed with depression when I was 12 and I've been struggling with it and ADHD for decades now. I have had maybe a couple years at a time when it was under control and the rest of the time... chaos. And the past few years, partially bc of the pandemic, have been really bad. It's really hard to figure out treatment for depression when you're really depressed and also really disorganized and really broke, but I've spent the past few months trying to dig myself out of the hole.

On Friday I had a seemingly minor setback that sent me into a bit of a spiral. I would usually try to handle it on my own, but because it was related to my physical health and my mom's a doctor, I called my mom. And I told her what was going on and she convinced me to tell her all the depression stuff and she was straight up like, "do you need to be admitted?"

And I hadn't even considered that. I kept telling myself "it's not that bad". But my mom was like "no this is really that bad". And she convinced me to go with her to urgent care. I told her that they wouldn't do anything, but she thought she might be able to convince them to prescribe me something so I wouldn't have to wait the weeks it would take to find a primary care doctor or the months it would take to get in with a psych in this area.

So I went with my mom to urgent care, which couldn't do anything and they sent us to the ER, and then the ER couldn't prescribe anything. They asked if I wanted to be admitted and I said no. BUT the ER was able to refer me to a primary care who is required to see me in the next week or so. And mom knows the doctor and says that he's good and will definitely prescribe me some antidepressants.

And then my mom went home with me and we cleaned the house where I live with my sister. And I just felt so much better after. I'm still probably a long way off before really getting relief from the depression bc I've typically had to try 2-3 different meds every time I have an episode. :/ But it reminded me that I have a mom who loves me and wants to help me and that's a lot...

And then, like an hour after my mom left, my friend asked if I still wanted to see Everything Everywhere All At Once. And I thought about saying no because I was exhausted at that point. But I said yes and we went to see the movie.

And not to spoil anything, but it's all about mothers and daughters and depression and suicide and love. I was already primed with all this emotion and then I'm seeing this extremely strange and amplified reflection of all this stuff I'm going through THIS WEEKEND (right down to the parts about taxes -_-). I was sobbing like a little baby by the end... and I also laughed a lot.

Anyway, It's a very very good movie and I highly recommend it. Just maybe heads up on the suicide themes.

#depression #suicide #mental health #movies #everything everywhere all at once #long post #moms

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robininthelabyrinth · 4 years

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My fav MDZS stories are ones where Mo Xuanyu lives and WWX takes him under his wing when the Sacrifice Summons goes slightly wrong. I would love to see your version of this au bc your writing is very very good and I've fallen in love. However you want to character MXY is fine, but I know you'll make him compelling.

also on ao3 because long

“It’s not wrong if you write it down,” Mo Xuanyu muttered to himself like a mantra as he scribbled down a rough explanation of what he was going to do. “If you write it down, it’s just an experiment, and that makes it okay.”

That’s what they used to say back at Koi Tower. Not all of them, no – most people didn’t talk to him, stupid shy useless stuttering bastard that he was.

But Jin Guangyao had smiled at him, smiled the way he smiled at everyone no matter how lowly, and Mo Xuanyu, flattered at the unfamiliar feeling of positive familial attention, had tentatively smiled back. That had been a mistake, of course, but he hadn’t realized it at the time – he was still young, then.

He hadn’t been crazy, then.

(Had he? He didn’t remember. The screaming nightmares weren’t until later, after he’d swallowed down that medicine that Jin Guangyao gave to him, that he’d forced down his throat with Xue Yang holding his shoulders down – they’d been regretful about it, he remembered that. That’d been nice. No one’d ever been sorry about what they’d done to him before. Or after, for that matter.)

That came later, though. Towards the end. The experiments – that was earlier, wasn’t it?

Yes. Back when Jin Guangyao still thought he might be useful, and he let him follow him around; back before Xue Yang had disappeared – wait, if Xue Yang had disappeared, who’d held him down? – back when he still called him Xue-gege because Xue Yang thought it was funny, and if he did that he could sit around in a place where no one would find him and watch while Xue Yang did…stuff.

Usually bad stuff.

Still, it was better than being anywhere else in Koi Tower. With Madame Jin, who hated him and threw things at him, just like Auntie Mo did, and his father who wanted him to talk about girls (Mo Xuanyu didn’t know anything about girls), and all the people who giggled at him and talked about him behind their sleeves as if he couldn’t still hear them.

If you write it down, it’s just an experiment, Jin Guangyao told him, smiling, because he always smiled. That’s why what Xue Yang does is okay.

Xue Yang taught him the basics of drawing arrays, how to hold the brush in your hand and push spiritual energy into it. Mo Xuanyu didn’t have very much, so it made him very tired and then he dropped the brush; that made Xue Yang laugh at him, push him down until his face was on the ground so he could get a better look at what he was drawing, and then he got bored and pulled him back up to try again.

It was still better than being taught by the Jin sect cultivators who sneered at him and ordered him to get hit with boards any time he made a mistake, and Mo Xuanyu made a lot of mistakes.

Mo Xuanyu didn’t like to talk to people much, wasn’t very good at it. Wasn’t much good for anything, really.

Except this, he supposed. This was something he could do.

Xue Yang taught him the basics of drawing arrays, but it was only ever the basics – as soon as he figured out how to do it, Jin Guangyao took over the teaching, and he only ever wanted Mo Xuanyu to learn one array in specific.

It didn’t have a name. It was an ancient, forbidden technique; those didn’t get names. Jin Guangyao’d found it in a book, hidden on an abandoned old mountain – a place where lots of people died in a battle a long time ago, and then again not so long ago – and he’d thought it was just right for Mo Xuanyu.

The array required blood, blood of the caster, incisions all over – painful ones – and the point of it was to offer up your body to some extremely villainous ghoul so that it could take revenge for you.

“But I don’t want revenge,” he’d told Jin Guangyao, plaintive and naïve. “And I don’t know any villainous ghouls.”

“You don’t have to ask for revenge,” Jin Guangyao had told him, patient. He was always patient when he wanted something. “You can ask for something else, if you want. Revenge is just the usual reason.”

“Not many things besides revenge are worth sacrificing your soul for,” Xue Yang had opined, and Jin Guangyao had glared at him like he’d said something stupid. “What? It’s true.”

“We’ll discuss the Chang clan later, Chengmei. I was talking to Xuanyu.”

Mo Xuanyu had been poking at the manuscripts, feeling doubtful, and Xue Yang’d huffed and grabbed them. “Don’t touch the papers! Wei Wuxian didn’t leave much behind; I’m not losing the bit we got.”

“Wei Wuxian,” Mo Xuanyu had said, feeling the weight of it on his tongue. He didn’t know much, but even he’d heard about the Yiling Patriarch. “Is he the villainous ghoul you want me to summon?”

“No,” Xue Yang’d giggled. “He wants you to bring back Nie Mingjue.”

Mo Xuanyu hadn’t known that name – he really didn’t know anything – but the weeks that Jin Guangyao thought that he could one day become him were probably the best in his life. He’d never been petted or coaxed before, never been treated so well; he ate nice food every day, wore nice clothing, slept as late as he liked, took lots of baths…Jin Guangyao wanted his body to be in good condition before he did the ritual. He gave him lotions to make his skin feel soft, used medicine to nourish his organs, spent hours and hours teaching him to braid his hair the way the Nies did, all complicated and pretty yet practical.

(“He’ll hate it so much,” Jin Guangyao whispered in his ear on the nights he let Mo Xuanyu share his pillow. “Soft and decadent and weak – you’ve got the weakest golden core I’ve ever seen, Xuanyu, weaker even than me, and you’re too useless to even have any ambition to make it stronger. I could push you down with one hand, overpower you, make you crawl…no one will ever be scared of you. Let’s see how much you like being the weak one, da-ge.”)

It’d only been when the ritual failed – not just once, but many times, no matter how many cuts Mo Xuanyu made on his arms or how well he painted the array – that Jin Guangyao had given up on Mo Xuanyu.

They hadn’t been able to figure out why it wasn’t working, back then, but now Mo Xuanyu thought that maybe he just hadn’t wanted it enough back then. He’d wanted to make Jin Guangyao happy, yes, and he hadn’t really cared what it cost to do it – Jin Guangyao’s arguments that he was useless and pointless, his life worthless, and so he might as well do something useful with his death were pretty convincing – but he hadn’t wanted it.

He wanted it now, though.

Something worth sacrificing your soul – it really could only be revenge, couldn’t it? Xue-gege knew what he was talking about. Revenge was something you needed, something that ate away at your soul until sacrificing it was the only thing left to be done with it, and that, that, was what was going to make the ritual work this time.

Mo Xuanyu was going to get revenge. Revenge on Auntie Mo, on Master Mo, on Mo Ziyuan, on A-Tong…they deserved it. He hated them. He hated what they did to him and how often they did it, he hated that this was his life and that nothing would ever get better, he hated hated hated…!

(“You don’t have to do this,” the young sect leader surnamed Nie had told him when they’d had tea for the last time. He’d bought Mo Xuanyu the cosmetics he liked – he’d offered to buy him something nicer, but Mo Xuanyu had his preferences; the expensive stuff didn’t feel heavy and greasy on his face, didn’t make him feel like he’d painted himself into being somebody else, someone braver. “Just so you know.”

“I know,” Mo Xuanyu’d said. Sect Leader Nie had come to ask him for any information he had about Jin Guangyao. He didn’t say why, but – Nie, Mo Xuanyu’d thought to himself, Nie like Nie Mingjue – he hadn’t been at all expecting to hear the story Mo Xuanyu’d had to tell him. He hadn’t been the one to suggest the ritual, that’d been Mo Xuanyu – he hated, hated, hated – but Mo Xuanyu never did learn the name of any of those extremely villainous ghouls so he’d asked him for a suggestion.

He’d suggested Wei Wuxian, and that’d made Mo Xuanyu giggle to the point of hysterics. Don’t touch the papers, Wei Wuxian didn’t leave much behind – oh, Xue-gege, you’d think this was so funny!)

“Gotta write it down,” he said to himself as he made the cuts and drew the array: it was already starting to glow in a way it hadn’t any of the other times he’d done it, and it wasn’t that he’d gotten any stronger. “Writing it down makes it okay…”

He went to get some paper, and that’s when the cat came in. A big old fisher cat, vicious and mean.

And, well, Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang were always talking about how you’re supposed to try stuff out before you do the real thing – practice makes perfect, that’s what they always said, until the day Jin Guangyao got tired of Xue Yang’s practice and made him disappear, and after that it wasn’t all that long until the day that he got tired of Mo Xuanyu, too, and made the sect kick him out.

(They said he was a cutsleeve, which was true, and they said he’d attacked Jin Guangyao, which was laughable – wasn’t Jin Guangyao the one who was always commenting on how weak Mo Xuanyu was? But that was after he drank the medicine that came with the nightmares and the weird spasms and the rest of it, and it wasn’t as if anyone in Koi Tower had ever listened to anything he said even before that.)

He wasn’t actually going to do anything bad to the cat. He just wanted to use it to make sure he got the markings all done right; it wasn’t as if the array would actually work, not without him in the middle – this array ran on resentment, on revenge, and how much resentment could a cat have?

Apparently Mo Xuanyu’d underestimated cats, or possibly his array-drawing skills, or maybe even it was only that he’d poured so much hatred into the array that when he put the cat down in the middle to see if the positioning was right the whole thing exploded right in Mo Xuanyu’s face.

He woke up to Mo Ziyuan kicking him and yelling about how dare he report him to his parents (he hadn’t reported anything, just asked for his stuff back, he hadn’t even meant to do that because he knew it was pointless but they’d asked what he was thinking about and it had just slipped out) while A-Tong broke all his stuff, but that was pretty normal so he didn’t think too much about it.

The cat leaping for Mo Ziyuan’s face, howling something that sounded an awful lot like the words fuck you except sort of halfway into being a cat’s meow, was new.

Kind of funny, too.

Mo Xuanyu giggled and lay back down on the floor while Mo Ziyuan ran out, crying for his mother, with A-Tong right on his heels as always.

The cat made its way back over to him and jumped up on his chest, looking down at him. It was a pretty handsome cat, now that Mo Xuanyu was looking at it: long and black, with white on its chest and like little socks on its forepaws, a noble appearance that had been concealed by the messy state of its fur.

“I’m sorry I accidentally nearly sacrificed you to a villainous ghoul,” Mo Xuanyu said to it.

“Who told you that I’m a villainous ghoul?” the cat said back. “You couldn’t find another wandering ghost as harmless as me!”

Mo Xuanyu was crazy, yes, but it wasn’t – it wasn’t that type of crazy. He had fits that sent him down to the floor, limbs thrashing crazily; he had days in which he wanted to do nothing but die; screaming nightmares at night and sometimes during the day, hearing and seeing things that weren’t there…

This was still new.

“Did you just talk?” he checked.

“You bet I talked,” the cat said. “Now tell me, how in the world did you manage to offer up the body of a cat? That’s not how that ritual’s supposed to work!”

“It was supposed to be my body, Master Cat,” Mo Xuanyu explained. “But they said that you should always try something out first –”

“First off, you shouldn’t be sacrificing yourself either,” the cat said. “That’s your soul you’re talking about – the ritual just says the soul goes back to the earth, but what if it destroys it entirely? You could’ve been doomed never to reincarnate!”

“That sounds restful,” Mo Xuanyu said wistfully.

“…you have serious issues. You know that, right?”

“Yes, Master Cat.”

“Stop calling me ‘Master Cat’. You know my name, you can use it.”

Mo Xuanyu blinked, long and slow. “But I don’t know your name? You were just the stray that lived out back behind the grocer…”

“I’m Wei Wuxian! You summoned me here and offered me a body!”

Mo Xuanyu hadn’t realized it’d worked. “Does that mean you won’t help me get revenge?” he asked, disappointed.

“I don’t exactly have much of a choice, do I?” The cat – Wei Wuxian – huffed. “That stupid ritual…how many cuts do you have?”

“Four,” Mo Xuanyu said automatically, except when he checked they were about half-there, half-gone, and after a little bit of investigating it looked like the other half of them were echoed in appropriately parallel locations on Wei Wuxian’s fuzzy feline body. “Oops.”

“Oops, he says,” Wei Wuxian said, but he already sounded cheerful again. “Seems like you bound our souls together when you brought me back – probably because there were too many souls in the center of the array, once you added in the cat. Anyway, don’t count me out – two legs or four, I can still help you get revenge. Who on, by the way?”

Mo Xuanyu tried to explain. He wasn’t very good at it, tongue tripping over his words as he tried to put into words why he hated them so much that the idea of killing them had possessed him in every one of his three souls and seven spirits, and it all sounded really stupid when he said it so he went off on a tangent and explained how his father had wanted to use him but he was too useless for that, and his half-brother wanted to kill him but he was too useless for that, and his family just wanted him to die, but –

“Too useless for that,” Wei Wuxian said, and his ears were pinned back against his head with his hackles raised and fur all puffed up all over. “Yeah, I got the gist. Okay. I’m sold. Let’s kill ‘em.”

“Really?”

“…I’m actually pretty bad at cold-blooded murder, even if the people you want me to kill do sound like scum. Hmm. Maybe we could just cause them a lot of trouble? A lot of trouble?”

“That seems like a bad idea,” Mo Xuanyu said doubtfully.

It was, if only because Mo Xuanyu was about as terrible at causing a disaster as he was at anything else.

Wei Wuxian ran off into the main greeting hall and started knocking things around, bellowing unconvincing meows as if he’d never met a cat in his life, and Mo Xuanyu wanted to die of embarrassment, stuttering apologies at the visiting Lan sect disciples that looked about as awkward about the whole thing as he was.

(They’d tried to get him to deal with the fierce corpses first, sending him out to the hills and yelling at him to do something, but he’d never been invited to night-hunts back at the Jin sect so he just stood around uselessly until they’d given up and invited some real cultivators.)

Auntie Mo was furious – even more so when Mo Ziyuan showed up and started trying to hit Mo Xuanyu for being a liar, except he wasn’t lying (Wei Wuxian had shouted something about theft and robbery, about cutting off someone’s hand if they stole from him again, and everyone thought it was Mo Xuanyu doing the yelling and then he’d had to explain, hadn’t he?) and eventually the entire thing got to be so stressful that it brought on one of his fits.

He woke up not long afterward, with his head in a Lan sect disciple’s lap – he was transferring spiritual energy, which was nice of him but unnecessary – and Wei Wuxian on his chest, frantically licking his cheek and trying to whisper questions of “Are you okay? Mo Xuanyu? Can you hear me?” into his ear.

“I’m okay,” he said, blinking away the daze. There were broken teacups and wine jars tossed all around – it must have been one of the screaming fits, where he threw himself down on the floor and tossed and turned and screamed and sometimes frothed at the mouth. He broke a lot of things during those fits, almost always his own. “Sorry for disturbing you.”

“I told you he was a lunatic,” Auntie Mo said, her voice shrill as always. “Always breaking our things, and then he still complains when A-Yuan borrows a little, as if he wouldn’t just break it himself anyway…! Wretched thing! Useless thing! Honored cultivators, please pardon us this embarrassment, forgive me. We’ll take him away at once –”

Mo Xuanyu flinched, and the Lan sect cultivator who still had his fingers on his pulse frowned. He was very young, and Lan sect; he’d probably never encountered a lunatic before. “No need,” he said. “We need to go and get started with setting up the array in the Western Courtyard. Senior Mo here can show us where it is…can’t you?”

“I can,” Mo Xuanyu said, eager to avoid being locked away again. He scrambled to his feet, not forgetting to scoop up Wei Wuxian the troublemaker. “Follow me.”

They said a few more words, reminders not to go outside once the array was set up, and then they followed him, talking quietly behind him –

“Why’d you call him Senior, Sizhui?” one of the Lan sect disciples was asking the other in an undertone. “He’s a lunatic!”

“He’s a cultivator,” the one that had helped him earlier said. “He has a golden core, and he’s older than we are; that means he’s a senior.”

“He’s got a golden core? No way! He paints his face like he’s a hanged ghost!”

“Jingyi! What does it matter what he does with his face? It’s true, I felt it when I transferred him spiritual energy. Anyway, I didn’t want him to get punished just for having a fit…hey!”

That last exclamation had been because Wei Wuxian had twisted out of Mo Xuanyu’s arms and leaped towards the flags they were carrying, snatching one to the ground and rolling around with it.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Mo Xuanyu said, wanting to cry. He didn’t have any grudge against these Lan sect disciples; why was Wei Wuxian making trouble for them? “I didn’t mean to mess up your flag formation, or the…”

“Spirit Summon Flag,” Wei Wuxian muttered from his feet and Mo Xuanyu quickly used a foot to slide him back behind him and pretended he’d been the one to speak, smiling earnestly at them. “Weak, with a range of no more than five li, but serviceable enough; they can go ahead and use it.”

“You know about Spirit Summon Flags?” the taller Lan sect disciple – the one who’d been called Jingyi – asked, looking surprised, and Lan Sizhui elbowed him in the ribs.

Mo Xuanyu shrugged helplessly. “They used them sometimes at the Jin sect,” he said, which was true, even though he’d never gotten involved in that sort of thing. Saying that just made them all look even more surprised, though; probably at the idea that a lunatic like him had been part of the Jin sect in any way shape or form. “That was back before I went crazy. And you don’t have to call me senior – I got kicked out before I learned anything useful.”

“You’re still a fellow cultivator,” Lan Sizhui said, and smiled at him. Mo Xuanyu felt his face go red and he looked away, regretting how easily he showed his emotions; it would probably embarrass Lan Sizhui later on, when he heard the rumors about Mo Xuanyu’s sexual preference. That wasn’t the reason he’d blushed, he’d never had any interest in children – it was only that he liked it when people smiled at him.

“I’ll be going,” he said, and grabbed at Wei Wuxian again, only to miss and nearly trip before finally managing to pick him up. “Good luck with your hunt. I hope it goes well.”

It did not go well. Mo Ziyuan got himself killed by stealing a Spirit Summon Flag – Mo Xuanyu and Wei Wuxian both checked their left arm or forepaw at the same time, seeing the cut there heal up before their eyes; apparently the curse considered it to be close enough, maybe because Wei Wuxian had invented the thing – and somehow Mo Xuanyu ended up being accused of his murderer.

And that was before things got really bad.

“Set up a blocking array at the corner,” Wei Wuxian hissed in his ear.

“I can’t!” Mo Xuanyu said, hiding behind a tree. “I don’t know any arrays!”

“What?! Impossible. You did the body offering array – that’s extremely difficult, especially for someone of your cultivation level.”

“It’s the only one I was ever taught,” Mo Xuanyu explained, and Wei Wuxian’s fur suddenly puffed up all over again.

“Someone is going to die, and not necessarily the Mo family,” he said darkly; it might have been more intimidating if Mo Xuanyu hadn’t tied a red ribbon around his throat earlier to try to make the idea of him being someone’s pet a little more believable. “Whoever did that really only wanted you for one thing, didn’t they? I wonder why they wanted me back so badly.”

Mo Xuanyu was about to explain that actually Wei Wuxian hadn’t been the original target, but then there was more yelling – the Lan sect juniors were very competent but the ghost hand was terrifying – and Wei Wuxian got distracted, hissing at Mo Xuanyu to kick Lan Jingyi.

He obeyed on instinct, which saved Lan Sizhui’s life, and then Wei Wuxian was out of his hands again, streaking towards the corpses like a bolt of feline lightning, and suddenly there were three more corpses standing up and fighting against the possessed remains of Auntie Mo.

“Looks like I can still cultivate,” Wei Wuxian said happily, strolling back over and using the tree to leap back up to Mo Xuanyu’s shoulder. “I thought I should be able to use your golden core, given the way the curse bound us together…how are we doing on the curse, anyway?”

Mo Xuanyu checked. “I think that’s everyone, actually? I should thank whoever sent the ghost hand.”

Wei Wuxian was silent for a moment. “Huh, you’re right,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking about it at first, but those Spirit Summon Flags definitely didn’t have enough of a range to summon a ghost hand like that from far away – and we would have heard of a lot more deaths if it’d been that close. Someone must have released it near here.”

Mo Xuanyu hadn’t been thinking along those lines at all. It was only that no matter where he lived, Mo Manor or Koi Tower, there was almost always someone causing bad things to happen.

“Should we do something to help?” he asked hesitantly, watching the battle unfold and then flinching when there was an unexpected sound – two strums on a guqin, full of spiritual power.

“Nope!” Wei Wuxian said. “In fact, we should leave. Right now.”

“Leave…?”

“You can’t be planning on staying at Mo Manor now that everyone’s dead? Come on! Let’s go! Hanguang-jun’s here; he’ll take care of the ghost hand.”

“I wasn’t planning anything,” Mo Xuanyu argued even as he headed towards the exit obediently. “I was going to be dead, and the body would be yours, and you could do whatever you liked with it when you were done.”

“Well, we’re done,” Wei Wuxian said. “And you’re not dead. You’re just going to have to live with that.”

“Live with…not being dead?”

“Just accept the glorious wisdom of your elders already,” Wei Wuxian said cheerfully. “Either way: we go. As quickly as possible. Before anyone notices. Is there anything you need to pack? We should take the donkey in that courtyard.”

“And money,” Mo Xuanyu said practically, heading for Auntie Mo’s room first. After all, she was dead and wouldn’t need it, and he was the last living heir of the Mo family – it was only reasonable that he take the first pick before everyone else got it. “You can always use money, even if you’re dead. Or a cat.”

Travelling was a bizarre experience.

Mo Xuanyu hadn’t been allowed to go outside of Mo Manor in a few years – Wei Wuxian hissed and spat some very impressive curses on the Mo family name, present company excluded – and even at his time in the Jin sect, he’d always been taken places by other people. Now, for the first time, he was alone…well, alone but for Wei Wuxian, who insisted that they had to stay together, curse or no curse, because of how they’d been bound. Mo Xuanyu suspected the real reason was because he didn’t think Mo Xuanyu could make it by himself, and he was probably right.

At any rate, he didn’t have anywhere to go, so instead he followed Wei Wuxian’s instructions to head towards Dafan Mountain to see if they could find some tombs that Wei Wuxian would be able to use. He still had fits, still wanted to die rather a lot, but he ended up spending so much of his time trying to coax the donkey (dubbed Little Apple by Wei Wuxian after they figured out that apples were the best and possibly only incentive to get it moving) that he didn’t have time to think about it too much.

Not being around either Auntie Mo or anyone from the Jin sect helped. Wei Wuxian wasn’t too bad – he may have been a villainous ghoul once, but now he was a cat.

“Didn’t you used to cultivate with a flute?” he asked as they walked along the mountain paths late at night. Well, the donkey walked, Mo Xuanyu rode the donkey, and Wei Wuxian rode in Mo Xuanyu’s arms. “What are you going to do about that? You can’t play a flute anymore; you’re a cat.”

“Cats are innately musical creatures,” Wei Wuxian said. His voice had become a lot more human in the past few days, rich and compelling and increasingly lacking the rough meows that had initially interrupted his speech. It was no surprise that someone as talented as him could pick up being a cat faster than Mo Xuanyu had ever learned to pick up being human.

Mo Xuanyu narrowed his eyes. “That’s a lie, right?” Wei Wuxian had been trying to teach him how to distinguish those, but they weren’t having very much success with it. “I don’t think I’ve heard a single decent sound out of –”

“Why don’t we see who’s making that noise?” Wei Wuxian said loudly, so they dismounted and went to go look.

There were people yelling, caught in a golden net.

“Can you get them down?” he asked Wei Wuxian, who reached out with his claws to grab a leaf, muttering something that was probably uncomplimentary.

And then –

Oh, no.

“Why are you hiding behind a tree again?” Wei Wuxian asked him, not keeping especially quiet. “Don’t tell me you’re hiding from that little Jin sect boy who clearly didn’t have a mother to teach him?”

Mo Xuanyu dropped him like he was a boiling hot skillet.

Like everything he’d ever done on instinct, the move immediately backfired: Wei Wuxian landed on Little Apple’s foreleg claws first and suddenly Little Apple was braying loud enough to wake the dead, which set Wei Wuxian off yowling and hissing right back at him.

“Who is that?!” Jin Ling demanded, striding over with an extremely cross expression that suggested he’d heard the bit about mothers. “Who is – oh. It’s you.”

Mo Xuanyu weakly lifted up a hand. “Uh…it’s nice to see you, Jin Ling.”

Wei Wuxian’s yowls cut off as if he’d been suddenly smothered.

Jin Ling glared at him. “Stupid cutsleeve, you think I didn’t hear what you said earlier?”

“I didn’t!” Mo Xuanyu said immediately, starting to shake at once. He couldn’t bear it when people in bright yellow were angry at him, not since those last few days at the Jin sect; it was a sure-fire way to bring on a fit. “I swear I didn’t! I – I –”

Jin Ling lifted his sword and Mo Xuanyu squatted down to cover his head at once, feeling his eyes overflow with blubbering tears as he began to panic. “I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t,” he wailed. “Don’t hit me! I don’t want to drink any medicine! I don’t want to get hit! I didn’t do it!”

“You…!” Jin Ling didn’t seem to know what to do now. “You’re such a coward! You – damnit!”

Mo Xuanyu had his face hidden away, so he didn’t see what Jin Ling did next, braced as he was for a blow. He could vaguely hear the sword being put away, but that didn’t diminish his fear in the slightest: the majority of the Jin sect had never been willing to use swords on each other, thinking it disgraceful. Even Jin Guangyao didn’t use his sword very much – he preferred other methods.

Mo Xuanyu was most afraid of those other methods.

He flinched violently when someone lightly touched his shoulder.

“Stop crying, you’re making a fool of yourself!” Jin Ling said, his harsh voice at odds with the gentle touch of his fingers. “Have some thought to your face, okay?! You can’t embarrass yourself like this! Aren’t you my uncle, after all?”

“He’s your what?!” Wei Wuxian’s muffled voice came from under a bush.

“It’s true no matter how you look at it, even if I don’t want it to be,” Jin Ling said with a sniff, clearly assuming the exclamation had come from Mo Xuanyu. “Listen here, what are you doing on Dafan Mountain anyway?”

Mo Xuanyu snuffled, wiping his nose with his sleeve. “Well, my cat –”

“Night hunting!” Wei Wuxian hissed.

“I mean, I was night hunting,” Mo Xuanyu repeated obediently, then frowned. “That’s not really believable, is it?”

Jin Ling looked pityingly at him. “Not really. Do you need – is there something…?”

“Those words from earlier were really rude,” Wei Wuxian said from the bushes, and Mo Xuanyu covered his face with his hands. “They shouldn’t have been said.”

“Yeah, well, whatever. It’s not like I haven’t heard it all before –”

“Jin Ling, get away from him,” a low, cold voice said from behind him.

Mo Xuanyu’s shoulders slumped. It wasn’t relief so much as it was resignation: if there was one thing he knew, that everyone knew, it was that you didn’t cross Jiang Cheng. They said he could smell the stink of demonic cultivation on you, and once he did, that was that, and Mo Xuanyu was pretty sure, though no one had ever said for sure, that the body offering array was some form of demonic cultivation.

They said Jiang Cheng would take demonic cultivators back to the Lotus Pier to be tortured to death.

Mo Xuanyu was almost looking forward to it. Other than the horrible sword flights back and forth to Koi Tower in Lanling, Dafan Mountain was the furthest from home he’d been, and Wei Wuxian had been waxing poetic about the beauties of the Lotus Pier for days now; it would be nice to see it, however briefly, before he died.

He’d probably get to see lots of Jiang Cheng, too – he’d only ever caught glimpses of him before, when he was visiting Koi Tower, so he’d never had a chance to look his fill. And whatever could be said about the man’s temper, it couldn’t be denied that he had a first-rate face.

“Why?” Jin Ling asked, not moving. “It’s only Mo Xuanyu. Did you ever meet him? He’s –”

“Not him,” Jiang Cheng said, and he looked – bemused? That wasn’t the expression Mo Xuanyu would have been expecting. “It was – Wei Wuxian…wait, the cat?!”

Mo Xuanyu’s mouth dropped open in shock. How did he know?

“Definitely not!” Wei Wuxian blurted out, which didn’t seem smart, and suddenly Jiang Cheng looked extremely confused and abruptly sat down.

“Uncle, what are you talking about?” Jin Ling said. “Are you okay?”

“No,” Jiang Cheng said, a hand to his temple as if he had a headache, or possibly questioning his sanity. “It’s – it’s the cat. I heard – that voice – Wei Wuxian wouldn’t be sniveling on the ground like a newborn infant, and the only other thing around is – so it must be –”

“Is lunacy contagious or something?” Jin Ling demanded. “Uncle, I know you’ve been looking for him for years, but you can’t seriously think Wei Wuxian resurrected himself as a cat!”

“Meow!” Wei Wuxian said desperately, except it was as awful a meow as it’d ever been – entirely human. “Meow, meow –”

“That voice –!”

“Uncle!”

“Shut up!” Mo Xuanyu abruptly yelled, pushed entirely beyond his limits. “All of you! Just shut up! Stop yelling and stop harassing my cat!”

With that, he grabbed Wei Wuxian and ran blindly into the woods.

He kept running until the air wouldn’t enter his lungs anymore, and then he fell down under a tree and burst into tears again, the fear and panic and exercise all escalating uncontrollably until he fell into another fit, no matter how much Wei Wuxian tried to talk him down.

When Mo Xuanyu woke up, he felt as though he really had gotten beaten up by Jin Ling, even though he knew he hadn’t been. He groaned.

“You’re awake again, good,” Wei Wuxian said. He was standing on his two hind legs, forepaws behind his back as he slowly paced a circle. “Those fits of yours – they only started after you went crazy, you said?”

Mo Xuanyu nodded and sat up, rubbing his face – he didn’t have a mirror to check, but all those tears must have messed up his make-up. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the case of cosmetics he’d insisted on taking the time to remove from Mo Manor, no matter how much Wei Wuxian had urged him to leave quickly before they were found.

“Based on the things you’ve said, it seems like there was a particular point in time where you went crazy – enough that you can accurately pin-point things as being before and after.”

Mo Xuanyu nodded again, using his fingers to apply more red paint around his eyes, which were still a little swollen and tender from all the crying.

“And you said something when Jin Ling was holding his sword – damnit, that was Suihua, I should have recognized it at once – anyway, you said something about…about not wanting to drink medicine?”

Wei Wuxian certainly fixated on the strangest things, Mo Xuanyu reflected. Maybe lunacy really was contagious.

“Someone poisoned you,” Wei Wuxian concluded. He still had the red ribbon around his neck – in combination with the way he was just barely maintaining his upright balance and the way his tail was lashing around, it was rather cute. “If it took place in the Jin sect, it was probably something with quicksilver, since they use it to make vermillion. It damages the brain and liver if consumed in high quantities, and it’s associated with epilepsy, hallucinations, and terrible nightmares; it’s been used since ancient times to make men into fools.”

Mo Xuanyu nodded politely, mostly disinterested. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know who was behind it, and it didn’t really matter what exactly was involved – if anything, the medicine could almost be seen as Jin Guangyao’s way of being nice. He could have had Mo Xuanyu disappeared the way he did for Xue Yang, or he could have fed him to Xue Yang’s fierce corpses, or even just slit his throat...at least by going mad, Mo Xuanyu would still be useful to Jin Guangyao, a vivid demonstration that any madness in their bloodline must have come from their shared father’s side, not the mother.

He wasn’t sure why Jin Guangyao cared about that, but at least he wasn’t dead. No, wait, didn’t he want to be dead? His half-brother was so confusing sometimes.

Maybe sending Mo Xuanyu back to Mo Manor, back to Auntie Mo and all the others that Jin Guangyao knew Mo Xuanyu feared, maybe it was supposed to teach him how to hate enough, so that he could make the ritual work – if so, Mo Xuanyu’d probably disappointed Jin Guangyao all over again.

“…some ways to at least ease the symptoms, maybe more if we can find a good enough doctor.” Wei Wuxian was still talking, for some reason. “At least you have your golden core; if you were a regular person, there wouldn’t be any hope at all.”

“Hope is overrated,” Mo Xuanyu said. “It just makes it worse when you’re inevitably disappointed, and then you die, if you’re lucky.”

Xue-gege had taught him that one, and he was even pretty sure he’d quoted it correctly, but Wei Wuxian didn’t look particularly impressed.

“I’ve heard that quicksilver poisoning can cause qi deviation, which is associated with suicidal urges,” Wei Wuxian said, dropping to all four legs and then hopping onto his shoulder. “Let me try to stabilize your qi – maybe it’ll keep you from saying things like that all the time. Go on, get up and stretch your legs a bit; they’re probably sore from all the running and thrashing you were doing.”

Mo Xuanyu walked all right, walked right into a confrontation with a stone goddess, which was honestly just how this day was going. Wei Wuxian really needed to stop being so surprised when bad things happened.

“Can you play the flute?” Wei Wuxian hissed into his ear, all thoughts of qi stabilization forgotten. “I need to summon something powerful, and yowling, while surprisingly effective, isn’t going to cut it.”

“I can play the dizi,” Mo Xuanyu offered. “But I’m not good at it, and anyway we don’t have –”

“Good enough! Grab that piece of bamboo and give it to me, I can use my claws to make the holes, and you can follow the tune that I show you –”

Wei Wuxian meowed, Mo Xuanyu played, and Wei Wuxian’s ears went flat backwards in apparent agony.

“Whoever taught you should be tortured to death,” he said briefly before resuming his guidance, focusing in on whatever demonic cultivation technique he was doing – it made the Ghost General appear, so Mo Xuanyu assumed it was successful, although Wei Wuxian’s shocked muttering suggested something had gone wrong regardless. Again, not much of a surprise.

One thing led to another, and then a tall man in Lan sect white showed up along with the juniors from Mo Manor, along with Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling, and at that point Mo Xuanyu decided that some of this bad luck had to be Wei Wuxian’s, because even the worst of his bad days weren’t usually this bad.

Wei Wuxian panicked when they bumped into the tall man – Hanguang-jun, apparently? Mo Xuanyu vaguely recalled hearing about him, but he’d never come to Koi Tower while Mo Xuanyu had been there – and it was very uncomfortable to have a panicking cat on his shoulder, especially when he was still trying to remember enough flute-playing to follow along with the tune Wei Wuxian was meowing, something more relaxing to try to calm down the Ghost General.

“…Wei Ying?” Hanguang-jun said, staring at the cat.

Mo Xuanyu stopped playing and turned his head to stare at Wei Wuxian. “How are you this obvious?” he asked.

“This is not my fault,” Wei Wuxian exclaimed, aggravated. “I’m a cat! Nobody should be blaming me!”

“I think I’m losing my mind,” Jiang Cheng, located somewhere further away on the field, said, his voice sounding strangled. “I really do swear I just heard….”

“That was me!” Mo Xuanyu said quickly. “Totally me! I picked up ventriloquism to better process the auditory hallucinations! I’m very sick, and also a lunatic – you can just ignore me!”

Nobody seemed especially convinced.

“…Sect Leader Jiang,” Hanguang-jun said after a while. “There are very good healers dedicated to the calming of the mind at the Cloud Recesses. I can take Young Master Mo – and his cat – with me to see them, which I think will be beneficial to everyone involved.”

“Fine,” Jiang Cheng said. “But I’m coming too. I think I need it.”

Hanguang-jun frowned for a moment and the two of them stared at each other for a long time, unspoken emotions crackling in the air between them. Finally, he nodded. “Very well.”

“You know, I don’t think we’ve ever agreed to go to -” Wei Wuxian started to say, but Mo Xuanyu stuffed his fingers over his little snout. Hanguang-jun was the second master of the Lan sect, which meant Zewu-jun was his brother, and Zewu-jun was Jin Guangyao’s friend – and you didn’t go against what Jin Guangyao wanted, not if you knew what was good for you.

Mo Xuanyu might be stupid, but even he could figure something out after it hurt enough.

“It’s fine,” he said. “We’ll go with you for a little, but you have to promise to let us go afterwards. You have to promise, you hear me? I don’t want to be locked away again!”

Hanguang-jun had a strange expression on his face, which was about the same as the expression on Jiang Cheng’s face, and Jin Ling’s, and all the Lan juniors – had Mo Xuanyu said something wrong?

“Your freedom and safety will be assured,” Hanguang-jun said.

“And my cat’s!”

Jiang Cheng put his hand on his head, looking pained.

“And your cat,” Hanguang-jun agreed peaceably, and turned and started to lead the way.

Mo Xuanyu and all the others followed behind.

“Fine,” Wei Wuxian muttered in Mo Xuanyu’s ear once the others were far enough ahead to not immediately overhear. “We can go with Lan Zhan back to Gusu one time. They really do have good healers there, anyway – but I want to talk to him about that ghost hand. Someone released it right next to Mo Manor, probably the same person who wanted me back so badly that he taught you how to do the body offering array, and I want to have words with that person.”

Mo Xuanyu was a little confused: was it Sect Leader Nie he wanted to talk to or Jin Guangyao? And why was Wei Wuxian so angry at them? They were both so nice, at least some of the time…better not to ask.

“You should get some Emperor’s Smile when you get to Gusu,” Wei Wuxian added.

“I don’t drink,” Mo Xuanyu objected.

“For me.”

“Cats don’t drink.”

“I’m not planning on being a cat forever,” Wei Wuxian said. “And won’t that be a surprise to everyone?”

Mo Xuanyu thought about it. “No,” he said after a moment. “I really don’t think it will be, actually.”

#mdzs #mo xuanyu #wei wuxian #jin guangyao #xue yang #lan wangji #jiang cheng #jin ling #nie huaisang #my fic #my fics #dark #just assume ALL the trigger warnings #Anonymous

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