#it's so ingrained into him too like... it's not something he can just unlearn or forget!

[juneknight]

obsessed || 2

Part One

About this: college au. dorm room!marc/fem!reader. Oral sex (f receiving) No I don't edit or proofread my works, thanks for asking!

Immersivity: reader is given no overt physical description and no name. Details about her figure/body could be assumed based on the fact that she wears a pair of Marc's stollen pajama pants. It is referenced that she comes from a sex-negative household. Any further details which hinder your immersive experience are welcome to be pointed out to me.

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That’s how he gets you sitting ramrod straight on the center cushion of the couch, knees pressed so tightly together that not even the holy ghost could come between them, both hands covering your face. Marc sits cross legged at your feet, laughing at you. With your eyes covered, he can let his face relax from its cold, neutral expression into one of mesmerized fondness. You have that effect on him. You melt him into something liquid and soft. 

God, he’s a fucking idiot. It’s hard enough living with you now; how is he meant to go on the way things have been once he’s had a taste of you? How is he supposed to listen to you gargle in the bathroom knowing he’s had his mouth on you? His excuse—being pent up and craving pussy—is thin enough for him to see through. Marc’s been jerking off plenty enough at night (and in the shower, and anytime you’re in class and he has the dorm room to himself), and he’s had a handful of opportunities that could have opened the door for sex though he hadn’t followed through with them.

Because he wants you. 

“Come on,” he says, tapping your shin. His eyes linger on the way his pajama pants fit you. You don’t even fucking know what it does to him to see you prancing around in his clothes. With your eyes covered, he feels safe enough to reach down and palm his cock which is aching beneath the denim of his jeans. The little bit of friction helps and hurts all at once. “Spread ‘em.” 

“I’m shy,” you bark at him. 

The naivete would be a turn off if he didn’t know you better. In the majority of situations, you’re far from inexperienced, and he has never known you to be shy in the classroom or at parties. But after many nights similar to this (spent talking about anything and everything), he knows that you grew up in a household where sex was viewed very particularly. Those long-ingrained doctrines have been difficult to unlearn, no matter how much you want to. 

“Hey,” he says. “Just be honest with me. Don’t say yes just because you think I want to. If you don’t want to, then I don’t want to.” 

You lower your hands. “It’s not that I don’t want…to. I’m just scared.” 

Scared. Marc tends to have that effect on people; he’s been told that he’s too deadpan, too intense, too cold. You aren’t the only one holding on to a less than stellar childhood. Even though you had skirted a safe perimeter around him for the first few days you’d shared classes together, you’d been quick to see something in him that others hadn’t. Something that Marc didn’t even see in himself. Always though the fear comes creeping in, the fear that you’re afraid of him. 

He has to know—whether it hurts or not, he has to know. “What are you scared of, baby? Me? Me…accidentally hurting you like that last guy did?”

“No,” you rush to assure him. His shoulders lower but jaw remains tight. He isn’t sure if he believes you. “I know that you wouldn’t hurt me. And you’re probably a lot more careful than that other guy was. I guess I just…don’t know what you’re getting out of it. What if you think I’m disgusting?” 

“I literally spent fifteen minutes earlier waxing poetry about eating pussy. If you think I’m not going to thoroughly enjoy myself, then you’re wrong, and for what it’s worth—you could never disgust me.” Honest, too honest, Marc, some voice warns from the back of his mind. He lifts one hand to let it rest below your knee, gently clasping your shin. “If you want it, I want it. Let me make this good for you.” 

You let out a shaky sigh. His heart pounds when, marginally, your knees begin to open. Marc lets his thumb drift down from the top of your knee down and inward, breaching the newly open space and rubbing your leg softly through the flannel pajama pants. “Okay. What should I do?”

“You should probably take your pants off.” Then, he thinks about it. “No, wait, just stand up. Let me take them off of you.” 

Then you’re standing, calves pressed against the couch cushions when Marc doesn’t move back to give you any room. He’s eye level with the crotch of your pajamas. Glancing up at you, he’s surprised to see your eyes already on him, wide and unblinking, staring down at him with something akin to amazement. The moment is almost enough to make his head spin. Here he is, on his knees for you, about to undress you and put his mouth on you. 

His hands come up and rest at your waist, thumbing at your hips until he sinks his fingertips over and beneath the waistband of the pajama pants. He lets his fingers brush against the top elastic band of your panties and you shiver above him. 

And god help him. God help him because—

“Remember when I said that when a woman is really wet, you can smell her?” he rasps, pulling his thumb free to trace a vertical line from the waistband down towards the top of your mound, stopping just centimeters above where your clit must be. Feeling like he’s about to be torn apart, Marc leans in and nuzzles against the crotch of your pants. He inhales sharply the smell of you. The smell of you wet for him. “Fuck, I love it. Fuck, fuck. Can I take these off?” 

You nod, but that isn’t the enthusiasm he wants. 

“Can you say it?” 

You clear your throat. “Yes. You can take them off.” 

With all the care of handling crystal, he peels them from your hips and slips them down your thighs, eyes tracing the newly exposed skin before zeroing in on your panties. They are a pale lilac, cute and sensible compared to some of the other pairs he’s seen in the laundry hamper on the rare occasion that he lifts the lid to put his own clothes inside. He clenches his jaw trying to hold himself back from leaning in and pulling your panties down with his fucking teeth. Gentler than he feels, he guides your hips back until you sit heavily on the couch. With care, he slips the pants off of your feet and brushes them aside, kneeling up onto his knees and then resting back on his heels. 

“Open up,” he murmurs, staring at your cloth-covered cunt. “Spread your legs for me.” 

You do. As soon as your knees spread just a few handbreadths apart, Marc groans, a punched-out sound. The crotch of your panties are soaked a darker purple, clinging to your cunt so that his eyes can just barely trace your folds. 

“Holy fuck, look at you,” he says. “You’re so fucking wet, aren’t you? Look at this.” 

Both of your hands fly up to cover your eyes. He makes an unhappy sound in the back of his throat. You crack open your fingers an inch so you can look down at his raised brow. “Don’t hide from me. I want to see your face. It will help me know if I’m doing something wrong. Or something right.”

Fighting what must be your instinctual urge to hide, you lower your hands to your sides and clench them into tight fists. You’re being so brave for him, for yourself. Marc drags his palms up and down the sides of your calves, relishing the cool softness of your skin and trying to ease your tense muscles. 

“Tell me what he did wrong,” Marc says, breath fanning across your bare thighs. “How did it hurt? I don’t want to do anything that might hurt you.” 

“‘m sensitive,” you grumble. 

Marc breathes a laugh. “Yeah, it’s your pussy, I bet it’s sensitive. How sensitive, though? Was it too much when he was using his tongue? Or was he using his teeth?”

“The tongue was fine,” you say, speaking about it the way you might a mediocre appetizer you’ve been served at a restaurant. Marc holds his jealousy in a tightly closed fist. Now isn’t the time to be jealous of some young boy who couldn’t even make you feel good. Now is Marc’s turn.  “But he—oh my god, I hate you, I can’t say this shit out loud Marc.” 

“Tell me,” he murmurs, unable to help leaning in to press the softest kiss against your knee. Your chest hitches at the contact, a movement his eyes track but his mind doesn’t understand.

“He was…”

“Was…” 

“Sucking on me. On my clit. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if I wasn’t so anxious. If I was turned on like, at all.” 

“Consider it noted,” Marc says, refusing to pat his own back by pointing out how turned on you seem right now. Then with gentle pressure (to give you plenty a chance to refuse him) he coaxes you to spread your thighs wide and then wider. 

“Shouldn’t I take off my underwear?” you ask.

“Not if you might be too sensitive,” says Marc. “Come here. Slouch down.” 

You shift around, but not nearly low enough for his liking. So he slips his hands beneath you, cupping your ass and pulling until your cunt is at the edge of the couch, inches from his waiting mouth. The squeal you give has him pursing his lips to keep from laughing. His strength always seems to surprise you.

Gazing up at you, he waits for you to nod before he turns his head and lays a soft kiss on the tender skin inside your thigh. Above him, you exhale shakily. The feeling of your skin beneath his lips has his head buzzing. He begins dragging his mouth upwards, his kisses growing ever-more open mouthed until he is blatantly tasting your skin. His eyes flicker shut as he inhales noisily, the scent of your arousal making his cock twitch. He switches thighs. 

A sound slips through the back of your throat, something high and breathy. A whine. Marc’s eyes flash open at the sound, flickering all across your face for any hint of pain. But he doesn’t find it. If anything, you look fucked out: mouth parted, eyes heavy lidded. He hasn’t even fucking touched you.

I can do this, he thinks. I can make you feel good.

He softly sucks blood to the surface of your skin until you can’t seem to sit still, thighs tensing beneath his mouth. When he opens his eyes, your panties are even wetter. Enough teasing the both of you, he thinks. He shifts and drags the tip of his curved nose up the seam of your clothed cunt, nudging so softly against the apex.

“Oh my god,” you mutter above him, sounding about as wrecked as some of his past partners did when he was already finished with them.

He’s losing it. He can feel it, the threads of his control fraying beneath the sharp edges of his desire for you. Never does he think that he wouldn’t be able to stop if you asked him to or if you gave any indication that you weren’t enthusiastically enjoying his work, but he wants to make sure that you know you’re in control. You’re in control of him, no matter how consumed he appears. 

“If you want me to stop, you say the fucking word okay?” he rasps. His lips brush against your underwear and come away faintly sticky with slick. He doesn’t even let himself lick it from his lips, not yet. “And if I’m not stopping fast enough for your liking, gouge my goddamn eyes out, you hear me?” 

He waits until you give a frantic bob of your head. Then he licks the flat of his tongue up the soaked crotch of your panties. It’s hard to tell who groans loudest. You taste good. His jaw aches the way it does when he sucks on something sweet, mouth salivating. He laps at you again and again, careful not to be too forceful. Your thighs clench tight around his head and he has to pull them away and pin them open wide to the couch so that he can move the way he wants to. 

“Is—am I—” Marc begrudgingly opens his eyes to see you struggling to speak. He struggles to keep his gaze on you. The taste of you in his mouth, the feel of your warm skin beneath his hands, the serenity of this moment all has his eyes wanting to roll back. It takes a herculean effort to pull his mouth from you, to lay his head on your thigh taking deep breaths through his nose while waiting for you to collect your thoughts. You finally manage to ask: “Am I—gross?”

Marc blinks. “Are you gross? Baby who the hell hurt you?”

It’s your turn to blink down at him. “What?”

“Who in the fuck has put you so deep inside your head that you can’t see I’m sixty seconds away from cumming in my pants because you taste so fucking good? Because you smell so fucking good? Because you sound so fucking good? You know what. Don’t answer that—” Marc reaches backwards towards the coffee table, finding the flier he’d written on earlier: HOMETOWN DICK is scrawled there. He slaps it on the couch cushion beside you along with the capless pen. “—write it down if you can and I’ll get to them later.”

He lets saliva pool on his tongue before his next lick of you. Between his spit and your own slick, your thighs are wet and sticky, panties soaked. He can’t help but reach up to tug upwards at the waistband just a bit, just so the fabric rides up flush against your pussy so he can see every last curve and fold of you. The stimulation of the fabric must feel good because you whine—honest to god whine, your pelvis giving the most adorable little arches as you try to decide whether to press into the stimulation or press away from it so that his hand draws the fabric against you tighter. 

Marc has to let go to keep your thighs spread as they try to creep in closer to his ears. His eyes are shut as he laps at you with long, firm strokes, alternating directions, doing his best to be gentle in case you’re as sensitive as you think. Periodically he glances up to make sure you’re okay, and that is when he notices the way your hands are clenched into fists, shaking with the force you’re using to keep them still. He reaches out. Your fingers are cool beneath his, and at the first touch, your hand opens up, blossoming like a flower so he can lace your fingers together. He smiles against your pussy—he hadn’t intended to hold hands, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to turn it down. 

“Put your hands in my hair,” he says. He gently shakes his head from side to side letting the flat of his tongue rub against your clit. Your gasp makes your chest heave, fingers clamping down around his. Fuck, yes. You just need something you can pull on. “C’me on, baby, you can get rough with me.” 

Your eyes are wet, wide as you shakily move your hands to his hair. The feel of your fingers in his curls is divine. His lashes flutter. “Yeah?” you breathe. “I don’t want to hurt you.” 

“Hurt me, baby, I love it, okay?” 

You tug a little. His cock jerks where it’s still confined in denim. “But what if you need to breathe?” 

“Don’t care,” he says. “Drown me in your pussy, I do not fucking care. Okay?” 

“Ma-arc,” you whine, thighs spasming. “God Marc, please—” 

He groans, pausing to lap at your thighs, to clean up the mess he’s making. “Please what, baby? I’ll give you anything, just ask for it.” 

“Just—don’t stop, please—” 

And he doesn’t. He has no plans to. Not when his scalp is alight with the way you pull at every new movement of his tongue, not when you’re so fucking vocal, whining his name and little pleas and nonsensical strings of words that will forever echo in his brain. He doesn’t know how you manage to touch yourself so quietly at night when you think he’s asleep, when the only indications he gets that you’re touching yourself at all are the little shifts of the bed, the way you hold your breath before you cum, and (sometimes, on nights when you must be really, really worked up) the occasional wet sound of your fingers slipping over your clit.

“Marc, ‘m gonna cum,” you gasp. 

Marc’s heart stutters in his chest. He finds one of his hands lowering, aching to press a finger or two inside of you so that he can feel the clench of your pussy when he pushes you over the edge. But that’s just another good reason why he left your panties on; the last thing he needs is to push your boundaries in the heat of the moment, to lose his head and maybe take a liberty that would hurt you. He lets his thumb press against your soaked panties though, notching itself against your entrance even through the fabric. His jaw aches, legs numb from where he’s kneeling on them, but nothing could stop him now. Nothing. 

He focuses on the aching little knot of your clit, letting his tongue rasp over it until your back bows off of the couch, your breath stuttering and then stopping altogether the way he’s already so familiar with. Your fingers spasm in his hair, nearly losing your grip and then you’re pulling him closer, his nose pressed into your pubic bone, thighs shivering and shaking while you give a short cry. 

You came. You are cumming. Because of him. For him. He can feel the way your entrance spasms beneath the firm press of his thumb, and he lets himself imagine how that would feel around his cock. There’s no harm in just thinking about it. If thinking it were a sin, Marc’s soul would be lost long ago. 

Just as he expects you to come down, he finds you doing the opposite. 

“Don’t stop, don’t don’t, please, I can cum again—can I? Please—” 

Marc lets out a broken moan, nodding his head. Fuck it does things to him, hearing you beg, hearing you ask him for permission, like he has more of a say when you cum than you do. But you are pushing him back suddenly, and he jerks away as if he has been burned, eyes wide—had he had a time-slip? Had he missed something, some indication that you really wanted him to stop and not continue?

But all you do is shift your hips up, hooking your thumbs in the waistband of your panties and wrenching them down over your thighs, knees, tossing them to the side. He pulls his eyes away from where he’s dying to let them rest so that he can look at your face: damp at your temples, lips swollen from biting them. Your chest is heaving, and out of the corner of his eye he sees your hands clutch into fists again, suddenly anxious, exposed—

Exposed for him. Because you wanted to be. Because you chose to be. 

Marc lets his eyes fall, takes in your swollen pussy, slick with your own cum, and not to get fucking philosophical, but he’s pretty sure that it’s going to change his life. He wants it. He wants his mouth on it. He finds himself being drawn in like your pussy is a fucking siren and he’s ready to dash his ship on the fucking rocks just to drown in it happily. He barely manages to stop himself at the last moment.

“Can I?” he rasps. 

“Please,” you groan. 

He swipes his tongue from your entrance to your clit. Your taste is so much more concentrated like this, a little salt and a little sweet. He can’t help but press his tongue inside you as deep as your pussy will allow, his head nearly spinning when he feels the way you clench down softly, like you’re trying to keep him inside you. Then there is a sharp tug of his hair as you drag him back upwards a fraction. 

“My clit, please, pleasepleaseplease—” 

His eyes nearly roll. Fuck, he loves when you’re a little bossy. He loves when you’re confident, loves to see you chasing what feels good without letting your insecurities get in the way. He takes your clit between his lips and sucks sweetly, letting his tongue flicker over it. Only a few moments have passed since your last orgasm, and it’s clear that you’re heading towards another with the way your nails dig into his scalp, your breaths coming more and more stuttered. Beneath your breath, all you can repeat is fuck fuck fuck fuckfuckfuck. 

This time when you cum, you shriek. The volume of it clearly surprises you because it sends you into trilling peels of laughter that have him grinning even as he struggles to focus on prolonging your pleasure, letting his teeth graze over you just to see the way your laughter cuts off and your back arches, a gasp pulled from deep within your chest. 

“Holy fuck, Marc,” you gasp wetly. “Oh my god. I want to go for a third. Can I?” 

“Fuck, you’re one of those girls,” he laughs breathily. “And you thought you were too sensitive. Yeah, baby. Three for three sounds good.” 

This time his jaw just can’t keep up. You don’t seem to mind when braces a hand against your lower tummy and lets his thumb rub the slick little nub. The exhaustion of your all-nighter has clearly caught up to the both of you. He nearly loses himself watching the way your thighs go lax, utterly relaxed in your pleasure. Your head tilts on your neck like you can’t keep it up straight. Your lashes rest against your cheeks as you breathe out his name and ask so fucking sweetly, would you put a finger in me?

“Need something to clench down on?” Marc wonders, resting his head on your thigh. “Is your poor little pussy empty?” 

“Uh-huh,” is all you can whisper back. “Feels good to have someth’n inside when I cum.” 

“I’ll bet it does,” he whispers back. Gently, so gently, he eases a finger into you. You’re burning hot, slick and soft. Your orgasms have you so relaxed around him, he immediately knows that you could take another of his fingers. Two seems to offer you the stretch you want, because your shoulders sag in relief, walls clenching around him. 

When you cum for the last time, Marc gets to feel it. Wrung dry as you are, your pussy does nothing but give soft little spasms around his fingers as he flexes them and rubs the slick textured walls inside you. Your thighs twitch, a low whine rising in the back of your throat as he overstimulates you. But he can’t help it. He wants every last moment of your pleasure. He wants to commit every moment to memory in case this is all he ever gets from you, in case after graduation you move away and it’s all he has left of you. 

When Marc pulls his fingers free, he doesn’t hesitate to tuck them into his mouth and suck them clean. Your eyes are shut, head reclining back against the couch, thighs still spread as far as he forced them open. Your poor pussy looks so sensitive, so fucked out and fucked open by him. 

The need rises up in him, a tsunami wave that blocks out the sun. He’s been ignoring his cock for so long—during what is without question the most amazing sexual experience of his life, no less—and now the desperation becomes almost a frenzy. He has to get to the bathroom so that he can jerk off, posthaste. He doesn’t care if it’s improper, doesn’t care if it’s all too obvious to you what he’s doing. 

Marc stumbles away from you on his knees, palms hitting the floor to keep himself balanced. He catches sight of his fingers, still wet from where he had sucked them clean, and a sound slips from the back of his throat: high and desperate. The little movement he’s made has brushed his cock against the denim and pushed him incrementally closer to that edge. 

“Marc?” 

The bathroom is right there—

“Marc—” 

—he can see it, see the door cracked open, see the silly little night light you put in there, the one that keeps him from constantly banging his hip on the sharp edge of the sink—

“Marc.” 

He has stopped his forward movement, he realizes. He has fallen to one elbow, his other hand fumbling at the button of his jeans, but his fingers are clumsy and exhausted and shaking with how badly he needs to cum, so he just says fuck it, just reaches down and rubs himself over the denim. The attention after so much neglect has him gasping wetly. He let himself lower the last few inches until he is laying on the floor, lets himself tip onto his back until he is looking up at the cheap fluorescent lighting doing his to jerk himself off through the restrictive denim—

And he sees you, sitting upright on the couch with your eyes on him, face slack. 

Yeah, he cums. Right then, looking at you, at the haze in your eyes and the hair plastered to your forehead. He cums so hard his eyes roll back, cums so hard that it hurts, cums so hard that he knows a little piece of his soul slips out of his body and will forever rest there in Dorm Room E12. There will be a monument there, useless though no less momentous for it, like Plymouth Rock or the Liberty Bell. It will let future generations know that this is where Marc Spector saw God. 

He lays there on the floor panting. Slowly your face comes into view above him. You’ve tugged your pants back on. 

“Are you…okay?” you ask. 

He holds up his thumb. 

The smile you give him is wobbly, and the next ten minutes the two of you spend cleaning up the apartment (after Marc ducks into the bathroom and changes his pants, thanks) are painful with how quiet you are. When you crawl into bed, you pull the blankets up so high that all he can see is your hair, facing the wall.

Maybe he should have known that this would happen. Common sense could have forewarned him that eating out your best friend might lead to some internal conflict. While it was happening, he would have told himself that no matter the consequences, it was worth it, but now he isn’t sure. He crosses to his bed, sheds his shirt, and is just about to slip between the sheets when he sees it: a neat little folded square of pale purple fabric, tucked just beneath the edge of his pillow. He pulls your panties free and clutches them in one fist, heart pounding. It had to have been an accident—except it couldn’t have been. You must not have done it on purpose—but then how could you have done it at all? He brings them up to his face and smells the scent of your slick. They’re still damp, for fuck’s sake. 

“Here lies Marc Spector,” he mutters. He tucks the panties beneath his pillow, mind already spinning about the implication of them. Already determined that he’ll give them back when they’re pried from his cold dead hands. Just as he pulls the sheets over himself, he sees the glow of the sun strike the wall through the window with the broken slat blinds. He plans to watch the sunlight move across the wall as it rises, but falls asleep within an instant.

[popatochisssp]

if you feel up to it, I'd love to hear your thoughts on how vi and hunters relationship evolves after gaster dies and they move to the surface

like what's the vibe of their dynamic after all that? how does it change over time?

Their relationship is…complicated.

They both just got out of a situation that was toxic and pretty fucked up, to say the least.

Hunter was controlled, used like a tool, changed physically and mentally against his will, and his brother wasn’t the one making the call to do that, but he was enforcing it. He fully believed he couldn’t trust or talk genuinely to anyone around him, because one of those people was Gaster and the other acted like he was on his side but then turned around and heeled whenever Gaster whistled.

Vi was controlled too, but it was made invisible, he couldn’t talk about it and he had to act like he was broken in to Gaster’s will while fighting the temptation to do just that, to give up. He was constantly stuck between a rock and a hard place—Gaster’s orders and seemingly 24/7 surveillance and Hunter’s defiance and open scorn of his actions.

They both hurt each other, failed each other in different ways.

Vi didn’t protect Hunter from Gaster and he kept too many secrets to be someone Hunter could trust.

Hunter gave Vi no grace or benefit of the doubt and often put him in hard situations where he would either catch hell from Gaster, Hunter, or both no matter what he did.

They were both severely isolated and learned intimately what it was like to have their free will taken away from them.

So…they’re cagey with each other, after it all.

Wary.

Awkward.

Hunter knows now that Vi was just as leashed as he was, and Vi no longer has the axe hanging over his head for if he slips up, no one for either of them to answer to…

But there’s still a lot of ingrained patterns to undo, ways of thinking to unlearn.

When they have a common goal, they still work together like a well-oiled machine, ruthlessly efficient and totally unhesitating, but in the downtime they still stumble—and there’s a lot more downtime these days than there used to be, now that they’re cut loose.

They’re still figuring out how they work without Gaster in between them to make it hostile, learning to trust each other and be more open, but it’s not something either has any practice with so they do mess up.

Vi tries to assume too much control of what Hunter is doing and has to intentionally back off, Hunter blows Vi off when he means well and realizes later he probably shouldn’t have, but…y’know, the rest of the time, they’re…pretty okay?

They can talk to each other and joke and be, what seems to be, brothers, moments that used to be interrupted by Gaster intervening, or the stain of him felt even when he wasn’t there.

Sometimes even now the ghost of him will do that, making moments feel awkward and uncomfortable when they remember what things used to be like, what he would’ve said in that situation…but that’s fading with time.

Some of the best bonding they manage to do is in the process of delinquent type shit—they both like getting into places they probably shouldn’t be and picking locks, parkouring up to drop a fire escape ladder, or helping each other over barbed wire fences is an easy way to feel in-sync and get somewhere quiet where they won’t be interrupted.

They can’t talk about what happened to them, not and look each other in the eye-socket, so when they do end up actually talking about the tough stuff, it’s usually on a roof somewhere—one will go up and sit down and start thinking deep thoughts, and the other will eventually come join him and sit back-to-back until the words come out. They don’t always, sometimes there’s just silence, but…even that helps, a little.

It's a work-in-progress, those two, and it's not always easy but they’re trying.

[diana-bookfairchild]

Ron made a valiant effort to get up again but fell back with a whimper of pain. Lupin made toward him, looking concerned, but Ron gasped, “Get away from me, werewolf!” Lupin stopped dead. Then, with an obvious effort, he turned to Hermione and said, “How long have you known?”

“Dumbledore hired you when he knew you were a werewolf,” Ron gasped. “Is he mad?”

But Ron didn’t move. “What’s up?” said Harry, looking at him. Ron looked around at Harry, his expression very serious indeed. “Did you know?” he whispered. “About Hagrid being half-giant?” “No,” Harry said, shrugging. “So what?” He knew immediately, from the look Ron was giving him, that he was once again revealing his ignorance of the wizarding world.

“So?” Harry prompted Ron. “What’s the problem with giants?” “Well, they’re . . . they’re . . .” Ron struggled for words. “. . . not very nice,” he finished lamely. “Who cares?” Harry said. “There’s nothing wrong with Hagrid!” “I know there isn’t, but . . . blimey, no wonder he keeps it quiet,” Ron said, shaking his head. “I always thought he’d got in the way of a bad Engorgement Charm when he was a kid or something. Didn’t like to mention it. . . .” “But what’s it matter if his mother was a giantess?” said Harry. “Well . . . no one who knows him will care, ’cos they’ll know he’s not dangerous,” said Ron slowly. “But . . . Harry, they’re just vicious, giants. It’s like Hagrid said, it’s in their natures, they’re like trolls . . . they just like killing, everyone knows that. There aren’t any left in Britain now, though.”

Ron's grown up in the wizarding world, and with its prejudices. His automatic response is to believe in them and be horrified realizing people he likes and respects are creatures. But he overcomes this! We see in future books that Ron treats Lupin and Hagrid both just as he does everyone else, with just as much warmth and friendliness. And this isn't remarkable to us because the other two do the same. But Harry and Hermione don't have this stuff ingrained in them. They're free to form their own beliefs from knowing and liking Lupin and Hagrid. But Ron isn't. And still he unlearns these beliefs, for the sake of his friends, because it's the right thing to do.

And we see this with house-elves too! How he goes from entirely dismissing them to considering them more than Harry does. I've seen people bash Ron for how he treats Griphook in Book 7 'after everything', but not only does Griphook kind of prove him right, this is how he begins with all creatures because this is what he's taught, grown up with, basically indoctrinated with! And still he struggles against these and tries to be better and this is so, so important and incredibly brave.

And for Hermione, who values justice and compassion and bravery and equality, this is such a good fit! I genuinely don't understand how people can think Ron won't try to understand Hermione's perspectives due to her muggle upbringing or will force her to follow wizarding traditions and become a house-wife, when so much of his arc is about his personal flaws and prejudices and getting control over them. Weasley is our King!

[odinsblog]

This stinks to high heaven, or Jannah, or Valhalla, or whatever makes you happy

My big sister is gay. I was the first person she came out to when we were kids, not quite 20 yet. I care deeply about her. And as I matured + unlearned much of my ingrained adolescent homophobia, with my sister’s help, I have come to care deeply about the LGBTQ community. Even the white ones, and all the other non-Black ones too

I’m trying really hard to imagine hearing about something like the Pulse nightclub shooting and somehow not caring about some of the non-Black victims because they might not have shared my exact political beliefs. I can’t. I can’t imagine not caring. Not caring because of something so trivial by comparison of being murdered by a crazy person in cold blood.

Look, I guess at some point either you care about people or you don’t. And if you’re able to turn off who you feel sorrow for based on their race, religion or ideology, then I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know how to relate to you.

I’ve been trying not to post too TOO much about some specifics of what’s happening in Palestine and Israel, but I’m sorry: I feel bad for the innocent children and civilians who were murdered in cold blood in Israel. I know that the “any means” tankies crowd wants everyone to ignore their deaths (or worse celebrate their deaths), but I guess I’m not built that way.

Some of those people murdered at the concert, for example, were not only innocent civilians, but they were also pro-Palestinian activists who spent their time working for peace. I shed tears hearing their family members talking about them. Hamas murdered Holocaust survivors, ffs.

I absolutely can understand Jewish people feeling uneasy right now. They lost a ton of noncombatant civilians —not to mention children. And oh yeah, antisemitism has been at an all time high, unfortunately, just like Islamophobia is about to be. Again.

I might be wrong, but I honestly just do not think that Hamas did Palestinians any favors.

Yes, yes, I dO understand that violence is always a necessary part of freedom and decolonization.

“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.” —Assata Shakur

So I’m a big podcast listener (helps occupy my mind whenever I’m working on long tedious projects), and I was listening to one where they interviewed a Jewish soldier who was recently activated, but he was out of Israel and had to fly back. He said something like, “If they had only attacked military targets, then I would get it. We got caught with our pants down, and all is fair in love and war, right? But the mass slaughter of civilian families, women and children is the reason I’m going back.”

I wanted to reach through my phone and ask him about Israel preparing to do exactly the same thing to Palestinians in retaliation, but alas I guess I just sounded like a crazy person yelling to himself in my office.

And yeah, before you read too much further, please understand that I dO support the fuck outta Palestine. Let me be unequivocal here: Israel is in the wrong. Israel has oppressed Palestinians for decades. For actual generations.

Remember when Israel literally bulldozed over a woman to build more houses in Gaza?

Yeah, seriously heinous shit, right?

And we don’t actually have a solid count for all the innocent murdered Palestinian civilians who were living in apartment buildings that Israel has been bombing to smithereens for the past few days. I understand that Israel and the West would have us believe that everyone in Gaza is a terrorist and nobody is an innocent civilian, but hopefully, if you’re reading this, YOU know better than that.

But that said ….. I cannot get with tankies—who, safe and sound in their homes, not being perpetually bombed—want to sound “hard” on social media, and make no distinctions with the people who were just minding their own fucking business at a goddamn concert. I think about all of the mass shootings in America (movie theaters, grocery stores, night clubs, concerts, schools, office buildings, etc) and I just cannot imagine justifying or excusing ANY of them because of the shooter’s “ideology.” I know it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but it’s close enough.

“If they were on colonized land then they deserved to die” is one hell of a fucked up take. The slippery slope is that if any of our loved ones are gunned down by “freedom fighters,” then we should just be happy for “the cause” and not shed any tears, because ALL of us deserve to die in America and other Western countries, because we’re all living on colonized land.

I cannot even begin to explain how flawed and fucked up that so-called reasoning is.

You have to have some fucking lines and boundaries.

We don’t just do a shoulder shrug when children are murdered in cold blood—and no, I’m not talking about the 40 babies allegedly beheaded, I’m just talking about the little toddlers who were shot through walls and died, and the elderly and disabled who were shown being dragged away. Yeah, I feel sorry for them too. And I won’t apologize for that.

Rape is wrong. All the time. Under all circumstances. Even when it’s happening to people who you don’t like.

Murdering children is wrong. All the time. Under all circumstances. Even when it’s the children of people who you don’t like.

Do I really need to spell this shit out? JFC.

If you don’t care about any of this because you’re “down for the cause,” then you. are. lost. Like really and truly lost. You aren’t a radical. You’re a fanatic. And hopefully you won’t be in a position to ever receive the fanatical Karma that you’re asking for.

Anyway…

I am on the side of Palestine in all of this. They never deserved to be oppressed by Israel or anyone.

Innocent Palestinian women and children are dying as you’re reading this. I’m shedding tears for them too. They’ve been going through this for way too long. That fact alone is beyond being a tragedy.

Palestine has already suffered and will suffer 10 times more than all of the civilians and noncombatants who were tragically murdered in Kfar Aza.

As always, my usual reminders:

The Holocaust happened

Antisemitism is real

Hamas ≠ Palestine

Israel is an apartheid state

Collective punishment is a war crime

Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal

You can support Palestine without being antisemitic

Free Palestine 🇵🇸

[septictankofdreams]

I think it’s time for episode two of Jessica Moore headcannons because no one can stop me and I will never be proven wrong (unless the SPN writers are here *side eye*)

She was a cat person. She and Sam have both seriously considered if this would be a deal breaker.

She was super protective of Sam and made it her personal mission to make sure he knew how great he is. She would take every opportunity to brag on him and compliment him so he never questions how she feels (he does the same thing with her).

She was a feminist and overall progressive. She helped Sam unlearn a lot of toxic crap from his dad.

She goes by Jessica, only Sam called her Jess.

She worked at a grocery store while she was at Stanford (this one has become so ingrained in my mind that I forget it literally came from absolutely nowhere)

She was on scholarship too, but not a full ride. She worked a bunch to make ends meet and pay for school.

Jess was considering asking Sam to marry her if he didn’t get to it first.

Jess was an introvert, but she liked to be social too. It worked well because she encouraged Sam to get out some but she was always happy to head home early and just watch a movie together or something when he’s over it.

She loved crafting and upcycling (Sam found that he did as well)

**bonus related Sam headcanon: he worked at the library on campus. He and Jess both worked a lot because they were both financially independent. Jess had family that helped where they could but they weren’t wealthy so most of the day-to-day responsibilities fell to Jess

[xplrvibes]

I may be weird for saying this,or too childlish but it kind of irritates me how colby said women don't have to be cookie cutter perfect and then goes to (allegedly) date m, who is basically a barbie. I know. Pretty people date pretty people. But anytime this sort of thing happens (when a guy says you don't have to look like a doll then goes and dates one), it just irritates me a bit, ngl.

If you will indulge me for a minute, I'd like to play a slight game of devil's advocate here.

I do believe when Colby has said that in the past, that what he meant was that looks don't matter as much as the personality , to him at least. Now, saying that, I'd like to point out a thing that a lot of people do without even realizing it, because it's so ingrained in our society to see certain people in certain lights.

There are a lot of people in society who hold on to this notion that good looking people, especially ones who have maybe had work done, are just vapid, empty shells. I've even seen snc fans boil Colby down to the "dumb, hot one" tons of times over the years. It's a weird stereotype - to be good looking, you gotta give something up in return - either the smarts, or the personality.

But that isn't the case.

People are people, and their looks don't - and shouldn't - define their personalities or their smarts.

Now, I want to point out the obvious - M is a beautiful woman. Colby is a gorgeous man. They met each other and yes, were probably physically attracted to one another right off the bat. It's going to happen, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with being physically attracted to someone based on their appearance and hooking up with them solely based on said physical attraction. That's kind of normal, actually.

But, to assume that he is only repeatedly hanging out with, spending time with, or dating this girl solely cause she's hot is a little premature, considering we do not know her or her personality. Knowing the way Colby operates, I don't think he spends this much time around anyone who doesn't interest him on a personal, deeper level, and that's the important part.

And even if he was only hanging out with her cause she's hot, and she has the personality of a moldy brick - just because he said that looks don't matter as much doesn't mean that he now has to go out of his way to be with people who the internet wouldn't deem attractive. That just seems counterproductive (and honestly, would probably be a borderline fetish thing, depending on how far he was taking it).

Now, I do want to state this for the record: I don't think it's childish to feel this way at all, anon. I think a lot of feelings like this stem from seeing these beautiful people all getting together and having these beautiful lives with their beautiful pristine teeth and their perfectly arranged houses and whatever and turning that into an internal indictment against oneself, because we feel we don't measure up somehow. That feeling of inadequacy breeds resentment, especially when you've got someone who has indicated that they aren't that concerned with looks in the past and they seem to be walking that back.

But at the end of the day, he's going to date and be with someone who he finds interesting and stimulating and fun to be around, and if that person comes in a cookie-cutter package then hey, so be it.

Anyway, I get where you are coming from and I know a lot of other people probably feel the same way too, but my wish for all the younger people on the internet is that they can someday unlearn some of those ingrained societal norms that are there just to hurt them and make them feel low on themselves so that everyone can be happy in their own skin, and be happy for others who are in theirs. <3

[tally-kiza]

I often struggle to figure out just who Arthur is. It makes writing him incredibly difficult. He’s just so many different things all at once. Because... he tries so hard to be a good boy. He’s just so repressed, and suppressed, and tightly wound, as tight as his skin wrapping over his bones. Arthur’s gentle and polite and meek, and most importantly, happy. Because that’s what he’s supposed to be right? That’s what he was raised to be. And besides, all his heroes in his favorite movies are gentle and polite so he should be too, right?

And then there’s the part of him that’s kinda... off. The one that crashes into his darker impulses, who follows people around the city, who relishes in the sense of power a gun gives him, who is just so tired and beaten down all the time that he just can’t help but want to hurt something. Or someone. He can be rough, and disturbing, but even when he is, there’s still a gentleness to him, something so ingrained it can’t be shaken, even after his mental breakdown.

He’s just a man who hides behind a mask, of Arthur, and then puts on another mask, of Joker, just to feel like himself... But I don’t know who he is without his masks. Which part of him is who he is, and not just who he thinks he should be. In the right conditions, where he’s given an actual support system and given the space to unlearn toxic positivity, who would be become? 

That’s the Arthur I want to crack into, to paint onto the page. Who is Arthur Fleck when he doesn’t force himself to be happy or meek or polite, yet feels blessed relief from his dark impulses and depressive thoughts?

[dmclemblems]

undefined

he’s so paranoid... ;o; bby... bby boy... it’s okay i will never let those meanie assassins hurt you... ;o;

[ruby-whistler]

i think one of the most fascinating misinterpretations of c!dream's character is people thinking that he would come to a realization. that if he were to be redeemed - the first step would be regret.

/dsmp /rp

because c!dream isn't stupid. he doesn't need to come to the realization that what he did was awful, because he already knows that. he knew that before he did it - that's the thing.

because people seem to think that regret can only come from gaining awareness, which is why they think he'll never regret what he did, and in turn, can never be redeemed.

that's not true. regret is more than showing surprise over your actions. sometimes, it's not sudden.

what people don't realize, is that more often than not, remorse is a process.

because c!dream isn't lying to himself; he isn't hiding something from himself, he isn't unaware. he's, funnily enough, the exact other way around. he believes wholeheartedly in his cause. he believes, whatever it is, that his plan will work; because c!dream doesn't hope. he takes strings things into his own hands and he achieves.

it is literally ingrained in him to reach, to hurt, to do whatever it takes.

the thing that makes c!dream do the things he does isn't lies, baseless beliefs, or a lack of knowledge. it isn't impulsive feelings or deceptive obsessions. it isn't something sudden, temporary, something he can wake up from or realize, or something that defines him to the point he couldn't come back from it.

it's a mindset.

mindsets aren't sudden, mindsets aren't overnight - it takes experience to change the way you look at the world.

"the world is cruel to you; why should you show mercy?"

"attachments can and will be used against you if you let people know you care."

"you can't trust those who brought war, even if they promise peace."

"in the end, you're the only one who can fix everything."

and most importantly;

"the ends justify the means."

c!dream has had these mindsets reaffirmed repeatedly over the course of the story, hence they're rooted deep within his thought process - the last one especially has always been a vital part of the character, and only spun out of control when he was pushed too far.

mindsets can't be "realized", ripped out by the stem. they'll only grow back stronger, thicker, more poisonous from the root.

which is experience.

mindsets must be uprooted; you have to dig deep enough to tear out their origin. you must teach the person, or even yourself, to think in a different way; because mindsets are not gained, they are learned, and hence, to be truly gone, they must be unlearned.

and unlearning a mindset takes time.

that is why c!dream will not regret what he did when he is told he's horrible, a monster, a villain, a manipulator; that is why c!dream will not regret what he did when it's beaten into every inch of his body.

it's not because he can't regret it - it's because mindsets can't be destroyed with words or with fists, but need to be shown to be incorrect through actions.

tldr: what drives c!dream's actions aren't beliefs, which can be proven wrong; it's mindsets, which need to be unlearned.

so, what now? if not regret, what is c!dream's first step towards redemption?

well, surprisingly enough, much like in the real world; in this case, change can only be achieved through positive reinforcement.

think about it - everything he does stems from the mindset that he alone can repair his home, he alone can fix everything for everyone else which is why he needs control - but this... isn't true.

at least, it doesn't have to be - because although that is all c!dream has ever known, that friends need to be disconnected and allies can't be trusted to be rational, be peaceful; do the best for everyone - he can, step by step, fulfilled promise after fulfilled promise, another try, another successful leap towards happiness, learn that he doesn't need to be desperate, doesn't need to control others for them to listen to him and see him as a person instead of just a threat.

the only way to get c!dream to show remorse for his past action is to teach him through support and kindness that he is wrong.

that he doesn't have to hurt himself and others for his goals.

that the ends don't justify the means - that some things can never be justified. that there is always another way out, and that way is people you can rely on and who won't leave you.

c!dream is a character plagued with harmful and toxic mindsets, some instilled and all reaffirmed by a harmful and toxic environment.

wouldn't it make sense, that once he's finally shown something else, he himself can, without having to be taught through pain and sharp words, slowly come to the conclusion that he was wrong?

[gatesofember]

can you expand on the canon and fanon ableism in solangelo? I sort of picked up on the infantilisation of nico (hes dealing with ptsd and i guess chronic fatigue, hes not a baby) but i always thought that was handled better in canon than in fanon? But then i havent read ToN i admit

Sure! I don’t know that I’m the best person to ask this because while I am disabled, I’m still unlearning a lot of ableism myself. But I’ll try my best to explain! Maybe some people could recommend some good posts about this if they know any?

Infantilizing—like you mentioned, this is one of the biggest problems with ableism in the fandom. There isn’t much of this in canon, but in fanon Nico’s often characterized as helpless and he’s not taken seriously. Will often plays the role of caretaker rather than boyfriend to an infantilized Nico, which creates an inherent and unhealthy power imbalance.

Will being portrayed as a savior—a common and dangerous trope in romance is that one character is saved by the love of another. It’s especially damaging when the character being saved has mental health problems or physical disabilities. I think most people realize nowadays that this isn’t okay, but you’ll still occasionally see things that portray Will as a savior. Nico entering a relationship because he’s healing and accepting himself is great! But Nico being saved by a relationship? Bad.

Victim blaming—honestly most characters who interact with Nico in canon engage in some level of victim blaming, but by far the worst one was Will (aside from like. Hades and Minos.) In BoO, Will went on an entire rant telling Nico that he was responsible for his own problems and that he manufactured his own abandonment by pushing people away, when really, Nico was the victim of bullying, rejection, abuse, and serious mental health problems—and he already blamed himself for all that so Will’s rant only would have made him feel more invalidated. Later books definitely pulled back on the victim blaming, but it was such a prevalent part of the foundation of their relationship that it’s been ingrained in the ship. It shows a severe and dangerous misunderstanding of mental health on the part of both Riordan and the fandom.

Will being Nico’s healthcare provider—What makes Will being portrayed as a savior even worse is the fact that Will is a healer. Doctors shouldn’t date their patients. Much like the caretaker issue I mentioned above, it creates a power imbalance which is usually satisfied because the doctor is paid for doing their job, but things get messy when any kind of personal relationship is involved. Will should not be in charge of Nico’s medical care. Of course he can act as Nico’s healer in emergencies, but Nico’s primary medical care provider should be someone else. If Will acts as Nico’s medical care provider out of necessity (eg, because he’s the only healer at camp halfblood), then they need to set up clear boundaries and rules. Will being Nico’s doctor should never be spun as a good thing.

Will abusing his authority as a medical care provider—most notably the “doctor’s orders” and “doctor’s note” scenes. Will was extremely overbearing in BoO, from forbidding Nico from using his powers to ordering him to stay in the infirmary, and that kind of pushiness isn’t okay. He was abusing his power, doubting Nico’s judgement and capabilities, and denying Nico’s right to make his own decisions (again, infantilizing). Disabled people’s agency is often denied and autonomy is so important. Nico should have been allowed to make the choice to stay in the infirmary on his own (or not to stay, or to follow through with his plan to leave chb; he should have had the freedom to make those choices, too), and frankly, it would have been a much more powerful ending to Nico’s pov if he had. He should have chosen to go to the infirmary because he decided he wanted to get better, not because he wanted to be around Will (see previous point about Will being portrayed as a savior) (although it would have been fine if Nico thought of Will as an added bonus). I said in the previous post that Will writing a doctor’s note to allow Nico to sit at the Apollo table doesn’t bother me, but that’s because I imagine that situation being like, Nico was denied accommodations so Will and Nico hatched a plan together to use what little leverage they have to get adults to listen to Nico’s needs and take him seriously, but both of them fully understood that Will should not act as Nico’s doctor again unless there were serious medical reasons. Other people interpret that scene as Will abusing his power as the head medic to sit next to his boyfriend. And I’m not saying that my interpretation of that scene is necessarily the correct one, just that I don’t interpret it as Will being ableist.

Nico faking his disability to get things—I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone bring this point up, but it’s something that really bothers me. The ableism regarding the “doctor’s note” for me isn’t the scene itself, but when the fandom portrays Will and Nico constantly using the doctor’s note excuse to get what they want, often having Nico fake some sort of symptom. Besides the abuse of power I mentioned before, promoting the idea that disabled people fake disabilities to get certain privileges is not okay. This is the sort of thinking that leads to stereotyping disabled people as lazy and it’s so prevalent that it makes a lot of disabled people wonder if they’re really disabled or if they’re making it all up (which ties in with the victim blaming point again).

Sometimes I agree that canon Solanagelo is less ableist than fanon, but sometimes fans do a better job than Riordan. It really just depends. I definitely think that both Riordan and the fandom have gotten better though! Will’s character and his relationship with Nico was very different in ToN than it was in previous books (different for the better but also to the point of inconsistency, but that’s a different critique). There were a lot of things in ToN that made it clear that Riordan was listening to the responses of disabled people. Some fans seem to be listening, too. There’s still rampant ableism in the fandom, but people are getting better at responding to criticism and realizing that a lot of tropes that used to be popular just aren’t ok.

Thank you for your ask! I’m glad you reached out to learn more. Again, if anyone knows good posts to read or blogs to visit for further information, please reply with them!

[robininthelabyrinth]

Without a Path - Chapter 2 - ao3

Warnings: adult content - please mind the other tags on Ao3!

-

Morning came far sooner than Lan Qiren would have liked.

Unsurprisingly, he woke first, the habit long ingrained by his sect’s rules. Instead of rising, he twisted to look at Nie Mingjue, who had at some point wrapped himself around him like an especially warm blanket, his chin tucked in against his neck.

In the pale light of predawn, he looked calm and undisturbed. He looked young, and vulnerable, and like he shouldn’t have had to deal with any of that.

Lan Qiren let out a shuddering breath and wondered how he would ever justify this to – anyone.

Lan Xichen, for one. Himself, for another.

Nie Mingjue.

A moment later, far too soon, Nie Mingjue started stirring. Lan Qiren suppressed a moment of panic; he’d only had enough time to briefly clean himself, nothing else – for some reason he’d thought he would have more time to collect himself, to make a plan for their next steps. They would need to arrange an engagement, even if they didn’t go through with the actual marriage – Wen Ruohan hadn’t seemed like he would publicize what had happened in order to force them into a corner, since he was clearly still angling to get Nie Mingjue himself, but having something prepared would put them in a better situation, reduce anxiety…

“Teacher Lan?”

Lan Qiren flinched.

“Sect Leader Lan,” Nie Mingjue corrected himself quickly. He sat up, the blanket Lan Qiren had tugged over the two of them falling off to reveal the fact that he was still naked. “Thank you.”

Somehow, that was the thing that went too far.

“Don’t thank me,” Lan Qiren said, voice harsher than he meant it to be, unwelcoming and unfriendly. Nie Mingjue’s cultivation was high enough that he’d healed away most of the marks from the day before, but his lips were still red and Lan Qiren couldn’t stop seeing Wen Ruohan’s fingers slipping between them, violating him despite Nie Mingjue’s specific request that it not be allowed. Couldn’t stop hearing Wen Ruohan’s offer to share him, his suggestion that he would’ve invited Lan Qiren to join in, his expectation that he would have accepted.

He’d promised to help Nie Mingjue, and what had he done? He’d failed him. He hadn’t been able to think of another way out of their dilemma, which he should have – instead he’d used his former student’s body for his own pleasure, taken advantage of his youth and desperation, had him submit to him, had him call him teacher…

He might as well have been Jin Guangshan.

“There’s no need for you to thank me for what I’ve done to you,” he said, averting his eyes, hating himself.

“There is,” Nie Mingjue said. “Don’t get some stupid idea into your head or anything. You saved my life. You made it –”

He choked, and Lan Qiren turned to look at him again. Nie Mingjue’s cheeks were flushed, but he was looking straight at him, fierce and determined to say his thoughts no matter what.

“You made it better than it might have otherwise been,” he finally said. “It was – good.”

“That would be the drug,” Lan Qiren said, feeling his own cheeks burning. “Two drugs, in fact; you were right about that. Wen Ruohan admitted it.”

“I know,” Nie Mingjue said, and rubbed his nose when Lan Qiren looked at him sharply. “I remember some of it. I was…supposed to, I think. You drove him away.”

He had. Through sheer bravado, but he’d managed it.

At least he’d done that much.

“You’ll need to be careful of him in the future,” he warned, and Nie Mingjue nodded, his expression grim. “He won’t give up easily.”

“I’ll be careful,” Nie Mingjue promised, but then his eyes narrowed. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you changing the subject. It wasn’t just – because of the drug. You…” He flailed a bit. “You made it good. I liked – when you –”

He shook his head.

Lan Qiren cleared his throat, embarrassed and unsure of why Nie Mingjue continued to dwell on the point. He appreciated the younger man’s attempt to comfort him – another failing on his part, as he was the elder, the experienced one, and he had chosen freely, while Nie Mingjue had been coerced – but they really ought to focus on the more practical realities of –

“Can we do it again?”

Lan Qiren choked on air.

“Just – once more,” Nie Mingjue said. He was staring at the bedding. “I know I’m not – what you would want. You’re a Lan, you only want to be with your ‘one’, and I’m not…well, anyway, it’s not a situation where I can exactly let people know, is it? But since we’re both here already, we might as well. Right?”

If Lan Qiren had been Jin Guangshan, Nie Mingjue would already be pressed down, Lan Qiren reflected, and he couldn’t deny that certain parts of him were interested in that. But a lifetime of restraint gave him the discipline he needed to think the request through and see that it was not so clear as all that.

“What’s driving this?” Lan Qiren asked, crossing his arms. “You are not a man who succumbs so easily to lust.”

“I’m not,” Nie Mingjue acknowledged, meeting his eyes. “But I want there to be no mistake about what occurred between us.”

Lan Qiren frowned. “I should think it was quite clear.”

“It is, to me. I was in desperation, and you aided me, and it was good. The circumstances were not what either of us would have chosen, and perhaps not the partner, either, but I will not have you going home and torturing yourself into seclusion because you think that you took advantage of me. Xichen would never forgive me!”

Lan Qiren’s jaw dropped. “I would not!” he squawked, thinking to himself that he didn’t need the reminder that he’d bedded a man who was friends with his nephew.

Besides, Nie Mingjue was wrong: yes, he’d been feeling guilty, even agonizingly guilty, but there were limits to such things. Lan Qiren still had two nephews and a sect to run; he couldn’t follow his brother’s example and abandon all his responsibilities no matter how badly he felt.

Nie Mingjue did not appear convinced.

“Even if I did have such an inclination, you don’t have to have sex with me to disprove it,” Lan Qiren insisted.

“Maybe I want to,” Nie Mingjue said stubbornly. “Maybe I’d like to know what sex is like when I’m not drugged to the gills, and this is my only opportunity.”

“But it isn’t,” Lan Qiren argued. “Sect Leader Wen made it clear that he wouldn’t press for a marriage, and no one else knows – you’ll be able to return to your sect, continue as Sect Leader. You could take another lover –”

“Oh, because that’ll work,” Nie Mingjue said, and now he was the one with his arms crossed and eyes narrowed in a glare. “Even if Wen Ruohan won’t press the matter now, he’s only doing it because he still thinks he can do better. If I were to go to bed with someone else, someone neither you nor him, you really think he’d hesitate? And then I’d be an adulterer as well.”

That was – a very good point.

“It was my first time, Teacher Lan,” Nie Mingjue said, pressing his advantage the moment he saw that he was gaining some ground. He was a fearsome opponent, whether in battle or out. “Didn’t it ever occur to you that maybe I had some ideas of my own, things I wanted to try out…”

“Like what?” Lan Qiren asked, cutting him off with an arched eyebrow. He didn’t actually think Nie Mingjue was pushing this idea for his own purposes, even he was making a solid argument; this was all a roundabout means of ensuring that Lan Qiren wouldn’t go into seclusion over his guilt.

Sure enough, Nie Mingjue spluttered a little, and Lan Qiren smiled, intending on pointing out that neither of them were in any state to be having this discussion – that surely after some time and sober reflection they would be able to come up with a better way to deal with the threat of Wen Ruohan and societal expectations both – except he never got the chance to say it before Nie Mingjue blurted out, “I want to suck your cock.”

Lan Qiren stared.

Nie Mingjue looked back at him, defiant. “Well?” he said, challenge clear in his voice. “You’re not going to let the only memory I have on my tongue be Wen Ruohan, are you, Teacher Lan?”

Lan Qiren should refuse him. He should insist on them both pulling back – on Nie Mingjue getting dressed, he was still without a stitch of clothing on him – on taking some time to think before doing anything he couldn’t get back.

He shouldn’t be leaning back against the wall and waving his hand in implied permission.

He definitely shouldn’t do that, which is why he was so surprised to find that he was, in fact, doing it.

Nie Mingjue rose up on his knees and bent down with the recklessness aggression that was more characteristic of him than the hesitation of the day before, pushing aside Lan Qiren’s robes, and Lan Qiren was struck by a sudden, visceral memory of the day before, his cock shining with traces of Nie Mingjue’s own slick on it.

He didn’t have time to think about that too long, though, before his cock, already hard enough to ache, was disappearing into Nie Mingjue’s eager mouth.

It took Nie Mingjue a few tries to figure out what exactly to do – at first he let Lan Qiren’s cock into his cheek, and then to his throat, nearly choking when he did, and finally helped himself with his hand to Lan Qiren’s balls as if to steady himself, and he seemed uncertain as to whether he ought to be sucking or using his tongue or simply letting Lan Qiren’s cock sit on his tongue, trying one after the other without much distinction.

It was awful.

It was amazing.

Nie Mingjue’s hair was entirely loose now, falling over his face and onto Lan Qiren’s thighs, his expression intent and focused as if he were training his saber, his mouth full of Lan Qiren’s cock.

Lan Qiren found his hands drifting up and over towards him and restrained himself, forcing them back to his sides, but Nie Mingjue saw him and pulled up, wiping the drool off the corner of his mouth with the back of his palm.

“Teacher Lan,” he said. “This unlearned student humbly requests his teacher’s guidance.”

It was a lot harder to hide his interest when his cock was twitching in Nie Mingjue’s grip, Lan Qiren thought. He reached out and ran his fingers through Nie Mingjue’s hair, making the other man shiver.

“Students should not be impertinent,” he said, and Nie Mingjue swallowed hard. “If I agree to teach you, will you be obedient?”

“Yes, Teacher Lan,” Nie Mingjue said, and Lan Qiren guided his mouth back to his cock.

Nie Mingjue was, as always, a fast learner, even if the subject Lan Qiren was instructing him in was something he himself had little experience in beyond his fantasies. He avoided using teeth, cleverly applied his tongue, and sucked him enthusiastically, eagerly taking more into his mouth as soon as he could, tears springing into the corners of his eyes. He even obeyed Lan Qiren’s order to put his hands behind his back, hands clasping onto wrists, and allowed Lan Qiren to fuck his face, his fingers dug into his hair and scalp as his hips set a bruising pace.

“Do you want me to come in your mouth?” Lan Qiren asked when the possibility seemed close by, releasing him enough to pull off.

“No,” Nie Mingjue said, and his voice was a little hoarse. Hoarse from the use Lan Qiren had made of his throat, Lan Qiren thought, and noted that it was his cock that was shiny with spit this time, not Wen Ruohan’s fingers. A much better mental image. Perhaps there was something to Nie Mingjue’s idea of moving past yesterday’s events after all, though that might just be Lan Qiren’s libido making retroactive justifications. “Can I…on top?”

“You want to ride me?” Lan Qiren asked, and Nie Mingjue nodded, looking shamefaced. “You may.”

He said it as if he were granting Nie Mingjue a favor, but he watched avidly as Nie Mingjue clambered over to him, straddling him and kneeling above him, and swallowed when he realized that Nie Mingjue had yet to release his hands from behind his back – he hadn’t been given permission, so he hadn’t.

“Good boy,” Lan Qiren praised, and Nie Mingjue bit his lip. “You may use your hands to guide me inside.”

Nie Mingjue ended up having to finger himself open first to get him in there, grumbling about his healing speed, but Lan Qiren didn’t object to the delay – not when it gave him the front row seat to such an appealing show. Not when Nie Mingjue grunted as if struck when he finally pressed down in just the right way and Lan Qiren’s cock slipped inside of him.

“You’re so fucking big,” Nie Mingjue hissed, clearly not meaning it as a compliment as he put one arm on Lan Qiren’s shoulder to brace himself. “This is ridiculous. Other people aren’t like this.”

Lan Qiren was aware that he was above average in that particular regard, although not monstrously so. “Have you seen others?” he asked, curious, and was surprised when Nie Mingjue nodded.

“The Unclean Realm has common baths,” he reminded him. “Hot springs.”

Lan Qiren had known that, of course – had even taken advantage of them several times when visiting on discussion conferences or otherwise – but somehow he hadn’t expected that Nie Mingjue would have shared the baths with other men. He supposed that was his own failure of imagination and his unfamiliarity with the whole notion of misalignment, despite having disciplined his thoughts to accept it - after all, Nie Mingjue might be misaligned, might have the body of a woman, but he was a man of the Qinghe Nie, and the penalties for sexual misconduct in that sect were even stricter than the Lan sect’s. If he was recognized as a man, then surely he was a man, with all that entailed, and of course it would presumably have been even more inappropriate for him to go to the women’s baths…

He lost the train of thought entirely a moment later when, apparently impatient to get to it, Nie Mingjue proceeded to shove himself halfway down, impaling himself open on his cock. Lan Qiren caught his hips before he did himself any damage. “Slowly,” he snapped, then reined himself in. “Please recall that it is also a sensitive area for me.”

“Right,” Nie Mingjue said, flushing. “Of course. Slowly?”

“Slowly.”

Nie Mingjue gingerly settled himself the rest of the way down, sliding until he was fully seated, his cunt stretched wide across Lan Qiren’s cock. In the light of dawn, hair a mess and body still sticky with yesterday’s sweat, he looked beautiful as he started slowly working his hips up and down, his hand sliding in between his legs to rub at his clit as he started riding Lan Qiren in earnest.

“You’re doing so well,” Lan Qiren said. “Taking me so well. Is this what you wanted?”

“Yes,” Nie Mingjue panted. “Yes – yes. Like this. Like yesterday. It’s good.”

Lan Qiren brushed his hair back and touched him, ran his hands over his cheeks, his swollen lips, over his shoulders and down his sides, put his hands on his thighs and his hips, slid them back to cup his ass.

“Good,” he said, rocking his hips up to meet him. “I want you to feel good.”

“Can I –” Nie Mingjue started, and then hesitated.

Lan Qiren couldn’t help feeling a stab of humor. “Is there really something you’re afraid to ask me?” he inquired sternly. “Now?”

He squeezed Nie Mingjue’s ass with his hands, fingers kneading the firm flesh, one even slipping back to rub across his hole, and Nie Mingjue flushed.

“Can I kiss you?” he blurted out, and Lan Qiren stilled.

Had they not…? No, he supposed they hadn’t. They’d fucked several times in several positions, Nie Mingjue had even gotten on his knees and put his cock into his mouth, and Lan Qiren hadn’t once kissed him.

“You may,” he said, his voice softening, and Nie Mingjue surged forward to press their lips together. It was a bad kiss by any objective criteria, too hard and noses bumping into each other, and Nie Mingjue had no idea what he was supposed to do with his tongue, whether to stick it into Lan Qiren’s mouth or simply jab it at him; after a moment he tried to pull back, looking embarrassed.

Lan Qiren caught him by the chin and drew him back in, trying to show him with his own lips what to do.

They kissed for a while, long, wet, slow kisses in the light of the morning dawn, Nie Mingjue in Lan Qiren’s lap with Lan Qiren’s cock seated firmly in his cunt, their hands in each other’s hair.

Lan Qiren felt something a little strange, a pulling sensation and then something falling, and then a moment later Nie Mingjue pulled back with a small exclamation of surprise: he’d accidentally tugged Lan Qiren’s forehead ribbon free. While it was bound tightly, its position reinforced with magic, Lan Qiren hadn’t rearranged it since the evening before, when it had undoubtedly become loose during their activities.

“Oh! I’m sorry,” Nie Mingjue said, watching as the ribbon fluttered down, twining with his fingers. “I didn’t mean to –”

Lan Qiren rose up in a sudden movement and pushed him back onto the bed.

“I’m going to fuck you,” he announced, suddenly giddy – like any good Lan, his ribbon was his self-restraint, and must never be touched by any but his parents, his children, or his lover. It belatedly occured to him that per that last exception, Nie Mingjue was at the moment unquestionably permitted. “Put your hands above your head.”

Nie Mingjue looked confused, but obeyed at once – such a good student – and gaped when Lan Qiren looped his forehead ribbon around his wrists, tying him to the bed.

“You can hold onto it if you like,” Lan Qiren told him kindly, and then set about fucking him as enthusiastically as he might have ever imagined doing to a lover. Nie Mingjue did end up clutching at the ribbon as if for balance, yielding completely to Lan Qiren’s whims as he fucked him in multiple positions, pushing his body around as if it was his own personal doll.

They ended up side by side, with Lan Qiren penetrating Nie Mingjue from behind and Nie Mingjue having freed one hand – with Lan Qiren’s permission, of course – to frantically touch himself as Lan Qiren fucked him. He came first, body shuddering, and Lan Qiren took advantage of his suddenly slack body to curl up against him and use him mercilessly before he, too, reached completion, spilling into that warm, wet heat.

“Fuck,” Nie Mingjue said, panting as Lan Qiren pulled out and sat up. He sounded impressed. “I see why you keep those on.”

Lan Qiren retrieved his forehead ribbon from where it was still looped around Nie Mingjue’s other hand and settled it back in place on his forehead before starting to gather up the rest of his clothing, discarded at some point in the morning’s proceedings as it had not been the evening before. “You did too well in my classes for me to think that you don’t know that that is not how that works,” he said primly, and was rewarded with Nie Mingjue’s smile.

Truly a handsome young man.

His lover. Apparently.

The last few days had been full of terrible decisions, this morning’s almost certainly among them, but he was suddenly having trouble feeling regret. It was difficult to think of himself as another Jin Guangshan, careless and ruthless with the bodies of others, when his own lover looked pleased as a smug cat and just as satisfied. When only moments before he’d been whimpering out pleas for more amidst moans of pleasure that Lan Qiren had himself wrung from his body.

Perhaps Nie Mingjue had had a point, about the seclusion. He would not have actually retreated from the world as his brother did, but he might have tried to punish himself in other ways, withdrawing from the things he liked best – teaching, for one – without considering that Nie Mingjue was, unlike his actual students, an adult capable of making his own decisions, having his own calculus of what was acceptable and what was not.

“I’ll call for baths to be prepared,” he decided. They really did have to discuss their next steps, even if his own forward thinking was currently restricted to his intense need to clean himself thoroughly.

“Excellent idea,” Nie Mingjue said, sitting up himself and rubbing his wrists. “I feel absolutely filthy – sticky all over. I’ve ended night-hunts, good ones, and still been less sweaty than this…”

Lan Qiren made the mistake of looking at Nie Mingjue as he stretched himself and swallowed abruptly when he saw the place between his thighs, still reddened from their joining, and the trickle of fluid that slowly seeped down and dripped onto his thigh.

His first reaction was a smug feeling of pride and possession.

His second –

“I shouldn’t have finished inside of you,” he abruptly realized. He’d been thinking of Nie Mingjue as a man, and one could sow seeds all one liked with a man without concern that one of them might take root - but even if Nie Mingjue was a man in his mind and soul, his body was not. “The storm has passed, but the hill is likely to be still impassible for some time yet. I don’t know if there will be appropriate medicine available…”

Nie Mingjue stared at him briefly, then abruptly sniggered. “You’re worrying about that now?” he asked, eyes curved up into crescents. “Teacher, how many times did you come inside of me yesterday?”

It had in fact been rather a lot.

He resisted defending himself by arguing that even if it might not have been strictly necessary as a technical matter, it was surely unavoidable because they wouldn’t have been able to tolerate a few more rounds; Nie Mingjue wasn’t even accusing him of anything.

“Aren’t you concerned?” Lan Qiren asked hesitantly. “About the possibility of a –” He choked a little. “Of a child?”

“I’d resigned myself to the risk from the start,” Nie Mingjue said with a shrug that was, in Lan Qiren’s view, taking things far too casually. “Medicine taken after the fact is notoriously unreliable – there are plenty of children in the world that owe their births to that! There’s nothing to be done about it, so don’t panic unnecessarily. It’ll be what it is, and at least the child, if there is one, won’t be surnamed Wen.”

It would serve Wen Ruohan’s purposes very well to ensure that Nie Mingjue was impregnated, Lan Qiren thought, panicking a perfectly reasonable amount in his opinion. What better way to show off his power and dominion over the powerful Nie sect than to force their sect leader to bear him a child? There were medicines to increase fertility as well, even if most doctors recommended against them, and of course Wen Ruohan wouldn’t care about the increased risk, even though even the strongest female cultivators often died in the birthing bed…

Even putting aside the risks, he’d never really thought too closely about having a child of his own. What would his nephews think of all this? They were still young, especially little Wangji – would they think he was seeking to replace them? Would they –

“– teacher? Sect Leader Lan?”

Lan Qiren blinked and forced himself to pay attention to Nie Mingjue, who was now fully dressed and standing in front of him. He looked much as he always did, tall and powerful, indominable – it was far too early for there to be any signs if he was pregnant, of course, but Lan Qiren couldn’t help but examine him with his eyes, wondering. Was it possible that even now…?

“Did I break you?” Nie Mingjue asked, and waved his hand in front of Lan Qiren’s eyes.

“You did not,” Lan Qiren said, finally recovering some of his dignity. “I was merely distracted. The baths –”

“I’ve already asked for them,” Nie Mingjue said, smirking. “You may need to have a conversation with your attendants regarding discretion – I doubt they missed the smell – but baths will be ready soon. We rose early enough that we’ll be able to bathe, change clothing, and still make it to the first meeting of the day, though I expect that will be cancelled on account of crisis.”

Lan Qiren frowned. “Crisis? Are you planning…”

He trailed off, abruptly disappointed in himself. He’d been about to ask if Nie Mingjue were planning on confronting Wen Ruohan for what he’d done, and to counsel against it – they could not afford to start a war, his sect would never support a war – but then he hadn’t been the target of Wen Ruohan’s scheme, even if he’d been involuntarily pulled into the mire. Who was he to tell Nie Mingjue that he couldn’t even vent his frustration?

“Oh, not me,” Nie Mingjue said, his thoughts clearly not following Lan Qiren’s at all from the faint smirk on his face. “Collateral damage only.”

“…oh?”

“Your attendants brought gossip as well as breakfast,” Nie Mingjue said, looking positively smug. “And I had time to send my own attendants to do the same for Sect Leader Jiang.”

Now Lan Qiren was truly lost. Nie Mingjue looked like a cat that had just brought home some murdered prey and wanted to be praised for it, but he couldn’t figure out what it was that he’d done. “Sect Leader Jiang?” he asked, bemused and deciding to put aside his attendants’ behavior for the moment. “You sent him – breakfast and news?”

“Breakfast, and a tonic to help ease any side-effects of the drug he, like the two of us, was dosed with,” Nie Mingjue said. “I imagine he’ll be very relieved to know he has something to blame for his conduct last night.”

“His – oh no,” Lan Qiren said. “One of the dancers?”

“One of the dancers,” Nie Mingjue confirmed.

“Yu Ziyuan –” Is going to cut off his balls and wear them as earrings. “– will not be pleased.”

“No, I imagine not.”

Lan Qiren studied Nie Mingjue. “Did you, by chance, happen to mention who was responsible for putting the drugs in his food?”

“Naturally. I even mentioned that the bottle I found in the kitchens appeared to be stamped with the mark of a Lanling glassmaker.”

Lan Qiren pinched the brow of his nose. Jiang Fengmian was a very easy-going man, most of the time, but his extremely vicious wife was his bottom line – he would undoubtedly kick up his version of a fuss with both Wen Ruohan and Jin Guangshan, and his version of a fuss, while not violent, was extremely time-consuming. The morning and, very likely, the afternoon, were almost certain to be a complete waste of everyone’s time.

“A bath first,” Lan Qiren said, deciding not to think about it. “And then we should discuss out next steps.”

“A bath for sure,” Nie Mingjue said, and scrubbed his face, satisfaction at sending a disaster to his enemies’ doorstep fading in favor of his habitual scowl. “As for next steps…I don’t think there’s anything to be done. We’re not prepared for a war and I can’t beat Wen Ruohan in a duel, so there’s no point in calling him out, especially as most of the cultivation world would say that nothing actually bad came of it.”

They would, too, and probably imply that Nie Mingjue had brought his fate upon himself by being born the way he was born and then not conforming himself to the accepted behaviors of the sex of his birth.

They would also then proceed to congratulate Lan Qiren and he would be forced to murder them to make them stop (and then he would need to retreat to seclusion), so it was probably all for the best that Nie Mingjue wasn’t being reckless.

“If he’s not going to press for a marriage, then we write up an engagement contract and sit on it,” Nie Mingjue concluded. “We carry on as we always have, each of us in our own sects, and, with luck, no one finds out that it exists except for the two of us.”

“For how long?”

“Until Wen Ruohan is defeated,” Nie Mingjue said, then amended, “Or until you find someone else you wish to marry, of course. I would not stand between you and your ‘one’.”

Lan Qiren had his nephews and his sect to care for; he had precious few opportunities to leave his sect to meet new people, and even fewer people would be interested in him, knowing that he was only a stand-in with all the responsibilities and none of the privileges. He had already resigned himself to not even thinking of marriage until his nephews were old enough to inherit the role of sect leader.

“I do not expect that to be an issue,” he said briefly, then glanced at Nie Mingjue’s midsection. “What if…?”

“We’ll find out in a month or so,” Nie Mingjue said, shrugging. “No point in worrying about it until then, is there?”

It was times like this that Lan Qiren appreciated and also despised the brutal practicality of the Nie sect.

“Very well,” he said, and tried not to wonder if the child would be surnamed Nie or Lan, assuming it even existed. Though perhaps it was a cruelty of him to think of it, given… “How old are you?”

Nie Mingjue gave him a strange look, which Lan Qiren supposed he deserved, knowing as he did that the Qinghe Nie did not share that information.

“Just – you’re of age?” he tried. “An adult?”

“I’m old enough,” Nie Mingjue assured him. “There are younger than me that have been mothers safely.”

That wasn’t entirely what Lan Qiren was asking, but he knew he wouldn’t get a better response, and in all truth he wasn’t really sure he wanted to know, either. Knowing wouldn’t change what he’d done – what they’d done together – and shamefully it probably wouldn’t make his desire to do it again any less.

He vaguely heard a distant crash.

“Oh, good!” Nie Mingjue said. “Sect Leader Jiang woke up.”

Lan Qiren grimaced and went to bathe. He would deal with this – with all of this, up to and including his emotional reaction to everything that had happened in the past day – later.

For now, he would carry on.

Everything else could wait.

It did.

Years later, when the war they had tried so hard to prevent was won – when Lan Qiren had been nearly crippled by Wen Xu, who Nie Mingjue later beheaded – when Nie Mingjue was the war god of the cultivation world, and Lan Xichen, Lan Qiren’s nephew who had once been so young, was now renowned as a heaven-sent bringer of mercy, when the two of them had sworn brotherhood along with the man who had (finally) killed Wen Ruohan and brought an end to the cultivation world’s long nightmare – Nie Mingjue came to the Cloud Recesses on foot through the mountain path.

This was, of course, the most irritating way to get to the Cloud Recesses, so it was no surprise that Lan Xichen was waiting patiently for him by the gate, an expression of curiosity writ large all over his face to those who knew him well enough to read it.

“Is something the matter?” he asked the moment Nie Mingjue made it to the gate. “Is Baxia…?”

“Baxia’s fine, I’m fine,” Nie Mingjue said. “Also, I may be thinking something terribly rude about your ancestors in relation to that last hill, but I hope you won’t hold it against me.”

He wouldn’t be the first, or the last, to think such things. There was a reason some of their more reasonable ancestors had invested in stairs for the main entrance, strong cultivators or not.

“Can we speak in private?” he added. “In your study, perhaps – and you should invite your uncle.”

Lan Xichen looked even more intrigued. “Of course, da-ge. At once.”

It was a little presumptuous of him to promise such a thing, given that Lan Qiren might have been busy, but he wasn’t. He certainly wasn’t skulking around the entrance gate along with far too many others in his sect, wondering why Nie Mingjue hadn’t ridden a horse or taken the easy way up along the stairs that had been put in place for just that reason, although one might be forgiven for thinking that that was what he was doing – at any rate, there was no conflict, and so they all three of them went to Lan Xichen’s rooms.

The sect leader’s rooms, now. It was still a little strange.

“I’ll have someone fetch us tea,” Lan Xichen said, but Nie Mingjue shook his head. “No?”

“Don’t preempt me,” Nie Mingjue said, and pulled a qiankun pouch out of his sleeve. “Tea is part of the gifts I brought.”

“Gifts,” Lan Xichen repeated, his eyes going wide and a little worried. He knew, and Lan Qiren knew, what that might mean. “You brought gifts?”

Nie Mingjue nodded. “Walk on a road with no path, bearing gifts,” he recited, and Lan Qiren felt his heart try to stop in his chest at the confirmation of Nie Mingjue’s intention. “That’s how proper wedding proposals are done in the Lan sect, aren’t they?”

“Under…certain circumstances,” Lan Xichen admitted. He put his hands behind his back to hide his anxiety. “Da-ge…you’ve always been a – very good friend –”

“Of many years running,” Nie Mingjue agreed. “I’m not going to lie; I’m hoping to capitalize on that to get your approval.”

“My…approval?” Lan Xichen asked, astonished, and rightfully so: he was no one’s father, so his approval would only be required for those whose parents had already died – a function of his role as sect leader. Yet, sect leader or not, no one could grant their approval over their own marriage, and that meant that Nie Mingjue was not, as Lan Xichen had so clearly feared, here to propose to him – poor Lan Xichen, who was exclusively interested in women and who had on account of that already needed to subtly turn down the advances of his other sworn brother. “You want my approval?”

“Yes,” Nie Mingjue said. “I’m here for your uncle.”

“My – shufu?!”

“We’re already engaged, so that should make it easier to get it through your sect elders,” Nie Mingjue said. “I still wanted to do it right, though.”

Lan Qiren covered his eyes with his hands as Lan Xichen exclaimed, far too loudly, “You’re engaged?! To shufu? Since when?!”

There were several audible thunk sounds from outside the hanshi. Several people would need to be punished for eavesdropping, and by morning they would probably need to discipline the entire sect for breaching the prohibition against gossip.

“Oh, ages,” Nie Mingjue said blithely, and Lan Qiren resisted the urge to try to wring his neck. “I think you were something like fifteen? It was something of a matter of circumstance at the time, though I like to think we’ve reached an understanding in the ensuing years.”

Lan Xichen’s mouth kept moving, but no sound was coming out.

“Are you intending on me marrying into your sect?” Lan Qiren asked, deciding to move onto the practicalities while his nephew processed his shock.

Nie Mingjue nodded. “Obviously you can come to the Cloud Recesses as much as required to assist Xichen with his responsibilities, but your reputation as a teacher is such that I’m sure you would be able to teach just as well from the Unclean Realm.”

“Statements like that may lead my sect elders to think that you’re trying to poach me.”

“Well, I wasn’t planning on starting my pitch to them by pointing out that the Unclean Realm has more surfaces we can fuck against, was I?”

Lan Xichen made an extremely high-pitched sound from the back of his throat.

“I would advise against making that argument, yes,” Lan Qiren said with a sigh. “However, it would be more helpful to point out how this would mitigate their concern regarding additional collateral branches in the main lineage of the Lan clan.”

“I’ll take your advice,” Nie Mingjue said. “I’ll also read your agreement to the entire concept into it. Well, Xichen? You going to let me steal your uncle away or what?”

“I would hardly term it as stealing –”

“You had sex?!” Lan Xichen shouted. “With my uncle?! And – uncle! You! With Mingjue-xiong?!”

“This may take a while,” Lan Qiren said to Nie Mingjue, maintaining his dignity.

“I’m going to tell Wangji!”

“Possibly a long while,” he revised.

“I’ll go wait in your quarters then, shall I?”

“You will,” Lan Qiren said testily, “wait in the guest quarters to which you will be assigned, as is appropriate.”

Nie Mingjue grinned at him. “Oh, all right,” he said. “Maybe I’ll go to the library and read up on interpretations regarding your sect’s rules on promiscuity between engaged couples.”

“Da-ge!”

“Sect Leader Nie, don’t make this worse. Go already.”

“I’m going, I’m going…”

Lan Qiren would not start his married life by strangling his intended, no matter how much of a troublemaker he was being. Though he might put him over his knee later on.

Something to think about.

[deistarr]

the biggest thing that gets me about reconciliation is that like. what does wwx even get out of it. the pleasure of jc's company lmfao? damn idk why he isn't banging on lotus pier's gates as we speak

Yeah, I know, right?

JC is just... so toxic, and the dynamics of his relationship with WWX have always been so abusive; I honestly can't imagine how they could possibly manage to change it.

Even at the end of the novel - when WWX had no real positive feelings for or about JC anymore; no desire to maintain any kind of relationship with him, and a deeply-buried part of him probably even hated JC for the Seige and the Wens - he still treated JC with far more patience and respect than he deserved. Because his entire life, he'd been conditioned to put JC before himself.

At this point, it's a habit. An automatic reflex.

And that's something that would take years to get rid of completely; even though he doesn't actually like JC as a person at all anymore. Even though he has a lot of negative feelings towards and about JC; when something is deeply ingrained in you from the time you're a child, you can't just shut the unhealthy mental thought processes off like a switch. It takes time and effort to unlearn them.

Honestly, the only reason I can see Post-Canon WWX agreeing to a reconciliation is if JC approached him and wanted it, and was actually (uncharacteristically) being civil and reasonable about it; but WWX wouldn't actually want it himself. He would just feel obligated to try to move past all of the incredibly shitty things JC has done to him and to people he cares about, because JC was making an effort; so his conditioning would make him feel guilty about not trying to meet him halfway.

But even if JC got ever hit by a clue-by-four and dosed with a little bit of grow-the-fuck-up, WWX still wouldn't really be thrilled about the prospect. And I think LWJ would pick up on that; even if WWX said he wanted to try.

I think LWJ would stop him and make him consider whether he actually wanted to try to reconnect with JC, or whether he just felt like he should. Which means that even if JC ever miraculously became a decent person and WWX was reluctantly planning on trying to build a new relationship with him, LWJ wouldn't let it happen.

He loves WWX far too much to stand by and watch him make himself miserable for someone who's done nothing but hurt him and just take, take, take.

[betelguwuse]

I’m starting to think maybe I don’t want to get married. Hypothetically I’d love to be in a godly marriage with a man who respects me and sees me as the person that God does (and not only me but women as a whole), but realistically do christian men like that even exist? Mainstream christianity, especially gender discourse, is so watered down and twisted into something that’s more political than biblical. I feel like this is gonna piss off both the christians and feminists, even though I’m both (though some might say I’m not a real feminist, whatever idc lol). Might also tag as Side B because I feel like this is also maybe a Side B mood? But here goes.

Color coded by vague topic, bolded so it’s easier to read.

Like I recently heard of a pastor being criticized for saying it’s a woman’s duty to look good for her husband, and the boomer conservatives were acting like criticisms of this pastor was the end of christianity. There’s no way “looking good” in a biblical sense was anything more than basic hygiene, nowhere near the beauty standards of today; and that is if the idea of looking good for your husband is even in the bible. These people siding with the pastor were saying that any woman who doesn’t shave or hide her “flaws” with makeup or basically completely embody the tradwife meme are bad wives. Like what the literal hell.

Honestly the entire tradwife aesthetic seems to be the goal for a lot of young christian couples, when it’s not inherently biblical. I used to be into it myself because heck yeah staying home, housekeeping, taking care of children, and wearing cute flowery dresses sounds like a dream. But my goals aren’t universal! Some women don’t want kids. Some women want to work. Good and God-honoring women of the bible didn’t all have kids and stay home. I mean the timeline of the bible spans so long, so yeah maybe there were times when most women did. But that doesn’t mean women who didn’t were bad wives or lesser women. Not to mention there’s such a blurred line currently between cute tradwife lifestyle and creeps who fetishize the idea of a traditional (and by traditional they mean submissive) wife. Gross.

Another thing too many christian men do is say women can’t be in any position of power in the church. There is the whole specific issue of whether or not women should be the highest up actual pastor of the church, and I don’t know enough about that whole debate to validate or debunk it, but I’m not talking about that specifically here. Aside from that one position, a lot of christians think women can only teach other women and girls but not guys, even like literal child boys. That’s so weird, like imagine thinking a little boy has more authority than, or even equal to, a grown woman? Couldn’t be me. And this whole idea comes from an out of context “I do not permit women to speak in the church” from a regular human guy. And the reason he said this was that the women around him were spreading heresy. I still think it’s flawed logic to exclude all women from speaking in that situation just because most of them were wrong, but again, this wasn’t a command from God. This was just a guy recording his church experience and doing his flawed human best to manage it. Various women throughout the actual bible outside of this one leader’s timeline held positions of power in various churches. And modern day american christian men think biblical womanhood is all about subservience? Bro what bible are you reading?

I just want to make it clear that these are all just generalizations, but having been in various actual biblical communities and conservative christian communities, I can kinda pick up on the general sexist behaviors of the latter. But unfortunately in today’s political climate more and more young christians are only being exposed to political opinions that are surface level americanized good christian morals, but not actually biblical.

Even on top of that, even if a man knows of these biblical misconceptions, we live in a society. Like we’re constantly exposed to women’s sexualization, and it’s pretty impossible to escape that. I don’t want to spend my life with someone who’s grown up in a world where women are seen as weak, objects, pleasure machines, etc. And yeah we can unlearn these biases (honestly I hate the word unlearn but I can’t think of a substitute rn), but it feels like a hassle to casually figure out whether a guy can make an effort to understand what women go through, and if I were to just bring it up I’d scare them away. And that’s not to say I’m some perfect person who’s never sexualized men, we are all sinners after all and we live in a fallen world etc etc. But a whole society where women are so objectified that it’s normal for little boys to be watching porn, that just doesn’t really happen with little girls. I can’t speak for all women, but when I started seeing men sexually it was in my late teens when I realized like ‘oh I can sexualize men too? wild. ok I’m an adult lemme check it out’. Still sinful, but not ingrained in me from porn ads as a kid the way most young boys have been since like the creation of the internet.

Even the men currently in my life who genuinely want what’s best for me are so incredibly misogynistic it’s baffling. My male family members see any woman who breaks an imaginary dress code or ideology is some kind of deviant. I just want to make it clear that this is MY family and I’M the only one who gets to complain about them. We all love each other here even if the males are horribly wrong.

So I shaved my head for halloween and my dad could barely look at me, not because he was exactly mad or anything but just because I looked ugly to him. He always says ‘close the windows in your apartment because men will spy on you changing’ but after my hair was gone he was all ‘actually don’t bother because nobody will look at you looking like that’ like wow I wasn’t aware men only sexualized women for their hair. Like you really think a gross creeper is gonna be turned off by a fully naked oblivious vulnerable woman just because she’s bald? That’s not how any of this works. And just today my sister was watching a goth youtuber egirl or something, I didn’t see her makeup but my dad said stuff like ‘ew why does she look like that, maybe it’d be cool as a costume but how is she going to get a job’. Like, I’m not one to go ‘women don’t wear makeup for men’ (because most women who only use makeup to hide their insecurities and follow beauty standards very much just do it so they don’t get backlash from others, if not directly to please men), but when it’s a fun crazy look that’s not meant to be pretty, I’m all for that shit and generally I hate when men lose respect for a woman just for wearing something they don’t like. Like fashion isn’t real and your appearance should be as costumey or weird as you want without people losing respect for you. Also like...do men know that makeup isn’t permanent?? Like if she wanted a job that required no makeup she could easily wipe her face off and get one?? Not only that, but people can work from home and/or be self employed. Maybe youtube itself was this girl’s job. Who the hell cares man. And the worst thing here is my brother outright said one time “the root cause of feminism is pride”. B r u h. And this was back when I considered myself an anti-feminist, even then I knew that feminism started for good reason and I was absolutely furious. I think I kept it to myself like a coward lol, but if anyone said that to me now I’d tear them apart. In a debate I mean, not like literal violence.

Tldr: I’m not trying to say men are inherently more evil because there’s evil in everyone, but the way it takes shape in men in most societies is so insidious and inescapable. I love my family and guy friends, but I don’t want to deal with one in a romantic/sexual relationship because I don’t know if even the most educated and goodest christian boi in this world can see me as a true equal. It sucks because I want sex and children, but when the mainstream idea of hetero sex is female submission, it just makes me shrivel up and contemplate becoming a nun. I’m not even catholic. But even nuns are sexualized and degraded in coomer’s disgusting brains. In conclusion I’m going feral and starting my own woman-only church in the woods let’s go ladies.

[newtafterdark]

Love your analysis of the characters 👍 what are Gorgeous' issues? I love how you protray him btw :)

Awww, thank you! 💕

And you aren't even aware of the things I've recently written about him with friends! >:3c I can't wait to share that eventually! I have a feeling you'll adore him just a smidge more! :>

Alright, time for the big man!

(content warning for topics of ableism, PTSD, violent dissociative states & toxic masculinity)

To me, there are several factors that made Gorgeous into the man he is today. He didn't have the same kind of rough upbringing Mind did... but it was none-the-less something that left its marks.

Gorgeous is selectively mute & actually prefers ASL over using verbal words. And that on its own was already hard to grow up with, especially with teachers who had no patience for him either signing too slow or too fast (when he was excited over something)...

So in the end, he just stuck with speaking short sentences in general. It's as far as he'll go for the convenience of others.

To folks who don't know he's selectively mute, this does read as him just being rude & being short-spoken to just be a dick. ...which to be fair, sometimes that's actually the case.

Aside from that... he had the unfortunate thing to deal with, where things like "don't touch that, that's for girls" got ingrained into his brain very early on.

He was stuck with a major case of toxic masculinity for a long time... but he unlearned a good chunk of it over time- (shout-out to his twin sister Dazzling (or “Dazz” for short) for talking sense into him, eventually his classmates in the gender studies at MIT as well, him doing some serious soul-searching on his own, and of course Beauty)

Now... aside from that... he carries serious PTSD from the Resonance Cascade with him. Being reminded of it triggers a violent dissociative state that takes him literal minutes to get out of.

And that... leads to the final big issue he has. If having that dissociative state wasn't already enough on its own... he's also painfully aware of how his heightened strength can do so much more damage than "normal" people could.

He hates getting close to people because he's afraid he'll hurt them... and he can't handle the thought of seriously injuring someone he actually cares about.

So, in the end... all I can say is: Someone hug this big doofus. He's trying his best.

[loveanoutcast]

Hello again❤️ I just wanted thank you for updating “Games”, i LOVED the last chapter!! The bond between Eren and his wife is so heartwarming, but also EREN CAN YOU STOP BEING JEALOUS FOR LIKE A SECOND UGH

I also wanted to ask what are your thoughts on aot’s ending?😭

Hi! I always look forward to your responses! I'm so happy you loved the latest chapter, i made it especially long this time for two reasons: 1. I can't get enough of Eren married trope 2. I had a feeling the last chapter of the manga series was going to leave me emotionally drained and I was spot on. I'll be doing a part five for "Games" but i do not know when, hopefully in the next two weeks. I know Eren is sooo jealous, but he's also extremely cocky and aware of his strengths, at this point he gets jealous on purpose to make the sex better and also who doesn't love possessive Eren😆

Okay so, SPOILERS AHEAD.

Now, I, like many, have my opinion on the last chapter, First, Isayama wrote this amazing story and from the very beginning I always wondered if the title of the first chapter was really for Eren. How can I best describe this...okay truth is. Eren Yeager is my favorite character of aot. No, its not because he's hot but it is a partial small reason lol. I loved him since the very first episode because I felt so incredibly bad for him. I pitied Eren and I also understood why he acted the way he did. SO many people complained about him being a douchebag and a crybaby, and they aren't wrong but yes they are. Eren lacks emotional intelligence (also some common sense but thats for another time) he lack a sense of self because he witnessed his mothers death, he was given a serum at the tender age of 10, he ate his father, and he was recruited to be a soldier at the age of fifteen because he was hell bent on a revenge that was unrealistic. Let me make something clear: Every single soldier of the main group and Marley group were MINORS. They were CHILD SOLDIERS. That is fucked up no matter the threat of any kind. They were robbed of their innocence and faith and forced to train, behave, and not be stupid teenagers (EVEN THO THATS WHAT THEY ARE) just so they could be human machines to a selfish old and twisted higher-ups. Eren wasn't smart like Armin, he wasn't strong like an Ackerman, and overall he wasnt unique. The Attack Titan is what made him unique but once he realized that there were other shifters like him, it was a blow to his ego. The fact that you could S E E the depression weighing him down hurt so much. but I understood his immaturity, I myself have struggled with childhood trauma and I often catch myself saying something or doing something childish. It takes YEARS to unlearn something that was so heavily ingrained in your memories and Eren doesn't even have the time to do that. he's impulsive and hot headed but he can also be overprotective and I have always loved him for tht and I always will. I also never doubted for a second that he loved Mikasa. Mikasa had her share of traumas as well, she witnessed her parents murdered and she had to kill to save Eren, BUT the difference is that she had a savior. Eren was an awkward shy kid just like anyone else and yes he was a little messed up but i want one person to tell me they've never met a child that seemed a bit too edgy for their age. When eren's mother died NO ONE was their savior. Hanes wanted to save her but coming face to face with a titan scared him so bad he retreated and took the kids. Eren didn't retreat with those kidnappers despite the disadvantage he was at (he was a child for shits sake). He gave Mikasa the scarf and well we all know what happens. I also would read how Eren was stunted at his age mentality because of his trauma and I do agree and I would add that even though Armin and Mikasa were there for him, they ALLOWED his behavior. They are not at fault of course bc they are kids trying to figure out how to be adults with no parental guidance but everyone around Eren tolerated and allowed him to be how he was (except Jean but you could smell his jealousy and Eren fucking knew it LOL plus he was immature in his own way too) Even Hange, Levi, and Erwin his higher ups made excuses for his attitude. Levi didn't know how to parents he was raised by KENNY fir shits sake and he never spoke of the underground. Erwin was too busy and high up to worry about kids, he was trained to ensure the lives of soldiers and im sorry but that is all he saw them as. We won't even go into Hange who is a mad scientist lol. Furthermore, Eren was always my comfort character and even though i sometimes didn't like how he handled stuff, I GET IT, he had no one to guide him or show him another way and by the time he kissed historia's hand, he realized what he had to do. He was 15!!! when I was 15 I had the emotional range of a walnut and the temper of a bull. That on top of the fact that he knows he only has 8 more years is enough to make anyone want to collapse. No matter 1/2

[roc-thoughtblog]

Sense and Sensibility Readthrough Part 7.5

Or, where I was gonna start chapter 11, but needed to talk about why I thought Willoughby's observation was wrong.

And then, of course, I turned it into something really long, so that's taken up my reading session today. (I still haven't finished writing my thoughts on Narrative Voice either, because it has gotten loooong.)

Anyway.

"Brandon is just the kind of man," said Willoughby one day, when they were talking of him together, "whom everybody speaks well of, and nobody cares about; whom all are delighted to see, and nobody remembers to talk to."

Elinor is right, here, that Willoughby is demonstrably wrong in his assessment of Colonel Brandon's social activity. It's not merely the fact that Elinor herself has taken an interest in Brandon enough, but simply the fact that Willoughby's claim that nobody remembers to talk to Brandon, is predicated on Willoughby himself dismissing the existence/value of the Middletons in general. It's not true that Brandon is not spoken to, it's that he's not spoken to by an arbitrary class of people whom Willoughby thinks matters, such as Willoughby, Marianne and Elinor, which he himself is a part of.

> "That he is patronised by you," replied Willoughby, "is certainly in his favour; but as for the esteem of the others, it is a reproach in itself. Who would submit to the indignity of being approved by such a woman as Lady Middleton and Mrs. Jennings, that could command the indifference of anybody else?"

We know the Middletons speak to him, because Willoughby himself admits it, but we also know from his own words that they don't count, only Elinor does. In fact, he considers them a negative. Social noise. Detractors by association even, a bad or shallow crowd. I wouldn't be surprised is he considers servants here also. After all, Marianne has already said as much in her statements around being 27, and we're lead to believe they share perspective on most things. Were it to be that Colonel Brandon was comfortable and sociable with the Middletons' maids and butlers, I think Willoughby would still consider him an unfortunate case.

And importantly, we know that the Middletons don't restrict themselves to just speaking with him, they also do care about him and his problems. Elinor has referenced that Sir Middleton clearly knows about whatever has troubled his history, and does have an investment in seeing the man socialise. Mrs. Jennings, for all her misplaced enthusiasm, does have an interest in his romantic life or woes as it may be. Just because these cares are aligned with their own interests of socialising and matchmaking, doesn't invalidate them. (Can't say much for Lady Middleton but the narrative has ventured that Lady Middleton specifically is a little cold outside the topic of her own children.) And, you know, who knows what other friends Brandon may have. We aren't him. He was even a Colonel, he must at least have military mates.

We see the Middletons as very flawed individuals because the narrative has framed them this way. Sir Middleton is ignorant, Lady Middleton is self-absorbed and Mrs. Jennings is shallow; on this line we're also expected to dismiss their value as individuals and friends at least slightly, the same way Willoughby and Marianne do.

But really, we can turn that assessment straight around, on Marianne in particular. She can be considered narrow-minded and dismissive. Arrogant perhaps, maybe even cold to people who are unfamiliar to her. As self-absorbed as Lady Middleton, perhaps, or as shallow as Mrs. Jennings. She's not so different, but she gets a pass inside the story for being young and pretty, and out of story for being the protagonist. It's easier to dismiss her flaws because they are presented, but not highlighted. But, again, we can turn that back around for the Middletons! If perhaps Brandon were the protagonist, would Mrs. Jennings have the same cheerful warmth as Mama Middleton? Maybe Lady M does care, but is simply detached like Elinor? There is certainly nobody in the story as genuinely generous and well-meaningly sociable as Sir M.

How might the Dashwoods appear then? Elinor might be cold, disinteresting, even if she shows some care. Marianne, pretty but vain and shallow; friendly, but mayhap just as likely to ask somebody to sing a song she just heard, or to bulldoze somebody with her opinions. Mama Dashwood might even appear as self-absorbed in her own family as Lady M; she made a point not to socialise beyond walking distance.

Either way, my point being, they are not so different. Watch Willoughby or anyone, including herself, give Marianne the time of day if she were older or dumpier! Or a servant! Is my statement here to mean that noone will give her attention? No, actually. Plenty of nice, genuine, and flawed people will anyway. Just that Willoughby and Marianne themselves, and anybody with that particular flaw of pride, would not.

So, yeah! Willoughby's observation was incorrect, and very myopic really. Such is youth, except come on man, Marianne is 17 but you're my age. You should know better! Man's definitely coasted on some social privilege his whole life and it shows.

"I do not dislike him. I consider him, on the contrary, as a very respectable man, who has everybody's good word, and nobody's notice; who, has more money than he can spend, more time than he knows how to employ, and two new coats every year."

I think Willoughby genuinely considers himself to not dislike Brandon. After all, he doesn't hate him, and he knows he has no reason to dislike him. I think Willoughby is the type of person who genuinely considers themselves to not dislike anyone, because, again, he has no reason to. They don't matter to him in that way.

But I think his general attitude speaks for itself. After all, he does find Lady Middleton and Mrs. Jennings thoroughly disrespectable, even by association. He considers Brandon a respectable man, but only in the ways in which he considers Brandon to have potential to be amongst people like himself and Marianne. He otherwise has everything callous to say about the aspects of Brandon's personality and circumstance that keep him from joining what he perceives as a more lively and acceptable strata of sociability. He certainly takes no issue with Marianne's actual open dislike of the man. (Though, come to think of it, that may be at least in part Mrs. Jenning's fault for setting her on him through thoroughly inappropriate real-person-shipping.)

I do think Willoughby has a great, mostly unvoiced disdain for Brandon's crowd, and I think that disdain extends to Brandon himself for having just enough potential to escape it, but not doing so. I get flashbacks to cases like in To Kill a Mockingbird (and uh, real life...) where people don't think they're racist, but also quite obviously don't think anything of the black community, and also look down on anyone who associates with them, like the guy has to always pretend he's drunk, and Atticus Finch himself. Disliking other people is a bad thing that other people do! This case is probably nowhere near as serious, but it comes from similar places on basic levels. Exclusivity, tribalism, elitism, prejudice, ostracisation, from where deeper, deeper problems take root.

STATUS! That's a word that could have been useful to me but I haven't used.

Anyway, I take this perspective because it's not as though I wasn't there too at one point, though absolutely nowhere near the extent of Marianne or Willoughby. I certainly didn't hold those conscious opinions, but I still felt the pressure to define the boundaries of people I should befriend, and I did unjustifiably dismiss people who I thought were dismissable by arbitrary social standards I didn't even understand. And for what? After all, I was exactly the same type of arbitrarily dismissable person! I was a weird kid! Weird kids are not socially prestigious material!

It's strange how easily ingrained that arbitrary-social-boundary-drawing is. Seriously, where exactly are children getting it from? Answer’s probably obvious but I’m already going too long.

I think, it's a very important thing to unlearn. If not least because it's a source of very deep societal problems, it can also potentially be another thing that leads somebody into a situation of, "everybody speaks well of, and nobody cares about; whom all are delighted to see, and nobody remembers to talk to." Not because noone cares or wants to speak to them, but because they've arbitrarily blinded themselves to people who do! There will of course be Willoughbys and Mariannes who don't care about you and think little of you, but at the end of the day they're a minority, and in terms of social interaction they're really no different from every other Middleton who might genuinely care.

It's ironically a fate that will most likely to hit hardest a Marianne or Willoughby who falls from social grace. After all, if they lose whatever privilege of personality or appearance, wealth or youth that keeps them afloat, they'd have noone to care about them or to talk to! Just lots and lots of Middletons, or probably worse. And befriending those people would involve, gasp, lowering your social standards! Descending to the level of people whom you have implicitly thought to have been beneath you this whole time! And now you've become a Brandon, who is old, and most unfortunately boring, and who only interacts with the Middletons, who don't count.

What a terrible fate!

Final Thoughts: So yeah, I think Willoughby was wrong, and also I think he's more than a little disdainful. He's definitely the kind of guy who has always had the luxury of arbitrarily making his choice of social affiliation, and has never had to challenge his prejudices. If he thinks nobody wants to talk to Brandon, well, on top of not being correct, he's also quite satisfied to play his own role in Brandon's perceived ostracisation. Not saying you are obligated to socialise with people whom you don’t have any interest in, but man, there’s no reason to do ‘em like that.

Wait, I've definitely used both the words pride and prejudice in this tangent. Hmm.

Anyway, making friends, and especially connecting with them, can be hard, but Brandon at least seems to be doing fine. The kids just have a superiority complex.