#there is no real purpose to this i just like killing time by being a huge fucking nerd. i love knowing shit

[waitineedaname]

Shen Qingqiu had always had a fondness for the Mid-Autumn Festival. When he was Shen Yuan and very, very young, he had briefly been convinced that all the celebrations were for his sake given the proximity to his birthday. Even when his parents had laughed and explained the real purpose of the festival, it remained one of his favorite holidays. The lanterns, the sweets, the games – what’s not to like?

Needless to say, the Mid-Autumn Festival in the Demon Realm blew all other celebrations out of the water. This was a place where people could do literal magic. Talismans made lanterns glow different colors and float higher in the sky than they realistically should. Demonic performers used all variety of abilities to enhance their performances, from qi powered dance moves to shapeshifting instead of changing costumes. Shen Qingqiu observed the celebrations with a kind of glee he hadn’t felt since he was a child. As empress (a title he still hadn’t gotten used to), he was welcome to partake in the ostentatious banquet prepared by the palace kitchens, but privately, his favorite treats of the night were the mooncakes Luo Binghe had made especially for the two of them. 

He didn’t have blood family to share mooncakes with in this world, but he’d made sure to send an order of treats to his disciples on Qing Jing Peak since he would be unable to share the holiday with them. He and Luo Binghe had agreed to split the holidays between their two realms, and this year Qing Jing had New Year’s while the Demon Realm had the Mid-Autumn Festival. Here in the Demon Realm, the only family he had to share mooncakes with was his husband. He was perfectly happy with that.

“Does husband approve of this one’s cooking?” Luo Binghe asked with a smile, pulling his fingers away from where he’d handfed Shen Qingqiu yet another artfully made mooncake. The festivities were winding down for the night, and they were back in their chambers, which was the only reason Shen Qingqiu was allowing him to hand feed him. That, and he had just enough wine in his system to make him feel loose and relaxed.

Shen Qingqiu hummed and swallowed his food before answering. “Binghe knows his cooking is always excellent,” he praised. Luo Binghe beamed and snuggled into his side to kiss his cheek. 

“Which was your favorite?” He had made a variety of mooncakes with a variety of fillings. Realistically, many of them were flavored with ingredients that should not be available in this setting, but he’d bug Airplane about it later. Luo Binghe had cut all of them into neat pieces, allowing them to sample all of the flavors. Shen Qingqiu thought for a moment, then pointed to one of them.

“The five kernels one,” he said, and Luo Binghe immediately sat up to cut another slice for him. “It’s something of a novelty to be able to eat it,” he continued, fanning himself gently. “The first time I ate that flavor, my parents immediately had to rush me to the doctor.” He sighed. “What a relief this body doesn’t have a nut allergy.”

Being able to talk about his old life was a recent development. Luo Binghe had found out the truth of his transmigration situation from Shang Qinghua not long ago, and since then, he had slowly been allowing himself to reveal more and more of his previous life, finally free from the terror that the System would immediately kill him for it. Binghe clearly appreciated the honesty and seemed conflicted between wanting to ask more and not wanting to push Shen Qingqiu too much. Sweet boy, how could Shen Qingqiu deny him anything?

“Is there anything else Shizun can enjoy now that he couldn’t before?” Luo Binghe asked, offering him another slice of the five kernels mooncake. “This one would be happy to indulge any of his tastes.”

“Mm, well you’ve already got the gluten covered,” he said, gesturing to the mooncakes in front of them. “I didn’t have that many food allergies. I suppose red meat made my stomach irritated sometimes. I am still unfortunately lactose intolerant.” He sighed sadly. “What I wouldn’t give for a lactaid. I wonder if there’s a special flower or magic pill that would help with that…” he trailed off in thought. Perhaps that was something else he could bug Shang Qinghua about. He wanted to know what the protagonist’s skills would do to ice cream without it incapacitating him for the rest of the day! He didn’t realize he’d zoned out until he blinked and saw Luo Binghe staring at him with a fond smile. “Ah. Sorry, Binghe. I was lost in thought there.”

Luo Binghe shook his head and leaned in to press a surprisingly chaste kiss to his lips. “Shizun looks very handsome when he’s thinking.”

Shen Qingqiu huffed and gently batted his head with his fan. “Hush.” He still allowed Luo Binghe to wiggle under his arms until he could wrap both of his own around Shen Qingqiu’s waist. Shen Qingqiu tsked fondly and stroked his hand through Binghe’s curls. “Clingy child. I suppose if you want to make a treat for me… perhaps more of these mooncakes for my birthday?”

“When is your birthday?” Luo Binghe asked, looking up at him from where his face was squished into Shen Qingqiu’s chest.

“Let’s see…” Shen Qingqiu did some quick math. “Today is Tuesday… It should be this Saturday.”

Luo Binghe sat up, startled. “Shizun!” he exclaimed, sounding peeved. “That’s so soon! You didn’t warn me!”

“It’s not like I’ve thought about it much!” Shen Qingqiu shot back, tugging his husband back in for further cuddles. “Binghe doesn’t need to do anything special for this master’s birthday anyway. I’m happy to just eat a meal with you.”

Luo Binghe grumbled, clearly still displeased. Shen Qingqiu resigned himself to whatever elaborate celebration his ridiculous husband cooked up for the weekend. “How old will you be turning?” Binghe asked curiously.

“Uh…” Shen Qingqiu realized he still wasn’t certain how old the original goods were. He supposed he could probably find out from Yue Qingyuan, but… yeah, that would be an awkward conversation. “Do you mean combined between my previous life and this one?”

Luo Binghe nodded. “Shizun must be very old and wise with the experience of two lives.” His eyes were wide and hopeful.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Shen Qingqiu said with a soft laugh. “Let’s see… I was twenty when I first transmigrated, and then there were those five years when I was dead.” He didn’t notice Luo Binghe gradually stiffening in his arms. “I suppose at this point, I’m only a year older than Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu said, pleased by this realization.

“Only… a year older?” Luo Binghe repeated. There was something unreadable in his tone. 

“Yes?” Shouldn’t this be a relief? Shen Qingqiu still felt like a creep sometimes when he thought about how he’d known Luo Binghe since he was a teenager, but their actual combined lived experiences were not that far apart. Somehow, against all odds, they’d evened out at some point along the way!

“So Shizun… isn’t old and wise,” Luo Binghe said slowly.

Shen Qingqiu frowned. Why did that sound disrespectful coming from him?! “Well, this body is likely in its forties at this point,” he said, making his best estimate.

Luo Binghe’s lips flattened into a line. “But you complain about your old hips when we–”

Shen Qingqiu cut him off with a swift smack of his fan. “Don’t say anything else! They are old hips! Not all of us are blessed with youthful demonic stamina!”

That seemed to cheer Luo Binghe up for some godforsaken reason, but he was still pouting. “Shizun, why don’t we celebrate your birthday as your forty-eighth? Twenty-eight sounds too strange.”

“Okay?” Shen Qingqiu was lost. What on earth was going through this strange boy’s head? “You really don’t need to make a big deal out of my birthday, it’s nothing special.”

“This one is happy to dote on his middle-aged husband,” Luo Binghe said, squeezing Shen Qingqiu around the middle.

“I’m not–”

“His middle-aged husband,” Luo Binghe repeated firmly, hugging him even tighter. Shen Qingqiu grunted and swatted at him until he loosened his grip.

“Alright, alright.” He still wasn’t sure what was going on, but he still hid his flushed face behind his fan. “Pass me another mooncake, will you?”

Luo Binghe happily cut him another slice and fed it to him by hand. This truly was a strange second chance at life he’d found himself in, but Shen Qingqiu supposed he couldn’t complain.

[distort-opia]

*bursts through your window at 4AM wearing bloodied Hamlet costume* Hey Tort beloved i got you a whole chicken and an egg for breakfast:

Batman VS. Bruce Wayne— which one, in your opinion, is the person and which one is the persona? Realistically, when hell breaks loose on a good god abiding gotham day, which one could Bruce lose and still have his identity remain somewhat intact? I know different comics and media take complete separate parts of him as what makes him, but which one do you think makes Bruce Wayne who he is at heart?

Hi! You're not the first person to ask, so I'll put these two together. Thank you for the hearty breakfast and please accept these cakes as apology for how delayed this answer is (you and Anon both).

To be honest, I consider the question of "which one is real, which one is fake" as a bit overdone... and needlessly complicated. Especially because many times when people bring up the debate, they're thinking of "Brucie Wayne" and "Batman", with arguments of Batman being the real personality seemingly always correct and almost obvious. This oversimplifies things, because there's "Brucie Wayne", there's Batman, and then there's just Bruce.

Is the persona of "Brucie Wayne", the ditzy womanizing playboy with half a braincell, fake? Yes, absolutely. That one's a mask which serves the purpose of hiding the existence of Batman. But is that the same as Bruce Wayne, the man we see joke around with Alfred in the Cave, interact honestly with Dick and the Family and Talia and Selina and so many others-- the human underneath Batman? No, it isn't. That Bruce Wayne is very real. And Batman is not a separate persona or a mask, it's just another facet of the same person, borne out of Bruce Wayne's trauma. Batman is so many things... a coping mechanism, a way to commit suicide, the fantasy of who Bruce would like to be; but he's got roots within Bruce to such a fundamental extent that calling him a mask, or a persona, feels wrong to me. Batman is both the worst and the best of Bruce Wayne. There's no separating them... no matter how badly Bruce would like to make it that way.

Because Bruce has struggled (and still does) a lot, both with admitting to himself that there's more to him than the existence of Batman, and with maintaining a balance between the many personas he wears. "Batman is the real one, Bruce Wayne is fake" is something Bruce desperately wanted to believe and make real himself, in multiple stories. This is where this long-standing fandom belief probably stems from: from Bruce having convinced himself that "Bruce Wayne" is dead, and that there isn't anything left to him but Batman. Hell, Bruce has literally tried to "kill" Bruce Wayne and only be Batman in Bruce Wayne, Murderer? and Bruce Wayne, Fugitive; this is probably the story arc that dealt with this divide in Bruce's psyche in the most depth, I absolutely recommend giving it a read.

However, the more important thing is the why. Why this constant struggle? And it's a simple reason... maintaining ties to his humanity versus giving himself over entirely to the Vow. Batman was forged out of Bruce's pain, and is a response to loss. Batman is how Bruce channels his emotions into purpose. Batman will always want to never go through the loss of loved ones again, and the simplest solution to that is to never care again. Never have romantic relationships, maintain a distance from all the people in his life. But humans can't live like that. Bruce can't live like that, he needs grounding by the many relationships he does have, despite how much the side of him that's Batman pulls in the other direction. That's why Bruce Wayne, Fugitive ends like this:

And the thing is, we keep having the same story, over and over. Bruce nearly being consumed by Batman, and then finding his way back, most of the time with the help of his Family.

Here's another instance:

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #140

And another one, which so beautifully illustrates how Batman and Bruce Wayne are the same, but also how Batman contains a suicidal and self-destructive side of Bruce too:

Batman: Ego

(Lol. Yeah this is your life, man.)

But you could find an equal number of examples in which Bruce declares that "Bruce Wayne" is useless and disposable, and that Batman is the only thing that matters (e.g., Robin 1993 #125). Because again, this is comics. There's no finality in sight, no traditional ending that everything we read is heading towards. Bruce will keep doing this dance, will keep having to learn how to balance these two sides of himself. Most recently this happened in Zdarsky's Batman run, with the conflict between Bruce and the Batman of Zur-en-Arrh... but don't even get me started on that utter disappointment.

Actually though, @psalmsofpsychosis, this part of your question is quite interesting: "Realistically, when hell breaks loose on a good god abiding gotham day, which one could Bruce lose and still have his identity remain somewhat intact?" Because there have been times of crisis in which this has happened, in comics. And what Bruce did is probably not what you'd expect. This answer got long enough though, so I'm putting the rest under the cut.

Bruce has gone through a lot. There's been many catastrophic-level events he's dealt with. And at first glance, you'd think that he'd consistently fall back on Batman, if that's who he "really" is. But when his will genuinely breaks, that isn't what always happens. In Batman: Cult, a story that takes place towards the end of Bruce's first decade as Batman, after Jason became Robin, shows that Bruce can give up:

Batman: The Cult

Bruce abandons Gotham, and with it, Batman. Obviously, he eventually comes back. But it had to be Jason dragging him around for half this issue just to make him fight, just to make him function. (Much earlier than this, in Going Sane, he also considered just leaving Batman behind. But that story is deeply intertwined with Joker's identity as much as his, so I'm just mentioning it.)

And then Barbara gets shot, Jason dies, Bane goes after Batman in the Knightfall arc... it's just one thing after the other for the poor guy. Knightfall and its continuations are very extensive and many things happen, but after Bruce's spine is broken, he leaves Jean-Paul Valley in the role of Batman. And even after Bruce's injuries get healed, making a previously proclaimed goal of becoming Batman again much easier, he tells Tim that he doesn't want to come back. That he wants to stay retired, and "rejoin humanity":

Batman: Knightquest

Tim has to tell him of a crime that Azrael as Batman did, which is impossible to ignore... and Bruce has to confront Jean-Paul and see the truth of him having gone mad himself, before he decides to retrain and "become worthy" of his Batman identity once more.

Then, in a much bigger and well-known storyline that follows the Cataclysm event, Batman disappears for months. No Man's Land starts with a world in which Bruce has been away in Monaco trying to be someone else, instead of in Gotham, being Batman and taking control of the wrecked city which had been abandoned by all. Oh he comes back, but still...

No Man's Land: Ground Zero

So. Batman isn't his "real" identity, it isn't the core of him. Many times, he's wanted to run away and leave Batman behind, just like in some stories he was ready to completely destroy the "Bruce Wayne" identity and only be Batman. But in times of crisis, he repeatedly tried to leave and find happiness outside of Gotham and carrying the mantle of Batman... without succeeding.

Sometimes, Bruce hates Batman, and tries to run away. And other times, Batman hates Bruce, and tries to destroy him. It's a constant give-and-take, and neither facet of him has managed to succeed so far, because Bruce is Batman. There's no one without the other.

[edwinisms]

it’s actually so wild to me that this fairly quirky YA type show gave both of its main characters deaths that can, in one way or another, solidly be considered hate crimes. they were both flat out murdered as a result of being A) gay and effeminate or B) brown (south asian, specifically) and you could argue whether or not those kids thought of it that way in the moment or whatever but the bottom line is that they would not have been in the situations that killed them if they weren’t of their respective minorities. like legitimately that is a ballsy choice for this kind of netflix show, let alone for the two Main Characters, and i respect it big time

[jasontoddenthusiastt]

“Stop excusing Jason killing just because he died!!1!111!!1”

We don’t excuse his killings, you ignorant fool. We actively encourage it.

[selfinflictedgunshotwound]

sorry for only saying this type of shit lately but i kinda wanna drive a car straight into a brick wall at the highest speed possible

[frogspawned]

pet peeve is when a story tells us something is aberrant, but it seems to matter more about who does the behavior than the behavior itself. rorschach in snyder's watchmen isn't going too far; we watch nite owl and silk spectre ii snap necks and arms with gleeful, loving abandon, in slow motion no less, while they lecture the audience about rorschach's violence. heroes frequently torture the plot contrivance out of a villain and then moralize to the camera when the villains do the same. indominus rex's killing spree doesn't shock or appall me; all the jurassic world dinosaurs act like mindless killing machines, and the camera lingers, rapturous, on their cruelty. it's not an outlier. there's nothing interesting about it beyond as a set piece.

in a better script, the indominus rex would have had pathos; a chimera made for entertainment, for profit, stitched together with no regard for itself and placed in a lonely box. a freak among freaks. of course it would be mad. but the film wasn't interested in it as an animal, or a character, only as a moving piece of scenery for people to scream at or breathe tensely while it can clearly smell and reach them but doesn't, because it isn't a character and doesn't have motivations.

it's just sort of boring, i suppose. it tries like all other empty drab things do to cover it with bombast and roaring and soaring brassy scores but it's just sort of dull. a sprawl of nothing.

conversely peele's nope is a transcendent monster movie, imo, because it thinks about the the whys and hows, how jean jacket perceives the world, how the world perceives her, and lets that shape the narrative as much as jupe or emerald or gordy. they consulted biologists and behaviorists, digging into the meat of it. the creature as a camera as an animal as a device. nope has layers. it takes its own insane premise seriously, and has something to say, and is a goddamn good movie. i forgot where i was going with this.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

one of these days i'll write up a post about the parallels and foils between vivi and hermes and why it fucking kills me. for now all i can say is in hindsight the 'latched onto vivi Hard as a kid' to 'latched onto hermes Hard as an adult' pipeline is Real

[buttercupart]

why doesn't chara & asriel live with toriel at all?

everyone's gone on without you

[backpackingspace]

How does one even go about having feelings about escaping being murdered?

[mizukiko-kun]

Productions of Hamlet where Hamlet downs Horatio’s poisoned wine himself, my beloved. Drinking the poison meant for your best friend to save their life must have felt so intimate…

[tariah23]

ur tags on that kenjaku post… oh my god you saw that too? i was truly horrified

YEAH… I saw that shit, I hate stsg so much lmfaooo. It’s so obvious that they want Getou to be the “girl,” so badly. He’s getting the treatment of every dark haired best friend in a popular shounen 🚶🏾‍♀️. He’s too good of a character for this!

[homo-house]

my bucket list includes being able to name every country in a world map my current biggest opponents are east europe and west/central africa i swear these countries keep changing names

[yutadori]

sukuna i am going to bite you im going to bite you sooooooo hard i cannot wait for nobara to come back and kill him while everyone films it and cheers and celebrates and then gojo takes the kids out to sushi <3

[vaugarde]

warrior cat fans will be like “ok but child abuse is ok if we dont like the kid right?” without an iota of doubt

[neverendingford]

.

[alxclaremont]

being an f1 fan is crazy because what do you mean i let 10 drivers influence my moods and then proceed to spend the rest of my sunday after the race feeling incredibly empty