#this made me mad so now I have to inflict it on everyone else

[letterlitter]

Pacify Her

Lando Norris x reader

•Tags: smut, toxic Lando, hate-fuck, makeup sex

•Loosely based on a song by Melanie Martinez with the same title.

•Wordcount: 1.6k

It was unbearable how Lando squeezed this new girl's thigh and whispered in her ear. You knew it was to make you jealous, he was a tease even more when you two were in a relationship. You had really bad arguments that let to the decision of splitting, but since you didn't want to break up the friend group, you agreed to just say the relationship ended on good terms and decided to be friends which was a total lie and both of you knew it.

Now, only a couple months after everything, Lando had shown up with a new "girlfriend" which drove you absolutely mad how uncouth he could be. Bringing this girl in your group out of the blue fully knowing that neither you nor himself had moved on from that deep, long term thing you had.

She looked at you like she wanted to be your friend and get your validation so bad. You didn't know if Lando had told her you were his ex. He didn't even dare mention it when he was introducing her. You automatically hated her, although her big brown eyes seemed lovely and innocent. She didn't have a clue what she had gotten herself into. You pitied her cluelessness.

You noticed Lando's griny glances at you, he kept making sure you were looking before each kiss he left on her cheek. The bastard had all his moves coordinated and planned but you had been with him for too long not to see right through his facade.

You were at your limit, who was he to inflict this hurt on you after all that he had done?

Rage made your body dense as you walked towards Lando's house the night after, when you made sure nobody else was with him. His Friday nights had always been free on purpose to sleep until noon, game, and sleep again. You remember trying to wake him up for lunch and he was dead asleep because he had stayed awake to play with friends.

You rang and he buzzed the door open without asking. Walking towards the stairs you noticed the rose garden you had planted in a corner. The thought of Lando's face after a thorn had poked him in the arm and how he treated the flowers as his enemies forced your lips into a fainted smile. You hated that his memories made you happy. You hated it was him you had those memories with.

You pushed the thoughts away and tried to focus on why you were here. Lando opened the door, a confused look on his face, "y/n? What is it why are you here?"

"We need to talk." And you stormed in.

"Please come in, make yourself comfortable." The sarcasm in his voice was familiar, and now that you weren't in love with him, infuriating.

"Want to talk about what?"

"About how you're being such an asshole."

"Excuse me?"

"Don't act like this Lando I know you did those things on purpose."

"Damn I don't know what you're talking about." He kept his sarcastic tone. You hated it.

You pushed his chest back in anger, "stop playing with me. You know damn well this girl you keep bringing is just a doll to mess with my head."

Lando smiled as if he had been expecting these words from you.

"This is way too low, even for you Lando."

"Everyone thinks we're friends, why can't friends introduce their new girlfriends to their other friends?"

"I'm not everyone. I know this is a lie stop trying to make it sound casual."

"What do you expect me to do? Stay single until you're over me?"

"Yes!" The loud sound that exited your mouth surprised you as it did Lando. You never planned to sound weak or needy. You just wanted to get closure, "look. I'm not trying to control your life or whatever, but what you're doing to make me jealous is messy and fucking pathetic. Fix it. Goodbye." And you started walking towards the door.

"Well did it work?" Lando's voice stopped you. He sounded sort of genuine for the first time in months.

You kept silent and still, wondering what to answer. Turning around to face him you said, "well do you love her?"

"Of course I do. She's very real."

You took one step closer, "stop lying."

Lando took a step closer to you, "stop being jealous."

You took one more step, "she looks way too innocent for you. I pity her."

Lando took another step , "I can teach her."

-"Funny."

-"I know."

-"You're insufferable."

-"I know."

Silence.

Now you were only one step away from eachother. Only one breath. You were mad at him and the tension felt heavy in the air as the sun was halfway set. His eyes looked crazy blue in the last golden rays of sunshine coming in fron his big windows. His face stingy and lips so soft it made you even more angry at him.

Your self control was getting shaky and you felt it shatter when Lando swinged his arms up to hold your face to kiss you deeply on the lips.

You squeezed your hand on his arm in protest to rip him off of you before it was too late but he was desperate.

He kept kissing you harder and harder like you gave him air to breathe.

You hated this. You hated the way his body pulled you in and you hated how it felt so good. He knew his way with you. Every single button, all the nooks and crannies.

You finally eased into the kiss, letting go of Lando's hoodie that was balled up in your fist and started to kiss him back.

His hands unzipped your sweatshirt and pulled it off your arms as soon as he felt that you wanted this as well. You let him. He slipped his hand under your tshirt, pinching your belly, messaging your back.

You let out a heavy exhale.

"I missed you." He whispered into your mouth, putting his lips on yours before you could say anything back.

Lando's hands moved down to your jeans but you held onto his hand to prevent him from going on. He stopped kissing you.

It was all too much for you and you hated him for being so good at this. You stared dead into his eyes, knowing full well that you were helpless, and said, "you fucking bastard."

He giggled when you pressed your debating lips on his again.

You let him kiss your lips, your neck, your collarbone, your breasts, your belly. You let him get down on his knees for you, between your legs.

His wet tongue on you made you jump in a surprising pleasure. The tip of his tongue moving in circular motions, in search of the place that made you moan the loudest. You tried fighting the sensation but failed miserably when he raised his finger to your entrance, messaging and warning about what's to come.

The moan that left your lips after he pushed his finger inside you was involuntary. You could feel Lando smiling on your pussy with the sound. He kept moving his tongue with your hand in his curls; pumping his finger and pulling moans out of you until you felt like you could take it no more. That's when Lando pulled his now soaked finger out and stood up, Leaving you clenching around nothing.

He faced you again to continue his kisses; you could taste yourself on his lips as he took off your tshirt and your bra, leaving you completely naked in the middle of the house. He looked at you once more before taking off his own hoodie you've been pulling on to get rid of since the start, he turned you around and got closer. His bulge rubbing against your butt from under his sweatpants.

"You're so pretty." He whispered into your ear, "wait here okay?"

You turned around to see him almost run to his bedroom to get condoms and you got a chance to take a look at his smooth, tan skin as he walked back.

Lando kissed you shoulder and your back as he slowly bent you over the handle of the couch. Messaging your body as he bent on you to let you feel his skin, his pants were off, your could feel his hard dick against the back of your leg. He adjusted himself on you and pushed in. You weren't hesitant to moan anymore. His length inside you was a familiar sensation of pleasure after this long. He was all you needed.

Lando started pumping deeper into you, making you feel fully stretched. You could hear his little groans and exhales when he grabbed your neck to make you arch your back more, pulling your head towards his mouth. "I bet nobody fucked you like this since I was gone." And he started moving faster. You pushed back your body into his, blurring the lines infront of your eyes.

You came within seconds after that.

He pulled out of you. You turned around quickly, grabbed his shoulders and lead him to the couch to sit down.

"Could you ever teach her this?"

And you climbed on top of him, each leg on each side. Leading his still erect dick to your hole and pushing down on him. Lando threw his head back with a moan. You took his hands and put them on your ass. He squeezed his hands with every movement you made.

You started kissing under his ear, where you knew he was sensitive. Moans started turning into whimpers and he started pushing up his legs towards you. You both moved faster as you reached your high. You nails dug into Lando's shoulder and his hands tight around your back when you both came and you collapsed into his arms.

****

"What a stupid decision." You said through your panting and you both giggled since you knew you were going to make more.

(This is the first time I'm posting a smut one shot online sorry if it's short or lacking♡)

[kairiscorner]

yk what, im tired of seeing reader being the one protected, so what about this: reader that sees o'hara severely injured on a mission they are together, and going nuts on the one that hurt him? like even Miguel is surprised cause he never saw reader as mad and bloodlust-y as now, but when its over, the reader goes over him and treats him gently, kinda panicking over the fact that hes hurt.

i feel like Miguelito has such a heavy weight on his back about protecting everything around him and keeping the universe under control, he deserves someone to protect him and have his back 🥺🥺

OH MY GOD you have enlightened me. i fucking need this too now. i hope you like this <:))

(reblogs are greatly appreciated, it helps get my content out there! if you guys like what you see, please reblog it too <:D)

let me save you. — miguel o'hara x reader

summary: carrying the whole multiverse on his back, having everyone fall back on him... but who's got his back when he's got everyone else's? pairing: miguel o'hara x gn!spider person!reader genre: fluff, comfort, and some angst word count: 1,244

content warnings! depictions of gore, blood, bleeding and wounds. please do not read any further if you are uncomfortable with these topics ^^

heaving, erratic breathing was heard coming out from you as you tried to process that miguel had been slammed into the ground by the anomaly. he had been slammed into the ground, and he's not getting up. his suit's glitching out, slightly dissipating as he coughs up some blood–lyla shows up to try and salvage his suit, get him back in action, but he's not getting up.

miguel always got back up every time he was forced to the ground by the enemy; he never let defeat get to him. it always used to be you who would get slammed into the ground, through some wall, or flung across a whole block–and miguel always saved you, he never... needed saving. never, that was, until tonight–as the anomaly continued to wreak more havoc, thinking they gained the upper hand, they felt a blunt object strike them in the back.

you threw a whole car at them after webbing it up and chucking it at tem in pure, unadulterated rage. you were... so pissed off–you had a fire burning in your eyes and a throbbing in your chest, it was such a heavy, painful throbbing that you couldn't shake off. some part of you told yourself that, until this anomaly is beaten and unconscious–until it was struggling to breathe, bloodied and unable to stand like how they made miguel... how they made miguel hanging on to his consciousness–and probably, his life right now–after they ruthlessly threw him to the ground with a loud bang following the impact.

your eyes were bloodshot from the tears you weren't aware you were shedding, the salty taste of them enveloping your tongue as you decided to end this, once and for all, for miguel... for the man you loved and couldn't bear saying goodbye to. you tried taking down the villain a peg, going after their legs and beating them down the minute they were on their knees and wounded. they cried out in pain as you delivered non-stop punches, kicks, and other blows to their body–inflicting all your rage upon them through marks and wounds on their face that could never, ever amount to the pain and anger you felt when you witnessed miguel get thrown down by the villain, to the point that he's hanging on to life right now and probably fading in and out of consciousness.

you couldn't even hear the sound of you huffing and puffing, even growling and screaming in rage as the sounds of you completely obliterating the anomaly's face in distracted you as you kept thinking, 'when can you just stand down and get knocked out?' the anomaly began to glitch, worsening the pain they experienced from your endless barrage of blows upon them. this evoked no mercy out of you as all you could think was, 'you get what you deserve, you monster, you freak!'

a weak voice rang out from your watch and pleaded–not commanded, but pleaded–you to end this madness. "please... we need that... villain... alive. people... people here are gonna die..." the strained voice begged of you as they coughed on the other end; it was miguel's voice, his tired, pained voice begging you with all the strength he had left to plead with you not to murder the anomaly. he coughed again and wheezed, shuddering as he exhaled, feeling so, so cold. "please... you can't... can't have your way with them... it's not... worth it..." he whispered as his strength was fading away from his voice, from his body as the call ended, and you could only beg for his voice to come back on the call, to hear him, hope he was okay.

you bit your lower lip as you tried to fight the urge to sniffle and weep, your tears beating your mind's demands as tears escaped your eyes. you didn't have time to wipe them away, miguel was fighting his own battle with death looming over his head the longer his injuries go untended. you throw a final punch to the villain, one with all your raw emotions packed in that punch–and you webbed that villain up, calling for back up to come and pick them up. as you had hoped, they were now unconscious, but nowhere near as close to death as miguel was. you rushed over to miguel as soon as a support team was coming over to clean the mess up and send the anomaly home, but you couldn't focus on anything or anyone else right now but him–miguel.

you ran over to him and skidded to his side, scraping your knees in the process, but disregarding the pain as you gently took his hand in yours, watching him breathe heavily. "miguel? mig? mig, baby, look at me..." you whispered to him as you placed your other hand on his cheek, feelings his shallow breathing as his tired, half-lidded eyes stare into your own tear-stained and puffy ones. you remove your mask and let the tears fall, placing both hands on his face and trying to match his breathing, you hoped against a hope that the support team would get here soon and help you cart miguel away to get some treatment for his wounds and have him recover quickly.

miguel ran a hand through your hair all weakly and sighed. "you... were phenomenal..." he murmured as he dropped his hand to the side out of exhaustion. "i've never... never thought i'd be the one... needing saving." he said with a low, forced chuckle, which fizzled out as it became a wheezing cough. you placed your hand on his chest and shushed him, calming him down. "mig..." you muttered his name as you laid your head on his chest, hearing his faint heartbeat grow steady, and in relief, you kissed the spot on his chest where his heart was slowly beating, hoping it'd beat a little faster, keep helping him live. "i can't lose you... i'll never, ever give up on you..." you promised him as miguel placed his hand on your head and began to lightly tear up himself. "and neither... neither will i." he swore as you sobbed a little louder into his chest, finally letting the fact you could've lost him if you didn't call for help any sooner finally sinking in.

you couldn't afford to lose him, you could never afford to kiss him goodbye, or to have him leave you without another word or touch from him. you can never stand the thought of being alone, much less without his stern, serious ass bothering you over something trivial or consistently reminding you to take care of yourself, to keep yourself on your toes, to be... nicer to yourself–because you're the only person he's truly come to care about; and that's him for you, too. he completes you, and you complete him–to lose one another... would be like the death of you both. from here on out, you both have made oaths to one another that you swear on your hearts: to protect and defend each other, and to hang on for the other as long as you can, not to waste a single breath, and to breathe it... knowing the other will do any and everything to keep you alive, to be with you longer than infinity spans, and to be yours until the multiverse gives out and collapses in on itself... to be each other's and in each other's arms until the end of everything.

tags !! @miguelswifey04 @binibinileonara @hisachuu @wreakingmarveloushavok @fictarian @yuridopted0 @simsrandomstuff @luvstarrstruck @popeheywardssecretgf @meeom @arachnoia @melovetitties @fable-library @ophanimgold

[joltyflare]

(Sun and Moon Show Rant #4: Ruin's Arguably The Most Tragic Character In The Series)

Buckle up guys, this is gonna be a long rant!

So, Ruin. He has basically become the most hated character in the series after Solar's death. I'm a Solar simp, believe me, so I understand why people are mad. But I don't hate Ruin for it. I don't hate Ruin at all. I'll explain more in this rant.

So, at first when Ruin was "cured" I was skeptical like everyone else. I mean not too long before he was injected he went on about how he was a good actor. I felt like this could be foreshadowing. In hindsight, I was correct. However, I actually fell for his ball pit shark, clumsy, unable-to-fix-things-but-trying antics (which one of my rant posts displays as an example IN FULL). When he revealed himself to not be that it took a few days to get used to his character, which was made harder by the fact he was responsible for Solar's death.

That said, I did have the theory that he was going to do things that Sun and Moon wouldn't like that possibly involved the Creator Council and I was right on the money with that theory and I was so happy! Kinda. I didn't like that Solar of all people had to die. I was just happy my theory was correct.

Anyway, I got used to this real side of him that has finally been revealed. Then, as I thought about it, and as more episodes passed, I realized how much I love Ruin as well as how tragic his life has been. He might just have the saddest backstory of any character in this series! Sure, he hasn't died yet (as far as we know), but he has suffered a fate much worse than dying.

So, now onto the part everyone is here for...

First of all, Ruin has had to deal with the trauma of slowly watching his friends succumb to a virus that he found out too late he was carrying. He watched as they turned against each other and as the world was sent into chaos because of the virus! By the sounds of it in the episode where Eclipse confronted him about why he was made, it sounds like Ruin didn't know why they were turning against each other at first and found out later. Keep in mind that he was the carrier of this virus, which means that he was carrying it without realizing it if this was the case.

So far, we can only theorize as to how he came to the point where he carried the virus and spread it to the other animatronics without meaning to. Someone pointed out that it was slightly implied his Creator didn't make it and someone else did. People assumed this to be Ruin, though with what we know about him he obviously didn't do it...right? Well, people have proposed the theory that the Creator somehow tricked him into making it and carrying it. From what we know about Creators, all of them are manipulative and have a way with words.

Anyway, so...yeah, he had to deal with watching his friends lose their minds and turn on one another, succumbing to a virus that ended up destroying his dimension. This was bad enough on its own but it obviously gets worse from there.

Ruin had to pretend to also be inflicted himself. He had to act like he didn't mind killing people. To put it in perspective: He had to pretend that he was a psychotic killer robot who killed and maimed people and animatronics for fun and games. When in reality, he didn't like it. Not one bit. He had to do this to survive and have his plans remain undetected. For years on end. He had to trick people into thinking this was what he was like and he had to kill just to prove it, when in reality he hated every second of what he did and currently hates himself for it.

On top of that, his body deteriorated and fell apart. That was just something he had to live with as part of his act. As a way to fit in with his now-deranged former friends who also turned on him because of their virus.

He had no choice but to pretend to be some deranged maniac who loved killing and had to deal with his friends slowly decaying physically and mentally, also while learning there wasn't much he could do for them in the end. However, he did learn that he could save other dimensions...by destroying the Creator Council. And this was a goal he had to work toward for a long, long time. He had to figure out how to kill all the Creators involved and when he did figure out a way to do so, the only thing he could come up with was to destroy 5,000 of their dimensions entirely and essentially kill off every single inhabitant of those dimensions. He couldn't think of another way but he knew they were too dangerous to keep alive and that 5,000 wasn't that big of a number when taken into consideration the infinite amount of dimensions that would have been affected by the Creator Council.

Maybe Ruin even thought that destroying the dimensions was a better fate for the ones that were destroyed than having their Creators ruin them themselves. Maybe he thought them just being destroyed in a fraction of a second was merciful for the dimensions, which would make sense after what he saw his own one go through.

He couldn't think of a way to get rid of the Creators without many casualties. Not only did he know this, but he also knew that those in other dimensions who were affected by these collapses would seek him out to kill him. He knew he'd have enemies after this. He knew anyone who had loved ones from those dimensions would lose them suddenly. But he had no other option. He thought about this and plotted this for years. He didn't want to make anyone else suffer but strongly believed that the consequences were worth getting rid of the Creator. He did this for the best interests of every other dimension that would have been affected by this council...which would have been way more if he hadn't stopped them.

Ruin never wanted another dimension to suffer the slow, violent fate of his own. On top of this, nobody would love him for it. He knew this. He knew that after he did this, everyone would hate him and that nobody would appreciate this and that most people he saved would obviously have no clue. To him, it was necessary to save others and he didn't care if it was a thankless act.

We also have to keep in mind the fact that he did this in a dimension where he began to be treated kindly (at least for the most part) by its inhabitants. Kinder than he believed he deserved, knowing what he had done and what he was going to do. Even though they kept him at an arm's length, he got to know Sun, Moon, Solar, Earth, and Lunar to a degree. Some of them mainly through observation. He knew they wouldn't approve of what he was doing and knew the only way to distract them was to bring back someone they feared and hated most, after having slowly been getting treated more and more kindly by them, knowing they believed they had spared his life after saving him from a cure. Yet he felt he had to bring back their greatest enemy to distract them. All while keeping the act of being innocent, clumsy, and just weird.

Before this, he had to make everyone fear interrupting his plans by resurrecting Bloomoon, someone he knew would maniacally kill everything in sight and had to pretend he shared their joy in doing so.

But, yeah, back to his relations with Sun and Moon...he began to clearly begin feeling some sort of fondness for them, I believe, because I have my doubts he would've even thought of keeping Solar alive when he had been under the "virus" persona. At that time, I don't think he felt any sort of kinship with them yet and would simply have continued to treat them as part of the necessary casualties without even bothering to think of sparing Solar from his equation... But after that, when he'd spent months around them and even got to the point of knocking Solar out and copying his code, I believe he did genuinely begin caring more than he would have liked given what he was planning. I believe that this is why he did try doing what he could to spare Solar and found out he couldn't no matter what he tried.

So, after failing to find a way to prevent Solar from being wiped out with the dimension, Ruin had to watch his family react to his death and watch them grieve. Not only did he wait for them to come so he could at least explain what he did, but he continued to face their grief and then allowed them to do what he liked. This leads me to...

He believed he would die. Then and there, he believed Moon would probably kill him or send Eclipse to kill him. If not, then he probably believed this would occur immediately after Moon copied his data. But Ruin surrendered himself entirely to him and his family. Keep in mind that this guy has magic. He could've done whatever he wanted to after this. But he handed himself in. Some people think that this could've been part of a different plan but...really? I don't think so. I mean, by all means, he could have gone off and done anything he wanted. Monitored everything from afar if he needed to. But he didn't. This shows further proof that he really, truly does lack self-interest. This is huge right now in determining whether or not he's truthful. Plus, everything else he has acted out so far has involved him suffering a bit as a result. This Ruin, the one who killed all the Creators and gave himself up to Sun and Moon and their family, is undoubtedly the real Ruin. We finally have him as who he is.

Adding onto the fact that he handed himself in, he now has to watch their grief up close even longer after believing he probably would be dead by now. He has to watch as they suffer Solar's loss and has to deal with being confronted and hated on as he stands completely still in his cell. He has admitted that he hates himself and that he wants to die, having no real reason to live now that he believes he has freed the universe from the Creators. Wanting them to hurry up and kill him already. Having no friends who are alive. I don't believe he expected to be alive this long. Since he admitted to feeling genuine guilt over the death of Solar and hating himself, it's safe to assume it must hit him hard inside being reminded of the things he felt he had to do. He didn't enjoy making others suffer or tricking others. He was just good at pretending and it was a skill he needed to get what he felt he had to do.

I think he didn't want to get close to the family and began to care for them more than he wanted to admit. He even admitted that made it harder for him to have to trick them, knowing that Moon was even thinking of considering him family. That would've been his last opportunity to have friends or family again and he gave it up completely for his goal.

Ruin is an anti-villain who did what he believed he had to for the good of others, despite it being in a way that was tragic and awful. He believed it to be the only way. He had to watch his friends die. He had to pretend to be maniacal and evil and enjoy killing for who knows how long...and imagine how his first kill felt when he had to do this!). When he finally dropped that act (which he was probably quite happy he had an excuse to do!), he had to pretend to be a clumsy family friend. He gave up the chance to truly have them as his family and friends to achieve his goal. He now has to sit in a cell, watching the grief of everyone around him, knowing he will be both hated and scorned for what he did, even giving himself up just to face their wrath because he deserves it. Waiting for his death. He believed it was for a good cause...even if he'll never, ever be recognized for it. Even if he knows he is going to be despised for as long as the universes exist, with no one who will appreciate what he did.

And that is just tragic.

You can also note that he sounds more and more worn down with each interaction he has in his cell.

Well, I wonder what will happen to him now. I feel like his story is not yet over and he will not get the death he yearns for. He's still important to the plot, I believe, and I feel like he still has potential that can be squeezed outta him!

I'm so curious to know what will happen to who I believe is the most tragic antagonist in the series. Character in the series. If he dies, I hope it's meaningful. He's such a good character!!

Edit: Oh, yeah, and he also mentioned knowing a thing about grieving with others. Bonus angst points

[runawaymun]

okay your QiQi and Hu Tao post is so real, her trying MULTIPLE TIMES to bury Qiqi is so??? Like. A young child dies in an accident of no fault of her own, and at the last second, an adeptus, an immortal powerful protector of the land, decides "this child deserves more than she got. She deserves to live." and revives her so that she can do that, but Hu Tao thinks she knows better? Like yeah your family has been running a funeral parlor for years but you're like 19 and you think you have the authority to overturn the judgement of low-level gods?? Please. Bless Baizhu's patience to keep rescuing Qiqi tbh I would have resorted to violence long ago.

Also, while Baizhu is not my Blorbo I am extremely glad to see a familiar face genshin-posting, I want to follow people on here for that but every time I go into the tags I take psychic damage :( I suppose I shall just have to do it myself but I'm a little intimidated lol

Me every time Hu Tao shows up and starts Some Shit:

I know it's supposed to be like silly goofy and her cluelessness is meant to be endearing, but it's just...not? She is so rude and careless and there comes a point when it is no longer pragmatism about death and steps over the line into "You're just an asshole". The fact that she leaves fliers FOR HER FUNERAL PARLOUR outside THE PHARMACY is just insane behavior. It's disrespectful to Baizhu and it's so fucking insensitive and disrespectful to literally everyone else. God bless Baizhu for insisting that he doesn't have a problem with Director Hu and for being the bigger person/the adult in this situation and so forgiving and patient like it could NOT be me.

Yeah she's nineteen and has trauma, but exactly exactly exactly Qiqi's story says the gods felt so bad that she died because of their conflict that they brought her back to life to right a wrong, and it's so fucking mean that Hu Tao insists that "Qiqi isn't alive" and "that's not any kind of life to live" and "let her be at peace" etc etc like that is not your fucking decision. That's up to Qiqi and Qiqi wants to live god damn you. LEAVE HER ALONE.

Also okay yeah she's 500 years old but that is a child with severe memory loss. Yes she's a jiangshi but she literally gets lost and stuck on her orders sometimes to the point that Baizhu needs to help her find her way home. Qiqi is just out there living her life and Hu Tao said "and I took that personally" LET HER VIBE. I hate that she made so many comments on Qiqi's stiff limbs (read: her fucking disability) that now Qiqi feels really uncomfortable if anyone other than Changsheng, Gaming, and Baizhu see her doing her stretches. I hate that despite Qiqi struggling to remember loved ones' names and faces and interactions with them, she remembers Hu Tao because of the trauma that Hu Tao inflicts on her every time she sees her. Qiqi is actively trying to improve her life with researching memory/brain exercises and doing her calisthenics every day etc etc and the pharmacy literally could not function as it does now without her. She has as much a right to be a member of Liyue's community as Hu Tao does -- and yeah like you said it is so insanely arrogant and hubristic of Hu Tao to assume that she knows better than the fucking minor gods of Liyue.

Literally Baizhu and Qiqi deserve justice and it's just insane to me that the implication is that neither of them decide to press charges on her even though they have to go to the fucking cops about this reoccurring incident. And presumably the cops always side with Baizhu and so like. Again does Hu Tao ever get consequences? Do they at least sanction or fine her??? IDK IDK it makes me so mad that this apparently has happened more than once and the idea of her running off with a child who has memory loss and may not remember who she is or where her home is, she just knows she's scared and that she might literally fucking get buried alive here, makes me physically ill.

anyway I know some people will be like "it's just a game. it's not real and it's not that deep" but I'm still going to hate a fictional character over it. She's an asshole and needs to fucking grow up. Idk maybe she does as she ages. I certainly hope so.

Also hi yes <3 <3 I am so glad you're enjoying the Genshin posting because I am going to be so annoying about it for a while!!! It's nice to find out that you're a fellow Genshin enjoyer. The fandom is uhhhhh crazy. So I feel you on that. I'm slowly collecting some nice people :) Thankfully the Baizhu fans are all pretty cool! I feel like characters like him just attract good energy <3

[moodymisty]

I’ve been cursed with this idea for about half a minute now and I plan to inflict this psychic damage on you next.

So imagine, Reader is working with The Bad Batch during a covert mission. They are like a living lie detector and can notice micro expressions, nervous habits, etc. They’ve been with these fine men long enough to understand their body language and recognize their speech patterns.

Hunter or Crosshair (you get to choose which one 😏) gets pissed off during a mission even though no one is hurt and it was a success but one of them brings the attitude back to the ship. Cue them saying something snarky and the rest of the crew being a bit off put or shocked about the comment.

However, lovely Reader literally just translates to the rest of the Batch how much they don’t mean it and that same man is flustered that he is being read so easily. Of course his brothers tease him about it too.

Anyways this was a lot I had to type but I wanted to get it out of my head before I forget it. Hope you have fun with this😘

Author's note: I'm so honored that while you were experiencing physic damage, you thought to inflict it on me too. ✨ #besties ✨

This was a cute little idea, I like it. Especially with someone like Crosshair since it would be so easy to piss him off with it XD

Relationships: Vague Crosshair/Gn!Reader could be read platonic if you wanted

Warnings: Crosshair's shitty attitude, Some fluffiness at the end

There's a unique energy in the Marauder at the moment, and everyone is currently sitting in their assigned, meaning chosen and a fight with break out if someone doesn't stick with it, seating- trying to desperately avoid it.

You could cut this air with a knife, and it's very clear everyone else feels the same. Echo is sitting up far straighter than usual, and Wrecker is bouncing his leg; Both habits that give away they're not very comfortable.

They don't really get why however, no one's said or done anything, but you can tell that it's Crosshair's attitude that's making the cockpit seem like an interrogation chamber.

He's biting his tongue for now, but it's clear by the way he keeps glancing around and wringing his fingers he's got something he wants to say on his lips, but is holding it back for the moment. You've seem him act like this many times before, and now is no different.

Only when he leaves, does Echo lean a bit to the side closer to you to speak quietly.

"I mean, it went perfectly," He whispers, referring to the latest mission. Saying it was a success would be putting it lightly. Not even a scratch on anyone or even any of the equipment, it was as close to a clean sweep as you could possibly get.

Hell, it made your presence almost not needed, in a way. A medic wasn't going to be of use if no one got hurt at all, after all. Not that you minded, given the context being not needed is what you want.

"So why's everyone acting like someone died?" His wry joke almost makes you laugh, but it only comes out as a sharp inhale of breath as you purse your lips and attempt to not make any noise. When Echo realizes that he did kind of make a joke, he smiles a bit as well at making you laugh.

When Crosshair returns to the cockpit however, what little leveling you'd done to the atmosphere quickly dissipates, as Hunter turns to look over the back of his seat. He'd heard your comment and agreeing with it, scowls at the sniper.

"Cross, quit it. It all went fine. Who cares if it was a bit boring." You take one quick glance over at him, as he leans against the wall.

"It did other than you barking in our ears; What, afraid we don't need you and your nagging?"

To the side of Crosshair Wrecker's shoulders tighten, a bit off put by Crosshair's sudden bite. Tech is attempting to ignore the bickering as usual, but even he can't help but spare a glance. You roll your eyes.

"Ignore him. He's just mad that he feels trapped now that we're out on so many of these textbook reg missions." You're not looking at him, but at Hunter, so you don't notice that Crosshair reels rigidly upright as if smacked; His lips purse and his nose wrinkles, miffed that you read him like an open book.

"We got it done and with time to spare. Lets enjoy the free time we get now." Hunter turns to look out the viewport again, and you lean into the arm of the chair to look back at Crosshair.

He's glaring at you, hard; But if you're willing to bet, his face is a little hotter than normal. He gets angry when he gets embarrassed, boiling in his own armor.

It's what he gets though, for being so easy to read. Or maybe you've just gotten too good at it.

Hefting yourself up off your seat and walking over to him, you give one gentle tug to the collar of his breastplate.

"I'm sure they'll hit us with another 'suicide mission' soon. Don't get too disappointed." He looks down at you, face softening ever so slightly.

"I thought the medic wouldn't want us to go on those types of missions?" You shrug your shoulders and give him a bit of a smile.

"Whatever makes you happy." A jerk of your head gestures towards the rest of the cockpit. And thus the rest of the squad inside.

"Them too but..." Dropping your voice down to a whisper and putting a hand to your face, you mumble:

"You're my favorite."

Crosshair can't help but smirk at that one, and a hand comes up to poke the fattest part of your cheek.

"Go sit down and mind-read one of them instead of me, will you?"

He scoffs at you rolling your eyes, moving to sit back down. He takes two long strides to stand behind that same seat, resting his arm on the headrest as you all fly through hyperspace.

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[honeygrahambitch]

WHATS A HANNIGRAM CODED TAYLOR SWIFT SONG

The perfect ask doesn't exi-

I have prepared for this my whole life. Here is a list of hannigram coded taylor swift songs.

Look what you made me do

it's sexy and petty and it's the perfect Will Graham in salmon shirt revenge song but it's also very Hannibal in Mizumono coded.

2. I did something bad

perfect for both of them and especially for Will discovering that killing people makes him feel stuff that he shouldn't

3. Back to december (I am feral about this one)

perfect for them. chef's kiss. You can listen to it and think about Mizumono or about Digestivo, depends what kind of pain you want.

It turns out freedom ain't nothin' but missin' you

Wishin' I'd realized what I had when you were mine

I'd go back to December, turn around and make it alright

this is so Will Graham thinking about Mizumono and also Hannibal surrendering to the FBI cause he doesn't need freedom if he cannot have Will.

But if we loved again, I swear I'd love you right

I'd go back in time and change it, but I can't So if the chain is on your door, I understand

This lyrics too because it's the tea cup motif, turning back the time, which is exactly what Hannibal wanted to do in digestivo. And also related to Will's regrets about Mizumono.

4. Mastermind

Perfect for them both, from beginning to end. Nothing to add than some very fitting lyrics.

I knew I wanted your body I laid the groundwork, and then Just like clockwork The dominoes cascaded in a line What if I told you I'm a mastermind? And now you're mine It was all my design

5. Better than revenge (more as crack if you want to think of it from Hannibal's pov towards Molly lol)

6. Right where you left me

season 3b coded, breaks you to pieces if you imagine them and the glass wall in between.

7. Wonderland

I reached for you, but you were gone I knew I had to go back home You searched the world for somethin' else To make you feel like what we had And in the end, in Wonderland, we both went mad

them in season 3a, Hannibal trying to replace Will with Anthony but it was in vain.

8. Come back, be here

Will grieving after Hannibal left

9. Hoax

there is so much to say about this one, I find it very fitting

My only one My smoking gun My eclipsed sun This has broken me down My twisted knife My sleepless night My win-less fight This has frozen my ground

(...)

My best laid plan Your sleight of hand My barren land I am ash from your fire

(...)

You knew it still hurts underneath my scars From when they pulled me apart You knew the password, so I let you in the door You knew you won, so what's the point of keeping score? You knew it still hurts underneath my scars From when they pulled me apart But what you did was just as dark

you can think about all the pain they have inflicted into each other and each time they have betrayed each other

10. I almost do

11. Sad Beautiful Tragic

so so so hannigram coded

We both wake In lonely beds In different cities And time Is taking its sweet time erasing you And you've got your demons And darlin' they all look like me

12. Ivy (which is considered to be a very queer song)

I wish to know The fatal flaw that makes you long to be Magnificently cursed

13. Willow (a lil more cheesy)

14. The lakes

hannigram coded because they don't fit in the normal world. And the lyrics sound like something Hannibal would say

15. Vigilante shit

as petty and sexy as Look what you made me do

16. Bad blood

doesn't need any explanation

17. No body, no crime

for the whole arc of Will trying to convince everyone Hannibal framed him

18. Getaway Car

Mizumono coded

19. The Great War

twotl coded

All that bloodshed, crimson clover Uh-huh, sweet dream was over My hand was the one you reached for All throughout the Great War

(...)

It turned into something bigger Somewhere in the haze, got a sense I'd been betrayed Your finger on my hair pin triggers Soldier down on that icy ground Looked up at me with honor and truth Broken and blue, so I called off the troops That was the night I nearly lost you I really thought I lost you

and this part very Mizumono coded

20. Peace

they are both problematic for each other

21. The Alcott

describes the Uffizi Gallery scene. Like, in perfect detail.

22. My tears ricochet

23. Illicit Affairs

Look at this idiotic fool that you made me You taught me a secret language I can't speak with anyone else

24. Last kiss

for when Hannibal is locked up

25. Haunted

26. Cowboy like me

especially because Will is from the south lol

I've got some tricks up my sleeve Takes one to know one

Hope this helps!

[ouatsnark]

Okay. So.

I don't remember the name of the fic (probably wouldn't put it anyway) but I do remember that it's the one that absolutely made me stop reading fics with Swanqueen in it (which sucks because there's a rare pair I adore that has them in quite a few background fics).

Basically it went like this:

Emma and Hook were dating.

Emma then finds out from Regina about the time Hook tortured her and leaves him. Because 'it was too far'.

And I'm pretty sure it was set seasons after season 2.

And the fic did not at all address the reason Regina was being tortured (and if I remember correctly, Hook wasn't there for most of the torture if not all of it).

And if I remember correctly, Regina pinned the death of Kurt on Greg. Which if is the case, just makes me even more mad remembering the fic.

I don't know if you'll be able to do anything with this but I just needed to rant/ramble about this because the fic just made no sense to me. It could be because I quit half way through.

But yeah. Absolutely wild.

That is one of SwanQueen’s most famous talking points “if Emma knew Hook tortured Regina she’d leave him!” While ignoring the elephants in the room: Graham & Henry. If Emma knew that Regina raped, enslaved then murdered Graham when she could no longer control him, would Emma not see justice served? What if the show had acknowledged the years of child abuse that Regina inflicted on Henry? What about the fact that Regina herself has tortured people? Is that OK because she’s a woman? How are these NOT lines too far?

Emma should’ve banned Regina from their lives. But I am forgetting that Regina stans refuse to acknowledge how vile their queen is by either putting their heads in the sand or blaming her actions on everyone else just as the show wrongly taught them that personal responsibility isn’t a thing if you’re a beautiful woman crying about their life. In reality Emma should see Regina’s torture as justice seeing that Regina never paid for a thing she ever did.

I did talk about this in my PSA: Hook didn’t torture Regina post. You are correct that Hook was not there for the torture. She had just tried to kill him so he left her to go hunt for Rumple. He did not participate but he also didn’t help her. It’s not surprising me if the fic didn’t address why Regina was being tortured because her apologists refuse to accept the facts: Regina was being tortured by her victim for killing his father. The show does a good job of glossing over that too and making Regina the victim so you cant fully blame their ignorance on them.

I don’t remember if Regina blamed Greg/Owen for his father’s death but it wouldn’t surprise me. She also throws the whole thing back in Killian’s face yet no one mentions the fact that she’d just tried to kill him and was trying to kill everyone else at the time. But we cant have that, can we? Regina is just an innocent little smol bean. Bleh.

P.S. I think Emma did know because of the look she gives Killian when Regina brings it up in season 3. What now Regina Apologists??

[stabbyfoxandrew]

not an aftg related sleepover ask so feel free to delete and ignore but this is a question I inflict upon everyone at parties so I had to send it

I need to preface this by saying that this question is just about embarrassment not consequences or pain or anything just embarrassment: what do you think is more embarrassing to be hit my a car or hit someone with a car?

cause apparently my answer is controversial I think i would want to die if someone asked me if I was okay and i was just lying on the street like god I would pick up the ribs that flew to the other side of the street and run away with like my broken leg or something nah I'm not staying there regardless of how hurt I am! keep in mind this is about embarrassment only not pain or consequences!

in case you are curious 8/12 people so far have said that hitting someone with a car is more embarrassing but one should not be counted because he's a first responder and I agree that hitting someone with an ambulance would be more embarrassing! (can you tell I'm fun at parties 💀)

also you should try hasselback potatoes I made thos yesterday and they are heaven! fucking heaven!

mwah

It doesn't have to be aftg related! It can be anything! I just love talking to you guys!

Also oh my god, you're right though. It would be so embarrassing. Like if, God forbid, knock on wood, etc, I ever got hit by a car it better knock me out. There's no way I'm LYING THERE IN THE ROAD like that with 200 rubber-neckers staring at me. And people asking if I'm okay?! NO I WAS HIT BY A CAR, PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE THOUGH! STOP LOOKING AT ME BLEEDING OUT OR WHATEVER.

For real. Catch me crawling away from the scene to hide. Like that would be mortifying? Like I can't drive so I have no fear of ever hitting someone with a car. And I don't leave my house ever, so getting hit by one is very unlikely too.

Obviously I don't want either to happen but yeah. Getting hit would be so embarrassing. Like why the fuck was I in the road? Something stupid like picking up a coin/something else shiny I saw? Crossing when the sign says 'don't walk'? Saving a child's life? (That would be less embarrassing but still embarrassing.)

Or did the car come up onto the sidewalk? Like... Why did I not hear/ see it coming and get out of the way? Why is someone driving on the sidewalk?

Anyway, final answer: YES. Getting hit is more embarrassing. Especially because if you did HIT someone everyone... would be mad at you? Not like fussing over you and trying to help you?

Also I love the fact that you have your Findings in the ask. This question is hilarious and I'll bet you're super fun at parties. Look at me though I haven't been to a party since... I was a child... So I can't judge Adult Parties.

Also I love potatoes in all forms and if I weren't so goddamn lazy I would try them because I have like... three bags of potatoes in my kitchen right now.

sleepover weekend ask game!

[furiousgoldfish]

My family are okay, and it could be a lot worse than it becoming more ... influenced these days? They've been listening much more frequently to gateway alt right stuff (in front of me at least) and gone a bit heavy in the religion aspect of stuff. Had a bit of a panic attack when they listened to some anti-lgbt stuff in front of me (in the closet)

They themselves were abused in their own childhoods (though they definitely wouldn't put it that way + normalized back when they were growing up) so maybe i should cut them some slack? Apart from occasional slaps on my hand and when i was younger they used to bang my head with knuckles a bit if they were really mad. Theyve apologised for it but do mention how back in their day it was way worse.

I dont know i guess ive been thinking much more about the future recently and how theyd HATE it if they found out some of the stuff i really think. Lots of yelling. Its embarrassing to talk about this with friends.

This sounds dumb when i put it into words but for years now ive been forced to keep a diary. I liked the idea of having one and writing down about my self so i went with it until one day i wrote about how mad i was at them. They read it despite me telling them not to and made me apologise and write down how sorry i was for doing that. There was a lot of yelling. I cried. They openly read what i write now and kinda force me to do it. ngl I kinda hate the thing now. Was that wrong of them?

maybe this is too vague for a checklist but request for one about signs your family is going down a conspiracy rabbithole/signs your parents are victims of misinformation would be nice. This ended up rambly im sorry.

Anon, I am so sorry, this sounds like an absolutely terrifying experience. You're blameless in all of this, you're perfect as you are, but your parents are actively participating in a hate group against your own person, in front of you, consistently exposing you to that narrative, and that is like being in the enemy's lair, isn't it? It has to affect your well being negatively, to hear those sorts of things, it's like you're forced every day to listen to perspectives of people who absolutely despise you, think you shouldn't exist or be the way you are, and who are ready to go and hurt anyone who is like you.

No, you do not need to cut them any slack. Were you any of their parents who did those things to them? No? Were you the founder of the culture where were hit, or force children to hit themselves? I don't think it's possible, since you weren't even born when that shit started. So your responsibility for this is zero. Yet these two people are coming at you asking you to be grateful they're not doing worse to you. Apparently by the logic of 'we had it bad, now you have to be grateful when we do bad things to you'. As if.

No person or being who was abused in the past, regardless of how badly, has the 'free card' to now inflict similar abuse on you. That is completely ridiculous and if that were true, than anyone abused would be going around hurting everyone else and it would be 'fine' because that person was abused as well. That kind of thinking only brings forth more abuse and trauma and nothing else. You did nothing to deserve any of that shit. If their parents hurt them, they should go ahead and take it up with their own parents. Except, they don't, do they? Because they cowards and prefer blaming and directing it towards their child.

If you had a kid, would you want that kid to be grateful you're hurting them slightly less than your parents are doing to you? It sounds insane, doesn't it. You'd want your kid to be happy and safe from ANY abuse, not paying for whatever anyone else has done to you in the past. Because that kid is innocent and did nothing to warrant bearing the burden of your past. And you are that kid right now, you are asked to bear the burden of the abuse that got absorbed into culture, abuse that your parents suffered and abuse they feel entitled to inflict onto you, and for what? It doesn't make anything better or fairer. It doesn't make the world a better place if you're getting hurt in it. If your parents think it's normal they can do it to their parents, thats none of your business. You're a kid brought into that family by no will of your own, subjected to horrifying shit and told you should bear it like it's normal. It's not normal. No child deserves this.

I also have to say that banging your own head with knuckles is especially vicious and victim-blaming abuse to do, I'm sickened by the very thought, and if they felt sorry for that, they would have never done it. It sounds like they'll do just anything in anger and expect 'sorry' to fix it. Sorry doesn't fix abuse. They shouldn't have slapped your wrists either.

The last part of your ask really had me in shock and horror, because that was such an intimate invasion of your privacy, and for them not even even feel sorry or ashamed for invading your private boundaries like that, but to be enraged you dared to feel anger? It's disgusting what they did. They should be so deeply ashamed. Any normal people would realize there's something wrong with them if their child is so mad and would take it as a sign to do some introspection and to evaluate whether they've been unfair, cruel, abusive or hateful to the kid, that is if they already went so far to read your diary without your permission, that they forced you to have!

Their reactions prove that they're so dead-set on controlling you, they even want to control your inner thoughts, convince you that you have no right to anger, no right to human feelings or human expressions, that you should be like a robot who only listens to commands and reacts in the way they want to. It's dehumanizing, disgusting and insanely cruel. You're a human being who's been hurt. Of course you're angry. You have the right to anger. You should have the right to express it in any way you want to, not just to write it in your private diary, but to yell and scream and fight back. But you got punished and had to take your own words back, when you did the least possible expression of it, writing it down privately.

Here's a post that feels relevant, explaining why it's wrong for parents to suppress anger in their children. Here's another one on importance of anger.

They know that any sign of your anger is a proof of their abuse, and that's why they're fighting so hard to suppress it. If they put that energy in trying to be good parents, they could have been great parents to you. They made their choices. Just based on this shameless and gross invasion of privacy and trying to control even your thoughts, it sounds like they have narcissistic tendencies, and they should not be trusted with a child.

I wish I could give you the checklist you asked for, but I have no experience whatsoever on parents, or people, who are being sucked into conspiracy theories, I think I've read articles about it, on topics like QAnon, explaining the phenomena, I'll try to find the post explaining why do people fall for conspiracy theories in general. Here it is. I hope it helps.

If anyone has more resources on conspiracy theories or knows about a checklist, please link it to this post.

[daswarschonkaputt]

I saw “lwj doesn’t like jyl” in your wip list and I’m so intrigued, would you tell us a bit about it?

ah this ask is so old now, idk if you're still interested, but sure, i can talk about it.

so, fandom seems fairly set on the fact that lan wangji hates jiang cheng. like, i feel like no-one's arguing that fact. but i see a lot of lan wangji getting along really well with jiang yanli, which i think is... yeah, fair enough, but my brain was like, okay, let's explore a universe where he hates her too. why does he hate her? what does he hold against her? how justified is that hate? is it pettiness? or does he have a genuine grievance? how does he moderate this, given that wei wuxian definitely still loves her?

content warning under the cut for discussion of child abuse, in line with what we see of yzy's treatment of wwx in canon, but applied to a modern setting.

around the time i was musing on this, i read a modern au of mdzs that had wwx as the victim of horrific child abuse in the jiang household, and the fic was sort of about him reconnecting with jiang cheng and jiang yanli years down the line. (don't ask me which it was, because i do not recommend it.) and i was looking at that premise, and i was like, hmm. i could do something with this.

the more i worked on it, the more it started to feel like a jiang yanli character study, almost. her strengths and flaws and regrets became a central part of the fic. i really wasn't interested in doing the slash fic demonising women thing. i wanted to write her with depth and sympathy, whilst also demonstrating her flaws (that wei wuxian would be blind to).

here's a few bits:

the opening scene of the fic:

JIANG CONGLOMERATE STOCK PRICE REACHES TEN YEAR LOW FOLLOWING CONCLUSION OF LIBEL CASE Read: After the Yunmeng People’s Court ruled today against Yu Ziyuan, wife to chairman Jiang Fengmian of the Jiang Conglomerate, stockholder confidence in the company dropped, leading to their lowest share price in nearly thirteen years.

TSINGHUA UNIVERSITY ISSUE APOLOGY TO WEI WUXIAN, SCHOLARSHIP AND ENROLMENT REINSTATED Read: Tsinghua University has issued a written apology for the “hasty” sanctions they issued against post-graduate student Wei Wuxian, who has been the subject of a month-long libel case from his former family.

“I LIVED EVERY DAY BELIEVING I WOULD WAKE UP TO DISCOVER HE WAS DEAD.” – TESTIMONY FROM JIANG DEFAMATION CASE REVEALS HORRIFYING REALITY OF CHILD ABUSE IN HOUSEHOLD Listen: Leaked audio from the Jiang Family’s defamation case details the horrific physical abuse inflicted upon the defendant, Wei Wuxian.

YU ZIYUAN ARRESTED FOR AGGRAVATED ASSAULT, ATTEMPTED MURDER; FACES UP TO TWENTY YEARS IN PRISON In Photos: As Wei Wuxian attempts to escape the crowd following his decisive victory against the Jiang Family, Yu Ziyuan’s exit from the court is interrupted by Yunmeng Police.

--

Staring at the sky When all of this started, I was so mad about what Wei Wuxian was doing. I was convinced he was a white-eyed wolf, and he was lying just to get back at a family he’d ended things badly with. I was right there with all my classmates, trending #expellweiwuxian all across weibo. Now that we know the truth, I’m so deeply ashamed. Wei-xiaozhang, I’m so sorry!!

Paralysed by the flow of time I don’t think I’ve ever listened to something that made me quite as upset as Dr Wen’s testimony in the #JiangDefamationCase. To think about her as a young med student, stranded across the country from him, trying her best to keep him alive, yet knowing it could all be for nothing if Yu Ziyuan had a bad day and killed him… And the fact that it was her that kept records of his injuries and abuse – evidence that Wei Wuxian had thrown away himself – just in case he ever needed it… It makes complete sense that when he finally ran from the Jiangs, he ran to her. Wei Wuxian, marry that girl before someone else does!

Three for free and two for too Fuck everyone in the Jiang Family who covered up the abuse that was happening. Fuck every single member of their staff who saw what was happening and stayed quiet to keep their job. And above all else, fuck Yu Ziyuan.

Three for free and two for too Prison’s too good for that bitch.

--

Jiang Yanli thinks of her life in moments, most often.

Part of it, she knows, is due to the tumultuous nature of the household she grew up in. There was a thick tension that sat heavily over their house, even when A-Xian wasn’t mouthing off in front of their mother. There were so few moments of unabashed joy that Yanli clung to them all the harder – and just let the other memories slip away.

There was one, when she was seven: the day she met Jiang Wuxian. He’d been tiny and bright-eyed – untrusting but eager for affection. She’d loved him the moment she saw him.

Then, another, at eighteen: a little tipsy, hiding from the crowds at her parents’ Lunar New Year party, when Jin Zixuan looked at her like he finally saw her, and the caught her mid-laugh with an impulsive kiss.

Twenty, legs weak as she walked to the altar. Twenty-two, with Jin Ling in her arms for the first time, tiny and precious and utterly untainted.

The most important moment, though, the one that turned her life on its head, happened three days after her marriage to Jin Zixuan.

They were on their honeymoon. He’d taken her to dinner at an exorbitantly expensive restaurant – even after a year of dating Zixuan still liked to posture. The evening is dimmed somewhat by alcohol; Yanli is a consummate lightweight, and she and Zixuan had already split a bottle of champagne in their hotel room before surfacing for food. She can’t remember exactly what she said, but it’d been something like—

“If my mother knew I was ordering steak, she’d slap me.”

It wasn’t intended to be anything more than a careless remark. She’d said things like that before, and her friends had never made it seem like something terrible. At most, she expected a little light teasing about watching her figure. Maybe a shallow smile.

Zixuan gave her neither. “Is that why you always order a salad when we go out?”

Jiang Yanli had blinked. “Ah,” she said without meaning to. The deviation from the expected script threw her. “That is…” She didn’t want to misrepresent anything to Zixuan, but she couldn’t think of a way to explain herself without making his misunderstanding worse. “You know me. Kind of a glutton. My mother just—well, someone has to watch what I eat, or else I’d never have fit into my wedding dress.”

“Kind of a—” Zixuan cut himself off. “Yanli,” he said, “you’re—you’re tiny. You eat like a bird. I always—you should eat more. I don’t care if I have to buy you an entire store’s worth of new dresses. I just want you well.”

Yanli looked down at the dinner settings in front of them and felt her mouth go dry. She shouldn’t—Zixuan was being—perfect, as always. It was nice. But for some reason, his words made her feel—agitated. Uncomfortable. Like there was something treacherous to be found in his kindness.

“I am well,” she said, at length. “Please,” she reached across the table to lay one of her hands over Zixuan’s. “A-Xuan. It was just a joke. Forget I said anything.”

Jin Zixuan turned over his hand and laced their fingers. “If your mother were here,” he said, very serious, “her hand would never even get close to your face. Even if I had to take the blow for you. So order whatever you want.”

In retrospect, it was such a small thing. It shouldn’t have mattered. But it—struck something, deep and fundamental to her very being. Her hand would never even get close to your face, echoing around her head for days, weeks, afterwards. It was the first time she had ever thought to consider her mother as anything other than an absolute authority. It was the first time anyone had ever suggested that they might protect her from her.

She thinks about it a lot.

She thinks about it when she holds Jin Ling, and wonders if there will ever come a time when A-Xuan will have to protect their son from her. She thinks about it when she visits Jiang Cheng each year, on the anniversary of Wuxian’s disappearance. She thinks about it in quiet moments, when her hands are occupied with laundry or housework, and her brain is able to spiral out and play with words like abuse and childhood trauma.

And she’s thinking about it now, stood on the steps of Yunmeng’s People Court, watching A-Xian try to fight his way through a crowd of reporters. Her hand would never even get close to your face. Yanli’s father is collapsed on the ground beside her. Jiang Cheng is arguing with the police officers leading their mother away. Zixuan is back home with their child – a courtroom is no place for a toddler.

Her hand would never even get close to your face.

It had been so easy for Zixuan to make her feel safe. She wasn’t living at home anymore. She was married. Her husband was wealthy enough to take care of them without any help from her family.

She can’t imagine—

Her hand would never even get close to your face.

—how much more difficult it must be, to make Jiang Wuxian feel safe.

There’s a clatter behind them and Jiang Yanli turns her head slightly, to catch sight of a young woman rushing down the steps after A-Xian. Yanli recognises her. This is Wen Qing. She testified for A-Xian.

Yanli watches her place her tiny body between A-Xian and the press. Wen Qing stretches her arms out, forcing her way back, giving A-Xian space. She says something sharp and short to A-Xian. When he nods, she grasps his hand, and she forces her way through the crowd, A-Xian following in her wake.

Yanli watches them both until they’re completely swallowed by the mass of cameras and microphones.

“Jiejie, say something.”

Yanli’s attention snaps back to A-Cheng. Both her brother and two police officers are looking at her expectantly. “Oh,” she says after a beat. “I’m sorry. Could you repeat that?”

Jiang Cheng growls. “They’re saying we can’t follow them to the police station to talk to Mom,” he says. “And I said they’d be hearing from our lawyers.”

Oh, A-Cheng, Yanli sighs internally. Always so convinced of his own righteousness. “We should take Dad home before dealing with any of that,” she says gently. “Gentlemen, am I to presume you are members of the Yunmeng Police Precinct?”

“Yes, ma’am,” one of the officers says.

Ma’am. How ridiculous. I’m not even 30. “Then we know where to send our legal team,” she says easily. “A-Cheng, we can get Mom out of jail later. For now, can you help me with Dad?”

“They had no right to—”

“A-Cheng,” Yanli says, stronger this time. “I can’t lift him on my own.”

Jiang Cheng cuts himself off. He looks between their father and the police officers, hesitating, before he sighs, and kneels down to hook his hands under their father’s arms. “It’s okay, Dad,” he says. “Come on. We’ll get it sorted out.”

Yanli looks around them – at the teeming mass of reporters, barely held back by their security team, at the place where just moments ago, A-Xian had staggered out of the courthouse, victorious but no less wrecked for it, at the police car pulling away with their mother in handcuffs—

Yanli looks at it all, and can’t help but feel that this is the kind of mess that can’t really be sorted out.

and the little snippet that inspired the entire fic:

(cw for discussion of injury, and fairly horrific child abuse)

(context for this scene: wei wuxian is sick, and as such has to cancel on lunch with jiang yanli. when she hears he's sick, she makes him soup, and brings it by his apartment.)

“Oh,” Jiang Yanli says, looking at the kitchen. “This is…”

Lan Wangji follows her gaze, not entirely certain what she’s noticing in particular. He has chopping boards out, piled with vegetables he was in the middle of preparing, when Yanli arrived. There’s a pot of stock simmering on the stovetop, and a steamer that’s half-filled with dumplings.

Jiang Yanli smiles helplessly. “I guess I never expected either of you to be able to cook. A-Cheng’s hopeless, and the less said about my husband in the kitchen the better. And A-Xian… I guess I don’t know anymore. Does he cook?”

Wei Ying doesn’t so much cook as he attempts to kill his tastebuds – and his husband – with spice.

Jiang Yanli hovers inside the kitchen door. Lan Wangji watches her, quietly.

“I understand,” she says at length, “why you don’t like A-Cheng. He is rude to you. I—he hasn’t figured out yet, which parts of our mother’s teachings he wishes to keep. Please be patient with him.”

Lan Wangji’s fingers pause on the knife. He does not say what he is thinking, that he has little sympathy for the plight of Jiang Wanyin. That it is simple to him: a woman who beats a child under her care is not one who he would listen or obey in any circumstance.

It isn’t his place to say such things.

“So, I understand, why you avoid us,” Jiang Yanli goes on. “But – I am not my brother. I have no quarrel with your relationship with A-Xian. You have been – good for him. So I hope – I hope we can be friends. For A-Xian’s sake,” she adds, “if nothing else.”

Lan Wangji looks down at the knife in his hands. It is sharp, and expensive, and he should not be holding it for this conversation. He places it down on the table.

“Thank you for your care,” Lan Wangji says. “Wei Ying will appreciate the soup. But we cannot be friends.”

She blinks at him. “Why not?”

“I dislike you.”

His blunt statement seems to have staggered her. She blinks, again. Tilts her head. “I—what?”

“We cannot be friends,” Lan Wangji repeats, “because I dislike you.”

“Oh,” Jiang Yanli says. “Mr Lan, I’ve never – if I’ve done something to offend you—”

Lan Wangji’s eyes fall to the Tupperware in her hands. “It is not what you have done,” he says, “but what you have not.”

Jiang Yanli follows his eyes to the empty soup containers she’s holding. “I—I don’t understand,” she says.

“When Wei Ying was thirteen,” Lan Wangji says, “Yu Ziyuan flayed the skin from his back. Doctor Wen still has photos saved from the incident. I have seen them. It is no understatement to say that Wei Ying is lucky to have survived – had the wounds become infected, he would have likely died. You brought him soup.”

Left unsaid are the events that prevented that: that Wen Qing had stolen prescription antibiotics from the pharmacy where she worked, risking her job; that Wen Ning had spent every penny of his savings on a plane ticket across China and taped the blister packs of pills inside a hollowed out workbook, that was slipped to Wei Ying under the premise of make-up work; that Wei Ying himself had applied ointment to his wounds with a cotton pad taped to the end of a ruler, unable to reach the network of lacerations stretching across his entire back.

“I – I always have,” Jiang Yanli says. “It makes him feel better, when he’s sick.”

She doesn’t get it.

“Yu Ziyuan left him lying in the dirt,” Lan Wangji says. “He had to crawl up the stairs to his room because he could not stand up without passing out from the pain. He vomited when he reached for his first aid kit, because it had been placed on the top shelf of his wardrobe by a maid. And you brought him soup.”

Wei Ying loves her for it, even now. Jiang Yanli, his jie-jie, who always brought him soup when he was sad. She is untouchable in Wei Ying’s eyes.

Lan Wangji will never forgive her for it.

“You were in a position to help him, long before I even knew what was wrong,” Lan Wangji says. “You moved out, went to university, met your husband – and for four years, you never said a word. How many times did you come back home and make soup? How many times did you see your mother’s cruelty written across Wei Ying’s body – and how many times did you choose to do nothing?

“I saw signs I didn’t have the knowledge to interpret, and I hate myself for never speaking up. It is my greatest regret, that I didn’t have the courage to end Wei Ying’s suffering even – one year, one month, one day earlier. But you knew all along. And you made him soup.”

[vaulttecexec]

the barb side continuation to this theory and how it changes the relationship dynamic for the howard family:

disclaimer: these are all thoughts i've been thinking and in no way have any truth other than me thinking it is. under a cut, again, because while this is an addition to the main theory, i'm still long winded and do not want to clog your dash with my peabrain think train.

I ENCOURAGE READING THE OTHER PART OF THIS FIRST FOR ANY OF THIS TO MAKE SENSE.

so, now that i've dragged you all down my rabbit hole, we have to discuss how much barb potentially did or didn't know, and how all of this ties into the theory of him looking for her too.

this is not going to be an argument of if they truly divorced or not. that isn't the point.

personally, i don't think barb knew any more than the next guy until it was too late to do anything about it, like it was hinted at between moldaver and the pip boy scene. there is very little that came down to her idea, and she seems to be appeasing the suits more than anything. that doesn't mean she didn't know something was fundamentally wrong with what they were doing. it's quite likely that when she found out, there was very little she could do about it or was faced with a bigger issue at hand that needed dealing with. nothing about her character says she would have struggled with indecision. she simply made the choices that were best for their family when they came up.

could bakersfield, vault 12, and the necropolis be why she didn't think bakersfield was a good idea? sure. this one is one of the very few times barb played the villain. she knew something bad was going to happen there, because she knew there were good vaults and bad ones, but the extent of her knowledge still isn't common knowledge. she also broke it to cooper in a way that cooper could digest and would keep him from being angry at anyone but her. that shows her self inflicted guilt, too. she wants him to be mad at her. how she said it says she wants someone to react to what she's saying and ask questions and help her sort it out and potentially get out. it just didn't happen like that.

she never seems to make any important business decision or show any other outward sign of guilt and blame drawing in the show until she says the line (and that shouldn't even count, because she's looking to someone else for approval when she says it). This story isn't told from Barb's point of view, it's told from Cooper's so the skew would come from him seeing her differently. When they argued, you can clearly see he still has this belief she's a good person and would remain so to him.

I don't think knowing made her a bad person or a bad wife or mother. I think we can't keep group dumping that logic of vault tec bad so everyone else involved is too. there were some genuine good people, who thought they were doing the right thing, and they got caught up with the wrong company.

how did it affect the howard's?

first it's shown in her inability to touch him or allow him to touch her in the way she did at the start of the show. by the end of it, she seems almost hesitant to let him even hug her. and she is definitely in another place mentally through it. that is the first indication that she isn't cold and malicious. she's genuinely struggling with what's going on here.

it's also shown in how she immediately sets her shoulders like she's going to war with cooper. you can see her physically prepare before she speaks to him from the hottub scene on. it was subtle, but it was there.

so, if cooper was an experiment, what does that have to do with barb?

VAULT TEC HAS DEFINITELY DONE SOMETHING FOR HIM TO SEPARATE WHAT HE THINKS OF THE COMPANY AND WHAT HE THINKS OF HER.

first of all, if she knew about bakersfield, she was definitely trying to keep them from becoming ghouls. she'd have to know that was a potential for any of them. but, it would have been more than that.

cooper, at some point, would have had to come to terms with the fact that she was still making a good decision by not wanting that fate for them. he also would've had to reconcile his feelings with what she'd said and what he knew of her and about her to get to the point of considering her his family WITH janey.

he would've been receiving first hand exposure to exactly what she was trying to keep them from, and that likely had something to do with the reconciliation he'd done in regards to her. he's also spent a lot of years wandering the wasteland, so if his plan was to just die in the drop, he'd know that was NOT guaranteed either. he'd know that while a little twisted, she really was making the best choice for her moral code in that moment. he'd see people ghoulify naturally. he'd probably find out about cryopreservation and the amount of people saved from it. he'd learn everything they never talked about in all that time.

AND CONSIDER, all that time he spent with his memories if he was a science project.

i think his development to include barb in his hunt was one that was probably harder for him to deal with than the knowledge at least his daughter was safe.

again, this is not a review of their relationship. what that looks like seems way messier than how he got to the point to look for his family and not just his daughter post experimentation.

plus, we do get an idea of how long he'd been topside. it wasn't mentioned that cooper worked with that man's grandfather, he worked with his dad. that was said for a reason. it changes the topside timeline, but it would fit into the grand picture of cooper not being naturally occurring.

also, his clothing hasn't fully disintegrated from exposure? that means something, too.

i got sidetracked, but these are all things that affect the howards and how they came to the point they were by the end of the season

GDI ROCKI, TL;DR. PLEASE:

If Barb knew about good and bad vaults, she likely had an idea of what was going to happen in Bakersfield. I don't think she had the clearance to stop anything, but she could navigate a better future for them by keeping her head down. This would have to all be things Cooper learned after the fact, which likely helped him reconcile some with her. He'd done so enough to consider not just Janey his family, but her as well by the end of it. We also get the idea that he hasn't been gunslinging as far back as the drop happened based on easily overlooked dialogue. There's clues he wasn't.

[0junemeatcleaver0]

Lestat/Armand for the prompt, the most depraved but still sweet thing you can think of (because I’m exhausted and I need someone else to write it too, so help me God 🥹🥹)

Lestat/Armand Rating: E Features: Whump (IE: Lestat beats the shit out of Armand, but it's consensual, no worries), thoughts about the past, revelations, aftercare cloaked in sarcasm because these two can never get too vulnerable with each other. Post-canon; in this version Lestat has actually at least tried to do some work on himself.

𝔽𝕦𝕔𝕜 𝕄𝕖 𝕃𝕚𝕜𝕖 𝕐𝕠𝕦 ℍ𝕒𝕥𝕖 𝕄𝕖; ℍ𝕚𝕥 𝕄𝕖 𝕃𝕚𝕜𝕖 𝕐𝕠𝕦 𝕃𝕠𝕧𝕖 𝕄𝕖

It sounds less like meat slapping meat, and more like meat slapping stone.

Lestat tries to remember if it was like this the last time, but it doesn't matter. So much has changed since then--individually and between them.

Where once he had done this purely out of rage, now he does it from a place of...of what exactly he's unsure. Armand had made the request of him, which quickly became a demand. And when Lestat still refused, Armand had backed him into a corner--

"Louis was happier with me, you know. Everyone knows it. There's no denying it."

--until Lestat reacted on his worst instinct, slapping Armand hard across the face.

He felt like an idiot. He shouldn't have allowed himself to be lead like this--to have given the little demon what exactly what he wanted.

Harder.

Armand forces the word into his head.

Why? What's the meaning of--

With a closed fist. Do it.

Lestat looks at his hand as though it had only just sprouted at the end of his arm. His palm was still slightly pink from the impact, even though Armand's face has already regained it's smooth, even tone.

You've done it once before. Armand reminds him.

That was different.

I want you to do it again.

That night in Paris, forced into his mind. Lestat beating the boy mercilessly, intent on killing him, on wanting to be rid of him once and for all.

"This is madness." He whispers. "I can't--"

Don't make me drain you.

And then suddenly that memory--the inciting incident--is in his mind but Armand isn't the one who put it there. Armand pressing his fangs into Lestat after dropping him into a haze with the Mind Gift, pulling great draughts of blood from him. The memory edges him closer and closer to fight or flight so when Armand thinks DO IT at him, it's pure impulse to raise his hand and strike him again.

And then once more.

Armand had well and truly been a monster in those early days. For all of Lestat's postulating about the Savage Garden and being a monster outside of the control of even Satan himself, Armand had been unnerving to him.

For Armand had actually inhabited everything that Lestat had touted and when met face to face with the reality, Lestat found himself terrified. A true monster wrapped in the most pleasing visage--beautiful enough to draw you in and dazzle you before you could stop him from inflicting terrible cruelty upon you.

Lestat shivers at the memory as he strikes Armand with a closed fist, connecting with his ribs.

There was a reason Lestat had kept Louis and Claudia from the others. Marius had seemed an anomaly in civility. What he knew of the rest of his kind had frankly chilled him to the core. Even after hearing Armand's story--a story that did not match up to the one he would later tell David, a fact that would forever plague him--he could not fully trust the vampire, even if he had begun to feel more empathy towards him.

He hadn't really begun to recognize whatever version of 'humanity' they had allotted to them until Armand had turned Daniel.

Lestat lands a blow to Armand's jaw and stops abruptly, realizing what he's doing.

Armand raises his bowed head, attempts to fix his gaze upon him with glazed eyes. He spits a mouthful of blood onto the floor between them and reaches out--catching Lestat's wrist in a lightning fast grip to press his palm flat against the arousal growing in his woolen trousers.

Reflexively, Lestat flinches back, whipping his hand away.

The fact that Armand likes a bit of rough play is perhaps the worst kept secret in all of vampire-dom. Lestat had assumed it stopped at being taken hard and perhaps smacked around a little--startled to find that being the victim of a brawl could make him this hard in so few hits.

Do it. Do it. Don't be a coward! Do--

Something snaps inside of Lestat and he grasps Armand by a fistful of hair by the back of his head, pulling him in close to strike him thrice more with his free hand.

The monster is in him, too, that's the problem. Armand's cruelty has always appeared from the outside to be dispassionate, but Lestat is also cruel and he enjoys it. Enjoys having control, enjoys taking life. It's one in the same, really. And while he's made great strides in the past few years he cannot pretend as though this isn't still a part of him--this desire for ruination.

No one brought that desire out of Lestat better than Armand.

Harder, Armand insists.

Finally, Lestat obliges without a second thought, striking him so that he stumbles back and trips over the low table behind him, falling to the floor. Lestat is on him the next second, straddling him as he continues the beating.

Time ceases to matter--if it ever truly could matter to their kind. He doesn't know how long it takes for Armand's pitiful moans to turn to gurgles as he begins choking on his blood.

His guard is down, mind open and Lestat takes a peek as he cocks his fist back again. Sees himself on that lawn in Paris, beating Armand senseless. Sees himself here and now, looking down upon Armand, backlit so that his hair is a bright yellow halo surrounding his head. Sees the two versions of himself blending and turning momentarily into Marius's face for a split second before he's himself again, fist still held back waiting to be thrown.

He brings his hand down to the carpet beneath them, momentarily stunned.

I missed him so much then.

The thought is weak but unmistakable.

You looked so much like him. As though you could have been his son. I hated you for it. I wanted you so badly.

And suddenly Lestat is horrified again, unprepared to see this part of their shared past through a new lens--to know that the reason Armand had imprinted upon him like a duckling was because he looked so much like his old Master. That he derived some sick pleasure from the beating he'd dealt him.

That he might only love him due to his love for Marius.

Lestat rolls off of him, laying on his back next to a sprawled out and broken Armand to stare at the ceiling for a long moment, numbed. There are no more thoughts--his head static.

He turns his head to look at Armand. He's hit him so hard--the trauma so deep--that he's still badly bruised. His hair is matted with blood, left eye glued shut with coagulation. His bottom lip is split and his perfect cheeks are purpled.

Slowly, Lestat sits up and begins undressing Armand with shaking hands. His knuckles are sore--he can only imagine how Armand feels. When he sits the boy up to pull his shirt down his arms--his torso a bed of bright blue blooms--the blood runs free and thick down Armand's slack jaw.

"Did you get what you want?" He mumbles. "Are you satisfied?"

"Yes." Armand croaks. "Thank you."

The horror falls away suddenly, replaced by affection for this approximation of a broken child before him. Carefully, he helps Armand remove his shoes and trousers.

"He wouldn't have ever beat you this badly."

"I'm glad one of us is certain of that."

He is certain, but only because he has to be. Refuses to think less of Marius. He thinks maybe that is another thing that binds the two of them so tightly together--their devotion to the Roman.

"Can you walk?"

"Of course. You didn't strike my legs."

"Keep up the attitude and I might."

A thought. No, a memory. A scene he'd read in Armand's sad little pornographic book--a switch coming down again and again against the backs of his thighs, wielded by a stern Marius, the scene crystalline in the way a memory only could be, frozen there for eternity.

"Don't threaten me with a good time." Armand mumbles. His swollen lips in a close approximation of a smirk.

Lestat dumps him on the bed. Armand moans in pain, his ribs in obvious disarray. He's fairly certain he hasn't broken them--runs a steady palm along Armand's flank to make sure.

"Hold still." Lestat mumbles, swinging a leg over Armand's legs. It's different this time--Lestat planting kisses instead of punches to each bruise, pressing is own blood against the injuries with his tongue.

He works him over just as slowly as he had before, correcting their shared wrongs with each kiss until Armand's torso is all the same pale shade of marble once more. Lestat sighs, slicing his tongue open again, letting gravity drizzle a ribbon of blood onto Armand's swollen eye and rubbing it in with a gentle thumb. He watches as the skin mends itself, the bruise falling away, almost appearing to sink into the skin until it is no longer visible.

He saves Armand's lips for last, bending to kiss them bloodlessly and tenderly. They have the same color and over-plumped fullness of a plum. Armand hisses when Lestat's lips make contact, pained. Lestat hushes him, sliding a hand between them to stroke Armand's half erect cock as he kisses each corner of his mouth.

"You don't have to--"

"Hush."

Armand plumps against his palm in just a few strokes, moaning when Lestat pets the head with his thumb, wincing when each moan pulls the split in his lip a little wider. A droplet of blood wells up on Armand's bottom lip and Lestat licks greedily at it as his thumb swipes a bead of precum off the tip of Armand's cock.

"Christ, please." Armand begs, breath pouring into Lestat's mouth.

Lestat opens his tongue again, licks the blood over Armand's bottom lip and into his mouth as he strokes him faster. Armand comes with the second mouthful of blood Lestat passes to him, body going completely limp.

He waits for Armand to recover for a moment before slapping playful at his hip.

"Up. Up now. You're sweating all over my bed and your hair is disgusting."

Armand remains dazed for a moment before scowling, throwing a pillow at Lestat's retreating back.

"And where are you going?"

"Calm yourself, imp. I'm drawing you a bath."

[see-arcane]

this person who posted in the tags that you do "weird flanderization of Jonathan who suddenly is the most feral most strongest most specialest little boy who gets to meet all of the other characters." and that "he shouldn't be in the league at all" isn't because of your writing or anything but because they're mad that jonathan is taking up jekyll's spotlight in the league. i apologize on behalf of the j+h fandom they are notorious around here and now they have targeted you too.

I'll be honest, I seriously blanked on what post you could be talking about because my eyes kind of glazed over mid-rant when I was scrolling past it. (My pretty pink eye is always open but it doesn't always pay attention, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

On that note, I've mentioned before what my reaction to people/media being jerks about Jonathan Harker is *--

*Spoilers: It means I make even more gratuitously indulgent Jonathan Harker content. I'm making a whole monster AU sequel novel centered around the guy for crying out loud.

--and that was well before I started churning out fanfic for the LXGF comic that Does Not Exist Yet about the myriad public domain characters who are owned by no one, but who are, to the best of my knowledge, being written in a way that realistically grows from the canon of the books they come from. On that point, if their main issue is the League of Extraordinary Gentlefolk and my premature bootleg scribbling about the same, feat. Jonathan Harker? I guess it needs repeating (as it is made very clear on the comic's blog itself):

This is not Alan Moore's comic! The closest resemblance is the name! It is not, nor was it ever planned to be, a direct child of Alan Moore's work! Nor of any movie or musical or series or adaptation!

The characters and their potential adventures are based on what we can take from the actual books!

Which are being read en masse at this point by all the writers involved, as we love nothing more than inflicting book club after book club on ourselves. Anyway.

This isn't worth a meatier rant, honestly. Ditto for anyone's griping about how we're not catering specifically to their version of Jekyll and Hyde, or how they want the comic to be done, or how they want anyone who dares to write a story involving public domain characters to mimic their favorite adaptation or spinoff. None of the things they're complaining about are being made for them. They're being made by people who want those stories to exist for themselves and for anyone else who might like to see their stories. That's it.

I will say that I honestly hope they can get past whatever hang-up they have about these characters and their hobby of trying to shout or wheedle everyone else into playing along with their mean-spirited takes.

Because looking at the wider fandoms of all these classic literature and comic book fans? This person seems to be one lone sourpuss stamping their feet while everyone else is being chill or excited about their own stuff. Some have even done the easy thing and, you know, blocked the blogs/tags that upset them. I do it all the time. It's probably been done to me. I don't know and I don't care that I don't know.

I sincerely want this person to get to that headspace too. If only so they can find their way back to the point of being a fan, which is having fun with the content they enjoy rather than seeking out projects and people to throw bile at.

[okayto]

Harrowhark the Ninth reread/liveblog, part iv: chapter 47 - THE END

This was just going to be a reblog on the previous post chain but it got long and I have THOUGHTS so it's by itself. Cannot wait to read Nona (and eventually Alecto) and find out how many of my thoughts were on the mark or not.

No comments on the whole spirit scene except I love Abigail, and Magnus. And poor Ortus just needed a different environment to be raised in.

Jod interrogates Commander Wake and I can follow the conversation so much better this time! So Blood of Eden believes what I’ve been leaning toward, that John caused the Big Kablooey.

“How many babies died in the bomb, Gaius?”

“All of them,” he said.

I wonder what that’s like for him? Ten thousand years of being god, and these people know his sin. It’s not just that they hate necromancers or want control of the Solar System, they know they’re dealing with the guy that destroyed them all. He’s a murderous, genocidal dictator, of course they’re going to attack him.

And then to have his remaining Lyctors tell him that they found out, and plotted for centuries to kill him? How’s that feel, Jod? The hell you inflicted on everyone—the ten billion dead, the souls of planets turned into ravenous monsters, the people who dedicated their entire existences to you, so much that they absorbed the other most important person in their lives, betrayed and in turn betraying? He deserves it. This is now a Jod Hate account.

(I disagree with Wake that all necromancers need to die, because it’s not the current batch of existing humans’ fault that their leader and cultural originator is a genocidal dickhead. But if the Houses get evacuated we know that necromancers can’t be born outside the Solar System so they would gradually die out. Of course, I also have next to no info about BOE themselves so I’m not necessarily rooting for them.)

Alecto—what is the significance of the name, versus Annabel? Why is “Alecto” taboo? Why was she mad (I pondered this in an earlier post)? But “a monster in a human suit,” “a monster the moment you resurrected her, and you went and made her worse!”

The Lyctors (excluding Gideon) hated her, begged Jod to kill her. The Resurrection Beasts were coming partly for her. And she has Jod’s eyes, and he hers.

I’m gonna bet that John was some sort of ecofascist. He thinks that blowing up the entire planet was necessary. He sees BOE (or their predecessors) as having abandoned it. Whatever sad faces he makes, he doesn’t actually regret it. He and his eternal war with child soldiers.

“Augustine,” he said, “ if the man you were — the man you were before you died, before the Resurrection — could hear what you just said to me, he’d tear your throat out.”

So Augustine—and presumably more (most?) of the lyctors wasn’t just any acolyte, he was John’s friend! Who was murdered (or committed suicide, essentially, probably, if he knew about the Murder Everyone Plan) and then resurrected as an amnesiac and…what, made to follow his co-conspirator as a god? Creepy! But that also allowed him to like, have a life. While whatever the hell Jod is trying to do (“expanding” “bewildering cartography” searching for something according to Augustine) consumes him. Or maybe there’s not much to do when you’ve killed your planet and created a whole new culture with yourself at the head. Can’t die. Can’t visit any media, cultural artifacts or people from before the murder. Can’t get therapy when you’re god. Maybe he’s just bored.

I wonder what that felt like, to be so finely disassembled into temporary death? And to be put back together again? I hope it hurt.

AND HERE WE SEE A GLIMPSE OF THE REAL JOHN. Not the fool who desperately wants, even with everything, to pretend he’s still on the same level (physically, socially, emotionally) as everyone else. Here I think we’re seeing the man who killed ten billion people. Cold. Not sorry. Ultimately the lyctors are still tools to him—yes, he wants their friendship, companionship, worship, but ALSO they exist ultimately to further his millennia-long goal, whatever it is.

The conversation with Pyrrha—I just realized this likely explains that time Harrow walked in on Gideon1 humping Cytherea’s corpse! Was probably Pyrrha, who knew Wake was haunting around.

I have no idea what’s happening to Harrow here at the end. Except not going back to her body, I guess?

THE END

[buddiekinard]

I don’t mean people who dislike Tommy in general. That’s fine, we don’t like every character and it’s whatever. I hate people that go out of their way to try and say that Tommy and people like him are ‘toxic’ and ‘evil’ because they made bad decisions in their past. There are a lot of valid criticisms for Loud and for Tommy and even for Ryan Guzman, and that’s fine and everyone has their own opinions. What grates on me are the people that go out of their way to attack the character and try to paint him as a bad representation and somehow evil and irredeemable but don’t have those same issues in real life instances of racism or bigotry like we saw with Ryan. I’m not saying he should be attacked or reviled, nor that it should be ignored and swept under the rug.

My argument was more that the people who specifically target the Tommy character as a villain and spew vitriol at his fans and at the actor are just using the morality argument to disguise that they’re really just mad about their ship being canon. And when they get called out they double down. Yet the moment Buddie goes canon they will forget all their previous arguments and champion it as ‘pure, queer love’ as if that’s the only kind of experience and representation that gay men should be allowed to have, meanwhile being intentionally ignorant of Ryan doing the exact same things they lambasted Tommy for.

It feels disingenuous and in bad faith for so many fans/BuckTommy haters to be having this argument without having any intention of standing up to real life moments of racism, homophobia, misogyny, or other kinds of injustice on or off the show. It’s playing pretend anger so they can try and bully show runners into making Buddie canon and it gives a really bad name to the fandom. What is the point of crying about fictional behaviors when they choose to ignore real life iterations that mirror them? They decided that it doesn’t count so long as the actor in their favorite ship is involved and that really bothers me. It’s a deeper issue than I’m expressing, clearly, but it seems so intentionally nasty and selective in some circles and it’s driving me up the wall because they know what they’re doing and intentionally continue to inflict this hatred on everyone who disagrees.

I have been sitting with this trying to find a good response but honestly I just don't feel qualified to pass judgment on this particular topic. Hypocrisy certainly exists in fandom, and that's definitely it's own issue, but having not been around for the Ryan stuff I can't speak on people's reactions to it. I honestly can't even explain fully what happened (I know he made some comments and I know Oliver and Aisha made statements after but that's about it). I didn't want to seem like I was ignoring this message (and maybe someone else will have something to add), but I just don't feel like I can respond in good faith at the moment with my current brain power and knowledge of the subject.

I do think people are being unnecessarily nasty about Tommy/Lou though. I think that goes without me saying. Death threats towards real people are never appropriate, especially when that person's crime is....playing a character you don't like, and I've definitely seen people doing that. Honestly, I am really exhausted from everything going on right now in this fandom, and maybe that's why I can't come up with a really well thought response. It's definitely time to work on curating the dash a bit better.

[whatevz420]

just venting, idk. i usually do this in my journal but i'm refraining from adding any negativity into the one i currently write in, so of course logging back into my ghost town of a tumblr account is the only logical place to dump it all.

life fucking blows. i was researching examples of emotional abuse and i've experienced every single one. like, going down the list and feeling my heart drop a little bit more with each point was such a painful feeling. my abusers (which feels weird saying/writing for the first time, but it's appropriate, sadly) are in denial that they could have possibly done these things to me. and oh, how they love to tell me how responsible i am to continue going therapy to fix the wounds i have. it's up to me now. it's the truth, but i can't help but be extremely angry that they can say it with complete validity. because even though me getting help IS the appropriate next step, what about them? what about the actions they need to take, like apologizing? and meaning it? why aren't they doing research on whether or not what they did constitutes abuse? identifying to me exactly what they're sorry for instead of making absurdly vague blanket statements to hopefully get me to shut up about it forever and let it die in the past so they are never reminded of their own actions again?

i was so mad when i was forced to tell them how i felt only for them to say, "okay? well your only option now is to get help. the past already happened." like ... thank you for such a sensitive response to my feelings. this is why i never open up or ask for help. it's just not bound to end well. if you open up, people will use your sensitivities against you as a weapon. if you ask for help like you've been told to, you'll be gravely disappointed because you were expecting people to care, and they won't.

i believe in forgiveness. i firmly believe it is the most important virtue of all. but how do you forgive someone when they aren't even sorry? and more importantly, how do you forgive someone when their behaviors from 10 years ago still occur every now and again?

i'm 24 now and i want to let go of the pain so bad. my younger self was so much wiser. and i was always optimistic. i thought i would be that way forever. maybe i still can be. i remember being so happy when i was young, so full of joy and always in awe of the world around me. i loved music, i loved to sing into my nintendo dsi voice recorder. i loved learning about makeup and practicing it on myself. i thought the grass outside in the summer was such a beautiful green. i never failed to appreciate the little things.

then, i was mocked, bullied. all the time. every single day. and any passion of mine was never appreciated. i didn't know it at the time, but my parents were neglecting me and everyone else was bullying me. i was made to believe liking those things was wrong. i was made to believe that liking such normal things was not normal. one thing i've learned about myself is that i am very easily manipulated and i will quite absolutely believe anything people say about me. i was also always a shy girl to begin with, but i was made fun of for being quiet so i began to overcompensate and became the most nauseating, attention hungry teenager, and it still wasn't enough because of my physical appearance.

i was then bullied for being overweight. by peers, but also by my own family. i never felt so alone in the world. i felt like it was never going to end. the sad thing is, it kind of never really did end. i wish i had at least one friend to validate my feelings and tell me everything was going to be okay, but sadly i didn't even have that.

i've tried to take my trauma and become a better person out of it. my biggest fear was ending up becoming someone who inflicts harm onto others because of what they've experienced. i feel like i've done a pretty good job maintaining that, actually.

but now, i'm suffering. my self esteem has plummeted because everything i heard about myself when i was a child is so ingrained into my head. those people ruined such a sweet, young girl. i strongly believe those things about myself to this day, all these years later. when i have children of my own, i will instill so much confidence, praise, and love into them so they will never have to misunderstand their value in the world the way i did.

i'm hoping that i can teach myself to become whoever i want to be. fuck my abusers. fuck them for trying to take everything away from me. their failed attempt is pathetic. i've been abused by other people but i've let it go because they're no longer in my life. unfortunately, my worst abusers are the ones that are in my family, which are people i can't just easily cut off. but i don't care, them being "family" may make it harder to deal with because i can't escape them, but it doesn't mean i will ever accept the behavior. i still love them, but they have made it extremely difficult to do so. and if they ever tell me, "well, you don't show us you love us," like, hmm, why do you think?

pretty sure no one is reading this but thanks for letting me trauma dump <3