☆ you sow; & thus you shall reap what you are owed
{☆} characters tsaritsa
{☆} notes cult au, imposter au, drabble, gender neutral reader
{☆} warnings blood, violence
{☆} word count 0.8k
You are dying.
Gold melts into the dirt, bleeds into the very earth that you'd molded by your own hands – a familiarity you do not understand the source of – you know it to be true, yet you do not remember it as Teyvat does. It weeps, in turn, for the way you bleed upon it, the way your lungs strain for breath.
It is fury and sorrow and fear and hatred so raw that your mind buckles.
You will die.
"A dying godling and its judge, it's jury – it's executioners," The voice is hollow and cold, sweeps across your broken body like the first chill of winter, "Archons who saw themselves Gods, now brought to heel by their own hubris."
A cold hand upon your cheek, the brush of a thumb across your lip, the gentle caress of cold across your skin. You know her – you don't remember, you shouldn't recognize her but you do – and she knows you. The cold beckons and you follow, let her kindness settle in the hollow space of your chest. You want to speak, to cry and scream and rage, let the world burn around you in a fit of flames so hot even she cannot contain it – but she silences you, quiets the anger seeping into your blood, quiets Teyvat itself.
"Do not speak, little godling. Guide my hand," She is cold; her hands are not gentle, yet it is bliss compared to the callous, cruel hands that have shattered you. She is cruel and cold and brutal but she is love in the way she kisses the crown of your head. She is love in the way she is the bulwark between you and the world that has scorned you – she is fury in the way she brings them to their knees. "And I shall enact judgement most divine."
They will pray for forgiveness, and they shall find themselves wanting.
"It wasn't our fault!" They cry, but you cannot recognize the voice – it breaks and cracks like glass. "They were too human. How were we meant to know? We– we thought they were.."
Silence.
You watch your judge – the executioner, the blade that shall carve their sins into the very marrow of Teyvat, stand above you like death. As cold as winter and just as brutal. Your temple has been painted in the gold of your divine blood, and she shall complete the masterpiece with their own. The Archons shall become the grandest art in the world – this temple the canvas, their blood the paint and their bodies the palette. The cold that cuts sinew cradles you – it sings to you, whispers sweetly in your ear and carves bone from body in the same breath. The cold presses it's lips to your wrist and it cradles a heart within it's palm – judges them and finds them guilty.
It is her spear that rests between their ribs, her sword that dissects and her dagger that carves – the cold devours.
In the breadth of this divine sanctuary, the Archons dwindle. They become the pieces of a divine work of art, they bleed and bend and break upon her hands. She shakes the heavens and carves mortality into the bones of the divine – your word is Law, and you weave their deaths into the roots of Teyvat itself.
They shall know of their grand folly in every moment henceforth and longer still and they shall weep.
And as the curtain falls, as the world crumbles beneath fist and blade, she cradles your face between hands too cold – as gentle as a shard of ice between your ribs, as brutal as the kiss of gentle snowfall. The world buckles at the loss of six, but she alone does not allow it to break – you will have to mend the wounds of the world when you are well, but today you weep and Teyvat weeps with you.
And alone, the cold remains.
Stone has eroded, the wind has ceased, the flames have been extinguished, the storm has been silenced, the forests have gone quiet and the seas go still.
But the cold remains, bathed in gold.
It wraps you in thick furs, cradles you against the winter storm that brews beneath a veneer of composure. It brings you home – lets the world settle into a stillness and silence that inspires only dread and still she presses a kiss to your brow.
It is cold, but there has never been something so warm.
Where hands have broken you, she drapes you in furs, wipes away the thick gold that clings to your skin. She pieces you back together where you have been shattered, reshapes you where you have been bent – makes of you something new. Not a god and not a mortal but something wedged between them.
But you are yourself.
And you are where you belong.
They shall put you back together and you shall know only the worship worthy of the divine. They shall carve this world into your image, tear out and burn away the rot that festers.
All you need to do is say the word and they shall be your tools to make this world your own.
One word and those who wronged you shall burn, too.
Just one word. That's all it takes, and they shall take away your pain.
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on “Zutara is a colonizer x colonized ship”
“Colonizer” is not an ontological category. It’s a role within a specific geopolitical power dynamic, and therefore it can change — or even cease to exist — when these geopolitical power dynamics change (like when, idk, a Gaang of teenagers overthrow a genocidal imperialist colonial regime to install a new monarch who vows to stop the genocide and imperialism and colonization and bring about an era of love and peace)
I know it’s a bad faith anti argument, but it bothers me more than most anti Zutara arguments because I think it is indicative of a very pessimistic, defeatist attitude about power relations in general. Any type of oppressor is not a fixed role. It’s subject to change, and indeed ATLA’s message is that it’s your obligation — and your right, your power — to fight for that change, even if you’re just a ragtag group of kids against a whole empire. Calling Zuko a colonizer is not only a baffling misunderstanding of what colonization is, it also implies that even when you successfully challenge and restructure oppressive power dynamics, old sins cast long enough shadows that there is nothing you can do to be free of them. It’s one thing to acknowledge the complexities of a close relationship with someone who used to benefit from your oppression (indeed that’s kind of the whole arc of The Southern Raiders where Katara confronts the ways in which she has projected the trauma of her mother’s murder at the hands of the Fire Nation onto Zuko, who is now a valued ally). It’s quite another to claim that neither of you can ever escape the ontological categories of oppressor vs victim even if you’ve both changed the world.
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I'm getting to work I promise, but god I'm such a fucking nerd, I was trying to think of rewards to give myself for finishing my Nursing Job Homework and I thought to myself "ooh I've been meaning to check out a few different Nursing Job book references on pharmacology so I can train new nurses better!!" this maybe sounds like I'm trying to brag about how diligent I am, and I'm super not, I'm flushing my own head in the toilet for being such a dork. One of the other rewards I'm considering is being allowed to write a real long post about nursing diagnoses. What happened to me
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tagged by @arisingonmorningsinnocent
Rules: shuffle your On Repeat playlist and post the first 10 tracks, then tag 10 people
It's All Futile! It's All Pointless! by Lovejoy
In the Shadow of the Western Hills by the Mountain Goats
Nobody by the Crane Wives
Achilles Come Down by Gang of Youths
Never Quite Free by the Mountain Goats
A Burning Hill by Mitski
Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod by the Mountain Goats
Be Calm by Fun.
Autoclave by the Mountain Goats
His Theme by Toby Fox
tagging @spiritunwilling @circuit77 @risingape @existentialterror @scientificalstories @erstwhilesparrow @adhdo5 @roundearthsociety @lepertamar @wolffyluna and anyone who sees this and wants to-- feel free to say i tagged you ^_^ and on the flip side if you were tagged and don't want to do it feel free to not!
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