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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

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Initiative pt 2 - ao3 or tumblr pt 1

It was just typical of his brother, Nie Huaisang thought. He finally, finally, finally found a girl that might suit him, agreed to marry her, and then he spent all his time worrying about…saber.

Typical.

Nie Huaisang volunteered himself to act as the family representative in negotiations with the Jiang sect, seeing as his brother would undoubtedly get them fleeced if he were trying to do it himself – “Try not to be too mercenary, Huaisang. We are the ones in the stronger position, through no fault of theirs.” – and with one thing or another he arrived at the Lotus Pier less than a week after Jiang Yanli did.

Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian seemed rather surprised to see him.

“I haven’t had a moment to tell them,” Jiang Yanli said, pressing her head to her forehead and looking a little tired. “They’d just completed the memorial hall, when I arrived.”

“And it’s been nothing but keeping them from fighting ever since?” Nie Huaisang said, not without some sympathy.

Only some, though. If Jiang Yanli couldn’t handle Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian, even the grieved and tragic versions of them, what was she going to do the first time his brother went into a rage?

Maybe he was being too cold-blooded. After all, they’d been her parents, too.

“Your arrival is a good thing,” she said, narrowing her eyes a little in satisfaction. “Now they have no excuse to run away from me.”

Nie Huaisang couldn’t help but smile a little at that.

She summoned a few sect disciples, divided them neatly into two groups – one larger than the other – and instructed them to go bring her two recalcitrant brothers to the main hall. “You may use force,” she informed the larger group. “I would advise you that A-Xian is especially weak to tickling around his ribs, and don’t let him scare you off with that Yiling Patriarch stuff. And as for the group going to get A-Cheng – may I suggest looking especially pathetic when you convey the message that his sister, who he left alone for almost the entire war, would really like to see him if he has a moment to spare for her?”

Nie Huaisang’s smile broadened. “Tears,” he added solemnly. “Tears are very good. He hates tears.”

“Just so. Thank you all.”

“My brother is already planning out your saber,” he told her once the disciples had left, and she brightened visibly. “If there’s anything you want to contribute in terms of design, now’s the time – I brought mine in case you want to have a look later on.”

Aituan was in his luggage. Somewhere. His brother had refused to let him leave the Unclean Realm before he’d produced proof of saber, and he hadn’t unpacked since then, so surely it was somewhere.

“I’m sure whatever your brother comes up with will be fine,” she said. “I don’t know anything about weapons.”

A brief hesitation.

“Although, perhaps not – so large…?”

Nie Huaisang decided to be daring. He opened his fan in front of his face and looked at her over it, allowing his eyes to curve up in a smile. “Don’t worry about that – though if all goes well, you’re going to have to accustom yourself to dealing with a large saber at some point in the process.”

She burst out laughing, which was good.

“Nie Huaisang!” Oh, look, Jiang Cheng was here. “What are you saying to my sister? You’d better not be harassing her!”

“What would you do if I was?” Nie Huaisang wondered. “I mean, I’m not, I don’t think, but –”

“Just don’t.”

“A-Cheng,” Jiang Yanli said. “Be polite. Where’s A-Xian? I have something to tell you both.”

Wei Wuxian came in a few moments later, grumbling and rubbing his ribs but brightening when he saw them all gathered up there, and he slid into place by Jiang Cheng’s side easy as anything even if they did sort of stare awkwardly with quasi-glares, quasi-grimaces at each other first.

And then Jiang Yanli told them why Nie Huaisang was there, and all awkwardness fell away at once so that they could unite in glaring at Nie Huaisang.

“Why are you looking at me for?” he asked. “I’m not the one marrying her, that’s my brother.”

“If you had anything to do with this –” Wei Wuxian started, doing his whole looming-with-the-subtonal-wailing-of-dark-forces Yiling Patriarch thing, but ticklish around the ribs and a summer of nonsense didn’t really do much to encourage fear in Nie Huaisang, who’d never had as much common sense as a regular person ought.

“Oh, no, I objected to it,” Nie Huaisang said breezily. “Your sister doesn’t deserve my brother.”

And that, of course, got them both up in arms even more.

“What’s that supposed to mean? What’s wrong with my sister?” Jiang Cheng shouted, and Wei Wuxian’s aura-of-darkness got even more out of hand as he crossed his arms and glared death. “She’d be a great bride for anyone! Give me one reason –”

“I’m glad to have your support, didi,” Jiang Yanli said, calmly ladling out the soup she’d promised Nie Huaisang as if they were sitting in the midst of a nice breeze instead of a hurricane, and okay, fine, maybe his brother had a point about the importance of things like backbone and patience. “Don’t worry so much. If Nie-er-gongzi is here as his brother’s representative, that must mean he’s accepted the match.”

Or that he was here to sabotage it, but he appreciated her good faith interpretation.

“Please, just Huaisang is fine,” he said, smiling at her. “You’ll be my sister-in-law soon enough, won’t you?”

“We haven’t agreed yet!” Wei Wuxian exclaimed.

“Oh, like your opinion matters,” Nie Huaisang said, rolling his eyes. “You know how many people have put good money down on you leaving the Jiang sect in the next three-to-six months?”

That got all of them looking like they’d just been unexpectedly stabbed in the chest, Jiang Yanli included.

“What?” he asked, batting his eyelashes innocently at them. “Did I say something wrong? Everyone knows you aren’t doing anything for the Jiang sect anymore, Wei-xiong. All the rumors says so, and the only reason for that is if you were planning on ditching now that you don’t need them anymore.”

“That’s enough,” Jiang Yanli said, and there was a bit of steel in her voice. “A-Xian isn’t leaving, and even if he was, his opinion on my marriage would still matter to me.”

“That’s one of the reasons I objected,” Nie Huaisang said to her, deciding that she was clearly the only one mature enough to have this extremely necessary discussion with. “Meaning no offense, but in every possible respect, you’re a bad match. If you marry my brother, will you be expecting him to run around defending everything the Yiling Patriarch does whenever he’s in the mood to thumb his nose at the cultivation world? Or paying for the Lotus Pier’s reconstruction costs, even though Jiang-xiong hasn’t made a single overture to our Nie sect in terms of reestablishing trade routes or even just swapping craftsmen for mutual benefit?”

Both Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian were positively black in the face.

“Of course, even if you weren’t going to anchor him down with even more political obligations, there’s your personal value,” Nie Huaisang continued, tapping his finger against his cheek. “Word has it that you’re weak and sickly. Who’s to say that you won’t die along with the first child you bear –”

“How dare you talk about my shijie like that!” Wei Wuxian shouted, slamming his hand down on the table, while Jiang Cheng’s Zidian crackled lightning like an overactive firework. “How dare you –”

“And do you still support the marriage, even with all of these disadvantages?” Jiang Yanli asked, holding up her hands to hold her brothers back. Her eyes were a bit wet, but she was otherwise unperturbed, at least on the surface.

“I do, actually,” Nie Huaisang said, pleased. Even if she went to go cry later, which he didn’t think she would, she’d done well enough to pass his personal test of what constituted backbone. “My brother doesn’t care about politics, we have plenty of money, and there’s doctors for the rest of it. If you’re really willing to put in the effort, I’d be happy to call you my sister-in-law.”

Jiang Cheng was hissing like a pot of water on the boil. Wei Wuxian was grinding his teeth.

“I appreciate that,” Jiang Yanli said, disregarding them entirely. “I can promise you that I’ll do my best.”

“Good, good,” Nie Huaisang said, and grinned at her. “There’s only enough room for one useless flower vase in the Nie household, and the position is taken. By me, if that’s not clear. I brought my brother’s eight characters – do you have yours at hand? We can calculate the auspicious date immediately.”

“I still haven’t agreed!” Jiang Cheng exclaimed, and Jiang Yanli reached out to touch his arm lightly. “I haven’t! Jiejie, you don’t have to marry anyone you don’t want to, no matter what good things you think it’d bring to the sect, okay? You should marry for love!”

“Jiang Cheng’s right, shijie,” Wei Wuxian said at once. “You should get anyone you like. Even if you still want that stupid Jin sect peacock, we’d find a way to get him for you.”

Nie Huaisang looked at Jiang Yanli carefully at that one. It was even odds if his brother minded her having some vestigial affections, especially in the beginning, but he himself wouldn’t be having any of that – least of all with a Jin, no matter how much better Jin Zixuan seemed to be than his father.

His brother deserved someone who would put him first, this time.

“No, thank you,” she said without the slightest hesitation, and Nie Huaisang nodded in approval. “Young Master Jin has made his opinion about me clear enough, and not just once. I’m not going to run after him like I think that’s all I’m good for. And anyway, Chifeng-zun is a good man, who you both greatly admire – why can’t I marry him?”

“You can marry anyone you want,” Jiang Cheng said at once.

“And I want to marry him,” she said, and smiled. “At first, yes, it was primarily because he seemed to offer the most advantages for our sect, but…I don’t know. He’s very nice.”

Nie Huaisang mouthed the word ‘nice’ to himself, rolling it around in his mouth like a fine wine. It might be the first time anyone had ever described his brother that way.

“I think I would be happy being married to him,” she concluded. “Even very happy. Will you approve?”

They folded like a stack of cards.

“Oh, I like you,” Nie Huaisang told her, finally but now wholly delighted. “It’ll be good for my brother.”

And it’ll be interesting to see how the Jin sect takes it, he thought with a smirk half-hidden behind his fan. Since you bring the power and influence of whole Jiang sect with you, and the Yiling Patriarch too.

He wouldn’t mention that, of course.

Only an idiot would negotiate against themselves.

#mdzs #jiang yanli #nie huaisang #nie mingjue #wei wuxian #jiang cheng #my fic #my fics #initative

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ouyangzizhensdad · 3 years

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I hate it when I go to follow a MDZS or TGCF blog, and four posts in they’re talking about how “MXTX is a braindead perverted creep. 😒” Why the fuck are you here then?

A lot of people use “death of the author” to mean that they can “reclaim” a story from a writer and openly dislike them, which is cute but also not what the theory was ever really about. But hey, I guess if tumblr/twitter says it is, that must mean that this is what death of the author is about (I do get the irony that I am posting this on tumblr, believe me).

I wish more people actually paid attention to the text instead of dismissing it with a shallow reading because it’s danmei/bl, because they’d find a lot more nuances and subversion than they think. I just find it fucking irritating when I see people reproach her things that are not even the novel and just come either from a very specific reading of the text or from just disregarding what is actually in the text: like, if you are going to criticise, at least do it properly? I’m not sure if it’s because I personally rage when I get blamed for things I did not do, or if it’s because I take offense at seeing people confidently spout nonsense without anyone calling them out on it, but it does active my inner hulk.

I’m not saying that MXTX and her works are above criticisms, far from it, but I don’t necessarily get what makes her a “perverted creep” compared to most writers who write erotica of some sort. I don’t think writing sex scenes is her forte, but um, you know, most erotica is fucking shite anyway so.....

#anon ask #anti-mxtx discourse #Anonymous

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tangerinefluff · 3 years

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before i can freely dive back in on tumblr after being gone for a long time, i just wanted to address some asks i got during my inactivity:

where do I start lmao. so i’m not sure if I understood the asks the way the anons intended to communicate them. could be because of a little language barrier? and im actually having trouble deciphering hate or disrespect because i have almost never in my life been hated or received serious hate in any form (i was THE good girl, on the outside that is, my entire life no one messed with bc i dont really do anything hateful like it’s just not in my nature to respond in that way 😅 anw very besides the point) so you may talk to me again if that’s not what you (anon) intended.

to the first one who said this:

hi! i get ur suggestion but maybe word it differently? bc that was kinda rude. first off, this one (garbage) writing is for you too. second, i appreciate the cute hearts at the end to go with the insult in the beginning 😅 (but also) third, you’re on MY blog. i mean,,, with the first words i agree? LMAO. i apologize i don’t have the best thoughts but no i won’t change things. this is literally my own space and im sharing a little of what’s on my mind and they don’t have to be useful and significant and a WOW moment kind of post to everyone lmao. fourth, you can locate the unfollow/mute button yourself. im not actually sure what writings you meant, if it’s the unrelated or personal posts/asks, or the blog-related shitty posts. and i’m not very tidy with my tags either so i’ll try harder on that! will tag unrelated texts as “garbage.text” and blog-related texts as “hq.text”. fifth, that’s what i keep my following tabs open for actually. i follow a lot of even betterrr blogs with content like mine and esppp amazing artists you should check out yk instead of sending people ask like that..haha. lastly, i hope you don’t go around sending blogs asks like this one and just filter out the stuff you want to consume yourself. let’s be careful with words bestie! (edit: also my blog now is 90% reblogged art so.... why the big issue).

candidate #2 who quoted a tag on my post and said:

aah what i meant there is that i am actually having a hard time remembering.. in general. (cue the victim card script) yes dramatic but i feel like my memory’s deteriorating. can’t remember names of people i just met or friends from a long time. things i just did or the phone i just put down 30 secs ago. conversations and with whom. read somewhere that it could be due to mental health problems. and i cant keep track of all the interactions here so i mess things up sometimes which is why i’m less active. and its not bc my friends here are insignificant!!! lmao. dw i remember, i have my close friends’ UNs and names listed on my notes too :D

yk i wanna bite harder than this bc im a real B on the inside and i wanted to make light of this (somehow funny to me because ik i shouldn’t respond bc it feels like twitter behavior) &&& i wanted to show off my clean record that i haven’t ever been hated before lmao until this moment that is. im just super shocked cause i’m 22 and JUST realizing, oh so this is the dangerous stuff on the internet! like i thought i could’ve avoided them because im.... literally... nice that i’m almost boring here and unproblematic and trying my best and just talking about stuff i like. bestie is not special over here.

to those who have been following me from the first (cringe) days, would know i post reallyyyy randomly. it was more original posts rather than reblogs. and i minimized on that when my following increased. there’s 4.4k amazing people following this blog in just a little over a year. so i toned down the personal stuff right away. honestly got conscious and i didn’t like it because the blog started to feel less like it’s mine. i can’t openly switch to a different content/media or just scream nonsense. i can’t answer personal asks freely. can’t interact with mutuals. then i just decided that i won’t mind anymore. as long as my post isn’t offensive and/or rude, i will post as i wish. i don’t normally engage in hateful posts because it bums me out. like a minute into reading these asks they really upset me then writing my response and letting this sit in the drafts made me think i won’t bother anymore because i could just let the asks get lost into the void and it’s not like i did anything wrong, but i guess i had a little energy today. and yes, will be turning off anon asks from here on out.

i hope this one won’t get dragged out and i’m not expecting any interactions from this because i just wanna talk about stuff i’ve been getting into lately, back to regular programming.. AAAAHHHHH!!! not sure if this will reach the anons (expected they unfollowed because that’s the smart thing to do) but I still wish them a good day/night and a peaceful tumblr experience! (^^)

#garbage.text #hate asks cw #hate (?)/ rude asks #anon asks #please please dont open if reading rude asks makes you uncomfy!

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littlemisssquiggles · 4 years

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...So about the ORNJ_JNPR T-shirt thing...

daggerpawstudios asked

“Okay I am the only confused by all the hate that Oscar is getting right now because they dropped some new merch at the RT Store. I am not sure if you heard that Team JNPR got called Team ORNJ on the new shirt. I feel like this is kind of a mistake on the marketing team's part and not really CRWBY. But now a lot of people are attacking RG shippers and Oscar fans and I don't really understand because it seems more like fragile egos”

Squiggles Answers:

@daggerpawstudios

Hey there Dagger. Well to be honest with you fam, this squiggle meister has sort of been out of the RWBY loop for the past few months. Got a work project so I haven’t been as active as I normally would be in my squiggle shire here on Tumblr.

Nevertheless, I did sort of know about the shirt thing. I first heard the news from a tweet from RWBY Youtuber Calxiyn it over on Twitter. I then saw RWBY Youtuber ThatKaitoDan mention Oscar replacing Jaune as leader of Team JNPR in his own tweet post as well but I didn’t know the full context of what he meant by that until you brought this to my attention.

I didn’t know that RT had actually listed the shirt as Team ORNJ which in their case is…well…a big OOF on their part. Personally, I don’t think this is something that folks in the FNDM should be making a big hullabaloo about. I think it’s an obvious PR mistake on the marketing department who run the RT store releases since no offense to RT and whoever is in charge of promotion on their online store but…their record of “getting things right” their store especially with the FNDM hasn’t exactly been squeaky clean in the past.

Besides, another obvious giveaway to me as to why I think it’s more likely to be a minor error is the very fact that Jaune’s silhouette is still first in line.

Think about it. If Oscar had really usurped Jaune as leader of the team then why isn’t his silhouette first in the line up?

Isn’t it not a golden rule of thumb that the leaders of each huntsmen team always appear first in the team line-up whenever they do the silhouette thing as we’ve seen previously with teams like RWBY and even the Ace Ops?

Anyone with decent vision can clearly see that that’s Jaune’s silhouette at the front of the line. Not Oscar. If Oscar was truly the new leader of the team then why is he the third silhouette?

If thing had really turned ORNJ, then the order should be Oscar, Ren, Nora and finally Jaune. But as you can clearly see, the order is Jaune, Ren, Oscar and Nora.----THE SAME ORDER THAT WAS FEATURED IN THE VOLUME 7 OPENING! Or did folks…y’know…forget that?

I know V7 ended earlier in the year but have folks forgotten the season already with its opening sequence? After Team RWBY, we got the JNPR 2.0 gang and the order in which JNR and Oscar appear matches the T-shirt with Jaune being first, then Ren, then Oscar and finally Nora. So there you go.

So I wouldn't worry too much about that Dagger. I agree with you in thinking that it was a simple error made by the RT store. However, that being said, the other part about people stirring discourse over this and worst yet attacking the Pinehead and Rosegarden community over this…do I even need to say how silly that sounds.

Much like with the ridiculous discourse that arose after the small Rosegarden moment in V7CH9, this is yet another classic example of certain-certain folks literally scraping the bottom of the barrel and using any excuse they could find to harp on something they don't like while unfairly accosting the people who do.

I feel really bad for my fellow Pineheads, Rosegardeners and Rosegardening Pineheads who were victims of this time of foolishness. Because that's what this all sounds like to my ears. Foolish fools acting foolish yet again.

Seriously, what does Oscar as a character or even Rosegarden as a ship have to do with something that was posted by the RT store and is clearly an error made by the people who run it?

Are certain-certain folks truly that desperate to stir up drama and conflict that they would honestly seep so low as to use a T-shirt design as fuel for an easy argument?

The Pinehead, Rosegarden and Rosegardening Pinehead communities get enough flak as it is but this is just...beyond silly!

I'm not implying that the hate brigade should train their anger on RT but how silly can you be to take something as a T-shirt design to that level of seriousness? Especially when the design more or less outs its own error. Am I missing something here? Is there another unknown part to this where the CRWBY Writers came out and confirmed that this is legit? Because otherwise, this is just…so…LIKE SERIOUSLY DUDE?!

I like RWBY a lot and in spite of my own personal gripes and nit-picks with the direction of the show at times in terms of its writing and treatment of the characters and their respective relationships and arcs---in spite of all that, I still actively enjoy the show and I’m still invested in seeing where the CRWBY Writers take it to the very end. However I’d be lying if all the constant discourse from the more “toxic” side of FNDM isn’t slowly starting to chip away at my excitement for the series. I can live with RWBY having flaws but what I don’t need are folks constantly going out of their way to use any excuse they could to express their own personal gripes with show; going as far as to abuse others in the process. That kind of stuff isn’t cool and it’s not good to witness through the eyes of someone who wants to enjoy the show or is at least trying to...y’know what I mean?

When I first heard the news of the JNPR shirts, I was excited. Not only is this the first merch we’ve gotten of JNPR in some time but it’s also the second merch to feature Oscar.

In case folks don’t realize, Oscar doesn’t have a lot of his own merchandise sold by RT which sucks for us Pineheads.

At least the OG JNPR/JNR have a couple of merchandise (albeit not as popular or abundant as Team RWBY’s but still there).

But Oscar…not so much and the same can be said for Ozpin too. It took RT six whole seasons to release ONE T-SHIRT DESIGN with Oscar and Oz on the front and even that was sort of short-lived since I don’t see that shirt advertising in the store anymore. It’s always the same ole Team RWBY stuff.

So with that in mind, this shirt was a first and a given. It’s so great to see Oscar together with JNR on a shirt because in a way, it makes it more official that he is a member of their group especially for those of us who were rooting for this to happen since V5.

I still don’t think it means that he is the leader because as I’ll say again, look at the order on the shirt design. Oscar is third. Right where Pyrhha used to be. How can he be leader and be third in the line-up? Oscar is meant to replace Pyrhha, not Jaune.

In the case of this whole ORNJ JNPR T-shirt scandal, I don’t understand how on Earth a clear marketing typo could reach as far as to spark discourse for a fictional character of a series, his fans and the fans of one of his ships? AGAIN!

What does Team JNPR (or whatever they will be called) being miswritten as Team ORNJ has to do with us Pineheads, Rosegardeners and Rosegardening Pineheads? How are we as a fan community responsible for an error made by RT?

Even if there are Pineheads who think this should be official--NOT speaking for myself here but I have seen other Pineheads express their desire to see Oscar lead JNPR for their own reasons---still, this is no excuse to harp on someone for liking it just because you don’t.

You’re right Dagger; this doesn’t make sense to me either.

All I can say is that it is what is it. Another example of certain-certain folks using any excuse to harp on something they don’t like while trying to drag others down with them and/or ruin their good vibes.

Seriously these types of folks are honestly scraping at the bottom of the barrel. I’m surprised they’re still able to see after sinking so low with their foolishness. If that sounds a bit too harsh then sorry; not sorry.

Ever since the whole discourse over the minor Rosegarden moment for V7CH9, I have lost all patience with these types of fans. I honestly find them to be as dumb as their behaviour and it exhausts me just hearing about them and their nonsense.

Losing their marbles and attacking my people over a bloody T-shirt error that ain’t got nothing to do with us.

SO...DAMN...SILLY!

I hope RT clears this up at some point. And even if they don’t, I really don’t see why people should believe this means anything. I certainly don’t.

Not like I want that to happen either. In my opinion, I was never in favour of ORNJ---at least, not right now when Oscar is still a teenager growing into his duties and responsibilities as a huntsman. To me, I only like the idea of Team ORNJ from the perspective of Jaune retiring/stepping down from his role as leader of a huntsman team; instead choosing to pass the torch onto Oscar after the former farm boy had matured into a fine huntsman under his team’s guidance and after proving himself in the eyes of his teammates, especially Jaune.

Y’know that kind of idea.

This is why I always referred to JNR and Oscar as JNPR 2.0. I want JNR to become Oscar’s team and surrogate brothers and sister in arms. I want Oscar and Jaune to have a close big brother-little brother type of dynamic where Oscar admires Jaune’s strength and leadership and looks up to him alot as both a close confidant (much like Ruby) and teammate while Jaune himself admires Oscar’s tenacity after everything he’s been through while making it his role to look out for him along with Nora and Ren.

This doesn’t mean I want Oscar to replace Jaune as team leader nor do I think he should.

I’ve heard some folks rationalize that Oscar should lead JNR since he is Ozpin’s successor. Nothing against the folks who like this concept but if I were to add my $2.50 to this, I don’t think Oscar being Oz’s successor should automatically qualify him to take over JNR; y’know what I mean?

Jaune earned his place as leader of JNPR after proving his talent for leadership back in V1.

The only time that Jaune took a step back was when Ruby led the group as RNJR between V4 and V5 since at the time, the trio were aiding Ruby with her objective to get to Mistral, as Ren said. But even then, Jaune was still a leader and backed up Ruby’s calls with his own strategies.

Not to mention that folks seem to be forgetting that Ozpin was the one who chose Jaune to lead JNPR.

Though we never got a scene of Jaune confronting Oz on his decision to make him team leader like we did with Ruby Rose in “The Badge and the Burden” episode (I think that was the title. Correct me if I’m wrong), much like Ruby, Oz picked Jaune and was of sound mind when he did. Oz picked Jaune to lead since despite his past hiccups and shortcomings, he saw that Jaune also had the makings of a great leader as shown during JNPR’s first fight against the Deathstalker.

So the whole notion of Oscar getting to be leader of JNR JUST BECAUSE he’s Oz’s successor EVEN THOUGH it was Oz’s decision to choose Jaune to be leader of JNPR in the first place---yeah that doesn’t sit right with me.

Jaune is meant to be a leader and JNPR is his team to lead; even with Oscar joining it. Sorry ORNJ-fans. But that’s where I stand on that.

Anyways, that’s all I have to say on this subject. I hope I answered you Dagger.

~LittleMissSquiggles (2020)

#daggerpawstudios #squiggles answers: rwby #oscar pine #jaune arc #lie ren #nora valkyrie #team jnpr #team jnpr 2.0 #rwby remarks #roosterteeth

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youredoingkinwrong · 4 years

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hi! sorry if youve been asked this before or if this is insensitive but it used to use the term "kinnie" in relation to characters that I've strongly related to before (ex: I'm a "x" kinnie) and I was wondering if that was offensive? I don't use it anymore since finding out it's a term for otherkin (I thought they were two separate things) but I really wanted to know since my friends still use it! thank you and sorry to bother you!

Hi anon! Sorry for such a long time before responding, I’ve been dealing with a lot of real life nonsense lately.

For starters, the term “kinnie” is kind of hotly debated.

You’ve got a lot of older (and/or more serious) otherkin and fictionkin who hate that word, and consider it tantamount to an extremely offensive term considering its history (if I remember correctly, the term came about initially by trolls who mocked us with it, and I’ve heard rumors that it’s based off of the t-slur as well - though that’s just conjecture on my part), and are vehemently insistent that no genuine ‘kin would use it to refer to themselves.

Then you’ve got a younger generation who more or less grew up on Tumblr, which... is a bit of a warped facsimile of other alterhuman online spaces. A lot of them use the term “kinnie” to refer to themselves, either because they think it’s cute or they just don’t take being ‘kin all that seriously. Often people who don’t really know what being ‘kin means will use it to say “I relate to x character” - but that’s not what its original purpose was, and I’ll be honest, it is close enough to “kin” and other such variations that if you use it to mean “I relate to” then you’re going to deal with a lot of confusion from other people.

“Kinnie” is referring to otherkin and/or fictionkin. That’s what it initially meant, though it’s really not a popular word in more serious alterhuman circles. It doesn’t have an actual canonical definition, that I’m aware of, and the more I see it, the more I personally want that word burning in a ditch somewhere.

So, I wouldn’t say it’s exactly offensive to use that term. You have to know your audience, really. There are going to be people out there that like it, who use it to refer to themselves and others, and there are also going to be people out there that hate it, who will get angry about it, who will not take you seriously if you use it.

I wouldn’t say I’m in either camp, really. I know that some people may not know or understand why the term sucks, and I know that some people like it, and may consider using it a way of reclaiming it. I don’t really care, it just grates on my eyes, lol.

#anonymous #ask

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duhragonball · 3 years

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Obligatory Destiel 2020 Post

Look, I barely know what goes on anymore, but I have one pressing question: Why did the guy get sent to super mega hell? Like what even is that? Do they actually call it that on the show?

Destro: Careful, buddy. Until we seal that portal, anyone who confesses their true love will get sent to hell, but not just the regular kind! This would be like a super mega hell, that makes the normal hell look fairly okay by comparison.

Ariel: I don’t care, Destro. The only one I’ve ever loved is yooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu...

I mean, I know that’s how these urban fantasy things work, they all gotta be flip with the magical lore, but this sounds like having a character in a drama write a check for “one zillion dollars” and they actually show the letter ‘z’ on the check.

This reminds me of the same gripe I have with the overuse of “gods” in fantasy stories. Dragon Ball Super really leaned into that nonsense, but you see it everywhere nowadays. People will talk about how the Avengers and the Justice League are gods who have fought literal gods. Meanwhile both teams heavily feature regular-ass dudes who shoot arrows and climb ropes. They have gods on their rosters, but usually the writers spend most of their time trying to make them look as vulnerable as possible so the guy with the arrows doesn’t look completely useless. Then they’ll run out and defeat an evil god, who’s usually just a large mean man whose divinity is only shown in that he’s strong enough to beat up the Incredible Hulk.

To a point, I get it. It makes the characters sound impressive and important. And not every god has to be an omnipotent, omniscient being. Sometimes it can just be an immortal dude who runs fast, or a guy who can beat up the Incredible Hulk and not much else. But they always try to have it both ways. They use the word “god” specifically to evoke the idea of an all-powerful being, but then they just end up being not all-powerful, which diminishes the term.

This is one major reason I hated the Zamasu arc, because this is a guy who got beat up by Goku in his first appearance, and then he spent the rest of the story crowing about how important gods are. Even the other gods in the story are like “Wow, this guy’s really got it wrong, everyone knows we suck.” So how the hell did Zamasu get this idea of a fire-and-brimstone All-Father in the first place? In his world, there’s no such thing, and he knows it. But in our world, the concept does exist, so he’s playing into that imagery to make himself look more compelling as a villain. Then Trunks cuts him in half like it’s no big deal, so what does that make him? It’s dumb is what it is. One of these years they’ll make Dragon Ball Super II, and introduce the Grand Mega Ultra Supreme Zeno, and everyone will tell Goku that he’s the real top god, and all the other gods are just dumb jerks.

Same problem I have with “hell”. If you’re going to have a hell that’s even worse than hell, wouldn’t you just call that place hell and call the lesser hell something else? Hell Junior. I Can’t Believe It’s Not Hell. Practice Hell.

Regarding the queerbaiting aspect of it, I’m reminded of this clip I found on YouTube where Quagmire from Family Guy beats up Brian from Family Guy. On the show Family Guy. I enjoyed it, mostly because I had watched another clip of Quagmire being pissed off at Brian and this seemed like a good payoff. Mostly I just enjoy watching cartoon characters beat each other up. But then I found out the larger context of the episode, and it’s this transphobic shitshow, but the truly galling part was when I looked up the episode on Wikipedia, and there were quotes from Seth McFarlane about the negative reaction, and he seemed genuinely surprised that the LBGT+ community found it offensive. Like, he seriously thought they would love it or something. So it doesn’t shock me much that the people who write Supernatural were aware enough of the shippers to cater to them, but tone deaf enough to completely botch the execution and expect a pat on the back for it. Same shit, different decade, basically.

And maybe these two issues tie together somehow. The disconnect seems to be that a lot of these showrunners only see “gay” or “trans” as gimmicks, like “super mega hell” or “god-but-we-don’t-have-the-budget-for-that”. So they’ll use it when it suits their purposes, or just to get some attention, but they’ll never stop and think about these as identities instead of labels.

I dunno, I’m just thinking out loud here. Mostly, I kind of want someone to tell me that “super mega hell” is a gross exaggeration and the real concept is a lot less sensational, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how SPN rolls. I’m still trying to figure out why BBC Sherlock had Moriarty kill himself in the first season, and if tumblr has taught me one thing, it’s that all these moonspeak shows all eat the same stupid pills.

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arcaneranger · 5 years

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Final Thoughts - Netflix Exclusives 2018

Oh my god you guys, I’m finally done. I’m free from the prison of 2018, just in time to actually finish my premieres for spring of 2019. But first, let’s talk!

2018 was the year that Netflix really went all-in on producing its own anime and picking up some big names, so we saw Devilman Crybaby made specifically for the service and high-profile shows like Dragon Pilot and Hi-Score Girl basically hijacked by the streaming service and delayed for months in the U.S. so that the biggest name in the game could release everything in bingeable packages. Unfortunately, bringing in an auteur like Masaaki Yuasa for Crybaby and throwing all the damn money at him worked so well that, long before any of these shows would even premiere, they decided to seemingly take any anime pitch under the sun, and wound up financing disasters like Hero Mask and B: The Beginning. Really, these shows kind of run the full gamut from garbage to god-tier, with an unfortunate tipping of the scale in the wrong direction. I haven’t gotten to see Ingress yet at the time of publication though, so we’ll have to see whether 2019 will start in a good direction.

ANYWAY.

DROPPED

WORST OF NETFLIX: Back Street Girls -GOKUDOLS-

I still don’t get how anyone thought this was worth promoting. The entire concept is offensive, and yet it was directed by a master and veteran of the medium (who is also a woman), leading me to just throw my hands in the air and resign myself to never having a satisfactory answer for why Netflix would pick this up to begin with. Dropped after 1 episode.

Hero Mask

One of the most incompetently written first episodes I’ve ever seen gave me absolutely no hope that Hero Mask was going to actualize into anything watchable or even average-looking. It was boring and unintelligible. Dropped after 1 episode.

Fate/EXTRA: Last Encore

What the fuck was Akiyuki Shinbo even doing on Fate? Did he do this at the expense of season 3 of March comes in like a lion or something? Probably not, but geez... This seems much more like someone attempting to copy his style than the genuine article, but nope, there’s his director credit. In the end, I suppose that Fate/EXTRA, despite being a very interesting game, was not ever going to be adapted well - the protagonist is almost literally a blank slate for a self-insert of the player, and their servant is also not set in stone - but I kind of would have rather had nothing than this. Dropped after 2 episodes.

SWORDGAI The Animation

Oh hey, yet another “the Animation”, it definitely doesn’t sound pretentious yet. I don’t have much to say on SWORDGAI, or at least not any more than anyone else - it’s stupid, very earnestly stupid, and doesn’t seem aware enough of that fact to be entertaining for more than a hate watch - and my hate plate is full already. Dropped after 1 episode.

Last Hope

I remember almost nothing about Last Hope other than that it was both pretentious and nonsensical, which kind of illustrates why Yoshiyuki Tomino is wise enough to stay out of anything that isn’t his beautiful Gundam baby, and it’s a shame that Kawamori (father of Super Dimensional Fortress Macross) doesn’t stick with what he knows, which is mech design. (No, seriously, he’s got a ton of credits on MAL and they’re almost all for that.) Dropped after 1 episode.

BAKI

Oh, BAKI, it’s okay, you’re a remnant from a different time. That time was right around when Mars of Destruction seemed like a good idea. It’s not that bad so I shouldn’t really mention them in the same sentence, but the hyper-violent imagery of this show is on the level of the Berserk manga. It’s unfortunate that I had to leave it after one episode because Netflix picked up a sequel that relies heavily on your pre-existing investment (just like with the Dragons TV show, for the record). Dropped after 1 episode.

A.I.C.O. Incarnation

I stuck with this one longer than any other that I didn’t drop, but in hindsight I shouldn’t have wasted my time. It’s one of the worst-looking Bones productions I’ve ever seen and the plot is a dumb ripoff of a much better science fiction series. Dropped after six episodes.

B: The Beginning

Probably the biggest waste of money on this list, B has such lavish animation that you can almost forget that you have absolutely no clue what’s happening or what the context of the story even is. It tries really hard to be both Psycho-Pass and Death Note at the same time to the point of cutting between them multiple times per scene, and it just ends up a badly jumbled mess, albeit one with really pretty colors. Dropped after 3 episodes.

Kakegurui

I still don’t have much to say here because the topic has been so thoroughly covered by The Anime Pope, so I’ll resummarize here - this is a show about gambling where the stakes seem utterly meaningless, even though it tries to impress us by showering money on the characters.

Children of the Whales

It’s so pretty, but it’s so boring. Children of the Whales succeeds in looking beautiful, but fails as a story that wants to be grim and apocalyptic but comes across as a soft-hearted small-village story that gets surprisingly violent four episodes in. This should have been the tone from the beginning, and the entire thing needed a good kick in the pants. Dropped after five episodes.

FINISHED

Sirius the Jaeger (6/10)

One that I waited a long time for after seeing the PV at Anime Central last year, and wound up pretty disappointed by in general. It looks nice (...at first), given that P.A. Works at least knows how to make a show visually appealing on a consistent basis, but the plot jumps so far into cliched stupidity by the end that, even though it had a few twists I wasn’t expecting, they couldn’t save it from being something I won’t recommend to anyone with as much anime experience as myself.

Lost Song (7/10)

(Author’s note: Yeah, apparently nobody on all of Tumblr has made a GIF of this one...)

Lost Song was a pleasant surprise that I wasn’t expecting to be invested enough to finish. One of the best of LIDENFILMS’ output, it manages to weave together a decent fantasy Symphogear AU fanfic, with interesting third-act twists peppering the last few episodes that made it memorable despite looking pretty generic. There’s a sequel due this year, too!

Hi Score Girl (7/10)

A very visually distinctive show with a neat concept that didn’t dive far enough into the heavy subjects it brings up, Hi Score Girl sits in a place where I like the presentation of it a lot more than I like the story. Don’t get me wrong, the romance is certainly cute, and I won’t begrudge a love triangle if it’s meant to be the primary conflict of a show, but the fact that it spent most of its last episode setting up for later robbed it of the chance to give us a satisfying place to leave off until the next part of this adaptation. Luckily, it got a second season, hopefully to finish the adaptation later this year.

Forest of Piano (7/10)

A good first try by a fledgling studio, but not one that lives up to what it really wants to be due to some very bad habits. I still distinctly remember the constant character shilling, and it feels like the story could have happened a little faster if not for the breaks every few minutes to heap praise upon the protagonist. Also, the mo-cap piano playing still looks weird. I’ll probably watch the sequel though, to see if it gets concluded well.

Dragon Pilot: Hisone to Masotan (8/10)

I literally just did my write-up for this one, so I don’t have much new to say here, but I’m pleased that Dragon Pilot turned out as well as it did despite not being what I quite expected from it.

Aggretsuko (8/10)

A fantastic and rather unorthodox look at what it’s actually like to be an adult in the Japanese workforce, Aggretsuko was an early darling of the year, and the only things that could have made it better were a more interesting visual presentation and a less squirrelly ending. Shame that the Christmas Special was...not good.

Devilman Crybaby (9/10)

It was so, so good...right up until the end. Yeah, that’s the only thing holding this back from a perfect score - I really, really hate the ending, and it needed to be changed. I know that, for most people, the best show of the year was either this one, or the most conspicuous work that hasn’t yet appeared on this list, though, so…

BEST NETFLIX SHOW OF THE YEAR: Violet Evergarden (10/10)

Oh God, what beautiful cry-porn. I hope that Kyoto Animation was paid well for their best show in years, and I’m kind of shocked that the two shows that made me sob the most this year both came out in the same season (thanks, A Place Further Than the Universe). I won’t spoil more than I did in my original review, but Netflix should be pushing this to literally everyone who would be even casually interested in watching it.

And that’s it! Last but not least, the last list won’t be a roundup of the whole year (since, you know, I’ve already done that in big chunks), but a list of the Class of 2018 Superlatives. Look forward to it!

#arcaneanime #netflix 2018 #violet evergarden #devilman crybaby #aggretsuko #lost song #sirius the jaeger #dragon pilot #hi score girl #forest of piano

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meishutori · 4 years

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THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; Mun & Muse - Meme.

fill out & repost ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OC’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multi-Muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm.

My muse is: canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless /

Is your character popular in the fandom? YES (?)/ NO.

Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK.

Is your character considered strong in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK.

Are they underrated? YES / NO.

Were they relevant for the main story? YES / NO.

Were they relevant for the main character? YES / NO (?) / THEY’RE THE PROTAG.

Are they widely known in their world? YES / NO.

How’s their reputation? GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL.

How strictly do you follow canon? —Canon is my bitch and I utilize it as I see fit.

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals. — Have you seen him? That’s it, that’s the pitch. Though, no, I mean.. He is just such an interesting character ! I am pretty much convinced he is based on Robert Plant, Especially where his looks are concerned. He is a super chill individual, and he FEELS a lot and allows himself to. He is a dramatic bitch, which is incredibly fun to write. He is also a visored which gives so much more angles to write with.

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?). — I think people usually tend to say that his fights/abilities are boring, though I just believe he was done dirty lol. His abilities are really cool but they pretty much made him tell his opponents how to beat him so like ??? Also, the flair for drama is something some people might really not appreciate.

What inspired you to rp your muse? — All the layers in writing him, and he also has a special place in my heart because I moved to him from Izuru. Where Izuru is a muse I picked up because I was in a terrible headspace, I moved on from him to Rose who also gives opportunities to play his melancholy, but has a positive note to his personality usually, which... Really helps me.

What keeps your inspiration going? — All the connections to other characters he has, and developing these relationships. At times it is also AUs I get to play (whether modern or something else), and because he is a visored you have a 100 years of human history at your disposal to use in your writing !

Some more personal questions for the mun.

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

Do you think you give your character justice? YES / NO.

Do you frequently write headcanons? YES / NO. (I tend to think about aspects of his character as they come up in writing. I do memes sometimes that force me to think about it, and that is when I do write them. But usually I don’t)

Do you sometimes write drabbles? YES / NO. (I like being able to bounce off someone. That motivates me way more to write than just writing on my own...)

Do you think a lot about your Muse during the day? YES / NO. (When I’m on tumblr I do, but I tend to fixate on the things happening in real life instead.)

Are you confident in your portrayal? YES / NO.

Are you confident in your writing? YES / NO. (it changes day by day lol)

Are you a sensitive person? YES / NO. (;W;)

Do you accept criticism well about your portrayal? — I have issues with Rejection Sensitice Dysphoria, so I don’t handle criticism well at all. I do my best, and try to get better at it. I also don’t tell people to never critices me, obviously, and please do so when I do something that hurts you, but where my portrayal is concerned I really don’t... Care what other people think and don’t need your opinion, sorry ^w^;

Do you like questions, which help you explore your character? — HELL YES. especially when they are based on threads I have or something. I love exploring dynamics between characters and I really like thinking about my muse’s motivations and choices. HC questions may take me a while though.

If someone disagrees to a headcanon of yours, do you want to know why? — Depends. If they want to tell me I won’t ignore them, but chances are you won’t change my mind.

If someone disagrees with your portrayal, how would you take it? — I mean.. The unfollow button is right there. There is no reason why you’d have to tell me, unless you think I’m being offensive in some way, in that case, do let me know.

If someone really hates your character, how do you take it? — Loooool Rose is too minor a character for anyone to hate him tbh.

Are you okay with people pointing out your grammatical errors? — Yes. they happen a loooot lol, and I’m not a native English speaker/writer. So if you see them, or we have a thread together, feel free to tell me, or to correct my mistakes on your reply reblog.

Do you think you are easy going as a mun? —I like to think so. I am not a very chill person in real life and at the same time I am ?? I have a lot of anxiety lol but I’ve taught myself to cope, so my body will be like OH SHIT, STRESS and my mind will be like lol chill out. This translates in RP and interactions through me being a little distant to people I don’t already know (social anxiety lol) and coming off cold, I guess. I also don’t have the energy to interact with a lot of people, and I’m old... so like... I like what I’ve already built here. I definitely always try to be polite, but years on tumblr have made me very no-nonsense.

That’s about it, congrats for filling out!

Tagged by: @hirako5hinji {holy shit anna that wa s a LOT (also you are so eloquent asdfh) } Tagging: @deviiatc @viciousvizard @kazeshinigami @despairforme @grimmjxw

#;; ooc

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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

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Chapter 5 of The Quiet Room (ao3 or tumblr pt 1, pt 2, pt 3, pt 4)

Nie Mingjue took three tries to wake up.

In all truth, he wasn’t that badly injured – if it hadn’t been for how tangled his spiritual energy already was, steeped in resentment from his wayward cultivation and burned by trying to keep a saber’s pace from within a human body, a night’s rest and some tonics would probably have been enough to put him right. But it was, and he was, and so the concern of his doctors was all the more pronounced.

The first time he woke, it was to Nie Xiaoxuan, a cantankerous old doctor who’d lost all patience with her patients years before Nie Mingjue had been conceived, looking down at him with a scowl, saying, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Go back to sleep!”

A needle had descended, leaving him not much choice about the matter – it was a good thing he was used to such rough treatment, or else he might’ve worried. Instead he found some comfort in how some things were always the same, and his Nie sect’s objectively awful bedside manner was one of them.

He slept.

He woke a second time to arguing outside his door in the middle of the night, whispers and hisses that were so loud as to be unworthy of being called lowered voices –

“– the Sect Leader deserves to know!”

“Nie-er-gongzi gave the order, and it was obeyed. There isn’t any need to disturb the Sect Leader’s recuperation over nonsense.”

“Nonsense?! Do you know what the implications will be? Nie-er-gongzi is still young, he doesn’t understand –”

“Sect Leader was once younger still. There is still sect discipline, or are you making an official challenge to his judgment? If so, you should be bothering Nie-er-gongzi, as the one who gave the order, and a council of peers that would be assembled to determine if his judgment was flawed.”

“I - no. I won’t.”

“If there’s no challenge to the quality of Nie-er-gongzi’s judgment, then there’s no reason to talk to the Sect Leader.”

Nie Mingjue smiled, proud of his sect and of his brother – even if he didn’t know exactly what it was that Nie Huaisang had ordered that had caused such a stir – and went back to sleep.

He woke up the third time to the sounds of a guqin.

He’d always been slow to wake from an induced sleep, and this time was no different – his body was heavy, confining, and it was a long time before he managed to open his eyes. A half-shichen at least, and yet the guqin continued steadfastly onwards.

So by the time he did manage to open his eyes, the first words out of Nie Mingjue’s mouth were, “Wangji, please stop making a racket.”

The sound of the guqin paused.

Nie Mingjue turned his head to look at him. Lan Wangji looked better than he had the last time he’d seen him, in that horrible mixture of nightmare and reality that had been their flight from the Cloud Recesses and the terrible strain of flying all the way to Qinghe in a single night. If either of them had been lesser cultivators, they wouldn’t have been able to manage it; even at their level, it was considered highly unwise, and they had known that they were spending life energy rather than spiritual qi to buy them the strength they needed.

At least it had been late enough that both children, initially excited by all the rushing around involved in their escape, had quickly lapsed back into sleep instead of descending to tears.

Still, better was a low bar. By the end of their flight, Lan Wangji had had blood soaking through his white robes, his eye locked on the horizon and unable to focus on anything nearer, his entire body wracked with occasional shudders – if he’d been anyone else, he would have been screaming.

He still look pale and bloodless, his eyes hunted and guilty and tired, stark white bandages visible beneath the pale (but not white) robes that looked like something Nie Huaisang had once owned, but he didn’t look about to expire, so Nie Mingjue would take that as a victory.

“I would have thought,” Lan Wangji said carefully, laying his hands on the guqin chords to stop the sound, “that you would prefer that it not be silent.”

“There’s silence and then there’s silence,” Nie Mingjue said, trying to shrug and abruptly realizing that that was a bad idea. His shoulders and neck and back all hurt – possibly he’d dislocated something in trying to get out of that horrible room. Probably, even. “Not wanting to be locked in a room designed to be as close to nothingness as possible doesn’t necessarily mean that I don’t want some peace and quiet once in a while…I shouldn’t have called your playing a racket. It’s very good. There was just a lot of it.”

Lan Wangji blinked, then shook his head. “I do not take offense,” he said, simply enough that Nie Mingjue believed him. “It is a surprise that you think the way you do about silence, even now. I myself have been…struggling, with the concept.”

“It’s very loud here,” Nie Mingjue said knowingly, and Lan Wangji averted his eyes. “It’s all right if you don’t like it that much, you know. Has Huaisang talked with you about the options for soundproofing?”

“He has,” Lan Wangji said. “I have not yet accepted.”

“Why not?”

“It feels –” he hesitated. “Like a step backwards. My Lan sect has always valued silence, quiet – not just valued, but imposed, even on those for whom it is not appropriate.”

Like you, he meant, or maybe he was thinking about little Lan Jingyi, the orphan he’d stolen away from his own sect – truly stolen, since unlike little Lan Sizhui Lan Wangji had no guardianship rights over him to justify taking him away.

Nie Mingjue hadn’t objected to it, figuring that it didn��t make much difference to the amount of scandal he would undoubtedly causse whether he had taken away one child or two when he convinced the Second Jade of Lan to abandon his ‘seclusion’ in favor of refuge at the Unclean Realm. Anyway, if Lan Wangji had concluded that it would be better for the child to leave, then it probably was – Nie Mingjue trusted his judgment.

Just like you trusted Lan Xichen’s?

“Each sect has a different cultivation style,” he said, deciding not to think about that right now. “With both strengths and weaknesses. My Nie sect has a martial style, aggressive and overpowering; your Lan sect, although it still follows the orthodoxy of sword cultivation, focuses on contemplation, thoughtfulness, and, yes, quiet. Who is to say which is better than the other? They’re just different.”

Lan Wangji was frowning.

“Sometimes I think Wen Mao made a mistake when he abandoned sects based on preference and style in favor of raising up his clan,” Nie Mingjue confessed. “And your ancestors and mine, too, in following his lead. Look at Huaisang – to cultivate a saber is his heritage, his birthright and his duty to our bloodline, and so he must do so despite being clearly unsuited for it.” He paused, then sighed. “Not that he’s all that suitable for anything else, either.”

Lan Wangji shot him a quelling look, disapproving, but in the sort of way that Lans had when they were amused by you.

“Still, we’re all cultivators, each of us fighting against fate,” Nie Mingjue continued. “While we must be guided by our traditions, we must also each find the path that suits us best. You’ve always enjoyed the quiet, Wangji; you welcome peace, prefer order, thrive within the confines of your sect’s rules. Finding the point at which you and your traditions part ways does not mean that you are morally obligated to give up everything about them.”

“Not even when those traditions have caused so much harm?”

“Even so,” Nie Mingjue said firmly. “We’re all on a path, and in choosing to take a new turn, you are not disregarding the past, but adding your wisdom to that of those who came before you. I made changes to my Nie sect’s cultivation style once I became sect leader, just as my father did before me; my brother will make still more when he takes the position after I go. Each of my Nie sect disciples practices the Nie sect style, but each one takes it and makes it their own. Keep what helps, discard what hurts.”

“But in this case, is it not the very same thing?” Lan Wangji asked. His brow was still furrowed, the matter clearly one of great concern to him. “I have always turned to the quiet for comfort and strength, sought seclusion to temper myself and test myself, and yet – in the absence of all noise– I found myself slowly going mad, locked away and alone. You yourself nearly died from it. What lesson can I take from this, if not that the quiet is evil?”

“You can take the lesson that too much quiet can be an evil, in the same way too much medicine can be a poison,” Nie Mingjue said. “I might hate your jingshi, since it doesn’t suit me, but I’m given to understand that it often helps, too. It brings peace to cultivators who are tormented by a mind full of thoughts they cannot quiet and helps them fight the demons in their hearts, it allows those who are too connected to the world to tear themselves away. It was built for a purpose.”

“It was,” Lan Wangji said. “A purpose it has now betrayed.”

Nie Mingjue didn’t have anything to say about that. He’d once told Lan Xichen that he thought his sect’s practice of introducing children to that place until they learned quiet whether they liked it or not was inhumane and cruel, and Lan Xichen – in a rare moment of sarcasm – had asked him if teaching them to cultivate a saber spirit that would eventually consume their minds with rage was somehow meant to be morally superior.

To each their own faults, he supposed. Perhaps the next generation would do better.

(He found himself thinking things like that a great deal, these days. He was only in his twenties, and yet his thoughts resembled an old man’s – the feeling of death stalking his footsteps, the day nearly done, his legacy a book that seemed to be nearly completed.

That had been what had driven him to stop his sessions of Clarity with Jin Guangyao, in fact. He’d been reviewing a plan for renovating the western courtyards of the Unclean Realm as part of a long-term plan to get more air and light in there and he’d found himself thinking I probably won’t be here to see this completed, and that had been when he’d realized that it was time to start seriously planning for succession.)

“Perhaps it is the conflation of different things,” Lan Wangji mused, more to himself than anyone else. “The quiet, being alone, loneliness…and yet you can have quiet without being alone, you can be alone without being lonely, you can be lonely without quiet. A balance between disconnecting from the world and connecting with other people.”

That sounded like poetry, and Nie Mingjue could see Lan Wangji’s fingers twitch towards the guqin – he’d probably been inspired.

Nie Mingjue sighed and put his hand over his eyes. His father had told him that being an elder brother meant a life of sacrifice, and he’d been right. “All right,” he said. “Go ahead and play something. I know you want to.”

Lan Wangji was silent for a few long moments, and then his fingers began to move, the too-familiar sound of the Song of Clarity rising up to fill Nie Mingjue’s ears.

“I didn’t mean for me,” Nie Mingjue clarified, rolling his eyes while his hand was still hiding them. The Lan were always so earnest. “I’m not even meditating right now, Wangji. Don’t waste your effort.”

Lan Wangji’s fingers stilled briefly, then continued.

“Chifeng-zun –”

Nie Mingjue pulled his hand away long enough to give Lan Wangji a stern look – he’d already told him several times to refer to him more casually, and however long or short his stay at the Unclean Realm was, if they were going to endure a scandal together, he was simply going to have to adjust to their ways.

Lan Wangji looked long-suffering.

“Mingjue-xiong,” he conceded, and Nie Mingjue nodded, pleased. “Please pay close attention to my playing. Identify if there are any differences between my rendition and –”

“Wangji,” Nie Mingjue interrupted, feeling pained at the very thought. “I can’t.”

Lan Wangji frowned at him, his eyes showing distress.

Nie Mingjue felt guilty at once, and exhaled a sigh. “Wangji, you know I don’t cultivate with music,” he said. “It’s all just interminable plucking to me.”

Lan Wangji’s eyebrows shot up. “Plucking?” he echoed, and Nie Mingjue winced – he’d probably shocked poor Lan Wangji’s conscience. “Mingjue-xiong…you really don’t like music, do you?”

“Not in the slightest,” Nie Mingjue confessed. “I can more or less follow a beat or rhythm, and military calls are fine no matter what instrument is involved, but the rest is all a mess of pointless noise. I can’t tell if the notes are high or low, which ones go before the others, and apparently there are different tones in music as there are in speech? Except in music, certain of them apparently sporadically considered bad, in a variety of different and exciting ways, sometimes but not others, none of which make the slightest difference – ”

He stopped talking on account of Lan Wangji having started to make an unusual hiccupping sound.

Nie Mingjue squinted. Was Lan Wangji…laughing?

If so, he was sorely out of practice. Though now that he thought it, that seemed to make some sense.

“Forgive me,” Lan Wangji said, shoulders shaking – he’d stopped making audible noise, but he was evidently still suffering from an attack of hilarity. “You speak so well, Mingjue-xiong; I had not realized that you suffered from amusia.” He saw Nie Mingjue’s frown of confusion and clarified, “Tone-deafness.”

“I say so all the time!”

“I had incorrectly assumed, as I suspect many have, that you were using the term colloquially,” Lan Wangji said. “How do you fight alongside my brother? I have seen you do so flawlessly, without any impediment, even when he wields Liebing.”

“I can follow along with what he’s doing with his qi,” Nie Mingjue said. “We have been close for so many years, and his spiritual energy is as familiar to me as my own –”

Lan Wangji flinched.

Nie Mingjue stopped talking.

His heart was heavy in his chest, weighed down with feeling, all those things he’d been so carefully not thinking about suddenly stifling him. Lan Xichen, his childhood friend, his lover, his beloved…

He’d hurt him.

Nie Mingjue couldn’t bring himself to believe that the act had been intentional or malicious, not even when Lan Wangji’s arrival made painfully clear that Lan Xichen hadn’t even bothered to supervise him. It simply wasn’t in Lan Xichen’s nature to do such an underhanded thing –

(You once thought Meng Yao wouldn’t do that sort of thing, either. Do you make a habit of blindness?)

He had known Lan Xichen for such a long time, though. If he didn’t know him, both virtues and faults, what person existed that he could say he understood?

No, Lan Xichen must have been trying to help him, not hurt him. And yet – regardless of his intent – he had.

He had hurt him very badly.

Lan Xichen hadn’t listened to him, had ignored him, disregarded him – Nie Mingjue had been as clear as he could be about how he felt about the quiet room. Perhaps he hadn’t told Lan Xichen about his youthful attempt to see if he could handle it, at first out of simply not wanting to appear weak in front of his lover, but later out of (admittedly petty) principle: shouldn’t his ‘no’ be enough? Shouldn’t Lan Xichen have trusted him?

He hadn’t.

He’d trusted Jin Guangyao instead.

Jin Guangyao with his smiles and slippery manner, with his so-believable excuses and always-present rationalizations, always the victim in every exchange they had – Lan Xichen always went to comfort him first after they had another one of their arguments, Nie Mingjue recalled abruptly. He’d called him on it once, in his anger, but Lan Xichen had explained that he knew how strong Nie Mingjue was, how resilient, and that his “A-Yao” needed his sympathy more.

Nie Mingjue hadn’t thought much of it at the time. He was resilient, and anyway he knew how frightening his rages could be; he’d thought perhaps that Lan Xichen simply wanted the excuse to be elsewhere until he’d had a chance to calm down.

He’d rationalized a lot of things. Maybe too many. But this?

This was too much.

“Mingjue-xiong,” Lan Wangji said hesitantly. “About – about my brother…”

Nie Mingjue grimaced, and Lan Wangji felt silent once more.

Nie Mingjue’s heart cried out for his lover, the kind and gentle man who might be a little too reluctant to express himself, a little prone to going with the will of the majority to avoid confrontation, a little inclined to panic at the thought of disappointing people, but whose faults only made him the more human, the more loveable.

But Nie Mingjue had slept, and slept well, and even if his heart was still tangled, his mind was now clear.

“I have long thought,” he said carefully, painfully cognizant of the fact that Lan Wangji was Lan Xichen’s younger brother, “that fate had arranged for your brother and I to meet, and that we would live the rest of our lives intertwined, our hears and minds filled with thoughts of one another. But it seems to me now that that was perhaps – not our destiny.”

“My brother has wronged you,” Lan Wangji said solemnly.

“I still believe his intent was good,” Nie Mingjue assured him earnestly. “Your brother has – more reason than most, I think, to resent my intransigence on matters of my health, and to suspect – to suspect –”

He stopped, swallowed. He had long been (politely) termed to be a straightforward man; it was not in his character to stutter over his speech, to be unable to say the unvarnished truth no matter how painful. Even if it was his lover who was causing him such pain.

“Wangji,” he said instead, and Lan Wangji looked at him. “You know that my family – does not live long lives.”

Lan Wangji nodded.

“It is not uncommon,” he said carefully, “for those in my family to begin to show signs of decline before the end. A certain rigidity of thought –”

“You are not so far down that path that your thinking has become impaired,” Lan Wangji said abruptly, his voice unexpectedly fierce. “Moreover, your refusal was not new, but consistent with your prior thoughts, your opinion expressed repeatedly and consistently. Do not make excuses for him.”

Nie Mingjue was a little surprised, having expected Lan Wangji to defend his brother, but then he recalled the matter of those thirty-three marks marring Lan Wangji’s back. Even if Lan Wangji’s conduct had been wrong, it had been motivated by love, and at any rate the others in the Lan sect had not died – no one had died, except for Wei Wuxian, and Lan Wangji had only been able to offer his beloved the succor of his presence for a short time before he returned to submit himself to punishment.

Impulsive, hot-headed, passionate – it might not be the actions of a Lan, but, as a Nie, Nie Mingjue found his sympathies lay with Lan Wangji in this matter. Yes, he had defended a murderer from being torn apart by the hands of his victims, and Nie Mingjue would not say that he did not think it was necessary for Wei Wuxian to die, but even those that had been duly tried and sentenced to the worst capital punishment might still be allowed the mercy of a good meal and the touch of their lover’s hand before they were executed, and a bit of disobedience against one’s elders was to be expected in any love affair.

Was fending off a few old men to buy a few shichen of love before its premature end really worth a punishment that would have crippled anyone weaker?

“Actions matter more than intent,” he agreed, wondering how he could convey his thoughts on the subject without being offensive to the Lan sect, “but that doesn’t make intent meaningless. To act from love and affection is still better than for – other reasons.”

He wasn’t sure Lan Wangji had understood his meaning: the other man only lowered his eyes.

Nie Mingjue’s mind reluctantly returned to his own troubles.

“I’ll speak with Xichen,” he decided, even though he knew it was probably a bad idea. Lan Xichen’s conduct, however it was meant, could be understood as having brought him to the very precipice of death – enough justification to start a war, given that Nie Mingjue was a sect leader. Their respective positions meant that a disagreement between them could never be simply personal, but was also political; if Nie Mingjue allowed his soft heart to convince him to forgive Lan Xichen, he would be setting a poor standard for the future. “He can explain what he was thinking. If I find his explanation unsatisfactory, I will – tell him what I told you.”

Nie Mingjue was blunt and direct, sparing no one – not even himself – but he was not so cold as to be able to cut off a relationship that already spanned the majority of his life sign unseen. He would give Lan Xichen one chance to salvage things between them, to be shocked into sobriety by the extent of how things had gotten out of hand, to genuinely apologize –

“I think,” Lan Wangji said, very slowly, eyes still locked on the floor as if there was something fascinating there, “that brother’s explanation may omit that he was distracted by his other lover.”

Nie Mingjue’s heart froze in his chest.

“Other – lover?” he said dumbly. Lan Wangji refused to look at him. “Wangji – are you saying – Xichen has..?”

Lan Xichen wouldn’t. Surely he wouldn’t.

“Lianfeng-zun has told him lies, and Brother accepted them without verification,” Lan Wangji said, and his voice was bitter. “I believe that he feared confronting you on the subject of a man he knew you disliked, and also saw an opportunity to obtain his heart’s desire – to not give up anything and yet gain something he wanted. And Lianfeng-zun is known to be skilled in anticipating people’s desires.”

Nie Mingjue stared at the ceiling in a daze, his mind whirling.

So many little things suddenly made a belated sort of sense.

The way Lan Xichen seemed so certain that all the troubles between them were only temporary, the way that he entreated Nie Mingjue to think kindly of Jin Guangyao as if there was a stronger bond between them than a lost former friendship and a new sworn brotherhood. The way Jin Guangyao acted more intimately with Nie Mingjue whenever Lan Xichen was present, only to return to a more professional remove once they were alone – he’d assumed that was because Jin Guangyao knew that Lan Xichen would protect him if Nie Mingjue got annoyed with him for such familiarities and that Nie Mingjue would not want to upset his beloved by scolding over something so minor.

But if, for instance, Jin Guangyao had told Lan Xichen that they had been lovers once, those public intimacies, and Lan Xichen’s joy in them, all suddenly took on a new flavor –

Surely Lan Xichen knew that Nie Mingjue would never have done that to him?

Skilled in anticipating people’s desires.

Nie Mingjue had noticed Lan Xichen’s fondness for Jin Guangyao from the first, back when Jin Guangyao had been only Meng Yao, and he’d known that Meng Yao had respected and even revered the beautiful, powerful, and chivalrous Zewu-jun. He’d been pleased when they’d become friends, hadn’t minded the occasional light flirtation – he’d been so certain that nothing would come of it, trusted in Lan Xichen’s morality and their love. He himself was not skilled in wordplay the way they were, nor as sensitive to the subtle changes in a conversation, preferring to stay silent rather than risk mis-stepping, a habit formed of too much responsibility and exposure to politics at too early an age. Why shouldn’t Lan Xichen get to enjoy the cut and thrust of charming, clever conversation with an expert at the art?

They had all been friends back then. Nie Mingjue had been so proud of his prized deputy, and pleased beyond measure that Lan Xichen liked him as well; Nie Mingjue had so few friends that the addition of another one was something he treasured. Even if Lan Xichen’s good sense had surely told him that such betrayal was impossible, given Nie Mingjue’s character, he might still in his reckless desires allow himself to be intoxicated by his affections and believe it for just a little while – just long enough to taste Jin Guangyao’s lips, perhaps.

That’d be enough.

Nie Mingjue knew Lan Xichen well; he knew his lover’s faults as well as he knew his virtues. If Lan Xichen had allowed himself to act foolishly for a moment, he would have panicked at the thought of coming to terms with it, and Jin Guangyao was so good at soothing his panic. Too good: where Nie Mingjue, in his harshness, had always advised revisiting mistakes and learning from them, no matter how difficult the process, Jin Guangyao would always recommend being kind to oneself, taking care of oneself, avoiding the pain that came with tackling one’s flaws and erroneous self-conceptions head-on.

Too much care for the self would eventually mean not enough care for others, Nie Mingjue had always thought, rolling his eyes whenever Jin Guangyao earnestly held forth on his views. But Lan Xichen had liked it – and why wouldn’t he? It was easier to put yourself first, to refuse to admit mistakes were mistakes, to rationalize events until you were always the victim and everyone else wrong. It meant you didn’t have to confront your own capacity for cruelty and selfishness, could conceive of yourself as always virtuous and always good and always right.

Right, rather than righteous.

Justified, rather than just.

The way Jin Guangyao always did.

Yes, Lan Xichen might allow himself to kiss Jin Guangyao, or more if Jin Guangyao pushed his advantage – which he would, Nie Mingjue had no doubt of that – and then, after the fog of lust had cleared, Lan Xichen would realize that he’d have to confess the entire thing to Nie Mingjue.

An emotional confrontation of the sort he hated most.

And then, of course, just as Lan Xichen was most upset and vulnerable, Jin Guangyao would offer him a way out – a way for Lan Xichen to continue to see himself as a good person who had done no wrong, who didn’t need confront anything – a way to get a new love alongside the old, to have Jin Guangyao’s clever speech and gentle care while not losing Nie Mingjue’s steadfast affection and support.

It was not uncommon in their times for a man to have more than one wife and entirely possible for him to love them both equally; the idea of a triad was not so strange. But Lan Xichen should have asked.

He didn’t.

He didn’t ask because some part of him knew that the answer would be no, and, just as he had with the quiet room, that was not an answer he wished to accept.

And that…that was not something that could be blamed on Jin Guangyao, as much as Nie Mingjue would prefer to do so.

That was all Lan Xichen.

Lan Xichen...how could you do this to me?

Nie Mingjue closed his eyes in pain. It felt as if all the air had been knocked out of him, like a really good punch might do - he felt hollow, weightless, disconnected, as if he had been struck by a blow that had shattered his bones and he was drifting in that blank space in the moment after the blow landed but before the pain reached his brain.

The full weight of the revelation would hit, eventually. He would feel it all, eventually.

“I see,” he said, and he did. Lan Wangji was upset over it in a way that suggested that he had only recently learned the truth. Given the speed of their travel, that meant he must have discovered it while conversing with Nie Huaisang – and that was another problem, because Nie Huaisang was their father’s son just as Nie Mingjue was, and nothing sparked their rage more than an offense against a loved one. “Thank you for telling me.”

“It is what I should do.”

Nie Mingjue nodded, his throat tight, his chest dull as if there was a knot where his heart had been - yes, he would need some time to deal with this.

“Huaisang is managing well?” he asked, not quite able to bring himself to actually ask for a little more time before he had to return to being the stern and untouchable sect leader, before he had to once again take on the mantle of power and make all the decisions – to force himself to react as a politician rather than a betrayed lover. It would be disgraceful to give into such weakness.

“He is,” Lan Wangji said. “He has given orders that you may not leave your room until the end of the week at the earliest, so as to remind the disciples of the benefit of rest following an injury.”

Nie Mingjue loved his brother.

“Very well,” he said, and decided not to ask about what Nie Huaisang might or might not have gotten into over the last day or so that had led some disciples to think they needed to disturb his rest in order to tell him. It didn’t really matter. They needed to adjust to taking Nie Huaisang’s orders as if he was sect leader in truth – especially if Nie Mingjue’s health continued to deteriorate…

He didn’t have time to think too much on that before Lan Wangji spoke again, saying, “Even if you do not understand music, you can follow the emanations of qi from an instrument, correct?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Nie Mingjue said, a little puzzled by the sudden shift in conversation but deeply relieved to have something to think about - anything, really, as long as it wasn’t the brutal feeling of his heart being torn to shreds within his chest.

“So if I were to utilize musical cultivation, you might be able to determine if I were using the same patterns as you had heard others use?”

“I suppose so,” Nie Mingjue said. It would be extremely irritating to have to pay attention to such small ebbs and flows, especially when he was also trying to meditate and draw the qi into himself for the fullest effect, but he was familiar enough with Clarity by now that he probably could if he really had to. “But why?”

“A suspicion,” Lan Wangji said. “Nie Huaisang has pointed out that Lianfeng-zun’s actions in connection to my brother are suggestive of malice against you, his actions in convincing my brother to lock you into the jingshi doubly so, and yet he comes to visit you regularly, purportedly to improve your health.”

Purportedly.

Nie Mingjue grimaced again, but this time it was with anger at himself – because the suggestion did not shock him the way the information about Lan Xichen had. Meng Yao, Meng Yao, he thought, I wish I didn’t believe this of you. I extended my trust to you twice over, and each time you have disappointed me…it’s my own fault, I suppose, for being arrogant enough to think I could change you.

“Thank you, Wangji,” he said, suddenly tired. “I understand your implication, and we will of course need to examine whether it is correct. But not today.”

“Of course,” Lan Wangji said, and stood up. “I will take my leave and go tell Nie Huaisang to move me into one of the soundproofed rooms. I require time to contemplate the subject of quiet.”

That made Nie Mingjue want to smile, though he couldn’t quite manage it, still twisted by all the revelations that had relentlessly pounded against him since he had awoken. “Good,” he said instead, turning to nod at Lan Wangji in approval. “I hope your meditation on the subject is fruitful.”

“Mm,” Lan Wangji agreed. “As you said, I must find my own path, be guided by tradition but not unduly restricted by it. But there is one point in what you said that was incorrect.”

“Oh?”

“You said that I should not, without consideration, throw out my sect’s traditions,” Lan Wangji said, and he was standing stiffly, at attention, with his face as serious as it ever got. “But at the moment, it is not my sect. You have given me permission to stay here, and I intend to do so.”

Nie Mingjue’s first thought was oh that’s going to have some serious political implications, followed immediately by I guess I did do that didn’t I and someone is going to wring my throat over this, probably Huaisang, but very shortly thereafter with if this is what he needs then so be it.

Still, he could do nothing but watch, stunned, as Lan Wangji lifted his hands to his forehead and very deliberately removed the forehead ribbon that marked him as a member of the Lan sect – the symbol of his family, the symbol of his restraint, which he would normally have never allowed another person outside his family to see him without – and, just as deliberately, wrapped it around Nie Mingjue’s wrist.

“I would ask that you keep this for me, Mingjue-xiong,” Lan Wangji said, and his tone when he said Nie Mingjue’s name was the same as when he called Lan Xichen brother. “Until such time as I decide to reclaim it as my own, or discard it forever.”

“Of course,” Nie Mingjue said, his voice a little faint from shock. “Whatever you need, Wangji.”

Lan Wangji looked at him, grateful, and saluted deeply before leaving.

Nie Mingjue lay back down on the bed and stared at his wrist for a long moment.

This is going to have some serious political implications, he thought a second time. And Lan Xichen won’t ever forgive me for stealing away his little brother.

A moment later, he shook his head at his own foolishness. Lan Xichen had made his choices.

Now he would have to pay for them.

#mdzs #nie mingjue #lan wangji #my fic #my fics #the quiet room

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