#Also his “Adoption Sense” could actually be a legitimate Power of his now that I think about it

[ladyimaginarium]

man ....... my& founders era first generation jinchuriki oc's were literally SOOOOOOO fucking iconic i& CAAAAAAAANT

they rly were iconic plural representation b4 i& even knew i& was a s.ystem. im& so sad i& never got to explore them more but like. i& love them sm. like.

fusa arashi is the first kazekage's bastard daughter by a tribeswoman in the country & grew up on the streets of sunagakure & she made friends with these street dogs that she made her familiars then she had to like. compete with her legitimate siblings to gain her father's affections & she's forced to be the jinchuriki of shukaku against her will to become the country's pride & weapon & she's literally like. 13-14 when all this is happening. a litcheral child. she rly was so iconic. she was called the wild child & then eventually the desert rose. she'd like. never sleep bc shukaku doesnt let her. she'd have all these fancy fuinjutsu & would seal bitches in sandcastles & have all these wack ass wind jutsu strong enough to level small sections of forests ( & a funny scene in my& head is that whenever she sneezes ppl literally get knocked over if they're too close to her lmao ) & have a sense of smell similar to a bloodhound & bc her mother's tribe were expert hunters she'd be insanely good at hunting & tracking people down similar to a sensory nin & she could like absorb things into her skin & she'd have this summoning contract of raccoon dogs & use her dogs from the streets as familiars & her own personal service dogs & use feral taijutsu attacks like a dog would & much like her future successor gaara used her sand as the ultimate defense.

nii tora was a liberator & she was this warrior princess who led her people to safety in the warring era & then allied w/ the senju to take back her lands & now she's the trusted adviser to the raikage & she willingly took on the role of jinchuriki to matatabi. & my girl was going OFF !!!! she was out here w/ the whole claws & everything & spitting out blue fire & just. overall using blue fire techniques that couldn't be put out with water & was one of the fastest kunoichi in the world & was out here being so iconic bc she's litcherally married to ANOTHER jinchuriki the raikage's brother lmaoooo

yuki shiro was out here being a pirate lord & the lastborn son of the first mizukage & a princess from the yuki clan & he was born albino & thus bc of superstition was seen as like. this dark omen by the entire country & this mf..... this mf deadass went up to his father & was like "aiight since y'all fucking HATE ME SO MUCH i'll be your monster" & took the jinchuriki role w/ pride & he was out here killing his siblings in a civil war & raided across the world & he was actually a major key player in the destruction of uzushiogakure aka the reason why kushina, nagato & karin & to an extent naruto himself dont have a country no more. rip btw his partner is another jinchuriki who's nonbinary & they're. super fucking gay together. & like. not only did this mf have ice release but this mf also had coral manipulation techniques & could like. use shell techniques & his skin was TOUGH

terumi akane..... she's a literal bombshell ilhsm. she a baddie that will Never take no for an answer. she was out here being this. like. spy/assassin & was one of the greatest taijutsu practitioners in the world & her era & willingly took the duty of jinchuriki with her adopted brother head on. she was out here with all these insane green fire techniques & could also use lava release but being the jinchuriki of son goku made it that much more crazy powerful & could make magma armor to protect herself & could also use different variants of lava like strong acidic mud to hot molten rocks to quicklime whether corrosive or noncorrosive to vulcanized rubber stuff to melting flames to ashes.... all in HEELS. she really was That Bitch TM

goemon ishimaru is akane's younger adopted brother. he's a hardhead & ngl a fun loving chaotic dumbass but we love him 4 it. he was on a three man team w/ himself, akane & onoki. he was also the physically strongest member of his village. literally the only reason why he took the role of jinchuriki was because his older sister didn't have to feel alone in the world. he had. insanely massive superhuman strength & could use steam techniques from boil release that could give him even more strength that rivals gyuki the 8 tails & he could also use it to burn & melt surroundings & could use steam armor & he also had horns from kokuo if he chose to. so. yeah thats smth lmfao

homatsu mizuto is shiro's enbyfriend. they were a broke ass enby w/ no lands or titles & would always just... wander the docks & watch the ships pass & they were basically shiro's only friend growing up. literally the only reason why they took the place of jinchuriki was because they didn't want shiro to feel alone in the world & the thrill of adventure. literally everybody thought they were insane but shiro liked them so that's all that mattered. they're literally that meme of the stick people killing people brutally & also the other meme of a neurodivergent stickperson jumping off the walls..... yeah. they also helped shiro w/ the destruction of uzushio. they, like utakata, could use bubble techniques & could use acid techniques in both gaseous & liquid forms that could burn through most materials in seconds & could also like develop this mucus that could immobilize its victims & also use poison techniques. we love 2 see it.

tamamushi takiko was actually kakuzu's apprentice. she was sold to a pleasurehouse by broke parents until kakuzu bought her freedom & set her free. the takikage had other plans for her tho... & that involved becoming the jinchuriki of chomei. kakuzu was her only companion. sure he was a grumpy asshat but she didn't mind. but she's. surprisingly still a really sweet person despite everything. she'd have all these insect techniques like developing chitin to be used as lil weapons or surgical threads & develop an exoskeleton as a defense mechanism & be able to use a bifurcated horn when necessary & she could also molt & release pheromones for a variety of different purposes & was immune to diseases & poisons bc of insect immunity & like the bombardier beetle she had this spray technique that while mixing hydrogen peroxide quinone & her own chakra could be fired at enemies that was a scalding 100 degrees celsius & also have the ability to fly w/ these really pretty wings. she was there the day kakuzu tried to assassinate hashirama. she just rly was the sweetest person ever.

otenki b is tora's husband & we love him sm. he was out here being a great father, gladiator, warrior & revolutionary. very few truly knew his real name. he was his brother's right hand man thru & thru & most ppl to this day internally shit themselves even after he's dead. he was out here fighting the uchiha & was just that badass. he took his duty as a jinchuriki w/ pride & was out here doing black lightning techniques & could do all this crazy shit with swords & could do nintaijutsu & could surround himself in black lightning & bc he was gyuki's jinchuriki he could also do insane feats w/ his superhuman strength & also use ink techniques that could be used to create clones or blind enemies.

im& not gonna get into u.zumaki m.ito bc she's. not rly an oc she's a canon character lmfao but...... she was out here w/ chakra chains that could not only pulverize & beat the living shit out of u & would be capable of fighting a bijuu head on but can also bind & nullify ur chakra & the byakugou seal aka the pinnacle of chakra control, slug sage mode that allowed her to use slug senjutsu w/ acid techniques that could melt through rocks, all ur skin, muscle tissues & bones w/ ease & the nine tails chakra mode on top of that...... g-d help everyone.... mom come pick me up im scared lmao

& btw uh. since this is the founders era....... the og nine jinchuriki could use chakra modes willingly & could achieve partial transformation as well as just. full on transformation & merge w/ their tailed beasts so..... rip @ the entire world lmao

do not reblog unless you're a member of our& system.

#arcana.txt #they were rly that iconic #idk i& hope to rp them at some point #tw; long post

[space-city-traffic]

yet again im back on my bullshit so... (gazes with mixed feelings at the TV show Firefly) i could fix him.

my extremely long thoughts about my Own Personal Good Version of Firefly (with plenty of spoilers for the show and the movie) under the cut:

things that are getting axed first thing no question:

out with the whole “let’s add in a thin veneer of Chinese cultural aesthetics out of context for ~flavor~” deal. just no.

instead, let’s hire some actors from a bunch of different cultures and work with them to figure out how their characters would bring those cultures into space with them!! and also hopefully bring some experiences with immigration/alienation/travel into it, since the Whole Core of Firefly is about how humanity always brings our doomed and silly and stubborn and unique warmth with us even into the cold void where nothing is familiar or homey in the slightest.

let’s respect our sex worker character shall we?

i do appreciate that Inara’s work as a companion is described as legitimate and well respected in the show. however please stop having your captain and hero call her a wh*re every five seconds against her clearly expressed wishes and portraying this as just a totally acceptable thing

let’s be more respectful of our characters of color and also have some more diversity, shall we?

others have put it better than me but yeah, the way Zoe and Book are treated is very uncomfy, and the rest of the show is depressingly monochromatic. come on let’s do better.

stop the weird confederacy hat tips

again others have pointed these out with much more thoroughness than I could, but the names of some characters and locations, as well as some of the language used to describe the browncoats, has uncomfortably confederate vibes. instead i propose we very Clearly tip our hats to the Alliance equaling space capitalism instead! you can’t go wrong with space capitalism as a villain.

don’t! make! the! psychotic! character! violent!

listen i love River Tam with my whole heart. but you should absolutely not portray your only character with psychosis as violent because of that psychosis!!!!!!! and yeah, a huge part of her character is that her brain got fucked up by the alliance and so she hallucinates and is also a super ninja. but like. she doesn’t need to be a super ninja for her character to work, okay? the crew does not need to be scared of her for her character to work, okay??? more on this later bc it would take a lot of care and nuance to make her character work but i really think it can be done

things we are absolutely keeping:

found family tropes my fucking beloved

this should be self evident. this is why the show is as appealing as it is despite its flaws, at least in my eyes.

malcolm reynolds, the knight in dusty armor

there’s something so appealing to me about what Mal stands for. because at his core is this ridiculous, silly, stubborn, doomed devotion to what he thinks is important and right, a romantic idealism thinly covered by cynical cowboy platitudes that he thinks make his bleeding heart totally invisible. and he is so obvious and entirely incorrect. bless. this is a man who will do anything for his family, who charges into swordfights to defend his friend from a man who wants to turn her into an object despite having no clue how to hold a sword. at his worst, he starts brawls in bars just for the martyr’s thrill of being persecuted for supporting the right; at his best, he inspires downright religious belief from his crew because he represents a romantic and chivalrous and doomed dedication to the right thing over any practical concerns. and then he throws a “selfish” quip over it with 100% confidence that everyone fell for his clever distraction and believes him to be a dirtbag. he’s oblivious and ridiculous and god he makes me want to be a better person because he’s just so goddamned sincere. stupid, but sincere. 10/10 himbo. <3

Mal and Inara ultraslowburn friends to enemies to friends to lovers to enemies to friends to lovers to friends to...

there’s nothing i love more than a ship that’s just two people who know each other way too well, and they’re each the only one who knows the other well enough to call them out on their bullshit. the way Mal and Inara interact in the show sometimes makes me uncomfy but like. the core of their relationship has to stay.

space western aesthetic

i need the cows on a spaceship scene to stay like i need air okay

that sweet sweet religious shit

mal, who lost his faith in gd and a whole lot else during the war. who lost his faith in himself, and now feels he has to hide the part of him that still wants to be good, because he knows he can’t be anymore, and he feels like it’s embarrassing for a guy like him to want something so unattainable. who takes a preacher on board, and the preacher has lost something, too. the preacher has his own past, and his own questions. but not questions like the observant neurodivergent girl, the one who wants to interact with and understand this thing that’s so important to him, but it just doesn’t click with how her brain works and she feels like something needs to be fixed, either the Bible or herself. and Mal takes care of them all, and slowly, he begins to find gd again, not in a prayer but in humanity. humanity doesn’t need to be fixed, like the alliance thinks. the shining imperfect strawberry sweetness of it in his family’s smiles is something to be worshiped and served and devoted to. and he finds he has something to believe in again. (and his crew find that he’s given them someone to believe in, too. and maybe suddenly he’s a saint.)

and finally, my brilliant ideas as to what i would like to add:

TRANS WOMAN KAYLEE RIGHTS

listen her femininity is so important to me okay? it’s so thrilled about everything that’s pretty, from dresses to the spaceship’s electric innards, and it’s so non-traditional and grease stained until it’s not and it’s pink and ruffly and twirly, and she never sees any of it as a contradiction, because none of it contradicts, it’s all just her! her gender is warmth and love and prettiness, feeling pretty and appreciating the pretty and making her friends’ days pretty too.

i want us to find out she’s trans in that episode with the ball, and i want us to find out alongside Mal who just never asked or never realized. Kaylee gasps and squeals at the dress in the shop window and Mal makes an off handed, ill considered comment, and then... someone yanks him aside and hisses a few very significant words in his ear. and suddenly he remembers what the blue white and pink she painted all over the engine room means, and he knows he has something to make right. so he buys her that dress himself and lets her know just how pretty she looks, and when he walks into that ball with her displayed on his arm like something precious, he looks the proudest out of any man there. and she notices. for a few seconds, of course, until there’s chocolate, and ‘nara, and a chandelier—and some horrible girls, but she’s used to that, until—suddenly, she finds her people. a group of old men who light up when she jokes about compression coils and whack presumptuous boys who ask her to dance. they adopt her as a treasured granddaughter, and Mal is beaming at her like a proud dad, and she finds that one of her new elderly friends gazes a little too long at her bracelet, and so she gives it to xem and teaches xem a few new words, and... it’s a good day, huh? it’s a really good day. (of course, then the captain has to go and punch somebody in the face, but it was a real nice party up until then.)

also she and Simon are both transhet t4t im correct and you know it

time for a better River Tam

the first thing we’ve established is that this version of her is not unpredictably violent and the crew is not scared of her!!!! it makes no sense to take a kid who’s primarily brilliant, experiment on her brain, give her telepathic powers....... and tack on the fact that she also has super strength and speed and dexterity and what not, AND say that they programmed her to be super violent. no! no. not only is that extremely harmful rep, that’s also just stupid.

instead!! my version of River is in fact not terrifying to the crew, but is actually the one they feel safest around. River has always been totally blunt, she was one of those kids you could tell realllllly early was autistic, and she doesn’t like being disengenous at all. so you can always trust her to tell the truth and not play weird passive aggressive games or have any hidden agenda, which makes her just a really chill person to be around. also, one of her longtime special interests is music and dance, so whether or not she’s nonverbal on a given day, there will always be some sort of beautiful sound when she’s around. she does have the singing voice of a dying crow unfortunately but that’s ok bc Simon’s is even worse and they’re both incredibly competitive so you’ll at least get free entertainment out of the affair.

my version of River does have psychosis and hallucinations because of the trauma of the experiments, and they are really troubling to her. she and Simon work together to find ways to cope and meds that help, and it’s a process, but there are some things that help.

the only thing she gained from the academy was the ability to hear people’s thoughts and sense the future a little bit. and yeah, that led to her picking up a few spooky secrets at the beginning, which, yikes. and for a while, it was hard to figure out which voices were real and which were hallucinations. but around her friends, she always feels safe to ask “did you just think about triple cheese burritos or was that just a me thing?”, and they’ll always tell her the truth no matter how embarrassing their thoughts are, bc it’s important to all of them to respect her and help her sort accurately through what’s reality and what’s not. and bit by bit, she gets better and better at figuring out what kinds of things tend to be telepathy and what kinds of things tend to be psychosis, and that each one feels a little different. and because of the trust and respect and support of her found family she’s able to do that in a safe environment!!!

trans man Simon rights

listen i wanted to keep him as just a side note on Kaylee’s list but he is my son and he’s important to my heart so here goes

out on the outer rim where Kaylee’s from, gender ain’t much of a big deal, there’s an individualistic quality to life out there, and so if the trail you blaze is the trail of a woman or a man or neither or both, that’s respected even in the rare cases where it’s not outright encouraged. but in the inner planets, where competition and connections and public faces and family names are everything, you have to be what’s expected of you to survive. you can’t change your brand, you can’t be anything other than what your family planned for you since before you were born, it’s incredibly hard to survive in such a hyper competitive environment, and so your very identity becomes just a tool in how to market yourself for better success.

needless to say Simon (just as autistic as his little sister and also very trans) fuckin hated it there. but he was very good at it. correction: he was very good at his very specific field of STEM, good enough to where people stopped talking about how cute he looked in bows and started talking about how impressive his work was from a very young age. and his work had no gender. he could be whatever he wanted to in equations. so that was where he could express himself, and gd, he got so much praise for it, he never wanted to stop.

not until he discovered that his sister needed him, and ran away, and needed a disguise, and realized... suddenly, every stifling rule and prying eye was a million miles away. he was freefloating, freefalling, with none of the charted paths he’d been following all his life... so you know what? fuck it. he’s always enjoyed the name Simon. and since it’s not on any legal records, it’ll make him just that much more untraceable.

and on Serenity, starting over with new people who never knew him before his transition feels like an unbelievable blessing that just dropped right into his lap. he has to keep up the secrecy, he has to make sure they never find out who he used to be, because gd, it’s so nice when they look at him and say his name right, and he doesn’t know if he can handle losing that, not when it’s so new and so important to the person he’s finally becoming. but then one day, the unthinkable happens, the wanted posters for his arrest have an old name on them, they’re looking for the Tam sisters, and... nothing changes. the crew of Serenity could not give even a tenth of a percent of a fuck, and it doesn’t seem like they even know they’re supposed to. huh. that’s new. Simon could get used to that, he thinks.

i’m sure there’s more i could add, but it’s 4:30 in the morning now, so if more occurs to me, ill simply add it in a reblog tomorrow. if you’ve read down this far, i am in love with you. please let me know your Better Firefly ideas, too, bc im always down to yell about this show!!!

#firefly #Serenity #in which i choke out joss whedon with my bare hands and rescue his characters and give them better homes #ollies fix it series #malcolm reynolds #ollies personal good firefly canon

[fernisworm]

How did the lycans react at first to karl?? If he was a kid when he got his powers and his dad hc being urais? Did he have to fight or did miranda instil fear in the lycans that they knew karl was incharge straight away?

[an;

hey anon! tysm for the request!!

I can't believe I never really thought about child lycan!karl until now?? wow I actually love that concept but this post is gonna be a doozie for neglectful parenting lmao

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❀ Characters: Lycan!Karl Heisenberg (child through to adult??)

❀ Warnings: neglectful parenting, abuse, implied abuse, mentions of starvation, just god awful parenting in general courtesy of Mother Miranda 😀

✿ You can find all my stories here!

✿ My requests guide is here! (And you can place a request here!)

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I cannot justify whether I saw this somewhere or not or why I think this but. Karl was abducted by Miranda when he was like 7 I can't explain why but until further information is revealed I will (for some reason??) continue to think this until the day I die

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🛠️ Okay so like straight up Miranda never cared for Karl at the best of times

🛠️ But when I tell you that every ounce of fondness she possessed shrivelled up when she found out he was part lycan I absolutely mean it

🛠️ She was honestly revolted that such a fine specimen had been 'tainted' (her words) with lycan genes and I mean she was like REALLY upset

🛠️ I'm not even lying to you when I say the first time Karl used his lycan side (accidentally when he was about 8 or 9) Miranda quite literally cast him out of the entire goddamn village

🛠️ She was so disgusted (and so far up her own ass) that she sent this 9 year old boy to live in the cold, snowy forest with the lycans she had also cast out of the town

🛠️ Like!! This child was so confused and upset!!!! Miranda didn't do shit for him either she just!!! Took him out of the village and fucking left him there!! To die probably!!! She didn't care!!!!

🛠️ Miranda didn’t want anything to do with the lycans either so like hell she was gonna give any of them a heads up about Karl lmfao

🛠️ Idk if I’ve mentioned this before but I do HC Uriaș being lycan!Karl’s adoptive father figure

🛠️ Uriaș knew Karl wasn’t going to last long if the lycans found him (or even worse, if any of the vârcolac did)

🛠️ In all honesty the lycans might have accepted him and not eaten him

🛠️ The vârcolac? They would have gobbled him up the moment any of them saw him like honestly

🛠️ Otherwise Uriaș knew Karl was going to freeze to death bc it was the goddamn middle of Winter

🛠️ Either way Uriaș wasn’t going to leave it up to chance and decided to take Karl under his wing in a sense

🛠️ For whatever reason, Uriaș felt bad for Karl 

🛠️ They’d all been cast out of the village because of the way the cadou had mutated them but Karl was?? a child?? if Miranda wasn’t heartless before she was heartless now

🛠️ Initially when Uriaș introduced the other lycans to Karl they were very much in awe and surprise of him

🛠️ Uriaș: this is my new son

🛠️ The lycans: 👁️👁️

🛠️ Obviously the vârcolac were shady as fuck and could not be trusted to be alone with Karl at all

🛠️ Uriaș barely let them near Karl

🛠️ And when Karl showed the lycans he was a werewolf they were??? really weirdly excited about it

🛠️ Like your dog when you get home from work or school

🛠️ They thought it was epic as fuck

🛠️ This helped Karl to not get eaten by any of them LMAO

🛠️ Karl legitimately lived with them for several years then when he was like 11 or 12 Miranda found him walking through the village acting like an actual feral dog 

🛠️ (He was practically raised by lycans at this point what did you expect)

🛠️ She was surprised, to say the least, that he’d survived so many years on his own

🛠️ Miranda decided he was stronger than she initially thought and her saviour complex started acting up so she took him back in as her “son”

🛠️ “Wow guys look at how great I am I saved this poor little boy from the lycans and the cold harsh forest I’m such a good person u should worship me some more😎😎“

🛠️ The only thing she ever really did to ‘help’ Karl was teach him how to speak English because at her time of abducting him he could only really speak German

🛠️ And after living solely alongside Uriaș and the lycans for like 3 years he obviously hadn’t spoken a lot because none of them could speak English 

🛠️ When Miranda found him again he was making dog noises and growling at her LMAO

🛠️ Other than that he was speaking in mostly German to her again

🛠️ So yeah after going feral for a few years he was back to square one and she had to completely reteach him English lmao

🛠️ My GOD she drilled it into his head that she “saved” him from the lycans

🛠️ But even at such a young age Karl knew better than that; he knew who had cast him out of the village and who had really saved him

🛠️ Even when he was living under Miranda’s roof again he would sneak out to see Uriaș and the other lycans, sometimes disappearing for days at a time

🛠️ And Miranda made sure to let Karl know first and foremost that if he ever invoked his lycan side in her presence there would be dire consequences

🛠️ Though she had said explicitly said “in her presence” Karl knew she really meant “at all”

🛠️ But as Karl got older he would ignore her words and wolf-out where ever and whenever he pleased (away from Miranda, of course)

🛠️ Referring back to the ask; really it was Uriaș who instilled fear in the lycans (for Karl’s sake) 

🛠️ As Karl got older and started to rebel from Miranda more he also started to have more control over the lycan pack

🛠️ Uriaș made sure that the lycans understood Karl was to be regarded in the same way he was (which was at the top of the pack)

🛠️ Though Uriaș made sure the lycans knew Karl was also in charge, that didn’t mean Heisenberg didn’t have his fair share of scuffles within the pack

🛠️ He also made sure to earn his respect rather than leech it off of Uriaș (which he very well could have done)

🛠️ None of the lycans ever really had a problem with Karl though

🛠️ The fact that he practically grew up with them might have contributed to their liking for him

🛠️ And eventually Uriaș (rather happily) stepped down as leader of the pack to make way for Karl

🛠️ Karl had never intended to lead the pack on his own but the fact that Uriaș had entrusted him with such a responsibility filled him with immense pride

🛠️ Miranda soon regarded Karl as her ticket to controlling the lycans 

🛠️ God I hate her she ruins everything

🛠️ Anyway since Karl literally grew up with the lycans for most of his life obviously they influenced his lycan side the most

🛠️ While Uriaș and the lycans encouraged Karl to wolf-out whenever the hell he wanted to obviously Miranda was being a sour bitch about it all still

🛠️ Being used to wolfing-out at any time when he was with the pack (or just away from Miranda) was also Karl’s downfall since it meant he had very very little control over himself and his lycan side

🛠️ Cue Karl wolfing-out during Miranda’s meetings sometimes

🛠️ Oh my god she would get so FURIOUS

🛠️ Cue Karl disappearing into the forest for two weeks because if he didn’t give Miranda time to cool down she might have actually killed him ✌️

🛠️ Of course whenever he returned after something like that she wouldn’t have forgotten and would punished him anyway (not as harshly though, thank god)

🛠️ Though that wasn’t half as bad as the times where he didn’t get a chance to leave the village so her anger was still super fresh 

🛠️ One time when he wolfed-out Karl was so blinded by rage he tried to fight Miranda

🛠️ Obviously it didn’t go well and he very easily lost

🛠️ “How dare you attack me! And in that bestial form! You disgusting whelp!”

🛠️ She locked him up and isolated him for a month without food and honestly without the cadou it probably would have killed him

🛠️ Then afterwards she acted like it was her trying to help him

🛠️ ???

🛠️ “Thanks to me that disgusting beast has been discouraged from showing itself for a long long time, isn’t that right? 🥰🥰”

🛠️ Basically incentive for Karl to not use his lycan form

🛠️ After that particular incident Miranda kept him from seeing Uriaș and any of the pack for several months

🛠️ He nearly broke down honestly

🛠️ The only reason he didn’t was because it would mean he let her win

🛠️ Miranda and her incessant belittling and brainwashing is most of the reason why he hates/hated his lycan side, he continues to use it though in defiance of her

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[an;

this ended on a really terrible note i am so sorry 😀 but also hope you enjoyed the enjoyable parts of this LMAO

#re8 headcanons #re8 #karl heisenberg #re8 karl heisenberg #re8 heisenberg headcanons #karl heisenberg headcanons #lycan!karl heisenberg headcanons #lycan heisenberg #lycan karl headcanons #resident evil 8 #heisenberg headcanons #re8 lycan #resident evil 8 headcanons #my writing

[robininthelabyrinth]

Your idea of madam nie!jgy is really good could u wrt that ?

for those who don’t remember, the Madame Nie!JGY idea is here and here

- on ao3 -

Untamed verse

Paperwork.

The bane of Nie Huaisang’s life.

It wasn’t that he didn’t know he was moderately clever, sometimes scaling up to very clever if he was irritated, but somehow he’d never had the ability to keep facts and figures and exact sentences straight in his head. Any teaching done through rote memorization (in other words, most of it) was wasted on him, and the few things he could keep track of, usually in over-abundant and hyper-specific detail, weren’t the sorts of things that were especially helpful. 

Or, well, they were helpful in figuring out what clothing to wear or whether art was good or bad, and occasionally in being able to figure out where people should sit in a hall in order to either minimize or maximize the opportunity for incidents that would create gossip, but they really weren’t helpful if what you were trying to do was run a very large and very industrious sect.

His brother handled the majority of it, of course, as sect leader, and naturally he hadn’t stinted on hiring talented deputies – admittedly, the Nie sect threw around the word deputy the way an especially enthusiastic firefighter tossed around water and sand, but most sects had a more settled bureaucracy in place than the Nie sect did and it was an important position, even if it was usually just a gateway to being put somewhere you actually fit rather than a permanent spot for most people – but in the end there were some things that required the signature of a member of the Nie clan and Nie Mingjue, Nie Huaisang very reluctantly supposed (if he had to), couldn’t do everything.

He groaned and put his head down on the table.

This never happened when Meng Yao was here, he thought bitterly.

Meng Yao had been one of his brother’s finds, someone he’d promoted in a fit of temper as usual, but to just about everyone’s surprise he had turned out to be amazing at logistics and organization, able to quickly gain expertise in really everything and anything a sect needed to run. After a few months he knew most things, and the things he didn’t know he could either figure out or speculate on with relative accuracy. He’d been amazingly efficient, and it had made Nie Mingjue happy – happy not just to have such good help and to have his taste in subordinates confirmed, but also to see Meng Yao flourishing as his deputy, his real deputy, to see him pleased and respected the way his talents so obviously deserved…

Nie Huaisang sighed. If only his stupid brother had gone ahead and just sworn brotherhood with Meng Yao when the idea had been proposed!

If only he’d done that, Nie Huaisang could have been acting cute and calling Meng Yao – no, wait, it was Jin Guangyao now, he kept forgetting – he could have been calling him ‘san-ge’ right now and hanging off his arm and soon enough Jin Guangyao would yield and do all the work for him, leaving only the actual signing for Nie Huaisang to do. And the work would’ve gotten done better than he would have ever done it, in less time, and he could’ve been spending his precious time doing literally anything else.

Ugh.

Well, he supposed it wasn’t entirely his brother’s fault that the whole plan hadn’t gone through. He hadn’t been the one to back out of the brotherhood idea – that’d been Lan Xichen, for some reason, even though he’d been the one to originally propose the idea, and obviously Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangyao weren’t going to swear brotherhood without him. It was Venerated Triad, not Venerated Duo.

It was just so unfortunate that the absence of a sworn brother relationship meant that Nie Huaisang had no basis to ask Jin Guangyao to help him out. Or, while he was imagining things, why not just go all the way and imagine that Jin Guangyao could just come back to Qinghe already.

He could run things in a way that made sense and was efficient, which would reduce Nie Mingjue’s stress levels, and Nie Mingjue’s stress levels going down meant that Nie Huaisang’s stress would go down. Way down. And Jin Guangyao’s stress levels would also be way down as well by virtue of, well, being back at Qinghe, where things made sense and he didn’t have to deal with his awful family of his which he seemed to value for some reason that Nie Huaisang didn’t understand and honestly didn’t want to understand. It’d be a win all around!

Ugh.

Life was just better when Jin Guangyao was around.

But what could be done about it? He couldn’t exactly suggest being sworn brothers with Jin Guangyao himself – you needed to do something impressive together to justify that, usually – and for all that he had his brother wrapped around his little finger, he knew perfectly well that Nie Mingjue might hire an unknown man as a deputy in a fit of temper but he’d never hire someone he fired, even if Jin Guangyao were willing to take the role of deputy again. Which he probably wasn’t now that he was all legitimate and recognized and stuff; it was probably beneath him.

If only there were another position available, something not a deputy, not a sworn brother, something where he could just run the Nie sect for the good of everyone –

Wait.

There was.

And, thanks to his brother’s misanthropic ways, the position was available.

Perfect!

-

“Congratulations, da-ge!” Nie Huaisang announced grandly, sweeping into his brother’s study.

“Just tell the treasury to cover the cost of whatever it is you broke or bought,” Nie Mingjue said without looking up, which, first, rude, and second, really? Awesome. Nie Huaisang was going to get so much mileage out of that one.

“Oh, da-ge, really. I wasn’t talking about me –”

“A miracle.”

“– shut up. I was congratulating you! It’s what little brothers like me should do for big brothers like you on the event of their engagement!”

There was a silence of about five deep breaths.

(Or at least, that’s how long Nie Huaisang assumed it was, provided that his brother was listening to his doctor’s orders about managing his anger, which he had damn well better be.)

Nie Mingjue put down the piece of paper he was working on, and gently laid down his brush to avoid breaking it like so many of the others, and looked up at Nie Huaisang, fixing all of his attention on him.

“Huaisang,” he said, his voice only slightly above a growl. “My what now?”

“Your engagement!” Nie Huaisang beamed at him. “The Sunshot Campaign is over, our father is avenged, and you’re already in your mid-twenties – that means it’s time to get moving on finding the perfect Madame Nie, and I’ve got a great candidate in mind for you.”

His brother looked uncomfortable. “Huaisang,” he said, and his voice was almost delicate. “You are aware…”

“I’ve taken your preferences into account,” Nie Huaisang assured him, and he was only mostly lying. His brother had liked Meng Yao a great deal, once upon a time, and even if they’d never actually slept together – his stupid anti-social brother probably hadn’t even hinted that he might be interested, what with the power differential and Meng Yao’s unfortunate familial history – there was no reason he couldn’t like Jin Guangyao, too, if only he’d give him a chance. Just because he didn’t like him right now didn’t mean anything about his preferences generally. “It’s not like I missed the vast increase in the amount of cutsleeve pornography in our library, okay?”

“That was not me.”

“I know it wasn’t you, but you got the benefit of it, didn’t you? Like I said: don’t worry. It’s a man. You can stop worrying, relax, and let me handle it.”

His brother’s face was doing the skeptical look again, the one where he looked like he was seriously doubting Nie Huaisang’s ability to put on clothing in the morning. He wasn’t five anymore, da-ge! Okay, eight, but only because he kept putting stuff on backwards while he was rushing. Maybe ten for formal clothing... “No, Huaisang.”

“No, really, I can –”

“The answer is no, Huaisang.”

That sounded depressingly final.

“What if I do the puppy eyes at you?”

“The answer is still no,” his brother said, going back to his paperwork, although he was smiling a little. “No, you may not set up an engagement for me; no, I will not agree; no.”

Damnit.

Okay, maybe Nie Huaisang should be tackling this from a different angle.

-

“It’s so good to see you!” Nie Huaisang gushed. He wasn’t entirely sure what to call Jin Guangyao now – after all, the other man was a few years his senior, and now that he was recognized by his father there wasn’t a class difference that would make it permissible for Nie Huaisang to call him by name the way he’d used to call Meng Yao. But they’d known each other for years, so Jin-qianbei might come off as pretentious and too formal, Jin-gongzi was definitely too formal, and were they really at the stage where he could call him Jin-xiong?

(Plus he already called Jin Zixuan Jin-xiong, so he’d have to figure out where Meng Yao fell in the hierarchy – except no one had ever clarified one way or the other. He was pretty sure Meng Yao was older, but even if he was it probably wasn’t appropriate to go around calling him Jin-da-ge.)

Now, Nie Huaisang had more or less made it his life policy to adopt virtual strangers as brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles, the more the better, but he also didn’t want to offend Jin Guangyao by making it seem like he didn’t respect his new position.

Especially when he wanted Jin Guangyao to do something for him.

“It’s good to see you too, Nie-gongzi,” Jin Guangyao said, and no, that wouldn’t do at all.

Nie Huaisang poked at him with his fan. “How many times do I have to tell you? Just call me Huaisang, the way da-ge does. You were almost my san-ge, remember?”

“Nie-gongzi…”

“Huaisang!”

Jin Guangyao had an indulgent look on his face. “Very well, Huaisang.”

“Anyway, I know you’re busy with dealing with sect things – that hunt last month was great, sorry about da-ge being overenthusiastic but at least he had a really good time – and stuff like that, but I just wanted to swing by Lanling to congratulate you!” Nie Huaisang said, deciding to take the moment to barrel onwards. “I didn’t get a chance to talk to you last time, and so much has happened since you left Qinghe! You got accepted into the Jin sect! Recognized by your father! Given a name! A fancy title! A position! An engagement! A nice hat!”

“I’m sorry,” Jin Guangyao said. “I got a what?”

“A nice hat!”

“Nice try, Huaisang.”

“Oh, come on, you don’t even know who I’m setting you up with yet!” Nie Huaisang whined. “And it’s not like you don’t want to get married! Weren’t you  thinking of marrying the Qin sect’s girl? I mean, before they backed out on account of swearing vengeance against your father and the Jin sect and all…”

“I appreciate your thoughtfulness, Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao said, gentle and polite as always, but in his own way just as firm as Nie Mingjue. They really would be a good match, and not just because it’d make Nie Huaisang’s life so much easier. “But I’m really much too busy to think about anything like that. Matters in the Jin sect, you understand…”

“But –”

“Huaisang, please.”

Damnit.

-

Nie Huaisang was going to need to think about this.

He hated thinking.

-

“It’s just so unfair,” Nie Huaisang moaned. “Why do people insist on making things hard? When it could be so easy if only they’d listen…”

“It sounds like a real tragedy,” Lan Xichen said, pouring him a cup of tea.

He was just barely managing to resist smiling, which was good – he didn’t smile that much anymore, not since whatever it was that happened to him a month or two back around the time the sworn brother ceremony was supposed to happen. No one knew what it was that happened, not even Lan Wangji (Nie Huaisang had asked), but it was making everyone worried; Nie Mingjue had wanted to go over to demand answers practically ever since but things just kept happening.

Mostly due to Lan Xichen, actually, now that Nie Huaisang thought about it.

First there was that failed sworn brotherhood thing – he’d been the one pushing the idea in the first place, but only a week before they actually did the ceremony Lan Xichen had suddenly showed up at the Unclean Realm, bursting into Nie Mingjue’s bedroom while he was resting during his recovery from the events at the Nightless City, and insisted they call the whole thing off. He’d been pale, his eyes wide and scared, but he’d refused to explain anything no matter how many times Nie Mingjue asked; he’d only been sad and oddly clingy for the entire week, refusing to leave until the planned date of the sworn brotherhood ceremony had passed with it unfulfilled.

Then he’d gone home, and things had seemed to be fine, only after the hunt at Phoenix Mountain and Wei Wuxian’s impromptu theft of a bunch of Wen prisoners of war – neither of which appeared to be due to Lan Xichen, admittedly – and right when everyone had been gearing up to go make a big fuss over it, Lan Xichen had abruptly revealed that he’d been investigating the Jin sect and they were up to their necks in all sorts of unfortunate things.

Secret demonic cultivation experiments, which one might understand, and buying corpses, a subject on which the Nie sect had always been remarkably open-minded, but also stealing beloved corpses and tomb robbing, more-than-likely murder, possibly even massacres of entire small clans, all as part of their experiments, and to top it all off there were a whole big number of rapes attributed to Jin Guangshan personally.

Madame Qin among them, which was why Jin Guangyao’s original marriage plans had fallen through. It wasn’t even worth considering it, not when there was a risk that poor Qin Su, who’d had such a crush on the gallant Jin Guangyao, might be his sister…

Anyway, while the Jin were still too powerful, as a Great Sect, to fully suffer the consequences of their actions, the Jin sect had been disgraced at the very moment that they thought they were on the rise. Jin Guangshan had even been talking about taking up the post of Chief Cultivator following Wen Ruohan’s demise, which he might have been able to swing since Nie Mingjue thought the idea of having a Chief Cultivator at all was bullshit, but now obviously that was completely out of the question.

Plus the whole thing had retroactively cleared Wei Wuxian’s name, leaving him free and clear to return to the Jiang sect as a hero who stood up against Jin sect presumptuousness and overreach when no one else would, which was a pretty big change from his previous political position, which was being widely known as an arrogant and dangerous hothead on the verge of being cast out of the sect for the good of the cultivation world at large despite them very, very obviously not wanting to do it.

Wei Wuxian had even been able to bring the Wen sect members he’d rescued back to the Lotus Pier with him, and now there was even talk that Jiang Cheng might marry Wen Qing (as someone who went to the Cloud Recesses lectures with them both, Nie Huaisang wasn’t surprised by the suggestion at all) once his sister concluded her marriage with Jin Zixuan, which was going to be a far less sumptuous affair than originally planned. After all, the politics of the situation had reversed almost entirely, with the disgraced Jin sect needing the marriage to the reputable (and, thanks in large part to Wei Wuxian, powerful) Jiang sect to help keep what was left of their reputation and influence intact.

Perhaps the Jin sect’s crimes were the reason that Lan Xichen had been acting strangely distant from Jin Guangyao, even though no one had ever proven anything about his involvement – Jin Guangshan’s attempt to throw the blame entirely on his newly adopted son were dismissed as the fabrications they so obviously were – but Nie Huaisang wasn’t so sure.

Lan Xichen wasn’t the sort of person to worry about politics, after all. But then why…?

“Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?” Lan Xichen asked, settling in his own seat with his own cup of tea. He looked very serious, as if Nie Huaisang’s opinion on things mattered to him.

It was nice. Most people just looked really long-suffering when they talked with Nie Huaisang, and those were the people that actually liked him.

“Okay,” Nie Huaisang said. “So. Theoretically, if a person were trying to set up a marriage between, hypothetically, two people who would be perfect for each other, and I do mean disgustingly everything-would-be-wonderful-for-everyone sort of perfect, and they were just, you know, refusing for absolutely no valid reason other than their own stupid issues –”

“How in the world did you figure out that I was trying to get Wangji to confess his affections to Wei Wuxian?” Lan Xichen said, sounding stunned. “I didn’t tell anyone…You really are a genius, Huaisang.”

Nie Huaisang blinked, then lifted his head off the table, settling his chin on his hands.

“That actually wasn’t what I was talking about,” he admitted. “But now you have my full attention and I don’t care about my issue anymore. Tell me everything.”

-

“So, fun fact!” Nie Huaisang said, bouncing into his brother’s bedroom just in time to help him undo his braids before sleep. It was his favorite chore, no matter how much his brother protested that it wasn’t a chore and also that he’d been doing it for himself for years and seriously he could do it himself if Nie Huaisang wasn’t so stupidly possessive about being the only one allowed to do it any time they were both at home with violations punished of having Nie Mingjue’s fingers smacked with Nie Huaisang’s fan, all of which Nie Huaisang treated as the irrelevant and pointless statements they were. “I was just over at the Cloud Recesses visiting Xichen-xiong and he’s clearly super into me.”

“What,” his brother said.

Nie Huaisang cackled and dug his fingers into his brother’s thick hair – he was so jealous, his own was thin and stringy and brushing it definitely did not feel like petting a tiger the way it did when he did Nie Mingjue’s hair. He watched in the mirror with satisfaction as his brother’s shoulders immediately relaxed, all the anger and tension flowing out of them at once as a result of Nie Huaisang’s careful training over the years, although Nie Mingjue’s eyebrows still stayed sky high.

“I’m serious!” Nie Huaisang said, starting to release the braids. “He said that he respects me, and that he thinks I’m a genius. He has to have a thing for me. The only possible reason anyone would respect me is if all the blood had left their brain and they were blinded by my overwhelming prettiness!”

His brother seemed torn between denying Nie Huaisang’s statement that no one could respect him and telling him to stop being so full of himself about the overwhelming prettiness comment.

“Maybe Xichen just went insane,” he ended up saying instead. “That seems marginally more likely.”

“An excellent point,” Nie Huaisang acknowledged because, well, it was. “Now, totally unrelatedly, did you know that the Jin sect is treating poor Jin Guangyao just awful? Madame Jin throws things and Sect Leader Jin yells and blames him for stuff and it’s just so sad, we should do something about it.”

“Something like invite him here to live as my brand new bride, I’m guessing,” Nie Mingjue said, voice extremely dry. “You’re incredibly not subtle.”

Nie Huaisang freed a hand and held up a finger pointedly. “Ah, ah! Xichen-xiong says I’m a genius.”

His brother fell silent for a few moments. “You’re right,” he finally said. “He must have a crush on you. Not even insanity would explain this.”

Nie Huaisang sniggered.

“Also, really, Meng Yao?” Nie Mingjue asked. “That was who you were planning on setting me up with? You have to know that wouldn’t work.” He shifted in his chair. “…are they really beating him there?”

Huh, maybe Lan Xichen was right and Nie Huaisang really was a genius.

He wisely decided not to answer – it would work better if his brother investigated and found out the (admittedly fairly awful, according to the servants’ gossip) details for himself – and instead said, “Why’d you kick him out, anyway? I thought he got stabbed saving you. Whatever he did, how big of a deal could it have been, really?”

“He committed premeditated murder. In the middle of an attack on the sect, no less.”

Damnit, Meng Yao! Can’t you make things easy on me for once?!

“Okay,” Nie Huaisang said, tugging on one of the braids until Nie Mingjue, who’d tensed up, relaxed again. It was a nice that his brother was so easily trainable, or at least he was on everything other than saber practice. Surely that was a selling point that Jin Guangyao could appreciate in a man? “Uh. Have you considered that, uh – well, maybe it could have been justified?”

“I asked him for an explanation,” Nie Mingjue growled. “His reason boiled down to ‘that guy was a dick to me’.”

“Wow,” Nie Huaisang said. “I have such strong empathy for Meng Yao’s position, you have no idea.”

“Huaisang.”

“I’m just saying, if we could stab everyone who acted like a dick…”

“Huaisang. No.”

“You know you want to.”

“But I don’t,” Nie Mingjue insisted. “He used the cover of battle, a Wen sword…he even tried to blame Xue Yang for it when I literally saw him holding the sword in his hand! I should have executed him right then and there, and I would have, if he hadn’t saved my life.”

A tricky one, Nie Huaisang thought. But not a match for me, Nie Huaisang: Lan Xichen-certified genius.

“Okay,” he said. “But…you already punished him for that, right? You exiled him. He was exiled. It was all very sad, tears were shed, mostly by me but also a bit by you – we’re an emotional family – and just possibly by Meng Yao, though who even knows, maybe Jin Guangshan’s spawn are all born without tear ducts as a congenital deficiency. But any way you look at it, it’s done now, and that means he can come back!”

“Huaisang. That’s not how exile works.”

“Uh, I think you’ll find that it does,” Nie Huaisang said haughtily. “There are at least five incidents in the Nie sect’s history where something comparable has happened.”

“Really.” His brother’s voice was very, very dry.

“Really,” Nie Huaisang insisted.

“And you, with your amazing ability to retain facts, know this…how?”

“Okay fine, I made that up,” Nie Huaisang confessed. “But I will find some and prove to you that it’s a thing! And then you’ll have no choice but to agree with my plan!”

“That’s not how that works, either,” Nie Mingjue said. “But if you’re willing to knuckle down and do the historical research to justify your bullshit, I’ll – consider it.”

“I will! You’ll see!”

-

“Xichen-xiong!” Nie Huaisang wept, clinging onto Lan Xichen’s arm. “You have to help me! There are so many books! And they’re all so long! They’re doing it just to spite me personally!”

Lan Xichen managed, with a truly remarkable amount of skill, to detach Nie Huaisang from his arm and settle him down in a chair in record time. If Nie Huaisang didn’t know better, he would have guessed that he’d done it before dozens, maybe even hundreds, of times, but of course they didn’t know each other that well.

Pity, that. Nie Huaisang might not need him as urgently as he needed Jin Guangyao, but losing out on having Lan Xichen as his er-ge was also a big downside of the whole not-swearing-brotherhood thing.

“What’s the problem this time, Huaisang?” Lan Xichen asked. He did not seem all that concerned, which...yeah, fair.

“I need you to do some research for me,” Nie Huaisang said, batting his eyelashes at him to see if that would work. “Nie sect history. Please?”

Lan Xichen tensed a little. It was a minute gesture, barely even noticeable. “On…what subject? Does your brother know?”

“Free passage laws and border restrictions,” Nie Huaisang said, and Lan Xichen visibly relaxed. “And of course he knows, he assigned it! Do you think I would do boring old historical research for fun?”

Lan Xichen smiled again, and Nie Huaisang counted it as a victory.

“All right, I’ll help,” he said indulgently, then paused. “Just…this isn’t part of some scheme, right?”

“Of course not,” Nie Huaisang said, injured. “Why would you even ask that? I am the most scheme-less person you could ever meet in your life. There are newborn baby rabbits that are more scheming than me!”

This was because newborn baby rabbits were dicks. Lan Wangji made him hold one once and Nie Huaisang was pretty sure it deliberately pissed on his fingers.

Lan Xichen coughed into his sleeve, just barely managing not to laugh in face. “I’m sure you are. No reason for asking. Did you bring the records you wanted me to look through?”

“By total coincidence, in fact, I did! Not that I would assume that you’d agree, of course.”

“…of course, Huaisang.”

-

“Jin-xiong!” Yes, Nie Huaisang was going for it; Jin Zixuan was just going to have to deal. “Jin-xiong, I have been informed by reliable sources that you’re a big fan of power, am I right?”

Jin Guangyao actually reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose – he must be very tired, to react that way while Nie Huaisang was still present.

In fairness, he really had been having a hard time of it recently. Even putting aside how awful it must be to live with Sect Leader Jin and his wife – it was no surprise (to Nie Huaisang, anyway) that their own son and heir spent a disturbingly large portion of his time visiting the Lotus Pier with his wife, even accounting for having to deal with the world’s most over-protective brothers-in-law – there were all the problems the Jin sect was having, the way Sect Leader Jin’s nasty and arrogant reactions to being challenged only seemed to be making it all worse, and then of course there was also the fact that Nie Mingjue had literally punched Sect Leader Jin in the face after he’d come in unexpectedly and caught him throwing a cup of tea on Jin Guangyao.

(That particular disaster was still ongoing, actually, and at very high volume – Jin Guangyao had been waiting anxiously outside the door, which wasn’t going to do him a single bit of good, but luckily for him Nie Huaisang was here to distract him from all of his troubles. Wasn’t Nie Huaisang a wonderfully nice person?)

“Jin-xiong,” Nie Huaisang whined, tugging on Jin Guangyao’s sleeve until the other man had no choice but to follow him further down the hallway and further away from the receiving room where the current Nie-Jin shouting session was happening behind them. “Tell me. Am I right?”

“You’re really excitable today, Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao said instead of answering. “Are you feeling all right?”

“Actually, I really, really, really hate flying on my saber and I’ve had to do it so often recently, it’s been terrible, you have no idea how much I’ve suffered, but I’m at least marginally hopeful that it’ll all be worth it in the end. But enough about me. You, power…how would you really like to tell your father and his wife where to shove it?”

“Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao said helplessly. “We’re in the middle of Koi Tower. Can you at least keep your voice down?”

Pssh, like Nie Huaisang cared what some Jin sect retainers thought. His brother just punched their sect leader in the face, what in the world was he going to do that would top that?

“Really,” he insisted, deciding to ignore Jin Guangyao’s clearly misplaced objections. “Consider it for a moment. How would you like to obtain fame, power, wealth, legitimacy – of the public-recognition variety, not the familial sort, you got that already – the ability to rub your success into your father’s face and also possibly jump up and down on it a few times, and, just as a bonus, also maybe become Chief Cultivator?”

Technically, wife of the Chief Cultivator, but in reality there was no way he wouldn’t be the one doing all the work. People were being really insistent about there being one, and with Jin Guangshan out of the picture, Lan Xichen acting weirdly shifty, and Jiang Cheng being Jiang Cheng, the entire cultivation world were all currently forming a consensus that it was going to be Nie Mingjue regardless of whether he actually agreed to take the job. So if Nie Huaisang’s poor beleaguered big brother was going to get stuck with the title, why not give the work to someone who’d actually enjoy it?

“Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao said, and his voice was so overtly sorrowful and pathetic that Nie Huaisang actually stopped to goggle at him. “I have never once sought personal power nor pursued ambition on my own behalf, and I regret that you think of me in that way.”

He paused for a moment.

“You can keep talking, though.”

“Excellent,” Nie Huaisang said. “So the plan is –”

-

“Forgive my language,” Lan Xichen said, his voice a little strangled. “But what the fuck?”

Nie Huaisang giggled. “I didn’t know the Lan sect permitted swearing.”

“It doesn’t. I’ll punish myself later,” Lan Xichen said, still staring blankly into space. “I just…they’re getting married? All those changes, and they end up getting married?”

“Technically, they’re eloping,” Nie Huaisang said. “Since they’re not actually getting Jin-xiong’s father’s permission and all…oh, Madame Jin looks angry enough to eat glass. I love weddings!”

Lan Xichen turned to look at him with narrowed eyes.

“Huaisang,” he said warningly. “This was a scheme on your part, wasn’t it?”

“Uh, I mean, okay, maybe a little,” Nie Huaisang confessed. “But only a little. A mini-scheme. A micro-plot. A stratagem. Oooh, did I intrigue? I like that. I’m intriguing.”

“You certainly are that,” Lan Xichen said dryly. “But…why?”

“Because now Jin-xiong – we can still call him that, right? I don’t think his father has the right to take back the name once it’s given, even if he does go ahead and disown him the way he’s threatening to – now Jin-xiong can do all the paperwork and make things run efficiently back home, and also it’s now totally in his best interest to make sure my brother stays sect leader and Chief Cultivator forever because otherwise he loses the basis of his own power,” Nie Huaisang explained. “And thus far I haven’t seen anything that Jin-xiong – oh, I can call him sao-zi now, that’s much more straightforward! – anything that he can’t do if he puts his mind to it. Which means I am now guaranteed to have a nice long life full of sweet, blissful nothing! No responsibilities! Freedom!”

He paused.

“Oh, and obviously they’ll be great together, really happy and all that,” he added. “That’s important too.”

Lan Xichen put his hand up to his forehead, but he was smiling broadly now – not the tiny little smiles Nie Huaisang had managed to steal up out of him up until now, but a big old grin.

“Anyway, now that that’s over and done with, I promise, no more schemes,” Nie Huaisang added, putting his hand on his heart. “This is the last one, okay? If you don’t believe me, you can write it into our marriage vows.”

Lan Xichen huffed a little, clearly not believing him, but he sounded fond about it. “Whatever you say, Huaisang – wait. Hold on. Our what?”

“Our marriage vows,” Nie Huaisang explained. “At our marriage. On account of your total inexplicable crush on me, which upon reflection I have generously decided to accept and return your affections.”

Lan Xichen’s mouth was opening and closing like a fish.

“Of course, we’re not going to be so lucky as to just elope,” Nie Huaisang continued thoughtfully. “Da-ge can’t have a proper wedding ceremony because people will be too afraid of irritating Sect Leader Jin to attend, but if we have a nice big party to announce my engagement to you, well, that’s different, right? They can all come to that. It’ll be like a secret-not-secret wedding that everyone knows is a wedding but with the plausible deniability that it’s totally just an engagement party. But if we have the big announcement, there’s no getting out of doing all the steps and rituals and whatnot, and, oh, we’ll have to deal with your uncle and our elders…it’ll be a disaster, really. So much work!”

He sighed. “Oh, the things I do for you, Xichen-gege! You’re very lucky I like you so much!”

Lan Wangji cleared his throat behind them both, and they turned to look at him – he was standing there with his arm around Wei Wuxian’s waist, which was more or less the same posture he was always in these days. Now that was one marriage – arranged as it might have been originally, with Lan Xichen pressuring Jiang Cheng until he agreed – that had gone very well, even if Lan Wangji was still a little cold with his brother over the extremely aggressive tactics he had employed in getting them together.

“Congratulations on your upcoming nuptials, brother,” Lan Wangji said, somewhat stone faced. “It couldn’t have happened to someone more deserving.”

Wei Wuxian, by his side, smiled and nodded. “If you’d like any help planning the wedding –” he started to say.

“Oh, would you?” Nie Huaisang exclaimed, clapping his hands in excitement. “Wei-xiong, you’re the best. We’re going to need at least a thousand of those spirit summon flags of yours.”

“A – a thousand? Do you know how long it’ll take me to draw a thousand talismans?!”

“Well, how else will we guarantee that we have a hunt so impressive that no one will ever stop talking about it?” Nie Huaisang asked, because obviously that’s what his da-ge would have wanted for his own wedding and since Nie Huaisang messed that up for his own purposes, having it at his was the least he could do to make it up to him. 

Best of all, as the bride, he’d be all decked out in jewelry and fancy clothing and exactly nobody would expect him to participate. Win-win! 

“Chop-chop, Wei-xiong! The wedding’s happening sooner rather than later, so if you think you’re going to have problems keeping up with demand, I’ll send some Nie sect disciples with decent handwriting over to you to learn. I think some of the people sao-zi is bringing with him from the Jin sect have some background in demonic cultivation too, I don’t know, but I’ll find out and let you know as soon as possible. You need to train up some people anyway so that you can ramp up production – once you start selling your talismans, more people will use them, and people will be much less afraid of you. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian were both gaping at him. Possibly he had used too many words at once for them – or maybe it was just the speed in which he’d said it?

Lan Xichen started laughing.

“This is fine,” he said, wiping his eyes. “It’s just so much better than – yes, this is fine.”

Nie Huaisang was glad he agreed.

It meant the epic getting-together scheme that he’d had half-planned in the back of his mind in the event Lan Xichen said no could be safely shelved for another day.

Victory!

#mdzs #nie huaisang #nie mingjue #lan xichen #jin guangyao #nieyao #xisang #my fic #my fics #letitdevour #intriuging

[of-house-atreides]

This article is breaking my brain

Have you read this article ?

TW: mentions of suicide and also I’m an angry petty bitch

Yes I know this article is from like three weeks ago but I just found it... and I have things to say.

I swear I can’t handle this anymore...

“But today, Loki steps out of his brother’s shadow”... to step in another one. It be the TVA or Sylvie, just... take your pick.

“resuming his role as the God of Mischief” um where? when?

The comedy part is debatable but fine, whatever... I must have missed the noir crime-thriller bit maybe it was between two scenes of Loki getting his ass kicked by literally everyone in this show.

Yeah you forgot that end-credit scene showing Loki alive and well in IW/Endgame.

And no, alternate/variant Loki doesn’t count, he’s not the same person/character.

Because of course when you think of Loki you instantly think his story should take place in a “bureaucratic nightmare” -

And why not hire competent experienced people for Multiverse of Madness and Loki? Is this Marvel’s way of telling us they don’t really care about these projects?

Kevin really said “no experienced writers on this project, let’s just hire whoever” - or maybe it’s a budget thing? Less experience means less zeros on the pay checks?

Wow, ok.

So not a fan of the movies nor a fan of the character, just a fan of the genre, that explains a lot...

“what was really important to me was stripping away all the fantastical elements” ... ?? I’m sorry?? What?? So removing all the fantastical elements from a show titled after who is supposed to be the main character who is a GOD and a prince from another realm/planet was what was important?? The Trickster God of Mischief, magic wielder, master of illusions NEEDED to be stripped from his FANTASTICAL ELEMENTS???

ffs

“find the heart of this story” - is the heart of this story Loki becoming best friends with his (mental and physical) torturer after what? 2 days? Was it falling in love with the ‘superior’ version of himself after only 13 hours together? I’m still looking for the heart of this story.

“what is the relatable message at the center?” - well apparently it’s ‘you can be a God and a warrior with magical powers but still get your ass kicked by literally everyone all the time and never use your strength and skills to fight back’. Or it’s the power of love, idk -

Oh wait, is it falling in love with the female version of himself? For a weird ‘love yourself’ metaphor? That must be it.

Or maybe it’s jet skis.

Ah yes, the ‘you can be good, actually’ message of this series that is so subtly presented to us...

They really missed the whole fucking point of Loki.

They missed it so bad they made him call himself a narcissist (which he isn’t btw).

For the record, Loki is a prince of Asgard who learnt one day he was adopted and in fact taken from one of Asgard’s worst enemies, the King of the Jotuns, aka Frost Giants “the monsters parents tell their children about at night”. He found out he was not only adopted but also abducted and not out of love. He feels not only betrayed but he thinks he understands now why Odin always favoured Thor and why he’d never have the same love from Odin that Thor has had his whole life. He thinks of himself as a monster and wants to be worthy of Odin’s love. So he tries to get it. And sure, he doesn’t do it in the best way, and yes, he is the villain of that story. But Loki isn’t a villain. He doesn’t like to make people suffer, he did it out of pain, out of hurt. The events in Avengers was after he was thoroughly tortured and coerced by Thanos to invade Earth. There is even a moment in the end when Thor asks him if he thinks this ‘madness would stop under his rule’ (or something along those lines) and he looks unsure and regretful. But due to the fear of Thanos and insecurity about himself (love is weakness or whatever) he keeps going. He redeems himself in Dark World, again in Ragnarok and yet again in IW and he was thrown in the trash for it.

Yes, Loki’s story is complex, but it really isn’t that complex... So maybe Loki is a “scared little boy” but his way of acting out makes sense and there’s a legitimate reason for it that was not explored in the show. And his backstory is probably what she called the “bells and the whistles”... 

“we literally delete his universe” - and apparently you deleted his personality too

“it’s a story of reinvention ... can Loki find goodness in himself?” - again, you’re missing the point. Loki is insecure, but not about his ability to do what’s right, but about whether or not he is worthy of love! Finding goodness within himself comes AFTER!

“Loki’s journey, to me, is really about acceptance of himself” - several questions here, um, first, what about himself does he need to accept? That he’s a Jotun? The show never mentions it. That he’s done bad shit and should forgive himself for it? Give him a reason to. Self-love doesn’t come after being mentally and physically tortured by some guy who acts like he’s your best friend after 2 days of working together and being yelled out that “he can be anyone he wants, even something good”.

Show, don’t tell, isn’t that the point of your job?? The job you begged for??

Loki’s journey should have been about self-love and no, falling in love with the female version of yourself (who keeps saying they have nothing in common (because they don’t!)) doesn’t count!

“a more mature and darker path” ...

well this is interesting... was making Loki a clown and the butt of every joke part of making the show mature and dark? Were the terrible attempts at humour? Him being beaten up every two seconds? Having him say lines he’d never say in a million years just to be funny but since it’s out of character for him it fails completely? Was making him incompetent and a complete idiot part of that attempt of making the show mature and dark?

Is that why there’s no magic? You cut off the magician so your show would be more “mature and dark”?

Having him cry every episode doesn’t make your show mature and dark.

Loki from Thor, Avengers, the Dark World and even IW is mature and dark. Your Loki from your series is just a pathetic clown.

“don’t give viewers the story they are expecting” - I personally wasn’t expecting any story, I just wanted Loki, you know, in this Loki series, supposedly all about Loki, and you guys couldn’t even do that.

So this is the author of the article speaking here, I’m guessing, and I think they’re giving a summary of the show so far, so let’s break this down:

“This is Loki as we’ve never seen him before” - I 100% agree -

“Stripped of his self-proclaimed majesty” - ok, first of all, Loki is a prince, that’s a fact, he didn’t make that up, and for the few years he was King of Asgard disguised as Odin, he seemingly did a great job, so...

“but with his ego still intact” - ah, yes, his ego, you know, because he’s such a narcissist... oh wait -

yes he has an ego, but he has a regal one, not misplaced entirely either - his ego in the show is basically him underestimating the TVA and Mobius (as well as the Time Keepers) - his ego is him getting offended by the variant: the ‘superior Loki’ - his ego in the show is used as a weapon to humiliate and belittle him.

“he faces consequences he never thought could happen to such a supreme being as himself” - he literally tried to k*ll himself in the first Thor - literally a result of his own actions - when he returned to Asgard in Dark World, he didn’t try to pretend he hadn’t fucked up. He didn’t try to hide what he had done (he tries to deny to Mobius in episode 2 that he was manipulating them at the fair) - he sacrifices himself in IW... but sure, Loki from the series is indeed surprised that he is powerless (even when he doesn’t need to/shouldn’t be)

“there is a lot of humour ... he is taken down a few pegs by the TVA” ... he is humiliated by the TVA - definitely not what we were expecting, I’ll give you that.

“sentenced to a lifetime of bureaucracy” - definitely did not expect that either

and here comes my favorite quote: “it’s a sad Loki without any mischief”

yes - yes - yes

that is a good summary of this goddamn show, a sad, pathetic, powerless Loki without any personality 

“fallen God” - yeah that’s definitely not what I was expecting either from the Loki series so good job on subverting expectations I guess...

“who is going to win out in this match between them?”

there is no match - Loki is powerless - he’s been turned into a pathetic docile harmless wet dog - Mobius literally mentally (episode 1 and 4) and physically (episode 4) tortures him, both time in an attempt to have Loki do his bidding - Loki is the dog and Mobius is the master - even when Loki ‘tries’ to manipulate him it fails because he’s underestimating them (by overestimating himself) - he uses obvious techniques to manipulate the TVA (episode 2) and nobody buys it because it’s not subtle at all! Loki is smarter than that, he is a TRICKSTER GOD FFS!

“there is an interesting dynamic between them that maybe you haven’t seen with Loki in the Marvel movies” - yeah, maybe there’s a reason for that... like... he wouldn’t... submit so easily... he’d be wary, cautious, cunning... he’d be... himself...

Sans déconner ?

It’s like whoever wrote the series didn’t actually know shit about Loki... like that wasn’t fucking obvious...

And those lectures were apparently done after the script was written so... again, no surprise there... we can see that

Well...

“we wanted the show to be imbued with mischief” vs “sad Loki without any mischief” choose your fighter

“Loki has this very sensitive, damaged, broken heart with an enormous capacity to feel emotion on the biggest scale.”

Are surprised that only Tom so far has portrayed and talked about Loki accurately?

“loneliness, sadness, anger and grief and loss”

I love this man.

I do wonder what Mr. Branagh thinks of the show...

I’m of the people who see a vulnerability beneath those layers of charm and playfulness. I love Loki because he’s smart and cunning and regal, and elegant and sophisticated. I love him cause at the end of the day, he just wants to be loved, and he deserves to be loved.

And in the end, the only Loki I can’t stand is the one from the series.

#loki negativity #Loki #loki series #review #anti Loki

[aintitfierce]

Gimme the S flowers for Vanya please?

o | Accepting

sage :   what is your muse’s legacy ? what do they want to be remembered for   &   what might they actually be remembered for ?

jckdwo oH this is kind of a spoiler for the fic he's from, actually, but atm he definitely has a certain legacy as something of an annoyingly powerful pest lmao. like if someone gave a cockroach divine abilities hhh

he is Extremely Not Pleased with this state of affairs, and it's part of what has led him to have such an interest in grandmother (or, to be specific, the book she's been entrusted with, in which every oostali creature and resident is recorded). he thinks that if he could get his hands on that book and edit his own entry in it, it will somehow fix his reputation. he also most likely had a not entirely amiable relationship with the mortal who originally created and wrote the book, so i'm certain there's a sense of petty revenge in there, too lmao

he has no real desire to be seen as grande, or awe-inspiring, or even to be acknowledged for the relatively powerful and ancient creature he is, but he can't stand being collectively thought of as a pest or a swindler of some kind thinking emoji

also, according to grandmother, the mortal also decided to describe vanya as ugly or ghastly-looking, which she also surmises is the real reason he wants to edit the book

salvia :   is your muse possessive over people or things that matter a lot to them ? how do they express that possessiveness ,   or lack thereof ?

people, generally not (particularly since outside of the various children he's 'adopted' over the years and to some degree even them, most of his interest in other people amounts to kind of a fleeting and superficial curiosity). he is also immortal, and he has seen his share of loved ones, no matter how shallow that love was, come and go

that said, he does tend to be stingy when it comes to objects that he's claimed as his own, ha. whether it's something as small as a friendless sock or something far more Significant, if he's decided it's now his, it's going to take a lot of coercing and bribing to get him to let go of it lmao

and this possessiveness would be hard to miss, bc he’s typically a very outwardly expressive creature-- hugging his Treasure close to him, doggedly moving it out of other people’s reach, directing very injured and sulky looks at them if they manage to take it lmao

he would also readily verbally clarify that this object is now His

snapdragon :   is your muse merciful ? why or why not ?

he’s honestly not often put in the position to decide one way or the other, as he’s spent the vast majority of his life kind of just. doing his own thing away from mortals and generally only interacting with them in a passing manner. but i do imagine that he tends to lean more toward merciful, albeit not entirely purposefully

he has no strong feelings toward either option, and while killing a mortal is not something he’d lose sleep over, per se, it’s also not something he’s altogether drawn to, and he gains no enjoyment or sense of purpose from doing so. as mentioned above, he doesn’t really care to be legitimately worshiped or acknowledged as something Powerful and Grande. he is much more concerned with being thought of as easy on the eyes jfifewi he’s also easily won over with Things which pertain to his interests-- pretty rocks, old books, broken crayons, so on and so forth

in most cases, as well, he has a very tenuous grasp on the idea of certain acts of violence and cruelty and other crimes as being deserving of some kind of punishment just on principle alone. bc of that, he wouldn’t be driven to feel any sort of obligation to withhold mercy were he to for some reason be put into the position of deciding a criminal’s fate or something

all that said, i could see him feeling compelled to mete out some kind of punishment were this less-than-admirable person to target sirree, not out of a sense that to do so is immoral but bc to do so is. well. mean to sirree fjiefpa

aaaand there were two more but g o d i’ve had this ask drafted for so long now with no idea how to answer them so i’m just. doing these three rip forgive me

#cursedfortune #;answered by masha #;headcanons

[lokigodofaces]

(mini) thoughts on loki episode four: the nexus event

under cut for your convenience

mainly about Renslayer, Kang, and just other things I deem important

there is no villain now. i don't think Renslayer will be the main villain. so this could lead to Kang the Conqueror.

in the comics, Renslayer is a love interest to Kang. she isn't interested in him, and Kang starts killing people because of it. i wonder if we are seeing some version of that. that could be why Renslayer became a judge after losing Sylvie, she was unfairly promoted so that Kang could keep a better eye out for her.

this would be a horribly abusive thing going on & i hope marvel doesn't try to be abuse apologists for that, but i don't have much hope.

if Kang is the villain, why is he doing this? Kang loves the multiverse, he wants to conquer all of them.

i think the TVA is a ploy to get rid of branches and people in them that are a threat to his reign.

lets look at Loki, for example. Loki is wicked powerful. Loki is someone with the potential to learn about Kang, more so than, say, Steve Rogers. Kang does not want Loki to know what is happening because Loki would try to stop him.

in addition, Kang knows the dangers of Loki and Thor being cooperative. we all watched TDW and TR, we know that they're able to do a lot while working together, even use Ragnarok to defeat the Goddess of Death. i think this is why in the "sacred timeline," Thor and Loki are pitted against each other, and Odin and Frigga are the way they are. because that depowers an entire family that is very powerful and could maybe stop Kang.

so why was Sylvie arrested when she was? i think it was that Odin had just told her she was adopted (something drastically important considering how things went for the main Loki). i don't think the minutemen could handle Odin, so they waited until Sylvie was alone.

this explains why Sylvie was able to go years without being pruned because, if the TVA's rules are as they seem, Odin and Frigga should've created a branch timeline when Sylvie was conceived and did not have the chromosomes necessary for a male child. i don't think Kang cares if there are branch timelines. i think he cares when there are threats. once Sylvie was told about her heritage, she becomes that much more of a threat and has to be eliminated.

this is why powerful characters have crap happen to them. Kang chose to have a multiverse of Lokis that go through heck in their lives. they chose Lokis to have self-esteem issues, to have contention with Thors, to not have confidence, to go through horrible things. Kang chose to have a universe that had the first person to use all infinity stones insane and not want to use them to check out how the universe works (revealing Kang). a universe where most of the really powerful characters died in the Snap, a way to control them, to take away five years where they could do something. think about it: Strange and Wanda die in the Snap, Loki is killed before that, and this drives Thor to depression. the four most powerful people (in my mind) are taken out, not in a position to cause problems.

what about every other variant? i don't think the TVA knows about all this. if anyone does, it would be Renslayer, but even then i'm not sure. i think that the technology is set up to detect enough nexus events Kang couldn't care about so that the TVA seems legitimate, but really it is impossible for the TVA to prune every branch.

(also i think pruned people generally go to a place where the Time Keepers "create" them, a way to get free labor. so pruning regular people is to Kang advantage to keep a workforce to hunt down the powerful people he fears)

they also made a big deal about Lokis not dying in this ep, so i think that's why pruning and entire timeline is done. trying to kill Loki is inefficient, we all know that. but get rid of the timeline and force them through the TVA? then everything will probably be alright for the story Kang wants.

possibly Loki is in a limbo pocket dimension sort of place with all the Lokis. and Mobius? i theorize pruned TVA agents go to limbo instead of being remade because they have to deal with people remembering them and if they rebelled once, whose to say the won't again? & we know Mobius will show up again driving a car by the Sphinx and Stonehenge (or something similar? can't quite tell what that structure was), so that's how i think it is, but who knows.

this explains how the multiverse HAS BEEN CONFIRMED SINCE DOCTOR STRANGE. the Ancient One literally talked about the "vast multiverse" when she met Stephen. i trust her when it comes to this stuff, more than i do the TVA. so i think there is a multiverse, it is just being selected by Kang to be the least threatening to him.

also Mobius said the TVA deals with a lot of Loki variants, so that adds to this.

as for apocalypses, if we look at real life physics (many worlds theory) hiding in apocalypses does make a new universe. stepping on the wrong leaf in an apocalypse makes a new universe. any choice anyone or anything makes creates a new universe. but Kang is fine with that. because anything in an apocalypse that would be a threat to him is destroyed. i'm jumping into Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for an example. Talbot was powerful as Graviton. i don't know, maybe he would have been threatening to Kang. but in the timeline where he destroyed Earth, he was destroyed as well. so why would Kang care if he attacked Los Angeles instead of Chicago? he wouldn't! as long as Talbot died, there is no threat because he is dead regardless. but, if Talbot had left, if he had survived, then maybe the TVA would've come after him (oh my gosh those poor minutemen that would be hard).

& i don't think Loki falling for himself is the reason behind the nexus event. i think that it is because he made an actual connection with someone for once. and that is important to him being able to heal and to have self love and all those good things. & that is so much more dangerous for Kang.

again, think about it, bad stuff always happens to the most powerful characters of the MCU. Loki, Thor, Stephen, Wanda, Carol, (since i'm into aos), Daisy, Ruby, Talbot, they all had bad things happen to them. things that have repeatedly knocked them down/killed them. they've grown from these things, yes. but they all have traumas they have to work through, things that are protecting Kang. out of all of them, i'd say Loki probably had it the worst. and he is definitely a threat to Kang, but only if he believes he is.

also, if the TVA is a bunch of BS, it means AoS is there! maybe a different universe after all the time travel hijinks they have, but there!

also, since Wanda is a nexus being, i don't know how much the TVA/Kang can control her since she is detached from reality.

i kept talking about Kang, but he's the guy i think would make the most sense. it could be King Loki or He Who Remains or someone else, but i think the fear of Loki is still there.

#loki (2021) #loki (2021) spoilers #loki (2021) review #loki laufeyson #tva loki #sylvie laufeydottir #ravonna renslayer #kang the conqueror #mobius m mobius #agents of s.h.i.e.l.d. (2013 2020)

[searching-for-arcadia]

Sea-Hearts by Margo Lanagan & Vita Nostra by Maryna and Serhiy Dyachenko

torchwood fanfic asks

9. AUs? what kind?

Edits aren’t quite responsive since they’re not quite AUs that I’d say I gravitate towards, but more AUs I’d love to see people’s take on (I’ll actually answer the question below).

First, Gwen as selkie (and not the Torchwood selkie which seems to be an opposite selkie) isn’t something I’ve seen done (though if you know of a fic that has done this, please send it my way!). There is something about the soulfulness of her eyes that says selkie to me. A little snippet of something for flavor:

Gwen loved Rhys. He was a much kinder man than the man whole stole her from the sea. He loved her because he loved her, not because he owned her. That was more than many mortal men could boast.

Second, I would love to see a Torchwood/Vita Nostra fusion where Tosh was recruited to the Institute of Special Technologies and goes through the terrifying transformation and education we witness in the novel, but ultimately rejects her place and her power. She retains her brilliance but is always a little afraid from that point on of what she is capable of of. A little snippet of flavor:

She built the sonic modulator with the same sick feeling in her stomach that she had carried with her when she first joined the Institute of Special Technologies. She remembered when she sleep deprivation was driving her to madness and incoherence; she remembered when her studies suffered and her mother was in a near fatal automobile accident. A reminder, her mentor had said, and an incentive to study harder. She remembered the horrible accidents that befell all her classmate’s family members (broken bones, heart attacks, just-too-coincidental deaths); remembered that they were all taken hostage, their families held as ransom or collateral, until the lessons overtook their senses and they fell into the heady trap of being powerful. She was careful, while building the sonic modulator, to not become too interested, to not let her sense of capability outstrip her sense of fear. She would not forget how to be human twice.

And to actually answer the questions. YES, I love AUs. Excluding my already professed love of Chosen One!Ianto and my continual insistence that everybody, Suzie included, should live, here are some of my favorite AUs (in general, I love things that decrease the stakes for everyone involved because these days I just want to be coddled and comforted):

1. Time Lord Tosh or Ianto: I just think Time Lord Tosh makes a whole lot of sense and that she would make a fantastic companion to the Doctor (regardless of whether she’s human or a Time Lord, so that’s another AU for you, Companion!Tosh).  And of course, I love the different ways that people tackle Ianto and Jack after Ianto regains his Time Lord senses (Does he get over it by sheer force of will/love? Does Jack’s fixedness not bother him at all? Does he choose to live as a human because he can’t bear to be with Jack as a Time Lord and he also can’t bear to be without him?).

2. The Team in Boeshane: I love the idea of the whole team being taken by the Rift and dropped off in Boeshane, either with or without Jack and while past-Jack is there or not. I just love Jack’s mother taking members of the team in.

3. Harry Potter AUs: I think that it’s our prerogative to pry this universe out of J.K. Rowling’s hands, take the interesting bits, and then tell better stories in it. I headcanon Ianto as a Slytherin, Tosh as a Ravenclaw, Gwen as a Gryffindor, Owen as a Hufflepuff, and Jack as a Hufflepuff, Gryffindor, or Slytherin (depending on what happened to his family life prior to his sorting; if there are no incidents, Hufflepuff; if there was an incident with Gray, but his parent(s) didn’t reject him, Gryffindor; if there was an incident with Gray and he has a fraught or non-existent relationship with his parent(s), Slytherin).

4. Daemons AUs: I especially love Daemon AUs that keep the touching taboo and think about how the existence of daemons would impact modern life. I think that the existence of daemons also has interesting ramifications for Suzie and Ianto. Does Suzie persist with the glove even though it can’t bring back a person’s daemon? I think you could characterize her either way. Does Lisa retain her daemon despite her partial conversion? I tend to think so and that the persistence of her daemon is the reason why Ianto doesn’t give up; when her daemon disappears is when he knows its over even if he can’t accept it yet.  I don’t have a lot of defined thoughts about the daemons I’d give the team except that usually, I think of Suzie with a bird, Ianto with a scavenger, and Gwen with a canine. Jack, Tosh, and Owen are more variable in my head. I would also love to see broader HDM AUs that take more of the universe than just the existence of daemons (give me witches and the science of dust).

5. Coffee Shop AUs: Kinda. I’ve never really been particularly into Coffee Shop AUs specifically, though I do love them in the general way that I love fluffy Torchwood-doesn’t-exist AUs (Jack is a traveling artist and Ianto his muse, Gwen is a legitimate psychic who consults with law enforcement, Rhys and Ianto run a restaurant together, Owen as the A&E doctor who treats Tosh after a welding accident, Jack is a sci-fi author and Ianto writes mysteries; the possibilities are endless!), but now I’m a bit of a coffee snob (this happened independent of Torchwood; I developed my coffee habit and snobbery years after watching Torchwood) and know people who roast coffee, so I just want to see more coffee geekery. I do wonder how blasphemous it would be to update Ianto’s coffee tastes to be more in line with third wave coffee roasting preferences/innovations (which was certainly alive and well in the 2000s, especially in certain cities, but hadn’t seemed to hit Cardiff yet).

6. Role Reversal AUs: For when I feel like keeping the stakes the same, I love AUs that put Ianto in charge of Torchwood Three by whatever twist of fate you’d like with Jack working under him. Sometimes he’s immortal (so he takes on Jack’s backstory minus the coming from the future bit), sometimes he’s not (he gets put into power before or after Canary Wharf, though after seems most likely). Sometimes Jack grew up on Earth (either because his entire backstory has been changed or he was taken by the Rift as a child) and sometimes he didn’t (he can still be immortal or he can be a stranded Time Agent/Time Agent in hiding).

7. Dogs AU: Honestly I can’t explain myself. It’s completely silly and I love it. I don’t know if I’ve seen one of these in the Torchwood fandom, but AU where the whole cast are dogs and they meet at a dog park or their humans are neighbors. Jack is a retired military dog. Ianto spent some time as a street dog, was rescued, then there was some incident that put him back on the street, before being adopted (possible by Jack’s human(s)). Gwen is a former police dog that was pulled to join an experimental medical program and she now spends her days sniffing out neurodegenerative diseases. Owen is a therapy dog; his humans don’t get it because he hates strangers, but it’s like he’s a different dog around those in need. Tosh is a scarily intelligent dog who is part of the cohort of animals that is being taught how to communicate using a speech board.

#torchwood #torchwood edits #my edits #gwen cooper #toshiko sato #torchwood fanfic asks #au ideas #i feel like i kinda covered this #when answering the trope question #but i do really like creature ianto fics #werewolf vampire siren etc #what if both ianto and gwen #were selkies with stolen skins #they'd probably gravitate #towards each other #and mourn and yearn together #imagine rhys and jack #helping them find their skins #and sometimes going down to the beach #together in the hopes #of catching a glimpse #of their former lovers

[tbctbloggers]

ICT Thoughts

The latest session we’ve had for ICT was a super interesting one. Not just in the sense I actually paid attention but also in that almost everything we covered seemed so familiar to me. 

The concepts that we looked at were things I’d never actually heard of before, But when their details were explained I was shocked to discover these were essentially paraphrased versions of principles I’d learned in high school and during my gap year as methods for success.

The 5 Principles of Effectual Logic especially caught my attention. Through my time playing video games at a professional level I quickly learned the “Lemonade” principle as being active, vigilant and adaptable were the key improvements I needed to make to reach the top level.

I’m essentially just gonna write a huge catch-up on some points in my life that are pretty heavily linked with the principles of effectual logic just to nail these points in my head. If anyone reads this monster I hope you get something out of it.

In my last couple years of high school I went through the IB DP, which is one of the toughest school systems in the world. They just throw too much at you for a person who is highly unorganized like me to deal with. As a result I inevitably got overwhelmed and started to sink into a pretty heavy depression. While that sucked and I didn’t get much done I wasn’t just sliding right down the spiral of depression going nowhere. While feeling like crap all the time I was thinking of methods to not feel overwhelmed and push myself to start getting things done. Eventually after a couple months of being an unproductive sap something clicked and I’d essentially taken on the “Pilot in the Plane” principle of focusing on what’s under my control and taking actions based on that. As a result I not only clawed my way out of my depression I also went on to pass the IB with a result higher than the predictions made the year prior during my slump. 

During the essentially forced gap year between my graduation in May and joining this course a couple months ago I figured I’d spend most of my time learning methods and approaches to success as an adult. I figured that while high school got me a few good skills that I’ll be able to take advantage of (like writing this stuff) I still had a huge amount I’d yet to learn that would be vital for my growth and success as an adult. I began by branching off things I’ve already enjoyed such as Psychology and video games. Though as useful as many of the things I’d learned from these areas have been I needed to go somewhere completely unexplored to learn some new lessons and just decided look at a comedy group I’d never really learned much about before.

I’m beating around the bush here but I purchased a subscription to the gumroad (essentially a patreon) of Sam Hyde. An American Comedian and co-founder of the comedy group Million Dollar Extreme. Sam’s a very controversial figure to say the least and I wouldn’t recommend finding out about him in any other way than his incredible anti-futurist mockery TEDx Talk where he managed to con his way into a legitimate TEDx Talk event and spouted complete nonsense and buzzwords for 19 minutes while holding in laughter. Sam Hyde and MDE went on to produce a TV show on Adult Swim which ran for 1 incredibly successful season before being “cancelled” over stupid political allegations.

During this time and for a very long while after Sam was producing videos in a series on his youtube channel called “HydeWars” where he told stories and shared lessons he’d learned over the years that he thought were worth hearing. I subscribed to the gumroad after seeing edited clips from these episodes on youtube where the gumroad boasted having unedited full hour long videos of the “wisdom” he was sharing. 

During my MIQ here in NZ I went through all of the hydewars episodes and essentially studied them to pick out the nuggets of info that I could apply to myself and my approach to things. One of the most important messages that he gave was EXACTLY the Crazy-Quit Principle of effectual logic. Find and connect with people who you KNOW can be trusted, work hard and feel nice to be around.

I’ve been putting that principle to work quite a bit so far making a very clear partnership with Jordan. He’s someone who’s very clearly flawed, but makes up for it by being hard working, reliable and fun to be around. Another lesson I learned from Sam’s videos is that if you find someone who fills a gap that you suck at and work with them, you should fill a gap that they refuse to. I’ve been doing that by focusing on the communication side of things with Jordan, along with figuring out logistics, playing the devils advocate and more general management work where necessary. So far it’s been working out pretty well and I hope that as we develop further the balance of work begins to even out more as my value in the group defines itself a little clearer than it is now. 

The main problem I see I’ve been running into is that while I’m very good at using the tools I’m familiar with I tend to disregard them if I’m told to set a goal of work that needs to be done. When I’m given a problem and some tools I become extremely crafty and resourceful, but when I’m given a problem AND told to come up with a solution I disregard the “Bird in Hand” principle and start going for pure abductive thinking which results in poorly executed creative work. 

One positive side of this is that Jordan from my observation adopts the “Bird in Hand” principle and Max my other Studio group member is very concerned with the “Affordable Loss” principle, so with our powers combined we do a pretty damn good job at solving problems and working creatively. Although we’re still bound to crumble to pieces during our work we’re very adept at putting things back together, and not necessarily the way they were before, but instead a way that works better for what we want to do.

I apologize Ricardo for not including any questions, but I’m still pretty happy with how this turned out. Also if dates save on posts just ignore this one, just a bit of the old late night jolt of inspiration.

#ctec502 #ctec501

[erekiosuncreativeideas]

Reliving An Old Nightmare - Chapter 24

<= Chapter 23

Summary : Things don't go as planned. Also available on AO3 : https://archiveofourown.org/works/22337299/chapters/59020252

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New chapter, yay ! [WARNING: the third and last drawing is gory]

THIS CHAPTER HAS AN AUDIO FILE ! I commissioned Puyo-Proto again, and he did an AMAZING JOB ! Please check his Twitter, he's so talented !! (Here : https://twitter.com/Puyo_Proto) Thank you so much for voicing a part of this dialogue !

YOU CAN LISTEN TO IT HERE !

I hope you'll like this chapter :) Happy reading !

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Chapter 24

-“Oh, it’s so good to be back!” The voice coming from their enemy brought back Snatcher to reality: this was it. The moment he had been waiting for so long. The evil spirit was almost out of the breach as Vanessa launched another one of her ice attacks in his direction. The stranger avoided it by very little and managed to enter the rift, cackling threateningly as he did so.

Something felt very wrong about the way this guy laughed, thought Snatcher couldn’t put his finger on it. And it certainly wasn’t the time for this kind of thoughts.

Vanessa didn’t wait long to throw another attack, defiantly adopting an aggressive attitude against their common enemy, who kept dodging all of her attempts at hurting him. The stranger floated around, avoiding each ice pillar coming out of the floor with grace, all while laughing maniacally at the trio.

This Moonjumper guy was mocking them and certainly didn’t see them as a serious threat to his existence. Normally, this would enrage the shade more than enough, but in this particular scenario… This was extremely dangerous, because it meant their opponent was much more powerful than them. Plus, the latter had a Time Piece in his possession, which would definitely play a part in their fight.

What would happen if this guy used it to his advantage? The kid probably knew the answer, but the time wasn’t appropriate for questions. Now was the time to fight.

The other snickered, while Vanessa’s frustration intensified. She always missed her attacks and the ghost could see her powers corrupting her body more and more. Her attacks were becoming messier, meddled and less coordinated. If she continued like that, not only was she going to get consumed again by her powers, but she would most likely wear herself out. Considering the fact that she was the only one able to pit herself against this Moonjumper, this was not a good thing. The Queen needed to snap out of it and to stop letting herself be taunted by this guy. This was exactly what this spirit was trying to do!

Apparently, the kid on his side came to the same conclusion as him, though she reacted in a completely different way than Snatcher would. Without his powers, the ghost felt useless and quite literally harmless against an enemy able to resist Vanessa’s attacks. Trying to hurt this monster would likely result in him being thrown away or, in the worst-case scenario, getting killed. Thus, charging this opponent in that meat sack of a body was not something strategic, at least not if he wanted to attack the other physically. He didn’t even have a weapon!

But, of course, the hatted brat didn’t think. No, she just rushed into things without thinking about all the possible outcomes!

The little girl exchanged her dweller mask for her alchemist hat and then started to run to the crate she had broken earlier, grabbing one of the damaged planks on the ground. She took a good hold of it as she charged this Moonjumper while the latter was still busy dealing with Vanessa.

Fuelled by a feeling of panic, the ghost extended his hand towards the child, letting a “no!” out of his lips. But the moment his voice came out of his mouth, he deeply regretted it: their enemy hadn’t actually seen the kid approaching him but, now that Snatcher had voiced his worry aloud, the other spirit looked in the child’s direction and spotted her attempts at hurting him.

The shade wished he could have kept his mouth shut. Vanessa abruptly realizing how close the kid was to their enemy and was stopped in her tracks, as she was about to throw another attack. She had already risked hurting the hatted child before and surely didn’t want to do it again, but this had been a mistake too.

It simply gave the other a chance to attack as well.

A sickening smile appeared on their opponent’s strange face, as his crazed stare was fixed on the little girl, who had lifted her weapon above her head to hit him. Red strings suddenly appeared from the tips of the other spirit’s fingers and launched themselves in the kid’s direction. They moved in the air quickly, almost too quickly for Snatcher’s stare to follow them. However, before the child was able to dodge or defend herself, the red strings tied themselves around her small body, immediately immobilizing her and bringing her attack to an abrupt stop. The plank she was holding fell back on the ground.

-“Well, well, well, what do we have here?” cooed the evil spirit with a dark smile.

Vanessa frowned at his tone and tried to attack him once again before stopping herself almost instantly when this Moonjumper pulled the child just in front of him, where the spikes would have hurt him if the Queen hadn’t hold herself back. The child let out a shriek and closed her eyes as the ice pillars almost hit her. She was unable to do anything else, much too tied up to move. Fear had suddenly replaced her determination as she was now completely harmless and powerless.

This guy was using the brat as a hostage. The thought made the shade absolutely livid. No one could dare to hurt that hatted brat, he was the only one. The ghost felt heat radiating from his body as he gave the other spirit a death glare.

-“You let go of her right now,” he started with a dark and threatening tone, “and maybe I’ll consider giving you a merciful death.”

The threat only made the other giggle cruelly. He pulled on the red strings with one hand, making them squeeze the brat tighter, as if he was taunting him. His victim winced from the sudden pain, not without struggling. But no matter how hard she was trying to get free, the strings only seemed to squeeze her more.

-“Is that so?” bragged Moonjumper: “And how are you going to attack me? You may look like your old form, though you are just as harmless to me than a regular and common human.”

He used his free hand to tie more strings around the hatted brat, this time around her neck. Terror appeared on the kid’s face as breathing was getting difficult for her.

Apart from Vanessa, the shade had never wanted to kill someone so badly. However, seeing how much in danger the kid was, he remained motionless and silent as their opponent started talking again, turning towards Vanessa:

-“As for you… I would not try to do anything if I were in your shoes,” he paused and continued, much more serious: “Unless you want another child to die because of you.”

The remark made the woman grow pale instantly and she lowered her black hands back to her hips, unable to do anything else. The ghost saw her glancing in his direction, probably wondering if she should try to attack the other and ignore the latter’s threat, but Snatcher glared at her in response. They would not take a risk like this one. Hurting the kid was not part of his plan of the day.

-“Good, good,” cooed this Moonjumper, sarcastically, sending more red strings in Vanessa’s direction. The strings tied her up before she was able to dodge them, keeping her in place: “Now, kneel,” ordered the evil spirit.

The woman hesitated, glaring at him fiercely. However, when the latter started to pull on the red strings on the little girl’s neck, Snatcher’s voice echoed in the room:

-“Do as he says!”

There was too much despair in his intonation for his taste but he couldn’t care less at the moment. The kid’s life was in danger and if Vanessa had to kneel to save her, then he would scream at her to do so. The Queen glanced at him and eventually complied, while the shade let out a sigh of relief when their enemy gave the child more slack.

Why would anyone want to murder them anyway? This made no sense! They didn’t know that guy!

-“Why are you doing this?” interrogated Snatcher, trying his best to sound calm, even if he definitely wasn’t.

The question seemed to take the other spirit aback as he simply stared at Snatcher in bewilderment for a few seconds. Why? This was a perfectly legitimate question! Who in their right mind would not ask that if they were in this particular situation?

Their enemy tilted his head in pure confusion and then a smile appeared on his lips. Slowly, his expression started to change, going from surprise to hilarity, and he then started to laugh. If his hands weren’t busy to keep the child in place, the other would have certainly clenched his sides from how much he was laughing.

This laugh, why did this laugh bother Snatcher so much?

It was now his turn to be confused and the trio couldn’t help but watch the scene before them, completely powerless. The child was glancing between the monster holding her as a hostage and her two adult companions, not knowing what to do or what to think at all.

The other spirit’s laugh ended darkly as he stared back at Snatcher, eyes full of hatred:

-“Oh, of course, you wouldn’t recognize me, how silly of me,” he growled as he squeezed the strings around the child even more, making her whine and close her eyes from the pain. The ghost was so going to murder this guy, slowly, making him suffer as long as possible.

However, the words took Snatcher aback: what did the other mean? Snatcher had never met another spirit like this so-called Moonjumper before! His frustration intensified, though he managed to keep his mouth shut, not forgetting that his interlocutor could very well snap the child’s neck if he wanted to.

-“Well, it is not really surprising, I suppose,” continued the monster, his cruel smile widening: “Using the Time Piece had some…Special effects on my vessel. It seems now that I am both dead and alive at the same time,” he explained, in the same tone someone would use to talk about the weather: “My appearance is quite different now because of that. A shame, truly.”

-“Listen,” protested the shade, careful not to sound too aggressive and kept going: “I have no idea who you are.” It certainly couldn’t be someone who died after one of his contracts, since he always ate their soul afterwards. Maybe an acquaintance of one of his victims? Yet, it didn’t make much sense as his interlocutor seemed to know him personally.

The ghost was not lying when he said he didn’t know this guy.

-“Oh, I know you don’t,” replied the latter cynically: “You never even knew I existed in the first place.”

-“So who are you?!” snapped the shade, unable to stay quiet anymore. He just wanted answers! He glared at his opponent as he kept talking, still watching the child carefully, hoping nothing would happen to her because of his attitude: “Why would you go through the trouble of recreating a whole version of our past just to kill us in the end? We don’t even know you!”

The evil spirit glared back at him but didn’t hurt the brat again, thankfully. Instead, he just smiled wickedly and tilted his head as he finally gave an answer to the question the trio waited for:

-“I am you.”

This was definitely not the answer Snatcher was expecting. From the look on his companions’ face, they didn’t expect that kind of answer either. Apparently, their reaction must have been pretty visible because this Moonjumper giggled and corrected himself:

-“Or, well, I used to,” he explained, then continued with a darker intonation: “Fortunately, I have nothing to do with you anymore.”

And when he said those last words, the stranger showed his left hand, as if to prove a point. For a few seconds, Snatcher didn’t know what to look at exactly, until he spotted something very special: a ring on his ring finger, a golden jewel on which could be seen a damaged ruby. Immediately, Snatcher’s heart sunk in his chest: he knew that ring. Even from afar, the shade could recognize what this ring was.

This was his old engagement ring. The one he used to have when he was alive. The one he had when he woke up in that forest. The same one he died with, so many years ago.

The shade’s eyes widened as everything started to make sense: the clothes this “Moonjumper” was wearing, his claims, the way he laughed, his corpse-looking like appearance, this ring… But this couldn’t be! Snatcher was here! And this guy was over there! If they were the same person, how could they be at two different places at the same time?

There had to be an explanation for all of this, and what this spirit had told him certainly wasn’t it.

The others must have perceived his scepticism because his smile widened as he spoke again:

-“You don’t believe me, do you? That is fine. I did not expect you to. It does not matter anymore,” he said, darkly: “Nothing matters anymore, because you are all going to die,” then, patting the little girl’s head in a very disturbingly slow manner, he added: “Well, not you, little one. I used to want you dead as well, but I changed my mind. This does not concern you in any way, after all. Furthermore…”

The evil spirit gave Vanessa a death glare as he continued :

-“If I did kill an innocent child, I wouldn’t be any better than you,” his smile returned as he turned back to the trembling victim in his hold: “Besides, if I do come back to the Horizon after this, I will have someone to keep me company!”

He chuckled at the sight of the brat’s confused and afraid expression. In the meantime, Snatcher’s anger and frustration kept growing. He didn’t understand a single word this guy was saying! The Horizon? What was that? What was he even talking about?

-“You’re crazy,” mumbled the shade, astonished. He couldn’t believe what was happening: this was the only explanation! There was no way this monster was right, it was simply and physically impossible!

The word caught the other’s attention, though in a very bad way. He frowned and threw a glance full of hatred at Snatcher:

-“Me, ‘crazy’?” he repeated, in a voice that was much too calm to be normal. The shade should have kept his mouth shut. His interlocutor kept going: “You know, this is quite ironic. You are the one who caused me so much trouble, who abandoned me… And I am the ‘crazy’ one?”

-“I have no idea what you are talking about,” insisted Snatcher, putting an emphasis on each syllable as he answered. But the other was not having it:

-“You left me in there to rot, literally! You left me, your other half, to be stuck in a hellish dimension for hundreds of years!” yelled their opponent, absolutely livid: “I spent all this time, alone, having to watch you, of all people, being this pathetic while I couldn’t even leave this place!”

Snatcher’s eyes widened as he was listening to the other, astounded. “Other half”? “To rot”? This guy couldn’t mean…

The latter guessed his thoughts and finished them for him:

-“I am the part you left behind, that night,” he explained with a low voice: “You are the coward part of us that fled because you were just too afraid to face her!” he accused, pointing at Vanessa as he kept going: “And you abandoned me in there, with her! You left me in this pathetic body while you buried your head in the sand, not even considering the possibility I existed!”

He laughed bitterly, tilting his head on his side:

-“You know, I have thought a lot about why I was stuck in this place, the Horizon as I like to call it now. And I think I know. I can’t believe it took me so long to understand why!”

He squinted, looking daggers at Snatcher:

-“I am incomplete. That’s why I can’t dwell in the mortal plane like a dweller or go to Heaven if it even exists! You are the reason I got stuck in this dimension, forced to watch people living happily while I was alone for years! I have no idea how you even exist, why I was the one to suffer because of this… But I will definitely fix what you did to me.”

He paused, smiling in a horrifying way as he revealed his plan:

-“I will not be incomplete once you just stop existing. I will not be missing any part of myself anymore. As soon as I stop maintaining the stability of the rift… You will both perish and I will finally be free.”

A cruel laugh came out of his lips as he watched in delight Snatcher and Vanessa’s reaction to his plan. This guy was absolutely mad. They had to act now!

The shade was trying to find something, anything to help the kid and get them out of a situation like this one. However, when his eyes fell on the brat’s, he noticed her expression had changed from fear to determination. With her eyes, she instructed him to look at her right hand. When the spirit’s glanced down, his ghostly face grew pale immediately.

The kid had materialized a potion in his hand and was cautiously and gently shaking it to activate it.

Instantly, Snatcher’s body became weak at what she was planning to do. She couldn’t seriously think this was a good idea! There were so many other ways involving her not hurting herself in the process of getting away from this monster!

Said monster let his laugh die slowly and started to talk again:

-“Well… I guess this is time for us to say goodbye,” he said, before turning to Vanessa, who was shaking from rage: “I really must thank you, Vanessa. Without you, I would have never been able to go this far. You were so easy to manipulate! Getting the opportunity to finally kill you is the best gift you could have ever given to me.”

He was about to add something when a strong-willed voice interrupted him:

-“Not so fast, you crazy peck neck!”

The little girl’s voice echoed in the room, forcing the other to look at her, surprised. However, when his eyes fell on the little vial in the kid’s hand, his face crumpled in distress. Everything after that happened so fast. The monster immediately released her, trying to get away from her before the potion exploded. Once she was free again, the hat-wearing child managed to throw the potion in his direction while she was sent flying to the other side of the room. Red strings had caught her arms and were taking her as far as possible, but it was too late. The vial had been thrown and the kid had managed to get away from their enemy without getting harmed!

But as Moonjumper was blinded with the explosion, he lost the control of his strings, not seeing where they were taking the brat anymore. But Snatcher was seeing what was about to happen, but he was far too slow to prevent any of it. A deafening and horrifying scream left his lips as he witnessed the little girl being impaled on one of Vanessa’s previous ice pillars.

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:)

=> Chapter 25

#A Hat In Time #Reliving An Old Nightmare #Raon #puyo-proto #voice acting #THANK YOU AGAIN FOR YOUR WONDERFUL VOICE ACTING PROTO !! #hat kid #vanessa #snatcher #moonjumper #gore #gore tw #tw gore #my art #fanfiction #ahit

[otterskin]

A Rebuttal to a ScreenRant thing on Loki and the Thor films for no reason other than the catharsis similar to shooting at clay pigeons that aren’t even trying to fly

Don’t click on this but here’s the article - https://screenrant.com/mcu-things-make-no-sense-about-loki/

Ah, ScreenRant, my old foe...you hath fallen so far these past few years...time was you were almost legitimate, but once you were sold to new owners, you became a rag of thoughtless clickbait 'journalism', seeing plotholes where there none. Let's dance.

ScreenRant Text: (So you don't have to feed them clicks)

Loki is often considered one of the greatest superhero movie villains of all time due to his never-ending schemes and tricks. As Thor's adopted brother, Loki has always been jealous of the God Of Thunder. His animosity mostly stems from the inheritance of the Asgardian throne.

Loki was denied the throne because he is the biological son of the Frost Giant ruler Laufey. After being abandoned by his father, he was adopted by Thor's father Odin and raised as an Asgardian prince. While Loki's never-ending deviousness makes for great entertainment, there are a couple of things about him that make no sense.

We begin with a Bonus Round! Loki is considered one of the greatest superhero movie villains of all time for various reasons, but the 'never-ending schemes and tricks' thing is a little...lackluster. It's not exactly what I'd say made himso successful, nor is it particularly true, but this is a matter of opinion. I'll let it slide. This, however:

His animosity mostly stems from the inheritance of the Asgardian throne.

Untrue. Thor 1 even has him state explicitly that the throne was never an objective of his, which is something I liked very much about the character and that film. It didn't go for the boring, stereotypical, low-hanging fruit, but actually tried to give the character a bit of humanity and zigged when most characters of that ilk zagged. That's the actual reason people like Loki, IMO. He surprised people by being - gasp - interesting. His animosity comes from a variety of things, but to simplify, if I may get schmaltzy, it comes from his fear of rejection and abandonment, and of being seen as less-than.

Loki was denied the throne because he is the biological son of the Frost Giant ruler Laufey.

We are never told why he was 'denied the throne'. We can guess. We assume this is the case, but it also seems like a) as the elder son, Thor was always first to inherit and b) When Odin promised that both his sons would be kings, it seems likely that at one point he intended to install Loki as king of Jotunheim, but then changed his mind. However c) it's mentioned clearly in an older scene in the script that Odin and Frigga had hoped that while Thor was officially king, that Loki would essentially be sharing many of his duties and would wield substantial power. 

I won't say this is 'wrong'. Loki, after all, claims it as the reason Odin didn't choose him as his successor. He may have been right. But we don't know that. Ambiguity is part of what makes films interesting, but apparently nerd media can never have a 'maybe' for an answer, sigh. This is a bigger problem than ScreenRant, so I'll let it go.

After being abandoned by his father, he was adopted by Thor's father Odin and raised as an Asgardian prince.

...this is what Odin said, immediately after Laufey tells us that Odin is a 'liar and a thief'....and then is proven right. Again, it's possible this is true, but we're also given reason to doubt Odin, and it's also possible Odin thinks he's telling the truth but is...wrong! Which he is about many things. It's something that makes him an interesting character. Ambiguity and interpretation. It's what makes you think about something long after the movie stops playing.

While I'm already disagreeing with SR here, this is more a fandom-wide problem of taking the text at face value only and reading the most shallow interpretation possible. However, stating that Loki's animosity comes from wanting the throne is in contradiction to what we've seen in the films, or at least a gross oversimplification. I award myself a half-point for that.

Points: 0 SR, 0.5 Otterskin

10. Unrealistic Survival

During the final moments of Thor: The Dark World, Loki became impaled and passed away in the strong arms of loving brother Thor. Dead? Not really. He was back in Thor: Ragnarok. Apparently, that was just one of Loki's holograms and the villain himself was very much okay.

However, recent history in the MCU proves that he holograms cannot be touched. In Thor: Ragnarok, Thor even failed in his attempt to throw a rock at Loki’s hologram. But in the death scene, Thor just happens to be holding him comfortably. And given that rocks go right through a hologram, then any other hologram shouldn't have been stabbed either.

EHHH wrong. Yes, Loki's 'light' magic can't be touched when there's nothing else there. But, as we see also in Thor Ragnarok, it can be touched if Loki is inside it - say, when he's pretending to be Odin. Thor grabs his shoulders and holds him in place after throwing Mjolnir. Great moment. As for that wound....who says Loki wasn't actually injured? After all, the scene was filmed 'for realsies' at the time and a reshoot retconned Loki into surviving later...but that doesn't mean he faked the whole thing. It's also possible that Loki just plain survived, due to some unknown Frost Giant ability that perhaps he didn't even know he had. We've never gotten a clear answer. And yes, keeping up the pretense of his death is still 'faking his death', even if he was really fatally injured. So no contradictions there.

SR - 0, OS - 1.5

9.Poor Attempt At Trying To Kill Thanos

Before he was made to look incompetent by Thanos, Loki was a very intelligent villain. Catching and defeating him wasn't easy, and this was all thanks to his ability to create illusions at will. He used this trick very many times and it always worked.

But when Loki is trying to kill Thanos in Infinity War, the only trick up his sleeve is pretending to pledge loyalty to the Mad Titan with secret intentions of stabbing him with a blade. Of course, Thanos stopped him and killed him. Why didn't Loki use a smarter trick? More importantly, why didn't he use his tried and tested illusion trick?

Hmm. Plenty of people have complained about this, but I never had a problem. For me, the answer is simple: what kind of intelligent is Loki? He's not a mastermind. He's not particularly gifted at tactics. What he's good at is misdirection and manipulation. And, when he does it, it usually has some kind of terrible personal effect. When I saw this scene, I had no problems with it from a character standpoint. Loki is a character who thinks with his emotions and does things based on that, even if they aren't logical. It's his fatal flaw going back to Thor 1 and present in every appearance since. In this case, I think Loki was manipulating Thanos. Manipulating him to kill Loki. Probably because Loki knew that would mean he'd spare Thor. However, this is my interpretation, and you're allowed a different one, SR. We'll just disagree on this one. I leave it to the commenters to decide who gets this point. For now, I'll give us both a 0.5.

SR - 0.5, OS - 2

8His Evolution Into A God

According to the MCU, Loki's parents are the Frost Giants Farbauti and Laufey. Despite his parents not being gods, Loki evolves into the “God of Mischief.” How is this possible, given that he was only adopted by Asgardian parents who were gods, but he himself had no god lineage?

RELATED: 10 Loki Memes Only Real Fans Will Understand

For Thor, his god status is understandable given that his biological father and grandfather are gods. So, can one become a god even when they aren't directly related to any god?

...I don't even know where to start with this. First off, we do not know who Loki's mother is. In fact I don't think it's even in the comics. If you mean the myths, then Laufey is his Mother, not his father, and in many myths Laufey is in fact Às (Asgardian), while Farbauti is his giant Father. He would also have two younger brothers. This is not the case in the MCU. There's some evidence that Loki's mother, whoever she is, is not a jotunn - he has biological features the giants do not, and Sir Kenneth Branagh indicated in the commentary for the movie that he was 'at least part giant', which could mean 'only part'. Eh.

Next...have you not been paying attention? This whole character arc is about Loki finding out he's not 'a god' due to his blood and trying to figure out who he is without that blood. At the end, he embraces his identity and decides for himself to be 'God of Mischief' and 'Odinson' regardless of his bloodstatus, while also, if not exactly coming to terms with his heritage, no longer hiding or rejecting it. Yes, it's about him 'becoming a god' and always having been a god, reaffirming his identity and recontextualizing it.  It's his whole...THING. And in fact, it’s the main thesis of Infinity War. It’s the challenge to Thanos, which he then accepts. Infinity War is Thanos’ ‘God Quest’, in which he endeavours to gain the powers of a deity. However, what being a ‘God’ meant to Loki is being ‘an accepted part of a family’. Thanos destroys his children in his quest to become a god. It’s an interesting contrast between the two ‘villains’.

Geezus, this is just being dense. And for the record, many Norse Gods and Goddesses are also giants, full-blooded and otherwise. Skadi, Goddess of Skiing, is my favourite goddess ever and she’s full giant. Her husband has very handsome and large feet, which is her preferred feature on a man. You know. To walk on snow with.

Two points to me for dealing with this nonsense. And a half a point for Skadi, she always gets you a half point.

SR - 0.5 OS - 4.5

7.Blue Hue

As the son of a Frost Giant, Loki was born with a blue skin tone. When Odin adopted him, he cast a spell that changed his tone from blue to white. However, Loki never seems to have an idea about his true skin color. Given his history of mischief, he has never attempted to change back either.

After, Odin’s spell to keep Hela far from Asgard ended in Thor: Ragnarok, his spell on Loki ought to have ended too. Or perhaps Loki has always been aware that he is blue. If so, then the confusion ought to be cleared up.

You know what? Point to SR for knowing Odin cast a spell on Loki and that Loki is blue (dabadeedabadie). We gotta throw them a bone, and that’s something other people forget or get wrong all the time.

As for the spell not breaking...Dr. Strange said it himself. A dead wizard’s spell is harder to remove. A spell falling apart in the event of the wizard’s death seems like a major design flaw. Can you imagine if other things worked like that? If a test was too hard, you could pass if you killed the teacher? Or if you locked yourself out of your house, all you had to do was track down the locksmith and murder him to destroy every lock he ever made?

I find it highly unlikely Odin would have been foolish enough to create a spell that would have failed upon his death. Hela was being actively contained, and even then she didn’t immediately appear upon Odin’s death. It still took her a minute to break free.

SR - 1.5 OS - 5.5

6Mind-Controlling Hawkeye Instead Of Fury

Loki found himself in the S.H.I.E.L.D. base after using the Tesseract’s portal to transport himself. One of his first tasks involves mind-controlling Hawkeye so that he can use him as security.

He also mind-controls Dr. Selvig to make him create the Chitauri portal.But it's strange that he doesn't mind-control the boss ,Nick Fury. If he had done that, everything he wanted would have been achieved more easily. Fury would have been his puppet and he could have used him to make the Avengers make regrettable decisions.

Honestly if he’d just walked into the UN it would have been easy-peasy, we can go down this rabbit hole until we end up in Oz.  But hey, we’ll give this one to SR, as one of those typical ‘CinemaSins’ things that Alfred Hitchcock would reply ‘because then there’d be no movie’ to.

I would add that this is more Thanos’ plan than Loki’s, though, so we don’t know if that was ever an option the purple man would’ve allowed.

SR - 2.5, OS - 5.5

5Thanos Was Too Lenient Towards Him

Long before they became enemies, Loki and Thanos were associated. One of the instructions that Thanos gave Loki was to get the Tesseract as soon as possible, or else. Yes, there were stipulations from Thanos outlined to Loki by The Other. Loki was promised a kind of pain he'd never known before.

RELATED: 10 Best Recurring Jokes In The MCU

However, Loki wasn't able to deliver the Tesseract for more than six years, and nothing really happened to him. Given how ruthless the Mad Titan is, it's a mystery why he was so lenient towards Loki.

...interesting that being promised untold pain is related to recurring jokes, ha ha...not sure what that’s about.

I dunno, Loki got the most brutal and graphic death in the film, seems pretty un-lenient to me. Not to mention half the people he’d just saved were all slaughtered in front of him, making him responsible for Asgard’s second destruction.

As for why not sooner, Loki was living under an assumed identity for those 6 years as his own father, his death widly publicized as a popular play. I imagine Thanos caught a matinee or something. Let’s just call this a draw.

SR - 2.5, OS - 5.5

4Stopping Agent Coulson

During 

Loki's invasion of Earth

 in

Avengers

, he trapped Thor in a cage, and while he was talking to his brother, Agent Coulson tried to stage a surprise attack. Not so fast Coulson. It appears the God Of Mischief is also the God Of Anticipating. Coulson ended up shooting a hologram instead of the real Loki.But how exactly was Loki able to anticipate Coulson's arrival? Can he see the near future? If such is the case, why didn't he see the attack from Hulk coming? Why didn't he use a hologram during the beatdown that left him in a pretty bad state either?

These are getting weaker, not stronger, as we get to number one. Didn’t expect people to still be reading, huh? Guess I’m the real loser, wasting more time on replying to this than was spent writing it. Oh well.

Chances are Loki turned himself invisible and left a copy in his place before walking behind Coulson. Which he’s done before. Illusions and mind-tricks are his main power.

SR - 2.5, OS - 6.5

3Hatred For Thor

Thor has always cared about Loki, but Loki has always wanted to end his brother. During the events of Thor: Ragnarok, a flashback scene showed Thor and Loki during their childhood days. Apparently, Loki did plenty of bad things to Thor.He once transformed Thor into a frog, while he also transformed himself into a snake to fool Thor into picking him up. Thor loved snakes, so when he tried to pick the reptile, Loki transformed back to himself and stabbed Thor. Why was there so much hatred? According to the first movie, Loki used to love Thor. He only started hating his brother when he found out that Thor was going to be the Asgardian king.

Always wanted to end his brother? Where is that coming from? Because he stabbed him as a kid in Thor’s anecdote in Thor 3? These are Asgardian kids, I expect there to be five stabbings before lunchtime. Kids are practically given daggers as teething toys.

I’m guessing this writer has never been or met a pair of siblings. Why is there so much hatred? Gee, I dunno, maybe because ‘Thor won’t stop hogging the X-Box and it’s my turn, Mum, it is!’ I mean, brothers and sisters do terrible things to each other. They make each other eat dirt and bugs, push each other off the deck, cheat at chess, spit in their hair, hide frogs in their bed, you name it. Now upgrade that to the level of the gods and you got some real fun shenanigans, and several more centuries of time in your childhood to get up to even more mischief.

You can still love someone and turn them into a frog. 

SR - 2.5, OS - 7.5

2Takeover Plan

Still, in the first film, Loki began scheming after finding out that he was adopted and he'd never become king.  The God of Mischief assisted the Frost Giants in gaining entry to Asgard so that he could destroy the Frost Giant King Laufey before he could kill Odin.RELATED:

 10 MCU Moments We Need To See In Disneyland’s New Marvel Land

Sounds good, but then Thor tried to feud with the Frost Giants too, and this didn't turn out so well for him. In fact, Thor was banished and dispatched to Earth because of this. It is thus strange that Loki thought Odin would like him for doing what Thor had done. Loki also waited for Odin to sleep first before trying to destroy Laufey. Wouldn't it have been better for him to try and do this while Odin was awake?

The order of events is all wrong. Loki did not discover his heritage until they went to Jotunheim, and didn’t hear the whole story until the Vault, at about the halfway point of the film. Yes, the film opens with him secretly helping the giants into Asgard to disrupt Thor’s coronation. He intended to goad Thor into going to the Bifrost to attack Jotunheim, and, as he says later to the W3 and Sif while their wounds are being treated, he hoped they’d be stopped there by Heimdall. However, Heimdall was more prideful than he’d accounted for, and that’s when they went to Jotunheim, which wasn’t the plan. Everything after that point is Loki improvising and reacting - it’s not so much a scheme as a scream, if you know what I mean.

Loki was unexpectedly made interim King while Odin was asleep and Thor banished. That’s a condition depending on Odin’s sleep and Thor’s banishment, either of which could end at any time, as Frigga tells him. She also tells him that Odin can see all of Asgard, even while asleep. Laufey reiterates this right before he tries to kill him. Odin also cries in his sleep, indicating he can perceive his children fighting on the bridge later in the film. Loki is putting on an elaborate play to demonstrate his loyalty to Odin and simultaneously sever his connections to Jotunheim, which he sees as a threat to his bond with Odin. He has room for only one father.

Were you on your phone when you were watching this movie? ...It’s okay if you were, but...man, you’re writing about this film, at least get the sequence of events right. It’s not a particularly complicated film.

I feel like I’m getting mean. Lose half a point for meanness, gain two points for two points made.

SR - 2.5, OS - 9

1Not Teaming Up With Hela

Loki and

Odin’s abandoned daughter Hela

had the same goals, but strangely enough, they didn't team up to make everything go smoothly. Given the kind of unity Loki had seen from the Avengers, he'd have been smarter enough to value teamwork more.When Hela arrived to take the throne and get revenge, Loki ought to have been the first person on her side. Her plan was basically a newer, small-scale version of his own plan in Avengers. Given his nature, it could have been more logical for him to team up with her then destroy her.

Same goals? You don’t mention them, though. I’d say their goals are entirely opposite. We see Loki’s rule contrasted with Hela’s quite clearly in Ragnarok. Loki withdrew Asgard from the other Realms (in my opinion, likely because he only has love for Asgard, and his interest in it and its people). He’s not interested in invading or enslaving or plundering (yes, yes, I know, Avengers, but that film was constantly making it clear that Loki wasn’t enacting his plan, but Thanos’, and he was being baby-sat by the Other to make sure he didn’t forget it. The stone was meant for Thanos, and we also know Loki wasn’t at his best self mentally at that time. He looked like he’d been chewing on coal and his skin had all the healthy pallour of a plastic bag. Compare that to Ragnarok, where he’s much more at ease and less...’my whole world has crashed down upon me’). Loki is like a cat in a sunbeam, happy to soak up praise, adulation, and acceptance from Asgard. Hela also wants those things - she’s upset when people don’t bow to her, that no-one remembers her, and that her cool paintings are gone. However, her solution to this is to kill everyone until she’s left with the people who are loyal to her. Loki’s was to create the play (which is either propaganda or much-needed Loki representation in the media, depending on how you view it), and convince people to like him. Hela demands loyalty, Loki wants love. Very different.

Her goal, of course, is to make Asgard great again, through conquest. Admittedly Loki did do something similar when he tried to flambé Jotunheim in Thor 1, but he did that for personal reasons, while Hela has a policy. Also, Hela wants Thor and Loki dead, and possibly was a large reason why Odin died (likely he was drained from imprisoning her). Loki loves Thor and Odin and does not want them dead; he also does not seem to want to be killed, at least by any hand not his own. There’s also the little problem of him being a frost giant, which Hela would likely not look kindly on (heck, original drafts of that painting depicting Hela conquering show her essentially enslaving the giants and forcing them to help build Asgard.) Hela isn’t looking for an equal partner. Loki wants equality above all else.

So no, no reason to team up.

SR - 2.5, OS - 10/10, a very good girl, here’s an invisible gold star

Aight, that was a great waste of time. But sometimes, you just need to refute every single point of something to feel better.

TL;DR: ScreenRant didn’t watch the movie(s).

#thor meta #screenrant response #waste of my time and yours #but I do feel better now

[ja-khajay]

Thoughts on the new Khajiit lore books and their take on Khajiit religion

After discussions with the Beyond Skyrim team and also my friends, and seeing @fadomay‘s posts on the matter, I’ve decided to post my own opinion on the new khajiit lore books leaked from the ESO Pellitine expansion! 

Transcribed from a conversation I had with Aqo @madamefirilanyaofficial on Discord. With a few editing and annotations to what books we were referencing!

TL:DR I Do Not Like Them. They oversimplified Khajiit religion like Bethesda did to the Nordic pantheon in Skyrim, and removed some aspects I found made Khajiit stand out as a well written, unique fictional belief system, that worked perfectly for its setting.

Aqo : have you seen the leaked eso lore ?

J : I've seen some books about khajiit dieties but they're uh......Not good

in what ways?it feels like its written by an avid azura fan asdfgh

Have you read clan mother ahnissi*

that book lists khajiit dieties in a very distinctive writing style that's associated with khajiit

Well the leaks I read surf on that book but badly written the what's new is they added imperial dieties to the list by just giving them names with slightly different sonorities

yea i noticd that

Boethra is the best example. Before eso I hadn't seen and khajiit mention of Boethiah - but her sphere is "violent overthrow of order" and khajiit don't need that they're already an extremely chaotic aligned people

and they realy focus on boethiah and  mephala, like the dunmer

Instead of having a smaller pantheon + a few original gods (ban daar, rahjin, the Ja'Kha'jay) they just went "lol it's just like the imperial pantheon but with funny names right???" just like what Skyrim did to nord religion.

Before skyrim nords also had a smaller pantheon with gods that were born from the same concept as a few imperial ones, but with different names and associations, and skyrim just steamrolled that

it feels like they did take existing pantheons and just khajiitized them

It makes sense to have different cultures take from each other, khajiit live right next to imperials and we already have proof of them adopting a foreign god with Yffer

who now is like evil?

That's not how it works. Khajiit have their own drastically different roles for each diety. I don't like seeing TES dieties as one entity named [add imperial name since that's obviously the default now] that each culture that's not imperial sees under a warped light. That's ridiculous

Khajiit religion was good BECAUSE it did wild stuff with established concepts, and was written before oblivion when religious texts were still kind of out there. It showed radically different associations : Namiira being evil, Padomai being good off the top of my head

I like to think gods in TES are more like concepts, made out of what people believe. See almsivi - they are powerful, but a character like Fyr** is as powerful as them, the difference is their believers....yes the daedra have personalities but that doesn't mean they should be exactly the same, each culture interacts with their sphere differently. Hell khajiit don't even make a difference between d.aedra, and I can't wait for ESO to cut that out too

What sucks is the imperials are well, an empire, and you could legitimately make a whole deal out of their vision of the world spreading into the provinces they've conquered. It happened with the Romans (see Bath), it happened when the Hittites invaded Mesopotamia, it's a legit dynamic and could be fascinating to explore but writers don't think that far it seems

its like the khajiit just took the imperials religion without a fight but thats not how khajiit work azertjvklthe whole y'ffre/nirn/ hircine dymanics seems.... kinda weird?

wow it would be so cool if we had a canonical proof of khajiit and imperial feuds over invasions like some kind of faction or something what if we wrote a manifesto of a faction against the empire like radical pro Elsweyr fighters could you imagine oh wait***

"Sangiin. Blood God of the Second Litter. Sangiin is not an evil spirit by nature, but Khajiit must know that all things within his sphere turn True Cats from the Path. These are the urges of blood and pleasure without purpose. To fall to Sangiin is not to give in to the Dark, but to give in to the flesh. He tries to tempt Khajiit into making their flesh immortal, and this is a prison to all spirits of the ja-Kha'jay. Sangiin is therefore a spirit that will test you on the Path and must be overcome. The secret to defeating him is to ignore him, and this we learned from Mafala, who said: Lust for nothing but Truth." the khajiit become catholic

this is so stupid khajiit are notoriously horny and open minded bro. khajiit wouldn't see sex as bad

yeah like

i just hope there will be some context for the books. people have pointed out that its verry dunmeri and even has names only dunmer use. like some propaganda  by dunmer or something

I hope it'll be dunmer propaganda, that'd make a whole lot of sense actually holy fuck?? Like the daedric corners being all added, Sheggorath's association with Skooma (a dunmer drug which is a plague to khajiit) removed, plus the dunmer have used khajiit as slaves forever, it could be part of a really fucked up plan to grab a piece of Elsweyr

yeah in that case it works like the added importance on mephala and boethiah.

Annotations :

* Words of Clan Mother Ahnissi

** Divayth Fyr

*** Ahzirr Traajijazeri

#j #testag #teslore #this is a mess lol #check out fadomays tumblr its good if youre a khajiit lore fan

[robininthelabyrinth]

Hi! I really love your writing and was wondering if you would do a part 2 of the fic you did for @kitsunesongs birthday?

The one where Nie Huaisang meets Xiao Xingchen and "persuades" him to go to the Nie Sect.

sequel to this one

Xiao Xingchen and Nie Mingjue got along just as disgustingly well as Nie Huaisang might have predicted, and it was starting to tick him off.

Not just him.

“It’ll pass,” he remarked to the glowering young man sitting beside him. “It always does…eventually. Xiao Xingchen is no different.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Song Zichen said, voice tight and back even tighter. The temples and the sects were not on what one might call the best of terms – it was politely referred to as tensions – so Song Zichen had refused to even consider leaving Xiao Xingchen in Nie Huaisang’s not-so-capable hands, but he also wasn’t strong enough to stop him, so all it meant in the end was that he had to trail along with them like an imprinted duckling.

A duckling with no sense of humor.

“They all come and get knocked over the head with it,” Nie Huaisang said with a sigh, fanning himself. He’d seen it happen time and time again. “My brother, I mean.”

“Your brother…hits people?” Song Zichen said, sounding doubtful enough for Nie Huaisang to realize that even he’d fallen for it.

“No,” he said patiently. “They’re overwhelmed by admiration for how good of a big brother he is and want him for their own.”

Song Zichen’s expression appeared to be at war with itself: he couldn’t decide whether to scoff at Nie Huaisang’s patent ridiculousness, furiously deny that Xiao Xingchen was attempting to market himself for possible adoption, or sullenly acknowledge that he, too, would like to be the recipient of Nie Mingjue’s rough sort of affection.

It was all those meaningful hand-on-shoulder, serious eye-contact, respect-is-given-where-it-is-earned-and-I-respect-you things Nie Mingjue did without thinking about it – possibly it was just the dearth of decent parents among the Great Sects, and the smaller sects too come to think about it, but everyone was hilariously susceptible to it.

(He’d accidentally done it to Lan Qiren once, making the man actually glow with pride for a moment before he realized he was being complimented by someone at least a decade his junior and fixed his expression. It was a memory that warmed Nie Huaisang’s heart.)

“Still,” Nie Huaisang mused. “I will admit that this is getting out of hand.”

He’d known that Nie Mingjue would be fond of Xiao Xingchen, but he hadn’t anticipated how much his brother had apparently been longing for someone with whom he could have ethical and moral discussions that didn’t leave him scowling and looking sick to his stomach. The two of them shared a clear and forthright vision of the world – in which people were supposed to help others, fight evil and save innocents, and that everything else was a distraction – and what started out, to Nie Huaisang’s mind, as some sort of moral purist fan club had eventually sort of…escalated.

It wasn’t that Nie Huaisang forgot that his brother was a powerful sect leader and formerly the general of the combined forces of the cultivation world and therefore was a terrifying political powerhouse to be reckoned with, not really. It was that his brother so rarely ever did anything with his power and influence that it was easier to just…put it aside.

On a normal day, his brother was a simple person: he wanted his family and sect to be happy and safe and strong, the common people protected, and evil defeated – ideally courtesy of his blood-thirsty saber, after a brisk bit of exercise. Nie Mingjue was respectful of others, such that he rarely intervened where he wasn’t explicitly invited, and so his focus had always been Qinghe, its environs, and the surrounding sects that pledged their loyalty in exchange for Nie support and strength.

Xiao Xingchen had more ambitious ideas than that.

Maybe he should have done more to head off their enthusiasm before it got this far, Nie Huaisang grumbled in his thoughts. But his brother seemed so happy, lighter than he’d been in years, less angry at everything – and his sudden burst of activity was driving Sect Leader Jin up the wall, and that was just legitimately hilarious.

Still, it was one thing for Xiao Xingchen to say that he wanted to protect innocents and defeat evil, no matter where it was. In the end, he was a naïve and untried young man unfamiliar with the world, no matter how powerful his ancestry, and such things would always be met with indulgent smiles and virtually no interest, everyone assuming it was little more than a child’s daydream.

It was something completely different for Nie Mingjue, Chifeng-zun and Sect Leader to one of the Great Sects, to put out a call for all able-bodied cultivators with courage and skill to join together once more to sweep through the worst parts of the cultivation world and clean it up together.

After all, Lan Xichen might win the women’s vote, but among men, at least, Nie Mingjue was the most admired man in the cultivation world, bar none, the most idolized and revered and envied, and he was offering an opportunity to win valor by his side. Those who had fought in the Sunshot Campaign were enticed by the notion of something clean and straightforward, cultivator against evil the way it was supposed to be; those that didn’t have a chance to win glory the last time were champing at the bit to belatedly add “fought under Chifeng-zun’s command” to their personal legacies; those who had been too young for the war were excited by the possibility of fame and fortune…

Sect Leader Jin, who was advocating to be Chief Cultivator of the cultivation world, did not want there to be a roving war-bad of powerful cultivators under his chief-most rival’s personal command, traveling throughout the cultivation world and making friends with each other and winning fame left and right with only Nie Mingjue to thank for it.

Sadly for him, there really wasn’t anything he could do about it.

Especially not now that Nie Mingjue was no longer asking Jin Guangyao to come play for him so regularly.

The playing had been designed to help with his ever-worsening temper, if Nie Huaisang understood his brother’s curt explanation properly, but it hadn’t really been doing much, and Nie Mingjue was far too busy now to waste time with things like that.

(Nie Huaisang did not think about how his father had died, and how much stronger his brother was than his father had ever become. He did not think about the fact that Xiao Xingchen was said to be doomed, the way his brother was doomed, or the fact that his brother’s decision to stop listening to Jin Guangyao’s playing or Lan Xichen’s encouragement of it had come on the heels of meeting someone else who was trading away their chances at a long and happy life for a chance to try to improve the world.

He did not think about any of that, or of the slow halting explanation his brother had finally given him about all the things he knew-but-didn’t-know about his sect’s cultivation style, about his brother’s own personal prognosis, and he certainly didn’t think about how his brother clearly saw this whole ridiculous notion of a massive large-scale night-hunt as his final campaign, his legacy, to be left behind when he himself left the world.

It wasn’t relevant, because it wasn’t going to happen, Nie Huaisang wasn’t going to let it happen. So he wasn’t thinking about it.)

“It’s a good plan,” Song Zichen said, and Nie Huaisang looked at him. “I had wanted to start a sect with no bloodline, based only on friendship, but Xingchen and your brother are putting together a coalition of sects that is much the same thing. All of those young men becoming brothers in arms…”

“Women, too,” Nie Huaisang said, because it was true. There’d be plenty of unexpected marriages formed before this whole thing was done – Jiang Cheng had recently declared his intention of joining, the nephew he’d insisted on caring for personally carted around on a sling on his back, and he looked so positively dashing when he did it that the women of the cultivation world might even consider removing him from their blacklist one day.

Maybe.

Song Zichen nodded seriously. “Women as well. Regardless, the end result of what they are achieving is the same - unity, friendship, cooperation, rather than chaos.”

Nie Huaisang smiled. And then, because why not, he used the excuse to slide closer and nudge Song Zichen in the side with a hand that lingered. “Don’t count yourself out, Song-xiong. You’re contributing, too.”

Song Zichen did not appear convinced.  

“You are!” Nie Huaisang insisted. “You just need to figure out what you’re good at – some purpose for yourself, some mission, or even just something to pass the time pleasantly. I’ll even help.”

He was about to suggest that they go to bed together – listen, he was shallow and Song Zichen was a very pretty person – but Song Zichen frowned, ducking his head a little in thought.

“Well, there is something,” he said slowly. “I thought, if it was true, that I might go deal with it. Although it’s only a rumor I heard…”

“I love rumors,” Nie Huaisang assured him, shelving his proposition for the moment. “What is it?”

“Have you ever heard of someone,” Song Zichen asked, “by the name of Xue Yang?”

#mdzs #nie huaisang #song lan #nie mingjue #xiao xingchen #my fic #my fics #disaster incoming #Anonymous

[leyacer]

A while ago I was talking with a friend about what it’d be like if aa was a jrpg, and now I have an AU, which I’m calling Turnabout Tales! Three guesses which game series it was inspired by.

It spans the entirety of the main series, but for this post I’m focusing on aa4, specifically Apollo, Trucy, Ema and Klavier! You can find more info under the cut!

Note: I came up with quite a bit concerning the world, but I don’t want to make this too long, so I’ll keep it to ajaa-relevant stuff (There isn’t much main plot here though. Pretty much all descriptions are pre-Turnabout Trump)

The world

Dikaios

A kingdom divided into six districts: Oures, Antora, Valasi, Kurain, Demortan and Patheri

Each district is ruled by a duke or duchess, except for Oures, which is ruled by the king or queen of Dikaios.

Demortan: District most removed from the king’s domain, after Kurain. Used to be ruled by the Gramaryes, but is now being ruled by Kristoph Gavin. Known for its talented mages. Despite its harsh ruler, its criminal underworld has been growing steadily

Magic

1 in every 3 people has the ability to use magic, though innate power varies from person to person

Magic commonly draws from the four elements; water, earth, fire and air. It is possible to use magic that isn’t immediately linked to a specific element, but because elemental magic is easier to perform, that’s the most popular practiced form of magic. 

Magic related to enhancing a person’s natural abilities, their senses or healing wounds is a risky type of magic, since it’s basically altering someone’s body. Practitioners must have years of practice under their belt to decrease the risk of accidentally harming someone with their magic.

Healing spells are often bound to talismans and the like, to decrease the risk even further (intense emotion can negatively influence magic)

Spirit channeling still exists, but it’s incredibly hard to do

Staffs, wands etc. can be used to assist someone in using magic

Apollo

Born in Demortan, but adopted by Dhurke after Jove died in Khura’in

Was returned to Demortan after the rebellion started

Because Dhurke didn’t have any contacts in Dikaios who were able to take care of Apollo, Apollo grew up in an orphanage, which is where he met Clay

Once Apollo became too old to stay in the orphanage, he began looking for a job

Clay, who was moving to Patheri to become an assistant to a famous inventor, offered to take him with him, but Apollo declined

As Apollo grew older he noticed the danger that was lurking beneath the surface in Demortan, or at least part of it. He wanted to find some way to make positive changes, but there wasn’t much he could do at that point 

After a year or so, Apollo was taken on as a squire by Kristoph, who’d happened to notice his wit and speed several times that year and thought he’d be a useful knight 

He’s owned the gauntlet with the decorations around the wrist since he was a kid, but after he became a squire and could afford it, he bought a semi-matching one

The gauntlet helps him perceive people’s tells, but it has also been enchanted to improve the wearer’s reflexes  

Wields a short sword, though he’s a decent fistfighter as well

Unable to use magic, but he understands how it works

Still takes the time to do his hair every day and often refuses to wear helmets because of it

In his spare time, he likes to read in the castle library

Trucy

A very talented mage and performer traveling together with her dad in hopes of finding a reliable patron

Born while the Gramaryes were still in power, but when they disappeared, she was left behind, and adopted by Phoenix, who had lost his knight status not too long ago

Able to use very advanced magic

She picked up the basics and a few other things while still living with Zak, and practiced a lot by herself afterwards

Phoenix taught her a couple of things too

Her staff used to be vital when practicing, but now it simply provides her with a bit of extra power

Despite being great at magic, she loves performing magic tricks and puts as much effort into learning them as in learning actual magic

Occasionally performs said magic tricks at taverns or any other place that would let her perform

She usually uses her most unique tricks for those performances, otherwise people would just accuse her of using actual magic

Ema

Amateur alchemist trying her best to be recognized as legitimate

She’s great at making all sorts of potions and elixirs, though she prefers coming up with new ones, with mixed results

She has a habit of being careless with her concoctions, which is why she hasn’t been officially made an alchemist

She’s also blown up at least two buildings by accident

Her coat is a novice alchemist’s coat, and a gift from Lana 

Whenever she started to grow out of it, she would adjust it so it would still fit her

Originally from Oures, but left to study in Patheri, ending up in Demortan after she kept causing accidents

Makes a living by selling salves and healing potions, though she sells her own creations to those interested from time to time

Able to use magic, but doesn’t care much for it, and as a result doesn’t know much more than the basics

Klavier 

Lives in Demortan’s capital, but he travels around the district a lot 

Aware of the rising chaos in Demortan.

He knows there have been more and more violent incidents and criminal acts in recent months, but he isn’t aware of their true extent, nor of the cause

This is partially because he travels so much, but also because Kristoph intentionally keeps him from finding out

Is almost as much in the dark about how Kristoph came to power as the majority of Dikaios’ citizens

Makes music in his spare time, either by himself or with Daryan

He often does it in public places, so others can get to enjoy the music too

Well-known amongst nobility and commoners alike 

Nobles know him for being a knight and Kristoph’s brother, commoners know him for his music

  Owns a full set of armor, but only wears it when he needs to

Armor is heavy, and Klavier prefers to be mobile in a fight

 He also has a lot of confidence in his skills and experience

The times he wears armor are the only times he uses any weapon other than a dagger

#ace attorney #trucy wright #apollo justice #ema skye #klavier gavin #long post #leya arts #klavier gets all the unnecessary belts #wouldn't be an rpg inspired au without em #turnabout tales

[thefudge]

Listen to any speech that Daenerys talks about being Queen in. She talks about how she was born to rule, it’s her birthright, she’s her father’s heir, etc. That’s not being elected a ruler. She’s not allowing a chose to be made there. Her people didn’t chose her, she’s telling them what to think.

the problem with what you’re saying is that 

a) 90% of her followers know squat about mad king aerys or the targaryen legacy or westerosi politics, so she absolutely could not win people over just by ranting off her titles and birthright. yes, she is always introduced with the titles and regalia (which include titles both in westeros and essos) because dany has to hold her head high and adopt a “fake it till you make it” policy when it comes to slaver’s bay, she has to look fearless and command respect. i do think in time she becomes too attached to the idea of “legacy” and her responsibilities as a targaryen conqueror (this is part of her story arc in the books) but every other character is almost as obsessed with roots and family inheritance. inter-generational trauma is important in asoiaf. to say, however, that the people only followed her because she made the choice for them is…extremely odd. again, nothing regarding her legacy would persuade ppl from essos to bow down to her. they’d sooner laugh at a young girl saying she’s the last bastion of a once glorious dynasty.  there are many exiles in essos who would claim the same thing. i’d more likely accept the argument that some of her followers want to ingratiate themselves with her because they know she has power or out of fear of her dragons. but the ppl who claim her as their queen do not really give a rat’s ass whose daughter she is, imo

b) dany’s speeches in private to her friends and counselors are about what is expected of her in westeros, precisely because she knows birthright is so important in westeros. she wants to appear to the westerosi as a legitimate heir and yes, she feels that this is her due, just as stannis, for instance, feels it is his due (both in birthright and might) to become ruler of the seven kingdoms. whether one is more deserving than the other isn’t the point. the point is that this rhetoric is not singular to dany at all. you can criticize both these people’s sense of entitlement from a doylist perspective (because we as readers know more about the state of things than both dany and stannis) but from a watsonian standpoint, nothing here screams “bad news”. dany’s speeches to her freed people in public, however, have little or nothing to do with her birthright and much more to do with her plan of liberation. like any good leader, she asks them to share in her future glory. of course she is persuasive. to these ppl she seems like the only good alternative. in that regard, you could say they have “no choice” but that’s a really oblique way of looking at it. almost like saying “guess they had no choice but to choose being free from bondage”. and even so, it’s not dany’s fault that in this world, she is the best choice. also, she clearly tells the unsullied that she will only accept those who want to follow her by choice and that the rest are free to leave and do as they like. in fact, some of her problems in mereen revolve around ex-slaves wanting to sell themselves back into slavery due to economic and social unrest. now that you could lay at dany’s feet (aka her political mismanagement) but not her forcing ppl into following her.

i do think that dany’s growing sense of aggrandizement will have consequences and will be handled much better in the books, but the important and interesting thing about dany is that the hype is actually real. that’s what makes her impending tragedy that more effective. many ppl genuinely do want to follow her and see her as their ticket for change. she’s not just a head figure followed out of a sense of cynical, mercenary intent. again, this is what makes the fall heavier when it comes. 

#replies #daenerys targaryen #asoiaf meta #asoiaf

[ct-hardcase]

TROS Review

I’ll start by saying something I already did: I liked the movie, but it wasn’t a good film.

What I mean by that is, as a fan, I like some of the beats it hit. It had good trio moments, good stuff for Rey and Finn individually, as well as Leia, and I genuinely enjoyed those. The pacing, however, was interesting. The entire first quarter of the movie was driven by plot devices and shock value, and I found myself wondering, after they went to yet another planet to find the macguffin, when the real plot was going to happen. Things picked up in the second half, but there were still some weird choices made. Specifics below:

Stuff I did like: 

Force Sensitive Finn! It’s about damn time, honestly, but I’m very glad that Finn got to realize the Force within him (and I think that’s what he was trying to tell Rey this whole time? This was unclear). The fact that he had some conflict with both Rey and Poe over that was also great.

I thought I was going to hate Rey Palpatine a lot more than I did. Because of JJ spinning it into a “it doesn’t matter who your bloodline is, as long as you choose your family/destiny” theme, I didn’t mind it as much. Still kind of cheesy, but not the worst way they could have gone about it. I like Rey adopting the Skywalker name.

I was hoping for “power-drunk bastard” Kylo and I did cherish him while I had him. The fact that he was determined enough to find the Wayfinders and find actual literal Palpatine was pretty neat. The fact that he was also briefly power-drunk enough to try to turn Rey into his equal in the dark side was pretty cool too.

This movie surrounded the Force in general--Kylo and Rey are good saber duelists, but they aren’t the best, so I think it was a smart decision to focus more of their impressive feats on the Force.

General Poe! I really wish it didn’t have to happen like that, but I’m so glad to see Poe Dameron get his due in this regard. His fear at leading and everyone comforting him along the way was a good story to tell.

The actual creepy, cultlike aesthetic of the Sith was really fun in the last half, complete with faceless crowds and soul-transfer rituals.

I have wanted Rey with a yellow lightsaber for SO LONG and I finally get it, yeehaw everyone.

The entire trio dynamic was really great. They promised a movie with them and it delivered. In particular, the Poe and Rey dynamic really picked up the slack from the last two movies. Finn’s dynamic with Poe and Rey were the sweetest things, and the end of the movie really showed that he found family and love with those two.

Chewbacca is great, and I’m glad he got a scene where he could mourn.

I’m also glad he at least got to say hi to Lando.

Jedi Master Leia!!!! I’m so happy that it’s canon that she got trained as Jedi and that she’s Rey’s Master and Rey feels connected to her which makes sense because Leia actually put time and effort into training her (no offense Luke, your Force Ghost cameo was really powerful too and nice).

Loved Jannah’s plot with the group of deserter stormtroopers (and the fact that all of them are implied to either be in-tune with each other or Force Sensitive???? Hello??? Some of Rey’s first students there perhaps?)

Rey jumping toward Finn, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

Despite my feelings toward bendemption, the moment with Han legitimately got me. Ben finally being candid with Han, Han talking to his son frankly, Ben finally accepting Han as his father, and Ben throwing the bled saber into the ocean called back to tlj really nicely and makes that moment hurt a bit less for me now.

(also, it paid off to read Rise of Kylo in this instance--because the lightsaber is the “Ren” he was effectively throwing his title away when he threw that out and that’s also probably how the Knights knew he was gonezo)

Palpatine getting defeated by his own hubris is very very nice. You can’t outfight Palpatine. You’ve got to beat him Ezra-style: by having him underestimate you.

If Kylo had to get redeemed, at this point in his career, redemption through death is a good path for him.

Hi Knights of Ren!

Stuff I didn’t like:

Bye Knights of Ren!

I’ll just be blunt and put the rylo kiss up here. That kiss was nowhere near necessary. A romance with Ben wasn’t pursued after the fact and he died, so it didn’t even fulfill rylo that much, and so now we have a kiss where nobody’s happy. Congrats.

I’m conflicted on Leia dying in order to give save Ben/give Rey the opening to kill him. On one hand, I’m glad she died for the mission, on the other, it put such a weird taste in my mouth that I couldn’t even mourn when she died because I was so conflicted.

I also felt :/ about Rey healing Ben because of my obvious anti-bendemption bias, but also, if we’re going to commit to killing people and Rey fearing her inner darkness, go all the way with it. If she’s trapping herself on ach-to, have it be because she did kill Kylo, finally, and she’s feeling conflicted about it.

I’m usually not one to say that a m/f romance is “making a character straight” because I’m bi and I don’t like that erasure, but Zorri definitely felt like a way to “no-homo” Poe because so many people thought he was gay. It was unnecessary, super straight, and really felt like a bird flip to LGBT+ fans.

Also, Poe being a spice runner both ignores his canon backstory of being a new republic military brat that went into the resistance, but is also just straight-up racist. Thanks for having your latino character be a drug runner, lf.

RIP Hux. Domhnall Gleeson played the part so well and he deserved better. I like the spite direction, both Rian and JJ can stick the fact that they made him comic relief where the sun don’t shine. I like the impunity with which he was killed but he was way neutered. Glad Finn got to shoot him.

They way overused the “did [x] die??? did they not?????” in this movie. It loses its punch after a while. Chewie, Threepio (in terms of memory), Kylo, Kylo again, Rey, and then Kylo for real this time.

I loved Finn being Force Sensitive but they really dropped that thread and kind of ignored it after they introduced Palpatine. If you’re going to introduce him as FS, commit.

Ditto Jannah and the deserted stormtroopers.

#star dorks #tros spoilers #sw spoilers #spoilers #sw negativity #but also a lot of positivity