tgcf book spoilers, but one mu qing and xie lian snippet that I think about a lot is this one, at the start of xie lian’s second banishment when he’s surprised to hear mu qing being described as generous and kind:
as opposed to this memory from before his first ascension when mu qing started giving out cherries to the kids in the city:
I think it just really goes to show 1) how deeply mq’s actions truly affected xl and what he thought of him, but also 2) just how different mq and xl are fundamentally in the way that they think and approach things.
I don’t have a lot of commentary on xl that hasn’t already been said, but bc we get the story from xl’s pov, we see a lot of mq’s actions being framed as selfish or suspicious (which is fair, bc again, we know how much his actions hurt xl), but we also see a lot of misconstrued kindness, like in book 8 where it’s revealed that he knocked out fx in order to save him. it’s also pretty obvious how much mq still cares abt xl, with how quickly he volunteers as fu yao and the lengths he goes to protect him when he deems hc a threat, so I also think it’s very likely that mq leaving the trio first was exactly what he said it was — that he thought becoming a junior official, ascending quickly, would be the best way to take care of not just his mother, but also xl, fx, the king and queen, and himself, and so in a way, him leaving was him acting on his kindness. but ofc it doesn’t work out, and he spends the next 800 years fighting w/ fx about it, defending himself, his decisions, and his kindness, and nitpicking the accuracies of his statues while he himself remains completely misunderstood by the two people he probably cares abt the most.
and idk, I guess I just think that’s probably a really lonely way to spend 800 years.
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i accepted im not finishing the timkon vday fic today and instead launched into yet another new wip instead. i present to you: a snippet of kon vs his deeply repressed medical trauma, featuring core four and what is gonna be some gratuitous kon & clark fambly focus...
The voices are still talking, too loud and too fast to understand. Kon tries to breathe harder, his heart racing—the beeping doesn’t help—and looks around frantically. Where’s the exit? He just came through a door, but he doesn’t know where it went—
A gloved hand settles on his arm, and a cold wipe that smells of alcohol scrubs over his skin. Kon tilts his head to see what’s happening.
A needle glints in the doctor’s other hand. They’re prepping his arm for intravenous injection.
“NO!” He jerks away, terror flaring through his stomach. It’s so poignant it almost drowns out the agony. His TTK flares, too, and the doctor and the needle in their hand fly across the room, far away. A flash of light and a person with chestnut hair catches them, so they’re not hurt.
Good. Kon didn’t mean to hurt anyone. He just—he just wants them to stay away.
He’s safe for the moment. Kon sobs for breath—
“Kon!” The person from before, the one lying and saying it’d be okay, appears again. They grab Kon’s hand and squeeze it. “Kon, she was only trying to help! You’re safe, I swear—”
Kon jerks away. “Don’t—don’t lie to me—” he manages. He needs to get up. He needs to get out of here. He needs… he needs…
When he tries to sit up, pure agony lances through his entire body. It radiates out from his gut and spears up through his chest like lightning, so sharp he can’t breathe and stars sparkle across his blurry vision.
What did they do to him?!
He isn’t safe here, he needs to get out of here! It’s only gonna get worse the longer he stays; they’ll get another doctor, another needle—he has to sit up, he needs to move—
Strong hands clamp onto his shoulders and hold him down. Despite all his strength, they hold him down. Kon cries out, a new wave of ice-cold terror spearing through him. “No! No, no let me go!”
“Cassie, you’re scaring him!” the other voice says, tugging at the new person’s wrists, completely ineffectively. “We need to calm him down, not—"
The new person, Cassie, ignores them. “Kon, listen to me.”
Kon shakes his head, terrified. “No no no no no!”
“Kon, you can’t hurt the doctors. They’re trying to help, okay? You’re badly hurt, and they’re trying to help, but you need to let them do their jobs!”
Another person in surgical scrubs approaches. Kon barely hears what they say over all the roaring in his ears, but it doesn’t matter. He knows how Cadmus operates.
“…you restrain him until we can administer anesthesia?” he overhears. It’s enough. He hyperventilates, sobs for breath, shoves ineffectively at the strong arms holding him down. Desperate, he shoves at Cassie with TTK. Thankfully, that has some effect: she yelps as he shoves himself a few inches off the bed, but then sharp, white-hot pain sears through his entire body, and his vision blacks out.
When he comes to, Cassie is over him again, and—and—
Glowing, golden ropes wind tight around his shoulders, his wrists, his thighs, his legs. He’s completely pinned to the bed. One end of the ropes is wrapped around Cassie’s hands.
He can’t move.
He can’t escape.
No. No no no no this can’t happen again, they’re going to hurt him and he needs to get out but he can’t—he can’t—oh, god, this is happening again and he’s just gonna have to take it, and—and it already hurts so much, he can’t take it—
Kon chokes on another sob. “Please,” he begs. “Please please please please—”
Cassie looks anguished. “I’m sorry, Kon,” she says, but she’s not sorry enough to let him go, so it doesn’t matter. “It’s for your own good, I swear.”
He can’t move. He can’t move and it hurts and he can’t move and it hurts and no matter how hard he struggles, he’s pinned, and it hurts it hurts it hurts so so so bad, and oh, god, he’s trapped. He’s trapped, he can’t—he can’t—
Terrified, Kon does the only thing he can think of.
“SUPERMAN!” he screams. “Kal! Kal-El! Please, please—help me, help me, don’t—don’t let them do this to me again, Kal, Kal—”
There’s a pinch in his arm.
The needle.
Kon falls silent.
It’s… it’s really happening again, isn’t it? No matter how much he fights and screams and pleads. They’re gonna cut him open and hurt him and put him back in the tube. They’re gonna make him just another slab of tissue. An experiment and not a person. It’s happening again. And he can’t stop it. He can’t escape.
He can’t escape.
His chest hurts. A single tear rolls down the side of his face into his hair.
The door slams open. Kon’s gaze snaps over.
“What is going on here?”
Superman stands in the doorway, resplendent in all his glory. He’s an even more welcome sight than the sun, and even though Kon can’t move thanks to the golden ropes, he whimpers, fingers twitching as he yearns to reach for him.
He looks furious.
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thinking about how interesting the black family could be as a whole but fannon has twisted their personalities so deeply that they’re unrecognizable and refuses to write them as the morally grey/dark characters that they are !!
sirius perpetuating the views of his family in his first year as a gryffindor and having james always correct him. sirius suffering through his teenage years because he wants to please his family so badly so he learns to lie and manipulate but at the same time feels conflicted and wants to be a good person bc … the potters
regulus being a assumed death eater who honestly hated his brother bc he was the perfect heir but now he has to do sirius’ work. give me regulus enjoying hurting people because it pleased his family and he was hungry for acceptance to then later find out voldemort secret and completely freak out and how that affected his morals
bellatrix being the crazy one where all the expectations were on her and craving ambition so when the opportunity arose she took it without hesitance becoming voldemort most trusted follower. but also give me bellatrix being so annoyed and angry at andromeda and sirius for leaving all of them because family should come before everything and do they not see the sacrifices she made for all of them, being the eldest ??
narcissa and her perfect life and how she alone uphold the black family moto while everyone else was either in jail/dead or burned from the family tree so she took it up to herself to carry her family’s name and honor. give me narcissa agreeing with voldemort’s ideals of blood purity but not agreeing with the violence and the killing. give me narcissa seeing andromeda across the room and not being able to reach but wanting too because that’s her big sister but knowing she can’t because she betrayed them all for an inferior being and narcissa kind of hates her but she really doesn’t
give me andromeda missing her sisters so much and wondering how they were doing. give me internal conflict and guilt for leaving her family behind but also no regret because she loved ted and her daughter so much. give me her visiting bella in azkaban because she wanted to see her because she’s still her sister even if she hates her.
give me blacks and their family DRAMA !! give me complicated emotions forged upon years of abuse and sibling competition. missing each other and doing nothing about it so much so that it’s bellatrix who kills sirius which makes it even more heartbreaking. give me their mistaking painful longing with hate.
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So, in the fic where Tim gets his appendix out, Jason tells him that he usually freaks out before he gets put under, not after. Now that Tim knows, how would he comfort Jason? I'm thinking, like, imagine that Jason breaks his leg badly on patrol, so urgent surgery is in order. Would Tim try to prevent him from freaking out? How?
P.s. i said i a thousand rimes bur I love your works!! You're amazing!!
Ooh so I've actually answered a similar question pretty recently (although that was focused more on the needle aspect than the anesthesia/loss of control aspect which I headcanon to be Jason's main issue with being put under)
Honestly? I think Tim would be the worst family member to try to comfort Jason through something like this. Not for anything that Tim is doing right or wrong, just because anesthesia is something that really freaks Jason out, and his response to being freaked out is a) to angry cry, and b) to lash out at people. Because he knows this about himself, and he's also extremely protective of Tim, he tries not to let Tim see him when he's not fully in control of himself. So while Jason would totally be great in a crisis involving Tim, he does terribly when the roles are reversed.
BUT that being said, if Tim was the only one available, I think Tim would end up offering his hand to squeeze, and Jason would hesitate at first but eventually take it. He'd probably also be trying really hard not to cry, which Tim would very intentionally act as through he wasn't noticing because at the end of the day, Jason needs his dignity more than anything.
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