burningthegallows

[burningthegallows]

@shanastoryteller

I turn to Ares.

Thanks to Tyler Miles Lockett who allowed me to draw inspiration from his ARES piece for page 2! Look at his etsy page it's SICK

⚔️ If you want to read some queer retelling of arturian legends have a look at my webtoon

[burningthegallows]

DAVID LYNCH Weather Report 7/6/21

[burningthegallows]

Meg is the first choice, of course, but she’s not suited to this type of long term mission and they all know it. The problem is, almost none of them are. The nature of the beast, she supposes.

That’s why it ends up being her, in the end. Well, it’s almost Ruby, but there’s one thing she has that Ruby doesn’t.

How she ended up here in the first place.

She thought Clyde loved her. She thought he’d take her away, from her father and her terrible life, and so when he died too young, before he could fulfill any of his promises, she’d sold her soul to bring him back.

But he hadn’t kept a single promise. She’d died in her father’s house.

“You remember being in love, don’t you?” he asks, cruel in his callousness, which is different than his other types of cruelty. It’s all he has, shining out in a thousand different ways. “You’ll be better at faking it.”

All she does is fake it.

“Yes,” she says.

This mission gets her topside. It’s worth it for that alone.

~

She slips into a pretty blonde named Rebecca first but by the end of the day, the girl’s screaming has given her a headache, and she slips right back out. She’ll probably just think she had a bad trip.

He’d offered to arrange something for her, but she wanted to pick herself, and she’s not interested in having someone crying and moaning in the back of her mind. But it’s not like there are a lot of options.

She could kill one, of course. But she’s never – she hasn’t been topside, before. Everything she’s killed before had already been dead. So she hovers for the next week, looking for some sort of opportunity, for something she can use that’s not going to scream at her.

The day before she’s going to have to either pick someone or risk being sent back, there’s a car accident.

The girl’s heart is still and her body’s warm, blood pooling down her head, but that’s nothing she can’t fix. She settles into the body, jumpstarting the heart and can feel the skin on her head knitting back together. It’s also blessedly, thankfully silent, with her the only one inside this body. The driver who hit her is dead and people are crowding in, a crying girl pulling her free. “Anne! Anne, are you okay, oh my god, I can’t believe that happened-”

She wrinkles her nose before smoothing out her expression.

The name will have to go. She’ll say she’s reinventing herself after tragedy, or something, but she’s not going to walk around responding to Anne. That’s not her name.

Anne’s a sophomore, which isn’t ideal, but she’s beautiful and doesn’t have that many friends and barely talks to her family, so she’s actually perfect.

She’s also blonde.

She’d been blonde before too.

~

All the demons who had run these sort of missions before give her advice, tell her things that will help her. Some of their assignments had lasted months, but no one’s tried to do it for as long as she’s supposed to.

He likes smart girls.

Be confident. Be flirty. He’s shyer than he looks.

He never had a mother. He likes it when girls take care of him.

He likes to take care of girls too. He wants to feel useful.

She’d had dreams, before, of all the ways she’d could escape her father. It wasn’t common for girls to get more than a basic education, but she’d been smart. She could read and do complicated sums and enjoyed the quiet evenings when she balanced her father’s books. She’d thought she might like an advanced education, thought it could get her out of her life, but hadn’t known how to manage it.

Clyde had seemed easier. More attainable. More realistic.

She’d sold her soul for nothing in the end. She hadn’t even got the full ten years of her bargain.

She doesn’t know how much of their advice she can take.

She can be smart, but considering the school they’re at, all the girls will be smart. She hadn’t been confident or flirty, which is maybe why she’d latched onto the first boy who smiled at her. She never had a mother herself and doesn’t know to act like one.

She’s never been taken care of and doesn’t know how to do that either.

There’s no way for her to do this. She’s going to be replaced and sent back below and he’ll be angry at her and she hates hates hates when he’s angry at her, what he does to her.

“Are you okay?”

She looks up, something cold on her tongue, but falters.

He’s standing there, warm hazel eyes and long dark hair, hunching to try and make himself smaller, and a smile on his face that does nothing to hide his concern.

“Do you ever feel like,” she starts, her dead stolen heart beating too quickly, “everything is falling apart around you and you have no idea what you’re doing and like maybe your whole life is one huge mistake?”

Well, fuck. She’s definitely being replaced now.

Except Azazel’s favorite throws back his head and laughs, smile stretching into a grin. “Every day of my life, more or less.”

“How do you deal with it?” she asks, scrubbing a hand over her face.

He shrugs. “Well, my brother would say women and liquor.” He seems to realize how that sounds a moment later and he pales, “Um, not that I’m – I’m not saying, I wasn’t trying to. He’s just sort of a cad, and – I wasn’t trying to, with you, uh.”

She feels herself softening in spite of herself. “So you’re not one to apply that method yourself?”

“No,” he says firmly, eyes wide. “God, I’m just – I’m sorry. I – I’m Sam.”

“Hi Sam,” she returns, with a smile she doesn’t have to fake. “I’m Jess.”

~

She’s not supposed to fall in love with him.

She’s to worm his way to his side. She’s to keep him from running back to his family, to keep him from rebuilding the bridges he’s burned. She’s to keep him distracted and focused on her until his powers activate and then she’s to guide him into using them, to be supportive and loving and to push him straight into Azazel’s arms.

Sam loves his family so much.

He talks of his brother all the time. His father less, the emotions there more tangled, but love no less fierce.

She nudges him away from it, talks to him about how it’s normal for families to grow apart, to say that they’ll understand when he graduates, that he’ll show them they type of man that he is.

By the time he graduates, his powers will start manifesting, and he’ll avoid his family without her prodding. He knows what they’ll think of him, then, and Jess tells herself that she’s helping him. That this is for Sam’s own good.

If he’s with her, then he’s safe. His father won’t kill him while he’s safe at school. He can’t kill Sam for powers that he’ll never know about.

It’s easy to dig into the anger for his father, to use his last words to Sam as a way to hold him at her side. His brother is more difficult. Jess doesn’t do much with that, in the end, tells herself that it would be too complicated, too suspicious, and as long Dean is sticking with their father it amounts to same thing anyway.

The truth is more complicated.

His father will kill Sam if he has to.

She doesn’t think that his brother will. She thinks that maybe he’d choose to protect Sam, over their father’s wishes, over everything he’d been taught, no matter the consequences.

She fears that she and Dean have a lot in common.

She invites Sam over for holidays, makes summer plans with him, holds as much of his attention as she can manage.

She studies and makes friends and laughs and spends so much time with him, but not all of it. It has to be believable after all, has to be constant, in a way that it didn’t have to be with all the other demons sent to take care of him.

Jess lives a life that had been denied to her and tries to do what she was sent to do and does the one thing she was definitely not supposed to do, which is fall in love with Sam Winchester.

~

His brother shows up in their apartment and she knows that she’s going to lose him.

Sam tries to act angry, but she knows him too well. He’s moving around his brother like a flower following the sun and she asks him not to go, tries to find the words to keep him here, but they all get caught in her throat. If she begged, if she threw a fit, if she demanded it of him, he would stay. He’d tell his brother he’s sorry but he’d stay with her and not help him and burn their relationship for good. He loves her enough to do that for her. She knows it.

She loves him enough not to make him.

He kisses her and she knows it’ll be the last time. He doesn’t.

“What did that take, five minutes?” Azazel is right there, breath on the back of her neck, and his anger fury rage pressing down on her even closer. “Over three years at his side and you lost him in five minutes. What a waste.”

“I kept him for over three years,” she says, tries to keep her voice steady, but knows she fails.

She had him for over three years.

“Not good enough,” he whispers, lips on the shell of her ear. “Guess I’ll have to send Meg in after all.”

Pain erupts hot across her stomach and her screams mix with his laughter.

~

Love always burns her in the end.

[burningthegallows]

I was kind of a lonely kid, Dean.

[burningthegallows]

One of my absolute favorite tropes is “We have taken the one you love most!” “Oh, have you? Good fukken luck lmao” *distant screams of kidnappers as loved one escapes* or the flipside: “We’ve kidnapped you!” “You are in so much trouble. You are in so much fucking trouble. You are in the most trouble ever, oh my god.” *DOOR EXPLODES INWARDS AS LOVED ONE ARRIVES* and the alternate: *vehicle pulls up, door opens, person is shoved out, door slams, vehicle screeches away* “Did you get kidnapped??” “For a minute yeah”

[burningthegallows]

100% yes.

and aside from his ultimate refusal to follow through on that togetherness promise, he actually does try to walk beside her, and to make it possible for her to walk alongside of him.

he makes such an example of the fathers with petty daughters. he allows her to walk beside him into danger. he uses her perspective when it comes to solving crimes, and he even follows the leads she provides him with.

ayao, shanjian, either probably would have been a decent match for shaoshang. but both had a lot of growing up to do to meet her at her level.

buyi was the only one who was asking her to be more than she already was, and she loved him for that.

look at the empresses banquet— beyond the grandest hopes and made possible by both of them together.

of course, despite all of that (and despite the loving support of both the emperor and the empress) they still manage to fuck it up.

but then again, they’re imperfect and blind to certain flaws— that’s why the show is so good.

something I like about Ling Buyi is that even before he goes through his post-engagement character development, he is pretty astute in matching (most of) the qualities that Shaoshang wants in a partner.

In his proposal, Ling Buyi outlines two key points. One: Shaoshang's the best woman ever. Two: Shaoshang's someone that can stand/walk together with him (in my very loose translation). No.1 directly addresses Shaoshang's biggest insecurity: she hasn't ever been seen as decent/satisfactory, let alone the 'best'. No.2 is a word-for-word repeat of Shaoshang's ideal partnership as she expressed to A yao a few eps back, which Ling Buyi had spontaneously parroted without ever hearing it from her directly. When Shaoshang asks him whether he'll accept her since she isn't exactly the docile, obedient wife type, he's like 'yes. fuck yes. are you kidding?' Of course, he hasn't yet figured out how to act in such a relationship at that point, but it's very cute that he is someone who already idealises the exact same kind of relationship as Shaoshang.

another thing is that he seems to generally know the kind of guy that shaoshang would like. He never even considered yuan shanjian a threat, and he also could buy that shaoshang genuinely liked a yao (unlike yuan shanjian, who time and again tells shaoshang that she was just looking to escape her parents.)

it's been a while since i saw a drama that goes into why the female lead will like the guy. Most dramas would provide you hints aplenty that the male lead is really really into women who can speak their mind/is competent/doesn't like to scheme or whatever, but when it comes to male leads it's just (1) he's rich, important and capable. you've been bullied your whole life. here's a good ending (2) he treats you well and isn't a misogynist douche (3) he saved you plenty of times and it's just treated as kinda default that the female lead would be pretty happy in the relationship. so i think it's a nice touch that they bothered to show how these two people actually suit each other

[burningthegallows]

for anyone too young to know this: watching The Truman Show is a vastly different experience now, compared to how it was before youtube and social media influencers became normal

before it was like, "what a horrifying thing to do to a human being! to take away their autonomy and privacy, all for the sake of profits! to create fake scenarios for them to react to, just to retain viewership! to ruin their happiness just so some corporate entity could harvest money from their very humanity! how could anyone do something so evil?"

and now it's like, "ah, yeah. this is still deeply fucked up, but it's pretty much what every influencer has been doing to their kids for a decade now. probably bad that we've normalized this experience"

[burningthegallows]

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aww it’s like the hat thinks the founders would have wanted the other in their house

Truly love how Draco and Harry reflect the house founder of the other.

Draco is the noble fighter that revels in the light and cares about other people.

Harry is the dark and mysterious one. Dangerous, a bit... Off

Draco is the duelist that heals his opponents

Harry is the parseltongue with anger issues

I love this. I love siat.

[burningthegallows]

Elizabeth Bennet: I went to Accomplished Woman Island and nobody there knew you. In fact it was uninhabited.

[burningthegallows]

HASSIDRISS 'Untitled Collection' 2024 couture

[burningthegallows]

Happy Valentine’s! SIAT Draco and his parents plz

inspired by this fanart

Harry wakes up alone in Draco's bed, the red tinged light of the year's first sunrise falling through the windows. He pushes himself up, glancing towards the bathroom, but it's quiet and the lights are off. The place beside him is still warm, so he couldn't have gotten too far. He could just go back to bed, it's not like anything happened to Draco in his own house, but they've only been asleep for a couple hours at best and he wants to know where his soulmate has gotten to.

He slides on a pair of Draco's silk sleeping pants before leaving the room, creeping softly down the hallway. He almost calls Winky, who could tell him where Draco is immediately, but he knows the elves were all working extra hard to prepare for the New Year's party. His is first guess is the kitchens, and then maybe the library.

He doesn't even make it that far. Instead he sees Draco sitting a couple stairs from the bottom, leaning forward to look into the entryway.

"Draco," he starts, but Draco jerks back twists to look at him, eyes wide a hand to his lips.

Harry frowns but nods, silently descending the stairs to sit next to him. It helps that nothing in the Malfoy Manor creaks. Draco presses their knees together, absently reaching out to tangle their hands together. He mirrors Draco's position, peaking around the edge of the wall.

The curtains all open, letting the weak light pour into the room and lighting it up in shades of soft red and orange.

There's music coming from somewhere and in the middle of the room is Draco's parents. They've both discarded their overrobes and Lucius has folded the arms of his shirt back to his elbows.

They're dancing, but not touching, their blank arms held behind their backs and their soulmarks on display as their hands and forearms are raised and so close it almost looks like their dragons are twined together as they circle each other across the room. They move so easily together, not only like they know each move their partner is going to make, but as if they've done this a thousand times and are planning to do it a thousand more.

"This is my favorite part," Draco whispers, leaning his head on Harry's shoulder.

There's a shift to the music and Narcissa steps an inch closer, clasping hands with Lucius as he reaches out to grab her hand at the small of her back, pulling her almost flush against him, neither of them missing a single step or stumbling even with the bottom of Narcissa's dress in the way.

They never look away from one another.

Harry rests his head against Draco's. "Mine too."

[burningthegallows]

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stand alones:

Inspired by this post by @shanastoryteller

[burningthegallows]

[burningthegallows]

survival is a talent universe

Inspired by this post by @shanastoryteller