#(not really writing but its adjacent)

[tcfactory]

Dumb SVSSS thought of the day is Xuan Su being one breakthrough away from cultivating a human form and making its (his?) newfound ability to speak aloud to other people everybody's problem.

Unity of the Sword cultivators give more of themselves to their bonded blades than people cultivating other paths, because they have to cultivate together with the sword, as partners. It's both a blessing and a curse, making their swords more... aware. It's not unusual for Unity swords to ascend with their masters or to cultivate humanoid forms to become something like a platonic life partner.

Xuan Su is an old blade. A powerful one, expertly if eccentrically crafted (what kind of cultivator would choose a zhanmadao when a jian is so much more ethereal and versatile?) and wielded by dozens of prodigiously talented cultivators before.

Each one of them set it aside, finding it too heavy and unwieldy for their ambitions. Each and every one of them died for it. It could feel through the bond as they each fell, the lighter, sleeker blades they replaced it with crumbling like paper under the weight of the destinies they all bore.

If it stopped calling out to young prodigies after its history of losses things would have been... much the same, probably, because Yue Qi has heard about the power of Xuan Su before he stepped foot in the sword hall, but there might have been a chance that he might have heard the call of a sword more suited to his level of cultivation, one that could have grown organically along with him.

The problem is, Xuan Su keeps calling out to new wielders and no amount of warning from Wan Jian's masters could convince the ambitious prodigies to give up on the chance to be the one who carried the famed Xuan Su to ascension.

After losing too many of its people, however, Xuan Su no longer knows how to bond normally. It clings too hard, hooks its metaphorical claws into its cultivator's soul, crawls through their meridians until there's no boundary left between them.

The last three people who tried to take it up didn't live long enough to unsheathe it.

For good or ill, Yue Qingyuan will be the last one to ever wield Xuan Su. It will either ascend with him, die with him or Wei Qingwei will throw it in the Wan Jian forge where the cursed thing deserves to be if it manages to outlive zhangmen-shixiong.

The thing is, however, that an old sword doesn't necessarily mean a mature one. Xuan Su wasn't wielded enough for its spirit to have matured fully. The only cultivator who even entertained it past the first few months of realizing that fighting with a zhanmadao is an unwieldy affair, that they could never become the picture of divine grace hauling around a blade that gave some polearms a run for their money, has been Yue Qingyuan, so most of Xuan Su's personality comes from him.

A thousand years worth of guilt and abandonment issues mixed with whatever traits it borrowed from semi-feral ex-slave teenager Yue Qi when they bonded does not make for a pleasant personality. It would remind Yue Qingyuan of a young Xiao-Jiu, expect Xuan Su has a brand of unashamed bloodthirstiness that can't be replicated by anything that's not made of 5 feet of sharp-edged murder.

It's not all bad. Xuan Su mourned with him when they though Shen Jiu was dead and rejoiced when they found him again. It has been trying its best to help Yue Qingyuan fight his heart demons so he could confess to Shen Qingqiu, even when it has heart demons of its own. They are beyond compatible in the physical and spiritual sense, granting Yue Qi the almost inhuman strength he became famous for. The mental component of their cultivation stagnates, however, because they are trying to split their attention between dealing with Yue Qingyuan's guilt and Xuan Su's abandonment issues and they are getting nowhere.

It's Shang Qinghua who accidentally gives them the push to pick one or the other. ("All right, enough!" Shang Qinghua claps his hands and freezes the dozen frantic An Ding disciples almost coming to blows about which one of their three separate crises should get the most resources. "You," he points at a kid with a missing front tooth. "All resources to your problem. And when that's done, then to his,-" Points at another child. "- and then hers. This way all of them will get solved on time and they will get solved better because you don't spread yourself thin trying to do three different things requiring full focus at once.") They decide to address Xuan Su's bottleneck because it's easier: Yue Qingyuan has already proved that he would not abandon it. They will ascend or die together.

They don't expect the backlash from its breakthrough to knock Yue Qingyuan out for several weeks (it's the bond stabilizing, finally, but his body and core need time to grow accustomed to only having his qi and his life force, all contained neatly within him as it should have been all these years). Weeks while Xuan Su is left alone on the peaks, unsupervised and without anybody knowing that it currently wears the form of a fourteen-year-old boy.

So of course the first thing it (he?) does is slip away before anyone could identify him and goes to Shen Qingqiu. The plan is simple: chew the man out for making Yue Qi sad all these years and then tell him what went down in the caves so he forgives Xuan Su's human and they can all be a happy family together! (A lot of its previous wielders sought fame to be allowed to wed various people they would not be able to marry otherwise, so Xuan Su might have acquired a passing interest in romance. Xuan Su approves of Yue Qi's choice, Shen Qingqiu is a sharp, very sword-like human and Xiu Ya is a very nice, well-balanced sword, but they really keep dragging things out way too long.)

Except Shen Qingqiu doesn't believe that the suddenly appearing feral teenager on his peak is actually a sword spirit. Swords cultivating human form are the stuff of legends and Yue Qi is far too down-to-earth for any of that nonsense. So clearly this Xiao-Su is an orphan his idiot Qi-ge has adopted; he's certainly feral enough to be one. No idea where Yue Qingquan has hidden this child before, but he's not quite presentable enough to be among the Qiong Ding disciples, despite the wonderfully elaborate clothes he's wearing. He enjoys food like he's tasting decent cooking for the first time, so he must not have been here long. Shen Qingqiu remembers being much the same when he first got to eat regularly, but hiding it much better, thank you very much.

Shen Qingqiu decides that he's going to keep an eye on his shixiong's charge until the man wakes up, because it's obvious that the kid can't be allowed to wander the peaks unsupervised. This decision has obviously nothing to do with Xiao-Su's instant hatred towards the little beast. Nope. Nothing at all.

Xuan Su eventually does manage to tell Shen Qingqiu that Qi-ge came back for him. Yue Qingyuan wakes up and confirms that yes, that bratty rascal is the great and powerful Xuan Su. They eventually learn about Binghe's demonic heritage and go investigating how the hell that has happened. But not before a few weeks of shenanigans and Luo Binghe accidentally winning Xuan Su (and by proxy Shen Qingqiu, much to the man's annoyance) over by the wonders of his godly cooking skills.

[inkyprince]

i have two au’s /stories that sit in my head rent free but my stupid shoulder is preventing me from drawing them gaah

ig i could work on writing them down, but my brain has so many thoughts swirling idk where to start dhdhjee

[darkscaleswriter]

thinking about lego monkie kid again and i have... So Many unposted AUs where macaque and mk have some sort of connection to each other pre-canon, bc their relationship is fascinating and i love them. but also, a big part of macaque's character to me is that he's so mean. he's so mean!! he's a scrungly feral cat who will look you in the eye as he bites the hand that's feeding him with 0 regrets.

so, to make a pre-canon connection with mk work in my head, macaque needs to have a REALLY good reason to care about this kid. sometimes, that's a genetic relation (bc it never fails to amuse me that mk looks more like macaque than swk, especially when they're in bird form lmao). sometimes, it's a "i helped you one (1) time out of self-serving reasons and now you keep showing up at my house and refusing to leave me alone (and i won't admit it but you're growing on me like a fungus)" type of dynamic. sometimes, it's even "you're a critical part of my stage tech crew and opening night is tomorrow, if swk makes you skip work for 'training' then i am taking that Personally."

regardless of why macaque cares, he's almost always mad about it lmao. classic villain turned antihero character. he has been conned into becoming invested in this kid and it sucks!!

then, after the monkie kid thing happens, macaque is alternately tying himself into knots about it and resisting (or not resisting) the urge to break into swk's house to fight him, bc how dare that stupid monkey king put a claim on mk. macaque has dibs! he was there first!!!

usually in my AUs, macaque ends up training mk out of spite, bc swk sure wasn't doing it in the early days of mk's stint as the monkie kid. this has Consequences when swk finds out and mk always gets caught in the middle, poor kid. how the story goes from there depends a lot on the AU. regardless, macaque and mk have the snarkiest mentor-mentee relationship ever and it's hilarious.

[goosewizard]

thinking about tommys death and resurrection. thinking about dream, with no access to anything outside of what is in his cell. dream, bludgeoning tommys corpse and tearing apart skin and muscle to grab at his new tools. dream, with bone shards for scalpels and sewing needles, with tendon for string. tommy wasn’t using it right anyway. dream, who puts tommy back together piece by piece, just to destroy him again. and tommy, who is broken and made anew over and over, tommy, who paradoxically loses as much flesh as he gains, tommy, who is never whole but retains all the pieces, tommy, who’s cracks are not filled with gold but his own flesh, twisted and wrong, tommy, who’s broken and ugly, tommy, who walks with a limp now, tommy, whos bones never set right, tommy, who never fully left the prison, tommy, who is still sitting shiny and new on dreams countertop.

[every-sanji]

[themyscirah]

Ok game time which 3 series would you just DIE to get a run on ? I'm talking full creative control, can be as a writer or an artist + plotter if that suits your vibe best

My 3 are

Suicide Squad

Wonder Woman

Green Lantern Corps/Green Lanterns

(in that order)

[weallpartyatybcpatricksfuneral]

it's no coincidence that in soul punk the song order goes from a song that discusses selling yourself out to the music industry to a song about alcoholism as a metaphor for burning out and music making to a hidden track about how fame dehumanizes you and makes your very existence cryptic to a song about how greed consumes everyone and how capitalism fucks everyone over.

[waywardsalt]

there is undeniable opportunity to make bellum x linebeck fucked up but i dont have it in me. im a sucker for it just being fine with a side of like. light nautical crimes against nature but i cant make it toxic or w/e after a certain point. theyre chilling

[moe-broey]

There are so many details I love about Moe, one of which being the Wrong Gender effect.

Where, Moe, when presenting as "female", sported very short hair. Never was much of a makeup guy, either. Its choice in fashion was highly feminine, but its face didn't really match that.

Then it cracks. Realizing, it's not a girl. It Feels distinctly masculine in identity, but doesn't quite get it "right" for A While. LIKE... esp focal is how Moe doesn't feel it fits perfectly into traditional notions of masculinity, either. So, what does it do? It grows out its hair. And since it had short-short hair pre-transition, and hasn't had Long Hair since it was a kid (the kid self, feeling devoid of gender until it was suddenly Forced upon it)... it feels dysphoric, if its hair is too short. It feels more masculine, when its hair is long.

It's. About the gender non-conformity. About the mishmash. About how admittedly arbitrary things deemed "masculine" or "feminine" are just cobbled together in Moe. Not haphazardly, though. Even on a subconscious level... I think it was always very intentional.

[lazer-screwdriver]

Liz thinks Strax is the absolute best and is chill w Jenny & Madam Vastra BUT.

Instead of the grin or commiserating scoff she expected, the other woman frowned at her curiously, tilting her head slightly.

“Your insistence on a rigid gender dichotomy concerns me, given your supposed citizenship to a more advanced civilization.” She said, as casually and lightly as one would comment on the weather. Madam Vastra blinked at her and got a raised eyebrow in return.

She turned back to watch her strange rude friend cut his way through the crowd away from them, a small wry smiling tugging its way through her blank expression. “He would be just as awful as a woman, I promise you.”

[scattered-winter]

“Pidge, do you know what’s going on with Keith?” Lance rested his hands on his hips, giving the girl a stern look. “You have that look on your face.”

“What look?”

“The ‘I know something and I’m trying really really hard not to say it’ look!” Lance poked a finger into her face. “You know something about why Keith’s acting so…Keith-y!”

“It’s Keith,” Hunk pointed out. “Isn’t being emo and antisocial like, his thing?”

“He’s been gone for days,” Lance said. “Days. He’s not answering his scroll, and nobody has seen him, not even Shiro! Does anyone else find that a little concerning?”

“Of course I’m worried!” Hunk protested. “But I don’t know why you’re interrogating Pidge about it!”

“Because,” Lance said slowly, turning to jab a finger at Pidge again, “she knows something we don’t.”

Pidge’s eyes darted between them before her shoulders slumped. “Okay. Yeah. I—I promised I would keep it a secret, but��” Her brows drew together, and she bit her lower lip. “I’m worried about him. I think…I think he might have gotten into trouble.”

Lance arched a brow. “Keith. In trouble. Gods, Pidge, I can’t imagine that.” His voice was flat and humorless.

Pidge glared at him. “He could be in more trouble than you can imagine,” she said, voice low. “Real, actual trouble.”

There was no denying the serious expression on her face.

“What kind of trouble?” Hunk looked nervous, obviously picking up on Pidge’s distress.

Pidge hesitated. Then she drew in a steadying breath, squared her shoulders, and said, “Keith’s a Faunus.”

A beat.

“What?” Lance leaned away from Pidge like she’d burned him.

Hunk looked equally shocked. “What kind?”

“Cat. I think.” Pidge managed a small smile. “The ears are pretty cute, but he’d kill me if I told him that.”

“Ears?” Lance shrieked, eyes bugging out of his head.

Pidge slapped a hand over his mouth. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you,” she hissed. “So I would appreciate it if you didn’t tell everyone in the fucking building!”

Hunk shook his head. “No, no. He can’t be a Faunus! He doesn’t have cat ears, he wears a…hood…”

Slowly, the color drained from his face.

“Oh my gods. He really is a Faunus, isn’t he?”

“Why is he lying to us about it?” Lance flung his arms into the air. “Why the fuck wouldn’t he tell us he’s a Faunus? And how would that get him into trouble?”

Pidge’s shoulders dropped, curling inward. “I…it’s complicated.”

“Why?” Lance demanded. “How is lying to his team complicated?”

Pidge seemed to gather her courage, drawing herself up to look Lance in the eye. “He’s a member of the Blades of Marmora.”

Behind Lance, Hunk sucked in an audible breath. “Oh. Oh.”

Lance said nothing, but his entire body tensed at the name like he was under attack.

“Lance, it’s not what you think—” Pidge began, voice desperate.

“What is he doing here, Pidge?” Lance’s voice was low and dangerous; there was no more humor in it, no more messing around. This was the voice he used when he was fighting.

Pidge wilted, wrapping her arms around herself like it could protect her from the truth. “I don’t know,” she said softly. “But I—I know Keith. I know he isn’t here to—to hurt anyone. He’s…he’s not like that.”

Lance curled his lips into a snarl. “How do you know that? We’ve known him for, what? A few weeks? How do we know he isn’t like the bastards that killed my family?”

Pidge’s eyes were bright with tears, and Hunk had one hand pressed over his mouth.

“I…I just think we should give him time to explain,” she whispered. “He deserves that much.”

Lance ground his teeth so hard he thought they might crack. “I don’t want to listen to what he has to say,” he snarled. “We need to go to the police.”

“You’re turning him in?” Hunk cried, dismayed.

Lance whirled on him. “You’re not?” He threw out his arms, unable to believe what he was hearing. “Hunk, he’s a Blade! We can’t trust him! He’s here to do something awful, I just know it!”

Hunk looked devastated; tears glistened in his eyes, and he looked sorrowfully at Lance. “Yeah. He’s a Blade. But…” He heaved a great sigh. “He’s our teammate, too. He’s saved our lives more times than any of us can count. He’s our friend. We need to at least hear him out.”

Lance was shaking, head snapping back and forth between them. He let out an incredulous, humorless laugh. “I can’t believe you two. You’re really trusting a Blade? A Blade?”

“We’re not asking you to trust him,” Pidge said quietly. She looked up, pinning Lance in place with amber eyes. “We’re just asking you to…not turn him in. At least until we’ve had a chance to talk to him.”

Lance pressed his lips together. A whirlwind of familiar emotions—grief, fear, rage—swirled in his gut, battering him like stormy waves pushing a ship out to sea.

But he knew Pidge was right. Keith had had their backs in too many fights to count. He’d had plenty of opportunities to harm them, but hadn’t. Of course, he could simply be biding his time, waiting for the right moment…but despite all the rage, all the desire for vengeance…Lance couldn’t deny that he needed to hear Keith’s side of the story first.

Slowly, he unclenched his fists and relaxed his shoulders. “Fine.” His voice came out as a low growl. “But once we’re done hearing him out, it’s time to tell the police.”

Pidge looked unhappy, but nodded reluctantly.

Hunk squeezed Lance’s shoulder, ignoring how he tensed up again. “Come on. Let’s go look for him.”

---------

RWBY AU RAHHHHHHHHHHH

[gummy-worms-in-my-brain]

thinking if i should draw a silly little one-off comic i wrote down that is just a half baked idea abt lancer susie and rouxls,.,,, really want to do it with like actual effort put into the drawings fjdmgfdhjg

[organised-disaster]

Burrergh I'm making horrible progress I haven't even started chapter thr-

Oh

[llycaons]

truly do find 'perfect' sweet little kids who exist to be cute and protected extremely boring to the point of aggravation but alluka DOESN'T fit that description because she's been neglected and isolated her whole life, she is soul-bonded with a horrifying (to many) and nearly omniscient being, she is endlessly sweet and loving to really only one person, and she STANDS UP TO that person when he hurts someone else she cares about!! she may not have a lot going on but her character and personality contrasts her situation so much to make it really striking. and I'm a sucker for close brother/sister relationships!! so sue me!!!

[tennessoui]

There are so many cool options for crossovers

For example a crossover with Kingsman would be cool. Obi-Wan could recruit Anakin and their relationship would be forbidden. Or there are both agents. Oh a James Bond crossover. Anakin is Q and Obi-Wan is James Bond who flirts nonstop. He doesn't realize that he already gets the best gadgets. A Stranger Things AU. Maybe one of them gets flayed and the other one will do everything to save him. Or a Teen Wolf AU. One is a werewolf and the other a puny human who has magic and gets possessed by a demon. 👀

oooo these are also amazing au options though i gotta be honest, i haven't seen kingsman so i can't really comment on that, but i've said it before and i'll say it again: i adore this one james bond-like fic called spare parts by mercy-me i think....though apparently it was taken down which sucks because it was literally my favorite obikin fic....the ingenuity...the prose....it was amazing and i miss her

BUT also there's another james bond fic im obsessed with by euryrice on ao3 called "i'd never be me (without the security of your loving arms)" and i adore it sososo much holy shit i can't wait to reread it now that i'm thinking about it

i could totally get behind a teen wolf au i used to love that show but it would be interesting to try and figure out how to make it also loyal to the star wars characters and the teen wolf universe......

[miraclemaya]

for the game im "making" i keep on thinking of how to best portray this society that is like a cyberpunk dystopia that is at the higher levels of society utterly consumed by a false worship of elder things and old gods and what not and i think i want there to be a quest line where some like actual cultist of some god asks you to bomb board room meetings where scarfices to elder gods are happening noy because it's an enemy cult but because this cultist is so disgusted by the fact that they don't even actually worship the god in question they just use it to make the line go up