#Ilu so much

[jake-and-amy-are-married]

[faerunsbest]

You had bad day? I SHOWER YOU WITH LOVE. BOTHER BOTHER BOTHER BOTHER BOTHER - cinnasalmon

I AM SHOWERED WITH LOVE!

[sirserpentine]

I LOVE YOUR PENTIOUS SO SO SO MUCH AND YOUR DESCRIPTIONS OF EVERYTHING ARE SO VIVID AND WONDERFUL!!!! He's so genuine and it's a delight seeing him express different emotions. The piano scene with him and Angel trying to dance lives rent free in my mind because of the way it was described (which was EXCELLENT)— same with so much of the other stuff, like his relationship with Alastor and now the Blood Ball with Valentino! He's funny, he's smart, he's a little mischievous and I love himmmmm!!! It's okay to hit burnout or start doubting yourself or feel like you're "not writing as good as you used to" but typically for me it just means I need to take a break for a couple days and then it resets? Your writing is amazing though, your head is just being mean! 💜

How is my portrayal?

//ALLLL THANK YOU SO MUCH SWEETIE. You know I adore your writing just as much too, I'm always so glad we discovered each other and our fiction styles just CLICKED. I appreciate your kind words, thank you for being so wonderful. <3

I really need to go back and re-read that part with them dancing (ONCE AGAIN), it really was so so sweet. T_T

[wisteriamemory]

What kind of gay awakening is this?

[merchantofwhispers]

[ Me, not part of the fandom or rp group, still reading everything and adoring the noodle monsters despite not knowing what the fuck any of it means: ]

(This is fully about @vehxmence and their crew)

[lionhxrts]

@xenologues

So true bestie

[deeskip]

I love your art! Especially of the Ten Men!! And Kate! and Milligan!! :D <333

this heart is for YOU!!!! but seriously though thank you so much. i'm so glad that you enjoy and tolerate my ten men brainrot. and i love the wetherallsl so much, they're everything to me

[astarionsilverbough]

i have been struggling with major depression this year, and gods and monsters is one of the few things I look forward to. thank you so much for putting in all the work that you do!

oh darling!! i've so so so been there, oh god it feels like i've been there for so long but i promise - there is a light at the end of the tunnel. it comes from you. it may seem impossible - but then, so many things seem impossible before they become real.

i am so glad tlogm is a spot of comfort for you. let it be a reminder that there is always hope. always. ilu 3000, be gentle with yourself, the world is better for your being here <3

[emilykaldwen]

✨🌈SEND THIS TO OTHER BLOGGERS YOU THINK ARE WONDERFUL. KEEP THE GAME GOING🌈✨

I MISS YOU I LOVE YOU WHY DO WE NOT LIVE NEXT DOOR TO EACH OTHER

[ofgeto]

makes kissy faces at ur geto 😉😉😉😘😘😘😘😘

"Aw look at you. Making kissy faces."

[kymsys]

suguboo? 🐇💖✨ happy fucking birthday again to my dear @fushiglow, this is for you! love you to bits and pieces ♡ CAN YOU TELL I LOVE GLITTER???? and also glitter is just so damn hard to get off, even after showering and so much washing. it just sticks like glue!!!

[faerunsbest]

OH MY GAWD

[oodlyenough]

"you snooped through my wallet?!" - max caulfield, who once dug a friend's pregnancy test out of the garbage right in front of her face

[womanlives]

There’s a common trope in literature. Two characters find themselves in a bad situation. In an attempt at levity, the first says to the other, “Well, it’s not like it can get any worse, can it?” And then it starts to rain. Classic. Mercy’s a sucker for it when she’s the one reading it.

Living it, however.

Amine. Seojun. Names she’ll forget within the next few breaths. Not critical to Jie’s survival; therefore, not critical to hers. What she does fixate on is the movement. Big Guy — Amine? — steps forward, jittery and uncertain. The healing won’t be nice. Calm Guy — Seojun — steps in for added context. A knife’s gonna be involved. My blood heals. On instinct Mercy clutches Jie tighter. What the fuck is that supposed to mean? “Who’s going to hurt?”

Probably best there’s no time for an answer. Mercy’s seen some fucked up shit in her worthless little life. Done some, too. What happens next, though? What happens next defies all rule, rhyme, or reason.

Magic. It’s magic. Slap a different name or technical term on it if you want. What Big Guy does is magic. He brings a switchblade to his palm, cuts — no, digs it into his palm. Mercy lets out the breath she didn’t realize she was holding: a hiss of half-sympathy, half-warning. Her eyes track the blade as Big Guy moves it away. Then he just — presses down. On Jie’s wound. Skin-to-skin, blood-to-blood.

It's almost humorously anticlimactic. Until Jie starts screaming.

He sounds like a shot dog. It’s the worst thing Mercy will ever hear in her entire life. Jie’s eyes snap open, sightless and wide. His body convulses, and Mercy panics. This is so far beyond her that she looks outward for reassurance. For help. Big Guy’s no use; his expression is locked in a grimace of discomfort and his eyes are squeezed shut. Calm Guy, though. Calm Guy’s still calm. Calm Guy radiates it like the sun radiates warmth. Calm Guy doesn’t look at her. Calm Guy stares straight ahead at whatever the fuck is happening to Jie, focused but relaxed. Just another Thursday night. His voice echoes in her head. Please keep in mind that it is helping.

Fine. Fuck. “I’m trusting you,” she says through gritted teeth. If it sounds like a surrender, that’s because it is. This is out of her depth, and she hates herself for it.

Mercy spends this short eternity comforting Jie. Or trying to, anyway. She thinks back to when she was broke in both legs and crying and dying. The scariest part was the loneliness of it. So while Big Guy hunches over the both of them and bleeds, Mercy presses her forehead to the side of Jie’s face and whispers to him. I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know it hurts, just a little longer, please, stay with me, I’m sorry, he’s almost done, you’re doing so good baby, I’m sorry. She only pauses when she needs to take a breath.

Big Guy interrupts. Mercy looks up at his hands. They’re massive, and shaking, and they make the bullets he extracted look almost comically small. What the — ? Actually? Who has time to give a fuck. Mercy follows his gaze to Jie’s torso and blinks. It’s healed. Completely. Covered in blood, sure, but no longer bleeding. The gaping holes are gone. He’s damn near good as new.

“Tell me I’m not dreaming,” she says. She’d laugh if her throat wasn’t so tight. There’s a lot of screams pooling beneath her jaw, begging to be let out. Not yet. “Tell me I’m not fucking dreaming. Is this real?”

Big Guy ignores her and goes for the ribs. Or tries to. There’s a rumble from Jie’s chest, one that vibrates into Mercy’s bones. Gonna kick your teeth in.

Oh my god. He’s okay? Mercy’s gaze whirls to meet his. Jie’s eyes are open. More than that, they’re alert. Angry. Her heart stops. There he is. That’s her man.

Somehow, her laugh gets out. Clipped, maybe, and breathless, but her relief is audible and buoyant. She frees one of her hands so she can wrap it around Jie’s shoulders, hugging him close. Her face presses to his; she drops a messy kiss just to the side of his lips. “Shut up.” She’s so happy. She feels like she’s floating. Like her laugh lifted her way. “You let him work. He’s fixing you.”

Jie’s okay, Jie’s okay, Jie’s okay, Jie’s okay —

After a moment she releases him. For the first time since the door opened, Mercy uncoils. Not fully, mind, but enough. She slips to the side so she won’t get in the way of Big Guy and Jie’s ribs. Her hand still tangled with his relinquishes him with a little squeeze. Behave. She gives a curt nod in Big Guy’s direction. “Keep going.”

Then, an octave lower, murmured against Jie’s cheek, “Big words for someone who got shot twice.” A solemn pause. “He’s gonna start again. Can I do anything for the pain?”  

Sure enough, it's that same voice that answers.

Cruor steps up to heave against the barricaded door. The metal protests and groans, but gives way after a long second. The state of things are catastrophic inside. Then the first delicate crunch of glass sounds, and they both look down immediately. What in the world happened? Why does it look like an entire glass manufacture exploded? Disquieted, but no less determined, they step carefully through the debris. Over the long expired corpses. Through the blooming pools of rosewood blood.

They spot two figures in the far off room. One of which sits hunched, knife sharp and wound tight in vigil. The darkened glare feels just as potent as the fallen on his best of days.

"Hi, um, ma'am." Surprisingly, Cruor's the first to break their silence. He maneuvers past the elder healer, steps further into the common space with open facing palms. It only takes about five big strides to reach the pair. Nervous and fear ridden as he is of the felled hound, his instinct to help takes over. "I'm Amine, that's Seojun." A thumb's jabbed backwards towards Vector. "Not sure how much he told you about us, but, ah... It's not going to be, nice? The healing—"

"Amine, go ahead and work on him. I can explain things," Vector suggests, a pleasant smile scratched thin across his mouth despite the urging.

"—'kay." Cruor gives himself one last second to steel his wits against the bloodbath below. It's okay, it's nothing, it's a lot of nothing — holy shit that's a lot of blood. Already, he feels nauseated, but he doesn't pale just yet. A hand gently removes any cloth and gauze from where the bloodflow looks heaviest. Fingers stop short just before the exposed ruin of Jie's stomach.

"Before he starts, I want to warn you how a knife will be involved. It won't be used to harm him, I assure you. Amine, here, needs it to.. Bloodlet, so to speak."

Slowly, oh so slowly, does Cruor slip a switchblade into his free hand. The quiet shink sounds far too loud in the otherwise stagnant air. "My, um, blood heals." It's the easiest way to explain. He lifts the exposed blade for the lady to see first. Then he moves it to the palm of his already bloodied hand. Presses it deep to spill forth a rivulet just over the gut wound. "It's going to hurt, a lot." For Jie, he means, but the teeth gritting pain already starts to voice itself from the way the hound groans.

"It's going to sound harrowing," Vector adds, now grim-faced but with an air of empathy. "Please keep in mind that it is helping. Amine's blood speeds up the regenerative properties of the body—"

The groan turns into a throaty rasp, a second winded rattle. "Please don't punch me." It's all that Cruor says, quiet like a prayer, before he catches some of his own blood and presses down over the wound. Tightens his grip around the switchblade to dig into the tenderness of his own flesh.

That's when the howling starts. The baying of a limp sickened dog. Every part of Jie goes rigid. His eyes snap open, unfocused on anything but the searing agony reignited in his fucking core. It burns — oh, fuck, does it burn. He writhes involuntarily but doesn't lash out. Some part of him knows who this is, recognizes the method of which his body's forced to mend itself at a faster rate.

Ten minutes of this and the source of suffering finally presents itself. Two stubborn pieces of ammunition clatters from Cruor's shaking hands. The wound is gone. Organ matter, muscles, and skin alike look as if they'd never been scratched. Somewhere between the start of healing and this moment, he closed his eyes. Now, he opens them again. Immediately tries to find a not bloodied body part to focus on. "Hey— uh, ribs?"

"Gonna kick.. Your teeth in." Comes the strained growl, but Jie speaks. He's trembling as well, but his gaze is lucid once more — pinned on the sniveling wimp that's doing him a solid.

Cruor's throat clicks from swallowing dry. "Right, um, ribs." So he repeats the process from stomach to side.

[silenthilllz]

die

[khattikeri]

one of my favorite things about mdzs is that for how heavily its plot involves politics of classism and misogyny... even the characters most directly impacted by it can't and don't free themselves from it. literally the closest exception is mianmian.

meng yao being the "son of a whore" wasn't some sort of commie awakening for him that led him to wanting everyone to be socially equal. he played the political game, climbed the ladders, sucked up to and backstabbed and murdered people, including other prostitutes who actually had nothing to do with how he and his mother were treated at the brothel he grew up in.

he put in so much extra excessive effort for even a fraction of the same respect that members of gentry cultivation clans got. and he did deserve to be treated more humanely! but he feeds into the exact same system that created him, leading to his own undoing.

his efforts were for a fragile upward mobility that was never going to hold up. he never surpassed his origins nor did he empower others in similar stations, because the society he lives in is not one that would accept that.

the second he got caught and all those crimes exposed, he was scapegoated to hell and back, replacing wei wuxian as society's terrible one-sidedly evil boogeyman overnight.

speaking of not-quite male gentry, i think it's interesting that wei wuxian explicitly doesn't try to climb the ladders in BOTH lives, knowing full well that anything he does will be punished just for the sheer fact that he is wei wuxian.

wei wuxian is scolded for giving intelligent and correct answers in school. lan wangji does the same and is praised.

wei wuxian occasionally lounges around with fellow disciples and is punished. jiang cheng does the same and mostly escapes.

wei wuxian refuses to carry his sword around in public (after losing his golden core, which nobody knows) and is scorned as an arrogant upstart. nie huaisang has been doing the EXACT SAME THING for YEARS and nobody bats an eye.

unlike jin guangyao, wei wuxian knew subconsciously from the start that his acceptance was superficial and that he could be cast out any time. when he was 10 and recently taken in by the jiangs, he canonically would not eat or use "too much" food and water because he thought they'd find him a nuisance for "wasting their things" and kick him back out.

now away from just the classism, yu ziyuan is a proud and strong noblewoman in a society that belittles and derides women for everything they do. her strong cultivation doesn't matter. she's victim to the vicious rumors of her husband loving another woman who is strong like her but apparently had a more likeable personality.

it doesn't matter even if jiang fengmian didn't cheat or that wei wuxian is wei changze's son with cangse sanren; yu ziyuan can't bear with the humiliation of herself (and by extension her children) not being "good enough". she's ridiculed for "failing" in that one duty as a wife, mother, and woman.

she lashes out and takes out that anger on everyone present for years, giving her children lasting trauma and also being a key element in how the jiang family and yunmeng jiang sect are effectively wiped out at the hands of the wen clan.

madam jin doesn't even have a name outside of the fact that she's married to jin guangshan. i don't even remember reading anything that indicates if she's a strong or weak cultivator, or what, which in itself proves that to most people, it doesn't matter. she's "just" a woman.

of course she's angry at her husband's affairs and all the bastard children they bring in. but she also can't do anything about them, so she lashes out at the few people she can: servants. non-cultivators, probably. those very same bastard children.

shoutout to meng yao getting shoved down a flight of stairs at age fourteen, because if madam jin tried that move against her husband instead, it would make her lose even more face, which as a noblewoman she'd never do.

and that's not getting into how jiang yanli is consistently sidelined for being physically weak.

that's not getting into how mianmian was actually a good cultivator, but was mocked by everyone around her for trying to stand up for wei wuxian when everyone was turning on him. how everyone scoffed at luo qingyang's words as "just some lovesick woman" who "obviously wants to marry or bed him since he saved her".

luo qingyang is the only one of these characters who HASN'T died. she didn't play society's games like jin guangyao. she didn't dig her heels in confidence of her own abilities like wei wuxian.

she didn't bitterly lash out like yu ziyuan and madam jin. she didn't gently accept it like jiang yanli.

she just LEFT.

she married an ordinary merchant and cultivates separately from mainstream cultivation society, and therein found her own peace and happiness.

mxtx doesn't bother with particularly class conscious or feminist vocabulary to hand-hold readers into understanding these disparities, but that choice highlights them & the deeply entrenched politics of their society even more. i really love it.