#YOU'RE GETTING STABS

[fireflysugarpie]

I think it would be funny if Shang Qinghua and Shen Qingqiu decided to get married, not for tax purposes per se, but for marriage/sex curse immunity. secretly, of course ;)

why would they do this, you may ask? why wouldn't they? excluding aphrodisiacs, there are plenty of curses and/or magical objects just laying around the SVSSS world just waiting for an unsuspecting Peak Lord to trip over them. And since Shen Qingqiu has decided to travel to see all the worldbuilding and cool flora/fauna he missed out on in the original PIDW, he's dragging Shang Qinghua along with him for the ride. Of course, they would need protection against the more serious afflictions they could catch or be caught by, and getting married was the perfectly logical solution!

and if they ended up getting sex-pollened and needed to rail each other anyway? if they both said no-homo after, then it didn't count! and if they had started to sleep in the same bed and woke up in each other's arms, that's because it's cheaper than getting separate rooms! Who cared that Shang Qinghua started to sleep over at Shen Qingqiu's peak when they were both back at the sect? And brought him gifts and food? And that he reciprocated? They were obviously just hanging out as friends.

And friends are supposed to be affectionate and show care towards each other! They're the only transmigrators in this world, so they need to stick together! Watching the other jerk off can be a bonding activity, you know!

And if Shen Qingqiu noticed one day that they stopped saying no-homo? They already know they aren't gay, so it would be redundant to keep saying it. Carding your fingers through your fake (real) husband's hair while he lays in your lap and complains about the merchant's trying to weasel out of a deal with the sect is completely straight behavior!

[knockknockitsnickels]

I think this is one of my favorite lines from the Wraith route because of (imo) how much the meaning changes depending on if you got there via Spectre or Nightmare. For Spectre, it honestly strikes me as a genuine question. Why are you doing this to her? If you're on the Spectre route, you presumably already know the Narrator can't really be trusted, since you had to reject his reward to get here. What are you hoping to gain from continuing to hurt her? For Nightmare, it honestly just makes me sad. As the Shifting Mound describes her, "She desires only companionship, but the only thing she knows is how to hurt." This line feels like a plea from someone who genuinely doesn't understand why you keep rejecting her. She wants to be with you, but she just can't understand how to do that in a way which doesn't hurt you.

[brainrotcharacters]

"His little pet Wolverine."

"Tell me somethin'. Are you pissy because I left, or because I'm with him now?"

[sherwoodflorists]

The whole "Lian Harper has actually been alive and has just been teleporting throughout time" retcon is objectively stupid but I will NEVER complain about it because I truly have never quite forgiven Cry for Justice for taking THIS away from me

[arthursfuckinghat]

There needs to be a scientific study done on how Rockstar Games' Arthur Morgan is able to provoke the most earth shattering emotions I didn't even know I had in me

[lunar-wandering]

alright, i'll do it.

I'll go off the deep end over the argument scene

First and foremost: they're kinda both in the wrong, obviously. But also kinda both in the right?

Macaque, is in the right for being upset that Wukong didn't listen to him, that Wukong drove himself to this point, etc etc. He, even, is not the one to start this argument, and instead approached peacefully, and attempted to leave when he was getting irritated. It was Wukong that pushed him over the edge into blowing up at him.

He even leaves afterwards, which, actually, is technically the right course of action. In a healthy relationship (platonic or romantic) it'd be best to give both parties time to cool off, and then return and discuss the issues calmly to find a solution.

The main problem is; they don't do this. Macaque doesn't come back, and Wukong doesn't cool off.

On the other hand, Wukong is in the right for being mad, mad that Macaque isn't working to free him (cause, from his position, it sure seems like he isn't), and is instead 'wasting time'. Mad that Macaque would dare to say he was dragged into a mess when he isn't the one trapped under a mountain. (On some level, mad at himself, likely, for letting all this happen).

He, of course, doesn't have the choice to leave, so instead he's left.

The core issue here, as is usual with most relationships shown in media; is their lack of communication. Wukong didn't truly listen to Macaque, and Macaque was too upset to understand Wukong's side of the issue.

...And they let this fester.

Of course, this isn't the end of the falling apart between them. No, there's more to this, the show makes this adamantly clear with MK trying to get Macaque to tell him "what happened between them".

Things continued after this, this was just the barest tipping point.

So. Macaque (probably) didn't come back.

We don't know why. We don't know if it was his choice, based on hearing Wukong yell that he "never wants to see your face again", or if it wasn't his choice, if something else happened.

So Wukong is left alone.

It is shown, in Journey to the West, that Wukong is prone to anger.

Quite usually, this is his response to most situations that upset him (followed later by crying), anger and destruction is usually his first response.

Whether viewed under an "autistic Wukong" lense or a "traumatized Wukong" lense, this makes perfect sense.

It's even shown in the show, if you look at the early pieces of flashback art that show bits of the Journey, you can see that Wukong looks pissed in most of them, and that he slowly starts to look happier as the images go on, as, in the story, he worked on this issue, and got better, less angry, less prone to immediately resort to violence.

(Notably, as far as I remember, the tipping point for when he slowly starts becoming less violent literally is the Macaque Chapter. Interesting, huh?)

Wukong, likely, logically knows that there was nothing Macaque could do to free him. Emotionally, though?

He's going to be upset the next time he sees him. And when he's upset, he's prone to anger.

Macaque, on the other hand, is going to see Wukong, with the Journey to the West group, slowly becoming a better person, old parts of him returning, creating someone new. Wukong... changed for these people, he listens to them.

But not for him. Wukong didn't change for him, and he never listened to him.

So. They meet again. We're not sure how. We don't know if that whole thing of Macaque pretending to be Wukong and attacking the JTTW gang is still actually a thing in Monkie Kid. It's possible he might do it out of jealousy, but we're not sure if it happens.

Maybe Macaque came to Wukong for help. Maybe Wukong, still mad about being left behind, refused. (I consider this possible based on the the way the special shows Macaque when MK says that "Monkey King would try to save us if one of us was trapped" + his reaction to MK saying he'd never abandon his friend in s3ep10. It's possible he's regretting not trying harder to free Wukong, but...)

We don't know.

What we do know is, they fought, and Wukong, in the end, successfully killed Macaque.

A Key thing this show hasn't brought up though is... how.

Shadow Play, vaguely, implies that it might've been via his Kaiju Form.

Notably, we are now at the point where Wukong, who, once again notably, has the most memorable Kaiju Form within the story of Journey To The West, is the only one of the three monkeys in this show who hasn't used their Kaiju Form.

We've been told, quite a few times, actually, that Wukong is holding back.

He held back against Nezha. He held back in episode 9, in the fight against Macaque. Even when he was possessed he wasn't using his full power- we're outright told that Wukong was fighting her control the whole time- he couldn't do that while also going at full power.

We've never seen Wukong go all out in the show.

...Why?

Why would the most powerful character, of all time, not use that power to defeat world-ending threats? Why would he choose to not pull out all the stops?

...

("You can't just ignore your power because you're afraid of it.")

Why else, would he not be using his full power, if it wasn't what killed his best friend?

[suddenrundown]

ed dreamily saying "stede stabbed me once, i had to make him do it" followed by him in the next episode "making" stede pull rank and be mean captain...

man's orchestrating situations. manifesting. good for him.

[xfilesinamajor]

Um....what?

Just like that? He unties himself? I always assumed that, realizing he'd majorly screwed up, Eurylochus or one of the men cut him loose.

Ody, if you could untie yourself that whole time, why the f*ck didn't you do it before they killed the cow?

[faaun]

we sang in the aeroplane over the sea tgth ☆

[in-fair-verona-we-set-our-scene]

I think Slay the Princess is so popular partially because the *gets stabbed* "I'm in love" reaction is both intentional on the part of the developers and then they completely follow through on it.

[greenerteacups]

Hi! I am an ardent fan of your writing, and I hope to be as sorted and planned as you some day in my own writing journey.

My question is: you have a keen eye when it comes to planning character personality, dynamics, and such. I've also been wading through your ask replies, and your insights into how you write people and how you make them play off of each other is so wonderful to read. If it's not too personal a q, how did you learn how to write like this? Did you go to school for writing, does it come from years of observing people, do you have reading list recs for "how to write real people and real interactions"?

Thanks! This is a really flattering question. I'll try to answer it honestly, because I wish someone had been brutally honest about this with me when I was a young writer.

I didn't go to school for writing. I started doing it when I was about nine years old. It sucked very badly. I kept writing throughout high school, and it still mostly sucked, but some of it was occasionally interesting. ("Interesting" here does not mean "good," by the way.) I took a break in college, and then came back. I've been writing ever since. Sometimes, I feel good about it. A lot of the time, I don't!

I hate giving this advice, because I remember how it feels to get it, and it's the most uninspiring, boring-ass, dog shit advice you can get, but it's also the only advice that is 100% unequivocally true: you have to write, and specifically, you have to write things that suck.

I do not mean that you should make things that suck on purpose. I mean that you have to sit down and try your absolute hardest to make something good. You have to put in the hours, the elbow grease, the blood, sweat, and tears, and then you have to read it over and accept that it just totally sucks. There is no way around this, and you should be wary of people who tell you there is. There is no trick, no rule, no book you can buy or article you can read, that will make your writing not suck. The best someone else can do is tell you what good writing looks like, and chances are, you knew that anyway — after all, you love to read. You wouldn't be trying to do this if you didn't. And anyone who says they can teach you to write so good it doesn't suck at first is either lying to you, or they have forgotten how they learned to write in the first place.

So the trick is to sit there in the miserable doldrums of Suck, write a ton, and learn to like it. Because this is the phase of your path as an artist when you find what it is you love about writing, and it cannot be the chance to make "good writing." This will be the thing that bears you through and compels you to keep going when your writing is shit, i.e., the very thing that makes you a writer in the first place. So find that, and you've got a good start.

Some people know this, but assume that perseverance as a writer is about trying to get to the point where you don't suck anymore. This is not true, and it is an actively dangerous lie to tell young writers. You are not aiming to feel like your writing doesn't suck. You are aiming to write. You are aiming to have written. Everything else is dust and rust. And of course, you'll find things you like about your pieces, you'll find things you're proud of, you'll learn to love the things you've made. But that little itch of self-criticism, in the back of your brain — the one that cringes when you read a clunky line, or thinks of a better character beat right after it's far too late to change — that's never going away. That's the Writer part of you. Read Kafka, read Dickens, read Tolstoy, you will find diary entries where they lament how absolutely fucking atrocious their writing was, and how angry they are that they can't do better. A good writer hates their sentences because they can always imagine better ones. And the ability to imagine a better sentence is what's going to make you pick up the pen again tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that.

Which is what I mean, and probably what all those other annoying, preachy advice-givers mean, when we say: a good writer is just someone who writes every day. It's that easy, and that hard.

[ntj2pj]

[space-boy-alex]

Me: *simply vibing as an autistic, asexual, trans guy who doesn't like to do drugs or have sex*

People: OMG PRECIOUS SOFT BOY UWU SO PURE AND INNOCENT BABY, MUST PROTECT UWU.

Me: *with murderous intent* 🙂

[strqyr]

maria in an episode titled "worst case scenario": ugh, hacking, technology... why can't people just do what they used to and fight to the death? a lot simpler if you ask me.

qrow in an episode title "with friends like these": you don't know my friends. that's (fighting your friendos) how it always goes.

i have so much faith in my strq girlies to deliver on some good old fashioned fight to the death. truly it would be the worst case scenario but with friends like these... who needs enemies? :)

[everythingwasalreadypicked]

So Hecate kids canonically kill eachother to get the title of the strongest, right?

Hc: The older Hecate kids made fratricide jokes aboard Princess Andromeda

[theotherrichardpapen]

killing eve // wishbone; crush - richard siken // letters to milena - franz kafka // a primer for the small weird loves; crush - richard siken