#and I feel terrible even mentioning this bc I feel like it’s making their tragedy about me and that’s NOT what I want to do

[fortes-fortuna-iogurtum]

.

[fandxmslxt69]

Terrible Liar

Avenger!Loki x Avenger!f!reader

Warnings: Swearing, mentions of injury (reader has a nasty ass wound), mentions of blood and medical supplies, Loki and reader are both assholes to each other but its FUNNY. Rushed plot bc this came to me in a fever dream. Maybe some bad grammar, run on sentences etc. Ignore those ahaha. this is NOT edited or reviewed AT ALL. she's as raw as they come.

A/N: This came to be in a fever dream. Btw. Like God sent it to me. I'm sorry if it feels rushed I was so desperate to get it all down I blacked out. IT'S 5K OKAY MY BAD AHAHAH i'm kind of a slut for this kind of trope so MY BAD. anyway this is for THE @sarahscribbles 's Christmas Celebration!! Sorry I'm a little late, these two wouldn't shut the fuck up so I got carried away. ANYWAY I HOPE YOU ENJOY SARAH I LOVE YOU <3

Synopsis: What could possibly go wrong with spending a night sharing a room with Loki? (aka: enemies to lovers + one bed trope)

Word count: 5K

Oh man. You watched Loki bang the hood of the car in anger. That can’t be good. 

You rested your head against the window of the stolen car, taking deep breaths. You could feel your whole body shaking from the adrenaline. You hadn’t calmed down a single bit since the ride out here. How long has it been? Probably less than an hour. You had no idea how far out you were from the nearest town and it absolutely was not the right time for this car to stop. Your entire body hurt from getting kicked in the ass repeatedly during the fight, and your head spun. Your left side throbbed and your shoulder screamed in agony. Not to mention, you are completely separated from the rest of the group, and you have no means of communication. Somewhere along the way, you had lost your comm, and your spare was of no use. Loki said the lines were down anyway, so it wasn’t much help to begin with. 

Speaking of the devil, he threw the door of the car open, letting in the chill winter air, and huffed as he got back in, slamming the door behind him. “Stupid, useless vehicle. What is the point of transportation if it fails so easily?” He grumbled.

“It’s out of gas, genius,” “Well it’s not making for a very efficient getaway car,” He ran a hand through his hair. “Well?” You looked at him expectantly, but he only looked back with an expression of confusion. You sat up straighter to face him, but your vision blurred and your head swam. It took you a minute to collect yourself. “We can;t just sit here, we’ll freeze to death,” Loki scoffed. “No I won’t,” You clenched your jaw. “Okay, I’ll freeze to death,” “Tragedy,” His tone was dead as he pulled out his phone to mess with. “I’ll let them know it was a heroic death,” “You’re such an asshole,” “How original,” You nearly growled. “Laufeyson,” “Agent,” He replied smoothly, looking up at you with one of those disarming grins. You were not falling for it. You may be delirious and crashing soon, but you were not falling for Loki’s charms. 

“We need to figure something out,” “You mean I need to figure it out,” “Oh my fucking god. I’m not gonna sit here like some passenger princess-” “Agent, you are trembling so hard you couldn’t even walk a foot much less help out in this little dilemma,” Loki interrupted. “I have no desire to starve out here, and horrifyingly, I can’t find it in my heart to let you die out here either. I’ll figure it out,” 

You grumbled under your breath, and you were certain he heard you because he grinned wider and went back to messing with his phone. 

He was right though, you were shaking really hard- both from the adrenaline and now, the cold. Whenever you exhaled, a puff of white air formed in front of you, and the tip of your nose was starting to go numb. The idea of leaving your fate at the moment in the hands of Loki was an absolutely horrifying idea, since you knew how reckless this guy tended to be. But you didn’t have much of a choice, and as much as it physically pained you to sit quietly and wait, you did just that. It was made another fifteen minutes before Loki peeled his eyes away from the phone pad. He opened the door to the car, and stepped out. 

“Hey!” You yelled. “Where the hell are you going? Close the goddamn door!” But of course, he didn’t bother answering or listening. He looked around, staring at his phone occasionally before surveying the area again. And just when you thought he couldn’;t get more insane, he started walking away from the car. Your heart squeezed in your chest. Was he going to leave you here? Like hell he was. You kicked open your door, shakingly getting out of the car. You were vaguely aware of the stab of pain at your side that nearly had you doubled over as black spots danced in your vision, but you willed yourself to push it aside. You slammed the door shut as you walked out after Loki. 

“Hey!” You yelled out to him. You had no idea if he could even hear you with the way the wind howled and snow whipped at your face. It was freezing cold, snow biting your cheeks and your teeth chattering after being out here for less than a few minutes. “Laufeyson!” You yelled louder, arm clutching your side and limping in the direction he walked in. No answer. You were positive a storm was kicking up. 

“Loki!” You screamed this time, as loud as your voice let you. Your chest heaved, your throat hurt, and the air you gulped stung so bad you were so close to never breathing it again. 

“Loki! God help me, Loki, when I find you!” You looked around slowly, yet all you saw was the outline of your stolen car in the winds, and white. So much white. “I’ll haunt you, you know!” You shouted into the wind. “If I die here, I’ll haunt you forever!” You had to shield your eyes from the harsh snow as you yelled. You knew he couldn’t hear you, but you also knew that he couldn’t have gotten too far. How long could he even last out here? Damn it, he could probably last a while. 

Stupid, horrible, arrogant Loki. You contemplated going back to the car, but decided that if you were going to imagine a million and one ways to kill and haunt Loki for eternity, you might as well do it while freezing out here. You were only at number fifteen of your haunting possibilities when you heard his stupidly smooth voice. “What in the Nine Realms do you think you’re doing out here?”

You whirled around to find him standing there, absolutely unaffected by the weather or your situation. His cheeks were rosy and his pretty hair was up in a bun (that was more falling apart than anything) and pretty snowflakes hung in the curls. 

He looked….well. He looked heavenly, to say the least. 

“I was out here looking for you,” You shot back as harshly as you could, but with the way your teeth chattered and the small smirk that tugged at his lips, it didn’t seem to be working. “You should have stayed in the car,” He sounded almost…angry. Why the hell would he be angry when he left you behind? Although, the frown and furrowed brows were a little cute. “You shouldn’t have wandered off and left me behind,” “I was coming to get you,” “Like hell you were,” “I was,” He stepped closer to you, and you had to hold back everything to not huddle up closer to him like a goddamn penguin. He snapped his fingers and you felt something warm and heavy fall on your shoulders. “Put that on. We’re leaving,” 

“Leaving?! Where the hell are we leaving?! Do I need to remind you that we are stranded in the middle of a storm?!” 

Loki grumbled as he forcefully got you into the jacket he conjured. You didn’t bother saying thank you, which was fine because he only kept glaring at you before marching ahead. 

“Where are you going?!” He didn’t bother answering. “Loki!” Assshit. You grumbled and huffed the entire time as you hurried after him, trying to block off the tingling ache at your side. You knew you didn’t get stabbed. Maybe it’s a big cut. You were certain you’d know if a knife had lodged itself into your side. 

You had no idea where Loki was taking you but you kept your mouth shut in hopes that it was someplace warm and safe. 

“Your hair looks like shit,” You blurted out. Okay, maybe not always keeping your mouth shut.

He looked at you from the corner of his eye. “You don’t look much better,” “Yeah but I said it first,” “Maybe I should have left you in the car,” “I would’ve still found you,” “Yes, haunting me forever,” “You heard that?!” He shrugged. “I was heading back to the car. You weren’t exactly quiet,” You stared at him with wide eyes. “And you didn’t even say anything,” “I found it too amusing to interrupt,” You frowned, shoving him with your shoulder. Wrong move apparently, because your vision started spinning and your knees nearly buckled. Loki wrapped an arm around you ever so gently, as if scared you’d shatter otherwise. “Stop talking,” He snapped. “And stop being so damn aggressive. I would like to make this journey without you collapsing on me,” “I’m not going to collapse,” You mumbled. “You always were a terrible liar,” He muttered under his breath, and more or less carried you to your destination. At first, you didn’t let him, but he won eventually, like he always did, and you leaned the rest of your weight onto him. 

You had no idea where you were until you reached the smack middle of a small town. A picture perfect fantasy, almost. Little houses and small shops lined with lights and trees and covered in snow. It was like stepping into a Hallmark movie. Each house was so full of light, and even through the howling wind, you could hear the sounds of laughter and shrieking children. 

How the hell did Loki find this place? “There’s a motel here. We’ll book rooms, spend the night. I’m sure there’s Wi-Fi too,” Loki sounded like he was talking more to himself than you. 

“Freaking out?” You asked. 

“Yes. I’m thinking of which way Stark will kill me if you die,” “Pfft. Tony wouldn’t kill you,” Loki raised his eyebrows but stayed quiet as he walked you both through the town. The storm was clearly picking up, and you were thankful that he had all those genes to keep him alive in this weather, and that he was able to find this place. 

When you reached the motel- which appeared to be the only one in town- you couldn’t help smiling (even if you couldn’t feel your face at all anymore). It was a cute little building, rustic and heartwarming. Little snowmen lined the front, and a bed jingled as you and Loki entered. The inside was even better, with burgundy and gold designs and wallpaper that looked like it came straight out of a Victorian novel. It was cozy, and more importantly, warm. 

You almost sobbed in relief as you practically collapsed onto an armchair by the counter. Your body sank into it, your nerves singing in joy as you slowly felt your fingertips again. 

“Are you alright?” Loki asked. 

You nodded. “Yup,” He made a sound of disapproval. “You need to lie better,” “Go shove your head through the wall,” You muttered back. He only grinned. Loki didn’t even appear fazed or relieved at the warmth, and simply marched up to the counter. There was no one there, and he rang the bell at least five times. 

“Would you stop that?” You snapped after the sixth time.

“It’s a bell. It’s meant to be used,” “Not like that,” “It’s how you call for attention,” “Well I’m sure whoever runs this place will be here shortly,” He lasted a whole two minutes before he hit the bell again. 

“Loki,” You hissed. 

“Just a minute!” You heard a cheery voice call from the back, and a short old lady appeared, seemingly out of breath. “Sorry about that, all those damn stairs,” She chuckled to herself.

Loki flashed her a smile. “It’s not a problem at all,” “Oh my,” The old woman smiled back but this time you swore up and down she blushed a little. 

Loki and his stupid, disarming smile. 

“My…friend and I are a little caught in this storm,” He started, gesturing to you. You waved weakly at the lady and mustered up a smile. She probably thought you were crazy. You had no idea how you looked, but you knew it wasn’t how a normal person should. 

“We were wondering if you had any available rooms for the night. Just two is fine,” He turned back to the lady with an even bigger smile. 

“Well,” She smiled wider at Loki. “I’ll see what I can do,” He nodded, “Thank you…” he squinted at her name tag. “Lucy. Thank you very much, Lucy,” And there Lucy went, blushing and grinning at him again. 

Horrible, absolutely tragic. The poor woman had no idea how insufferable Loki was. 

Lucy rummaged through her desk, seemingly looking for keys to the rooms. She pulled out one, placing it on the counter, before going back to look for the other. You waited, tagging your foot on the wood floor, staring at the cute fireplace. Your whole body hummed in gratitude, and your feet tingle, feeling back in them. 

“Oh dear,” Lucy muttered to herself. 

“Everything alright Lucy?” Loki asked. 

“It seems that I only have a single room available. This storm has the place booked fully,” She explained. 

Hell no. 

Loki sighed. “Very well-” “Are you sure?” You interrupted him. “Can you check again?” You probably sounded desperate, but you couldn’t stop yourself. 

You can’t share a room with Loki. You’d go crazy. You’d do something disastrous- like give in to the urge to cuddle into his chest! Or God forbid, tangle your hand in his hair. 

“I did, hon. I’m afraid this is all I’ve got,” She said apologetically. 

Fuuuuck. 

“It’s quite alright, Lucy. There’s two beds in the room, correct? I’m sure we can manage to share a room for a night,” Loki said hastily before you could interrupt again. 

Lucy opened her mouth, as if to say something else, before she stopped. “Alright,” “How much is it for the night, darling?” Oh okay, he was really laying it on thick then. 

“Oh- oh um…” Lucy chuckled nervously. “This room….it’s 150$ for the night. You can pay in the morning, if you prefer,” “Nonsense,” Loki smiled, pulling out cash from the pocket in his top armour, counting the bills. “Here you go, Lucy,” He handed her the money. “Thank you so very much for your help,” She nodded wordlessly as she handed him the key. Loki took it and turned back to you, arms on his hips. “Are you coming, or must I carry you?” “I wouldn’t mind being carried…” You started jokingly. Apparently, Loki couldn’t read the room, because he frowned, shrugged and then walked over, picking you up effortlessly. 

“Hey-!” You started to protest, but a sudden wave of pain shot through you, shutting you up. “I was joking,” You muttered.

“Mhm,” He said, shooting Lucy another smile before heading upstairs to your room. The stairs were cute too, you noticed, lined with a soft matt and cute lamps lined the walls. And Loki’s chest was really warm, and- that had nothing to do with the motel. 

Before your thoughts could get any more dangerous, Loki stopped in front of a room, hand rummaging through his back pocket to get the key. “You can put me down now,” “I’ll put you down when I feel like it,” Shithead. 

He unlocked the door and stepped in, closing it behind him with his foot. All businesslike, he walked over to the big bed and placed you down on it. It was comfy, and you had to control yourself from not falling back and getting it dirty in all your blood and gore. Loki looked you over. “Fine?” You nodded. “Fine,” He smiled and you were certain he was going to call you a liar but you stopped him. “Laufeyson?” “What?” “Where’s the other bed?” Loki froze, looking around the room slowly. “Oh,” “Oh?” He looked back at you. “It seems, darling, that there is no other bed,” “No fucking shit! You’re sleeping on the floor,” He looked at you in disbelief. “Absolutely not. We can share the bed like civilised people,” “Everyone always says that! And then it never works out!” You threw your hands up. You winced, immediately dropping your hands to hold your side. “Everyone? Who the hell is everyone?” “The movies, duh,” He stared at you. “You’re serious,” “Dead,” He ran a hand down his face. “Alright. We’ll split the bed or something. I truly don’t care enough. I simply want to sleep,” You shrugged. “Fine. Go shower first, then I’ll go in,” “I don’t have clothes to change out of, genius,” “You’re a god genius,” You replied mockingly. “I’m pretty sure you can snap your fingers and get us some clothes,” He stared at you, like he hadn’t had that thought at all. “Right.” And indeed, with a snap of his fingers, a pile of clothes appeared on the bed, and one in his hands. “Try not to get yourself killed,” “I hope you drown in the shower,” He smiled at you before heading into the washroom. You were finally alone, even for a few minutes. You breathed a sigh of relief. Being around Loki always ended with one of you flustered. Tragically, it tended to be you. You looked through the pile of clothes Loki summoned- a plain shirt that appeared way too large, and some plaid pants. They weren’t outrageous. You just had to make sure you hadn’t lost any limbs. 

You slowly peeled off the layers of your top- the jacket, weapons, cash, your useless comms and phone- and then unzipped your equally-useless-in-the-cold vest. You laid all your things on the floor, not wanting to get the bed dirty. Then, slowly, you lifted your top just under your chest, sucking in a deep breath.

Fuck. 

There was a nasty looking cut, starting from right under your ribs and nearly crossing the other side. You didn’t think it looked terrible, but you are almost certain it needed stitches. It wasn’t bleeding too much, but that might have to do with being out in the cold for too long than anything else- even your top was more or less soaked in blood. 

You didn’t even have a first aid kit. You traced around the cut slowly, wincing when it hurt. You prayed it wasn’t infected. 

“Alright, hm?” Your head snapped up to see Loki freshly showered and changed, his now useless mission suit nowhere in sight. “Um, yeah, I’m fine,” His jaw ticked. “You’re hurt,” “Yeah but I’m fine,” “You are bleeding,” He sounded ...angry. Was he mad at you? “It’s not like I did it on purpose,” You snapped. 

He clenched and unclenched his fists. He opened his mouth to say something, before he shook his head and stormed out of the room. 

“What the fuck? You called out after him. He didn’t answer as the door slammed behind him. 

You had no clue why he had to be so mad. It’s not like you chose to get hurt, and you certainly weren’t going to ask him for anything, so why’d he get so pissy? You grumbled to yourself as you grabbed the clothes, heading into the bathroom to scrub off the day. 

It took you a solid twenty minutes to wash everything out. You were very careful to not open your cut further, taking warm water to wash off the dried blood around it. 

You tugged on the plain shirt as you stepped out of the bathroom. You winced when you reached up to tie your hair, deciding to just leave it down to dry. You had thrown your old clothes on the pile of Loki’s in the bathroom, and used a spare towel to press against your wound. 

“Welcome back,” You said sarcastically when you found Loki sitting on the bed. 

“Come here,” He said curtly. 

“You can’t just order me around after you walk out you know? And you can’t get bitchy with me for no fucking reason-” “Will you please come sit down so you can look at your wound,” Loki snapped, but it didn’t sound harsh. It was almost…pleading. You froze in your spot, blinking slowly at him. His voice sounded devastated and in your daze, you nodded, slowly walking over to sit on the bed beside him. 

“May I?” He gestured to your shirt and you nodded again. He lifted it over your head, and suddenly you were thankful for putting on the sports bra Loki brought with your clothes.. “You didn’t say anything,” He whispered. 

You swallowed. This was too freaky. You never got this close with Loki. “We-...we had other things to worry about,” You swore his hands trembled as he reached into the first aid kit beside him. Where did he get that? Did he run out to buy one? Damn it. You and Loki didn’t do fluffy shit. The one day you needed him to be an asshole….

He took his time cleaning the wound, and you tried your best to keep your yelps of pain down. 

“Do you want stitches?” Loki asked in a soft tone. He looked ...frightened. And why too pale. Did he get squirm-ish at this stuff?

“Are you a medical professional?” You asked. 

“Farthest thing from it,” You hummed. “Just wrap it up,”

He nodded, grabbing some cotton pads and the gauze. He carefully placed the pads onto the wound, and began wrapping the gauze around your waist. His fingers brushed against your skin, and you shivered at the touch. 

“There,” He exhaled, pulling his hands away. “You can put your shirt back on,” “Yeah,” You nodded. You should definitely grab it now. You should probably put it on. But you didn’t move a muscle, not with the way Loki stared at you, and the way his eyes dipped lower occasionally. He looked away, appearing flustered, his fists clenched on his thighs. “Loki?” “What?” He snapped. 

“Why are you so angry?” “You could have died,” His voice died down to nothing but a desperate whisper. “You could have died,” You opened your mouth to protest, to say that you had it under control and that everything was fine, but he shook his head. 

“Don’t you dare say everything was ‘fine’. You’re still such a terrible liar,” You weren’t. He just had that freaky ability to tell when you lied every damn time. 

“You could have died. Human life is so horribly fragile, you could have died at any second. What was I to do then, hm? Stare at your lifeless body?” “I thought you’d rejoice at my death,” You joked, trying to break the tension. His eyes snapped to look at yours, his jaw clenched and his eyes wide with fear. You thought he’d say something, but instead he just leaned in, crushing his lips harshly against yours. Before you could even react, he pulled away, breathing heavily. 

“I would have died too. In the simplest terms, my heart would have stopped working the minute yours did too,” You froze in shock, staring at him with wide eyes. What just happened? Your lips tingled from the kiss. You wanted him to do it again. “What the hell are you saying, Loki?” “I’m saying that you are incredibly stupid and idiotic and completely selfish. And that I would rather die than live a life without you in it,” He started, his tone angry and desperate. Your head was spinning. Maybe there was drugs in the linen of this bed. Or maybe Loki hit his head. 

“Say something,” Loki pleaded now, the fight gone from him. “I’m sorry if I offended you. I’m sorry I’ve been such an ass. I can’t help myself. I go crazy every time you’re around. I can’t think straight and I….I don’t know what to do with myself. I’ve never done this before. I thought perhaps if I annoyed you enough, I’d get you out of my head. But Norns, every time you shot some clever remark back, it only egged me on more,” He was rambling at this point. 

You felt confused, but at the same time a sense of relief washed over you. It wasn’t like you were in love with Loki- but you definitely didi entertain the idea of occasionally making out with him or spending the day shopping together. 

So maybe it was a little crush. 

And fuck, it was a relief to hear him blurt out how helpless he was with you. 

“Did you black out?” Loki asked. He cursed under his breath, getting up to give you some space. “I apologise, I shouldn’t have said anything. I came off too strong,” He fumbled as he stood up, running a hand through his hair. “I just…I panicked. I apologise-” “Loki,” You stopped him from spiralling further, even if it was cute to see his usually composed self dissolve. You shuffled over to him on your knees. Even while on the bed, he was still fucking giant. You cupped his face and pulled him down, pressing a kiss to his lips. 

You pulled away after a second, dizzy from the feel of his lips on yours. It was better than you could have ever imagined. He stared at you in shock, lifting his fingers up to press them to his lips. You nearly died right there. 

“What was that for?” he asked, shocked. 

You laughed, kissing him again. He leaned into it this time, wrapping his arms carefully around your waist, his lips pressing against yours. 

You kissed him again and again and again, until you were both breathless and his lips were swollen and you were sure yours were too. 

“You’re really fucking insufferable, by the way,” You muttered against his lips. He hummed, chasing after yours as you pulled away. “You drive me insane. You’re in my head all the damn time, I can’t get rid of you,” “Don’t get rid of me, then,” He captured your lips in another bruising kiss. “I don’t plan to,” You sighed happily as you shuffled back onto the bed, pushing aside bandages and gauze wrap and wipes. Loki was a lot neater, taking his time to put them away onto the night table. He crawled into bed with you, his body hovering over yours, hands on either side of your head, caging you in. He leaned down, pressing another kiss to your lips. One kiss turned into two, into three, and then you were making out lazily, your lips crushed together, heavy pants and heated breaths for god knows how long. Tragically, Loki rolled off of you, laying down beside you. You took deep breaths, trying to calm your racing heart. 

Loki shifted, laying now on his side to look at you. You did the same, smiling softly. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?” 

“If you couldn’t tell, I’m not quite a people person,” You chuckled. “No, I guess not,” He could be your person though.

Maybe that’s too early to say. You kept your mouth shut. 

“Did I come off too strong?” “Nah,” You shook your head, reaching out to wrap your finger around a lock of his hair. “It was a Hallmark-worthy confession,” “What in the Norns is this Hallmark?” You laughed. “It’s a company. It makes lots of cheesy rom coms, all of which have some sort of frustratingly handsome male lead and big confessions,” “So you’re saying I’m handsome,” He grinned devilishly.  

“Can’t deny it,” 

He leaned in and kissed you again. You kissed him back but then pushed him off. “Stop it. I’ll become addicted,” He leaned back in. “Not a problem. I have no plans to go anywhere,” You ducked away from him, laughing. “If you keep making out with me Loki Laufeyson, we will be having sex,” His brows furrowed. “Absolutely not. Not while you’re injured,” Damn. 

“Fine, then stop kissing me,” “Well that’s unfair. I just got started!” You shrugged. “It’s not my call,” He huffed, pulling you closer, your back flat against his chest. His arm wrapped carefully around your waist, the hand coming to rest just under your wound. “Go to bed then. Before I do something crazy,” “I like crazy. I’m quite fond of crazy,” “Yes, crazy seems to follow you everywhere. It might be your whole identity, really,” “Is that an insult?” A pause. “I don’t think so,” 

You fell silent for a minute. “I think Lucy has a crush on you,” Loki laughed. “What makes you say that?” “Um, the way she blushed when you smiled at her? You laid it on so thick,” You could hear the shiteating grin as he spoke. “I have no idea what you mean, darling. I spoke to her like a normal person,” “Hm,” You wiggled closer to him. “Nah, you definitely were charming her,” His hand squeezed your hip. 

“Stop that,” “What?” You feigned innocence. 

“Stop moving,” You wiggled your ass again, just for a bit of emphasis. “What? This?” 

You swore the sound he made then was some growl. “You find new ways to annoy me every day,” “It’s my talent,” “And you excel at it,” You truly did. No one ever got under his skin like you did. And now with this new layer of your relationship, you have an infinite number of possibilities. 

You knew you guys should probably talk. Figure out where you stand. A plan for tomorrow morning. Try to communicate with the team. You couldn’t find it in yourself to care right now though. Loki was warm, and as he peppered kisses across your shoulder, you felt like maybe tomorrow would be a good day too. 

“I still think you’re an ass,” You mumbled, your eyes half closed. 

He laughed, the sound vibrating in his chest. “Truly a terrible liar,” He pressed a kiss under your ear. “I still think you are the bane of my existence,” “The only one?” “The only one,” You hummed, content with the answer. You could figure things out tomorrow. Tonight, you just wanted to lay in this haze of sunshine. To sleep and wake up to get drunk on Loki again.

Tags: I'm gonna tag a few people because I think I'm silly and this is my second little christmas-y fic so what the hell i dont care LMAO. DONT FEEL OBLIGED TO READ <3 @sarahscribbles @divine-knight-hand @holdmytesseract @joyful-enchantress @saturn-rings-writes

[prideprejudce]

I've seen alot of badfaith interpretations for the writers having 'forgotten' jaeherys' death when Rhaenyra says the 'son for a son' line, and honestly I thought it made alot of sense with how Rhaenyra sees the situation.

Rhaenyra clearly sees herself as a Good Moral Ruler who ONLY enacts violence as a Means for Peace™️, so I dont think she takes responsibility for Jaeherys' death at all. I think she sees his death as a random fluke tragedy that rests solely at Daemon's feet, and completely rejects that she has anything to do with it. She's the Good Guy she would never kill an innocent! She rebukes her husband very seriously for that waste of energy and violence, (wagging her finger at him bc no thats bad we dont kill children in 'Our Good Justified War'), but I dont think she cares enough about jaeherys or jaehera to consider it revenge for lucerys' death.

To Rhaenyra the fact that theyre innocent children, and therefore worthy of protection upsets her about jaeherys' death, but ultimately shes so removed from the kids themselves, I dont think she cares so much personally about them. I doubt she thinks one of their deaths is equal to her loss, and I honestly dont think it occurs to her that Alicent would feel for Jaehyrus as acutely as she did for lucerys. (Which might be correct, seeing Alicent was much more concerned about her daughter's grief than the death itself)

I think with the 'son for a son' line we do see the two sides at war within Rhaenyra. She's a mother who wants vicious revenge for her son's death, but shes also a mother who knows that this will destroy Alicent.

Her 'son for son' line is equal parts relish and sympathy, she wants to dig the knife in a bit bc alicent had a hand in lucerys' death, but also I think 'son for a son' could also be her terrible way of HELPING Alicent make such an impossible decision by framing it as justice. Like, 'One of your sons is guilty for killing mine, whether its by direct action or responsibility via usurping my throne, not to mention other warcrimes, Therefore, its okay to choose to save helaena because she's innocent where your sons are not, and finally this is justice.'

TLDR: Rhaenyra only considers Alicent's direct sons as compensation for her loss of lucerys, both bc theyre 'responsible' for it and also bc she barely remembers that the younger green targs even exist. She says Son for a Son specifically to Alicent to make the decision easier for her.

hey anon how does it feel to be born with a galaxy brain

[violent-viscera]

THEORY OF ENDING OF ARCANE

ok, so i should preface that while i guessed singed was orianna’s father p much right away after i read orianna’s lore (which im super proud of), im terrible w theories. but i just want to ramble a bit.

i feel like jinx is going to die at the end of the show (which i hope not bc she’s my favourite character and she’s suffered so much.)

but considering how much arcane loves parallels and tragedies, it makes sense to me.

i feel like the whole foundation of jinx/powder as a person is that she seeks to belong, family, love, and to feel useful.

this whole unending tragedy is bc of piltover’s oppression of zaun and the power struggle/imbalance there, of course. but that’s how a little girl—who is predisposed to mental health issues and deep laden insecurities—ends up accidentally blowing up her entire found family.

her deep sense of emotionality and compassion becomes her worst enemy; it’s the guilt and trauma left behind by her actions that propels her character into chaos and deviancy. she believes everything she does is bound to be cursed and she can never do anything good. or right. and it doesn’t help that her second father figure is cursed w the similar insecurities of inferiority, projects his trauma onto her to make it tenfold, and manipulates her so he doesn’t lose her.

so instead of facing her pain head on and accepting those parts of her, she leans into it and adopts the persona of jinx.

it’s less painful than being weak, fragile, sensitive powder who can’t do anything.

so, in season two, with all the scenes of jinx slowly finding morsels of powder still lingering in the depths as she adopts isha and reunited w vi (however fragile and tenuous it may be) and just seeing how that former little girl who just wanted family and be loved and to love…i feel like she will die.

except she will die this time as someone who didn’t fuck shit up and died for her cause (maybe she protects vi as we see she does when faced w feral warwick). she will be reunited w her family (her parents, silco, vander, and isha) in death and she’s been saying she’s been wanting to die anyway.

not only that but it could be the way to bring closure to the sisters in a way that is stereotypical of arcane where they reaffirm their love but also still is considered tragic. maybe as jinx is dying and the shimmer leaves her system, she dies w powder’s blue eyes.

it also would parallel silco’s death at the end of season 1 and we can see even through montages this season that their journey into darkness begun from just wanting to help.

and as i mentioned earlier, she also stepped in front of vi, shielding her from warwick whilst demonstrating her hope that vander was still intact inside (powder’s optimism and hope still alive) and vi acknowledging jinx doesn’t need her anymore as she’s a force on her own…feels like maybe jinx will protect vi instead of vi being the protector.

i could be so dead wrong and i would like to be bc i love jinx and her story, but right now so much feels so set up to jinx’s death.

like the amount of redemption arc they’re aiming for and how much powder is still left inside her (her capacity to love still is alive and well), it feels like informs me that she will die.

[aliesther-eistein]

Hi, I read your post about Messmer & the hornsent crusade, and I found it really intriguing but I also disagreed on some of your points, however I'm not sure if I just didn't understand them or I misunderstood, so I thought I'd ask about it.

To preface, I mean no disrespect or hostility to you or your opinion, I'm just curious about some of the things you brought up in your post & I'd like to just understand them better. If I come off in an aggressive or confrontational manner I apologize, this is not a hate ask, I'm not great with tone in through text.

you mention in your post ppl in the fandom talking about how they like Messmer, but feel the need to justify why, or try to find excuses for simply liking a character. On those points I do agree completely, I think it's a Little ridiculous to do mental gymnastics to 'excuse' simply liking a souls character even though 99% of them are very morally grey. What I don't understand is your next point though, you say Messmer's past does excuse the crusade.

The post makes it seems as if the hornsents are one big monolith, who all participated in the torture & genocide of the shamans, despite them being a massive civilization and the greater potentates being the ones who specialize in, and practice the jar stuffing. From what I understood from the post, you believe that the hornsent as a collective, deserved to be genocided because of what happened to Marika's village.

You also say in the beginning of the post, that you like darker themes in Fromsoft stories like death and suffering, that the characters do terrible things but that we like regardless because we understand or sympathize with their reasoning, why they do it.

So what I didn't understand abt your post was this: Why bring up how Fromsoft characters are capable of terrible things, but we like them Bc we understand WHY they do those things, if you think the crusade was completely justified?

Following that logic, that the Hornsents all deserved to suffer and die, that wouldn't make Messmer a character capable of great evil, because then that just makes the crusade him enacting justice for his & his mother's people and it wouldn't be a morally wrong action.

That's why I wanted to clarify if I grossly misunderstood your points on my end. but If I didn't misunderstand I want to know why you think the Hornsent deserved to be purged completely. To me, It's not like the entire people all committed crimes to the shamans. If Messmer wanted to prevent/protect more shamans being jared, (assuming they weren't all dead) He wouldn't need to destroy their entire civilization & kill them all. he would just need to go after the potentates, places like bonny village & whipping hut etc. He and Marika are literally Gods who command multiple armies so I'm sure it was possible.

I just don't see how the Hornsent are all collectively responsible for the shamans being murdered when there was a entire village whose sole purpose was torturing shamans. Assuming that the shamans are indeed all dead, and Marika (understandably) wanted revenge then why not go after the ppl who actually committed the crimes in the first place? There's characters like Romina, who you can see in the trailer her church being burned down while she cradles her pole blade or something, getting caught in the cross-hair of the crusade but how is she & others like her, deserving of Messmer & Marikas extermination?

Basically how is Messmer excused for the crusade, when it didn't even target the ones responsible & only continued the cycle of violence by committing the same atrocities that happened to Marika's people. I see your point about ppl trying to be '' all-forgiving '' and virtuous over fictional characters but I don't think it's abt ''forgiving'' or anything, the way I saw it the story was conveying how the Hornsent weren't the 'good guys' or entirely innocent whilst still showing the tragedy of the crusade, bc it was still wrong to wipe an entire race out of existence for the actions some of it's members committed.

Again, I truly don't mean any animosity to you by sending this ask. I know fandom discourse can often be utterly vitriolic and I'm not tryna contribute by being disrespectful to you over a post. I merely wanted to understand your points that I was worried I misinterpreted. Even if I didn't I still respect your opinion. Anyway feel to grill me or ignore this if I'm wrong/grossly misinterpreted your post lol. I'm sorry it's really long, I tried articulating my thoughts as best I could. I hope you have a good day.

Thanks for the question. It’s a perfect illustration for what I wanted to tell, but obviously failed.

You’ve noticed a lot of details, you know the lore of the game pretty well, I am not to question it, and in a way this is the problem. This post is not about the lore and the characters, but about point of view and the language we’re speaking.

What I actually wanted to say with this post is that it’s pretty easy to be forgiving when you are not in rage. When you are not in rage, when you don’t see death, when you are not in fear for the ones you love and/or for the people of your kind, it’s easy to say “they are not monolith”, “their culture”, “not all of them”. In this peaceful state of mind, when you see only the story on the screen, it’s easy to notice those details and play with words.

But when your point of view and your state of mind due to the situation you are in changes, you are not capable of this anymore. When you fear, when you are in rage, when you see mutilation right before your eyes for months and years, it changes you to the core. You are simply _not_able_ to forgive, you are not able to differ your enemies. There is nothing like “culture”, “not all of them” and so on. When you see one of their kind, you see “one of their kind”. Not “someone”. People, - no, creatures, - who are a threat to you, who have already brought you sufferings, are not humans anymore. It’s easy to recall their humanity in the back of your mind when you don’t have memories of them slaying people right around you with joy. But once you’ve seen something like that, there is no way back. You will never see all the things you are talking about now, they will never matter anymore, and the enemy will never gain humanity in your eyes. When you understand that someone wants to slain you just because you are you, and when you see them actually doing it with the people of your kind, on the streets you are walking, you don’t want to ask questions and discuss their culture. You want to kill them all just in order to stop it. That’s how this puzzle looks from another point of view.

Returning to your question, are right in a way, but you are speaking in the language of peace. Most of people here, on Tumblr, I believe, have never seen war and terrorism knocking at their doors. And what I wanted to say with this post is that the language of peace is a privilege of peaceful times. When war comes, you forget it once and forever, because now you live in the new reality, and in this reality language of peace becomes total cringe.

I am speaking in the language of war, rage and vengeance.

So Messmer does.

I expected this fandom (since all dark things and so on are okay for people here) understand it perfectly, but now I see that they don’t. They’re speaking about war in the language of peace because peace is their reality, and seems like they can’t even imagine another one.

Sadly, I can. I don’t even have to. This is the reason we misunderstood each other, and, obviously, we will keep on doing it again and again.

P.S.: Remember what I said in the end: that post wasn’t only about Elden Ring.

[sillyandquiteawkward]

as a big enjoyer of suicidal evil characters i LOVE when fans actually put care into depicting jimmy... he's an awful human being but in a v specific and impactful way,... like pre-crash curly unambiguously liked jimmy and was closer to and prioritized him above the rest of the crew (that fucking psych eval... lmao...) which is RLY IMPORTANT to getting exactly how bleak anya's situation was...! anyways ummm i like how you draw anya and curly's noses. also that drink comic of yours is one of my all time fav  shitpost jimmys. that semi-not-joking mass death ideation + halfhearted backtrack is so choice

i think its valid to not want to depict jimmy, especially bc he is a terrible person whos done incredibly upsetting things that lots of people have experienced. but i think its important to not just label jimmy as a monster in general and then set him aside, but to acknowledge that hes a person that continuously choose to do bad things in efforts to self serve and shift blame, and that there is a method to his madness. theres a lot of really fucking interesting characterization going on with jimmy, and while he uses that all to be a shitty abuser, hes still a compelling villain protagonist. its a shame that this fandom is so hostile to any sort of delving into him, to even mention him, unless its surrounded by 300 warnings and disclaimers. understandable, but a shame.

the way jimmy wormed his way into positions of power over others due to the neglect of pony express and curly's desire to "fix" him, how jimmy had his talons deeply sunk into curly who just rolled over for him when it came to his assault on anya. how jimmy was able to use swanseas solitary personality and daisukes naivety to exert his dominance and desire for control over anya and the tulpar which he was never capable of handling in the first place due to his lack of responsibility and selfishness, which ultimately brought everyone down...oh that is wonderful tragedy. the trainwreck, the facade, the hubris, the unreliability. a big house of cards posed perfectly to be knocked over in an instant. sadly everyone knows an incompetent idiot who thinks hes the shit and makes it your problem, everyone knows the guy you have to warn new people about. not as fun when its in reality. but i think exploring these ideas in fiction can help prepare, notice, and prevent jimmys from ruining you and others lives.

and thank youuuu any time i can draw a big nose, or a big bumpy nose, im there. im ready im hype. <3

also hehe i like the drink comic a lot as well. im glad people like the little bits of character i was able to shoehorn into single frames. theres too many comments about "why didnt jimmy put drugs/poison in there" which completely forget that 1) this is all on video evidence, which the crew will be watching back/posting 2) he also has to drink it 3) literally what would he gain for killing the crew before they even leave earth. lmao. jimmy adding monster to what he assumes to be alcohol is reflective of his impulsive spite towards swansea talking shit to everyone (him), but played off as a joke to save face. loooook its just a little jab back at swansea, no biggie. just tit for tat. his willingness to make everyone suffer (including himself) bc one person made him feel tiny. gnashing my fucking teeth

[irrealisms]

jun wu or bwx for character asks? 👁️

starting off: hi yen if you're reading this it's got spoilers so pls skip this post ty <3 u can come back to it when u finish tgcf which at your current rate will be in like. a couple days lol

How I feel about this character

Im Normal About Him.

the ending is. perfect. the bamboo hat. it's never too late. when he's defeated he looks relieved. quoting myself from discord:

he cannot face being proven wrong, because it means he’s done terrible things and hurt people when he didn’t have to. he wants so badly to be proven wrong, because it means that maybe there’s good in the world and not just endless crushing pain and evil.

i have a lot of thoughts abt him & the tragedy of him & his entire ideology!!! i am sort of failing at condensing them but i have a lot of thoughts about him .

All the people I ship romantically with this character

hehe. xie lian (i am a sicko). i can also justify this to some extent--jun wu/bai wuxiang (i think mostly bai wuxiang, actually?) remarks positively on xie lian's appearance a notable amount, there's the "makes one ache, makes one excited" bit which i cannot read as anything other than Kind Of Weird And Horny, there's the thing where jun wu tests xie lian's virginity by making him bleed on jun wu's sword (i have another whole meta in my heart about swords as blatantly phallic in tgcf but i assume you do not need to be convinced of this lol)--but honestly i don't fully stand by it. this is a ship i have at least 80-90% because i am a sicko. i hope you can all understand

My non-romantic OTP for this character

ALSO xie lian. im complex. i contain multiple guys. the thing is that i have a beautiful google doc that consists of every time jun wu/bwx is analogized to a parent/teacher and xie lian is analogized to a child and it has . like. 30 quotes? somewhere around there? it's a lot! it's a lot. "i have decided that we are the same guy due to The Parallels but also i am going to enforce this and Make us the same guy by Molding You into Becoming Me" is an incredibly good dynamic whether it is slash or gen, and i do think the "weird forced adult-child relationship going on" reading is in fact more supported by the text than a shippy one. also when i'm not being a sicko about it there's also something deeply beautiful to me about their ending, about xie lian defeating jun wu but also showing him this moment of grace. and of course the Parallels which apply equally when it's slash vs gen. also you may have noticed that neither this question nor the last one do i bring up guoshi. this is bc idgaf about him. sorry mei nianqing . he exists i just Do Not Care

My unpopular opinion about this character

im gonna be so real i have no idea what is and is not popular wrt jun wu. what are the popular jun wu opinions.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

once again im kind of at the same place i am wrt mu qing of, like.... nothing, honestly? i am incredibly happy with what we got, i think it's beautifully written and the resolution is perfect, mxtx is a good writer and tgcf is a good book, no complaints

having a bit more of his backstory with mnq might be cool, i guess? we get the huge infodump but it's kind of just an infodump, it is just Pure Exposition, going into that a bit more / more naturally than "guoshi helpfully exposits for us" could be neat even tho i dont think its necessary. as mentioned i'm p much happy with what we got

(ask game, give me a character)

[longsightmyth]

What are your thoughts on the destruction of Numenor? I have not read the silm (yet?) so all my knowledge comes from the wiki, but to me, it just seems incredibly cruel of the Valar? I admit to probably being biased bc I come from watching rop and really liking Miriel so I am Not Happy over her canonical ending but still. Ik Numenor did a lot of very bad things, but there were still good people on the island (it's not like everyone could have escaped with Elendil & co). There were children there! I just feel like there would have been a lot of ways to deal with the situation that did not involve just up and killing everyone. Ig it might have just been a somewhat unwanted side effect to the Valar remodelling the world to cut off Valinor from mortals but even then, was that *really* necessary? It's not like Pharazon & co seemed to really be a danger to Valinor given that the Valar easily killed them all and their entire island. They could not have at least saved the children and remaining Faithful on Numenor? It also seems especially unfair given All The Shit The Noldor Did, where the harshest punishment the Valar ever seemed to give was banishment. It's not like Numenor was the only place to ever get tricked by Sauron either (although tbf, they did do a lot of extremely terrible things)! But again, I did not actually read the source material for that so I might be missing smth important there, so I'd be very curious to hear your thoughts.

Depends on which notes and editions you pick up probably, especially given the framework that the silm was written by elves and so is a biased account. Some notes say Miriel was forcibly married and renamed: others say she was in on it. The silm is written more in the style of a textbook, albeit one with a distinct slant towards a people with a vested interest in presenting their views, and it isn't like we ever have a narrative story IN Numenor, at least not that I've found. @arondirslovechild will correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm not sure what you're asking me here. "Was there a solution to the general murderisland numenor had become without sinking it" I mean I can't sink islands so it's not on my list of solutions. This is a callback to the fictional atlantis, which isn't great (I've mentioned before the ties between atlantis theories and nazis) but at least doesn't pretend atlantis was just shining light etc etc by the end.

But to be honest, Numenor is not where most of my attention goes. There is a certain amount of Catholicism in Tolkien's works that is inescapable even if he personally disliked it being called allegorical. The valar warned numenor what would happen: the ones who believed them a, didn't sail west to try to conquer elf heaven, b, didn't do shit like human sacrifice, and c, got the hell out of dodge.

Unless they couldn't, as with the non-complicit version of Miriel, who, again depending on which notes you decide to fold into your tolkien canon, knew what was happening and tried to plead with angry gods (or archangels, whatever) from atop a mountain for her people until the last.

Which I guess falls into Tolkien's entire mission statement: grand, sweeping gestures are all noble and well and good, but what keeps us from getting to that point and what makes them effective is the small everyday things that can build you a base. If Numenor had not drifted so far from this philosophy, they wouldn't have supported Pharazon's hostile takeover, they wouldn't have started human sacrificing all over the place, and they wouldn't have persecuted the faithful, somewhat ironically meaning they wouldn't have needed the faithful at all.

Anyway I am ill-equipped to judge Mythical Fictional Beings on such a grand scale, but I am going to note that given Tolkien's track record they were irrevocably doomed to some tragedy the second Pharazon married his first cousin and doomed even further in the version where he married her without her consent. It's a tolkien thing. You creep on a lady, you get hurled from great heights in a literal fashion, and I am counting hurling from the top of the sea to a cavern under it for this circumstance.

[humanoidtyphoons]

thank god doffy has always been an asshole

i'd wondered you know, bc the DQ fam keep on making a show, that he's suffered, that he's overcome so much, that he's earned their loyalty by what he's lived through, how much he's achieved

and it's like. he killed his dad. he killed his brother. were they bad people? and that's why doffy turned out this way?

bc honestly, they keep saying that doffy, the young lord, has gone through hardship that no one ever has. and i was. just.

i wanted to believe them? i wanted to know what oda had up his sleeve to say: yeah, his backstory is sadder than the straw hats combined, it's sadder than ace dying, and you're weeping bc it's the revelation why he's become such a twisted individual reduces you to tears, bc he's done that to me several times!!!

and like. looking back. even mentioning the fact that he was once a celestial dragon, that he stole the throne nd hearts of the people of dressrosa by some manipulation... there was still some part of me that wanted to believe them! that there was another reason! they belabour the point so much, his backstory is not for the faint of heart, the young lord is so strong, and wonderful.

and it's just pure bullshit????? he's just a fucking asshole!!!!

he didn't want to give up being a celestial dragon! that was a choice his father made! his father wanted to live like a human being, and so doffy just kills him! and he can't return to being a celestial dragon and go back to heaven! so he's like. alright, fuck 'em, i'm going to be the king of dressrosa, beloved by everyone bc of his successful smear campaign and distorted memories. i'm gonna get the one piece. there's nothing i won't do to set the world on fire.

and it's like. this is your villain origin story? that your daddy wanted to live like a normal human instead of believing that everyone should kneel at your feet?

seeing doffy as a child, asking "father why aren't we buying slaves today" it just... really made everything click.

that's he's always been this way. that he's always been a colossal twat.

that i was holding out for some... emotional moment, some tragedy that would rival every moment i've wept overcome by the scope that one piece has moved me: merry's funeral, laboon's history.

and it's like. why the fuck was i believing DQ fam over... the people of dressrosa, law. why the fuck did i think when they said "you don't know what he's been through! he's suffered more than anyone!" i was like, yeah they're prolly right. looking forward to seeing it, that his dad was terrible, that his brother was a monster too.

and it's just. nah, man. doffy's always been fucked up and evil. there's no villain story here. he's just a typical celestial dragon, dethroned, turned pauper, and he's tricked and lied and clawed his way to the top once more. it's just. like michael cervantes character don quixote, doffy is full of grandeur, attacking windmills, and rewriting the narrative to suit his bizarre beliefs. there's no sad story here!

and like. i'm furious at myself. i'm proud of oda. i'm laughing. i just feel all kinds of hysterical, bc in a way: his name is a dead giveaway: full of bullshit!!!!

i’ve been feeling lightheaded all day wrapping my mind around this!!

but it's anticlimatic in the best way, and stupidly funny to think about looking back, to pin some sort of trust on his followers, how they love and admire him despite his terribleness, to insist -- and sincerely believe -- that he has gone through so much! angels would weep, if they could!

and.

he's an asshole. always has been. always will be. his family is as deluded as he is!

why did you even consider thinking otherwise?

what a relief, you know?

[romy350-romyakari]

You know, I have been thinking about Hades 2 for a while.

I love the first game story even if I don't have first-hand experience to mention.

And hell am I seeing the angst flags everywhere in Hades 2.

More or less because I am way too attached to the family down there. The story in Hades 1 as you progress has so many things that makes you really like the characters, it is rewarding as each clear of your way out of the underworld gives you more bits and story or progression with some of them.

And the way Hades 1 can leave this just makes me wonder, how badly did Chronos caught them off guard?

There is one scenario in my head that is possible, and it makes me more sad as I think through it.

Possibly, whoever was collecting the pieces of Chronos or just Chronos rebuilding himself was at the last stages when possibly Zagreus ran into this situation. My worst scenario is he did kill Zagreus and maybe stopped time on him so he can't revive, so maybe Chronos keeps him dead if he is not imprisoned.

Why I think that Zagreus was the one who found him? He is running through the underworld many levels that I feel it possible he stumble upon the situation by pure accident to his bad luck.

And that makes it more tragic, which yeah hurts my heart, nobody expected this but run with this tragic scenario of mine till maybe they give me something more heroic in canon than tragedy or it is more tragic in there.

The thing that kicks me in the gut of this terrible scenario my brain created just to hurt me a bit more is how everyone is taking in the situation. Probably everyone is just specting to see him stand up, but it doesn't happen. the dread of not seeing him reacting and maybe getting the feeling something is wrong.

I can picture everyone getting used to him, probably going on a run to the exit as any other time, only to see him float of the water but not freaking moving, that would be chilling bc you are used to see him just stand and walk to the other so first flag something is not right, then the things becomes a mess.

Then all is clear.

We can imagine how it went, maybe everyone ends in some imprisonment bc they come back again and again or stopped in time on their defeat.

In the end I may be so wrong but I don't mind that. I just need this brain worm out in the open bc it was talking to me for way too long.

I am excited to see Melinoë go and kick Chronos, though I wonder what factors will make the purpose of runs, keep retrieving others that were made prisoners? Run further into maybe till you defeat him? Fight whatever is guarding to find more pieces of information so you can get back your people?

Who knows, but I am all in to see how that goes 👀✨️

[millipedish]

Dang. Wishing Night got me reinvested in notfm in a way that diaries and memory in the mirror couldn't. While i enjoy the gameplay for all four game modes, the stories had a very "by the way" feel to them that took immersion away. By the way, when Red was 10 she was way more powerful than she is now. By the way, Red has a sister that no one has even mentioned before. Even the Jerry route in full moon is a "by the way" that kind of tries to retcon some of my fav characters and i still don't know how i feel about that. Wishing night is the first true sequel and it's a long time coming

It also sold me on the central ship, a little? I can't say that I ship the kids but but the tragedy is interesting to me. Red's denial is engaging. Her denial about Jerry's death and even that fact that he's a werewolf. She is such a badass in full moon and diaries, but she is just a kid who's gone through way more than she should have. It's heartbreaking to see such a strong character showing the signs of a mental breakdown.

This makes mechanic Red the only Canon Red in my hc, simply bc of my feels. Will I feel like that still later? Who knows.

Not to mention that the reused art gives me brainworms. I can't imagine why the weapon dealer has become so enthusiastic about the weapons he sells given his backstory. Unless it's a different guy? The owl shopkeeper canonically being the other shopkeepers son is a great touch. And i love seeing the apocathary again. His English voice is so great.

Also several of my favorite characters from full moon were retooled as minions, mostly for Red. Probably this is the closest I'll ever come to seeing Red and Crocdad teaming up. Au where the forest spirit is defeated but instead of transforming back, the cursed people are recruited by mechanic Red.

Not terribly impressed by the new enemies, tho I am curious about wtf is up with the orbs. I wonder if the devs will follow up on that, our of its yet another lost thread.

Also i like the mermaid and the shark. The mermaid is adorable and I want to be her friend, and the shark's PTSD symptoms are haunting. His cage is his mind :(. Makes me want to write a drabble with him and the Tin Man, who's body turned into a cage.

Also hecking curious about Queen Italis(sp?). Not only how does she connect to the plot, but all this stuff about her not being of the world and having visiting the God of wish once before. My headcanon? She was the nightingale mentioned in one of the endings. Maybe she fell in love with the king she belonged to and wished to become his wife? But idk. Would love to see other people's theories

[scullysflannel]

i remember seeing your post about why bcs is better than breaking bad, with this last episode, how do you think it stands as an antithesis of breaking bad?

it's become even more obvious this season that better call saul is not at all the antithesis of breaking bad, even though it is the antithesis of the kind of antihero story breaking bad exemplified. both shows are about moral agency in the wild west. they assert choice as identity (you are what you choose to do) and ask whether those choices redefine you or just reveal who you are intrinsically. they're both about men who become the architects of their own destruction and about how one person's actions can trap others.

I think better call saul is doing it in a much sadder and richer way. jimmy is acting out of deflected love, in a system that gives him fewer options to succeed without bending the rules. walt is handed an out early on from his wealthy ex-partners, but he doesn't take it because of his pride. he does what he does for entirely selfish reasons: money, power, ego, control. I've seen some pushback against walt hate on the premise that it ignores the humanity in the writing or whatever, so let me be clear: walt sucks because he's written like a human being. he's terrible to his son and only dotes on him when he wants to feel like a big provider. he ignores and lies to his pregnant wife. his students don't like him. he thinks he cares about jesse, but he's manipulating him, and he's at his most affectionate when he has the most control over him. that's not real care. I do think in the later seasons it sometimes borders on ridiculous how loathsome walt can be, and he's not the best character on breaking bad (jesse, skyler, mike, and hank are all more interesting. marie and gus are cooler). but the writers took care to root the worst things about him in personality traits that clearly predated his little meth empire. this is not a good guy we caught at a bad time. this is a small man who's masked his bitterness in socially acceptable ways for years.

in better call saul the chain reaction is more tangled. jimmy takes the opportunities that he's given to change, and then he tanks them, and his self-sabotage is both a fatal flaw and a response to legitimate structural problems in the legal system. (the rules are harder to justify when those rules are designed to maintain a status quo that makes upward mobility so hard, makes forgiveness so hard. think of jimmy's speech in "winner": one teenage shoplifting incident will follow you forever. they are never, ever letting you in. he got a whole law degree, but it was from an online university, so should it count?) he's much more shaped by other people than walt is ("people tell me how they see me"). better call saul builds on the big ideas in breaking bad but really commits to making the world around the fucked-up guy fucked up too, and it makes the tragedy so much deeper. because ultimately it's still a story about personal responsibility, just as breaking bad is. even when you have no good options, you still have to live with your choices.

being a prequel pushes better call saul to be smarter (which is what I was saying in the post you mentioned). it makes the characters more reflective. shoutout to the new yorker article that pointed out what it does to the show that the actors look older, as if the characters are trapped reliving their pasts without the power to change them. jimmy believes his fate is sealed, and as a result we get to watch him seal it. it's agonizing. that's where better call saul diverges from the breaking bad antihero formula: there's no (lasting) thrill in watching him make bad choices because we know what they'll do to him in the long run. but rebuking the walter white problem doesn't make better call saul breaking bad's opposite; it just makes it a more fulfilling version of the same story.

[janecrockeyre]

scum villain is a greek tragedy disguised as a regular tragedy disguised as a comedy disguised as a danmei

this is going to be long, and this is only PART ONE.

a.k.a, Analysing the plot of Scum Villain’s Self Saving System through Aristotle’s Poetics, because I Have Mental Issues

Part One: Introduction and the Tragic Hero

Scum Villain’s Self Saving System is a tragedy disguised as a comedy, unless you’re Shen Yuan, in which case it’s a mixture of a romance and a survival horror. It's a fever dream. It's a horrible, terrible book that made me feel new undiscovered emotions when I finished reading it. 

The thing is... SVSSS shares characteristics with some of the most famous tragedies in the West, such as Oedipus Rex, Medea, Antigone, the Oresteia... if you haven’t read these, I’ll explain everything. But the gist of my argument is this: SVSSS is the perfect tragedy. In triplicate. 

Tragedy as a genre is old as balls and so it has meant slightly different things to different people over the last few thousand years. I'll be focusing on ancient Greek tragedy, which was performed at the yearly Festival of Dionysus in Athens during the 500-350s BC (give or take a hundred years). Aristotle, when writing about this very specific subset of tragedy, had no idea that one day Scum Villain would be written, and then that I would be using his work as a way to look at Shen Qingqiu’s Funky Transmigration Mistake. Anyway!

Greek tragedy greatly influenced European dramatic tradition. I have a lot of opinions about white academics idolising and upholding the classics as the "paragon of culture" but I'll withhold them for now. I have no idea if MXTX has read Greek tragedy or not, so don't take this as me saying they are writing it. 

In my opinion, tragedy is a universal human constant. We are surrounded by pain and hurt and none of it makes any sense, so we seek to process that pain through drama, art, literature, etc. We want to understand why pain happens, and how it happens, and try to make sense of the senseless. The universe is cold and cruel and random. Tragedy eases some of that pain. 

On that note: Just because I am analysing Scum Villain through a Greek lens doesn't mean that it was written that way. I'm pasting an interpretation onto the book when there's probably a very rich and deep history of Chinese tragedy that I just don't know about. If you ever want to talk about that, please, god, hit me up, I would love to learn about it!! 

Anyway, tragedy. MXTX is excellent at it! Mo Dao Zu Shi? Painful dynastic family tragedy. Heaven Official's Blessing? Mostly romance, but she managed to get that pure pain in there, huh? 

But in my opinion, Scum Villain holds the crown for the most tragic of her stories. MDZS was more of a mystery. TGCF was more of a romance. Neither of them shy away from their tragic elements. 

Scum Villain would fit right in between the work of Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus. How? Let me show you. Join me on my mystery tour into the world of "Aristotle Analyses Danmei..."

Part One: The Tragic Hero

What is a tragic hero? Generally, Greek tragic heroes are united by the same key characteristics. He must be imperfect, having a "fatal flaw" of some kind. He must have something to lose. And he must go from fortune to misfortune thanks to that fatal flaw. 

There are two (technically three) tragic protagonists in SVSSS and all of them are tragic in different but formulaic ways. Each protagonist has their own version of “hamartia” or a “fatal flaw”. 

Actually, hamartia isn’t necessarily a flaw - rather, it is a thing which makes the audience pity and fear for them, a careful imperfection, a point of weakness in the character’s morality or reasoning that allows for bad things to happen to them. For example, in Oedipus Rex, the king Oedipus has a “fatal flaw” of always wanting to find the truth, but this isn’t exactly a flaw, right? Note: this flaw can be completely unwitting, as we see with Shen Yuan. It can also be something that the protagonist is born with, some kind of trait from birth or very young. 

Shen Yuan

Shen Yuan’s “hamartia” is his rigid adherence to fate and his inability to read a situation as anything but how he thinks it ought to be. He believes that Bingmei will grow into Bingge, and it takes several years, two deaths, and some truly traumatising sex to convince him otherwise. 

Shen Jiu

Shen Jiu’s fatal flaw is his cruelty. It is his own sadistic treatment and abuse of Binghe which directly leads to his eventual dismemberment. This is kind of a no-brainer. Of course, it isn't all that simple, and as an audience we pity him for his cruelty as much as we fear it because we know it comes from his own abuse as a child. This just makes him even more tragic. Delicious. 

Luo Binghe

Luo Binghe’s fatal flaw is a complicated mix of things. It is his position as the “protagonist” which compels him to act in certain ways and be forced to suffer. It is his half-demonic heritage, something entirely out of his control, which sets in motion his tragic reversal of fortune when he gets yeeted into the Abyss. He also, much like Shen Yuan, has the propensity to jump to conclusions and somehow make 2 + 2 = 5. 

As well as having their respective “flaws”, all three protagonists match the rough outline of a good tragic hero in another way: they are in a position of great wealth and power. Even when you split the different characters into different “versions”, this still holds true. Yes, Luo Binghe is raised a commoner by a washerwoman foster mother, but his dad is an emperor and he also ends up becoming an emperor himself. 

Yes, Shen Jiu is an ex-slave and a victim of abuse himself, but Shen Qingqiu is a powerful peak lord with an entire mountain’s worth of resources at his back. 

Shen Yuan is a second generation new money rich kid. 

Bingge is a stereotypical protagonist with a golden finger. Bingmei is a treasured and loved disciple with a good reputation and a privileged seat by his shizun’s side. 

In a tragedy, having this kind of good fortune at the beginning of your story is dangerous. Chaucer says that tragedy is (badly translated into modern english) “a certain story / of him that stood in great prosperity / and falls out of high degree / into misery, and ends up wretchedly”. If we follow this line of thinking, a good tragedy is about someone who has a lot to lose, losing everything because of one fatal point of weakness that they fail to address or understand. 

If we look at Shakespeare, this is what makes King Lear such a fantastic tragic protagonist. He is a king in control of most of England, who from his own lack of wisdom and excess of pride, decides to split his kingdom apart to give to his daughters, favouring his murderous, double crossing progeny, and condemning his only actually filial daughter to death. He loses his kingdom, his mind, and his beloved daughter, all because of his own stupidity.

This brings us to:

Part Two: Peripeteia

This reversal of fortunes is called peripeteia. It is the moment where the entire plot shifts, and the hero’s fortunes go from good to bad. Think of it like one of those magic eye puzzles, where you stare at the image until a 3D shark appears, except you realise the shark was always there, you just couldn't ever see it, waiting for you, hungry, deadly, always lurking just behind that delightful pattern of random blue squiggles. 

Each tragic hero has their own moment of peripeteia in SVSSS, sometimes several:

Shen Qingqiu

In the original PIDW, SQQ’s peripeteia presumably occurs when he finds out that Bingge didn’t perish in the Abyss but has actually been training hard to come and pay him back. There’s really not much I’m interested in saying here - as a villain, OG!SQQ is cut and dry, and the audience doesn’t really feel any pity or fear for him. As Shen Yuan often mentions, what the audience feels when they see OG!SQQ is bloodlust and sick satisfaction. There is also the trial at Huan Hua Palace, which I will talk about in Shen Yuan’s section. 

Shen Yuan (SQQ 2.0)

One of SY’s most poggers moment of peripeteia is the glorious, terrifying section between hearing Binghe for the first time after the Abyss moment, and getting shoved into the Water Prison. 

“Behind him, a low and soft voice came: “Shizun?”

Shen Qingqiu’s neck felt stiff as he slowly turned his head. Luo Binghe’s face was the most frightening thing he had ever seen.

The scariest thing about it was that the expression on his face was not cold at all. His smile wasn’t sharp like a knife. Rather, it showed a kind of bone-deep gentleness and amiability.”

This is the moment of true horror for Shen Yuan, because he knows what happens next: the plot unfurls before him, inevitable and painful, and he knows that death awaits him at Luo Binghe's hands (lol). Compare it with the bone deep certainty with which he faces his own downfall during the sham of a trial later in the chapter (I’ve bolded the important part):

“In the original work, Qiu Haitang’s appearance signified only one thing: Shen Qingqiu’s complete fall from grace. [...] Shen Qingqiu’s heart streamed with tears. Great Master… I know you’re doing this for my own good, but I’ll actually suffer if she speaks her words clearly. This truly is the saying “not frightened of doing a shameful deed, just afraid the ghost (consequences) will come knocking”!”

After the peripeteia is usually the denouement where the plot wraps up and the threads are all tied together leaving no loose ends, but because this tragedy isn’t Shen Yuan’s but the former Shen Jiu’s, it’s impossible to finish. 

Shen Yuan cannot provide the meaningful answers that the narrative demands because 1) he doesn’t have any memory of doing anything, and 2) he wasn’t the person who did them. Narratively, he cannot follow the same path as the former SQQ because he lacks the same fatal flaw: cruelty. 

This is why Binghe doesn’t kill him - because he loves him, rather than despises him. And this is why Shen Yuan has to sacrifice himself and die for Luo Binghe in order to save him from Xin Mo: because the narrative demands that denouement follows peripeteia, and SQQ’s fate is in the hands of the narrative. 

(Side note: I believe that this literal death also represents the death of OG!SQQ's tragic arc. The body that committed all those crimes must die to satisfy the narrative. SQQ must die, like burning down a forest, so that new growth can sprout from the ashes. After this, Shen Yuan's story has more room to develop instead.)

It must happen to show Bingmei that SQQ loves him too. And this brings us to Bingmei.

Bingmei

Bingmei has two succinct moments of utter downfall. The first is a literal fall - his flaw, his demonic heritage, leads his beloved shizun to throw him down into the Abyss. From his point of view, SQQ is punishing him simply for the status of his birth. He rapidly goes from being loved and cherished unconditionally, to being the victim of an assassination attempt. 

He realises that he is totally unlovable: that for the crimes of his species that he never had a hand in, he must pay the price as well: that his shizun is so righteous that no matter what love there was between them, if SQQ sees a demon, he will kill it. Even if that demon is Bingmei. 

The second moment is when SQQ dies for him. Again, from his point of view, he was chasing after a man who was struggling to see him as a human being. Shen Qingqiu’s death makes Bingmei realise that he has been completely misunderstanding his shizun: that SQQ would literally die for him, the ultimate act of self sacrifice from love: that SQQ loved him despite his demon heritage. 

Much like King Lear holding the corpse of his daughter and wailing in sheer grief and pain because he did this, he caused this, Bingmei gets to hold his shizun's cold body and cry his eyes out and know that it was his fault. (Kind of.)

(Yes, I’m bringing Shakespeare into this, no I am not justifying myself)

Maybe I'm a bit sadistic, but that scene slaps. Let me show you a comparison of scenes so you get the picture. 

Re-enter KING LEAR, with CORDELIA dead in his arms; EDGAR, Captain, and others following

KING LEAR

Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones:

Had I your tongues and eyes, I'ld use them so

That heaven's vault should crack. She's gone for ever!

I know when one is dead, and when one lives;

She's dead as earth. Lend me a looking-glass;

If that her breath will mist or stain the stone,

Why, then she lives.

[...]

 KING LEAR

And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life!

Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,

And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,

Never, never, never, never, never!

Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir.

Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips,

Look there, look there!

Dies

Versus this scene in SVSSS: 

Luo Binghe turned a deaf ear to everything else, greatly agitated and at a loss of what to do. He was still holding Shen Qingqiu’s body, which was rapidly cooling down. It seemed like he wanted to call for him loudly and forcefully shake him awake, yet he didn’t dare to, as if he was afraid of being scolded. He said slowly, “Shizun?”

[...]

Luo Binghe involuntarily held Shen Qingqiu closer.

He said in a small voice, “I was wrong, Shizun, I really… know that I was wrong.

“I… I didn’t want to kill you…”

PAIN. SO MUCH BEAUTIFUL PAIN. Yes, I know Shakespeare isn’t Athenian, but he was inspired by the good old stuff and he also knew how to write a perfect tragedy on his own terms. Anyway. I’ll find more Greek examples later.

This post was a bit all over the place, but I hope it has been fun to read. Part Two will be coming At Some Point, Who Knows When. This is a bit messy and unedited, but hey, I’m not getting paid or graded, so you can eat any typos or errors. Unless you’re here to talk to me about Chinese tragedy, in which case, please pull up a seat, let me get you a drink, make yourself at home.

ps: if you want to retweet this, here is the promo tweet!

[septembersghost]

one of the best things is I see every character in BB differently now. Saul is heartbreaking. I love Mike more. I hate Gus WAY more (sorry to Gus enjoyers, he's a great character but he's easy to like in BB opposed to Walt, BCS reveals how terrible he is). Jesse makes me sadder in parallel to Nacho. and so on

that's the alchemical element of it all - if you're going to do a prequel, it needs to stand on its own, which bcs very much does, but it also needs to matter to the universe of the story as a whole. it needs to have weight that fundamentally impacts the narrative from which it was formed, or else it's not going to be captivating or have a unique purpose. a difficulty with prequels is we know certain outcomes that can't be changed - everything that happens to these characters has already happened, and therein lies the tragedy - and that can impede tension, but they've done an excellent job avoiding that and giving this narrative its own stakes. it's helpful that it's a sequel too, that we have glimpses of the future as counterpoint to the past. the magic act of taking characters we know well, whose fates are sealed, and adding in characters we didn't know and came to be very invested in, not only makes everything in bcs tick, it makes sections of brba resonate differently. we understand "saul" and mike far more profoundly as human beings now and it accentuates every single action they take in brba. nacho haunts the margins and jesse's moments that mirror him lead to escape rather than sacrifice, and that feels all the more necessary now. i think even antagonists like gus and the salamancas take on new aspects and shadows, and walt (as the antihero -> villain) does too (see: parallels, especially to chuck, and maybe even in ways to kim, which is compelling and terrifying!). as i've mentioned before, jane/jesse take on additional facets because of kim/jimmy and the devastating fallout of real love intertwined with that codependency and addiction. and we're not done yet! peter still keeps saying we'll view brba differently when all of this is over, even though that has already happened in so many ways! i can't wait to see what exactly that entails. we don't know where this ends on the tragic spectrum, if there's hope for reunion or redemption that perhaps brba could never have, but they have done a beautiful and brilliant job taking us towards it.

[curiosity-killed]

Lang Qianqiu deserves more love goddammit: a post, unfortunately

This brought to you by the wonderful @veliseraptor & @/yuer on Twitter but also mostly out of spite and the fact that it’s preventing me from writing a very dumb poke-the-bear post abt the entire weird social media culture around The Minors

As always ✨SPOILERS!! SPOILERS EVERYWHERE✨

So first off: when I hit the scene where lqq confronts xl and screams “I will never be like you” I sat up in bed, did a little shimmy of delight, and hissed “fuck yes” at like 2 AM so. Now you have a preview of wtf this train wreck will be

1 ) lqq is a good character

We don’t get a ton of time with lqq because tgcf is 87 side characters running across stage with The Most Interesting Concept constantly one-upping each other before vanishing. But what we do get is, I think, enough to make a pretty compelling story: Lang Qianqiu is a kind and generous prince who is also the sole survivor of the bloody massacre of his entire family, committed by the people dearest to him (both in his belief that Gusohi Fangxin did it and in the reality of An Le’s involvement), who goes on to peacefully lead his fractious nation into a peaceful reign before he ascends as a powerful enough (aka beloved and worshipped enough) god to be ranked among the top heavenly generals. That’s like. Pretty fucking classic protagonist vibes right there.

And, as usual with mxtx’s characters, we get a lot more than this lovely little backstory. In his interactions in canon, lqq is capable of great grief and anger; he is willing to sacrifice himself if it means avenging his murdered family; and he simultaneously holds both great hatred and great respect for his old teacher. And, of course, he winds up raising and taking care of his enemy’s son which shows a remarkable depth of compassion and emotional messiness that I find terribly compelling. He struggles with a simplistic view of justice that is supported by lies told to “protect” him and that is uprooted by the truth and forces him to try to make sense of the world without the guardrails that others installed around him (looking at you mister fangxin sir).

Also I’m stealing my own tweets bc I’m Right but:

*pulls up single barstool to lqq is a good character table* I think it’s interesting & Says Things abt the continued relationship btwn lqq & xl that lqq *didn’t* recognize xl, implying that he left fangxin’s mask in place even when he went to kill him

Like here is the man who killed his family & best friend, who left him abandoned in bloodshed on his 17th bday—& here is also the man who saved his life, who taught him, who lqq looked up to & wanted to be like

Even when lqq *does* recognize xl, he still has so much respect for him paired with that hatred that it’s honestly rlly tragic? Like man. There’s so much grief in lqq’s repeated demands for a duel & insisting it’s fine if xl kills him as long as he doesn’t hold back

*pats lqq pompom* this bb is so sad. And so much more like his teacher than either of them seem to realize or necessarily want

Despite being a pretty minor character, lqq gets a lot of complexity and nuance! Look at this child trying to be grown up while desperately turning to his old master for guidance and “the truth”! Look at him! Be sad!!

2 ) lqq is an excellent parallel to xl

Okay stealing my own tweet again don’t look at me I yell the same shit everywhere

Xl didn’t want lqq to become like him (self-sacrificing, vengeful, alone) but lqq not only became alone, chasing vengeance, & willing to sacrifice himself for revenge—he also became kind, open-minded, & remorseful!! & he still clearly respects xl @ novel end 🙃🙃

We all know hc’s “they’re not very alike at all” and yeah sure baby go support your man but narratively, there’s a lot of importance given to cycles, parallels, and foils in mxtx’s writing and most explicitly (compared to mdzs, haven’t read svss) in tgcf. For example, *gestures at beefleaf, gestures at Xianle Trio vs Wuyogn Crew, gestures at Xie Lian & Jun Wu’s whole uh. Deal.* And while I’d argue xl and lqq are part of a triumvirate rather than a pair, we’re not including mister three-face in this conversation so just looking at xl and lqq:

Both adored and sheltered crown princes

Both taught by a guoshi who was seeking to prevent the repetition of their own tragedies and in their efforts, lied/omitted information and failed to protect their charge from tragedy

Both were betrayed* by their closest friends

Both are the last living members of their respective royal families

Both caught the interest of supernatural beings from a young age

Etc etc I’m getting v bored and distracted writing this so moving on

Most importantly to me, we have their betrayal by a very close and adored mentor and how they react. The confrontation I mention at the start of this shitshow is really imo one of the most important scenes in the novel because it a) illustrates the differences in xl and Jun Wu and b) sort of gives you a preview of how xl ultimately wins

So a) Jun Wu and Xie Lian both take a talented, marked-for ascension young prince under their wing. Jun Wu sees himself in the boy and obsesses over shaping him into Jun Wu’s own image in the belief that this will make him the perfect heir. Jun Wu pushes his chosen heir into situations where Xie Lian is repeatedly harmed in an effort to show that the common people are fickle and cruel and don’t deserve his compassion and care.

Meanwhile, Xie Lian is reluctantly roped into mentoring his prince due to his inability to stand aside when he feels he could do something to prevent hurt or injustice befalling another (simultaneously his great strength and great weakness! God I love him). Xie Lian tries to teach his student to believe in and care for the common people and not to sacrifice himself (see: flashback convo re:taking the force of the sword strike into his own body).

When Xie Lian refuses to bend in the shape Jun Wu demands, Jun Wu bashes his head into the wall. When Lang Qianqiu cries “I will never be like you!”, Xie Lian laughs and says “Good!”.

B) this of course feeds directly into foreshadowing! Like Lang Qianqiu’s bold words, xl ultimately refuses to become like his mentor and remains defiant even when it would stop him from being hurt. Xl beats lqq and says so what if I tricked you, so what if I lied, I still won. Naturally, xl beats Jun Wu not through standard swordplay but by using a trick he learned while forced to busk and wander the earth alone and unlucky for centuries.

…okay so I have fully forgotten what I was actually saying here! Anyway!

Like Xie Lian, Lang Qianqiu spends a time consumed with the need for vengeance, hunting his enemy and rejecting the heavens. And like Xie Lian, he winds up caring for his enemy’s “son” and trying to both comfort him and maintain what’s left of Qi Rong’s life force despite having previously been hellbent on destroying him—bc he sees the impact it has on another person. In the end, he even gives a gift to Xie Lian—his mentor, his role model, and the one who killed his father—that was once given to him as a symbol of unexpected kindness. Sound familiar?

But, importantly, and contradictory to what I have been yelling abt but whatever it’s 12:30 am, Lang Qianqiu is not a direct mirror of Xie Lian but a closing of a vital loop in the story. Lqq is very similar to xl (I will die on this hill!! Only I won’t bc I’m stronger than y’all and will keep swinging these pots and pans) but bc xl tries to do better and keep lqq from suffering the way xl has, lqq is able to have a gentler and more optimistic path forward. He’s proof that even a small act of kindness or even kindness to only one person still matters and has a ripple effect that can’t be seen when you’re in the middle of it—a thread started with xl giving the coral pearl to Lang Ying and closed with Lang Qianqiu returning the pearl to Xie Lian.

So I have no idea if any of this is coherent or compelling but I meant to be asleep two hours ago and the points are:

A) Lang Qianqiu is good actually

B) parallels!!!

C) look ive already started another wip about Lang Qianqiu and Xie Lian and I didn’t want this but no one else wrote it so now I have to so pls just accept this as a warning

*sort of air quotes around this for Xie Lian bc frankly Mu Qing was right & Xie Lian kicked feng xin out BUT on the other hand, it was experienced as a betrayal and we also again have all of Jun Wu’s shit so it evens out

[unalivejournal]

u mentioned only reading kripke era fic do you have a reclist 👀👀👀and if not could you link some of ur faves cuz the stuff that gets circulated the most right now is all like late late seasons fic and kripke era is my favorite too but im having trouble finding that many fics for it or even seasons 6-10 era which im fine with also. its just that like. the last five seasons were so bad that it makes fic generally worse too because people have to jump off of just Thee stupidest plot choices no matter how good their prose skills might be. but anyway yea if u have recs that would be awesome :)

hi anon i was thinking abt making a reclist and u just gave me the perfect excuse thank u

jess adamilligan’s kripke era fic recs

from making this ive learned that i never bookmark ANYTHING. sorry all of these r like….. 10k and under. i DO read longer fic but i don’t have any kripke era longfics bookmarked & tbh i prefer short oneshots

season one gen

disclaimer because it’s unfortunately needed: NONE of these are w*ncest! they’re all completely tagged as gen and i did not read them with the intent of consuming ship content.

Coaster Park by fogsrollingin, 10.4k, G, gen

Coaster Park had been experiencing an unusually high frequency of technical difficulties. Dean wouldn't have pulled a shift treating nauseated, heat-stroked, or dehydrated park-goers for that if he could've helped it, but when 'technical difficulties' were accompanied by rumors of things moving and stopping on their own in front of the operators' eyes, Dean had to throw down.

No historical tragedies or disasters in the area, ectoplasm, or EMF. Dean's only lead was a battered-looking kid that'd been coming to the park every day since it'd all started.

really interesting au fic! slightly ‘it’s a terrible life’. dean winchester is a hunter/EMT and sam wesson is a college kid destined to die on a roller coaster ride.

two basic motivating forces by sahwen, 7.8k, T, gen

He can’t cry, it’s not allowed; even as a child he was hushed into silence, whether his tears were from a long car ride or a late night or a raging fever. It’s never been an option, it’s never been an available outlet, and it’s not about to start being one just because he’s having an emotional breakdown on the bathroom floor.

Sam isn't only afraid of clowns.

BIG emetophobia tw (both for graphic depictions of nausea/vomiting and for the fact that this fic is about sam suffering from emetophobia) for this one but it’s my favorite sickfic. portrays anxiety over getting sick really well and is a fascinating examination of the different ways that sam’s fear of loss of control can manifest itself. also has lovely brothers content <3

Let’s Start at the Very Beginning (Remix of Just as Easy as 123) by nwspaprtaxis, 4k, T, gen

Dean’s functionally illiterate and Sam’s determined to remedy it...

PLEASE READ THIS ONE god it’s so sweet. dean never learned how to read properly due to his nomadic childhood and sam teaches him how.

dean/cas

Broadway Musical by Griftings, 9k, M, m/m

This is the day that marked the Holy and Blessed Union of Dean Winchester and Jo Harvelle.

The merging of prominent bloodlines is always a grand occurrence, but breeding pedigree hunter families like Winchester and Harvelle is something to be rejoiced. It is also something to be meticulously planned, which thankfully the Host is very good at.

Or, the romantic comedy where Dean Winchester and Jo Harvelle are destined to get married, Castiel is given the task of playing matchmaker and fails terribly, the entire Heavenly Host becomes a sitcom audience, God warns against male pregnancy, and Jimmy Novak is incredibly unimpressed with angels in general.

somewhat of a fandom classic and the humor holds up wonderfully. a very silly fic completed with commentary from angel radio throughout the entire thing.

Sappiest Season by dollsome, 2.7k, G, m/m

In which Dean and Cas have to stop an evil Christmas tree (like you do), and it requires a little fake couple action.

hilarious little s5ish fic. one of the first i read when getting back into spn. i don’t want to spoil anything but this is my favorite pick me up and i still giggle randomly whenever i think about it

The (Mostly Accidental) Courtship of Dean Winchester by tuesday

Angelic marriage rites were never intended to go quite like this.

another fandom classic. ik this one is recced a lot but how could i NOT include it. dean and cas get married (mostly by accident) and they’re huge cunts about it

the one thing in the galaxy god didn't have his eyes on by prufrock, 2.4k, T, gen + m/m

“Wait,” Dean says. “Let me get this right. You can fly, right—you can teleport—but you can’t drive a car?”

or, after the events of S5E03 "Free to Be You and Me," Dean teaches Cas to drive. Cas finds it stressful

im always a sucker for a good ftbyam fic. also i can’t drive so. resonation

So Says The Sword by komodobits, 85k, E, m/m

The briefing was simple: ‘Stand guard over the Michael Sword until the battle is ready to commence. Await further instructions.’

Castiel doesn’t mind working security duty; he was briefed shortly after the initial salvation of the Sword from the pit, and again before taking up his position. He knows what to do. However, it’s easy to forget that the green room isn’t real. Time moves differently there, the space ever-changing to make a prison of mountains, cathedrals, salt flats, orchards, and whatever Castiel was led to believe about Heaven’s greatest weapon—Dean Winchester is something entirely unexpected.

NO introduction neede. i think everyone on spntumblr has read this already but still. if you haven’t then i am demanding that you read it NOW. tbh i’m just adding this one so that i have at least one long fic here 😭

the weight by @myaimistrue, 3.5k, T, gen + m/m

“Do you…” Bobby sighs. “Listen, Dean, do you have something you wanna tell me?”

It’s the conversational equivalent of being punched in the stomach.

Or, Dean works through some things with Bobby's help.

WHEN I SAW THE USERNAME I GASPED I HAD NO IDEA THIS WAS U. anyway i Love coming out fics idk why i just do. the world is ending and dean comes out to bobby

canticles by 2street2car, 10.3k, T, m/m

“But you know something? If I couldn’t get you laid, at least I gave you a good first date.”

feat: footsies at a Ruby Tuesday, stargazing, the recreation of an iconic "Dirty Dancing" scene (no, not that one—the other one), and practicing for When You're With A Girl.

another ftbyam fic that skepticalfrog (i believe?) recommended a while back. made me feel at least 28 new emotions

Epilogue by JayneL, 28k, E, m/m

Bobby is here, swearing somewhere above and behind him; and Dean is here, talking about 2014 like it's a foreign country; and Sam is here, and is not Lucifer. Which means-- Bobby is here, swearing somewhere above and behind him; and Dean is here, talking about 2014 like it's a foreign country; and Sam is here, and is not Lucifer. Which means--

Cas is no longer when he was. Lucifer sent him back.

Coda to 'The End'.

2014 cas gets sent back to 2009, feelings ensue etc. i don’t remember all the details of this one bc it’s been a while but it’s really good

bonus

currently reading

Fragile As We Lie by perilously, 11k, E, f/f

Dragging Bela Talbot out of perdition isn't so much a decision as it is a frantic choice based on gut instinct. Her soul is bright, if fractured, and Anna yearns to do good again after the perversion of free will that immediately preceded her death.

Bela's no ordinary human, though; she's prickly and damaged and beautiful, and Anna doesn't want to leave her side. So maybe they can figure out how to navigate post-resurrection, post-Apocalypse-that-wasn't Earth together.