#and now was on a war path

[dclovesdanny]

Dcxdp

Biofam 4/5

Maddie didn’t speak to her father, as did her sister. Unfortunately, that made it hard for them to contact their favorite uncle, but when they left at eighteen, they both agreed it was for the best. Even after they found out the old man was dead, they didn’t reach out, unsure of what they would say.

That was then.

Now, with shaking hands covered in ectoplasm,(god her baby was hurt, she had been hurting her baby, THOSE BASTARDS IN WHITE HURT HER BABIES) she dialed the number that she had never managed to forget.

“Hello, who is this and how did you get this number?” The British accent soothed a part of her she hadn’t noticed was tense.

“Uncle Alfred.” Maddie could barely choke out his name, hands still shaking. “I need help.”

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Heartbreaking Goodbye.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[thou-babbling-brook]

Smth smth endless cycle of war for a purpose that exceeds your understanding smth smth

[mxtxfanatic]

A lot of people say that Wei Wuxian's demonic cultivation is inherently disrespectful to the dead. I personally disagree but I'm not really sure how to say that, especially when they bring up how he treated the ghosts for the war or the torture session.

It's confusing 😔

Ok, to answer this question, we must first cover the basics of both what Wei Wuxian's cultivation is and how cultivators deal with the resentful dead in the orthodox path. 1) Wei Wuxian is not s demonic cultivator. He is a ghost cultivator, hence why his cultivation path is called "the ghost path" and why the title of the novel is a misnomer. The cultivation world calling him a "demonic" cultivator is meant as a slander of his work, not a neutral description of it:

“Let me ask you, are fae, demons, ghosts, and monsters all the same kind of being?” Wei Wuxian smiled. “No.” “Why not? What are the differences between them?” “Fae come from living non-humans, demons from living humans, ghosts from dead humans, and monsters from dead non-humans.”

—Chapt. 13: Elegance III, fanyiyi

By definition, Wei Wuxian is not a demonic cultivator, and every cultivator is taught this distinction from a young age. Moving on, 2) this is how orthodox cultivators deal with the resentful dead:

[Lan Wangji] nodded his head politely, and quietly said, “First, release the spirit from suffering. Second, suppress it. Third, eliminate it. For the initial approach, use the loving memory of his parents, wife, and children to comprehend his deepest desires and fulfill them. If this fails, move to suppression. But if the crimes are too great and his resentment too bitter to dissipate, eliminate him root and branch; his continued existence must not be permitted. Cultivators must conduct themselves carefully in accordance with this sequence of measures, without error.”

—Chapt. 14: Elegance IV, fanyiyi

The ideal goal of dealing with the resentful dead is that you get them to move on. That is why these are not three separate paths but a single route:

Lan Wangji said, “Thus release from suffering is the primary strategy, suppression, supplementary, and elimination, the last resort.”

However, only the first part of this route leads to peace for the suffering spirit; the other two either lead to prolonged suffering or utter destruction. Wei Wuxian's ghost path opens up a second route, the so-called fourth solution:

Everyone inside the elegant room stared at them in shock. The old man suddenly shot up. “The purpose of subduing demons and exterminating ghosts is to alleviate suffering! Not only have you forgotten this, you want to incite further resentment! You are inverting the means and the ends, without a care for humanity!” “If some people’s suffering can’t be relieved, why not make it useful?” Wei Wuxian replied. “When Yu the Great tamed the floods, redirection was the superior strategy, and obstruction the inferior. Suppression is like obstruction, it can only be worse—” Lan Qiren flung a book at Wei Wuxian, who quickly ducked out of the way. The color of his face unchanged, he continued to run his mouth. “Spiritual energy is energy, but resentful energy is also energy. Stored inside cores, spiritual energy is able to cleave mountains and drain seas, and is available for human use. Why can’t humans use resentful energy too?”

The end goal remains the same as the orthodox path's, just with the addition of using the dead's resentment to achieve your own goals in the meantime. To say that Wei Wuxian "creates" the resentment by which he then controls the dead he summons is to ignore that he actually can't create resentment and must rely on the resentment the dead already have. We learn this in the opening chapters of the book at the Mo Mansion where he must summon the corpses of the Mo family to fight because the other walking corpses that were already in the house had too little resentment to be useful. It's even in this very example of him pitching the theoretics of the ghost path: he doesn't say "just dig up any corpse" but specifically that the heads of those executed by the executioner (and therefore who would have resentment remaining in death) should be dug up to deal with the fierce corpse of their killer. And when everyone has burned off their resentment, it goes without saying that it would be easy to liberate them.

Now to address the whole war time torture session stuff: if we remember what I just said about Wei Wuxian being unable to create resentment and that in his speech he believes that the best dead to summon in order to subdue another resentful being are the dead who were killed by the being, then the fates of the Wen involved in the fall of Lotus Pier makes sense. Wei Wuxian does not control any of the dead like puppets, as explained here, so the ghosts got their own revenge themselves. It's not accidental that every Wen supervisory post was covered in ghost repellent talismans where none existed previously. As for the ghoul child and blue-faced woman, they had some sort of history with each other and Wen Chao and Wang Lingjiao that probably wouldn't be too hard to guess:

[Wang Lingjiao] collapsed onto the ground. Back then, the second that she opened the chest, she saw what was inside. There was none of her beloved treasures, only a pale-skinned, curled-up child!

—Chapt. 61: Evil, exr

The ghoul child, however, had bit out an entire chunk of the flesh on his hand and spat it out. He continued to devour the palm. Wen ZhuLiu grabbed the child’s head with his left hand, as though to put so much force on the small, cold head that it exploded. The blue- faced woman threw the bloodstained bandages on the ground and, like a four-limbed creature, she crawled to Wen ZhuLiu’s side almost instantly.

...

Wei WuXian, “Of course it’d be with a certain thing gone.” Jiang Cheng was disgusted, “You’re the one who did it?” Wei WuXian, “It’s nasty if you think about it that way. Of course I wasn’t the one who cut it off. It was bitten off when his woman went mad.”

—Chapt. 62: Evil, exr

"His woman" can't be Wang Lingjiao, because Wang Lingjiao died suffocating on the stool leg she stuffed down her throat. When Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji find her body, the stool leg is still halfway out of her mouth. "His woman" is the blue-faced woman, who obviously holds extreme enmity towards Wen Chao. It's the same situation when Wei Wuxian resurrects Wen Ning:

Wei WuXian, “Congratulations to you for successfully draining all my patience. Since you don’t want to speak up, let’s let him answer on his own.” As though it’d been waiting for his words for a long time, Wen Ning’s frozen corpse suddenly moved, raising its head. Before the two nearest inspectors could even scream, each of their throats was clenched by a hand as firm as iron. Expressionless, Wen Ning raised up the two short-legged inspectors high in the air. The empty circle around them grew larger and larger. The head inspector shouted, “Young Master Wei! Young Master Wei! Please go easy on us! Doing this in the heat of the moment would lead to irreversible consequences!” The rain fell heavier and heavier. Drops of water trickled incessantly down Wei WuXian’s cheeks. He suddenly spun around, putting his hand on Wen Ning’s shoulder before shouting, “Wen QiongLin!” As if a reply, Wen Ning let out a long, thundering roar. The ears of everyone within the valley ached. Wei WuXian spoke one word at a time, “Whoever caused all of you to be like this, let them meet the same end. I give you the right to do so. Settle everything!”

—Chapt. 72: Recklessness, exr

Wei Wuxian didn't "make" them do anything; he just corralled them and focused their resentment.

While Wei Wuxian is being very glib in his Cloud Recesses discussion—because it was an on-the-fly theory posed specifically to piss Lan Qiren off—the way he uses it in practice is actually much more contained. He also, personally, treats the dead more respectfully than most other cultivators, who react to the presence of non-aggressive dead with violence or disgust (reread how he interacts with the ghoul child and blue-faced woman, or the ghost girls in the restaurant, or the skeleton hand, or A-Qing, etc. etc.). So to answer your question: no, Wei Wuxian's ghost path does not disrespect the dead. It gives those with too much resentment or a who have a grudge too difficult to fulfill another way to burn off their resentment in order to achieve peace. While an individual can use it disrespectfully (Xue Yang, who uses it as a basis for his demonic cultivation), it is not inherently disrespectful in and of itself.

[glassrunner]

while isha was very much a cutesy character that helped soften some of the harsh moments of season 2, i ultimately feel that her existence was unnecessary.

the moment she appeared onscreen and immediately tagged along with jinx, i got the sense that she was incredibly hamfisted into the plot for the purpose of eventually making jinx Suffer More. the progression of their relationship (which i understand happened over a timeskip, but seriously that timeskip is doing too much heavy lifting -- a problem in its own) from "annoying kid following me around" to "new little sister" isn't elegantly alluded to, it's constantly made extremely obvious. and just to make sure we get the point, riot puts the final nail into that narrative coffin by having jinx literally say aloud that isha is a basically a younger version of powder and paints her hair blue. and then two episodes later, she's gone. just to give jinx yet another reason to go insane, which she doesn't really need.

isha has literally no dialogue. she serves to remind the audience of jinx's past, minus the trauma. it's easy and expected to project a young powder onto every scene she's in, which is just a waste of a new character. but even before the direct isha/powder comparison, jinx declares that she's discarded that persona, that "jinx" is no more. somehow, isha's mere presence even calms down jinx's psychosis to the point that she has a mild break for presumably the first time in a while only after isha is taken away, which just feels extremely lazy and gratuitous -- like the big bad Insanity is just a convenient lever to pull when the plot needs more tension and drama, rather than something that jinx has suffered from her whole life, and which silco's death amplified to the max.

all of the interesting plotlines i was looking forward to, like caitlyn's spiral into vengeance and fascism, jinx's rage and grief and psychosis causing chaos, vi and caitlyn either reconciling or being unable to in the end... it all just feels like it was brushed aside. jinx, after firing a rocket that killed half the piltover council, decides she just won't fight piltover anymore; caitlyn, who's grateful for ambessa's support and guidance in her crackdown on zaun, suddenly turns on her to aid vi; vi, forgetting her life-threatening feud with jinx, abruptly remembers they indeed are sisters who shared a life. so many conflicts conveniently resolved in seconds, when they should've taken at least a few minutes to untangle -- all because we needed so much time devoted to isha and jinx's relationship.

don't get me wrong, i LOVE the emotional moments that have been present so far. i think they do still hit, but their beauty is definitely muted because the pacing is a complete disaster. it was really difficult to enjoy isha having a bug battle with jinx when 1. i didn't even really recognize that jinx and 2. i was constantly thinking about what the other characters were doing. with how many plotlines need to be wrapped up before the finale (zaun's independence, the black rose vs. the medarda clan, mel's supposed magehood, etc.), i'm really not confident that we'll get a satisfying ending, and honestly i wouldn't have minded not having isha in the plot at all if it meant we could get a more coherent and less rushed overarching storyline.

[r0semultiverse]

Hey, Jake & Jack fans, is this anything?

Both men imprisoned (literal & metaphorical).

Both offered an out from their current predicament by an outside force (arguably in the case of Brain Ghost Dirk).

Both have loose ties to Lord English visually.

Yellow initial glow & Gamzee involvement too.

Sometimes a guy just needs to explode (same pose too).

Both dual wielding weapons.

That same said weapon type (for Jack Noir) having killed Jane Crocker.

It's really looking like Jake is going to do her in.

I would also like to point out that we've had interactions involving these three (Jane, Jake, and Brain Ghost Dirk) before that consisted of similar topics & themes.

Brain Ghost Dirk implying that he's just there as moral support, a manifestation of Jake's powers, and as a coping mechanism. Jane also talking about ruling an empire with him while talking down to him, similar to how she saw and/or still sees him in Beyond Canon's Candy timeline. Jake also being uncertain about doing anything to harm her despite all the bad things she's doing.

Brain Ghost Dirk going away tells us that Jake's more hopeful than he's ever been. This is the moment where he is the most sure of his decisions than he's ever been in his life, whatever those decisions may be in regards to Jane and how to handle this situation.

He is probably going to shoot Jane down, quite literally. I would also argue that after all this time, the lad isn't beating the Lord English allegations. We might as well have a parallel of him killing Jane much like how Jack Noir killed her right before he got possessed by Lil Cal & given some of Lord English's immense power.

Alternatively maybe we'll get to see what the power of hope or hope bullets can do to someone whose done so much wrong & come so far off the deep end in terms of moral wrongdoings. Maybe with every shot that hits her, she'll begin to be swayed to the side of good & start to self-reflect.

I'm still not fully convinced that Gamzee actually cured Tavros' peanut allergy, I mean just look at the panel.

This could absolutely be interpreted as Jake injecting his hope power into the epipen and by proxy injecting both his power & the epipen into his son! If younger Jake is strong enough to defeat Grimbark Jade, then adult Jake might just be strong enough to defeat a peanut allergy is all I'm saying! In fact, now that I'm rambling about it, this seems like the more likely outcome is Jake's hope power swaying or (in the very least) confusing Jane mid-fight. Hope bullets, they would look cool & would be pretty strong!

The power of believing in others & wanting things to change can be a strong tool indeed, Mister English.

If there's one person who still believes in changing Jane's mind (or bringing her back to proper canonicity depending on how you interpret the recent lore), it would be Jake English, the believer.

Okay, maybe this is something! Tally ho!

[mayhemspreadingguy]

the sketches were directly inspired by @posthumousvigor 's amazing series The Outcast's Gambit. I couldn't get it out of my head for days... my coping mechanism? draw.

[imaginative-joy]

I was sketching and watching the Halloween Parks and Rec episode when Andy puts Ben in a headlock to get him to talk about Feelings. Then I had this image in my head of the fight on Tanalorr but Bode and Cal are going about it like siblings, as in Big Brother trying to force Baby Bro into submission and their main weapon against each other is Annoyance. I get too many silly ideas from Parks and Rec. Seems like a good excuse to keep rewatching it.

Though this method of fighting is certainly safer than a full-on duel, they don’t inspire much confidence in their loved ones.

[lyhil]

OC-tober 21 - "Grasping the Splinters of My Previous Self"

Cardamomo / Caoimhe belongs to @starlightsuncrow

(SORRY rotated him too much in my mind and got hopelessly enamored)

[bereft-of-frogs]

Torbin was so Reath-coded this episode.

They can duel it out over who had the worse outcome of having a tantrum about going back to/staying on Coruscant.

[natsmagi]

thoughts on eimugi (in general not as a ship)

LOOOOOOOOOVE EIMUGI!!!!!!! easily one of the most interesting and gut-wrenching dynamics in enstars (to me)

and i enjoy it both as a ship and just in general 👍 though my personal favorite read is like........ well a situationship i suppose would be the best term LMAODHAUJSF LIKE UGHHH theres just something so heartbreaking abt thinking of them being so close yet miles apart. thinking mainly of tsumugis pov rn but like imagine you have this person you view as your whole world right infront of you, yet you cant seem to reach them no matter what. and for eichi hes so used to people using him for his money that he never even stopped to think that maybe tsumugis feelings are genuine and he actually cares, only when its too late did eichi realize what he'd now lost

u have these two self-hating people navigating love in one another in drastically different ways; one wants the other to make them whole, and the other cant even fathom someone liking them. a recipe for disaster and brother i eat it up every time

its also been so interesting to see how differently the two have healed from the events of the war. considering their dynamic ud expect tsumugi to still be hung up on it and eichi to not really care when the reality is the opposite. tsumugi has moved on and doesnt hold anything against eichi at all, while eichi still feels guilty and uncomfortable when it comes to tsumugi. plus eichi making it a big point to pass that bluebird over to natsume so they can get their happy ending........ it was a very cute end to this long event of discomfort, and really shows that eichi does want whats best for tsumugi...........

[caught-in-a-landslide]

Who’s to say you can’t love both your wife and your best friend?

[lornasaurusrex]

I miss you Lorna… this is such a mess

This is an old message and I had several other similar messages, but I miss you guys and hope you’re all doing well!! I’m sorry to see nothing has improved.

I saw I was kindly mentioned by @awesomefringey and some other commenters the other day, so just wanted to log in and say hello and log back out for a few more months. 💕

Sending so so much love to all of you. Take care of yourselves and each other, please.

The video is still on YT.

[living-in-a-fantasia]

Stiggy

[silviakundera]

Haha I also used the dickless bore. I thought that only the two main characters came back didn't know he did as well. I still don't buy him ever being into her but that's just me I do wonder if he's going to try and kill her again. I do think Li Rong is treating him too well for my liking she should at least treat hit similarly or worse than she treated ML I want to see wet paper towel non stop suffer.

on one hand, imo a SRQ who is heartless doesn't work for the story the writer is trying to share with us. On the other hand, it's totally ok to decide to be a full-time hater towards a minor character, just because it's fun. I support haters! 🎉 \o/ 🎉

One thing that I think is relevant when comparing LR's reactions: if PWX had killed her, the motive would have been as part of his mission to have his childhood love Qin Zhenzhen's son become the next emperor. (Remember, he came over to threaten her life over that right before she died and called his ex Zhenzhen lmao) THE AUDACITY. In contrast, LR is viewing her murder at SRQ's hands as part of the revenge plan for the Su family's execution.

Some passages of Li Rong's POV:

After a few moments, she whispered: “Where did the scent on you come from?”

“If I say it, you might be upset.” Pei Wenxuan’s eyes had a hint of gloating at others’ pain.

Li Rong thought for a while and frowned, “Su Rongqing?”

“Yes.”

...Li Rong said nothing. She blankly stared into the fire.

Pei Wenxuan turned the fish over and looked at her with a smile, seemingly quite happy. Li Rong found that he had a fearless, unabashed look of enjoying a good play and couldn’t help but be a little fazed.

She believed everything Pei Wenxuan said.

---

Su Rongqing was someone that she saved with her own hands.

That year, Prince Su rebelled, and Su Rongqing’s elder brother spoke up for Prince Su. Later on, he was falsely accused of colluding with Prince Su, implicating the Su clan with treason.

At that time, Li Chuan was so furious that he fainted. He put the entire Su clan in prison without going through the Joint Trial of Three Divisions first and put the men to death and the women into exile. She disagreed with this decision and rushed to beg Li Chuan before the Su clan received their sentence. After being subjected to ten planks, with Pei Wenxuan’s intervention, she was finally able to ask for amnesty for the Su clan.

Even if the death sentences can be forgone, it was impossible to escape punishment while still alive. Even though the men of the Su clan could live, they would be subjected to castration. The others couldn’t bear the humiliation, so they all committed suicide in prison. When she arrived, there was only one man “desperate for life and afraid of death” left among the men of the Su clan, Su Rongqing.

At that time, she had told Su Rongqing that she saved him without the intention of asking him to repay her. She could give him silver and a position, so that he could continue to live a good life in the future.

Back then, she didn’t have any special feelings towards Su Rongqing. It was just that he had saved her before, so after he took care of her, bit by bit, she felt grateful, and…vague sentiments towards him.

For the most part, she sought to save the Su clan for Li Chuan and her own conscience. The Su clan was a prominent, noble family. It was difficult for her to sit back and watch if they died in such an ambiguous manner.

At that time, Su Rongqing refused to go.

...It wasn’t that she had never thought that Su Rongqing would not take revenge on her. After all, it was Li Chuan who ordered all the men of the Su clan to be beheaded and exiled all the female family members. It was impossible for anyone to forget this blood feud, let alone the formerly first and most outstanding gongzi of that year?

For so many years, she had never dared to give him real authority, observing him and guarding against him while still trying to help him live a better life. She couldn’t actually kill him because of her own conscience, but she couldn’t actually trust him and give him power.

In the end, he still decided to act. He killed her first, then successfully took her authority in the name of eliminating Pei Wenxuan. If she guessed correctly, he would not leave with the advisors. Instead, he would borrow the excuse of taking revenge for her and enforcing the will of the people to join forces with the Empress, assist Li Xin in ascension, and fight to the death against the remnants of Pei Wenxuan’s faction.

...

She had anticipated this possibility from the moment she took Su Rongqing in, but she couldn’t help feeling a bit regretful when it actually happened.

[sol-insidious]

“Din Djarin’s identity as a Mandalorian will always be central to his character, and his devotion to his orthodox religion, warrior’s creed, and its chivalrous code of honor is a truly noble one.”

and

“Din Djarin’s devotion to his creed has fundamentally isolated him from love, his role as The Tribe’s breadwinner was as unsustainable as it gave him purpose, and the fierceness of his faith stems from unprocessed trauma and the guilt he feels as an orphan and a foundling. His views on what it means to be a Mandalorian were narrow until he met others who didn’t conform to his own creed, and in this, his status as an voluntary oathbreaker is equally as integral to his character.”

…are both takes that co-exist in my mind.