#bc that grief is a part of him

[monsieurboyardee]

I tweeted this when there was discourse about lwj playing inquiry for 13 years a la cql vs lwj moving on with his life a la mdzs/fan interpretation so here u go:

Hear me out hear me out, what if "hanguang-jun spent those thirteen years moving on from wwx and raising A-yuan" and "lwj spent 13 years playing inquiry on the guqin every night" are two ideas that can coexist?

Bc death is weird and hard especially when there's things you should've said or done that still weigh in you even years later, and it takes time to mourn and to grieve even when you've got other, more important things to be taking care of. Maybe after coming out of his three years of seclusion lwj did try to move on, to raise this kid and be a good father, to be a good brother and nephew, to be the second Jade of Gusu Lan. He went where the chaos was, he helped people, he lived his life. Even when wwx was alive they weren't attached at the hip. And slowly but steadily, he begins to move on because he is more than just his grief and his pain.

But at night, it's just him. The world is asleep, or getting ready for sleep, and he's checked everything off his to do list for the day. There's nothing but the silence in the Jingshi and the soft sounds of nightfall outside. And when wwx's death was still too recent, too fresh of a wound, lwj would sit and play Inquiry until his fingers bled over the strings, just in case his spirit was still out there, just in case he still has one more chance to say he's sorry. But an answer never came, and at this point he isn't expecting it to.

And he's been trying to move on, he really is, but sometimes it's the way Shizui smiles so so brightly and beautifully, sometimes it's when he's in caiyi town and he sees a bottle of emperor's smile, sometimes it's just when the night stretches on and all lwj can think about is wwx's hands on him, of his forehead ribbon in wwx's hands, of how he's so so fucking lonely despite everything because he's still kind of caught up in the idea of what might have been, what could have happened if lwj had just said what he'd wanted to say when he'd wanted to say it.

So he stores bottles of Emperor's Smile in his floorboards, and he sits up at night and plays Inquiry. As the years pass on he only plays it once or twice, but sometimes when the ache is too strong to sleep but not strong enough to put into words, he plays a few more. And eventually it stops being a way to call out to wwx and just one of those Things That He Does, as all people have--he holds his hand behind his back when he walks, he cannot handle his alcohol past one sip, and he plays Inquiry at least once a night every night before he goes to sleep. Because it's become a tradition of sorts for him, a way to rationalize and express his grief while still being able to go about the day and live out his own life. And so even when it stops being his crutch and just starts being his routine he continues, because it feels wrong to stop now and because he is Allowed to express every thing he cannot say in that short period, and he can quietly, secretly, say everything to wwx that he couldn't say before: I'm here, I'm here for you now, even though I wasn't there for you back then. And as the years pass and his routine continues, lwj learns to cope.

Until one day, thirteen years later, lwj hears an unmistakable melody floating through air and looks into Mo Xuanyu's eyes. And for the first time in what seems like forever, something slots back into place inside of him, a feeling that he had accepted and grown used to over the years rewritten over so quickly it would be astounding if he wasn't currently quite so distracted. And for the first time in thirteen years, lwj forgets to play Inquiry before he goes to sleep. Because for the first time in thirteen years, Lan Wangji can make things right.

[ruporas]

feast (ID in alt)

[im-smart-i-swear]

coming back home.

@barrenclan

[cry-ptidd]

” Am I not right to weep? O my children, cursed children of a hateful mother - ”

[skunkes]

my dad when im explaining the general plot of dungeon meshi to him with focus on thistle and falin bc thats what me and my friend cosplayed as and he wanted to know what the whole deal was and i get to the part where I have to explain what ultimately happens to thistle and get incredibly choked up about it

[possamble]

I'm not allowed to be on social media for more than two seconds today but I just wanted to say that Laios will absolutely have his own reaction to all this as someone who would die for Falin but has also imprinted on Marcille as his Emotional Support Comphet White Girl Not-Girlfriend along the way

[fakeoldmanfucker]

Thinking about how apparently John can't go back to the First House/Earth, and how souls rub off on each other in proximity and they become more alike with time, and how souls want to return to their bodies. And what it would mean for John if he returned to Earth after more than ten thousand years of having part of Alecto's soul in his.

[hythlodaes]

A sharp feeling digs into Emile’s chest, but there’s no anger in his voice when he says, “You presume to understand.”

“I only observe.”

And it goes unspoken: I knew you before you were like this.

[titanofthedepths]

Everything about both Longtail and Swiftpaw, and Cinderpelt and Brightheart gets a LOT sadder when you realize that they’re family

[worstloki]

not a fan of people saying Odin and Loki are similar in a moral or decisive sense, particularly when it comes to Thor. that makes it sound like Loki doesn't know Thor or care about him beyond what he symbolises (regarding Asgard/the throne/family/worthiness), when that's a defining part of their relationship

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

The Loudest Silence

YA contemporary

a newly Deaf-Hard of hearing girl moves across the country and starts a new school, struggling with navigating her disability and love for singing and lost friendships - determined to not make any new friends for the year she’s in Florida

and a boy struggling with family expectations and anxiety, after being made the fútbal captain even though he secretly ways to be on broadway, who quickly befriends her

bi & aroace-coded MCs

[tormentum-ab-intra]

skeledog Leander WIP

the skull here is actually modeled closely after a deer skull, just compressed to fit a dog's overall face shape. also tried to make the eyes a little less wide-set than a deer's without making them completely front-facing like a dog's. here's the rest of the (still un-rendered) body:

i'm testing out the screen recorder i just downloaded so if that ends up working the way i want it to i'll have a timelapse of this piece when it's done :)

[ruvviks]

toying with the idea of making yancey's friends not real. would that be too evil

[gojuo]

Proshippers be funny af. GoT opening sequence is nothing like hotd so that comparison they pulled up is false and desperate.

me: i want helaegon to be the deconstruction of targaryen incest that examines the psychological horror of a forced marriage to one's own sibling in which the full family is already hanging by a thread in a treacherous situation since there is no other targ couple in the entirety of canon perfectly situated to explore and dissect this horrific aspect of targaryen culture

#them: i want an incestuous love triangle (that is not canon) because incestuous love triangles is interesting writing or something

[padfootastic]

Ahaha thank you for the nice comments in tags <3 i love Remus but he seems bit like a spineless people pleaser and after dating somebody who would rather lie about their feelings than have people be mildly upset with them..... I chose violence 🗡

no but ur so right because!!! i’ve been sleeping on this for a while but let’s talk about remus’ personality traits and how they have the potential to make him a bad/absent partner, at best, and an abusive one, at worst. everyone wants to turn him into this image of perfection just bc he’s such an ‘uwu victim’ figure in fanon but that’s SO far from the truth omg

(i am…just gonna put this remus character analysis under a cut bc it got unnecessarily long and i wouldn’t want u to read it if u didn’t want to lol)

so, for one, he’s manipulative. he has no combinations in twisting the truth or dodging it entirely for his own benefit. like, the man could stand in front of his dead best friend’s orphaned son & not even allude to the fact that he knew his dad. he had no problem bringing james & lily up in the most twisted ways possible to guilt/emotionally influence harry. so remus in a relationship would have the capacity to either knowingly or unknowingly manipulate his partner. the definition of gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss except more sinister.

next, his spinelessness. either as a defensive measure to deal w anti-werewolf hostility or as an innate personality trait, remus has the habit of just—not standing up for things. he looks away when his friends act like assholes, even when he’s in a position of authority (which yes, u can argue that he’s afraid of losing them but atp they’ve literally risked life & magic & azkaban for him so either way, he comes off badly—either he doesn’t mind himself, or he doesn’t fully trust their friendship, or it’s just easier to look away). in a relationship, this can manifest as bottling everything inside u until it makes u bitter or u violently unload on the other person in an entirely disproportionate manner. the dynamic would also be a bit skewed. the people pleasing u mentioned is also such a big thing that people usually overlook. when ur constantly trying to make the other person happy and don’t want to rock the boat, that is a cocktail for miscommunication and breakdown of relationships. ur also constantly putting the emotional burden of constructively dealing w issues on ur partner instead of doing it urself.

connected to his cowardice is his habit of running away when things get tough. remus is conflict avoidant; he does not like to put himself in a position where he has to take a decisive stance, especially if it’s against what others around him believe in. he runs away when things get tough, and tbh, for me, this comes from a constant spiral of self hatred & self victimisation, both of which stem from his experience as a werewolf. in every difficult situation, he centres himself & his discomfort and instead of dealing with it and moving forward for a constructive solution, he decides that stepping back from it altogether is better. which, yeah, works well for him bc he can temporarily put a pin in it but it’s kinda terrible for everyone’s who’s left behind. so i also think that remus is a profoundly selfish character who doesn’t look beyond the end of his own nose. u can imagine how those traits might manifest themselves in a relationship.

and his people pleasing!! so this might be verging on fanon but his gratitude and/or devotion to dumbledore sets an…interesting tone. it’s also another example of how he cannot conceive himself in any other term except as a victimised werewolf. the marauders did a lot for him, arguably even more than dumbledore’s token representation formula, but he never felt indebted to them the way he did for D. dumbledore also kind of makes him feel needed? validates his feelings? and that just speaks to a very twisted sense of self for me. which, again, won’t bode well for his other interpersonal relations.

also, on a very hc note, i also feel like remus just…does not have any significant capacity to love. he takes and takes and takes but doesn’t give much in return. this doesn’t even have to be an actively malicious decision, tbh, just a very self-centred one. he doesn’t realise how much he’s taking bc he’s only thinking about his own circumstances.

all of these are also just why i can’t see r/s working out in any healthy manner. remus is exactly antithetical to everything sirius is/believes in, and not even in the fun ‘opposites attract’ way. but that’s another rant no one asked for lmao

[orcelito]

Ok so I was wondering like

Top 0.005% of listeners. That's Pretty Damn Small. But I was wondering Just how small...

357.1k monthly listeners

0.005% of 357.1k is... just under 18...

Guys. I'm within the top 20 listeners for IAMX. Period. 🫣