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talbaquix · 1 month

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A layman's guide to olympic fencing—

for writers, artists, olympic fans, or the otherwise curious.

disclaimer: i say layman for a reason! i'm not at all a professional, or even good, but i have been fencing (very) recreationally at an amateur level for ~7 years. also, my exposure to sabre is extremely limited, and i am speaking from an american POV, so please feel free to correct me on any points you see necessary. :)

long post incoming...

So, what is "Olympic fencing?"

First and foremost, it is a sport. Not a fight, not a duel—a sport. One of five that have been permanent fixtures since the very first modern Olympic games, actually—hence the name! While other similar sword-wielding activities (such as historical European martial arts (HEMA), kendo, or wushu for example) may occasionally be referred to as "fencing," most people (me included) define fencing as this specific sport, and use other classifiers to categorize the rest.

Originally, fencing began as a form of military training in Germany and Italy, before spreading recreationally across more areas in Europe. Currently, the fencing scene is almost uncontestedly dominated by Italy, France, and Hungary, though both China/HK and the US have had some pretty stellar wins more recently.

In addition, French has a pretty large influence on fencing terminology and language, at least in the West. Be prepared!

The Basics

Three Weapons

Fencing is divided into three disciplines, each with their own equipment, strategies, and ruleset. They are as follows:

Épée: The classic. The heaviest and most defensive of the three blades, épée's simple ruleset allows for more elaborate strategy and really lives up to fencing's moniker of "physical chess." In épée, the entirety of your opponents body (including face, toes, etc!) counts as valid target area and all hits must be scored with the tip of the blade. In case of a double-touch (relatively simultaneous hits from both opponents), both opponents score points.

Because there's no need for specific target areas, épéeists enjoy minimal equipment, forgoing lamés (electric jackets, pronounced luh-may) and mask cords in exchange for a larger bell guard to protect the hand (that big bit of metal at the end of the blade). Épéeists can use pistol grips for more point control (molded to fit a hand), or a french grip to get a little bit of extra distance (red stick grip).

Épée bouts are stereotypically known for being slow and boring, since the absence of right-of-way (explained later) allows more freedom in trying to sus out opponent reactions and strategize, and the whole-body target + double-touch system means there's more benefit to fencing slowly in comparison to sabre or foil. It's not uncommon for épée bouts to begin with both fencers being carded for passivity! There's a lot of bouncing back and forth in the middle.

Saber (Sabre): Fast, slashing, and aggressive. The fencing you see in movies? Sabre. It's the only cutting weapon, where the entire length of the blade is able to register contact with the opponent. In sabre, the target area is the upper half of the body (including the face, but excluding the hand) and their lamés reflect that. Sabre also employs what is known as right-of-way/priority/advantage (from here on abbreviated as RoW) which, in the case of a double-touch, essentially gives RoW—and therefore the point—to the "aggressing" fencer at the referee's discretion. RoW is pretty complicated, but is very influential in how both sabre and foil play out.

In their ready (en garde) position, sabreists also hold their blade vertically to protect the face (as opposed to foil and épée, where the blade is held horizontally to keep the point towards the opponent). Sabreists also need special masks to register hits, as well as a mask cord to connect it to the rest of the electric circuit. Sabre bell guards are kinda swoopy and extend downward (think pirates) and are always "french grips" (aka just a stick).

Sabreists are generally known for being (respectfully) batshit insane and dramatic as hell. Bouts are extremely fast (rarely more than a few seconds) and look simple, and rely much more on pure athleticism and fast reaction times than épée. Most bouts consist of the two fencers running towards each other, maybe a parry or two, then both fencers scoring hits with a fair bit of screaming and angrily pointing at the ref. Oh wait, did I say running? Sorry, I meant advancing, since sabre is also the only discipline where crossing-over with your legs got banned because people just started sprinting towards the middle instead of actually fencing. Love them for that.

Foil (Fleuret, rarely): Oh, foil. The artistic middleman. Originating as a practice weapon, foil tends to sit in the middle of épée's careful point-control and elaborate strategy and sabre's split-second reactions and fuck-it-we-ball energy. Yet somehow, it ends up being more nit-picky and complicated than both. It has the smallest target area of the three, only covering the torso, as well as the lightest blade. Touches are only registered from the tip.

RoW's influence is noticeably large, since, compared to sabre, the longer bout times actually allow for opportunity for RoW to be traded between you and your opponent. Foil can almost be thought of as turn-based combat. Fencer A initiates the attack first, now has RoW, lunges and misses, which gives RoW to Fencer B. Fencer B attacks, gets parried (back to Fencer A), A extends, B counterattacks, A gets the point.

Foil stereotypes aren't as strong as épée or sabre stereotypes, but foilists are generally known for either being super pedantic and arguing w/ the ref about RoW or whipping their blade around constantly & being flowery (hence, "fleuret"). Because of how bendy the foil is, foilists can also do cool stuff like flicks (snapping your wrist so that the blade bends around, oftentimes to hit your opponents back) and can also get into pretty funny in-fighting situations a bit more often than sabre/épée (since corps-a-corps contact isn't allowed in fencing, and stepping back means you lose RoW, there's a lot of awkward up-close poking).

Some Positions

En garde: the basic fencing position. In essence, a squat, with one foot facing forward and the other turned out, roughly one and a half foot-lengths apart. This is the basis from which all other movements—the lunge, the advance, the retreat—should be executed, and the position fencers return to once an action is completed.

Lunge: the quintessential fencing attack. From en garde, extend your dominant arm, kick out your front foot, land forward, and extend your back arm for balance. To recover, bend your back leg and return to en garde.

Parry: the most basic piece of defensive bladework that every fencer learns, with the "beat" serving as its offensive counterpart. Consists of hitting your opponents blade to prevent a touch. There are nine different parries in classical fencing, but the most common (in foil/épée) are the four and six, which defend the inside and outside lines respectively.

Ettiquette & Other Fun Facts

All fencers must salute their opponent, referee, and audience (if there is one) before and after the bout. Usually just consists of "nodding" at the salutee with your blade before the mask is donned. At the end of bouts, a handshake with your opponent using your non-dominant hand is also expected. Many people substitute/add on to the handshake by tapping blades instead.

Unlike in tennis, seeing a fencer hold up a one on their hand after a touch is an acknowledgement of the opponent's point, whereas a closed fist is a claim of theirs.

When fencing without a ref, many people will slap their thigh to indicate the start of a bout.

Fencers may not speak while the mask is on.

Fencing clubs are also sometimes called salles.

While electrical equipment can vary between disciplines, all fencers are required to wear knickers, a plastron (under-arm protector), a body cord, a jacket, a glove, and a mask. For women, a plastic chest protector is also required. In sabre and foil, fencers also wear a mask cord and lamé.

The first safety rule most fencers learn is to never raise your blade towards someone without a mask on, and it's taken pretty seriously. Because the back of a mask is exposed, its also a big big no-no to turn your back to your opponent during a bout or otherwise lower your head.

Common Terminology

En garde, prez, allez! - On guard, ready, fence! Used to signal the start of a bout.

Halt! - Said by referees to. halt the bout.

Strip/piste - The surface on which fencers fence. Usually around 2m wide and 14m long, the lines on the piste also dictate where fencers must move to to begin bouts, and where they're considered out-of-bounds. Sometimes, they're on raised platforms. Yes, people have fallen off, yes, it's extremely funny.

Feint - Probably what you think it is.

Disengage - Moving your blade in a little circle to avoid contact with what is usually an incoming parry/beat. On a very basic level, straight attacks beat disengages, disengages beat parries, and parries beat straight attacks.

Fleche - An explosive running attack. Due to not being able to cross-over, sabreists use "flunges" instead, a mix between a fleche and a lunge that essentially entails flinging yourself at your opponent in a flying lunge.

Balestra - hop :)

Riposte - An immediate attack done after a defender's parry. Usually heard as "parry-riposte."

Tempo - A kind of nebulous concept, but very similar to the musical definition of the word. The pace of a bout, sorta. Often used when someone is advised to break tempo or if one fencer is controlling the tempo of a bout.

FAQ

Why are the blades bendy? To keep us from dying, mainly. What, you want the metal pole people can throw at each other at the same speed as a bullet (literally) to be solid? Also, blades break a lot already, especially in the hands of the inexperienced—they'd snap a hell of a lot more if they weren't flexible. Ouch.

Does it hurt? About as much as getting poked really hard with a steel stick would. Leaves bruises often, but cuts very rarely. You get used to it. The real kicker is staying in en garde for that long. Trust me, your quads will be screaming.

Is it- No, it's not dangerous. If you follow the rules, fencing is actually extremely safe, especially compared to contact sports.

Does a red light mean no touch? No. One fencer is assigned a red light that lights up whenever a touch is made, and the other is given green. In sabre and foil, yellow (sometimes white) means whatever the fencer hit was off-target, and should not be counted as a point. Épée doesn't have an off-target light, since épéeists don't wear lamés.

How do the masks know when a point is scored? Often asked upon seeing the little lights on the side of masks light up upon touches. Unless you're "dry fencing" (no electricity), you're typically hooked up to a circuit. If you fence épée or foil, there's a little button on the end of your blade that registers when pressure is added onto it. When a hit is scored, the signal goes through the wire in your blade, up your body cord, and eventually to "the box" (and your mask if you're fancy), and the corresponding light is flashed.

Why hold your hand behind your back? Most people don't! Some beginners do it to prevent themselves from reflexively moving their non-gloved hand in front of them when being attacked (which is against the rules), but most fencers either keep their hand relaxed at their side, raised in a t-rex pose, or occasionally above the head.

Helmet? Mask.

Sword? If you want.

Touché? Often "touche," actually. No accent.

Paralympics? On (stationary) wheelchairs. Extremely cool, actually, and very hard. Check it out!

Expensive? To get all your own stuff? Yes. But most clubs will rent you equipment, or sometimes lend it for free! But yes, more expensive than, like, soccer. :(.

Is it fun? Absolutely. To quote some random internet user, "it's like chess, at 90 miles an hour, oh and there's swords!" I would 100% recommend it to everyone, especially if you're on the older side (fencing isn't super age-restricted at all—seeing a 12 y/o and a 70 y/o facing off on a club piste isn't uncommon!) It is exhausting, exhilarating, and super, super fun. Give it a shot!

Please feel free to send any and all questions, corrections, or musings my way. Thanks for reading—I hope this was interesting and/or useful!

#writer #artist #writing #writing tips #fencing #olympics #paris 2024 #epee #foil #saber #tbqx

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hetafice · 9 months

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soft!yandere china x reader

request: Hello! Do you write yandere characters? What about 2ps and nyo!? Could you do something for Yandere!China? If not can I get hcs or scenarios for China with a Fem!Darling?

I feel like you would have to be exceptional in some way to become the object of Yao’s affections. He appreciates beauty and intelligence, but he would place much more stock in a darling that’s graceful or poised. I don’t think he’s necessarily hung up on looks (he is thousands of years old- it takes more than just a pretty face to catch his eye), but he seems likely to try to cultivate sophistication in his partners as well. Elegance is closely associated with the feminine ideal in Chinese culture, after all. Regardless of how his darling identifies, he will strongly mold them to fit cultural/historical standards of comportment.

Before Yao even thinks to start a relationship with you, he will observe you. Likely within plain sight. If you’re a country you’ll likely feel his eyes on you in a crowd. Before he makes such a big emotional investment, he needs to be sure of what he’s getting into. Once you exhibit a few of the qualities he’s into, you’re a goner.

His age strongly informs the way he interacts with his darling. He’s old enough to not be delusional. I feel like he’s the least likely to kidnap you. Instead, he’ll take a different route completely. Think crazy gifts (first class flights, expensive clothes and jewelry), and compliments. Is he obsessed? Yes. Is part of that obsession fed by a desire to control? Also yes. But he does not want to coerce you. Part of the fun is indeed having you, but another is getting you to come to him on your own. He looks down on the greener nations that rely on force. He will carefully manipulate your perceptions of him, and over time you’ll fall into his trap without even realizing.

Of course he’ll let you borrow the car to drive yourself home, or he’ll take you home to get clothes, but why would you need to when he’s got the entire Spring/Summer 2023 Mugler collection at the penthouse?? I’m tempted to use the term gilded cage, but you can leave whenever. That “freedom” could easily give anyone a false sense of security. And he takes full advantage of that fact.

He is truly devoted to his darling, but is not the most openly loving person. As such, he expresses his love by giving gifts rather than physical contact or romantic language (it’s giving sugar daddy y’all). As mentioned before, he will pay top dollar and move the moon to ensure his darling’s happiness. He is not worried about spoiling his darling at all. He does not mind a little bit of brattiness to spice things up as long as nothing goes too far. He rarely spends money on himself, but as his sun moon and stars, that reasoning cannot be applied to you. Ask and you shall receive.

Don’t let him fool you! This devotion does not come without a price, though. Complete obedience is expected. He uses his darling’s standard of living as leverage, so there is rarely a need for real punishments. His goal is to get you so accustomed to luxury that you’ll do near anything to keep it.

Because of his age and temperament, I don’t think Yao would be keen on harsh physical punishments, or any physical punishments for that matter.

If you’re lucky enough to catch Yao’s eyes, you will never lift a finger again. So long as you play the part of a gentle, grateful, and obedient lover, that is. But with a life like this, why wouldn’t you be? No need to question anything that seems off…right?

#hetalia #hws china #aph china #yandere hetalia #hetalia x reader #yandere x reader #a request from the before times #aka my old blog #pls enjoy #requests are currently open!

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maleficentmrsofallevil · 6 months

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But I wanted her (knockoff playline dolls)

I don't use Temu! Temu bad! Temu steals your info! Temu -

Ooh. She's pretty. Yeah. I caved.

So technically, Defa Lucy is a Mexican Walmart knockoff of Barbie, but plastic playline knockoffs aren't viewed generally with the same level of distaste as recast BJDs. Others have their reasons, but mine goes a little something like this:

These toys are made with plastic injection molding machines. Here's a sales pitch video by Fit Precision Molding, a company that makes and sells these machines:

youtube

These machines are NOT cheap. This is the CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machine of toys. $20K (USD) for ONE machine is a starter price - and that's if you can get it cheap from China. So a company that has decided to create their own knockoff line also tends to have the funds to pick a legal fight with, say, Mattel (MGAE and Bratz). This is not a backyard art theft sort of operation. This is easily a $200K operation just for the machines.

Granted, YMY still got smacked good and hard by the company that makes Nendoroids, and they deserved to get smacked, cuz stealing is bad.

HOWEVER...

Playline companies steal from each other all the time (cough cough Barbie Extra trying to lift the LOL OMG line like that hot mess of clashing color outfits and ridiculous plastic jewelry can compare to the cohesiveness of MGAE looks cough). Generally, if one company is mad enough, they'll sue the "stealing" company pretty quickly, and the marketplace will figure it out.

The other reason it doesn't bother me is cuz I figure these companies kinda have it coming.

So when China opened up for business, companies all over the world ran there like their houses were on fire, cuz China so cheap! Such affordable labor force. Much lack of regulation - environmental or occupational safety. Companies initially balked at employees being required to join a union, but they were immediately comforted by the fact that Chinese labor unions do exactly squat for people. The unions exist solely to steal from the employees and transfer that money to members of government.

When you open a business in China, you're required to bring on a local company as a joint venture (same in Saudi Arabia, by the way), and the Chinese company will steal with delight and abandon - as actively encouraged by the Chinese government and CCP. Companies have whined extensively about this to their respective governments. "I want cheap labor force! I want to destroy water supply! I want to pollute their air! But they're stealing from me! Waaaaah!"

Well - you get what you pay for, now don't you. You want access to exploited labor forces (forced labor for Uyghurs in the Xinjiang province, imported North Korean slaves). You want rights to dump your toxic crap into the Chinese water supply and the Chinese air without repercussions - which travels over to California and gets trapped in LA, by the way (air moves, idiots).

You'll have to forgive me if my sympathies are not particularly high for you.

This sucks for anyone trying to be an ethical consumer. Walk into your local store and flip over any box. They all say "Made in China." All of them.

This is why even though dolls like Momoko and Obitsu are more expensive, I am willing to pay to import them. Japanese wages suck, but at least they're making some money. The dolls are made in Japan. That's why they cost as much as they do. If you want to be an ethical doll collector, your options are basically BJDs and Japanese dolls (maybe Korean). Anything on US shelves is made in China and therefore unethical AF.

#defa lucy #temu #playline doll companies #yeah I'm banned from visiting China #probably why I can't sign up for Taobao lol #Youtube

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buriedalienfma · 1 year

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The release of the first few episodes of ‘My Adventures with Superman’ has got me thinking a lot about Superman, and in particular, I wanted to talk about the Superman cartoon that never was - The Superman Family Animated Series.

For those who don’t know what this is all about, here’s the gist of it :

In around 2019, animation director Victor Heuck pitched an idea for a new Superman cartoon that was loosely titled “Superman Family”. The basic idea behind the cartoon was to essentially adapt the DC Rebirth Superman comics as well as the Super-Sons comics. The Rebirth Superman comics primarily focused on Superman raising his son, Jon Kent (who inherited his father’s powers) with his wife Lois Lane, while Super-Sons focused on Jon Kent’s escapades as the new Superboy as he teams up with Damian Wayne, the son of Batman.

Victor Heuck wanted to take the ideas behind the above mentioned comics and adapt them into a new Superman cartoon. The cartoon was also going to be very light-hearted in tone and Heuck has stated that the older Silver Age Superman comics was also going to be a strong influence on the cartoon. Just as an example, Heuck mentioned that he wanted to explore the idea of Jon and his mother dealing with Superman being turned into a Merman for a potential episode of the cartoon. That should give you a good idea of what kind of cartoon this was going to be.

Victor Heuck worked alongside Sean “Cheeks” Galloway to put together the pitch. You might have heard of Sean Galloway, he was the character designer behind the Spectacular Spider-Man animated series, and he drew up a couple of the character designs for the ‘Superman Family’ cartoon.

As the title of the cartoon would suggest, there was going to be a strong focus on the Superman family. Characters like Kenan Kong and Natasha Irons were going to be featured as recurring characters. In the comics, Kenan Kong is the Superman of China, while Natasha Irons is the niece of John Henry Irons, a character who built a high-tech suit of armor in order to become a superhero inspired by Superman himself. Natasha Irons followed in her uncle’s footsteps with her own suit of armor. The ‘Superman Family’ cartoon was going to portray Natasha as the big sister to Jon Kent. As you can see from the character sheets above, the classic Superman villain Mxyzptlk was also going to be a recurring character, which is fitting since I consider him to be THE silver age Superman villain.

While the pitch was received warmly by the people working at Warner Brothers, they ultimately chose to pass on the cartoon and as a result, it was never made.

So what are my thoughts on this pitch ? Well, this pitch was made in around 2019, and I can tell you right now, that wasn’t the best time for Superman fans. There was no plans for a new Superman movie or series at the time and the character seemed to be fading from the public eye. At that time, I gladly would have welcomed this cartoon. It would have had a pretty big impact on the Superman franchise. For one, I think that Jon Kent would have been propelled into the spotlight.

When this character was first created, he seemed to be guaranteed to be a very popular kid-appeal character. He was the son of Superman who had to live up to his father, one of the world’s greatest heroes. His design is anime-inspired and in-universe, he was even an anime fan. He had a pretty charming personality as the kid who meant well, but tended to screw up for one reason or another. He was created in the same mold as the likes of Gohan from Dragon Ball or Midorya from My Hero Academia. By all accounts, he should have been a bigger deal.

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. In general, I think the comics that starred the character were not easily accessible to the general public. The Superman Rebirth comics are still loved by Superman fans, but they’re full of continuity baggage that only long time fans would have been able to understand. They also weren’t very kid friendly and featured a surprising amount of gruesome scenes. The Super-Sons comic was a little more accessible, but it was ultimately short lived and didn’t make that much of a splash. Recently DC has experimented with aging Jon Kent up and having him become the new Superman...which hasn’t been well received by fans and to be fair his comic series is kinda mediocre. Over time, I’ve realized that while I liked the basic ideas behind Jon Kent, I don’t really care for the character as he is outside of a couple of very specific comics. And one of those comics is a fanfic, so that should tell you how bad the character has it in the past few years.

The ‘Superman Family’ cartoon would have been the break that Jon Kent deserved as the cartoon would undoubtedly be more accessible to the general public. I think the character would have been in a very different place if the cartoon went through and became successful.

As for Superman himself, I feel like the cartoon would have actually delivered on the promises of the Rebirth Superman comics. When I first read those comics, I was excited because I wanted to see Superman deal with the complications of being a parent, and especially a parent to a super-powered son, and I was rather disappointed when the stories side-stepped that idea entirely and just had Superman as a perfect father figure. Perhaps the cartoon may have fixed that ? Who knows.

Now with the benefit of hindsight and after seeing the release of two new Superman series in ‘Superman and Lois’, and ‘My Adventures with Superman’, do I still think that the cartoon should have been made ? Probably.

I have to be honest, I much prefer ‘My Adventures with Superman’ and how it took a more classic, back-to-basics approach to the Superman mythos. I think that is much more refreshing compared to the twists that other Superman stories have tried to put on the formula. One the other hand, the ‘Superman Family’ cartoon probably would have been much better than ‘Superman and Lois’, which has a similar premise and started off very strong but slowly became worse as the show was overtaken by soap opera drama that was bad even for CW standards. I’d take a more light-hearted Super-family cartoon over that any day.

But Ultimately, the cartoon only exists as a “What if ?”, and I think it’s a shame that the pitch was passed up by the higher ups. It could have been a fun little cartoon that could have placed the spotlight of a bunch of underrated Superman characters.

#superman #clark kent #lois lane #jon kent #dc animation

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yueyimold · 3 months

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dual color toilet pipe fittings mold

China twin shot mold maker, offer bi material toilet flush, dual color toilet pipe fittings, double injection waste pipe tube connector, two tone toilet pan connector

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wedreamedlove · 1 year

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To Live In A World - Light & Night Group Essay

Light and Night has an 18+ rating in China but, in my opinion, it's not for sexually suggestive scenes, it's for the topics they bring up that only individuals with solid worldviews can appreciate and discuss. One topic that comes up again and again is how an individual lives in the world: what makes someone choose to leave and what makes someone keep going?

Out of the 5 male leads in Light and Night, Sariel, Evan, and Osborn have tried to kill themselves. Charlie cannot even conceive of the idea of suicide, but he also discusses this topic and has his own coping methods to deal with suffering. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, Jesse has the standard response that he can't give up on everything because of his responsibilities, his attachments, and his loved ones [SSR Prairie Fire DATE].

Trigger warning for discussions about suicide. Spoilers up to Chapter 19 and Charlie's 2023 birthday.

[SSR Escaping Into Dusk DATE]

Evan: "Do you know how to meet a mermaid?" His tone sounded like he was asking someone a question, but also like he was simply telling the opening of a story. Evan: "You have to swim to the bottom of the ocean—there it will turn pitch-black and blue skies will become a memory." Evan: "When you lie down in that silence and decide to become a part of it, mermaids will appear." Evan: "If your love is sincere and pure enough, they will accept you and take you away forever."

This story comes from The Big Blue and, in the context of Evan's date, refers to committing suicide. I think it's only fitting to start this essay with this haunting metaphor, and this also happens to be one of the times Evan tried to commit suicide during the period of his life when he enjoyed freediving.

TO LIVE IS TO SUFFER—

Since Evan opened this essay, we'll continue to talk about him. First, to understand what could drive someone to commit suicide, I will summarize Evan's background. He was born into a caring nuclear family that quickly disintegrated and so, at the tender age of 5, he lost the love and protection of both parents. Right after that, he was forced to go through the brutal training all Blood Clan members go through, such as survival training in the woods and the indoctrination of their superiority.

[SSR Secrets in the Shade DATE]

Evan: Yes, it was when I was a child and driven into the woods for the first time. Evan: I witnessed wild beasts hunting and escaped from the mouth of a snake. I felt that the forest was full of dangers and only wished to get out of there quickly. Evan: And, just when I was hungry and exhausted, I saw a bamboo mushroom. Evan: At the time, I didn't know what it was and whether or not it was poisonous. I looked at it and thought hopelessly that I might as well pluck it and eat it, and resign myself to my fate.

[SSR Illusionary Light - 14 Years Ago Fall TRAJECTORY]

I felt my pulse beating, ba-dump, ba-dump—and so I aimed the screwdriver at it and stabbed down hard. The second the blood spurted out I heard the sound of my soul drilling out too. It cheered and sang for the freedom and sunlight it waited for so long. I was a bit happy, because I discovered that my heavy body was gradually turning light. That feeling of being able to fly even without wings was addictive. The smell of blood was a strong fragrance and when it dripped onto the mud it even blossomed as a vivid flower. [...] This time no one would be able to stop my footsteps. When the blood ran out, I would be free.

[SSR Against One's Heart - 11 Years Ago Spring TRAJECTORY]

Whenever my body was spread open to be seasoned, I always prayed in my heart for rot to come. I think I would greet it with extraordinary calm and even a small smile. Of course, I would allow myself to retain a bit of sadness and this would be my last reverence and friendliness to life. I held this thought until the first spot of mold appeared on my body—I meant the fresh and still bleeding bowl-sized wound in my chest, large enough that my heart could almost fall out. There was no moment closer to death than now, however a long-lost fear suddenly grew crazily in my body until, in the end, I was defeated. I watched myself stuff cotton balls into my body, along with all my obsessions and wickedness, and the blood stuck them together, forming a new piece of flesh of its own. If death happened to arrive at this moment, he would surely laugh at my hypocrisy and cowardice. Fortunately, the dense night outside the window stretched in front of me like train tracks and I could even hear his departing footsteps that were too lazy to step over those tracks.

The Blood Clan ground away his individuality, his sentimentality, and his attachments. In his 1st birthday [SSR Enticing Feast DATE], Evan explains that all members of the Blood Clan are brought up to have no affections for anything but family. He couldn't be picky about his food, he could only read books that were approved, and his pet rabbit was killed. To make matters worse, Evan is also the black sheep of the Blood Clan. He cannot bring himself to be like them with their cruelty, arrogance, and depravity. He shares their instincts but he instinctively rebels against it and questions all of the Blood Clan values.

Can someone even be considered to be "living" in this existence? It's no wonder Evan doesn't think there's anything to keep him in this world, because he grew up without even knowing who "he" is as a person.

Despite all this though, Evan did manage to find a way to reconcile his self-destructive impulses. However, this answer is going to be left for the next section and, instead, we are going to move onto our next male lead who suffered, Osborn.

Much like Evan, Osborn was also born to a loving family that disintegrated, starting with his father leaving and ending with his mother's multiple attempts to abandon him before she finally succeeded. Once that happened, Osborn had no more attachments to this world and thought about how easy it would be for him to disappear without anyone noticing or caring. He grew up with this fear of being abandoned again and so was afraid to get close to anyone. This self-isolation was only exacerbated by the prejudice of people around him, who saw him as a juvenile offender, and made no attempts to understand him.

[SSR The 400 Blows TRAJECTORY - 14 Years Ago Early Spring]

I look forward, beyond anything else, to the moment I kill myself. At least this proves that, at the very end, before the world abandons me, I severed my relationship with it first.

[SSR The 400 Blows TRAJECTORY - 8 Years Ago Early Summer]

After waking up, he climbed to the edge of the rooftop and looked at the rusty red marks on the concrete floor that couldn't be washed away, like they were a silent accusation. So long as he jumped, he could escape everything. Will anyone grieve for me? Will anyone care about my death? Osborn blankly thought.

[SSR Free Fall TRAJECTORY - 6 Years Ago Early Winter]

He suddenly raised his hand and slashed at his own neck hard. However, the biting pain didn't bring a sense of relief. Instead, it hurt more.

[SSR Free Fall TRAJECTORY - 4 Years Ago Early Winter]

All my classmates had jumped and kept hurrying me. The waves grew larger and larger and I realized I really would die if I didn't jump. But there was an instant where I seriously had the idea of giving up. I thought about leaving things like this, because to me this had never been an act to survive but instead a punishment.

Freedom is a double-edged sword. In protecting himself by keeping others at a distance and not getting attached, Osborn had also walled himself off from the world. It was all too easy for him to be indifferent and flippant with his own life because he cherished nothing and believed that no one cherished him.

However, as we all know, people (and animals) did get under Osborn's defenses and became family members he took under his wing and who ended up binding him to this world. He also discovered his own way of reconciling with the world, which we will talk about in the next section.

The last suicidal man was Sariel. Unlike the others (except for Jesse), Sariel was born to a loving family and there were no tragedies in his childhood. Instead, it was the trauma of war in his early adulthood that brought him to despair. On the battlefield, he saw the cycle of hatred and revenge, what humans do at the extremes of desperation (cannibalism), massacred a village, and ultimately ended the life of someone he loved with his own hands. Everyone he knew and loved passed away, either due to circumstances or the long passage of time, and after fulfilling all of their leftover wishes he himself was left with nothing of his own but crushing survivor's guilt.

[SSR Meeting Spring FILM REEL - Undead Nightmare]

Sariel lay on the shore of the lake and it was unclear whether it was lake water or tears on his face. Sariel: Yet another failure. After that, Sariel tried countless times more. Since his talent would save him, then he would try even more drastic methods. However, his talent followed him relentlessly like a curse. Cut veins would heal, torn off limbs would be restored, and even his heart could recover its function after being pierced by a long blade.

Not mentioned above is how, for his first attempt, Sariel jumped off a cliff and his body was practically pulverized or how, in the scene prior to the translation, he tied himself to a rock and sank into the bottom of a lake to drown. Unlike the other men, Sariel would have truly ended his life on multiple occasions if it weren't for his talent, but since he couldn't die he became an empty husk that wandered the world instead, attempting to drown out his pain in vices like gambling and wine.

So now, after seeing how some of the men in Light and Night hit absolute rock bottom in their lives, how did they pick themselves up and walk all the way to the present to stand before us?

—TO SURVIVE IS TO FIND MEANING IN THE SUFFERING (GORDON W. ALLPORT)

As I have been mentioning, all the men in Light and Night were able to come to terms with living in this world, although it's arguable how "healthy" their coping methods are. In this section, I will not be listing the men in the order I introduced them, but rather by my opinion on the worst-to-best coping methods the men demonstrate. Naturally, this is an incredibly personal opinion and you do not have to agree with me at all. In fact, discussion would be happily welcomed!

First, we have Evan.

[SSR Escaping Into Dusk DATE]

Evan: Actually, it can't be called liking it. It's just that I was once a little addicted to the feeling of freediving. Evan: In a turbid world without sound, color, or light. Evan: You toss aside every tool and means and rely only on the limits of what the human body can do... Evan: It's true the pain brought on by this method is inevitable, but the freedom of the soul gained from this is very captivating. Evan: You will genuinely experience and truly reach your inherent limitations as a human being. Evan: And, in this process, you can also expand the limit of your boundaries bit by bit as much as possible. MC: It sounds like it's nearly walking on the edge of death. Evan: More or less. But it's certainly attractive, isn't it?

[SSR Secrets in the Shade DATE]

MC: When you're feeling down or that things are difficult, just fantasize about the wonderful life you'll have after achieving your goals. [...] Evan: After I achieve my goals? Evan: At that time, perhaps nothing will be important anymore.

There are two parts to Evan's reconciliation with the world. First, as I brought up in my essay "The Depth of his Feelings", I believe the way Evan flirts with death is a homage to traditional vampire literature and their attraction to their own death, but I also think this is a natural act of those who are suicidal and lost as a person. Owing to the Blood Clan, Evan questioned himself and his perception of the world, but nothing is quicker at grounding someone to this world than the undeniable physical sensation of their body's primal instinct to survive.

Second, Evan ended up becoming indifferent to death. Even though I'm mentioning Evan first for "unhealthy" coping methods, it's mostly directed at his near-death outlets, and I actually appreciate his acceptance of death. On that note, there isn't a contradiction here because, even if his body emotionally wants to survive, he has intellectually made peace with death.

Evan's view on death reminds me a lot of the Stoic ideal of the good death. The Stoics do not believe that death is anything to fear because everything comes to an end and, in fact, they believe that suicide is a choice and amoral. The door is always open to you if you choose to leave; the only caveat is that you must consider your circumstances seriously and make your decision logically and not on a rash and impulsive decision. For Evan, he calmly accepts death after he achieves his goal (of wiping out the Blood Clan) because, to him, his life would be complete and there would be nothing more for him in this world. It would be a good death. Evan's acceptance of his own death can also be seen in his 2nd anniversary card [SSR Yesterday's Elegy TRAJECTORY].

Alright, we've seen how Evan reconciled with the world, so now we're going to move onto Charlie.

[SSR To the Oracle DATE]

Charlie: Fiancée, freedom exists. Charlie: It's pain and sacrifice that let him feel the value of existence. [...] Because that person who treats pain as feeling the world and touches the weight of freedom is Charlie too. [...] Charlie: But they can't stop themselves from interacting with others. MC: Why do they have to be so persistent... Charlie: Because they still have hope for this world.

[SSR Solar Flare DATE]

Charlie: I cried terribly when I learned that he would never come back. Charlie: But when I grew up I gradually understood that maybe he had already decided to say goodbye to this world. Charlie: So long as people live they will get hurt. No one knows how much pain the seemingly optimistic and cheery people around them have endured alone. Charlie: Time couldn't heal his wounds and so he gave up on saving himself. I could hear the conflict in his heart. He was someone who clearly valued life a lot and always spared no effort in saving every single person. How many similar things had he gone through, how many helpless moments had he experienced, and how had he carried all of this to this day to stand in front of me... I had no way of imagining it. I could only hold his hand tightly to let him know that I was trying to understand how he felt. Charlie: The look in Myron's eyes before he was lifted into the ambulance made me feel that everything I had done just now might have been meaningless. Charlie: But I will still choose to save them. I can't explain why, maybe it's an instinct.

Like I mentioned, Charlie cannot even conceive of the idea of committing suicide but, ironically, he experiences the world through suffering. As a phoenix, he innately loves the world and its people, and that's why the injustices and despair in the world hurt him so much. So, how does he find an outlet for this pain?

[SSR Perpetual Journey Home TRAJECTORY - New Era 44 Late Autumn]

Charlie clenched his fist, making the tense veins in his arms and wrists bulge out before they submerged into his palm. His flat nails nearly dug hard enough into his skin to bleed. Only then did I suddenly notice that his broad palm was covered with crescent-shaped scars that curved in the same direction. The protruding white marks were old, but it was obvious they were quickly covered with new purple marks before they faded. MC: ... Don't hurt yourself. I placed my fingers on the tips of his fingers and tried to pry them away. But Charlie didn't loosen his hand. He bent his knuckles so hard that it seemed as if he was biting the skin of his palm painfully. And that pain actually entered my body through this touch. MC: Charlie, let go! I heard my own urgent voice, as well as the imaginary quiet sound of flesh being separated. His fingernails dug into his palm, which slowly began to turn red. MC: Charlie, I don't understand... I shook my head, tears staining my cheeks. I didn't understand why he had to torture himself like this. Or— I did understand, but I could only use this common logic to persuade him to stop harming himself. The glaring redness of his palm filled my mind like the shallows of a sea. I smiled bitterly. Wasn't pain just another way of breathing?

[SSR Under the Stigmata DATE]

He walked to my side and sat down, watching quietly as the boy turned back to plucking his black feathers, as if he had seen this done countless times. In a daze, I saw Charlie sitting there in a firefighter's uniform, his face covered with smoke and dust. And every time the boy plucked a feather, his expression that was on the verge of a breakdown softened a little, as if that action could relieve his pain. I also saw Charlie, wearing a white coat and looking exhausted. He sat there blankly, his hands still shaking slightly. I recognized this action, it meant that he had just completed a long operation. They all had the same contentment of pain on their faces. It dawned on me that this place, this house, might have been built by his father originally, and Charlie had also once destroyed it. But in the present, Charlie had built all of this by himself, brick by brick. Here, he overlooked the pain of his past, again and again, gaining the power to rebuild himself from it. I thought about how he found a way to use this pain, but this didn't mean that this pain no longer existed and I didn't want to see any Charlie trapped in it.

This is how Charlie reconciles with the world and his powerlessness. It reminds me of these tweets about trashed bathrooms and how, when people have no control over their life or environment, they will want to assert control over the small part of their environment that they still have the power to affect. In this case, what can you always affect? Yourself. In a way, this is somewhat similar to how Evan paces on the border of life and death, because not only does it make him feel alive but it also gives him control.

For Charlie, there are so many things that he cannot control in the world, especially other people's decision to take their own lives. He also lives under the extraordinary pressure and control of his father, who has been trying to mould Charlie into his perfect heir (and a god to rule this world?). By hurting himself, Charlie can be assured that he is still in control of his own life and his own decisions and this gives him the strength to pick himself up again and again, among all this suffering, to try and help more people.

You can probably see why I don't rate Charlie's method that highly either, because I don't advocate self-harm, haha. Next, after having seen Charlie's method, we move onto Sariel.

[SSR Seeing the Spring FILM REEL - The Mayfly]

Sariel (Phantom): Everything has a conclusion that you have no choice but to accept, regardless of whether it goes against your heart or not, or whether it hurts you or not. Sariel (Phantom): When this pain is too heavy, it's better to forget it than to confront it bruised and bloody. Sariel (Phantom): Living on relies not on redemption or reconciliation, but on forgetting. Sariel: Did you survive to that time just by forgetting? Sariel (Phantom): Yes. Sariel (Phantom): Rather than letting regret and pain erode your heart into an empty husk, it's better to forget everything. Sariel (Phantom): Live on, Sariel. Someone is waiting for you in the future.

As we saw earlier, Sariel would have succeeded in committing suicide if it weren't for his talent. This is why his coping method is to forget the weight of his pain before it drives him mad and turns him into something else. In this dialogue between himself, Sariel does question whether forgetting is just another way of escaping his pain, much like drinking; but, in my opinion, it's a valid choice to set aside the pain when you cannot handle it in the moment. Sariel sealed his power and memories away but, now that he has you to support him, he's unsealed his power and memories and has the strength to look back on his past and come to terms with everything with a less despairing outlook.

Lastly, we come to Osborn who, in my personal opinion, has the healthiest mindset.

[SSR Free Fall TRAJECTORY - 1 Year Ago Midsummer]

To be honest, I was disappointed in that moment. It was no different from any other rainbow that appeared somewhere after the rain. It was very beautiful, and very ordinary. The end of the rainbow was in fact just the end of the rainbow, and it was only my imagination of it that idealized it. But I still stared at it for a long time, until I found that the disappointment wasn't that terrible either. Because the world didn't care at all whether or not I was disappointed. Even if I never set foot on the road again because of this, the world wouldn't use anything I longed for to urge me to stay. After understanding this, I suddenly no longer gritted my teeth and fumed about disappointment. Because I discovered I had other things that could transcend disappointment: people who were willing to take risks with me when I took risks, and people who could understand my emotions that weren't understood.

The world being indifferent is supposed to be comforting, because it means that setbacks and disappointments aren't targeting you in particular. Successes are because of your own efforts and failures are because there were more uncontrollable elements than there were things you could affect.

Osborn internalizes this message and I believe it explains why he's such an active person. He has no expectations for the world and thus cannot be harmed by it any longer. He no longer needs to feel like he did in his childhood, about abandoning the world before it abandons him first. He managed to turn his independence from the world, which used to make him feel isolated, into one of his greatest strengths and it's also because he now has personal connections that bind him to the world by choice.

For my headings, I used a quote by Gordon Allport but, to be honest, I prefer the old Buddhist saying that "pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional" and, in my opinion, it reflects Osborn's perspective and why I, personally, think he has the healthiest relationship with the world. It's inevitable that there will be times when things don't go smoothly in your life and that you'll experience (physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual) pain, but it's your choice on whether to suffer during this period or not. Suffering is optional means you should realize the impermanence of this pain and if you can accept when things are out of your control, manage your expectations, and understand that whatever the world does externally to you does not affect your core as a person, then you will realize there are actually a lot of things you can overcome and that you need not dwell on them.

In the end, Light and Night is a game about hope and all the characters are growing, hopefully including the players who are following all of these characters in their journey. I also really like how the game doesn't affix one theme to one character, but instead approaches a theme from multiple angles through all the characters because, in this case, there is no right or wrong answer on how to live a life in this world. But, hopefully, seeing how hard these characters struggle to keep living can also provide some courage to those who are struggling and searching for their own path.

#light and night #光与夜之恋 #ln osborn #ln evan #ln charlie #ln sariel #ln xiao yi #ln lu chen #ln qi sili #ln zha lisu #meta of light and night

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17meltedcandles · 3 months

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Beauty Standards and Tax Brackets

The more money you have, the more access you have to fit the beauty standard (fitness plans, surgery, brands, dyes/colored contacts).

And we’ve seen this link between wealth and beauty as long as we can remember.

- Aztecs putting jewels in their teeth

- Plump bodies in Ancient Greece to signify health (and access to it)

- Small feet in 1949 China, (show of wealth and proper petty as you could afford to not work)

- Fatness in medieval times to show the prosperity of meat and food

And the list continues on until today. Now we see slim bodies, well built, shiny hair, glad skin, doll lashes, plump ass, perky boobs. Usually, most of the time, these features come from surgeries, diets, specific ointments, trainers, appointments. And money.

The funny part is the more money you have, the more influence you have. Setting the beauty standard all over again.

There’s also a huge disconnect when someone naturally has these traits without having the money. They get called lucky to not have to spend so much money, they get preyed upon for their looks or sometimes get payed for it.

The opposite happens as well. When someone insanely rich is unattractive, they often get criticisms and many many comments about their looks and wealth.

This is also seen in literature. The Rich Mafia boss, the hot CEO, the Billionaire’s son, the Handsome Prince. All of these books push the narrative of wealth and almost always have a conventionally attractive man as the wealthy man.

This is not to suggest that I think ALL ugly people are poor or that ALL rich people are attractive. But just to comment on the beauty standard and how it just so happens to keep molding with the standards of wealth we’re seeing. Is it more expensive to hit the gym and eat greens? Slim bodies are the body standard. Does an influential figure have Doll eyes and a million bucks? Big doll eyes are back.

Simply observations :)

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the-monkey-ruler · 2 months

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hi, I don't know if you've heard about “Journey to the West: The Real and Fake Monkey King”, starring the actor of the monkey king from 1986? This year only the poster came out and from what I saw the project is somewhat controversial.

Oh yeah I've been hearing about this one! I think this might be part of the Monkey King 2014 verse but I'm not sure as the summary of the movie seemed to have changed.

I’ve only found websites that talk about the synopsis, do you mind telling me where you saw this? Unless you are talking about Liu Xiao Ling Tong himself as he is kinda seen as a.... purist I think is the right word to use. He has become kinda a meme in recent years as he is very judgemental of Sun Wukong adaptions that do not fit his mold of what he thinks the Monkey King represents, "Parodies should not be nonsense, adaptations should not be groundless recreations" and even advocated for laws banning parodies of classics.

"The sensation of Liuxue started when a cohort of trolls poked fun at Zhang’s years-long attempt to increase his relevance after starring as Sun Wukong 孙悟空, a.k.a. the Monkey King, in a 1986 television adaption of Journey to the West (西游记 Xīyóujì). The role is widely regarded as the pinnacle of Zhang’s acting career. Seeing generally tepid reception to his subsequent works, Zhang morphed into an objectively annoying celebrity who perennially dwells on his best-received performance, constantly boasting about his legacy and attaching his entire worth on the original novel and its variations, a cultural heritage to which Zhang only made a relatively small contribution.But unlike other sellout artists, Zhang went so far that people are now questioning his sanity. It’s documented that, at certain speaking engagements, he branded himself as the only person alive who can offer definitive interpretations of the original Journey to the West. At the funeral of Yang Jie 杨洁, director of the 1986 TV adaption, Zhang filmed a video promoting an upcoming movie where he plays the character again."

In any case, he does seem to be extreme in his views but I can't say if he is considered to be controversial moreso eccentric. While I don't agree with him and I do like the advocacy of laws banning parodies is borderline ludicrous, I can't say that he actually has any power or persuasion to make these realities. I can see why he is treated more as a joke/meme as what he is saying is impossible as there have been more adaptions than ever before. I hope that if he does get this movie made then at least his actors are paid well and that the movie production itself goes smoothly.

If this wasn't what you were talking about please let me know what you hear! Would love to know what’s going on!

#sun wukong #anon ask #anonymous #anon #ask #six eared macaque #liu er mihou #liuer mihou #Journey to the West: The True and False Monkey King #西游记真假美猴王 #monkey king #Liu Xiao Ling Tong

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absurdthirst · 2 years

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Kinktober 2022: October 18th

Day 18: Pegging // Tit Fucking // Hair Pulling

Dieter Bravo x F!Reader

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 1.7k

Warnings: Sex toys, anal sex, pegging, begging, slight power dynamic

|| Kinktober List || MasterList ||

Click Keep Reading only if you have read the Rating and Warnings and understand the warnings may not be complete to avoid listing spoilers. As AO3 says 'creator chooses not to use warnings'. You also agree that you're the right age to be consuming anything here.

“Which one?” Dieter holds up two different harnesses for you to pick out. “This one lets you have a toy too.” He shoots you a grin. “Double the pleasure, right?”

This man is eager, bouncing on his toes as he waits for your answer. You know he’s probably on something, he’s always on something. This is Dieter that you are talking about. You snort and look around the store that he had immediately dragged you to, unconcerned with anyone seeing him in the toy section for strap ons at 1AM.

How you got here, you don’t really know. Okay you do, but it’s enough to make you shake your head in wonder.

It’s no surprise that Dieter is…horny. He will fuck anyone who will let him between their thighs. You’ve witness his attempts to get people to sleep with him, and you had known it would eventually come around to you.

You know he finds you attractive, he’s made comments - although he does try to keep them respectful-ish. He hadn’t asked before now because you had put your food down firmly when you had first started working with him. So much that he had thought for a long time that you did not like him.

Until tonight. Until he had crossed that line like a bull in a china shop and asked the question that had brought about this scenario. “Would you every let me fuck you in the ass?”

You had laughed, thinking it was joking but his brow furrowed as if he didn’t know what you had found funny. He hadn’t been joking, he really wanted to have sex with you. So your response was pithy, almost snarky because you were sure that the conversation would die right then and there. “Only if you let me peg you first.”

****

“Come on babe, which one?” He turns his wrist and looks at one of the boxes. “I like this one, it can hold all sorts of toys and it’s gonna look sexy on you.” He sends you a wink and rattles the box in your face. “What do you think?”

“Um…” You bite your lip and tap one of the boxes. “That one.”

“Great!” Dieter tosses the other one down and you huff, scooping it off the ground so you can put it back on the display where it goes. “Now let's go pick out your dick!”

Your snorted laugh is quickly smothered by a hand so you don’t disturb the bored looking clerk as they flick through whatever dirty magazine he was reading when the two of you walked in here. Hell, he had barely acknowledged your presence here, which was good for Dieter. The last thing he needed was someone reporting that he was buying a fucking strap on.

It makes you curious as you follow him, watching as he examines multiple dildos of various lengths and girths. Taking this as seriously as you’ve seen him take anything really. He picks on up and weighs it in his hand, running his fingers along the veins that are molded into the silicone.

“What do you think about this one?” He asks, holding it up and to you, it seems like it’s an impressive size but what do you know? “Think you’ll like wearing it?”

“I mean, I think what you think about it is more important.” You admit, giving a slight shrug of your shoulders. “You’ll be the one taking it.”

“Oh yeah.” He gives a small smile and looks down at it again. “Eh, I think something like this will be okay. It’s about my size.”

You cough discreetly and try not to think about that too much as you continue to go through the store to pick up everything you need to make this happen.

****

“Have you done this before?” You have to give it to Dieter, his hands are very respectful as he helps you into the harness and adjusts the straps to make sure the fit is right and it doesn’t rub wrong or move too much.

He looks up for a second and flashes you a grin and a wink that is far too charming to be attached to a man who dresses like a crazy cat lady. “Not that people know about.” He scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Apparently Dieter Bravo can’t possibly be a bottom.”

When you are wearing the strap and ready, Dieter starts to get undressed. He’s teasing and playful with it. Pulling his baggy shirt off and throwing it at you like he’s a Chipendale dancer and gyrating his hips in a way that shouldn’t be sexy,

Pants come next, then finally a pair of boxers that look like they are a million years old. Making you grin when you see a hole in the crotch. That doesn’t surprise you about Dieter in the least.

He’s eager, grinning at you and sending you a wink as he lays down on the bed and spreads his legs. He’s already hard and his cock is curled up towards his stomach beautifully. “Someone’s excited.” You tease, making him chuckle and give a small, cute little shrug as he pulls his legs back. Giving you a first hand view of a surprisingly hair free hole.

“It’s been awhile and fuck - you look good with a dick.” You can’t help but give a little laugh and gyrate your hips, sending the toy into a slight helicopter swing which makes him roll his eyes and squirm in anticipation. “Hurry up.” He whines, impatient already.

You make sure that you are safe about this. Nervous and yet you are practically dripping with arousal right now. Learning something about yourself as you slather up the dildo with lube - you are turned on by the idea of fucking Dieter.

Maybe it’s the fact that you are fucking a celebrity. Maybe it’s because he’s a pain in your ass a lot of the time and this is kind of a power trip - or payback. But it’s the way your pussy clenches and throbs when he is squirming below you, your fingers buried in his tight little hole that has you thinking that pegging is something you will enjoy.

The first inch he makes the most glorious sounds. Needy and almost pained, making you check in with him by caressing his hip. Dieter shakes his head, eyes closed and breathless. “D-don’t stop.” He begs, and it’s probably the most wonderful order he’s ever given you.

You don’t. Rocking your hips, you work your way deeper, breaking him open so beautifully on the dick you so desperately wish were yours so you can feel how his tight little ring of muscles squeeze you. The utter filth of his moans convincing you that he is enjoying this far more than you had ever imagined and the red tip of his cock is nearly purple from want and need, leaking against his belly.

The toy that you had bought for yourself grinds against your clit every time you thrust your hips, making your own breath catch when it presses just right. Your sounds muted and puffed out as your thighs start to burn, but still you chase those sounds, those faces he makes every time you slide deep.

“Oh fuck.” Dieter moans, his hands gripping your thighs and he tugs you closer if he feels like your rhythm is faltering. “Of fuck baby- look at you fucking me. It’s-It’s so g-good.”

Shit. You can’t even help but be proud of yourself. Watching his hips start to roll down and start matching your thrusts. Fucking himself harder onto the toy as he babbles.

“Can-can’t wait to - oh fuck - wait to fuck you. You- you’re going to -to be so ti-tight.” Blunt nails start to dig into your skin, pinching slightly but it just makes you grin. You didn’t miss the way his eyes rolled back when you gave a particularly harsh thrust and hit something that had his thighs squeezing around you.

“Later.” You manage, biting your lip while continuing to grind into him with short, quick thrusts. Leaning over and bracing your arms while you wonder how the fuck guys continuious do this. No wonder they pause right when you are about to cum. You won’t complain next time. “F-first I want to- to see you cum.”

He whines, nodding eagerly and you watch as his hand - that fucking large, gorgeous hand - wraps around his cock in a fist and starts to pump his twitching dick to the same rhythm that you are filling him.

He looks fucked out. Hair mussed and sweaty, eyes glazed over - you swear he’s drooling a little while your hips slap against the back of his thighs - every thrust pushing a tiny sound of him. A moan, a whine, a whimper - all of them sounding like a fucking filthy symphony of pleasure.

When he starts to beg, it’s beautiful. His hips rocking up, fucking his fist and taking the cock you are wearing so deep and still begging for more. Lost in a haze of lust and greedy pleasure. “More, more - oh fuck, please, please, please…..” His eyes are pitch black and burning with desperation.

Biting your lip, you widen your spread thighs, changing the angle and pushing his legs up onto your shoulders. Spreading him out wider and drilling down into him in a last ditch effort to rip this man apart at the seams.

You cum because he does. Your throbbing clit on fire and as soon as Dieter nearly wails your name, body stiffening and heaving, you cum. Nearly missing the show from the black out pleasure licking through your body. Almost closing your eyes before you see the white hot spurts of cum shoot from his cock like a gyser to paint his chest, his face contorted in a nearly painful visage while he seemingly cums for hours even though it’s only a few moments.

His groan is nearly inaudible as he slumps down onto the bed, spent and shaking with the toy still buried inside him. “Oh fuck.” He moans, making you grin tiredly. “We- we’re doing that again.” He manages breathlessly, cracking one eye open and humming while he floats on the endorphins that are flooding his system.

Yes, the fuck you were. You will let him fuck you ass anytime as long as you can peg him first.

#kinktober #kinktober 2022 #pedro pascal #dieter bravo #dieter bravo x reader #dieter bravo x you #dieter bravo x f!reader #dieter bravo smut #dieter bravo imagine #dieter bravo fanfiction #dieter bravo the bubble

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thegoldenavenger · 7 months

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Little Fic Bits, WIPs, and Starts for SVSSS. Just a collection of ideas that I've started writing and am still kicking around, got stuck on, need reworking, or whatever. Unedited (as always) ♡ / mostly various iterations of binghe, sqq, and lqg / there's nothing too bad here content wise I think?

Pacific Rim AU

Shen Yuan wakes up to an aching head and an unfamiliar ceiling. He feels slightly off, his body an ache but an ache he isn't used to. The walls are concrete and the bed underneath him is hard. A hospital?

"Shen Qingqiu?" A voice swims up, breaking through his dazed scrutiny of the thin sheet covering him. His hands are elegant and callused.

"Are you okay? Qingqiu—"

Shen Yuan's hand is being held. He follows the line of hand to arm, to shoulder, to the man sitting next to him. He is handsome, tall, and looking at him with a concern that is as foreign to Shen Yuan as the room he's in, as the body he is increasingly aware of.

It's entirely reflex that has him pulling his hand back. The man lets it slip through his fingers.

"What... happened?" Shen Yuan asks.

"Do you not remember?" At this, Shen Yuan glares and the expression molds to his face like a glove. The man next to him, paradoxically, smiles. "It's good to see that you're feeling better."

The door opens and another man walks into the room holding a tablet. He has glasses and a lab coat and Shen Yuan instinctively pegs him as a doctor.

"You're up." The doctor says with mild surprise before nodding his head in greeting. "Shen Qingqiu, Yue Qingyuan."

"Mu Qingfang." The man—Yue Qingyuan—returns the greeting.

Mu Qingfang subjects Shen Yuan to an examination: looking at his pupil dilation, asking him to track his fingers, simple memory recall. He has Shen Yuan sit up so he can look at the burns on his neck and down his spine.

Shen Yuan, in the flight of fancy all young book-inclined children go through at one point or another, had resolved to act with dignity if he ever woke up in a fantastical situation. He hadn't ever really thought he'd become a—what? Chosen one? But stranger things happened in the books he liked reading, so he decided that if he ever walked through a wardrobe, or got hit by a truck, or passed some nameless threshold and became a xianxia transmigrator his first actions would be to not gape in stupefied amazement and ask suspicious, leading questions.

This is decidedly not xianxia ancient China, no matter how handsome the two men with him are, but he would still like to keep that childish promise to himself. If only Yue Qingyuan or Mu Qingfang would explain anything to him, that would make his position a bit easier.

Shen Qingqiu was, Shen Yuan was learning, a bit of a bitch. When Shen Yuan walks into the cafeteria, the idle chatter quiets down. In more than one case, several small groups of two or three all stand up and rush to sit at a table together as if terrified he will pick them to sit next to. The feeling is so unsettling when he first encounters it, Shen Yuan grabs the first thing he can get his hands on and leaves the mess hall entirely.

The staff avoid him, the trainees flinch away from him. The other senior members often act as though interacting with him will be a chore. Yue Qingyuan, who has rarely seen fit to let Shen Yuan walk alone, carries himself with such subdued guilt Shen Yuan feels a little like squishing him just to see if Yue Qingyuan will make a different face. Mu Qingfang offers all of his medical advice with the air of someone bracing himself.

Even after Shen Yuan has reluctantly allowed Mu Qingfang to speculate that he has suffered some memory loss from the incident that had landed him in the medical facilities, his reception is a stilted one. It helps, Shen Yuan thinks, that this body remembers its mannerisms well enough. He finds himself instictually reacting to certain stimuli in specific ways: Yue Qingyuan's apologetic voice makes Shen Yuan's—Shen Qingqiu's—face sneer; not hearing someone enter a room behind him and getting caught unaware makes him freeze first and then glare, blood itching to hiss a vitriolic remark.

He finds that some impulses are quite easy to lean into. The venomous tongue he'd used to weild devastating criticism lends itself well to the acerbic remarks Shen Qingqiu is apparently known for. His face, never that expressive before, has reached a new level of stoic apathy.

The face thing, specifically, helps him in the days it takes for him acclimate. Not only does he have an entirely new body, and an entirely new life, but he's in an entirely new world. The casual reliance on technology he's never seen before, the vaguely unrealistic military structure of the personnel around him, it all makes him suspect he has definitely transmigrated instead of just bodyswapping, or reincarnating.

He has his freak outs behind his closed doors, presents an aloof face to his peers when Mu Qingfang or Yue Qingyuan visit him to make sure he is recovering well, and nearly brains himself when Yue Qingyuan walks with him into the Central Headquarters for a meeting debriefing the incident he was involved in.

Because the meeting room has a wall entirely made of glass facing the bay of what is, now, unmistakably the Shatterdome. It is unmistakable because they are currently in the middle of repairing a huge, hulking, mecha which Shen Yuan recognizes from the gold-tier extras of his favorite hate-read Pacific Infinite Drift War.

Yue Qingyuan? Mu Qingfang? Shen Qingqiu??? Now he recognizes those names! Three of the twelve founding members of the Shatterdome, then called Cang Qiong, who invented the Pons technology that enabled the fantastically wild mecha battlesuits used to fight monsters in PIDW. It took so long because PIDW was set decades past this point. Long after Cang Qiong was flattened by the increasing threat of Monsters and the survivors rebuilt under the Shatterdome.

Only a handful of the original founders had survived to have any present role in the novel very early on in the prologue chapters. Luo Binghe, an orphan after a monster attack flattened his home town, was picked up by one of the founders Liu Qingge. Brought back to the newly built Shatterdome, six year old Luo Binghe resolved to become one of the mecha pilots trying to save humanity. He only had fleeting interaction with the old guard, Shen Qingqiu was briefly mentioned as an unpleasant and exacting master who berated Luo Binghe during synchronization tests.

At some point, Luo Binghe had been trapped near the rift allowing monsters through and sacrificed himself to carry a missile into it, hopefully closing it for good. He succeeded, discovered the rift was an opening to space, used his mecha to pilot away from the monster world and stumbled into a wide, wide galaxy of very fuckable alien women.

There the story devolved into a very flat, new woman of the week, space opera following Luo Binghe's journey through the galaxy ostensibly trying to find his way home but mostly finding himself in the bed of a new woman.

There were so many interesting things set up in those first chapters though! The mechas themselves were designed to be piloted by at least two people, sharing a neural link to help spread the load of operating such a behemoth. That neural link facilitated mind-to-mind communication between the pilots! The monsters were fascinating pieces of xenospec creature design, Shen Yuan had a great time speculating how their world worked in those beginning chapters.

The character plots set up in the beginning had been intriguing as well. Now that Shen Yuan had a reason to, he dug up his vague recollection of the intro characters. Shen Qingqiu, foreboding and always too hard on Luo Binghe's inability to synchronize with the mechs and establish a neural link despite himself being a technician and not a pilot. Yue Qingyuan's world-weary countenance having lived through almost half of his peers dying under his watch, latching on to those surviving with a guilt complex you could see from space. Mu Qingfang, a sharply brilliant multi-purpose doctor who was, of course, specialized in an unrealistic amount of disciplines and who seemed just as curious about the monster's as Shen Yuan was.

The others, Qi Qingqi, Wei Qingwei, Shang Qinghua, and Liu Qingge, were all unfortunately abandoned with very little character development which should have been Shen Yuan's first clue towards how this novel was going to go. Qi Qingqi was the token girl, and though Shen Yuan had hoped her position as one of the transitional trainers overseeing the mental preparations for synchronization trials she had been outshown by even Shen Qingqiu's meager appearances in the beginning chapters. Wei Qingwei was the head mechanical engineer and that is where his personality ended. Shang Qinghua had an interesting habit of conversing with Mu Qingfang about the monsters threatening humanity, but he disappeared (literally! He stopped being mention at all. Shen Yuan was fairly certain the author forgot about him) right before Luo Binghe went through the rift. Liu Qingge had a devastating neural accident sometime after picking up Luo Binghe but before the protagonist ever even got in a mecha!

Luo Binghe's relationships with his fellow trainees, were, of course, cut short when he went through the rift. The sweet spring romance between Luo Binghe and Ning Yingying was forever stalled! The antagonistic bullying from senior Ming Fan and Luo Binghe's determination to prove himself was never resolved!

And it would be too much to ask for any fleshing out of the many alien women Luo Binghe met post rift! No! All the substance they provided was in the interest of sex scenes that were, frankly, mediocre and under utilizing of the rich setting they were placed in.

Even the original conceit of the novel, the brain-linked mechas, got nerfed when Luo Binghe discovered he could pilot one by himself early on in the first arc.

So, Shen Yuan thought it was very understandable that it had taken him this long to recognize the world he was now in. What a treat! He was here for the actual development of the mechas! He would be seeing the prequel! Though, if his timeline estimate was correct he was nowhere close to seeing the surely adorable protagonist Luo Binghe, the alure of uncovering in all those plot holes and missing character scenes he'd been craving was really making up for it.

"Shen Qingqiu?" That was Yue Qingyuan.

"Maybe we were too hasty holding this meeting now is Shen Qingqiu is still having difficulties." That was a woman's voice—Qi Qingqi?

"Xuan Su is expected to be repaired with no difficulty," Another man's voice, deeper than Yue Qingyuan's. "Your quick thinking saved many of the delicate electronics."

"I'm quite fine." Shen Yuan—Shen Qingqiu—responds. "I just wasn't expecting..." He doesn't mean to let himself trail off but he's starting to remember, vaguely, as if remembering watching a scene from a movie, the screens of the mechas cockpit going staticky with overload and

---

Undertale AU

Shen Yuan wakes up on a bed of greenery after a particularly hard fall.

The cavern he's in is dark, except for the path of light hes lying in. He can't see the cave walls but he can feel how large it is in the way the fine hairs on the back of his neck raise. Looking up he can distantly see the hole he must have fallen down.

The quiet is so complete he can hear his blood rushing in his ears.

And then a flower blooms right in front of him: a lotus on land. It's petals are thick and a rich black as they spread open in front of his eyes. Nestled between the green shoots of bamboo Shen Yuan is lying in the lotus rises and tilts to face him. There's a face in the center of the flower.

----

Shen Qingqiu decides that if LBH and LQG are going to be stupid about him, he's going to not!date-date them both

He realised, abruptly, that they were waiting for him to choose. Between them. What was this? A game with him as a prize to win? They never ask him outright, though, and really that makes this their problem. The competitions, the peacocking, that's all on them.

He decides that he will not choose. Maybe that's selfish of him, but aren't they also being selfish? They keep acting as though his every decision carries the weight of the mountain to them. Well, he simply will not decide between them. If they're fine pushing each other back and forth with him as their referee then so be it. He's keeping them both.

----

[Liu Qingge Moshang Situationship because the BingLiuShen ship has Not Yet Sailed]

It doesn't escape his notice that he's being loaned out like livestock. On Junshang's whim no less. Shen Qingqiu smiles and then covers that smile with the fan Liu Qingge returned to him. "It would really be appreciated, shidi. This master would want to be there myself with Binghe if we weren't caught up here."

"You should be where your sect needs you regardless." He says, crossing his arms.

Luo Binghe hisses at him from where he's hovering like a gargoyle. Shen Qingqiu shushes him and delivers his final, devastating conversational blow: "Liu-shidi is the only one I can trust in the absence of me and my husband."

As always, Shen Qingqiu manages to hit his target two-fold. As always, Liu Qingge does what he's asked.

He thinks Shen Qingqiu won't ever forgive him for saying Luo Binghe had died at Maigu Ridge.

---

[They're all gods prologue]

He is the breakthrough. The final push. The turning of tides. The culmination. He has never failed to turn a lost cause into victory, there has never been a battle lost to him if he means to win it.

He is Liu Qingge.

Gods are not mortals, they do not change. He expected to be this way forever. Until the very fabric of the world crumbled and decayed. He never expected to change.

There is a story that exists, of a mortal who built a shrine because he was without hope. Cursed with tragedy for a bloodline he did not even know of, his every move was rife with misfortune. The shrine was built and caught the eye of Shen Qingqiu, Liu Qingge's god-brother of Bitter Autumn and Uneven Ground.

Liu Qingge wasn't aware of it at the time, but Shen Qingqiu caused some sort of mischief with the mortal and his shrine. It only becomes relevant later, when the shrine becomes a God itself under the mortal's own care.

Because Liu Qingge finds that new God, reeking of Shen Qingqiu's spiritual power but being so clearly new and naive. It takes the mortal under its wing and raises it up, like a pet.

And like a scorpion placed amongst frogs that little pet tears the heavens apart. Demonic blood festers the spiritual purity of heaven.

Liu Qingge, War God of Breakthroughs, goes through a Crucible and changes into the God of (pine trees) Endless Reliability. Of cyclical mundaniety. [This became that Everyone Is a God ficket outline thing]

---

[Lion, Tiger, Fair]

Liu Qingge is used to have Shen Qingqiu's undivided attention. The man enters the forest on soft feet, the layers of green robes swaying around him. He takes his time observing the new growth, the small animals, the spiritual pathways that Liu Qingge cultivates. Then Shen Qingqiu will find a nice spot and sit, sometimes he will meditate or cultivate, but often he will write notes in one of his field journals.

Liu Qingge will interrupt him then; striding out of the forest with mist on his paws.

Shen Qingqiu will lift his face up at him, a delighted smile breaking across it.

Like sunlight.

Liu Qingge will gracefully entertain his forests guest, sometimes he will lead Shen Qingqiu to a new surprise, or herd rare animals towards him. Q [drew a comic instead of writing OTL]

----

[LQG accidentally-on-purpose seduces Bingqiu]

Liu Qingge accepts Shen Qingqiu's marriage announcement with about as much dignity as can be expected of a war God brought to his limits every day for five years.

"You!" He shouts, alighting upon the verdant knoll of Qing Jing Peak. Cheng Luang sheathes itself as he lands in front of Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe. Shen Qingqiu stiffens and Luo Binghe pulls his master back from Liu Qingge's approach, as if preparing to perform some evasive maneuvers.

"... Me." Shen Qingqiu replies, evenly.

"When?" Liu Qingge demands, crossing his arms.

There's a moment where it looks as if Shen Qingqiu will prevaricate and Liu Qingge will have to figure out his words in a more orderly manner, but halfway through Qing Jing Peak's Lord just sighs.

"A few months," he says.

"Three months and eight days," Luo Binghe clarifies.

Liu Qingge looks at Luo Binghe, half a snarl on his face before turning back to Shen Qingqiu. "You didn't say anything." He accuses.

"This one was trying to avoid an argument." Shen Qingqiu says, his eyebrow an elegant arch.

Liu Qingge's hands were already fisted. There wasn't much more tightly that he could clench them before something gave so he forced them to relax. The tension gathering in his shoulders and spine reflexively loosens as well when he makes himself breathe deeply. Shen Qingqiu's face is a mask of impassivity, as always, but his hand is hooked into Luo Binghe's sleeve.

For as much as Luo Binghe looks ready to physically push Liu Qingge back if his Shizun—his husband, Liu Qingge reminds himself—wishes him to, Shen Qingqiu looks as equally ready to stand his ground. It takes Liu Qingge a moment longer than it probably should to realise that both of them are expecting a fight.

Of course Luo Binghe does; Liu Qingge has done precious little but fight the demon lord. But that Shen Qingqiu also expects it of him is... Liu Qingge blinks and shakes his head.

"There was gossip. I just came to hear it from you."

"Well then, you've heard it now. We're married." Shen Qingqiu takes the moment to find and thread his fingers through Luo Binghe's. The demon lord's expression turns into one of puppyish devotion.

Liu Qingge nods decisively and uncrosses his arms to grab Cheng Luan in its sheath. Shen Qingqiu and his husband tense again, Shen Qingqiu even opens his mouth halfway ready to say something—stop? Liu Qingge's jaw clenches. Surely Shen Qingqiu doesn't think so badly of this Bai Zhan Peak Lord as to expect him to attack a martial brother's husband unprovoked?

Liu Qingge removes his hand from his sheath, hoping his face doesn't look as surprised or as stung as he feels. He blows all the air in his lungs out in a displeased grunt. Later he will do some reflection on his own actions, for Shen Qingqiu to suddenly mistrust him.

"Congratulations." He says instead and turns on his heel to walk an appropriate distance before drawing Cheng Luan to fly him back to his Peak. He doesn't look back; he knows already that he'd only see Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe staring at each other.

The problem is that Liu Qingge, in those years he'd grown closer to Shen Qingqiu, had developed the habit of finding things. Yes, Shen Qingqiu's fans and various beasts Shen Qingqiu had mentioned. But also other things, here and there. When driving off some manner of demonic dread from a village, he'd spied one of the villagers wearing their hair up with an elegantly died ribbon, who, after seeing Liu Qingge's interest, had insisted on him taking it in thanks for his service.

The ribbon was promptly given to Shen Qingqiu.

"Afterall, I have no use for it." Liu Qingge had said to the man.

"Yes, and this master supposes rejecting it all together would have been too rude of my shidi to consider." Liu Qingge had let that accusation sit.

Not only the ribbon but books and scrolls, old and well preserved parchment, jewelry, wall hangings, fan ornaments, some hair crowns, a stray length of spider moth silk... anything he'd come across that reminded him of Shen Qingqiu and his strange inclinations.

With Shen Qingqiu's dead body out of reach and losing his battles daily, Liu Qingge had still somehow found time to keep this collection of would-be gifts growing. What did Liu Qingge have of his dearly departed shixiong except the little pieces of him Liu Qingge found himself seeing in the world around him.

With Shen Qingqiu back, alive, Liu Qingge could give those trinkets and treasures properly. He had been, though even Liu Qingge knew he couldn't dump five or more year's worth of grief filled collecting on Shen Qingqiu. However, there was a difference between giving your shixiong a book he might like and giving a married man an expensive jeweled guan—even if the jewels could be tracked to originate from a blue-kingfisher-wolf spider, which Shen Qingqiu had once filled an evening waxing poetic upon.

So. The problem: Liu Qingge has been giving gifts to a man in a committed relationship. Moreover, Liu Qingge has done something to make Shen Qingqiu wary of him. Mistrustful in ways not shown for a decade or more. He doesn't believe the two are inherently related, but he supposed the solution should be the same.

He needs to find a wedding gift for Shen Qingqiu and his husband.

That should prove to Shen Qingqiu that Liu Qingge, if not approving of the marriage, refuses to impede it. He doesn't want Shen Qingqiu to look at him like a threat. He isn't one, anyways. He can and would fight Luo Binghe again, could likely put up enough resistance to annoy the man even, but Liu Qingge couldn't defeat him once in five years. Whether for Shen Qingqiu's attentions or any other matter Luo Binghe bothers himself with, Liu Qingge doubts he factors as a concern at all.

The unfortunate part is that Liu Qingge has to find a gift that will please not only Shen Qingqiu but Luo Binghe as well. It cannot be a token gift. Liu Qingge is, also unfortunately, not well suited towards thinking of things others will like, to say nothing about Luo Binghe in specific. Half the reason he has collected so many things for Shen Qingqiu are because of how little he needs to think about it.

Shen Qingqiu is obvious in his affections and disparagements. He loves books and bestiaries and historical nonsense. He likes fine and well crafted adornments. He's fond of specific snacks and teas and serving sets. His fan collection is varied and large. It is very easy to walk into a city market and see green silks or a lauded tome and think: Shen Qingqiu would like this.

It's even easier to size up the monster of the day and decide whether to dismember it, kill it cleanly, or shove it in a bag for Shen Qingqiu's pinched and slightly disapproving face.

Somehow, Liu Qingge doubts that Luo Binghe would appreciate the same.

Still, he must try.

He supposes the traditional gift would be to celebrate their joint household. Luo Binghe did not spend almost eight years consolidating power just to shove Shen Qingqiu into some favored courtyard somewhere. No, the man had been determined to approach as an equal and to create a partnership based in equal powers. That he had gone so far as to stake claim in two realms and crown himself an Emperor was surely a sign of how much he idolized the Qing Jing Peak Lord. That he has all but abandoned his Demon Palace for a relatively humble bamboo house continues to reflect that his devotion, at least, has not diminished.

Liu Qingge is perhaps disadvantaged at knowing what one would welcome as a home gift. His own house on Bai Zhan is spare and he had left his home among mortals far younger than it would take to make him pay attention to and remember the furniture surrounding him.

Shen Qingqiu liked tea... perhaps a new tea table?

Liu Qingge isn't nervous. His plan is simple and straightforward: give the wedding gift and show Shen Qingqiu that he will not... do whatever Shen Qingqiu is worried that he's capable of. The stakes are obvious as well. Either Shen Qingqiu and his husband accept the wedding gift and understand that Liu Qingge means to be friendly and not hostile to both of them; They accept the gift but either do not accept or do not understand his intentions behind it; Or they do not accept the gift and therefore reject him completely.

Only the latter is insurmountable, and even then it just means distancing himself from the couple. Shen Qingqiu has not stepped down from Peak Lord, so Liu Qingge will still be in his life. This little social number is nothing like watching Shen Qingqiu's lifeless body fall too far for him to do anything about it. It's only Shen Qingqiu's regard for Liu Qingge that is in question today, and therefore, Liu Qingge has nothing to worry about. Any outcome is better than Shen Qingqiu dead.

Kicking the doorframe to announce himself is a habit so deeply ingrained that he automatically does it as he steps up onto the bamboo porch. He shakes his head in mild dismay. That will put neither Shen Qingqiu nor Luo Binghe in an especially receptive mood. Oh well.

As he waits for a reception he shifts his grip on the thin qiankun box he had packed the gift into. Though plain it is cleverly made, and he hopes its utilitarian design can be useful outside of its original purpose.

A gift of this much importance should be fitted inside a more comely presentation, but Liu Qingge found he didn't have the face for picking out a more suitable container. Imagining giving Shen Qingqiu and his husband one of those elaborately carved or lacquered gift boxes made him want to fight a waterfall.

He debates kicking the door again, as the wait draws on. Instead he puts the box on the porch by the door. He had used one of his polishing oils to help condition the wood of the box and the grain doesn't look terrible with the bamboo of the house.

With a sigh he retreats from the peak and waits to see the result of his overture.

He is rewarded when Shen Qingqiu invites him for tea several days later.

"Liu-Shidi," the man greets when Liu Qingge steps into Shen Qingqiu's home. "I'm sorry I wasn't here to recieve you the other day."

Liu Qingge makes a noise of acknowledgement. Shen Qingqiu ushers him inside and gestures him towards the area he usually hosts in. There, sitting on one of Shen Qingqiu's existing tea tables, is a new wet tea tray.

After meditating for many fruitless days, it was a fight that had sparked an idea in Liu Qingge. A quiet road to an isolated village was being stalked by a demonic wandering tree. The tree hadn't been much of an issue for Liu Qingge, but as he'd finished delimbing the trunk, he'd been struck by the way it's sap had stained the pale wood like blood. It had nearly been the same hue as Luo Binghe's demonic crest.

After searching markets and craftsmen, Liu Qingge had finally found a piece of seasoned wood of an appropriate size while night hunting closer to the borderlands. He'd taken it to an expert, to be sure, and it was determined to be from one of the milder variants of man eating tree: the Oxblood Heart Eating Tree.

It was characterized by it's deep and rich blood red wood tone, it's equally bloody diet, and, more importantly, its lack of innate toxic qualities. In fact the wood purified liquids fed through it, and it was a popular and expensive building material.

The piece he had found had been carved into a spectacular show piece: the dips and valleys at once resembling the top down view of mountains and clouds and the stepped banks of a tranquil pond. Accents stood stark against the deep red wood made from bamboo: an elegant crane in flight, the delicate wispy clouds flowing into a wreath of lotus blossoms.

It combines Shen Qingqiu's aesthetic senses and Luo Binghe's bold color palette quite well, Liu Qingge had thought. Now, settled in Shen Qingqiu's home, Liu Qingge thinks it again. It doesn't look out of place, but the deep red isn't a very common color theme and it draws the eye almost forcefully.

Liu Qingge seats himself as Shen Qingqiu bids him to and they are joined quite readily by Luo Binghe with such timing Liu Qingge can't help thinking the demon lord must have been waiting for his cue at the kitchen threshold.

Liu Qingge is served quite good tea by Shen Qingqiu and, to Liu Qingge's quiet surprise, a small selection of tea snacks Luo Binghe usually reserves for Shen Qingqiu only. At first, Liu Qingge almost suspects a trick, that the moment his hand moves to try one of the delicately steamed cakes Luo Binghe will have snatched it away for his Shizun's pleasure instead. However, the tea cake makes it all the way to Liu Qingge's mouth and he can't mask the noise of surprise he makes at its taste. It's very good.

Even Luo Binghe's look of smug satisfaction doesn't dampen the pleasant flavor. With Shen Qingqiu's selection of tea, the combination is very good.

Shen Qingqiu keeps up an idle conversation as they drink the tea finish the snacks. He blithely comments on his recent mission, the annoying debrief, a new recipe Luo Binghe had tried, some reports of a beast Liu Qingge may be interested in, and some light gossip. Liu Qingge contributes as much as he ever does: nodding or humming in appropriate places and asking one word questions when something catches his attention. Luo Binghe is much more solicitous, for all that he must have heard these same words before.

Liu Qingge thanks Shen Qingqiu for the invitation when the tea runs out. He also, perhaps unsubtly, makes it a point to thank Luo Binghe as well. The gratitude wants to stick in his throat but the way Shen Qingqiu smiles, before hiding it with his fan, reassures Liu Qingge that he had approached this correctly.

"Thank you for the gift," Shen Qingqiu finally says, once they've all stood and Liu Qingge is getting ready to leave.

"One could almost think it too much," Luo Binghe snipes. Shen Qinqiu sighs at him but doesn't censure him.

"Wedding gifts are supposed to be ostentatious," Liu Qingge answers, cautious.

"Ah!" Shen Qingqiu's exclamation is barely an exhalation of breath, hidden behind the snap of his fan except for Liu Qingge's cultivation supported hearing. "On our anniversary, too... shidi you are surprisingly thoughtful."

"I don't know about that," Luo Binghe says, as Liu Qingge steps away from Shen Qingqiu's gesticulating fan.

Liu Qingge shoots him a glare, but doesn't argue with him. Liu Qingge had not been thinking about the timing of his gift at all, afterall. Still, he will take the good favor from Shen Qingqiu all the same.

"Hush, Binghe." Shen Qingqiu scolds his husband. "It's a lovely gift. Thank you."

Liu Qingge nods and makes a tactical escape. As is becoming a new habit, he waits until he is out of easy combat range to mount Cheng Luan and fly away. For an immortal master and demon lord this means he stomps through a fair bit of Qing Jing Peak's bamboo forest before he can leave properly.

Shen Qingqiu, at least, seems to relax. Whatever Liu Qingge had done to make him wary seems to have rested after Liu Qingge's wedding gift. Luo Binghe is the same, and not any worse, so Liu Qingge decides that his plan worked.

Phase two is put into motion.

This, once again unfortunately, means thinking too much about things Luo Binghe may like. At least this is simpler as he just has to match the items he already wants to give to Shen Qingqiu. A length of jade colored diaphanous wooly reindeer silk is paired with a bolt of northern desert wolf wool. A bestiary local to one of the rare wandering realms is accompanied by a book detailing the surprisingly nuanced demon cuisine in one of the regions on the borders of the demon realm.

By the time he finds himself hacking at the poison backed ruby pangolin because the ruby-like crystals decorating its bony plates of armor would look quite well in a hair crown next to the one he already has for Shen Qingqiu, Luo Qingge is already past the point of despair. It's fun, finding things things for Luo Binghe.

So far, neither Luo Binghe nor Shen Qingqiu protest Liu Qingge's continued spate of his perhaps maladaptive coping mechanism through gift giving. Shen Qingqiu is pleased in fact, if the quick flash of smile Liu Qingge catches before the snap of a fan opens is any indication. The degree the man's cheek lifts, the squint of his curved eyes, increases with each new matched gift shoved towards Luo Binghe.

For his part, Luo Binghe is starting to look less apprehensive. Instead he looks confused when Liu Qingge presses something new into his hands and it turns out to be something pleasant instead of a trick. As if Liu Qingge had ever stooped to tricks in the first place. Infuriating man.

The challenge of finding things that not only match or compliment gifts he has already chosen for Shen Qingqiu, but also manage to suit Luo Binghe's tastes settles well on Liu Qingge's shoulders. He may mostly be known for fighting, but he's also a hunter. He can be patient and observant, when he wants to be.

The knowledge of what Shen Qingqiu likes had eased into him almost against his will. Taking tea with him, cleansing his meridians, still suspicious of his motives and plans for his sudden change of personality, Liu Qingge hadn't meant to find out what Shen Qingqiu liked. At the time he had been so hyper aware of Shen Qingqiu's every move that he had cataloged everything for fear that he would miss the tell-tale sign of duplicitous intent.

So when his hand twitched towards the tanghulu stand on one of their missions together because he knew Shen Qingqiu liked sweets, well. He was surprised at himself for knowing.

Luo Binghe though, did not give his preferences up so easily. Liu Qingge would watch him slide the embroidered silk of a new sash between his fingers and compare the tilt of his eyebrows to the face he makes when serving his husband tea. When Luo Binghe made a half-aborted noise at a well shaped wooden serving board to accompany Shen Qingqiu's new set of dipping bowls, Liu Qingge had to cross reference it with the pleased noise the demon makes when Shen Qingqiu makes a benign request.

Shen Qingqiu slides choice cuts of meat into Luo Binghe's bowl and Liu Qingge has to decide whether the resulting countenance is because Luo Binghe favors the meal or his Shizun's attention more. Liu Qingge chases after Luo Binghe's reactions like a hunter picking its way through a deer trail.

Luo Binghe does not like gifts of jade jewelry—that's the biggest loss Liu Qingge has encountered so far in this endeavor. Even Shen Qingqiu had winced when Luo Binghe pulled out the token. Liu Qingge had seen it and thought that it reminded him of Shen Qingqiu and subsequently that Luo Binghe might think so as well. It was a poor gift.

In his defense, other jewelry and decoration have been fine. Blood colored earrings, silver cuffs, hammered metal vambraces. Even, on one nostalgic occasion, a bamboo embroidered belt coupled with golden weights. The belt was black silk, the bamboo picked out in shades of red, so perhaps that is why it passed muster. (Liu Qingge had given Shen Qingqiu a matching belt this time made to compliment Luo Binghe's: all white with silver and pale green embroidery but the design was very obviously patterned in Luo Binghe's sigils.)

Of all his gifts, ones that allow Luo Binghe to play house wife are recieved the best

---

[Modern AU but demons are an oppressed class and LBH was part of an underground fighting ring]

"You're going to help him acclimate!" Shen Yuan beamed at him, his glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose and his eyes sparkling.

"What."

"Acclimate! He's had a rough time and he's so sweet... they were gonna dump him into the recovery system but I had a moment to talk to him and he would really benefit from a more personalized approach."

"The Recovery System is designed to help kids like him." Unspoken: Liu Qingge was definitely not designed to help kids unpack their trauma and become healthier, happier versions of themselves.

"Qingge," Shen Yuan pouted at him before turning his face away. He crossed his arms defensively, recovered his expression, and turned back to Liu Qingge. "His entire impression of the team is Da-ge... he's a little, well, mistrustful of it all."

Liu Qingge snorted. Shen Qingqiu was very, very skilled at infiltrating the illegal demon trade and blowing them up from the inside. He was also mean, underhanded, and not the kind of person who would coddle a traumatized kid caught in the middle of it all.

"And the kid is half demon, so, you can imagine... Da-ge wasn't exactly..."

"Just because you're brother is a jackass—"

"Hey!"

"Doesn't mean I have the—" knowledge? Skill? Patience? "—time to babysit for you."

"You'll like him though, he's so sweet! He really doesn't deserve to get lost in the system."

Liu Qingge nearly called him out. Does anyone deserve to get caught up in the bureaucratic red tape, passed through the seive of reports and check ups and therapy, modulated social rehabilitation? It was necessary but the system was so flooded it was mechanical, impersonal.

Liu Qingge knew very well what it felt like to be snatched from the middle of one hell hole, be promised it'd get better, and then abandoned to the monotony of "tell us about your feelings" and "why don't you try thinking about whether your actions are going to help or harm before you act" and "you can try a little harder to be empathetic to those around you". As if he had been the problem and not everyone else pressing so hard at his boundaries when the only thing he'd been taught to do was lash out. Eventually he'd just shut up, did his exercises without absorbing anything, swallowed the pills he'd been prescribed, until he got the grudging stamp of approval and was set adrift into society barely any more self sufficient than before.

If he hadn't run into Shen Yuan when he had, he'd probably still be doing the same exact routine: wake up, drink a meal replacement, walk to his boring little job at the corner store, refrain from punching (his boss, the customers, the vendors, the teenagers making a mess in the snack aisle, the auntie who always smiled at him as if she could see the struggle on his face, the rats that his boss complained about but was too lazy to do anything about, the—), clock out after 7.5 hours, run his habitual circuit, go home, shower, then stare blankly at the ceiling until he fell asleep.

If someone like Shen Yuan had scooped him up at the start of it all, where could Liu Qingge be now?

Well, he probably wouldn't be living in Shen Yuan's house, happily spending his days dogging the steps of the world's most oblivious, self-sacrificial man. Shen Yuan would tell him that someone should have been there for him. That it was sad he had been left alone for so long but that was no excuse for not helping others avoid that pain if he could help it.

If Liu Qingge was particularly unlucky Shen Yuan would get that disbelieving, disapproving crease on his forehead that meant Liu Qingge was acting entirely out of Shen Yuan's perception of his character. It didn't matter how many times someone else told Shen Yuan that Liu Qingge was a loose canon, a liability, selfish, inconsiderate, or self-absorbed. The only thing that could take the shine off Liu Qingge in Shen Yuan's eyes was Liu Qingge himself.

The thing was, Shen Yuan made Liu Qingge want to be reliable, responsible, competent, safe. He really, really wanted to live up to Shen Yuan's expectations. Thinking that eventually Shen Yuan would learn how difficult Liu Qingge was to handle slowly turned into Liu Qingge wanting to be easy for Shen Yuan.

Somewhere, somewhen, Liu Qingge stopped wanting to chase Shen Yuan away and started trying to keep him close with both hands gripped tight.

He blew out a sigh, and even to his own ears it sounded defeated. Shen Yuan perked up, smile playing around the corner of his lips. He pulled out his cellphone and tapped something quickly.

"Good! Perfect! Haha, I already said we could host him so it would have been embarrassing if you'd said no."

"Ugh," Liu Qingge rolled his eyes. "You're lucky I don't have hobbies. How else would you commit all my free time."

"I know, I know, Qingge is too sweet for me! So reliable!"

The familiar warmth of pleased embarrassment washed through him. His ears flushed with it.

"Well. As long as you know." He said, finally.

#kamaeteWRITES #svsss #fic roundup #so many of these stop mid sentence im sorry #i can rarely decide what to focus on ughhh #so i have a billions wips open at all time #plus the three comics haha

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