#covering the betrayal

[eksvnd]

[scribz-ag24]

It's still so unbelievable to me how extreme Dusknoir can be. He's a guy who will impulsively decide to rescue a pair of explorers he has never met for no reason (except maybe some superficial after-the-fact justification like "oh this will make me look even nicer", which doesn't count) and his first instinct when his temporal ally is about to get hit by falling ice is taking the blow for him, but he still lies and manipulates with ease, relishes flaunting his victory over his enemies at the cost of efficiency, decides to let the planet rot and decay as long as he keeps his own life and plans a horrible scheme where he will murder someone and puppet his corpse to attack his closest friends.

what wanting to survive does to a mf i guess.

[somewhatsentientspellbook]

It's interesting to bear witness to Emhira/The Matron's offer to kill S.I.L.A.H.A/Corellon because they were tired and intrigued by the notion of permanent nothing. Mostly because it raises a very interesting (and important) question for both Downfall and C3's narrative:

What, if anything, changed?

It's been hundreds of years since the Calamity, and The Arch Heart is still a prominent and heavily worshipped deity across a wide range of groups. Corellon, and any others sharing their sentiment, still have not made the choice to die, despite the means and motive being presented to them a long time ago. Even now, when threatened with the return of Predathos - they're moving in tandem with all of their other siblings, marshalling their forces and gathering strength

Did the Arch Heart have an epiphany between the start of Downfall and the end of Calamity? A moment where they realised that they genuinely do not want to die? Or perhaps they're still intrigued by the notion of nothingness, yet only stay alive to continue fulfilling their purpose to their siblings, worshippers, and Exandria?

It may very well be a question that gets answered in Downfall Part III, but for now it'll keep rotating in my head like a lazy cat on a lazy susan

[pasta-pardner]

spotify | john marston's revenge quest, set to music from 1960s spaghetti westerns.

Fun detail: the opening cutscene for Red Dead Revolver (2004) features an instrumental version of "His Name Is King". The lyrical version is oddly fitting for John, given that it's a song about seeking vengeance for a dead brother.

[lefttoesucker]

They call us Los Vaqueros... Cowboys

And all of them individually <3

[spacedlexi]

people dont talk enough about how heartbreaking the marlon betrayal mustve been for clem too,,

this dude saves the life of her and her kid. takes them in has them patched up gives them their first hot meal in who knows how long. gives them a safe place to stay. possibly permanently. confides in her that hes trying to be a good leader but feels like and fears that hes failing. asks her to help him take care of the rest of the group. helps her get over her fear of dogs by asking her to trust him. and things go well. she feels safe. like this place could really finally be the home shes been looking for

but as soon as she finds out what happened to the twins. that marlon planned on giving up her and aj too. she immediately becomes a liability to him and he attempts to kill her for it. locks her in the basement to die by walker. then tries to turn the group against her so he can shoot her instead when the first method fails. and he nearly succeeds

then a majority of the group turn against clem the minute aj kills marlon. ignoring marlons mistakes but condemning aj for his. like clem wasnt betrayed by marlon in the exact same way he betrayed the twins. like she literally wasnt almost killed twice? and how long had he been considering giving her up? was it always some contingency he planned? did he truly want to keep them around and things only changed when he feared the raiders had returned? she'll never know

[necrotic-nephilim]

Hear me out, kiss with a fist

https://youtu.be/ywMD3GLoKG4?si=nAot0594-vKVX3Ww

Make it slightly dead dove brudick

!!!! Florence + The Machine supremacy.

this song is SO them. Bruce and Dick do not know how to love each other without fighting. their violence and anger is intertwined with their kindness. i think it's fun they love each other so much, it's such a deep burning intensity that they can't figure out how to control and it leads to anger. like how do you handle loving someone so much that you want to protect every aspect of them to keep them safe and hidden from the world? because they should be *yours*. how do you handle loving someone so much that you have to get away from them because it's suffocating you that you don't know who you even *are* outside of your love for them? their lives revolved around each others for years and then fractured and all that love just bleeds out into violence.

i truly have a soft spot for Bruce and Dick fighting each other and being willing to turn to violence to try to turn to the other. and it's on both sides, they're both throwing punches and trying to hurt the other. sometimes, they don't even have a reason. they just want to hurt the other to feel the pain under their knuckles. Dick punches Bruce in the face just to finally see Bruce *show* his own pain and crumple, just a little bit. he wants to rip apart Bruce's bedroom because it's full of pieces of him that Bruce shouldn't be allowed to keep.

love the line "your slaps don't stick, your kicks don't hit, so we remain the same, love sticks" bc it's so them. the bruises they leave on each other -both emotional and physical- are never lasting. their bodies were made for this. and they don't *change*. it's just fundamental to Bruce and Dick's dynamic that they're just a *little* fucked up and unable to love each other kindly. they always crawl back bc a kiss with a fist *is* better than none. Bruce would let Dick hit him a thousand times just to feel Dick touching him and showing him attention. if fighting is what it takes to have Dick talking to him, Bruce will eagerly take it and he'll fight right back. i'm feral for this ty <3

[fwoopersongs]

On 33 elders and the Lan's Discipline Whip

This tumblr post by @qiu-yan the other day on moral luck in MDZS came past my dash, and there was a mention of the thirty three elders in the Lan Clan who were injured by Lan Wangji - some of you may remember it better as the reason for his thirty three whip scars xD. And I remembered reading (mostly on twitter) people saying things like he got whipped 33 times 'for going against his sect elders', or that the elders deserved it for acting unjustly. Maybe this was a CQL thing??? But I wanted to share my understanding of the situation from reading the novel.

For the record, elders here aren't like ‘Elders’ in the sense of people in positions of power within a clan i.e. 长老 as you might see in sects from more conventional Xianxia novels. Instead, its noun for ‘older generation’ i.e. 前辈 within the clan. 

So, here's a translation of Lan Xichen’s recount to Wei Wuxian of how Lan Wangji came to bear scars of thirty three strokes of the Lan Discipline Whip from Chapter 99/100, Discipline Whip Scars aka Hensheng: To Hate Life 3.

On Versions I’m comparing between two versions of the novel where the first chapter title is: {1} 魏无羡死了，大快人心! (lit: Wei Wuxian is dead, gratifying news for everyone!) & {2} 重生 (lit: Alive Again). The version I’m translating is {1} from the website Zhenhun using footnotes to compare it against {2}. Line breaks and other cosmetic or grammatical changes are ignored. References to chapter numbers and such will be based on {2} since this is the version used on the MDZS fandom Wiki. All chapter titles also are referenced from the wiki.

Wei Wuxian repeated, "Discipline Whip scarring?!" 

He grasped at Lan Xichen again and said, "Clan Leader Lan, I truly have no idea. Please, tell me. How did he get those injuries? Does it have something to do with me?!?”

Embittered anger surfaced on Lan Xichen’s face, "If it doesn’t ‘have anything to do with you’, did he perhaps scar himself for no particular reason at all?” [1]

Zewu-jun had always been restrained and composed to the utmost, but this was a matter which had impacted Lan Wangji and thus uncharacteristically, his anger was roused. Yet after observing Wei Wuxian's expression carefully, this anger receded slightly and he asked tentatively, "You… you've had some memory loss?"

"My memories?" Wei Wuxian said. He immediately tried hard to see if there was anything he could not recall, and then replied, "I don't think there’s any period of time which I don’t remem — yes!"

There was indeed one period during which his memories were blurred and indistinct.

The bloodbath at Nightless City!

On that night many years ago, he had believed Wen Qing and Wen Ning gone, their bones ground to dust and scattered by their enemies. On top of that, seeing the Great Clans on their impassioned, self-righteous warpath and witnessing Jiang Yanli die before his eyes, he finally utterly lost control. Combining the two halves of the Yin Tiger Tally, he unleashed it, allowing it to kill indiscriminately. The dead under the Tally’s power killed others, who then became new fierce corpses, creating an endless supply of massacring puppets which turned the place into a blood-soaked hell.

After that, [2] although Wei Wuxian could just barely manage to stay on his feet, he distantly felt himself leave this slaughterhouse of a ruined city. There was a long period in which he was not fully aware of anything. When he finally came back to himself, he had already been sitting in a daze at the foot of Yiling’s Knoll of Unmarked Graves [3] for a long time.

Lan Xichen asked, "Do you remember now?"

Wei Wuxian murmured, "That period at Nightless City? I… I’d always thought that I had wandered back in a daze, but..."

Lan Xichen was so angry he could have laughed, "Young Master Wei, How many enemies were you up against that night? It was three thousand! No matter how much of an unparalleled talent of this age you may be - withdrawing entirely unharmed under those circumstances? How could that be possible?"

Wei Wuxian asked, "Lan Zhan... what did Lan Zhan do?"

"What did Wangji do. If you don’t remember it yourself, I fear he will never tell you of his own accord, and you certainly won’t be asking [4]. Fine. Let me tell you." Lan Xichen said.

"Young Master Wei, on that night after you took out the two halves of the Yin Tiger Tally, merged them into one, and slaughtered to your heart's content, you were at the end of your strength. Wangji, having been injured by you in your madness, was in about the same state. He was only able to get to his feet by leaning on Bichen. Even so, the moment he saw you stumbling away, he immediately followed.

"There weren't many people left conscious at the scene. I was barely able to move and could only watch as Wangji, with his Spiritual Energy clearly almost depleted, limped laboriously in your wake, then grabbed and pulled you onto Bichen. The both of you flew off on the sword together.

“I only regained my Spiritual Energy two shicheng* later and hurried back to the Lan Clan in Gusu seeking support. I was worried that if people from the other families caught up to the both of you first, Wangji would be perceived as your accomplice. The best outcome of this would leave him with a stain on his name for life and a damaged reputation, the worst scenario would be him being dispatched without a chance to defend himself. And so along with my shufu, I gathered thirty-three elders who had always praised and thought highly of Wangji. Together, we spent two days as the sword flies secretly [5] searching. That was how we found traces of your trail within the borders of Yiling. Wangji had hidden you in a cave. When we arrived, you were sitting on a stone within the cave, dazed, while Wangji held your hand, transferring Spiritual Energy to you and speaking softly [6].

“And the whole time, you were only repeating one word at him.

“‘Scram!’”

Wei Wuxian’s throat was dry, his eyes red. He was unable to say a word. 

Lan Xichen continued, "My shufu appeared suddenly before him, giving him a scolding and asking him for an explanation. He seemed to have expected us to find him, yet he said there was nothing to explain, that this was just how it was. Since childhood and even after growing up, he had never been defiant toward our shufu and me [7]. But for you, Wangji not only talked back to shufu, he even turned his sword on the cultivation practitioners of the same origin, the same bloodline of the Gusu Lan Clan as himself, severely injuring [8] the thirty-three elders we had requested help from...

Wei Wuxian buried his hands in his hair, saying, "I... I didn’t know... I really..."

Besides repeating that he really didn't know, there was nothing else was able to say. 

Lan Xichen tried holding back for a moment, but went on to add, "Thirty-three Discipline Whip scars! All the strokes within one session, one for each person. You ought to know how painful that is, how long it takes to recover from it! [9], [Note] After willfully sending you back to the Knoll, Wangji returned, despondent, to receive his punishment. How long he knelt before the Wall of Discipline! When I went to see him, I said ‘Young Master Wei has already made a grave mistake. Why would you compound it?’ But he replied that he wasn’t able to judge if what you did was right or wrong, and regardless of that, he was willing to bear all the consequences with you. [10] Those few years he was said to have spent ‘reflecting on his mistakes before the Wall’ were, at their core, because his motion was limited by his injuries. And even so, after learning of your death, he forced himself in this condition to get up because no matter what, he had to go to the Knoll and see for himself…” [11]

*One shicheng is approximately equal to two hours.

[1] This part in italics isn’t in {2}. [2] Added in {2}: But after going through all of these, Wei Wuxian’s body and spirit had been seriously damaged. [3] He was at the foot of a small hill near the Knoll in the revised version.  [4] This part in italics isn’t in {2}. [5] In {2} Lan Xicheng and his uncle explicitly requested the elders to keep this a secret.  [6] In {2} Lan Wangji was asking him something. [7] In {2}, Lan Xichen only specifies that Lan Wangji has never talked back to his uncle, leaving himself out of the sentence. [8] In {2} Lan Xichen says they were severely injured, nearly fatally. [9] There’s a break in {2} with Wei Wuxian’s inner thought of ‘This, he knew.’ Reason being what I have in [Note]. [10] This part in italics isn’t in {2}. [11] This part in italics isn’t in {2}.

[Note] Per Chapter 11, The Elegant Flirt 1: Wei Wuxian has never been beaten with the Discipline Whip before, but he has seen its mark on Jiang Cheng. They’d tried all sorts of ways to make the scarring go away, but it was in vain. All clans use it for disciplining members who had committed grave wrongdoing. Later in Chapter 59, Sandu: The Three Poisons 4, we learn that Jiang Cheng was hit with it by Wen Chao who got his hands on the Jiang Clan Discipline Whip.

// a thought //

We just learnt that Lan Wangji had been injured by a berserk Wei Wuxian himself, was struggling to stand and nearly out of Spiritual Energy. Then he had to control Bichen to fly them both to Yiling, and at least at the moment they were found, was attempting to heal Wei Wuxian with the Spiritual Energy transfer. From Lan Xichen’s account, it took Lan Xichen four hours to recover somewhat and regain enough Spiritual Energy to go home for help. So let’s say Lan Wangji did take some time off from minding the catatonic Wei Wuxian to replenish his Spiritual Energy, he’s still not fighting them at a hundred percent. His elders from Gusu Lan had not participated in the fighting at Nightless City (uninjured), but they’d all been on their swords for two days, searching for Lan Wangji. Probably still in a much better form than him though. How was he able to injure them ‘severely’? 

(I think there are two options. One, Lan Wangji is just that good of a fighter. Two, his elders were holding back.)

[devilemon]

me when queequeg gave ishmael one last pained look and asked her to tell her her name once more

so when she finally died, she could look at HER sunset because she could never do it outside the whale in a future with her lover

i'm gonna be sick canto v was so good and ishmael is now attempting to grapple with a second loss of queequeg but now with an emotional support system

(gif by me, just ask to use it if you want ����)

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Trials of Azrael Cover Art

[holychaossandwich666]

Have we considered Peter being a spy. I don't mean in the canon sense and all. I mean, leaving school, he tells his friends that the dark lord is asking for him to join. So, they all go to Dumbledore and Peter legitimately becomes a spy. Then things start going awry during the war, the Order are accusing anyone and everyone. One of the mon-marauders accuse Peter because he's always looking after his 'sick mum' but instead of suspicion that person is absolutely ridiculed by the other three marauders. They come up with elaborate and detailed excuses for Peter so he can continue to spy on the death eaters for them. They're all so convinced he was truly on their side because it's *peter* and he would never hurt them. They're *brothers*. I just think it's something to consider as an angle when writing because seeing the betrayal coming after facilitating the circumstances of said betrayal almost hurts worse, yk?

[cashmere-caveman]

shogun ep. 9 is just bisexual suicide speed chess toxic breakup edition

[utenthy]

me when aziraphale and crowley have a fail miserable gay kiss and start crying and freaking out and immediately break up and betray each other

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Dear Wendy

YA contemporary

two first year students who become friends, bonding over their shared aroace identity and starting a club for aspec students

while unknowingly engaging in a petty war with their anonymous relationship advice instagrams

friendship, navigating potential futures and entering adult life, and exploring QPOC experiences

[statementlou]

another element that is kind of unsettling is the escorts/sex workers thing. nothing wrong with sex workers or paying for them, I just hope Kate knew about it and they had an open relationship/arrangement. grief is already hard enough without that complicating her grief more…I have my own thoughts about Kate but no one deserves to have their partner be unfaithful to them (hoping that’s not what was going on). I know this is small and doesn’t really matter in the context I guess but I’ve been thinking about it

As a former escort, I have definitely been following the role of the sex workers in all of this with extra interest and I keep wanting to have something interesting to say on the subject in response to this... but honestly I guess I don't. My only real take about that aspect is that I wish someone would PAY them, if it was any other kind of outstanding debt it would be paid by the survivors, honestly any other job the family would be wanting to meet them and chat about their loved ones' final hours... But instead they have both been identified and had their names (and details of their lives like how many kids they have etc) put on blast worldwide and STILL NOT PAID! For a FOUR 1/2 HOUR CALL!! As for the rest... the tabloids claim that Kate was shocked and upset by the news, who knows if it's true but if I had to guess I would imagine they had the kind of relationship where that would be the case, so, probably.

EDIT: terrific news, while Liam and Roger seem to have stiffed them, they may have been paid by the hotel (to get them to leave)! (and thus indirectly gotten the money from Liam)... I hope so