#i can have some self-loathing

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Lan Wangji Goes To Lotus Pier AU: Part 5: Flip Slip.

(Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 4.5)

[possamble]

Thank you for writing the (messy but neccessary) farcille breakdown. You handled it so wonderfully aaaaaaaah!! Like the other anon I was wondering how far "rock bottom" could get (because chapter 4 already felt pretty rock bottom) but. Yeah. That's pretty rock bottom, huh. The tragedy of loving someone but the other person not understanding <- this applies to both of them.

I think it was really neat how you flipped the question on who's reaching out to who with the academy flashback and the final scene with Namari, because... Marcille clinging onto Falin really is just a reversal of their academy days, isn't it? To everyone who met them after they reunited, it was always Marcille chasing after Falin, but to those who were at the magic academy, it was Falin chasing after Marcille. From picking flowers and berries to eat together, inviting Marcille out to see a play, and generally monopolizing her free time... I'm sure any of them would say the same thing as Namari, but in reverse. No wonder everyone thinks Marcille is just another friend to Falin. They weren't there to witness her pining /j. Idk!! I was rereading the chapter and the academy flashback girl was like "why do you hang off of Marcille so much" and I screamed to myself, "hey wait. HEY WAIT."

[eikichi-supremacy]

crying myself to sleep im so sorry they cut you out atsuko they couldn't handle the cunt you were serving im so sorry but i know i saw you cheer on your son during the dark tourney i saw you hold onto a dying puu i was there i know

[thedemonscrawler]

What this fic claims to be: Two characters forced to face their mental demons and take the first steps towards understand themselves and each other

What this fic will actually be: A series of character analysis essays thinly disguised as a story

[justabiteofspite]

Sad murder princess face last seen after Astarion's obviously fake "I love you" during the goblin party.

The animation here kills me every time. That is the face of someone who desperately wants what he says to be real while knowing he doesn't mean it.

And with Durge, there's also the question of if you're even worthy of love after all the crimes and atrocities and the murderous urges that live in your head. Maybe a fake "I love you" is the best you're ever going to get. Definitely more than you deserve.

[korrasamibottles]

Ironically repeatedly "getting out of my comfort zone" and "putting myself out there" creatively has not made it any easier to continue getting out of my comfort zone and putting myself out there creatively.

[spocks-kaathyra]

"ur repressed" okay well have u even considered that emotions r purposeless and only serve to cause harm to those around u and I have achieved a unique transcendent state beyond them. have u considered that

[buttercup-barf]

Under the cut are mostly self-insert doodles of decreasing quality. Again, not much directly tied to Team Fortress 2. Might as well toss these out while I have no access to my puter. Much yapping under the cut and in the tags incoming.

Another self-insert, this time less of a "here's me as a tenth class" and more of a "here's my game experiences translated into the class I would take the place of". The Cleaner. Although I guess they could still be wearing either suit. It doesn't matter that much.

That one Convict's Case taunt with Backup would be extremely funny, because the man would be on the verge of a breakdown (he does not want to go to jail so bad you have no idea). The second image- I owe no explanation. You know what I am. You see the pattern with my favourites.

The duality of the man. Resting face versus "just heard you express interest in religion/Russian folklore" face. He's not that hard to make friends with, when you pull him away from all the explosions.

Some doodles of trying to figure his face out. Unfortunately, the more I stare at him, the more I worry that he looks like A Certain Guy With The Last Name "Kazarin", and the fear of never being original in my life caught up to me.

Don't look at me, don't perceive me, I refuse to explain any of my actions to you.

[the-valiant-valkyrie]

jotting down a couple of my solaris post death engine headcanons. hospitalization and mental decline is discussed, although not in all too thorough detail, so i suppose that's a cw?

saying that the medical team didn't consider solaris worth saving wouldn't exactly be accurate. but her condition seemed bleak, and her survival chance was incredibly slim

physical injuries aside, her radiation poisoning was the worst of it. when she was initially brought in after the crash, she wasn't expected to last even a handful of hours as a result of her exposure

said radiation also got all over her clothes, which- when you factor in that patches of them were melded onto her skin due to the sheer heat of the crash- certainly did not help matters much when it came to mitigating further exposure.

thankfully she survived the three hour grace period for severe radiation poisoning. then the three day grace period for moderate radiation poisoning. and then the two week grace period for 'mild' radiation poisoning… the treatments helped, of course, but her immune system hardly escaped unscathed. nor did her stamina, pain tolerance, hair, or the majority of her muscle mass

getting such a traumatic injury immediately after spending an extended amount of time in zero gravity wasn't exactly great for solaris' physical strength. once she was allowed to leave her cot she found it very difficult to support herself without the temporary use of axillary crutches.

she… did not like them. and accidentally made herself worse for a time by purposefully forgoing them. but it didn't take her too long to learn it was less miserable to use them than it was to collapse in the hallway in front of her coworkers.

the fabricator's company especially helped during that period… having designed her own prosthetic after losing her arm, there was little concern fabby would think her any weaker for relying on a mobility aid

the incident… really changed solaris' perspective on a lot of things. grappling with your potentially-rapidly-approaching death will do that to you. she was always a bit of a perfectionist, but going forward she started to cling to her mistakes with a lot more self-directed hostility. after all, it was, ultimately, her fault the death engine project failed to begin with

she also struggles with regret a lot more- mainly in regards to time, and the ways in which she 'wastes' it. another consequence of watching it slip between her fingers, half certain she would be spending the remainder of her life in a hospital cot.

she tries not to make either of these facts too obvious to her coworkers. the fabricator can tell rather easily, though. but that isn't the worst thing in the world. at least she won't weaponize any of it.

the day after she was let out of the hospital was the day she drafted her resignation letter from zoraxis. but she was too scared to do anything with it, or act on the urge to quit beyond that… it was a miracle she even survived to begin with. zor could kill her with a flick of their wrist if they wanted to. and it isn't as if she and the doctor were ever on the best of terms- especially not after her catastrophic failure. she… didn't want to tempt fate until it proved absolutely necessary.

she threw herself into building her imposing figure and nature back up almost as soon as she physically could. and while she inevitably became just as powerful as she was before the incident strength wise, her constitution leaves much to be desired. functionally, she's a glass canon. thankfully, she doesn't look like one- which is a fact that she uses to her advantage when necessary.

[femmeterypolka]

i’m kinda like her except none of that happened to me i just have ocd

[arolesbianism]

Decided to draw some hypothetical employee id cards for my upper floor team captains <3

[usedtobemygirl]

me, this year: ok so I won’t get get into any romantic relationships as i cannot cope when they end & inevitably abandon me and i end up nearly dying. 2024 will be so much better because of this

the universe in 2024 after taking my best friend away from me: sike!!! you will never be happy

[maliro-t]

as a bona fide vaxleth lover i am more confused than ever about how they are portrayed on the animated series i'm not gonna lie 😭

[phoenixcatch7]

The problem I'm having with one of my stories is that it is compelling - but not clicking.

It's a sephiroth gets reincarnated into mdzs. Straightforward. I've got several branching paths: lwj, jc, nmj (my personal fave) and the jade twins (one mind in two bodies). All five of them have great potential, but for some reason my heart is set on sephiroth!lwj, because the aesthetic is sublime.

But! It's! Not! Working!

My main problems are a) despite similar surfaces, sephiroth has fundamentally different morals and life experiences to lwj and lwjs morals are a huge part of his and wwx's stories. B) I can't NOT have wangxian. I don't ship often at all, but when I do I'm pretty set on it lol. I don't want to deny soulmates. Unfortunately I HATE writing romance. C) I do not think sephiroth should be in any sort of romantic relationship at all nor can I see him wanting one. I've read tons of fics where he is in relationships (healthy or otherwise) and they're amazing, yes, but... Under my pen it's just not in the cards. And I do feel pairing him with wwx would just amplify wwx's worst traits, which is the opposite of what lwj does for him.

Everything's in conflict, but the lure of sephiroths second childhood in strict gusu and his complicated feelings about it, wwx being a perfect mix of all his important people with a spine of steel and righteousness that they all lost as everything fell apart, the relationship between sephiroth and his new mother, and how he'd inexplicably lose her too, the white on white aesthetic, the older identical brother, the cruel angels aesthetic with the benevolent demon, the angst of wwx's defection and death, his relationship with qi as a planet's overflowing life force, the tragedy of the mourning angel, monster x monster.... It calls to me.

But there's also the way wwx becoming a demonic cultivator was so vital to winning the war, and the way that affected things, gave him a legitimacy. Involve the silver soldier, and well. Everything else becomes a little extraneous lol. And sephiroth himself is such a big mover and shaker, I don't know what I could do to manage that without wiping out 80% of the remaining jianghu after the burial mounds siege with sephiroth appointing himself king lmao. He's not the kind of person to make small ripples, you know?

And I'd love a twin jades au to sort of turn the chaos inwards a bit (nmj and jgy would be Excellent foils) but again, I can't separate wangxian and imagining scenes feels a bit too close to incest for my tastes, even when it's ONE PERSON in identical bodies!

It's frustrating, wanting to write a non romance fic set in a love story lol. I just. I hate writing romance. But wangxian just don't want to be parted.

But the image of lwj in the xuanwu cave secretly covering a feverish wwx with his wing, only to notice a handful of white feathers pushing through the black as he unknowingly becomes a better person through showing care for other people, shaking his own deep belief that he is a horrible irredeemable creature incapable of love. Caught in an act of love. Hnggh.

Any ideas?!

[illogicalghost]

.

[golvio]

I'm also wondering if the ways you can "show love" to the Fury can change depending on your approach. Fury is about The Body, but you get to her from Tower by forcibly reminding her of her own mortality, breaking her view of herself as an absolute divinity. You get to her from Adversary by being hurt by her in a way you can't recover from, forcing her to have an existential crisis over what she considers to be her sole reason for existing.

I think Tower!Fury's going to be the one who more methodically takes you apart, then realizes that she was completely off the mark about what kind of goddess she was as she witnesses you tap into your Long Quiet powers whenever you're forcibly ejected from your body. Her framing herself as a singular, untouchable, very Catholic God-coded goddess was based on a mistaken impression of what you were due to getting off on the wrong foot, so part of her healing and learning to see you as an equal involves realizing she never actually "fell from grace," but was just changed by experience and shaken to the point where she felt "diminished" by having her worldview so radically challenged by your resistance to her will.

Adversary!Fury will lunge at you with a very Razor-coded "Let's Hurt Each Other!!!!!" However, I think that either she'll hesitate if she hurts you again, or maybe *she* will be the one who gets hurt in a way that she could've easily shrugged off as Adversary, but can't as Fury, now that she's very painfully aware of being inside of a flesh-vessel. Your bonding moment with her might involve healing her, or at least finding a way to stabilize her until Shifty can take her home. The Long Quiet is a deity of "life" and of preservation and stability, so it would make sense if his province was healing and the prolonging of life through treating injury and illness. Meanwhile, Shifty's domain is more violent due to the ways the body is made, unmade, and transformed through injury, birth, and death. There is something that you can do that ends up causing fury to reframe her worldview, realizing that she's not nothing without "her purpose," and that there's a big, wide world out there that's about more than just violence. That the body can be a utilitarian vehicle for the soul or an instrument of harm, but it can also be a source of pleasure and a way to learn about the world by experience.

It's like...they both feel violated and therefore take the form of a "fallen angel” to reflect how corrupted they/you felt they were in that moment where the existential crisis set in, but it wasn't because they were sexually abused (and thank god for the writers not going that route). They just had their sense of self completely destabilized by experiencing something that went completely counter to how they believed the world worked based on what they learned from their first encounter with you. Healing Fury and convincing her to leave with you, or at least lay down her arms, will involve a more conscious, deliberate reframing, until the cognitive dissonance subsides and she can start seeing things from your point of view. Either she realizes you are her equal and you have a lot to learn from each other, or she comes to respect your nonviolent approach and realizes that she's more than just "her purpose" as assigned by the narrative/your initial perception of her as your Adversary.

No matter what it ends up being, through that realization, she recognizes that she isn't "ruined," just changed. She's still her, no better or worse, just different. Once she understands that, she can come out of her pit of self-loathing and start building herself back up again.

(I'm also suspecting the "new ending" might be a First Princess-specific ending, like how Stranger got her own ending. But there are also a couple of other philosophical directions that haven't been explored, like what happens if you permanently die but she doesn't, or if there's something that can be done about the Narrator being stuck in his self-inflicted ironic hell.)

I could be completely off the mark about all of this, but I have no idea what to expect, and that makes the area ripe for wild speculation and imagination.