#i squealed at the 'you can accomplish anything' quote coming into play

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Road to Hell || Morgan & Miriam

TIMING: Current

PARTIES: @meflemming & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Morgan interrupts one hunt; Miriam proposes another

CONTAINS: discussions of violence

The woman babbling on about something to Miriam as the two of them sat at their little corner table was a witch. Miriam had known that the second the girl had walked into her store a few nights ago, just before closing. It was that time of year when she could actually go out into the main area of the store without worrying about sunlight and burning flesh, and she’d struck up a conversation with the woman, particularly about the runic tattoos along the girl’s skin. Miriam wasn’t daft; she knew that these sorts of designs were in with all sorts of people, not just practitioners of the magic arts. But the young woman had actually admitted to Miriam what she was. Spellcasters these days. They had no sense of self-preservation. So, Miriam had invited her out to dinner, a nice dinner for the young woman and a nicer dinner for Miriam afterwards. It wouldn’t be anything to be savored; Miriam refused to bring people home, not with Evelyn in her house. Still, it would suffice. Really, she was doing the girl a favor. Anyone stupid enough to out themselves to a mere stranger should be put out of their misery. She tried not to think about that too hard, about how that was technically how she’d met Morgan, and, if she’d truly managed to kill Morgan that night, she’d be down one… acquaintance. They likely weren’t friends. It wasn’t like they could be, not with the way that Morgan saw her.

“Is it not good?” The woman, Leigh, asked, looking at Miriam’s plate curiously.

Miriam forced a charming grin on her face. “Oh, it’s lovely, sweetness. I’m just a bit distracted. Would you like some more wine?” As long as she could keep the girl unaware, this would be easy. She could do this and be done with it for a few days, maybe even a week. Maybe the next one she wouldn’t kill, either, but just find them in the night, get her fill, and wipe their mind of the experience, leaving behind only the pain. Maybe so. But she’d committed to this form of hunting for the night. She took a bit of her steak, too done to provide her with any sort of nourishment, and poured both herself and Leigh a bit more wine. She wished she could feel its effects the way the younger woman did as she giggled and talked about her job, her family, her friends. Miriam would kill to be so innocent. Miriam would kill.

Morgan had plenty of experience balancing the cognitive dissonance of making holiday merry with normies while her world was falling apart. Thirty nine (almost forty, now) years with the curse had been good for that much. But this was the first year she’d had to do it without being able to get drunk. The UMWC English Department Christmas after party had enough tipsy middle aged women to get the dance floor at the bar moving, but no matter how hard or how long she danced, the world was still in pieces and she still, still soaked with blood and hurt, and she still needed a human sacrifice to accomplish the one single thing she actually had a clue about accomplishing. Morgan told her coworkers she’d get them vodka shots, teasing, “Maybe if we’re lucky, we’ll get as shitfaced as our students after finals,” as an excuse to separate from the pack.

But Morgan never made it to the counter, because she saw Miriam first. Even worse, she saw Miriam’s date. Those runic tattoos couldn’t have been and accident, and the alchemic circle on the top of her hand sure as hell wasn’t either. She was hanging on Miriam’s every look, oblivious and engaged in all the wrong ways. Morgan didn’t have long to think. What did she do? She didn’t have anyone to make a distraction for her while she ushered the would-be witch-feast out the bar. How was she supposed to do this by herself? There wasn’t time to panic, she needed to stay in control and do something now. What would Deirdre do if she had to make a distraction for this?

“HEY, BABY!” Morgan cried the words loudly, enough to make at least one person check over their shoulder.  She gave Miriam a big wave and ran over to their both, sliding in beside the vampire. “You should’ve said you were coming to meet me early, I would’ve had a round of your favorite waiting!” She planted a big, awful kiss on Miriam’s cheek and squeezed her hand, bringing it up on the table. “And, and, and!” She squealed excitedly. “I went to the jeweler and picked out your ring! It’s gonna be a surprise, obviously, but I think you’ll like it a lot.” She looked over at the girl sitting opposite, flashing a thin smile that she hoped said, get lost. “And who are you? No offense, but I was kind of hoping to have a more private meeting with my Mimsy,” she said.

The shrill sound of a familiar voice caused Miriam to tense up. No. No. No. She wished she’d gone to a more private place, perhaps a classier establishment, to do her hunting as she watched the zombie coming in hot towards them. “Morgan?” Leigh looked at Miriam with confusion, and Miriam gritted her teeth as Morgan slid in next to her. Of course, of course. “Darling, you shouldn’t have.” She really shouldn’t have. There was no way to save this, was there, Miriam wondered as she looked dejectedly at Leigh, who had shifted from confused to pissed off in a matter of moments.

“I’m no one,” Leigh muttered, grabbing her bag and shoving her belongings inside. “It was--” she looked at Miriam, and, if a voice that the vampire would not have heard had she been human, muttered, “Course she’s-- Fuck me, I guess.” Then, louder, to Morgan, “Sorry, I’ll let-- I’m just gonna go.” Leigh hurried out the door, leaving her food half-finished, before Miriam could so much as even try to explain her way out of this. Lovely. Miriam was so glad that she’d get to pay for not one but two uneaten meals. She shoved her plate away and downed her glass, the alcohol not doing shit when there wasn’t blood mixed in.

“What the fuck, Morgan?” Miriam snarled, pushing the zombie away and rubbing at her eyes. They were probably turning red, the anger and frustration and hunger causing the color to change from their normal shade of green. She couldn’t even muster up the energy to be mad for too long, though. She just felt tired. All she had wanted was a meal and then to simply go home, crawl in bed and close her eyes for a few hours. Maybe chat with Evelyn for a bit about nothing serious. “Do you think you were loud enough? I don’t think the other side of town heard you. Speak up a bit next time.” She almost poured herself another glass of wine, but instead she just grabbed Leigh’s. She could, at the very least, assure that it wasn’t wasted.

“What? I can speak up if you’re having trouble hearing me.” Morgan said playing dumb with a dry smirk. But she had succeeded in chasing the girl away and turning her off from further contact with Miriam. She didn’t have to make any more public fuss. “You know, maybe I just missed you. Maybe I was jealous! We have some seriously problematic differences, but you are nothing if not clear and consistent. Not everyone’s like that.” Deirdre, for example, came to mind. She played with the flatware and the napkins, rolling them back and forth with her palm against the table for the novelty of the sensation. “Maybe I just didn’t want some sweet idiot girl like I used to be get carried off to your secret lair.” She shrugged, grinning sidelong at Miriam. “It’s the department holiday party, over there--” she gestured to the dancing middle aged women. “You just caught me at the right time. I’m not trying to...I want better for you, but I’m not a stalker. We can take a twirl if it’ll save your night. Some of the ladies over there hate their lives and marriages enough to probably make a good snack.” She delivered all of this in a dry, even tone, unphased, even a little amused. “I mean, we could talk about murder and torture, but I’m trying to do a little better by you than that.”

“My hearing is just fine, sweetness, but thank you,” Miriam said with a smile that was more of a bearing of teeth. “You missed me? Aw, I’m touched, truly. Maybe give me a ring, though, next time? We can go out for drinks instead of you dropping in on my meal.” She sighed, though, and shot Morgan a sympathetic look. “Glad my consistencies can be counted on.” Really, Morgan was quite consistent as well, in her stubbornness that bordered on pigheadedness when it came to Miriam’s dietary habits. “I wasn’t going to carry her back to my ‘secret lair.’” She did air quotes with one hand. “Just to the woods. I don’t bring people home with me anymore. I have someone staying over.” Besides, her “secret lair” was her wine cellar, and there were only so many ways that blood stains could be explained away before it became far too suspicious. She glanced over at the gathering of people near the bar, frowning. She should feed, she should, but she was turned off from it, at this point. The mood was killed, and she had no desire to feed in front of Morgan, no desire to see the woman think even less of her. “I’ve lost my appetite, I’m afraid, but I do appreciate the offer.”

Morgan hummed, smiling, to hear Miriam’s nickname. Her expression was too sour and vacant for it to count as delight, but maybe someone might have made that mistake at a quick glance when she laughed. “Sometimes it takes your evil friend getting tortured and burned to ash for you to appreciate the important things in life. Or to decide, fuck it, I don’t care about anyone or anything so let’s just disappear and burn it to the ground. Or to finally get on that bucket list! Granted, I’m not usually into--” she screwed up her face, pretending to be scandalized, “Blood sacrifice, but the magic wants what the magic wants. Screw anything being easy for once, right?” She gave Miriam a wide, thin smile. “Come on! The night doesn’t have to be super ruined, right? I don’t  actually want you to starve or feel like I don’t care, you know? I might be a little...whatever, but if there’s a way that makes up your night that doesn’t involve witch torture, I’m at least interested.” Her smile twisted into a grin, conspiratorial. “Are you gonna tell me about this friend staying over? Is the same lady friend you were staying with before?”

For a moment, all Miriam could do was stare at Morgan in shock and blink. Then, she said, “I thought I was your evil friend.” She gave Morgan a smirk, one of the one’s she’d adopted in high school that said I’m Better, before she let it drop. “That’s quite a lot to unpack, Morgan. Really, more than a lot.” Blood sacrifices, really? See, this was what Miriam always thought of when she described bad magics, improper magics. Though, all magics were improper in the hands of human beings, but Miriam didn’t think she needed to try and drive that point home. Not while Morgan was like this. “Perhaps things should be easy, sometimes,” she said, slowly, putting down the glass without finishing it so that she could give Morgan most of her attention. She scanned Morgan’s face, checked her over for any signs of outer distress before she realized that, as one of the undead, Morgan wasn’t going to show scrapes or bruises. “Let’s make this easy, shall we? I’m really quite alright,” she could always feed later, “and I’m a bit more worried about you. I’m aware you don’t want me to starve, darling.” She knew that. Morgan just wanted her to find a better source of food. Miriam rolled her eyes. “It is the same person, yes. She needed me to check on her while she was sleepwalking, and now she’s staying with me amidst some repairs to her home. Nothing serious. I’m just helping her out.” And that was all there was to it. At least, that was all she would admit.

“You’re at least a little honest with yourself.” Morgan said, smiling fondly. “You wouldn’t hurt so much if you really thought what you were doing was the natural order of the world or some bullshit. And you know the people you hunt are people, and you don’t keep them in a five star containment cell for a few years. Maybe you’re a misguided torturer, but it’s coming from a real place. It’s not...banal. You’re better than that, Mim.” Morgan pursed her lips in a pout, teasing in sing-song, “Although, she did give really nice gifts. You’ve never gotten me anything pretty before, so maybe the jury’s out after all.”

She turned her face away as Miriam started giving her a once over. Her face, usually amused and unflappable, was wrinkling with concern. Morgan wasn’t sure she could bear someone with as few reasons to care right now as Miriam being concerned. “Thank you,” she said, her voice low and sincere. “For knowing that. My friend didn’t and I uh...I know we’re not about to suddenly become different people, but it’s important to me that you know I care. It’s the fucking worst, feeling like you’ve lost someone they’re judging you for how you are. I think you’re wrong and I think you know it too, but I still care even if I fuck it up every time we hang out. I want good things for you.” She swallowed thickly. “Don’t worry about me, I’m just uh...casually falling apart a little bit. I’ll figure it out. Although if you do have any tips for picking out a target who won’t be missed, I’m all ears.” She tried to smile sincerely, pull herself up by those proverbial bootstraps and keep trucking. “Tell me more about this friend. It sounds like y’all are getting pretty used to each other’s company. Maybe getting domestic, even?”

“Am I?” Miriam asked, a bit bemused. “I suppose I try to be, but I would have thought we wouldn’t agree, on that front.” She tried to tell herself, at least before, that this was her purpose. Witches must be dealt with. Now, she just told herself this was the only way to live. She’d love it if every witch on the goddamn planet stopped practicing magic at her behest, but she didn’t see it happening. So she’d just keep hunting. “Years? No, that’s far too long to keep someone about. Too much responsibility. Do I look like the kind of woman that has that much time?” She kept people for a few days, at most, and that was only if she was feeling extra malevolent. She was wracking her brain, though, trying to figure out exactly what was going on through Morgan’s head. She didn’t particularly like the path they were going down. “Well, damn. I suppose I’ll just scrap the jacket I’ve been working on then.”

Miriam couldn’t help the concern that she felt, the worry. She wasn’t used to it, either, which added to the discomfort of the situation. “Of course I know that, darling. You’ve made it clear. Every damn time you scold me, you try to find different options, which, though increasingly annoying,” and Miriam kept her tone light, teasing, “is considerate, so thank you.” She wrinkled up her nose. Morgan did have a habit of getting preachy and nosy when they hung out, and it almost always ended with one of them storming off the premises, but that was just who Morgan was. “I’m aware of all of that, truly. You don’t fuck it up. I suppose that the day you’re alright with my serial killer tendencies is the day I should really worry.” Though, she was really worrying now. Miriam… didn’t know how to be a friend, though, properly. It had been too long. “Casually falling apart is still falling apart, Morgan. Don’t fall apart if you don’t have the wherewithal to do it gracefully instead of casually.” What could she do to help with this? Could she do anything to help with this. Miriam had no experience with helping ex-witches through emotional crises. Nosy ex-witches were much easier to handle, and she rolled her eyes at Morgan’s words. “I don’t think I will tell you about this friend. I’m simply providing her with a place to stay for the time being while her… windows get repaired.” Though, really, Miriam was sure Evelyn’s windows had already been repaired. They just weren’t talking about her going home. “I wouldn’t say domestic. I don’t do domestic.”

“You could stand to be more honest, but you’re not full on, ‘humans are cattle, darling, this is putting them to good use,’” Morgan tried to mimic Lydia’s sophisticated cadence mockingly, but she could still hear in her memory just how poor a job when she was doing and felt miserable by the failed effort. “You know what you’re doing, you just don’t know you can be--more--” Morgan grimaced at herself, shaking her head. Aaaaand here I go again… “Thank you, for indulging me at least.”

At the mention of a jacket, Morgan whined, pouting. “There was a jacket? Don’t scrap the jacket. I want a pretty jacket!” Beneath her teasing, she was surprised that Miriam would go to such thoughtful lengths for her. Granted, she was a workaholic with nothing to do during the day and leatherwork was the only skillset Morgan was aware of her having that didn’t involve violence, so maybe it wasn’t so special after all. But Morgan couldn’t fully rationalize the thought away, that Miriam cared enough to try, and might be convinced to turn that care inward some day.

“Gracefully?” Morgan snorted. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s been applied to me in my life, sorry. And uh, no worries about those tendencies. I appreciate your expertise, and I’m only half kidding about needing pointers for scrounging up the right human to sacrifice, but I’m not going to give you another reason to think that killing is all there is for you by asking you to do my dirty work with me.” She flashed a smile, offering to let that part of the conversation go. “Getting windows repaired, huh? Is that a euphemism from your day? I think the kids are calling it something else now. But if your gal pal won’t be sad, can I interest you in a dance?”

“Well, seeing as how I was human not too long ago, I’d be a bit hypocritical to perceive them as cattle,” Miriam said wryly, wondering just what kind of peoples it was that Morgan associated herself with, presently or in the past, that would think such things, especially when she felt so strongly about everything that Miriam did. “I do know what I’m doing, and I live with it. It’s simply the way things are, Morgan.” Miriam sighed, though, grateful that Morgan didn’t go further. “Of course, darling. I don’t mind.” Too much.

“Was. Past tense.” Miriam adopted a pout of her own, mocking Morgan’s. “So sorry, darling, it’s officially been scrapped, not even a thought in my mind, anymore.” Really, though, the jacket was done save for a bit of stitching, something that she’d planned on giving Morgan during the holidays, probably at the start of Yule. She still would, most likely, all kidding aside. It had been fun to make, something other than some of the orders she’d taken on recently, and she was proud of it. Though, Miriam was good at her work; most of the things she made were worthy of pride.

“Come now, Morgan. I’m sure you’ve done something gracefully. Your tenacity is breathtaking, truly.” Perhaps more annoying than graceful, but still. It was something. She frowned, still concerned for her… friend. They were friends. She thought of Morgan as a friend. She wanted to continue this, wanted to point out that her expertise wasn’t in human sacrifice at all, and that, if that was what Morgan was looking into, perhaps she should find a spellcaster who practiced something as nefarious as blood magic or necromancy or something. Those tended to be the experts in blood magic, not charming but occasionally homicidal vampires. But she let it end there. “Getting her windows repaired means that all of her windows shattered, darling, and she had to get them fixed.” She rolled her eyes, but stood up and motioned for Morgan to do the same. “I don’t think my friend will mind, no. I’m more worried about you, darling. Won’t your girlfriend get jealous?”

Morgan pouted back, harder, if that was possible. “But-- even just a cropped jacket? Do you want my measurements?” She had a sense that if this jacket already existed, Miriam would give it to her no matter what, and if it didn’t, it was just a whim that wasn’t necessarily worth pushing just now. Morgan’s lips quirked up with hope all the same.

She couldn’t help but notice how Miriam refused to take the bait when it came to discussing the practical points of violence. But then, Morgan was being coy as well, almost embarrassed about the severity of her need and her total lack of knowledge. Why couldn’t she just come out with it? Was it really just because she felt guilty that there was no one else left to ask? That she couldn’t keep her intentions straight with her between trying to find something better than her alleged purpose and leaning on her expertise? Morgan let it rest for now, grinning with a bitter edge at the mention of her ‘tenacity.’ That was about all she had going for her these days. Tenacity.

Morgan took Miriam’s offered hand and followed her to the dance floor. “My girlfriend isn't here and I don’t really care how she’d feel about me dancing with a friend right now. Besides, I’ll be good.” She teased a coy smile and locked their fingers together as the song changed to an upbeat remix of another Christmas song. When she danced, Morgan’s body almost remembered itself. Hair swinging, feet pounding, she buzzed with the tingle of her body vibrating against the world, pulsing I am here, I am here, I am here, damnit. I deserve to be here more than you, Constance. She stayed close to Miriam, gauging how she took to the music with interest, and flashing the occasional grin. The song changed to something slower, and Morgan leaned against the vampire for the sake of appearances. If she were alive, her body would be exhausted after how desperately she’d pushed it into motion. “Can I ask you how you do it?” She asked, half into her shoulder. “How you make it so you’re never caught or interrupted?”

“Not a chance,” Miriam said, her grin only mostly bite. She rolled her eyes at Morgan’s questions about measurements. As if she didn’t already have them. As if she hadn’t been doing this kind of thing long enough to be able to get Morgan’s measurements in the plenty of times they’d been around each other. “Sorry, darling. Opportunity's gone, now. You should have been nicer to me, you know. Maybe then you’d still get it.” As they walked out to the dancefloor, she stuck her tongue out childishly.

“Well, if you’ll be good, then I suppose we can dance.” Again, another thing that she should be worried about. Not being worried about her girlfriend was very much not a Morgan Beck kind of thing. Then again, they were only friends. Morgan seemed more concerned about Miriam’s love life or lack thereof than anything. So she resigned herself to dancing, and she was pleasantly surprised to see that they were both damn good at it. Morgan was right; graceful wasn’t a word that could be used to describe her movements, but they were wild and fun and on beat, and Miriam found herself getting lost in the music for however long she could. Miriam had taken dancing lessons as a child, but she’d learned to actually enjoy dancing in college. This reminded her of that.

As the song changed, she pretended to be a little out of breath for the sake of the people around them. She was surprised, though, at Morgan's questions, and she glanced down at the other woman. She wasn’t going to drop this, was she? Miriam swallowed. “You make them trust you,” she said, lowly, swaying them along with the song. “You smile, and you compliment them, and you let them compliment you. We’re at an advantage, darling, with our gender, our appearance. They rarely suspect danger lurking under pretty facades.” She moved them away from the crowd. “Then, you take them somewhere secluded, somewhere safe. And you do what you must. Then you get rid of them. Or you don’t, depending on what you want people to know.” Sometimes, you left them out where they’d be seen in broad daylight because you were young and dramatic, and you just wanted to be seen. A cry for help, Miriam’s mother had said hysterically, though she’d cleaned the blood from Miriam’s hands with a calmness that Miriam had never seen in the woman before. For all her parent’s faults (or maybe in addition to them), they had never abandoned their daughter, even when they probably should have.

Morgan shuffled in step with Miriam as some girl on a piano turned ‘All I Want For Christmas’ into a crying balad. She listened, keeping the rhythm to distract herself from the ghost chills crawling down her back. “That sounds cruel,” she mumbled. “Trust is…” Fragile. Precious. There had to be some people Morgan could stomach luring and betraying over the course of an hour or two, but even thinking about playing with them on purpose… Morgan watched Miriam as she led her away, looking as lovely as she had the night she’d tried to kill her. Morgan had imagined herself after the fact as some kind of exception. And maybe in the course of playing that kind of game, she had become one by accident. But the dance had still been choreographed from the start, no matter what they became later. “And that’s it?” She asked. “No one goes looking into their whereabouts and asks, hey, who was that femme fatale they were last seen with? Maybe she knows something?” Morgan shook her head, not nearly as surprised as she would have been in any other place. “This fucking town…” But apathy and idiocy wasn’t Miriam’s fault, just like it wouldn’t be Morgan’s. And she, at least, would be able to bundle up the body and haul it to the shed to be disposed of after she’d harvested her blood. “Thank you, for being honest with me,” she mumbled.

“Life is cruel, Morgan,” Miriam murmured softly. “Besides, there isn’t a spellcaster in this town that should trust me or anyone matching my description. You know this, darling.” Miriam Flemming was a terror, just as much as she had been more than twenty-five years ago. It wasn’t her fault that her prey made it so damn easy. She leaned down and whispered in Morgan’s ear, “That’s it. What did you expect? Drugging? Threatening? I’ll admit that I compel the ones I let live, though that’s quite rare, but murder is a far easier endeavor than they want you to believe.” The first few times had been difficult, but she’d rarely tried to hide what she was doing, in the beginning. She had been nothing but newfound rage and vengeance and a desire to make everyone else hurt as she’d been, worse, even. “The apathy in this town will blow your mind, sometimes, the way some people seem to not care. But, and it will do you well to remember this, pride is the real killer here.” Miriam laughed, low in the back of her throat, and shook her head. “Like I said, they know about me. They’ve been warned. Hell, Morgan, you warned quite a few of them. But they see me, and some of them are blinded by thoughts of ‘Surely not her’ or ‘I’ll be different.’” She shook her head. “Or they underestimate me. You would think, over the years, that that wouldn’t be the case anymore, but here we are.” She had made orphans, widows, and widowers, yet still she was underestimated. But she was still a boogieman, a monster under the bed. Likely, there was more spellcaster deaths credited to her name than there was actual blood on her hands. She didn’t mind that. “You’re welcome, darling, though I’m… Perhaps you should let me do whatever it is you plan on doing. I’d hate for you to get caught due to bad advice.”

“Not always,” Morgan said feebly. She remembered believing this with a lot more umph when she was alive, even as recently as three or four months ago. It sounded like a line she didn’t quite believe now. So much of her good, her hope, had been pulled from her fingers. Would there even be much of a new life for her on the other side of this? Finishing the ritual was her anchor now, but what would it leave her with? Morgan tried to recapture the image she’d had when she started this all. How strong, how powerful, how very close to peace. The closest she would ever get to have, living as what she was now. That much would still be true, wouldn’t it? Even if everything else in her world crumbled, she would still be the woman who had ended the curse, who had taken her power back from that cruel, evil little bitch.

Miriam’s points were comforting only in their practicality. At barely over five feet, Morgan had the unassuming thing down pat. She could rely on her brute strength to subdue some random asshole, whoever she picked out. It just felt so….deceitful. And were it not for the obvious, that this person would run and tell whatever authority they believed in about what had happened, they didn’t have to die. They just had to suffer. There were memory charms, but how was she gonna find someone to do that to cover up a casual maiming? Morgan hissed through her teeth. “I need to do this myself,” she said, slumping against Miriam’s side. “This is my magic family bullshit, and I don’t think you’d enjoy avenging a line of cursed witches.” Another breath, just try and make the tension release from her chest.. “I just need blood wrought from pain. And because it’s magic, of course it can’t be my own. It doesn’t count unless it’s live.” Her voice turned bitter. She couldn’t even fully save herself. She couldn’t even lend energy to the exorcist that was due to make contact in, what, a little more than a week? “But I meant it, when I said you’re more than a killer. I don’t want to treat you like one, Mim. You should do something better with your time.”

“Most always,” Miriam bit back, but there wasn’t much bite to it, not when Morgan didn’t seem to be fighting much to begin with. She sighed, rubbed at the lines forming between her eyes. Eyes that flashed red briefly before she blinked the color and the feeling that came with it away. Miriam frowned, unused to the feeling, but shook it away. “I know that it sucks, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I apologize for the pessimism, but…” There was no but. She apologized. That was it. That was enough. She disliked that it upset Morgan, but there was no taking the words back, and there was no getting rid of their honesty. “I apologize.” She hoped Morgan understood how rarely she offered those up.

“Do you need to do this yourself, or is it a pride thing?” Miriam deadpanned. This, a blood sacrifice, something that she wouldn’t have suffered through were Morgan still a living, breathing witch, wasn’t a task that had to be conducted alone. Miriam hunted alone because she had to cause the pain, the misery, the anguish. She had to feed off of it. It wasn’t the same. “I’m offering my assistance to you, not your family, dearest, and if you find me a witch worthy of such a task, I really don’t give a shit, as long as you let me have a meal, afterwards.” She clicked her fingernails together, thinking. “It’s very easy to get blood wrought from pain. Killing isn’t even necessary. I would know, you know. I don’t always kill.” She grinned, though, just for Morgan, and her fangs slipped out easier than normal. Her voice is low and muffled by them when she speaks. “I know I’m more than a killer, but, damn, I’m just so good at it.” Then, more seriously, “Morgan, I’m offering. I know you think I’m more than a killer. I’m just offering to help. I’d hate to see you get arrested.”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Morgan mumbled, barely audible. She reached for Miriam’s hand and squeezed it carefully to show she meant it. There were more than enough reasons to believe the way she did, and as the days dragged on and the world shrank and shriveled up with winter, Morgan found she thought of it that way sometimes too. How much power could you exert by yourself in a world like this? What was the point when you couldn’t count on anything, anyone, to stay with you?

“If you mean ‘am I bitter that I have to face this death and magic problem as a neutered witch’ then yes, it’s a pride thing,” she said. “I don’t like having people do my dirty work for me. I’ve been on my own so many times, and when it comes to my deep, dangerous bullshit I feel better being the one to take care of it. And I...don’t really have much else going on for me. Definitely nothing else grounding me right now.” Morgan set her jaw, trying to to keep the prickle of tears at bay. It sounded awful out loud, but how else was she supposed to get this done except by giving this her heart and energy? How else was she supposed to come out of this free and cleansed (if that was even possib--no) if she didn’t put herself all the way in? “Does it have to be a spellcaster?” She knew that there were at least a few that made themselves into a menace. Jo the Alchemist was simply one she’d been able to find because her carnage crossed her path. She could find another, if she really tried, or maybe the fairest thing would be to pick someone at random, and hope they weren’t so traumatized from the experience they couldn’t have nice things after. It wasn’t the worst sort of deal. The pain caused by the bloodletting would at least go to Miriam’s survival, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. They both needed just enough to get by. And she couldn’t argue that she would probably make a shit torturer and cover up criminal.

Morgan looked up at Miriam, sniffling and blinking back tears. “You don’t scare me with those,” she said, hovering her finger over her fangs. She poked the corner of her mouth gently, teasing, and gave a sad smile.“You’re not a thing, you that too, right? When I say you’re more, I don’t mean you’re a swiss army knife. You deserve to have good things, better things, and I don’t want to use you.” But she needed this. Stars above, she needed this to go right. “So are you sure? Really, really sure?”

“Yes, well, I rarely am.” Miriam Flemming didn’t apologize. She just didn’t. She wasn’t raised to apologize, not properly, not well. She wasn’t sorry that she was wrong. She was sorry that she was right, and sorry that her words came out cruel because of it. Miriam owned up to her cruelty, but that didn’t mean she had to enjoy them. “But I’m apologizing for saying it, all the same.” She frowned a bit, looking Morgan over. “Then, perhaps, stop trying to solve problems as a neutered witch and start trying to solve them as a zombie. This isn’t me asking to do your dirty work. It’s just me offering assistance.” She swallowed. “And I don’t know what to tell you about grounding yourself. I’m not the one to offer that sort of advice, but.” She looked away. She wasn’t the kind to offer this sort of advice, not with her pastimes, not with her own marrow-deep need for revenge against a man that has long since been dead and buried.

“It doesn’t have to be a spellcaster,” Miriam said with gritted teeth. “But I would prefer it. For my own morality’s sake.” Though, maybe, her morals were skewed. But, if Morgan could find a shitty spellcaster, both of their needs were met. Morgan could get her blood, Miriam could get her blood, and they could both go about their merry way. This had worked fine with the Jo situation, Miriam had fed well for days off of that one. She sneered a bit as Morgan poked her fangs, but there wasn’t any meanness to it. She was more concerned with not making Morgan cry. She didn’t react well to tears. “Morgan, I’m quite aware that I’m a damn person. Granted, I can’t see myself in the mirror, so sometimes I wonder, but I know I’m not a thing.” She was more than a killer. She was just damn good at killing. “You’re not using me, I’m offering. And, yes, damn, I’m sure. I’m surer than sure.”

Morgan waited for whatever came after the ‘but’ of Miriam’s sentence but there was only silence. She didn’t know any better than Morgan. They were both just muddling along, trying their best, struggling against all of this muck, this pain, these ghosts tearing at their souls. She felt Miriam bristle, and shied away from her grasp reluctantly, an apology on her lips. Morgan swallowed it back and sniffled again, staring out into the night. This was the best plan she was ever going to get. There was no one else she could ask. There was no course in abduction and bloodletting she could cram for. She only had so many days before the exorcist she’d hired turned up ready to do the damage she’d asked for. Morgan couldn’t stomach having to fess up to needing more time, or to being gouged and mocked for needing that woman to do her work for her after the way they’d talked in the hotel. Playing the engagement in her head, the way the exorcist would laugh and sneer at once, Morgan cringed with humiliation. This had to be it; however heavy and cold it felt, this was her way out. “I don’t mean to upset,” she said. “I just needed to be sure. It’s important to me to be as fair with you as I can be.” She’d been enough of a magnet for collateral damage when she was alive. She didn’t want to hurt more people or bring whole classrooms and city blocks to their knees that cruel, evil little bitch. She couldn’t. But if this wasn’t going to give Miriam some kind of complex, then… “Okay. I’ll take a few days to pick someone out, spell caster or not, get in touch, and we’ll come up with a plan that minimizes risk to everyone. And when we’re done, I’ll end this.”

[blancheludis]

A/N: @iron-man-bingo square: “So you betrayed me with Uncle Rhodey.”

Fandom: Marvel, MCU Characters: Tony Stark/Pepper Potts, Morgan Stark, James Rhodes, FRIDAY Tags: Family, Fluff, Humor, Dad Tony, Precious Morgan Words: 2.244

Summary: “I said I didn't want to be disturbed," Tony snaps at FRIDAY, wondering why he bothers to put the workshop on lockdown at all when that is going to be ignored anyway.

"Distress calls from Miss Morgan take priority over that," FRIDAY replies coolly.

Tony is moving before she has even finished talking.

---

Blue, Tony thinks, is the perfect colour. It reminds him of the sky – not the dark nothingness of space but the hopeful stretch of horizon he could get lost in while flying. It is also the colour of the dress Pepper wore when they first danced and Tony first realized that she is his home in more ways than one.

It makes sense to paint her suit blue. Tony is nowhere near the point where he has to make decisions about the paintjob, however. More even than the War Machine suit, this one will have to contain all the security measures Tony can think of and more on top of that. He might have been lax about these things with his own suit, but the most important thing is his family.

“Boss,” FRIDAY’s voice interrupts Tony’s smooth motions while he spins the holographic specs in the air in front of him.

Now that his concentration is broken, he notices that his hands do not move as steadily as they should, but he dismisses that thought. He is still in the planning stages. Before he does not do any of the actual work, he does not need to worry about trembling fingers.

Tony glares at one of FRIDAY’s sensors. He has muted her hours ago because she kept reminding him to take a break or relayed messages from Pepper ordering him to do the same.

Ever since moving out to the lake house, Tony has become much better regarding his working hours. He has more important things to take care of now. He still cares about rebuilding and bettering as much of the world as he is capable of, even after failing to stop Thanos, but his family will always come first. His daughter most of all.

This is important too, though, he thinks as he stares at the plans for the suit he is going to call Rescue. He has talked about this with Pepper a dozen times over the years, begging for her permission to build her a suit. He has never meant for her to go out to play vigilante like he did. It is a simple safety measure.

Life has become quiet since the Snap. Tony’s fears have come to pass, the ultimate enemy has come down from the stars and wiped out half of the universe. That does not mean that the danger is over or that Tony has stopped being afraid. On the contrary, fear has become so familiar, and he has now more to lose than ever. He has gotten lucky once, and Tony does not trust that fate will spare him again.

His nightmares have changed now but they still come. Some nights he dreams of entering his daughter’s bedroom and finding nothing but a pile of ash on her bed. Some nights, he calls out for Pepper and gets only silence in return, the house utterly empty. He is still seeing the dead bodies of the Avengers too, joined by his family. Sometimes Peter is there, asking why Tony did not save him.

Often when he wakes from these dreams, Tony’s left arm is aching, accompanied by his stumbling heartbeat. It is a constant reminder of his own mortality. He has never minded that before, but now he has something worth living for.

The Rescue suit is a contingency. He is fond of those. Just in case has been his motto since Afghanistan beat What could possibly go wrong? right out of him.

“Boss,” FRIDAY repeats, causing Tony to stop his work unwillingly.

“I thought I said I didn’t want to be disturbed.” Despite his irritation, Tony hears the fondness in his own voice. He cannot be angry with his robotic kids for doing their job.

“Distress calls from Miss Morgan take priority over that,” FRIDAY answers, the merest hint of sharpness beneath her words.

Immediately, Tony is alert, the Rescue suit forgotten in front of him. The only reason he does not move yet, is because he needs to know what kind of trouble they are talking about and whether he needs to activate the security system, although FRIDAY should have already done that.

“What happened?” Tony demands, the well-known feeling of fear settling in his bones.

“Do you want me to open a –”

“Yes,” Tony cuts her off.

Despite his expectations, no video feed comes up on the screen. That means Morgan is either out of range of any of FRIDAY’s cameras – which is almost impossible anywhere on their grounds – or the situation is not as dire as Tony immediately feared.

“Daddy?” Morgan’s voice fills the workshop, containing an unmistakeable tremble.

Tony is moving even before she falls silent again. “I’m coming,” he promises and wishes he could guarantee that he will always be there for her.

The workshop door opens smoothly for him as if he has not ordered a complete lockdown hours – perhaps days – ago, and Tony takes two stairs at once on his way up. He realizes too late he has not asked where Morgan is, but that turns out to be unnecessary because he finds his daughter sitting on the couch in the living room, healthy and whole, beaming up at him, and surrounded by candy wrappers and an empty jar usually filled with homemade cookies.

“Dad,” Morgan squeals when she sees him, her tone the complete opposite from the fearful quiver it was the few seconds ago it took him to come up from the basement.

Tony skids to an abrupt halt, his heart still racing, while his mind tries to catch up with the fact that there is apparently no emergency, that his daughter is all right.

Out of the corner of his eye, Tony sees a shadow moving from the living room off towards the kitchen. He recognizes the slightly too smooth gait of Rhodey, still aided by the braces Tony made for his legs, and that is the only reason he does not rain hell down on the supposed intruder.

“Morgan,” Tony says, when he has calmed enough to feel the smile he has automatically directed at his daughter. He steps into the room, but does not get the chance to say anything further because Morgan jumps up and throws herself into his arms.

Tony catches her without hesitation. From up close, he sees the remains of more than one juice pop smeared across her mouth, but he lets her press her sticky face against his shirt anyway. It is not like he is much cleaner after his working binge.

For a long minute, Tony just holds on to her. Her warm weight in his arms will forever be a miracle, making him fall in love with her a little bit more every day.

“What happened?” he then asks, in this quiet, soft tone he did not know he could produce until the first time he held his new-born daughter.

“You’ve been gone forever,” Morgan answers immediately with a small pout. “Mummy said you’d have to get it out of you,” she continues, obviously quoting Pepper, “but Uncle Rhodey said you sometimes need help to get out of the basement.”

Tony has not even known that Rhodey planned to come over. None of them is actually good at sticking to plans, of course, with the notable exception of Pepper, and that has only gotten worse since Rhodey joined the universe-wide efforts of bringing some semblance of order back for all of them after the Snap. These days, he is as likely to travel through space – willingly – at Carol Danver’s side, as he is to stumble through their door, demanding some real food after weeks of alien slush.

For decades, Tony has missed his best friend, wishing his work would not keep him on another continent so often. Now, there are usually whole galaxies between them, and that is infinitely worse. Although Tony is glad for Rhodey to have found his place in this new world of theirs, and a budding romance too, although he keeps denying it. Carol, of course, is much more open about it.

“Help?” Tony asks his daughter, at once grateful and sad that she does not see anything strange about her space-travelling surrogate uncle.

Morgan nods happily. “He gave me lots of candy so I would try to sound sad when Fri called you.”

Tony tries to look stern but guesses his amusement must show, because Morgan’s smile turns wicked. “So you betrayed me with Uncle Rhodey? You and FRIDAY both?”

He will have to have a serious talk with Rhodey about appropriate measures and the allowed sugar intake of four-year-olds, but he cannot help but be glad that Rhodey is still here to pick up his slack, just like he has done since their MIT days. Without that, Tony would have never made it this far.

“No,” Morgan insists, frowning, “we helped.”

Tony turns so they can both look at the veritable battlefield on the couch. “And ate our whole pantry out of sugar.”

Not chastised in the least, Morgan giggles. “Juice pops are in the cooler downstairs,” she corrects him without the slightest trace of shame. “We only took the cookies from the pantry. Uncle Rhodey brought the candy.”

“Of course,” Tony says slowly but cannot pretend to be mad.

With Morgan still in his arms, he walks over to the couch table and gets a tissue out of the box Pepper keeps there. Morgan squirms when he wipes at the juice pop smears in her face but does not try to get free completely. It always warms Tony’s heart when she seeks his company. He cannot remember ever having done the same with his own father – not that it would have been encouraged.

“But you feel all right?” Tony asks once Morgan looks less like she has tried to turn juice pop into makeup. “No aching tummy?”

Morgan shakes her head but then looks at him earnestly. “I missed you.”

The worry in Tony’s chest unknots, making him feel all warm and happy. “Missed you too, hon,” he says. It is the complete truth. Ever since Pepper told him about the child growing in her, Tony has loved his daughter, more than he ever thought he could love anyone. “I didn’t notice how long I was gone.”

“Uncle Rhodey says you can’t read clocks,” Morgan says, no judgement or anger at his long absence in her tone. Tony really does not deserve someone as perfect as her. “Maybe I can help you.”

Biting down on his smile, Tony nods. “That is a very good idea.” The need to have a serious talk with Rhodey grows bigger by the minute. “Now, how about you brush your teeth while I greet Rhodey?”

He turns towards the stairs but stops again when Morgan grips his shirt right over his heart. “You can’t be angry with him.”

Amusement spreads through Tony but he keeps it from his face. “Oh? Why not?”

With complete innocence, Morgan answers, “Because he helped me bring you back.”

Tony sighs to mask the way he melts inside. “All right,” he agrees, inclining his head. “I won’t yell at him. Too much.”

He is rewarded with another brilliant smile. “Love you, daddy.”

And Tony, who has always been afraid of love because he never quite thought he deserved it, feels like nothing has ever been easier than to smile back at her and say, “I love you too.”

With that, he puts her down on the ground and gives her a playful shove towards the stars,

“And put that candy out of your pocket. You’ve had enough,” he admonishes lightly. “And don’t tell your mum about this or she’ll have my hide.”

Morgan laughs even while she shakes her head. “Mummy loves you.”

Another wave of warmth spreads through Tony. “She also loves sensible and healthy life decisions.” They share a conspiratorial grin, secure in the knowledge that they are a family and nothing will change that. “Now, off you go.”

Morgan makes a face, purely for the sake of making her protest known, but turns towards the stairs. Tony watches her go and does not say anything when she leaves the remaining candy in her pocket. She is the biggest miracle of his life. There are so many things Tony would change if he had the chance, but he cannot regret where life led him because he would not change having her for anything.

Once Morgan is out of sight, Tony turns around and strides off towards the kitchen. “Rhodey,” he yells, and swears he can hear another giggle from upstairs.

They all know he is not mad at Rhodey but that he will make a show of it nonetheless. He also knows that Rhodey will hold the coffee machine hostage, which is a fool-proof method of getting Tony to agree to inane schemes like proper self-care.

Whatever irritation Tony has felt at Rhodey and FRIDAY’s deceit has mostly drained out of him already anyway, softened by his conversation with Morgan and the exhaustion he now feels creeping up on him.

His work is important, especially since it concerns his family’s safety, but he has missed Morgan, and her immediate needs will always mean more than Tony’s contingency plans. Tony is sure he will take a break from going down to the workshop at least until Rhodey has left and Morgan and Pepper are asleep again.

Spending time with his family is the most precious gifts of all.

[meny-sempai]

MO DAO ZU SHI IS A MASTERPIECE – part 04

Hey guys!

First of all:

How is it possible that there are only 19 votes for this? Jeez…

This week’s newsflash!

Quote from the novel:

“Every day when Wei Wuxian was free, he played with the toddler Wen Yuan, son of Wen Qing’s cousin. He either let him hang on trees or buried him in the ground, fooling him that he’d grow faster if he was watered and bathed in sunlight… Turning around, though, he realized that Wen Yuan was gone. He almost turned pale, searching for the toddler all along the streets. Suddenly, he heard the wails of a child, and he immediately rushed over…

…

Wei WuXian, “Do you want one?”

Wen Yuan thought that he was going to buy one for him. He spoke embarrassedly, “Yeah.”

Yet, Wei WuXian walked in the opposite direction, “Haha, let’s go.”” (ch74)

Wei Wuxian, my son, you are so adorably horrible at parenting. Do keep it up. AND. If you think I’m not gonna use this in my favour, you’re wrong:

“Wei WuXian laughed madly, “Hahahahaha! Lan Zhan, congratulations! He’s taken a liking to you! He hugs the leg of whoever he likes, and he never lets go.”” (ch74)

“Jiang Cheng didn’t know when, but a child about one or two years old crept over and hugged his leg. Raising his chubby chin, he looked up at him with his dark, round eyes.” (ch73)

My boy JC = instant like. The children know.

Aaand that’s a wrap, see you guys next time!

… You wish. Let’s get started!

Before I begin I’ll just repeat this for the new readers:

I’m not a native English speaker so please bear with the mistakes I’m bound to make. I did read the novel, but only as far as the Exiled Rebels Scanlations translated it (thank you Rebels, you’re gods). I know a lot of spoilers, but I can’t say I know the whole story – If I start theorising be aware that I’m just theorising, I’m not actually telling the plot, but, just to be sure: SPOILERS ahead, I will use the facts I know for my analysis.

In this short series I’ll talk about the episodes, but I’ll also have long monologs about a certain topic.

EPISODE 07 – or, man I hate the Wens but I LOVE that theme music of theirs

… Has anyone ever told you the story about the boy who cried wolf?

And half of the fandom just died in the most satisfying death. I love how he just took a glance at the tables and was like: Nope, I’m not having any of this shit. And I’ll be theatrical and dramatic about it for all to see.

Remember what I said in one of my posts about the clans - how they don’t seem to be willing to play as a team and mostly watch their own? I think there’s a lot of truth in this and I suppose this is one of the reasons why the Wens grew so much in power. Nie sect obviously has a grudge against the Wens and wants to act on it. Now that Nie Mingjue is old enough he could do it. In theory. But without the assistance of other sects it would be suicidal. Was that why the Wens left Nie Mingjue and his brother alive after they killed their father? Did they know the other sects wouldn’t be willing to lift their fingers for the Nie? We can assume they didn’t react to the murder of Nie Mingjue’s father, so why would they help the Nie in revenge?

From my POV and understanding this advice of Lan Qiren should be pissing the hell out of Nie Mingjue. He is telling him to suck it up. Yes, for the sake of his clan, but also, because any kind of mess like this is endangering the other sects. Other sects chose to keep to themselves, so the advice is also: You do this, man - you’re alone.

On the other hand, this sentence can be also seen as how Lan Qiren himself feels. We saw him being enraged by the Wen clan because they let the Waterbound Abyss in their territory. But he can’t voice out his dissatisfaction, because he himself is sucking it up for his sect. If we see it that way, he’s basically saying: Even if we both riot it would be a suicide (Because, you see that yellow prick behind you? He’s not gonna help us and he’s the richest of us all. Jiangs are playing friends with them, they want to be family. We can’t count on any other help.)

And Lan Qiren is right. Nothing happened after Cloud Recesses was vandalized.

I don’t think the four big sects trust each other very much. The Wen sect actually brought them all together with all the shit they did. But teaming up happened mostly because the young ones took over.

I don’t even think they like each other. Which is kinda expected – they are all very different - their origin, mentality, temper, code, cultivation method. It’s actually funny how the Gusu Lan and the Nie are showing the first signs of teaming up since they are completely different in everything.

Instant confirmation to both Nie Mingjue and Lan Qiren. If you are understanding the scene like I described it, this guy laughing after what Lan Qiren said gets a whole new meaning. UGH. I don’t know why, but I really like the sound of his voice. Ugh…

And now we get the Jiang’s POV. The leader of the Jiang doesn’t care about the sitting arrangements (about the current situation of the sects). For him, the way things are, everything is already settled and can’t be changed in the present situation. What he cares about is THE FUTURE. Who will come after Wen Ruohan? Considering we know how deeply Jiangs value their family we can assume Jiang Fengmian is only thinking of how all of this will affect his children. Especially the future leader of Jiang.

What if? Jiang Fengmian always talks about the clan’s moto, he cherishes the “attempt the impossible”. But he himself is a very mild mannered man who doesn’t seem to have accomplished anything “amazing” in his years. And the way he acts could be seen as “weak” – he “accepts” the Wen sect, he “accepts” the wife’s anger, he “accepts” the marriage, he “accepts” the betrayal of his servant and friend. He is actually… very similar to Jiang Cheng.

What if the reason he’s being so strict and emotionless towards his son is because, in his way, he’s trying to make his son a better man than himself. Attempt the impossible/be like Wei Wuxian – don’t be like me. The future is bleak, and as a leader, you, my son, my heir, you can’t be like me.

Once again, MDZS makes a fabulous scene out of nothing.

Not at all.

My god, I love the dialog in this. Also, remember what I rambled about Wen Xu? Could this also be a hint? Did the sect leaders maybe hope to see him there? Instead, they got an untalented punk – worse than his father.

I’m sorry, for some reason I always laugh like an idiot during this exchange. I don’t know what it is that makes this scene so hilarious to me. Please, someone explain it to me.

He’s so precious!

Ah… JC, we meet again. I’ll talk about this moment down below. Just, remember it.

*squealing from love and insufferable pain*

JC: “Let’s split into two groups, then gather at the exit later.”

WWX: “Hey, where the hell are you leading me to?” (smiling)

JC: “Stop complaining! Just follow me.” BAM

WWX: “How about we go back the way we came? Rest assured. I definitely won’t tell anyone.” (teasing)

JC: “Just shut up, will you!” BAM

WWX: “Ahahahaha! Jiang Cheng.”

JC: “What now?”

WWX: “Look.”

I laughed my ass off the first two times I watched this. The third time… I noticed something.

Jiang Cheng takes the lead the moment the archery tournament starts, as an heir should. He gives out orders and goes into “follow me” mode. He has a path in mind, this strange and hard path looks right to him. He has a gut feeling he’s right in his decisions and he follows his gut. Wei Wuxian questions the plan like any of us would if someone started to drag us through “tight spots” for no reason. He questions him but he follows him nevertheless. I don’t think he even questions him for real, I think he’s just having fun watching his brother plays leader. And that’s one of the problems. Jiang Cheng is not playing. He’s trying to prove himself. This is his chance. So, when Wei Wuxian pokes fun at him he snaps like he usually does, but this time there is also an injury. Their conversation and Wei Wuxian’s comments hurt. Hence the head bumps. You can clearly see the change in Jiang Cheng’s expression after the first bump. He’s not so decisive anymore. He actually looks sad as if he’s starting to question his decisions too. But he can’t back down now so he just keeps going. And the smart-ass Wei Wuxian knows his brother too well. From his next comment we can see that he figured out what is bothering Jiang Cheng and as any decent sibling he pokes at it. Of course, Wei Wuxian doesn’t mean any harm, he’s just playing like the brothers always do. JC says some harsh things to Wei Wuxian too, it’s all part of being siblings. Sure, Wei Wuxian makes comments, but he still follows. He’s not even truly questioning anything, he’s annoying, but he completely trusts JC’s lead. He never thought of leaving his side, not even during “tight spots”.

Jiang Cheng doesn’t get hurt because of what Wei Wuxian says, he knows Wei Wuxian is probably the only one who doesn’t and won’t ever mean any of it. And that’s the biggest problem. Jiang Cheng believes in Wei Wuxian, he believes in WWX’s love for him, he trusts Wei Wuxian, but he doesn’t trust others. When someone says similar things that Wei Wuxian would jokingly say to him, Jiang Cheng can’t ignore it. Why? Because the same things have been said to him by the people who should love you the most. When your mother is always attacking your brother and saying you’re a fool to love him, when she is constantly dissatisfied with you and even says things like:

“You really are an idiot. I’ve told you long ago that you’ll never in your whole life be able to surpass the one sitting beside you. Not over cultivation, not over night-hunting, even over shooting kites, you can’t surpass him! … Your mom tells you countless times not to fool around with him, yet you’re still defending him. Just how did I give birth to a son like you?!” (ch51)

When your father never acknowledges you, when your parents are fighting because you’re not good enough, how do you feel? Wouldn’t any kind of comment affect you? Wouldn’t hearing that you’re worse at archery than some guy who missed the whole target hurt you? (But, they’re fighting because of Wei Wuxian and his mom, not because of JC.) Sure. But, would that be such a big problem if Jiang Cheng was as good as Wei Wuxian? If he was as good, wouldn’t that make his mother as good as the other woman? Wouldn’t that make his father love them equally? Besides, what child doesn’t think it’s his fault their parents “don’t love each other”?

“Jiang Cheng told him from inside, “Go sleep somewhere else! This is my room! You’re even gonna steal my room?!”

At that time, Wei WuXian didn’t know what Jiang Cheng was mad about at all. After a pause, he replied, “I didn’t steal anything. It’s Uncle Jiang who told me to sleep with you.”

Hearing that he was still bringing up his father, almost as if he was purposely showing off, Jiang Cheng’s eyes reddened as he yelled, “Go away! If I see you again, I’ll call a bunch of dogs to bite you!””(ch71)

This scene ripped my heart to shreds. Poor WWX, so confused and scared. Poor JC. Yes, this, THIS is jealousy. A full blown toxic jealousy attack, but there is also a lot to be read between the lines. Why is he exploding like this out of the blue? He was ready to forgive the fact that they’ve taken his only friends away from him. He was ready to share the room with the person for whom he had to give up his dogs. So why? He’s a child and he’s jealous, but is that really it? You know, seeing your father hugging someone should not be a trigger. It’s not normal to compare yourself just because of that. There has to be more, more unspoken reasons why someone would instantly compare oneself with someone. JC is someone who puts up with a lot of shit without saying anything – such people tend to explode for “no reason”. Realizing he’s been hugged only five times is the last straw.

When a very young child is unsure of whether his father loves him – you, as a parent, are doing something wrong. When a child is so afraid that his mistakes will make his father not like him even more – you have a very insecure child. An insecure child/person has a very low opinion of himself.

“Looking at Wei WuXian’s legs, Jiang Cheng’s face was full of nervousness. If any other disciple or servant learned about this and told Jiang FengMian, after Jiang FengMian knew how he threw Wei WuXian’s sheets out and made him hurt his leg, Jiang FengMian would definitely dislike him even more. This was also why he only dared chase after them alone and didn’t get anyone else.

Seeing how worried he seemed, Wei WuXian took the initiative, “Relax. I won’t tell Uncle Jiang. I only hurt myself because I suddenly wanted to climb a tree last night.”

Hearing this, Jiang Cheng sighed in relief. He swore, “You can relax as well. Anytime I see a dog, I’ll chase it away for you!”” (ch71)

I do believe this was the beginning of the ultimate trust. Also, after his jealousy attack, JC immediately realized what he did and felt bad. Yes, he was afraid of his father, but I do not believe for a second that that has any significance in his love for Wei Wuxian.

“Jiang YanLi put Wei Wuxian onto her back and began to walk back, wobbling in her steps as she spoke, “A-Ying, no matter what A-Cheng said to you, don’t bother about him. He doesn’t have a good temper, so he’s always home playing with himself. Those puppies were his favorites. Dad sent them away, and so he’s feeling upset. He’s actually really happy that somebody’s here to be with him. You ran out here and didn’t go back for a long time. I came to find you only because he’s worried that something happened to you and went to wake me up.””(ch71)

I love A Li, I’ll talk about her more later. She’s a great sister, but she does sometimes unintentionally do things that are unfair to Jiang Cheng (don’t attack me, wait for the next post for the elaboration). In this particular scene she was amazing. She didn’t get mad at JC (out of all the people he trusted her to bring back Wei Wuxian and don’t tell father about his mistake – that’s love). She carried them both (which is a nice contrast to Jiang Fengmian who carried only Wei Wuxian in the scene before). She tended to JC’s wounds from falling into the pit and encouraged him to say sorry. She. Was. Great.

But, let’s address one more thing. What does she mean by JC not having a good temper? What kind of a bad temper can a child have to not be able to have friends? Older JC is stiff and grumpy, but he does have friends in his sect and other people want to be his friends (Nie Huaisang for example).When you doubt your own worth, you can’t trust people to like you. Being around people can be hard. Being around dogs that have unconditional love for you can be very easy. It’s pleasant. I think Princess, Jasmine, and Love were healing his soul (like dogs often do) and taking them away was way more tragic from JC’s POV than it seems. No wonder he was wailing.

It’s funny how Wei Wuxian is afraid of dogs, but has so much unconditional love in him for his family.

I’ll talk about Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng more – the juicy episodes are coming. I’ll just say this: I really admire both of them. It would have been so damn easy for those two to hate each other’s guts, but they just don’t. And, yes, I don’t know the whole story, but right now, I believe JC never truly hated WWX, not even after everything.

Anyway.

Back to the scene from the donghua.

So, JC bumps his head and we laugh because it’s funny. If you are overthinking, like I am whenever JC appears on the screen, then you might see the head bumps as a metaphor for the comments JC has to live with. There’s one more way we can take this scene. Let’s say this is some form of foreshadowing. JC becomes the leader. Through thick and thin he leads and WWX follows him. JC’s decisions are not always the best, but the one who gets hurt by those decisions is him. Let’s go further and say the first bump is Shijie’s death.

Wei Wuxian: “How about we go back the way we came?”

I don’t know how it happens, but JC most certainly refuses to go back to how things were, he can’t go back. Even if you see honest hurt on his face, he continues and his leadership and decisions hurt him again. The death of Wei Wuxian. Even after this, JC continues on and in the end he reaches his destination. He was right all along, the path did lead to their goal (feral ghosts in this particular scene), but when he’s finally reached his goal he doesn’t see it. Not until Wei Wuxian points it out. When JC lost all of his family (Wei Wuxian in particular) he lost his focus. The goal became invisible because it had no worth anymore.

The two heroes of Yunmeng Jiang – Jiang Cheng needs Wei Wuxian in order to be himself and show his best.

I can’t wait for more chapters of the novel to analyse all of this and have a full picture of their relationship.

I know, ladies… Aahh… I know.

Well, you are extremely striking, Wei Wuxian, I’ll give you that. You’re so damn pretty here, my son.

One starts, the other one finishes. Both in their own ways. I just remembered this quote from the novel while re-watching:

“The two knew how to continue each other’s words ever since they were young. Now, one sentence after another, the argument flowed seamlessly…” (ch62)

I TOLD YOU NOT TO CRY WOLF! LOOK WHAT YOU DID! Calm down, Lan Zhan, breathe, my child brea-

HOLY FUCK! Down, Lan Zhan, stay down, remember the code! Remember, you’re a good boy, the best bo-

OK. OK, yeah, let it out. That’s healthy. Just… yeah. O.O (You better not piss off this dude. Fear the quiet ones, FEAR THEM.)

How can you be so smart, yet so stupid? XD Seriously, did you or did you not copy the damn rules for a month??? But, yeah, poor Lan Zhan, and poor Wei Wuxian – he is honestly confused. He wasn’t given a moment to properly apologize and he clearly wanted to. These two… they’ll be the death of me. Btw, the whole ribbon thing is so interesting, such a nice detail to the world building. But! I do admit that you most likely wouldn’t know about it if you follow only the animation. They should have made it more obvious. Unless. They did it like this on purpose, only to reveal it in the next season, which is also cool.

He feels so bad. TT_TT Don’t make that face at him, Lan Zhan, he’s a gentle soul. He doesn’t look like it, but he is.

Exactly. We won. Love is strong in JC. And look at those dorks. Precious. These moments are truly the blessing that we got from the animation. For me at least, it made me care about those guys even though I can’t remember their names. Those two nameless purple boys were the ones who made me drop my first tear in ep 11. These small things are so important. This is how you write a scene. 

Envious much? I get you, though.

EPISODE 08 – or, where have all these bitches come from???

Diminutive - used to express the fact that something is small, often either to show affection or to suggest that something or someone is not important: Adding diminutive suffixes is often a disparaging tactic. MDZS has this fascinating ability to tell and show without actually spending too much time to tell and show.

Once again, such an imaginative way to progress the scenes.

“The cultivation clans kept silent in indignation (after the fall of many clans), only to share their resentments secretly. In the same year Wen Ruohan commanded his eldest son, Wen Xu, to aggressively intrude and burn down the Cloud Recesses.”

Ah, Wen Xu, I had so much faith in you. But, at least you didn’t burn everything and killed everyone like Wen Chao did. And defying your father/leader is a no-no. Eh, dunno, I wish we had more on him.

Don’t touch my baby! *animalistic growling*

That was really… cruel. But, I already talked about it. I want to say another thing here. I think the main reason why Wei Wuxian immediately jumped to the chance to go with Jiang Cheng is because Jiang Cheng will be safer with him than alone (I think Jiang Fengmian knows this too). Wei Wuxian is very protective of his shidi, he always saves him from (physical) danger. Man, I really love the Jiang siblings.

This is a nice parallel to that one moment when Wei Wuxain absorbed resentful energy in the earlier episode. The core melting must hurt as hell. Since I know almost all of the Jiang family lost their cores in similar fashion I get so pissed whenever I see The core melting hand (I don’t care for his name, he doesn’t deserve to have a name, I actually hate him more than any other Wen. He knows what he’s doing is wrong, he knows his lords are evil and he does nothing and his excuse is some favor. I totally get why Wei Wuxain was so furious with him.)

SCREENSHOT!

Don’t do something that will kill you.

Also, I like how the moment Wen Chao said “Who else dares to defy my orders?” Wei Wuxian immediately showed up in the frame. It’s such a nice touch to his personality and it’s a nice “invisible way” of foreshadowing.

He’s such a good child… *ugly sobbing*

The world doesn’t deserve Wei Wuxian. The world punishes people like Wei Wuxian and everyone knows this fact. The world is just not ready for someone as good and righteous. It probably never will be and that’s sad. But being “good and righteous” is complicated and debatable. The world will never agree on “good and righteous”, the agreement can never be pure and open-minded – someone like Wei Wuxian will never be accepted in the real society. We can all say we admire him and we truly do, but we also call him a fool.

He is so creepy. I love the VA for this guy. The way he laughs and yells Yahoo adds to the craziness.

All of them are so cute here. Lan Zhan too, with his childish jealousy. They just look like kids playing around. Also, Nie Huaisang, I can’t wait to see more of your shady ass in the future.

… I just think this shot is beautiful.

Jin Zixuan: Did you just touch my shoulder with your filthy finger?

Me: Fret not, babe, I’ll have Wei Wuxian make him eat that finger.

Lan Zhan and Jin Zixuan started it, Wei Wuxian brings a whole new level to “Fuck you”. I mentioned this before, I’ll say it again: I really like how our MC fights first with his smarts and even when he’s physical you can see that he’s using wits and tricks to win. That’s not usually the case with MCs. In this particular case, because he used his wit to disgrace Wen Chao and the Wen sect, he got remembered and became the main target to Wens’ revenge. JC must be eating himself up over this. He tried so hard, yet at the end he let his brother do something that will kill him. Honestly, though, I would have done the same as Wei Wuxian… and then I’d be feeling guilty for the rest of my life… just like him.

… Um… Wei Wuxian sweety, your Yiling Patriarch is showing.

“Attempt the impossible” sequence is a go. Also, this is such a cool shot.

Can’t you see a giant killer turtle behind you??? Good to know what your priorities are. You dumb bitch. Also, that scream… That was a really good scream of Wei Wuxian. Well… not good. You know what I mean.

And that’s all for today. I always say to myself I’ll make it shorter next time and I always fail to do so. Well, hope you enjoy my rambling. See you!

[bountyofbeads]

The Liberation of Mitt Romney

The newly rebellious senator has become an outspoken dissident in Trump’s Republican Party, just in time for the president’s impeachment trial.

MCKAY COPPINS | Published OCT 20, 2019 | The Atlantic | Posted October 21, 2019 |

Updated: Sunday, October 20, 2019, at 9:32 p.m. ET

Mitt Romney is leaning forward in his chair, his eyes flashing, his voice sharp.

It’s a strange look for the 72-year-old senator, who typically affects a measured, somber tone when discussing Donald Trump’s various moral deficiencies. But after weeks of escalating combat with the president—over Ukraine, and China, and Syria, and impeachment—the gentleman from Utah suddenly appears ready to unload.

What set him off was my recitation of an argument I’ve heard some Republicans deploy lately to excuse Trump’s behavior. Electing a president, the argument goes, is like hiring a plumber—you don’t care about his character, you just want him to get the job done. Sitting in his Senate office, Romney is indignant. “Are you worried that your plumber overcharges you?” he asks. “Are you worried that the plumber’s going to scream at your kids? Are you worried that the plumber is going to squeal out of your driveway?” I am playing devil’s advocate; he is attempting an exorcism.

To Romney, Trump’s performance as president is inextricably tangled up in his character. “Berating another person, or calling them names, or demeaning a class of people, not telling the truth—those are not private things,” he says, adding: “If during the campaign you pay a porn star $130,000, that now comes into the public domain.”

At this, Romney glances over at two of his aides who are watching silently from the other end of the room, and grins. “They’re going, Oh gosh, shut up.”

I’ve spent the past several months in an ongoing conversation with Romney as he’s navigated a Washington that grows more hostile by the day. Before arriving in the Senate, Romney nurtured a pleasant delusion that he could somehow avoid being defined by his relationship with Trump. He had his own policy agenda to advance, his own vision for the future of the Republican Party. He would use his platform to take a stand against Trumpism, while largely ignoring Trump himself. When I would speak with his friends and allies in Utah during last year’s campaign, there was often a certain dilettantish quality in the future Senator Romney they envisioned—a venerable elder statesman dabbling in legislation the way a retiree takes up tennis.

Instead, Romney has emerged as an outspoken dissident in Trump’s Republican Party. In just the past few weeks, he has denounced the president’s attempts to solicit dirt on political rivals from foreign governments as “wrong and appalling”; suggested that his fellow Republicans are looking the other way out of a desire for power; and condemned Trump’s troop withdrawal in Syria as a “bloodstain on the annals of American history.”

Trump has responded with a wrathful procession of personal attacks—deriding Romney as a “pompous ass,” taunting him over his failed presidential bid in 2012, and tweeting a cartoonish video that tags the senator as a “Democrat secret asset.”

These confrontations have turned Romney into one of the most closely watched figures in the impeachment battle now consuming Washington. While his fellow Republicans rail against “partisan witch hunts” and “fake whistle-blowers,” Romney is taking the prospect of a Senate trial seriously—he’s reviewing The Federalist Papers, brushing up on parliamentary procedure, and staying open to the idea that the president may need to be evicted from the Oval Office.

In the nine years I’ve been covering Romney, I’ve never seen him quite so liberated. Unconstrained by consultants, unconcerned about reelection, he is thinking about things such as legacy, and inheritance, and the grand sweep of history. Here, in the twilight of his career, he seems to sense—in a way that eludes many of his colleagues—that he’ll be remembered for what he does in this combustible moment. “I do think people will view this as an inflection point in American history,” Romney tells me.

“I don’t look at myself as being a historical figure,” he hastens to add, “but I do think these are critical times. And I hope that what I’m doing will open the way for people to take a different path.”

With his neat coif, square jaw, and G-rated diction, Romney has always emanated a kind of old-fashioned civic starchiness. In the past, this quality has been the object of occasional ridicule. (During his 2012 presidential bid, reporters like me often snickered at his penchant for quoting lines from “America the Beautiful,” which he called his favorite of the “patriotic hymns.”) But in these decidedly more vulgar times, there is a certain appeal to the senator’s wholesomeness.

When I first caught up with Romney, in June, he was in a buoyant mood, preparing to deliver his “maiden speech” from the Senate floor later that day. I asked him how he was settling in. “This is great!” he replied. “I mean, everybody told me I was going to hate it here.”

I confessed that I was among those who thought he might not enjoy being the 97th most senior member of the Senate.

“I think people forget I worked for 10 years as a management consultant,” Romney said, referring to his time at Bain & Company. “Which meant I was able to make no decisions, I was able to get nothing done, and I had to try and convince people through a long process.” In retrospect, it seems, he was destined for the U.S. Congress.

Romney told me that he doesn’t think much anymore about his 2012 defeat to Barack Obama. “My life is not defined in my own mind by political wins and losses,” he said. “You know, I had my career in business, I’ve got my family, my faith—that’s kind of my life, and this is something I do to make a difference. So I don’t attach the kind of—I don’t know—psychic currency to it that people who made politics their entire life.”

Not everyone he’s met in the Senate shares this outlook, he said. “People are really friendly, they’re really nice—except Bernie,” he said, laughing. “He’s a curmudgeon. It’s not that he’s mean or whatever; he just kind of scowls, you know”—Romney hunched his back and summoned a Scrooge-like grunt. “For Bernie, it seems like this is kind of who he is. It’s defining. It’s his entire person. For me, it’s part of who I am, but it’s not the whole person.”

After he was elected in November, Romney began typing out a list on his iPad of all the things he wanted to accomplish in the Senate. It was 50 items long by the time he showed it to his staff, and though they laughed, he continued undeterred. By the time we spoke, it had grown to 60, with priorities ranging from complex systemic reforms—overhauling the immigration system, reducing the deficit, addressing climate change—to narrower issues such as compensating college athletes and regulating the vaping industry.

As he searched the Senate for legislative partners, Romney told me, he was warned that his efforts were likely doomed. Even in less polarized, less chaotic times, the kind of ambitious agenda he had in mind would be unrealistic. But Romney was steadfast in his optimism. “I’m not here to say it can’t happen,” he told me.

When I broached the subject of Trump that afternoon in June, Romney’s face didn’t register the familiar mix of panic and dread that most GOP lawmakers exhibit these days when faced with questions about the president. If anything, he seemed a little bored by the topic. I had heard repeatedly from people close to Romney that his decision to run for Senate was motivated in part by his alarm at Trump’s ascent. But he still seemed to believe that he could illuminate a path forward for his party without incessantly feuding with the president. “I’m not in the White House,” he told me. “I tried for that job; I didn’t get it. So all I can do from where I am is to say, ‘All right, how do we get things done from here?’”

Anyone familiar with the fraught history between Trump and Romney might have known that a detente was unsustainable. Trump has nursed a grudge since 2016, when Romney denounced him as a “phony” and a “fraud,” and warned of the “trickle-down racism” that would accompany his election. After he won, Trump briefly considered tapping Romney as his secretary of state, but the match was not to be. And in the years that have followed, the tension between the two men has only grown more exaggerated.

They manage that tension in different ways: While the president spent a too-online Saturday earlier this month unloading on Twitter—launching #IMPEACHMITTROMNEY into the canon of viral Trump taunts—Romney enjoyed a quiet afternoon picking apples with his grandkids in Utah and refusing to take the bait. When I met him in his office a couple of weeks later, I asked if the Twitter insults bothered him.

“That’s kind of what he does,” Romney said with a shrug, and then got up to retrieve an iPad from his desk. He explained that he uses a secret Twitter account—“What do they call me, a lurker?”—to keep tabs on the political conversation. “I won’t give you the name of it,” he said, but “I’m following 668 people.” Swiping at his tablet, he recited some of the accounts he follows, including journalists, late-night comedians (“What’s his name, the big redhead from Boston?”), and athletes. Trump was not among them. “He tweets so much,” Romney said, comparing the president to one of his nieces who overshares on Instagram. “I love her, but it’s like, Ah, it’s too much.” (After this story was published, Slate identified a Twitter account using the name Pierre Delecto that seemed to match the senator’s description of his lurker account. When I spoke to Romney on the phone Sunday night, his only response was, “C'est moi.”)

He understands, of course, that many of his Republican colleagues live in fear of being subjected to a presidential Twitter tirade. In fact, some believe that Trump’s targeting of Romney is intended as a warning to other GOP lawmakers lest they step out of line. That fear is one of the reasons his caucus has attempted such elaborate rhetorical contortions to defend Trump as the House impeachment inquiry turns up damning evidence. “I think it’s very natural for people to look at circumstances and see them in the light that’s most amenable to their maintaining power,” he told me in an interview last month at The Atlantic Festival.

Romney told me that he does not have an abstract definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” and that when it comes to identifying impeachable acts, he follows Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous standard for defining hard-core porn: “I’ll know it when I see it.” Asked if he’s seen it yet, Romney told me that he’ll make up his mind once he hears all the evidence at the trial: “At this stage, I am strenuously avoiding trying to make any judgment.”

In the meantime, Romney is leading the Republican revolt over the president’s recent decision to pull troops out of northern Syria, leaving America’s Kurdish allies behind. In a withering speech on the Senate floor last week, he condemned the administration’s betrayal of the Kurds, and called for hearings on the matter. He told me that he wants to see a transcript of the phone call between Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that preceded the troop withdrawal. “This is not just a disagreement on foreign policy,” he said. “This is a violation of fundamental American honor.”

Amid all the tumult, Romney has come to terms with the fact that there will be little progress on his legislative to-do list for the foreseeable future. (Between impeachment proceedings and next year’s elections, who has time to pass laws?) Nor is Romney especially well positioned to launch a bid for the Republican presidential nomination, despite endless fantasizing by pundits. (He has said he’s not planning to run again.) While his battles with the president have earned him plaudits from some in Utah—where support for Trump is uncommonly weak for a red state—he is widely viewed as a villain in MAGA world.

But Romney is looking beyond the next year, and beyond the president’s base, as he tries to lay the groundwork for a post-Trump Republican Party. While he acknowledges the failures of his own presidential campaign, he told me that he doubts Trump’s electoral coalition will be replicable in the long run. “We have to get young people and Hispanics and African Americans to vote Republican,” he said, adding that he hopes these voters will see his resistance to Trump as a sign that one day they could find a home in the GOP. If that seems naive, the senator is probably okay with it. In cynical times like these, someone has to serve as the guardian of lost causes.

After all, Romney said, “the president will not be the president forever.”

[jcmorgenstern]

Rambly not-review of QOAAD

Lol so tumblr is on fire and so am I so here’s Some Thoughts on QOAAD, mostly about the not-crispy boy, not as annoying and bitter as I usually am:

Bottom line: CC did right by me, y’all. Whether or not she did right by everyone else I can’t really say, but half of the time reading this book I felt she was catering to me personally, and y’all know how esoteric ‘catering to me personally’ is. There is some Wild Fuckening Shit in this book, and I for the most part loved it. A lot of my old gripes still apply, but tbh? for a kid’s book CC has really delivered some absolute gems and as critical as I often am, I really enjoyed reading this book.

Spoilers for the entire TDA trilogy, especially QOAAD, below.

Okay so for those of y’all who have read the book: let’s just get that whole thing out of the way. Yes she did in fact write three chapters of an AU where Sebastian won, is shacking up with a deeply unhappy Jace, and yes, I did in fact die irl. Like honestly I understand that’s problematic, and that the whole situation was about as fucked up as it gets, but honestly? I don’t give a shit. I was Thriving and even though I had to read Seb’s dumb ass dying again it was totally worth it 10/10.

Also Ash? Dark Jace? Biggest nut.

Basically, my criteria for liking the book were: (1) Ash can’t be a carbon-copy of Sebastian (2) Kieran doesn’t die and gets with Mark/Cristina (3) Diana and Gwyn stay together and (4) Kit and Ty keep being adorable. Bonus points were for (1) Dru and Ash interaction (2) more Dru content in general (3) Aline and Helen (4) that hint of Sebastian content she kept teasing that I never believed would actually materialize and (5) Julian and Emma breaking up so I never had to read another word about their “true love” at age 16 ever again (I’m a bitter asshole).

I honestly expected to get pretty much none of these and I was shocked to get everything except (5) from the list and so much more. So without further ado:

The whole Thule thing was a lot, tbh, starting with Maryse’s execution (I won’t lie, when Sebastian says “I killed my mother for Jace, and now he can return the favor” my dumb ass did in fact squeal out loud in a public bookstore) and ending with Sebastian’s really, really, really bad parenting skills. As a side note, the show must have had an advance copy of the book, because you may recognize the song little Jace sings with Izzy in....whatever episode they go into Jace’s head as the song Maryse sings before she dies. As far as I recall, that hasn’t been mentioned before (as well as the Malachi Configuration) so clearly the show got confused with the book release date. I’m sure that made CC very happy.

Like honestly Thule!Seb is just COHF!Seb taken up to 11, which is honestly a terrifying and hilarious thought, complete with a still-kicking designer clothes fetish and an inability to dream up a setting that isn’t a club. Sebastian’s designer suit fetish never really made much sense to me in terms of his personality--it always seems to remind me that I am, in essence, reading The Draco Trilogy with the names changed. But there are a lot of little details that recall COLS, which is always a plus for me, but also seem to indicate that he’s never really progressed or ‘matured’ beyond that. The return to the club setting as a callback to club in COLS, dressing Jace like a paper doll. While Thule itself is an imaginative setting, Sebastian’s presentation and behavior hasn’t changed at all, which shows that ultimately CC’s view of him is one of being completely static and inhuman.

I always really hated that, but here it works--it gives the impression that even though he’s won and destroyed the world, he’s living in the past, attempting to recreate COLS best he can. That mind-controlling Jace, going for a romantic murder or two with him, and chatting with Clary about how much she hates him is the happiest he’s been, the closest thing to family he can conceive of.  I think one of the most fucked up parts of COLS, and one of my favorites, is that the Magic House is a darkly genteel reflection of the warped view of family Valentine has, that Sebastian has symbolically completed.

Valentine’s wardrobe full of clothes he’s bought for Jocelyn for “when she returns,” all with the tags still on, is possibly the most chilling part of the entire book. He views his family--Jocelyn, Jace, Clary, as a thing to accomplish, to control, to collect and arrange in a seemly manner. He truly seems to think, or at least want to believe, that after he’s destroyed the entire downworld and the entire shadowworld government that they can all go play happy families. That his family would want to play happy families with him, or even be anywhere near him. It’s both terrifyingly cruel and self-aware and completely naïve, that he believes he can make his family love him, or at least pretend.

It’s that same mindset that Sebastian inherits--“I will bend him to my will and teach my sister to love me” pretty much sums it up, although he manages to be a bit more petulant about it. Although he seems to emphatically reject Valentine, he’s become Valentine, inherited his sword, his ring, his creepy shrine-to-Jocelyn house and his mindset and view of family. The same entitlement and sense of ownership Valentine displays to Jocelyn (and in a different way, Jace), Sebastian shows to Clary (and again, to Jace).

Valentine never saw his “vision” through, but Sebastian symbolically completes his father’s vision of their family, not as a son but by becoming his father, and Clary her mother. CC emphasizes and repeats this over and over, how Clary looks like her mother and Sebastian like his father, exactly like his father. Sister Magdalena even comments on it (“Why, you look just like your parents,” when Clary expects her to comment on their difference or wonder why Clary is in the company of a murderer). One can suppose that given his feelings towards Valentine and how he always resented Valentine’s lack of approval towards him, Sebastian craves “love” more than anything--or at least, his conception of love, which we all can agree is pretty fucked up. The completion of the “family” is thus probably what Sebastian sees as fulfilling, that control and coercion is as close to love and belonging as he can understand, or that he’s experienced.

There’s a very interesting sense in which in creating the Endarkened and going on a path of world destruction, Sebastian himself loses all sense of self or free will. It always bothered me that Lilith’s blood is used to abnegate free will in the Endarkened when Lilith herself is often interpreted as a symbol of free will (and feminism--that’s a rant for another day). But there is very much a sense that the Battle of Burren is Sebastian’s moral event horizon, that in trying to rape Clary or force all free will out of her and others he cements himself as ultimately irredeemable. I’ve often complained that his motivation for destroying the world is...well, non-existent, but in a sense it reflects an erosion of person-hood, that he is less a person in himself with his own self-directed wants and goals than a shadow or echo of Valentine embracing senseless (demonic?) destruction.

I know I’m going completely off the deep end, but I recently studied Milton and although it seems pretty clear that CC is more a Virgilian than a Miltonist (tbh I really don’t think she’s read Paradise Lost because if she had, she wouldn’t stop quoting it), Milton’s conception of Lucifer is really a prototype here. One reading of Satan in PL is that the personified Sin and Death (his “offspring” so to speak) are really just solipsistic echoes of himself and his hubris, and I think there’s a very interesting sense in which Sebastian could be read in a similar way to Valentine. In many respects, to me, Jonathan represents a sum of Valentine’s greatest sins--bigotry, hatred, cruelty, pride, and really bad use of the experimental method.

I get the impression that CC struggled with Seb’s characterization in COHF, and in large part that’s because he has no character, no motivation beyond destruction and a certain rapaciousness towards Clary. As I’ve derisively said before, wanting to fuck your sister is not a sound core personality motivation for a character. The way he’s written in the books, there’s not a lot of poignancy in his character, and although people do seem to feel sympathy for “green eyed Jonathan” (uwu), he doesn’t really exist any more than Sebastian does. Although CC claims through Clary that Sebastian wants to destroy the world to make it something that can love him, what she misses is that Sebastian in COHF is not really a character but an Endarkened version of himself--a shadow. He doesn’t seem to be much of anything.

Thule is the result of that hollow destruction, an Endarkened shadow of canon, and for that reason it completes COHF in that we truly see what CC means when she says there wasn’t enough good in him left for him to live--what I think she could also mean is that there isn’t enough of Jonathan left, or there never was. Valentine aborts his development (in...many ways: stay tuned for reports from the frontlines of developmental psychopathology, which I am taking) and what’s left is a solipsistic reflection or echo not of Jonathan’s demonic parentage but of his human father. And there’s something understatedly tragic about that cycle coming to a close with Ash, with Sebastian behaving the same way towards his son as his father did to him--with callousness and a desire to exploit. CC explicitly calls this possessive, which is of course a callback to how he treats Clary, but I think he’s more reflecting the father role he inherited from Valentine.

And Ash closes that cycle by killing Sebastian--just as, I would argue, that Sebastian in some sense wanted to kill Valentine. More and more I’ve been leaning towards a reading (and I hope with absolutely no confidence that the show leans towards this reading as well) where Sebastian’s obsession with Clary is at least partly due to the fact that she has done the thing that would symbolically complete him--kill Valentine. Sebastian hasn’t killed Valentine, literally or symbolically, and the cycle repeats; in this way, Ash as a Morgenstern takes more after Clary than he does his father.

Is this edgy, pseudo-academic, piss-poor, completely incoherent bullshit? Absolutely. The point is, god is dead and if I want to compare Paradise Lost, one of the eminent works of the English canon to a YA series based on fanfiction I can. Also, Thule may suck but Sebastian did canonically destroy the world financial system so is he really that bad? (Yes).

[ariannnawinchester]

Better late than Never

Characters: Dean, Reader, Sam, Jess, Meg, Charlie and Amara.

Pairing: Dean x Reader

Warnings: Just swearing. And waaaaay too many eye rolls and sarcastic scowls. FLUFF! (Dean being a sweety)

Summary: College Au. Everyone meets up for drinks as friends usually do and things take a very interesting turn. The reader finally admits how she feels.

A/N: This is for @dancingalone21​‘s AU Funny quote Challenge and I picked, “I have this code. No cash for ass.” I just wanna say congrats on 2K followers, your work is stellar and you deserve everyone of them. I hope everyone enjoys reading it as much as I enjoyed writing this. Thank you for reading and if you thought it was great, feedback would be appreciated. Lots of love!

You weren’t even supposed to be out tonight, you were supposed to be stuck in your room with your head buried in your biology books and studying for the test on Monday. But, here you were standing at  the counter of a bar Charlie worked at because Meg, was way too persuasive for her own good.

“I don’t want a beer” you whined and pouted like a spoiled child, “I want shots, preferably vodka or whiskey because tonight we get to meet Dean’s lovely new girlfriend.” you rolled your eyes with a sarcastic scowl on your lips

Jess scoffed, some beer flying out of her mouth as she tried to choke down her laughter, “Wait, how many is it now? Like five or six  in one month?”

“Uhh, try eight.” you stated.

Meg looked over her shoulder at Jess and you, “Yeah, the librarian’s assistant and Anna. To be entirely honest, Dean gets more ass than a toilet seat.”

You couldn’t help yourself, laughter bellowed out of your chest as you held onto the counter trying to catch your breath.

“Don’t forget psycho Lydia.” you heard Sam’s voice behind you as he wrapped you into a bear hug and went to give Jess a kiss hello.

“Trust me no one is gonna forget that one.” You stifled a chuckle as Meg began to stick her index finger in her mouth and make gag gestures.

“Oh, she made sure everyone in our building heard her having multiple big O’s. She’s just a drama queen.” Jess stated, disapproval coating her voice, “I can’t believe she leaves her adorable baby girl every night just to hook up.”

“That’s kinda why she got pregnant in the first place.” Charlie added her commentary when she popped up from the other side of the bar counter.

“Damn it!” you grasped at your chest, “You scared me Red.”

She giggled, winking at you then placed the whole bottle of vodka on the counter, “A gift from me to my beautiful friends.” she cocked to her head to the side and grinned, “especially for Y/N because I heard tonight you get to meet the new bird that’s been pecking after Dean.”

You rolled your eyes at Charlie, faking your annoyance, “Less talking Red and more drink pouring. I wanna pass out and get carried to the car like Meg last weekend.”

“Heeeeey!” Meg squealed in offence, but then her lips turned into a sloppy grin, “It was a great night. I finally got a chance to get into Cas’ neatly pressed chino pants.”

“What?!” Jess exclaimed whilst the rest of you stared with wide eyes and mouths agape, “Why didn’t you tell us sooner?!”

“What?” Meg shrugged, a smug smile on her face, “You all were dancing and we were alone. In the laundry room. I gotta say those months I spent pining over his pretty face was so worth it.” then she turned to face you, “Now it’s time for you to make your move. Dean’s blind. You have to spell it out to him. Or you’re gonna be waiting for him for your whole life.”

The atmosphere suddenly changed and you felt all their eyes settle on you. They hated seeing you pine after him for all these years, yet you never had the courage to say anything. You didn’t want to change the dynamic because once you unsettled things, there was absolutely no way to go back. You were afraid. It was weird, guys never ruffled your feathers, you never had a problem with getting them or keeping them but when it came to Dean, all your wits leapt out off the window and all you could do is stare at his pretty face until you snapped out of your daydream, where he was hopelessly in love with you as well.

Trying to ease the tension, “Come on guys, then i’d be having so much sex that we won’t have time to hang out.” you joked, punching Sam playfully in the arm, “Besides I get the feeling all of you will miss my cute little face way too much.”

You let out a deep breath when the chorus of laughter filled your ears, conversation diverted! Mission accomplished! Just as you were about to do another shot, Jess nudged you in the ribs whilst she motioned with her eyes to the direction of the door. You gulped at the sight of Dean and a girl clinging onto him. Unconsciously, your face had twisted into a disgusted scowl which earned you narrowed eyes from Charlie at the end of the bar counter, as if to say play nice.

How could you? This girl was a disaster. Where does he find them? You tried reasoning to yourself that maybe she was a great person but you could feel the jealousy boiling beneath your skin.

“What the fuck?” Meg mouthed at you before turning to face Dean and his date with a megawatt smile.

“Vodka!” she squealed, reaching for the bottle on the counter which caused her already tiny skirt to hike up higher displaying her butt cheek which didn’t concern her at all, “Can I borrow your glass? I’m borrowing your glass.” she said way too excitedly, before prying the shot glass out of your hand.

Everyone watched on with stunned expressions on their faces, just blinking at her. You could see heat rise up to Dean cheeks as he turned to everyone with a sheepish embarrassed smile on his face.

“You’re Amara right?” Sam attempting to make conversation.

“Yip, Amara. That’s me.” her speech on the verge of being slurred, “I was so excited to go out with Dean and to meet you guys. You are all so cool. I was passed out last weekend, you know at the party, and Dean helped me” she downed another shot then smiled goofily

Midst this chaos, Dean’s eyes met yours , sparks flying as usual but this time instead of staring on, you looked away and asked, “So you go here, to Stanford ? I’ve never seen you around.”

She giggled, the sound annoying you even though it really shouldn’t, “I go here.” her fingers gesturing quotation marks, “Just because my parents forced me, ya know? I wanna travel the world and party until I drop. Because what’s life without a little fun.”

“Riiiiiight.” the word dripping with cynicism out of Jess’ nude pink painted lips.

Half a bottle of vodka later, Amara had tugged Meg onto the dancefloor. If looks could kill she would have been dead five minutes ago and brutally by the looks of the murderous rage in poor Meg’s eyes

“Sorry.” you mouthed to her and shrugged with a grin on your face.

“Hey.” Dean’s gravelly voice tickled your ear, suddenly making your body way too aware of his close proximity, “are you still not talking to me?”

You pursed your lips, looking way more irritated than you were and still not turning to face him, “what makes you think that I’m ignoring you?”

“I sent you like a 500 hundred texts and you responded by saying K.” he whispers in your ear furiously.

You turn towards him and shoot him a death glare, his green eyes softening at the anger he could feel radiating off you, “You know I have a life and it doesn’t revolve around you.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” he narrowed his eyes, his pouty lips curling into an annoyed snarl.

“Nothing.” you plastered a fake smile onto your face, “It means nothing. You sure she’s not a hooker? Trying to swindle you?” you couldn’t help the scoff that bubbled in your throat.

“Me? With a hooker? Never gonna happen.”

“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“See, I have this code. No cash for ass.” he smirked, looking at you with a smoldering gaze as he took a swing of beer.

“Fair enough. Dean “The stud” Winchester.” you said in the tartiest voice you could muster. “I still don’t get it though.” you shook your head at him, “how do you even choose them? Do you not want an actual relationship?”

He only answered after a moment passed, your heart thrumming in your ears because you feared what he might say, “Look at Sammy and Jess.” he pointed to them as they were snuggled together in a corner booth, eyes only on each other, “That’s what I want. No games, no tricks, just the promise of being together no matter what. And right now, chicks just wanna fuck. I’m not complaining but sometime I just wish-”

“For more.” you were hanging onto his every word, you hadn’t even realized your lips were just inches away from his, you could smell his beer/peppermint breath that was fanning across your lips.

“Y/N. You wanna know why I’ve never asked you out?”

“Why?” the word barely came out of your mouth. Your chest was heaving, your breathing unsteady because his gaze made you feel like the only girl in the room.

“Because when I ask you to be my girl, it’s not going to be for a few weeks or months or years. I want it to be forever. I want you to be sure that you want to be with me forever. I don’t want you to break my heart and I don’t want to hurt you because you deserve more than that. You’re the girl that I wanna marry.”

He set your blood on fire and sent it racing through your veins. You took a deep breath, closing your eyes to calm yourself before you cupped his scruffy cheek, “Dean I was sure the moment I saw you, freshmen year.”

“Finally.” he whispers, pressing his lips to yours and taking your breath away, “Finally.” he shouts so the whole bar can hear, “She finally admits it.”

You furrow your brows, confused when everyone drops what they are doing and starts to clap and cheer for you and Dean. You glance at Jess and Sam and they are hooting, then at Charlie who is whistling, at Meg who throws you a naughty wink and then at Amara who’s clapping louder than everyone.

“No way!” the realization dawns on you as Dean wraps his arms around your waist, “You planned this. And to think I was going to punch you for being a man whore.”

A loud rich laugh made his chest rumble just before he took your face in his hands and kissed you so soft and tender, it made your knees go weak. The years pining for him was so worth it, if this is how the rest of your life with him is going to be.

[wrestlingbabe]

Make it all better.

Baron Corbin/OC- Reader and Baron get into an argument that leads to Baron showing her how much he was sorry.

Warnings: Arguing(like a little bit, does this need to be a warning,), smut, hair pulling, like a spank.

Shoutout to that anon who requested this. I just recently started to get into Baron so I hope this was everything you’ve ever wanted. Sorry that it was kind of short. Also shoutout to the people who want to get tagged in this stuff @the-geekgoddes @vebner37

I used to love when Baron came home. We would spend majority of the time together and never worry about anything. He always treated me like I was the greatest thing to ever happen to him, but recently everything has kind of changed.

Now when he comes home we spend maybe a day out of a week or two together. The guys are always around either hanging out at our place or him at theirs. If he isn’t doing that than he is working on his motorcycle. When he is home he never helps me out with anything like taking out the trash or laundry and it was starting to upset me.

1 week later----

“Hey babe can you make sure you take out the trash before I get back?” I yelled over him and the guys watching T.V.

“Uh yeah I got you.” Baron didn’t even look at me.

I walked out of our place and got into my car trying not to have a breakdown. I didn’t understand why everything had to be a problem with him. I got to the grocery store and went inside. I was half way done when I got a text from Baron.

3:21 “Wait what did I need to do? I forgot.”

I looked up at the ceiling for a second and groaned. I replied and went on with shopping.

3:21 “Just need you to take out the trash please.”

I didn’t hear back from him so I assumed everything was fine. I finished my shopping list and went home.

When I arrived I didn’t see Baron’s motorcycle there.”Please Please Please just of taken out the trash.” I opened the door with my arms full of groceries and groaned. The trash was still sitting there. I put the groceries on the counter and picked up my phone to call Baron.

“Hello.” I barely heard him over the music in the background.

“Baron seriously! I asked you to do one thing and you couldn’t even accomplish that. You are barely here and I would love if you could just help me out every once in a while.” Tears started to run down my cheek as I tried to keep my composure. “You barely hang out with me and I’m kind of thinking that maybe its because you don’t want to.” I said the last part quietly as the thought dawned on me.

“WHAT! No babe I love you I could never. I just forgot-”

“YOU TEXTED ME ASKING ME WHAT IT WAS YOU NEEDED TO DO. Just don’t. I’ll just see you when you get home, if you come home.” I hung up the phone before I could hear anymore excuses.

I put the groceries up and went to our bedroom. I laid down on the bed and took a shaky breath. I loved Baron so much but I feel like its only me with those feelings. Maybe he didn’t need me anymore. I moved further up the bed and laid on his side. I laid there for a few minutes before I felt like I was being suffocated by his scent. I rolled over to my side and slowly my eyes started to shut.

I woke up about an hour later to Baron rubbing my back gently. I huffed and wiggled further away from him.

“Y/N I’m really sorry. I know I screw up sometimes and sometimes I act like a dick, but I promise I love you with all my heart and that could never change. You are the best thing that has ever happened to me and I don’t know what I would do without you.” I felt Baron grab at my waist and pull me closer to him.

“God that was cliche. Which movie did you steal that from? If you wanted to be anymore original you could of quoted the Notebook.” I sarcastically replied while I rolled over to face him.

Baron laid down by side me and pulled me into his chest. “I’m going to work on this more okay. I’m going to tell the boys that I need my lady more than them sometimes and I’m going to take out all the trash always.”

I smiled up at him,” Well I’m taking you up on that promise. So next week when you aren’t here, you better find a way to get here to take it out.” Baron laughed and kissed the top of my head.

“I missed you babe.” Baron placed his hand on my lower back. 

“Oh yeah. Why don’t you show me?” I pushed my hands under his shirt and scratched up his abs.

Baron groaned and pushed me over onto my back. “I would love to.” He got up on his knees and pulled my shirt over my head. He kissed me hungrily. His tongue sliding against mine.

I groaned and started to push my pants down. Baron caught my hands between his, “Let me do that.” Baron kissed down my neck, nipping at the skin there. He reached behind me to undo my bra and immediately started to pinch my nipple. 

I gasped at the sudden harsh movement, ”More baby please.” Baron bent down and started to flick his tongue over my nipple causing me to arch my back. I felt myself getting wetter and started to rub my thighs together to get some sort of relief. 

Baron saw my movement and pushed my thighs open, “Stay still.” He switched to my other breast and gently bit on it, enough to cause a small hickey. “Mine. Understand?”

 I moaned at his words and nodded, “Will you touch me?” Baron smiled and moved further down the bed. He crawled between my legs and pulled my pants off. He played with the top of my panties and then dragged his finger down to my clothed clit.

“You’re so wet. Did you miss me?” He started to rub circles on my clit while I grind my hips up trying to speed him up. Baron pulled my underwear down my legs. He traced his fingers back up my legs starting at my ankles. I let out a small giggle when he got to my thighs. 

“M’sorry just a little ticklish you know.” Baron spread my legs and smiled at me.

“Well than I’m sure my beard will have you squirming.” It took all but a second for me to register what he meant, but the moment I felt him slowly lick my slit I understood.

“Fuck Baron. God don’t stop.” He sped up his actions. When he got to my clit he sucked on it hard and than flicked his tongue back and forth on it quickly. My thighs felt like they were on fire from his beard rubbing them. I knew that tomorrow I would be redder than a brick. My thighs squeezed his head as I was about to go over the edge. “Baby, Baby oh go- Fu- Fu- Fuck. About to.” Baron slipped two fingers into me and my orgasm washed over my whole body. He continued to drive his fingers into me as I rode out my orgasm. I pushed at his shoulder and he sat up.

“Does my baby feel any better?” He said in between sliding his jeans off.

“Much better but I think you could make it a little better.” I said as I slid my hands down my body to my clit. Baron moaned and flipped me to my stomach. I huffed out a breath and pushed my ass up a little.

“Don’t be a tease.” Baron said as he delivered a slap to my ass. I hissed at the contact and Baron ran his hands up my back. He used one hand to direct his dick to my core. He slipped in just his tip causing me to moan,”See, I can be a tease to.”

I smiled to myself and pushed my hips back at him causing him to slide completely in me. We both moaned at the same time and Baron started thrusting at a brutal pace. He pulled my hair into a makeshift ponytail and pulled me up to make my back flushed against his chest. “Missed you so-o much baby. Wanted to do this for such a long time.” Baron moaned and bit my neck. 

His other hand slid down my stomach to my clit. He started to rub slow circles making me whine, “Baron, babe oh speed up, harder please.” Baron lowered me to my elbows and gripped onto my hips. He pulled almost completely out and slam back into me. Every other thrust it felt like the air getting knocked out of me. 

I brought my fingers to my clit and rubbed fast. My eyes rolled back as the pleasure of my orgasm started to build up. “I’m going to cum. Cum with me ple-ease.” 

Baron grunted and started to slow down his thrust giving me a heads up that he was right there with me. He slapped my ass hard and my orgasm finally peaked. My toes curled and legs started to shake at the power of it. “Ba- Ba-beeee.”

Baron moaned at my walls clenching around him, “Baby feel so good. Going-” He groaned out my name as he came.

My arms finally gave out leaving me to land on my stomach. Baron laughed and got up off the bed. As I laid there I heard the shower start up. Baron came up to the bed, “Ready for a shower babe?” I groaned at the thought of getting up but  squealed when Baron picked me up and wrapped my legs around his waist.

“Missed you.” I mumbled into his shoulder as he started to walk us to the shower.

“I missed you more. But do I really have to take out the trash?” I rolled my eyes at his question