#in the worst moment possible

[flamingpudding]

Overshadowing in the worst way possible

Danny froze, and blinked. Several times.

His smile dropped.

Internally, he was screaming bloody murder inside his head.

Freaking the f out.

Was he having a panic attack?

It felt like he was having a panic attack.

Internally, at least for sure.

Why does timing suck so much for him?

Danny stood frozen seeing his own reflection in the kid's eyes, well eye, the other looked swollen shut already.

Dear Ancients, he was only freaking out more.

Danny had heard of things like this before...

His ghost rogues turned friends had a lot of stories to tell.

But this was worse than any story he could have ever heard before.

It was his worst nightmare.

The crowbar clanged loudly as it dropped to the floor.

His hands gripped his hair hard, nearly ripping strands out.

"Oh fuck, oh God... what the hell?!"

Danny has no idea how it happened nor could he remember but somehow...

He got stuck in the body of a clown that was beating on a kid.

This was making him so damn sick already.

He will need a whole lot of sessions with Jazz once he figured out what was happening.

And that kid probably would need it too.

Because whatever was happening wasn't helping his own clown trauma or the kid's possible trauma at all...

[littleholmes]

“Yes. I can read people’s minds.”

That is major that Anya even told anyone, let alone Damian, that she can read minds. I’m just amazed. But also it’s a good thing he didn’t believe her because if he did? 😬

[blue-mood-blue]

Of all the missed opportunities with Gongyi Xiao (of which there are many, why would you do that to my boy), I think the one I pine over most is that open and available invitation to Qing Jing Peak.

Because, if timed right, the possibilities are fucking hilarious.

You’re Gongyi Xiao. Your pride has taken a little bit of a hit after the Immortal Alliance Conference both because everyone expected you to place first (and you didn’t) and your teacher got so distracted by the one who did place first that you’ve felt a little… neglected. But you’re a nice person, and the conference ended with the deaths of so many of your shidi and shimei that you let the petty concerns roll off your back.

Except then the guy who pulled the upset at the conference shows up at your sect and pulls an upset on every other aspect of your life. The girl you like and who you thought liked you has heart eyes for him only, your teacher is definitely putting you on the backburner to the point of handing this guy most of your responsibilities (and he’s killing it, he’s doing amazing, it’s the conference all over again), and everyone else in the sect seems to prefer him to you. No one’s cruel about it, and they’re still listening to you - mostly. Most of the time. But you have the sinking suspicion that if it came to an actual disagreement between the two of you, you know who’d end up on top. Plus he looks just like you, except hotter. Maybe that’s not the kind of thing a guy like Gongyi Xiao outright perceives but there’s a vibe. The vibe of inadequacy.

(And because you’re Gongyi Xiao and a good person, you don’t have the kind of suspicion in your heart to start looking for ulterior motives or conniving plots - but even if you did, what would you find? The guy who is looking more and more like your replacement came to the sect injured. He looks sadly and deeply into the distance every time his original sect or shizun are mentioned. He’s polite. He’s talented. What are you supposed to say, that he survived unexpected disaster at the conference only to hatch some sort of hostile takeover plot in the meantime? Who would believe that.)

So, maybe it’s time to step back. Clear your head. Shake off the ridiculous and unfair jealousy, and give both yourself and Luo Binghe some space. What better time to take Shen Qingqiu up on his offer to visit Qing Jing? You can’t stop what’s happening regardless, so maybe it would be better not to be there while someone else swoops in and steals your whole life. (And maybe, tucked away deep in a not-so-good-of-a-person-after-all corner of your heart, there’s the possibility of slipping a few hints to Shen Qingqiu that his disciple is alive and well at another sect. Purely because Shen Qingqiu deserves not to mourn for someone still alive, and not at all for the sliver of hope that he’ll take the disciple he misses so much back so you can go back to the way things used to be.)

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to anyone else and especially not Gongyi Xiao, Luo Binghe is losing his mind. He had a plan. He was establishing himself. He was moving slowly and carefully so as not to startle Shizun, and this guy gets an invitation? Just, welcomed right in, specially, by Luo Binghe’s teacher? What did he do to deserve that? Is Shen Qingqiu going to poach Gongyi Xiao? As his replacement? So he can have a squeaky clean, good, human disciple like he wanted? Luo Binghe is better than him. He proved it at the conference. He proved it before the conference. He’ll prove it again if he has to. (He’s more attractive than Gongyi Xiao, too, and Shizun can hardly fail to notice if they’re side by side in front of him, so there.)

The Old Palace Master is using every trick in his arsenal to keep Luo Binghe from following right behind Gongyi Xiao while cursing Shen Qingqiu under his breath and frantically moving plans around to push up the date for the peak lord’s fall from grace, Luo Binghe is packing his bags furiously and tearing his own plans to shreds in the wake of his determination to prove himself absolutely irreplaceable, and Gongyi Xiao is enjoying a nice cup of tea and personal tutoring from Shen Qingqiu while making increasingly pointed comments about how sometimes missing-and-presumed-dead disciples just… pop up somewhere, at random, a few years after the fact.

Shen Qingqiu is blissfully (miserably) unaware of the chaos about to descend upon his peak.

[vaguely-concerned]

thinking about how deeply lucanis' life has been defined by a lack of control of that life -- as he himself points out, even before the ossuary went and carved the headline out again with big bloody letters. of course he reacts badly to losing what little control he did manage to construct for himself even within those circumstances.

(namely: experience has taught him that things (caterina, loss, pain, love, all horribly and indelibly intermingled) will happen to him whether he wants them to or not and there's nothing he can do about that... but he gets to decide what's let in or out of his soul as it happens, even if he has to close it all down and deaden and numb himself out in the process. (even if that means he drifts further and further away from illario, who's been desperately reaching out and trying to keep hold of him until he finally gives up completely and tries to cut the bond all at once when lucanis doesn't seem to reach back anymore.) it's such rare well-observed freeze logic solidly constructed from the bottom up, I'm still so impressed with it.

the way illario seeks constant external means to cope with caterina's abuse and importance in his life -- he can't win her admiration or acceptance or warmth (or like. acknowledgement even, at times :') ), no matter what, so he goes out and finds those things in others and then disdains and dismisses it for how easily and falsely it's won from them. he plots, he conspires, he tries to beat her at her own game however clumsily, he tries. lucanis doesn't try things that way. he's not about 'how do I improve my situation' by nature, he's 'how can I stop this from getting worse'. he avoids, he internalizes, he hunkers down and makes himself nothing until the pain maybe ends. he's fundamentally not a plotter, he's a reacter. an expert assassin pantser, if you will, to illario's clear and stated exasperation fhsak. man I love them. illario says 'get us out of here!!! if you loved me as I love you you'd help me get us out of here before it kills us both', lucanis says 'there is no other place, there's nowhere to go, all we can do is endure. and if it kills us... well, that's just family. that's what love is (the way things are headed I'll die first anyway so it's fine I won't have to face losing you)', and they're equally baffled and hurt by each other's POV. but they're both right, and they're both wrong. there's no 'right' way to deal with caterina's treatment of them, or their situation. the house always wins, if you pardon the expression. house dellamorte still stands and that is what matters to caterina in the end more than anything.

it also fits so well b/c like... their core wounds are that illario is the least favourite and is constantly dismissed, so he has to prove to caterina again and again that he matters. not even that he's worth love or respect or warm regard, but that he's here at all and as such should be considered. he has to shout 'in case u forgot I EXIST!!' at the top of his lungs or else be rendered nothing within the family structure (and himself, because it's all about family, that's all that really matters. in some weird twisted way I think caterina openly declaring him before all the other crows to still be of house dellamorte -- and no one from house dellamorte kneels -- is kind of a victory for him, as much as it's also a furthering of a prison sentence and public humiliation. house dellamorte brainfuckery goes hard.). lucanis is the favourite, and it's the double-edged sword that he gets all the affection and attention but also all the control and impossible expectations. drowning under all of that constant stress and close evaluation, his brain whispers 'I don't exist' to try to escape, to hide and hold on to the deep parts of himself that are crucial to life but not part of the perfect grandson caterina demands of him as the price of her love.)

I think a lot about how what seems to disquiet lucanis the most post-ossuary (as it would anyone with that psychological makeup) is the dissolving of internal boundaries and control he's been relying on, which is part of what spite symbolizes. his anger and reactivity has seceded from the union to the point of personification as a little guy (a little guy he resents and fears for his unpredictability and invasions into regions of his psyche he wishes to stay frozen and barren, and yet cares about deeply, loves! and also constantly dismisses and frequently helplessly lets down unless he's helped to learn to do otherwise. does this remind you of another relationship in his life, perhaps. it makes me feel nuts to think about the illario/spite parallels thanks for asking), and now that little guy is out there running the show freely the moment he glances away or closes his eyes. literal nightmare scenario I feel for him so deeply. so much of his coping is predicated on being able to Not do or feel or want certain things, and that's out the window now, Spite has Opinions. Spite refuses to stay wisely in place even if that place is hell on the logic that if you move you could find yourself in a place that's even worse, somehow. Spite actually wants to experience the world, however fucked up and scarring the way he arrived here, not just endure it. Spite means he has to face that maybe illario wasn't wrong all those years, at the same time as having to admit and face what illario has done to him, and figure out what to do about any of it.

anyway. mary kirby ma'am that's some good fucking metaphor work. thank you, and sorry about all the shit that happened

[lgbtlunaverse]

Most annoying NMJ or JC take is when someone that dislikes them is like "oh you're a fan of him? *scoff* Well obviously you've only seen cql, where he was super watered down. In the novel he's a dislikable asshole and that's the objectively superior canon I'm working from instead of your woobified fanfic." Meanwhile your main canon is novel canon and you genuinely find novel Jiang Cheng and Nie Mingjue complex sympathetic characters.

[thebaldursmouthgazette]

Oh and speaking of the clear plans for future games, I know a lot of people are worried about the executors being a retroactively fitted secret organisation puppeting events and I just wanna direct people to this part of the chant of light (from the canticle of silence, written by archon Hessarian based on historical records)

This is about the magisters sidereal and documents an acolyte talking to the high priest of Dumat and encouraging him to work with “the builders” (worshippers of Urthemiel, the high priest being the Architect of the Works of Beauty. Yes that Architect) to enter the golden city.

I’m pretty sure that guy is an executor, and this is the extent of the whispering and nudging. This guy did not come up with the idea of breaking into the golden city, he did not tell Corypheus to break into the golden city, the old gods (or, the evanuris through their archdemons) still whispered to make it happen to achieve their goals. The magisters still did it out of their own desires. There was just also another guy who, for his own purposes, was encouraging this and giving tips to make it happen.

Executors did not tell Loghain to abandon the fight at ostagar, or start a civil war. They just might have encouraged his paranoia by mentioning why the wardens had previously been banished. He still acted on his own accord.

Executors did not tell Bartrand to steal the idol and go insane, but maybe they told him about an interesting site in the deep roads (note that the teaser doesn’t imply the executors were involved in Meredith and orsinos nonsense at all).

Ive spoken about this at length before, but this isn’t a secret organisation puppeting things from behind the scenes. They appear to have a clear goal (get to the blight) and have nudged some specific events to favour them getting that goal (break into its prison, allow it to run rampant without warden intervention, bring the key to its prison back into play, possibly twice since it’s not clear who told the guy who removed the idol from the statue how to do that) and basically failed every time.

This isn’t secret over the seas illuminati secretly responsible for every problem we’ve faced. They’ve meddled with events we have seen in the past, but everyone still acted of their own free will and they’re not going to turn out to have been the villains behind everything all along.

[mangledmang0]

my favorite thing about this episode is that one part where solar starts talking about purposes or whatever and then says “yeah, my purpose was probably to die for sun”

bro??? not the time??? you just met nebula, and immediately opened up about your most traumatic event

[not-equippedforthis]

CHAPMAN

[creampuffqueen]

sorry for putting a weirdly long photo on your dash + even more riftposting but. oh my fucking god. i’m gonna be sick. this comic was created before any of the avatar novels. and here yangchen is. hesitating and not answering while looking absolutely devastated when aang asks about breaking promises with spirits. F.C YEE WHEN I FUCKING CATCH YOU—

[neo-zone]

Julius : "You're so funny". Thank you. My twin soul wiped out my memories because he foresaw me trying to stop him to the point I didn't know I had siblings, I came from neighboring enemy kingdom, and my magic derived from Supreme Devil. He then proceeded to use me and my three younger siblings as necessary tools to manipulate without our knowledge and consent, all for his long-planned large scale mass murder scheme in the name of achieving world peace and equality

[luxurystark-jackson]

the tfw dynamics with jack are so interesting to me because like. the most destiel “proof” (so to say) we get is from the concept that jack has of dean being his dad. and this stems from cas being his dad, and whatever their relationship is just being so horribly obvious that jack assumes they’re together and treats dean like a father figure.

and yet!! the kicker!! is that sam and cas are jack’s parents!! dean wants nothing to do with raising that kid but still ends up roped into it somehow.

[annabelle--cane]

every single time I listen to mag 141 I get to "you could have stopped me, but you wanted it as well, didn't you?" and just froth for a moment. jon, bestie, you had a point about basira saying she asked for you at full power. you could have stuck to that. instead you committed to really going slimemode as hard as possible.

[galaxymagitech]

Jason: *having a rare moment of emotional vulnerability* I’m scared.

Bruce: …

Bruce: Hi scared, I’m Bruce.

Jason: *knees Bruce in the stomach and runs away*

Bruce: In hindsight, that wasn’t tactful at all.

[the-ipre]

hello everyone i have begun to rotate a dead boy detectives restaurant au, mainly because im putting edwin on expediting and crystal as a waitress and i think they might kill each other

[waywardwhispersblaze]

I'll be forever mad that Jayce ruined the moment right there, but not because I think this would've been a perfect ending for them (I don't). I'm mad because if Jayce had just waited five fucking minutes, the resulting scene would've been so juicy.

Look at the way Vi and Cait look at each other here:

Caitlyn: shocked, betrayed, hurt

Vi just looks sad:

We know from their dialogue in ep 8 that while Vi and Caitlyn were making the plan to distract Ambessa, Vi had another one, to bring in Jinx as a contingency in case Caitlyn couldn't be trusted or failed. She had to know Caitlyn wouldn't take it well once she found out. Vi's priority n°1 was saving Vander though, and they likely didn't have much time to think this through. Basically, she had to know that from Caitlyn's POV, it would look like "Vi chooses Jinx over Cait", edition number 2.

And she was likely right! We know Caitlyn lets go of her anger towards Jinx in the next episode, and accepts that Vi has the right to choose her family, but in my opinion, she wasn't there yet in ep 6. Having a broken Jinx locked up in a cell (her single goal for the last few months) while Vi was lying unconscious on her bed for days very likely helped Caitlyn reassess her priorities in life. But here in this scene she literally doesn't have time to think!

Let's look at Caitlyn a bit more here. During their reunion, She probably expected Vi to hate her guts, but instead, Vi looks grumpy, calls her a mongoose and a cupcake in two sentences, and drops the "my dad needs help" bomb after hesitating for a hot, single second. Moments after that, Caitlyn reevaluates her life choices and decides to make a big career change. Plenty of great posts have already been made about Caitlyn's motivations there, but to sum it up, I'd say it was a combination of: her being already wary of Ambessa and not wanting to let a Noxian warlord get her hands on a dangerous weapon / innocent man, being tired of hating herself, and, yes, her feelings for Vi coming back to her in full force.

For a few, glorious moments, she was working with Vi again! Probably feeling more like herself than she had in months. Maybe she started to hope they could reconcile after all. Maybe, she hoped it could be a "do over" for their failed mission with the strike team, where she'd be helping a member of Vi's family, instead of being torn apart by one of them.

... only to find that Vi didn't actually trust her (which was deserved, but still, ouch), and to come face to face with the source of her seething hatred, the single object of her obsession in the last few months. Right after being saved by said source of seething hatred. It's a lot to take in. She had to be simultaneously disappointed and shocked

So, what was she gonna do? There was probably nothing Vi could have said that wouldn't have pissed Caitlyn off right then (no, Vi, saying "she's changed" probably wouldn't have helped), Jinx opening her mouth would have likely made it worse, but at the same time they still had to run away asap. Caitlyn had already betrayed Ambessa, she couldn't go back. Vi pretty much put her in a position where she'd have no choice but to follow along, no matter how angry she was, at least for a little while...

and I made this post just to say, that the resulting bickering would have been hilarious to see :S

(forget about Jayce waiting five minutes, though, what if it they had an hour? what would Caitlyn had done once they were far enough from the Noxian army? point her gun at Jinx? attempt an arrest? (right in front of Vander? gulp) she might have simply ended up separating from them, and that would have been heartbreaking enough, but a completely different story)

((and that's assuming cult member!vander would have just agreed to leave the commune without acting weird))

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

One thing about Lu Guang is that. He actually really likes hearing Cheng Xiaoshi say that he cares about and trusts him