#it's a sacrifice he's willing to make

[goldeneyedgirl]

TwiFicmas Redux: Shadow To Light

Happy New Year to everyone, and I hope 2024 is a beautiful and positive year for everyone - I think we've all earned it.

As promised, as an auspicious offering, the first 1000 words of the STL Ch 13 draft. Mary-Alice is being profoundly difficult about this chapter, but she's allowed to be a little bit messy.

Here's to a great year with more regular updates and more of my self indulgent nonsense ;)

Fourteen. Starved for so long of beauty

Once upon a time, a lifetime ago, she made a choice. It was an easy choice to make, because it was the right one. Because she didn’t truly know what came next; her certainty in her own visions, her certainty in who she was going to be - who the Major was going to be - had made her confident.

(She doesn’t regret it, she would never wish to go back and make a different decision. She just wishes… she just wishes that she knew better what was to come. What it was like to be stripped right down to the bone, layer by layer, from loneliness and violence and hopelessness. She wishes she’d read the contract she was signing in blood and tears and time, just so she could look fate in dead in the eye and make the same choice without a second thought.)

The Major smells like… he smells like something she doesn’t want to acknowledge.

(He smells like home.)

—

She feels silly after the worst of her panic attack is over, and the Major is there next to her with his arm around her. She feels utterly ridiculous, actually - the stolen t-shirt in her arms, curled against him so tightly… She almost feels ashamed.

(Except… she’s frustrated. She wants to demand answers - when is she allowed to fall down? When is she allowed to break apart and have someone else put together the pieces? In more than eighty years, it’s always been up to her to maintain control, to be the thing that bends but does not break and she’s so tired. But she’s also supposed to be better than this. Isn’t that what the Major always said? Why Peter always resented her? Even Maria noticed. Mary-Alice is sturdy, reliable, consistent. If she falls, she gets back up. It… it would just be nice not to, just once.)

“How are you feeling?”

The Major’s voice is warm and kind and it almost makes her feel less pitiful.

Almost.

“Present.” Her voice is quiet but her tone is clipped and distant, and she regrets it when she feels him withdraw slightly. She’s wrecking this, like she wrecks everything. It’s all she ever does.

(Maybe that’s why she was such a good soldier; she knows exactly how to ruin things.)

But the Major doesn’t leave. He just shifts so he’s not pressed quite so close, his cheek no longer resting against her hair. But his arm is still around her.

“Do you need to hunt?” He asks, and she doesn’t know. Everything feels odd and off balance and maybe she’s not as back as she originally thought.

So she doesn’t answer. She just rests her head back against the wall and closes her eyes.

The Major watches her for a moment before looking away. “When I met the Cullens,” he begins in a gentle voice, “I swear Esme only made Carlisle approach me because I resembled a drowned cat. Hadn’t stopped raining on the East Coast for weeks, and I’d been roaming the woods the entire time. I was disgusting. Maria would have thrown a bucket of water at my head weeks before if we’d been back home.

“And Esme took one look at me and whisper-bullied Carlisle into approaching me, like I couldn’t hear every single word. She kept saying that I looked cold.” The Major chuckles and she’s close enough that she feels the vibrations through his chest and it’s… it’s not unpleasant.

It’s strange being this close to another person and not being on edge. Not waiting for the killing blow, trying to figure out how to get to their throat first. Making sure that she knows exactly where their hands and teeth are, that she’s prepared for their next movement, for the tightening of their muscles before they lunge…

(It’s very strange being this close to someone, at all. She prefers to keep her distance normally. But this… it’s not the bad kind of strange, she doesn’t think. She’s just so intensely aware of him.)

“Just imagine it, will you - Esme wearing a tweed coat and riding boots and a hat to go hunting, and I look like a monster who spent a week sleeping in a swamp,” the Major continued, “And she was worried about me, like I was a soggy kitten.”

She can imagine it, honestly; his hair sticking to his face, and that gaunt, murderous look he got on his face when he was thirsty. Weeks of grime pressed into his clothing, his skin, looking like the monster from an old story or some mythological horror rising from the riverbed. Nothing sympathetic or pitiable about him for most people.

Right now, she feels oddly grateful to Esme for looking past all of that and seeing the Major as he could be.

“And you followed them home?” She tries to make the words sound light-hearted, but they fall flat and ugly, and she wants to take them back.

That makes the Major laugh out loud, a rumble against her side that is startling and she jumps a little.

“No. I told them to fuck off and leave me be; I had to tell them that a few times over the years until I gave in and talked to them. Let Esme convince me that taking a shower and accepting new clothing was a right and not charity. Let Carlisle remind me that I owed them nothing by ‘visiting’ with them. It took a long time for them to lure me over the threshold.” The Major takes her hand in his; his thumb smooths over a patch of scar tissue, a repetitive motion that feels… soft. Nice. “I think in the end, I hinted that I was ready for them to ask me to stay with them. I don’t think I was subtle about it either.”

“They didn’t ask you before then?” Mary-Alice feels the frustration boil for a second. She watched as much as she could bring herself to, for many years, and there are pieces that she’s missing. They just weren’t important enough for her to see, or something changed and recalling what she’d politely dismissed was too difficult.

(She had entrusted the Major to the Cullens. It didn’t matter that they had had no idea, all those years ago, her visions had made the contract. And even now, knowing that it all came together the way it was supposed to, it upsets her that he had to wait for so long to be taken home to his family.)

[blue-mood-blue]

I have been thinking about the blackening (as one does)…

…and it’s so interesting to me, the penalty Shen Qingqiu is faced with should he not decide to yeet his disciple into hell.

Account termination. Instant death. Sent directly home to his already-long-dead body, and that’s it for the villain of the piece who outright refuses his villainy. The protagonist needs a blackening for the story to continue, and Shen Qingqiu is going to provide it or get written out of the narrative. Either way, Luo Binghe is going to lose him. Either way, this is a turning point.

I wouldn’t claim that this is the intent of the penalty, but it fascinates me that the System has, potentially, backed the plotline into a corner - because Binghe still stands to be blackened even if Shen Qingqiu took the other choice.

Think about what that would look like, to him. He’s at the Immortal Alliance Conference, and everything is going wrong. He’s been outed as a demon, and not just a demon - the top tier of demon, as bad as it gets from the perspective of a righteous cultivator. His beloved teacher, the person who has been kindest to him and opened his home and heart to him, is standing there with his sword in hand, deciding what he’s going to do about what must look, to him, like a horrific betrayal. Binghe is apologizing. Binghe is begging for his life.

Shen Qingqiu hears him. Maybe it shows on his face, or in his voice, that he already knew; maybe there’s no hint at all, but Shen Qingqiu is suddenly talking quickly with an abrupt sense of urgency that Luo Binghe is having a hard time keeping up with. Telling him he’ll be wonderful - telling him he’s the best. Telling him the world will be his, with emotions cracking through that aloof mask that Binghe has never seen on Shizun’s face before, and it’s terrifying for reasons that Binghe cannot identify.

(He will, later. When he has time to think, he’ll realize it sounded like a goodbye.)

And then Shen Qingqiu is bleeding. And then Shen Qingqiu is on the ground. And then Shen Qingqiu is dead. There’s no countdown for Binghe - there’s no System, there’s no warning, there’s no answers.

Luo Binghe is a heavenly demon in the middle of a conference sabotaged by demons. Luo Binghe is alone. His fellow competing disciples are scattered, some dead or injured. The Peak Lord of Qing Jing Peak, the second in command of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect, maybe the only person he loved and who loved him back, is dead at his feet. No one will believe him if he says it isn’t his fault.

(He can’t believe it isn’t his fault.)

What choice does he have but to run? The last heavenly demon the cultivation world went up against has been sealed under a mountain for years, and one of the people responsible for that is probably looking for Shen Qingqiu already. They’ll be looking for him, too. There isn’t anywhere to hide; there isn’t any time to mourn.

There isn’t even enough time to ask why. Why again.

There is no closure waiting for him, because there is nothing to explain what happened. It just is.

It would be a different kind of blackening, certainly - less intense, probably, less of a warping, desperate thing. But how many times can one person have all the love and safety in their world torn out from under them before it starts to show? Before they just don’t allow things like love and safety to touch them, because that’s the better option?

Interesting to consider that, simply by offering the choices it did, the System rigged the story to guarantee that Luo Binghe would end up in hell (deliberate or not).

Interesting to consider that, even if Shen Qingqiu made what might have seemed like a kinder choice, there was every chance it wouldn’t have been.

[heartinhyacinth]

Thinking about how sacrificing one’s life for another was unacceptable to Xie Lian, resulting in his refusal to sacrifice Hong-er for the nobles and for the gods; in his refusal to give the people of yong’an human face disease for the people of the imperial capital.

The people of yong’an lived…then sacrificed Xie Lian on an alter—the man who refused to force that very fate on them all those years ago—in an attempt to defy death for the second time.

Hong-er lived and died…then defied death, returned as Wu Ming, and sacrificed himself to spare Xie Lian—the man who refused to force that very fate on him all those years ago—risking death for the second time (and not the last).

[raayllum]

thinking about Callum recalling / saying his father was someone who "lived with a terrible breathing sickness his whole life, he said it made him appreciate every breath and every moment" and how much Callum so clearly carries that awareness and appreciation with him in everything he does. In the way steady breathing and steadying breaths are so tied to his magic and self actualization, the way the first spell he ever learned and performed both as a mage and as a fully realized primal mage was aspiro, the way he loves the world around him and being s appreciative/verbally loving and validating to the people around him, too, because he wants them to know. he just loves being alive so so much, and it's so sweet to see

[f0rgetf0rgetting]

my first time doing a ship chart dont throw tomatoes at me guysh. im elaborating on the tags because im embarrassed. user f0rgetf0rgetting extreme yap session

i also got too passionate on the madoka magica one and ended up doodling this

[my-pjo-stuff]

Percy would sacrifice the world to save those he loves, Luke would sacrifice those he loves to save the world.

And Luke is the one in the right.

[keikoayano]

“WE are a different beast now. WE are the ones who feast now. No more of US deceased cause WE won’t take more suffering from you. WE are the man-made monsters. WE are the ones who conquer. WE won’t take more suffering from you.”

Was ALREADY a punch to my heart but then the switch to

“HE is a different beast now. HE is the one who feasts now. No more of US deceased, cause HE won’t take more suffering from you. HE is the man-made monster. HE is the one who conquers. HE won’t take more suffering from you.”

Because the crew recognized him. Until they didn’t. Until they realized he was a different “monster” from them. And they still believe in him, their captain, to keep them alive. That his goal is still to get them all home. But it isn’t.

[panharmonium]

i am not usually interested in dramatically canon-divergent scenarios because the canon story is what compels me, but i've been obsessed with this moment ever since i re-heard it during my second viewing. from the perspective of someone who already finished the story once and now knows the truth - this was wild.

WHAT IF?

[darkfluffydragon]

Shadow Milk's Corruption

In the AU (NAME STILL PENDING-), Shadow Milk Cookie doesn't get a physical form until later on. Until then, he occasionally possesses Pure Vanilla Cookie to have access to more of his original power and his abilities. However, due to them sharing the same souljam, there were some unintended side effects that neither were aware of.

The longer Shadow Milk Cookie remains in the same body as Pure Vanilla Cookie, the more their souls and minds blur together. It's a slow and subtle process since Shadow Milk Cookie wouldn't possess Pure Vanilla that often anyway. He can't torment someone if they're stuck in his mind. Pure Vanilla would find himself slowly gaining some of Shadow Milk Cookie's mannerisms, but he would see it as the effects of his controlled state. Shadow Milk Cookie would calm down a bit, in a way. Less erratic and manic, but still as eccentric as ever. He wouldn't notice these changes either, too busy with his new freedom from his suffocating prison. It would be why he decided to take over the faerie kingdom instead of burning it all to the ground. Occasionally, he'd act more like his past self.

The other four beasts would notice this change later when they're freed, pointing out that he's "gone soft". Some would blame it on Pure Vanilla, and wonder why Shadow Milk hasn't just taken the souljam yet.

[miketownsends]

i simply do not think there is another catcher out there who is as good with their pitching staff as Cal is!

(put the full article link in the source bc Tumblr was being weird about the link)

[butwhatifidothis]

Still baffled that Hopes so blatantly wrote Claude as the typical Evil Vaguely Middle Eastern Man set on destroying the Good White Nation for his Evil Vaguely Middle Eastern Nation that is often seen in fantasy settings - complete with him being seen as worse than a white woman who does many of the same evil deeds he does in-verse, even by his friends (should it be the bad ending route of SB) - and so many in the fandom were so eager to gobble that shit up. INSIST that "Clearly A Racist Stereotype" is LEAGUES better than "Subversion Of A Racist Stereotype" even. Like I don't think I'll ever get over how supremely fucked that is

[lesbianwyllravengard]

I'm a real tragedy enjoyer but Luis's death is no longer narratively enjoyable for me, now it just feels like an insult. I'm tired of characters having to die to be "redeemed". It's not their death that is the redemption, it's the fact that they were willing to die in the first place; it's the intent of sacrifice. I much prefer a narrative where Luis survives and is forced to every day atone for his past mistakes. I much prefer when characters don't get the respite of death, when they have to live with their demons, when they have to face their past and maintain their growth. And it's especially maddening when the only reason Luis dies is because he did in the original. They'll change his character so much to give him substance but they won't change his fate? I don't want that.

[redladydeath]

imo, i prefer the idea that vox went through some pretty intense moral decay during his time in hell. he was never a good or upstanding guy, but he was a very normal man when he first arrived, who, over the decades, has become more and more callous and desensitized.

[hacash]

listen listen I want Ted to stay in Richmond as much as the next girl, I just think that everyone posting about how he shouldn’t go home for ‘just’ his son and how awful a plot line that would be really doesn’t know much about…you know…having kids…

[mitskiluvr]

after these leaks i just genuinely think megumi has depression like not even in a “wow haha he always pulls out mahoraga!” way but in an Oh my god his WHOLE LIFE has been in shambles since he was like 8 and i think he is like forever messed up

[vasattope]

Listen, what if Sae decided to play the bad guy to help Rin get to the top?