#killed by the system

[galerymod]

When Putin kills a prominent government critic in front of the world public.

What do you think will happen to non-prominent critics of the system?

Putin will even keep the corpse of the hated Kremlin critic as a trophy so as not to have to admit that it was murder.

If the death of unjustly imprisoned people is accepted as normal, the whole system that is responsible for it is not right.

Putin is a vindictive little man with absolute power and great power fantasies.

He walks over dead bodies, whether it's one person or an entire nation.

He is like a street thug who must be stopped.

This can only be done through strength and strategy. Similar means must be used to unsettle the Russian people. Not destructively but positively reinforced.

It worked in the Roman Empire, so why not in the Russian Empire?

Rumours about food supplies and price reductions that are guaranteed never to materialise. I have already caused a lot of social upheaval. Whether it is peaceful is another matter.

His vanity, his exuded overconfidence suggest anything but a man who is ultimately secure and who only dominates his surroundings through violence and intimidation.

The older he gets, the more dangerous he becomes for those around him and the same applies in reverse.

All the fear he spreads will also affect him because when wolves realise that the Alfa Wolf is weakening, it usually doesn't end well.

Jack London more or less

[fairsweetlonging]

truth serum / system reveal au where shen qingqiu gets hit with an uncloaking spell that reveals the system in the reflection of his eyes every time it pops up.

during one of his missions, in the treasure hoard of some dragon-like creature, he finds a golden, oval shaped hand mirror, its gaudy style more victorian based than anything (airplane you hack!), that doesn't seem to do anything when he looks into it. but when he does, it reveals the system's screen in his eyes.

he doesn't notice this, of course, because he can't see it, and the system, surprisingly, stays quiet.

the peak lords think he's cursed.

maybe mu qingfang is the first to notice, during the mandatory post mission check-up, when shen qingqiu is scrolling through his most recently accumulated points and mu qingfang can see the strange vividly-blue lines reflected in his pupils. it's gone when shen qingqiu blinks, like it was nothing but a trick of the light.

it comes out when yue qingyuan is visiting and, just as he's done laying out the plans for a new mission, shen qingqiu's eyes glaze over and a bright blue box takes over the whole of his iris. shen qingqiu goes quiet; the thing in his eyes moves, shifts, pulses for a second, like static worms crawling all over his pupils. then he blinks, and it's gone, and shen qingqiu accepts the mission that yue qingyuan was almost sure he would decline.

maybe there is an intervention, when the peak lords corner shen qingqiu at qian cao peak and try to figure out what's wrong, subjecting him to all kinds of treatments and curse-finding spells that turn up empty, they can't find anything.

of course, the silencing threat is still very much up and running. at first shen qingqiu was kind of confused by the whole ordeal, but when the peak lords start describing a "strange blue box", he realizes, with sickening suddenty, that they're describing the system. and he can't say anything.

this only makes everything worse, because their fellow peak lord now keeps evading every question and acts like he doesn't understand. liu qingge points right at his face and asks, "that blue box, what is it?" and shen qingqiu laughs nervously and starts talking about how bright the weather is and surely it's the sky and nothing to worry about!

even worse, during the intervention the system thought it was a good idea to start talking to him, so now even the peak lords who hadn't seen it and who might have been persuaded by light tricks and reflections, get a first row view that no, that definitely isn't a trick of the light.

they try to do the whole thing of "are you in danger, blink twice" but shen qingqiu can't even do that because it's still a direct admittance!

maybe eventually he starts saying vague confirmations that don't actually confirm anything, like "this master hears what you're saying", or maybe he goes with a classic "this master can neither confirm nor deny that." but the system starts warning him for that too and eventually he stops saying anything, which worries the others more.

luckily mu qingfang catches on that every time they ask a direct question about the box or shen qingqiu says anything vaguely confirming, it appears. it doesn't appear when they ask about curses or demons, so it must not see that as a threat.

for a little extra angst: maybe the peak lords keep pressuring him for answers, and at some point shen qingqiu gets fed up and snaps out something like, "why don't you understand that i'm not allowed to answer that!" the system counts this as a direct admittance, threatening it's existence. so it punishes. shen qingqiu has a qi deviation so bad it lasts two weeks and takes two people every day to cleanse his meridians. the system doesn't appear in that time. it doesn't appear for a long while after that, either. the peak lords stop asking, mainly because shen qingqiu will instantly leave the room if they do. they don't stop searching for a cure, though.

shang qinghua returns from a business trip and catches on the second someone mentions a blue box and forced silencing.

[theballadofmars]

I love how mqf's oficial description is something like: a good heart who wants to help others but then you read the novel and his reaction to lqg trapping ten infected men who are crying in panic is "great now I can start to work in my experiments with decomposed people to find a cure" and gets out a lot of needles, which makes the man cry even harder.

Even if we only get bits of the other Cang Qiong sect leader's we can reach the conclusion that no one there is normal, sqq is just biased.

[hinamie]

i'm on an itafushi kick and i am making it everyone else's problem

[mohntilyet]

"for the chance to be by your side i would storm the black city itself. never doubt it" "let me make a promise to you here. i dream you will say yes" "tell me this ends with me asleep in your arms, and i will kill any god you ask" can we hear it for the antivans!!!!!!!! can we PLEASE hear it for the antivans!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[meltedmush]

I realized today that Ming Fan’s immediate elimination was a Donghua only thing,,, I’m sad it isn’t apart of the original novel, but gosh I’m so happy the Donghua gave out so many bits of comedic gold

[sunderwight]

Bingqiu AU where Luo Binghe's the chosen village sacrifice to the evil deity who lives up the mountain.

Normally the village sends maidens, but they've more or less run out of expendable girls of the right age and, ahem, "virtues". So of course Luo Binghe's early life bad luck kicks in. In the wake of his mother's death there's no one to really care about what happens to him, he's fairly pretty, and the village leaders decide that if they dress him up like a girl the teenaged homeless kid should pass well enough. And hey, y'know, he's probably got a hard life ahead for him anyway -- dying in a brothel of some venereal disease or on the streets of exposure or starvation. At least as a sacrifice, everyone else gets to benefit from his loss! And the kid will get added to a shrine and be remembered as a hero! If anything, he should be happy about this!

Binghe is not happy about this.

But he's also a skinny underfed nobody who is easily overpowered, dressed up like a bride, and tied to a post. So. Not much he can do but wait for the evil deity to come and do whatever horrible thing he's gonna do to him.

Meanwhile, Shen Yuan is pretty sure he's been isekai'd into the over-powered hero of some kind of supernatural adventure story? He's not totally sure because he doesn't recognize the setting, but the signs are there. He's got a shrine-like base of operations (though it seems to have become corrupted/ruined, probably he has to restore it somehow), he has a very resilient and handsome new body with spiritual energy of some kind flowing through him, and a very clearly magical sword. Plus lots of neat starter powers! Though it feels like he has other abilities that have been blocked somehow? Probably he has to level up in order to access them.

When he treks out of his "base" and finds what seems to be a distressed maiden, he takes it for his beginner hero mission. The girl claims that she's been doomed to be sacrificed to an evil god. That sounds a little above Shen Yuan's pay grade for dealing with, so he unties her and decides that they had better just get out of the whole region altogether. He already packed up anything useful from his base, anticipating he might get caught up in an adventure once he left, so they follow the river away from the settlement until they reach another one.

While they travel, Luo Binghe tells Shen Yuan about the cursed deity, Shen Qingqiu, who was cast out of the heavens for slaughtering one of his brethren and has apparently being do-who-knows what to maidens from the local village in exchange for his "protection" ever since. Sounds like a real asshole! And also mid-level boss type bad guy at least. Shen Yuan hopes he doesn't have to fight him, but he probably will.

Thank goodness he found Binghe, though! Clearly the helpful little sister type! He's definitely going to require her assistance if he's going to figure out how to navigate this world and level up his skills enough to take on a god.

[starry-bi-sky]

on a completely separate note; shizun luo binghe with a disciple shen yuan who fell into the abyss??? *thinks about LBH canonically stealing SQQ's corpse for 5 years* he'd hallucinate i think. like, like visual and audial hallucinations.

Keeps thinking he's seeing SQQ in the corner of his eyes, or wandering between the trees, amongst a group of disciples. Thinks he hears him calling for him, but its just the wind or another disciple.

Gets Xiu Ya reforged but patently fucking refuses to make a sword mound. Because his disciple Is Not Dead :))) There was No Body. He's Not Dead. And If You keep Insisting That He Is, He's Gonna Skewer You :). He's holding onto Xiu Ya so he can return his most favored disciple's sword when he returns. It's on his hip right next to Zheng Yang where it's supposed to be.

Also this motherfucker?? does not sleep btw. He has the image of SQQ, wide eyed and hysterical and standing at the mouth of the abyss burned into his fucking eyelids. Can't use the dreamscape to escape it either because he keeps trying to save him and either he does and it's an incredibly cruel trick to wake up to, or he doesn't and he gets his heart broken in several different pieces again.

There is no convincing this man that Shen Qingqiu is dead. Absolutely nothing at all. He is buried so deep in denial that moles would be jealous of how deep he is. He keeps making tea for two in the bamboo house only to remember that it's just him. SQQ's fans are hiding everywhere, little reminders of his presence. He goes to wake up SQQ on the mornings he sleeps in-- only to find the room empty.

[tiredbitchposts]

Ok, but Shen Jiu being Shen Yuan's father is so funny in a very tragic way. Shen Jiu is a ball of traumas and all types of issues and i truly believe there's not a single one that man doesn't have, so, you give him a baby!Shen Yuan, a little ball of life that depends on him for survival, cannot walk away from him and is culturally wired to pretty much love him and if not, to at the least respect him above all else, you cannot tell me that this man would be normal about him. Also, imagine Shen Jiu, who'd be the type of parent to project traumas the way only a mother could, having a child that looks like him but with a "sweeter" personality (which, by the way, is bullshit, they just have never seen that boy rip into a book he disliked but wouldn't stop reading) that has the effect on men Shen Yuan has, he'd lock that boy up in a tower to "cultivate" and consequently create a rumor about the Qing Jing's beauty who was so bewitching their peak lord father locked them in a tower because that's just his luck. Loving Shen Yuan wouldn't fix him, but it'd create a whole new set of issues that'd cancel out the other ones

[vebokki]

they're judging you unfortunately

[evilneo]

dissociative amnesia haver: wow i wish i remembered shit

dissociative amnesia havers when they remember:

dissociative amnesia havers when the memories then get taken from them:

[zzz-sunflowr]

"blah blah men can be oppressed bc they aren't allowed to cry and express emotion"

they aren't allowed to do that bc that's perceived as feminine.

the feminine is being demonized.

it still comes back to oppression of the FEMININE.

[tadpole-art]

More de-aged Shang Qinghua au. Liu Qingge is learning about pokemon :)

[callese]

[sunderwight]

Shang Qinghua thinking that Mobei Jun is inclined to kill people on the least little bit of suspicion, because every time he says "that guy's totally betraying you, my king" he doesn't even need to follow it up with much evidence or reason before Mobei's nodding and permanently divorcing that guy's head from his shoulders.

Shang Qinghua subsequently being really anxious about the prospect of anyone making accusations against him. Putting it around that maybe it's a good idea for everyone at court to just build up a pretty airtight case first, before bringing anything to Mobei Jun? And even though most of Shang Qinghua's proposals get a lot of blowback and resistance from Mobei Jun's courtiers (often just on the basis of him, the slimy human, making them) this one surprisingly sails through pretty easily? All of the demons at court are basically nodding vigorously like yeah definitely we should all be extra careful about knowing 100% that treachery is afoot before we say anything to Mobei Jun certainly all of us need to watch who we point fingers at.

Shang Qinghua finding it kind of odd later on when one of Mobei Jun's most trusted vassal lords levels an accusation against a far more expendable individual in court, and rather than killing the accused, Mobei Jun just says he'll look into it and then gives Shang Qinghua the meaningful "you'll look into it" glance.

Huh. Maybe his new policies changed Mobei Jun's own opinion on due diligence? Neat! He never realized he could wield that kind of indirect power in his king's court!

[maomango-doodle]

Getting to know people

Based on @acetrigunweek day 3's quote