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canary3d-obsessed · 4 years ago

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Restless Rewatch: The Untamed, Episode 25, part one

(Masterpost) (Other Canary Stuff)

Warning: Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

Holy crap, Episode 25! We’re halfway through! *Cue Bon Jovi*

Hunt Invitation

After taking a nice long break to watch Word of Honor pick lotus pods, Wei Wuxian and Jiang Yanli return to stressing over the shitshow that is the post-Sunshot cultivation world. Jin Zixuan has come to invite them to the Phoenix Mountain Hunt, with a special invitation from his mother to Jiang Yanli. Jiang Cheng reacts to this in a mature and reasonable manner, while Wei Wuxian...doesn't.

On the surface, Jiang Cheng has matured in recent months; much more than Wei Wuxian, with his secret burdens, has. But it's only on the surface, as we'll see later in the episode, when Jiang Cheng's insecurity will take the reins.

Jin Zixuan is adorably pleased by Jiang Yanli's acceptance of the invitation. Wei Wuxian is less pleased, but sort of tries to suck it up.

Jin Zixuan kind of undercuts the romance of his errand by asking Wei Wuxian for the Yin tiger amulet as soon as Jiang Yanli is out of earshot.

As always, Jin Zixuan makes an impression by being the best Jin currently in existence, but the Jins are terrible. JZX is working to advance his dad's ambitions, and as such he is currently Wei Wuxian's enemy.

(more after the cut)

Opening Ceremonies

There's a bunch of cultivators arranged for the opening ceremony. Later someone will say that this is more than 5 thousand people. Ok, sure.

As I've said before, it's best to think of it like a theatre production and assume the other 4,900 people are offstage or, you know, painted on the backdrop.

The young lead cultivators from the four main clans are standing together. Nie Huaisang is trying out some new body armor.

The clan leaders are seated up on the stage, along with Jin Furen and Jiang Yanli. Unfortunately Jin Furen doesn't seem to have a personal name that I can discover. Her title Fūrén ( 夫人) means she's the primary wife of the head of the family, according to this excellent meta.

So “Madame Jin” is a decent translation...if you're French? I feel like instead of English subtitles including borrowed words from French (”Marquis” in NIH), Greek (”Water of Lethe” in WOH), and other European languages, we could try borrowing Chinese words instead. Jin Zixuan's mom is titled, not named, Jin Furen. Since we don’t know her actual name, I'll call her that and abbreviate it JFR.

Wei Wuxian's childishness continues at the opening of the hunt, as does Jiang Yanli's encouragement of his childishness. I know she's had a rough couple of years, and it's understandable to want to baby her little brother out of a sense of nostalgia. But it's not good for him, and she shouldn't do it; she should encourage him to be more mature, just as she does with Jiang Cheng.

War Crimes Contest

Jin Guangyao says they're going to have an archery competition, and they're going to liven it up by endangering some prisoners. These prisoners are Wens in Wen cultivator uniforms, meaning they're not the noncombatants that were being hunted down earlier. But they’re still helpless people in chains.

There are three different reactions when the Wen prisoners are brought out. All the Jins are pleased, or neutral. All of the Jiangs, including Wei Wuxian, are upset.

The Nies and the Lans, what we see of them, are a little shocked, but not obviously upset. Based on those reactions, it seems like this is a maneuver that in-world is considered shocking and cruel, but not necessarily unethical or immoral. Shocking, cruel displays of power are pretty normal in this world; remember when Wen Chao lit a Lan cultivator on fire just to say hello, and nobody complained?

This whole scenario, of course, has been designed to provoke Wei Wuxian. One major goal of this event, and the whole reason for wanting Wei Wuxian to come, is to get the Yin Tiger amulet. Making him lose his shit in front of 100 5000 cultivators is a good step toward compelling him to hand the amulet over.

We see Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli both signaling Wei Wuxian to keep it together, and he takes a step back and tries to chill.

Meanwhile, Jin Zixuan seems annoyed by all this, and goes to take a shot at it, making it clear from his demeanor that this is easy and JGY is making a show of nothing.

He hovers in the air and makes a perfect shot, pleasing most of the crowd and impressing Jiang Yanli.

Then his cousin Jin Zixun taunts the crowd, challenging anyone to do better. This presents a bit of a problem for Wei Wuxian. For the sake of the Wen prisoners, Wei Wuxian should just take this taunting and let the contest end, if no-one else is willing to take a shot. But for the sake of the Jiang Clan’s status, and his continued control of the Yin Tiger amulet, he needs to put the Jins in their place.

Every Day is Blindfold Day

This moral dilemma is resolved with an abrupt tonal shift, where the humanitarian concerns of all parties seem to vanish. Wei Wuxian flirts embarrassingly with Lan Wangji and then goes as far over the top in besting Jin Zixuan as it's possible to go.

The flirting hits differently, incidentally, when you edit Jiang Cheng's annoyed reaction out of it:

Lan Wangji doesn't seem embarrassed by Wei Wuxian's request, despite it happening in front of 100 5000 of their fellow cultivators. He looks Wei Wuxian straight in the eye for longer than necessary before turning away; it’s not exactly stern disapproval. We’ll get very used to this look, in Wei Wuxian’s second life.

Fortunately, Wei Wuxian carries a blindfold with him wherever he goes, (gifset here), and he is such a good cultivator he can hit 5 parallel targets simultaneously without even holding his bow straight or tightening the string.

(OP fixed the angle of the bow for this gif, which is why everyone is standing on a hill in the background).

Everyone is pleased by this shot except Jins Guangyao and Zixun; even the Jin cultivators are clapping, and Madame Jin is presumably this happy any time Jin Guangyao’s plans go wrong.

With that they start the hunt. Jin Zixun challenges Wei Wuxian to do the whole hunt blindfolded. Wei Wuxian agrees, but the censorship committee said no, apparently, so we don’t get to see that.

Flute Hunting

We do get to see Wei Wuxian luring monsters into his nets by being too sexy for his robe, too sexy for his robe, and playing the flute.

We also get to see Jiang cultivators looking puzzled while random monster roars happen in the woods around them. We do not get to see any monsters, which is probably just as well.

Jiang Cheng is annoyed and concerned, muttering "I told you not to overdo it" which means he didn't, you know, tell Wei Wuxian NOT to do this, just not to do it quite so well. Jiang Cheng knows what Wei Wuxian’s abilities are and he is making use of him, as he should, but he doesn’t have the courage of his convictions.

Tree Confession

Wei Wuxian sees Lan Wangji and starts to say hi, but then he has a desaturated flashback to Lan Xichen telling him to back off, so he stops himself. But then Lan Wangji comes over to talk to him.

Lan Wangji starts off talking to him about his latest anti-resentment musical discoveries, and Wei Wuxian pushes back, even calling him Lan Wangji, but gently. Wei Wuxian asks "who am I to you?" and Lan Wangji turns the question right back at him, then waits a looooooong time, eyes downcast, while Wei Wuxian thinks of a serious answer.

Wei Wuxian says "I used to treat you as my zhījǐ" --which, as we’ve discussed before, is variously translated soulmate, confidant, intimate friend--with a strong meaning of "the person who truly knows me." Lan Wangji says "I still am." Coming from Lan Wangji, who NEVER says how he feels about Wei Wuxian or about anything, really, this sounds a lot like a confession of love.

It definitely takes the form, visually, of a love confession, as Lan Wangji speaks, then gazes at Wei Wuxian while he waits for a reply. Wei Wuxian's reply is this:

I don't think Wei Wuxian is oblivious (I'm speaking strictly of CQL, not MZDS, as always with these posts; they are different works). I think he loves Lan Wangji back, and knows it. But Chenqing and everything it represents are between them.

Lan Wangji is quite literally NOT his zhījǐ any more, because he doesn't truly know Wei Wuxian right now. He loves him desperately, but he doesn't know about his core, and hasn't accepted his cultivation method. So Wei Wuxian answers his confession by showing him Chenqing, effectively declining to accept his still-conditional love.

Snake Measuring

Next we get terrible hetero courtship in the form of Jin Zixuan finding snake discharge on the ground and talking to Jiang Yanli about comparative snake measuring. Seriously: that is the actual conversation that they are having.

Jin Zixuan boasts for a bit, and then awkwardly tries to ask Jiang Yanli on a date. When she turns him down he gets mad, because he's a typical heterosexual dude even though he's secretly a delightful person...very, very secretly. Jiang Yanli, for her part, can't string a fucking sentence together to save her life whenever he's around, so she's not helping their mutual understanding.

Lan Wangji attempts to hold Wei Wuxian back from beating Jin Zixuan’s ass yet again, but eventually JYL wants to leave, JZX tells her to wait, and WWX intervenes. Why doesn't Jiang Yanli have a maid or Jiang cultivator with her while she's on a date, incidentally? These kids are confused about whether they're doing feudal patriarchy or whether they're doing modern social life.

Jin vs. Jiang

Wei Wuxian jumps in between Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan, which JZX objects to. Jin Zixuan has no fucking business objecting and Wei Wuxian is 100% right, at this point. As soon as WWX shows up JZX should hand her off to her Shidi, bow, and leave her the fuck alone. Instead, he draws his sword on Wei Wuxian, and kind of on Jiang Yanli since she's right behind Wei Wuxian. Fortunately, Lan Wangji blocks him.

This instantly blows up into a Jiang-Jin Clan conflict, with Jiang Cheng unfortunately absent since he let his unmarried sister go off in the woods alone with the son of the Cultivaton world's most famous lecher. It looks like it’s a personal conflict, but since Jin Zixuan already told Wei Wuxian directly that Jin Guangshan wants his amulet, any arguments between them are part of a larger power struggle.

Cousin Jin Zixun comes running up to start shit. Wei Wuxian pretends--I am SURE he's pretending--not to know who he is. The dude hassles Wei Wuxian every time he sees him; Wei Wuxian is a troll, and right now CJXZ is butting in to something that doesn't concern him. Rather than argue, Wei Wuxian insults him by telling him he’s not memorable.

Jin Furen shows up with several maids and cultivator dudes in tow, which is the proper way for a highborn woman to wander around in the woods. She also brings Clan Leader Yao, because if it's Wei Wuxian Blaming Hours, Yao is going to be there.

I initially found the deep friendship between superhot Yi Zuyuan and dumpy Jin Furen implausible, but then I remembered that my lifelong bestie is a smokin' hot redhead with impeccable fashion sense, while I am a roly-poly nerd. Friends don’t always match. Also, Jin Furen's actress, Hu Xiaoting, looks like this:

...so she is actually hot in real life. Not as hot as Zhang Jingtong (who plays Yu Ziyuan) but literally nobody is as hot as Zhang Jingtong. Don't @ me, you know I'm right.

This is a heck of a long scene, so we’ll pick it up in part two!

Soundtrack: Livin’ on a Prayer by Bon Jovi

Writing prompt: Newly-divorced, cold-hearted CEO Yu Ziyuan buys an apartment next door to newly-divorced, warm-hearted pastry chef ...uhh let's call her Jin Dàngāo (蛋糕), sure. She can name her business after herself.

They discover their daughter & son are in the same college class, and so they meet up over coffee....several times...trying to matchmake their hopeless, hapless kids, while bonding over their own terrible (former) taste in husbands. Who will Cupid strike first, the kids or the moms?

#the untamed #the untamed gifs #wangxian #restless rewatch the untamed #canary3d-original #my gifs

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mikkeneko · 3 years ago

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Untamed Wing

So the meme (your first fandom/your current fandom) going around a few days ago got me thinking, what would a Gundam Wing/CQL AU actually look like? They're from different timelines, but they do share some common ground -- politics, philosophical musings on The Morality Vs The Necessity Of War, a convenient division into 5 factions and, of course, attractive teenage boys suffering nobly.

I did briefly entertain an actual crossover of the form Characters From Series A Wind Up In Series B, in perhaps a scenario where the Great Sects do some kind of cross-space-and-time summoning ritual to try to get help for their respective factions in the upcoming conflict, but ehh I didn't get very far with it. (Did waffle over whether to put Quatre in with the Lan because Nice, or in with the Jin, because Rich. Could go either way.)

Instead, let's talk about xianxia mechs. I was reading a MDZS/Breath of the Wild crossover (ed: it’s Main Objective: Destroy Yiling Laozu by Eleanor_Fenyx, it's very good) that used a concept of 'Divine Beasts' that were effectively beast-form mechs powered by spiritual enemy, and I quite liked it, so let's say something similar is going on here.

When the story opens we learn that the creation of these spiritually powered battle suits has recently become a thing, and of course each of the Great Sects engaged in a discreet arms rush to get their own Xianxia Gundam, because of course the best way to avoid a disastrous conflict between factions is to make sure that each faction is exactly as powerful as the others! I'll say that this is the first generation that these mechs have been available, so the social guidelines of how the mechs and their pilots work is still being worked out. How do they decide who gets to pilot the Gundam? Is it done by power level, or by social station? Different sects answer this question in different ways.

In Lan Sect, the gundam pilot is Lan Wangji, the younger Jade of Lan, and everybody is fine with this because he is both an accomplished cultivator and high-born, but not directly in line to become a Sect Leader himself. In the Jin sect, Jin Zixuan is the pilot despite the fact that he is in line to become Sect Leader; in the Wen sect, second son Wen Chao is the gundam pilot even though he's not the most powerful cultivator in his age group. Nie Sect skips over the direct line and puts cousin Nie Zonghui in the seat, and he's powerful enough that nobody really questions it, especially not if the alternative is noted layabout Nie Huiasaing. In the Jiang Sect, they pass over the ruling family entirely and put Wei Wuxian, the most talented cultivator, in the pilot seat. And you can bet this causes all sorts of fun family discussions in the Jiang household!

Either way, the five Great Sects each have an accomplished cultivator standing by to pilot the powerful Gundam Suits, and with this perfectly harmonious balance of power the Jianghu can continue in peace for a thousand years hahahahahaa I'm just kidding. The Wen Sect builds 500 more mobile suits and declares war on the other four.

#gundam wing crossover #the untamed #xianxia mechs!#my last fic was the untamed IN SPACE #now we have gundam wing IN XIANXIA

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gingersnapwolves · 4 years ago

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The Untamed, a brief summary [Part 1/6]

Okay my friends, I have heard your calls. Here’s my play-by-play version of The Untamed.

Note the first: I’m dividing it up into sections because it is, after all, a 50 episode series and I doubt anyone will want to wade through it all in one go.

Note the second: I am going to try to be as unbiased as possible. There are different ways to interpret some of the characters’ actions, especially later in the show when things get morally complex. You can find oceans of meta on this stuff, so I will try not to pick a side when at all possible.

Note the third: I’m going to keep the tone pretty light and humorous. This show gets *dark* in the middle but y’all are reading a summary and I don’t want it to get too dry or too depressing. Please pardon me if I am flippant from time to time.

Part One: Sword Wizard School

I thought about doing a character guide but decided it would be easier to introduce you to characters as we meet them, because there are a LOT of characters. However, I am going to give you a brief primer on the important families/places.

Actually, let me back up a little further. The Untamed is a xianxia drama, so it’s about people trying to become immortal celestial beings. They fight monsters and do a lot of magic, and they live in clans/sects. A clan is a family. A sect is a cultivation style/school. The terms are often used interchangeably (even I’m guilty) but they are not exactly the same. Members of a clan will belong to that sect, but the sect will also take in outsiders to train, who are sect members but not clan members.

There are five Great Sects:

Province: Yunmeng; sect: Jiang, home: Lotus Pier

Province: Gusu, sect: Lan, home: Cloud Recesses

Province: Lanling, sect: Jin, home: Koi/Carp Tower

Province: Qinghe, sect: Nie, home: The Unclean Realm (this is not to say it is dirty, it’s from Buddhism and might also translate to ‘The Worldly Realm’)

Province: Qishan, sect: Wen, home: Nightless City/Nevernight (depending on translation)

Here’s a map I made for my fic reference which shows roughly where these provinces are in relation to each other. I may have pretended they were cities in America so I could calculate mileage. Yes I am the world’s biggest nerd, thanks.

H’okay! The show is not in chronological order but I am going in chronological order because the point is to make this simple for you. I’ll admit that I may not get everything 100% correct because it’s been a while since I watched parts of it but I’ll try.

Setting: Caiyi Town, [Gusu]

ENTER A GREMLIN.

Meet Wei Wuxian. He is a 16 year old chaos gremlin with ADHD. He does not look 16 but actors in American dramas pretending to be teenagers also do not look 16 so we’ll let that go. He is with his adopted brother (also 16ish, but younger than Wei Wuxian) Jiang Cheng, and his adopted older sister, Jiang Yanli (probably about 6 years older).

Oh, right. Names. Most characters have two names, a birth name and a ‘courtesy’ name which is a fancy name they get when they’re old enough to get their swords and stuff. They also have titles. For the sake of not driving y’all crazy, I will choose the most commonly used name for the character and stick with it, and then give you a chart at the end so you’ll understand fanfiction.

Wei Wuxian and his siblings are headed to Sword Wizard School in Gusu, hosted by the Lan sect. Wei Wuxian is clearly planning to Be Himself during these lectures, and Jiang Cheng does Not Approve. Jiang Cheng is obviously very serious and concerned with appearances, which makes sense because he is the sect heir. As an adopted son, Wei Wuxian can goof off; Jiang Cheng does not have that luxury. (Wei Wuxian is the son of two of Jiang Cheng’s father’s friends, who died when he was young. More on this later.) Jiang Cheng reminds Wei Wuxian and the other disciples that are with them that they are representing the Jiang sect and they should make a good impression.

They don’t think they can get to Cloud Recesses before dark so they get rooms at an inn.

ENTER A SNOB.

Jin Zixuan is the next fun character you’ll meet. He’s also 16 or thereabouts despite looking 24 at minimum. He is a sect heir to the Lanling Jin and he does not like being near or interacting with strangers. He pays the innkeeper to rent the whole inn and throw any other guests out. Is this a dick move? I’m trying to be unbiased here, so yes. Yes it is.

Wei Wuxian tries to flirt with a couple of Jin Zixuan’s retainers to get them to allow the Yunmeng siblings to stay, but Jin Zixuan decides to be a big jerk about it. Fun fact! Jin Zixuan is betrothed to Jiang Yanli! He is literally throwing his betrothed out of an inn so he doesn’t have to share a building with people. Wei Wuxian gets pissy and picks a fight with him but Jiang Yanli convinces him that he’s not worth it (although she is much nicer about it than any of us would be in her shoes), and they decide to head up to Cloud Recesses despite the time.

But alas! In their haste, they leave their invitation behind.

ENTER AN ICE PRINCE

As the Yunmeng trio try to talk their way past the gate, Lan Wangji arrives. Also 16, he is your classic stoic, repressed gay, and is the younger brother of the Lan Sect leader. With him are a bunch of Lan cultivators and a guy on a stretcher who is clearly in rough shape. The Lan cultivators carry him inside.

Wei Wuxian, pure of heart and dumb of ass, decides that this is a great time to try to talk his way through the gate, figuring that Lan Wangji, being an important person, can let them in. Lan Wangji reacts about how you would expect a stoic repressed gay would to a cute boy flirting with him for the first time: uses a silencing spell on him, tells him he’s absolutely not admitted without their invitation, and locks them out.

Jiang Cheng, who has spent the last 3 minutes desperately trying to get his brother to shut up before he gets them all in trouble, sends him back to town to find the invitation.

Int. Cloud Recesses [Gusu]

ENTER A SOFT MAN AND HIS EXTREMELY STARCHED UNCLE

Lan Xichen, the head of the Lan sect and Lan Wangji’s older brother, is studying the guy they brought in, with his uncle. Lan Xichen is young for a sect leader (he’s only 19 in the book but probably 24-25ish in the show) and his uncle advises him a lot of the time. The guy they brought is kind of dead but also kind of not. They say a bunch of stuff you won’t understand if you have not seen xianxia dramas before. It’s not really important.

Ext. Cloud Recesses [Gusu]

RE-ENTER THE GREMLIN

Wei Wuxian has come back with the invitation to find the rest of his sect no longer waiting outside and all of Cloud Recesses sealed by wards. “Wards are made to be broken,” he says, demonstrating a clear lack of understanding of their purpose. It’s a good thing he’s here for school.

He breaks in, carrying a couple jars of liquor, only to find Lan Wangji standing guard. Lan Wangji reprimands him for breaking important Lan sect rules like a) not breaking and entering, b) not coming in after dark, and c) bringing alcohol, which is forbidden. Wei Wuxian offers him one of the jars because he is 16 and stupid and for some reason thought a bribe was what this situation needed. Lan Wangji pulls a sword on him, which is definitely a reasonable response and not because he has his first boner and he’s angry about it.

They have a sword fight, basically to a draw. Lan Wangji drags him in to see Lan Xichen, who clearly thinks this is hilarious. Wei Wuxian blames everything on Jin Zixuan and Lan Wangji. He also says intelligent things about the not-a-corpse they’re examining, because the writers wanted us to know that he’s not a whole dumbass. Lan Xichen basically slaps him on the wrist, tells him to behave himself and sends him off to the guest house his siblings were given, and then teases Lan Wangji about Baby’s First Crush.

Ext, Nightless City [Qishan]

ENTER AN OVER THE TOP VILLAIN AND HIS HENCHMEN

Nightless City isn’t actually nightless. It’s just never dark there because it’s on top of a volcano, because that’s where all the cool villains live.

This is the home of the Qishan Wen, who are Obviously Evil from the Black Outfits, Volcano Lair, and Shuffling Zombies. Their leader is Wen Ruohan. His personality is that he is evil. He’s saying a bunch of stuff you won’t understand yet and then sends his Obnoxious Son Wen Chao off to look for something. He also sends Wen Qing, who is related to him somehow, presumably. She asks if she can bring her brother, Wen Ning, and Wen Ruohan says sure because all he cares about is Being Evil in his Zombie Volcano Lair.

Int, Cloud Recesses [Gusu]

ENTER A SLACKER and his friend, EVERY RETAIL EMPLOYEE DEALING WITH A KAREN YOU’VE EVER MET.

They’re all at the first lecture, and there’s a ceremony where each visiting sect presents a gift to Lan Qiren (the uncle/teacher). I think we might see what the Jin give him but I don’t care. Right now we’re talking about Nie Huaisang, the younger brother of the sect leader of the Nie sect. He is baby. He has brought a bird to class for no reason other than that he caught it and thinks it’s cool. Presenting to the dour and stern Lan Qiren makes him nervous.

With him is Meng Yao. Unlike everyone else you’ve met so far, Meng Yao is not a member of the gentry. He is the son of the Jin sect leader and a prostitute. (Yes, this makes him Jin ‘I can’t breathe the same air as commoners’ Zixuan’s younger brother.) When he was old enough to do Sword Magic he went to the Jin sect and asked for admittance, and his father had him thrown down a set of 200 steps because his father is an Enormous Douche. (That’s not biased. Hating this dude is one of the few things everyone agrees on.) Then he went to the Nie sect, and they said, “Sure, you can come in, but you’re not really a disciple, mmkay?” and he said sure. But he has worked his way up to being the assistant to the sect leader which is a pretty important position for someone with his background.

Naturally, because Meng Yao is Not Like the Others, a few people take this opportunity to gossip and talk smack about him. Meng Yao is upset but tries not to look it. Lan Xichen takes a moment to reassure him, saying that the Nie sect leader had written to him about what a helpful and awesome assistant he had now, and that Meng Yao obviously lived up to it. Meng Yao immediately develops the world’s Most Obvious Crush Don’t @ Me You Would Too.

ENTER MR. OBNOXIOUS, AN IRON MAIDEN, and A PUPPY. Fortunately these are the last characters you’ll meet for a while.

The Wen sect shows up at the gates of Cloud Recesses like ‘what up, I got a big attitude and fuck you’. The gate dude tells them they can’t come in without an invitation, and Wen Chao attacks him because he was raised in a volcano and they go in anyway. With Wen Chao are Wen Qing and her brother, Wen Ning. They are actually pretty awesome, you just don’t know it yet.

Wen Chao busts in on the Saluting Ceremony just as Jiang Cheng is trying to present their gift, and immediately begins insulting everyone there. You should count yourself fortunate that you’re only reading this because Wen Chao is literally the most obnoxious character in this show. Anyway, Wei Wuxian decides to pick a fight with him even though this is *obviously* a stupid thing to do. (I love Wei Wuxian with my whole heart but he is so stupid at 16 lmao.) He calls Wen Chao out on interrupting Jiang Cheng. Wen Chao reacts completely rationally and calmly BAHAHA who am I kidding, he pulls his sword out. Everyone else pulls their swords out. Wen Qing looks like she has the world’s worst migraine.

Lan Xichen takes out his flute and plays eight seconds of music that makes everyone’s swords go flying into the ceiling. Had I mentioned how awesome Lan Xichen is? Because he is Awesome.

Wen Chao gets even more pissy but Wen Qing shuts him down, saying she and her brother are there for Sword Wizard School and she’s sorry her cousin is such an asshole. Lan Xichen tells them to ‘try to come on time’ tomorrow. Had I mentioned how awesome Lan Xichen is? It bears repeating.

Ext, Cloud Recesses [Gusu]

Wei Wuxian is making fast friends with Nie Huaisang. They decide to go fishing in one of the streams. He sees Wen Qing sneaking around and asks what she’s doing there. She blows him off.

Meng Yao stops Lan Xichen and says goodbye to him. Lan Xichen asks why he’s leaving so soon, and Meng Yao says that he can’t actually stay for the lectures, since he’s only an assistant to the Nie sect, not a disciple. Lan Xichen tells him that Nie Mingjue (the head of the Nie sect) is just and honorable and will surely reward him for working so hard. They make heart eyes at each other for like a solid thirty seconds before Meng Yao manages to leave. I’m sorry, I’m trying to be unbiased. They gaze at each other longingly – no, shit, that’s still biased. They, uh, regard each other with mutual respect for thirty solid seconds and then Meng Yao leaves.

Meanwhile Jiang Cheng is Fretting about the fact that Wei Wuxian is Making a Bad Impression. He ain’t seen nothing yet. Jiang Yanli calms him down.

Wen Qing talks to her brother Wen Ning and is sad because he’s sick. She promises him that someday they’ll be able to leave Nightless City.

Int, Cloud Recesses [Gusu]

Lan Qiren is lecturing. Wei Wuxian proposes some casual heresy. Lan Qiren gets mad and tells him to copy the Chapter of Conduct a thousand times, and throws him out of class. Jiang Cheng tries to crawl under his desk.

Instead of going to copy lines, Wei Wuxian wanders off and meets A PUPPY, ie Wen Ning. He is practicing his archery. Wei Wuxian proceeds to help him with his stance and Wen Ning looks like he just discovered his bisexuality. Wen Qing sees them together and is clearly not thrilled. Wei Wuxian asks her why she’s always wandering around the back hills of Cloud Recesses and asks if she’s looking for something. She tells him not to be stupid and leaves with her brother.

Lan Wangji drags Wei Wuxian back to the library for his punishment. Wei Wuxian proceeds to spend the next few hours doing Everything That Is Not That, which culminates in him exchanging Lan Wangji’s book for some porn when he’s not looking. Lan Wangji tears the porn up and tells him to piss off.

~romance~

Jiang Cheng: I hope you’re proud of yourself.

Wei Wuxian: I absolutely am.

They go back to their guest house. Wen Qing is there. She’s a doctor! Told you she was awesome. Jiang Yanli wasn’t feeling well and Wen Qing gave her some medicine. They talk about the fact that there aren’t lectures for a few days because Lan Qiren is off doing Official Stuff.

But there’s still fun to be had! There’s a water demon attacking people in the nearby town. Lan Xichen is worried that it’s serious and he’s going to go himself. Lan Wangji goes with him. Wei Wuxian asks if he and Jiang Cheng can go ‘get some practice’ as they fight lots of water demons in Yunmeng. Lan Xichen, remembering his brother’s obvious crush, says sure. Wen Ning wants to go too. So does Wen Qing. Lan Xichen suddenly feels like a chaperone on a field trip but says fine because he’s the cool older brother.

Wei Wuxian takes the opportunity to ask questions about the not-a-corpse from earlier. Lan Xichen politely tells him that’s it handled and not to worry about it. Wei Wuxian thinks there’s something he’s not telling him, and he mentions that to Lan Wangji, who agrees but won’t say so. Wei Wuxian can tell anyway because he’s learning to read Lan Wangji’s microexpressions.

They fight a water demon. Jiang Cheng gets injured and Wen Qing patches him up. He looks at her with puppy eyes. Some dumbass loses his sword in the water. Wen Ning tries to help him despite being uniquely unqualified to do so, and passes out. Wei Wuxian tries to rescue both of them, and Lan Wangji ends up rescuing all three of them despite clearly wanting to let the water demon eat them. Jiang Cheng buys a comb to give to Wen Qing but chickens out and doesn’t give it to her. Wei Wuxian deduces that Wen Ning’s illness is because of a previous bad experience with ghostly spirits or something, and gives Wen Qing a talisman to give to her brother that will help protect him from monsters. He says that no matter what she’s looking for at Cloud Recesses, he hopes the talisman will help Wen Ning.

Then he tries to buy Lan Wangji some fruit as a gift. Lan Wangji refuses to look at him. Lan Xichen starts mentally writing wedding invitations.

Ext. Nightless City [Qishan]

ENTER AN EDGELORD (sorry I forgot about him, in fact I think this happened earlier but the timing isn’t really important)

Meet Xue Yang. You have no idea who he is. Wen Ruohan is demanding he hand over something called yin iron. Xue Yang’s response to this is basically ‘choke me harder, Daddy’ and you’re left feeling vaguely disturbed.

Int. Cloud Recesses [Gusu]

It’s party time! Wei Wuxian smuggled some liquor back with him. He, Jiang Cheng, and Nie Huaisang get drunk. They give Jiang Cheng a hard time about his high standards for women.

Lan Wangji comes in like the hall monitor you hated in high school to break it up. Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang run away. Wei Wuxian uses a talisman on Lan Wangji to keep him from reporting them and make him take a drink of the alcohol. We all remind ourselves very firmly that he is only 16 and will do stupid shit, despite wanting to slap him. Lan Wangji has never had alcohol before and one drink makes him blackout drunk. Wei Wuxian has to babysit him for the rest of the night. Serves him right.

The next day, they’re all in trouble, even Lan Wangji. Wei Wuxian tries to tell Lan Qiren that it’s not Lan Wangji’s fault, but Lan Wangji accepts his punishment anyway. They get hit with a stick a bunch of times.

Lan Wangji goes to recuperate in the cold springs. Lan Xichen, the world’s biggest troll, sends Wei Wuxian to do the same. Lan Wangji nearly has an aneurysm when Wei Wuxian tries to start taking his clothes off.

ENTER THE PLOT

They get pulled underwater and end up in a cave. It’s a magic cave where only members of the Lan clan are allowed to be. To keep the cave from killing him, Lan Wangji wraps his Magic Forehead Ribbon around Wei Wuxian’s wrist. This is the same magic forehead ribbon he told Wei Wuxian ten episode minutes ago that only parents, spouses, and children are allowed to touch. Draw what conclusions you will.

There’s a ghostly lady in the cave who is Lan Wangji’s ancestor. She tells them Evil Is Abroad. A long time ago a dude named Xue Chonghai took a bunch of pieces of metal and filled them full of evil energy. Everyone banded together and killed him, but the metal couldn’t be completely destroyed, so it was split into ‘the cardinal directions’ and then sealed and hidden. Ah ha! This is what Wen Ruohan is looking for! It’s called Evil MacGuffin yin iron.

Wei Wuxian says if it’s so powerful, why don’t they use it to fight back? Ghost lady says she tried that but it’s too evil and it doesn’t work. She gives them the piece that was sealed in the cave and tells them to go fight evil together. Lan Wangji is glad it’s too cold to have a boner.

Except then she throws them out of the cave and onto dry land and Wei Wuxian lands on top of him and he definitely gets one from that. Sorry, Lan Wangji, I don’t make the rules.

They’ve been missing for two days and everyone is really upset, especially Jiang Cheng, who thinks Wei Wuxian was just goofing off.

Lan Xichen takes the piece of yin iron they got in the cave and seals it in a pouch. They discuss the fact that Wen Ruohan is clearly collecting the pieces of yin iron and this is Bad News Bears. The yin iron will respond to other pieces of yin iron so they decide they should use the piece they have to locate the other pieces.

But first, classes are over! Despite the fact that each of these events has led seamlessly into the next and it seems like they’ve been there a week, they’ve actually been there six months. If you dealt with the Teen Wolf ‘timeline’ I assume you can deal with that lmao.

There’s a lantern-lighting ceremony to celebrate. Wei Wuxian paints a rabbit on his lantern because there were a bunch of rabbits in the cave and Lan Wangji clearly likes rabbits. This makes Lan Wangji smile for the first time. They all light their lanterns and make a wish.

Wei Wuxian wishes he can stand with justice and live without regrets. Lan Wangji looks at him like he’s about to propose. Wen Qing wishes she could protect her little brother and that he’ll always be safe. Jiang Cheng looks at her like he’s about to propose. Nie Huaisang wishes he can pass his classes and get the hell out of high school. Truly, the most relatable.

But the moment is ruined because people start teasing Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli, asking why they didn’t light a lantern together and wish for a happy marriage. Jin Zixuan, the paragon of reacting reasonably to things, storms off. He tells his sect members he doesn’t want to hear about the marriage and they should stop bringing it up. Wei Wuxian overhears and they get into a fight. Jiang Yanli manages to get Wei Wuxian to back off.

The next day, Wei Wuxian is being punished for punching a jerk in the face. He is kneeling on the rocks of the courtyard. But he’s already gotten distracted because there’s an anthill and he has ADHD. Lan Wangji calls him ‘unteachable’ and stomps off, clearly mad at his boner like usual.

Because this is kind of important, the two sect leaders have showed up to hash it out. Jiang Yanli’s dad says ‘listen, if your son doesn’t want to marry my daughter, we shouldn’t force him’. Jin Zixuan’s dad says, ‘kids are stupid and they don’t know what they want’. Jiang Yanli’s dad says, ‘well I absolutely agree your son is stupid but he’s being a jerk to my daughter so why don’t we politely call this off before something happens that makes one of us impolitely call it off’, and Jin Zixuan’s dad agrees. Jiang Yanli is upset, although why she actually wanted to marry Jin Zixuan is beyond everyone involved, including the audience. Then again it can’t be easy to hear that some dude who has barely even met you has decided you’re not good enough for him.

Meanwhile, Wei Wuxian sees Lan Xichen telling Lan Wangji ‘be careful’ and correctly deduces that Lan Wangji is leaving with the yin iron to try to find the other pieces, while Lan Xichen stays behind to protect Cloud Recesses since the Wen sect thinks it’s still there. He leaves a note that says ‘gone monster hunting, meet you back at home!’ Jiang Cheng nearly has an aneurysm, especially when his dad is like ‘lmao that kid is such a dumbass’.

~end Sword Wizard School~

okay, guys, what did you think? was this helpful? could you follow it? was it at least vaguely entertaining? should I keep going?

#the untamed #liveblog #of a sort

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madtomedgar · 4 years ago

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The Case For Wang Lingjiao

Ok. I’m going to make the case for the Untamed’s third most unlikable character, Wang Lingjiao, being sympathetic.

Wang Lingjiao starts out her story as a servant. She’s not a cultivator. She doesn’t have a golden core. She has no social or spiritual power at all. She’s just the servant of either Wen Chao or Wen Xu’s wife. And Wen Chao, who has both a ton of social and spiritual power and can literally set people on fire with his mind, decides he likes her. Wen Chao is the worst person to decide he likes you. Jin Guangshan is second worst, only because he doesn’t have a habit of setting people on fire with his mind.

Wang Lingjiao has two options here. Option one: try to fight it and get set on fire at worst and merely fired at best. Option two: go with it, and try to do whatever she can to keep Wen Chao, CQL’s first ranked douchebag, happy and happy with her. When and if Wen Chao gets tired of her, she doesn’t have a lot of options. They are: get set on fire, at worst, and get cast out to fend for herself as a now fallen woman with a bad reputation at best. So she has a big vested interest in doing whatever she thinks will keep Wen Chao interested in her.

This explains the whiny “gooongziiiii” pouting, it explains her vendetta against Mianmian, because if Wen Chao decides to replace her? She’s fucked. He could literally just kill her and no one would care. It explains her being so insanely ride-or-die for both him and the Wen clan, because if he goes down, she goes down with him. It explains her coming along places where it really doesn’t make sense to bring your mistress, because a) gotta keep him interested and keep him from bringing home a new side-piece, and b) do whatever and go wherever he says, enthusiastically. It explains her being extra nasty towards Wei Wuxian, because Wen Chao hates him, and that will impress Wen Chao. It also explains her pouting about being “sooooo scared” after the sack of Lotus Pier and harping on Madam Yu’s qualities as undesirable, in sharp contrast to her. She’s painting herself as dependent, devoted, and desirable. It’s a strategic performance as much as anything, and she’s playing Wen Chao to keep herself safe and in a good position.

Her imperiousness towards Madam Yu also, I think, makes a lot of sense. Madam Yu is exactly the kind of person who Wang Lingjiao has lived her whole life under the boot of. She was born to social power, she is a strong cultivator. Wang Lingjiao spent her whole pre-canon life bowing and scraping and cleaning up after the Madam Yu’s of the world, and, when she didn’t do a good job, getting slapped or beaten or insulted. Of course she’s going to lord it over the current stand-in for the oppressive system she lives under, and have way too much fun with it. Also, in her eyes, Madam Yu’s refusal to offer tea is an insult, not just to the Wen clan, but an insult to her, personally, because Madam Yu thinks she’s better than her, because of her birth and marriage and cultivation. All of these things are completely off-limits to Wang Lingjiao. And when Madam Yu does insult her, it’s not based on her terrible behavior or her violation of Jiang sovereignty, it’s based on her birth (low), her job (a servant), and her lack of cultivation.

On the last night of her life, she knows she’s screwed, not because of Wei Wuxian, but because Wen Chao has grown bored with her. She’s scared of Wei Wuxian, scared of the war, just scared in general, and all he does is yell at her, threaten her, and insult her. We see later that he’s perfectly willing to kill her when she’s bloodied and asking him for help. Of course she was taking the jewels and running. She knew what she was in for the day he lost interest, and she knew that day was tomorrow. Wang Lingjiao never had a chance, not because she wasn’t a good person, but because the circumstances she was in didn’t give her the option to both be a good person and live.

#untamed stuff #long post #wang lingjiao

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m34gs · 3 years ago

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!!!

Aaahhh it's me again!!!! Idea! Idea!!

Karaoke!!

Urahara drags everyone to a Karaoke bar because of who he is as a person. What would everyone sing? Who is everyone there?? What are their voice types?? What chaos ensues??

Ahhhh!!!!

💙🧡💙🧡

Hope you're having a good one!!!

GASP! KARAOKE!!!! Hi friend, I love this idea so so much! Karaoke is one of my favourite things!!!!! That being said, I can ramble on music and song choices for forever, and so be prepared. This is gonna be a long one :D

Ok, so Kisuke dragged them out there. Who is 'them'? Oh the usual crew: Ichigo, Yoruichi, Grimmjow, Orihime (she went willingly), Chad, Uryu, Renji, Rukia (again she went willingly), and Nel joins this time too!

As for songs...well here's what I think:

Rukia and Orihime are the ones that are totally enthusiastic about this whole outing. They are very excited to be there. And Nel is excited too, even if she doesn't get all of it. That doesn't stop her from joining in with the other two just as energetically! I think the girls would sing together at least a few songs, and they would be songs like Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen, Hips Don't Lie by Shakira, CAPSULE by Hikari no Disco (link here, if you haven't heard this one before, it's cute and has a fun tune!), and other fun tunes that fit that kind of vibe. Nel doesn't necessarily know all the words, but she bops along with them and dances enthusiastically around. Maybe at the start they try some harmonies (building off your idea that Rukia is an alto and Orihime sings soprano, because I absolutely love that) but by the end of it, they are just having fun and singing as happily as they can, not even really caring what they sound like because they are too caught up in enjoying themselves (which is how karaoke is meant to be!) Nel is very off-key and off-beat, but no one cares because she is happy and it's pretty hard for anyone to want to criticize someone who looks so happy to just be there.

Kisuke doesn't go up to sing. But he does drunkenly sing along to every song the girls sing while remaining in his seat curled up next to Yoruichi.

Then, it's Yoruichi's turn. And yeah, she's gonna sing. This woman has confidence, as well as skill she has cultivated over the many years. I like to imagine her voice is also low, chesty, warm and soothing like the smell of cinnamon or the taste of hot tea sweetened with just the slightest touch of honey, or the feel of a warm and strong hug. She knows what songs suit her, too. She's gonna go for the ballads, but not just any ballad. She goes for jazz. Yoruichi sings Summertime, and if you want to know how I imagine her singing to be, just listen to Ella Fitzgerald sing it here! (Ella Fitzgerald is an absolute queen, her voice is so amazing and she is so beautiful!) Kisuke just falls more and more in love with Yoruichi as she sings. This is the only song he's quiet for. (Ichigo goes "oh now he's quiet" and Kisuke hucks a shoe at him and tells him to shut up).

Poor Renji gets dragged up there by Rukia to sing with the girls even though he knows none of the songs. (Rukia only knows them all because her and Orihime have sleep overs and listen to music while painting each other's nails and catching up on everything that's been going on). He is highly embarrassed and flees back to his seat as soon as he can. Then he just sits there all night, face as red as his hair.

Uryu has much the same fate as Renji, but he was dragged up there by Orihime (I think this is a cute ship tbh). He stumbles through one song and dance with the girls, and then manages to escape.

Chad is incredibly quiet, and he doesn't go up to sing for a long time. It takes all of the girls persuading him (and maybe a few drinks? I'm putting this during a time when they're all old enough to drink alcohol). But when he does, his voice is smooth, bass, beautiful, like the thunder rolling across the sky during a storm, and kind of surprises everyone (except Ichigo who knows only because he and Chad sometimes would sing along to their favourite songs on the radio together while hanging out). But Chad is not just a gentle soul. Oh no. He has power to his voice. So he starts off with Sound of Silence by Disturbed (link here for those who are unfamiliar with this version, it's my favourite version of the song).

Unfortunately for Ichigo, the fact he has spent time singing with Chad previously means that Chad knows Ichigo can sing. And Chad is not as innocent as everyone thinks. If he has to suffer, so does Ichigo. So he totally makes the off-hand comment that Ichigo should sing next, because his voice is really good. And now our poor Ichigo has everyone hounding him and Rukia drags him up there and Renji is shouting that he needs to because Rukia already forced him, so it's only fair! And so Ichigo is forced up there. Chad picks the song because he knows Ichigo won't. And he knows exactly which song he's gonna choose and as soon as he hears the intro, Ichigo glares at Chad because what the hell Chad you can't just choose the song Ichigo says reminds him of Grimmjow that is just not fair. Which song, you ask? Criminal, by Britney Spears. :D Ichigo sings it and the entire time he is literally glaring at Chad. And Grimmjow is now confused because is Ichigo singing it to Chad? But why is he angry at Chad then? And why does Grimmjow not like the idea of him singing that song specifically for someone? He has many emotions. He is grumpy and doesn't know what to do for the rest of the song. But he relaxes a bit when Ichigo comes and sits next to him and not Chad. He grins smugly at Chad, but Chad just...smiles knowingly back at him? And now he is More Confused. He would go up there and sing a song for Ichigo, as a fuck-you to Chad (definitely not as showing off to Ichigo, not at all), but he doesn't know what song to choose, how karaoke works, and he is still shy about singing in front of other people. So when he goes home that night, he goes through all the music he has learned about and searches for songs to sing to Ichigo (he's not even sure why but he just knows that he needs to be prepared next time so that he can show Chad he isn't special just because Ichigo was looking at him specifically for an entire song). He will be prepared for the next karaoke session.

These are my thoughts! Thank you so much for the ask! Do you have any ideas to add? Does anyone else join them? Are they in a private karaoke booth or are they at the open stage in a large bar? Do you have any other songs that you think would work really well in the scenario?

Hope you have a lovely day, friend!!!

#backwardshirt #asks #responses #mutuals #friends #bleach #karaoke au #grimmichi #bleach karaoke au #this is so fun #I loved this ask

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wangxiandecoded · 4 years ago

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Episode 10

Previous Episode | Next Episode

(Spoilers for the whole show ahead!)

Going to draw a heart over Wangxian to keep track of every time the camera shows someone third wheeling them from now on.

Wei Ying uses his Binding/Bonding talisman on Xue Yang to show Lan Zhan it’s a dynamic tool that doesn’t deserve to be named “Boring”. Even though there’s a serial killer on the loose, Lan Zhan’s opinions on his inventions matter a lot to him. Standard Wei Ying stuff.

Wangxian’s Mirrors

At this point of the show, I could not believe there was a couple who directly mirrored Wangxian. And surprise! They were two men who dressed in black and white and came together for their common vision exactly like Wangxian did. Wei Ying cannot help but connect the dots and Lan Zhan is already aware of their eminence.

Xue Yang Fancies The Yiling Laozu

Xue Yang’s introduction makes the story take a darker turn but also a gayer one. The homoerotic subtext between him and Wei Ying literally jumps out of the screen.

(This episode had a lot of moments that were just begging for alternate dialogues to be written. I just wanted to have fun with the subtext that’s already present.)

Wei Ying doesn’t want Lan Zhan to waste his precious breath interrogating the bad guy. He protectively steps up (something he does quite a lot) and puts some distance between the both of them.

But he wants Lan Zhan to hold his sword while he does that.. and if that act wasn’t necessarily considered to be intimate or romantic before, it just became that after Lan Zhan refused to do it in front of everyone.

Wei Ying has uttered many conspicuously gay things on the show but most of them are with reference to Lan Zhan. Therefore, this is possibly the gayest dialogue he has ever said in a strictly non-Lan Zhan context.

His tone is all, “Honey, you've been existing for 5 minutes, I'm the queerest person the cultivation world has seen in a millennium. You think frisking a guy is going to make me feel scandalized?” This is nuts to me because Xue Yang is arguably the most blatantly coded gay character on the show.. and here is Wei Ying all but saying he can outgay him. That he shouldn’t come after his job. And Lan Zhan just looks like..

It is curious how Lan Zhan says no to something that would require Wei Ying to go near Xue Yang again.

We get it, Lan Zhan. It was hard to see your guy giving attention to someone who wasn’t you.

When Lan Zhan is unsure what's happening back home, the first person his eyes seek is Wei Ying, his source of strength and reassurance.

SongXiao Help WangXian Fall Deeper In Love

Wei Ying is euphoric to meet another pair of Soulmates™. (The same kind of glee that queer people feel when they meet a celebrity queer couple.) His relationship with Lan Zhan just gained supreme validation and a boost to the power of infinity!

He sees everything he has with Lan Zhan reflected in SongXiao’s relationship. He admires them and is delighted that people like them who aren’t concerned with clan drama can walk the wider path of justice, and also lead successful, honourable lives. He looks to Lan Zhan for confirmation but Lan Zhan doesn’t seem too eager to publicize the super sweet promise they made at the lantern ceremony or the fact that he’s been secretly enjoying Wei Ying’s companionship on this expedition. And let’s be honest, it would’ve been more shocking if Lan Zhan did confirm any of that here.

Cheer up, Wei Ying! Lan Zhan will get plenty more opportunities to prove his love for you and he'll ace every single one of them.

No one asked for this but thank you NHS for declaring your ideal type is beautiful gentlemen who fight crime together and unapologetically go their own way.

The parallels between the two pairs write themselves. More importantly, it is while watching SongXiao leave together that Lan Zhan stumbles onto an epiphany.

This is such an underrated moment in the show. The sorrowful music and slow-motion shot of Lan Zhan looking at Wei Ying with vulnerability all over his face once again drives it home that Wei Ying is The One for him, and he is his. He was already getting tired of denying that Wei Ying is his soulmate in every sense there is, and he feels his pain and sadness in this moment. It is enough for Jiang Cheng to feel sorry for him and move on but not for Lan Zhan who feels all that his soulmate feels.

It is overwhelming and brand new information to Lan Zhan himself that he can feel it because Wei Ying is not in impending danger right now, so this need he feels to protect him and be there for him can only mean that he loves him beyond the shadow of a doubt. Wei Ying seems upset thinking about his mother and Lan Zhan gets it, without Wei Ying having uttered a word the whole time. His face shows a kind of defeat in this scene; he surrenders to everything he has known and felt for some time now : He's in love with Wei Ying and would tear down the universe without a second thought if it means it would rid him of his unhappiness. And he isn't able to do that in this moment. But thanks to Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen, he’s found comfort in the truth they have each other at the end of the day, even if they have nothing left in this world. He cannot give back to Wei Ying what he has lost but he can accompany him in his sadness, and it will have to be enough. And it is, because Wei Ying can overcome just about everything as long as Lan Zhan walks by his side.

Wei Ying Says Lan Clan Deserves Rights

Wei Ying has many nice things to say about the Lan clan who he found exhausting a few months ago. Love brings about miraculous changes in a person, y’all.

Wei Ying gravitates towards Lan Zhan as if it's second nature to him and it really is.

Jiang Cheng spends a lot of time trying to get Wei Ying to spill the Top Secrets about the Yin Iron and Wei Ying is like, "Sorry, I’m bound by the Soulmate laws to tell you absolutely nothing."

Wei Ying is already embracing the idea of controlling the Yin Iron and people are rightfully getting offended by his suggestion.

What did you expect, Wei Ying? Not everyone is your lifetime confidant to give you the benefit of the doubt and reciprocate it with compassion, trust and open-mindedness.

Wangxian’s Temporary Separation

What was that, Wei Ying? Did we hear you admit that the Gusu Lan roof is softer than the one in Qinghe? Could this have anything to do with a certain law enforcer in Cloud Recesses you fell in love with at first sword fight?

There is a delicate, bittersweet air to this separation, and even the casual watcher is going to be wondering, “When did I get so invested in Wangxian that WuJi makes me want to cry?”

It's cute how Lan Zhan is like, “Okay, I’ve seen the love of my life for one last time, I’ll quietly take my leave so he doesn’t know I was waiting for him to come back.”

Turns out, "I'll sleep on your roof tonight," is one of the most romantic things we could tell the person we love. Isn't it brilliant that just few seconds ago Wei Ying had said he will take whatever ground he finds as his home for the night, and how utterly beautiful is it to have followed it up with this dialogue? “Lan Zhan, I'll sleep on your roof tonight.” Because the world is big but my home is wherever you are. That’s where I’m happiest, I'll sleep on this rugged roof and walk through thorns if it means I get to be by your side. I won't mind it at all. And how unbelievably romantic is it that Wei Ying makes a philosophical statement about life, which ends up being about Lan Zhan?

Lan Zhan hears the implications in his voice. And he openly yearns to stay behind a little longer and commit to his memory what Wei Ying looks like when he is drunkenly proclaiming his love for him under the moonlight. It is pleasantly surprising that Lan Zhan is willing to express his emotions when he knows he is safe from Wei Ying hearing them, that he doesn't mind telling him goodbye when he thinks Wei Ying won't remember it.

But the audience can hear his voice and we are going to remember it. How, "Wei Ying, I have to go," is uttered in a cadence so sweet we did not know Lan Zhan was capable of before this. And the choice of words do not simply mean that he’s going to leave, but that he has to, and most certainly not because he wants to. And how it really means, “I’m worried about everything, but especially you, and I'm sorry I have to go. I have to trust that we'll both be okay on this path. Please know that I don't wish to leave you, and forgive me for it. Wei Ying, I love you."

Even their temporary separation hurts so good. If they were meant to be best buddies, this scene wouldn't have been shot so poignantly. But we got used to seeing them together and every frame is designed to dig deeper into your heart and instil the fact that these soulmates are parting, and we don’t know when they’ll see each other again. This is the melancholy of a man who does not wish to be away from his lover but is forced to for the sake of the greater good. Anyone can see that.

The rooftop and moonlit night come as a callback to their first meeting, only Lan Zhan no longer wants to point the tip of his sword at Wei Ying, it gives him far greater satisfaction to place Wei Ying behind his sword.

I haven’t counted the number of times people acknowledge Wangxian’s relationship and/or know that they are inseparable, but it’s safe to say almost every character does that at some point. And some even know how to exploit their weakness, that in order to hurt one of them, the surefire way is to simply aim for the other like Wen Chao does here.

To summarize, Episode 10 saw Lan Zhan showing us his true colors : When he isn’t occupied with being the esteemed, intimidating Lan Wangji, he’s busy being a regular, sweet, romantic guy in love. And Wei Ying did that. He single-handedly exposes the soft side of Lan Zhan that nobody sees to the audience now and the world later on.

This episode also gave us this : Two soulmates chilling shoulder to shoulder zero feet apart because they’re falling in love.

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neverdoingmuch · 4 years ago

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hello! I just wanted to ask, which do you think in the mdzs novel has the most questionable morality? like they have done more bad things but they still had kindness in them somehow (?)

oh!! this is a hard one for me anon! i’m always bad at ranking characters but i’ll do my best! i’m not sure if you were hoping for like a quick answer or a long one but i’m gonna go with a long one bc that’s always fun and i’ll do a tldr if you don’t want to read through all that? yeah that seems like it’ll work because holy shit i didnt mean for it to get so long (and kind of away from the point of your ask too so sorry about that!)

okay! So, the three main contenders for morally dubious characters are, as far as I’ve seen, Xue Yang, Jin Guangyao, and Wei Wuxian. Not a big surprise, I’m sure. While they’re the more obvious options, they do have a lot of parallels and exhibit a lot of the themes and ideas that MXTX was getting at. I mean, I love looking at Jin Guangyao and Wei Wuxian as foils, and even other combinations of the three, so my answer will probably be heavy on the comparisons. I do think it’s worth touching on Jiang Cheng as well though. Also, I’ll try to stay as unbiased as I can because there’s a few characters on this list that I just don’t like … like at all.

Jiang Cheng tends to get brushed over a lot when it comes to some of the horrible things he’s done. From promising to protect Wei Wuxian from dogs only to immediately use them as a threat whenever he wants to to leading a siege on a group of people he knows are completely innocent of any crimes to torturing and killing people for thirteen years, he’s definitely not a good person. His concerns lie first and foremost with himself and his. That doesn’t seem like a horrible thing at first – he should owe his loyalty to himself, his family, and his sect – but it does mean that when the Xuanwu’s cave situation happened, his response was to get mad that Wei Wuxian helped Jin Zixuan and Lan Wangji. (And that’s why Jiang Fengmian got mad at him!). Later on, when pressure comes from the sects regarding Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng chooses not to stand with him, which, while understandable, isn’t exactly a kind move to someone who called Jiang Cheng his family and was trying to repay the debt the two of them owed Wen Qing. There’s no denying that he does care about Wei Wuxian, but when forced to make hard choices, he picks what’s easiest for himself. In general, I’d say that his sense of morality is selfish and somewhat flighty, but not necessarily questionable, so I’ll move on!

For the usual suspects, I’ll start with Xue Yang because I’m just going to immediately eliminate him from the running. I’ve seen people interpret his character sympathetically or try to justify some of his actions or the way he turned out, but I honestly just can’t. While you could feel sympathetic towards him because of his childhood, we have Wei Wuxian as a direct contrast to Xue Yang, as well as, to a certain degree, Jin Guangyao. Both Xue Yang and Wei Wuxian were street kids who had a horrible time in their youth, but Wei Wuxian was able to leave that behind him. That’s a lot easier to do when you’ve been adopted into a major sect and afforded comforts above your station (and also have terrible coping mechanisms), but even Jin Guangyao’s revenge isn’t quite as wide-spread and malicious. I know it may seem a bit obvious, anon, but some people really do try and treat Xue Yang like he’s morally dubious which confuses me a lot because how?? Even if we do say that he has suitable cause, one of the messages of the novel is that your past experiences don’t justify your future actions, so even within the context of the novel – a novel which is concerned with highlighting the grey areas of morality – Xue Yang isn’t afforded any sympathy. So, there’s really no way to construe him in a positive light. His only moments of kindness come with his time spent in Yi City with Xiao Xingchen, where Xue Yang doesn’t change much – he may have cared for Xiao Xingchen, but Xue Yang still tortured him as he did so. I never quite read that arc as Xue Yang learning to care or being allowed to be kind again so I’d just say that he lacks both morals and kindness. On that basis we can boot him from this competition.

Jin Guangyao may have been one of the antagonists of the novel, but he wasn't a completely bad person or like The Worst. His main crimes involved getting revenge for slights against him or his mother – being from Nie Mingjue, Jin Guangshan, or any number of other cultivators. I think that, to an extent, his actions are justifiable. While you can contrast this to the way Wei Wuxian gets called a servant's son, they do differ in the fact that Wei Wuxian is afforded a higher level of protection due to him being favoured by Jiang Fengmian. Additionally, when Wei Wuxian does have his birth used against him, he's usually the person who acted out first anyway. Jin Guangyao was insulted for doing little more than exist and was never the person to act out first, yet still faced a near constant onslaught of insults. I'm not saying his actions were justified by any means, but the reasoning behind his actions is sound. The one thing I will note is that he doesn't let go of his grudges – even when everything is all done and dusted and he has everything that he could possibly want from life, he still holds onto that hatred. I remember seeing a post where someone mentioned that characters who were able to move on and change for the better were able to get their happy ending in MDZS, which isn't relevant here but definitely applies to Jin Guangyao when thinking about why he got the ending he did. I don't agree with the degree to which he enacted his revenge against certain characters and I loathe the whole Qin Su situation. I don't care how much he cries about it, he could've at least told her, but I mainly just pretend that part didn't exist. So, he has suitable cause for at least some of his actions, and his other victims can just be classified as necessary collateral rather than being intentional innocent targets, if that makes sense, but he's definitely vindictive and spiteful.

On the other hand, he did a lot of good, too. He's a side character for the most part so Jin Guangyao didn't get the most screen-time, but we do hear of some of the good things he's done. The main example would probably be the watchtowers. One of the interesting things about Jin Guangyao and Wei Wuxian is that while both of them are capable of kindness, the breadth and scope of Jin Guangyao's is much broader – the watchtowers are an idea that not only showcase how Jin Guangyao's upbringing allows him to see flaws in the cultivation world that the other privileged cultivators can't, but also show how he does care about the people. I've seen a few people try and play it as a spying technique but I don’t really believe that in the slightest. I mean, the point of the towers is to cover the areas where the sects aren't, so I have no idea what Jin Guangyao's people would even be spying on. Anyway, setting up those watchtowers really didn't benefit him any specific way – unless you consider him endearing himself to Lan Xichen and garnering a good reputation with the common folk something that outweighs the absolute nightmare it would have been to make the sects participate in the project to begin with. In a more specific case, Jin Ling's dog was given to him by Jin Guangyao. It's interesting that, despite Jin Ling spending the novel being trailed by Jiang Cheng, the gift that he obviously cares for deeply is from Jin Guangyao. In the Guanyin Temple scene I definitely got the sense that Jin Ling had loved and trusted Jin Guangyao before the truth came out so I'm firmly convinced that he would've been a wonderful and conscientious uncle to him and just generally good to the people who worked for him and/or the commoners.

Okay, now Wei Wuxian!! As far as I've seen, people are relatively good at staying true to his questionable sense of morality. Like with Jin Guangyao, we know that he can be vindictive and pretty excessive when it comes to getting his revenge, but I'm not going to deny that I was definitely rooting for him when he went after Wen Chao and his little gang. The main issue with Wei Wuxian is probably the demonic cultivation – the stigma against it tends to get reduced to it being bad for the user and their temperament etc. etc., but there's more to it than that. I'm no expert on Daoism by any means, but from my understanding desecration of corpses and disturbing the dead is a significant cultural taboo. This isn't just Wei Wuxian doing something no one else can do (though it certainly is true), it's also him doing something no one else should do. I've seen the massacre at Nightless City being added as another tally to his list of crimes, but I honestly think that that isn’t a crime worth adding – he needed to defend himself so he did, simple as that.

As I mentioned above, Wei Wuxian's kindness is a bit more specific – where Jin Guangyao cares for the people, Wei Wuxian cares for individuals. We see his kindness more clearly, be it because he's the main character or be it because actions are clearer and stronger when it's for a single person or a small group. It's a bit easier, in my opinion, to care about people when you don't have to live with them and face them every day, but Wei Wuxian does. Even though Wei Wuxian led a lot more comfortable life than Jin Guangyao, we never really see Jin Guangyao get his hands dirty in the same way Wei Wuxian does. When a sacrifice needs to be made, Wei Wuxian’s the one who makes it. He doesn't relegate, he does it himself. We know that he would do absolutely anything for those he cares about and that's why he's able to commit a lot of the atrocities he does.

When it comes to deciding between Jin Guangyao and Wei Wuxian for most questionable morality, I think we need to look at the reasons behind their actions. Wei Wuxian’s sense of morality is definitely nowhere near that of the Lans but he has always been driven by his sense of justice and his love for those around him. In that sense, I've always read him as having a flexible sense of morality rather than a questionable one. I'm not sure how much of it ties in with his sense of duty, but it's definitely a lot. Wei Wuxian is, and always will, fill the role that is required of him – be it the childish and sweet younger brother, the talented but flippant older brother, the monster that wins the war, or the fierce protector that gives his all, Wei Wuxian will twist himself into whatever position he's needed in at that moment. Obviously, he went after Wen Chao for his own benefit, and the corrupting influence of the resentful energy does need to be factored into this, but at his core, Wei Wuxian will always value his duty (to his sect, family, friends, and innocents) and doing what is right over anything else. He may have stumbled along the way, but he did manage to form his own path to uphold all the values that he wanted to. Jin Guangyao, on the other hand, is similar to Jiang Cheng in how he's driven by his own motivations for betterment and revenge, albeit with more grace and intelligence. Jin Guangyao may masquerade as being motivated by any number of causes but he will never do anything at his own risk, and he will always be his top priority. So, while it's a close call between Wei Wuxian and Jin Guangyao, I'm going to have to go with Jin Guangyao on this one!

tldr; the fandom favourites for questionable morality are xy, jgy, and wwx so i mainly looked at them. I included jc as well but neither xy or jc demonstrate the dichotomy needed so they got eliminated from the running. Jgy and wwx both commit and are willing to commit horrible crimes as well as being capable of caring for others and being kind. but, where wwx is driven by his sense of justice and love for others, jgy is driven by his own motivations for betterment and revenge, making for a more questionable morality (as compared to wwx's more flexible morality).

#mdzs #mdzs text #mdzs meta #dfgrgt i was like hm but what if this post isnt good enough to tag as meta #modao zushi #wei wuxian #jin guangyao #xue yang #jiang cheng #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #asks #legal talks #i figured that since i wasnt giving a very interesting answer i might as well throw in some discussion too #i hope this answers your question anon!!#thanks for asking me i had a lot of fun answering this #in case you couldnt tell from the uhh 2k i wrote #Anonymous #but if you want to send any more asks please do!! i love discussing things like this

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sodone-withlife · 4 years ago

Text

let's play, my love

for @yourlocalheartbreaker , who posted this painful idea, i really hope you enjoy this! also, apologies in advance for the pain that this might cause you?

characters may seem a bit OOC. as per usual, this had little to no proofreading, so apologies for any mistakes. i might also post a commentary later since there are parts i kind of want to explain (or clarify)

warnings: substances, gun violence, canon-typical violence, abuse, suicide, character death

word count: 3.2k words

They were always good at acting.

He might have forgotten practically all of his lines up on that stage as the Fourth Pirate, but even that fiasco did not detract from his carefully cultivated image as the lone wolf, injured and bleeding but strong enough to rip anyone approaching to pieces.

The fact that she had single-handedly created the drama department in their small school that accommodated all of the children and teens in that little backwater town was enough to demonstrate just how good she was at both acting and standing tall in the chaos.

They were just as good as seeing through bullshit and picking apart facades, no matter how well-layered it might seem to be.

They were also just as good as ignoring what they didn’t want to see, and while that might have done well to keep them together, there was only so much they both could take.

So when he started feeling woozy in his home office hours before he normally hit his limit and two weeks into a local serial investigation, he felt something inside him shatter, giving way to an awakened creature crawling out of its sleep before he finally blacked out.

A gentle light was filtering through the curtains when he came to with a pounding headache. The smell of freshly brewed coffee wafted over him, and he slowly opened his eyes, only to flinch at the bright light that suddenly flooded the room when the curtains were jerked open.

Hotch blinked the stars away, looked back in front of him, and froze as he was faced with the evidence of his complicity, his weakness, spread all over the table.

The old birthday card.

A single faux feather that he had recognized to have been ripped off from that old costume hat.

An old ticket stub for the opening night of Rent.

A wedding ring.

Even though they were sealed inside plastic evidence bags, he could still smell the perfume he had bought her as a wedding gift, that she had sprayed on all of those keepsakes that she had left behind as taunts.

His breath caught in his throat when cold metal momentarily pressed against the back of his neck, but he forced himself to remain still.

This is the endgame. You have to play now. You can't avoid it like you have been, with your evidence pilfering and self-imposed isolation from the team.

“Don’t bother trying to move. Your handcuffs have been put to good use.”

Haley walked around the table, helping Jack up onto his chair before settling down across from him with a revolver deliberately placed on top of the table. She met his eyes unflinchingly, a cold sort of amusement on her face at the stone facade he was wearing that was quickly falling to pieces.

“It’s about time you are here for breakfast, instead of in the middle of nowhere doing God knows what.”

Hotch couldn’t help his flinch at the sharp jab, knowing all too well how true it was. He tried to force himself together, just so he could gauge the situation with a profiler’s eye, but there was only so much he could do as the once-hibernating creature tried to rear its head.

He focused back on his wife, who was still staring at him, anger simmering underneath an oddly genial expression. “When did you realize?”

It was genuine curiosity, he realized with some faint surprise as he cleared his throat. “I knew something was off two weeks ago, after the first murder,” he said, trying to sound offhand. “The pieces fell together with the third murder.”

“Was it a shock?”

His swallow was convulsive as he attempted to keep the bile down. “No,” he finally forced out, looking away as he thought about why.

My fault. I knew exactly why you did what you did within minutes of figuring out it was you.

“Look at me.”

Hotch flinched at the tone that was so unfamiliar and so strange, and forced his eyes over to Haley after flicking a brief glance at Jack, who was playing with his cereal on the other side of the table. “I know the others,” she spat the word, beautiful features suddenly twisting harshly in hatred, “don’t know that you have had a full profile ready for days.”

“Haley, I know you—”

“Do you?”

The ringing question struck him straight in his core, sending the creature in his chest skittering back as he swallowed convulsively, unsure how to answer. She scoffed derisively. “Well, we’ll find out then, won’t we?” she asked rhetorically, fixing him with a cold stare, rage simmering underneath. “Tell me your profile.”

It was an order.

And with a revolver clenched in her hand and their son only a few feet away, he could only agree.

“The unsub is a woman—”

“Wait.”

Hotch stopped, attention drawn to Haley’s hands, which were fiddling with the barrel of the revolver. Dread pooled in his stomach when he saw her empty the cylinder of all but one bullet.

Russian roulette

“You know what this is, so let's play, my love,” she said mockingly, closing the cylinder and spinning it. She looked him square in the eyes, steely resolve barely masking an anger that was becoming more and more clear. “I read your notes. You get something wrong in your delivery, and we play a round.”

He took in her clenched jaw and trembling hand and tried to summon up his years of expertise only to find himself at a complete loss, the storm in his mind frozen for the first time in years as he was faced with a situation he never could have anticipated. Haley tilted her head mockingly when he didn’t start speaking.

“Show me what you keep leaving me behind for,” she sent towards him tauntingly, hand twitching on the revolver as she lifted it up and let it linger as it was aimed towards his chest, only to bring it to her temple.

She lifted it up and let it linger as it was aimed towards his chest, only to bring it to her temple.

No—

She knows all of your pressure points, of course she would use them.

Use that brain of yours and think.

Eyes unable to leave the weapon, he forced himself to verbalize the stream of consciousness he remembered going through his head as he was writing notes three nights ago.

“The unsub is a woman in her mid-30s to mid-40s and exhibits traits of both an organized and disorganized killer. The killing of the first couple was spontaneous and unplanned, as shown by the messy crime scene. But it triggered something within her, and she killed again within a few days.”

How is it that, out of the two of us, she snapped first?

“This time, the scene was markedly cleaner and demonstrated rather high organization, which helped us narrow the age range. While the wife was killed quickly and efficiently, she loses all control when it comes to the husbands, evidenced by the immense overkill and the destruction of the mens’ belongings.”

How does someone so good snap before someone who didn’t even know love until they were a young adult?

Hotch abruptly came back to the present—you're not at a precinct, dammit, focus—as he swallowed, throat dry. He sent a quick look to Haley who seemed to have turned her attention to Jack, but the gun was slightly lowered and he could tell she was listening. He continued, now choosing his words carefully. “Victimology suggests she was inserting herself as the wife of- of absent husbands. She projects her rage at her own husband towards the male victims and her self-hatred towards the wives—”

“Stop,” Haley suddenly ordered, voice trembling in suppressed rage, and for a brief moment, Hotch wondered how far she had devolved since the last killing.

Look around you. Jack is just feet away.

She took a few deep breaths, trying and failing to return to the level of composure she was at before. In frustration, she slammed the revolver back onto the table, the noise startling both him and Jack, who only looked around in confusion.

She's losing control.

Well done for stating the obvious.

Didn't I tell you long ago not to listen to your heart?

The malicious voice of his father echoed through his head, an oft-ignored presence in his head louder, more present than it had ever been.

And look where that's gotten you.

“I'm surprised at how good your memory is, especially since you forgot about Jack's school performance two weeks ago,” Haley's scornful voice jerked him out of the storm that was once again gathering in his head. “No matter, there is another way we can do this,” she continued, pulling what he recognized to be his phone out of a pocket and dialing a number.

“I'm calling your team right now,” Haley said to him lightly, her tone a stark contrast to the manic anger that remained in her expression. “It takes about forty minutes to get here from Quantico. During that time let's tell them about all the secrets you've been keeping.”

The malice in her voice was like a blow to the chest, forcing all the air out from his lungs.

Haley…

Old lessons from the Academy profiling classes floated back into his consciousness—

Once someone devolves too far…

Years of working in the field, and faced with the woman he helped turn into a killer, he could only turn to the basics of profiling he had learned ten years ago.

Did I do this to you?

He flicked another look towards his son at the side, who was still happily entertaining himself and blissfully unaware of the sheer danger he was in.

… there’s no telling what they could do.

“Hello, Agent Gideon,” Haley suddenly greeted, voice still in a strange calm.

The team—

“Don’t talk, just listen..."

They'll kill her—

"I have a revolver on the table and we're about to play a little game of Russian roulette..."

They wouldn't—

“You would do well to start heading over here.” She sent Hotch a derisive look over, then turned back to the phone. “There are some things I'd like you and your team to find out about Aaron that I think you should know.”

Would they?

She placed the phone on the middle of the table and looked back at Hotch. “Here are the rules, husband. You cannot flinch, you cannot react, you cannot break eye contact with me, otherwise, we go through a round,” she began, her stare boring into him as she carelessly swung the revolver around. “Do you know why I'm doing this?” she asked, making her voice sound saccharine sweet and grating to the ear.

Hotch remained silent, all too aware of the team that was probably listening to him through the phone. Suddenly, his head snapped to the side as a sharp pain bloomed across his face, and the creature in his chest snarled.

“Say it, Aaron Hotchner,” Haley brought the revolver up. ready to hit him again. “Answer the question, or take the gun.”

Finish this.

His traitorous brain superimposed an old memory over her, his father's pose fitting perfectly, and something in him snapped.

A weight disappeared from his chest, it suddenly became much easier to meet her stare with his own dark look, the one he vowed never to bring home, to leave at work with all of the darkness that trailed after him.

Finish this before they get here.

Play the game.

“Uncuff me,” he requested simply.

The creature purred in satisfaction at the surprise that came across her face, but all he could think about how easily he was breaking his promises, ripping through them like they were tissue paper, why was it so easy—

“Try to leave, and I’ll kill everyone in this room,” she hissed into his ear, pressing the revolver up underneath his chin as she slowly freed his hands.

And there’s the threat.

He glanced towards Jack again, reassuring himself and the creature that the child, so innocent and so ignorant of what was happening, was still safe, and then at the revolver that had been placed in front of him.

To be a coward, or to lose everything. That is the question.

“You know I don’t want Jack to go through what went through, a vow I had made years ago. You’re doing this to punish me because in a way, this is worse than what I went through.”

The answer easily flowed from his lips, much easier than he ever would have expected, especially knowing that the team was listening in. The creature in his chest was strangely settled, and he vaguely wondered what that meant when his attention was pulled back towards Haley, who had sat back down across from him.

He looked closely at her, and the high that was in her expression was easily recognizable to him.

How many times had he seen that in unsubs desperate for control, no matter how temporary?

Hadn’t he recognized it in himself for weeks after that night, twenty years ago? When he finally reclaimed control from the alcohol-induced monster that prowled his childhood home?

Taking a gamble, he decided to ask a question. “Haley, you’re entirely in control, and you can choose what to do to me,” the familiar buzzwords fell from his lips, tinged with desperation while trying to be coaxing.

He couldn’t help but flinch at the loud smack that sounded when she slammed her hands onto the table and leaned over towards him, the sound bringing up too many old and unpleasant memories that easily broke through the odd veil of calm that had set over him.

“That’s right,” she began, an odd note to her tone. “I’m entirely in control, so here’s what I’m going to do,” she said, snatching the revolver from his side of the table and opening the chamber again to rearrange the bullet so that it was in the next cartridge.

Haley walked back over and pressed the gun into his right hand so that she was controlling his finger over the trigger. Slowly, she shifted the chair he was sitting in so that it was facing Jack in his chair and brought the revolver to his temple. Hotch could only freeze, mind rapidly moving through scenarios that accounted for his miscalculation, and—

“Game over, Aaron,” she said quietly. “It’s been lovely playing with you, my love.”

He felt the warm blood splattering across his face before he registered the gunshot and the body dropping to the floor behind him.

Slowly with his ears ringing, he stood up, turned around, and stared.

And stared.

The image shifted, and suddenly he was in the doorway of his parent's old bedroom, smelling the sharp tang of blood that was diffuse in the air.

He blinked, and he was back in his house in Alexandria, staring at his wife’s cooling body on the ground with an apathy he thought was left behind in his youth.

But reality suddenly crashed over him in a wave, and all of the emotions he had cycled through in the past two weeks sent him crashing to his knees and the creature in his chest fell silent and still when he realized—

Haley killed all those people.

She killed all those people because of me.

All of those people are dead because of me.

She forced me to pull the trigger

I killed her.

…

And Jack—

He whirled around to pick up his son who was crying his heart out in fear of the loud bangs and wanting comfort from his parents, but he saw that a few droplets of blood had made their way onto his face.

And as quickly as the grief had cascaded over him, an inferno of rage was suddenly ignited within him, burning through his grief.

Stronger and more wild than he had ever felt in his life, it scorched its way through the remnants of his person, burning him from inside out with all of the passionate emotion and hatred and anger he had suppressed over the years until all he could hear was the roaring of the creature inside his chest and all could see was the child that had been the catalyst to a series of events that got his mother killed—

she protected me and he beat her to death

—had gotten the woman he had loved so much killed

she showed me what kindness was, she was a mother of two

–killed because of the one who should have loved her with all his being—

she was too good for this world, and even the darkness of their home couldn’t dampen her spirit, so she had to be killed—

The front door burst open just as another shot was fired.

And then silence.

Silence.

…

Aaron? Is Mama okay? I heard loud noises.

Mama’s fine, Sean She's just sleeping. The noises were my fault, I’m just making sure I didn’t wake her up.

Oh. Okay.

Go with your friends, I know they’re waiting for you.

He knew they were looking at him in horror.

Why wouldn’t they?

He was, after all, standing above the bodies of the two people he was supposed to love and cherish until his dying day.

But they only saw the obvious. They didn’t see that it was his own fault this happened, they didn't see the masks fall and they didn't see the creature prowling about, preparing to rip anyone approaching to pieces.

They didn’t see that this was the only way to make things right, to make sure his cold, ravenous darkness didn't swallow everything now that it was free after twenty years of waiting.

The cold metal tasted of bitter victory.

He smiled.

His father remarried within months, and Sean grew close to their stepmother.

But his little brother was forgetting their biological mother, and soon, he would be the only one in the family who thought about her.

That revelation had hurt more than he could bear.

Over the years, though, he had hardened, and the creature in his chest that was born when he saw his mother take her last painful breaths had learned to bide its time.

He knew of his father’s plans already.

He knew where the note was, where the will was, where the gun safe was.

He was supposed to be on the way to college for his freshman year, and Sean was over at a friend’s place for a sleepover.

It was a warm night, and his father hadn’t raided his stash of alcohol yet, hadn’t turned into a creature of rage.

Which meant they were both fully aware and cognizant when he shoved the metal into the man’s mouth with an ease and apathy that shouldn't be seen in a healthy, well-adjusted teenager—

His smile had always been too sharp, his eyes too dark.

His love was twisted and broken.

Hidden, it lay in wait, ready to destroy everything that posed a threat.

…

He tilted the gun upward, pressing into the roof of the man’s mouth.

He pulled the trigger.

#dedicated to sumayyah lmao #aaron hotchner #haley hotchner #sodone let's play #criminal minds #bau #tw character death #tw guns #tw violence #tw suicide #tw substances #tw abuse #tw murder

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childrenofthenightt · 4 years ago

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only the black rose (chapter 2)

pairing: jimmy page x layla porter (oc)

warnings: mature language (a given), fluff, and a (possibly) pretentious description of the rain song

words: 4k

summary: in the blink of an eye, it’s 1975 and layla’s suddenly joining led zeppelin for their north american tour. throughout the chaos, the band take a liking to her, she builds friendships with the boys, and love blossoms. but all good things must come to an end.

author’s note: not beta’d. this story does follow a playlist of mine, because i put too much thought into things. i hope you enjoy :)

masterlist

playlist

chapter one

----------

Tearing down the hallway, cheeks still flaming red from the encounter with Jimmy just minutes ago, Layla nearly runs into Peter, with one John Paul Jones trailing behind him. She rushes past quickly, head down, darting into the washroom that Robert, thankfully, had the mind to point out during the tour of the facility, ignoring their worried glances and aborted questions all the while. The young woman bolts the door shut and rushes to the sink, splashing her face with the frigid water flowing from the tap.

“Shit! This can’t be happening!” She whispers, concern etched on her face at the thought of all that has happened that day. Her jumbled thoughts are soon interrupted by a knock at the door. From behind it, a familiar voice sounds.

“Layla, it’s Peter! Jonesy is here too. Can we come in?”

Silently, Layla unlocks the door, and returns to her vigil at the sink. The two men enter, giving her worried looks that go unseen. Unexpectedly, it’s Jonesy that breaks the silence that has cultivated between the trio.

“Layla, are you alright?”

“Uh, yeah! Why wouldn’t I be?”

“...”

“Well, I think what Jonesy means is that... You’ve had a stressful day, dear, and you looked anxious when you ran in here. Also, Robert walked by just a few minutes ago, smiling ear-to-ear. Do you want me to talk to him?”

“Peter, he didn’t do anything wrong…” Layla sighs, debating whether she should tell them the whole truth. Remembering the key she had discovered earlier, she pulls it out, and reads the address carved onto the bronze surface. “I’m fine, it’s just… Everything that happened today, it just sunk in? I don’t want to bother you all more than I have already, but I don’t exactly have a car, and I should really be getting home.”

“Of course. I’m sorry we kept you this long, Layla. Though, before you go,” Peter says, fishing a notepad and a ballpoint pen out of his pocket, scribbling a number down onto the paper and ripping it out of the small book. “Here. This is my personal number. I’d like it if you called every so often. As much as they would hate to admit it, these boys have taken a bit of a shining to you.”

“Actually, Peter, could I drive Layla?” Jonesy cut in, smiling lightly at the woman. “There’s something I’d like to talk to her about. Only if you’re okay with that, Layla.”

“Of course, Jonesy. I’d like that.” Layla smiles at Jonesy, and the three of them exit the washroom, Jonesy leading Layla to his car parked out back. Once inside, Jonesy starts up the radio, an Elvis song crackling through on low volume. The man pulls the car out onto the street, and starts the drive over to Layla’s house. Lost in her thoughts regarding what she might find once she gets to her destination, Layla almost doesn't register Jonesy’s deep voice calling her name.

“Sorry, Jonesy, what were you going to say?”

“I know you’re not from here.”

“God, again with the accent? Fine! I’m Canadian, and after high school I moved to—”

“No,” Jonesy sighs, steeling himself for the conversation. “I mean… I know you’re not from this time. You aren’t supposed to be here. In 1975.”

“John… How…”

The man in question, sensing that this wasn’t a conversation to be had while driving, pulls over, and turns to the dazed woman beside him. Her mouth is hanging wide open, lips moving as though she was trying to form words, though nothing comes out.

“Look…”

“What the fuck?”

“I know you’re shocked, Layla. I was too, the first time I witnessed it,” Jonesy puts a gentle hand on Layla’s arm, rubbing his thumb in soothing circles. “I know you’re not from now, for lack of a better term, because I have seen this kind of thing before.”

“Jonesy, I don’t…”

“When I was a session man, working with plenty of different bands, I saw a lot of weird things. The weirdest, however, was when, right in the middle of a session, the band’s guitarist disappeared.”

“Do you know what happened?”

Never halting his comforting ministrations, Jonesy continues, sympathy dripping from his voice. “He was in the producer’s booth, listening to a playback while we were fooling around with our instruments. We heard a huge crash, and saw sparks, so we all rushed over to check on him.”

“Then what happened?”

“We couldn’t find him,” Jonesy sighed, eyebrows furrowing. “He was gone for about a day or two, but we were all incredibly worried, so when we heard that he was found, we rushed over to see him. The only thing he said about what had happened to him, was that he ‘figured it out’.”

“That’s all he said?”

“He did say later that he wanted to write a song about time travel,” Jonesy laughs softly, Layla joining in. “Not sure if it ever came to fruition though.”

Layla sobers up now, glancing at her companion helplessly. What if she can’t go home, to her own time? What if she can’t ‘figure it out’? Almost as though he could see the cogs turning in Layla’s brain, Jonesy moves his hand from her arm to rest on her knee, a grounding weight for the anxious woman.

“Layla, I’ll help you figure it out. We’ll get you back home. We can figure it out, just like he did. It will be okay.”

The woman in question can only nod wordlessly, struck by the devotion of her new friend. Jonesy, deeming her to be okay, starts up the car again. A couple minutes pass as Elvis is traded in for Buddy Holly, until Jonesy finally breaks the relative silence.

“So… You and Jimmy?”

“Nothing’s going on with Jimmy.”

“Right,” Jonesy laughs, shaking his head, sarcasm dripping from his voice. “Because you didn’t look at him like he hung the stars the first time you saw him, and he certainly didn’t rush past me in the hallway earlier, face the colour of a tomato, Robert’s laugh echoing off the walls behind him.”

“How did you…What?”

“Layla, I’m very observant. Just… Be careful with him, okay? You have to go back sometime, and I know him. He’ll take it hard, and… Things happen, I know they do, but please… Just try and be careful.”

“... John Paul Jones… Are you giving me the shovel talk?”

Laughter fills the small car as they drive through streets that become increasingly familiar. The pair finally pull up to their destination, and Layla is shocked to find that she’s staring back at what looks to be her flat, from her own time. With a hug and sincere words of gratitude, Layla climbs the stairs to the front door, and pushes the key into the lock. Holding her breath, she pushes the door open. Everything is exactly the way it was the day before. The empty coffee mug by the sink remained, and the mail on the dining table hadn’t moved an inch. She rushes upstairs, to find that the turntable was still there, open, though there was no record inside. There were scorch marks on the carpet. Layla throws out a hand, pressing it to the turntable, expecting sparks once more.

Nothing happens.

----------

“Hello?”

“Is… Is this Peter Grant?”

“Layla! I was beginning to think you’d never call,” A chuckle sounds from the other end of the line, tinny through the aged receiver. “How have you been, dear? The boys have been asking about you.”

“Oh? What are they saying?”

“My Goodness, it never stops. I’m surprised they’re not right up against me listening in. It’s always ‘Peter, when is Layla coming back? Peter, Layla could get a job here, as a roadie! Peter, we need our little dove, she’s our good luck charm!’”

“Well… I can guess who the last one came from. Peter, would it be okay if I came down again today? I really did have a good time, despite the circumstances.”

“Of course, of course! You’re welcome anytime, my dear. Here, I’ll send one of the boys out to fetch you. Lord knows they need it, they’re bouncing off the walls with energy.”

Another bout of laughter crackles across the line, and Layla pictures the kind, comforting smile almost permanently etched onto Peter’s face. “Wonderful! Thanks again, Peter. I’ll see you soon!”

“Goodbye, Layla. See you soon.”

“Oh! Peter, before you hang up! I gave the clothes you lent me a wash, and I’ll return them right away!”

Silence, only for a second, seeps into the conversation, until a scoff from the older man cuts it like a knife. “My dear, keep them. Jimmy won’t miss them. In fact, I remember hearing him say to Bonzo earlier, that they ‘look better on Layla anyways.’ Well, I should let you go. We’ll see you soon.”

The line goes dead, and it is not hard to imagine the grin on the man’s face before he hung up. Regardless of if he was telling the truth about what Jimmy had said, the young woman couldn’t help but swoon a little, shades of red dancing across her cheeks. She looks at the neatly folded pile of clothes beside her, and, pressing her nose to the fresh fabric of the sweater, she puts it on. Even with the magic of the washing machine, it still held a foreign scent; one of cigarette smoke, pine and citrus, which harmonized with the subtle smell of the detergent she had used. It was a scent that, on paper, sounded like an odd combination, yet Layla could hardly get enough of it. She had smelled it just the other day, in the studio, when Jimmy was above her, jade eyes boring into hers, curls a midnight halo framing his porcelain face.

The honking of a car horn shatters her concentration, and as she looks out to the street for the source of the disturbance, she sees the grinning face of John Bonham, who is hanging halfway out of the open window, waving frantically.

“Layla! Get in, you slowpoke!”

“God, Bonzo, you’re gonna wake up the whole country if you keep that up!”

“As if that wasn’t the goal, birdie.”

“Birdie? Seriously? My God, you guys are just asking to get hit.”

“By you? Birdie, you couldn’t even reach my face if I was sitting down.”

“Bold of you to assume I’d go for the face first,” A smile of feigned innocence, blooms on Layla’s face. “Question, Bonzo. How much do you value your kneecaps?”

“Ah!” Bonzo exclaims, laughing loud, carefree. “Smart girl, smart girl. Maybe we’ll call you whenever we have arguments.”

“Jonesy’s short enough, just call him. I reckon he could do some damage from down there.”

Peals of laughter ring through the car, just audible under the din of the music that Bonzo insisted on blaring as the newfound friends cruise to the studio. Finally arriving at their destination, the drummer sends a glance over to his companion, taking into account the sweater she is wearing. He lets out a sudden snort, and hides his laughter in his hand. Layla, noticing this odd display shoots him a concerned look.

“You okay, Bonham?”

“You know, birdie, there are other ways to become Ms. Page...”

“...Get out.”

“Layla, you realize this is my car, right?” Layla gives him a heated glare, and as though he could physically see the daggers she was aiming at him, Bonzo exits the car in a huff, mumbling about how “it was just a joke…”

Allowing herself a private smirk, Layla exits the car, hurrying to catch up with her friend, short legs working a mile a minute. Reaching the man, she slings a companionable arm around his waist, and immediately feels an arm wrap around her shoulders in response. The two friends enter the building, giggling anew.

“Layla!” A chorus of voices echoed off the marble floors of the lobby, accompanied by a stampede of approaching footsteps, and the woman in question was swiftly bombarded with a chorus of arms around her, squeezing tightly.

“Really feeling the love here, guys, but I can’t breathe…” The arms relinquish their hold immediately, and Layla is met with the ecstatic faces of her new friends.

“Nice sweater, love.” Jimmy pipes up, sharing a subtle smile with the woman.

“Jim, don’t be surprised if you never get that sweater back. She’s attached now!”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing. I think she looks stunning in it.” Gone is the bumbling, shy man from before, replaced by confidence and charm. Layla smiles, enjoying this new side of the raven-haired guitarist.

“...Anyways… Little dove, we were just about to rehearse, would you like to sit in?” Robert hooks his arm through hers, an innocent wink tossed haphazardly over his shoulder at the guitarist, who only smirks and shakes his head.

“I would love to, blondie, but enlighten me real fast,” Layla says, giggling at the golden-haired man. “What exactly are you rehearsing for?”

“I’m glad you asked, Layla,” Jimmy says, swiftly taking her other arm, uncharacteristically playful. “We have a very important tour of North America coming up, and it would be a shame if we came in unprepared, wouldn't it?”

“That’s really cool!” Layla exclaims, exhilaration clear on her face.

“We’ve got some practice shows in Belgium and the Netherlands, and then we’ll be off to the Promised Land.”

“‘The Promised Land’? You guys really need to get out more.”

This is met by raucous laughter by the band, much to the confusion of the woman.

“Oh, sweet, sweet, naive Layla…”

“Remember what I said in the car, Bonzo? About the hitting?” This is accompanied by a friendly smirk, typical of the woman.

“You have so much to learn…” Jimmy continues mischievously, green eyes glinting, earning a strong glare.

“Little dove has such attitude, she’s basically one of us,” Robert sighs dreamily, no doubt playing it up for Layla, earning a chuckle from her in response.

“Okay, now that that’s all over and done with,” Jonesy’s steely blue-gray eyes survey the group, stern as they lock onto the eyes of the band. “Let’s actually play for her. Once in a lifetime opportunity here, Layla.”

“Glad stardom hasn't gone to your head, guys. Truly the most humble group I have ever had the pleasure of meeting.” Laughter accompanies the group as they make their way to the studio, intent on blowing Layla’s mind.

----------

“How about a little Rain Song, boys?” Jimmy says, tuning up the acoustic guitar in his hands, as though it was delicate and precious.

“You just wanna impress Layla, don’t you, Pagey?” Jonesy smirks, teasing the guitarist. Jimmy flushes, rubbing the back of his neck nervously, the shy man from before making his brief return.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, Jonesy,” Jimmy shoots back, trying for nonchalance, the slight waver in his dulcet voice giving him away. “Does ‘Rain Song’ work for everyone, or are we picking something different?”

A smattering of “works for me,” sounds throughout the studio, and the boys launch right in. Soft sounds of falling rain pour out of the guitar, and Robert’s golden voice floats out like streams of sunlight. Jonesy’s piano trickles through, a mist amongst the downfall, Bonzo’s soft drum beats claps of thunder. The music picks up, becomes harder, like wind in the face of a torrential storm, and then all is still, Robert crooning all the while. Layla is mesmerized, unable to look away at the boys, seemingly glowing with the influence of the music they play. A fragile silence follows the last tinkling of raindrops, one that the occupants of the room are afraid to break.

“... So? How was it?” Bonzo is the first to speak, an apprehensive grin gracing his face.

“It was… You just…”

“Never thought we’d make you speechless, little dove.”

“Ignoring that. It was truly incredible, guys.” Layla’s face lights up in an excited smile, chestnut eyes sparkling as though reflected in a clear pool. The young woman locks eyes with Jimmy then, who sends her a shy smile her way, arresting her where she stands. Layla looks away quickly, cheeks warm.

“Jonesy, your keyboard playing was incredible! It sounded like tiny raindrops! Bonzo, your drumming was just… It was so good! It sounded like thunder, and broke through the rest of the instruments perfectly. Robert, as much as I truly hate to say this…”

“Hey!”

“You were beyond words. You owned those lyrics, and made them almost come alive. I truly felt them. Jimmy… Your guitar. It drove the whole storm, and paired with Jonesy’s little droplets... It was great. I can’t say enough about this whole performance.”

“I knew we kept her around for a reason.” Bonzo snorts, closing the distance first to hug the young woman, Jonesy following with a smile painted on his aristocratic features.

“Little dove, has anyone ever told you that you should be a music critic?”

“A few times. Now get over here, blondie. You too, Page.”

The embrace is interrupted by the click of the studio door being opened, revealing the hulking figure of the usually soft-natured Peter Grant. Taking in the scene before him, he chuckles heartily, his smile never slipping. Walking over to the group, he claps his hands together in delight.

“I’m glad you’re all getting on. Boys, that was another wonderful performance. If you perform like that on Saturday? God, we’ll rule the world!”

“We’ll need our good luck charm, though.” Jimmy gestures towards Layla, winking at her conspiratorially.

“Peter, is there any way we can bring Layla over?”

“I’m sure we can work something out, Percy. Layla, would you like to join us?”

“Well… I’m sorry, but I’m not sure if I could manage, with the finances of it all. I don’t exactly have a job at the moment...” Layla says sheepishly, eyes cast downwards in embarrassment. Peter scoffs and shakes his head in response, placing his large hand on the young woman’s shoulder.

“My dear, you wouldn’t have to pay even one pence,” Pete explains, kind eyes reassuring as they gaze at the woman in front of him. “Though, if you are worried about something like that, we do always need help in the wings, if you’re interested?”

“Peter, are you sure? I couldn’t just—”

“Layla, for the love of God, just say yes?” Jonesy mutters, huffing out a laugh at the display of stubbornness in front of him.

“I mean, if you’re sure… I’d love to.”

“Wonderful! Now, we leave on Friday. We’ll pick you up at your flat, just make sure you’re packed, dear. We’re happy to have you on board.”

----------

As the calendar pinned to the wall is steadily painted in royal blue ink, Layla’s excitement grows. One more day, and she’ll be on the road, living it up. January 10th couldn't come any faster, it seemed to Layla.

The shrill ringing of the phone interrupts her musings, and as Layla hurries to answer, a smile grows on her face at the thought of the days ahead. As much as she tries to deny it, Layla felt quite fond of the boys already.

“Hey, little dove, I’m leaving right away to pick you up. I’ll explain what’s going on in the car. You don’t need to bring anything. See you in 15.”

“Robert? What—”

“Oh, and Layla?” Smugness dripping from his voice, Layla can already see the cheshire grin the man is sporting, “Wear something nice.”

“Robert—”

Click.

Shock freezing her in place, Layla shakes her head, a featherlight smile gracing her lips. Flying up the stairs to her bedroom, Layla picks out a pair of merlot bell bottoms, paired with a cropped bell-sleeved shirt, a snowy white in colour. Rings scattered across her hands, Layla looks in the mirror, applying some light makeup. Seeing a car pull up to her house, a sleek, rich red against the stormy gray of the curb, she rushed downstairs, waving at the driver. Stepping into the vehicle, she turns to her friend, who smirks, looking her up and down.

“I said to dress nice… This is gonna kill the man.” Robert scoffs, mutters under his breath, tugging playfully on a perfect brown ringlet of Layla’s hair.

“Robert, what’s going on? Why couldn't you explain over the phone?”

“Well, I couldn’t let a certain someone overhear my master plan, could I?” This is met with a blank look from the passenger of the vehicle, and, glancing over quickly, Robert cackles.

“Listen up, little dove,” Robert says, whispering mischievously, starting up the car and pulling away from the flat, “It’s Jimmy’s birthday, and the lot of us were planning something. It would be a shame if we didn’t get his favourite girl in on the secret too!”

“Favourite girl?”

“Oh come on, Layla. Don’t tell me you’re that oblivious!” Robert scoffs, lazily throwing his head to the side to look at his companion, golden locks flying every which way, “The man can’t take his eyes off of you. It’s a whole subject of conversation when you’re not around. I can tell by the colour of your cheeks that you might feel the same…”

“If I say yes, will you drop it?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Should have known… Anyways, what’s the plan here?” Robert winks at her in response, ocean eyes glinting in the warm afternoon sun.

“So, you know quite a bit about guitars, hey?”

“A fair amount? I used to play. What does that have to do with Jimmy’s birthday, though?”

“Well,” Robert starts, grin growing at the confusion of his friend, “We’re gonna throw a little get-together at the studio, but I was thinking, his favourite acoustic keeps breaking, and he hasn’t had much time to fix it yet. This is where you come in, little dove.”

“Don’t leave me in suspense here, blondie.”

“You’re gonna pick out a new acoustic for him.”

“Robert, I don’t know…”

“Don’t worry about the costs,” Robert exclaims, shaking his head vehemently, “I got it all covered. Perks of being in a famous band, I guess. Jim’s not the best at words, you’ve experienced this firsthand. He speaks with his music, and by doing this, you’re speaking his language.”

“I get that, but what… What if he doesn’t like the guitar I pick out?”

“That’s what you’re worried about?” Robert laughs out, stealing a glance at his fidgeting companion. “Little dove, you could give him a trash bag and he’d still cherish it. He’ll love whatever you pick out for him.”

Robert parks the car, and turns towards his friend, taking a small hand in his, a comforting smile on his tan face. Giving the hand a squeeze, Layla steps out of the car, and, arm in arm with Robert, they walk into the store.

Strolling through the aisles, Layla was struck at the sheer beauty of the instruments in front of her. Shades of sepia and seafoam green blend into starry blues as she walks on. A body of rich mahogany catches Layla’s eye then, and she knows immediately. This is the one. The pickguard is a deep maroon with swirls of midnight black, thin rings of pristine white surrounding the sound hole. It’s perfect. Layla can’t help but stare, until she feels a tap on her shoulder, accompanied by a light peal of laughter.

“I take it, that's the one, Layla?”

Turning around, caught, Layla’s cheeks warm, and, smiling ever-so-slightly, she nods. Turning to the guitar once more, she trails her fingers across the smooth polished wood of the guitar.

“It’s perfect…”

“He’s gonna love it, just you wait.”

Layla plucks it from it’s resting spot on the wall, and, cradling it with the care of a new mother, she walks with Robert to the front of the store to pay. After a couple of autographs, and a few weird looks, the pair return to the car, finally setting their sights on the studio. Guitar case resting safely in her lap, Layla allows herself a private smile, picturing the face of the guitarist, emerald eyes filled with elation, upon seeing the gift.

“Why are your cheeks so red, little dove? Are you feeling okay?”

----------

taglist: @jimmys-zeppelin @salixfragilis (let me know if you want to be added!)

#led zeppelin #led zeppelin fanfic #jimmy page #jimmy page fanfiction #jimmy page fanfic #classic rock fanfic #only the black rose

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needtherapy · 4 years ago

Text

Huaisang’s Hit List

or, how I learned to stop worrying and love my cursed dick

Technically Huaisang never slept with Wen Chao, just...spent a few minutes extricating himself from what turned out to be that awful murder-tortoise cave adventure. And anyway, it doesn’t matter because Wen Chao wasn’t on The List. The List was the problem. Is the problem.

Remember that Top Cultivator’s list? You know the one, the one where the Twin Jades were the two most eligible cultivators and Wei Wuxian was ranked higher than Jiang Cheng?

Yeah, that was Huaisang’s fault. But no one regrets it more than he does.

Except maybe all the dead people.

Read more Kristina Writes Tiny Stories

Notes: Sort of explicit, and there’s definitely some terribly silly cursed sex acts. If you want to read it on AO3 instead, you can do that too! Many thanks to @coslyons and AO3′s mongrelmind and effienell who probably will regret being tagged. Read their fantastic work instead of this absolute travesty.

⟹ ⟸ ⟹ ⟸ ⟹ ⟸ ⟹ ⟸ ⟹ ⟸

In hindsight, Huaisang should have realized way before the Wei Wuxian Incident that he was cursed. But to be fair, people die all the time.

He should know. He has personally killed eight people with his cursed dick.

“So,” Jiang Cheng says, hands tucked under his head, staring up at the sky, “You’re telling me that everyone you have sex with dies. And therefore, you must be killing them?”

“More or less, yes.”

“Isn’t that a little…” Jiang Cheng pauses and kicks the water his feet are dangling in, apparently trying for once in his life to be tactful, which makes Huaisang even more miserable. If Jiang Cheng is being tactful, it must be the end of the world. “Conceited?”

Huaisang pulls another leaf off the branch he is mutilating. He really doesn’t think he’s ever been conceited. Conceited would imply a lack of justification, and he is quite sure he’s right about this.

“A-Cheng, I have evidence. Hard evidence.”

Jiang Cheng chokes a little, and Huaisang glares at him. “Could you not? This is serious. I am never going to have sex again.”

Jiang Cheng chokes again, this time gasping with pained laughter, and Huaisang throws the branch at him. “Fuck you a-Cheng.”

“Thank all the gods you never have!” Jiang Cheng is howling now, curled in a ball and wheezing, and Huaisang has never been so insulted in his life.

Huaisang gathers what remains of his dignity and stands. He doesn’t care how beautiful Lotus Pier is in summer, or how many different shades of pink the flowers blanketing the lakes are, or how wickedly indulgent the sun feels through only two layers of robes, he is going to walk back down this dock and leave.

“Oh sit down, you big baby.” Jiang Cheng grabs the hem of Huaisang’s green robe. “I know you’re just dying to tell me about your ‘hard evidence’ and as much as I would rather rather erase all knowledge of your sex life from…”

Jiang Cheng's utter inability to disguise any thought he has is a gift, Huaisang thinks. Not only does it mean that in almost twenty years, Huaisang has never lost a game of weiqi, it also means he knows the moment it occurs to Jiang Cheng exactly what he means. Or rather...who.

“You. Did not. Fuck. My brother.”

Huaisang glares at a pair of ducks flying noisily overhead—those bastards were probably using their wings to escape awkward conversations—and silently bemoans his sudden and inexplicable flirtation with honesty. Why precisely had he wanted to share the details of his humiliating curse with Jiang Cheng? He frowns down at Sandu Shengshou’s tight, angry slash of a mouth, crackling dark eyes, cheekbones that could slice open his fingers if he ran them over the ridges…

Oh yes. That was why.

“Well, not first,” Huaisang says, deciding that if he’s in for a piglet, he’s in for a hog. “What happened first was Wen Xu.”

Jiang Cheng rolls into the lake. Huaisang is speechless. As rude escapes from his presence go, it is unprecedented. Wen Xu only snuck out of the window.

⟹ ⟸

Huaisang wasn’t biting his lip because he was nervous. That would be preposterous. He wasn’t a virgin after all. But he had also never picked anyone up in a tavern...well, certainly not a tavern in Hejian...okay, definitely not anyone at a tavern in Hejian as spectacularly handsome as the man whose name he couldn’t recall and really didn’t care about currently stripping in front of…

He lost his train of thought when—what was his name...Yang...Tian...something about the sun—threw his undershirt on the ground and looked expectantly at Huaisang, flexing the outrageous muscles on his chest just enough to make Huaisang’s blood boil. Yes, oh yes, he was definitely going to bite Sun Man right over the top of his left nipple immediately. And then he was going to make Sun Man beg for mercy. He stepped forward, his mouth stretching wide in a practiced seductive smile, and everything went wrong.

Sun Man stepped forward too, eyes closing, an arrogant tilt to his mouth. Huaisang tried to avoid the kiss—who kissed a stranger in an inn?—but he avoided to the left, and Sun Man lurched to the left. Like a slow motion fall off a cliff, they crashed into each other, arms and legs flailing everywhere. Sun Man’s head smacked into Huaisang’s chin, and worse, Huaisang’s knee collided with the soft—well, not that soft, some distant, smug corner of his brain noted—flesh between the man’s legs. He grunted in pain, grabbed Huaisang, and they fell on the floor in a fairly uncomfortable heap.

Fuck. Well, there goes that, Huaisang thought. Another thrilling night listening to da-ge rant about the damn Wen dogs loomed in his future.

“No, no, I’m fine,” Sun Man said immediately, sprawled on top of Huaisang, and Huaisang realized he meant it, judging by the considerably less soft space between his legs that was currently pressed against Huaisang’s hip.

He cheered immediately. Sun Man liked being hurt. It wasn’t a great start, but he could work with that.

Yes, he thought, as he slapped Sun Man hard on his spectacular ass and Sun Man let out a hearty moan, he could work with this.

Later, history books would describe da-ge as glorious in battle, cutting through the Wen army to the Wen heir, knocking the arrogant smile off his face and the man off his horse, laughing when he begged for mercy and dismembering his body as a lesson to the others, all to the triumphant cheers of the combined army.

What the history books did not mention was da-ge dramatically throwing the head on the ground at Huaisang’s feet in the music room.

“I will take his head to Xichen,” da-ge announced proudly, and Huaisang winced. How could anyone be so bad at romantic gifts?

He looked down despite himself—it had been almost a week since da-ge had thrown a Wen body part on the floor—and gasped.

Huaisang tried to look away from Sun Man in time but in the grand tradition of brothers everywhere, da-ge was unfailingly observant at the worst possible times.

“Huaisang, what did you do?”

Nothing, Huaisang thought, snapping his fan open and trying to blink the hysterical laughter away. Just spanked the daylights out of Wen Xu the night before he died. Just made him cry and climax and collapse in snoring exhaustion before Huaisang had a chance to finish any kind of reciprocal satisfaction, the bastard. And then just watched him climb out of the window before dawn. He sighs. What a wasted night.

“Nothing, da-ge. It’s just...he’s leaking on the floor.”

Da-ge grunted and rolled the head out of the room with his foot.

“I was expecting it to last longer, honestly,” da-ge said, and Huaisang thought, me too. “He seemed spent before we even started.”

Huaisang covered his giggle with a sympathetic cough. “How disappointing for you, da-ge.”

“The thing is,” da-ge continued, eyes sharpening in a very worrisome way. “I noticed a distinctive shade of lip color on his neck, right before I separated it from his body. Almost...like...the mauve you’re wearing right now.”

“This is raisin,” Huaisang snapped before he could help himself and then cringed. He was in so much trouble.

But instead, da-ge sank into a chair laughing. “You could have just drugged him, Huaisang. You didn’t have to fuck him. Next time, tell me before you decide to single handedly give our enemy the serpent’s kiss?”

Huaisang decided to take credit for the tactical fucking, but did not want to be assigned any future war jobs, hand, blow, or otherwise.

“I am not having sex with any more Wens,” he said virtuously, sitting in a chair across from his brother. He did not appreciate the roar of laughter.

⟹ ⟸

“Oh gods, how many more Wens did you have sex with?” Jiang Cheng demands, wringing out his dripping hair next to the hearth fire in the kitchen. “The whole army? Wen Ruohan? Truly, you are the unsung hero of the Sunshot campaign. We should have made you chief cultivator.”

“First of all, I would be a phenomenal chief cultivator, thank you.” Huaisang throws a towel at Jiang Cheng, whacking him on the side of the head, but Jiang Cheng just grins charmingly, the wretch. “Second of all, none of course.”

Technically he never slept with Wen Chao, just...spent a few minutes extricating himself from what turned out to be that awful murder-tortoise cave adventure. And anyway, it doesn’t matter because Wen Chao wasn’t on The List. The List was the problem. Is the problem.

Jiang Cheng twists his hair into a knot on the top of his head and starts stripping off his wet clothes.

“Okay, so then you slept with my brother?”

Huaisang slumps in a chair and stares at the carved ceiling, not looking, not looking, not looking. Pretty, he thinks, focusing very diligently on the wood. It looks like a giant lotus flower.

“No, only the number sixes at first,” Huaisang mumbles, wondering if the splotchy paint marks on the carving are actually tiny lotus flowers. If so, he really has to admire how committed the Yunmeng Jiang are to the aesthetic.

Suddenly Jiang Cheng’s face is next to his face, his hands on the arm of the chair, and he looks angry again. Wet and angry. Like a scandalously unrobed cat that just crawled out of a well—Huaisang fumbles the metaphor, too distracted by Jiang Cheng’s chest.

“Are you talking about that plague of a ‘most eligible cultivators’ list? If I ever find out who ruined my life with that list, I am going to tie them to something very hard and beat them within an inch of their life,” he growls, and Huaisang is afraid he might be a little turned on by that. He tries something. A sort of experiment.

“I made the list.”

Jiang Cheng turns white, the blood draining instantly from his face. His eyes widen, his nostrils flare, and Huaisang decides that yes, indeed, he is terrified and aroused. He really does learn something new about himself every day.

“You asshole,” Jiang Cheng hisses. “Why?”

“I don’t remember,” he lies. “Maybe I was bored. Maybe it was a list of people I wanted to be friends with.” It was certainly not a list of people he and Meng Yao had wanted to see naked. Not at all.

Jiang Cheng doesn’t move. If anything, his nose gets a little closer to Huaisang’s nose. Tantalizingly within biting distance.

“It was a sex list, wasn’t it,” he accuses, entirely unfairly in Huaisang’s opinion. But then he frowns. “Your brother was on that list. That’s...a bit much, even for you.”

Huaisang sticks out his tongue, almost licking Jiang Cheng. Wisely, Jiang Cheng jumps back, protecting his precious nose with his hand.

“Okay, that was Zewu-Jun’s fault! He found out that da-ge wasn’t on the list and he looked so sad. You know how he is! ‘But Mingjue-xiong is so handsome and kind. Why wouldn’t he be considered the most eligible cultivator? You know I have no interest in such worldly things, but oh, woe, life has been too cruel to my dear, dear friend Mingjue-xiong.’” Huaisang knows he does a killer Lan-zongzhu impression, and Jiang Cheng’s mouth twitches at the corners.

“Fine. You didn’t fuck your brother. Good for you. Go ahead, tell me who you did kill. Since I apparently can’t stop you.”

“I didn’t know I was doing it, a-Cheng. I wouldn’t kill people on purpose.”

Jiang Cheng doesn’t hesitate to reassure him.

“Of course you would.”

Huaisang is friends with Jiang Cheng for this exact reason: because he is the kind of friend who would steal chickens and bury bodies with you and not judge or ask questions.

Jiang Cheng freezes, closes his eyes, and asks a very judgmental question. “Don’t tell me you were responsible for Jin Zixuan too?”

Huaisang winces. “Not...only.”

⟹ ⟸

“So you’re second cousins,” Huaisang asked, drinking another cup of the finest wine he can afford, and staring at Jin Zixuan’s increasingly handsome face, already a work of art.

Naturally, it was the other one who answered, because nothing was easy today except for Huaisang.

“No, his mother’s sister’s husband’s sister is my mother. They were married in the same ancestral hall as my mother’s brother’s wife’s brother, though, and....”

Huaisang didn’t give two fucks about Jin Zixun droning on about his relations, but he liked the flush on Jin Zixuan’s cheeks when he caught Huaisang staring at him. He’d had two bottles of wine, and he seemed to be one of those drunks who got quieter and quieter until he fell over. Huaisang wanted to catch him.

He had found Jin Zixuan in Yudao Tang, looking at the map of the Sunshot Campaign without da-ge, and although he was fairly sure it was innocent, he was also fairly sure da-ge would absolutely qi deviate if anyone touched his little metal horses and toy soldiers. He was just going to shoo him away, but Jin Zixuan, the third most eligible cultivator, had given him A Curious Look, and Huaisang had shifted tactics with a military precision he thinks would even have impressed his da-ge.

“You’ve been working so hard, Jin-gongzi,” Huaisang said, testing out Jin Zixuan’s bicep with a soft and gentle squeeze that lingered long enough to promise something hard and rough. “Let’s go share a bottle or two to loosen up for the night.”

He hadn’t even realized the other one was there.

“You’re too generous Nie Huaisang! We accept your offer,” crowed the unwanted Jin, whose name Huaisang was unwillingly informed was Zixun.

So now Huaisang was sitting in an inn in Hejian trying to get Jin Zixun pass-out drunk faster than Jin Zixuan. It wasn’t working. The man had a hollow leg. Possibly two hollow legs. Definitely a hollow brain. But then he felt a hand on his knee, and Jin Zixuan was looking at him from under eyelashes as long and thick as butterfly wings.

“Would you like to leave?” he asked quietly, and Huaisang could not have been more relieved than if he had been plucked from the coils of a liangren she.

“Yes please,” he whispered under Jin Zixun’s droning. “You go first. I’ll follow.”

Jin Zixuan stood gracefully, only swayed a little, and was up the stairs before Jin Zixun had completely explained the intimate details of his mother’s sister’s son’s wedding tea service. Huaisang endured the description of osmanthus cakes for two whole minutes before he laughed loudly, interrupting Boring Cousin.

“Stop! I need to relieve myself and I can’t bear to miss one single detail! Wait right here and I’ll be back.”

Jin Zixun looked disappointed to be robbed of an audience even for a heartbeat, but he stayed, and Huaisang fled.

He found Jin Zixuan waiting in the doorway of his room, and he didn’t waste another second. Pushing Jin Zixuan onto the bed, Huaisang practically launched himself at the man, kissing him viciously, thrilled when Jin Zixuan groaned and locked his hand around the back of Huaisang’s head. He looked rumpled and flushed, and he tasted like heat and honey. Absolutely delicious. Huaisang didn’t understand why Wei Wuxian didn’t like Jin Zixuan. Probably because he’d never bitten the skin at the base of his throat or heard how sweetly he moaned when Huaisang got his pants down and started to stroke him, sliding his hand expertly along the smooth curve.

“There you go sweetheart,” Huaisang encouraged, when Jin Zixuan reached between Huaisang’s legs and finally wrapped those long, thin, elegant fingers around his shaft. He was exactly what Huaisang had hoped: beautiful, strong, and eager, if a little unskilled.

And then Huaisang heard the worst sound he had ever heard in his life.

“Fuck, this is hot,” Jin Zizun slurred from the door. “I want to join.”

⟹ ⟸

“And then he did, a-Cheng,” Huaisang whines, taking a bite out of the dumpling Jiang Cheng hands him. “It was the worst.”

Jiang Cheng looks unsympathetic. “Oh, I’m sorry, are you done detailing how you fucked my brother-in-law and his abhorrent cousin to death? I tuned out somewhere around the extremely comprehensive description of my sister’s father’s daughter’s husband’s dick, which I could have lived my whole life without hearing.”

“You asked,” Huaisang points out.

“‘Yes’ or ‘no’ would have been sufficient,” Jiang Cheng retorts.

Huaisang hadn’t considered that.

“Oh. Um, yes. I was responsible for Jin Zixuan. And Jin Zixun, although I didn’t mean to be. And...um...Ouyang Xi and Yao Shui. They were both number sixes. Ouyang Xi was the only girl I ever put on the list. Remember her? She was amazing.”

Jiang Cheng sits back, thinking. “Wasn’t she taller than Hanguang-Jun?” When Huaisang nods, Jiang Cheng whistles appreciatively. “Oh yeah, I remember her. She was something. I can’t even be mad about that one.”

He seems to realize how that sounded and shakes his head. “You’re ridiculous. You aren’t killing people. They died in the war. They died because they were assholes. They died because people die. That’s not proof.”

Huaisang does not want to tell him about Wei Wuxian, but Wei Wuxian is proof.

“It was twice with Wei Wuxian. And he died twice. Once his heart. Once his life. That’s when I realized, and that’s when I stopped having sex.”

Jiang Cheng’s mouth drops open a little and he stares at Huaisang, obviously dumbfounded, probably horrified. Finally, Huaisang thinks, Jiang Cheng doesn’t have anything sarcastic to say.

“I am so mad at you right now,” he finally replies, and Huaisang shrinks. “Once you realized, why the fuck didn’t you sleep with Hanguang-Jun? You could have made my life so much easier. Gods, Huaisang, you are never thinking about me.”

Huaisang’s mind spins futilely, a dog chasing its tail, but he finally processes Jiang Cheng’s sparkling eyes, the slightly raised left eyebrow, and the extremely provoking way he is biting his lip as “teasing.” Huaisang expects his eyes to stop there, but the traitors keep going, looking at Jiang Cheng’s muscular chest, disappointingly garbed in dry clothes, his long legs stretched out in front of him…no! Focus on being truthful! His mind—okay possibly not his mind—objects to both truthfulness and not ogling Jiang Cheng but he perseveres.

“You...you aren’t angry? About Wei Wuxian?”

Jiang Cheng shrugs. “He’s alive now. What can I change about the past? And I’m not sure I want to hear any,” he pokes Huaisang in the chest, “ANY details about whatever you two did.”

Huaisang thinks about Wei Wuxian at sixteen, full of sunshine and curiosity, kneeling in front of him in the woods behind Cloud Recesses, and he thinks of Wei Wuxian during Sunshot, his jagged edges so beautiful and sharp, begging Huaisang to tighten the rope a little more, hurt him a little more, distract him a little more.

“Nope, nope, see, that face is exactly what I don’t want to hear,” Jiang Cheng interrupts. “Not a word, Huaisang. Not a word.”

He leans forward and pours more wine into Huaisang’s cup. “Look, just stop making the list and you’ll be fine. You can go back to doing whatever, whoever, you want.”

“I did! I haven’t been in charge of the list for years! For a while, no one was updating it, and then I handed it over to Jingyi, oh, about a year before Wei Wuxian came back, but...it still works.”

Jiang Cheng’s eyes roll back so hard, so long, Huaisang hopes they get stuck. “I assume you know because you tested it personally. I compliment the rigorous dedication to checking your theory, Huaisang.”

Huaisang sniffs. That poor Zhao girl (an exceptional number seven—Huaisang couldn’t argue with Jingyi’s taste, at least) had died horribly, he thinks, falling from her sword after a tragic mid-air goose collision.

“Well, I had to check, because…” If he is ever going to face a consequence, Huaisang thinks, today is the day. “For once, I wanted to use it.”

And then he waits for the dao to fall.

⟹ ⟸

Huaisang had planned of course, planned for years. Found evidence. Found witnesses. Found proof. But nothing was as good as a sure thing. So he would do this distasteful thing to ensure that no matter what happened, no matter how it happened, his plan would succeed.

Winning was so close he could taste it, like salty tears, like bitter fruit. It was a taste he remembered well.

“San-ge,” he sobbed, drinking his wine and immediately burning off the alcohol, “I just don’t know what to do. I’m going to die alone.”

Jin Guangyao, who Huaisang never thought of san-ge in his mind anymore, looked a little annoyed, but Huaisang poured him another cup of Emperor’s Smile, and his brother’s murderer relaxed.

“A-Sang,” he said in a patronizing tone, as though he was so much older and more mature than Huaisang. “We can visit another matchmaker and try again.”

“Noooooo,” Huaisang wailed. “I just can’t. It won’t help. You must have advice. What can I do to make a woman love me?”

There it was. The flinch. Huaisang loved the flinch. The flinch was winning. He gleefully drove the sword in deeper.

“Oh no, I’m a fool,” he moaned, with a dramatic sniffle, drying his tears and touching the back of Jin Guangyao’s hand, the lightest feather, only the tip of his finger grazing one knuckle. “I’m being selfish. This is such terrible timing, with everything that’s happened. I’m just so lonely. I miss…”

Huaisang sighed and turned away morosely, watching Jin Guangyao out of the corner of his eye. He really wasn’t as good at hiding his reactions as he thought he was. For instance, he bit the inside of his lip the way he always did when he was thinking of the past. And his eyes shifted to the right the way they always did when he was about to lie, so Huaisang beat him to the punch, pouring more wine. Four bottles down.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sure you never think about...well...you know.” He let his eyelashes flutter. Jin Guangyao looked a little alarmed, so Huaisang ratcheted the flutter back to a flicker. “But it was the best time of my life,” Huaisang said with a wistful jab, adding a twist of longing, and the thrust hit home.

“Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao said, sounding a little like he was drunk and a lot like he was weakening. “That was a long time ago.”

Huaisang was aware. He was aware that Meng Yao was never on The List, so sleeping with him never counted. He was aware that it was, perhaps, a bit callous to put a man whose wife died two days ago on a list of most eligible bachelors but he is Jin-zongzhu and chief cultivator. It would honestly be a crime not to include him.

“Maybe...maybe tonight I could help you and you could help me? Think of it as therapeutic catharsis, a-Yao.” Huaisang suggested, this time touching Jin Guangyao’s knee, and, when he got no objection, sliding his hand up further.

This is no worse than Su She, he reminded himself. Actually, a lot less worse, he decided, remembering the flash of raw meat that was Su She’s chest with a repressed shudder. He definitely can’t think about that, or he won’t even be able to coax The Cursed One into working order.

“Sang-er,” Jin Guangyao whispered, and Huaisang knew he’d won.

In more ways than one.

⟹ ⟸

Huaisang can’t tell what the look on Jiang Cheng’s face means.

“Ha!” Jiang Cheng shouts, and then tips sideways onto the couch laughing.

No, laughing is a polite word for polite people. Jiang Cheng is braying, quite a bit like Wei Wuxian’s donkey. It is frankly, very unbecoming behavior for a sect leader.

“You sound like Lil’ Apple,” Huaisang says crossly, and Jiang Cheng laughs harder, falling on the ground at Huaisang’s feet.

“You named your dick ‘The Cursed One’? No wonder it hates you. I’d hate you too. Here’s a suggestion. Try naming it something nice!”

“Oh, like ‘Princess?’”

Jiang Cheng shuts up.

But not for long. Never for long. The only person who shuts up less than Huaisang is Jiang Cheng. Huaisang considers himself a model of restraint compared to Jiang Cheng.

“What if you just kiss someone? Does that kill them?”

Huaisang eyes Jiang Cheng suspiciously, but he is sitting up, not laughing, and looks genuinely curious.

“My lips aren’t cursed.”

Jiang Cheng nods slowly. “That makes sense.”

“It does?”

“Not really, but I’m trying to be supportive of your bout with insanity. What happens if you have sex with people who aren’t on the list?”

“Nothing. But I never know who is on the list anymore. Jingyi and Sizhui are very protective of it. I don’t think they trust me not to tell anyone they write it.”

Jiang Cheng gives him a disbelieving look. “I can’t imagine why.”

Huaisang can’t either. It is a very unfilial lack of faith in his well-proven ability to keep secrets.

“Well, I guess if it’s the only way you’ll ever have sex again, I’m willing to sacrifice myself,” Jiang Cheng announces, holding out his arms and wiggling his hips suggestively. “Come and get it, Huaisang. I’m sorry, but this is your best, no, your only option.”

Huaisang kicks Jiang Cheng’s foot viciously. “You are so mean, a-Cheng, and it doesn’t help, because you’re still on the list, okay? Stupid Jingyi and his stupid crush. You’re number three now.”

Jiang Cheng grins so broadly, Huaisang hates him. Hates him a lot. Stupid, vain, irritating Jiang Cheng. He can’t remember why they’re friends. He can’t remember why he likes him.

“That’s so sweet! I knew I liked that kid for a reason. I should invite him over for tea sometime.”

Huaisang pops to his feet. “You go right ahead. I’m leaving.”

As fast as a striking snake, Jiang Cheng sits up and grabs Huaisang around the waist, pulling him down, startling a squeak out of Huaisang as he lands on Jiang Cheng’s lap.

“You idiot,” Jiang Cheng tells Huaisang fondly, tucking his hair behind his ear. “Have you ever tried having sex with anyone on the list who isn’t a fragile flower? Or who thought you were worth risking a little death for? Maybe you aren’t cursed. Maybe you just have terrible taste.”

He kisses Huaisang, so gently and tenderly, eyes closed, nose rubbing Huaisang’s cheek, and it is nothing like Huaisang expected, but it does feel a little like something breaks. Maybe it’s the curse. Maybe it’s the brittle ice around his heart that formed when da-ge died. Whatever it is, he can’t be bothered to think about it. He kisses Jiang Cheng back with everything he’s wanted to say since the day they met.

“Wait!”

Jiang Cheng wrenches away and glares at Huaisang. “Number three? Three? I can understand two, because ugh, Xichen, but who else could possibly be more eligible than me?”

“Cheng-gege, I’m probably just remembering wrong. You know how I am with details. I’m sure you’re second,” Huaisang soothes, wanting to return to the kissing part without having to tell Jiang Cheng that er-ge had put his foot down a long time ago about being on the list. It is actually his nephew who is number two and Ouyang Zizhen who is number one. He doesn’t think Jiang Cheng will see the humor in it.

“That’s true, you do have an atrocious memory,” Jiang Cheng grumbles. “For instance, you seem to have forgotten that you spent the entire afternoon detailing your exploits with half the cultivation world.”

Huaisang’s thought process is somewhat compromised, and he can’t make himself connect Jiang Cheng’s words with the feel of his hands, those wide, strong hands cupping Huaisang’s ass.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, tipping his head back and letting Jiang Cheng nibble a path down his neck. “They were all terrible. I do not recommend any of them, especially not the dead ones.”

Jiang Cheng laughs, a rumbling sound that makes Huaisang’s fingers fumble at the lotus clasp on his belt.

“I didn’t hate it, but we’re going to start a new list, Sang-er, called ‘Huaisang’s Best Sex,’ and I am going to be the ony person on it,” Jiang Cheng informs Huaisang, biting his earlobe.

“It’s not…” Huaisang kisses Jiang Cheng’s exquisite collarbone, having cleverly freed him from his robes, “...a list if…” Huaisang wraps his arms around Jiang Cheng’s neck and rocks against him, “...there’s only one person on it.”

With a growl that might be hiding a laugh, Jiang Cheng flips Huaisang onto his back and grinds against him. “Stop arguing, Sang-er. I am busy writing my name on your new list, and I expect it to take the rest of the night.”

Now that he thinks about it, Huaisang decides, lifting his hips so Jiang Cheng can pull off his pants, it’s really a brilliant idea. The best idea Jiang Cheng has ever had. Jiang Cheng’s mouth engulfs Huaisang’s very much forgiven dick, and with a gasp and a moan, he vows to henceforth let Jiang Cheng have all the ideas.

⟹ ⟸

Huaisang stretches like a cat in the morning, as pleased with himself as the sun is to rise, and stares down at Jiang Cheng’s unfairly beautiful face. Last night, Jiang Cheng had seemed very determined to break the curse, or break Huaisang’s back, and Huaisang isn’t surprised that he’s still asleep. With one finger, Huaisang traces the line of Jiang Cheng’s jaw and leans down to kiss his cool, smooth lips.

Cool lips.

No.

No!

Huaisang flails out of the bed, scrambling backward, falling, shaking his head as though not looking directly at Jiang Cheng will change what he felt.

He knew he should have listened to his gut and not his traitorous, evil dick.

“No no no no no no,” he chants softly, like it will make Jiang Cheng any less dead if he says it enough times.

And then a ton of rocks falls on his head. He is in the Jiang zongzhu’s bedroom with a dead Jiang-zongzhu. The self-preservation instinct that has kept him alive this long kicks him in the ass. He hurries to Jiang Cheng’s side of the bed and rolls him over, tucking the blanket around him like a mushu pancake. First, roll up the body, he mutters to himself. Then, dump him in the lake. Then, run away. This would be easier if he had someone to help. Like Jiang Cheng.

He stops and frowns. Is that…

The rolled up blanket shakes and Huaisang leaps back, clearing the entirety of the lotus-shaped rug—gods, they are devoted to that theme—and landing on a chair as far away from the undead Jiang Cheng as possible.

The wildly panicking rabbit in his head only slows its escape as he recognizes the sound from the bed.

Laughter.

Fucking laughter.

Fucking Jiang Cheng rolls himself out of the blanket. Not dead.

Not yet, at least. Huaisang is formulating some very definite ideas on how to change Jiang Cheng’s living status right now.

“Your face! You should see your face. I swear, I will cultivate immortality just so I can remember this moment for a thousand years. I never thought there would be a reason to use my qi to slow my heart rate like that but I was so wrong. You were going to dump me in the lake!”

“What is wrong with you!” Huaisang shouts. “I thought I’d killed you!” He stalks over to Jiang Cheng, intending to make his assumption reality, but Jiang Cheng wraps his legs tightly around Huaisang’s waist and kisses him soundly.

“I don’t die easily, Nie Huaisang. Not for you, not for anyone. Besides, I’ve waited too long for you to figure out you’re in love with me. Now, come back to bed, and I’ll let you try to kill me again, as many times as you want. If you’re very good, maybe Princess will return the favor and try to kill you too.”

Dammit, Huaisang should have known he’d like the name. He’s going to be stuck calling Jiang Cheng’s dick Princess forever.

He grins and shoves Jiang Cheng backward, straddling his waist, and the aforementioned Princess twitches enthusiastically. Forever is a nice amount of time, Huaisang decides, and Princess is a small price to pay for forever.

#the untamed #cql #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #jiang cheng #nie huaisang #sangcheng #nie mingjue #jin guangyao #the untamed fic #I don't even want to tag the other people #wen xu #jin zixun #jin zixuan #there was a cursed idea #and then a cursed fic came out of it #it is quite silly but #not gonna lie I do sort of love the way it came out #kristina writes tiny stories

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ibijau · 4 years ago

Text

Deathbed wedding pt2

Wishing you again a happy new year. I’m starting mine with some xisang! :D

Nie Huaisang plots, but isn’t as careful as he’d thought

Nie Huaisang absolutely refused to come out of his room to have dinner that night, no matter how much Nie Zonghui and Meng Yao pleaded for him to be reasonable. For a full shichen, he also refused to have that dinner brought to him in his room, arguing through the door that he refused to eat anything until his brother apologised for what he’d said earlier. Then, because Nie Huaisang saw no reason to be kind to his brother, he also repeated Nie Mingjue’s exact words to them.

He could guess, already, that Nie Zonghui was probably going to have an argument of his own with Nie Mingjue on that subject. After all he’d been the one to personally train Nie Huaisang since he’d decided to finally take an interest in his sabre. Saying that Nie Huaisang hadn’t made any progress in the past year was to insult Nie Zonghui’s skill as a teacher, and being their cousin he shared that volatile temper of theirs. Busy handling two fights at the same time, Nie Mingjue was sure to be quite distracted in the days to come.

More importantly though, Meng Yao was going to be angry at Nie Mingjue too. Considering his background and his late start, he sometimes took it a bit personally when people spoke of someone having low skills. He had been very supportive of Nie Huaisang all along, even sometimes training with him when his other duties allowed, and he would not take kindly to hearing that Nie Mingjue thought some people couldn’t be taught at all. His anger would be less explosive than Nie Zonghui, and Nie Mingjue probably wouldn’t even consciously notice it, but it would still throw off their perfect balance, and that too would play to Nie Huaisang’s advantage when the time came.

Besides, he really was upset over what his brother had said, and so it really did feel good to complain about it.

When Meng Yao and Nie Zonghui gave up on making him eat that evening, Nie Huaisang dug into the secret stash of snacks that existed precisely because of this sort of arguments.

He went to bed early, and rose up again just as early, a habit he had taken up during his time in the Cloud Recesses. While most of the sect slept, Nie Huaisang set to work preparing some talismans.

With Chiwen, his sabre, Nie Huaisang knew that he was exactly as bad as everyone said, if not even worse. Using his spiritual energy directly was no good either, he just didn’t have enough, and it was too weak. But Nie Huaisang had found over the past year that he had a knack for talismans. Calligraphy had always been one of the few things he could focus on, even as a child, and he had a good steady hand when writing. On top of that, he had a great memory and a good eye for detail, which made it easy for him to learn and copy new talismans. It was really a shame that Qinghe Nie had no strong tradition of using those. He hard learned the basic ones everyone knew, but aside from that the few specialised he had found in their library were mostly meant to bait creatures, with very little to actually fight. If Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji hadn’t loaned him a few of their own sects’ talismans to learn, Nie Huaisang’s skill would have been quite useless.

That was the story of his life, of course. Nie Huaisang knew himself to be extremely talented, and in quite a few domains too. If he had been born in a non-cultivating family, he would have been considered a very accomplished and skilled young man fit to go serve the emperor, but alas, in the cultivation world none of the things he was good at mattered.

He had never really cared, until certain events had forced him to.

A good while after he’d woken up, Nie Huaisang heard the rest of his brother’s sect become more active as well. Without surprise, Nie Zonghui and Meng Yao came knocking at his door again. A scene very similar to that of the previous night played out, with Nie Huaisang still refusing to eat anything. Because they both had a lot to do, Nie Zonghui and Meng Yao informed him that they were leaving his breakfast on a tray in front of the door. Nie Huaisang ignored the food, snacking instead on some watermelon seeds while he wrote a letter informing a certain person that he would be at a certain place on a certain day. He gave the letter to one of his better trained birds, crossing his fingers that the animal would carry his message in time, hoping that he would be awaited even if his letter was missed. If he wanted to be at the agreed place in time, he would have to leave that very evening, and to fly faster than he was usually comfortable with. This gave him very little time to prepare everything, but it could be done if he played his cards right.

Between breakfast and lunch time, Nie Huaisang took care of his sabre and practised his forms for a while. Nie Xinfang would be furious if she knew that he was pushing his wounded wrist so much between talismans earlier and the weight of Chiwen now, but it truly wasn’t hurting that bad. Or at least, the pain wasn’t so distracting that he couldn’t bear with it.

At lunch time, Nie Huaisang still refused any food, and also announced he wouldn’t be talking to anyone anymore until Nie Mingjue came in person to apologise. Considering the intensity of the fight, that was unlikely to happen for at least another three days, so he felt quite safe in making that demand.

In the afternoon, Nie Huaisang tried to meditate, only to end up falling asleep. It was fine, he sheepishly decided when he awoke. He needed to be well rested, since he would be flying pretty far.

At dinner time he remained perfectly silent when Meng Yao and Nie Zonghui came to check on him, making no more noise than if he hadn't been there at all. As soon as they left, he brought inside the dinner they'd put on his doorstep and ate the whole thing. This, hopefully, would create the expectation that he was angry enough to skip a few meals, and so his absence would take longer to be noticed.

With this last part of his plan accomplished, Nie Huaisang only had to pack everything he'd be bringing with him and wait for darkness to fall.

A little after the sun had fully set, Nie Huaisang exited his room through a window and, carefully avoiding any patrols, any servants still going around, he made his way to a certain secret passage that led outside of the Unclean Realm.

Meng Yao caught Nie Huaisang at the exit of that secret passage.

How his brother’s deputy had managed to find that exit and to get there before him was a mystery, and one Nie Huaisang would need to solve… some other time.

“I swear I’ll fight you if you try to stop me,” he hissed. “Wen Chao invited me to a Night Hunt, I have to go. You know he always organises the best Night Hunts, they’ve got a bunch of awful monsters on their lands. I can’t let that chance pass me by! So let me go, or I’ll...”

“There’s little glory to be found in fighting me,” Meng Yao retorted calmly. “So don't even bother. And Nie gongzi needs to learn a little patience.”

Nie Huaisang huffed. “Not you too. You know they won’t let him have me even when he’s of age, not if I can’t prove I’m good enough! He’s too nice to go against his elders if they say no again, and then we’ll both be miserable for ever, and…”

Meng Yao laughed softly.

“This humble servant only meant that if you had waited another shichen to sneak away, he would not have seen you go out,” he explained, looking far too amused in the face of Nie Huaisang's despair. “Nie gongzi should have checked that nobody was still awake. Nie gongzi also should be aware that I’ll have this passage condemned, now that I know it. It’s a security hazard.”

“It’s not. Da-ge is aware it exists, there’s a bunch of protections over it.”

“Then I will have to warn Nie zongzhu that the protections must be strengthened, since that did not stop me from guessing where it leads.”

Nie Huaisang gritted his teeth, so frustrated that he felt tears prickling at the corner of his eyes. He'd been so close to getting away with this.

And it wasn’t just about the Night Hunt itself. He knew that Lan Wangji was going, which meant a chance to finally get news from Lan Xichen, since they hadn’t been allowed to write to each other since that day. Nie Huaisang wanted to know how the boy he loved was doing, if Lan Xichen missed him too, if he hadn’t been forgotten, if his efforts to prove himself were working at all…

“Meng Yao, you have to let me go,” Nie Huaisang ordered, gripping the handle of his sabre in what he hoped would seem like a threat, even when they both knew Meng Yao had more skill than him. “It’ll be different this time, I’ll be more careful, but I really have to go. I don’t know how much more time I have!”

Pity flashed across Meng Yao’s face. He’d heard those worrying rumours too, of course. Meng Yao always kept track of all the gossip, he must have heard about this long before Nie Huaisang had.

Hopefully, none of it was true anyway.

“I’m not here to stop Nie gongzi,” Meng Yao announced. “I just wanted to make sure there was no breach to our defence, and to warn you it’ll be harder for you to leave next time. And did you take food?”

Relaxing a little, Nie Huaisang nodded, allowing himself a weak smile.

“Of course. Food, warning signals in case I get in trouble, a bunch of talismans… Da-ge taught me well. How much of an advance are you giving me?”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t see you leave, and unless your brother decides to visit you, I won’t ‘discover’ you’re gone until tomorrow afternoon. But you will owe me,” Meng Yao warned with a pleasant smile. “And next time, if I catch you, I will alert your brother.”

From anyone else, it would have been a threat to stop disobeying his brother already. Coming from Meng Yao though, Nie Huaisang took it more as advice to improve his sneakiness.

“There won’t be a next time,” Nie Huaisang promised, throwing himself at his brother’s deputy to hug him. “I’ll show them for sure this time, and then I’ll never have to go on a stupid Night Hunt again!”

Meng Yao huffed, clearly unconvinced, but allowed the hug for once in spite of his usual dislike for displays of affection. Nie Huaisang figured he must have looked pretty pathetic if Meng Yao was acting so nice.

He certainly felt very pathetic. It had been over a year since he had last seen Lan Xichen, and he had made so little progress toward proving himself.

This time really needed to be different. He couldn’t keep failing, or else Lan Xichen might start to share his father’s opinion.

Nie Huaisang had to show he was capable of more than anyone expected, no matter the cost.

#xisang #nie huaisang #lan xichen #jin guangyao #mo dao zu shi #mdzs #deathbed wedding au #jau writes

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canary3d-obsessed · 4 years ago

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Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 19, part two

(Masterpost) (Other Canary Stuff) (Previous Post)

Warning: Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

The Man Comes Around

Over at the Wen Indoctrination Tower, which seems to exist just to torture Lan Wangji with stair climbing, Lan Wangji is climbing the stairs. Too bad his cultivation level is too low to be able to just jump up. At least this time his leg isn't broken.

This is the first vengeful stair-climb in the show, but not the last. (Parallel gifset here).

The Wen guards are stationed all the way at the pinnacle of this tower to guard...what? Why are they not at the bottom of the stairs? What is this location for, actually? This is further up the stairs than the scenes with the indoctrination lectures. Anyway, it's been three months since Wen Chao threw Wei Wuxian into the burial mounds, so naturally these guards are talking about that exact thing as Lan Wangji approaches.

Lan Wangji knocks them all down with a blast from his guqin. Did you know his guqin is named Wangji, by the way? It is. A guy who is that lazy about naming his quqin maybe shouldn't feel so superior to a guy who named his sword "whatever."

(I'm suddenly remembering a plush lamb I had as a child, whose eyes were orange, that I named "orange eyes.") (I, however, was three. And I had a lot of plush lambs. Little ones. Grown-ups found it hilarious to give them to me.) (Native speakers of English can probably guess what OP's real name is. Hint: it rhymes with Canary.) (Everybody else: there is a kid's rhyming song called Mary Had A Little Lamb. OP's name is Mary.)

Anyhoo, after Lan Wangji is finally finished with his dramatic entrance, Jiang Cheng comes flying in from wherever he's been hovering for the past 20 minutes of stair time. A bunch of Lan sidekicks also flood into the frame from wherever they were hiding during the wide shots of LWJ on the staircase.

In case you hope that CQL Lan Wangji is as much of a top (offscreen) as MZDS Lan Wangji is (on the page), here's a gif for you.

(more after the cut)

He uses the patented Lan string attack to choke this guard. Lan Wangji doesn't have to hold a guqin string in his hands to choke someone with it. He doesn't even have to tighten it, judging by how absurdly not-tight this string is.

Or maybe this guy is choking on the chin strap of his helmet. This is exactly how OP's son reacts when OP sticks a bike helmet on him. (Note: it's GOOD that they are following choking safety protocols on set. Very good. However, they could have just left the string out and pretended, and it would look better, in this instance)

The Wen guard tells Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng about the whole "thrown into the burial mounds" thing. Team Let's Find Wei Wuxian is not happy to hear this.

A Vengeful Ghost

Meanwhile, in some Wen office somewhere? Where the hell is this? Yiling, we get an ominous shot of the rooftops where Wei Wuxian is lurking and then we see Wang Lingjiao trying to sleep and having a nightmare.

Wang Lingjiao has gone to sleep with a full face of makeup on instead of washing her face before bed. She has forgotten the important maxim, Go To Sleep Pretty, Wake Up Zitty.

She leaps out of bed to go cling to Wen Chao and freak out about Wei Wuxian's ghost. Wen Chao is trying to read the sports section and has clearly had enough of this crap. This has presumably been going on for a little while now.

Wang Lingjiao is in a new outfit, which is...pajamas? It has the feel of a 1930's French peignoir set, and it's much more softly colored than her usual bright red-purple combo. If this is her pajamas is it weird that her day clothes are a lot more aggressively sexy-looking than her nightgown? A freak in the streets but a lady in the sheets.

Wen Chao rants about the Sunshot Campaign and talks some smack about Wen Qing, and then leaves to go to the bar and watch the game with Wen Zhuliu. After he leaves Wang Lingjiao freaks out for a bit and then looks at the notice he was reading.

The notice basically says that the Sunshot Campaign is kicking their ass. She should be proud for inspiring the name of the campaign with that kite-shooting bullshit she made up at Lotus Pier. Before slaughtering everyone.

No Matter What You Do, I Only Want To Be With You

Back at the Indoctrination Tower, Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng are having feelings about Wei Wuxian. Jiang Chang does all the talking but Lan Wangji's thoughts are louder because a sad violin is playing Wangxian while they talk.

Jiang Cheng tells Lan Wangji about their meetup plan and says he thought WWX had dumped him to go find Lan Wangji in Lanling. Lan Wangji telepathically indicates that this didn’t happen. This means two things: 1. Lan Wangji has been hanging out in Lanling, where Jiang Yanli has been hanging out, so maybe they have bonded over the past 3 months and 2. This is the first time Jiang Cheng has talked to Lan Wangji since Wei Wuxian disappeared.

Much as my fic-loving heart would like to believe these two spent three months on the road together looking for Wei Wuxian, in fact they are both important high-level fighters in an active military campaign, and Lan Wangji was busy taking back the Cloud Recesses while Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian were having elective surgery. They probably both were assigned to the "Indoctrination Bureau" mission and this is the first chance they've had to talk about Wei Wuxian.

Is it heartbreaking that, while Wei Wuxian was helplessly getting his ass beat because he'd sacrificed his golden core for Jiang Cheng, Jiang Cheng believed Wei Wuxian had abandoned him for Lan Wangji? Yes. Yes it is.

For some reason Jiang Cheng is hesitant to believe that Wei Wuxian really was thrown into the Burial Mounds. I mean, I understand not wanting to believe Wei Wuxian is dead, but given that Wen Chao is the dude who oversaw the massacre of all of the people at Lotus Pier, including kids, why would Jiang Cheng think his guards are wrong? Maybe he just feels like Wei Wuxian is invincible, since so far he kinda has been.

The Sword is Mightier Than Not Having a Sword

While they've been chatting, the Lan disciples have found their swords. One disciple is holding Bichen (LWJ's sword), Sandu (JC's sword), and OP consults wiki Suihua (Jin Zixuan's sword). Another disciple is holding Subian (WWX's sword).

Jiang Cheng grabs Sandu while the Lan disciples, who apparently know their gongzi’s heart, offer Wei Wuxian's sword to Lan Wangji.

Lan Wangji takes Subian (Bichen: What am I, chopped watercress?) and immediately tries to draw it. Like you don't do. It's sealed itself, which apparently means that it's upset. It's unclear if it's upset because Wei Wuxian is dead or if it just misses him, however.

Lan Wangji definitely misses him, and wonders, out loud inside his own head, where Wei Wuxian is. Um, he's in the Burial Mounds, dude, they just told you. Well, I guess he's actually in Yiling proper at this point, haunting Wang Lingjiao as he promised her he would.

Twa Corbies

The scene shifts to Qinghe, where there are about 12 dead bodies lying around, which in this show means that there are really a few hundred. In fact, per Jiang Yanli's statement "nothing can be seen but corpses covering the plains." The camera can't see most of them, is all.

Wen Xu's head is hanging in the doorway, and the Jins talk about how Nie Mingjue killed him, cutting his head off with just one swing. Is this foreshadowing anything, like perhaps someone else's head being cut off by Baxia in just one swing? Nope, definitely not.

A couple of crows are perched on a body, totally not eating it, but Jin Zixuan gallantly zaps them with a talisman to make them fly away anyway. It might be noteworthy that nobody used to use talismans but gradually more and more people are using them - particularly people who have spent time with Wei Wuxian.

With mony a lock of his golden hair-o, we’ll theek our nest when it grows bare-o

Asshole cousin Jin Zixun says “scavenger rights,” so Jin Zixuan puts him in charge of collecting all the bodies.

Since OP just finished watching fur-collar-happy Nirvana in Fire, these crows look to me like they are wearing luxurious fur collars. Where OP lives, crows are not this fancy.

A Romantic Corpse-Filled Interlude

Disaster het Jin Zixuan goes to help Jiang Yanli get out of the carriage but she rejects his hand just like he rejected hers back in Gusu.

Jiang Yanli is extremely shocked when she sees Wen Xu's severed head, and turns away in horror, preferring to calmly rest her eyes on dozens of crow-pecked corpses.

Jin Zixuan tries to comfort her and she tells him she'll be going now, thanks for the hospitality. He tries to say that he has to personally deliver her to a representative of the patriarchy one of her brothers, but then one of her brothers shows up.

Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng arrive, having presumably flown there from Qishan. They show that they are flying by blowing a fan on the ground and then jumping off of a box, which is better than the effects we were subjected to earlier in the episode.

Jiang Cheng rushes over to have an emotional reunion with Jiang Yanli, while Lan Wangji rushes over to have an emotional reunion with Wen Xu’s severed head. Jin Zixuan kind of spoils it for him by talking about Wei Wuxian's absence while Lan Wangji is trying to have a moment.

The whole time Jin Zixuan is talking to him, Lan Wangji appears to be gazing into the middle distance but in fact he is staring at Wen Xu's severed head. This is the guy who led the burning of Cloud Recesses, killed a bunch of disciples, and personally broke Lan Wangji's leg. Lan Wangji stares at his head for more than a full minute before glancing away.

Jiang Yanli hasn't seen Jiang Cheng since they were in Wen Qing's clinic, and she is happy he's recovered. When she asks about Wei Wuxian he gives her the bad news in the classic Jiang fashion, which is to say nothing, but look stricken until your interlocutor figures out that something is horribly wrong, but not precisely what.

Four Angry Men

Inside the fortress, Nie Mingjue is slapping the table and saying, this bad boy can hold so much resentment and vengeance. They're having a mini war council and we're getting a better sense of Nie Mingjue's anger management problem. Note for those who don't get the gif reference: this is a The Godfather joke, not a sex joke, but it can be both, if you like.

We're also getting a little more info about Baxia, who seems to be eager to go fight even without anyone wielding it. (Her? Him? Them? do swords have gender? I don't know). Well done, person below the camera frame whose job is to rattle Baxia in a menacing manner.

They've got a giant model of the battle targets, which looks like it was carved out of real rock (I mean, as much as any of the rocks on this show look like real rocks) and has its own table and everything, decorated in Nie colors. Where was this before they took Qinghe back? Has Nie Mingjue been traveling with it?

Anyway, I'm assuming Nie Huaisang made it, because it's pretty nice. Hopefully they will keep it around for tabletop gaming after the war is over.

Jiang Cheng is upset but is using his anger management mantra to help control his temper while Jin Zixuan and Lan Wangji talk with Nie Mingjue.

Lan Wangji talks by leaning forward meaningfully, mostly not by using any words, but he asks for a battle assignment and Jiang Cheng immediately joins in. They both want to go find Wei Wuxian.

Nie Mingjue says Yiling is too difficult of a target, but Lan Wangji puts on his determined face, which is apparently very persuasive.

After Team Find Wei Wuxian leaves, Nie Mingjue asks Jin Zixuan to hang back so he can ask him how Meng Yao is doing. This is the first time he finds out that his ex didn't go to Lanling. Jin Zixuan tries to delicately remind him that Dad's got, like, SO many bastard children, they really don't have space for all of them. Nie Mingjue dismisses him immediately and abruptly.

Nie Mingjue might invite the straights to his party but he isn't interested in actually socializing with them.

Unconditional Soup is Only for A-Xian

Jiang Cheng can't sleep, and takes some time, now, to be sad about Wei Wuxian. Presumably he spent the prior 3 months being mad, not sad, because he really thought he just buggered off without saying anything for all that time. Which is sort of fair, but sort of not. One thing about these two bros is that for as close as they have been and as much as they love each other, their mutual understanding has some big, messy gaps.

Fortunately while he is feeling sad, Jiang Cheng does not try to draw Subian from its sheath, because wouldn't THAT be awkward.

Jiang Yanli can't sleep either, and comes to sit with him. Jiang Cheng feels bad that she's wearing herself out with worry and she says "As your sister, I have nothing to do but to worry about you." Jiang Yanli isn't one to complain but she doesn't like being inactive or helpless. In Lanling she was far from the war, but now that she's in Qinghe she'll make herself useful by tending the wounded, and later she'll help Jiang Cheng shoulder his responsibilities as he takes over the Jiang clan.

At the moment, however, all she can do is fret and make soup. As she gives Jiang Cheng a bowlful she reminds him that he absolutely has to rescue their brother who has, according to his captors, been reduced to bone dust.

With all the impossible shit that Jiang Cheng is expected to achieve - and in many instances, does achieve - he is absolutely the embodiment of the Jiang Clan's motto. Fuck his father for disrespecting him because he hadn't figured out how to do everything by the age of 16.

Definitely Not Chilling in Yiling

Back in Yiling, Wen Chao is hearing the news that the Qishan Indoctrination Bureau has fallen and that he's being called back to Nightless City. Wen Chao says he shouldn't need to go back because his dad has a new right-hand man. That new right-hand man, we will eventually learn, is Meng Yao. Wang Lingjiao, meanwhile, is hiding under the bed covers and deciding it's time to dump Wen Chao.

She locks the door and goes to pull out her jewelry box, which is locked and hidden under the bed. Maybe this is Wen Chao's jewelry box, because she acts kind of squirrely about opening it. Upon opening the jewelry box, she doesn't find jewelry but a pair of bloody fake eyeballs staring at her. She screams and freaks out and then the wind picks up and we hear the sound of a flute, playing the "I'm here to fuck your shit up" tune that Wei Wuxian likes.

Wang Lingjiao runs to the door and pulls down the protection talisman that's pasted above it, and pastes it directly to her chest instead, which is, we will learn in the next episode, the worst idea she could possibly have at this point.

Then she uses a poking stick to go flip the jewelry box open and finds it's full of ugly-ass jewelry again, plus an improbable number of weird round paper-mache biscuits that have been painted gold. None of this jewelry looks anything like the exquisite accessories people wear in this show, which means this stash was put together by the practical effects department, not by the costume department.

Anyway, Wang Lingjiao apparently thinks she can sell this fakeass stuff for a good price, so more power to her. But then we get a short glimpse of the menacing eyeballs again, this time on the floor, having moved out of the box and brought their little blood pool with them. Screeching ensues.

Next episode: Lady in Red!

Soundtrack: Twa Corbies, by Steeleye Span

#fytheuntamed #the untamed #the untamed gifs #the untamed meta #restless rewatch the untamed #canary3d-original #my gifs #jiang cheng #wang lingjiao #jin zixuan

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stygiusfic · 4 years ago

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if the hades characters were a tarot deck

I saw gorgeous art on twitter of a few Hades characters depicted as Major Arcana cards and, because I’m a humongous tarot nerd, I started thinking about who would be the best fit for each Major Arcana, based on their personality and character arc. Unfortunately I can’t draw well enough to do my ideas justice, but I hope it’s interesting to read!

Some minor spoilers for the events of the game up until the true ending, since character arcs are mentioned.

The Fool - Zagreus, setting out, damned be the consequences. Someone ready to take the first steps in a new direction, thinking only of what they stand to gain. The traditional fool shows a traveling youngster, maybe a bard, happily walking forward, not realizing or caring that he's about to walk off a cliff, because he's focused on the sky and the vistas before him. There is a dog at his heel, trying to keep him back, but he ignores the warning. Zagreus doesn't care that "There is no escape"; he is determined and does not lose sight of his goal.

The Magician - Chaos. This is a card of luck and creation, of forward momentum. You have made plans and now it's time for action. With the resources at your disposal, you enact change upon yourself and the world. There is a certain whimsy to this card that I think fits Chaos very well too, though I was tempted to place them in The Hermit, symbolizing the guidance they provide.

The High Priestess - Nyx. This card signifies the serene wisdom that comes from intuition and introspection. It's a card of deep, profound knowledge. The answers we seek are sitting inside of us, in our minds, our bones, they are truths we can feel, and those are what we must follow. This is Nyx urging Zagreus to pursue his desire to find his mother, and supporting him in the endeavor, because she knows as well as he does that he needs it in order to move forward.

The Empress - Persephone. The Empress provides; her generosity is built upon effort and careful cultivation in order to achieve the goal. Plus, harvest symbolism runs deep in this card. She ran away once, but once she returns, we see her trying to settle into her role as a mother and, once again, a Queen, and trying to be kind as she wants Hades to be.

The Emperor - Hades. In its reversed aspect, this card symbolizes a leadership that can be almost tyrannical in the way it lays claim to the loyalty of others and the rigidity and unfairness of his rulings. This fits his rulership and his intransigent attitude towards the members of the House and the Shades who enter compacts with him. His rule over the Underworld is absolute and, on occasion, stifling.

The Hierophant - Athena and, to a lesser extent, the other Olympians. This is a card of traidition and institution. In many cases, it can be an oppressive card of rigid rules that restrain our growth, but sometimes it can be interpreted as a calling to become part of an institution and seek a purpose. I'm going with that reading, with Athena lending her support to Zagreus' cause because they are family, and family stands united (family, too, is an institution). And she believes she is calling him to Olympus, which is its own hierarchy separate from the Underworld.

The Lovers - Zagreus in between Meg and Than. Mutual desire, a healthy partnership where all parties have their needs fulfilled. In some cases, it can represent a choice between two paths when you've come to a fork in the road, which works as well if you decide to choose a single romance. Alternatively, this could be the choice between reciprocating their feelings or staying friends; regardless, the relationships are positive.

The Chariot - Hermes and Charon. Healthy motivation, willpower, a sense of drive and certainty. Why not make this a card of Hermes delivering souls to Charon's "chariot", his boat? This is a card of purpose, of knowing exactly where you're going and heading there. The professional associates seem like a perfect fit for it.

Strength - Theseus and Asterius. In the way that traditional Strength cards picture a woman subduing a lion, I picture Theseus standing behind a sitting and relaxed Asterius, with his hands on his shoulders or mane. Theseus is as insufferable in death as he was in life, but we see him having realized some of his mistakes, starting with killing the Minotaur and then rescuing him from Erebus in death. Strength represents the courage to face your shortcomings and learn from them in order to move forward.

The Hermit - Sisyphus and Bouldy. In truth, Sisyphus would have been a good fit for Justice as well, as a character who pays penance for the atrocities he committed, but in the context of the game we often find him chilling during a break from the Furies’ wrath, and spending quiet time with Bouldy. The Hermit is a card that urges us to take time to be alone with our thoughts and reflections and use that to become better people, which Sisyphus definitely has, because oh boy, he was a piece of work in life.

Wheel of Fortune - The Pool of Styx. This card represents the ever-shifting nature of our lives; sometimes, we are on top of the world, and then we fall and are crushed by the wheel, only to rise again. Fortune and misfortune are temporary. Is there a better symbol for RNG? That being said, I would have chosen The Fates for this if they were in the game, because they're very closely tied to this card, for obvious reasons.

Justice - Erinyes. Balance, fairness, cause and effect. Good things happen to good people, and similarly, bad things happen to bad people. The Furies punish the worst of mortal sinners for the crimes they've committed.

The Hanged Man - Hypnos. Sometimes, you can feel stuck in life, and you just have to ride it out and accept it and do the best you can. Think of Hypnos' running commentary whenever you get killed. "Have you tried not dying?" And, "My brother never talks to me". And he fell asleep on the job again, and he gets scolded all the time. But the little dude is happy to just hang in there, make his lists and vibe. He does his best with what he has and I love him.

Death - Thanatos. Obviously because of the card name, but beyond that I think this card really fits Thanatos' journey. Death is a card about change, a deep change that can be painful because of its magnitude but is often necessary, and brings with it a new beginning. I think Thanatos is forced to reassess a lot of things when Zagreus decides to leave, and the change he goes through as a result puts him in a better place by the end.

Temperance - Euridyce. Temperance is a card of calm and balance, and it is the last of the virtues in the tarot; together with Strength and Justice, it brings the virtue of Prudence, which is the highest Platonic virtue. Following after the upheaval of Death, Temperance is the reassurance that despite the changes, the core parts of ourselves, what makes us who we are, will remain throughout it all. Despite the challenges, we thrive. Do I need to copy-paste the lyrics of "Good Riddance" here or are we good?

The Devil - Achilles. I picture him in this card as the most raw version of himself, the angry and afraid self that clings to the most harmful influences on him. The Devil symbolizes oppressive forces in our life that we are nevertheless loathe to part from, such as addictions or toxic relationships or negative emotions. Achilles is chained by his pact to Hades, separated from the man he loves and the happiness that he could find there, but more than that he is chained by his fear. He is consumed by regret that Patroclus died because of him and would rather imagine Patroclus happy in Elysium than confront him and his own feelings. When he decides to "risk it all", he is breaking the chain of that fear.

The Tower - Orpheus. In the deck I saw on twitter, he was assigned to The Fool, and that would be appropriate for the Orpheus setting out to the Underworld to rescue his wife, but when the game starts we see an Orpheus that is broken, standing in the wreckage of the consequences of his actions. The Tower has fallen, taking with it everything that seemed true and reliable about oneself, and we are left to question who we are in the wake of that destruction. He loses his will to sing and is listless and depressed. He is too swept up in the pain of his failure to move forward.

The Star - Dusa. This card is a light in the darkness, a moment of encouragement to move forward in the wake of a catastrophe like the Tower. Dusa's bubbly manner always puts a smile on my face, and I think she's perfect for this card. There is also the reversed meaning, which is that sometimes you can lose track of yourself and you need some time to recenter yourself and decide what your next step should be, which happens to Dusa as well.

The Moon - Patroclus. This is a card of reflection (look, he talks to himself a lot), and it can be a warning not to let yourself be led by your fears and anxieties. It's a card of dreams that encourages you to listen to your gut and not be swayed by the fears of others or your own. Very little is illuminated by moonlight, but we move forward even so.

The Sun - Cerberus. The best boy(s) is clearly a big source of joy for Zagreus, perhaps the most comforting constant in his life in the Underworld. The Sun brings warmth, a moment of joy and reprieve and the opportunity to bask in what makes you happy. If you don't pet Cerberus first thing after you return to the House of Hades, you're playing this game wrong.

Judgment - Zagreus and Persephone in the garden. As one part of the journey comes to an end, a higher purpose calls to you, and you should heed the call. That is why so often, in decks that borrow the imagery of the Rider Waite Smith tarot, this is depicted as people rising from their graves at the sound of the angels' trumpets. This is a card of consequences, of reaping what you have sown. At the end of his trials and tribulations, Zagreus finds his mother, but that is only the beginning. The road to reconciliation of all those problems is still open. (If you wanted to be funny with the rebirth themes in this card, you could just put Skelly here, for shits and giggles. That dude just keeps coming back, and he’s definitely receiving some of the energy he put out into the world if his eternal fate is to be a punching bag).

The World - The Olympian Feast. The World is the real culmination of the journey, where all the effort made so far pays off and brings a moment of contentment and completion. The Underworld and Olympus fixing their relationship over Hades' best wine feels like a good fit for this, aside from being the conclusion of the game's story.

#tarot #hades game #hades #supergiant games

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nikibogwater · 4 years ago

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The Norse Chaos Chronicles: Chapter Four--In which by some Easter miracle, the Incompetent Vikings defeat the Elder

Been a few days since my last update in regards to Team Bogwater’s exploits in the world of Valheim. This is mostly because we actually had a couple of play sessions that were relatively calm.

We actually did manage to expand to the Black Forest across the sea and set up a functioning base there, where we lived in somewhat cramped quarters for a while until we had gathered enough minerals to enter the Bronze Age (and by cramped, I mean all three of us were crammed into what was basically a single king-sized bed because we failed to make the house big enough to accommodate a reasonable amount of space between each of our beds--clearly some home renovations are in order).

I, being a very kind and responsible sister, spent some time on the server by myself making our base more secure with Stake Walls, setting up a sufficient space for storage, and gathering food, all tasks that the others didn’t seem too excited to take care of. I was expecting the boys to notice and at least tell me that my additions were helpful.

I know for a fact that they at least noticed, because when I joined them for this most recent play session, Gustav had decided that what our base needed now was a spike pit around the front gate, which I know wouldn’t have occurred to him if I hadn’t put up the spiky walls. I was never told that my additions were helpful or appreciated, but considering that there were far fewer deaths happening close to our base, I suspect they were nonetheless.

Niki: ...Is....Do we really need the spike trap? Like, is it necessary? Gustav: How could you even ask something like that?! I have never been more upset in my life. Niki: It’s just...like, there’s a bridge that goes right over it. Gustav: Yeah. So we can get across it. Niki: Right but so could the Greydwarves. Gustav: Greydwarves aren’t that smart. (20 minutes later) Gustav, trying and failing to shove a Greydwarf into the pit: You guys, I may have overestimated how unintelligent Greydwarves are.

Gustav got exactly one (1) Greydwarf to fall into the pit and die. The only other thing he caught was Tripe.

Okay, well, he did manage to get a Troll to walk into the spikes, but then it just smashed them all to pieces. It was at this point that Gustav finally accepted the reality of the fact that a spike pit was completely useless to us in this particular area.

Gustav, filling in the pit with rocks: Man, why didn’t one of you guys warn me that the spike trap was a dumb idea? Niki and Tripe: Yeah, that was our bad. 🙄 (10 minutes later) Niki, just peacefully mining copper in the forest: Wait, so where did the Troll go- *gets slammed by the Troll before I can even finish voicing the question* GUSTAV, WHY DIDN’T YOU KILL IT?!

Tripe and Gustav upgraded to Bronze Gear and Troll Hide (I brought mine over from my single player world to save time and resources). I was still trying to gather up enough Bronze to make a Cultivator so we could eat something other than Cooked Meat and Queen’s Jam, when suddenly I was informed that we were getting into a boat (we upgraded from the raft, finally) and going to kill the Elder.

Tripe: Get in losers, we’re going to kill the next boss. Gustav: *jumps in without any hesitation* Niki: Wait what?! That’s a terrible idea! (5 minutes later) Niki, sulking in the front of the boat: Did I mention this is a really bad idea? Gustav and Tripe: It’s fine. How bad can it possibly be?

Horrible. Absolutely horrible. That’s how bad it was.

We had rather unlucky RNG with our world generation, and the Elder’s altar was a good 1,000 miles away from us. Which meant a significant portion of this play session was actually just sitting in the boat and watching the scenery pass.

It sounds like a pleasant time, but I was absolutely terrified the whole way there.

Gustav: ...Oh hey, we discovered the ocean. Niki, who has seen videos of Sea Serpents absolutely wrecking well-equipped players: BACK TO THE SHORE. GO BACK. DO NOT MOVE INTO OPEN WATERS. GUSTAV, FOR THE LOVE, GO BACK TO THE SHORELINE! (Passing a Plains biome) Niki: ...Did you guys know there are one-hit death bugs in the Plains Gustav and Tripe: Will you please calm down

We happened to run across Haldur the merchant shortly before reaching our destination. Since Valheim doesn’t tie your inventory to individual worlds, I went ahead and bought a few things to bring back to my single-player world (namely the fishing gear). I hopped off the server for a minute to transfer the items, and while I was in my world, I grabbed some extra food (the boys are terrible about keeping food in their inventories) and, since I figured we’d need all the help we could get, grabbed a few jugs of mead without really paying attention to what effects they gave.

When I came back into the server, Tripe and Gustav were setting up our temporary base so we could reset our spawn points. Right. Smack. Dab. Next to the altar. As in, when the Elder spawned, he was going to basically be standing directly on top of it.

Niki: ...You guys that seems like a poorly-conceived plan. Gustav and Tripe: No, it’s fine. Stop worrying.

At this point, I was pretty resigned to the disaster that was inevitably going to unfold, so I just grabbed some wood and set up my own shack a decent ways away without making any further attempts to convince the other two.

Gustav: Niki, where are you? We’re all ready. Niki: I just...I’ll be there in a minute, hold on. Tripe: What are you doing? Niki: ...I’m building a house. Gustav: YOU ARE BUILDING YOUR OWN HOUSE WHEN WE HAVE A PERFECTLY GOOD ONE RIGHT HERE?! RUDE! Niki: I DON’T WANNA RESPAWN AND THEN JUST IMMEDIATELY BE SQUISHED AGAIN, ALRIGHT?!

Houses built and weapons readied, we all gathered at the altar. I chucked the Ancient Seeds into the flame and immediately booked it out of the vicinity as fast as my meaty Vikings legs could carry me, frantically downing a jug of mead as I went. The Elder spawned in and within seconds, absolute carnage reigned supreme.

Gustav died within the first two minutes and spent the next ten trying to make it back to his grave. Which he couldn’t really do because his respawn point was right next to the Elder, and emerging from the house naked of all armor and gear was basically an instant death sentence.

Gustav: I’ve died six times trying to get my gear back. We really shouldn’t have built the house this close to the altar. Niki, why didn’t you warn us? Niki, fleeing from the massive thorny vines that the Elder is trying to impale her on: I hate you guys so much right now.

I was hanging back as much as I could, dealing damage with my Finewood Bow, but the Elder has a huge range of attack, and it had me down to single digits in health within less than a minute. And it was at this point that I realized I had majorly screwed up.

The mead that I had been frantically chugging in hopes of gaining better health regen? It was actually slowing my health regen and only increasing my stamina.

Niki: YOU GUYS THE MEAD WAS A MISTAKE. OH MY GOSH, IT’S MINUS FIFTY HEALTH REGEN, NOT PLUS! OH CRAP CRAP CRAP--I’M LITERALLY SLOSHED OVER HERE! Gustav: WAIT, NIKI CAME INTO THIS FIGHT DRUNK?! Niki: I DIDN’T NOTICE THE MINUS SIGN!!!! *yeets the rest of the mead into the ocean before meeting my first demise at the hands of the Elder*

Miraculously, I only died twice during the fight (again, mostly because my respawn point was away from the altar, meaning I had a clearer path back to my graves when I respawned). I have no idea how many times the other two died. Towards the end we were also being bombarded by hoards of Greydwarves, which only made things ten times worse.

Gustav: Have either of you seen my corpse? I mean, I have several lying around here at this point.

I don’t even know how we managed it, but we did finally take out the Elder and received our Swamp Keys. We all stood around the scene of destruction for a minute, just kind of collecting ourselves.

Tripe: ...I feel like that could’ve gone better. Gustav: Yeah. It’s just, Niki goes and does all this research and watches videos and then she doesn’t bother to tell us not to put our house so close to the- Niki: *punches him*

The trip home was blessedly uneventful. Tripe did decide to cut across the ocean instead of following the shoreline in order to save time. I was 90% certain we were all going to be eaten by a Serpent, but we were fine.

We made it back to our camp only to find a Greydwarf Shaman mucking around in our front yard.

Gustav: What is he--is he barfing on our house...? NO, HE’S SMASHING THE CART! OH YOU SON OF A-- *takes a flying leap out of the boat and tears through the shallows, furiously waving his spear*

The Shaman poisoned Tripe, who had a mild panic attack because his respawn point was still back at the Elder’s Altar, and if he died now he would have to walk all the way back here.

Tripe, with 1 HP left: NO I’M NOT DYING LIKE THIS! *dives headfirst into the nearest bed*

So yes. That is what I was doing this weekend, in case any of you were wondering where I disappeared to. I am hoping to spend some time working on ToA stuff today, but I again, I think it is important to record these events for posterity...and perhaps as a cautionary tale for others.

#niki rambles #gaming #valheim

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