#which is the problem

[johnsspacesuittight]

here’s the thing I wouldn’t put it past Shayne and Courtney to do a fake wedding shoot for April Fools, I also wouldn’t put it past them to actually get married and hard launch on April Fools just to fuck with everyone as hard as possible

[mxtxfanatic]

Xie Lian doesn’t fucking change in his beliefs or morality from beginning to end of the entire book. He almost loses himself in book 4 but is brought back from the brink by Wuming (Hua Cheng), prompting him to vow to never lose himself again. All of the suffering he experienced after his first ascension? A direct result of his unchanging beliefs, as stated directly by Guoshi:

“He had always been setting riddles for you to test you,” Head Priest said, “The Human Face Disease of Xian Le was the first question. Based on his answer, as long as you chose to unleash the Human Face Disease against Yong An back then, then you would’ve passed. Not only would he not have banished you, he would even help you cover up, and truly turn you into his trusted heir, taking one step to reach the top of the heavens while taking two steps against it. But you’ve answered wrong.”

“The period when you were banished, he should’ve set another riddle for you, but you still didn’t give him a satisfactory answer, so the moment you ascended, you were immediately beaten back down.”

...

“The second time you were banished and drifted in the mortal realm, he had countless opportunities to slowly ‘educate’ you, slowly wait until you’ve changed your mind.” Head Priest said, “Based on my observation, he was already calmed down at first, but this calm was disrupted recently.”

“The reason being your third ascension.”

“If you were a puddle of rotten mud, then whatever. But you, even after you’ve become like that, completely ignoring everything he’s planned for you, you actually were still able to ascend for the third time, and still the same as before, completely unchanged... I don’t know what he thought when he saw you, but I felt he would definitely set out more riddles to test you.”

—Chapt. 220: Heaven Official's Blessing The White Emperor Sets Life and Death Riddles in Secret, fan translation

Guoshi also had this to say about why Jun Wu made the type of choices he did in setting up these “riddles”:

... “Besides, as long as you start doubting yourself, doubting your true heart, your actions and objectives, then it’d be easy for him to lead you in the direction he wanted.”

“If you thought: ‘I am the Crown Prince of Wu Yong’, the possibility of you repeating his fate would be greater. He was leading you proactively, hoping to make you walk the same paths he did, so it wasn’t that your paths were somehow destined to be similar.”

“He couldn’t tolerate how similar you both were, but walked different paths.”

Xie Lian and the Crowned Prince of Wu Yong lived similar lives and had similar aspirations, but the moment the Crown Prince of Wu Yong faced an insurmountable problem that brought his entire kingdom to ruin, seemingly by his own hand, he could not handle it. He did not want to acknowledge the failure as a failure of self but as a forgone conclusion of human nature, that others would rather do immoral things to save their own lives or reputations or status and, therefore, nothing good can or should be done to help anyone else, especially not at the risk of any of those three things. Xie Lian, however, comes and proves him wrong by choosing to sacrifice himself over and over again for the benefit of others, even as they turned on him. White No-Face even tries to twist Xie Lian’s nature against him by sacrificing him against his will when he set Xie Lian up in that cave with the human face disease. But the moment Xie Lian is given a choice again, that is still the choice he makes, himself.

Jun Wu cannot stand that someone who has faced the same adversity as him would still hold tight to his morals, because Jun Wu ultimately hates that he could not hold to his own morals under the same pressures. This is why he manipulates every facet of Xie Lian’s post-first ascension life to play into this ultimate tragedy, to force Xie Lian into making the same decision that he feels like he was forced to make however many years prior. But what Jun Wu failed to realize but Xie Lian did is that even if every action is not met with resounding success, that does not mean that the action in and of itself was worthless or a waste of time. A failure to achieve one’s goals does not have to be a personal failure or a failure of the ones you tried to help; sometimes shit just happens! There is still good in doing good even without acknowledgement. Even being beaten at Jun Wu’s hands, Xie Lian continues to refuse Jun Wu’s path:

[Jun Wu] laughed maniacally then dragged Xie Lian and slammed him towards the rocks, smashing as he yelled, “WILL YOU CHANGE? WILL YOU CHANGE? WILL YOU CHANGE??”

It was as if Xie Lian had gone mad too, and he gripped Jun Wu’s arms roaring, “I WON’T! I WON’T! I WON’T CHANGE!!!”

Even though the smashing was making him see stars, incomparably painful, but he held this breath in stubbornly, refusing to give the desired answer at all, and cried as he roared, “I JUST WON’T CHANGE! EVEN IF IT’S PAINFUL I WON’T CHANGE, EVEN IF I DIE I WON’T CHANGE, I WILL NEVER CHANGE!!!”

—Chapt. 239: Heaven Official's Blessing Crack the White Armour; Fantastic Magic Shattering the Cursed Shackles

Xie Lian believes that his every kind act, regardless of the outcome, was still worth it, and that is the difference that drove the two men’s wildly different life paths.

[rubyfunkey]

if id been reading chimera!falin x reader fic instead of getting really into cult of the lamb when i was recovering earlier this year this wouldnt be happening to me

[yakultii]

very scared rn

[vosquitransitis]

i miss her so much (carrion)

[prossima-nebulosa]

my honest to god toxic trait is coming back to bkdk fics every time i think 'damn i wanna read a fic about x ship' and while searching for something i think 'damn there's nothing good here, nobody does it like my fellow bkdk-ers. but i already read everything on there gosh'

and end up finding a total random bkdk fic anyway that was just spot on the thing i wanted for my bkdk niche taste

[oreoambitions]

Sudden surge of irl people requesting to read my work and insisting that I carve out time in my life to write and demanding that I stop saying "just" fiction like a novel has less merit than a term paper and honestly... Thanks random confluence of irl encouragement

[fivestoriesfallingg]

my sibling saw my haircut and immediately was like . wow lol you look like shit LIKE DUDE ????? who fucking raised you

[mysillycomics]

[spectre-tabris]

i have as of last count something like 11 eso fics i'm in the middle of writing. all of which i am genuinely having fun with (most of the time) and would very much like to finish. so someone please explain to me why the only thing my brain will focus on today is fucking around with the coding on my oc page...

[kstarlitchaotics]

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A post shared by Asher Arwine (@asherarwine)

Him and thelordsgaint on Instagram is about the only ones I really follow because each time when I try to look for others to get inspired they act like they're beyond perfect more so than the Lord himself but he -this guy- remembers still human which I think a lot of Christians forget they are

[papaiyatree]

honestly kinda feel like donating my wonderwoman historia copy to my schools library...

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

[mooreaux]

Love Undying

[monkesupreme]

Making Bruce the kind of guy to work through his thoughts out loud when he knows hes allowed to. This leads to him rubberducking off of anyone who will let him, including, but not limited to his boys and assorted JL members. He latches on, and suddenly, this is not Bruce's Case, its Our case.

Despite him doing this to anyone that will listen, Clark tends to be the most available victim due to his extreme patience, his investigative skills, and love of listening to people ramble at him <3