What In The Demisexual Erasure Is That Take Anyway?

Dye Their Flowers With My Blood - Always Roaming with a Hungry Heart

The most bitter tears are those that none can see.

Dye Their Flowers With My Blood - Tho’ Much Is Taken, Much Abides

New beginnings need new rules.

Mini-fic or Prologue - who knows?!

Okay, I have drafted a prologue for the Xiyao fic I threatened earlier today. My friend likes it, so I took a second glance at it, smoothed out a few wrinkles, and now I'm throwing it here.

I have no idea if this can function because I have yet to read the books, so I can't tell for certain if I will use it all - and if I do, it might not be the prologue so much as part of a chapter, all of that is written in the stars. But since Ao3 doesn't allow placeholders (nor should it) and I don't know when I get to write the whole thing (although that I will write it certain), I'll at least put this fragment of questionable permanence here for the time being. I will announce when I post the actual fic to Ao3.

No Bonds Can Hold Me

‘Maintain your own discipline. Train your body and your mind. Store your inner wisdom deeply.’

Second nature. All of this was second nature to a man who had lived by these rules his entire life. Now discipline eluded him, his mind refused to focus on what mattered, and his inner wisdom was torn to shreds. There was almost nothing left of the man he had been … before. And if there was nothing left, what was the point of him? ‘Do not act impulsively.’ That rule had saved his life several times over recently. To what end? He had broken so many others: ‘Do not grieve in excess. Do not bully the weak. Do not associate with evil.’

Am I the evil? The voice that existed in his thoughts only perforated his meagre attempt at meditation again, stripping away another layer of his strength.

Seclusion had done nothing to erase the guilt and the pain and the grief, to silence this voice. It lived in his heart as constantly as its beating. It hadn’t helped compose his mind, hadn’t let him accept that what was done was done. Every time he started out asking himself, ‘How could I have acted any differently?’ the question quickly degraded into the much simpler and much more destructive, ‘How could I?!’ The blood on his hands and clothes was long gone, but he could still feel it sticking to his skin any time his eyes closed, could smell its cloying scent, so much, so much of it.

‘Be gentle and content in adversity.’

Slowly, Lan Xichen opened his eyes. It was, indeed, done, and yet he knew there was one path not yet taken. ‘Do not act impulsively. Do not fall to evil.’ But was an act he had chewed over time and time again for more hours than he could count impulsive? Was saving a soul evil?

He hadn’t allowed himself those thoughts at first, but now that he did, he felt calmer. ‘Have a strong will and anything can be achieved.’ His path was laid out before him and he would walk it openly and with determination. He needed help, and he wasn’t afraid to ask for it. Beg for it, if he had to.

‘Don’t be unreasonable.’ What was one more rule broken anyway?

The voice in his head that kept repeating his name like a broken mantra could only be assuaged by returning it to the real world. It was his fault that it had been silenced, so it had to be him that did all he could to restore it. (‘Uphold the value of justice.’) And if that proved impossible, he should earnestly consider following it into oblivion, the way he had been prepared to.

Lan Xichen stepped out into the darkness. (‘Venturing out at night is prohibited.’) He had tried to silence the call that only he could hear, but now he welcomed it, let it guide his steps and fuel his spirit. Lan Xichen, Lan Xichen … ‘Yes,’ he thought, conscious of the cool air surrounding him and the light breeze rustling his robes, ‘I still hear you. I’m not grieving for you. I’m coming for you.’

Dye Their Flowers With My Blood - Offices Of Tenderness

... And sometimes the answers are the people we left behind.

Okay this is lovely. They have an extremely lovely longfic, too*, which I've just read and I have no words.

The Waves are Rising and Rising, to be found on Ao3. Seriously. It's so, so good.

happy valentines day! have some happy 3zun, based on a lovely moment from the Good Mornin'! sequence in Singin In The Rain :)

If anyone ever wonders why I left the Abramamitic religions behind me in favour of some weird form agnostic omnism with strong pagan leanings, read the answers to that one. So much earnestness for what can't be proven, so much fervour for old story books. Oh boy. With someone who hasn't done this entire Catholic thing any more for almost two decades, this is bizarre.

I mean. I did consider myself Catholic, I even considered joining a convent, but it NEVER occurred to me to call pagans satanic or any such things. This is the kind of attitude that turned me off the whole thing. (Apart from the bits that say 'I am the only god' and 'I am jealous of all the other gods that TOOOOTALLY don't exist' thing that makes ZERO sense and is toxic af. I don't want anything to do with jealous people, human or otherwise, they can stay the hell away from me. I ain't doing this.)

That the person in question is not even Christian doesn't matter. All three are the same thing to me. Same sky daddy, same arbitrary rules that made some sense back in the day and none now, same fervour in the followers that gobble up what they're fed by the higher-ups in their particular brand of the 'I love you but if you step a toe out of line I'll destroy you even beyond death' cult. They were when I liked them and they are when I'm glad to be out.

Boy. I really don't like them any more it seems.

Edit: I mean, it's poetic, in a way. I used to wear a gold chain with a small cross, Star of David, and crescent to signify that they have the same value and worth, and then I started, little by little, to resent all three. That process took many years. And then, one day, my chain broke. I was really sad and decided to have it fixed. I noticed in time and didn't lose any of the pendants. I never had it fixed. I know now I never will. The broken chain is a symbol in itself. I am lost to them and they are to me.

really recommend getting a partner with a different religion than you and very little knowledge of your religion because the opportunities for explaining things to each other are just exquisite

Avenge the Living, Heal the Dead

New Chapter:

Xie Lian has made his report. His plan for the rest of the night is to go home and sleep - and he'll get to do just that. Except there is this one little thing ...

(Note: I also posted the epilogue already, so we are, officially, finished!)

Honestly, I have learned from constructive criticism in reviews/comments (how to arrange dialogue is my big one thing because I did that in a fashion that was confusing until I got a hint and followed it) and sometimes people find actual mistakes - which I'm very grateful for.

So, I have to contradict this mindset, I welcome it when it is good advice. If people tell me I use the wrong typography because I use ' instead of ", I send them to f themselves because that's common in British English, which is what I use. So it depends. If you're giving me a heads-up that I missed something or that something isn't clear, that's great. But if you tell me my correct spelling is wrong, we won't be friends.

I just saw a Tik Tok that said writers on AO3 are not looking for constructive criticism in their reviews. I have no audience on this platform so I have to know if this is true? I've always left my pros and cons when reading a fic and now I'm concerned that the authors didn't like that.

Yeah writers are Not looking for criticism, constructive or otherwise. Unless they specifically ask for it, it’s considered rude and honestly a bit hurtful. In the least bitchy way possible, don’t do that. It’s unwanted.

Wait, people say WHAT now? Did we read the same book? There are so many legitimate reasons to dislike Jin Guangyao - trust me, my best friend has listed all of them to me as if I didn't know myself - that there is no need to make up new ones.

Look. I don't think anyone is (unironically) saying that man hasn't done anything wrong. But this is the kind of stuff that I'd respond to with, 'Whatever you say, Sect Leader Yao', because no-one with more sense than him could have come up with that tripe.

It's fascinating. Apparently people completely fall for the unreliable narrator - even though Wei Wuxian says that the stuff happening to Jin Guangyao is the same mob mentality that got him killed and that they're trying to pin everything that ever went wrong in all of history on him, no matter if it's true or not.

"actually jgy harassed mxy and then framed mxy" is fucking wild bc consider:

wwx got the account "mxy harassed jgy" from mxy's own writings. if things were actually the other way around and mxy got framed then don't you think that mxy's writings would have mentioned that. like mxy's diary entries were all about how everyone persecuted him and how his life was miserable, so if mxy actually were framed don't you think his This Is Why I'm Making An Evil Spirit Kill Everyone essay would have brought it up lol

even if mxy didn't harass jgy, then....that still doesn't imply that jgy harassed mxy?????

like im sure that with enough Free Invention you could construct a full explanation of events that has jgy harass mxy and also doesnt directly contradict anything directly stated by the novel. but you still need quite some insane leaps of logic to even get there lmao