i do love the idea of the Justice League finding out Batman’s identity and the fact that he’s actually just a tired vigilante dad and immediately discrediting his spooky-scary-intimidating reputation, and Bruce just being devastated about it. he worked so hard on that reputation, on that respect, and it’s all down the drain just like that. nobody flinches away from his glare anymore, because they’ve seen him glare at Red Hood and get a spoonful of mashed potato flung into his face for the effort. nobody cares about his threats anymore, because he tried to threaten Red Robin to go home and rest one time and Tim just giggled at him deliriously before mocking his tone and stealing his coffee. they’ve seen him pick a splinter out of a whining Nightwing’s finger mid-meeting. Damian once called him a condomless harlot to his face when he told him not to bring his swords onto the watchtower. he’s lost control.
he decides he wants the fear factor back and in all his brilliant genius, he decides the best way to go about that is to invite the league round for a fancy dinner party, specifically so he can use all his ‘brucie wayne’ acting skills to channel the essence of every creepy-rich-guy-in-haunted-manor movie he has ever seen in his life. it is the only time his kids have been fully onboard and willing to contribute to one of his plans without any complaints. they almost seemed more eager to pull it off than he was.
they spend the entire day making the manor look old and slightly abandoned, much to Alfred’s displeasure, and ensure that the only lighting is a fuck ton of candles, just enough to light the halls while leaving the corners and edges shadowy and ominous. Damian is allowed to have some of his more ‘skittery’ pets roam the manor freely for the night, causing occasional scritches and scratches to come from the ceilings. all of the kids dress in their best funeral attire, apart from Jason who gleefully pulls on an old white shirt stained with blood from when Tim crashed through his window with a stab wound, requesting a medkit.
when the league arrive they’re greeted by all the kids lined up on the staircase, staring at them blankly and ominously, while Bruce gives them all a large grin and ushers them into the creepy looking dining room. the league are somewhat nervous.
during the dinner the kids act completely different than the league have seen them in-mask. polite, cordial, and refusing to show an ounce of emotion. they pick at their food and only speak in vague sentences that refer to various horrific events of their past. Bruce has never been prouder.
the first close call they have to breaking character is when Bruce presents a bottle of red wine without any kind of label. as he pours a slightly disturbed Diana a glass, she asks where he got it from. Bruce happily gestures to Jason as says ‘my second eldest procured it especially for you, earlier today.’
Diana looks across the table at where Jason is grinning eerily at her by candlelight, still visibly stained with blood, eyes glowing slightly green. she pales, and Tim knows he can’t watch her shakily lift the glass to her lips without bursting out laughing. he refuses to be the one who fucks up first, so he dramatically stands up and declares he must ‘go feed the experiments’ before storming out the room. ‘the experiments’ are in reference to the pen of rabbits outside that glow in the dark because Damian rescued them from a testing facility, but given the environmental context it sounds much more sinister.
Jason joins him by the pen to also start wheeze-crying in private about 20 minutes later, because apparently after Oliver Queen had finished with his bbq rib, Damian had leaned over and without blinking stared into his eyes to blankly state ‘i would love to feed your bones to my animal friends, if you don’t need them anymore.’ and from the other end of the table Jason had snorted wine up his nose from how hard he was trying not to break.
amazingly, they never break character, although it came pretty close when after hearing another skitter from somewhere above, Stephanie climbed up from the table into the crystal chandelier and deftly returned to present the table with a large tarantula cradled in her hands, to which Damian stood up and declared, ‘ah, dessert! i will help pennyworth prepare it.’ before taking the animal and leaving to put his beloved spider back in it’s enclosure. the league genuinely seemed to be under the impression they were about to be served a tarantula-based desert, and upon seeing their faces at this realisation Dick had to pretend he’d dropped a fork on the ground so he could duck by Bruce’s chair and stuff a napkin in his mouth while he got his laughter under control. Bruce pats his shaking son’s back below the table cloth, determinedly staring at their guests with that same creepy-grin he’d kept up the entire night.
every member of the league makes their excuses to leave early, much to Bruce’s exaggerated disappointment. the second the last of them is out the door Alfred turns to face the family and says ‘mission accomplished. now get this manor back to it’s proper state.’ and they have the spend the rest of the night cleaning.
totally worth it, in Bruce’s mind. none of the JL will look him in the eye for weeks afterwards, and it was honestly the most successful attempt at family bonding they’d ever had. he wonders if they should make it a monthly thing. It’s also how they find out Damian’s a fucking theatre kid with a gift for the arts which is another revelation in of itself
If you could change the fate of one character from The Untamed, whom would you choose and what change would you make?
…just one, anon? Just one?? Do you know the sheer body count of this show???
All of my gut instinct responses are the ladies of CQL, because they all get royally screwed over by the plot for reasons of various legitimacy (they were fridged. let’s be honest here. they were completely and totally fridged)
Jiang Yanli deserved a life outside of the men in her life. Wen Qing deserved to be respected for the leader and healer she was. Lan Yi deserved to be respected as an innovator and a sect leader, regardless of her gender. Cangse-sanren deserved to live in defiance of societal expectation, to love the man she chose, to raise their brilliant, beautiful son together. A-Qing deserved an entire life beyond her not-childhood.
But fate means more than just life or death; changing someone’s fate could mean a version of Jiang Cheng who forgives himself much earlier than canonical Jiang Cheng does; changing someone’s fate could mean a Lan Xichen who holds his blade and spares Jin Guangyao’s life, and never confronts the emotional agony of murdering his sworn brother, never goes into an indefinite seclusion.
You know what? Fuck it – for novelty’s sake, I’m going to say Wen Zhuliu. Change his fate, and change it early – he never falls in with the Wen Sect, remains Zhao Zhuliu, rogue cultivator, Core-Melting Hand, dark-robed vigilante. He haunts the five provinces; he enacts a cold, unseen kind of justice. He occasionally turns up at Lotus Pier in the middle of the night, silent and shivering and bloodied, and Madam Yu snaps at the guards to fetch a healer for him. He’s almost always gone by the morning. Sometimes, when Madam Yu gets particularly vicious, a toxic kind of violence bubbling low in her gut, resentment and dissatisfaction boiling over, she ignites a talisman and meets Zhao Zhuliu in the woods beyond Lotus Pier a few nights later, and they go night-hunting together, taking aim only at the most ferocious of legendary beasts, the most vicious of vengeful spirits. Their exploits only make their way into public knowledge as gossip and myth, but Zhao Zhuliu is long accustomed to being the subject of both.
He is afforded a terrified kind of respect; he is left alone.
Of course, this means that Jiang Cheng never loses his core to Wen Zhuliu; this means Wei Wuxian never makes his sacrifice, the Yunmeng Shuangjie never experience that particular heartbreak. I’d love to see Zhao Zhuliu interact with Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan, two other rogue cultivators who choose to remain outside of sect politics. I’d love to see him defend the Wen refugees, just glare everyone else into terrified submission with implicit threat. I’d love to see his blank-faced surprise when Wei Wuxian, lead disciple of the Yunmeng Jiang Sect, a boy he’s watched grow up over his erratic visits to Lotus Pier, now a young man he’s seen cut ruthlessly through opponents during Sunshot, shows up in the fragile settlement Zhao Zhuliu’s helped the Wen refugees establish; I’d love to see Wei Wuxian offer to help with that wide, guileless smile of his, and in between building up the foundations of new houses, he breaks down Zhao Zhuliu’s walls, becomes the first to see Zhao Zhuliu for the man he is behind the fearsome reputation, the awful technique.
Would you teach me? Wei Wuxian asks one night, when everyone else is asleep. The cookfire burns low between them, occasionally spitting a spark into the darkness.
Zhao Zhuliu knows exactly what Wei Wuxian is asking. No, he says. After a moment, he adds, but I would consider it.
Why not? There is no hurt in Wei Wuxian’s tone, just idle curiosity as the lead disciple of Yunmeng Jiang leans back to look at the stars, long legs stretched before him.
I’ve always intended for the technique to die with me, Zhao Zhuliu says. It’s just taking longer than expected.
And Wei Wuxian looks at him with those dark, heavy-lidded eyes that have always seen more than he lets on in his carefree, careless demeanour, and Zhao Zhuliu feels seen, inspected, assessed, judged.
He thinks about his solitary night-hunts, the weeks spent in hard, lonely pursuit of brutal criminals on the fringes of society, where sect law wears thin and evil deeds go unreported, unpunished. He thinks about the invisibility of the justice he metes out, about a society that never wanted him, a world that barely tolerates him. He thinks about the suicidal missions and the dangerous night-hunts, thinks about the number of times he’s stumbled back to Lotus Pier in a haze of blood-loss and injury, thinks about how accustomed he’s grown to saluting death as it brushes his shoulder on its merciless path. He realizes that people feared him because he was fearless, and that he was fearless because he’d always expected to die young and unmourned.
Zhao Zhuliu lets out a long breath, one weighted now with the self-awareness that he’s always assumed his years were running out soon, and leans back against the wall of a half-built house, crossing his legs at the ankles and staring up at the stars. Around him are the delicate skeletons of lives he’s saved, lives he’s helping rebuild, living and breathing and laughing proof that his hands can do more than destroy.
Zhao-ge, Wei Wuxian says, eyes closed. Do you think Wen Qing would let us plant potatoes if you suggested it instead of me?
Not a chance, Wei-gongzi, Zhao Zhuliu says, and feels something warm and glowing settle in his chest, like the dying embers of the fire between them, barely visible in the dark.
Finally did it guys! BL Drama recommendations flowchart catered to me. Me only. ME people who might have the same taste as me. Enjoy
oh my god...
so the first screenshot is trying to look this up on tiktok normally, "donald trump rigged election" and it says that search violates community guidelines.
the second screenshot is looking up the same exact thing, but with a (australian) vpn on. canadian vpn didn't fix it fyi.
THIS is exactly the type of censorship to be looking out for on tiktok. this actually is crazy.
QUEER (2024) dir. Luca Guadagnino
FELLOW TRAVELERS 1.01 // 1.07
I drew this before the movie trailer was released, but honestly, it can still apply.
When your former padawan disobeys the council for the 63846336th time.
as a queer person #FellowTravelers already means a lot, but THIS episode8-finale ep-ending scene? this scene means absolutely the world, it's everything, for all of us.🌈 can't watch it without sobbing.
+ :
all of my ocs are inherently neurodivergent in someway because i dont know how neurotypical people work
BEWARE: Here is the land of Asian BL/GL dramas with a spattering of Western shows!
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