Strong Urge To Continue This Post

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales (2020)

Serizawa carrying Reigen!

thirty year old salaryman carries twenty nine year old boss cuz they arent gay!!!

my svsss comic about sqq and his little personality split (what if)

fortunately i have stupid sexy little bitch disease so i never understand anything you guys are talking about

here’s a story about changelings

reposted from my old blog, which got deleted:   Mary was a beautiful baby, sweet and affectionate, but by the time she’s three she’s turned difficult and strange, with fey moods and a stubborn mouth that screams and bites but never says mama. But her mother’s well-used to hard work with little thanks, and when the village gossips wag their tongues she just shrugs, and pulls her difficult child away from their precious, perfect blossoms, before the bites draw blood. Mary’s mother doesn’t drown her in a bucket of saltwater, and she doesn’t take up the silver knife the wife of the village priest leaves out for her one Sunday brunch. She gives her daughter yarn, instead, and instead of a rowan stake through her inhuman heart she gives her a child’s first loom, oak and ash. She lets her vicious, uncooperative fairy daughter entertain herself with games of her own devising, in as much peace and comfort as either of them can manage. Mary grows up strangely, as a strange child would, learning everything in all the wrong order, and biting a great deal more than she should. But she also learns to weave, and takes to it with a grand passion. Soon enough she knows more than her mother–which isn’t all that much–and is striking out into unknown territory, turning out odd new knots and weaves, patterns as complex as spiderwebs and spellrings. “Aren’t you clever,” her mother says, of her work, and leaves her to her wool and flax and whatnot. Mary’s not biting anymore, and she smiles more than she frowns, and that’s about as much, her mother figures, as anyone should hope for from their child. Mary still cries sometimes, when the other girls reject her for her strange graces, her odd slow way of talking, her restless reaching fluttering hands that have learned to spin but never to settle. The other girls call her freak, witchblood, hobgoblin. “I don’t remember girls being quite so stupid when I was that age,” her mother says, brushing Mary’s hair smooth and steady like they’ve both learned to enjoy, smooth as a skein of silk. “Time was, you knew not to insult anyone you might need to flatter later. ‘Specially when you don’t know if they’re going to grow wings or horns or whatnot. Serve ‘em all right if you ever figure out curses.” “I want to go back,” Mary says. “I want to go home, to where I came from, where there’s people like me. If I’m a fairy’s child I should be in fairyland, and no one would call me a freak.” “Aye, well, I’d miss you though,” her mother says. “And I expect there’s stupid folk everywhere, even in fairyland. Cruel folk, too. You just have to make the best of things where you are, being my child instead.” Mary learns to read well enough, in between the weaving, especially when her mother tracks down the traveling booktraders and comes home with slim, precious manuals on dyes and stains and mordants, on pigments and patterns, diagrams too arcane for her own eyes but which make her daughter’s eyes shine. “We need an herb garden,” her daughter says, hands busy, flipping from page to page, pulling on her hair, twisting in her skirt, itching for a project. “Yarrow, and madder, and woad and weld…” “Well, start digging,” her mother says. “Won’t do you a harm to get out of the house now’n then.” Mary doesn’t like dirt but she’s learned determination well enough from her mother. She digs and digs, and plants what she’s given, and the first year doesn’t turn out so well but the second’s better, and by the third a cauldron’s always simmering something over the fire, and Mary’s taking in orders from girls five years older or more, turning out vivid bolts and spools and skeins of red and gold and blue, restless fingers dancing like they’ve summoned down the rainbow. Her mother figures she probably has. “Just as well you never got the hang of curses,” she says, admiring her bright new skirts. “I like this sort of trick a lot better.” Mary smiles, rocking back and forth on her heels, fingers already fluttering to find the next project. She finally grows up tall and fair, if a bit stooped and squinty, and time and age seem to calm her unhappy mouth about as well as it does for human children. Word gets around she never lies or breaks a bargain, and if the first seems odd for a fairy’s child then the second one seems fit enough. The undyed stacks of taken orders grow taller, the dyed lots of filled orders grow brighter, the loom in the corner for Mary’s own creations grows stranger and more complex. Mary’s hands callus just like her mother’s, become as strong and tough and smooth as the oak and ash of her needles and frames, though they never fall still. “Do you ever wonder what your real daughter would be like?” the priest’s wife asks, once. Mary’s mother snorts. “She wouldn’t be worth a damn at weaving,” she says. “Lord knows I never was. No, I’ll keep what I’ve been given and thank the givers kindly. It was a fair enough trade for me. Good day, ma’am.” Mary brings her mother sweet chamomile tea, that night, and a warm shawl in all the colors of a garden, and a hairbrush. In the morning, the priest’s son comes round, with payment for his mother’s pretty new dress and a shy smile just for Mary. He thinks her hair is nice, and her hands are even nicer, vibrant in their strength and skill and endless motion.   They all live happily ever after. * Here’s another story: Gregor grew fast, even for a boy, grew tall and big and healthy and began shoving his older siblings around early. He was blunt and strange and flew into rages over odd things, over the taste of his porridge or the scratch of his shirt, over the sound of rain hammering on the roof, over being touched when he didn’t expect it and sometimes even when he did. He never wore shoes if he could help it and he could tell you the number of nails in the floorboards without looking, and his favorite thing was to sit in the pantry and run his hands through the bags of dry barley and corn and oat. Considering as how he had fists like a young ox by the time he was five, his family left him to it. “He’s a changeling,” his father said to his wife, expecting an argument, but men are often the last to know anything about their children, and his wife only shrugged and nodded, like the matter was already settled, and that was that. They didn’t bind Gregor in iron and leave him in the woods for his own kind to take back. They didn’t dig him a grave and load him into it early. They worked out what made Gregor angry, in much the same way they figured out the personal constellations of emotion for each of their other sons, and when spring came, Gregor’s father taught him about sprouts, and when autumn came, Gregor’s father taught him about sheaves. Meanwhile his mother didn’t mind his quiet company around the house, the way he always knew where she’d left the kettle, or the mending, because she was forgetful and he never missed a detail. “Pity you’re not a girl, you’d never drop a stitch of knitting,” she tells Gregor, in the winter, watching him shell peas. His brothers wrestle and yell before the hearth fire, but her fairy child just works quietly, turning peas by their threes and fours into the bowl. “You know exactly how many you’ve got there, don’t you?” she says. “Six hundred and thirteen,” he says, in his quiet, precise way. His mother says “Very good,” and never says Pity you’re not human. He smiles just like one, if not for quite the same reasons. The next autumn he’s seven, a lucky number that pleases him immensely, and his father takes him along to the mill with the grain. “What you got there?” The miller asks them. “Sixty measures of Prince barley, thirty two measures of Hare’s Ear corn, and eighteen of Abernathy Blue Slate oats,” Gregor says. “Total weight is three hundred fifty pounds, or near enough. Our horse is named Madam. The wagon doesn’t have a name. I’m Gregor.” “My son,” his father says. “The changeling one.” “Bit sharper’n your others, ain’t he?” the miller says, and his father laughs. Gregor feels proud and excited and shy, and it dries up all his words, sticks them in his throat. The mill is overwhelming, but the miller is kind, and tells him the name of each and every part when he points at it, and the names of all the grain in all the bags waiting for him to get to them. “Didn’t know the fair folk were much for machinery,” the miller says. Gregor shrugs. “I like seeds,” he says, each word shelled out with careful concentration. “And names. And numbers.” “Aye, well. Suppose that’d do it. Want t’help me load up the grist?” They leave the grain with the miller, who tells Gregor’s father to bring him back ‘round when he comes to pick up the cornflour and cracked barley and rolled oats. Gregor falls asleep in the nameless wagon on the way back, and when he wakes up he goes right back to the pantry, where the rest of the seeds are left, and he runs his hands through the shifting, soothing textures and thinks about turning wheels, about windspeed and counterweights. When he’s twelve–another lucky number–he goes to live in the mill with the miller, and he never leaves, and he lives happily ever after. * Here’s another: James is a small boy who likes animals much more than people, which doesn’t bother his parents overmuch, as someone needs to watch the sheep and make the sheepdogs mind. James learns the whistles and calls along with the lambs and puppies, and by the time he’s six he’s out all day, tending to the flock. His dad gives him a knife and his mom gives him a knapsack, and the sheepdogs give him doggy kisses and the sheep don’t give him too much trouble, considering. “It’s not right for a boy to have so few complaints,” his mother says, once, when he’s about eight. “Probably ain’t right for his parents to have so few complaints about their boy, neither,” his dad says. That’s about the end of it. James’ parents aren’t very talkative, either. They live the routines of a farm, up at dawn and down by dusk, clucking softly to the chickens and calling harshly to the goats, and James grows up slow but happy. When James is eleven, he’s sent to school, because he’s going to be a man and a man should know his numbers. He gets in fights for the first time in his life, unused to peers with two legs and loud mouths and quick fists. He doesn’t like the feel of slate and chalk against his fingers, or the harsh bite of a wooden bench against his legs. He doesn’t like the rules: rules for math, rules for meals, rules for sitting down and speaking when you’re spoken to and wearing shoes all day and sitting under a low ceiling in a crowded room with no sheep or sheepdogs. Not even a puppy. But his teacher is a good woman, patient and experienced, and James isn’t the first miserable, rocking, kicking, crying lost lamb ever handed into her care. She herds the other boys away from him, when she can, and lets him sit in the corner by the door, and have a soft rag to hold his slate and chalk with, so they don’t gnaw so dryly at his fingers. James learns his numbers well enough, eventually, but he also learns with the abruptness of any lamb taking their first few steps–tottering straight into a gallop–to read. Familiar with the sort of things a strange boy needs to know, his teacher gives him myths and legends and fairytales, and steps back. James reads about Arthur and Morgana, about Hercules and Odysseus, about djinni and banshee and brownies and bargains and quests and how sometimes, something that looks human is left to try and stumble along in the humans’ world, step by uncertain step, as best they can. James never comes to enjoy writing. He learns to talk, instead, full tilt, a leaping joyous gambol, and after a time no one wants to hit him anymore. The other boys sit next to him, instead, with their mouths closed, and their hands quiet on their knees.   “Let’s hear from James,” the men at the alehouse say, years later, when he’s become a man who still spends more time with sheep than anyone else, but who always comes back into town with something grand waiting for his friends on his tongue. “What’ve you got for us tonight, eh?” James finishes his pint, and stands up, and says, “Here’s a story about changelings.”

Douxie : when I was a kid, sometimes Merlin would ask "what do you think you're doing?"

Douxie : but that just meant stop. He didn't actually want to know my thought process.

SVSSS fic recs - UPDATED DEC 21

I decided to make several rec lists this year. Since @veliseraptor asked for SVSSS recs, I’m starting with these. I’m not good with descriptions but I can guarantee that everything on this list is amazing.

Also I tried to sort it into pairings, most of which inlcude some version of Binghe and some verison of SQQ, but sometimes the lines between bingmei and bingge and even sy and sj are made blurry by fics, so please take this division with a grain of salt.

EDIT: I originally comliped this rec list in March 2021 and am now updating it in December 2021. For those fics I’ve added now I put (NEW) in the list.

Bingqiu:

High Mountain, How I Long by Minimalistless.

Huan Hua palace divergence

white amaranth, purple eggplant by tshirt.

Postcanon, domestic, dealing with trauma.

honesty is such a lonely word by chrysaliseater.

truth serum, trial (!) fic Songs of a Wayfarer by foxflowering 

An absolutely stunning ballet AU. Reads like Virginia Woolf if she were into danmei.

(NEW) Deluxe System 2.0: Co-op Mode! by kitsunealyc

What if Shen Jiu’s soul never left his body, and he and Shen Yuan had to cooperate. The perfect fix-it for SJ. Qijiu as side-ship. 

(NEW) Unfinished Business by kitsunealyc

Bingge gets back to his teenage self and gets a system. Shen Qingqiu is Shen Jiu but he was Shen Yuan in between and got therapy. Interesting SJ/SY character blend. (WIP)

(NEW) dew over by ataratah

After self-destructing, SY comes back as rogue cultivator Peerless Cucumber. He and LBH start a casual relationship while LBH pines for his “dead” shizun. Cue SY being jealous of himself (that gotta be one of my favorite tropes). SJ also makes appearance (with hints of qijiu).

Bingjiu:

Shadows can bleed by SenZen_Travers

my favorite fic in this fandom. LBG resurrects SJ and tries to change him to his liking.

Не в нашей власти by Ликующий Октаэдр.

After his death, Shen Jiu returns to the time when he suffered his qi deviation and tries to change his fate. Amazing strategizing. (Russian, WIP)

point of view by acernor

SJ and LBG changes places, super hot hate sex ensues

(NEW) the taste of blood, the claim of love by newamsterodam

the one where lbh makes sj his advisor. it works very well.

(NEW) Там, где нас никогда не было - Nuoba

very hot fix-it with foot fetish

(NEW)  only want love (if it’s torture) – Chesra

A lovely AU where LBH engages in a demon courtship with SJ

(NEW) faithless love (the only hoax i believe in) – Chesra

SJ puts LBG under a love potion. Delicious plot twists. (WIP)

(NEW) more delicate than the golden blossoms by xiaolongbaobei

LBG changes his treatment of his prisoner. beautifully evocative language, the best description of LBH’s demonic court ever. (WIP)

(NEW) from your knees by persicae

assassination attempt as foreplay. bingjiu at their finest

(NEW) Proud Immortal Demon’s System by Queen_Buster

Bingge relives his disciple days with a mission from the System to make himself a kinder shizun. Interesting plot; a satisfying read. (WIP)

Bingyuan:

How to Handle Laundry when Traveling Inter-Dimensionally by hoarous

hot washing machine sex

Reflected in Shadow by ibex_ascendant

LBG kidnaps SQQ. Cool worldbuilding, among other things. Has Non-Consensual Hurt/Comfort as a tag, how cool is that! (WIP)

to love another (and to learn yourself) by nyoomerr

LBG kidnaps SY (who was never SQQ and only read the novel), then re-learns how to be human. sweet.

(NEW) pay no attention to the man by PandaFlower 

SJ is reborn as SY (but still in xianxia setting), LBG forces him to marry him. (WIP)

(NEW) the best luo binghe by neery

LBG roleplays himself where SY roleplays SQQ. Cue hot and emotional CNC.   others (NEW) voluntary victim (tie the noose) by technorat     

bingliujiu the most delicious sj whump

(NEW) recovery by moonsheen

qijiu, sj is rescued by sy and co and nursed to health

(NEW) The Quest To Happiness by karrot

shen jiu/everyone. A funny, feel-good omegaverse fic

blowing my own trumpet

鬼火|ghost light

bingjiu. LBG manipulates SJ’s memory to make him think they’re married. (WIP)

a point of honor

liujiu. Liu Qingge rapes Shen Jiu during his qi deviation and tries to make amends. (WIP)

don’t let them throw me away

liujiu with side bingqiu. human stick! sj gets transported into the world of svsss, where he ends up in lqg’s charge (four finished instalments, two more to come)

I’ve got more SV fics but am too lazy to create so many links so you’ll have to look at my AO3 for that.

that other post about how miserable the OG Luo Binghe truly is got me thinking (again) about how incredible it is that the Bingge vs. Bingmei extra is actually part of the canon. like! that is SUCH a classic fanfic setup, and the author just went ahead and included it! and that is WILD to me because –

Now that the original Luo Binghe has been made aware of the existence of SVSSS, of the alternate universe where he is happy and loved –  he canonically knows this and cannot unknow it! And that means there is no good outcome for OG Luo Binghe after this.

Luo Binghe has an obsessive enough personality that he won’t be able to just… let it go. That’s not in his nature. He’s had his face shoved in the fact that his current life doesn’t make him happy, that he has no one who truly loves him the way his alternate self is loved. And even if he has Xin Mo and a thousand realities open to him, there’s just no winning combination for him.

The original Shen Jiu, even if he’s still alive or could be revived, could never be a loving husband to him, for so many reasons.

The original Shen Yuan, even if he could be located in another world, would never be able to fulfill the same role because he hasn’t gone through the same journey as a person.

And the only person in which these two halves are combined - the actual, Shen Qingqiu Who Was Shen Yuan, can never be a loving husband to him because he’s already happily married, and because OG LBH is too frightening/traumatic for him. There’s no good options!

He’s doomed to live out his whole life knowing that there’s another him that is loved and happy, and he will never be loved and happy in that way, and there’s nothing he can do to change that. It’s a situation which is set up to just not have any possibility for a happy ending, a lot like the Yue Qingyuan/Shen Jiu situation, and man, MXTX is just so good at those.

And it’s canon.

bingge/sqq kiss from the extras

I think, on some level, that Shen Yuan is like enrichment for Airplane Bro's enclosure. I think Airplane Bro kind of fucking LOVES having this guy around. Like, I do think their relationship is nuanced, weird and full of contradictions and not always good for them, but I also think that some chaotic part of Shang Qinghua honestly likes having his #1 hater weirdo running around completely fucking up his world.

Shen Qingqiu, grabbing Shang Qinghua by the shoulders: "Why didn't anyone TELL ME that Binghe is GAY NOW?! I'm going to die because of MONSTER DICK?!?!?!"

Shang Qinghua: (internally, probably only half-consciously) "Incredible. Amazing. How did I live without you? You torture me with your bullshit. You complete me in every possible way. I think we might be soulmates and we should make out about it. I hate you. I love you. You mean nothing to me and everything to me. This isn't your story and you stole it from me. I wrote this for you without even knowing you existed. You are a fascinating mystery that I will never solve. I will throw you under the bus at the first opportunity and yet I can't stop risking my life to help you. Your stupid game of gay murder chicken with my emotionally and mentally unstable protagonist is going to destroy the world and kill us all and I've never felt more alive. You have changed me as a person. Let's do this forever."

Shang Qinghua: (out loud) "Lol, sucks to be you, bro. At least you can get laid."