Why Are We Here? Just To Suffer? Every 5 Minutes I Have To Clean My Glasses

This SCREAMS Wei Wuxian, I dunno bout y'all

“He was a good man once, my grandfather. He took to necromancy, now he haunts my Castle. Excellent babysitter though!”

Lost to Happiness

The woman sitting in front of me is smiling. It’s a vacant, empty smile. The smile a baby would have, clueless and blissful in ignorance.

“It’s such a lovely day. It’s warm, the sun is shining, it can’t get any better,” she says. Her voice is soaked in pure and simple joy.

It makes my stomach twist and bile rise in my throat. I feel like vomiting, watching this woman smile blankly in the sun. Instead, I force my stony face into a semblance of a smile and agree. We return to complete silence.

The woman wears my sister’s face. She uses my sister’s voice. She has my sister’s touch.

She is not my sister.

My sister has shadows painted underneath her eyes and a furrowed brow. Her mind always runs, sprints, gallops, with endless clever ideas and possibilities. She does not comment on the weather and sit happily in silence. My sister has ambition. And a pressure that whipped her brain into only giving perfection, like a jockey whipping his horse to finish first. Her ambition was inherent. The pressure was a complex, parasitic creature that latched on and sucked her dry. It morphed out of her ambition, anxiety, and our skewed childhood somewhere along the way. It made her neither good nor bad. There were other qualities that decided that.

There was a time of course before she was stolen from me, before there was mounting pressure at all. It coincided with our skewed childhood. Happy pockets of time littered those years; some separated by lengthy stretches, others fell together side by side.

In those days, the sun hated our exposed skin. We tumbled inside, sweat-drenched and dark as ebony without a single care. Water lapped our feet and sand rubbed between our toes before we ran, head first, into rising, salty waves. We shrieked at each other, triumphant glee or sour disappointment bursting from our throats, over endless card games. The wind whistled in our ears as we biked, hands-free, down steep hills. The heavy scent of flowers filled the evening breeze as our mother braided jasmines and marigolds into our hair. She whispered to me in the pitch-black night as we lied in our bed. We muffled our giggles in our blankets. Two feet away, our mother drowsily told us to shut up. Our father was already snoring and dead to the world. She grasped my hand and asked for a story. I weaved her a fantastical tale of magic, the struggle for power, and a battle for peace. Somewhere near the end, still holding hands, we fell asleep.

Suddenly I can’t bear to look at the woman. Blinking furiously, I pretend to consider the beauty of nature as wistful anguish ravages my heart. Eventually, I sigh and turn back to find her looking at me.

“The jasmines are beautiful, aren’t they?” I feel bitter over how mundane her comment is and how easily she swallows my deceit.

“Yeah, they are. Remember when ma used to braid them into our hair?” The woman’s face closes and her eyes flicker. Something like hope rises in my chest. I hold my breath and stare expectantly. My sister hates those times. There were too many poisonous words in harsh voices and raised hands; too many broken bottles, ringing shots, and prejudice. It drove her to excel, to spite everything that pushed her down. But there was too much pain that accompanied our bliss for her to love any of it.

The shadow that crossed her face is destroyed by a relentless light. “Not really, it was such a long time ago and I’m no good for memory. But I’m not surprised that she did - mothers usually do that for their daughters.”

My heart beats hard as it falls - split between anger and grief. “Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I suppose.” It’s hard to sound emotionless when the woman’s smiling at me but I try my best. Wretched silence falls upon us again.

My sister is almost never quiet with me. Even when we fight and she ignores my existence, it’s all too easy to provoke her into a screeching, fist fight. We did not argue a lot in our youth; that changed, as many things did, when we grew older. We are both obstinate people, so when we did fight it was war. As children, I only had to wait until the apartment was empty for us to reconcile; a common circumstance as both our parents worked long hours. It was hard for her to ignore my apologies in a one bedroom apartment; especially when she was expected to care for me as the eldest. Later in life, especially while she was far away in university, I would wait weeks and then months for her forgiveness as pressure drove her to hostility. She grew too sensitive and I grew too blatant for us. A wall of our own fury was erected every time we clashed and dismantled every time we made peace.

The woman is sweet and innocent as a lamb. There is nothing that she is passionate about; nothing that propels her to be livid; nothing that prompts her to search for answers. She is nothing like my sister and the knowledge burns me.

My sister is the pinnacle of academic accomplishment. She had the highest average of her grade in every year of school. Her awards and degrees fill the walls. A stack of her research proposals lay waiting on her desk, as is her work in her own lab. She was accepted into prestigious universities and medical schools under thousands of dollars in scholarships. My heart is yet to stop swelling with fierce pride when I think about her every achievement.

My heart is yet to stop cracking when I think about her every achievement.

It was pressure that shoved her over the edge. There is no other explanation for what happened. Doctors are unsure of what caused her coma. But I know her best and I know that her need for success and everything bad finally suffocated her.

It took seventy-six days of lying in a hospital bed, with shallow breathing and tubes sticking out of her, for her to wake up. She did not panic when she woke up. She calmly laid there as doctors rushed around her. I felt fear slip down my throat as I watched her. My sister demands answers immediately, she overreacts, she becomes hysterical. I was told that her ease was a good sign, that it signified her understanding of what was happening. I let that appease me.

She was beaming contently in her cot as she looked out the window when I was allowed to see her again. The sight disturbed me being so contradictory to my sister. I ran and pulled her into a hug, sobbing into her shoulder, anyway. She embraced me back. For a second I believed everything would be alright.

But then she asked, “I’m sorry, but who are you?”

I fell away from her and screamed.

It has been many years of revulsion, denial, rage, and despair since then. Everyone else has abandoned any hope for my sister coming back. I cannot.

The woman is happy. My sister is happy. It is selfish of me to crave for my sister’s return when she was so unhappy in her own thoughts. But enduring the agony of being without her is too grueling. I look at the woman, my sister, and say, “Hey, we should go back to the house. It’s getting late.”

She smiles, her eyes are amicable and cheerful but lacking all of our history and love. “Yes, you’re right. Let’s go.”

I envelop her into a tight hug before we leave our darkening garden. She hugs me back and tears prick my eyes. There are stars peeking out in the sky now. I want to curse them for doing this to us. I can’t give up on my sister; I need her back.

But she is happy now, joyous even. The thought crawls out of a corner of my brain and brands itself onto my heart. I close my eyes as I feel defeat creep into me.

Y'all what fresh hell is this. This is actively horrifying. I'm not on Twitter, thank god, so I haven't seen the hate on Nora to this extent. These are her characters????

In conclusion, I have nothing productive to say I just wanted to say I am so sorry to Nora (@korakos) if she ever sees this and jesus fucking christ, what.

Also, @lyndiscealin, that's a really valid point and fear. All I can really say is that I hope assholes dont stymie you at all in your works and mental health and best of luck

I really hate the twitter aftg fandom. People were hating on Nora and saying all this shit about her and were like "I'd be scared of the fandom and leave social media too if I wrote such shitty takes" and hating on her for the EC???? And calling her a bigot and all of these really rude things even though she was always so nice and interactive with her fans. like what the fuck y'all, why are you even in the fandom if you hate her so much? "They're OUR characters now" ok bitch??? Then go write your own fanfics and shit, no one cares what you do with them because they're fictional characters anyways. Just like how Nora can say what she thinks would happen with the characters after the books were completed. It's not like the EC is set in stone anyways, she CHOSE not to write those things into the story for a reason and said multiple times that we can choose what we think happens.

And people were calling HER misogynist and a "woman hater" for no fuckin reason too smfh, because she said Andrew is misogynistic. Which he kinda IS, and tbh he has valid reasons for being like that. He doesn't hate ALL women and Nora never said he does, but of course he has some feelings of resentment towards a lot of women because how he felt betrayed by his own mother.

But like look at this shit smh. If any of these people are you then LOL block me IDC, I don't want your negative attitude on my dash anyways

my current obsession is Matt hightailing it out of the dorm before The Shower Scene. He said ON GOD Neil I will not cockblock you bro. He said Andrew sir I am not looking, I am respectful. He saw the sexual tension and homeboy RAN I’m-

Whatever That is Left

There is a deepening void somewhere in her chest.

It's inky darkness poisons her smile,

Breaking it down and reshaping it into something more cruel and lifeless.

But there is a shimmering layer of what is left of her.

It sits at the bottom of that hole, like a fine dusting of sugar on the best sweets.

Happy memories and love and ambition and joy lie somewhere in between,

It tries and tries to push her forward and just barely supplies her breaths.

But every time, without fail, she reaches deeper and deeper into herself to pull out what little is left,

And offers those splintering pieces to be soothe and provide.

They are rarely every returned in good health.

So often, she is left pillaged, burned, brutalized, and diminished

And ready to go again,

To scrape out whatever that is left,

And to display it with broken and bleeding hands to her world once more,

Until there is nothing but a pit where she had once glimmered gleefully and open to the world.

Baby bear catching snowflakes 

(Source)

some very important info re: paid accounts~

I am not a lawyer, but I can decently interpret legalese and, being as I also suffer from tl;dr syndrome and assume others may as well, I took one for the team and went through the updated TOS for the post+ accounts and highlighted (what I understand to be) the most pertinent information, which ultimately comes down to this:

You cannot monetize copyrighted works (aka charge and earn money from fanfic, fanworks, etc) and if you do decide to put your fanworks behind a paywall via Tumblr, when you are inevitably sued, Tumblr will not protect you and will not defend you and you alone, personally, will be responsible for whatever monetary damages said lawsuit results in.

If anyone is a lawyer and knows I've gotten any of this wrong, please do not hesitate to correct me/this post.

Screenshots taken from Tumblr's TOS (updated 7-21-21), Stripe's Account Agreement, and the post+ FAQs.

1. Your paid account will not be hosted by tumblr; it is routed through a 3rd party.

2. By signing up for a paid account, you're entering into an agreement with Stripe, so in addition to Tumblr's TOS, you are also bound to Stripe's TOS.

3. Stripe, like Tumblr, will not defend you or protect you against any lawsuits.

4. Furthermore, you may end up owing Stripe money (indemnify = compensate)

5. Tumblr's TOS specifically states that you can't put any content on your post+ account that violates any laws, including laws that protect intellectual property rights of others. This is super important, because Tumblr's post+ FAQ also states that you can post anything that you would regularly post on tumblr, which I'm sure many will take to mean that gifsets, fanworks, etc are fair game, since all of that stuff can be posted on tumblr now. However, the difference is, you're not making money from the fanworks you're posting or reblogging now. Once money enters the equation, the game changes.

Tumblr is making it seem like any and all content goes for post+ accounts, knowing 90% of this site is fanworks. This is not true and you'll be opening yourself up for lawsuits if you charge for fanworks.

6. Tumblr further disclaims any and all liability in any legal issues.

tl;dr: Please do not make a post+ account, bc you will be opening yourself to lawsuits and if that happens, Tumblr's response will be not our problem, you agreed to all the terms which said you couldn't do that, sorry not sorry. Please protect yourself.

Reblog if you want your followers to tell you which fictional character you remind them of.

Anybody else have no idea how their personality is perceived by others? Like am I nice? Am I mean? I have no idea.

Thanks everyone for the prompts! I decided to try and knock these all out in one go:

@thegirlwhotrashcans: remember, you asked for it. au, nobody dies, wwx and yanli bodyswap. they’re married to lwj and jzx. 100% crack. bonus points if jin zixuan completely loses his shit and lwj looks very calm but loses his sh*t after everything is back to normal

@alightbuthappypen: Competency kink! One or both of them (when I say ‘them’ I mean wangxian obvs, I know what I’m about) getting hot and bothered about the other being amazing. On a nighthunt maybe? Or anywhere else that strikes your fancy!

@hearteyeswangji: WRITE MORE P*RN

I think I can manage that. With a few tweaks, accidental seriousness, and broad, ridiculous fix-its tacked on. I have no idea how long this might be. Let’s try it in installments? I’ll reblog and add on as I go. Maybe it’ll be fun. We’ll find out.

Disclaimer that this is just gonna go for it with no revising and no beta readers, so pls do not hold me to any conceivable standard of coherency thx

–

WILL INCLUDE: wangxian, xuanli, let jyl and lwj be friends agenda, canon divergence, fix-it, everybody lives, arranged marriage, bodyswap, light angst, getting together, Attempts at Comedy, eventual (light?) wangxian smut

The Sunshot Campaign has just been won. Everyone goes over to Jin Guangshan’s house after the Nightless City banquet, to Negotiate Stuff, and some hasty political marriages happen resulting in Xuanli Wedded Bliss and Wangxian Un-confessed Wedded Tension. Then, suddenly…a curse befalls our brave heroes.

–

Wei Wuxian wakes suddenly, feeling odd. He’s sleeping on his stomach for one thing, which is not his usual, but he feels warm and comfortable enough that he doesn’t think it strange. But then there is the scent of peonies and gardenias, which is both familiar and alien, somehow. It makes him open his eyes. 

Which is when he sees the hand before him on the bolster. It is slender and elegant. Small. Pale. Familiar? Wearing a jade bangle. He pushes himself up a bit, startled, only to see the hand move when he does. 

The hand. Is his hand. He stares at it. The shock of it, coupled with the early hour, leave his mind working very slowly.

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