Of bats and white nights

promise!

they say wei wuxian will punch u in the face …but jiang cheng will punch u in the pride 

black hair? check. bad parent(s)? check. trauma? double check.

bruce: how’d you get your scar?

zuko: my dad got mad at me for saying that killing people is wrong so he lit my face on fire and banished me.

J: “wan na kno w h ow i go t thes e sc ar s”

Consider

Iroh: you too must learn patience. Boiling the water ruins the delicate flavor of the white jade

Alfred: oh I’m dreadfully sorry - for some reason I expected this tea to have TEA in it

(later)

Alfred: *aggressively laying out full tea service with milk, lemon, sugar, and, just to drive his point in, jam*

while Zuko is enthusiastic about cream and sugar

Blood is thicker than water The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.

“Supporting/minor character gets a do-over” sounds more fun, especially with all of the supporting and minor characters being non-transmigrators. Picturing the transmigrators reacting to a non-transmigrator having and using foreknowledge sounds like it could be a lot of fun.

Except I just pictured Mobei-Jun getting a do-over and the only thing he changes is that he’s nicer to Shang Qinghua, he tries to figure out how to successfully court a human being, and maybe he tries to thwart his scheming uncle early. All that plot stuff? The Immortal Alliance Conference? The epic highs and lows of Luo Binghe and Shen Qingqiu? Mobei-Jun couldn’t care less about any of it. No idea how to stop it; he doesn’t care to stop it. 

What’s he doing to do with this second chance? He’s going to serve Shang Qinghua some handmade noodles and clearly state his affections. 

Because saying you are and idiot is one thing

And she looked at me and told me not to fall into the trap of “activist guilt.” I couldn’t remember the exact words, but, it was the first time I’d heard the term and it took a weight off my shoulders.

We do what we can. It’s so much better than giving up entirely or not doing anything at all because we can’t do it perfectly. It doesn’t benefit anyone in the end if we just sit around feeling guilty about every little thing in life. I’d just joined tumblr back then (haha, so like, eight or nine years ago at this point?), I was being exposed to way more than I’d ever been before (I was previously just into feminism and animal rights/wildlife conservation/environmentalism since I was a kid), and it was weighing on me.

As long as humans are humans and living flawed lives, many consumed by greed, there will not be anything in this world untouched by evil.

I usually avoid stuff that says it was made in China or other cheap looking knockoffs, out of fear of them being made in sweatshops (now, I know even a lot of big brands use those…), it’s exhausting. Then, I read something about how people who actually lived and worked in those would still buy this cheap stuff and how this shocked the foreigner reporting on it, but they just looked confused like, it’s what they can afford and them avoiding consuming it isn’t going to change the whole system from the ground-up.

… it went on about how “money talks” and choosing where to put your money still feeds the whole capitalist system and is nearly a way of comforting yourself, but you not buying doesn’t mean everyone else isn’t. What needs to be tackled is at a much higher level than any of us can reach.

Of course, I’d still, given the choice, give my money to companies I agree with and I’ll boycott what I know to support awful stuff, but I also feel no superiority over this and know now it’s not as black and white or easy as I thought it was.

This is the same reason that moral purity “you can’t enjoy [x] because it’s Problematic ™” is such nonsense, because nothing is pure. There’s something bad about everything if you dig deep enough. As long as we lived in flawed human societies we’ve got to make the best of what they offer us. If you have the choice and means, please, do support those who do good, but also, don’t beat yourself up over not living up to an unattainable ideal.

No one can. You’ll just make yourself so miserable, you either burn up and stop fighting entirely or you’ll make yourself a non-productive, depressed heap just out of a bleeding heart left unchecked. You can’t make a change to this world if you refuse to engage in it.

In the “servant to a different king” AU I proposed months ago, Shang Qinghua (without System restrictions) dumps Cang Qiong Mountain Sect before becoming head disciple and saves Tianlang-Jun and Su Xiyan. So, let’s say that in this AU, Shang Qinghua anonymously gives Su Xiyan a heads-up and does successfully become the candidate for the next Lord of An Ding Peak.

Only, in that vague time before “when Tianlang-Jun was supposed to be imprisoned” and “the ascension of the new generation of Peak Lords”, Mobei-Jun’s family gets in trouble with the newly married, new father, newly interested in politics to protect his family Demon Emperor. Linguang-Jun implicated his brother in some scheme and cozied up in the hopes of being the Demon Emperor’s “appointed” next Northern King, maybe?

Only the scheme backfires because Tianlang-Jun is a spiteful bastard (and maybe not entirely fooled by this web), so he’s like, “Hey, what if I kill the Northern King and keep his body? What if I don’t give him back afterwards?” So, Mobei-Jun’s family will lose thousands of years of inherited power. Mobei-Jun’s family is panicking over this (including Linguang-Jun), which Tianlang-Jun finds delicious, and he’s like, “Hey, what WOULD you do in order for me to let him live or at least give you back the body? Dance for my amusement here, people; I want GOOD suggestions.”

SOMEWHERE along the line (don’t know how or who suggests it), marriage to a human pops up as an idea. Tianlang-Jun is married to a human and has a half-human son. Wouldn’t that show the Demon Emperor that Mobei-Jun’s family doesn’t hate humans and didn’t try to kill the empress?

Mobei-Jun basically exists to be the next Northern King and hey, he knows a human being, so he grabs head disciple (almost Peak Lord) Shang Qinghua from An Ding Peak and brings him before the Demon Emperor. (Mobei-Jun is kind of panicking here. Whatever his personal feelings for his father are, they CANNOT lose his father’s body.) Mobei-Jun’s explanation of the situation to Shang Qinghua on the way is not very good and very confusing, but part of that is because the situation is very ridiculous because Tianlang-Jun is ridiculous.

So, young Shang Qinghua is forced to spin a forbidden love story for the Demon Emperor (and possibly a large audience of demon royalty/nobility), in which he saved Mobei-Jun’s life and they’ve been secretly seeing each other for years. Tianlang-Jun is like, “Wow, I was probably just going to destroy the body no matter what they did, but this IS good. Keep talking. I really relate to this forbidden demon-human love story you have going on. A powerful demon lord and a human cultivator? Love it!”

Shang Qinghua’s explanation is SO GOOD, in fact, that Tianlang-Jun decides not only to let the current Northern King live after all, but to personally throw Shang Qinghua and Mobei-Jun a fabulous wedding.

Tianlang-Jun: “Xiyan and I eloped, so we didn’t really get to do the whole Big Fat Demon Wedding thing, but you two can! This is great. Xiyan and I don’t have any other demon-human couples to hang out with. You two should have kids A.S.A.P. so my son can have some half-human friends around his age.” (As far as Tianlang-Jun is concerned, if they ARE faking it, he’s going to make them do the whole monkey-dance anyway just to see how far they’ll take it.)

Shang Qinghua is like, “Great! Sounds great!” While Mobei-Jun is completely stone-faced (like, more than normal somehow) because he doesn’t actually want to marry his human servant, but can’t object without bringing down all the consequences just avoided.

Me @ me: “Hey maybe don’t draw the entire first season of YOI from yakov feltsman’s perspective. That will take weeks and you’re an adult with a life”

…I did it.

Bonus:

Loosely based on this post.

NO I DIDNT 😭