tangerines₍^. .^₎⟆

she/theyᣟ𐚁˳ multifandom

[raindrops-on-concrete]

atp I'm convinced that a good piece of media can get me into any genre and anything whatsoever

like, for the longest time I was convinced that I just really hated gore (evidenced by me not liking gore in a handful of films I watched and fics I read) but now I'm reading a very gorey fic and I'm so into it and it's not that I'm into everything else so much that I'm tolerating the gore, I love all of it

[flonejapassingby]

When i kill columbina because im bored

[hootyhoowoo]

Tender Ranwan for @mios-art !!!

Thank you for the art trade!!! :’))) go look at their beautiful piece here <3 !!

This piece took a looong time but I’m happy with how it came out!

[nnolinocere]

[ghooostbaby]

(2ha spoilers ahead)

i've been thinking of the way mo ran's chronology is (un)represented... from the moment we first experience him as a teenager, where we only experience him from his point of view as a 32-yr-old evil emperor... this way he has of seeing and thinking about other people, like watching the world around him, sizing it up, figuring it out, with an intense, clear idea of what he wants and making a plan for how to get it, while holding and remembering the memories of the first time he experienced this all at 15, and how he felt, what he thought. from the beginning we have never really seen mo ran or known him as he actually was at 15, it's always through this lens of his 30s-aged, jaded, bloodthirsty, (and immature) self in his 15-year-old body.

it's why when i try to think of who mo ran is it's like banging up against a wall because it's hard to make sense of him when we so often understand who people are by their development from infancy, all the things that happened to them and how they responded and the choices they made through to adulthood and the person they became, the desires they have and the choices they make. but mo ran... as we witness him 'growing up' he's already grown up and become this broken and spiteful person acting as his 15-year-old self.

and especially to see the way he can be so friendly and cute, charm so many people so easily as a teenager. both his past memories and living in the current memory. trying to think of what was going on with him really, the first time, it's always heavily filtered through the thoughts of taxian-jun, who isn't who mo ran was when he was a child actually. and it's only so many many many chapters later that mo ran 2.0 goes back to his actual memories of when he really was a child and clinging onto his mother, who have no one but each other, who starves to death to allow mo ran to live, and then mo ran having to drag her body for days, and bury her, wandering alone almost starving to death himself, finding a place to take care of his own needs eventually at the brothel, but being bullied cruelly by the owner and her son, and being so so lonely and pathetic, being treated like a dog, and locked in a cage as punishment like he was a dog, scapegoated for everything until he lashed out violently and killed EVERYONE. like . little teenage baby boy murdering an entire house of people, the whole brothel. crying because of how sorry he was now with what he's done he can never see his mom again, but it was either do that or lie dying himself as these hateful people kill him.

and then we hear the story of how he gets picked up by Xue Zhengyong, and then we see him from Chu Wanning's perspective, as this sweet, beautiful, privileged kid. He's this social and pleasing and perfect darling teenager. And after all this time to learn about what Mo Ran lived through and what he must have been feeling at this time, the stark difference between his interior life and how people see him, I feel like I want to know so badly, directly, what he felt then, but you never get that. this kid my heart breaks for but... he's like a ghost, he doesn't really exist anywhere. He's this memory. He's not there the first time we experience Mo Ran at 15 because that's taxian-jun inhabiting him. It's something similar, how Mo Ran 0.5 is harbouring this secret self and goals as this 30s-aged tyrant trying to capture the thing he lost as a kid, to the original Mo Ran youth who just killed a whole bunch of people and is given this new life in a cultivation sect based on a freak chance and his ability and willingness to lie. In the bits and pieces of memories you discover him, trying so hard to do good for what he did. Lying to everyone. Smiling so charmingly. Wanting to cling onto kindness and beauty, knowing that his punishment is coming one day, just like how he felt when he was in his 20s and trying to become a good zongshi to make up for everything after chu wanning's sacrifice.

The other place this original personality of mo ran's actual youth seems to exist is chu wanning's memories before mo ran changed... how mo ran wanted to learned to write to burn a letter for his mom to read in the afterlife... this sweet baby quietly nursing so much grief and guilt. and shi mei's memories of mo ran stopping him from planting the hate flower in chu wanning, from that you can kind of infer how he felt about all the things he had done before he was brought to the sect ... that he had done so much evil, he had to be doomed, and the least he could do for his teacher was to protect him by taking it for him. letting himself be doomed even more so he could at least save chu wanning, who had been kind to him. just like he did years later as mo ran 0.5 when chu wanning sacrificed himself for him. like the book says so often, he was like a dog who will be loyal forever to whoever was nice to him and hate whoever hurt him.

i thought it was interesting rereading the first pages introducing taxian-jun as equally this powerful and cruel emperor and pathetic dog. the tone was mocking this powerful figure. to find after so many books this little fierce, heart breaking, loving, and desperate kid that no one really knows hidden deep deep deep down in the heart of it but also barely existing...

each of these brief little moments you can glimpse him get tucked away, that kid doesn't exist anymore in anyone - taxian-jun inhabiting his body with almost 20 years between them and an intense focus on what he wants now, just picking through past memories to make tactical plans, and mo-zongshi years later recounting this story but feeling so distant from it, not trying to dwell on it or justify anything, or explain how he felt, like it happened to someone else. for mo-zongshi too... he hasn't lived that time in so long, he lived through all the years of his childhood and became the evil emperor, and then become the emperor in the 15-year-old body and grew up again over years to become this moral cultivator. it feels like he's watching the world unfold around him through a screen, waiting for everything to fall apart. he feels like he looks at the world like an ancient, so distant from it all, hurting and loving it but also waiting for and expecting the end. he's still the person who was taxian-jun who had those memories before the hate flower erased.

it is really beautiful that the original chu wanning takes such care and effort to bring his memories to the other world, like this message in a bottle for his other self to find so someone can hold onto these original memories of mo ran and cherish them, keep them in the world and hold onto the fullness of who mo ran is before the hate flower, that mo ran himself can't keep hold of.

i can't help but feeling like... i want to know who is mo ran beyond all the things that happened to him. i want to spend time with him. i was fantasizing for hours about what if things just were slightly less terrible, and he didn't do mass murder and he ended up finding a way out of the brothel, becomes a cook at the sect. who would he be? who is he without all this suffering and concealment? who would he be if he could just be himself? you never see him once just in a moment where he can exist without this heavy weight of sense of his own badness and the guilt and grief of the past. there's no self that has survived from a time 'before' and a chance to know who he could have been otherwise. how familar, that's trauma i suppose. but it's like this beautifully subtle narrative experience that is never overtly stated. mo ran's loss of his possible self that he can't even really remember.

i've seen so many people say they love 2ha but didn't really like mo ran at first or still don't like him and i can't even understand... i guess why you would read that book, but also not finding him interesting. for me, the way he can turn on this charm and be able to please and befriend and reach out to people after so much suffering ... the way he responds to being aware of his doom to just grasping onto something he loves and sort of fatalistically wanting to hold onto it while he can, knowing soon enough he'll lose everything. for me, in that position, i think i would only want to hide from others, i could only lay down and die. and that's why he fascinates me and breaks my heart and makes me feel adoration and tenderness...

[maribii]

i know everybody really likes saying aggot is basically the reincarnation of olruggio, and to a point, via circumstances. yes. she is. but coco is so much like olruggio it's almost sickening.

let's start this by the parallels of aggot and qifrey. despite them not sharing the same origin, being harmed by the brimhats, they basically have the same pipeline. they're both some gloomy loner kid who believes that having connections to people is beyond them and prefer to stick to themselves.

but coco and olruggio seem to rewrite this. they're persistent, they don't back down. they're a constant beacon of light and warmth and this is threatening to aggot and qifrey because this is not the life they're used to.

they're not friends at first, they never are. but as the days pass it kind of just happens, qifrey starts caring for olruggio maybe even the moment he ever speaks to him, even if he didnt want to admit it. and so did aggot to coco, god, she seemed to hate her but we all now know that wasnt one bit of the case.

olruggio and aggot may come from the same background of having a high-up family and generational trauma paired with soul-crushing expectations. so yes, on a situational level aggot and olruggio look the same, and share the same origin.

and qifrey and coco may have both been greatly harmed by the brimhats, they may both be outsiders and because of that they are outcasted by other witches and looked-down upon. yes, qifrey says to coco, "you smile like i do." and yes. they share the same general origin.

but the thing is, aggot and coco completely parallel olruggio and qifrey in two ways.

coco is an outsider, but she shares olruggios heart and determination. you'll catch panels where she looks exactly like him when he was young. coco was wronged by the brimhats, but she has done and will do the extent of olruggios stunts just to keep her loved ones safe.

aggot comes from a prestigious family, but she shares the same disconnect and confusion towards people as we observe qifrey do in flashbacks. olruggio teaches qifrey love and patience and hope and kindness and unconditional good things.

coco teaches aggot love and patience and hope and kindness and unconditional good things. she sticks up for her when aggot least expected it as we've seen olruggio do for qifrey. on the night of silver eve, we watch aggot smile, a genuine one, after she apologizes and shows coco her magic.

"so you can smile." kidruggio tells kidfrey. so you can smile.

i do think that it's very important to note that coco and aggot dont parallel two completely opposite sides. they are double-mirrored. they give back just as much as they take.

[zoomberbaby]

something i think is so telling about bear as a character is that he bought TWO of the one wish willows with the initial intention of using them himself. his first thought is to wish nikki only loved him as a friend, but then presumably he would use the second one to "adjust" his first wish which we know he wanted to do based on the conversation he has with the one wish willow helpline guy. once he realizes he can't do that, he goes to ian and asks him to wish that he had never made a wish, thus giving him the chance TO MAKE ANOTHER WISH. if bear wanted to just free nikki he would've asked ian to wish that nikki didn't love him anymore, but he chooses specifically to say "wish that i never made a wish" because he knew he still had that other one wish willow and he could use it anyway. Fuck. That. Guy.

[modernmusess]

there’s something so gutwrenching about the fact that the female characters in obsession have real dreams and wishes but never get the chance to see them realized, while both male characters waste their wishes on short-term selfish satisfaction. they were complex, free-spirited young women who just wanted to create art, and they were destroyed by a man determined to confine them to his superficial perception of them. nikki wanted to be a writer, sarah wanted to be a tattoo artist and now neither of them will get to be anything at all

[yuwadraws]

Maomao fanart I made cause I love her.

Feel free to commission me to make art for you

[vos0q]

Werewolf witch & vampire yuri

[mikrosoul]

Idk why I associate her with blue and green

[azotalque]

❤️

[cdsiren]

QJJ characterizes everyone so well, it’s on a level I’ve never seen. Like yes I love Hassen’s POV and learning about his upcoming marriage with Dorlan. It humanizes him, and his decisions carry greater impact. Any of the fights between him and Xiao Chiye don’t feel like a protag vs a villain, it genuinely feels realistic because we know Hassen has personal things to fight for just as Xiao Chiye does. It’s just very interesting to see.

[cloudylusion]

omfg so ever since chu wanning got revived, mo ran has been the biggest simp ever! he's like "I'll always be by your side" every 2 seconds, and poor chu wanning who has like never gotten any affection or care in his whole life just doesn't know what to do with it all. AAAHHHHH THEYRE SO CUTE IM SCREAMING.

mo ran starts mouthing off the biggest sect leader so that people don't focus on how chu wanning is rude to him, but will focus on how mo ran is even ruder.

he catches fish for him and lets him win the race OMG I CANT THEYRE TOO SWEET

and then every 2 seconds mo ran is like "all I want to do is embrace that man and hold him in my arms" 😭😭😭😭😭😭

[nums-bird]

The level of uncanny that is the similarities between cezhou and sherliam NEEDS to be studied cuz what😭

[nums-bird]

Never forgetting how they had Yao Wenyu and Qiao Tianya first interaction and the first thing that they say respectively is call the other their lucky star and recite poetry on the other's beauty THEN they switched to cezhou like😭😭

[blkrrv]

😝