#4amkatara

[girlgerard]

whenever you rb my mbs you yell ab the exact same pictures i yelled ab while making them and i am like hm... you loved venus in fur didn’t you

to feel seen one must first feel exposed

[paradoxspaceheater]

omg.... Please share your qin su headcanons!!!

qin su hcs: part 2!

she’s very close with her father (qin cangye, i mean, not jgs) and she goes to visit him and her brothers every year, sometimes with jgy, sometimes alone

(in aus where she discovers the circumstances of her birth, she still considers herself a qin and qcy as her real father)

her public persona is that of a dutiful and innocent beauty, but she’s a lot more astute and involved in the politics of koi tower than most people realize! back when the previous madam jin was still alive she and qin su had somewhat of an internal power struggle going on, and qs was also involved in helping jgy to secure the position of sect leader

unfortunately she never got to meet jiang yanli! they probably would have been good friends though

because of her lack of martial skill, she didn’t attend the wen indoctrination. her second brother did though, and told her and their other siblings all sorts of possibly-slightly exaggerated stories about the things wen chao made them do

she loves to write poetry and once ranked second in a poetry competition hosted by the jin sect

she cannot cook 😔 she always gets anxious and messes up

she’s a hopeless romantic tbh and loves giving gifts. she’s also very bi

her eyes are a nice dark warm brown, and she has long eyelashes

[paradife-loft]

nmj for the ask game!

ahaha, I figured at some point I’d get one that wasn’t all easy sunshine and rainbows gushing for paragraphs XD

well, ok. I think probably the thing I like most about Nie Mingjue is the way he really, truly is also an unfortunate crispy marshmallow full of trauma and resultant bad decisions just the same as everyone else is?? a lot of ink has been spilled by other people writing very eloquently about the way being raised to the expectation of pretty inevitably dying before his time for his clan has given him a perspective on what’s important in life that very few other characters have; about, similarly, the militarised culture the Qinghe Nie are more steeped in than most other sects even before the Sunshot campaign begins due to territorial encroachment, and the way operating as a sect leader and military commander starting at such a young age, where others are regularly laying down their life for him, have shaped the justifications he needs to hold onto as to what kinds of sacrifices of whom are necessary.

and that’s really the core of what makes him a sympathetic character to me, is the very clear throughline between the burden of responsibilities that shaped him, and (like everyone) the dysfunctional, destructive ways he internalises their messages and the coping mechanisms he needs to build to deal with them.

(in its own way, I also do like in CQL particularly, that we see how a decade of building resentment, how reinterpreting events after the fact and getting ever more caught in his own biased memories and interpretations, affects the way he’s even able to show others the knowledge of history he has access to. eyewitness unreliability, and the fluidity of memory more generally, are topics/themes that are very important to me and I really appreciate the role he plays in bringing those ideas up in the story.)

oh and, I do also very much like that he can make Lan Xichen smile and open up emotionally and not always have to be the oh-so-calm-composed-responsible-Zewu-jun in his presence!! because er-ge being happy and having someone to reassure him and lay his burdens down with occasionally is important to me 🥺🥺🥺 so he can stay, for a bit, for now :P

[fatalism-and-villainy]

hmm nieyao?? curious to hear ur thoughts on it

Unfortunately I don't have many thoughts about it. I don't really like 3zun or its subships at all, honestly, with the exception of Xiyao (and even that's... complicated).

Why don’t you ship it?

Honestly? A not insignificant reason is that I just don't find Nie Mingjue very attractive. Big burly guys with mustaches are not my thing, and aesthetics/attractiveness is a factor in why I like ships. If there ever was a place to be shallow, it's in shipping *shrug*

Furthermore, I just... don't like Nie Mingjue very much - his worldview and ideological approach are pretty off-putting to me, and I find his conflict with Jin Guangyao to be not particularly appealing or juicy as a result.

Another factor here is that I just did not get a shippy vibe from them upon first watching CQL, and the insistence from shippers that this was the only way to read their scenes, and there's no heterosexual explanation for this, just kind of put me off it out of spite. I've never claimed to not be petty...

What would have made you like it?

I would probably have to like Nie Mingjue more, but that would require him to be a different character, and as such the ship would be different, so.... I got nothing.

Despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it?

Oh yeah! It's got a lot of crunchy potential, and lots of skewed, fucked-up power dynamics. And I do love a good ship in which one half of it murders the other. Just not this particular one.

[esmeraldablazingsky]

im brigitta!!! nickname is bri, she/her (...i think), my fave character are lxc and jgy (also will graham), i got here bc we both like mdzs and xiyao and your art is *chef’s kiss*

hello!! nice to meet (?) you! extremely valid taste in characters although I still don’t know anything about will graham, and also thank you very much :)

[irrealisms]

21 and 34 for the writer asks??

21. Favorite pairing to write for? (platonic or romantic!) hmmmmm i don’t actually know that i have one right now! there are a lot of pairings, both platonic and romantic, that i have fun with, but not really a single standout favorite. in terms of ‘throughout my fic writing career’, all my favorite stuff is russingon. they own my soul v thoroughly.

34. Copy and paste an excerpt you’re particularly fond of.

He’s chain-smoking, because he always smokes when he gets maudlin, because it distracts him and he likes the acrid smell of it and the way that it buzzes on his skin, because it’s something to do with his mouth that’s not chewing on pens until the ink spills out or asking too many inappropriate questions. Because he’s hungry and the nicotine--increases dopaminergic projections to the nucleus accumbens, along with binding to α3β4 receptors, both of which could apparently inhibit appetite. He had decidedly not known any of that two seconds ago, but that’s--fine.

Honestly, I’m very fond of every time I write Jon POV and insert some random Beholding Knowledge(tm) into the fic. usually when i’m writing a fic and get distracted by a totally irrelevant research tangent none of it makes it into the final version! but when i’m writing Jon i get to just have him Know It and it adds some flavor to the whole thing. v fun stuff.

[vespertineflora]

jiggy for the character ask!!

OH NO i just did one for jiggy. Should I............ idk i’ll do lan xichen in compensation xD

How I feel about this character: He is....... my sweet sad son. I know i live in like 24/7 jgy hours most of the time, but that’s bc jgy hours mean i live in a fantasy world where awful things don’t happen and by PROXY that mean lxc gets to not be so desperately sad and alone that my heart aches over it. when it comes down to actual canon and not my happy au realm, lxc is my favorite 🥺

All the people I ship romantically with this character: Jgy first and foremost and ofc nmj, and BOTH. (and maybe someday i’ll write the post canon fic that lives mostly in my head where i give lxc an OC friend/bf who helps him heal)

My non-romantic OTP for this character: ........ you know i don’t even know. lxc keeps almost everyone at arms’ length which is why i’m so SAD for him in the end, bc he’s very very alone. i’ve like to think that maybe he could reconcile his brotherly relationship with huaisang??? or maybe bond with wwx, that would also be nice. 

My unpopular opinion about this character: AGAIN this is hard just bc.......... what are the popular opinions????? i lead a very insulated fandom life xD I like bottom/sub!lxc, and i feel like i see way more top lxc in art. Or maybe “lxc wasn’t TRICKED by jgy, he did know most of who jgy was, jgy just kept certain crimes from him” tho maybe that applies more for jgy xD One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: more scenes with him? i would have loved to see more of his time with people, more of his scenes with 3zun. i know the story’s not ABOUT him, but STILL

[fatalism-and-villainy]

xiyao for the ask meme!

I really like their canon content in CQL! Especially towards the end - the scene with JGY giving back the jade token, their interactions in the temple, etc. It’s a bit like the Yi City dynamic in that I don’t think about them with much emotional engagement on my own, but do get very invested while I’m watching. 

I will say I also appreciate the fantasy of... “this person is so Good and Perfect, and thus I am wrong and tainted for wanting them” being met with the catharsis of reciprocity.