"Wot is this place?” Crowley asks, giving the room a good look around. “It feels familiar."
"Used to be a church," Hastur explains with a snarl. A dig, poking fun at the amount of time Crowley has spent in the company of an angel. "We scrubbed the walls with Hellfire, of course, but the priests wot ran it were some of ours so the holy water weren't even dangerous. The blessings on the stones didn't give up much of a fight. If you breathe in deep, you can catch the faintest whiff of holy. We sprayed the whole place down with bear pheromones to mask the odor."
Crowley scrunches his nose. "Charming." He had taken a big sniff when he walked in and did indeed catch a familiar scent, one he sniffed a second time to tray and identify. The pheromone thing is a bit more info than he needed. "Still, this would have been consecrated ground. If this was a church, how come we can walk around in here?"
Hastur gives the floor beneath his feet a triumphant stomp. "Ground's been deconsecrated. And we kept some of the old furniture. Pews for one. Those padded benches make it easy on the knees."
"I'll bet," Crowley says with partial sarcasm.
"Come on. Have a go." Hastur pats the wall of holes with the flat of his grimy palm. "For old time's sake."
"Nah,” Crowley says, intrigued but not eager to give Hastur, of all demons, the satisfaction. “You know how it is."
"No, I don’t. I don’t know nothing about you!"
"Nor I you. Let's not go ruining a good thing."
Love and Glory
Before I call it a night, I wanted to post this teaser for the story I’m going to start posting tomorrow, along with a huge, heartfelt apology to @likearumchocolatesouffle who has had to wait patiently for the story they won through a @fandomtrumpshate auction TWO YEARS AGO. I hope you enjoy it <3
oh goodness I’m changing favourite songs constantly, and I’m very bad at knowing what was released this year. According to Spotify I listened to this song the most this year, but ngl I’m still really loving Loona’s Why Not. What a bop. Love it.
9. best television series?
oh god I watched SO MUCH tv this year, it’s hard to pick the best one.
actually jk not it’s not: 1) Gaya Sa Pelikula, 2) HIStory 3: Trapped.
17. what are some hobbies that you developed?
Lately I’ve been drawing and painting some more? I’m still very bad at it, but definitely improving so that’s good! I only have shitty low-quality supplies but like, it’s fine, I’m having fun with it and might slowly upgrade if I keep going.
I’ve also been picking up my languages again, and now even have a study budy for Korean (hi @natigail !) so that’s fun!
Is Wei Wuxian your fave? Please do the meme with answers about Wei Wuxian. Thank you
[HELLO you sent me this like? weeks ago? I am answering it now!]
haha YES he IS! (Which is very convenient, that, when one’s favorite character is also the protagonist - it means that my priorities and the show’s tend to be pretty well in alignment.)
(and why are you asking me when you’re not even in this fandom! but I <3 you. thanks for the excuse to post. I hope I manage to entertain you a bit.)
[this is really RIDICULOUSLY long, btw.]
How I feel about this character
I love him so much OMG… I was just thinking, yesterday or maybe this morning, that it’s early to tell, y’know, but he might join my ~FAVORITES OF ALL TIME.~
He is just! Set up so well, (~it’s cheating,~ no, that was gonna be a post), he loses so fucking much (parents, foster family/home, newly created found family/home, beloved sister, #it’s complicated wrt beloved brother, um, magical ability (#it’s complicated), hm, DIES), and he also - gets? does? etc. so fucking much. He’s good at way too many things tbh, at fighting and playing the flute (it’s also a form of fighting, it’s a magical flute), at charming people and inventing ~NEW MAGICS~ and… pissing people off? that’s a skill lol? He takes up farming/gardening, cause he rescued a bunch of prisoners of war who need something to eat, (and he misses food from home); he takes up raising a very small boy (he says! miss me with saying he’s not!) as his own, because someone needed to, because he was one of those same prisoners of war.
He NEVER FUCKING STOPS, no matter what anyone thinks, no matter the cost. He’ll take a curse mark on himself or go into a dangerous trance or (any number of other things that happen in the plot) for someone he doesn’t know, or doesn’t like… just because he thinks he can, is a lot of it, and isn’t that fascinating. And because he can, he couldn’t not.
What I meant, though, re: ~the man is non-stop!~, is: he does it with a smile, a laugh, a joke. A bowl of wine and a delighted stroll through the woods, looking around at the leaves, or a stop at a stall selling snacks or cute ornaments. He’s always working, always thinking, always playing - and! these are the same thing! for him! Even though his play definitely can get more physical than anything else, there’s always still this alertness looking around for an unexpected trick. And the work he chooses to do, not the fighting, but invention and the studying to back it up, traveling and helping people with their monster/ghost/spirit problems… that’s play, for him, it’s fun. There’s always something new and interesting to see or find or learn or make.
All the people I ship romantically with this character
LAN WANGJI aka his canonical soulmate/boyfriend/husband/cultivation partner, the one who knows him!, my heart. Howwww… can I explain their connection? They love each other, of course, and probably more importantly, they get each other… they trust each other, they work so well together, they make each other so happy. That’s one of the things that I love, that although they’re both people who are highly liked and/or admired generally in their society on a superficial level, that they’re both fucking weird people? Wei Wuxian is charming and Lan Wangji is impeccably virtuous (and they’re both very talented), but when you get to know them, Wei Wuxian never fucking shuts the fuck up and Lan Wangji will barely say one single word… they’re both a lot to handle, in a number of different ways! But they. Just like each other, a lot.
And the trust between these two. Slays me. Wei Wuxian lets Lan Wangji hold a sword to his throat, cause he knows Lan Wangji will know if he’s ~gone too far.~ Lan Wangji defies his clan, his family, the whole cultivation world, for Wei Wuxian, because he knows, that Wei Wuxian is and was right. They pursue justice, goodness, together… they find it in each other.
People try to set up an opposition between ‘marry your best friend’ and ‘star crossed lovers’ high-drama types of scenarios? But these epic losers (she says with love) are both… there’s no reason why not, after all. And I love ‘em SO MUCH.
JIANG CHENG, who is is his foster brother. Usually I’m not one for incest? It only tends to be something I ship when a sibling bond between characters is broken, or twisted, … or fails to really exist in the case of Luke/Leia type scenarios. (I have never watched a Star War, but I did read Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, okay.) The relationship between Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng (and their sister, Jiang Yanli), very very much does exist, but… Jiang Cheng stabbed his sword into the rock of the cliff that Wei Wuxian was hanging off of, and yelled at him to go to hell. And Wei Wuxian finished yeeting himself off the cliff, and D I E D.
(it’s totally a romantic setup! what!?)
Anyway, they both really really love each other, they need to reconcile ASAP PLZ, and pairs of characters who both really really love each other but also have deeply conflicted and fucked up and sometimes even murdery intentions towards each other are extremely my jam. I want to smush them together! Mostly involving conversations, and extremely fraught invitations to visit, and small significant gestures. But also sometimes involving sex, because… why not.
SOMETIMES JIANG YANLI, though only in concert with Jiang Cheng as an OT3, because if Jiang Yanli’s still alive… you can’t have two of the three siblings together ~like that~ without a third. (So I guess this is the first exception that I’ve found so far to my usual pattern! Of only shipping incest when it’s already all fucked up. Jiang Cheng’s got enough fucked-up-ness for the all of them?). Anyway, I would like to thank the scene where Jiang Yanli shows Wei Wuxian her wedding dress for including the line from Jiang Cheng ‘you don’t think she’d marry you!?’ (to which I always say, it’s okay, Jiang Cheng, no one is leaving you out! <3), and also Madam Jin’s take on the ~scandalousness~ of Wei Wuxian and Jiang Yanli walking alone together (to which Jiang Yanli says: that’s my baby brother, and also, how very dare you).
Together the two of them (Jiang Yanli and Wei Wuxian) are sweet and mutually supportive, and simply the delight of fucking even further with societal expectation and rumor is not going to get me shipping that. But as a threesome! Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian struggle with issues of insecurity, of jealousy, vis-a-vis family, and poor Yanli - she’s always trying to be enough for both of them, for everyone, and it must be very hard, … she reconciles the two of them, it’s a pattern, and they’re more united in thinking she deserves the world than they are in anything else. It can be fun to play with.
WEN NING!! Wei Wuxian walked away from his family and set his face against the cultivation world for Wen Ning, and Wen Qing, and their followers. He says he would’ve done it for anyone, but in fact he does it - the prison break, the dive all the way down into dark magic - for Wen Ning. He brings Wen Ning back to life. Which is a huge gift, but not necessarily one that Wen Ning would’ve accepted? But. He doesn’t get to be asked, he was dead.
And Wen Ning, in turn, is just ridiculously incredibly loyal to Wei Wuxian. It’s part of how Wei Wuxian brought him back to life, but - he’s the knife in Wei Wuxian’s hand. (That’s almost literally what his sister, Wen Qing, says). That sort of intimacy, being a human weapon, turning over your own volition, (not voluntarily! but Wen Ning’s okay with the fact that it’s a thing that happens!), to someone else, is… man, it’s a lot.
And there’s also the things Wen Ning does control: after Wei Wuxian comes back from the dead, (so they’re undead buddies! ;) in different ways), he follows Wei Wuxian everywhere he goes. Which causes some problems! One cannot have a zombie everywhere, with one, at all times. Even if he does save your life when you don’t expect needing it. … so, anyway, they both do these huge amounts of things for each other. They won’t give up on each other. They keep trying to take care of each other - Wei Wuxian gives Wen Ning his sword to wield. They never ever meant to depend on each other like this, but that’s what happened when they wouldn’t let go - and now they don’t need to, by the end of the story. But that story is A LOT, and I want them closer, and also to fuck with the controlling-the-undead angle ;).
XUE YANG! This is a never-ending list, lol. Anyway, if Jiang Cheng was the answer of ‘ship my two favorite characters,’ this is very much the answer of ‘ship the two characters that are hottest to me.’ ;). Anyway, I should point out that I don’t ship-ship them. Xue Yang’s a mass-murdering sociopath. And even if you can catch him in the plot before he goes all mass-murdery… Wei Wuxian would never love Xue Yang. (Never-minding the distinction between ‘love’ and ‘in love with,’ he definitely loves all the above.) But would Wei Wuxian fuck Xue Yang? Maybe! If you can set it up right.
(my current attempt stalled out with Xue Yang threatening to murder a small child in Wei Wuxian’s care, so… there’s no fucking in that case.)
Anyway. They’re very similar in some ways. They’re fearless, they really really hate boredom, they love to fuck around… just for fun. They’re both curious! When Xue Yang meets Wei Wuxian, for the first time, he asks him about the charm Wei Wuxian had invented that he’s fighting him with. While they’re fighting. (Which really strikes me as a very Wei Wuxian move.) Pity about the being evil thing, lol. But Xue Yang is a demonic cultivator who’s following on the magical paths that Wei Wuxian laid out… so a sorta teacher/disciple thing could be interesting. Again! If you could get around the killing people thing for just a second, before of course bringing it back in to smash everything down.
and that is, finally, all the major answers re: actively shipping, (really my main ships in this show are Wei Wuxian/almost everyone he significantly interacts with, and then I guess some other people who aren’t Wei Wuxian can also have some ships too?), but a few more quick answers I’d Definitely Read:
NIE HUAISANG in a friends-who-have-sex way back during their time in summer school together. You can’t tell me Lan Wangji thought that he wasn’t walking in on a Wei Wuxian/Jiang Cheng/Nie Huaisang orgy, that one time! You can’t tell me that Nie Huaisang lent Wei Wuxian gay porn book(s?) and never at least tittered about the idea! Their friendship at that point isn’t all that deep but… I think they both might very well find it a fun way to ~let off steam,~ or whatever, and I’d be into it.
WEN QING, even though I really like the fact that her friendship with Wei Wuxian is a hundred percent platonic (yes, it is, I’ll fight you). I love how they run the Burial Mounds together, I love the mutual sympathy and the mix of teasing and deadly seriousness in their dynamic, what I really want is SO MUCH MORE of just their friendship - and working-together partnership! - but, you see, I have a weakness, for friends who are not romantic! Just friends! But they fuck once or twice or in a while for fun, in between doing things that are more important.
(Also I particularly like when they’re exes who are better off as friends, in a modern AU? Idk somehow it just feels like a perfect fit for these two.)
… and I realize belatedly that the question asked ‘romantically’ and not ‘non-romantic fuck-buddies’ and therefore half of my answers don’t even apply, but whatever, I do what I want, and honestly for non-OTP-level ships I’m just as likely to ship them as fuckbuddies as I am romantically. So there, meme, I cannot be constrained.
My non-romantic OTP for this character
I COMPLETELY REFUSE TO CHOOSE: like, okay, fixing his relationship with his brother is the number-one most important thing to me about how canon ended. So I guess?? I’d have to say that?? YUNMENG SHUANGJIE (the Pride Twins of Yunmeng) 4EVER, sure, definitely. They both sacrificed everything for each other! More importantly, to me, I think both… of them, just really miss each other a lot. Jiang Cheng’s fucking furious at Wei Wuxian, and Wei Wuxian’s pretty much given up on making any sort of attempt to change that, but I love them both and want them both to have everything that they still can that they want in life, and that means each other.
But I also love Wei Wuxian’s friendship with Wen Ning! And his friendship with Wen Qing! So much!!! They are ALSO family, okay, they made a new home together (and then it died) ;___;.
And then!!! The way he relates to the kids! Is just so wonderful. I love how he tries to be the ‘cool uncle’ to Jin Ling, how he balances the side of ‘I was an obnoxious brat too at your age… and in fact I kinda still am!’ with being a very responsible and caretaking adult. I love the way that he gets down in the mud and plays with Sizhui as A-Yuan, being silly, and is also so thrilled and proud of Sizhui as an adult. So uh yeah these are all of my favorite things <3.
My unpopular opinion about this character
Hmmm I’m not so sure what’s unpopular. (Besides a lot of my non-canon-OTP ship choices, but those aren’t really ‘opinions about the character.’ I don’t think he’s likely in near-canon-verses to be with anyone besides his husband, I just like stories where it can happen!).
I think I’ll say: I think he’s generally a pretty happy person. He hides suffering with smiles, certainly! That’s what he does! But even though he has lost a lot - and even though I think he feels guilt over some things, like his sister’s death, and his nephew’s being an orphan - he doesn’t tend to dwell, on either the sorrow or the guilt in his life. He is genuinely pretty okay... and finds ways to be okay, even happy, even in the worst parts of his life, day-to-day! Even in the Burial Mounds, for example, when he’s missing his family and his almost-not-quite-yet boyfriend, ... sometimes he drowns in the missing, yeah, but far more often he’s happy with the things and the people that he’s growing there.
One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon
HE AND LAN WANGJI SHOULD HAVE KISSED??? That’s the most obvious and unarguable thing. They’re together, they’re so fucking together… on the steps of Carp Tower, in ep 42? Or maybe in the snowy night in the Jingshi, in ep 43, before the scene faded away (to black). (And presumably multiple times in the eps after that, but, eh, whatever). The only reason why this didn’t happen is censorship - though I do admit, I love all the post-canon get-together fics.
Also: HE SHOULD”VE STAYED AT CLOUD RECESSES??? With Lan Wangji??? Or Lan Wangji should’ve gone with him, to ~wander the world together,~ though personally I prefer the ‘Lan Wangji is Chief Cultivator’ ending. Anyway the fact that they separated is bullshit, (although, yes, I know all about that reunion implied in the last scene, but it’s not really satisfactory imo)… but, again, censorship. And, again, I love! All the post-canon fics where Wei Wuxian wanders around for some time before he finally ~comes back home~ to Lan Wangji.
Also also: if we’re talking about artistic decisions that weren’t cause of censorship: he and Jiang Cheng should’ve thawed just a little. Been just a little bit more hopeful. Towards each other, at the end of the show. Jiang Cheng wanting to say something, but not..? It was very ow, to me, it’s not a bad ow, but it needs to be remedied. Let Jiang Cheng find a way to be able to tell his brother he misses and still loves him, please.
What's the show with Red Robin and Bat Kid and where do I watch it? Thank you!
It’s from the new DC animated movie ‘Death in the Family’! I haven’t seen it yet myself, but what I’ve heard about it I find incredibly cool on multiple levels - they’ve taken the original Death-in-the-Family story and somehow made it interactive?? so this is from the ending if you take a different path from the original storyline!
Did either of you ever keep a diary? Or do you remember your entire lives without any external memory aids? I'm curious whether you can recall lots of detail from long ago or if it's kind of fuzzy. And I think it would be very interesting to read a diary from someone who lived thousands of years ago!
Aziraphale: I did keep a set of notes a while ago, which I must still have filed away somewhere... They were never anything as formal as a diary, but in order to help me blend in as accurately as possible, I used to write down useful details about human life and recent events that had happened.
Crowley: You kept notes and still live your life a century behind everyone else? That’s almost impressive. I’ve never kept a diary, my memory’s fine... Weeeeell, I remember the important bits.
