this is inspired by The Coroner's Gambit by The Mountain Goats! I realized too late that I had miscounted and 42 on my top songs is actually Dissonance by AJJ, but I had already gotten attached to the idea of writing something about Xin Mo inspired by the coroner's gambit, so... let's pretend that's actually 42!
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Xin Mo made him so many promises. Luo Binghe had known he shouldn’t listen, had known from the start that the sword was poison on his cultivation, his temperament, his mind. And yet, he couldn’t resist swallowing that poison when it tasted so sweet.
Xin Mo promised to make him powerful, so powerful that no one would ever be able to hurt him again. That was tempting, especially in the depths of the Abyss where it seemed that everything wanted to hurt him. Xin Mo promised to grant him a way out of the Abyss, and Luo Binghe was tempted further. That was the whole reason he sought out the sword in the first place, after all.
The sword was a parasite that fed off of desires and fears and insecurities. In a moment of weakness, Luo Binghe let his guard down and it burrowed its way into his heart, searching for the thing that all his desires and fears tangled around, and it found…
Xin Mo promised it would help him get Shen Qingqiu back. Luo Binghe couldn’t help but listen.
It told him that he needed to get powerful enough to make Shen Qingqiu respect him. If he couldn’t respect him, then at least he might fear him instead. When Shen Qingqiu ran, it told him to chase, to make sure he never got far. It whispered darkly in his ears, telling him that everyone who dared look at Shen Qingqiu was a threat. It gave him so many ideas for how to handle these threats, images flickering in his mind of limbs removed, eyes plucked out… Luo Binghe shivered and did his best to squash the darkest desires that Xin Mo encouraged. Shizun would be ashamed of him for thinking this way. He still wanted to be a good disciple for Shen Qingqiu; Xin Mo was only a means to that end, a way of getting close without going too far.
It wasn’t supposed to go like this.
Shen Qingqiu’s body was still warm in his arms, but his pulse had stopped, the blood mites in his veins lying inert without the pumping of his heart.
The crowd growing around them was cursing his name, but he could barely hear them. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Xin Mo was supposed to get Shen Qingqiu back in his arms, yes, but hadn’t expected it to be like this, with Shen Qingqiu detonating his core to calm the qi deviation Xin Mo had brought on.
Already, Xin Mo was sinking its dark tendrils back into his mind, taking advantage of the instability brought about by grief. It was just because he wasn’t strong enough, it told him. This was a temporary setback. He could get stronger, powerful enough to bring Shen Qingqiu back and then make him stay. But in the meantime, he had to get him away from all these onlookers. They would steal Shen Qingqiu away from him in a heartbeat if he let his guard down. He didn’t want to lose him completely, did he?
Luo Binghe couldn’t say no.
He rose to his feet with Xin Mo in one hand and Shen Qingqiu in the other, carved a portal, and stole away with his shizun’s body.
Oh I can tell you soooo much about naruto refusing to let sasuke be alone... especially in the context of the climactic fight scenes I used... the point of the fight when they were kids is that sasuke was freshly retraumatized (in, like, at LEAST three distinct ways) by his murderous brother, so he left the village to train with a certified Bad Dude, and naruto desperately tries bringing him back not only out of patriotism but out of the understanding that sasuke's safety and life would be severely at risk under that mentor... and sasuke explicitly expresses he's trying to kill naruto BECAUSE he's the person closest to sasuke (and only by killing his best friend can sasuke unlock the power he feels will make him capable of beating his brother)... but in the end he can't and won't do it...
And then in the scene where they're adults, sasuke decides the only way to reform their broken world is by losing every last attachment he has to it, and naruto understands immediately that sasuke is just trying to protect himself from more loss and REFUSES to let it stand. The fight is explicitly a battle between two lonely men who grew from two lonely boys who have always only had each other 😣😣😣
📝Share a snippet of an unposted WIP, with or without context.
🔍Give a clue (a picture, emoji, a word, etc) and let your followers guess what a WIP is about.
kljdfsldkjf thank youuuu
hmmmmmmmmmmm i think... i wanna post a snippet for ITNL 14 that i havent shared yet heheh
With a loud, dramatic sigh, Vash shut his eyes and tilted his head back until it was hanging. "Lots of things are scary, lots of things are fucked, but little old me isn't supposed to worry about that stuff, so can we move on already? I'm getting kinda tired of this conversation."
No one said anything, which was as good of an agreement as any.
"Great." Vash rolled his head forward and sat up straight. Picking his screwdriver back up, he started poking at his arm again. "Sorry for bringing the mood down, but there are just some things I don't like talking about. Understand?"
Tentatively, Meryl replied, "I do. Sorry."
"It's fine," Vash lied.
it may not remain like it is here but i like this part so slkdfjslkdfj yea. sometimes Vash deserves to get a little snippy with people. & especially considering the rest of the convo before this................. yea lol
as for the second.................... my post-trimax one-shot. here are. clues. for the vibes.
💕 - uhhhhhhh oh man idk, the thing is i don't shop around much for podcasts so i'm not really keyed in to what's common already and what's not? I wanna listen to more fantasy podcasts tho
📎 - FRANKLY A LOT OF THEM. specifically tho both Knight of the Crown, Lord of the Swamp and Moonlit Hermit i have listened to each at least like... fucking fifteen times. maybe more idk. obsession is fun
🦉 - Lucretia adventurezone, Arum secondcitadel and Mira secondcitadel, Velune innbetween, both Amelia and Sybil midnightradio.... basically a lot of folks
Okay, so just to get this out of the way, I'm a HUGE nerd, and one of my interests is etymology (the study of words origins), which occasionally comes in handy, especially in classes like biology. So one day I answered a question (something along the lines of "what is the meaning of this term," though I don't remember the actual word), and my teacher looked impressed and asked me how I knew that.
Now, this was my chance to shine. I could’ve said anything- about etymology, about my love for words, anything! Instead, what comes out of my mouth? “I like to read.” /I LIKE TO READ./ My teacher was a huge jokester, okay, and he /rolled/ with that one. I mean, it sounded so heckin pretentious, and he good-naturedly teased me until my head was on the desk and I’d sworn never to talk in class again.
It shouldn’t have taken that long, but what happened was the recipe my brother picked absolutely did not have enough water for the dough, and we had to figure that out. Like, straying from recipes isn’t on my list of favorite things to do, and my mom had already explicitly told us to look up multiple recipes just in case. But my brother had already found one and was unwilling to keep looking for them,
and while I was definitely going to look up more, he was already getting out ingredients, and I totally forgot about it. So it was both of our faults, really, but in the meantime, we’re freaking out- the apple mixture is going fine, but the dough was like… not. Dough. After a while it would look solid enough if you punched it, but the second you tried picking up a handful, it basically fell apart. It was Not Good.
So I panicked and called my mom in, but she couldn’t figure it out either. I finally salvaged it by refrigerating the dough for a little and then adding way more than the recommended amount of water (this was after finding out most of the recipes online weren’t very similar to ours at all, yayyy), and it turned out fine, thankfully
oof oof, i find these hilarious but i can also like feel the second hand embarrassment. i pretty much don’t talk in any of my classes, especially science, but the one time i did so it was early in the year and i argued over memes with my teacher. m e m e s. and that’s what he knows me as now, the meme girl.
You asked for snippets from "heart beats best" and it's been CONSUMING me, so how about this bit which knocked me OUT when I first read it?
"No," Damien keens, quick and desperate, and only Arum's hands on his sides prevent him from sitting up in distracted distress. "No, it isn't- you haven't done-"
"We can stop," Arum says quietly. "If you would like. I think... I think I've upset you, and if we are not both enjoying ourselves, then we have quite strayed from the point of our arrangement."
Damien feels his eyes go hot, his body flushing with shame and an inexplicable tightness clutching his chest, and Arum makes a small noise before he crawls closer, laying himself carefully along Damien's uninjured side.
I'd also just like to say that I hope you've had a great day, and this fic is utterly BRILLIANT!!!!
[Pick a short passage from any fanfic I’ve written (OR SPECIFICALLY HBB) and send it to me, and I’ll give you the equivalent of a DVD commentary on that snippet!]
oooooooTHANK YOUUU chapter three. I’ll start a few lines earlier. this is likely to get Lengthy, because i cannot shut up. 🥰
["I- no, I didn't mean-" Damien tries a laugh, weak and unconvincing, and then he brushes his thumb across Arum's face in a way that he hopes is placating.] god i forget how ridiculous Damien is sometimes. Okay so Damien's slip of the tongue a few lines earlier, saying that he doesn't care if Arum hurts him, is a classic Damien fuckup in the context of- Damien’s self-directed dismissal accidentally implying something bad about someone else. And i think i’ve said this before, but Damien did not mean it. Obviously Damien would care if Arum hurt him- but the thing is, Damien knows that Arum won’t hurt him. He does. Not purposefully, or knowingly. A long time ago, maybe, Damien could have made himself believe that Some Monster wouldn’t care about incidentally hurting Damien while fucking him, but Arum isn’t just some monster. The issue is, Damien just wants things to be as normal between them, and his injury is in the way of that. He’s trying to ignore it. Arum is not capable of doing the same.
["I only... I only wish to be... for this to be for both of us. That's all. I know you wouldn't- I didn't mean to imply... or to- to ruin-"] Damien is overly concerned with the reciprocation, because Damien takes a lot of comfort in the scaffolding of their “arrangement.” He clings to what the both of them have agreed to as true about this Thing between them, because doing that means he does not need to THINK about it. Also, poor thing, he’s terrified that he’s “ruined” their tryst, tonight. Which is the LEAST of Arum’s worries.
[Arum's frill relaxes, the distress in his expression easing closer to exasperation as he draws a pair of palms soothingly up and down Damien's thighs.] Arum knows Damien. He knows how worried Damien gets, and that’s a lot more familiar than Damien trying to talk Arum into having sex with him regardless of any physical toll. He’s still worried, but at least Damien getting in his own head is familiar turf.
["I told you," the monster hisses. "I told you to be still, and let me take care of you.] arum voice don’t you believe what i say? arum voice don’t you trust me? arum voice all i want is to make you feel good.
[Have I ever left you wanting, honeysuckle? Have I ever given you reason to think that I would resent you for needing to take your physical limits into consideration?"] Theoretically these questions are rhetorical. However, Arum is also asking them on the wild chance that he may have, somehow, fucked up in the past and given Damien some indication that he would be That Specific Sort Of Asshole. Or, possibly, to ferret out if someone ELSE has treated Damien that badly in the past, in which case Arum may need to start a hit list.
["No," Damien keens, quick and desperate, and only Arum's hands on his sides prevent him from sitting up in distracted distress. "No, it isn't- you haven't done-"] Obviously not. Even when they were just starting, their situation was so fragile and precarious that they were both VERY careful with each other. And Damien responds with so much distress because, again, his own motivations were so internal. It was about disregarding himself, not about judging Arum’s treatment of him. Oopsie Daisy. “you haven’t done anything wrong” was the end of that sentence.
["We can stop," Arum says quietly. "If you would like.] This is one of the lines that I can hear so distinctly in my head. Oh, Arum. He cares so, so fucking much.
[I think... I think I've upset you, and if we are not both enjoying ourselves, then we have quite strayed from the point of our arrangement."] Arum puts the onus on himself for the situation. “I think I’ve upset you” rather than “you’re in a bad place right now.” And also, he frames his reasoning in a way that he knows will read to Damien, because it’s the same framework that Damien himself is obsessed with using. If Damien is upset, they aren’t doing their whole thing correctly. Which is both honest and also telling, in that BOTH of them are more worried about how the OTHER is feeling, rather than themself.
[Damien feels his eyes go hot, his body flushing with shame and an inexplicable tightness clutching his chest, and Arum makes a small noise before he crawls closer, laying himself carefully along Damien's uninjured side.] Damien’s response is a Me response, tbqh. Being ‘turned down’ for sex is extremely charged, even if it’s ABSOLUTELY the right thing to do, and it compounds the way that Damien feels already, which is to say, like he’s failing at something. Also, Arum’s more acute, very attuned senses are my favorite thing to play with. Arum can tell instantly that Damien is about to cry, which is NOT what he wanted. He immediately tries to comfort him, all physical contact and affection and then, humor.
["We can stop," he says again, more firmly.] Damien nearly cried. No way in fucking HELL is Arum going to just. keep trying to have sex. That’s unthinkable. ["You are injured, and tired, and I do not want for you to drive yourself to distress or harm for something as trivial as my orgasm."] Make a joke out of it, make it feel less important, make your voice breezy and unbothered. Arum is... so fucking gone. He just wants to make Damien smile again. literally, that’s all. That’s all he cares about, just now. make sure that damien is not unhappy. And he does make Damien laugh, so he counts that strategy as a win. poor, poor lizard. He’s Doing His Best.
anyway THANK YOU for letting me ramble so goddamn much slkdjflsjdlfk 💖💖💖
5. What work of yours got more feedback than you expected?
30. Biggest surprise while writing this year?
I already answered both of these (self-written dreams, and how supportive the svsss fandom is) but I guess the other feedback/surprise answer is the response to Best Laid Plans, specifically the absolutely incredible response from @raineda-shipper! I remember having a really stressful meeting scheduled that day, and then I woke up to their extremely long comment and attached art???? I went absolutely nuts over it. I felt so powerful, I could take on anything. I was so thrilled about it, I was like full on happy flapping about it, which is very rare for me! whenever I get a really long comment, it makes me ecstatic, and then getting fanart for my fics makes me even happier, so to get BOTH?? I damn near exploded. so that's a specific surprising feedback that I was thrilled about :]
17. Your favorite character to write this year?
definitely Shang Qinghua lol he's really really funny to write and also just pretty easy for me to capture, which is definitely a plus! Shen Qingqiu is also really fun to write, that guy's brain is fucking mystifying. Luo Binghe is also fun to write, mostly because I just get an excuse to gush about SQQ lmao
