#but you also get a metric buttload of angst | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

littlesmartart · 2 years

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is your last post to say that nmj and nhs's moms are/were together in the modern au 👀👀

anonymous asked: I wanna know about all the modern AU 3zun raise Jingyi parents but I'm especially interested in the Nie moms' headcanon you have

okay so there are multiple ways you can translate the vague details we get about the Mamas Nie in canon (which seem to indicate either consecutive wives, or a wife and a concubine) to a modern AU - I considered Mingjue's mum dying when he was young and Papa Nie remarrying to Huaisang's mum, but @guqin-and-flute and I decided that there's enough big parental angst going on already, and SOMEONE'S gotta have a framework for healthy romantic relationships in this throuple! so we settled on Papa Nie + Mingjue's Mum + Huaisang's Mum being in a poly relationship themselves. I am as yet undecided whether I prefer their triad forming by Huaisang's Mum joining the other two, who are a married couple, or whether it's Papa Nie being invited to join the relationship of the other two.

not only is this fun and cute in itself but also I think it retroactively explains a lot about our thoughts on canon Mingjue; mostly irt how a character who is very... rigid in his opinions, and tradition-focused, could be so open and comfortable with a relationship that would be considered pretty unconventional by the society around him, but also explains his frustration with people obscuring the truth or masking their feelings - healthy poly relationships require a great deal of communication and honesty, so if Mingjue grew up in a household with that as not only the norm but the expectation, I can imagine he'd find Lan "My Emotions Are A Burden On My Loved Ones" Xichen's and Meng "If You Saw My Weakness No You Fucking Didn't" Yao's attitudes.......... aggravating dsfkldsfjksl

unfortunately nearly everyone in this fucking story suffers from Dead Parent Disease, so the collective Parents Nie do wind up dying when Mingjue is in his teens. we haven't decided exactly what the modern version of qi deviation is, but it's some sort of terminal hereditary condition that is greatly exacerbated by stress. Papa Nie knew that his father and grandfather died of it, but was so caught up with the family business that he brushed off any attempt at persuading him to slow down and have it looked into - until a bad flareup in his condition inadvertantly causes a car accident that kills both Mamas Nie but leaves him physically unscathed. that's pretty much the beginning of the end for him; whilst he goes from hospital to clinic to specialist trying to find something that might help, he's too far gone, and dies only a few years later in his forties. Mingjue personally believes that it was the guilt that killed him more than anything else. he also gets a metric BUTTLOAD of dad-issues from this that rear their horrible horrible head when Xichen officially adopts A-Fu... but that's another story.

#ask #tootiredtoosadtooangry #anonymous #tumodernau #Nie Mingjue #3zun

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dontcallmecarrie · 3 years

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Replying to the commenters of this post [heads up for angst]:

To @kine-iende, who said:

hot damn. if "our" justin was a mom-friend in their home-universe, here people would start questioning if justin was in secret a very motherly scrull or something (and be fine with it ^^). but yeah, love the trope too. was it "for the want of a nail" or "through a mirrorm darkly"? well, contrast and a what could have been would be lovely. feel enabled, whenever you want to write this :)

I am not very familiar with the concept of Skrulls [...iirc, that’s something introduced in Captain Marvel, which I have yet to get around to], but yeah, that tracks. Assuming it’s a thing they know to look for, though, because here Justin’s being themself is the biggest and most obvious way to establish that they are not canon!Justin.

Sure, they’re identical physically, but the moment either Justin opens his mouth, the jig’s up.

As is, not five minutes into this strange hellscape where their oldest rival looked at them with no small amount of disdain in his eyes at first, Justin had already managed to charm their way out of holding and into a very relaxed “we’ll keep an eye on him” Avengers custody.

Well, on paper at least— in reality, most of the team doesn’t really give a damn one way or another, whereas Tony starts out morbidly curious as to just how different NHDD!Justin is to the one he’s used to dealing with, and ends up getting a concentrated dose of All The Feels™ because the moment NHDD!Justin realized this Tony had a metric buttload of undiagnosed-and-constantly-belittled mental health issues and a support system that was equal parts duct tape and caffeine, he went “oh, so this universe is the Hell Timeline, okay, makes sense :) :) :) dammit Ivan you’d better fix this stat”.

In retrospect, Justin’s not sure when exactly the horror show started; if it was the absolute lack of concern or care the Avengers had for their Tony, or the minute they noticed the gauntness in his face. Maybe the tension between Iron Man and Captain America, or the obvious bravado this Tony used– and the fact that none of the others so much as noticed.

All Justin knows is, a version of someone they care about is hurting, hurting badly and has been for a long time now, and that’s more than enough for them to go “oh, okay, mine now”.

For his part, Tony has no idea what the hell’s going on. The non-annoying Justin Hammer who crash-landed an Avengers debrief is...something else, and he’s torn between shock, pleasant surprise, and no small amount of existential angst and jealousy because in the span of a few hours, Tony’s had a brief taste of what some other version of him had for a lifetime, and...

Tony’s not sure how he feels about it. He’s a genius, he can wrap his head around string theory and all that good stuff, but numbers are one thing, having to live with the fact that somewhere out there, a version of him grew up with someone so unfailingly kind and supportive and—Tony can’t think of a better word for it than nurturing— and, in the span of seconds, had been able to call him out on his bullshit and seemed to instinctively push him to be better but not in the demanding way his father or the rest of the world had—

If he thinks about it too long, it makes him want to cry, just a little. Somewhere out there was a Tony who’d been enough for someone, who had never been asked to change himself, who’d been pushed up instead of repeatedly torn down and he didn’t know how to deal.

He’d thought having a non-annoying Justin around would be funny.

This was not, it was goddamn distressing is what it was, because Tony hadn’t even known it was a possibility but now he is acutely aware of the fact that he got stuck with his Justin— the human embodiment of one of those yappy dogs who nipped at people’s heels thinking they were so tough, despite not being able to back it up.

This Justin was, uh, not that. Tony wasn’t sure if he was always like this, or if it was only with him because he shared a face with someone Justin cared about, but... was he always this much of a mom friend? And where’d that granola bar even come from, anyway? Not that he minded, it was a nice change of pace, but really?

...Tony was really going to miss him, once they figured out a way to send him back home.

To the commenter who said:

Stephanie isn’t a canon character, is she? Because if not, NHDD!Justin might be able to pull off a “the birth of my little sister awakened my previously deeply buried parental instincts” to explain his whole… [gestures uselessly].

Technically, she could be, in that Justin Hammer has a sister and nephew in canon [according to the wiki and a deleted scene, apparently]. I chose to make her a younger sibling in NHDD, to really emphasize the ‘reincarnated with shitty memory’ aspect of this AU. Specifically, while it’s never specified, Justin’s past life was...not great, and part of it was the fact that their younger sibling was sick.

With what, they don’t remember anymore, but sick enough that they know health isn’t something to take for granted; sick enough that towards the end, they remember their parents had to choose between paying hospital bills and electricity, remember going to bed hungry because meds were expensive and their next paycheck wasn’t until Friday.

...suffice it is to say, there’s a reason Justin’s so protective of those he cares about, even if his memories faded a bit on the specifics as time went by.

To be fair, canon!Justin also cares for his sister and nephew; it’s just that NHDD!Justin acted more like a third parent than a sibling, once Stephanie was born.

Bear in mind that canon!Justin’s situation is very different than NHDD!Justin’s, because canon!Justin was basically set up to fail from the start as a normal kid who was constantly compared to a child prodigy two years younger than him and terrible parents. While NHDD!Justin’s situation is similar on the surface, the difference is they’re literally a reincarnated OC, with all the baggage that entails.

Maybe, if their second life hadn’t been surrounded by adults with A+ Parenting Skills, 0/10 Do Not Recommend, their issues and traumas from last time wouldn’t have been exacerbated. If they’d been born to a regular family, Justin would’ve been a good kid but nothing special, and their memories of a past life would’ve faded away by the time they hit puberty.

But instead, they were born to the Hammer family, and proceeded to be put through the wringer.

Which is bad enough, and meant they immediately started leaning hard on everything from their past life because these people wouldn’t know good parenting if it bit them on the nose, but...then Justin’s little sister was born, which immediately kick-started every older sibling instinct they’d ever had because last time they’d been responsible for their younger sibling’s health and safety and you can probably see where this is going.

aka yes, some of Justin’s behaviors could arguably be called trauma responses and/or coping mechanisms and it’s something I only realized as I was writing this, and no, this AU was not supposed to be this messed up

Justin’s responsibility, their willingness to deal with shitty parents and do tremendous amounts of emotional labor if it helped anyone they took under their wing? That’s no accident, that’s what happens when a soul has to be the adult, has to step up because nobody else is going to. There’s a reason Justin has so much disdain for Hank Pym and Howard Stark’s immaturity, why they have so little patience for their parents as time goes on; their mental age means the older they get, the more they’re looking at the adults around them and judging them hard.

...ahem. Sorry for getting a bit off-topic, but hey, at least now you know a bit more about what’s going on inside Justin’s head!

And yeah, if he had to bs an explanation for why he’s such a mom friend, Justin’d be more than happy to point to his little sister as an excuse. So long as they know she exists, anyway; if not, he’ll just laugh it off and try to chalk it up to one of the differences between their universes.

edit to remove the stuff that got through my nonexistent brain-to-mouth filter because I was averaging a not-optimal amount of sleep as I got used to my new job

#No Hero [Downward Descending]#Naught replies #replies #thinking aloud

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forthereaderinserts · 4 years

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Return by Death!Y/N because I am way too into Re:Zero and writing angst.

Y/N gets isekai'd into the Naruto world for reasons they don't know. They soon learn that they've been 'gifted' with the ability to return to a very specific point in time every time they die. You can probably figure out how they realised this.

After seeing their friends die in the first timeline, they decide to make sure everyone stays alive, even if it means getting killed/comitting suicide over and over again. What's worse, they can't tell anyone the truth about their ability or their past, because every time they do, a side effect of the Return by Death ability activates, that makes it feel like the user is having a heart attack.

All the while they're being 'tested' via choices. Sin vs virtue. In one scenario: pride vs humility; either get help to defeat a stronger enemy (let's say Zabuza) or try over and over again to defeat them alone, only to fail every time. And so on. They can only move forward after they've overcome their demons and become a better person.

To everyone else, Y/N seems like they have incredibly high luck or they're some master strategist, not even knowing everything they've been through. And they never will.

All of this, as you can guess, leads to a metric buttload of stress and other mental problems.

It's finally time. They've pieced together that they were summoned into the new world by Black Zetsu so he could use them as a backup vessel for Kaguya in case his plan for Madara went sideways (also because Y/N reminds Zetsu of Kaguya due to tehir original personality being a lot more like her). It's the tail end of the 4th war and Y/N sees Black Zetsu going in to stab Madara in the back. Without even thinking, they leap to save them.

They are fusing with Kaguya, but due to that, Zetsu's hold over Return by Death is weakened and broken. Y/N is finally able to tell everyone the truth and how much they've suffered. With all their strenght being used to hold Kaguya back, Y/N asks for anyone to kill them so Kaguya wouldn't be a threat anymore.

Despite everyone being against the idea, Y/N insits. After many tears are shed and stories are told, Y/N is killed for the final time, finally being free from Return by Death.

Y/N opens their eyes and see that they're back in the real world, our world. It looks as if barely any time has passed here, despite they spent years upon years in the other world, trying to set things right.

It all felt like a dream. It should have been a dream. But it wasn't and they know it. But they're ready to move on and be the better person they've become. They're going to be fine in this world now, unlike before.

I bet I'm actually going to make this a fic, but I already have multible other fics to work on, including a Naruto one, but gaoddamn it my weakness of writing angst is calling me to pick up a pen.

———————

Dude holy shit this is a whole ass novel

#a submission!!!#reader au ideas #submission

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