Anger is such a normal part of recovery, and I wish it were normalized. I think it is genuinely harmful to depict recovery as this era of your life that only sets you free and makes you euphoric, and there will never again be a cloud in the sky because you have Ultimately Healed.
It's the fucking opposite sometimes. Recovery can feel violent, because the things you are recovering from are often (though not always) violent. It is so common to feel white-hot rage, grief, catharsis, elation, numbness - in essence, a whole host of emotions that aren't pretty, or aren't simple little categories to be neatly boxed and sorted and understood by the "normals."
Those recovering: Your emotions are real, and they aren't bad. You aren't a bad person for how you are processing and healing. You, however, aren't alone. You are doing so fucking well, no matter what it is you are healing from or for. I genuinely hope you can be proud of that.
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What if Hua Cheng had memorialized the temple?
I don’t think he did, canonically. I imagine that was a memory he wasn’t keen to linger on, especially not to such an extent as to record it, to hover over the details in his mind and commit it to physical imagery. But I could see where he might - maybe catharsis, so that night can exist somewhere outside of his head. Maybe twisting, spiteful justice, so the world won’t be allowed to forget what it did to his god. Maybe just desperation, to record every shard of Xie Lian that he has in an effort not to lose a single piece while he searches.
It wouldn’t be graphic; I think it would be something more stylized, more symbolic. Xie Lian is tied to his own altar. He has replaced the divine statue that should be there instead, the god made present the way he was for Hua Cheng once, the way he was for all of his people once. He is surrounded by blades, but they aren’t piercing him yet. Hua Cheng can’t do that to him even in paint. Bai Wuxiang is not featured, because Hua Cheng would not force any version of Xie Lian into that monster’s presence, but there is a ghost fire hovering near. There is a small, crushed flower on the ground at the foot of the altar, like it was dropped from the Flower Crowned Prince’s hand moments before. The entire tableau holds its breath in the anticipation of something horrific.
It’s painted in a shadowed corner, with a cloth hung in front of it. Not out of shame, or even because of Hua Cheng’s own trauma - out of respect for the prince’s privacy, unwillingness to make a moment of such incredible, painful vulnerability a spectacle to anyone else without the prince’s say-so.
That doesn’t stop Mu Qing from finding it.
Mu Qing, who was already horrified, Mu Qing, who was looking for Xie Lian to drag him out of the caves immediately because he’d seen a statue that suggested things he would rather not think about in regards to his former prince… Mu Qing brushes the curtain aside in that tucked-away corner and stops.
A hundred blades are pointed at His Highness. A hundred faces leer and sob and stare. And Xie Lian sits at the center of it all, head lowered, waiting for the slaughter.
Is it so unreasonable that Mu Qing takes it for a threat? Is it so unreasonable of Mu Qing to drag Feng Xin to what he’s found, for the both of them to slip an arm around each of the prince’s own and pull him away from wherever that altar is somewhere in the complicated network of twisted, obscene worship? That thing painted on the wall - it can’t have ever happened. They would know. Mu Qing and Feng Xin, who spent every day of their early lives with the prince, beside the prince, trailing along behind the prince… they would know. They would have been there; they would have prevented it. This is the fantasy of a ghost king who laid ruin to thirty-three heavenly officials and found his thirst still unslaked.
(Mu Qing does not consider the eight hundred years of Xie Lian’s life he knows nothing about. Feng Xin does not consider the eight hundred years of Xie Lian’s life he knows nothing about. It’s a habit they’ve grown skilled at, over eight hundred years.)
They don’t explain to Xie Lian, so Xie Lian has no opportunity to explain to them what they saw. And Mu Qing isn’t wrong, when he concludes that Xie Lian has been stalked and watched and hunted since he was seventeen. He isn’t wrong. He just doesn’t know, yet, what direction the threat is coming from. There’s no time for anyone to tell him, or Feng Xin, who tied the restraints and provided the sword.
They’ll find out. Masks are made to be removed.
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sorry im still thinking about the toe thing, about how permanent it is, how purposeful it felt.
ed must have had hours to think about it, and he still decided on disabling his first mate, stopping him being able to do his job properly. no matter how impared his thinking, it wasn't a spur of the moment thing. ed has to have had a reason why he decided this was the course of action he would take over any other.
no matter what happens next, things will never ever be able to go back to the way they were before.
the crew can forgive ed for marooning them, and izzy will still be disabled
frenchie and jim can forgive ed for the kidnapping, for the inevitable trauma, and izzy will still be disabled
stede can buy a whole new ships worth of things, and izzy will still be disabled
izzy himself can forgive ed for what he did, recover from the psychological impact, but he will still be disabled
they can grow old, have adventures, retire, but nothing will bring back izzys toe
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I got to do some like, legit atmospheric horror work a month or so back.
The party, after ditching the giant dragon turtle, was making their way through the forest in search of a small village they’d seen from its back--the only sign of civilization. Their unicorn friend Albion had dropped them in a region of the faewild he said contained a trusted ally--but no one had come to find them, and they need to get moving, so the village is as good a place to start as any.
Along the way they ran into a pair of charming rabbitfolk brothers named Brush and Briar, struggling on the side of the road to right a partially-smashed cart. After cautious, exact-words exchanges in which Max the bard did some serious work to make the party appear nonthreatening and avoid accidentally imposing a debt, the brothers explained that they were from the nearby village of Little Ivywood, and they’d been attacked by bandits on the road and nearly lost all their worldly possessions because the bandits accused them of “betraying their queen”. They explain that Little Ivywood surely has some pro-mortal sentiments, but that certainly neither of them have betrayed any queens!
The party, who were headed that way anyway, of course take the brothers under their wing and help them get their cart back to the village. Along the way they chat about the faewild, about the bandit problem (bandits are described as “bestial” and there are claw marks on the cart), about how about 20% of their carrots “bite back” and it’s very offputting, dontchaknow, but such eternal suffering does seem to be somethin’ of our people’s lot in life.
So they pass several pleasant hours before coming up on the village of Little Ivywood.
The............very....very. Quiet. Village of Little Ivywood.
Max and Andromeda are the first to see the bodies in the fields.
The party puts Brush and Briar behind them and--in a moment that made me the DM ache over how recently they were a ragtag bunch of misfits half of whom had never taken a life before--do a VERY professional check-and-clear sweep of the village. It’s...bad. If there are survivors, they’re nowhere near.
The wounds are grisly, and the attack was...thorough. Nimbus the ranger finds the marks of boots and cloven hooves in the dirt, but is having trouble checking trailsign--he grew up in a village just like this. While checking houses, Audie the wizard finds a cellar door thrown open with the bloody body of one rabbit dead on the floor outside it, and a rug thrown aside under the trapdoor--someone who gave his life to hide his family, only to have them die anyway.
Andromeda, the aarakocra paladin, stays in the air on overwatch. While checking the perimeter, she sees a glimmer in the treeline and drops down to check--expecting to find enemy scouts coming back for stragglers, or perhaps an injured survivor taking shelter in the hedgerow, and finds--
Snares.
Iron running snares, set in between rows of crops, paths in the hedgerows, along gaps in the underbrush. A cruel, condescending kind of joke--the kind of perimeter you set up when you intend for no one, not a single living rabbitfolk, to escape the slaughter.
With no small amount of guilt, the party takes what they can from the homes--they haven’t been looted, this wasn’t a bandit raid. And then--something moves.
The trio of liondrakes emerges all spite and fury; held at bay by the heavily-armed party but hissing insults, calling Brush and Briar traitors, demanding to know why the party would defend them, swearing to kill them all in the name of their queen or die trying. And something--doesn’t add up. The liondrakes scoff at the idea of serving the Courts--it was the Summer Court, they say, who killed these people, and their own queen, the Queen of the Wilds, who tried to save them. They say, again, that the party is harboring traitors, and...
and it’s Nim who makes the 20+ insight check.
Brush and Briar lived in Little Ivywood. They were farmers, not merchants. So, on the night their families and neighbors were slaughtered by the Summer Court...
What were they doing in the middle of the woods with all of their worldly possessions?
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