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#will probably change it
azen13 · 29 days
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The Lives and Losses of Lovers
Description: This is actually inspired by a post by @lum1nesc3nce, which you can find here! TLDR: Zhongli x God!Reader, where Zhongli kills his lover but they stay alive. This does have a bit more of a Yandere!Zhongli flavor, though, so be warned!
CW: Yandere Themes, Descriptions of Violence, Descriptions of Blood, Murder, Mild Gore,
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The patio is warm, blessed with the touch of the sun’s earliest rays. Already you and Zhongli sit in two comfortable chairs; he sips on tea, you on coffee. It is a scene that has played out a thousand times, yet one Zhongli never tires of. He never tires of seeing your face aglow, of feeling your body leaning against his, of knowing you are here, miraculously breathing life through your bones and skin.
“My dear, I was wondering,” Zhongli starts, his soft contemplative voice shattering the flimsy silence blanketing the porch. “Would you like to accompany me to Liyue Harbor to purchase some groceries?” It is a reward–he thinks as he revels in your surprised reaction–for how understanding you have been in these turbulent times. With the whole mess regarding the Fatui cleared up and a mundane mortal life ahead of him, Zhongli can afford to spend more moments with you in sweet, blissful love.
Perhaps one day it will make up for that vile scene years ago, the moment his heart became stone: your body splayed stunningly on the ground, looking like the most gilded, horrific masterpiece he had ever seen. Painted in sunlit hues, his spearhead sticking from your chest splattered with blood made of molten gold. 
Even nearly dying you looked breathtaking. 
He is still suffering from regret for the decision. At the time, the situation was looking grim; Guizhong and Azhdaha were both gone, leaving you his only close friend. He spent many moonlit nights sharing tea and hushed conversation, as well as tears and heartfelt confessions with you. Zhongli is not the god of words, but just the sight of your iridescent eyes made him want to tell you every trouble and every worry had. You were his most valuable treasure, his lover through and through. Your contract with him, to always stand by side, loyal to one another, made him so weak, so soft, so human.
But that was the issue. Everyone knew of his love, his tender affection; unbecoming of a god who wielded earth and stone as weapons. His life was plagued by phantoms day and night. When he dreamed he envisioned you being kidnapped by some evil god like Osial and being tortured. Killed. Doomed to a fate worse than death, even. In the day, every action you did reminded him of a delicate tree weathering a deluge. Your branches swayed in the intense winds and even the earth couldn’t anchor you.
So he pleaded. He begged you to stay tucked away in his private domain where no great evil could stalk after you, promising to love you for an eternity of eternities. He would love you until every mountain had become a valley. But you refused, saying you wanted to live every facet of life, turning the world like a kaleidoscope in your hands.
The mirrors shifted and the skies turned red.
Those prophecies he had dreamt, uttered to him by ghosts haunting his mind, came true. You were taken away by some pesky, lowly god, and confessed all that you knew. That was fine. Zhongli was made of stone and Cor Lapis, and even if this insignificant insect of a god knew his weaknesses–few as they were–Zhongli eviscerated them.
But the contract.
When the god was sealed away beneath the sea, Zhongli fell to his knees, mouth opened but unable to utter any words.
Zhongli is not the god of words.
It is horribly tragic, he mourns as he stares at your hollow expression, that you must face the wrath of the rock because of a ridiculous choice of words. “To always stand by his side.” You have technically betrayed him.
The earth shakes for weeks afterwards. The sudden freak earthquake is talked about for weeks on end before people move on, as life does. Zhongli does not. His memory of you remains petrified, his new specter. He will never truly love again for thousands of years. Every time he is reminded of you, a piece of his heart chips away
But then you came back. 
That day is amber, crystallized in his mind. Seeing you in the bustling streets of Liyue Harbor, so lost after centuries away from home. At that moment, Zhongli decides he will not make the same mistake twice. He would have preferred more time to draw you in carefully, but he is afraid now. Afraid that some hideous twist of fate will rip you from him again. So he whisks you away to his private domain, and drafts up a new contract, binding you to him in matrimony forever. 
Please forgive him, he begs after you sign the contract in gold, tears dripping down your cheeks. He only wishes to protect you; he has always wished to protect you. But the world is cruel to lovers, and not even the strong can uphold such a delicate thing. 
In Zhongli’s private domain, wicked things like time and fate are nonexistent. Zhongli is the only god that rules these lands. He is a benevolent god, if a little possessive. After being deprived of you for so long, he craves your presence, he claims. Day and night, he tries to spend every living moment with you. When he cannot, you are ever-present in his mind–a living, breathing thing instead of the dead spirits that once terrorized it for all those years.
Some days you seem despondent, craving room to spread your branches far and wide. But Zhongli simply chuckles and kisses the top of your head; he smells the gentle scent of your shampoo, knowing this is what is best for you. He whispers it quietly, lacing sweet nothings and honeyed words into his voice as he pulls you into his arms. You haven’t tried to fight him on this in years, either. It’s part of the reason why he has proposed going on a  little trip to Liyue Harbor. Perhaps if all goes well, he’ll allow more trips out of the private domain. All supervised by his watchful eye, of course. After a few moments of stunned surprise, you finally have the courage to speak. “I-I’d love to. Thank you, Zhongli,” you say quietly. Zhongli smiles, leaning to press a delicate kiss to your lips.
“You are very welcome, my treasure,” he whispers, a hand reaching to cup your face; his thumb reaches to brush your lips tenderly.
He can tell that you are still afraid of him, fearful that he will hurt you again. No matter. One day, Zhongli hopes, you will shed your fear like a caterpillar in chrysalis, and emerge into a glittering world full of Zhongli’s love for you. 
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mangozic · 2 months
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michael distortion what a goofy guy
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autumn-may · 6 months
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Mostly spoiler free summary of my viewing experience
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wormtime123 · 4 months
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i got too attached to dragon gem before the season start so now she's a sea beast to me
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redstonedust · 2 years
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nothing more disappointing than a shower with low water pressure. i don’t want to feel like a wet sad beast left out in the rain i want to be power washed.
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go-learn-esperanto · 11 months
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I see so many people starting to use Threads as a way to escape Twitter and yes, it's owned by Facebook's CEO and giving Facebook the monopoly of social media is bad but I think we should also talk about the fact that, you know, Threads isn't avalibe in the EU for privacy reasons????? That should be concerning to EVERYONE
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shigayokagayama · 1 year
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mob psycho is the greatest show ever made because reigen being cancelled on twitter is one of the most important moments for his character as well as one of the most emotionally heavy episodes of the show but him being trapped in alone in a purgatory dimension slowly starving to death is treated as a gag and never mentioned again
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going through my old journals as part of therapy homework and i'm reading a section written in the emotional wreckage of a full-on breakdown when i get hit with this line:
There is never a satisfying answer to ‘Why didn’t they love me?’
like wow babe. good fucking point
#like you were on the ground biting the carpet and dry sobbing while you wrote that and still. good fucking point#not a shitpost#cptsd#and it's true. there's never a satisfying answer#the truth is i know why i wasn't loved#i analyzed my parent's traumas and abuse to death. i understand why i alienated and was alienated from my siblings#i know why my mom was too overwhelmed to be capable of nurturing#i know why my dad vanished into addiction and avoidance#the details of our cycles of trauma and cptsd and family history i have a phd in all of it#i understood perfectly. i spent years studying and now i knew the answer#and guess what? IT WAS NOT SATISFYING!!!#because they still didn't love me! and i still couldn't change that!#it was still a completely unsatisfying state of affairs!#so like. when the people who are supposed to love you...don't.#when the people who are supposed to take care of you...fail to#you can look for answers and reasons and explanations#but that's not actually going to FIX your situation.#and it's probably not within your ability TO fix the situation. (and definitely not your job)#because you don't need answers--you need a new situation#*inserts Just Walk Out. You Can Leave!!! (Running Skeleton) Meme*#and yes. walking out isn't always possible.#but for you i hope it will be one day soon. and i hope you build the courage to take that leap.#stepping away from the people who failed to love you...it feels like being untethered but also like being lighter than air#new and scary. immensely relieving. the future opens up. empty but empty like a canvas. blindingly bright until your eyes adjust#like climbing out of a pit you called home and for the first time realizing how bright the light of day can truly be#when you aren't just getting glimpses from the bottom of a hole
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the most anticipated comic from this blog: White Boy Goes Dancing (follows directly from this)
Everyone's been sending me asks for this! I have a second part to this planned for the future. Watch this space!
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justl-12 · 3 months
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I don't know how a solar punk type outfit would look, so this might me inaccurate
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reasonsforhope · 29 days
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Federal regulators on Tuesday [April 23, 2024] enacted a nationwide ban on new noncompete agreements, which keep millions of Americans — from minimum-wage earners to CEOs — from switching jobs within their industries.
The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday afternoon voted 3-to-2 to approve the new rule, which will ban noncompetes for all workers when the regulations take effect in 120 days [So, the ban starts in early September, 2024!]. For senior executives, existing noncompetes can remain in force. For all other employees, existing noncompetes are not enforceable.
[That's right: if you're currently under a noncompete agreement, it's completely invalid as of September 2024! You're free!!]
The antitrust and consumer protection agency heard from thousands of people who said they had been harmed by noncompetes, illustrating how the agreements are "robbing people of their economic liberty," FTC Chair Lina Khan said. 
The FTC commissioners voted along party lines, with its two Republicans arguing the agency lacked the jurisdiction to enact the rule and that such moves should be made in Congress...
Why it matters
The new rule could impact tens of millions of workers, said Heidi Shierholz, a labor economist and president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. 
"For nonunion workers, the only leverage they have is their ability to quit their job," Shierholz told CBS MoneyWatch. "Noncompetes don't just stop you from taking a job — they stop you from starting your own business."
Since proposing the new rule, the FTC has received more than 26,000 public comments on the regulations. The final rule adopted "would generally prevent most employers from using noncompete clauses," the FTC said in a statement.
The agency's action comes more than two years after President Biden directed the agency to "curtail the unfair use" of noncompetes, under which employees effectively sign away future work opportunities in their industry as a condition of keeping their current job. The president's executive order urged the FTC to target such labor restrictions and others that improperly constrain employees from seeking work.
"The freedom to change jobs is core to economic liberty and to a competitive, thriving economy," Khan said in a statement making the case for axing noncompetes. "Noncompetes block workers from freely switching jobs, depriving them of higher wages and better working conditions, and depriving businesses of a talent pool that they need to build and expand."
Real-life consequences
In laying out its rationale for banishing noncompetes from the labor landscape, the FTC offered real-life examples of how the agreements can hurt workers.
In one case, a single father earned about $11 an hour as a security guard for a Florida firm, but resigned a few weeks after taking the job when his child care fell through. Months later, he took a job as a security guard at a bank, making nearly $15 an hour. But the bank terminated his employment after receiving a letter from the man's prior employer stating he had signed a two-year noncompete.
In another example, a factory manager at a textile company saw his paycheck dry up after the 2008 financial crisis. A rival textile company offered him a better job and a big raise, but his noncompete blocked him from taking it, according to the FTC. A subsequent legal battle took three years, wiping out his savings. 
-via CBS Moneywatch, April 24, 2024
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Note:
A lot of people think that noncompete agreements are only a white-collar issue, but they absolutely affect blue-collar workers too, as you can see from the security guard anecdote.
In fact, one in six food and service workers are bound by noncompete agreements. That's right - one in six food workers can't leave Burger King to work for Wendy's [hypothetical example], in the name of "trade secrets." (x, x, x)
Noncompete agreements also restrict workers in industries from tech and video games to neighborhood yoga studios. "The White House estimates that tens of millions of workers are subject to noncompete agreements, even in states like California where they're banned." (x, x, x)
The FTC estimates that the ban will lead to "the creation of 8,500 new businesses annually, an average annual pay increase of $524 for workers, lower health care costs, and as many as 29,000 more patents each year for the next decade." (x)
Clearer explanation of noncompete agreements below the cut.
Noncompete agreements can restrict workers from leaving for a better job or starting their own business.
Noncompetes often effectively coerce workers into staying in jobs they want to leave, and even force them to leave a profession or relocate.
Noncompetes can prevent workers from accepting higher-paying jobs, and even curtail the pay of workers not subject to them directly.
Of the more than 26,000 comments received by the FTC, more than 25,000 supported banning noncompetes. 
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cozymochi · 5 months
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certified Deuce moment that definitely happened [ x ]
Ko-fi
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almondpiglet · 4 months
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reigen wigglin around... like a worm no less
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buggachat · 1 year
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Part 178 of my bakery “enemies” au!
baking montage!
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Kofi
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journey-to-the-attic · 8 months
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approximation of an idea i had for how ik solves levi's ordeal whenever it's his turn for this weird demon puberty everyone in nb s2 is having
from this post
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hinamie · 8 days
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off on an adventure ! this au turns 1 week old today
jjk atla!au with @philosophiums
pose ref [x]
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