sandsandsorrows

[sandsandsorrows]

I was in a League mood lately, so I went back and revisited my good birb.

It’s Azir’s day off, please don’t bother him with trivial matters while he’s trying to enjoy his coffee.

[sandsandsorrows]

@askdragonbladetalon

“Is it normal that you are losing this many feathers?” Talon asked one day, lounging on Azir’s bed. He was picking out the many, many lost feathers from the bedding and gathering them in a neat pile. Even taking into account that Azir was definitely not a small bird, the pile was growing steadily and he had yet to venture outside of the bed.

“I have yet to go bald, so I can only assume so.” Azir replied, looking up briefly from his work. You would think that it was impossible to bring your work home when you basically lived in the same building, but Azir somehow managed. “I grow them at the same rate as I lose them.”

Talon made a noncommittal noise and picked out a feather from the pile.

“They aren’t much too look at.” They were mostly light grey and kind of downy. Makes sense really as Azir didn’t have wings, but still Talon found himself a tiny bit disappointed.

He blew on the feather and watched it flutter down. Even if Azir had any decorative feathers, they would be broken and torn by the heavy armor he wore. He tried to lift the chespiece exactly once. Azir's face was hilarious when he saw, but it wasn't worth pulling a muscle over. “Maybe I could make a pillow out of all of these.” People used goose feathers as pillow stuffing, right? No reason Azir’s feathers wouldn’t work. “It’s a waste to leave them just laying around.”

“Why would you even…?” Even if nothing came of it, the suggestion was worth it for the baffled expression on Azir’s face.

“They are soft.” Azir glared at him for a long moment before coming to the conclusion that it was One Of Those Talon Things and ignored any further suggestions about an Azir-feather pillow.

-----

“What would it take to make you abandon this foolish fixation?” It was a week later. They were in Azir’s room again, sitting side by side on the emperor’s bed. Azir was tending to his feathers with a soft brush while Talon did his best to gather all the loose feathers he brushed off.

“Oh come on. It’s a perfectly solid idea! You could even merchandise it if you ever run out of money.” At the rate Azir was shedding, he could make a medium sized pillow every week and there had to be people out there who would pay for a piece of the emperor.

“I can only pray that it will never come to that.” From the corner of his eye Talon saw Azir reach out towards him; he let him, attention still mostly on the pile of feathers he already collected. Azir had humoured Talon many times when he was in a far worse mood, Talon didn’t think the emperor would do anything unpleasant over a mild annoyance.

Azir carefully tucked something behind Talon’s ear, then tilted his head to the side to examine his handiwork.

“Not quite your color, but since you like my feathers…” he trailed off with a smile. Talon reached up and carefully plucked the feather from behind his ear. It was a big one, nicely formed with both sides even, half grey half white. As pretty as Azir's feathers could get.

It was perfect.

He was still going to make that pillow. Just because.

[sandsandsorrows]

Hey are you all right? I hope you aren't gone for good you are my favorite blog.

Oh hey. Very late answer, but I’m holding on. A bit overran by irl things and going through a depressive episode so I don’t have the drive to write or draw lately, that’s why I’ve been staying mostly away from my blogs.

Thank you for asking about me. It means a lot.

[sandsandsorrows]

Commission for a guildie. An engineer repairing a little buddy.

The Mark Y Golem is friend shaped and my dear friend Toast commissioned this as a substitute until he could get his own robot buddy.

Try Guild Wars for free || Buy HoT or PoF || Buy me a coffee

[sandsandsorrows]

What tarot card are you?

DEATH

You can be a bit intense and find yourself drawn to dark and mysterious things. You’ve been through a lot and have probably seen your fair share of endings, but probably cope with it through humor. On top of that, you are surprisingly easygoing — you’re open to change, try not to let past baggage weigh you down, and seek out new experiences.

That’s partially accurate. Not sure about the humor, and ho boy Azir carries his grief like the most awkward maxi-sized baggage there is, but the rest mostly fits.

tagged by @goldenmovement tagging whoever wants it

[sandsandsorrows]

fic: somewhere to belong

summary: Talon has skills that Azir needs.

Azir sets down his quill and watches Talon for a few seconds. The assassin is wrapping cloth around himself, swathes of red silk that he drapes over his shoulders and head. The merchant who brought in the ‘offering’ to the Emperor’s Court could not have predicted that it would be a Noxian assassin who’d attire himself in the cloths and jewelry. Golden chains, bedecked with coins, hang heavily around Talon’s neck and drape temptingly over the jut of his hipbones.

“Have you ever considered settling down?” Azir asks.

“What, like getting married, having kids, quitting being an assassin?” Talon arches an eyebrow at his reflection, fiddling with the drape of the headscarf.

“No. I meant working for one employer instead of several.”

“You mean like when Marcus forced me to work for him and the Noxian High Council?” Talon’s eyes narrow, his tone dangerous and dark enough that Azir can feel his own talons stiffening. “Fuck no. I like my freedom.”

“…Very well.” Azir says nothing more for a little, waiting for the tension to seep out of the sharp shoulderblades of Talon’s muscled back. When the assassin appears absorbed once more in creating his new persona, Azir asks, “How well do you know other assassins?”

“Depends on how good they are.” Talon’s voice is a little distant, the assassin busy comparing the effects of various silks draped over his face in the style of his scarf. “No point getting to know people that aren’t good enough to survive. The lower and middle ranks, not so much. I know mostly the people that operate on the same level as I do. Not that there even are many people as good as I am.”

Keep reading

[sandsandsorrows]

FIC: loveless hopeless homeless

Little drabble for @sandsandsorrows!

“What’s it like?” Talon asks abruptly. He’s got a bad habit of doing that, carrying on conversations in his head and then suddenly voicing part of them as if Azir will know what he’s been thinking.

“What’s what like?” Azir’s tone is patient; of all the assassin’s many quirks, this is one of the easiest to deal with.

“Being loved.” Talon turns his head, resting his fingertips on the railing to better his balance as he twists to look at Azir. “You had a wife and kids. Did they love you?”

“…Yes.” Azir’s beak clicks shut on the single word. His family is off-limits as a topic of conversation and Talon knows it. He waits for the assassin to pry, but instead, Talon studies his face for a few minutes, then shuffles closer. His bladed cloak drapes down from his shoulders but he’s traded the rest of his outfit for Shuriman garb, shirtless now with light white trousers that let the breeze blow through.

It’s not a bad look on him, Azir has to admit, and it’s far less menacing than usual. Perhaps his advisors will be less panicked about having a Noxian assassin around if Talon continues to attire himself more like a Shuriman.

“I’m not asking about them,” Talon says, the words slow as if they’re being pieced together by an inexpert mechanic facing an expensive luxury toy. “I just wanted to know what it feels like to be loved. To have someone care about you and want to make you happy.”

“Your sisters don’t love you?” Azir shuffles his wings uneasily, puffing up instinctively. Talon’s introspection is a first – and far, far too somber for Azir’s liking. While the assassin might be annoying, he’s not usually sad. Azir hadn’t even know that Talon could feel the lack of love in his life, let alone mourn it.

Talon shrugs. “Katarina’s all about Noxus and her father. If he comes back, she’ll side with him to see me slaved and broken again. Cass – I don’t know if she’d side with Marcus. I hope not. But they’re blood to each other and I’m just a jumped up piece of street trash.”

He leans forwards slightly, toes curling over the very edge of the railing.

“Besides. It’s Noxus. Wanting to be loved, wanting someone to be gentle with you, is shameful. If you’re worth anything, you have to be strong enough not to need gentleness. Not to even want it.” His short bark of laughter nearly makes him teeter over the edge; he jumps back gracefully, landing on his bare feet, and sweeps his cloak behind him. “Why would you want something that means you’re weak? Pathetic.”

“…The love of my wife and my children felt better than ruling the Empire or the love of my subjects,” Azir says as Talon turns sharply, facing him fully now with dark, dead eyes. Azir does not hesitate but keeps speaking. “She was awed by my position as Emperor at first and it took time for her to see me instead as a human man in need of her love. But when she gave it, it felt like the sun itself had replaced my heart. When my children smiled up at me, there was no sweeter joy nor pride than the love in their eyes.”

Something flickers in Talon’s eyes, then he bows his head and stares at the ground. “Thank you.”

Very gently, Azir reaches out with a wing and lets the feathers brush over Talon’s bare arm.

[sandsandsorrows]

@askdragonbladetalon Hi it’s still early in the morning and I still couldn’t get my hands on a cup of coffee, but I wrote a thing.

Pointy friend isn’t a thought he’d ever expected to catch himself thinking, yet here we are. It’s the first thing on his mind as he’s startled awake by a hand trying to fruitlessly locate his pulse. It doesn’t retreat or falter even when he opens his eyes to the dark room - what time is it even? - and turns his head towards the owner of said hand.

There really aren’t too many candidates for who that might be.

“Talon. Prey tell me, what are you doing?”

“You aren’t breathing,” the assassin says, his fingers buried in Azir’s feathers, still looking for proof that he’s alive and not a particularly talkative corpse. Azir draws in a breath so he can sigh.

“Ah, yes. I sometimes forget.” It’s more habit to him than necessity, like a lot of things lately. Part of it he can blame on Ascension, the rest, well. You can’t take something that has been dead and dust for millennia and make them truly alive once again. If pressed hard enough he would admit to being an unusually presentable lich of sorts, but it’s not something that he wants to discuss with Talon of all people. “Did you think I have died in my sleep?”

“Yes.” Talon was never one for lies when the truth is so much simpler.

There are sand soldiers all over the city an Azir peers through their eyes to seek out the clock tower. It’s barely even midnight damn it. Much too early to deal with Talon.

Azir reaches out and startles Talon by dragging him down to lay on top of him, the assassin’s head tucked under Azir’s chin.

“I am fine. I am alive.” After a fashion at least. “Sleep now. Questions in the morning.”

Talon tenses at the sudden touch and it takes long moments for that tension to ebb away. Long enough that Azir half expects him to get up and leave as soon as he lets go of him, but Talon settles for wriggling into a more comfortable position curled up by the Emperor’s side. Probably to humor him and nothing more, but he’ll take this as a small victory.

He huffs and pulls part of the blanket over the Talon. Not that he would need it mind you, not when he’s still wearing his clothes - even that ridiculous cape of knives - and is this close to Azir who is radiating heat, but it’s just polite to do so. Never let it be said that he hogs the blanket.

He wonders, briefly, if he could sneak out before sunrise to avoid the barrage of questions Talon will pelt him with, as usual, but even he can admit that it’s nothing more than wishful thinking.

[sandsandsorrows]

I dare you to kiss sandsandsorrows

“How do you kiss people?” Talon asked after an unnervingly long period of silence. While the assassin was good at silently staring at people, he usually spent his time around Azir barraging him with questions. Today, however, he’d dropped down from the roof (causing a lot of screaming, panic and two thrown spears before Azir had reminded the court that this was just what Talon did, it was not a prelude to an assassination, and Talon was not here to kill anyone), found a vase to perch on and stared at Azir wordlessly through the entire council meeting.

Once it was finally over, he’d broken the silence with his odd demand.

“Generally, two people put their mouths together, don’t bite, and then take their mouths away.” Azir sighed, reaching up to rub the side of his head. He understood Talon asking him questions about Shurima but this? Surely there was someone in Noxus who could teach the assassin – who looked to be in his twenties – about the birds and the bees. No. He’d better not use that wording. He did not want to give Talon any reason to start speculating about how birds, or Ascended falcon Emperors, procreated.

“I know that,” Talon said. His muscles bunched, then he leaped from the vase to the table, skidding over its surface until he was crouched in front of Azir. “I mean, how do you personally kiss? With this?”

As if his words weren’t clear enough, he reached out and tapped Azir’s beak with his fingernails.

“I don’t,” Azir said, feathers fluffing up irritably. “Is that all?”

Talon cocked his head to a side, appearing to consider that for a few seconds, then leaned down and touched his lips to Azir’s beak.

Azir barely even felt it, eyes crossing as he looked down the short length of his beak to see what Talon was doing now. The assassin had turned his head to a side and was rubbing his cheek against Azir’s beak.

“There,” Talon pronounced with the utmost satisfaction. “That’s how you can kiss.”

For the sake of Talon not doing anything stranger, Azir nodded.

Being an Emperor meant knowing when to yield.

[sandsandsorrows]

wedding ring drabble

Arranged Marriage Starters/Drabbles | Still Accepting.

“It is an insult,” his people say, murmuring to each other under the shade of the bazaar stalls, in the quiet times after lunch, in small groups clustered tightly around hookahs.

“It is an insult,” his advisors say, plucking their chins in distress, slamming their staffs against the ground, puffing out their chests under their robes, glowering at the ground.

Azir looks at the young man, so slim when stripped of his bladed cloak, and thinks of knives in the night, the hunger of Noxus which will consume everything and his young, untested army.

“It is a warning,” he says and as Emperor, he has final say.

Keep reading

[sandsandsorrows]

If I may add something go this discussion, as someone who feel that might be able to bring up something no one has decided to bring up. It is a little known fact that skin color DOES change depending on the amount of light. I don't mind tanning either. My mother is Native American, and was dark all her life until she moved with my father up north. Now, she's pretty much white. And no, I don't mean 1/16 Native I mean from the reservation and has her card. (1/2)

Kai'Sa never saw light for over a decade and Sivir travel to many places abd did canonally stayed in Noxus for quite some time. This DOES affect skin color. Now, that said I do wish there were more dark skin champions, but people need to consider backgrounds and SUNLIGHT when asking for skin color.(2/2) 

I’m not asking for skin color alone, although I would argue that a black or an Asian person would look still recognizably black or Asian regardless of the amount of time they spend in the sunlight.

If you took Lucian, Ekko, Illaoi or Taliyah and changed their skin to something lighter they would still look distinctly non-Caucasian. Take Taliyah’s Freljord skin for instance.

I probably should have made it clearer that my problem isn’t mainly with her skin color (and you are right, because she has spent almost no time in the sun for several years she would have become lighter), but with her having NO non-Caucasian features at all.

[sandsandsorrows]

dealin-em:

Been reading these on and off, and I have a question.

Let’s assume that yes, Riot has a problem with their character designs There are more characters that are created with a Eurocentric form a beauty than any other kind of character– and no female character (to my knowledge) is an amputee, while I think 3 men characters have some form of disability.

How many more characters would Riot need to create from this point forward for the general public to agree “Okay, Riot creates characters with variety. Would it need to be a 50/50 thing?

Also, do financial things take part in this as well? If characters with certain aspects of beauty make more money for riot than others, should Riot sacrifice money for artistic integrity?

I don’t want to turn this into an argument about what percent of characters need to represent X thing before it becomes acceptable, progressive, etc. because that was not the original point and frankly I have no idea.

Could we at least agree that the characters coming from obviously not-European inspired cultures shouldn’t be light skinned to the point where it’s impossible to tell that they are not white?

This applies to Ionia (Asia and India), Bilgewater (seemed very Caribbean inspired to me) and Shurima (Middle East and Africa) mostly. Don’t just borrow the props and the costumes, make the characters fit the background.

There is place for characters that are traditionally white and pretty and I don’t live under the delusion that they will ever drop the same-face-same-body-pretty-woman mold entirely because I there is still a percentage of the player base who doesn’t pick their champions based on playstyle, but sex appeal.

But when it comes down to taking stock of our Shuriman human characters and the list goes:

Taliyah (perhaps the only one who without doubt looks the part)

Kassadin (whose face is covered, pre-void could possibly be arabic)

Malzahar (face covered, hard to guess skin color, could possibly be arabic)

Sivir (mostly white passing, could count as arabic on the rare occasion when they don’t forget to give her a tan)

Ryze (he’s purple, depicted as light skinned when he’s not)

Someone looked at that list (or hadn’t even bothered to do that) and decided that yes Kai’sa, light skinned pretty lady with zero Shuriman characteristics and a face that’s almost indistinguishable from pre-rework Katarina will be perfect to round out the desert roster.

The question should be “why the fuck is riot so allergic to let desert dwelling people be dark skinned?” not “okay but what if they earn a little less money if they make more characters who aren’t pale as a snowflake and pretty as a doll?“. They are a very big company and most of the money is in the skins and in esport anyway.

[sandsandsorrows]

@miighted replied to your post :

   id say shes white passing, because shes still technically not a white person even if riot are cowards    

It’s still a design flaw. I’m not trying to argue that she isn’t technically white, I’m saying that the fact that despite being specifically from the desert she’s looks like any other white female character in the game contributes to her overall bland and bad design.

If anything it’s one more opportunity riot missed to make her unique or interesting because they were cowards.

[sandsandsorrows]

Okay, but imagine a Piltie archeologist bringing Azir the transcript of an ancient text or other because emperor or not he’s still way more approachable than Nasus.

He just stares at the paper, turns his head this way and that, looks at it from different angles. Finally points a finger at a symbol in the first row.

“That is either an elephant or a very excited hyena, either way I have no idea what it means, next time bring me the original.“

His hieratic (cursive) is pretty damn atrocious so his logic is if he can read his own handwriting then he can read most other atrociously illegible handwriting as well and he’s usually not wrong.

[sandsandsorrows]

do you ever just... look at an ancient document and go "holy crapwaffles, Wenennefer had terrible handwriting, i am yelling at you from the future, don't you know that even if this is just a message to the baker asking him to use more of that honey pepper glaze you like, i have to read it and you really should be taking more care"?

Yes, and no. Mostly some other poor unfortunate soul

*pause for Little Mermaid chorus*

has transcribed it into hieroglyphs before I even got there, meaning I don’t have to bother trying to decipher the general chaos of the hieratic that the original document is in. I mean, I can read hieratic, but the effort of reading something like this:

When I could read something like this:

(note: these are the same 10 lines of a text in both examples)

It’s really no contest. As a rule, Egyptologists will not read the original hieratic handwriting if we don’t have to, because…well look at it. Palimpests all over the place. This is a court document so this was in effect a stenographer writing down what was being said using a reed, that needs to be dipped every 4 words, on a piece of papyrus on a board on his lap. Thutmose’s handwriting was always going to be terrible under these circumstances. 

However, terrible handwriting can often aid us in identifying who was writing what, because after all, the one thing people with terrible handwriting are is consistent. I can’t really be mad at them then. Writing with a reed and having to re dip it every few words is hard work (ahahaha I tried once and it was terrible), so I tend to empathise with them. Plus they never intended for their work to be read by someone this far in the future. I don’t write a sloppy shopping list and expect an archaeologist in the future to curse me out because I didn’t use the best handwriting (not intending any other audience than myself). Can we truly say it’s bad handwriting if we’re looking it from a perspective of someone who has never grown up with this language? 

Nevertheless, there is someone who we know who transcribed hieratic into hieroglyphs and fully intended for his work to be used by a multitude of people. His name is Kurt Heinrich Sethe. He wrote the Urkunden, which looks like this:

DON’T YOU KNOW SOMEONE HAS TO READ THIS, SETHE? 

YOU 

REALLY 

SHOULD 

BE 

TAKING 

MORE 

CARE.

[sandsandsorrows]

“I feel like there is something… amiss.”

Dark Star Jarvan, because I absolutely adore this skin.

[sandsandsorrows]

You are just nitpicking for no reason again.

I’m at a point where unless they are doing something extremely fucked up (see the whole Noxus debacle) or someone specifically asks for my opinion like now, I’m ignoring the new lore because I can’t be bothered to care. I know I’m getting this reputation as a never ending source of salt, but I’m in general just disappointed about the whole thing rather than mad. Being mad is too much effort and it’s just not worth it

I would also argue that calling the Kaisa lore a whole bunch of nothing is nitpicking. For fuck’s sake there’s zero new information in the text, they didn’t even bother to try to explain away the extremely boring and honestly lame design the champion has.