#BUT HES FIXED NOW ALL IS GOOD SORRY

[marclef]

realizing ive been using. text format to upload some of my stuff instead of actually labeling them as photos. uhhh whoops.

SO reposting this one just in case. Very Good Sprite redraw friends. enjoy.

[deoidesign]

Portrait of a vampire

Photo of a werewolf (who doesn't trust cameras)

As a treat I like to paint my characters realistically from time to time... so I can see them...

Webcomic

[arsenicflame]

It's a time-honoured tradition- every time Sam comes across Izzy (and Ed) in their travels, he asks Izzy to marry him. And every time, Izzy turns him down.

At this point, Sam is asking more for the sake of it than any belief Izzy will ever say yes, a remnant of childhood dedication touched with 30 years of heartbreak and regret- though even now, a small part of him still holds out hope. Sam's promises have only got more extravagant over the years, from a job as his first mate, to a captaincy, a fleet at his command, a whole fucking island if that's what Izzy wants- but he knows it isn't though, not really. If Izzy was ever going to agree to marry him, to leave his life and go with Sam, it wouldn't be for anything Sam could offer him. Izzy never did care for flashy shows of wealth, for a ship or to be captain. The only thing that ever mattered to him was loyalty given, and loyalty shown in return. 

It all comes to a head after Stede left and came back, after Izzy lost a toe, lost his leg. Sam hasn't seen him since before things with Ed started to really slide off the rails, before stress permanently set into the lines of Izzy’s face. So, when he sees a dishevelled man with a hoof for a leg in a no-name port, he doesn't even consider the idea that he might know him. It's only when he turns towards him, and Sam catches a glance at those oh too familiar tattoos, he realises this is Izzy, his Izzy, that stands before him.

Knowing Izzy's discomfort with pity, he doesn't treat him any differently than he would in years gone by, positioning himself in Izzy's line of sight before approaching and sweeping him up into a bone crushing hug. 

“Israel-goddamn-Hands!” he exclaims, as Izzy grumbles back a begrudging “Samuel-fucking-Bellamy”, a tradition almost as old as their friendship itself. Izzy might not hug him back, but he can’t keep the corner of his mouth from twitching, just for a second.

(If Sam holds Izzy a little tighter and a little longer than usual, well. That's his business)

By the time Sam lets go, most of the crew has appeared in the town square, drawn in by the commotion. They may have given Izzy his leg and welcomed him as one of them, but still there’s an underlying tension, with nobody quite ready to set aside everything that happened before the Kraken. Seeing him cosying up to an unknown man sets everyone on edge, unsure whether to come to their first mate’s aid, or to assume that they've been betrayed once again.

When Ed sees that the yelling was Sam, his hand goes tense where it's held in Stede's. He knows the routine, has seen it more times than he can count, but as he watches them part he realises that this is the first time in a long time he's unsure of what Izzy's response will be.

Knowing that something’s different, knowing that Izzy's feeling vulnerable already, Sam doesn't go for the same flashy proposal he’s been giving for years. He doesn't promise Izzy the world, he doesn't cause a scene (or, any more of a scene than he already has, anyway). He looks at the fractured man in front of him, takes his face in his hands, and says the exact same thing to him he said when they were little more than boys. “Israel, I have to ask you. I know what you'll say, but I have to try. Come with me. Marry me and sail away with me. I'll keep you safe”

And Izzy… hesitates. He glances over at Ed, at Stede, and says to Sam “...We’re staying in port for a week. Ask me again then”

That's the moment Sam knows there is something deeply, horribly, wrong. He's not just looking at an Izzy who got seriously injured in a fight and is struggling to cope, this is something so much bigger than that- and that Ed has something to do with it. Izzy wouldn't even be considering leaving if he didn't. Whether it was negligence or something more sinister, Sam doesn't yet know, but he intends to find out.

[bowenoke]

you'd think a timeloop of mouthwashing would go so hard but unfortunately i think to remain true to the source material. the crew member stuck in the time loop WOULD have to be jimmy

[bonicedemandarina]

Happy birthday Viktor! Ignore Jayce over there, he's cut out bc this isn't about him/j

[fujii-draws]

OKAY! Chatot rant in tags below! Read at your own discretion.

[le-fruit-de-la-passion]

putting a tiny pink bow in Viktor's hair. He is mine. I have married him. he cannot be hurt anymore.

[cern1cal0]

>> I'M THINKING MIKU MIKU OO-EE-OO <?>

[spanishinfluenza]

The knife shakes. The air throbs with the blood.

"God, help me."

A Rope In Hand

[weezerlvr228]

hi fam !!

[blushy-tigerrr]

vent in tags sorry

cw: mention of loss

[iridescentoracle]

Hello! I am here to ask about your Dior headcanons re: the political cohesion of Doriath. 👀

Oh man, I didn't expect anyone to actually take me up on that!

(Okay so I got partway into writing this and then realized I should probably note up front that I tend to stick to the Silm (& LOTR/the Hobbit where applicable, but they... aren't, here) as the most authoritative version of canon, and I can get into why and where the nuances/exceptions are there (I do say tend to stick, it's not hard and fast!), but that's mostly a side note here: the point is simply that I don't really factor other drafts or the poetic Leithian into my take on Doriath, Thingol, Dior, etc, just what we're told in the actual Silm. I also read the Silm as an in-universe history text compiled by in-universe scholars, who, being people, are going to have their own biases and blind spots, even when they're doing their best to be accurate!)

So, this is a two-part thing: #1, there's the political cohesion of Doriath before & at the time of Thingol's death, which i talked about in the tags of the post that prompted this ask but is kind of necessary as context for the Dior part to make sense, and #2, there's the actual Dior headcanons. Both of these parts are very long because I've never really seen anyone else suggest any of this stuff and I want to explain where I'm coming from thoroughly enough that it actually makes sense to people who aren't me, but the TL;DRs:

TL;DR 1: I think Doriath was probably a hot mess politically after Thingol died, with tensions between various groups of Sindar and Laiquendi in the leadup to Thingol's death & Melian's departure, and more political tensions afterwards between those who wanted Beren & Lúthien to come be the new rulers, and those who thought they should stay gone, with someone still in Doriath taking over.

TL;DR 2: I think Dior became Eluchil, potentially at the request of some portion of the Iathrim, hoping to help prevent Doriath from devolving into civil war, and saw dealing with the Silmaril-Fëanorioni situation as a lower priority than stabilizing Doriath's internal political situation until it was too late.

1. The political cohesion (or rather, lack thereof) in Doriath prior to Thingol's death

So, okay, the thing about Doriath is that we don't actually have any real idea of like... how much the Iathrim liked being the Iathrim? We're never told about any intra-Iathrim conflict, but a) the Silm was probably compiled mostly by surviving Gondolindrim or their descendants, so they wouldn't know about anything liike that unless surviving Iathrim told them, and after the Second Kinslaying I don't imagine many Iathrim would've been eager to talk about how things had actually been tense/messy/etc when they could remember everything as having been perfect until it was ruined by the Fëanorionrim, and doubly so after the Third Kinslaying, so why would anything like that make it into the Silm?

and b) what we do know about Doriath is that it wasn't really Doriath as we know it until Morgoth came back to Middle-earth, and everything went to hell.

At the start of the first age, you suddenly get Doriath (the fenced land!) being the one protected area of a continent that used to be totally free and open. How many Sindar actually didn't particularly care for Thingol's style of leadership, or simply preferred to live nomadic lives, going basically wherever they pleased, until suddenly that wasn't safe anymore, and you were only guaranteed survival if you were close enough to Menegroth to be within the Girdle when it went up? ditto how many Laiquendi had no interest in swearing loyalty to Thingol right after their own king had just been killed, but again, made it to safety and stayed there over taking their chances on their own in the outside world?

I think it's entirely possible that there were always potential political tensions under the surface in Doriath that just... never got written about, because they never boiled over into actual political conflict, and so it was never the sort of tension that had any bearing on the historical record.

Except then Beren & Lúthien happen to the world, and a few years later the Narn, and in the blink of an eye suddenly the only king Doriath has ever had is dead, and the only queen Doriath has ever had is gone and the Girdle with her—and more than that, the only rulers the Sindar had ever had for three thousand years before Doriath existed.

And where a few years earlier I think the Iathrim would probably have turned pretty universally to Lúthien, now she's abandoned them for her human husband—and while she's my favorite character in the entire legendarium hands-down and I don't blame her, I think that's another place there might have actually been some very mixed feelings among the Iathrim that nobody wanted to admit to later because how could anyone have been upset with Lúthien—and on top of her abandoning them for him, I think it's extremely probable most of Doriath did not actually get over their xenophobia about humans in general or Beren in specific when Thingol did (we know for sure at least some of Doriath didn't, cf. Saeros insulting Túrin's mother & sister to his face), but again, who's going to admit to having had a grudge against the holy couple of Middle-earth after the fact, you know?

Conversely, there could've been a sizeable faction of Sindar who had been totally loyal to Thingol until everything happened with Beren & Lúthien, but who found his actions towards them and/or Finrod to be where they drew the line, and while (unlike B&L themselves) that faction stayed in Doriath, there could've been a new, additional tension on that front.

Finally, for all we know there were multiple factions within the Laiquendi of Doriath, with political tensions stretching back to before their king died, rooted in who-even-knows!

2. Dior

All of that, of course, sets up a very, very messy political situation for Dior to walk into.

The Doriath stuff is arguably more speculation than actual headcanon, but here's where the unambiguous headcanons come in: I don't think "Dior Eluchil set himself to raise anew the glory of the kingdom of Doriath." Obviously that's how it got written down, but bluntly, I can't see Beren and Lúthien having a kid that stupid or, like, power-hungry and arrogant?

What I can see is a situation where the messenger that brought word of Thingol's death and Melian's departure asked Beren & Lúthien to come take over as the new king and queen, we promise we're not mad about you leaving and we won't be xenophobic to your husband anymore we swear it's fine now pretty please, Beren & Lúthien said no, and the messenger either asked Dior as a second choice, or said "okay fine none of that was actually true but Doriath is falling apart and we need a leader ASAP and there's about eight different contenders* (mostly kinsmen of Thingol or Laiquendi) being backed by various factions and it's going to devolve into civil war any minute so if you care at all—" and Dior said "would I do?"

(* Ask me about my Galadriel headcanon)

I don't think Dior necessarily wanted to be king of Doriath, and I don't think he saw the throne as his birthright or anything like that; I don't think anyone involved, from Thingol to Lúthien to Dior himself, ever considered the possibility of Thingol dying and needing an heir! I think it's possible he was asked, or at most that he offered, and either way, I think he saw becoming king as taking on a responsibility for the sake of others.

(Which, like, "well here's a potentially impossible task that I'm going to take up even though probably no one thinks I'm actually capable of it, but it's my duty to help others as best I can" sure does sound to me like an attitude one might develop when raised by Lúthien "I kicked Sauron's ass cast a sleep spell on Morgoth and persuaded the Valar to find a loophole in the fabric of reality" Tinuviel and Beren "I stayed by my father's side as an outlaw to give my mother time to lead the rest of our people away hopefully to safety knowing I would never see her or any of them again (and then spent several years being a giant thorn in Morgoth's side for good measure)" Barahirion, where "apparently my grandpa I may or may not have ever met died, guess that makes me the king of a place i may or may not have ever been" does... not.)

I also think he either took on the epithet Eluchil, or was given it by whichever factions of the Iathrim accepted him as king, when he actually became king. Obviously he's going to be referred to as Dior Eluchil even before that in retrospect because that's how he's thought of later, but that doesn't mean it was actually a name he always had, you know?

The final thing is, I think if Dior essentially walked into a political situation five seconds from devolving into civil war, it makes his inaction regarding the Silmaril prior to the Second Kinslaying make more sense: the Fëanorioni have been sitting around doing nothing about the Silmaril in Doriath / with Beren & Lúthien this whole time, the letter saying "hey that's our Silmaril give it back now" is probably just a formality, and Dior's only been ruling for a couple years, there's still plenty of people dubious about whether he should be king at all, he might well be subject to at least some of whatever xenophobia remains about humans in Doriath, and in general all the work he's done on stabilizing the kingdom will absolutely come undone again if he screws up; he's trying to keep a kingdom from falling apart, the Silmaril thing can wait.

Of course, it wasn't a formality, and it couldn't wait, but why would Dior have known that?

[widevibratobitch]

so what that i slept in for the exam. my voice teacher just called to talk about yesterdays concert and said some truly insane shit that made me cry again (but like. in a good way lol) so who even gives a shit lol

[beeholyshit]

Part 2: I hope you are sorry

[itsalwaysdark]

i was gonna make a post abt how i dont rly like like. Genre changing covers of songs and then realized upon introspection is that i sort of just dont like rock covers of songs generally

[tr0ubl3d-tr4n53nd3r]

I opened up about my body image issues and people called me a horrible person, told me I'm invalidating people with eds and that I'm body shaming people? God what the fuck? Ive got no fucking support system in real life and the Internet just hates me I guess.