#I decided to omit that

[reginrokkr]

𝐗𝐗𝐈𝐈𝐈. With the appearance of Ronova, her overall presence and the environment being all veiled in an ominous red, big reasons to think that she was the one present in Khaenri'ah during the era where the crimson moon was worshipped and thus the Crimson Moon Dynasty was the ruler appeared:

The dogmatic priests convinced the muddle-minded king upon the throne that the remnants of the Crimson Moon in the sky ruled all, For it is the color of the moonlight that flows beneath mortal flesh, and the darkness hidden within the bottom of the abyss shall too emerge from the Crimson Moon. This being so, the king of humanity should take upon himself the name of the Crimson Moon, and by the light and flame of two worlds judge fickle fate. Thus they yearned for transcendent individuals to build countless glorious towers, and prayed for the long-dead Crimson Moon to bring them salvation.

As per their convictions, one extended belief that reached the last of Khaenri'ah's days was that from the crimson moon they'd get the abyssal power they always craved for in order to topple the gods. Which is ironic thinking about the arguably dark vibes Ronova gave herself as possessing abyssal origins to some extent as well as the curse of immortality due to its similar symptoms and signs to abyssal exposure.

Moreover, moving to the Perinheri book collection:

Perhaps it was the fear brought on by the darkness combined with hunger and exhaustion, but Perinheri did indeed see an illusion. The crimson moon, hanging high in the pitch-dark night sky, suddenly turned around, revealing itself to be a titanic, horrified eye.

Besides the point that this may look like a vague description at most that can or cannot be an exaggeration for literal purposes of the book, there is one thing that connects deeply with the mystery behind the fall of the Crimson Moon Dynasty as a plausible reason why it happened in the first place:

Until the astrologists branded as heretics glimpsed in the inverted image of the false sky the origin of all the world's fate, Until the unquenchable flames of doubt and fury blazed across the dreamless realm like wildfire, finally burning to the moonlight-hued palace itself...

As it's customary of Khaenri'ah, there were those who learned the truth about the origin of all fate and as a result, they were branded as heretics due to the disbelief of the rest. Nevertheless, the entire society fell into an uproar that included the assassination of many of these people and the eventual fall of the Crimson Moon Dynasty, soon to be replaced by the Eclipse Dynasty after that. So let's put ourselves into perspective: we have a kingdom that was purposefully founded in a place where the gods' gaze doesn't reach, formed a belief that goes against the gods and worshipped the crimson moon only to find out that this same crimson moon was none other than a god— actually, one of the shades of the God King that started it all. It would understandingly cause an existential crisis and the people would seek to deviate into a different direction as fast as possible.

By the time of the blackened sun, the name of the Crimson Moon had long faded along with the crimson that had flowed. Only the epithet "Balemoon" remained to stain the lingering detritus. Whether the unclean who suffered from the curse, or those unblemished ones not yet tainted by fate, none would again consider themselves a follower of the moon's remnants. Few survived the utter destruction of their kind, hiding in the shadows where the sun did not shine, longing for the Crimson Moon to decree their desire for vengeance be repaid—

Neither those who continued in the kingdom under the newly-established Eclypse Dynasty nor those who survived and exiled themselves somewhere else continued to worship the crimson moon, and the name they're referred to is derogatory at best in the memory of foolishly worshipping a god. Furthermore, either this event in specific or something else caused the crimson moon's departure as well until the last moments of Khaenri'ah during the burst of the Cataclysm where the moon came back.

And not only that, it was confirmed that the author of the curse of immortality was Ronova herself, which further incentives the thought that she was present as the crimson moon in Khaenri'ah millennia ago. As punishment for weaponizing the Abyss (which it's now known that it's the fault that led to Khaenri'ah's ruin and punishment), Ronova came again. However, there is an interesting passage in Dain's introduction narrated by Vedrfolnir that insinuates her taking revenge on the Eclipse dynasty:

The original calamity had been overturned, yet the island in the sky set the earth to burn. Chalk pursues gold, in this time inopportune, [the eclipse is swallowed by the crimson moon / the crimson moon takes revenge on the eclipse].

Which could be either seen through by cursing all the Khaenri'ahns, no matter if they were to blame or not for using the abyssal power too (as per Thrain's words, most of the people didn't know about its exploitation by the Five Sinners and Dain's fond words for Khaenri'ah despite his evident distaste for what the Abyss Order (many of which are Khaenri'ahns that had transcended into abyssal creatures) seem to attest as much) or something entirely different that wasn't revealed yet.

Lastly, knowing all of this, it's understandable that the survivors of the Crimson Moon Dynasty would feel petty about those of the Eclipse Dynasty and wanted nothing to do with them, as what they said was true and even so they were annihilated and chased away of the kingdom only to... not do things any better than they used to.

[molinaesque]

The Ghoul/Cooper Howard making pre-war references

[remindertoselfto]

More Gumshoes

[mammoth-clangen]

Next Previous First

I promised you Bats and I have delivered! Sorry he's having a bad time though c':

This moon is sad but I really love it tbh, I enjoyed getting to explore all the kids personalities a bit better! Also yes, Dart is- what we in the business call- a bit clueless /affectionate

FOG TIME!! I drove through a huge fogbank for nearly an hour in August and since then i have desperately wanted to draw a foggy moon. Moon 6 was already colour coded by that point and this one made sense, so I went with it eve

Kindred of the Mammoth is on Comicfury as well!

[falafels]

pt.13 !! <pt.12 pt.14>

taglist for @andrewsleftarmband @blurryhour @you-know-i-get-itt @notexactlythatgirl @strangeoffputtingrat @tessasilverswan @minyard-05 @carbon-dated-gal @bisexualchaosdemon @stormiiflies <3

[c0riiander]

are you ever going to post an art tut or a speedpaint?

i don't know how to make an art tutorial but here's a speedpaint😭

also, side note: the way i did my lineart(?) is a bit different from usual because i don't have my drawing tablet with me anymore so i had to use my finger in the meantime but the whole art process is still the same :3

[brainrotcharacters]

I'm disappointed that Feysand has a son. I'm not disappointed that they have a child! I'm disappointed it's a boy and critical, life-threatening information had been omitted from Feyre about birthing that child. Omitted even by her mate, the father of that child.

Why is it considered a cunty, iconic thing for Feylin to have a daughter, but canon Feysand has a son. The birth of a fae daughter, not to mention the first future High Lady by birth and not by declaration, is designed only for pettiness and humiliating a male? Not in the name of continuing to make the Night Court, with its collection of powerhouses like Feyre and Nesta Archeron, a better place? The very thing the other characters had spoken paragraphs about wanting to do?

I'm afraid for Nyx's future in that court.

[ezlo-x]

Also sorry i havent been drawing much lately 😭

[bigsnaff]

AN ODE TO MY MONSTERS

[swasdoodles]

dA request. A human Draculaura.

[clownleys]

I'm a long time follower and I love your blog, I'm happy to see you again on my dash <33

Would you give a shoutout to a few of your fav mutuals and spread positivity too? <3

darling, this made me feel so happy and warm inside, you have no idea! how long have you been around? 👀 i love all my mutuals dearly, so i can't choose any faves. but i do want to appreciate the people that make me smile here everyday, so i'll give a shoutout to those who i see regularly in my notes or interact with, both mutuals and followers (including you, dearie!!) in the order of appearance: you dear!, @tikitikitu, @nicenightmare13, @cryolyst, @alexrrr, @cononeillbreastingboobily, @cantputitintowords, @mudalchemy, @anon 💋, @violetwreck, @very-authorized-author, @witchwhaat, @chaoticjuless, @way-to-go-lad, @voidistooshortforausername, @livy-doll, @eucatlyptus, @essaytime, @maurice-a-novel, @antea21, @thriceandonce, @holi-holy, @knifebun, @kli-kli, @pointlesshroom, @atencjuszka, @trevoristhemandarin, @pinkie-satan, @svantetic, @ichithecupcake, @chleby-i-ksiezyce, @iorwethh, @soraaiame, @glompto, @spiremire, @ocaenvvaves, @fangable, @warczacy, @svantetic, @chleby-i-ksiezyce, @yukinojou, @neutron-stars-collision, @a-lost-little-eevee, @sadchtulhu, @youre-you-i-am-me.....

alright im pretty sure i broke some sorta limit bc it won't tag people anymore? so anyway! here's a tiny portion of the people i really love on here! 💕

[braceletofteeth]

When society is robbed of Khabkluen moments as a dentistry student... JoongDunk to the rescue!

[epersonae]

Director's cut of "For The Benefit of All the Broken Hearts", please! (p.s. - is it annoying if I send more than one of these? I have Curiosity)

I saw that it was for the whole fic and I just [stares into space] - because not only is it 62,158 words, which is a lot of words, for me anyway, but it also is one of those stories that occupied my entire brain for months on end, and is still kind of a core part of my personality. I could probably do a whole Taika-commentary-track-of-Boy thing with it, and be equally weird and revealing. 😅

But in trying to pick out a single aspect to write commentary, I realized I've never written the post I've been threatening to write for a year (WHAT), which is what I learned about writing an unnamed protagonist. (Or at least I can't find anything in the #carlita coded content tag.) It's now been a year, so it's likely I will miss something important, but it was such a striking learning experience that I think I can do pretty well with it.

This got long, so more under the cut:

Because aside from being obsessed by the subject matter and vibes and all that, writing for the benefit of all the broken hearts was an incredible boost in my writing craft. (the other big boost was around dramatic pacing and narrative tension and foreshadowing, btw.)

She didn't have a name in the original, and deliberately so, and I was committed to that in my work. See also: Rebecca; this post's tags has some thoughts about Rebecca as a narrative influence in addition to the technical aspects. And unlike Rebecca, I was writing in close third person. (One of the reasons that when I'm feeling particularly cocky I will say SUCK IT DAPHNE DU MAURIER.)

And that's not that hard to do when there's only two characters in a scene and they use different pronouns, but so much of the story is her and Mary. (this post made me laugh A LOT) Which means I can't use pronouns to do the lifting, instead I had to think about other ways to handle it structurally.

Using Mary's name probably more than I would normally, to be quite honest. Her name is in many more dialogue tags and starting actions than I think it would be otherwise, because if Mary's doing one action, she's doing the other action; if Mary is saying one bit of dialogue, she's saying the other.

Using line breaks strategically, clearly separating character actions; and I think over time this actually made a difference in distinguishing how they act (and speak) differently from one another, that carried over to her interactions with Ed and Stede as well. And that carries over to how Mary also becomes a more distinct character.

In some cases, this went as far as actually rearranging the physical action. I don't remember the precise details, but there's something about when they first go into the kitchen in Ch 15, when Stede is making drinks, where you have all four characters directly interacting: I reworked who was doing what where to disambiguate which "she" I'm talking about.

There's also a lot of very fiddly sentence rewording, rethinking every individual sentence, and does every clause need to be there, and what is every single sentence doing. Because there's a lot of ways of writing that are "natural" (aka I have been writing fiction off and on since I was probably nine years old, and even with a wholeass English degree and a lot of supplemental reading about craft, I'm still kind of intuitive about my writing) that lead to structures where clearly her name would go here, but I can't do that, so: is the sentence working? Should it get flipped the other direction? Do I need a paragraph break? Is it okay if it's a little ambiguous -- there's a line in one of the coffeeshop scenes where it's kind of unclear which one of them does some gesture or another, and I decided that the ambiguity worked, actually.

And then probably my favorite craft becomes theme trick, particularly where there's sort of a repetition of sentence structure, or where Mary has been doing something and her actions are in reaction to that: sometimes it makes it work to just remove the subject of the sentence. Walks across the room. Picks up her coffee. It both somehow makes things clearer despite offering less detail AND reinforces this thematic thing of her being both absent and present.

Bonus difficulty level, btw: even if epithets had made sense for the tone (which they did occasionally, iirc), I deliberately chose to have very limited physical description of both her and Mary, on account of them both being amalgams not of actor and character (like Ed, Stede, Jim, Roach, etc), but of either two real people and real person and character played by a different real person respectively. They are both entirely secret third thing, and giving them things like hair color/style (beyond a vague reference to length) or eye color takes that away. (Instead they have some details of their overall physicality - age, respective heights - and clothing, both of which also tie into the themes of the thing.)

Honestly, overall it was an interesting creative puzzle, and I learned a ton -- Through the Storm, which is a very very very different story, owes a lot to it, and I've managed to commit to the bit through all the missing scenes fic (altho since a lot of that is alternate POV, there's a lot of "Ed's wife" construction, which is not my favorite) and the alternate bad endings fic.

tagging the beta team in case anybody has anything to add; this was very much a group project, esp in identifying places where it was clear to me but not to other people: @emi--rose @veeagainsttheday @gaypiratebrainrot

also, going to leave this here - when I went to ECCC in 2023 the original artist of this meme was selling versions with a blank word balloon and you could have her write in something, and I got it left blank with the idea that I would write other things on the plastic or if ever get a glass frame, but uh, it's been Carlita? since March of 2023.

there's so many other things I could have written about at this length about this story (both specific details and the thematic stuff), I'm serious.

and to answer your ps: NOT ANNOYING AT ALL. clearly I enjoy talking about my writing. :D

[director's commentary asks]

[foundfamilyhq]

[oldmanffucker]

hello ive gone thru the gloaming tag. i see u have watched n i raise my previous query if ur so inclined 👁️

(previous query was about how I, as a grief specialist, feel abt in the gloaming)

ok i wrote out an outline as i was watching it and haven't had the spoons to do more with it but here's that:

Mourning rituals - letting danny have a say, but also the bag pipes - a connection to the grandfather, to danny, and to his dad, who could remember and offer them for the funeral. To be a part of the creation of the service.  “No lilies” “In the language of flowers, the Lily has long held the symbolic meaning of fertility, purity, and remembrance. They are a time-honored inclusion in memorial arrangements and are considered spiritually symbolic of the circle of life. Individual types of lily flowers and the respective colors of the petals may hold additional meanings.”

Father - head and dissonant griever. He grows tomatoes not because he likes them but bcause his wife does. He tends his tomatoes, covering them in the winter, tending to them gently throughout the year. Silently, lovingly. “I think he grows them for you”  Realizes that his father does love in his own, quiet, unassuming way. Must be an earth sign.

“I dont see that much love, I dont even see that much connection.” “sticking it out, doing it together. Endurance.” [later, I miss paul… i guess he didn’t have enough endurance as it were.] 

other moments of quiet care: “Come and see what I’ve done with your room,” “I seem to remember lamb’s his favorite” making him the reception dinner. “she’s one of the museum’s most valbuable assets,” we see him pruning the tomato plants and collecting the tomatoes in a basket to show off to his wife. He comes in after danny goes to sleep “did he talk to you?” “So you’ll talk to him about it?” “just tell carla and i give her the specifics of ti” “well i turned out all the lights” making things easier for her “tell me about your book” Dad sees she looks stressed while making dinner and takes action, trying to bring her to the places she mentioned. Gets up to try to catch danny when he needs to get up for his broncho treatment. We dont see the ramp getting installed, but i would assume that the dad put it there. “I thought I’d make it more homey in here” - he brings in his trophies, Trying to talk about what he’s interested in - tennis - but seems to be one step behind him on everything. The picture of him and Gary, the tennis, the trophy, the lamb. It’s not until the bag pipes at the end that he can seem to get it right. “I’ve got some donuts hidden in my desk,” him trying to let his son in, connecting, being more human.

Initially we see him dealing with the degenerating health of his son by constantly exercising - reminding himself that he is healthy, likely due to discomfort of being confronted with death. But also perhaps as a continuing bond to the danny he remembers.

Deep discomfort with not just death, but the visible death undertaken by his son. Adding the death he has a precarious relationship with to the already precarious relationship with his son, making undertaking a new relationship with his son may feel extra fraught or dangerous. “I dont think he likes being around me very much. He doesn’t know me. He doesnt have a clue as to who i am.”

Not everyone is built to be a hands on supporter in the intimate moments of dying. We see the dad cant engage until the son is gone. "Tell me what else my son liked," suggesting the bagpipes

Mother - was good with being understanding right out the gate - the embodiment of how to approach a dying loved one - she’s a masterclass in embracing that the death is real, and not speaking around that truth (while also never belaboring the point). “I have to write a will.” she says nothing “thank you.” “for what?” “For not saying there’s plenty of time for that or some similar hooey.” is his mom simply not saying that there’s still time to write a will. It’s her simply nodding and saying okay when Danny says he wants to write a will.

“What else do you remember?” I loved this as an example of starting a conversation in a way that communicates desire to listen, safety in reminiscing. Treating him as a person.

We see there’s a yarn swift in the background in the living room, meaning that she is liekly an avid fiber artist with yarn, and I bet she made that hat for Danny! What a labor of love.

Hardly leaves the house, is attached to danny at the hip, afraid that he’ll die if she leaves.

Sister - we don't see a lot from her, but we do see shame about AIDS in that she doesn’t ever bring her husband or son around to visit Danny. This indicated that, though it’s not shown, her grief is and will be disenfranchised, at least insofar as she is able to express it with her husband. She may be reticent to bring it up with family, or she may allow herself to express her grief with her family and not with her husband. She also suggests that mom’s over-attentions made him gay.

The movie is not only about grief, but about what a good death can look like. 

(Of course within that is the inescapable politics of what constitutes a good death, who gets a good death, and the privileges of affording a good death, so I will mention that here, but will focus mostly on what it is about the death that makes it a so called good death. )

His family takes him in to receive hospice care, sets up a hospital bed, has a safe and not overstimulating space to experience the end of his time and catch up with his family and have a part in planning his funeral, speak his truth, have in in home nurse keeping him as comfortable as possible.

When Danny first comes home, they are continuing to treat him with, at least a hearty performance of, normalcy, though his dad’s just shakes his hand when he comes in, and his sister pats his back as she leaves and when his meds come out the all scatter.

This is not a story about breaking the hard news of illness or dying to anybody. This isn’t a movie about the dying man scrabbling to make it to the solid ground of acceptance from some deep valley below. He’s at acceptance already.

Nurse, very straightforward. Honest, gentle. Letting Mom help with the medical stuff, feel connected to a new process in his life. 

"It’s amazing what vast sorrows can do to open up to the most essential action of loving out loud" Showing how this time of confrontation of the uncomfortable facts of death are opening the family up to saying all that they neglected to say in the intervening years.

“I think youre anything but average”

“How much do you really know about the range of my personal experience, mom?”

Mom goes from changing the subject when she has to talk about herself and the things she likes, saying there's nothing interesting about her, to explaining that there are little nuances to the things she likes about movies. to talking about the little things easily, even talking about sex scenes - things usually not talked about in “polite company”

“I think maybe we should change the subject.” “Well then maybe we shouldn’t.”

“What’s your favorite holiday?”

Talking about Paul “Don’t ask don’t tell?” “I’ve always accepted you." "I think you have, you just haven’t always…participated.”

('the 4 thanksgivings before we broke up' aaa awugh)

“I felt excluded, danny was always your favorite." "Why didnt you ever say anything." "Because we don't talk about those things.”

“Did you love? Were you loved in return?” “Yes.”

Obviously the gloaming in this time between life and death, the dusk of his life.

Of the gloaming: “Everything seems to move more slowly,” 

"You thought I said it was gloomy" “I always thought it hurt you somehow that the day was over, but you said it was a beautiful time because for a few moments the purple light made the whole world look like the Scottish highlands on a summer night.” (full quote from the original short story) - the dusk of life may seem gloomy because it's the end of a life, but in this story, it's a beautiful time because the mother and son come back together like comets.

(I am quite obsessed with the way Alice Elliot Dark used knitting as metaphor ESPECIALLY when she described Danny's death. It was so so beautiful.)

[iffylogic]

Tagged by @mereelskirata, thanks for the tag friend! 🥰

Rules: Write down your 5 fave movies and let others decide your vibe!

No-pressure tagging: @pinnadraws @sevlinop @deemoyza @daily-rayless @runicmagitek