#I used to write about grief a lot

[new-berry]

The curve of the earth makes a horizon

Martin/ Ben all fiction, future fic 2063? You are wrong about seeing a spelling mistake.

“When you kiss me I feel like it’s going to be like this forever. A better version of forever, that never gets boring.”

Martin looks through the lens of his camera, adjusting the shot by millimetres until the image was perfectly centred on nothing at all important.

There is a lot of rock. “Lots of fucking rock.” He says out loud. Looking around guilty for a second like someone might hear him. That someone might take notice of this old man standing on the lip of the Caynon taking photographs.

A late in life hobby, an excuse to go out into the wilderness. Careful, sanitised, wilderness. Retracing the holidays they took when they were younger.

His kids, their kids, insisting on regular check-ins, and scrutinising his itinerary. Turning into the hectoring nags they accused him of being when they were young. He takes a ridiculous deep satisfaction at this.

Martin knows that people can drown in sand. His kids, their kids, scold him for watching too many grim documentaries. Like he isn’t Nordic. Like every God his people ever had wasnt mostly a warning that the vagaries of fate will screw you over every time.

Kids raised in too much American sun. Playing in the pool with their dad. Martin the one with snacks and sunscreen. The desert lays waiting on the ground and in the air, and you can wake up with a throat like sandpaper and your lungs squeezing pain every time you draw breath.

There is a difference looking into a fjord, a satisfying cool promise. Ben cutting through the water like an otter. The summer of the midnight sun when Martin walked around every day with a ring in his pocket trying to find the perfect moment to propose.

Martin read that you, a younger you he supposes, even younger than his children now. You can see for nearly five kilometres before the curve - like a wine glass held with the stem between the index and middle finger, red wine swirling a little with the hand moving in time to the conversation full bloodied and alive on your tongue - of the earth makes a horizon.

That is a long way to see, longer if it is both behind and ahead of you. Martin turns away from the agonised mouth of the Grand Canyon. It looks, he’s pleased, exactly like he remembers. Exactly like yesterday. Exactly like last week. Exactly like forty years ago.

When they were young and Martin would insist they had to do something utterly different, and then park up on a beach for Ben.

The first time they saw the Victoria Falls and all that water was just too much to process and he and Ben had gone back to the lodge, barely speaking to each other the whole way home, and fucked all night. Hands rolling over each other like white water, faster and faster and dissolving into steam.

How they had missed two days of the safari and could have just stayed in London and fucked in their own bed. How Ben had looked so wide eyed and innoncent and said “a lot of fucking zebras man” whenever people asked about their trip.

He didn’t understand The Falls then, didn’t understand canyons, terrified by their immensity. He needed the thin steel of Ben behind him to back him up. Needed Ben’s breath in his ear and his hands on his hips. Now he gets it. The extent of time, the patience of waiting to cut through the last few layers of rock to the soft belly of the world underneath. Not blooming and fading, patient and enduring.

Love as a dream that someone else had last night. Martin woke up early, still cool enough to walk up to the edge here. Pretty soon the stones will be spiky with heat. He’s here under a sensible beige hat, his face shaded. Trousers with too many pockets and his kids, their kids, unread messages on his phone. An expensive gold watch that he rescued from Ben’s wrist.

He rests his hands on the metal guardrail that will soon be too hot to touch. The phantom of tattooed fingers that used to slide over his rest just outside his vision.

Eventually, the sludge left of the Colorado River still wading through the bottom of the Canyon will cut right through to the other side of the earth. This is how long it would have taken Ben and the boys to dig a hole to China, like they tried to years ago.

Ben’s face so serious, and their faces so intent. Blurred in his memory to little shovels moving as sand was flung around, all their shoulders getting red. The next morning the tide had smoothed the beach flat and they made sandcastles, Martin balancing out the sides where they were uneven, and Ben decorating them with shells. The careful little hands patting sand into place now sending him daily messages reminding him to hydrate properly in the heat.

He couldn’t have coped with that dark plodding river so many miles below his feet alone when he was young. Would have been terrified with the idea of running out of time. So much to achieve, so few winters left.

It is almost dark by the time Martin pulls into the small town he’s been using as a home base. It’s almost time to move on, he can feel it. Too long in the dust, and he’s longing for a damp that can settle in his body and anchor his brittle bones down. But he keeps driving around these small towns with their ordered streets filling in a checkerboard on the map. First street the thickest black line through the centre of the town, cutting second street west off and making it second street east, making order of the desert.

He came here, decades ago, with Ben. They were new to each other then and imagined, he imagined, you could make order by planning. But they didn’t stick to the route, they went off the map. Kept the secrets though, the ones they whispered, the ones they thought.

That trip that was carefully named many things, a vacation, a break, a road trip. A get away. Before the beach. Neither of them willing to admit out loud yet that it was a dress rehearsal for their possible future.

The two of them. A car. Two boys at play, all the weight of London sanded off. When he finally saw the Canyon he understood their trip. The first time he had gone to the desert he was a child and time has wounded his face to grooves but he’s still a boy hopelessly in love. Tripping over his tongue and Ben’s trying to explain what he wanted their future to be.

In his dreams he is young. And Ben is there. Ben drives and Martin has just woken up, woozy and not entirely sober after sleeping in a moving car. And he can smell Ben’s sweat on him, feel the salt and skin itching under his fingernails. Ben isn’t talking, just driving through the black, humming in tune with the white lines, dots and dashes, that appear in the headlights.

A truck appears from nowhere and breaks the spell, and Ben spills out a flood of words and love that chip the first stone face of the canyon away.

He’s told his kids, their kids, he’s travelling around. But he’s never far from a canyon. Every day when he comes back from walking the scrub looking for inconsequential images he can send back - nothing with bones picked clean in the sun, nothing with snakes, nothing with vultures posed on power lines like cartoons - he reminds himself it’s time to go soon.

Propped against the lamp is the last picture he took of Ben, when Ben was only just there. It’s in the sun all day and it’s faded almost away. And Martin holds to the idea for seconds every morning that replacing the past is as possible as replacing a photograph. That last picture that he took as much with his mind as his camera, swept years and travel from Ben’s body. Martin can only see his eyes and the gleam they held.

The smooth ordered bands of his skin with the carefully shaved beard that Martin would run his fingers over. Even now he runs his fingers over the image, Like peeling a sun burnt layer of skin off. The same way he’s brushed frost from a window, cleaned dust from a shelf, and underneath, not another layer, but the gleam of the glass and wood, the round of bones.

He knows that he can’t walk to the edge too many more mornings. That their kids are waiting, messages need to be answered, and the garden they planted needs watering. That no matter how far into the horizon he looks he won’t find that flung apart longing that they left here years and years ago. The earth curves, closes off behind you, no matter how desperately you look back.

[humlase]

Neil's mother may have been abusive, but that doesn't stop him from missing his mom and Abby is right there to pick up the pieces.

Or in other words, Abby gives great mom hugs.

[grimmweepers]

life comes at you so fast

[lupins-hehim-pussy]

I wanna know ur Fontaine msq criticisms 👁️👁️👂I’m all ears

I'm not sure if you wanted me to talk about this secretly or publicly but! Here I go!

The TLDR: Fontaine MSQ aestheticised prison, poverty, child abuse, the justice system/court and didn't properly address any of it.

More:

Focalors/Furina has way too much of a sympathetic angle for a dictator who's lets people drown with her inaction.

Neuvillette feels Bad for sentencing some people to death/prison, but that's it. He's one of the most powerful people in Fontaine. If he felt like there are systemic injustices, I.E sending an abused Child to prison, he should be the first person to DO something about it, not just cry and be sad so the audience can be like aw, that's complex character writing isn't it? No it's not! And guilt doesn't absolve you!!!!!!! (These are stuff we deal with in OTCOJ read my fic now /j)

Meropide has children in it, both Sentenced there (Wriothesley) and BORN THERE (Lanoire), and this is just a quirk of the place. Not only that, Meropide accepts prisoners of all genders and crimes. There are abusers and abuse victims in one place. Do you know how bad that is? How much potential for crimes to happen in a place like that— oh wait, Meropide isn't under Fontaine's jurisdiction. If you are assaulted as an inmate it literally means nothing to the court.

Wriothesley had no qualifications when he took over. Depending on how long he lived on the streets, how old he was when he killed his parents, how old he was when he was first taken in by the orphanage, etc, the man might never have more than 4–5 years of formal education. Sigewinne probably had to teach him how to write reports. And do Meropide's spreadsheets. Edit because I forgot to elaborate on this one: This isn't a point brought up anywhere, which is bad, because when poverty and incarceration robs you of a proper education (and the rights to vote in many places too, too, by the way), it reduces your prospects for jobs, reduces many people's ability to get a home etc etc. Wriothesley was just, narratively, Given his position.

Meropide is an industrialized prison, and they portray this as a good thing. Prisoners are paid in coupons for their labour, and this is also portrayed as a good thing.

The One-Meal-A-Day reform was something Paimon gushed about being so great of a perk, that people might want to go to jail for food (could be interesting and reflective of systemic poverty if MHY had brains, but they don't, so I was just Pissed because essentially all Paimon wanted to say was "Prison isn't so bad, but still don't go to prison guys! Prison labour is really hard!"). By the way, in most real-world prisons they are obligated to feed you three meals a day. Because that's how much food a human needs. MHY went with one meal just so they can say "if you want to eat more, you have to work." And then the welfare meal is a goddamn gacha. So imagine you're a starving child who's too weak to work in the fucking robot assembly line, and you wander up for your first meal in 24 hours, only to luck in with a shit one. I'd kill myself.

They wrote Wriothesley, who's a victim of the system, into a guy who's say shit like "I'm the Duke I can do whatever I want" for a cool moment where he choke-slams an inmate (I know he was a bad guy. But also, in copaganda when cops are violent/disregarding protocols, they are always only portrayed to do that against bad guys, so what does our critical thinking tells us about this one?) They wrote Wriothesley, who was an inmate of a prison so bad, so notorious that it is the literal boogeyman of Fontaine, that has a legal (???) fighting pit, with an administrator who abuses his position to be unreasonable, to willingly stay in the place and become an Administrator who would choke-slam an inmate while saying a cool line about how he has the power to do whatever he wants. They wrote him, the guy who had to be fed on the streets by melusines, to think one-meal-a-day was a good enough reform (while he spends god-knows how much on his boat). This wasn't a victim-turns-into-abuser narrative either, they want all this to be seen as positive character growth.

And then, the final kicker is, they gloss over his entire abuse. You can only read about these shit in his profile, which most people don't because they don't Have Him or doesn't care to unlock it/read it online, and they jammed his entire backstory into a flaccid info-dump at the end of his character story quest. This man isn't Allowed to feel abused and neglected and show any reaction to it within the narrative of Fontaine itself, because if they actually Gave Weight to what happened to him, they'd have to confront THE FUCKING JUSTICE SYSTEM they had NO PLANS on criticising. I don't think they ever explicitly said the fucking Crime-Theatre nonsense was Bad either.

I could go on, but this is already so long. But yeah, I hope this gave you an idea.

[naivety]

sorry but i hate that claudia's dress is hung up like it's in a museum. i know why it is, and it's sweet and tragic and i don't blame louis for trying to both honor and grieve her in this way, but i hate it <3 that her clothes fitted perfectly just for her by her immortal companion, just like her diaries, her own private thoughts penned down throughout her life, have been preserved and made perfect in bright open spotlight for gloved hands and watching eyes to feast on even in death. kinda hate it here

[longagoitwastuesday]

Kusakabe, dear, you're too beautiful to be saying that kind of stuff

[faithandfairies]

Okay, so in 5x12 after Jane jumps off that bridge and then gets rescued Maura is once again faced with the revelation that she's in love with Jane. This time she can't ignore it to the point that in Maura and Jane's first conversation after, Maura's feelings for Jane are like the elephant in the room.

But Jane dismisses Maura's visibly distraught reaction to her almost-death as survivor's guilt and Maura realizes Jane isn't on the same page and declaring her actual romantic love for Jane at that moment won't do them any good.

In the meantime she's still in a relationship with Jack, but the next time we see him Jane gives him a once-over and then pretty much asks Maura if there's trouble in paradise. Which obviously there is, Maura has just realized she can no longer simply ignore her feelings for Jane even if she really likes Jack.

Then Maura breaks up with Jack in that same episode for an excellent reason that technically has nothing to do with all of the above. But it's still fascinating that the first episode we see Jack in after Maura's realization about Jane Jane senses they're in hot water and then Maura breaks up with him.

Then Jane is all about making Maura feel better and literally lists every single pastime Maura likes and would like to try and Jane hates that she can come up with and pretty much promises to try it with Maura if she will just allow it.

Maura finally gives into one and Jane then kind of lures her into going alone to a sweat lodge while she investigates a case she can't figure out.

Then afterwards Maura comes to a ton of realizations

Jack was awesome.

If Jack found his way to her another awesome person can find their way to her (she says while she gives Jane a once-over)

Jane is afraid of her feelings and therefore chooses not to process them, instead she puts them in a little box and ignores them for fear of what will happen if she acknowledges them. (Funnily enough Korsak also warns Jane in an earlier episode how being emotionally unavailable can ruin relationships as it did for him.)

Jane needs to figure out her feelings for Maura on her own, Maura can't do it for her. But either way Jane will be okay.

For now, at least, Maura is willing to wait for Jane as she figures out her feelings.

Literally all 5 points are addressed in the season 5 finale, some as realizations only by Maura, others also by Jane that she then talks about with Maura.

[denkisauce]

don’t have the energy to rewrite my thoughts here on tumblr but these past couple weeks have been so rough and it’s really hard to talk about my feelings on everything but also really hard to not talk about.

i know i’m just like a random blog on tumblr but it feels important to share my feelings. zionism does not hold up under scrutiny or critical thinking which is why it’s so important to educate yourself, even if it’s hard even if it’s uncomfortable. knowledge is power and being informed is a key tool againist oppression

[coolspacequips]

I miss rping so fucking much and it's so hard to start a successful thread it's so weirdly crushing and depressing

[aroace-number-eight]

Drawing Five according to his canonical UaO epilogue description is so messy and saddening because there's so much to account for that got him physically fucked up and you know the writers were hammering in this whole disfigurement as punishment thing with him

Because first you have the eye hole where Marina pierced him, and I'm not sure if he's still wearing that gauze eye patch on the island because eventually it'll get dirty and he'll have to toss it

Then you have the scar marks from when Setrákus Ra clawed right through his metal skin "like butter" and it's not mentioned whether those marks are still there or they disappeared when he returned to his flesh skin (and it's doubtful those were healed at all, we don't even know if Marina had a proper visit and talked to him and possibly healed those away)

Then you have the goop that created some patchy spots all over his skin and show up all web-like on him

And then how it's implied he starved on the island because he lost weight so fast and is described to have flaps of skin on his arms and torso and a body so skinny you could see an outline of his ribs and spine

Bro he has so much physical trauma on him, like they did the most on him and left it like that till the very end

[furymint]

2023 Creator Reflection

ffxiv.

1. dance me to the end of love

this one was fun! i always like merging a character's outfit with the bg so i liked doing that again. picking the colors for elliots outfit was also enjoyable. ive wanted to make smth w that cover for a while

2. shame was still the tyrant of his life

i only wrote two nol and eli things this year and neither of them are finished. the first was a continuation of a scene where nol kisses elliot against the blue stained glass in his room--i once posted it but then i deleted it bc it made me feel woozy for its allusions to sex. i wanted to rebuild it and take a shot at it now that im comfortable writing n reading sex, but i never got very far. theres actually lots of nice parts! i just like nols dumb angsting the best!

3. valentine

i really wanted to focus on nol's eye here, but also not make it too obvious lol. i used a ps filter like a schmuck but i wanted it to be darker without making it even more difficult to see, so i took away their bodies and limited the colors to make it what it is.

4. amateur cracksmen

the second nol n eli wip, which doesnt have many interesting lines rn, was a raffles-inspired story where eli drags nol as his valet to a rival artist's house and tries to steal back the brooch that he bought from an underground dealer feat. much babbling abt the state of societal responsibility that war is supposed to bring

ffxvi.

1. herz an herz dir

i wrote some reflections about this one already here. i honestly was very (distressed voice) cant believe im writing pure fanfic for the first time in over ten years and lacked a lot of direction when i started bc uhhhhh terence has 8 and a half mins of screen time. i tried to convince myself that it's not much different than me stealing brucemont for my own evil devices, but the unique perspective of seeing quite so much fan content def influenced my interpretation. i wanted their relationship to be much more imbalanced from the get-go initially--dion using his power unintentionally and terence barely passing a thought abt it until later bc he's just so accustomed to obeying--but i ended up giving terence a lot more sway & ammunition in their argument. the breakfast bed thing is also smth im rly fond of.

2. mund an mund

there's also additional meta for this one here. i made a silly doodle abt it also. dion kept picking fights here! it honestly turned out how i expected. when i first started this fic, i was gonna have dion start out right in oriflamme and meet ter and kihel there, but i booted them to northreach so i could have this stretch of conflict. i think it's like. Bad Pacing. technically. if i still believe the conflict introduced in the next chapter is the core one, that is. which i sorrrrta do. but i dont care bc i rly like the visual of kihel laying in dion's lap and getting to put a gun on the wall w ahmed.

3. eines atems

its been two months since the last chapter and this chapter is humiliatingly not written. i have all my scrambled notes and scenes that i jotted down in between the first two chapters, so i have a full direction, but it's been really difficult to write lately. ive been devoting all my time to trying to recoup my mental health and work on my teredio secret santa. ill start next year with this wip as a priority, so for now i only have the photoshop edit for it. kihel is holding terence's hand--it's his pov turn.

overall i didnt like this year very much. i didn't read, create, research or do a lot even though i tried to. i became really disconnected from all of my friends bc im too tired to stay for rp or hold online conversations. at this point, i dont play ffxiv at all except the few times i managed to rp a little. i moved into nanny's house and have my own space, but don't have the presence of mind to do anything about my pc, books, and so on, although i did make a lot of progress rewrapping my books w fresh wraps and some other things. my plans for next year are to reach out to a couple of my friends, build my pc, relearn + rebuild + relaunch my queer lit blog on open source code, survive school, and rediscover the productivity ive lost the past few years.

teredio has helped me a LOT to find community, inspiration, and art in my loneliest year yet. im very proud of my fic and grateful every day to the ppl who have reached out to me about liking it. even if im sorry about my productivity rate in comparison to how many extraordinary writers there are in the ship's fandom, i know i have to be easy on myself to relearn how to write, create a writing schedule that works for me, and stop punishing myself when i cant get the words out.

past reflections:  2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022

[faytelumos]

WIP Drinking Game

Oh my goodness. Oh my jeez. Thank you @tildeathiwillwrite for tagging me.

Rules: Make a drinking game for your WIP.

Okay, for Shryth's story, take a drink:

Every time Shryth is the only character in the scene.

Every time Ohrik says Shryth has no friends.

Every time Shryth thinks about her lost/dead friend.

And if you wanna die of alcohol poisoning:

Every time you see the word "ground" in the text.

---

Tagging to play @afoolandathief, @amethystpath-writes, @annakayy, @dyrewrites, @gummybugg, @kaatiba, @those-damn-snippets, @serenanymph, @space-writes, @surplus-of-sarcasm, @written-in-starlight, and anyone else who wants to play!

[crunchycrystals]

i hate interpreting "give me back my girlhood it was mine first" as being about just virginity mostly because it feels so much more meaningful if you allow yourself to interpret it as your younger self and the childhood innocence you had that got taken from you but also because i hate the idea of calling someone's virginity their "girlhood"

[transingthoseformers]

Back on my TFP au angst train, but. The second sparklet's loss must've hurt so much more when you consider just how much happened during when Megatron was first carrying Silverlight and they were fine. But. Now? After doing everything that could possibly be right right, just for this to happen? It's going to fuck with him and Optimus so much. There might be a lot of self doubt, and "what if...?"s. Which in experience is not a good line of thinking to go down as you can't change the past.

I've been doing a scene where after the initial medical frenzy, after it's confirmed that Megatron lost the newspark, he gets up, subspaces as much energon as he possibly can, and locks himself in whatever quarters is closest (if they're at the autobots' base, then Optimus's / Megatron's there. If they're on the Nemesis, then Megatron's / Optimus's quarters there.) After uttering the phrase "I want to be left alone." Optimus sitting outside of his/their quarters, acting as a protective sentinel. Sometimes Optimus has Silverlight during this, sometimes Silver is with Knockout and Breakdown instead. The medics, Breakdown, and Soundwave bring Optimus cubes but he stays. He doesn't move until Megatron lets him in, or until Megatron is ready to come out.

[tundrakatiebean]

Weird little things: the guy doing the funeral arrangements like the obit I wrote and my dad added to :) I dunno that just made me happy.

[theamazingannie]

Tried to lay down to sleep and my mind immediately went “what if your entire family was brutally murdered?” so I guess I’m just not sleeping tonight lmao