#Maudlin

[two-crabs]

maudlin: danger

amity: fire

fire: what’s one thing they’d destroy if they could, and why? would that destruction bring them any satisfaction or catharsis?

— maudlin wants to see the abbey of the everyman burn to the ground with every overseer locked inside of it. (when they have this thought, they blink and shake their head and think no, they cannot all be that way. they cannot all hold the whip and the knife and the hammer. and then they blink again and think, it wouldn't fix what's been done. and then, but it might at least bring her some comfort. and, it might make the guilt go away.)

EDIT: i can't fuckin read

fire: what’s one thing they’d destroy if they could, and why? would that destruction bring them any satisfaction or catharsis?

— amity would destroy the exarchs. all of them. and maybe most of the eidolons too. in a world where normal people can do magic there is no space or need for gods. it wouldn't give her any catharsis, but it would make the world feel a little more balanced.

[texoff]

in a lovely, maudlin, trip-hop kind of mood,,,

[partybi]

We found a ticket for the lottery,

And though we knew our chances slim,

Without a word one day you burned it,

convinced that we could never win.

[countesspetofi]

A thought struck me today: are those of us who were alive during those dark days of the HIV/AIDS crisis when there was no cure in sight and queer people and IV drug users were dying left and right while politicians refused to address the issue and their families refused to claim their bodies one day going to be like the people who saw the Holocaust and then lived long enough to see generations who neither know nor care that it happened?

[nuisancehelicopter]

Prince of tennis making me ship everybody with everyone else

The cultural impact this show had was unbridled

[yorkiepuoh-blog]

Times like this... I really needed a hug from an actual person who actually cares for me, truly.. and not just from spiritual level.. haizt.... 🙏🤲

[two-crabs]

danger, blood, spring and proof for maudlin!!

💚💚💚💚💚

danger: what’s one thing that makes your OC angry? what’s their temper like? how do they respond to people who make them mad?

— it takes a lot to get maudlin angry. they get exasperated and they get despondent and irritated and despairing, but they don't get mad very much. when they do, they retreat into themself and let it burn off quietly, letting it reduce down into sadness or anxiety. maudlin turns a cold shoulder to the people who anger them, and they hold grudges that they very rarely—but not never—act on.

blood: what would your OC would sacrifice everything for? what does “everything” entail—their life, or something else? how far would they go?

— i want to say that maudlin would die for auntie and miss hester, but i don't know that that's true. i know that they would give up their freedom, and do things that they were ashamed of if it meant that the two of them were safe, and i know that they at least think they would die for that safety, too. but maudlin worked so hard to stay alive, and are so afraid of dying that i don't think either of us can be sure they'd have the will to do it.

spring: what does your OC miss most? will they ever be reunited? how would they feel about that?

— they miss their mother, whom they do not speak of much. when she died they didn't take the time to mourn, because they were too busy running away. and many people have died since then, but hers was the first death that scared them into action. a reunion would mean a lot of explaining and some apologizing, but many introductions to make up for it all.

proof: what is your OC looking forward to? what best moments in their life are yet to come?

— maudlin is going to a dance at the end of the month, and miss hester will be there, and they'll both be in their finest. after that a lot of terrible things might happen, but after that the spring will come, and they'll sit by the river with auntie, and drink coffee, and feel the sun on their face.

[thepixelatedcactus]

OC is maudlin by @skelleste

man...

[ghostlylaments]

[ 2023.November.17 ]

Feeling a bit like I could be forgotten, but I blame social media and the culture it created to base worth on interaction. I feel like I need a reset button, however. I try too much, maybe—get a taste of what community could be—and then it all goes away. Left behind.

[tangerinebonfire]

LiveJournal and Lapsed Friendships

I've had "back up livejournal" on my to-do list for about ten years at this point. I finally decided to do it today. After I pulled down all my posts, I clicked onto the friends tab to see who was still around. The most recent post from anyone was 2020, and most of them were closer to the mid-2010s. A few people fully scrubbed their blog.

It feels weird to see the last snapshot posts from people I used to be close with. It's weird to realize that those people are gone. Like, even if I sent one of them a message today, I would get someone else -- whoever they are now 10 years later. They'd be confused to hear from me.

I've been having this unsettling feeling lately (like, past 5 years tbh) like I am living my life in the space after the credits have rolled. Everything used to feel urgent and real and immediate, and it just mostly doesn't anymore? I'm not sure if this is just how life is after your 20s are over or if it's because I live in the suburbs.

[maeowl]

✨An autumnal look for my huldra, Maudlin, to visit to the Autumn Court in! ✨

[not-this-crude-matter]

PAX weekend has been a challenging time since 2014, and very challenging since 2019, but it's a hell of a challenge this year.

[two-crabs]

Bright

Maudlin passed four Feasts of the Fugue aboard the Abandon. The first was lost to them, like so much of that first year was. Between the shock and the suntroke and the vodka, they could recall nothing of 1829 except for fear and seasickness. Six krill died that year, two during the feast, and it was only for luck and stubbornness that Maudlin was not one of them.

The second Fugue was spent warm and content with Callum’s big arm around their shoulder or their waist. He pulled them possessively against his side, and shot hard glances at anyone who tried to tell him such behavior was unbecoming of a whaler. Earlier in the summer, the boatswain had cornered Maudlin in the hold, and propositioned them in a way that felt less like an offer and more like an order. Callum had interrupted, calling the boatswain away to her office on the quarterdeck, and Maudlin had been skittish ever since. But for the length of the Fugue, at least—while no one had anywhere to go or anything to do but drink and gamble and fuck and fight—Muadlin let their guard down. They spent the evenings sitting on Callum’s lap, taking drags off his pipe, sipping from his flask, and watching the stars sail by.

Six days before the third Fugue, Callum went over.

There was a storm, and some poorly timed repair work, and a poorly tied knot. Maudlin had been below decks, splicing rope and hiding from the rain, when the first mate came down cursing the sky and screaming that they’d all be chum without a trained carpenter. They thought they’d misheard, or misunderstood, and they wandered the ship looking for Callum for nearly an hour before the bursar and two other shipmen were able to sit them down and tell them what happened. Maudlin remained upright long enough to collect what was owed to them as Callum’s beneficiary, hand half of it to the cook in exchange for what liquor he had, and hobble back to Dudko’s office. For a week they wept, and drank themself numb, and fell in and out of nightmare-plagued sleep, until the Fugue came.

When Dudko said, “Go, little fish, get some fresh air, some sun. Be distracted. Be happy, if you can,” Maudlin tried. They changed their clothes and washed their face, and Dudko kissed them on both cheeks before confiscating their drink and herding them up the stairs.

The sun was starting after so long below decks, and their stomach rebelled at the sight of the rolling sea and of their fellow whaler’s merriment. Soon they were retching overboard, nails dug into the railing, fresh tears streaking their face. They flinched when someone started rubbing their back, and they looked up to see the boatswain offering them a mug of pale beer with lemon. Maudlin sipped it, and let her dab at their cheeks and mouth with her handkerchief, before looping her arm around theirs, and leading them gently back towards the quarterdeck.

Maudlin didn’t remember much of that third Fugue, either.

On the morning of their fourth Fugue Feast, Maudlin was shirtless sweating, face down on Dudko’s table, wincing as the doctor inked a pair of swallows into the small of their back.

“I’m too old for it, Dudko,” Maudlin groaned in gravelly, liquor-slow Tyvian.

“Too—too old?” Dudko dipped his needle and looked up. “Outsider’s taint, Maud, if you’re too old then what does that make me?”

Maudlin laughed, resettling their cheek against their arm. “It makes you dead, I think.”

“Hrmph,” Dudko snorted, and went back to his work. It was slow, and it stung, but it was a familiar hurt that Maudlin had come to relish. It cleared their mind and stilled their often restless body. They closed their eyes and listened to the tap-tap-tap of Dudko’s needle, and the hum of chatter on the decks above.

Two days earlier another whaleship had been spotted and flagged, and they had begun sailing towards each other. The Black Vehement was a new-built Gristoli ship headed east along the outer causeways towards the Pandicean shelf, still in its first few months out of port. The Abandon was meandering along its old fashioned, serpentine route, scanning the Great Sea north to south until it caught something.

“All the fun will be taken up if you’re not at the front of the line,” Dudko said, stirring Maudlin from their dozing. He was wiping the excess ink from their skin, and they could smell the alcohol on his rag. “Right-o.” He held up a little mirror to show them the finished work: proof of how far they’d sailed, somewhere that no one would ever see it.

“I’m not…overly interested in fun today.” Maudlin sat up and pulled their shirt on.

“Hm.” Dudko turned to his desk and started fumbling through drawers.

“It should be quiet downstairs,” Maudlin said, mostly to themself. “At least for the first night, I should get some—”

“Here.” Dudko turned, and held three fat Serkonan cigars out towards them. “Go on.”

Maudlin took one and stared at it for a while, before biting the end off and sticking it in their mouth. “I appreciate the gesture, doc,” they said around it, patting their pockets for a match. Before they could ask for one, Dudko produced a small blue flame from a lighter hidden in his palm. “But I don’t really…”

“No, but he did.” Dudko lit a cigar for himself, and put the other in his breast pocket.

Smoke filled the little cabin almost immediately. Maudlin’s eyes began to water. They stared down at their legs, at the patches of unmarked skin exposed beneath their rolled up trousers. There was still blood beading on their back, and already they itched for more. They took a long drag, and started coughing.

Dudko thumped on their back a few times. “Easy, easy. That was expensive, don’t inhale the whole thing at once!”

Maudlin laughed, a wheezing, hacking chuckle, held the cigar away from their face and took a few deep breaths. Dudko kept a hand on their shoulder, but as their breathing settled and the warmth from his touch spread through them, Maudlin’s chest started to ache.

It had been months since they’d cried for Callum, but in the last few weeks he had started visiting them again, appearing in their dreams, tempting them. Sometimes it was him, his face, his hands—easing them gently from their hammock, whispering reassurances into their ear, guiding them to the stern, and lowering them over. Other times, it was a masked whaler that Maudlin only hoped was him, with water pouring from its black eyes, pulling at their clothes and trying to drag them down.

From somewhere above them, the telltale thunk of a plank being lowered and lashed, and the sound of a hundred men cheering.

Maudlin shivered in the sweltering office. “I can’t go up there. I’m not fit for it.”

Dudko crouched to catch their gaze, and sighed. “You don’t have a choice, little fish.”

The anger that stirred in their chest was unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Their heart raced. “Doctor, I appreciate your comfort and your service but—” They straightened where they sat, shrugged away from Dudko’s touch. “You’re not my commander.”

Dudko stood, and crossed the room to lean against his desk. There was a clear path between Maudlin and the door. They sat, hands on their knees, cigar between two fingers, slowly turning to ash.

“Maudlin,” Dudko said calmly. He took the cigar from his mouth and stubbed it out. “I have some bad news.” Maudlin had heard this tone of his before. It usually preceded someone getting a limb cut off, or dying of tetanus. Dudko was gentle, and he was kind, but he did not lie.

“What?” It came out sharper than they had intended. Sharper than they’d ever been with Dudko before. Maybe sharper than they’d ever been in their life.

“You are not going to die on this ship.”

It hung in the smoke-filled air of Dudko’s office, a little damnation.

“You don’t know that.” Maudlin lifted the cigar to their mouth, but stopped before it passed their lips. “You…don’t know that.”

“Sometimes, when a person’s away too long, they get funny. They don’t know how to talk to strangers, they forget their manners.” Dudko rubbed the back of his neck. “Or they can’t get the ship out of their head. They act like they’re still out here. They become shut-ins because they’re not used to the freedom. They get…fearful.” He paused, looking hard at nothing in particular, then sucked in a breath. “So you’ve got to be ready.”

Maudlin reached over and ashed their cigar. “I was funny before this. I don’t know what I’m going to be after.” They wiped at their eyes. The office was cast in blue light from the oil lamp that hung in the corner. It was hard to believe that somewhere, the sun was shining.

“That’s why you have to practice. You won’t get an opportunity like this again.” He held his round stomach in his hand and shook it. “I feel it in my liver, we’re going to have a bite soon.”

“Well,” Maudlin sniffed. “You’ve said it.” They craned their neck and pretended to spit over their shoulder. “We’ll be out here for another ten years, now.”

Dudko smiled. “You better hope not. I’m running out of ink and you’re running out of hide. Here.” He pulled the last cigar from his pocket and held it out to them. “Find someone to share this with. You don’t have to make ‘em yours, just…try. For me, right?”

Wordlessly, Maudlin slipped the cigar into the pocket of their own shirt and stood from the table. Dudko settled into his chair, and nodded towards the door.

On the way up to the surface Maudlin went to their hammock, took the flask they kept in their pillow, and grabbed a pack of matches from their bag. It was desolate in the sleeping quarters; the whole crew was up top, getting rowdy with fresh, unfamiliar faces. The captain would be sabering the heads off Tyvian wine bottles to offer his equal from the Black. Their cooks would be bartering what they had for what they needed. The boatswain from the Abandon—grown quickly and mercifully bored with Maudlin—would prowl hungrily through the ranks of strangers. Whalers like Maudlin would drink and smoke and gamble and find new ways to entertain and distract themselves.

It was dizzying to think about. Maudlin almost tripped as they climbed the narrow stairs to the quarter deck. They could hear the bursar’s concertina, and another instrument they couldn’t place, squeaking out a tune. They could smell wine, and salt. And when they opened the last door to outside they were blinded, but only for a moment, by how bright the world was.

[okierazorback]

Word of the Day - Maudlin

Adjective:  Maudlin tearfully or weakly emotional; foolishly sentimental: a maudlin story of a little orphan and her lost dog. foolishly or mawkishly sentimental because of drunkenness. Synonyms:  mawkish mushy sentimental weepy befuddled histrionic insipid lachrymose schmaltzy tear-jerking Usage: “That’s because you were too busy being maudlin in your last post,…

[cranialgunk]

All this time I thought is was because of Morrissey but it was McDonald's. 😉

[motleywolf-et-al]

rereading fool's fate...

i know everything that's going to happen.

i've participated in endless discord discussions about multiple aspects of this book and this trilogy.

i've devoured probably thousands of pieces of fanart centered on this trilogy, and at various times i've savored, tasted, gorged myself on, or gobbled down quite a few fics related to this part of the series.

truly, i expected that my emotions on reread would be more blunted because of this history and because of the time distance between when i first read this book and now. surely there could be no way my heart would be shattered in a million tiny little pieces driving themselves into my tender internal organs like ice picks this time around.

surely!

no way.

...

as you can guess, that is not what i'm discovering, as i sit here wiping tears from my face and irrationally hating fitz for actions yet to come in the last trilogy (namely, forgetting the effects of torture halfway through FQ when he both went through it himself in RA and witnessed a small taste of it via the pale woman), while simultaneously bleeding internally with the foreknowledge that i'm just at the beginning of the Dark Times in this book.

this time hits different because i know how it ends. this time, i'm already heartsick halfway through the book, and filled with dread to read the rest.

this time, there is no hope. only a broken heart, broken well in advance.