#They often get lost in the whole illustration but I do love painting eyes a lot

[arishnea]

Eyes train!

Artists, if you see this reblog and add yours. Let's see many beautiful eyes~

[abyss-sss]

AOT characters reading:

Content: General headcanons, death spoilers and minor spoilers for the rumbling, fluff with hints of angst.

Word Count: 1.8k

Includes: Levi, Eren, Armin, Erwin, Mikasa, Hange, Connie, jean, Sasha,  Onyankopon, Reiner, Annie, Christa

A/n: This took me a long time to get up but I hope you enjoy!

Levi:

-Levi likes to be in charge of the maps.

-He has a very good sense of direction and just prefers to be the one calling the shots. It's also handy as a captain.

-Levi does a lot of reading documents and files for the survey corp. Although he doesn't necessarily like reading them, the monotony soothes him sometimes. 

-He'll read through some just to calm down or distract himself after a long day.

-Levi learned how to read late in life so he sees it as unnecessary for survival purposes.

-He doesn't want to get lost in a fantasy world when he has issues to deal with in real life. If he reads fiction it's often cynical/deep literature.

-Reading is something he learns to like later in life, especially after the rumbling when he can settle down.

-For fictional reading Levi enjoys a good detective novel.

-After the rumbling he'll enjoy reading through memoirs of the scouts- half to mock the lies and half to reminisce. Eren:

-Picture books.

-OK OK I KNOW THIS SOUNDS BAD.

-He likes art books or illustrated books that he can lose himself in where he can imagine a better life for him and his loved ones.

-He'll trace his fingers over pictures for hours, imagining the touch of the painted flowers or the fleece of a drawn teddy bear.

-Photo albums are one of Eren's favorite things to flip through. He is so glad to know that those memories he made will be preserved....long after he is gone.

-Eren didn't read much as a kid because he never had the attention span for it.

-He used to flip through some of Grisha's old anatomical books but that's about it.

-Eren's mom always nagged him to read. Eren feels really guilty that he didn't read too much so after her death he will read a short book on any subject just for his mom. Armin:

-Everything- he’ll read anything he can get his hands on.

-Particularly he likes to learn a lot. He'll buy old textbooks from markets and annotate them in the margins.

-He loves science as a whole and will pick up anything to do with how things work.

-He reads a lot of fantasy too, wanting to imagine what might lie behind the walls. It gives him a lot of hope, even if he acknowledges they aren't real.

-Strangely, Armin enjoys reading biographies.

-He likes stories of underdogs or people overcoming things. It really inspires him.

-He makes examples out of biographies he particularly enjoys and tries to take on their good traits to improve himself. It's a way of trying to become who he wants to be.

-Besides self improvement he reads them to experience things through new eyes and gain new perspectives. It's just really neat reading about other people's lives for him.

Erwin:

-Erwin quite enjoys war strategy books.

-Obviously as commander he has to be well versed in those things to keep the troops safe but he just genuinely likes reading them.

-Strategy is a big game for him and playing around with different scenarios or techniques stretches his brain muscles.

-He also enjoys instruction/strategy books about games like chess. He's not a huge player but he believes that many moves can be applied into real life.

-The tactful skills he's learned from those books has probably saved many soldiers.

-Because of his position, Erwin is rarely afforded free time to do much at all.

-When he's frustrated with paperwork though he might pick up a book, going through different movements in his head to focus himself. Mikasa:

-I think Mikasa would prefer to read very practical books like cookbooks or books of herbal remedies.

-She has completely memorized the most useful recipes for herbal/natural cures as well as first-aid.

-She feels responsible for everyone so she likes to have that information on hand for bad situations. 

-She doesn't have to use the knowledge in the field much after Armin and Eren inherit their titans but her quick thinking has saved many cadets.

-Mikasa also makes really good soup, courtesy of a cookbook that Hange lent them.

-Mikasa really likes cookbooks because she tries to find a recipe that tastes like food that her mom used to make her.

-Like Levi, Mikasa prefers not to "waste time" or get lost in a book as the world passes by her. She prefers books that have practical applications for her life.

-Mikasa also reads more after the rumbling. She especially likes reading books that Eren used to read and keeps copies of them on her bookshelf... Hange:

-100% is a big anatomical book reader. They'll read whatever biology book they can get their hands on.

-Hange also reads any and all books about titans of course. They'll skim through first-hand accounts with titans written by other soldiers. For some reason it soothes her.

-Hange is not a very consistent reader- paperwork and lengthy works often exhaust her patience.

-They're more in tune with writing about things they enjoy. Hange has actually written a book or two about titans. They didn't sell too well but every once in a while someone will come up and ask them questions about titans.

-Hange will spend hours reading over Erwin's old papers, no matter how mundane, just to remember what it was like when he was alive.

Connie:

-Connie is....not a big reader.

-He has never been the quiet settle-with-a-book type no matter how important his mom told him it was

.-On occasion Connie will read an instructional book on something he wants or needs to learn.

-After his mom is converted into a titan, Connie will reread all of the letters his mom wrote to him, over and over.

-Connie remembers a book that his mother used to read to him when he was little which he then purchased for himself.

-He'll go out to his mom and read to her, hoping that maybe she'll remember him as her son.

-After the rumbling Connie doesn't read more but when he does, it's usually meaningful. Often its a book one of his friends has sent him or old letters from days long ago.

Jean:

-Jean is very inclined to like poetry.

-He has read through poetry books to help him relax at night. Jean is a dreamer and he likes romanticizing the good things in life.

-When he reads love poems he'll imagine Mikasa as the muse and imagine her in it. 

-Jean sends some of his favorite poems to Mikasa as a gift. It's not necessarily romantic but rather a token of his appreciation.

-Jean also writes poetry but he'd rather die than let any of his comrades read them.

-Fiction in general is Jean's style of books but he especially like historical fiction and dramas.

-Something about inserting himself into a book is so joyous for him.

-After the rumbling Jean winds up buying a big oak shelf for all of his most prized books. Eventually he writes a book of his own and plans to write an auto-biography. Sasha:

-Sasha, like Connie, is not the biggest reader in the world.

-Sasha does enjoy fantasy novels like those from her childhood. It reminds her of being a kid and wanting to grow up to be a hero.

-Fairytales are her favorite things to read. The tale she likes the most is Red Riding hood(the version where red riding hood slays the wolf and saves grandma.)

-She has always had to be strong so she likes to envision herself as a warrior princess, a brave and valiant woman.

-She has most of her favorite recipes memorized so she has no need for a cookbook except for a few things. 

-She'll use one on the occasion that she's cooking something new or cooking with someone else. Despite how little she uses them she still has a full collection of them...

-After her death Connie and Jean were supposed to inherit their cookbooks but decide to pass a lot of them to Mikasa and Niccolo to remember her with.  Onyankopon:

-Onyankopon is a very intellectual reader.

-He likes learning things about the world from books. He particularly likes books on aviation, religion and cultures.

-Onyankopon is a big philosophy nerd. Understanding how people see the world is something he appreciates. 

-Classic literature is Onyankopon's favorite. He has shelves full of his favorite authors and will often write essays or analysis on books he's read.

-He will bring books to Levi that he thinks Levi will enjoy. Levi won't admit it but he likes having that connection with Onyankopon, especially because Onyankopon likes deep conversation about the books. Reiner:

-Reiner genuinely doesn't like doing things that brings him joy. Like honestly his guilt consumes him a LOT.

-Because of this he gave up reading for a long time. After the rumbling though everyone was able to convince him to let go of the guilt and let himself enjoy life as a retired soldier.

-Reiner reads a lot of self-help books to help himself cope with all he's done and gone through.

-Gaining confidence and learning how to be what he considers a "good" person is what he strives to learn in books.

-Eventually Reiner learns to enjoy fiction and non fiction too. He doesn't have a favorite genre, he just appreciates the act of reading in general.

-Reiner will get recommendations from Onyankopon every once in a while for something new to read.

-Reiner will also dutifully read any poetry books that Jean recommends to him. Sometimes he doesn't get it but he loves that Jean is willing to share poems with him after what happened with Marco.

Annie:

-Annie is similar to Levi and Mikasa in the regard that she prefers practical uses for what she reads.

-Her dad had her read many combat and martial arts training manuals as a kid so she was forced to study them.

-That damaged her perception of reading for a long time, only seeing it as a tool more than anything else.

-Post-rumbling though she picks up a love for thrillers or psychological thrillers.

-The adrenaline rush is just something she enjoys from an exciting book.

-She savors a good mystery too, trying to figure it out before the main characters in the book do.

-Like Reiner, Annie felt that she doesn't deserve to enjoy things like reading but Armin is the one who convinced her out of that.

-His child-like enthusiasm for reading, along with many heart-to-heart talks gave Annie the courage to pick up a book for the one of the first times since coming from Marley.

Christa:

-Christa doesn't read too much because of the hassle of being a queen and a mother but she used to love it when she was a cadet.

-Like Sasha, Christa was always intrigued with fairytales. Unlike Sasha though, Christa admired the lady-like princesses more than the warriors.

-Christa always wanted to be just like Frieda, trying to embody everything that a "lady should be like."

-She realizes that perfection isn't something that defines her though. She comes to terms with it but still enjoys the "ideals" in books.

-After the rumbling Christa reads a lot of "how to" books like DIY's and such. She likes to be artistic with creating specialty furniture even though everyone begs her to just buy luxury furniture instead.

-Doing things herself is valuable to her because she craves independence. 

-Christa became an avid sewer after stealing a book away from a library. She sews clothes for her friends or their children too.

[59writes]

SEVENTEEN- SCENARIO: HAVING AN ALT PARTNER (PERFORMANCE UNIT)

VOCAL • HIP HOP • PERFORMANCE

Last but most definitely not least, the boys with the moves 🙌🙌

again! don’t be shy, feel free to reach out or request!! I’d love to have some anon buddies lol. I promise I’m nice haha!!

also hi Jun’s is about kandi I had to self indulge a little lol (which is why it’s so long omg) I make kandi and it’s literally the best pastime and the culture around it is super cool too so I had to add it in haha!!

🌈🌈🌈!!!PLUR!!! 🌈🌈🌈

tw: food maybe (?)

JUN

• you guys met on complete accident

• he was walking to the company, you on your way home

• and he bumps into you and one of your bracelets hooks onto his bag and it snaps

• you’re both shocked by the sound, watching the beads bounce into the street while people shoved past you both, glaring at you both for blocking the way

• and even though Junhui is late he stoops down to pick up the beads

• you stop him quickly

• “don’t worry, I have more beads at home”

• and he’s like “wait woah you made this” because it’s intricate and pretty and a little pixel art cat that he accidentally ruined ):

• but he feels so bad, and wants to pay you back somehow cuz the bracelets are so cute and he broke one!!! he cannot get over it!!!

• even when you assure him it’s fine he looks so concerned you have to give in

• so you give him your number, telling him to text you when he can and you can work something out

• and at the company he considers it all day

• he, an idol, just got a number from someone on the street. all because he messed up and then insisted to be in your life

• was this a good idea?

• Seungcheol hears about it eventually, and says to give it a chance

• “your friends are in another country, Jun. make some here too. plus you’re stressed, and it’s probably best to get any weight off your shoulders you can.”

• and so he texts you

• and plan to go to a cat cafe (his treat) on his next day off

• when he walks into the cafe you greet him with a beaming smile

• “I have a gift for you.” You grin, pulling something out of your bag

• and like, Jun almost disagrees, like “no I’m supposed to be apologizing to you” but then be sees what you’re offering

• a little cat bracelet just like the one he broke the other day

• he reaches out for it but you shake your head

• “there’s a special way to do it, here.”

• you give him a rundown on the style of bracelet, called kandi

• and you explain they’re meant to be traded

• “and there’s a secret handshake to trade with, ok? just do what I do.”

• peace, love, unity…

• and he’s suddenly holding your hand

• you slip the bracelet onto his wrist before letting go, grinning as he examines his new accessory

• “I’m y/n, by the way.”

• “Junhui.”

• you chat and play with the cats that come to visit your table

• you take off one of your kandi rings at one point and gently loop it around one of the kittens’ paws

• Jun hasn’t had this much fun in a while, much less been in such a positive environment

• as you were bright and cheery as you made kissy noises at the cats to offer them snacks

• always had something new to say or observe

• and when it was time to leave he really didn’t want to go

• you don’t either, but you have an appointment you can’t miss

• so you promise to do it again soon, giving Jun a quick hug and a wave before dashing off

• Jun can’t keep his eyes off the bracelet as he goes back to the company, running his fingers along the peyote weave

• he spends the rest of the night reading about kandi and kandi kid culture

• and everyone involved is so happy, and their bracelets?? like holy shit.

• he thought yours was good but some of these people had massive and intricate kandi

• the next time you meet, he asks if you can teach him how to make kandi

• and your face lights up!!

• the next few meetups he learns, little by little

• passing the bracelet to you if he can’t get part of it right

• and he just keeps getting surprised by your patience when you have to undo rows, your bubbly spirit calming a bit as you focus on a pattern

• and one day you invite him to a rave

• and yo he’s so nervous ??? but he wants to go so bad ???

• you promise him you guys can leave it early, because eventually you get overwhelmed too

• so he agrees

• you meet at your apartment, Jun shy as you flit around and drape him with more kandi

• you ask him to sit still as you paint a tiny design on his face in UV paint, hand resting on his jaw to keep him still

• and when you gleefully spin him around to look at himself in the mirror he’s just. wow.

• a line of heart stickers on his cheek, a necklace made from kid toys draped around his neck, and of course, endless bracelets

• this was so cool.

• the rave was even better.

• Jun got used to the flashing lights and eccentric music very quickly, mostly following behind as you greeted people and traded bracelets

• and then you turn and pull him out to the dance floor

• and that shit is like a fever dream.

• adrenaline, glitter, and neon lights fill your veins as you both dance for hours

• eventually too tired to keep up, you fall into Jun’s arms, laughing

• and he’s grinning too (:

• you leave shortly after that, walking home in the dark

• you stop to sit at a park bench, and Jun says he has a surprise

• he holds out his hand

• peace, love, unity, respect

• and slips a bracelet onto your arm

• he did it completely himself, as you’d never seen the design before

• it’s of a cat with a rainbow tail, along with his name spelled out in pixels

• and you look up at Jun, whose eyes are filled with anticipation

• and you give him a huge hug

• and he thanks you for showing him this diverse underground world full of color in the night; a way to break out of his shell a little

• and damn I guess you can’t help but hold back an “I love you”

• and he feels the glitter surge back into his veins

• and the feeling never leaves again (:

HOSHI

• Soonyoung always thought photographers were more likely to stay out of the lens’ view, but you proved him wrong

• when you introduced yourself as his photographer for the magazine shoot you were working on, he couldn’t help but feel like you should be in front of the camera, not him

• like holy shit. the beads and chains that engulfed your arm and shimmered in the dim lights. the clips nestled in your hair that were shaped like cartoon spiders. the patches for bands he’d never heard of on every square inch of your camera bag.

• he’s polite and energetic the whole shoot, and to be honest maybe you take a little longer than usual to line up closeups of his face

• after all he deserves the best photos (:

• once you’re finished you agree to meet again at Pledis the next day, just to review the photos

• and Soonyoung spends the whole night hyping himself up lol

• you look just as cool as the day before, if not better, and he manages to compliment you without a problem (practice pays off!!)

• he wants to see more of your photos, and you offer him a ticket to a portfolio viewing you’re having

• he shows up without telling you, taking his time to walk through the gallery and examine each photo

• and they’re so dynamic, perfectly balanced, mysterious. he can’t help but get lost in each one, not even noticing you staring at him

• you, heart warm from his wonder and genuine interest

• he was soon a common subject and reviewer of your photography

• and you were soon a common staple of his, Soonyoung trying to be with you at every opportunity

• he invites you over for movie nights with the other guys

• if you show up in your usual outfits he whines about how you’re all pokey and he can’t lay on your arm without getting stabbed ):<

• luckily you own soft sweatshirts that still look super cool so it’s a win/win

• he’s so adoring of everything you do omg

• every interest of yours is now his interest too

• and he’ll always be by your side, curious and wide-eyed, always ready for the next adventure with you

• whether it be through clothes, or photos, or even just the park

• you’re what makes it special (:

MINGHAO

• dude. he’d lose his shit in the best way possible.

• have you seen this man??? his sense of style??? he’d be drooling in seconds lol

• you’d catch him watching you as you intern at Pledis, sketching up scenes in the corner

• finishing your degree required film to turn in, and you managed to snag an internship with the production crew for Seventeen

• a successful music video for a major group would definitely save your grade lol

• every dance practice, you’d be in the corner, wedged against the mirrors, huddled over your sketchbook as you designed

• and of course you watched them dance, you had to encapsulate the emotion somehow

• during a water break, one of the members plops down next to you and introduces himself as Minghao

• his hair is damp with sweat, sleeveless shirt clinging to his chest

• and he asks to see your ideas

• the concept is focused on the ideas of identity, and your current plan was sketches of each member as the background

• you could animate them slowly turning into each member, and you explain the idea to Minghao as he very gently flips through the pages, fingers hardly touching the pages

• he lingers on his own page

• “you didn’t sketch anyone else’s face this detailed.”

• “you’re pretty.” You say simply, reaching for the book back

• he grins at his lap.

• he sits next to you every day now, always eager to see your designs

• but more often he wants to see your other works

• and when you tell him you and your friends made most of your clothes he’s dumbstruck

• “can you make some for me?”

• you laugh and he apologizes for being so straightforward

• but the next day you bring in a trench coat you’ve been illustrating

• cutting diamonds into the sleeves and lining them with neon thread

• the half-finished painting on the back your friend started working on

• and as you proudly explain the coat’s background Minghao can’t help but want to join in too

• the way your face lights up when you speak about it, how gently you fold the fabric, how you adjust the collar on him so it looks just right

• eventually you begin to hang out outside of the company

• and you take him to craft stores when you need supplies or new clothes to ruin

• and he has such a good eye oh my god

• and his long fingers pick up sewing so easily

• and many hours are spent on your apartment floor quietly snipping, painting, lacing

• minghao wears his clothes with pride, especially the ones you make for him

• you go out one day, both of you completely dressed in your own designs

• and Minghao has never felt this beautiful before

• and when he sees your outfit he can’t help but wrap you in a huge hug

• he’s proud: of himself, of you, of the creativity and passion and hours put into these clothes

• and he admits he’d like to keep that feeling around a lot more

• and so your time in the city becomes a date

• and behind the music video sets becomes a spot to hide and snuggle

• you still sketch him sometimes

• when he doesn’t notice

• when he’s too focused on choreo, or reading a book, or laughing at the other boys goofing around

• because you’re proud of him, too

• and when he sheepishly admits he’s been doing the same, pushing over his own sketchbooks filled with endless drawings, improving page by page

• you know he’s your other half.

DINO

• Dude he’d be so flustered

• he straight up would just. not know what to say and would probably be defensive whenever you talk to him so he might come off as rude ):

• it would take time for him to warm up to you

• but when he does it’s clear he can’t get you out of his head

• as a choreographer, you had to spend a lot of time with the performance line

• and in this case, specifically Chan, as he has a solo

• and just seeing you look so damn rad even when you’re slowly walking him through potential choreo,,,, homeboy is gonna break down and try and defend himself

• the first few days are awkward because he’s drawn back and a little hostile

• but you force him to get lunch with you after a particularly rough morning, just to try to have a better relationship

• you guys didn’t finish the choreo that afternoon, choosing to sit on the studio floor and talk

• the next day he’s still quiet, but shyly rather than defensively

• and he can’t seem to get his arms right, and you have to go over there and straighten his arms for him, rings digging into his biceps

• and even though he tries to hide his grin you know it’s what he wanted

• eventually your job is done and you’re ready to head to the next performer, or go plan choreo for another group

• and Chan shuffles up and even though his cheeks are red he manages to ask you out

• and how could you say no?

[dendrite-blues]

Fluff, and Why it Triggers Me

Odd start, isn’t it? I bet most people reading this are like “whaaat?”

Which....fair. I know it’s weird. I didn’t have an explanation either, for the longest time. Like 15 years. Seriously.

I just knew that fluff fics made me irrationally sad, angry, and lonely.

I avoided these stories so hard that I left whole discord servers just to get away from them. I developed aggression and frustration with the people who posted about it. I starting getting annoyed just by looking at the prompts channel because it was most often used by the fluff mongers. It’s super unhealthy.

But that begs a really obvious and hard to answer question:

How the fuck could fluff—a genre explicitly about heaping the reader in good feelings—be triggering?

Well that really gets to the heart of trauma and the ways it warps cognition, particularly childhood trauma. If you’d like to see me unpack that trauma, keep reading. Otherwise, have a nice day. :)

We learn to process the world through our parent’s eyes, so when our parents are not good blueprints we end up with some whack ass mental hallways and trapdoors to the haunted basement that healthy people just don’t have. 

For instance:

Fluff-->feelings of comfort, love, support, acceptance Angst-->feelings of hurt, sadness, fear, loneliness, depression

But when I read fluff the story doesn’t have that intended effect on me. I actually feel most of the words listed after angst when I read fluff. And vice versa, reading angst makes me feel seen, validated, comforted, and like I’m not alone.

Having given the matter lots and LOTS of thought, I can finally articulate why.

Because when I look back at my life and particularly my childhood I cannot remember a single specific incident in which I was given comfort or support when I needed it. (God and I’m tearing up just typing that out, fuck’s sake.)

My parents were not outright abusive. They were wealthy, they gave me the best clothes, food, toys, and education money can buy, but they were utterly oblivious to the emotional needs of a child. If I cried I was given a toy or food or told to stop complaining when I had it so good. 

Any negative emotions were treated as an aberration, and when someone broke down in our house it was seen as a display of that person’s weakness, or laziness, or lack of gratitude for the riches we had been blessed with.

To my parents happiness was the natural state of a person, and being unhappy meant you must have done something wrong, or you must be broken in some way. 

Receiving comfort or support required you to first prove that you were entirely the victim, because otherwise your pain and hurt would be answered with a lecture about how you deserve whatever happened because of X, Y, and Z.

The worst part is that my parents are exceptionally logical, orderly people and so most of the time they had very coherent, rational reasons behind their painting of you as a bad person who caused your own problem. It’s a very insidious kind of message that leads you to punishing yourself in their stead, since you leave totally convinced of your own culpability and badness.

My family has two children, me and my sister. I think it’s pretty telling how we turned out because we really are the two most natural responses to growing up in this kind of environment.

I am a hyper competent perfectionist who cannot handle even the slightest insinuation of critique. She is a pathological victim who seems allergic to success and accountability.

When negative emotions are a punishment for wrong doing there are only two ways you can respond. 

Either you eliminate failure and unhappiness from your life so that you do not need support—me.

Or you focus all of your energy on deflecting blame to others so that you can present yourself to your parent as a helpless victim and receive the emotional support that you need—my sister.

But this post is about fluff so let’s get back to that.

Why does fluff trigger me?

Because it confronts me with how healthy people respond to a loved one in pain, and in the course of witnessing that freely given love, I am subconsciously told/reminded of how my ‘loved ones’ failed to do that.

It’s not a conscious thing, as I said at the beginning I went 15 years without ever making this connection. I just knew that flew filled me to the brim with resentment, disgust, discomfort, and anger.

And all of these feelings happen because on some level, my soul is hurting. It’s hurting so bad because I know that I deserved that. 

I know that I deserved to be the protagonist of a fluff fic when I came out. I know I deserved that when my busted wrist killed my illustration career. I know I deserved that when I failed to finish my Masters degree. I know I deserved that when my film work dried up and I lost everything. I know I deserve that now, for no reason other than because I’m sad and doing nothing in particular with my life.

And I wasn’t.

Not because my parents didn’t offer me comfort, but because I learned to never offer myself comfort. I learned to regard my own pain as a weakness, and my desire for support as a character flaw. I learn to hate and resent that weakness inside me, and to project that hate bitterly onto other people who were capable of being comforted and were capable of enjoying soft, fluffy stories. 

Because we humans never want to think that we are the broken ones. It’s too scary. Too much cognitive dissonance. It’s easier to think that everyone else is just stupid or weak or shamefully self indulgent in their reading habits.

But that’s not true, and thinking in that way certainly isn’t healthy for me. In fact it works against my recovery to regard stories about healthy coping/relationships with distain and resentment.

So I’m making the effort from now on to retrain myself, and to unpack all of those emotions I denied myself. To—as some psychologists say—re-parent my inner child.

I might never be a fluff fanatic, and I certainly am not going to stop enjoying angst. I will always love hurt/comfort (or ‘earned comfort’ as I’ve started calling it, to remind myself of why I conveniently allowed myself to enjoy this genre even though it is basically the same as fluff). But from now on I’m not going to let myself look down my nose as fluff and fluff readers. 

I’m going to take those negative feelings and ask myself, “Why do I hate this?”

Is it because fluff is stupid, shallow, annoying, and pointless? Or is because I’ve been conditioned to see love and comfort as things I’m not allowed to want, and that I am weak for wanting?

I’m not sure if anyone else has this reaction to fluff. I know that it’s without a doubt the most popular genre in every single ship tag ever. I know that I have felt freakish and deformed for disliking it because it was so overwhelmingly popular and so universally regarded as harmless and pure and good.

I don’t know if I’m the only one, but if I’m not then I hope this helps the one other person with this problem. I hope it helps you in your recovery, and that it makes you feel seen.

Pull out your inner child, and give them a hug from me. Because we’ve both been deprived of things every single human being needs, and that’s a wound that nobody deserves to carry into adulthood.

[autistic-beshelar]

'm loving everyone venting about Molly! Thanks! And I want to ask you how you imagined the finale was gonna be? I have this whole fanfic in my head about Molly realising he had a four leaf clover stuck in his hair and upon noticing it he would give it to Yasha. Then the M9 would deal with Trent and Molly would finally know how terrible of a person the dude was. And then the M9 would introduce Molly to everyone else they met and visit every place they left better than they found it.

that's so sweet!

it's weird, because while like every other molly fan, i've had thoughts on his resurrection and a fic series i'm working on, but i'd never really... thought about the end of the campaign, or what it might be like?

(ETA this ended up so long im so sorry i have a lot to say apparently and this isn't even all of it)

my biggest and most important thing: they are a family. they belong together. maybe they'll go off on their own for a while, or stay with their families, but the nein belong together.

for fjord... he spent so long trying to be someone else, and while he's learning how to be his own person now, he deserves closure on that part of himself. he deserves a last conversation with vandren, and then to move on, to explore new places, to find new goals for himself. there is so much for him now, the open sea with so much life and promise. he buys a ship, a new ship, all his own, not one borrowed or stolen from another, and jester paints its name, decorates its quarters, makes it a home. he wrangles the nein (yes, even veth, yes, even essek) into joining him, and they set sail, all nine of them, the way it couldn't be the first time. he shows molly the ropes, teaches essek how to navigate, and watches his crew, his friends, his family, learning from him, placing so much trust in him, letting him guide them, and sees how truly happy they are to be here with him. usually, the crew is him, jester, beau, and often molly and yasha, but sometimes he will leave for a time, entrusting the boat to orly. sailing isn't all he has now, there is more to see, to do, there are things for him on land now too, but the sea will always be home to him.

for jester... she deserves her happy fairytale ending. i think for a while she stays with her family, seeing her parents happily together, finally properly introducing her boyfriend, and just spending time with her mum in a way that she didn't get to so much when she was young. and then i think she travels, just for the sake of exploring, with no defined goal other than to sow the seeds of joy and chaos everywhere she walks. and as she travels, she begins to write. stories were homes to her as a child, and they're homes even now, for someone with such a powerful imagination. she writes of her adventures, of her friends, she writes of mystical and fantastical things, half of them real. she writes and writes, words and illustrations filling so many books, she gives them to beau, to yasha, passes them off as silly little things, as though they aren't brilliant works of art. all of the nein read her stories - yasha out loud to molly as she plays with his hair, caduceus and calliope in the quiet of their garden, caleb and essek by the light of their bedside table. and in time the stories reach others, scattered journals are copied and bound into books, and one day jester wanders a quiet, nameless town, and in the window of a bookshop she's never seen, embossed on the cover of a novel, there is a brilliant green door.

for caleb... oh man, he is a teacher. that is so perfect for him, and i've been thinking about it ever since his talk with luc. i think there's something so powerful about being the person he deserved when he was younger, about stepping into that position of power and authority and being so kind with it. he's so passionate about magic, and i think it's beautiful to see him come so far - from someone burned and traumatised and so convinced he was irredeemable, to someone who can take comfort in soft things, someone who some days, almost, almost believes he can be good. i think out of everyone, except perhaps veth, he stays home the most. he still adventures with the nein of course, and if there is ever a whisper of artefacts or hidden knowledge or some expedition or other, the nein are with him in an instant to investigate it. but more often than not he is home, making the empire a better place, keeping the fire warm for them.

for veth... i want her to learn that she is enough as she is. i want her to learn that she doesn't have to choose between wife, adventurer, mother. she is all of these things. i want her to accept that her transformation was not a return to her old self but becoming someone new. i think she goes home, as she promised, and i do think she stays there for a long while, a few years perhaps, making up for lost time. and she'll pretend that she's fine with that life, with staying home, with being a wife and a mother. but that isn't all she is, and eventually, with yeza's help, with the nein's help, she will accept that. she'll no longer see it as two lives, two identities. she'll be able to kill fearsome beasts and explore strange new lands with her friends without guilt or fear, and at the end of the day she'll go home and regale her husband and son with extraordinary tales of her and her friends' heroics (that may or may not be exaggerated).

for yasha... i want her to be happy and loved. she's come SO far, from someone running from her past, drowning in guilt and so unsure of herself, to someone strong and bold. i love that ashley said she would do little odd jobs - i think she would do that, go around helping people as they explore. like most of the others, i don't think she would truly settle down. i like to imagine she does have a house somewhere - maybe inspired by the clays, she has a home somewhere green, surrounded by flowers, somewhere quiet and calm and peaceful. a little cottage maybe, for her and beau, just somewhere to return to and feel safe, somewhere she can rest. but i think most of her time would be spent travelling, seeing all the wonderful beautiful things the world has to offer, being with her friends who love her for exactly who she is, who showed her that she was someone worthy of being loved, who taught her that it's possible for her to love herself.

for caduceus... i think, for a time, he rests. he's tired. not done, far from done, but tired. i think he stays with his family at the grove, tending to all the things that are now so vibrant and alive, feeling the walls he was so sure would crumble. but after a time, he would feel that he is supposed to leave. the grove is wonderful, and will always be his home, somewhere he will always return to, and i think throughout his life - throughout the nein's life, and of course they will come to rest there, after everything - he will come home, to tend to the garden, to watch over the temple while his siblings roam. i think he travels, too, but not so much to adventure. after everything he's been through i think he deserves some peace, and quiet. he travels all the lonely winding roads, all the quiet humming spaces, sees all the life in all the hidden corners. while several members of the nein travel with him, it's yasha that walks with him the most, happy to go at his pace, eager to share in that peace and wonder.

for molly... there is so much for him now. he is no longer covered in eyes, no longer has that weight on him, even if he does hold memories of it, in darker moments. he is him but brand new, able to forge himself into whoever he wants to be, and the nein give him so much space and so much time for that. i think he stays with the clays for a little while - while the others deal with trent, yasha, so so scared to lose him again, places all her trust in caduceus to take care of him. and when they return (to find him with freshly cut hair the same colours as his coat, and a particularly proud looking clarabelle), they just spend time with him, all the time they missed and more. fjord tells him of their journey, jester showing him her journal, giving him meaning for it all, and all the time yasha holds his hand, unwilling to ever let him go. it's hard, being gone for so long, and while he is so, so (embarrassingly) proud of his friends for all that they've gone through, and how much they've grown, it's also glaringly obvious that he can't keep up. he almost has it in mind to leave - he doesn't want to hold them back, and he can't help but wonder if he's really the molly they want - it's hard to live up to a memory, after all. and there is so much he's missed. they tell him he's a moron, obviously. he is their friend, and there is nothing they won't do for friends, and waiting, staying, is such a small thing to ask. beau trains him, at his insistence - she thinks it's a joke at first, tells him that she'd be a terrible teacher, just as she was a terrible student. she's wrong, of course, and molly grows stronger by the day. he has so many adventures with them, sailing the seas on fjord's ship, sowing chaos with jester, fighting side by side with beau. there is not a single day that he isn't with his friends, yasha most of all. they are with him through everything, though good days, so many good days, and through bad ones too. molly has so much time - time the nein have given him, as he once gave to them - to live, to love, to wander, to form new memories and experiences. to be everything he never had the chance to the first time, and so much more.

for beau... she is so, so scared at first. they saved the world. they stopped trent. they've done... everything they've set out to do. what's left? what's keeping them together? when molly tries to run it reminds her so much of how she felt before, how she thought to run, to leave them before they could leave her. he returns the favour, reminds her that they are family, reminds her that she has worth, and the nein want her to stay, that they keep her, just as they kept him. (she almost believes him, and definitely doesn't cry). she does so many things - she goes home with yasha once in a while, somewhere tranquil, somewhere to study and research, she travels with caduceus, learning to appreciate a slower pace and all the quiet contemplation and companionship it can offer, she travels with fjord, his first mate, his best mate, allowing someone she trusts to take the helm and lead her on adventures. and she studies - long gone are the days of pretending to turn her nose up at books - she is one of professor widogast's best (and most irritating) students, learning magic not to weave it herself but just to understand it, just learning for the sake of learning. when she confronts her father, fjord and caleb are there as they should be - fjord to talk, to use his words and his charm to help, caleb in quiet solidarity, a hand on her shoulder, just standing with her as she tears down her mentor, her abuser, and comes out stronger for it, just as she had been there for him. finally, she can put that behind her, and she stays with the soul, as their greatest expositor (though maybe one who never does their paperwork), rooting out corruption, seeking the truth, exploring new horizons.

for essek... he spends a long time waiting for the past to catch up to him. it doesn't. it already has, in a way, if only in his own mind, the once unfamiliar guilt that weighs heavily on his shoulders. it never goes away, not entirely, but time heals, and so does the presence of the rest of the nein, always in his life, for as long as they can be. though he and caleb have different goals, they overlap so neatly, and though essek has a place in his own homeland, he spends far, far more time living with caleb. he continues with his research, caleb and beau poring over his notes, sharing his excitement and passion. he doesn't go on adventures near as much as the others, preferring to stay home, but he visits them, in all their different homes scattered across the land - jester in nicodranas, the clays at the blooming grove, veth and her family on the outskirts of zadash, beau and yasha's cottage in a little forest near felderwin. he has homes scattered across the land, so many places he is always welcome, and while guilt never entirely leaves, nor does the knowledge that one day, of course, all this will end, he finds peace.

i guess the reason i've never thought about the campaign ending is because for me.. it doesn't, not really. the mighty nein are family, chosen family. they stay together, they find homes in each other, and they leave every place better than they found it.

[belettewrites]

Some mountains and a dog part 8

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The thing about that forest was that it felt welcoming. Looking around him was like looking at those small drawings children got at school when they were good – or so he was told. Rare were the children getting to enjoy this, paper was expensive and he avoided being around nobility as much as he could, but Ciri had mentioned, in passing, that she used to get them from Eist when she had done particularly well in her lessons.

But the forest did look like a painting, like something you’d see in an illustrated book for children – the good kind of book, where nothing bad happened, the kind that you read to children after they had a nightmare. A painting, as if Melitele Herself had added small brushstrokes of colors. Dark green for the pines, and a lighter one for the fern; birds flying, small dots of red around their necks. And, the richest color of them all, a bright gold for the sunbeams that were coming through the branches and warming the ground.

This scenery didn’t make the forest look like a threatening place, and it was unnerving. It wasn’t silent, either, and Geralt almost wished it was, because he at least would have known that something was lurking around, scaring the birds and other animals away. But the only thing lurking around was him, and the lack of apparent threat made him feel uneasy.

Or maybe that feeling came from the fact that he had kissed Jaskier right before leaving. Maybe. Geralt tried not to think about it.

Tried being the key word here, because he wasn’t exactly succeeding. To think that he hadn’t realized it right as it happened, that he had done it like he had been dreaming of doing it for a while now without seeing what he was doing – it had felt so natural, to just get closer and kiss him, as if they had done it a thousand times before, a good luck and goodbye kiss, a promise to come back safe.

But they hadn’t done it before. It wasn’t a thing that they did. It was something Geralt oh so desperately longed for, but couldn’t have. It was… one would call it longing, the thing he felt – he had thought he had it under control, that being Jaskier’s friend was enough, and in a sense it was, he would take whatever the other man would give him, but for his mind to betray him like that –

Geralt was furious at himself, because he had overstepped his boundaries and had forced a kiss on Jaskier, had taken advantage of his friend before leaving without apologizing, because apparently he had been so out of his mind that he hadn’t realized before it was too late.

A distracted Witcher was a dead one, no matter the circumstances. It shouldn’t have happened for multiple reasons, the first one being that Jaskier hadn’t consented to this – it made Geralt feel sick. He hoped his friend would be able to forgive him. If he couldn’t, well, Geralt hoped that Jaskier would at least let him help him down the mountain, before they parted ways – why was it always on mountains that Geralt found ways to fuck up?

He viciously stepped on a branch that had fallen, almost disappointed when it didn’t crack under his foot. A bird sang in a tree next to him, and he glared at it. Everything reminded him of Jaskier, and of the way he had –

Something howled from deeper in the forest, ahead of him. He wasn’t walking on a path, there weren’t any, but he was hoping he’d find one made by animals as they passed through. He clenched his teeth and his fist, and started walking faster, looking out for stumps and other holes in the ground, his bag with some potions at his side. He would take care of whatever it was, go back, and apologize – and maybe confess, too, because there was no other way he would be able to explain what he had done without telling Jaskier that he loved him.

It would mean losing his bard, but Jaskier’s happiness mattered more to him than his own.

***

To say that Geralt hadn’t fucking expected this would be an understatement.

That being said, Geralt hadn’t fucking expected this.

To be fair, it was not as if he had expected anything; he had walked inside the forest ready to fight (ready to forget what he had just done), ready to do his witchering and to go back to the house (ready to go back to Jaskier), ready to fix the problem (ready to apologize).

He didn’t know for how long he had been in the forest – one always lost track of time when they couldn’t see the sun in the sky, even a witcher, but he knew that he had been walking for what could have been two hours or more before he had heard the howling coming from afar. After that, he had walked for maybe half an hour before hearing more noises, something that had sounded like two people talking and dogs playing on the ground, yapping and growling – young dogs, by the sound of it.

It intrigued him. Why would people be out there? He and Jaskier might have been in the forest, but they had stayed close to paths already traced. They had not… ventured three hours away from them.

Geralt started walking more slowly, careful not to step on anything that would have alerted them of his presence; he must have done something wrong, though, because the noises suddenly stopped. All noises, in fact, seemed to have stopped, the only thing he could hear being the wind softly whispering between the trees.

He carried on, walking towards where he thought he had heard the voices coming – and he could hear heartbeats now, someone was there. Someone, or something. He paused to listen. They were beating rapidly – whoever, whatever it was was scared, which meant that they – it – had heard him. It wasn’t good. Scared people or animals tended to react impulsively, and Geralt had promised to Jaskier that he would come back uninjured.

There was a clearing ahead of him, he could see it by the way there was much more light over there. He didn’t draw his sword. No need to, not yet. If there indeed was someone there, Geralt didn’t want to burst in, sword in hand, seemingly ready to attack – his reputation had been more or less mended by Jaskier’s songs, but anyone would be scared shitless of a Witcher coming out of the woods.

The trees soon parted ways, letting him distinguish silhouettes. He could see two, maybe three people standing in the clearing, looking in his direction. So they had heard him, and they were indeed people. Hoping he didn’t appear that threatening, he approached them.

“Hello,” he said, stepping in the clearing, taking in the sight in front of him. Three people, an unlit fire and – and nothing else. Which was weird, because Geralt could hear six heartbeats.

He wished Jaskier was here, as he often did; Jaskier would have known what to say, would have known how to ask why the fuck were there people without bags, in a clearing in the middle of a forest, without sounding aggressive or threatening.

But Jaskier wasn’t here, so Geralt had to do this himself.

“Hello,” the woman nodded. Her clothes needed some mending, as did the ones of her two companions, a man and a teenage girl who might have been only slightly older than Ciri. It made Geralt’s heart ache, but he also didn’t miss the way his medallion was softly vibrating against his chest. They were magic, and he hoped they weren’t fae, because if they were –

“Everything alright?” Geralt asked, still not drawing his sword, but searching around him for the source of the three other heartbeats. The vegetation around the clearing was dense and perfect to hide in. He counted again – yes, six heartbeats, three in front of him and the others coming from around him. All extremely nervous.

He heard a small whine coming from the bushes, one that sounded like Charcoal’s, but a pitch higher, as if it were a very young dog that had made it. The woman glanced at the bushes before looking back at Geralt, nervously stretching her hands.

“Yes, yes of course, sir. We were just-”

Cutting whatever she had been about to say, two dogs ran out of the bushes, landing at her feet, yapping happily. Her eyes widened in horror as she looked at Geralt, who suddenly realized that they weren’t dogs, but young wolves. Cubs. A third wolf, fully adult, came out and growled at him, standing protectively in front of the younger ones.

Geralt took a step back, his medallion vibrating more than before.

“You’re shifters,” he breathed, making sure to watch the adult wolf’s movements. Its yellow eyes didn’t leave Geralt’s, and the cubs, having apparently understood that something was going on, hid behind it.

“Please don’t hurt us,” the woman pleaded, stepping in front of the teenage girl who had tears in her eyes.

The whole situation had made Geralt tense his shoulders and frown; knowing how that made him look he tried to relax a bit, not smiling but definitely not frowning anymore. He put his hands in front of him in the traditional ‘I’m not being a threat, I’m not going to attack you’ gesture.

“I’m not going to,” he said, and the wolf growled. “I wouldn’t.”

“You say that,” the man who had been silent until now snarled, “but I see your medallion, your swords. You’re a Witcher, your kind kills monsters.”

“You aren’t monsters,” Geralt frowned.

Something shifted in the air, his medallion vibrating once more, and where once stood an adult wolf was now a tall woman, hair loosely tied and a scar on her cheek, sword on her hips.

“Aren’t we?” she almost barked, her eyes glowing fiercely, “Aren’t we? We’ve been thrown out like dogs when our village learned what we were, why wouldn’t a witcher be different? If people that were once close to us stoned us, why would you spare us?”

“Are you the ones that have been attacking the sheep?” Geralt replied instead. He wouldn’t hurt them if they didn’t threaten Lila and Violet’s security, but he couldn’t tell them that, they wouldn’t believe him. They seemed harmless – but wolves had teeth and claws and could use them.

“We’re forced to hide, witcher, we’re forced to hunt and sleep outside. Winters get tough, went the game gets rarer – you can’t blame us for taking a sheep that they don’t need to survive, not like we do.”

Geralt was suddenly reminded of his first meeting with Jaskier, of the elves and of Filavandrel, of how they had justified stealing from the valley as a means to an end, because they had no other choice. The pack of shifters in front of him was like them, if less regal; they hadn’t asked for anything, were merely trying to survive. Though maybe, unlike the elves, they could be reasoned with.

The two cubs were still hiding behind the tall woman’s legs – she was the leader of the pack, then. Tears were rolling down the teenage girl’s face; from fear or pain, Geralt didn’t know.

“The shepherdesses would welcome you,” he told the leader, “You don’t have to hide. You need to talk to them, offer your services – I think they would gladly give you a sheep in exchange for labor.”

She squinted her eyes and didn’t reply, assessing him.

“You give humans a lot of credit,” the only man of the pack replied. “How can you know that they will?”

He reminded Geralt of Lambert, in a way. So he replied like he would have replied to his brother.

“After you attacked their dog, leaving it in such a shape that they had to put an end to its misery, you mean? Some humans are good, and the shepherdesses are.”

Geralt looked at them, truly looked at them. He didn’t want to hurt them – it would be against his witcher code. As nonexistent as that code might be – a way for him to refuse contracts –, it was based on his own morals, and he absolutely refused to harm another sentient being. Though he would do what he needed to do in order to protect Violet and Lila – he quite liked them, the way they were around each other and with Jaskier.

He almost groaned. Why the fuck had he thought about Jaskier? It seemed that his mind couldn’t stay away from what had happened for long. Guilt and love didn’t go well together.

He tried to focus on the task at hand. Distracted witchers didn’t last, he berated himself. He would deal with the Jaskier situation when he would be back.

“But if you don’t,” Geralt warned, his voice a bit colder, “I’ll do whatever is necessary for you to stop being a threat to their safety. I understand you need to survive, I know how it is to have a cub to protect, but you’re putting them in danger. I’m sure they would accept to help you, if you asked.”

Violet hadn’t flinched when she had recognized him as a Witcher, Lila had welcomed them at her table and had served them lunch, hosting them and lending them towels that had been obviously gifted to her by her wife. They were kind, he knew. They would welcome the shifters in their house, looking at them a bit coldly after learning that they had been to the ones that had killed their dog, but they wouldn’t throw an entire family out. It wasn’t like them. Geralt had maybe known them for only a day and half, but he thought himself to be a good judge of character, and Violet and Lila were reliable people.

The tall woman glared at him. Geralt was feeling a bit threatened, if he was being honest. He would be able to win in a fight against her if the need arose, but there were two other adults here, plus the teenage girl, and he knew he wouldn’t make it out of it uninjured. He wouldn’t have time to take his potions, and he was away enough from Jaskier that the other man wouldn’t be able to help him, let alone actually find him here.

“We’ll think about it, witcher. We won’t harm the sheep for now, but I can’t guarantee that it’ll continue if the shepherdesses aren’t able to help us.”

Geralt nodded. It was fair, and all he could ask of them.

“Now go back before the night falls, witcher.”

He knew a dismissal when he heard one, and he had nothing to add. He would tell Violet and Lila what he had seen and done, and they would get to decide what they would do next. He hoped they would be okay, though – both the two wives and the shifters. Some people were played a cruel hand by Destiny, humans but not enough to be accepted among them, and he could only hope that they would be able to find a safe haven in the form of Violet and Lila’s hospitality.

He turned around, not really liking the fact that he was facing away from them, but not having any choice. In theory they wouldn’t attack him now, because he had established the fact that he was no threat for them, but he had to stay careful, years of training screaming at him to not face away from your enemy.

Geralt walked in silence, thinking about what he would tell Violet and Lila. He had expected a fight against some ungodly creature, and here he was, unscathed, his potions still tinkling in his bag. Jaskier would be relieved, but also disappointed – he would have to lie if he wanted to make a ballad out of this. Maybe he would turn it into a song about how Geralt had defeated a monster that could only be found in mountains, terrorizing the shepherds, lurking on its prey for days before finally attacking them.

Geralt would pretend to be bothered by the inaccuracy of the song, secretly admiring how his bard was able to twist events to get a way better story out of them, and would buy him more ale. Then they would go to their shared room, and Jaskier would braid his hair while humming a soft song, and Geralt would stay still, relaxing under the soft touches of his hair, wishing that he could reciprocate Jaskier’s tenderness-

Fuck. But that wouldn’t happen again, wouldn’t it? Not with Jaskier knowing how Geralt felt. Maybe he would stay, maybe he would not. Watching him leave again would be Geralt’s nightmare manifesting in front of his own eyes, but he’d let it happen. He would let a lot of things happen for Jaskier.

[doomedandstoned]

A Talk With BREATH, Portland’s New Meditative Doom Metal Duo

~By Billy Goate~

Illustrations by Tyler Wintermute

We're used to doom metal being, well, rather dark and sinister, but can it be meditative too? OM, the famous Al Cisneros side project, proved that yes, it can. Other acts, such as the celebrated UK band Bong, the New Brunswick trio Zaum followed (with Italy's Ufomammut, Finland's Dark Buddha Rising, and Ukraine's Bomg being just a step away with their generous, if often louder, landscapes).

Then I encountered doom metal yoga in Portland, and all bets were off.

Last month, Doomed & Stoned introduced you to another band you can add to your short list, whether listening in your Savasana stance ("corpse pose"), getting your groove on at work, or doing a little wake 'n bake to start the day.

This is BREATH from the City of Roses and on February 5th, all mysteries will be revealed as the meditative doom duo brings us their debut LP, 'Primeval Transmissions' (2021) on Desert Records.

Their music "is informed by adventures leaving the comforts of what was known behind. Going into unknown woods sometimes figuratively and some literal. With heavy melodically driven grooves their Meditation Doom will take you to secluded caves, and totemic vision quests'' (band bio).

Over the weekend, I traded words with Steven O'Kelly (bass guitar, vox) and Ian Caton (drums, percussion) recently to get to know this new name in the Pacific Northwest heavy underground. Doomed & Stoned also takes this opportunity to share a new visualizer with you for Breath's latest single, "Observer."

Breath - Observer

What themes and concepts does Breath explore musically and lyrically?

Peering into rituals meant to transcend the physical world. Initiations into the varied mystery schools like Orphism or Druidry I find very powerful. The Shamanistic role being so selfless putting themselves through extreme trials, shedding their previous self to protect their people by communication with spirit.

These things have lots of weight with sacrifice, and knowledge seeking from traditions nearly lost to time. Our sound aims to reflect that weight through the way we use the bass guitar and drums. I think a theme of meditation informs a lot of the riffs with spaciousness and transformation.

Who are your musical influences?

Foundationally, Black Sabbath is a center pillar. My first record being a Sabbath compilation by Earmark. I appreciate the balance they find between settled songs like "Orchid" leading into its counterpart "Lord of this World."  Grails’ Burning Off Impurities is such a vehicle that I would get lost in through the whole record. Melting boundaries of East and West with Zak Riles’ classical guitar and the crushing drum work by Emil Amos.

That brings me to Om, which is an important band to me that struck a chord all the way through from the music to aesthetic. Every show I’ve been to is like I’ve snuck into a temple ceremony, and leave feeling light on my feet and blissfully ringing eardrums. "On the Mountain at Dawn" is the heaviest song to me, with this immediacy and undeniable flow like the strong current of a river.

Photographs by Marissa Caldarelli

What sort of gear do you guys perform and record with?

Ian: DW Performance series Drum kit with Maple shells. Remo heads and Aquarian Kick Drum head. Zildjian K cymbals.

Steven: 4003 Rickenbacker bass guitar. Electric Amp Innovations Power Unit 180. Ampeg 8x10 speaker cabinet. Geezer Butler Cry Baby bass wah. MXR bass compressor. Ernie Ball VP Jr. Electro Harmonix Freeze. Deluxe Bass Big Muff. Also, Shure SM 58 and VE-20 Boss Vocal Performer.

You've mentioned gaining inspiration from solitary walks in the woods. What does the Oregon outdoors mean to you and how does it stir your creative processes?

When I first tried meditation, I was given this palm sized booklet by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu on breathwork as the entrance to a practice. Feeling and visualizing blue water filling and then leaving the well of your lungs. The band like our actual breath is a lifeblood for me. Making music and lyrics I can easily and gladly lose myself in. That practice I believe is responsible for shaping our sound.

Sometimes I feel a sort of unspoken conversation with the trees that surround, lots of times getting most lyrical ideas during these hikes. Boundaries are fluid in this space, and by its very nature puts my mind out of whatever box it might’ve been in before. Wilderness here has lots of personalities through wind, rain, and sun. For me, watching trees come alive moving in the wind or the quiet calm after a rain breeds deep reflection. Nature is a mirror.

What's the biggest epiphany or the strangest thing that you've experienced while being surrounded by Mother Nature?

On a summer day at Mt. Tabor in East Portland sitting in a secluded grassy opening circled by trees, I had the most psychedelic out of body experience without the aid of eating anything. High through trance, I came to the plants and tree’s awareness of me and I them. Like they knew my name.

Many of your tracks tell a story. Are these original tales or based upon the band's own mythos?

Whether I identify with an archetype or am retelling an experience I had, All the lyrics have roots in my real life even if themes might be far flung from our time.

Primeval Transmissions by Breath

Give us a walk through your new record, track by track, if you will.

Track 1   Starting with "Evocation," it’s a mixture of Shamanistic ritual and the effects meditation can have in clearing hurdles of adversity. I had been reading a book on Druid Lore and their equivalents around the world. Then I discovered Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams and was completely spellbound. Seeing cave paintings perfectly intact, it’s entrance hidden by a rock slide before Roman times in France. This painted a visual counterpart to my reading and was consumed with the world it represented. Hallucinogenic trance, their soul migrating to the spirit world through the rising smoke of the fire lighting cave art meant to dance with flickering flame. Taking on an animal guide and returning anew.

Track 2   "Dwarka" at its roots is a story about confrontation with otherworldly phenomena. There’s two personalities to it. At first the ominous impending arrival and, the character coming to grips with what he’s witnessed. The nature of the main riff reflects the enormity of space, and what might be out there. I feel like the energy of the song mirrors how the witness felt, getting heavier as the night becomes more harrowing.

Track 3   "Observer" bridges my love of Eastern music like Ravi Shankar and Baris Manco with metal accents. It’s the journey your mind can take through meditation, simply focusing on your breath and how it can lead to intensity. Mainly one riff building and transforming over the course of Observer. The lyrics are a recording of Sri Swami Satchidananda leading Hatha Yoga, an important teacher for me.

Track 4   "Battle for Harmonic Balance" is centered around the ancient mystery schools of the left and right Eye of Horus. Invoking themes of renewal like the Akhet, a Sun rising between two mountains. Heaviness from the beginning reflecting the weight of importance Egypt holds to me, being a cornerstone of our past. The riff deconstructs towards the end, aligning the song like the Sphinx during the Equinox. Facing East to summon the Sun once more. "Halls of Amenti" is the realm of the Gods, where the Sun goes at night. An ethereal ceremony exchanging distortion and drums for the hypnotic beat of a Shaker and deep Bass guitar.

Track 5   The reprise to "Evocation" is a continuation of the Shaman’s trek across the razor’s edge. With this offering without lyrics we convey the obstacles, lulls, and successful return starting with the similar ritual beginning as its first chapter. This is followed by a call and response conversation between drums and bass guitar. Floating in the ether until finding his way alongside the totemic animal guide culminating at the end, returning to body like the tide returns out to Sea.

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[tangled-the-series-forever]

Rapunzel and the Lost Lagoon

As soon as I heard about this book, I put it on my birthday wishlist. But alas, my birthday had come and gone. No Lost Lagoon. Apparently my mom didn’t see it on the wishlist, so that’s why. Flash forward to Christmas Day and I held the book in my hands, which were trembling with excitement. Not really, but you get the idea. I had been waiting to devour this book for months on end and I did. So without further ado, I will present to you this handy-dandy post that encapsulates my thoughts on Lost Lagoon before, during, and after reading. I thought it would be fun to record my expectations and compare them to what I discovered. If you’ve read Lost Lagoon, what did you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts! ❤️

Before Reading

honestly, I’m not quite sure what to expect. All I know is that there’s a lot of moments between Raps and Cass and I am ready for them!

maybe it explains how Cass came to be Raps’ lady-in-waiting? (I hope so because I’ve always wondered this...)

I think I’ll like the book as a whole (I’m hoping I’ll love it)

I’m guessing that it is cute, funny, serious, and adventurous all in one

maybe we’ll learn more about Cass?

will Raps tell Cass about her life in the tower?

what will be the ratio of lighthearted to serious moments? Am I more likely to laugh or cry? Probably both 😅😂😂

this book’s design is absolutely gorgeous! 😍😍😍 I literally just stared at it for a while beginning to read it

During Reading

Rapunzel’s hair hasn’t grown back yet? Oh, it’s her first week in Corona. Okay...

“Something was missing. I was hoping painting would help me find whatever that was, or at least help me end the afternoon on a happy note.” (is this relatable or what? I know not to chase after the elusive beast referred to as happiness, but I do often strive to end the day on a good note because I feel like Satan wins if I don’t)

Friedborg is Arianna’s lady-in-waiting? That makes more sense now. I always feel bad not knowing much about her or her background. I hope she makes some appearances in the book (no sooner did I type this than I look down and skim the scene where she teaches Raps how to sit. Crazy, right?)

Eugene referring to Rapunzel as “my girl” (so sweet 🥰)

“Eugene’s warm brown eyes and mischievous smile are irresistible from any angle” (she’s head over heels, ya’ll 😂💕😂)

first look at Cass 🥰 That’s my girl! Not only does she want to be part of the guard, but she wants to succeed her father as Captain! Go after your dreams, girl! I support you ❤️

“I’d rather shovel sheep dung than mend clothes and gossip.” Mood 😂😂

she recently discovered a hidden spot by using maps of an ancient underground tunnel system? How cool!

okay, but Cass’ animosity towards Raps is fair. And the fact that she refers to her as “that girl”? Priceless

names of nearby nations? Like, yes please!

the irony of Cass piquing Raps’ interest in her by leaving as soon as she can after throwing the shot put 😅😂😂

Cass worrying she got herself in trouble by practicing shot put. Poor thing!

the angst Cass feels towards her dad because he wants her to be a lady-in-waiting when she clearly doesn’t... so relatable (it’s tough when a parent’s expectations and our own dreams/desires don’t match)

I didn’t realize Cass created the maps herself! She’s so determined to prove herself to her dad, it hurts 😭😭

I wonder if the pools in Yultadore are what make up the lost lagoon...

“Her enthusiasm was so shiny and bright I had to squint” (I totally understand this)

pretty boy Eugene and his quips 😂😂

Cass trying to keep her distance from Raps by calling her “Princess” and firmly saying “Goodbye” before shutting and locking the door behind her

So that’s how Cass and Eugene met... okay, cool. Nothing too crazy or weird. I don’t know what I expected but it’s nice to know how their battle of wits began

I’m noticing a pattern in the words used to describe Cass: knowledgeable, brave, etc. I think that’s cool because I feel like her pessimism gets a lot more attention in the series. It’s nice to acknowledge her other qualities as well.

Arianna chose Cass to be Raps’ lady-in-waiting. I always wondered how she got the position. I’m loving how many little things this book is explaining 🥰

Also, just noticed the bird illustrations on the page of every new chapter. I wonder if there’s a pattern...

OWL!!! 😍😍 he literally “senses her distress”. I wish we got to hear about how they met

I wanted to cry for Cass. Poor thing just wants to follow her dreams. I like the way the finality of the decision was described. It’s so tragic 💔

“When Cassandra saw him [Eugene], her face clouded over like a stormy afternoon” 😂😂 I love how Cass doesn’t try to hide her feelings about people. It’s true that she keeps personal things close to her chest, but not when it comes to what she thinks of others. Honesty is the best policy, right?

I love how Cass continuously prompts Raps to keep reading the poem. She’s like, “Yeah, yeah, just get to the good stuff” 😂

about that poem... maybe it’s from Herz Der Sonne’s perspective. Could the “truth sealed in precious stones” be a reference to Zhan Tiri’s disciples and how they were trapped within stones? And what about the three gems? What’s the emerald tapestry supposed to be? Does it reference Saporia? I HAVE TOO MANY UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

“A few times I thought I heard some rustling behind me, but I kept going” (me: yeah, Raps is definitely following her) 😂

me when I realize the “emerald tapestry” is grass: 🙃

why is Cass so fearful around water? Did someone try to drown her? someone please tell me who is responsible so I can PUNCH THEM IN THE FACE 😅🤣

painfully ironic how Rapunzel can swim despite being locked in a tower all her life and Cass can’t

Raps nonchalantly offering to teach Cass how to swim just warms my heart 🥰❤️

okay, so Cass is responsible for her fear of water. That’s almost worse because it invites shame and self-hatred, which makes it more difficult to push against that fear or overcome it 😔

the importance of Raps agreeing to help Cass even after realizing she doesn’t want to be her lady-in-waiting is HUGE. This is something I feel like should have happened throughout Season 1 but never did (Raps supporting Cass and trusting that she has a good reason for things even if she doesn’t understand)

“But now I have to teach you which fork to eat your waffles with and stuff” 😂

the first time they call each other Cass and Raps 🥰😍🥰😍

woah, I didn’t expect there to be a time jump. I should have known because I kept wondering why they would depict Rapunzel with her blonde hair on the cover if this takes place before it comes back. Anyways...

I forgot to take notes as I read the majority of part 2. I’m currently a chapter or two away from part 3 and all I have to say is that something bad is about to happen. I can feel it. Dahlia’s definitely shady and so is Marco. I suspected Marie earlier but now I’m not sure. She wasn’t obvious until she was but now she’s not again so maybe she is guilty after all? Either way, Raps is making dumb decisions and I’m over here yelling at her to get her life together before she gets killed or kidnapped (whichever comes first, I guess) 😅🙃

Cass is absolutely roasting Rapunzel and I am here for it! Don’t mind me just munching away on my popcorn over here 🍿

Cass said she’s finally gonna leave Corona so I bet Raps will fess up and tell her that Dahlia’s been helping her with the painting for Cass so Cass will let her guard down and think Dahlia’s okay after all. But... she won’t be and they’re gonna realize she was the bad guy after all 😎

didn’t think Cass would get attacked 😅 also, the fact that she is highly skilled and powerful yet trips and twists her ankle is such a mood. Like, that’s literally me in a nutshell. She is beauty, she is grace, and she falls flat on her face 🤣🤣 while I’m here, I’m guessing Marco is her attacker because he probably has a rough voice

Okay, so I guess Dahlia really is innocent then... idk, I still think she could be up to something

I WAS RIGHT!

Marco’s the bad guy and things just escalated quickly cause now he’s got a knife against Cass’ throat 😳😬😵

so Dahlia’s innocent after all... I thought she or Marie might be working with Marco but I guess not (kinda disappointed to be honest)

okay so this Dahlia chick is exasperatingly hilarious 😂😂 she legit took part of Raps’ bookcase to use for an art piece. Like, who does that?

“Pascal shook his head, totally fed up” me too bud, me too 🤣

After Reading

so I did get to see how Cass and Raps first met (also how she first met Eugene as well)

I like how they combined their talents and passions at the end to create the map painting

There were a bunch of lines that made me laugh, although there were just as many that hit me like a knife to the chest (pretty much anything angsty from Cass’ POV) so I like how it made me feel all the feels (I felt like an investigator trying to figure out who the bad guy was and that was a blast 😆)

overall it was pretty good. I did feel like the characters were off (Arianna seemed like she swapped personalities with Frederick at times and Eugene apologized for joking Cass- as if!), but other than that I enjoyed it. There were a bunch of new characters being introduced so it was somewhat hard to tell who was bad and who wasn’t but I guessed correctly in the end. I was hoping there would be more than one bad guy but oh well.

I’m glad I read it because now I know a few extra things about Corona and its surrounding countries (plus I can finally read through all the Lost Lagoon related tumblr posts I saved for later... I was waiting until I read the book and here I am!)

If anyone needs me, I’ll be going through LL tumblr posts. I should definitely be sleeping but that’s not important 😅😂😂

[talesofealdancynedom]

Sirulius Healpenbroc, in fairy robes. After being mentioned in 5+ stories, you actually get an illustration of the notable storm breaker warlock!

Tale 19: Meriam Craweleoth: Mage Queen of The Grand West (chapter 7.2 - Yet To Pass 7/10) part 4. Stories of Old

Maps

Harsh Language

After three days, and three nights, a wall of abruptly tall mountains became visible. Meriam glowed with joy; she had almost forgotten happiness.

“Boys! Behold the Wall of Fire! The mountain range at the eastern end of the central desert. We are in Sinonia!” Meriam yelled back to her men. They all gasped with relief. Following their Queen was often the worst moments of their lives; until they reached their destination or went home to tell their children stories. Meriam was fond of her five soldiers. She paid them well for their company and service. Meriam, as a mage in fabric body armor and wielding grand spells, technically she didn’t need them with her. It wasn’t even to make her husband feel better anymore; Meriam genuinely cared for, and liked the comradery of her knights.

“My Queen! Why are we turning due south?” one of Meriam’s men yelled. That was a good question. Meriam looked around frantically, as did Asada.

“Don’t look me! They’re the guides!” Asada said, gesturing to the happy pair upon their proud camels, full of loot, and veering down a slope to their right.

“I once went into a magic forest so bright; I swore I had drunken an odd potion. I was greeted by a bard in a halved mountain cabin, surrounded by precise patches of odd vibrant fruits. This man spoke without tone, with a pained smile; he wed two royal fairies. Their companion lived in their cellar, and she was an asocial heartman, who baked wonderful rum shortbread. They fed me something with eggs and cheese, and then answered none of my questions, and left me to fend for myself in the lucid thicket. That is why I do not like poetry.” Meriam said, following the guides south. The Anglian men groaned and cried; They were so close to freedom from the wretched oblivion of sand. And now they were moving away from it. Worse yet, their queen may have gone mad; everyone was so confused by Meriam’s tale, that they offered her water and rest. She refused.

“The world has led me many places, and in hindsight, they have all been wonderful.” Meriam said with whimsy. Her companions sighed and followed.

           By nightfall, the men were dehydrated. They had been crying for their lost chance of escape; which was within grasp, then suddenly taken from them. Meriam assured Asada her men were not weak, but human. Asada pointed to the rice fields and bamboo that was now at the roadside. It was all so, sudden. The men began to cry again. The smell of day-old raw fish and seaweed wafted from the bay, and hit them like freshly chopped onions. For they yearned for a cool dip in the sea, while being devoured by a bloom of jellyfish after such a journey.

“Oi, Da Lan se!” The merchants chimed. “we recommend noodle. Can’t find any place else!” The merchants said. They could speak Anglian: the whole time. It is likely they wanted to mess with the foreigners. They parted ways from their guides, and went towards the sea. Then Meriam, Asada and the five knights noticed the houses…

           The valley sat deep, like it had been slowly eroded over time, and was laden with salty silt atop the earth. The bamboo and growth, was young, and the paths were wooden walk ways suspended on thick stone pilers above the mud. The houses had docks off their balconies, as they were built on stilts. All the livestock sat in aloft cages, as fishers used tall poles to take trout from the tide. The people looked miserable, and wore mix matched fabrics, that hung with long sleeves and skirts. Their black hair was held up with pins and clasps, to keep it out of their brown, amber and hazel eyes. Their faces looked unfamiliar to the weary Anglian travels. And up the mountain, as it began to darken, they saw a large pale blue castle-pagoda-cathedral sitting upon a seaside hill. There was a trail of audible bells and lights of a camp not far from it.

“I can’t handle this. This place is awful. Let’s eat some steamed fish, bathe and camp. I’m going to die alone and childless, leaving my precious home to the cheats of my homeland.” Asada teared. Meriam patted her comfortingly on the shoulder. Asada was correct.

           At dawn, they found themselves surrounded by men in dark platted armour, and vibrant sashes and weapons. The royal guard of Sinonia, was to take these foreigners to their emperor. Who it turned out, was visiting this very village, to stop the immense amount of hate-mail he received daily. It made him wish the courts didn’t take literacy and penmanship so seriously. It made him wish he couldn’t read; He had begun to dream about reading these letters. So, he was refreshed when a party of foreigners was brought to his knees, and forced to bow. He wore many silken robes of violet, red and gold, and he also wore white paint on his face and an absurd hat.

“Exotic faces from far off lands? State your business! I only allow men of Francia and Indonia in my Kingdom. You look like children of the West” The emperor said.

“Yes. I’m Mage Queen Meriam of Anglia. I come to grant a grand favour for you, to make peace and friendship between our kingdoms.” Meriam said.

“That explains why you are so pretty. Your nation must be chaos, if they send women on such important journeys; you should be pregnant in a palace, garbed in silk. Unless you, their mage, are the grand gift?” He laughed. “Sinonia has two mages already; twins. One of which is the source of aggressive messages form this area. If I get another scroll depicting tentacles, or complaining of typhoons and poverty, I will kill him. Which is to say I am already here to kill the bastard.”

“Fuck me; there is a mage with jewels I can borrow here! You can’t kill him! I need his love to save a forest!” Asada yelled. Meriam cursed under her breath. Asada was vile, and this was not the time for harsh impolite language. Not that she didn’t want to literally bite the emperor for his own poor taste. She would have to push through some newfound opinions, to once again desire good terms with this land. Meriam held it back. The Emperor however, did not.

“Ah yes. Because the grace, and nurturing, beauty of a woman can tame that town fool. I will not give peace to a land I know nothing of, and tries to control me! Guards! Send them to that rough warlock upon the hill. I want to see what he does with them before we execute him.” The emperor grinned. The soldier’s faces were calm, hiding an untameable hatred for their leader. One even whispered an apology to Meriam on the way.

           Unable to access the impressive majestic home, the six of them were left on the beach. Meriam sent Nihten off to look for the mage, of whom she knew was Sirulius. Nihten came back, saying a man was laying in the tide asleep, with a brass staph holding a dark crystal sphere which had an Orca in it; clad in gold and blue fish kingdom fairy robes. Meriam gestured for Asada to head up shore.

“Your groom awaits. We will be here, tanning like fat seals.” Meriam shrugged. Asada jumped with joy and ran off. Meriam pondered weather or not Sirulius would be happy to have a woman thrown at him, or not. If he was crazy enough to meet Asada’s needs, maybe he actually would become overjoyed with a wave of true love. That sounded nice. Finally, able to relax, Meriam and her men dipped their toes in the sea.

“My Queen! We found this odd staph in the sand!” a knight said, handing her a lapis luzli staph, carved like a fountain that held up two bronze koi at the top. It reminded her of Feon’s staph.

“This must be his storm staph,” Meriam said “storm-breaker mages go dark when their happy, causing them to lose themselves, and summon disastrous storms.” She said, like she was reading from an encyclopedia.

“So, I assume those birds flying away form the sea, and the darkening of the sky, means he likes Asada’s company your majesty?” Another knight asked. They heard panicking come from the village, and the tide receded meter by meter. A basal fear overcame them, as they looked out to sea, and saw a wall of water form.

“She is quite the woman…” He continued; as did and screaming of the villagers. Meriam stared into the typhoon with a calm gaze, as her men tried desperately not to leave their queen’s side; they eagerly awaited orders to flee.

“Can you wait here a few moments?” Meriam said calmly to her men. Then. The screaming then stopped, as did the water, and birds in the sky. There is never hurry, when time is at your will. Meriam calmly walked up the beach to see how much Asada and Sirulius were enjoying each others company. When she reached them, they were indeed, enjoying each other’s company. The thought of sand burn, and finding it in her garments, nearly made her gag. Meriam walked up, placed the staph in Sirulius’s hand, and admired him. No wonder Feon chose to paint him. He was striking to look at. Not in an overly handsome kind of way, but in the same way as a peacock. His blue hair glistened, and matched his blue eyes; and his smile was so genuine. He must be so lonely in a town of people who hate him. After making staphs to control his magic for them, they still sent ill words to the emperor. Meriam decided, in spite of interrupting the moment of young love, to make time resume while she was standing there.

“Sorry to interrupt, but you forgot your staph. And the emperor is here, and wants to kill you.” Meriam said calmly. The typhoon began to return to the sea, and cheers were heard form the village.

“Thanks! I was looking for it when this attractive lady of Indonia asked for my hand! After intense grasping, we are going to surf, make hats, and go home to eat fish with you; then resume our passion several times more. Then you can go find my brother in the forest of The Stone Gate to return home!” Sirulius said.

“Yes, but your emperor wants to kill you.”

“Everyone does; and yet, here I am! They always come when I am in my house, but my house is locked by a secret phrase I reset daily, because I forget the password…” He said, hugging in Asada, who hugged back. Meriam felt a little awkward, and coughed.

“Well, it is nice to meet you Sirulius. I will be heading back to my men and your, Castle? Have fun?” Meriam said. Meriam ran back to her men, then scolded them for not trusting her.

           At dinner, Sirulius and Asada shared tales about each other, while Meriam’s men intently listened. Meriam was busy enjoying the fish. When Sirulius brought out the liquor he made, the quality of the conversation began to drop as everyone’s words dissolved into laughter. Asada leaned in closer to Meriam.

“I was right!” she whispered. “It is nice to hold someone’s hand. I will stay here a little longer, and use a candle gate to get home; you go home without me, and hold your special someone’s hand too.” She whispered with joy. The way Asada worded it, sounded nice. With no resentment or labels; Meriam wanted to try that. She realized she was still mad about being ripped from her friend and family in Francia, and having her destiny chosen for her. She didn’t need that when she could have a moment with someone, that made nothing else matter. Then Meriam realized, she had those type of moments all the time.

NEXT--->

<---PREVIOUS

[dippedanddripped]

Founded on the streets of Flatbush, Brooklyn, in the '90s, Carl Williams founded his iconic brand with "$1000 and a dream". Born in an era where your outfit was social currency, Karl used his passion for style to develop the influential brand we now know and love as Karl Kani. A self-taught designer, Karl's designs have been worn by icons such as Tupac, Nas, Jay-Z, Aaliyah, and Snoop. Building his own baggy-fit, hip-hop ready blueprint, Karl used his "hustle-hard" upbringing and a savvy eye for street-influenced fashion to create a globally-renowned brand.

Coming for an era where nobody believed hip-hop culture could become pop-culture de rigueur, Karl faced skeptical detractors, unsure if a street-influenced label could go global. Despite being confident, Karl would always ask himself "Can I do it?" This existential question was the launching pad that drove Karl to legally change his name from Carl Williams to Karl Kani. So, the question of "Can I?" morphed into the brand name "Kani", and with that, a legendary label was born.

Fast forward to the global pandemic of 2020 - in a time of uncertainty, many creatives are asking themselves: "Can I keep my business going," "Can I still perform," and "Can I stay fit and healthy?"

Looking to Karl's story for inspiration, an overarching message prevails - together "we can" do this.

In this candid video, Karl touches on his storied journey, from getting up at 5:30 am to sell newspapers so he could buy clothes, to gaining inspiration seeing his father visit tailors as a child. Ever the optimist, Karl touches on how he overcomes setbacks, remains grounded and healthy, and how we can grow as a community.

Volume 90%

As our community of creative talent grows stronger and stronger, we look to a diverse range of talents who provide individual stories of creative fortitude. With the effects of Covid-19 taking a toll on the industry, this inspiring set of creatives prove that an "I Can" attitude can overcome any obstacle. From rappers to visual artists, their stories provide hope during tough times.

KOBY MARTIN – ARTIST

A proud export of Ghana, London-based artist Koby Martin uses traditional and digital mediums to illustrate his work. His emotive style fuses Ghanian and British influences, articulating his life experiences through personal struggles and tragedies, turning them into artistic triumph.

With collaborations with the British Council, and The British High Commission - for which he was commissioned to create a live painting for 2019's Afrochella concert at the El Wak Stadium in Accra, Ghana. Koby's artwork spans over a variety of subjects, often using bright colors - a reflection of his heritage and spontaneous personality.

How has the current climate impacted your art and the way you create?

The current climate has me in a very reflective mood - in regards to how I use my time - whether spending time with family, friends, and even working. It’s also made me aware of how fragile & short life really is. Creatively, I always work in isolation, so it was quite hard to differentiate the climate from my normal routine. But, it also pushed me to experiment with other materials and learn new techniques. I also started reading more, which I rarely do, because of my short attention span. Although we have had a lot of tragedies and losses, I personally believe it's made me stronger, tougher, and smarter for any challenge ahead!

How can I make a change?

Change comes about through self-belief and the realization of who we are as individuals. It's a domino effect that begins with the man/woman in the mirror. I set out to express that through my gift of creating, collaborating, and having yearly exhibitions, which I believe brought together a sense of awareness, togetherness, restoration, and healing, especially within the black community.

How can I inspire others?

Inspiration starts with self and comes from within. To inspire, one has to believe in self and take action on the standards and goals they have set out for themselves. In doing that, it sparks a viral sense of awareness, belief, and motivation with the people you are around.

How can I create in the current climate?

The current climate has taught me to be still. I have learned to put everything at a standstill when it's time to create, a momentary pause from all the stresses of life. This allows me to get lost in my work. I step into a different world, a whole new dimension that allows me to create with joy. Something like stepping out of the business of a matrix and skip-hopping into a Teletubby world is the best way I can explain it.

TORI TAIWO – PHOTOGRAPHER

Photographer Tori Taiwo runs Hercuts, an empowering haircut page for women who have embraced shaving their hair, favoring unique and charismatic low-cut hairstyles. After leaving home and falling out with a family friend, 33-year-old Taiwo was given a place in a hostel. Too terrified to stay there, Taiwo was determined to change her life. She continues to empower, inform, and inspire others via her art.

How has the current climate impacted your art and the way you create?

The current climate has allowed me to explore and revisit my prior passions. During the first lockdown, I started shooting products, this allowed me to gain new skills and open a new revenue. I have started booking clients, and shooting and filming products, which I can do from home. How can I make a change? By being open to trying new things and willing to allow for changes that are unforeseen, as well as collaborating with other creatives to keep morale up and encourage others to try new things too!

How can I inspire others?

By sharing the process of pivoting and exploration - high, lows, and everything in between.

How can I create in the current climate?

By changing my outlook on the creative process - stripping back and using what I have at my disposal to create; trying new things & exploring.

STEFANI NURDING – SKATER/ ENTREPRENEUR<

As the founder of skateboard brand Salon Skateboards, Stefani Nurding hopes to destroy the "boys only" stereotype that plagues the skate scene. A skater who was once told she was "too pretty to skate", Stefani is passionate about promoting diversity within the skate community. With a respected brand, Stefani juggles being a mum and pro-skater in a male-dominated industry.

How has the current climate impacted your art and the way you create?

Before the lockdown, I would say that it really made me think about being disconnected from people. I felt much more like I wanted to film and photograph others skating, as opposed to focusing on myself. One of my projects was to shoot instant photos of friends or strangers skating, then give them the photo afterward. Now that we're in lockdown, I feel even more disconnected from people, so I try to make my content fun and positive to try and uplift people.

How can I make a change?

I realized that I have a lot of knowledge about how to make money as a self-employed person. My friends were losing their jobs around me, and I became aware that some of them had no idea how to make money other than having a job. I coached a few friends that needed help, and I also set up affordable online courses about time management and setting up your own business.

How can I inspire others?

After I had my baby, I felt so lost with skateboarding and my own identity. It felt like I didn't know what I liked anymore and had no idea if my body would return to my previous level of fitness after my cesarean. Fast forward 20 months, I am in peak health, doing pilates regularly and skateboarding 2-3 times a week. I am 32 and a new mum. I just really hope that others who see 30 as old, or think they can't do things after becoming a mother will just maybe think "screw it, she is doing it and so can I".

How can I create in the current climate?

I have my skate brand Salon Skateboards as a creative outlet for my graphic design which is nice, but I love to create sporadically and get ideas all the time which I need another outlet for. I have been creating a lot of different things - painting, experimenting with Photoshop, photography, printing clothes, and just generally having fun with making art. There are a lot of things where I just think "meh, will never use it", but occasionally I come out with a gem.

ROXXXAN – ACTIVIST/RAPPER/MODEL

Birmingham-raised rapper Roxxan represents the LGBTQ community with enormous pride. For the last ten years, the queer rapper has built up her own unique identity. A self-proclaimed tomboy, Roxxxan has expressed her want to create a space for women who adhere to non-gender specific traits. After relocating to London, Roxxx has displayed perseverance and determination - from coming to London to get a job at a major label to then being signed as an artist eight months later.

How has the current climate impacted your art and the way you create?

The current climate has affected the energy around me and where I go for inspiration. Before lockdown, I would meet friends, be around family, different energies, and walks of life, which made it easy to be inspired or do things that spark creativity. Now I go for walks or sit on a park bench so I can soak up all around me, then process it and let it out my way.

How can I make a change?

I can make a change by being visibly patient and open to change and growth. I aim to make a change by also being present for any women POC or fellow LGBTQA's. A lot of people are finding it hard to cope, I can make a change by being there for any and all of my people.

How can I inspire others?

I try to inspire others by living in my truth and fully accepting who I am; using my differences or things that have held me back in the past as my gifts to the world. I understand times are a lot different now, but had some of the artists and people I looked up to like Missy Elliot and Queen Latifa been open about their sexuality, I believe I would have found mine a lot sooner. Which also would lead to me finding myself sooner. I aim to be that for younger people growing up.

How can I create in the current climate?

In the current climate, I create at home with my iPad studio. Through spring and summer, I sat with and felt all the highs and lows of 2020. It’s only recently that I’ve finished processing, and now I’m ready to put everything into words and my outlet and art.

SILAI ESTATIRA – SPOKEN WORD ARTIST

Silai Estatira aka Mishaal Javed is a young British hip-hop artist, spoken-word poet, micro-influencer, and full-time international relations student. A brave artist, Mishaal has gone against the grain of what is expected from her culturally by venturing into rap, spitting socio-political raps with a unique and fresh take on streetwear style.

How has the current climate impacted your art and the way you create?

During lockdown, music almost became a lifeline. It has always felt like my purpose, but I realized how much I needed it. I’ve been writing more, going back to the basics of it, sometimes just freestyling in my room or with my best friend and having fun with it again. I’ve been revisiting some of my favorite projects too. Retracing the steps of artists I admire, just taking it all in.

How can I make a change?

I want to fight for the world to be more inclusive. To be a space for everyone, not just a representation of some voices. Fighting for all diaspora, the people who are othered, and everyone who doesn’t feel represented. Music can make a big change. I want my music to comfort people, and to give company, the same way it does for me.

How can I inspire others?

I want to let people know it’s okay to ride their own wave, step outside the box, and live outside it. It’s okay to venture into spaces you’ve never ventured into before, especially when people tell you that you can’t do it. Never stop. Keep perfecting your art. It belongs to you, it is yours. Everyone has a destiny, we can’t let anyone - including ourselves - stop us from chasing it.

As Muslim women, people talk over us (metaphorically). Everyone has an opinion, and there’s so much dehumanization and categorizing that happens. I know girls that have had to fight that. I still fight it. But we’re still here, going. For us, It’s a movement.

How can I create in the current climate?

Because there have been no gigs, I’ve had so much time to write and experiment with sounds. I’m lucky because I’ve always recorded in my room so I’ve just been continuing that. I’ve had more time to think about how to present and reflect on my pieces too. There are so many ways to create, it’s just about being present with yourself, and knowing what story you’re trying to tell.

KANAH FLEX – DANCER / MOVEMENT ARTIST

Born-and-raised in south London born, self-taught dancer and movement artist Kanah Flex was discovered busking by FKA twigs in 2014. The autistic dancer struggled to express himself, before finding his calling in the world of dance. A free spirit with a dedicated following on social media, the father of two challenges society’s ideas of normality, pushing his followers to achieve their goals.

How has the current climate impacted your art and the way you create?

I feel as if climate change has forced me to exercise all of the other gifts that I have shunned in the past, due to sheer laziness or the comfort of being inside the box. I feel like even though my physical might be on lockdown, my spirit is free.

How can I make a change?

The only change I am going to start with is myself, it’s impossible to change anything before that  - I must start with me. Self-discipline is very key to change.

How can I inspire others?

By staying true to myself, my family, and my people

How can I create in the current climate?

I make things work with what I have and what I am surrounded by. I cannot play the victim in these times, even though the climate has changed, my creativity hasn’t. I’m always thinking of innovative ideas.

[underleaves]

Happy new year/Bonne année ♥

I wish you all a happy new year! May 2020 be an indulgent year with all of you, may it be filled with small pleasures as great joys and may you stay healthy!

I wish you all a happy new year! May 2020 be an indulgent year with all of you, may it be filled with small pleasures as great joys and may you stay healthy!

For me it's time to take stock because the year has been full of events and taking a step back often helps me get back on the starting line in better shoes. If my little life doesn't interest you, you can skip the rest right away. If behind the drawings you are also interested in the artist and her moods, hang on tight because here we go.

- On a professional plan, it is confirmed, after 10 years of half paid strugglings, settling my services on professional rates has killed my activity as a naturalist illustrator. I have no more work and income since more than a year now. (Don't worry, I'm not in the street either, my love took over and our families are super supporting)

Paradoxically, I have never drawn (and especially enjoyed drawing) as many plants and animals since it's no longer for orders.

This "unemployment" nevertheless allowed me to devote all my time to my next comic "Plumes", which brings me to the next point.

- On the artistic plan, 2019 it is: more than fifteen illustrations, 24 comic pages painted with watercolor (a collaboration with JackPot, began 6 years ago, and which was a challenge as informative as rewarding), 270 WIPs posted with my Patrons, 240 sketches/sketch pages, 34 pages (only, raaaah !!!) nude studies, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, 12 colored comic pages and 12 other pages sketched of "Plumes"!

All in just 9 months, because I spent three months in South Korea during spring, which brings me to the next point.

- On a personal plan, I finished draining up my savings in a new trimester of study of korean in Seoul and it was really the break I needed to complete my transition and start off on a new foot. I met adorable people there, I left behind me art and my feeling of permanent failure to invest myself in a learning that I love, and succeed by validating my achievements with a score of 87.8 / 100 in exams. The whole thing was toped by a great trip through Korea with my husband (of which we lost almost all the photos in a computer crash, sadness ...).

I had to let everything down for a few months to begin to realize that without being really depressive, I had been wading for 4 years in a depressed state stucked to my skin and that I refused to accept despite the fits of tears and the regular fights against the need to curl up on the floor while waiting for the day to finally end.

I guess that those who follow me for a long time must be surprised to read these lines because I have never been the type to spill over my life and even less on my problems. The fact is that I always considered that I wanted to share my creations and my cheerfulness and that the rest had nothing to do on the web, because there were already enough depressing things in everyone's daily life. But over the years, I realized that all the artists and / or friends that I admired from afar and who to my eyes had succeeded, were in fact often in financial issues, or on the verge of depression, or exhausted by this race for visibility on the net, or overwhelmed by their feeling of failure, or fighting the impostor syndrome (when not all at once) and to cope with so many other problems that I know too well. Seeing them openly talking about their problems helped me to step back from mine and realize that the artists who really succeed are ridiculously few and that they are not even happier. So I told myself that for once I was going to make an exception and drop the varnish, because I don't know ... first it feels good, and if it can help someone, like these other artists helped me, then it was worth it.

The parenthesis closed, I come back on my daily routine because there is no way I am ending on a negative note. SO :

I continue to jog 3 times a week and climb 2 times a week with my love. My climbing improvement also goes on (I managed to climb two 6c +! *A*).

I managed to get back into the habit of reading in the evening and I'm reading in English right now. I no longer have anxiety related sleep disorders and I fell good since I started painting Plumes and feel like I have a new job. Even if it yields me nothing, lalalaa ... XD;

I continue to learn Korean slowly on my breakfasts and weekends. I also continue to write and I still love it, even if I have too little time to dedicate to it.

I also regularly spend time for my indoor plants and in my garden, which makes me feel good.

I learned to manage my schedules better, to be more realistic about the time that each task takes me but also to take into account the nervous fatigue that goes with it in order to organize my weeks more effectively and to exclude unnecessary stress.

These are a lot of small victories or small achievements with which I am very satisfied into my lifestyle, because they do good for my mind as well as my body.

And my love offered me a set of study oil paints for Christmas, so I still have great artistic experiments waiting for me. ♥

My good resolutions for this year:  Spend 2020 as I finished 2019 and everything will be fine ~

Thank you to all who took the trouble and had the courage to read me until the end.

And thank you to all those who comment, reblog or like what I post on my various platforms, your support is precious to me and that is why I wish you all the happiness in the world for this new year. ♥

-------------------

Je vous souhaite à tous une excellente année ! Que 2020 soit une année indulgente avec vous tous, qu’elle soit remplie de petits bonheurs comme de grandes joies et que vous y teniez la santé !

Pour moi il est temps de faire le bilan car l’année fut riche en évènements et prendre un peu de recul m’aide souvent à remettre les pieds sur la ligne de départ dans de meilleures baskets. Si ma petite vie ne vous intéresse pas, vous pouvez sauter le reste tout de suite. Si derrière les dessins vous vous intéressez aussi à l’artiste et êtes prêts à vous manger ses états d’âmes, accrochez-vous bien car c’est parti.

- Sur le plan professionnel, c’est confirmé, après 10 ans de galères payées au lance-pierre, me caler enfin sur les tarifs professionnels a tué mon activité d’illustratrice naturaliste. Je n’ai plus de travail de ce côté-là et c’est ceinture financièrement parlant depuis déjà plus d’un an. (Rassurez-vous, je ne suis pas sous les ponts non plus, ma moitié qui a pris le relai et nos familles sont super bienveillantes)

Paradoxalement, je n’ai jamais dessiné (et surtout pris plaisir à dessiner) autant de plantes et d’animaux que depuis que je le fais pour moi-même et non plus pour des commandes.

Ce « chômage » m’aura néanmoins permis de consacrer tout mon temps à ma bande-dessinée « Plumes » pour la mettre enfin à l’eau, ce qui m’amène au point suivant.

- Sur le plan artistique, 2019 c’est : plus d’une quinzaine d’illustrations, 24 planches de bande-dessinée mises en couleur à l’aquarelle (la collaboration avec JackPot, dans les cartons depuis 6 ans et qui fut un challenge aussi instructif que gratifiant), 270 aperçus de travaux en cours postés auprès de mes Tipeurs, 240 crayonnés/pages de crayonnés, 34 pages (seulement, raaaah!!!) de croquis d’étude de nu, et SURTOUT, 12 planches couleurs et 12 autres planches de BD crayonnées de « Plumes » !

Le tout sur 9 mois seulement, car j’ai passé trois mois en Corée du sud sur le printemps, ce qui m’amène au point suivant.

- Sur le plan personnel, j’ai achevé d’engloutir mes économies dans un nouveau trimestre d’étude du corée à Séoul et ce fut vraiment la pause dont j’avais besoin pour achever ma bascule et partir d’un nouveau pied. J’y ai rencontré des gens adorables, j’ai laissé derrière moi le dessin et mon sentiment d’échec permanent pour m’investir dans un apprentissage que j’adore, et y réussir en validant mes acquis avec une note de 87.8/100 aux examens. Le tout fut couronné par un super voyage à travers la Corée avec ma moitié (dont on a perdu quasiment toutes les photos suite à un crash PC, tristesse...).

Il m’aura fallu tout plaquer durant quelques mois pour commencer à réaliser que sans être vraiment dépressive, cela faisait 4 ans que je pataugeais dans un état dépressif qui me collait à la peau et que je refusais d’accepter malgré les crises de larmes et déprimes régulières à vouloir se rouler en boule sur le plancher en attendant que la journée s’achève enfin.

J’imagine que ceux qui me suivent de longue date doivent être surpris de lire ces lignes car je n’ai jamais été du genre à m’épancher sur ma vie et encore moins sur mes problèmes. Le fait est que j’ai toujours considéré que je voulais partager mes créations et ma bonne humeur et que le reste n’avait rien à faire sur la toile, car il y avait déjà bien assez de choses déprimantes dans le quotidien de chacun. Mais au fil des années, j’ai réalisé que toutes les artistes et/ou amies que j’admirais de loin et qui à mes yeux avaient réussi, étaient en fait souvent en galères financières, ou au bord de la dépression, ou épuisées par cette course à la visibilité sur le net, ou écrasées par leur sentiment d’échec, ou à lutter contre le syndrome de l’imposteur (quand ce n’était pas tout à la fois) et à faire face à tant d’autres problèmes que je connais bien. Les voir s’ouvrir publiquement de leurs problèmes m’a permis de prendre du recul sur les miens et de réaliser que les artistes qui réussissent vraiment sont ridiculement peu nombreux et qu’ils n’en sont même pas plus heureux pour autant. Donc je me suis dit que pour une fois j’allais faire exception et laisser tomber le vernis, parce que je ne sais pas… déjà ça fait du bien, et si ça peut aider quelqu’un, comme ces autres artistes m’ont aidé moi, alors ça en valait la peine.

La parenthèse fermée, je raccroche donc sur mon train-train parce qu’il n’est pas question de finir sur une note négative. DONC :

Je continue de courir 3 fois par semaine et de grimper 2 fois par semaine avec ma moitié. Ma progression en escalade se poursuit elle aussi (j’ai réussi à grimper deux 6c+ ! *A*).

J’ai réussi à réinstaller l’habitude de lire le soir et je lis en anglais en ce moment. Je n’ai plus de troubles du sommeil liés à mon anxiété et je me sens bien depuis que j’ai commencé à peindre les Plumes et que j’ai l’impression d’avoir un nouveau métier. Même s’il ne me rapporte rien, lalalaa… XD;

Je continue d’apprendre doucettement le coréen sur mes petits-dej et week-ends. Je continue aussi d’écrire et j’aime toujours autant ça, même si j’ai trop peu de temps à y dédier.

Je consacre aussi régulièrement du temps à mon jardin et à mes plantes d’intérieur, ce qui me fait un bien fou.

J’ai appris à mieux gérer mes emplois du temps, à être plus réaliste sur le temps que me prenait chaque tâche mais aussi à prendre en compte la fatigue nerveuse qui va avec afin d’organiser plus efficacement mes semaines et d’en exclure les stress inutiles.

Ce sont pleins de petites victoires ou de petits acquis dont je suis très satisfaite vis à vis de mon hygiène de vie, car ils font du bien autant à ma tête qu’à mon corps.

Et ma moitié m’a offert un méga set de peintures à l’huile d’étude pour noël, donc j’ai encore de chouettes expérimentations artistiques devant moi. ♥

Mes bonnes résolutions pour cette année : Poursuivre 2020 comme j’ai terminé 2019 et tout ira bien~

Merci à tous ceux qui ont pris la peine et eut le courage de me lire jusqu’au bout.

Et merci à tous ceux qui commentent, rebloguent ou likent ce que je poste sur mes diverses plateformes, votre soutien m’est précieux et c’est pour ça que je vous souhaite tout le bonheur du monde pour cette nouvelle année qui commence. ♥

[urcadelimabean]

Fellowship of the Ring rewatch thoughts from one of those intense lotr nerds!

- One thing that strikes me after so long - I think the last time I saw it was about 3 years ago - is not just the music but the sound...the sound effects for the heaviness of the Ring, the way spells echo and amplify when Gandalf or Arwen speak them, the sound effects for bowstrings, the screams of the Nazgul being so inhuman, the drums in the deep of Moria, the scrape of stone on stone for the Balrog...if the sound hadn’t bee so good the movies honestly wouldn’t have worked this well. God the soundtrack.

- I will always have little quibbles about stuff -- the Ring moving onto Frodo’s finger in Bree with CGI, Galadriel’s over the top green CGI moment, the fact that we see too much of the Watcher in the Water -- but in general, like in GENERAL, the fact that these movies are so beautiful and well made....we didn’t just dodge a bullet we dodged a nuclear weapon LOL....we really did. These could have been so atrociously bad, but instead they are beautiful.

- no one should be reading LOTR as an allegory anyway, but the Ring is often read as an allegory for addiction or a nuclear weapon and somehow not as frequently likened to carrying trauma. Which is absolutely wild to me. The concept of carrying something that poisons and hurts you but that you can’t put down....it seems much more similar to trauma than many of the things I see it compared too

- I love moral complexity, greyness, etc, but I find the idea that the Ring is just utterly and completely evil very refreshing. That there are things that you cannot compromise on, that are indisputably evil.

- One thing i love about LOTR is the fact that it is not what people think of as “high fantasy” - it doesn’t take place in a shiny, perfect world, it takes place in a decayed, faded, eroded remnant of so many things that have been lost. The whole setting being created that way is so important. And magic honestly doesn’t even come into the story that much. The Ring is magical, but the way magic functions in LOTR is so different from how it functions in Harry Potter for example and I am so thankful of that because it’s a refreshing and beautiful and different world.

- I’ve thought a lot about how Tolkien’s time in the trenches of WW1 influenced his outlook and therefore his writing, but the part where Frodo is talking to Bilbo and he says “My own adventure was quite different. I’m not like you, Bilbo.” It really struck me as something straight out of Tolkien’s mouth. This was a generation that became so disillusioned about the point of war and all this bloodshed and all these young lives lost, who found out that this idea that ‘fighting for your country is some grand adventure’ is completely empty.

- Really has been bothering me for years that the conversation of racism in Tolkien’s works is restricted to conversations about orcs and dark/light. Left out of that conversation is all the talk about bloodlines, pure blood, heritage, etc, and all of that stands out so sharply to me...like HELLO. That’s clearly as much of or even MORE of a problem than the other things, and once you know how drawn white supremacists are to LOTR it’s not hard to connect the dots as to why. But the LOTR fandom has historically been absolute shit at admitting this.

- I really really love that in LOTR you have characters like Merry and Pippin who have no special powers, no special birthright or parentage and the reason they are heroic is simply because they are loyal and protective of their friends. The way they distract the orcs by waving to them to come get them, so Frodo can run away - it has nothing to do with how good they are at fighting, they dont protect Frodo with special powers, they literally just do WHATEVER they can even if it means sacrificing themselves.

- And then you have Sam - he doesn't have special powers, or special parentage, or magic - and it’s again a situation where his heroic moment is simply refusing to be parted with Frodo. He wades into the water even though he can’t swim. All these movies these days are just heroism = powers, and it’s so refreshing to see the opposite, of heroism even when it’s almost futile, and that’s why it’s heroic.

- There’s something so painfully bittersweet about LOTR, and it’s one thing I love the most. It feels real because it’s painful. It wouldn’t feel real if it didn’t have this thread of sadness running through it.

- Everyone saying Gandalf is a Christ figure....brooooo do you know Odin??? I’m not even denying there are Christian themes in LOTR but Tolkien created LOTR to be a pre-Christian myth. Clearly it is compatible with Christianity, but Tolkien was a scholar of all these pre-Christian epics and he knows there are themes that are shared across mythologies. Compatible with Christianity does not mean original to Christianity. Also all this death and glory shit is so Norse guys come on. anyway ODIN.

- GOD the mythic themes of hubris, the importance of promises, warrior’s deaths....LOVE THAT MYTHOLOGICAL FEEL!!!!!!!!! LOVE IT

- everyone wants in on a redemption arc but Boromir is out here literally getting shot full of arrows, dying a courageous warrior’s death and confessing his love and loyalty to his King.....everyone just want what he has!!!!!!!!!!

- love me some hobbits. curly haired. small. love food. would love to marry one one day.

- did I mention how much I love Ian McKellen? I swear every time I hear him say those lines to Frodo I heal in some amazing way. “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” I remember the first time I read the Fellowship when I was 13 and Gandalf died I was just like “nope. that did not happen :)” and then sure enough I was right!!! and then I felt relived but not even that relieved because I literally had refused to accept it in the first place so I was just like :)

- Saruman should start a hair product line. His hair looks so silky. No but seriously Christopher Lee was perfect. Imagine how bad the casting could have been. I’m so glad they got the right actors. Viggo Mortensen!!!! that man

- Legolas after Lothlorien was literally like Gimli likes blondes? maybe I have a chance after all.....eyes emoji....

- never over the level of detail in the costumes, the armor, the chain mail, the Elvish in the songs, the way the scenes mirror paintings from book illustrations....like holy fuck. FUCK!! FUCK

- the way these movies do or don’t reveal things is so integral to how well they work. the fact that at first you meet one Nazgul, then two, then three, the fact that you hear the Balrog before seeing it, the fact that you rarely hear Sauron speak unless it’s indistinct, the fact that you never see Sauron in battle except for in flashbacks. It all preserves the mystery and suspense that makes it scary and compelling. Lotr made in 2020 would be like Aragorn vs Sauron and it would be literally awful.

- the amount of hugging and crying and actual human emoting in this one movie cleansed me of so much marvel fatigue. it’s so nice to see characters actually grieving and comforting each other instead of acting like cardboard cutouts.

- I’ve talked a lot about this before elsewhere but the reduction/interpretation of lotr to this black and white good versus evil type of story really does a disservice to the whole ass POINT which is that it’s a story about despair in the face of insurmountable evil, in the face of the destruction of the environment and the destruction of freedom and this awful powerlessness, and so it’s not just a story about despair it’s also a story about hope in the face of despair. which feels very needed right now.

- these bullet points are getting less coherent but I’m still just thinking about that last shot, of Sam and Frodo beginning to walk away into the wilderness towards Mordor, and the soundtrack.

[palegengarsiloved]

Buddhism, Existentialism, Dark Souls

Fromsoft's games revolve around a core idea, one that other Japanese auteurs like Hideo Kojima, Fumito Ueda, Yoko Taro also touch on: the cycle of life and death, the suffering inherent in that natural system, and the connections we can still form and the meaning we can still find within them. It's obviously rooted in Buddhist and Shintoist beliefs, as well as other East Asian philosophies that acknowledge the supremacy of nature (and natural processes), accept the impermanence and imperfection of the world, and yet (therefore?) also the beauty found therein. First, how do other forms of media try to communicate these ideas? In traditional East Asian visual arts, humans are oftentimes either ignored or viewed as very small, distant figures, entirely dwarfed by nature. Early Buddhist art avoided human depiction at all, using instead icons like wheels and lotuses/cherries to communicate ideas of the cyclic nature of the world and the impermanence of the moment (it's argued that human depictions of religious figures only came into prominence after the whole Greco-Bactrian thing where Greeks set up shop in what is now Afghanistan/Pakistan and started carving gods-as-people, and I mean, you gotta compete with that seductive reification of divinity). Shintoist poetry is brief, fragile, incomplete, often summoning a brief moment of nature ("this dewdrop world / is a dewdrop world / and yet, and yet--"). Kurosawa's deep love of rain and bamboo, Ozu's pillow shots of landscapes and rooms devoid of people. All of these use tools unique to their respective mediums to manifest a sensation or emotion into the audience: Ozu focusing on an empty street for 10+ seconds wouldn't be possible in painting or sculpture; architecture's capacity towards grandness and sense of proportion to a person inside it can't be communicated through photographs. Think about the tools unique to video games, now. Think of all the ways you interact with a game: user interface, input controls, gameplay loops, level design, etc, and how those connect to create a totality of experience. All of these drastically affect the interplay between audience and art; think of if a Jeff Koons balloon animal sculpture were installed in some small garage versus a giant New International-style skyscraper lobby. (Imagine if Dark Souls was presented as a visual novel or whatever genre Undertale is.) Now think about how Dark Souls approaches each of those tools. User interface and item management is one that is quite clever: you are given an item, and you have zero idea of what it is, so you find a brief safe moment and take a look at its item description. It's vague and honestly impenetrable, with a little bit of equally-impenetrable lore on it. You only have one so far, so you're afraid to use it, but you have the feeling that not only could it be useful, but perhaps even necessary for some encounter. You see that you can carry up to 99 (and store 600) of them, so maybe there'll be more later? You know that you've picked up stuff that you thought might be one-off and found more later, or a merchant who sells it. Fuck it, might as well try it out - after all, this user interface is almost begging you to think about the lore meanings, the possible item use, and exploring for more of them, or how/where you could best use it. It's designed so that you acknowledge the rarity of it, but also are assured to not to worry too much about it and just try it out for whatever benefit you can get in this dangerous world. What's the worst thing that happens - you die and waste it? You've lost thousands of souls (the precious in-game currency) before, what's one lightning paper or green blossom whatever? You know this game is famously difficult; "It's like Dark Souls" is industry shorthand for "It's a fucking hard game" at this point. Might as well try something new in this brief cycle you have before the next inevitable death. That leads me to the next tool: the corpse-running / death mechanic. You'll die a lot, sure, but then you'll learn more, have the opportunity to think about what you might be doing wrong or not seeing, maybe even find a shortcut or trick or use a different item this time to make it easier. It's another ostensible punishment that's actually an opportunity for you to get better at the game, and to think about maybe using that one item for a boost or trying out a different weapon, but also it starts teaching you something very important to the series plot and themes: it's okay to die - natural, even. A part of life. It's not a waste any more than anything else in life is a waste - the only waste is if you don't learn from it, appreciate it, bask in the purifying fire of failure to find yourself in something close to Zen gameflow. Even then, it's not the game disrespecting your time; I would say that it's the player disrespecting their own experiences, discarding any outcome other than an easy victory as a waste, as pointless, as if progress is the only marker of a life well lived. Resisting death, panicking, generally facing it in an undignified manner... all of these are counter-productive. To do so is to miss the philosophy of why there isn't an instant boss restart button! The brief little life as you scurry to your undistinguished death is, perhaps, the point. I mean this in a game sense, too. If you are deeply reluctant and fearful of death, you won't have as much success exploring dangerous and unfamiliar areas. Once you accept that you might lose some paltry number of souls in exchange for new items, new shortcuts, new areas... the game becomes less of a hostile slog and more of this world that you want to explore and understand. Yes, there'll be some suffering; that's to be expected. But there's still rewards you can find, NPCs you can ogle, vistas you can enjoy. Kind of a blunt metaphor, huh? That leads to the level design. By that I mean not only shortcuts and verticality/horizonality, which are ingenious from a design perspective, but in how the levels evoke two major things: one is the lived-in nature of the world; the other is how small you are in comparison to it. Cathedrals are prominently featured throughout the games. Historically they were specifically designed to make laypersons feel small in the presence of divinity, to make their eyes look upward, and to contemplate the sheer power (physical and social) necessary to create these things. Think of how small you are, then, that there are even greater powers in nature that can make these monuments to humanity fall. As for the lived-in aspect, think of how strange the items you find are, how fragmentary their lore, and yet how they start to fit together, even from their placement in the world. (Why is a Choir investigator-assassin hiding out in the School of Mensis? Why does he drop sedatives?) There's this giant world taking place around you and you're so unimportant that no one really bothers to tell you anything more than vague prophecies and allusions. Anyone who points you somewhere concrete sees you as the pawn you are; you're also literally smaller than many other NPCs (Non-Player Characters) to illustrate this point. The NPCs are yet another way that the game acutely communicates its existential ideas to you. Everyone in the Dark Souls world is cursed to not die, but rather turn Hollow – that is, to lose their minds in lieu of death. The only way to fight against this curse is to commit to a purpose and use that willpower to stave off insanity. This is strongly absurdist in nature, as a cursed undead either completes their goal and then, newly purposeless, goes insane, or the goal is unfulfillable, and the goal-seeker is doomed to an eternity of Sisyphean torment. Some NPCs appear broken under this will, crestfallen or twisted or gleeful upon recognizing the sheer injustice of their burden; some soldier bravely on; some offer unconditional kindness; some perform a mixture of all three. There are startlingly few characters in this game, each almost hidden by the landscapes, and each clearly dwarfed – both literally by the environments they are lost in, and by the staggering difficulty of the tasks they took up. It’s almost easy to attack all the NPCs you come across, as you’re conditioned to be fearful of any other entity you encounter; many players kill a certain peaceful demonic entity because they’ve slain so many similar-looking monsters defending her. It’s easy to miss these connections, and the game makes no effort to protect them. It’s the hedgehog’s dilemma: can you let down your guard towards someone who very well may hurt you, in a world that has done nothing but hurt you? Will others do the same? The multiplayer component of this game adds a corollary to this social experiment: there will, inevitably, be those who seek to invade and destroy you, those who will defend and avenge you, those who will help you, and those who will dabble in all three. You see every day in real life: the wounded lashing out in pain, the happy few just trying to help others along the way, the people who want to create some sense of justice in an indifferent universe. Oftentimes, one human will try out all three roles in their life. Why do we do this? Perhaps it’s how we work through the cosmic injustice of our existence, in a form of primitive dialogue that we need to act out. The human condition, after all, is reconciling oneself with the fact that we, and everyone we know, are fated to someday die. That's where the plot intersects with the gameplay and themes to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. The directive you’re given at the beginning of the game is to extend the Age of Fire, the era you are currently living in; you are told that this is because with Fire there’s light, and time, and the creative spark of divinity on high. However, it turns out that unnaturally prolonging the Age of Fire is actually pretty bad, and results in all sorts of upheaval and foul consequences (including, possibly, the undead curse itself, unless you believe a certain scholar in DS2…). We learn as we venture through this game and interface with its mechanics that death must be a part of life and dark must accompany light. We also know that something can arise out of nothing (as we know there was a “time” before the Age of Fire; think pre-Big Bang), so it turns out that even if you don’t extend the Age of Fire, the larger cycle of death and rebirth perhaps never ends. In any case: fighting against this inevitability, fighting against the possibility of pain and loss caused the Gwyn, the Lord of Fire and Light, to ultimately sacrifice and thus lose everything he defended in tragic irony; similarly, trying too hard to lean into the turn caused Oolacile/New Londo/Farron Keep to be lost in the Dark forever. By dying over and over in-game, by investigating the subtle hints of lore found in the items and the sparse dialogue, and by witnessing the sad existence of these once-great powers of Fire that have long-since shriveled up under the infinite and inescapable wheel of nature, you begin to internalize the themes these games try, through all the tools at their disposal, to make you feel. You can live, however briefly, and value it, but also learn to let it go. You can love nature and respect its impersonal processes, understand that ultimately it will reclaim us, and find some comfort that the end isn't necessarily the end. There will be suffering, but there will be moments of total (if brief) triumph. There will be moments of tenderness with NPCs that can only be generated by a video game world where life is immensely fragile and nothing but the curse of insanity permanent. Will you allow yourself to try and help them, knowing how difficult and obtuse it will be, and how little it might seem to matter? Will you extend the Age of Fire to uphold the lie, because this Age is the only thing you and the rest of the world has ever known? Will you be brave – or perhaps, human – enough to reach out to others in this brief moment before the end of the world, and when the time comes, to let the Age of Fire fade? Can you live, and perhaps just as importantly, die with dignity? The totality of the experience gets the player to directly feel these themes in a way that can't be done in other media. By showing - through the death mechanic, NPC quests that can permanently be failed or missed, unforgiving and vast levels with tons of secrets and shortcuts, obscure item descriptions and the resultant need for exploration and player-driven introspection and experimentation, and not by telling through cutscenes, everything works together to evoke a mood that the player directly feels like they're helping create. The sheer unity - the, ahem, ludonarrative assonance - of the design is beautiful to consider on an intellectual level but also satisfying on an interactive, practical level. You have fun not despite these things, any of which alone may be disheartening, but because together they're so thematically consistent. Taken by itself the corpse run mechanic might be considered unnecessary or anti-fun, but when placed among the larger picture it not only makes sense but makes the player consider that there might be something they're missing, that there may be more to explore elsewhere or some item that will help, because the game is so mysterious and rewards exploration and experimentation so much. This is in addition to how much it reinforces the themes of the game! I could expand on about how such well-executed unity of purpose and audience-medium interplay makes it high art, like, true fucking Michaelangelo's David type shit, but I don't want to get swept up in the hype, so I'll leave you with a classic Dark Souls quote: "therefore try tongue but hole"

[dimespin]

Why people like your doodles better than your finished works

Learn from your doodles rather than resent them

I frequently see artists complain that their finished works got less attention than mere sketches, doodles and other smaller or less serious work. Which is frustrating! But almost as often, I can see exactly why the doodle got more attention. I’m going to cover some of these reasons, so you can use that information so you can do more than fume about it.

The doodle is easy to read, the polished work is busy

The polished work is completely drenched in little details that the artist slaved over, but the details create a kind of overall noise that makes everything harder to understand, making the whole image less appealing.

Don’t get too lost in little details, work from larger shapes to small details, use things like a highly readable silhouette, contrast, variance in line width or negative space to keep the image understandable. Pay attention to the composition to guide the eye where you want it.

The doodle is high contrast, the polished work is low contrast

When you do lots of details all equally well lit and easy to see, overall you lose the strong lights and darks that make a work pop. You have to sacrifice some of those details, let them be in shadow or out of focus in the background, to create a more appealing image overall.

You might also be forgetting that without lineart you need to use strong lights and darks, since lineart creates it’s own natural high contrast.

Contrast draws the eye, use that to create focus where you want it.

The doodle is simple to understand, the polished work is highly ambiguous in meaning and message

Many doodles that outstrip the artist’s polished work are jokes. Jokes usually have a specific clear focus and message, the viewer can understand it immediately (if they couldn’t, it wouldn’t be funny). You don’t have to make everything funny, but like a joke, you need to get to the point and give the audience the information they need to “get it.” More details can be present, but the viewer should not be confused about what to look at from the outset. Remember: people will look at and interpret your art in milliseconds. They might give it a longer look but only AFTER that millisecond look.

The initial glance is like the first page of a book. If it wows them they keep looking to understand more, if they are lost and confused, no second chances, they’ve already scrolled away.

You can use things like composition, basic structures of shapes and simple shape symbolism to give viewers the initial information they need to stay interested. Don’t feel like you have to abandon more personal and difficult to parse symbolism, these things can work together to create intrigue.

The doodle is fluid and expressive, the polished work is stiff and dead

The sketch for your polished work needs to be done with spontaneity and fluidity. When you want to really flex your drawing skills and show the world your beautiful realistic human faces, your sublime anatomy, gorgeous textures - it’s easy to forget about the undersketch and jump to rendering as soon as you can, creating a stiff or boring sketch that isn’t worthy of all the time you’re sinking into the minute details.

Practice quick gestures, read up on line of action, and before you make a polished painting, make sure you have a sketch that’s fun to look at even without the detailed rendering. Thumbnailing helps. Studies too. Sometimes you have to do the bad boring sketch, but you can take a few stabs at it.

You can’t make a bad sketch good by painting more details on it, you need to work out the sketch first before moving to the details.

Remember, if you’re going to spend 20 hours painting the thing, you can afford another half hour sketching a few different takes on your idea before digging in.

Lots of doodles, very few polished works

If you mostly post one kind of thing, your audience will be people who like that. Also, you may not have much practice with the techniques you are using in the polished work, while you have become a pro at doodles. You become an expert at what you practice, do more of what you want to be known for, become an expert at it, make it the only thing your audience is there for.

The audience is familiar with the subject of the doodle, unfamiliar with the subject of the polished work

Many artists do doodles of fanart and get fed up that people like that more, but the truth is, they don’t like it “more” they just already know they like it. You can increase the chances of people appreciating your original works by making sure they can understand what’s going on in the illustration without prior knowledge of who these characters are, or simply sticking to it until you have garnered an audience. Just keep at it.

Remember, the creators of the property you made fanart of are themselves artists who were pushing an original idea at one time. You can follow in their footsteps.

The doodle is quirky and unusual, the polished work is stale and samey

This can happen when an artist has an image in their head of what a SERIOUS and PROFESSIONAL painting looks like, usually based on a very narrow subset of artwork, often itself based on the same cargo cult of seriousness.

Try studying works outside your usual stomping grounds. Look to artists that likely inspired your faves (if you’re talking about realistic artists who inspired your favorite concept artists, here’s some likely culprits to get you started on the google search: JC Leyendecker, Alphonse Mucha, Norman Rockwell, James Gurney, Rembrandt), look to artists outside your genre, and look at your doodles and ask yourself what “not serious, just for fun” source of inspiration is making them so fresh and vibrant that your audience is connecting to them so strongly. Study that, respect that fun and try to pull it into your serious work.

The polished work was hard to make and no one cares

Being an artist is hard, and that we keep at it is commendable, but struggling and taking more hours doesn’t make a piece better necessarily.

There are a few things to consider here. First, you need to realize looking to the vague faceless masses of the internet for a fatherly “I’m proud of you, son” moment is always going to be disappointing and painful and attempting to guilt strangers into fulfilling that role for you is awkward and inappropriate. You need artist friends who can recognize your hard work and cheer you on and you need to be your own cheerleader, value your own hard work and practice.

Second, you need to realize torturing yourself doesn’t in and of itself make art better. Hard work is something people love about art, the meaning of someone spending that time, but if I screamed for 8 hours, drew a single line, then posted that, the internet wouldn’t be wrong to be unexcited about it. Rather than blame the viewer, think about two things: how can you make the art itself more appealing while still doing the painting that you’re interested in doing, and how can you do that faster and with less pointless suffering?

It’s okay to be a masochist when it comes to art, many artists are, just make sure you’re spending your time and suffering wisely.

You’re complaining about someone else’s “doodle”

Sketches and cartoons are deceptively hard to make appealing, rather than fume that they are getting more attention, look to them for lessons. What could you learn from them? Could you do it? Maybe you should try. Would make a good exercise.

And never get mad that their drawings are more appealing to the internet than yours, even though they spent less time on their drawing than you did on yours. See above for why time is not important here, but also keep in mind they may have been practicing longer than you or may be more established than you.

Keep working on your art, keep posting, push to be seen, advertise your work, put yourself out there. These things take time but work.

[phemonoi]

tarot cards as foster the people lyrics 🌿✨

*based on the waite tarot deck

I've wanted to do this to better understand the relation of the cards with one another and I thought it'd be a good idea to post it here!

i. aces, the magician & justice

—houdini

“rise above, gonna start the war!” / “well, and eye for an eye, and an ‘f’ for a fight” / “well, you got what you want and what you never knew, perfect gift from me to you” / “focus on your ability, then they can’t get what they want to steal”

the aces have an aura of beginning, the spark of an idea, oportunity, birth. however, the magician is the “trigger” of that change, he controls it, activates it. he’s the architect and alchemist that has the ability to make use of each suit as he pleases. with justice, as we see, this power comes with a responsability. you get back what you give. and because the magician is also an illusionist, a liar and a thief, justice needs to be there as a reminder of what happens when you abuse magic. 

ii. twos, high priestess & the hanged man

—shc

“you’re a secret, that’s worth keeping, and now i’m keeping my mouth shut” / “well, i’ve been sleeping waiting for something, but to feel nothing at all, avoid the call” / “when i’m alone, there’s a ghost the keeps talking, and i know there’s gotta be more, for sure”

the twos are a symbol of alchemy, and this can be clearly seen in the cups with the caduceus of hermes on the background. the high priestess is the master of occult knowledge, she channels cosmic knowledge through intuition, thus creating a bond, an exchange of energy within her and the universe. the hanged man needs meditation and contemplation in order to decide what’s next, what’s real from what’s an illusion. he urges stillness in order to recover, much like the two of swords.

iii. threes, the empress & death

—fire escape

“my spine is made of iron, my heart pumps out old red paint” / “I see the seasons change, all the young faces come and replace the dying ones” / “i’ve watched the dreamers find their legs, and i’ve seen the ones that come get reduced to bones and rags”

this procesion of cards illustrates the importance of cycles. the threes combine pain, sorrow (swords) with recovery, harmony (cups), planning (pentacles) with action (wands), conveying the message that one simply can’t exist without the other, for the presence of the other is what gives one its importance, its core definition. they’re light and shadow, much like birth (empress) and death. 

iv. fours, the emperor & temperance

—coming of age

“you know i try to live without regrets, i’m always moving forward and not looking back, but i tend to leave a trail of dead while moving ahead” / “just like an animal, i protect my pride, when i’m too bruised to fight, and even when i’m wrong i tend to think i’m right. well, i’m bored of the game, and too tired to rage”

the emperor is the giver of stability, as we can see in four of pentacles and four of wands. he provides a stable foundation to build a home, he’s a father. meanwhile, the four of cups and four of swords portray temperance; they’re about patience, balance, and meditation. the emperor, as a leader, needs to balance the responsability of his power out with temperance, or else he will become a tyrant, ruled by fire.

v. fives, the hierophant & the devil 

—pay the man

“say what you love, it’s alright don’t be afraid to find your light, embrace the day, at night we’re here to fight, we all go wild again” / “climbing up my own tree, hoping it can hold all the things i’ve seen but i’ve chosen to ignore. well, i said, well i believe i’ve been well fed but the wolf’s not dead” / “lift up your name, seasons change, you know that it'll never be the same, we'll see the sun again, and before it fades, i just wanna say that i love you”

this procesion is very deep. it speaks of the spirit on a level that no other procesion of cards does in the entire deck. because the hierophant is combined with the devil, i feel like it unites opposite religious concepts: heaven with hell, purity with dirt, wisdom with madness. this alchemy of the soul is pretty much a product of dionysos, and that’s why he’s often identified with both major arcanas. the fives, now, are the middle point of each suit; they mark a transcendental point in the path of the fool. they speak of poverty, sadness, confusion and conflict. this is the event that leads to the tower; the failure, the longing for illumination, the unmasking of the lies and illusions that have ruled one’s life until now. the unity of darkness and light, the highest power, thrice-born and divine, with the lowest impulses of nature, the satyrs and maenads that lure you into their orgy. the devil here demands to be payed back, he wants retribuition, while the hierophant presents himself as the saviour, the guide, that happens to also be incredibly biased. i think it’s very useful to view this procesion as a representation of dionysos, he who initiates us into the journey of self-discovery through mysteries and shadows. 

vi. sixes, the lovers & the tower 

—the truth

“well i’ve been trying to relearn my name, it feels like a thousand years that i’ve been out of frame and i surrender, the truth is what it’s what i’ve needed from you, cause i’ve been floating within your walls of opinion, and i’m tired. i only want the truth” / “a blinding call to prayer has touched my feet, like the call of the prophets, a purpose is needed before you know that you know, to never wonder what you are, and not forget where you’ve come from” / “is it really love you’ve been speaking of?”

the lovers and the tower have a closer relation than what i thought at first, and the verses of this song really show it. the lovers is, finally, the resolution of the devil and the hierophant: it is the unification of duality, the yin and yang, and its lust is still present in the devil; the impetus and dichotomy of human emotion. but the tower and the hierophant are both events of immense spiritual enlightment. they represent freedom. the sixes are about charity, change, escape, and victory. 

vii. sevens, the chariot & the star 

—doing it for the money

“just close your eyes, we’re gonna run this blind, we live our lives, we’re not wasting time, maybe we lost our minds, we’re gonna get what we can” / “i said it doesn’t matter where i go, i am calling all the poets into battle, i am shouting to the world let them know that we won’t be afraid to step into the fight when we can’t see the light” / “there’s no retreat and no escape if we keep dreaming while we’re wide awake”

dreams, hope, courage and art. this is a creative procesion of cards. after the breakdown of the sixth procesion, the seventh brings bravery forthward. there’s no time to waste and we’re now purified, convinced of our worth and what we need to do in order to achieve what is needed. we’ve accepted the situation, the nature of our uncontrolling emotions and the will of fate. the sevens take action, a bit impulsively, but still they trigger a necessary change after the depression seen with the lovers and the tower. 

viii. eights, strength & the moon

—a beginner’s guide to destroying the moon

“and now i’m staring at the moon wondering why the bottom fell out, been searching for answers and there’s questions i’ve found” / “we’ve been crying for a leader to speak like the old prophets, the blood of the forgotten wasn’t spilled without a purpose, or was it?” / “you’ll never be whole until you lose control, and think freely to smash the wall of apathy, stop your self-importance and lift the weight off somebody else”

there’s a very pretty picture on the eight of cups in the ethereal visions illuminated tarot deck, because the moon is full, shining enormously over a deep blue landscape, and that perfectly illustrates the relation of this card to the major arcana of the moon. this procesion for me is about confidence. change is never easy, even when we’ve finally surrendered to the fate of circumstances, even when we were the ones to trigger it. eight of swords and eight of cups are not easy cards to gaze at, but we must remember that the moon is a mother, it is nurturing, it reminds us of the quality of nature to be cyclical, that things are always moving and flowing, and emotions don’t last forever. it’s also a card of illusions; it yells at us to remove the blindfold from our eyes and rediscover our worth. strength is about taming the beast, keeping on working, effort and struggle. so this tells me; no matter how much it hurts, keep going, be a leader, be the lion, make the blood you shed worth it. 

xix. nines, the hermit & the sun

—pseudologia fantastica

“don’t be afraid of the knife, sometimes you gotta cut the limb to survive” / “you got to love the madness of the feeling, don’t have to rush the freshness of beginning, you got to get back up and face your demons, don’t ever be afraid of starting over”

the nines follow the archetype of the hermit and continue their path through the sun. when we’ve worked hard enough, when we’ve compromised to facing our shadow self, when we’ve retired to truly know ourselves, admiting what we’ve done, what we’re worth, and retreated into silence, then there’s a comeback filled with joy, music, light. the nine of swords is a necessary dark night of the soul leading to a definitive awakening. 

xx. the tens, wheel of fortune & judgement 

—iii

“and i wont be afraid, it’s true we’ll never know, when the night will come and take us home, and people change, we fade from youth, and evolve into eternal life” / “wake the sleeping from their dreaming, we all want more, we all want more saints will sing and hearts are beating, saying we all want more, we all want more”

there’s still much to learn in the ten of swords already, but because life is an ouroboros and our purpose is to return to having full control of all the suits and making use of that power faithfully and wisely, it doesn’t matter. in the tens, we admit that we can affect certain situations but there’s always something that escapes our sight; fortune acts alone. wheels turn again, endlessly, for eternity. we want more; the ten of cups portrays a couple with kids new life, new paths, a new story that is, again, yet to be unfold. ten of pentacles passes down its knowledge and experience to the youth; ten of wands continues with its struggle, in the conviction that the nine will come back. ten of swords, however, looks defeated. it ain’t. it’s finally the death of the past self. ten of swords is, actually, the scene of the moment the knight defeated his adversaries. it is a card of victory; but the knight is yet to become a king. 

[winterromanov]

she’s the sunset (in the west) - thasmin fic

Poppy Smith is the youngest and quietest kid in Yasmin Khan’s reception class, so it’s a bit of a shock when she encounters Poppy’s mum - the chaotic, intelligent whirlwind that is Doctor Joanna Smith. With both parent and child struggling to hold their worlds together, Yasmin becomes more involved in the life of Joanna and Poppy than she originally anticipates (other than having the biggest, fattest crush on Joanna, of course. It’s impossible not to.)

single parent/teacher thasmin au

chapter one

Her last meeting of the night is at six fifty and Yaz has never felt so exhausted in her life.

It’s not the kids. She deals with them day in day out and yeah, it’s tiring, but it’s nothing compared to the tirade of questions from irate parents she’s had thrown at her since four pm. Many of them seemed annoyed at their kid’s reading ability—or lack thereof—which would be a problem if they weren’t four or five years old and, naturally, Harry Potter is still going to be a bit ambitious for a boy who can barely hold a pencil. She’s been through piles and piles of identical maths problems with erratic results, handwriting exercises varying from just about legible to dancing scribbles in HB. The art, on the other hand, is a lot more fun talk about. She tried so hard to hide her giggles when showing a bemused mother her daughter’s drawing of a dog poo she’d seen in the playground.

But right now, all Yaz wants is to lock her classroom door, make her way to her car and have the longest and hottest bath of her life. Ideally with a pizza and half a bottle of white. It’s been that sort of day.

But there’s still one more agonising ten minute appointment to go. Fortunately it’s with one of her…less behaviourally challenging pupils, a little girl called Poppy, with an August birthday that pits her at the younger end of the class. Despite her age, there’s no unintelligible scrawls in Poppy’s exercise books—she’s smart, one hell of a reading ability, but very quiet. Yaz has seen her stalking across the grassy edge of the playground at break and sat alone at lunch, usually armed with a dog-eared picture book about space.

It’s not Poppy’s behaviour Yaz is slightly concerned about. It just can’t be good, or healthy, for a little four year old girl to have not made any friendships in the month she’s been at the school. She’d really like to talk about it with Poppy’s parents, but the clock on the wall above the door ticks on and there’s no-one to be seen.

Six fifty-six.

Six fifty-seven.

At six fifty-eight, Yaz sighs and starts to pack up her things, because sometimes parents forget appointments or can’t get away from work or life happens. At six fifty-nine, she’s about to leave, when—

The classroom door flies open and a woman walks in gripping Poppy’s hand, flustered and panting like she’s just run across the playground. She looks up, blowing a strand of blonde hair that’s blown into her eye-line away from her face. Two vivid green eyes blink back at her—Yaz hasn’t seen anything like them, and maybe it’s the sappy part of her left over from her literature degree, but it’s the kind of gaze that horny Renaissance poets write sonnets about.

(It’s pathetic, but it would be a lie to say that she doesn’t end up writing one herself a little bit later down the line. Oh, well. It’s called being ridiculously in love.)

“Sorry,” the woman breathes in a Northern accent almost as strong as hers, “I’m late. Am I late?”

“You are late,” Poppy says decidedly, identical eyes staring sagely, “Can I please go sit in the reading corner, Miss Khan?”

The reading corner is a pile of cushions and beanbags in an abandoned alcove of the classroom, now covered with posters of The Gruffalo and animals that begin with every letter of the alphabet. Poppy has her space book tucked under her left arm, as well as a little stuffed dog.

“Of course you may, Poppy,” Yaz says, smiling, dropping her bag onto the ground by her chair. “Me and your mummy are just going to have a short chat about how you’re doing at school.”

Poppy nods, and the woman presses a kiss on the top of her head as she rushes away, little shoes tapping noisily on the carpeted floor. The woman turns, smiling apologetically.

“I’m so sorry. I do try, really, but sometimes it’s like the world is working against me to purposely make me late.” Yaz notices the small array of earring glinting on her ear, the smart grey coat she wears on top of some cuffed mom jeans and a long sleeved shirt. She leans across the desk, shaking Yaz’s hand. “I work up at the university, you see, and the traffic is an absolute nightmare if you… sorry, I’m rambling, aren’t I? Already taken up enough of your time, I expect. It’s Miss Khan, right?”

She talks at a hundred miles an hour, waving her hands occasionally, and there’s something oddly compelling about it. It really doesn’t take much to warm to her—or to notice the contrast between her and her daughter. “Yasmin. And you would be Mrs Smith?”

“Miss,” the woman hastily corrects, but then smiles awkwardly, scratching her head. There’s an absence of a wedding ring, which isn’t so unusual, but there’s a pain in her grimace that she doesn’t see in so many divorced parents. Rather the widowed ones. “Technically, it’s Doctor, but I really can’t stand titles, sounds a bit pretentious. Joanna is fine.”

Doctor Joanna Smith. Yaz smiles inwardly, and wonders if it’s totally inappropriate to have a little bit of a crush on one of her student’s parents, because there’s just something about this beautiful and chaotic woman in five minutes that is impossible to put her finger on.

“Okay, let’s talk about Poppy, shall we?” Yaz says, fanning out Poppy’s collection of exercise books onto the table. There are no full-sized seats in the room other than her own, so Joanna is perched on a red plastic one, face comically just above being in line with the desk itself. It doesn’t seem to bother her. “She’s a lovely little girl. Very, very smart for her age—her reading is on par with someone at least three years older and her maths is coming along really well. I’m worried she’ll overtake me!”

Joanna laughs a little, but she’s busy scanning rows of handwriting and felt-tip illustrations, fingertips skimming a picture of roughly drawn little dog. It’s the same one she has clutched in her hands in the reading corner, grey with a red collar.

“Here,” Yaz says, turning the book slightly to an assignment labelled My Family, “We asked all the kids to talk about who they live with, what they do, and so on. She clearly looks up to you a lot.”

It’s heart-warming, really, and Yaz almost teared up sat at home marking it. My mummy is very clever and kind and when we hug we go to the moon. Mummy says I am a star but I think she is a star too and one day we will go to space together

There’s no mention of a daddy, or anyone else, and maybe that’s what makes this task so bittersweet sometimes. Reading about the kids who aren’t like the other kids.

Joanna’s eyes glaze over for a second and she looks over to the reading corner, where Poppy is lying on her back with her book held at arms’ length. Her hands clasp together. “What she like with the other kids? She never talks about anyone at home, really, and she always struggled with making friends at nursery. By that I mean she didn’t have any.”

Yaz softens because she can see concern in her eyes and a sort of muted desperation and hope that she’ll say something that contradicts her thoughts. But lying doesn’t help anybody in situations like these. “She is very quiet and that does often mean she’s by herself, yes.”

Joanna bites the inside of her cheek. “You should see her at home. Can barely get her to shut up most of the time, always banging on about penguins or black holes or…well, she talks about you quite a lot.”

“Me?”

“Oh, yeah,” Joanna nods, “Ever since you read Alice in Wonderland she’s made me read it to her every chance she gets, but apparently I don’t do the voices like Miss Khan does.”

Yaz remembers reading a bit of the story just the other week with all twenty-nine kids sat on the carpet eagerly, rolling with laughter every time she changed from high to low pitch when voicing the Hare and the Hatter. Poppy had sat silently at the back, expression unwavering—yet the whole time she was taking it in, making a bigger impact than Yaz anticipated.

“There’s a fine art to the voices in Alice,” Yaz replies, Joanna grinning, “You clearly just haven’t mastered it yet.”

“I have a PhD in astrophysics but satisfactorily reading a children’s book to a four year old’s standard is where I fall short, yeah?”

Yaz leans forward, rests her chin in her hand. Hopes she’s been subtle but doubts she actually is, but that is usually the way. She wants to keep talking about Poppy but she also wants to talk about her, what she sees when she looks up at the sky and what it means. Her job at the university. The silvery light of a full moon and the pull it has on the tides.

“I’m sure you’ll get there. It just takes practice.”

“Yeah. That’s a good motto for parenting, actually.” She pauses, looking down at her hands. Her nails are painted navy blue and chipped at the corners. “I just—like, I worry about her, a lot. We lost her dad a couple of years ago and most of the time, it’s just me and her.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Yaz sympathises—there it is, there it is.

“No, no, it’s fine,” Joanna insists, “Long time ago. I don’t think she remembers him. And I don’t have any family, not anymore, just a few friends who are basically family, but… she needs more than that. I’m not worried about her schoolwork at all. I just want her to be able to talk and play with people her own age rather than me all the time. As much as I’d like to build dens twenty-four seven. Who wouldn’t?”

“You shouldn’t worry. It’s only the first month of term, after all. Kids move at different paces, and it’s just taking Poppy a little longer to settle in.” Yaz smiles comfortingly. “If you like, I’ll keep a closer eye on her. See if I can encourage her to be more involved with some of the children.”

Joanna’s demeanour brightens a little, hands loosening apart. “That would be great, thanks. Sometimes all she needs is a bit of a prod in the right direction.”

At that moment Poppy stalks over to the desk, toy dog straying behind her, book still clutched tight to her chest. She looks at her mother expectantly.

“What is it, baby?” Joanna asks softly, stroking Poppy’s blonde hair gently. “You tired?”

She shakes her head decisively. “Can I show Miss Khan the picture in my book?”

Yaz grins brightly, leaning across the desk. “You know, Poppy, I absolutely love pictures. And I think I’d love to see the one in your book.”

Poppy looks shyly over at Joanna before opening it to the back cover, where a biro illustration of a strange blue box stands majestically amongst the index. Joanna pulls her onto her knee so she can point to it better and Yaz looks intrigued, curious to know what it means.

“This is my time machine. Mummy drew it for me,” Poppy explains carefully, “And we’re going to travel back to the dinosaurs so I can ride on the back of a diplodocus.”

“A diplodocus?” Yaz raises a questioning eyebrow, as it’s a big word for such a little girl, and Joanna masks her giggle by kissing the back of her head. “That does sound like fun.”

“Mummy tells lots of fun stories. I especially like the one about the lizard and her wife and their pet potato.” Joanna does another terrible attempt of hiding her laugh and Yaz finds it ridiculously endearing, especially the way her nose scrunches as she grins. “If you like mummy could put you into one of her stories.”

The thought of being in this woman’s head after she’s left the classroom behind is too good an offer to refuse. They share a look, barely a second—but surely, surely, it’s not just her that feels something?

“I think I’d like that a lot,” Yaz says.

When they shake hands as Joanna and Poppy are about to leave, her hand lingers a little longer than before. Her skin is soft but flecked with black pen, a small silver ring indented with a moon on her index finger. When they break apart, Yaz longs for a reconnect. This cannot be the last time they meet. It cannot be the only time. It cannot.