#among the grave

[dailyloopdeloop]

DAY 75: onehat

[cod-dump]

Graves: Now I'm in a pickle. Because I don't want to see you die. Which is why... I'm going to leave the room.

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts 2 - Halloween Town

[gravegrime]

🪦 Daily Etchings - 253 🪦

💜 Pluto 💜

[vaguely-concerned]

the relationship between the chantry and the mortalitasi in nevarra is SO fucking funny. the carefully politic and civil syncretism of it all. the ‘I’ll refrain from scratching your back to bloody shreds if you refrain from scratching mine :)’. left hand politely averting its eyes from whatever the fuck the right hand is doing merrily up to its elbow in entrails because it usually knows what it’s doing I guess. speak softly, and have an army of the restless dead ready to go banapants horrorshow bonkers if you don’t get to tend to them. We Receive: being able to keep doing our goth thing mostly unimpeded. You receive: us not raising the great majority to protest your unwelcome meddling. render unto the chantry what is the chantry's and unto the watchers what is theirs (or, with all possible courtesy you understand, else…)

[ashesfordayz]

I can't believe this is my first COD art lmaoo

[rafesadlers]

how the cod characters play among us

inspired by: me just playing among us with my friends

GRAVES: takes everything way too seriously but gets really mad when he is caught as the impostor. makes really unbelievable claims to try to save himself. just gets mad in general.

GAZ: was the one who introduced among us to everyone else. is the instigator and causes the fights in both chat and voice call. doesn’t speak when is impostor.

RODOLFO: terrible at staying alive. is typically one of the first ones to die. really good at being impostor, though.

SOAP: doesn’t do his tasks and gets mad when people tell him to do them. likes to “dance” under the security cameras. is always the one to take forever to vote and just chooses the skip option every time.

ALEJANDRO: likes to follow rudy but whenever the lights are shut off, rudy is killed and he tries to avenge the impostor. ends up being the second one killed.

GHOST: really good impostor. but whenever soap is following him around, he kills him in front of the crowd. causes sabotages to perform a stacked kill and pretends to argue with everyone else.

VALERIA: thinks it’s stupid but likes to bully the boys in the chat. always wins whenever she’s impostor.

PRICE: doesn’t know how to play. “it told me to go in the bloody vent so i went in the fucking bloody vent!” is the one who asks people to watch him throw the trash.

FARAH: always the first one done with her tasks and then accompanies alex in the security room. hides in certain spots to try to spot the impostor.

KATE: refuses to play with everyone else (she actually hates being killed and will haunt the person who left her alone in the first place).

ALEX: always gets lost because the maps are “too hard”. stays in security watching the cameras but ends up getting killed because of it.

KÖNIG: rage quits. nearly shits himself whenever he is killed. panics really easily during the game and tries to run to hit the emergency button but gets killed right as the meeting starts.

[tarmac-rat]

Curious to know because I'm interested:

If you reblog, feel free to drop some lore (what 'ware, your lifepath, all that good stuff)

[alvojake]

OH SO HE WANTS ME DEAD??? 😃😃😃 SAY LESS BABE 😌✌

[softlysilverfountainsfall]

There is an oft-repeated scene in the Silm when one of Our Heroes has died fighting a noble but hopeless battle that they chose, and someone, somehow buries them properly AND it is specifically mentioned in the text that the grave lay undisturbed until some far future date (usually the breaking of Beleriand).

This happens to Finrod, to Fingolfin (though his grave was only undisturbed until Gondolin fell), and Glorfindel. For other dead characters, this precise formula does not occur.

(Beren and Luthien die natural mortal deaths and no one knows where they are buried, Feanor spontaneously combusts and none of his sons' burials are ever mentioned, and Turgon dies & is presumably "buried" in the collapse of his tower. Hurin, Morwen, and Nienor aren't buried [edit: Morwen was buried]; Finduilas and Turin are buried but it is not specifically mentioned that their graves were undisturbed afterwards. Barahir is buried by Beren but it isn't specifically mentioned that his grave was inviolate. Aredhel's grave isn't mentioned, neither is Thingol's, Dior's, or Nimloth's. Aegnor, Angrod, Orodreth, and Gwindor die in battle against the enemy but in a battle that came to them (Bragollach and of Nargothrond respectively) and was one they had to fight, not a hopeless battle that they chose and their graves' aren't mentioned.)

You will notice that I have not mentioned Fingon, who was famously "beat[en] into the dust with their maces...they trod [his banner] into the mire of his blood," or any who died in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad and were dumped in a pile by Morgoth's forces to create the Hill of the Slain/Haudh-en-Ndengin/Hill of Tears/Haudh-en-Nirnaeth.

The Nirnaeth is, of course, the ultimate noble but hopeless battle, and Fingon especially typifies that. (Relatedly, Azahgal's body is successfully borne away by his troops, presumably for a long-lasting burial place.) The Hill of the Slain is meant to be a symbol of Morgoth's power and a place of dreadful carnage and disrespect for those who fell and should break my argument--

But in one sentence Tolkien turns all that around:

"But grass came there and grew again long and green upon that hill, alone in all the desert Morgoth made; and no creature of Morgoth trod thereafter upon the earth beneath which the swords of the Eldar and the Edain crumbled into rust"

--and the symbol of Morgoth's total victory becomes a sacred, untouched grave of heroes.

[shroudandsands]

Prompt #14: Telling

She set down her glass as she let her thoughts dissipate into the night like smoke. Her fingertips mimed flicking away a cigarette. Her breath left her lips in a fog of cold. She pushed herself out of her chair. She took her cane.

The night took her in with love, its moonlit caresses of dusky skin and white-greyed hair her birthright and relief from the warmth of alcohol in her veins. Something to cool her cold skin. Something to give her back some modicum of her mind and sanity. Just some. Her cane lit from its crystal head as she stepped off the path. Into the wood itself. Something that was, by all rights, incredibly deranged in all minds. Even in one that was partially drunk and very distracted by its own thoughts. The Twelveswood at night was not a friendly home. Even during the day things prowled in the darker edges of the forest, but in the night they woke and they wandered. It would be easy to call it hubris as she walked as if with an old friend. Monsters that kept just out of sight. Voidsent that crossed the thin veil. Old creatures in the dark woods that preyed upon anything that wasn’t themselves. The Shroud was a veritable goldmine for the unknown and the dangerous- Something that she supposed would be a frequent source of missing persons and dead thrillseekers. More than there were already. It was difficult to grapple with the nature of the wood they lived in and the reality that it, in some ways, very much did not want them there. Such it was that they heeded the Elementals and all that they could do so that they might have some peace. Her own experience as a Hearer notwithstanding on her bias. Her own experience with the other denizens definitely withstanding on her bias.

Rakaso dimmed the light of her cane as she stepped deeper into well-rooted and over the well-rotted of the trees. Her steps carried her with a surety unbefitting of her mind in that moment and most certainly of the path she’d chosen to take. But it wasn’t long, no, and it wasn’t far. Things on the edge of the light that came close as it dimmed. Things that kept themselves within the blind spot of her eyes. Things that crept in the bough above. A hand on her shoulder. The light died at the smell of decay embracing her like a friend.

Rakaso didn’t speak often of the things that lived in the deep woods. There was no story to tell. No warning to give. No words of wisdom that could truly prepare someone for the things which so oftentimes haunted life like a nightmare. How do you warn someone against the stranger at the crossroads, the beast which is not as it seems, the cloud of shadow that can hang over a river and fill you as a miasma? To most, these are tales. To others, explainable phenomena. To the last, they are neither. A fact of life. To be avoided like one avoids a tornado, a flood, a hail of fire from the sky. You simply hoped you did not encounter them. You took reasonable measures. And you prayed whatever death that came with them was merciful. She sometimes wished she was so lucky to be so unknowing. But in other ways she was glad. So it was as she stood in a clearing of the woods, a creek running by her feet, and a stump upon which sat a… dear friend of hers. A woman at first glance. Similar to her. Perhaps even kin, one might surmise, as they might see them in the woods. But it only took a moment’s breath to watch longer and see more. To watch skin rot off, eyes to fade, flesh to fold in ways that could only be described in words not able to be formed by teeth and tongue. Sometimes there were only a set of eyes opposite her, ilms away, an inky black darkness that only served to brighten the pale moonlit gold of Rakaso’s own. Sometimes there was nothing but flesh that barely managed to maintain a person-like shape. Sometimes there were only teeth. And they were laughing. Oh they were laughing and speaking and telling tales. Rakaso was, in a way one might find solace in the presence of a beast which had chosen not to slay them where they stood, enjoying herself. And the other across from her could only be called ecstatic in this.

It was telling that nothing intruded. No prying eyes. No hidden ears. They were stood in a clearing in the Twelveswood. In the cold, quiet night. Her light dead. Nothing laid in wait. The duskwight across from her licked her acrid lips. Her breath smelled of rot. The bones in her mouth smiled darkly with life. The blood on her face smelt of death. Her teeth poked up through the dirt like headstones. But they did not close around the two of them. They had shared too many graves for that.

[tema-makes-art-sometimes]

if france isnt being really weirdly morbid about death and its beauty then whats the gosh darn diggity dang point.

[cod-dump]

Price: I'm not doing this for the money. I'm doing this so I can find Makarov and tear his throat out!

Graves: ... So I'll keep your share.

[age-of-moonknight]

Variant cover for Moon Knight (Vol. 9/2021), #30 by Tyler Kirkham.

[gravegrime]

🪦 Daily Etchings - 254 🪦

Pluto's very overwhelmed by all the support on twitter yesterday!

She says, "thank you"

[queenlucythevaliant]

Some off-the-cuff thoughts on overspiritualizing patterns in science

I remember watching a talk in middle school youth group about laminin, the "molecule that holds your whole body together" which was supposedly shaped like a cross. The suggestion, basically, was that the cross's image was integral to our molecular makeup and that this was part of God's design in a very Significant way. I was a burgeoning STEM girl, so I taped a diagram of a laminin up next to my bed for a while.

(As I would later find out, the whole laminin thing had/has some reach among Christians. There are T-shirts and everything)

Fast forever to spring of my freshman year as a microbiology student. I take my first course in cell bio, and I learn that laminins are actually one of many families of ECM glycoproteins. They aren't really any more significant in "holding the body together" than collagens, elastins, or fibronectins. They're very important, yes, but ultimately just one type of adhesive protein among many. And! They also do a bunch of other stuff that's way cooler than just. Adhesive.

While some laminins do bear resemblance to a cross when diagramed, it's really only because they have three subchains. Some are t-shaped, but others are y-shaped, and those don't look anything like a cross. Also, when they're in situ rather than in a nice, neat diagram, they tend to be all floppy and then they look even less cross-like.

Source

And when I learned about this I was oddly relieved. It felt like I was right about something that I couldn't even put into words, and that somehow the field of what I could call glorious had grown wider.

Christians are called to see and marvel at the presence of God in creation. I love doing that! I see God left and right through my scientific studies. Yet I also know that the human brain is pattern-seeking and that we are prone to pareidolia. I honestly don't know that there's a substantive difference between seeing the cross in some laminins and seeing Jesus on a piece of toast. It's all just seeing patterns that arise from something else (in the case of laminins, being able to bind three different molecules at once) and attributing spiritual significance. God is sovereign and maybe in the grand scope of his vision for creation it means something, but in terms of seeing God's hand in science I just find it so... small?

You could spin so many four-chain or four-domain proteins or goodness knows how many other molecules into images of the cross if you pick the right diagram. You could take every pattern of three in nature (and there are many!) as an image of the Trinity. If you really, really wanted to, you could take every six in organic chemistry as a sign of the beast, which would be hilarious in its misguidedness. It just becomes so literalistic and dull so very fast.

Look! Wouldn't you rather talk about the fact that laminins begin to appear along the edge of a developing lung at just ten weeks of human embryonic development, suggesting that they play a role in alveolar morphogenesis? That they're present in the neural stem-cell niche, which makes them an attractive candidate for helping to treat degenerative neurological conditions? I want to go back to whoever gave that talk that I watched in youth group and shake him and say, "God did that, and you're still hung up on the fact that laminins have three subchains?"