#and its my favorite thing on this page

[vampireflowerarts]

Some Blue-dles of Haru~

Ready to wreak havoc

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

"Pandora, Worrying About What She Is Doing, Finds a Way into the Valley through the Scrub Oak," from Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin

Look how messy this wilderness is. Look at this scrub oak, chaparro, the chaparral was named for it and consists of it mixed up with a lot of other things, but look at this shrub of it right here now. The tallest limb or stem is about four feet tall, but most of the stems are only a foot or two. One of them looks as if it had been cut off with a tool, a clean slice across, but who? what for? This shrub isn’t good for anything and this ridge isn’t on the way to anywhere. A lot of smaller branch-ends look broken or bitten off. Maybe deer browse the leafbuds. The little grey branches and twigs grow every which way, many dead and lichened, crossing each other, choking each other out. Digger-pine needles, spiders’ threads, dead bay leaves are stuck in the branches. It’s a mess. It’s littered. It has no overall shape. Most of the stems come up from one area, but not all; there’s no center and no symmetry. A lot of sticks sticking up out of the ground a little ways with leaves on some of them—that describes it fairly well. The leaves themselves show some order, they seem to obey some laws, poorly. They are all different sizes from about a quarter of an inch to an inch long, but each is enough like the others that one could generalise an ideal scrub-oak leaf: a dusty, medium dark-green color, with a slight convex curve to the leaf, which pillows up a bit between the veins that run slanting outward from the central vein; and the edge is irregularly serrated, with a little spine at each apex. These leaves grow irregularly spaced on alternate sides of their twig up to the top, where they crowd into a bunch, a sloppy rosette. Under the litter of dead leaves, its own and others’, and moss and rocks and mold and junk, the shrub must have a more or less shrub-shaped complex of roots, going fairly deep, probably deeper than it stands aboveground, because wet as it is here now in February, it will be bone dry on this ridge in summer.

There are no acorns left from last fall, if this shrub is old enough to have borne them. It probably is. It could be two years old or twenty or who knows? It is an oak, but a scrub oak, a low oak, a no-account oak, and there are at least a hundred very much like it in sight from this rock I am sitting on, and there are hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands more on this ridge and the next ridge, but numbers are wrong. They are in error. You don’t count scrub oaks. When you can count them, something has gone wrong. You can count how many in a hundred square yards and multiply, if you’re a botanist, and so make a good estimate, a fair guess, but you cannot count the scrub oaks on this ridge, let alone the ceanothus, buckbrush, or wild lilac, which I have not mentioned, and the other variously messy and humble components of the chaparral. The chaparral is like atoms and the components of atoms: it evades. It is innumerable. It is not accidentally but essentially messy. This shrub is not beautiful, nor even if I were ten feet high on hashish would it be mystical, nor is it nauseating; if a philosopher found it so, that would be his problem, but nothing to do with the scrub oak. This thing is nothing to do with us. This thing is wilderness. The civilized human mind’s relation to it is imprecise, fortuitous, and full of risk. There are no shortcuts. All the analogies run one direction, our direction. There is a hideous little tumor in one branch. The new leaves, this year’s growth, are so large and symmetrical compared with the older leaves that I took them at first for part of another plant, a toyon growing in with the dwarf oak, but a summer’s dry heat no doubt will shrink them down and warp them. Analogies are easy; the live oak, the humble evergreen, can certainly be made into a sermon, just as it can be made into firewood. Read or burnt. Sermo, I read; I read scrub oak. But I don’t, and it isn’t here to be read, or burnt. It is casting a shadow across the page of this notebook in the weak sunshine of three-thirty of a February afternoon in Northern California. When I close the book and go, the shadow will not be on the page, though I have drawn a line around it; only the pencil line will be on the page. The shadow will be then on the dead-leaf-thick messy ground or on the mossy rock my ass is on now, and the shadow will move lawfully and with great majesty as the earth turns.

The mind can imagine that shadow of a few leaves falling in the wilderness; the mind is a wonderful thing. But what about all the shadows of all the other leaves on all the other branches on all the other scrub oaks on all the other ridges of all the wilderness? If you could imagine those for even a moment, what good would it do? Infinite good.

-- Ursula K. Le Guin, Always Coming Home (273-5)

[ricky-mortis]

I have a lot of thoughts about Tinky fucking Ted up- have some doodles about it

[fagulaa]

Something I really love about the Silt Verses is how, in a world of gods and monsters, how grounded Faulkner's trauma [and relationship with his father] is. Especially as the season moves on, and the stakes amp up [and up] its so unexpectedly piercing to be presented with this exploration of childhood abandonment/negligence, inter-generational trauma, the indignities and stress that comes with unexpected elder care/early onset Alzheimer's. You're so locked in to these grander, more abstract concepts that your defenses are down! Mine were, anyway. TSV is so good at cutting its grand, complex plotlines with simpler [but not shallower] gutpunches, and it just grounds the whole thing.

[boughclan-clangen]

moon 0, page 7

>air thick with dread.

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[socialflairity]

i cant believe aimée didnt include the part when ralph lost it abt the shelter falling apart and threw himself on the floor and started complaining on and on about people not helping. it was so funny 😔😔

[lilypucks]

more mspaint but isat this time (+ closeup for my favorite sif i've drawn to date)

[xxplastic-cubexx]

Do you have any cherik fics recs set in the comics? Or at least not set in X-men first class

my rec list is very small for i don't really read fanfics and i only really read things when they're recc'd to me HOWEVER i do have a Very Small collection for you (descending by word count). under the cut cause the descriptions got long by accident Oops

1.) [EXPLICIT, READ WARNINGS BEFOREHAND] Chimera, by Andraste (Word Count: 1,304)

(Takes place in the Ultimate X-Men (2001) timeline) I can't really describe this fic adequately without telling the whole thing or accidentally doing an analysis on it: while it doesn't have a strict plot, calling it PWP isn't too accurate in my opinion either. The smut in this fic- in my reading- isn't meant to be erotic in the typical way we approach NSFW in fanfiction, but if I start to go in-depth on what that means this post is just going to be dissecting everything line-for-line LOL. The best way I suppose I can describe the premise of this fic is a "grim" scenario based around Charles reworking Erik's mind and keeping him "docile", and Erik catching on to what's been happening to him. This fic explores how Erik wants Charles to "atone" and confront the consequences for this meddling.

2.) As If Nothing Happened, by joshriku (Word Count: 3,289)

(Takes place amidst X-Men Unlimited (1993) #1) This fic expands on the X-Men Unlimited tidbit where Charles is rescued by a """"mysterious"""" figure (who we later learn is Erik in UXM 309) during the snowstorm he, Scott, and Ororo were entrapped by. Very domestic and "warm" and sprinkled with beautiful, playful back-and-forths, and is a joy to revisit if you want something cozy.

3.) [EXPLICIT, READ WARNINGS BEFOREHAND] Behind Closed Minds by f3armgneto (Word Count: 4,914)

(No specific verse or timeline) Honorable Mention Is Honorable i gotta include the fic that was written for me... i wasn't sure if you were looking for explicitly-stated comicverse fics only but i needed to do an honorable mention..... the art this fic's based off of is meant to be comicverse so surely that must count... Premise is essentially that Charles accidentally telepathically peeps on Erik showering and is incapable of moving beyond the instance without "proper resolution". Meanwhile on Erik's end, fully aware he'd been spied upon, thinks of a "countermeasure" to Charles' voyeurism (spoilers: it's more of a reward than a deterrent).

4.) it's going to be a long, long time, by joshriku

(Takes places amidst Krakoa period around AXE Judgment and X-Men Red) A series of events between Charles and Erik following the latter leaving to retire on Arakko. My summary does a poor job on highlighting the chemistry, dialogue, and longing between Erik and Charles in this: I can only beg you to give the fic some time to read it.

5.) not so tragic, my love- it's this dream, it's this sun, by joshriku

(Takes place post-gala/beginning-of-post of the Krakoa period, diverges from X-men: From The Ashes (2024)) Erik has Charles stay with him on Island M after the fall of Krakoa. It's no surprise Charles isn't doing so well mentally after losing everything, but- amidst the facsimile of some domestic joys- Erik wrangles with Charles' depression and anguish, the professor having long lost the light in his spirit to help his fellow mutants readjust after the downfall. (Guest Starring: Jean Grey who has a wonderfully written interaction with Charles- though this fic In Its Entirety is wonderfully written...)

when i was looking through my bookmarks i hadn't realized literally like. half of my rec list was written by joshriku AJLVKEJALK BUT THEM'S THE WORKS i owe them my life for getting charles and erik's voices, thoughts, and actions down so wonderfully. i hadn't read Number 5 in a while and i'm grateful for the excuse to do so: it's probably my favorite of their works that i have listed here, so if you read any of these fics i greatly suggest that one

if you read any of these at all tho i hope you enjoy them !!

[ragamine-kin]

there can be no redemption for a sinner such as i

[vanweezer]

come what(ever) may - zine

everything handmade/sewn/drawn by me

[amyloveletter]

yesterday i tried to draw amy like a model i'm obsessed with. her eyes are not in model at all but idc 💪💪

[gelarshiesprofruitboarder]

ewwwwwww gross

[eebie]

the underwater episode of bojack horseman makes me so SAD ..

[savage-rhi]

Fuschia/Magenta?

[velvetjune]

i played the remastered alan wake a while back and am replaying the original on steam, and, honestly, they’re so similar, I couldn’t tell which is which if you held up comparisons. ive come across reviews about the game looking outdated and bad (mostly compared to other releases in that time), but the original looks great and I like the hazy dark lighting for both this and awan

[beryllineart]

Character categorization

Okay, so there’s this thing, I don’t know if it’s a character trope or just something that I do obsessively, but I love things where a character is a fraction of a character (person maybe?). (0/2 is not a character, 4/2 is multiple characters, and there’s a spectrum in between). I’ll make a separate post explaining better what I mean (once I have made art that works to highlight my arguments), but the basic idea behind it is that characters have degrees of humanity and personality and wholeness that can be expressed in fractions.

Silent protagonists tend to be half a character to me, as well as robot characters (of course it depends on how they are written, but evolution from one half of a character to two halves of a character is my favorite thing about robot characters).

I'm really using the word "character" loosely, it's just that sometimes a character who is categorized in the 2/2 area isn't always human and I don't mean literal human but idk, humanity is an important part of characterizing these characters into regions but there are exceptions, especially since "humanity" is something that can have multiple definitions, Death from Discworld is probably the best example of a 2/2 character whose humanity is a bit odd. I swear I will make this easier to understand in the future it makes sense in my head.

The things these characters strive for is integral in categorizing them. Half characters tend to be passive and strive for less, two halves is a “normal” amount of striving, three halves is my favorite because it introduces the most conflict, and I don’t feel like figuring out what a four halves character would strive for (since a 4/2 "character" is usually made up of multiple characters, though it's often still a single unit).

Now, I’m not saying these fractions are about how complete a character is or how well it’s written. It’s more about how much of a unit the given character is… look, I know I’m not explaining this as well as I should, I am a pretty visual thinker and this is just a way for me to categorize characters (especially my OC’s, who always end up being 3/2 characters). I’ll try to make it understandable when I expand on this, but I really wanted to say something because I noticed that the Long Quiet from Slay the Princess is all of these fractions at once and I’m kind of obsessed with symbiosis, parasitism and relationships when it comes to characters. I guess you could say these fractions are a measure of dependence, independence, consciousness and humanity… I don’t know, it makes sense in my head.

Here are some examples of characters and where they fall on the fraction line. (Note, this is not a rating system, I often find 3/2 characters much more interesting than 4/2 characters because the conflicts that happen to 3/2 characters speak to me.)