#are these webweaves. is that what you would call it if there's two or less sources.

[vulpinesaint]

Venom + Kissing Death by MOTHICA

[sloth-sloth-sloth]

A heart's a heavy burden, but no one can live without one, right? What's the cost of one, then?

(or:

Grian was born heartless. He befriends then kills Scar for his heart, then has him brought back to life. Scar has questions about his thought process - now, if only Grian would talk to him about it.)

i have fic for @mcytblraufest and i must scream. chapters go up one per day.

this fic has two super awesome webweaves by @baddishbeans, i shall link and rb em when they go up!

an attempt at explaining whatever this is under the cut

so you know desert duo? you probably do! you know fantasy author dean francis alfar? maybe not, but he wrote this heartbreaking short story called "the maiden and the crocodile" (i think it's up online somewhere). our tale begins on a fine sunday afternoon. i had recently finished watching 3rd life desert duo and have gone feral over it. i had not-as-recently read "the maiden and the crocodile" and have gone slightly less feral about it. two braincells collided and exploded and when i woke up it was two weeks later and i have this fic sitting here.

from another angle, there was a set of songs that just swirled around in my brain for too long that accidentally became integral to the story. a lot of them were, yes, will wood songs, against the kitchen floor has my entire heart (ba dum tss), also love me normally, also and if i did you deserved it, also well better than the alternative, you get the gist. there's also this december, minor acts of cannibalism, green, are you bored yet?, famous last words, etc. the music brainrot is real.

fic? i had fic once. they locked me in a playlist. a favorite-songs playlist. a favorite songs-playlist for desert duo. desert duo gave me fic. i never left the desert

[bellshazes]

Will Oldham has showed up in basically every webweave ive made: a changed voice, when you don't even know who I am even more than I, there are two kinds of people. Each excerpt means the thing it is, but it's also deeply colored by my one-sided parasocial nemesis relationship with him, as well as the incredible piece that includes this anecdote:

he is not, I don't think, homophobic; his body of work is in fact extremely queer owing exactly to these personal experiences, notably songs like Black Captain or Antagonism. (Has it ever dawned upon you to do things as I do, and sabotage your rightful due?) He gorgeously captures what i can only call the capacity for intensely heterosexual queerness.

I once lucked into a photography assignment at a local art museum where he performed solo in the medieval wing in front of giant stained glass windows and among relics and tapestries, following the publication of songs of love and horror, his annotated lyrics compilation. His wife (a locally renowned artist in her own right) and young child were among the small audience. His many monikers and intense, thoughtful opinions on music as an industry give him a particular self-mythology, though I don't think he'd like that assessment.

So, to the point of last life and do it again, it's less fandomizing these things he's said or written and a deep belief to me that the dynamic of the snow fort is also resonating with the things that led to WO's works. A changed voice, yes, but the same voice; a changed life but the same life; and so the music changes. And so the dynamic changes - but it's the same. And it's deeply and lovingly antagonistic and agnostic of the changes even as they revel in them, like bdubs joking he would never even think of killing etho even though he did the prior season in the single best example of a covert assassination in the entire series.

and like. It's not intended to be queer. I don't think it needs to be read that way to be resonant! your friends who you'd die for or leave behind (black captain, both versions) whose bond with you is both juvenile and foundational and consuming. it has always been incredible to me that they're not even best friends. there's love but little sweetness, especially when no consequences are ever truly permanent, because there's always another world, another song. what if that relationship wasn't even the most important one in your life if you had to say what was, but it was so fundamental that every time you were in the same place you ended up entangled anyway.

In a long enough body of work across enough names or servers you arrive at mythology whether you like it or not. Many lives, many stories, ensnared by the unchangeable complex web of many pasts and set free by the infinite possibilities of many futures. I wish it were easier not to reduce them to simple narratives.