#argo TL

[navigatewithchiku]

GET MYSELF - GYROAXIA

I'm ready, I'm here

I will stay here

Let’s break through, until I go beyond my limit

Now, a proof of my existence…

No matter what someone else told us,

In this path(life) I chose there’s no hesitation.

Even if you keep waiting for your fate,

tomorrow won’t change, so shoot through the “now”.

I’ll find a substitute as many times as needed.

So now break through, sing and dance.

Flap your wings higher than anyone else. Come on, Go!

I'm ready, I'm here,

I will stay here

Strum, a proof of your existence, now!

Don’t stop! I cannot be stopped!

Dreams, Ideals? This is reality.

Now let’s break through, until I reach the other side

Strum the proof of your existence, (I’m) on my way.

This is how I live my life!!

I believe in myself!!

I can't take it in any other way!! My way!!

This is how I live my life!!

I believe in myself!!

I can't take it in any other way!!

Clinge to someone or something.

Just dreaming isn’t enough, the future won’t come.

A world that can be saved by

stuff like Love or Affection?

Are you kidding me?

Guys who choose comfort

One after the other, they’ll disappear.

The sound of wings flapping, depending on others

Throw everything away, now, go

I'm ready, I'm here

I'll always stay here

Strum, a proof of your existence, now.

Don’t stop! Run trough

Dreams, Ideals? This is reality

Now let’s break through, until I exceed my limit

Strum the proof of your existence, I’m on my way

this is how I live my life

I believe in myself

I can't take it in any other way, my way

This is how I live my life

I believe in myself

I can't take it in any other way

Keep on rolling

I should just stay true to myself, persist.

shit like “a normal life”,

I don’t need it

I'm ready, I'm here

I'll always stay here

Strum, a proof of your existence, now

Don’t stop! Do not stop

Dreams, Ideals? This is reality

Now let’s break through, until I go beyond my limit

Strum the proof of your existence, I’m on my way

this is how I live my life

I believe in myself

I can't take it in any other way, my way

This is how I live my life

I believe in myself

I can't take it in any other way

[sighonaraa]

Any of your WIPs that you weren’t asked about that you want to chat about? Or anything else you want to share about one you were?

YES I WOULD IN FACT!!! so this one is one that is not on the list because i actually just brainstormed it up today while shouting about de-aging fics with the wonderful @asteria-argo and now i must subject all of you to hearing about it as well:

the ending where you finally find your way home (tentative title)

AKA the fic wherein, in the middle of a 33-year-old jamie tartt's retirement party, a fuckery of the universe occurs and in the space between one heartbeat and the next, 23-year-old jamie is standing in the place of his older self. and he hasn't got any memories of the last ten years at all.

everyone panics. jamie panics the most and pretends he's not by lashing out at anybody who gets close, but especially roy, who for some reason is nearing 50 and seems to love 33-year-old jamie a hell of a lot for someone who's professed an undying hatred for him multiple times. actually, scratch that. the entire team seems to love this 33-year-old jamie a hell of a lot. and no matter how mean 23-year-old jamie is to them now, how much he bites and kicks, they just. keep. being. kind. and colin's got a husband? and isaac has two daughters? and there's this dani rojas character who keeps wanting to hug him? it's a lot. it's weird. but it's also... nice. in a way. he supposes.

oh, and also? apparently his 33-year-old self cut their dad out of his life a long time ago. but that can't be right.

tl;dr: this is the fic wherein a 23-year-old jamie gets all the love he deserved to have at that age, and it's all because of the life he managed to build and choose for himself.

[vacantgodling]

i have. an oc question. my brain is a bit of a pile of mush right now so i'm gonna leave this as an open question, but for whichever oc ship you have on the brain most right now, i'd love to hear about how they express affection for each other. which one is more open about their affection? which one is perhaps more reserved? do they have any specific ways of showing affection to each other?

you 🤝 me brain being mush

honestly i’ve had lath & ensio on the brain for a bit so i’ll do this about them—HOWEVER—i do want to preface that the two of them aren’t really a “traditional” romantic relationship as how we think of it. tl;dr there’s a long explanation of how love and relationships work in terrae — it’s split into 3 categories: bonds-kinship-pleasure. lath and ensio have a Bond which is essentially the all encompassing spectrum between friendship/romance, and is actually separate from sex (pleasure) or like traditional friendship/marriage etc as we think of it. bonds and all kinds of relationships do overlap (pleasure is a common one but it is wholly separate).

ALL OF THIS TO SAY lath and ensio aren’t romantic in a traditional sense but they are Absolutely bonded—to the point that when lath was made immortal, ensio was made immortal with him to be the literal sword he wields (though he does have a human form he can become). basically. do not separate. tm.

SO WITHOUT FURTHER ADO:

EXPRESSING AFFECTION->

the two of them are extremely teasing towards one another and have friendly ribs and goes at each other all the time. one of lath’s favorite things to tease ensio about is the “sorry” state of his beard (it’s not sorry at all; it’s very well taken care of and usually has braids and beads in it) and how it drives away potential sexual partners (ensio loves to pretend he’s more into pleasure than he actually is. he likes to deflect his real feelings by being like ah what i wouldn’t give to have my face buried in some tits rn and like honestly same. BUT he will always choose lath over anything like that bc. do not separate lmao). meanwhile, en’s favorite insult is regarding how lath hardly blinks (he literally doesn’t. he is seriously 👁️👁️ at all times LMAOOOO. lath does also generally forget to blink it’s wild. he is v much an eagle boy and his guardian wings don’t help). however at the same time, because they also have a kinship relationship (tldr lath’s parents died when he was extremely young and ensio/his family took him in) they also take care of each other as a form of affection. doing things for each other, protecting each other (physically especially; they’re both eventually scouts for the king and apart of the king’s guard before argos fell) but also just existing in the same space. the two of them don’t really have to use words with each other that’s how close they are.

i also have a few quotes to provide u of their relationship tm:

“I don’t see what you’re saving me from then.” Lath said, flatly but not unkindly. “Unless you mean boredom. If that’s the case, see yourself back down and fetch me a jester.”

“Oh ha ha.” Ensio rolled his eyes.

-

Ensio was quick to jump up, taking both the spoon and the jar of stew away from him.

“Stars and hills, Lath, be fucking careful!” He hissed, but the irritation in his voice was sharp contrast to way his hands gently came up to cup Lath’s cheeks.

-

(after kissing lath to help his burning lips)

“Must you always be so difficult?” Ensio murmured, but his voice was low in the back of his throat, low like the way his eyes were almost partially lidded. Lath stared at him, as he was prone to, until Ensio complained and Lath let out a bark of a laughter.

“I’m difficult because it’s you.” He declared.

“Lucky me.” Ensio groaned. He sat himself back in the chair, holding open one arm. “Get over here before you catch a cold.” 

-

“Don’t let it go to your head.” Lath said evenly. “Your beard is still awful.”

“And when’s the last time you blinked this week, owlet?” Lath thought a moment. “If you have to think then that’s the issue!”

-

(in talking about how they never really had sex before they’re about to uhhhh DIE lmao)

“It’s not as though either of us would ever know.” Ensio mused, but not unkindly. “Your horrible habit of unblinking deterred so many.”

“Yet your horrible beard drove off more.” Lath quipped back and the rumble of a chuckle that left Ensio, even as he continued to bleed, made a quirk of a smirk tug at Lath’s lips. 

“I would offer to let you experience it on my own chest, as a parting gift,” Ensio started. “But I’m afraid this armor is too hard to remove one handed.”

(that excerpt is actually really bittersweet but y’all get the picture lemme chill)

-

(after they’re finally reunited after death and lath is a guardian)

After a long moment, Lath pushed back. “It would be too much luck to have you taken off my hands for good.” He said finally and he cackled when Ensio snorted and grabbed him in a headlock, the two of them devolving into wrestling, just like old friends do.

OPENNESS ->

ensio is 100% more open about expressing affection. he’s the initiator in most things; bringing lath soup, kissing his lips to stop them from burning, intimating hugs or friendly arm-over-shoulders. it more has to do with being well adjusted, growing up with his family and many siblings. though lath grew up around them, he’s always been standoffish — which is funny when i think about how his legend has morphed in later terranean history; because basically it merged ensio and lath’s personalities (lath: uncompromising, fierce warrior + ensio: charming and honorable). so it’s really funny when people actually MEET lath in book two and find oh wait he’s weird as shit. it’s not that lath isn’t open about caring for ensio, he’s the most open with ensio IN GENERAL, but when it comes to initiating affection that’s all en lol.

i think in a weird winded way i also answered your other questions but it’s always a good day to talk about lath and ensio they make me INSANE.

[theoneandonlyhooman]

This idea came to me in a vision(I was being delusional). I'm thinking of making a few mini comics, or at least a few art works of a twomp AU based on this whole thing.

What if the voids are just various levels of hell/purgatory. And that's why everyone there are either not humans at all, or very twisted looking versions of them. It's because all the void 'natives' like the object heads or whatever Argos is are all demons, and the humans that move to the void are actually just all dead.

The reason why so many humans are 'moving to the void' lately (dying) is because some major apocalypse is happening on earth and killing everyone. Like a 3rd world war or another pandemic. Satan or Lucifer is Ashur himself, (ok e seen a lot of people talk about him as a God in cannon, and I guess that works as well).

The reason why no one is allowed in Void one is because it's like, the entrance where the living souls cross over to hell. If anyone enters it they'll see some giant sign saying 'abandon all hope, all thee who enter' or something.

The trains are like an updated version of the ferries that are used to transport souls in a bunch of mythologies, because times are changing. Maybe he'll has its own version of glacial warming, but instead of the oceans rising, they all dried up, so they don't need boats anymore and are using trains.

Argos is like, part of some important family in hell. That's why he's so different from every other void being, and why all his family members were killed in 'accidents'. It was just other people trying to end his bloodline or whatever.(This would be a cool idea regardless of the hell au thing)

So yea, just dumping a bunch of my thoughts here mainly so I don't forget them, but also to get some other peoples opinions on them because I need to know if you guys would be interested in me making art of something like this. =]

TL;DR : Twomp hell au where the void is just hell/purgatory

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk

[sobeksewerrat]

☆~~Elvina The Cock-Kicker~~☆

prolly gonna update or change this later (updated: 25/5/24 [d/m/y])

Uh, hello! Name's Elvina (I also go by AnDrew/AnDrea! And Argo aswell, but you need permission from me to use that one), but you can call me whatever lol

(There is also Eara'as, but who cares-)

Update on 24/2/24: Fuck it I am naming myself Adam too. Yes, after the guy from Hazbin. Sue me. It is one of my favourite names now.

-> لو انت بتكلم عربي و عايز تكلمني بيه ممكن تقلي ربيع او مروان برده!!

I'm an amateur artist and writer; currently trying to graduate as soon as humanly possible (and high school has been kicking my ass)

My tagline is "kinda bored ngl"; seriously it's been in the bio of every social media account I have ever owned since 2019 at some point or another it's actually insane, WHY AM I SO BORED?!?

this intro post pretty much only looks good with the "Vampire" theme, if you don't have that, then it sucks to suck, i guess.

BEFORE YOU INTERACT!!

☆I have a full Rules post but these are some others not included in that or TL;DRs.

-> I block very liberally, but I never just randomly block a mutual (unless it is a joke like in the freakblr war or they did sth horrible). I have severe anxiety so I tend to just block anybody who I feel is aggressive (intentionally or otherwise) or weirds me out.

-> I have a really broken sense of humour and I post a lot about inside jokes and stuff with my mutuals. I know I can't stop you, but if we're not mutuals or you're not involved in whatever inside joke I am talking about please dni with the posts. Once a joke of mine blew up and I deleted the original post and made my friends delete their rbs so people would stop seeing it.

-> I tend to forget to tag TWs properly. If I forget to tag sth, please inform me!!

Fandoms:

Special Interest (persumably): The Music Freaks

Hyperfixations: Ace Attorney, Luca(2021), The Stanley Parable, Story Thieves, Scott Pilgrim , Hazbin Hotel , Avatar: The Last Airbender

Danganronpa V3 [yes, V3 specifically.I don't interact with the fandom much]

Mark and Friends/The World of Mr.Plant

The Disastrous Life of Saiki K

Blue's Story (Victaton)

Big Hero 6

DDLC

Diary of A Wimpy Kid (mainly the Dysfunctional Perspective fancomic)

Al Kabeer (not a fandom technically but who cares)

Sonic

Jackson's Diary

Aurora (red osp)

Riordanverse (including KC and MCGA)

Unfamiliar (Lavendertowne)

FNAF

Omori

Helluva Boss

Obey Me!

Ramshackle

Buncha other stuff that I am too lazy to name (might edit as i post about them)

Fandom Stuff to Tag Me In!!

My Kins!!

Random Bullshit:

Egyptian

fav colour is red

Professional Faggot since 2018 (legally)

Aro/Ace (achillean)

Agender / Aboy (transmasc, pronouns: he/him)

Basically just your local pathetic trans boy with mommy AND daddy issues (the whole package!)

INFP

Born in spooky month, loves spooky month

OCD, ADHD, self-diagnosed Autism

Biochemistry nerd. I didn't mean to be one but there was just something very intruiging about toxicology. Blame Lavendertowne.

Massive multi-shipper (also i like crackships, A LOT)

Coffee, vimto and soda addict (blame cockitchy ouma)

Fav. fictional chr. of all time: ✨Manfred von Karma✨(PW:AA)

Drew and Milly kinnie (TMF)

I am Drew irl, all I say about him is canon, I even run the rp blog, don't question me

✨✨✨LEADER OF THE ANTI-DARK REUNION✨✨✨

Menace to society, according to all of my irl friends, and just people who know me (just ask my freakblr mutuals, they'll tell you).

Minor, obv.

Never truly grew out of my Gacha phase

Other Blogs

Tags

Artfol: sobeksewerrat (not super active there lol)

Wattpad: ElvinaHS

AO3: sobeksewerrat

pronouns

Have a great day/ night!!

Your favourite god,

Sober Skewart 🐊🍻

[cephalonserotonin]

Devstream 172

fortunately for y'all I am unemployed this summer and was able to actually watch this one live!

prioritizing recency for this one; will fill in some graphics later. after I take a nap

TL;DR: Echoes of Duviri update coming, some summer events, and we won't know what will happen at TennoCon in August but the reveal will probably be big

Last devstream before tennocon

Rebb opening her own devstream on her phone live to get the umbra forma drop... iconic

Pride campaign ends tomorrow! Grab the 1-credit pride stuff while you can!

7 Crimes of Kullervo - it's been out for a week

The prison island literally cannot be expanded any further due to storage constraints on the size of Duviri

The time-limited node (Kullervo's Hold) is to guarantee a Kullervo experience on the short term

Kullervo: 53rd warframe

Overguard for Kullervo: why? - mostly diegetic reasons, it feels non-immersive for stab man to summon shields from nowhere.

But his survivability on SP is lacking, so the team is experimenting with giving him some invuln and higher health

Some mixed thoughts on overguard vs adaptation

People want a dagger for Kullervo. it's been… tentatively teased

Captain (corrupted) Vor in the undercroft with a new monologue is popular (I haven't personally encountered him yet, and am excited to do so)

Upcoming Duviri content (next update: Echoes of Duviri)

New undercroft arenas in progress! Level design in progress shown is a lil grassland

The Jackal as an assassination game mode within the undercroft; He's a well regarded boss fight that scales well

Goal is expanding variety within duviri play

New incarnon models, which are gorgeous.

These 5 will be available for plat. There's a lot of awkward waffling here about pricing and free-to-play which has to be seen to really be understood

"We're not twisting your arm! We're not strong enough for that!"

DUVIRI ROOM FOR THE DOJO! Unique skybox for each mood Idk about y'all but I know exactly where in my dojo it's going

6th drifter weapon: the Argo and Vel, a mace and shield, similar to what the heavy Dax use Available for both Warframe and drifter (new weapon type for the drifter) The shield is gorgeous

Wisp prime coming July 27th

Teaser for her Prime trailer (I love the fluidity of it)

Fulmin + gunsen prime. The fulmin prime looks nothing like the fulmin lol

Megan's fashion frame has been called the 8th crime (oof)

More 10th Anniversary Content: the "recall 10-0 event"

will bring some old boss battles with cosmetics to earn

Starting July 19th

Dog Days returns with a hot rod domestik drone

TennoCon in person in August

Live tickets are sold out (as of before I found out I would be free that time after all, I cry)

Baro will bring all his Waros for 1 week

Broadcast schedule released

TennoLive will be 90 minutes

Helen introduces the cosplay contest ($10k prize for first place). Her hair looks amazing

The Warframe artbook content is done!

Dex operator + drifter suit by Liger! It looks like Hanzo Shimada if flowers were growing out of his back. Will be given to everyone for free :3

For the first time, reveals at this tennocon (for the "next installment" of Warframe) will be a true surprise. "It'll be our life's work" - Rebb. :o

Rebb still wants warframes starting with each letter of the alphabet. Q and D supposedly coming at tennocon

New soundtrack record picking up from the Sacrifice

Companion rework coming sometime this year

Warframe reworks won't be until post-TennoCon

Some poor lady was accosted on her wedding to ask Rebb about cross-save (bruh). More concrete news at TennoCon

[egoshq]

Oi, moderação. Sei que é meio cedo para uma ask dessa mas vocês poderiam pedir pros players terem mais atenção em responder os outros? Tem gente que tem comentários no próprio tweet e só responde quem quer, isso fica chato e deixa a gente sem vontade de interagir já que não interagem de volta.

mods tem gente que só tá respondendo quem quer na tl :(

Γεια σου!!! Juntando as duas asks pra facilitar o assunto e a conversa com vocês. A moderação não notou isso rolando, player, então obrigado por sinalizar. Não somos o gigante Argos, então aceitamos esses avisos e vamos aproveitar pra chamar atenção pra algo que notamos. Filhotes de Morfeu, não durmam no ponto e sigam as pessoas. 5 follows de 10 em 10min deve ser o suficiente pra não dar ruim na conta de ninguém; nesse meio tempo siga outras contas, verificadas e afins, qualquer coisa que facilite o follow mútuo entre todos os personagens. Seguiu todo mundo? Obrigado, agora respondam quem está tentando interagir com o personagem de vocês. Esforço de interação precisa ser mútuo. Se ficar ruim vamos pedir provas e precisar julgar o que tá rolando. Importante: tomem cuidado com o sb, muita resposta não notifica, não aparece, e aí fica impossível pra qualquer um responder. Por favor, vamos nos atentar pra esses detalhes importantes. Isso não é um puxão de orelha, e não queremos que se torne, é só um pedido pra gente começar a desenvolver um ambiente legal pra todo mundo que se esforça pra tal. Obrigado pela leitura e bons jogos no evento de hoje! <3

[hitchell-mope]

Andrea Rojas in the My Universe au.

I always found Andrea Rojas to be more entertaining, more sympathetic and slightly better acted than Lena. So in the rewrite. Andrea essentially takes the bastards place as the misguided soul who learns from her mistakes. Ie. She gets way in over her head with Leviathan and goes to Supergirl for help. And since Cat and Carter never left. She’s not in charge of CatCo so the whole “psychobitch boss” thing never happens. She’s still a little bit, um, “cray-cray”. But she doesn’t have The Boss thing hanging over her head. She also has the added guilt of for falling for her dead boyfriend’s best friend while both are trying to make sure his death wasn’t in vain independent of each other. She also ends up joining the team in the finale. Which also helps a lot because karamel go to Argo for a year in this.

TL;DR: I like Andrea more than Lena. So in the rewrite I’ve had her take the bitch’s place as the sympathetic one. I’ve also spared William. Because he was amazing.

[lyculuscaelus]

Oh NO we don’t talk abt the ten years of preparation. We just don’t. Helen left and Achaeans came together and went to Mysia and went back after the storm and regathered at Aulis to set out again. This happened in one year, at best. Whatever Apollodorus said was hyperbole and you can’t convince me otherwise.

As for timeline…such thing never exists. The Trojan War timeline is wrecked but wait till you see the chaos in the generation of the Argonauts…(and if I had to point out who the heck were responsible…the Dioscuri, the royal lineage of Argos, and as always, Heracles…)

Anyways back to their age. (This is a very approximate evaluation so feel free to yell at me). There is this post analyzing Odysseus’s age in the Iliad and I agree with them: Odysseus was from his early to mid-40s at the end of the Trojan War. Let’s say, around 44? And that makes him about 54 when he got home. That makes Penelope about the same age as him too (here I assume it’s about 54 when Odysseus got back). She was probably a bit older than Helen (since the oath of Tyndareus happened when Helen was just old enough to get married iirc. Penelope would have to be older to allow that double marriage to happen), so I’d say Helen was in her late-30s to early 40s when the Trojan War ended, which means she was in her late-20s to early 30s when she was abducted. There was a ten-year gap between the oath of Tyndareus and the Trojan War according to Apollodorus (I’d say trust him on this because Hermione being 9 years old when the abduction of Helen happened explains so many things), and if we’re putting Helen’s age of marriage at 18 then she was 28 when abducted, which checks. Menelaus was said to be younger than Odysseus in book 3 of the Iliad, so it kinda makes sense for him and Helen to be of the same age. And that puts Agamemnon in his early 40s too. Diomedes was the younger than Odysseus, Agamemnon, and of course Nestor, as Diomedes himself said in book 14 of the Iliad. He was a bit older than Achilles tho, so Diomedes was maybe around 34 in the last year of the Trojan War. So, he joined the war at the age of 24 according to this, so this puts the Epigoni campaign ten years earlier than the Trojan War, which is a neat number.

Now let’s talk abt Achilles. Apollodorus’s Epitome puts him at the age of 15 when he first joined the army in Aulis (of course there’s the time gap which I chose to ignore for reasons, one of them being everyone’s age), and if that’s the case then Achilles must’ve begotten Neoptolemus at an unreasonable age…unless Neoptolemus was born when Achilles arrived at Skyros after the storm scattered the Achaean fleet. I choose to go by the version where Achilles first begot him when he was hiding in Skyros because one, it’s more commonly accepted, and two, it makes more sense for Achilles’s motives. So, I’d put him in his late teens when he first joined the war, so at the end of the Trojan War he was in his late-20s, and same with Patroclus, and I assume Antilochus was in his early to mid-20s, since he was even younger than Achilles? As for Neoptolemus…he could be in his early teens when he first joined the war (could be even younger than that tho…I don’t claim any knowledge concerning the gap between Achilles’s concealment in Skyros and his recruitment). Don’t ask me how old Nestor was I hadn’t a clue how long a generation should be in the Homeric context for him to witness two generations of people die. And his dad Neleus just messed the so-called timeline up again.

(TL; DR: Feel free to yell at me it’s just my interpretation of their age based on certain context Age of some of the Achaeans in the last year of the Trojan War: Odysseus and Penelope: around 44 Agamemnon, Menelaus and Helen: somewhere around 38 Diomedes: somewhere around 34 Achilles, Patroclus: somewhere around 30 Antilochus: somewhere around 25 Neoptolemus: early teens? Don’t ask me the specifics Nestor: often interpreted as hundreds of years old but his father was somehow at Peleus’s time; technically should be ranging from 60 to 75 but timeline isn’t timelining when it comes to generations)

i have tried to go and research the trojan war timeline and am now more confused than when i began. how is anyone the age they are. send help.

[r0ryss]

taz grad doodlin! I love these three idiots already

[loneberry]

The praise singers: poets George Mackay Brown and Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins and George Mackay Brown were both Catholic converts, shy and tormented by depression, whose poems are filled with delight in Creation. A recently discovered cache of Brown’s notebooks shows how deeply he empathised with Hopkins’ inner struggles

[Pasting the entirety of this beautiful article here because I’ve been in a Hopkins hole and enjoy contemplating how poets befriend dead poets, how the poet feels the presence of the dead poet at the church of St Aloysius during evening Mass. If it’s tl;dr at least let me leave you with George’s extraordinary final vision before dying: Just before he lost consciousness, he said to the doctor and nurses attending him, “I see hundreds and hundreds of ships sailing out of the harbour.”]

By Maggie Fergusson

A poet’s hope, W.H. Auden believed, is “to be like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere”. No twentieth-century poet was more local than George Mackay Brown. He was born in the Orcadian seaport Stromness in 1921, and there, pretty much, he stayed – not even venturing the 15 miles to Orkney’s capital, Kirkwall, until he was in his mid-twenties.

In an age of Concorde and inter-city travel, he was as rooted in his landscape as John Clare or William Barnes. But, by drawing his boundaries so closely around him, he allowed his imagination to range freely through time and space. As Seamus Heaney put it, “George Mackay Brown transformed everything by drawing it through the eye of the needle of Orkney.”

So there was consternation among his friends when, in June 1989, Brown announced that he planned to make his first (and only) trip to England. The centenary of the death of Gerard Manley Hopkins was approaching, and the Bodleian Library in Oxford was putting on an exhibition of his manuscripts. The similarities between Hopkins and Brown were striking: both were converts to Catholicism, shy, spiritual, passionate, tormented, but also filled with euphoric gladness by the wonders of Creation.

“No English poet ever fell upon the language with such skill, sweetness and boisterous daring,” Brown wrote of Hopkins. Seeing the work of the Jesuit poet “in the ink” might help him to understand how Hopkins “forged and hammered and welded those resounding marvels”.

Brown travelled south with a friend, but the journey, by sleeper, was fraught. He was terrified by the semi-automated, fast-folding lavatory doors. At bedtime, he took a sleeping pill but, as he could find no water, it lodged in his throat. He didn’t realise that his compartment had a blind, so all through the night station lights flashed across his face.

By the time his editor, Hugo Brunner, met him at King’s Cross, he was shaken and weary. After a brisk tour of London, during which Brown was photographed in front of Buckingham Palace, clinging to a carrier bag from Argo’s baker in Stromness, in which he’d packed his pyjamas and toothbrush, Brunner drove him to his home in north Oxford. A friend who met him there soon after his arrival said he looked so frail, sitting in the garden, it was as if some dry leaves had blown themselves into the vague semblance of a man.

But, once he’d had time to rest, things looked up. Hopkins’s beloved Oxford –

Towery city and branchy between towers:

Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd,

lark-charmèd, rook-racked,

river-rounded

– began to work its magic.

Brown’s visit happened to coincide with the election for a new Professor of Poetry, and he walked through the city in the June sun to watch the voting.

The retiring professor, Peter Levi, spotted him standing in shadows. “He was a formidably craggy, elderly hairpin of a man,” Levi wrote. “Of everything I saw that day, his face is the only unforgettable experience.”

Brown talked to the pupils at St Edward’s School. He allowed himself to be interviewed by Sue MacGregor. He was driven out to Littlemore, and was deeply affected to visit the tiny chapel where Newman was received in 1845. But what moved him most was the welcome he received from Hopkins himself. Almost everywhere he turned in Oxford, Brown later wrote in The Orcadian, he sensed Hopkins’ spirit – “sweet” and “eager”. On the centenary itself, he visited the church of St Aloysius, where Hopkins had been curate, and sensed him “especially there in that little church … at evening Mass”. He travelled home to Orkney relieved, but elated.

It was three years after this that I first met Brown, sent to Orkney by The Times to interview him on the publication of his novel Vinland. I was in Stromness for four days, and we forged an unlikely friendship. “I hope you will come back often, Maggie,” he wrote after I left. “I feel you belong here in Orkney.” So I did go back, often, and the summer before he died Brown – who I now called George – gave me his blessing to write his biography, after he was gone.

It was a daunting task: how to make a book about a man whose life had been so interior and apparently uneventful? But as soon as I set to work, material flooded in – most wonderfully George’s correspondence with Stella Cartwright, “Muse of Rose Street”, the beautiful, tragic woman, possessed of “a kind of radiance, a rich essence on which poets and artists feed to sustain themselves”, whom he nearly married.

George had told me that his work on Hopkins – preliminary notes for a thesis he never completed – was in his attic, and I very much looked forward to reading it. But it couldn’t be found, and it wasn’t until recently that it turned up in a sale, and was bought by the National Library of Scotland. So last July, Edinburgh steeped in a summer haar, I slipped into the manuscripts room to look through rough jottings made by George in a handful of buff-covered exercise books in the 1960s. Here are just a few of the nuggets I found.

Winifred Maynard, the tutor who oversaw George’s work, and whom I tracked down in researching my book, found him a frustrating student. She had hoped he might produce some original work on Hopkins’ theories of prosody: sprung rhythm, outriders, instress, inscape. But what he loved to do instead was just to read Hopkins’ poems “in my own way, often aloud”, and to respond to them simply. And what his response lacked in sophistication, it made up for in feeling.

Hopkins, he writes, “was not a poet of fairgrounds and inn-yards, like Chaucer or Burns; he was a lonelier poet even than Wordsworth on his lonely hills”. So George is fascinated by the handful of real people “who live and move in Hopkins’ art”. Some of these are not much more than “metaphysical diving boards”, but a few come alive – none more so than Felix Randal – “caught in the tension between his life of elemental labour and the peace of a good death”.

Felix Randal the farrier, O is he dead

then? my duty all ended,

Who have watched his mould of man,

big-boned and hardy-handsome

Pining, pining …

There is “intimacy” in this poem, George writes, not just because Hopkins had come to love Randal, but because “the image that comes closest to Hopkins himself is that of a blacksmith … fettling ‘for the great gray dray-horse his bright and battering sandal’”. Through poems like these, George writes, Hopkins was making “a heroic lonely attempt to put song back into a language grown thin and washed out”.

Seamus Heaney called George Mackay Brown “the praise singer”, and he might have shared this epithet with Hopkins, many of whose poems express an exuberant love of Creation that no English poet has equalled –

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –

When weeds, in wheels, shoot long

and lovely and lush …

But then there is the Hopkins of the dark sonnets. “The melancholy of Victorian poetry,” George writes, “is all pale grey shadows compared to the black pit Hopkins went to at a certain late period of his life.” What “haunted him cruelly”, George feels, “was the loss of Eden in every individual, which needs must be (none knew it more than Hopkins himself, the priest: the Confession box is a kind of sewer where all the world’s filth runs away), and yet the great rift between innocence and sin wrung protest after protest from him against the seeming heartlessness of God –

No worst, there is none. Pitched past

pitch of grief,

More pangs will, schooled at forepangs,

wilder wring.

Comforter, where, where is your

comforting?

Mary, mother of us, where is your

relief?

“Such abandonment is all the more terrible for a man who is a priest,” George writes, “who holds in his hands every morning at Mass the Bread of Heaven.”

Is this a dark night of the soul? Not quite. In the dark night, George writes, people doubt the existence of God. Hopkins never does. “The dark night is next to incommunicable, but these sonnets express only too vividly the misery of all men who try to live simultaneously in two worlds. That is why they are so impressive, whereas (for example) St Teresa of Avila’s attempts to convey the ‘dark night’ to ordinary people leaves them cold and puzzled.”

George, like Hopkins, lived with blackness, though he never allowed it into his poetry. From adolescence, he was plagued by depression – “so severe it can be that one longs for oblivion”. And depression was bound inextricably with guilt. “The sun is flashing off the snow on to the back of my head as I sit writing in the kitchen,” he wrote to a friend one winter’s morning, “and all that brightness makes me feel what a filthy creature I am.”

No wonder, then, that George felt profound empathy for Hopkins’ moral scruples. Both poets were conflicted, for example, about fame. “There is a point with me,” Hopkins wrote to Robert Bridges, “when I must absolutely have encouragement as much as crops rain.”

And yet fame was, he believed, “one of the most dangerous things to man”. The only “just judge, the only just literary critic, is Christ, who prizes, is proud of, and admires, more than any man … the gifts of his own making”.

Hopkins was, George writes, “a divided man”, whose poetry bears witness to “the naked encounter of the sensualist and the ascetic”. He responds to Creation with “outbursts of pure pagan joy”, and then tacks 
on to them “God-invocations”. It doesn’t always work: “One can see the marks of the stitching.”

And yet Hopkins’ strivings were the opposite of futile. “No poet”, George writes, “ever indulged himself more, sought more passionately by all means – sensuous, intellectual, spiritual – for the fullest and truest flowering of his being.”

And for both these extraordinary poets, bleakness and bewilderment yielded, in the end, to bliss. The members of Hopkins’ Dublin community who sat at his deathbed heard him murmur “I am so happy, I am so happy”. George died in the Balfour Hospital in Kirkwall in April 1996. Just before he lost consciousness, he said to the doctor and nurses attending him, “I see hundreds and hundreds of ships sailing out of the harbour.”

[pinkwelshdragon]

Oh baby I got shit to talk about

Image 1) contranavis on Instagram

Image 2) Chiku.mi on twitter

I'm going to do this from top to bottom (Gyro to Epsi since we've already seen Argo's redesigns)

MY BOY

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahuevidhrnwiwgwjxieh he so pretty 😍

I think they've made Koharu more masculine in his "civilian" style so I'm looking forward to seeing him and the rest of Fantome in their vampire form in the new artstyle (sounds like I'm talking about superheroes lol)

I've also noticed that there are a few characters with updated hairstyles. There’s the obvious with Shu but there's also Aoi with slightly shorter hair and I think Miyuki and Kenta both got updates too (might be wrong)

Shu actually looks like a 13 year old boy now (possibly 14 by the next game, who knows)

The Nijo twins look really good and I can definitely see more of a resemblance between them.

Overall I love this new style. It looks so much cleaner and had much more time and effort to put it together.

Which has just reminded me that AAside only shut down at the beginning of this year and now we are in late Autumn and getting super close to being back on track!

TL;DR: AAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[vacantgodling]

@magic-is-something-we-create actually wait i’m gonna talk about your tags for a second on my tcol writing post also bc it’s an excuse to ramble about my favorite boy

because 1. thank uuuuu i tried really hard on that description haha

BUT 2, THE PART I WANNA TALK ABOUT

you are 100% correct and that’s exactly what i’m going for

i’m gonna ramble a lot about clear and the ✨themes✨ associated with him so buckle up + spoilers ahead (again):

so, it’s not incorrect to say that clear was a child soldier; the dark hunting tradition in eros goes all the way back to The Day of Fissures in 478 (and, for context, the main tcol plot takes place some 2000 years after this so uh, it’s been a BIT since then cough). but a very large tl;dr—the original capital of terrae was the city of argos, which was overrun by beasts and monsters because it was unknowingly built on a hotbed of chaos. some 2/3 of the population were killed during this siege, and what remained ended up splitting into two groups: what would eventually become the lathsburians or those who took the heed of the goddess MUINENS and fled the city for good, and those who turned their back on her and wanted to stay and fight for their home: the aegeans. and essentially from day one, their entire purpose was to take the city back. no one was allowed to stray from this purpose, not even the children. and with the discovery of tenom this meant that not only would adults stand a chance, but even children could hold their own. yes, many would die—but it was for a “glorious cause.”

people like san and another character that will appear in part 2 (clear’s younger brother, pure) represent that belief in this aegean tradition—that the only goal should be to continue to fight for this essentially impossible goal. dark hunting is revered! it’s essentially a godly occupation to them and those like, and especially clear are praised for it. clear is literally the strongest dark hunter to ever live on record (sans the first dark hunter but she’s another story and much of her history was actually purposefully removed from textbooks so not many know about her but ANYWAY)

clear is the longest living dark hunter. he was a dark hunter from age 7 to age 17, and then he essentially ran away from home because he was reaching his limit with The Horrors and he couldn’t stand it anymore, he wanted to heal and do something good with his hands.

all his life he was only told that by killing was he worth anything.

and killing beasts and monsters is one can of worms—but what about the comrades clear has had to kill because they went mad from using tenom too much? what about those he killed because they were going to die anyway and the best he could do was offer them a quick, painless death. what about his own mental state? it’s shit LMAO. he’s never been shown kindness. he was only a weapon to eros—to his father especially, who literally disowned him when clear expressed a desire to do something different, something more than just dark hunting.

BUT!!! through all of that, kindness is what truly shapes him, and saves him. kindness and compassion and understanding.

the first person he meets after his father disowns him, is an old guild adventurer in her 60s named efelia dobos (and her name is kind of deliberate but that’s a whole other post to delve into which goddess she’s named after lol) who has a farm and 8 children. but she didn’t hesitate when she saw clear wandering on his own, to take him in and help him heal, emotionally and physically. hell, she was the one who suggested that he go to the guilds and find purpose in that and so, he goes. sure, he lies and gets in falsely but he was doing what he had to do tm.

then, karenza—who in an opposite way is literally the strongest medic that has ever lived with like MASSIVE amounts of sana. she can literally revive the dead!! but she’s so kind, and when clear asks her for honest advice, she becomes kind of a mentor to him. he confides in her (eventually) that he can’t really use sana and she looks at him and says, “i know. but just because i have a natural gift and you don’t doesn’t mean that you can’t become a great healer.” and having someone believe in HIM, in his own hard work and merit, in his good intentions despite everything it really means something to him. he even tries to convince himself that maybe he’s in love with her but that’s a different can of worms.

and finally, forte. forte is clear’s rock and always has been from day one. he never questioned his ability, and even when everything in that excerpt happened there’s technically already been a huge scene where because of some shit that happens in the labyrinth, both karenza AND forte were left disabled by it. not sure how renza was (yet) but one of forte’s eyes gets fucked up beyond saving. at the scene clear was the only medic on duty but because their injuries technically required sana to save and clear doesn’t have that he really beats himself up. he kept them alive in time to get help, but he had to use drastic measures, his tenom, to keep them alive. and it’s something clear has done before—on himself. but his body can handle tenom’s ferocity, he was terrified that he killed them and when they were both fucked up afterwards he really wanted to die. but something forte tells him and is the TRUE KEY to using tenom that most don’t know—is that when forte was on the brink, sinking into oblivion as he was dying, he felt something like two hands grab him, shake him, and scream at him to live. to fight. to keep going. and it sounded like clear.

the best way to think about is this: when used correctly tenom is like a drastic form of adrenaline. you ever hear those stories about people in crazy situations where they shouldn’t be alive? who break bones or are lost at sea or whatever but through sheer will and luck they lived? tenom is like harnessing THAT energy, since it’s still an offshoot of vis (the force of will magic tm).

so forte’s logic is, how can he be upset with someone who fought so hard to keep him alive on nothing but his own raw power? it’s the same thing with renza. neither of them blame him, even if others like deux or moira or san look at him some type of way there are people who see him for who he is and trying to become. and it heals him, as he starts to open himself up to it.

clear doesn’t want to just be a killer he wants to be a healer and just someone helpful. he doesn’t want others to hurt and he wants to stop hurting himself but he doesn’t know where to start until people who are kind show him how to.

[elfyourmother]

9. Do animals like them? Do they get on well with animals?

24. What is their sleeping pattern like? Do they snore? What do they like to sleep on? A soft or hard mattress?

9. Gisele adores animals and is something of a Disney princess…matter what kind of animal it is, they’re drawn to her. She had no trouble at all finding the lost lambs for instance. And in Thavnair she was followed by a particular hamsa all the way back to the Great Work, to the point Thancred was calling it her child. XD They just love her. Her theory is they’re drawn to her naturally high levels of aether, but Haurchefant insists it’s because she’s kind and animals sense that. The latest ones were a Nagxian alley cat she found sick in Radz-at-Han, whom she nursed back to health and kept (her name is Mimi) and then Nosferatu, Hesperos’ little bat friend who quite literally followed her back through time because he was so fond of her. He’s small enough that he likes to sleep in her bosom. XD (Estinien got a rather hilarious surprise because of that)

She is deathly afraid of dogs though. I mentioned it very briefly in another response but the tl;dr reason is when she was very little and living in the Denerim alienage, human nobles used to sic their dogs on elven kids for sport. While this never actually happened to her, she saw it happen to others and it left her quite scarred and traumatized. Even just hearing a dog bark sends her into a mild panic. So it’s really rather unfortunate that Venat’s familiar was one, but I hc that Argos has mabari-level intelligence and understands that Gisele’s afraid and so is very quiet and gentle with her. (I also bc that she left the moon with her. And so she’s part of the menagerie at the house now: 2 cats, various fish, and a tiny, quite dapper little bat XD)

24. Gisele only snores once in a while, and it’s the most ridiculous sounding thing ever—like a little kid’s Power Wheel that one start. She also prefers very plush mattresses; firmer ones remind her uncomfortably of her days in the Circle (the beds in the apprentice dormitory were worse than military). If memory foam existed in Eorzea she would be all over that for the “sinking in” feeling. And she’s a very light sleeper, something that became a habit during the Blight when she had to be constantly vigilant for darkspawn attacks at camp, since she and Alistair were the only ones who could sense them coming. Then, too, she had terrible nightmares as a Grey Warden and so sleep was something she often dreaded. And her soul still remembers all of that, even though she has a new body.

[thundermanllc]

I don't know if it's just because I'm listening to this season live, as opposed to listening to Balance after the fact (and procrastinating listening to Amnesty), but I genuinely think Graduation is my favorite of the three seasons so far.

The worldbuilding and characters and plot were clearly made with love, and the amount of representation is really cool (Also, I've never hated a character more than I've hated the commodore, so good work on that). So much thought went into making a conflict that extends beyond "fight the big bad" because in reality, there isn't a real "big bad" to fight. And the sense of mistrust that just lingers with every NPC is such a cool thing to have pulled off- because nobody can be trusted.

And the PC's.

God, the PC's.

The PC's just feel so thoroughly thought out, and relatable, and like they have a reason to stick together other than plot convenience- yeah, they're roommates, but they just clicked. They're friends. They care about each other immensely, and actively choose to stay together and help each other, even if they had a rocky-ish start.

Master Firbolg was banished from his clan for saving berries for when they would be scarce. He lost his family, his home, his whole world- all in one day. For the first time in his life, he was forced into loneliness. And it was awful. He walked for two days and three nights, alone and banished from everything he knew. And then he found the school, and he found people who weren't like him. People who didn't understand him or his culture very well, but support him. People who may need a bit of moral guidance. Master Firbolg found a new clan in Fitzroy and Argo. He found a new home.

Fitzroy grew up alone and disadvantaged in a world that doesn't care about him. His parents were presumably shunned from their wealthy family and forced to work all the time to keep food on the table. He went to the school of his dreams, and was bullied horribly for growing up poor, among other things. Fitzroy had to learn how to lie, how to act like a stuck up rich person- he changed everything about who he was to gain the approval of his peers, and he never got it. Then his dreams were torn away from him, in a stroke of chaotic magic, and it crushed him. And then he went to the school, and he met people who were like him. People who cared. And he learned how to love- love his friends. Love his magic. Love himself. He found a support system in Argo and Master Firbolg. He found love.

Argo's life was torn apart when the commodore killed his mother. It was all he could focus on. The only thing he lived for, for ten years. Ten years of his life were spent scheming and alone, just so he could get back at the commodore for the murder of his mother. And then he went to the school, and he found more and more reasons to keep going even though it still hurts. Argo found his reason to keep living in Fitzroy and Master Firbolg, regardless of whether or not he gets his revenge. He found life.

They aren't the answer to each other's problems. They all have felt and probably still feel alone, but as Master Firblog said, they're alone together.

TL;DR: I adore Graduation ❤💖💗💕💝

[jewfrogs]

What was the place of trans people in Ancient Greece? I don’t mean myths, but accounts of irl trans people. I once read something about priests of Aphrodite whose initiation ceremony was castration and wearing women’s clothing, which could be reinterpreted through a modern lens as Ancient Greece’s version of trans women, so to speak. Perhaps even non-binarism, though I don’t believe there was basis for escaping the gender binary and the very much enforced roles in the Greek patriarchy.

this is another great question! i’m going to broaden our scope a little bit to include some discussion of rome as well, because there’s a lot of useful stuff there and the two are interlinked.

discussing trans people in any historical context is difficult, because the framework through which we understand it doesn’t exist. that isn’t to say that people who didn’t conform to their assigned gender didn’t exist (gender variance has been documented for about as long as history), but that applying modern labels and understandings to them doesn’t always work, and there’s a lot of overlap between some categories (e.g. could we understand this individual as a trans woman or as an effeminate [gay] man? what does that mean when neither of those identities are contextual during the individual’s time?). all that to say: there isn’t a lot that directly corresponds to trans people from antiquity, but there’s certainly not nothing.

one reference to trans people in ancient greece comes from lucian’s dialogue of the courtesans (c. 120-190 CE), where the character megilla/us seems to be remarkably like a trans man: “I was born a woman like the rest of you, but I have the mind and the desires and everything else of a man.” this is an excellent post that discusses this passage in depth.

according to pliny the elder, there was a noted phenomenon of women turning into men: “The change of females into males is undoubtedly no fable. We find it stated in the Annals, that, in the consulship of P. Licinius Crassus and C. Cassius Longinus, a girl, who was living at Casinum with her parents, was changed into a boy; and that, by the command of the Aruspices, he was con- veyed away to a desert island. Licinius Mucianus informs us, that he once saw at Argos a person whose name was then Arescon, though he had been formerly called Arescusa: that this person had been married to a man, but that, shortly after, a beard and marks of virility made their appearance, upon which he took to himself a wife. He had also seen a boy at Smyrna, to whom the very same thing had happened. I myself saw in Africa one L. Cossicius, a citizen of Thysdris, who had been changed into a man the very day on which he was married to a husband.” (Plin. Nat. 7.4) it seems likely that this is discussing intersex people, since pliny references them immediately before, but it is interesting to see evidence for at least some form of transition and for the acceptance of said transition—arescon has a wife! that’s pretty neat! these people seem to be fairly well-accepted, which does make one think about how transition in general might have worked or been seen.

with regards to the priests, i haven’t read about anything like that with aphrodite (although i would be remiss not to mention aphroditos here, particularly her mention in macrobius’ saturnalia), but i’m guessing you’re thinking of the galli, priests of cybele (a phrygian goddess, often correlated with rhea and with the intersex deity agdistis) as well as her lover attis (who was castrated as well—catullus 63, which i am going to write something about one day, is a retelling of their myth). they were castrated and generally wore women’s clothing, and many sources refer to them with feminine language. firmicus maternus (c. 4th century AD) said of them negant se viros esse, et non sunt <mulieres>: mulieres se volunt credi (“they deny that they are men, and are not <women>: they want to be believed as women”). there are certainly parallels that can be drawn here!

in addition, there can be a lot of blurred overlap between gay readings and trans readings. in ancient greek & roman thought, the categories of men-who-are-penetrated and women-who-penetrate (or, well... hump, since one of the latin words for these women is tribades, or “rubbers”) are almost genders in their own right, or perhaps the intersection of two genders: men-who-are-penetrated are like women but not, and women-who-penetrate are like men but not. (it can definitely be interpreted, to some extent, that these people want to be read as the opposite binary gender to the one they were assigned—which raises the question of whether we simply don’t know some of these stories because people did pass and therefore it wasn’t outwardly transgressive.)

this is probably best encapsulated by an excerpt from the fables of phaedrus (a first-century CE roman author who is supposedly adapting aesop’s work), where the question tribadas et molles mares quae ratio procreasset (what reason brought [lesbians] and [effeminate men] into existence?) is asked, and this is the answer:

The same Prometheus, creator of the clay crowd (which is broken the moment it offends fortune), had made those parts of nature which decency hides with clothing apart from the rest for the whole day. Just before he could fix the parts to the right bodies, he was suddenly invited to dinner by Liber; when he had watered his veins well with nectar, he returned home late at night on faltering feet. Then, with a half-awake mind and a drunken mistake, he applied maidenhood to a type of man and affixed masculine members to the women; thus desire now enjoys perverse joy.

there are different ways this can be read, because “applicuit virginale generi masculo” and “masculina membra applicuit feminis” can both be taken as an aetiology for either tribades or molles mares. take one: the first line refers to molles mares, making them men in body with women’s spirits, and the second line refers to tribades, making them women in body with men’s spirits. take two: the first line refers to tribades, making them men in spirit with women’s bodies, and the second line refers to molles mares, making them women in spirit with men’s bodies. these are both really interesting readings that both resonate to some extent with transness and specifically with the space in between gayness and transness.

as an example, take the figure agathon (a fictionalized portrayal of a real playwright) from aristophanes’ thesmophorizusae. agathon is notably effeminate—he’s first introduced by a character saying εγώ γαρ ουχ όρω άνδρ’ ουδέν ενθάδ’ όντα, Κυρήνην δ’ όρω (“I see no man, but I see Cyrene”, in reference to, as one commentary puts it, “a dissolute woman of the day”). that is to say: agathon is read as a woman. when another character in the thesmo needs to dress up as a woman, he doesn’t borrow a woman’s clothes—he borrows agathon’s. could we read agathon as a trans figure? perhaps! but his effeminacy is tied to him being, as the greek puts it, ευρύπρωκτος—literally “wide-assed”, but often translated simply as a certain six-letter word that starts with f. agathon isn’t a woman, exactly, but he’s not quite a man either. i wouldn’t necessarily call this in-between space trans, but i don’t know if i could call it cis either.

tl;dr: there are few depictions of people we might call trans as we understand it today from ancient greece, but there are a lot of interesting questions we can ask and consider with regards to gender that touch on transness and antique experiences analogous to modern-day trans ones. also gayness and transness are very much intertwined.