#bc if it's not you it'll be a loved one

[imagineagreatadventure]

tbh one of the reasons losing my mom 'early' is so hard is because typically in our family we live a long time. like i've done the research!! even back in the 1600s we were hitting our 80s and 90s. we must have the long life gene on my mom's side (across branches) save a few people and circumstances (but even then the ages were typically late 60-70s instead, people weren't dying at 50 or 60). like my mom's mom is still alive even with a bajillion different cancers residing in her body. so we're just not mentally prepared for losing her in her 60s when her cancer filled mom is near 80 and all of her grandparents were basically 79-100 when they died.

like other than an accident (which I guess you could argue that cancer is an accident of the body) we just didn't expect this to happen. and even with cancer.... like my nana is still here, she still is kicking despite having a million cancers since she was 49. in fact, my first distinct memory of my nana is her wearing the most atrocious red wig imaginable and scaring the shit out of me as a small child.

and she's still here! because her cancers have been able to be cut out. and my mom's hasn't for the most part. and it's just infuriatingly bad luck. because my mom has been healthy for the most part other than this. but that's been the case for almost everyone i've lost in the last few years. they were all in good health until they weren't.

[lazylittledragon]

ok i swear i'm not going to talk about my breakup forever but the thing that just keeps bothering me:

i know that not getting what you need in a relationship is a COMPLETELY valid reason to end it but also. i feel like having a very vulnerable moment where i opened up about my struggles with intimacy and being relieved that i didn't have to keep doing things i wasn't comfortable with, then being dumped a YEAR later because of my lack of intimacy. is something i should be allowed to be very hurt by???

[mattodore]

birthday boy 🎂

[payasita]

Do you have any more slay the princess art? Obsessed with it now and I really like the doodles you’ve shown before 🫶🫶 I like your design of the bird guy a lot

OH I DO ACTUALLY

nothing finished yet but hey

[writer-room]

Obsessed with Lloyd never mentioning his grandfather is the First Spinjitsu Master, apparently to the point even Arin didn't seem to know, because "eh, it never came up". Cause like, yeah, sure, my grandfather is God, what of it? Normal day for me. Shit happens. My dad is also evil, you wanna talk about that? I sure don't.

It's also funny from a character arc perspective. Here's itty bitty baby first season Lloyd, loudly proclaiming he's the son of Garmadon, and probably also making sure everyone knows he's God part 3 electric boogaloo. And then one Tomorrow's Tea and a few more years later and he's doing everything physically possible to NOT care about his heritage. In fact he'd probably rather his parentage was literally anyone else. Dude could care so less he forgets about it most of the time. King behavior.

[glitterslag]

ok this is my last one of these. maybe

[weather-phenomenon]

jail for 10000 years for everyone who passed around those oh if an inactive blog has -deactivated[date] op deactivated. if not staff definitely no other options available terminated them. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO that is literally not true. if you don't know how tumblr actually works why are you trying to tell people how it works? now 90% of the userbase is running around like headless chickens spreading misinfo and not even bothering to fact check and when you check the notes of the post the op is there like hi it's me no that was a sideblog i deleted myself or hi it's me i just changed my url. like how tf do yall even expect to be taken srsly if you dont actually know how tumblr works and you're running around conflating a situation based on misinformation like is this how yall act irl or do yall just lose common sense online fr

[ferberus-skull]

i finally got desdemona all her genes. please behold her because she is perfect. the soul wrangler Ever

[hella1975]

a post about fic updates! so the fics im currently juggling are dog teeth, tams, and of course, taob. my original plan was to start posting the second installment of the dog teeth series by sometime in april, bc it's the fic im most into atm and i already have the first chapter done, i just want to bank another one or two because once i start posting it i want to KEEP posting it with regular updates, hopefully every 2 weeks like with kaiein. HOWEVER this will put my atla fics on a back burner. april is a good writing time for me (PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE) bc i have the entire month off from uni to prep for may exam season, and i always want to write when im procrastinating my degree. which is. it's own thing im sure i'll graduate it's fine i'm fine. so if i focus on dog teeth, neither tams nor taob will get focus until like. june. which is par for the course with taob but im NOT happy about doing with tams.

SO my thought process was i can either be normal about this and just accept it's literally my final year at uni and im trying to graduate and it doesn't matter if updates are slow on ANY fics, or i can do my usual and implement an insane deadline that i somehow always make by the skin of my teeth. can you guess what i went with?

and thus i present unto the crowd my tentative plan: have the next taob chapter done by middle of april (im aware this is quite hand-wavey but it gives me a month to work with, so in my head this means anything between april 10th-20th), have the next tams chapter done by the end of april, and dog teeth can follow.

[moregraceful]

max and i are closing in on launching [redacted sports rpf charity fest] and i am once again pondering how do i write "experience with writing form emails and manipulating google forms in ways no one has dreamed of" in a cover letter without saying "i did it for the rpf grind"...like there's no way unless everyone in this microsoft teams meeting gets really cool about a bunch of stuff really quickly. you know

[wordsinhaled]

last line tag game

tagged by @mellxncollie <3 thank you so much for the tag!

here's the last paragraph i wrote! it's a random snippet of edwin's pov on his first meeting with charles, right after charles asks to stay.

Charles would tire of being a ghost soon enough. While it was the only option Edwin had, Charles still had another. He missed the sorts of things from life Edwin could not, never having experienced them; it would make the spectral plane a terribly lonely place for Charles. In due time he might even grow to loathe being dead. Already Edwin feared such a future for him—for this bright-eyed, overfamiliar boy, who sought his company so recklessly. What sort of companionship could Edwin hope to offer to a soul like Charles? He did not know yet about Edwin's tendency towards fits of the sullens, his attachment to his books, his exacting and difficult nature. But it would be all right, surely; for Charles could simply go where he was appointed, when he was ready. The world would return to its proper order, then.

(*90s-teen-movie-style splitscreen flash forward to edwin's love realization* it was most certainly not all right.)

tagging @eidetictelekinetic @tw0-ravens @mostly-functional @manicpixiedreamedwins @dear-monday @likemmmcookies

[feroluce]

When Al Haitham dreams, it's in shades of sandy blonde and red, metallic gold and feather-blue. His nightmares are colored much the same.

Kaveh leisurely strolls ahead of him, shoes leaving deep treads in the soft desert sand. He keeps a careful distance, arms length, and in return Al Haitham keeps an eye on him, the other man's back dead center in his sights.

He curses the sand in his boots and the long line of footprints he steps into, already the exact shape of the soles of his shoes.

They aren't lost. Al Haitham knows where they are. They've been here before. They are still here.

Kaveh doesn't watch their feet. His head is constantly tipped back with his eyes on the stars and their constellations (of which Al Haitham only knows two, Vultur Volans and Paradisaea). He'll walk right into a cactus like that. Al Haitham yells ahead for him to watch where he's going.

Kaveh reaches up to touch the side of his head in a strange motion, but otherwise there's no acknowledgement. They press on into the dark of night.

Something squelches beneath Al Haitham's boot.

It stops him short, pulls his attention like a magnet and as much as he wants to, he can't ignore it. He doesn't want to lose any more ground. But something won't let him move on. Al Haitham watches as red seeps into the golden sand, spills beyond the border of his bootprint until he slides his foot aside.

It's an ear.

It's a human ear, and there's a heavy earring attached, metallic gold, gems red and green, a familiar shape, a familiar shade-

Al Haitham opens his mouth to yell. Chokes. Swallows the lump in his throat as he quickly restarts his pace. Tries again.

"Hey!"

Another squelch under a hurried footstep. He doesn't stop to look. Al Haitham is pretty sure he knows what it is.

"Kaveh, hey!"

The path becomes littered, little slices and small pieces, fingertips and knuckles, Kaveh's arms once held casually behind his back now strewn along the sands. Every time Al Haitham extends his hand to him, reality warps and bends like the twisted image in a broken mirror, lines mismatched and edges jagged. Kaveh flits just beyond his grasp, fleeting fae, no longer able to hear him or to reach out to him. Al Haitham can only grit his teeth and follow.

His right foot marches forward. His left follows. His right again. His left suddenly doesn't follow, and Al Haitham is thrown off balance and pitches forward, swinging his arms outward to land on his palms and keep his face off the ground, because he's been in the desert enough times to know what a foot suddenly being stuck can mean.

Quicksand.

Al Haitham curses and swears in just about every language he knows as he tries to spread his weight as evenly as possible, stay afloat at the top of it because if he sinks, he knows he'll be done for, and shit, Kaveh.

His neck cranes uncomfortably in his search, Kaveh had only been a few feet in front of him, he can't be sunk much further, and he's in the desert much more often than Al Haitham anyway, he'll be familiar with what to do-

Kaveh stands in front of him, empty sleeves fluttering loose. Still just out of his grasp, still watching the stars. The quicksand is already up to his calves.

"Say, Al Haitham..." It's the first he's spoken this whole time. His voice resonates somewhere deeply nostalgic in Al Haitham's chest, produces a ripple that momentarily stuns his heart.

Kaveh is sinking.

Al Haitham stretches out on his belly as far as he's able, it's quickly up to his knees, Kaveh isn't even trying to redistribute his weight or pull himself out, it's at his thighs, Al Haitham sucks in a breath and yells for him, his hips, yells louder, his waist, Al Haitham's trembling fingertips can almost reach, his chest, Kaveh drops level with him, quicksand about his neck like a noose.

Kaveh's head tips back, back, impossibly far back, until it hangs, angle awkward, and he's looking right past Al Haitham with his tired smile and gouged, blinded sockets full of starlight.

"Do you believe in karma?"

The quicksand swallows him entirely and Al Haitham dives, shoves his arms deep and pushes off with the one foot he'd had left on safe ground, because he can't, he can't, it's not the same without Kaveh, not anymore, he needs him, no one else keeps him sharp, no one else challenges him like Kaveh, if he can just grab him, if he can just pull him back up-

Al Haitham thrashes, against the sands, against gravity, against the hardwood of his bedroom floor. Clumsily scrubs the back of his hand across his face to rub the grit of quicksand and sleep out of his eyes.

Sometimes he thinks he preferred it when the Akasha was still harvesting his dreams.

He pops his head out from under his weighted blanket and lays where he'd fallen out of bed for a moment, blinking blearily against the lamplight shining from his desk in the corner. Deep breaths. His consciousness shifts along the blurred line of nightmare and reality, crosses over the slow transition into wakeful awareness.

He's home, Kaveh is home. It's dark out. The house is dead silent.

He's just going to go check, he tells himself as he peels himself out of his sweat-soaked shirt and roots around for a replacement. He's already losing memories of his nightmare, the details spilling away from him like wet ink, but he knows he needs to see Kaveh. It'll feel better to do something, anything, than try to go straight back to sleep.

He's quiet when he slips out of his bedroom door, because they both keep late hours but their bedrooms are right next to each other, and Al Haitham will never hear the end of it if he wakes his roommate up.

Lights off, door shut. Nothing conclusive. He moves out to the main room.

Kaveh sits on one of those ridiculous sofas he'd ordered three of for some reason, back to him as he tucks a lock of hair behind his ear. A mostly-empty wine bottle stands tall on the table, next to the cobbled-together remains of an architectural model that's been picked and fussed over for four days straight now.

"Kaveh? What are you doing?"

This earns him an exaggerated startle, but Kaveh doesn't turn to look at him, preoccupied with whatever new sketch or blueprint he probably has in his hands. "Ohhh, nothing," he slurs cheerfully. "Just working. Just thinking."

Kaveh has always been the world's chattiest drinker. Al Haitham waits for the rest of it.

"Say, I think...I think I asked you this years ago, back then, but you never answered me." Al Haitham feels all the blood drain from his face in ominous familiarity, drip cold down the length of his spine. Kaveh sinks into the couch until he can tip his head over the back of it, looking up at him with a tired smile and exhausted eyes.

"Do you believe in karma?"

[littlespoonevan]

the thing about romcoms is just- it's never meant to be 'is it believable?' but instead 'do you believe it?' do you believe these two characters are actually falling in love with each other??? do you believe their chemistry??? do you believe whatever obstacle is thrown in their way is legitimately something that might keep them apart for a time and not something that could be solved with one conversation?? do you believe that they believe they need to fake date for this very specific reason??? do you believe the reason why they're 'enemies' at the start, no matter how silly a misunderstanding it may be??? do you believe the grand romantic gesture fits the characters and is actually how one character would show their love to the other?? like!!!! it's about empathy and authenticity and feeling what the characters feel so strongly that even if it's a trope or a cliché it doesn't matter because you believe it

[reanimatedgh0ul]

it's crazy to me that angsty broody danny™ is as popular as it is in fanon when it's like first off have you even MET danny and secondly SAM EBONY DARK'NESS DEMENTIA RAVEN WAY MANSON IS LITERALLY RIGHT THERE OUT OF ANYONE IN THE TRIO SHE'S THE ONE WHO'S GONNA ACT LIKE THAT OK I NEED MORE OF Y'ALL TO REALIZE THIS

THIS RIGHT HERE IS LITERALLY WHAT SAM VS DANNY WOULD LOOK LIKE ACTUALLY

[necrotic-nephilim]

just a housekeeping post, but if i'm slower answering asks for a bit, it's bc i'm working on SladeRobin week! none of your asks are being ignored, i just completely forgot about that until now and i want to try to complete every prompt so. pray for me, i think. but as always i love all the anons sending the lovely dead dove content <3

[swordheld]

how did u choose your username?

oh, this is a fun one!! i think i considered being swordtold at first, for that very ancient myth vibe of the sword being this narrative tool for adventure and structure and physical time, the parable being passed down through the centuries until it meddles into modern day rhetoric and ideology – a kind of fantastical tool, a spark of magic, of possibility.

i like the arc of the story of a place being physical / having it be held by time and hand alike, wearing with the years and having it become something different to each holder, each reader, each experience fantastical and individual.

having that kind of physicality to it; swordheld is the action of taking up and holding the sword yourself, choosing your own narrative, leading your own story. self-identity has always been something i struggle with (a novel concept i know, i know), so it felt right for this blog, since most of my older blogs before this one have been just me silently reblogging and never really posting anything myself, and i wanted this to be the change to that.

i've always had trouble wranging my social anxiety, esp. on the internet, and previously thought that keeping my words to myself helped keep the timeline cleaner, in a way, no messy thoughts for others to sort through, especially ones i believed no one would want to read anyway? but it never felt right, keeping myself apart from it all, esp. not in the way i so avidly enjoyed reading others' posts and additions, keeping their words close to my heart.

i wanted it to reflect that this was a space i was holding for myself? and i'm a little slow on the uptake sometimes, but this - this i think i got right. i love being here, on this blog, and the joy that it brings me. everyone else enjoying it too has been a wild ride that i never expected, and still surprises me, one that brings a little extra thrill to my heart whenever i think about it.

i had other urls that i liked, but i didn't want this blog to be tied directly to any of my fandom/story interests, since i wanted it to really just be a sort of archive of artistic inspiration and resource, like a little library or museum. i use them now as lil sideblogs of more niche interests now, which is rather lovely.

it hasn't always felt like it fit perfectly, the way that i'd like, but for some reason i can't think of really wanting to change it anytime soon. it feels mythic yet modern in a way that feels like puzzle pieces finally slotting into their place, something my own and inspirational to me, like a lantern i'm holding to make my way by. my own kind of light, if that makes sense – a star i know by name.