#blood upon the snow

[coldbrewarts]

To all things housed in her silence

Nature offers a violence

Blood Upon The Snow // Hosier & Bear McCreary

I worked really hard on this so Reblogs are appreciated!!

[banal-isenatha-nsfw]

Strung in my web...

[saminadorazahi]

Hozier

[sinkat-arts]

Self-indulgent quickfast doodle - Daisuga just happen to show up to the halloween party as a cowboy and a bear. 🤠💙🐻

[lookinghalfacorpse]

blood upon the snow

READ HERE on ao3

“I can’t do it,” Phil answered.  His voice was weak.  “It will take me 50 years to figure this out, and another 50 for him to forgive me.  The lad won’t live long enough for me to make this happen.” “We don’t know for sure that he’s mad–” “Then why won’t he come home?”

(in the wake of sam and quackity's recent recapture attempt, philza and technoblade are seeking vengeance. dream is nowhere to be found.)

sequel to 'the trees deny themselves nothing.'

SO FAR: 4 chapters, 4000 words. plenty more to come.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: mentions of torture, Descriptions of Injury, Loss of Limbs(both fingers & leg), Amputation, Panic Attacks, Chronic Pain, Sam being a major weenie

[wewindondowntheroad]

“I am sorry that I hurt you.”

a little drawing of last night's chapter from @sinkat-arts's Blood Upon the Snow

[kassasnek]

-Its not my arms that will fail me, but this world takes more strength than it gave me-

Like blood upon the snow

Merthur angst for everyone :D

[carmen-berzattos]

Favorite Hozier Lyrics [12/?]: Blood Upon the Snow 

[planchettettv]

Blood Upon The Snow; a gift for @hakunahistata from the Good Omens Song & Poetry Exchange! I'm really happy with how this turned out, though I feel like I could have written a full comic for this. Hakunahistata gave me a couple of lovely songs to work with, but ultimately I went with Hozier's Blood Upon the Snow and this is where it went. This was a super fun exchange and I'm so glad I was able to participate!!

[lifemod17]

okay but Blood Upon the Snow just freaking slaps. plain and simple

I would love to hear your thoughts about it <3

BLOOD UPON THE SNOW FREAKING

SLAPS.

and more people should absolutely acknowledge it for the beautiful song that it is!!!

I'm not even talking solely about Hozier. Bear McCreary is such a talented and amazing musician who deserves more recognition! I don't know how else to put it but that man is undeniably good. So the two of them coming together for this track is incredible!

The melody alone really captures what God Of War feels like (at least in my opinion). The instrument choices is just *chefs kiss*

The way Hozier starts off the song by singing ever so softly, hauntingly beautiful really. And ending it with a big finish by BELTING?? Insane. Andrew's lung capacity will never cease to amaze me!!!

My favorite lines being:

"It's not my arms that will fail me,

but this world takes more strength than it gave me.

The trees deny themselves nothing that make them grow. No rain fall, no sunshine,

no blood upon the snow."

The pen game is WICKED.

If you haven't yet, go listen to this epic song.

[starkholme]

The funny thing is that no one mentions the fact that DAW likes to be the "see good in all people" sunshine/powerful second wife of a grumpy guy who lost everything/keeps looking for revenge

LIKE NO ONE MENTIONS ????

[banal-isenatha-nsfw]

"We'll build a dynasty that shall challenge the gods themselves, draga."

Lady Dimitrescu/OC

[girlwtdragontattoo]

ok sorry for hozier spam but my heart and head haven’t been the same since listening to this

i swear if hozier was a siren trying to eat me I would RUN towards his voice without HESITATION

how fucking ETHERAL?!?!!

HOW WITCHER ESQUE?????!!!

ANDREW WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MEEEEEEE??????????????????????

(i never played god of war)

[sinkat-arts]

Haaaa, just realizing that I never put this here somehow;;;; This silly little thing brought to you by a comment on Blood Upon the Snow asking if Asahi could understand Percy while in horse form and furthermore would Percy spill the tea.

The answer is yes. Yes, he would. All the tea, all over the floor, everywhere. He's so done with them. (I kid, he loves them dearly.)

[lookinghalfacorpse]

i finally listened to blood upon the snow and was like !! thats the fanfic! and ive been thinking about the titles for a while and would love if you explained your thought process naming the fics and their connection to the song. ive been thinking so many things about sam and dreams relationship and survival and growth and the products of violence & cruelty that i cant articulate properly

hey anon i've been wanting to talk about this for TWO YEARS so ty for the permission to yap :)

it sounds counterintuitive, but the second chapter of 'blood upon the snow' is actually the first scene i brainstormed for the whole series.

i wanted to write something where c!philza would go against his initial promise to c!sam and try to kill him, and this song really Felt Like Philza's Rage. i remember going for a walk and listening to this song and imagining phil setting fire to a forest, and i wanted to make that happen. i needed a plotline where phil would kill sam even if dream is asking him not to, and i decided it was take a deep and personal betrayal for philza to go against dream's wishes as well as his old promise.

and since that scene landed in 'blood upon the snow,' i chose the title line as its name. 'the trees deny themselves nothing' is a different line towards the end of the song.

ultimately, both fics in the series feature characters that are: a) trying to fix something b) acting selfishly c) following their instincts & doing what comes naturally

dream is trying to recover from a terrible wound. it comes naturally to him to trust sam. having sex with sam also feels like a win for him; it feels like taking control, of demonstrating that he isn't hurt. he explains it a little bit in ch 16 of ttdtn. sam is trying to fix (what he sees as) a mistake. he's not the warden, but he wants to be the warden again, and it feels natural to him. sex with dream gives him a sense of control, too, and a taste of having him back. philza has recognized a wound that he can't heal and thinks that facilitating these meetings with sam makes up for his own shortcomings, but that's proven to be a mistake, and he's a man who already struggles with self-worth. his eagerness to help is an instinct, his rage is a different instinct, and both can be pinned as selfish. techno's role is simplest: his instinct is to protect, and he protects. he even protects dream from phil, whether or not he really needed to, and whether or not that was a good choice in the long run.

despite hozier's song being about nature running its course, i like it when applied to this fic because each character feels like a force of nature in their actions. dream is Doing What Dream Does, sam is Doing What Sam Does, etc, etc. every character has fallen into old habits in different ways, and even if it's destructive, its what's comforting for them, and its what they've done to survive so far.

the full line of ttdtn's title is the trees deny themselves nothing THAT MAKES THEM GROW. dream has hope that his arrangement will make him grow, and that the sex will help him grow, too, and he Desperately wants to grow.

the parent forced to eat its young before it grows. the instinct, the NEED is to eat, and sam eats.

it's all just nature doing its thing!!! these characters know their roles!!! and nature is very violent sometimes. dream knows his place is under sam, but if he Chooses it, he feels more powerful.

i had a cat who ate her runt kitten so the healthier babies could have more resources, and you can bet she didn't mourn it. philza went out of his way for better resources for this kid in his care, and when it backfired, he set the forest aflame.

[sweetarethediscords]

You're the meaning in my life, you're the inspiration...

The Maiden of the Barren of the Rime wouldn't exist if it weren't for Critical Role, Liam O'brien, and most importantly Caleb Widogast.

I'm sure every Critter out there has asked themself the question: 'What character would I play if I ever got to play at the table?' My answer was Mina.

Mina, originally, was a ranger/bard eladrin cursed to stay forever in the winter season. Specifically made with Campaign 2 in mind, I wanted to design a PC that would create a good juxtaposition to those already at the table. A literal iceblock that the Mighty Nein could chip away at as they often did with too-serious NPCs, and someone who could be mirror to Caleb, my favorite PC from Campaign 2.

As Campaign 2 steered it paths towards Aeor and the Eyes of Nine however, Mina didn't fit in the campaign any more (as most fandom OCs will do as canon goes along) but I couldn't abandon her. Couldn't throw her into my constantly growing pile of character sheets.

And she wouldn't let me forget her. In fact, her and her eventual counterpart, Sebastian, are some of the first characters of mine in recent memory to invade my dreams.

There was something in her I had to explore. Her rage echoed my rage. Her want to overcome her trauma, but fear that she would always be chained by it, mirrored my own healing journey.

Other characteristics of myself and themes I wanted to explore became the other characters. Sebastian became the other side of Mina's coin, someone who met inconveniences with relentless optimism instead of rage. A self-sacrificing people-pleaser against a self-preserving misanthrope, whose flaws both came from coping with past hardships.

A dirty little fire wizard sparked a rich story exploring the societal expectations of womanhood, the nature of generational trauma, and the complex journey of learning how to love one's self through others (among many other themes)...

...and a incredible talented singer/songwriter from Ireland helped hone them.

When I first started writing The Maiden of the Barren Rime in 2021, Hozier's music played an important, but minimal roll in providing emotional clarity for the characters. "Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene" helped to color the more ethereal and deadly nature of Mina, the fae part of her that lures people in, while "Nina Cried Power" grounded her fury, and helped to shape the larger world of Mina's story that will be revealed in later books.

As the core of the novel was written and finished in January 2023, the editing and refining process became my next great beast to slay. A huge slab of marble that with my fantastic editor and outside readers I was able to carve away at, but Hozier's Unreal Unearth steadied my hands.

It was already a wild enough coincidence that 'Blood Upon the Snow', a song meant to capture the brutality of winter in God of War: Ragnorak, released during writing MBR; eerily capturing exactly how I pictured Mina's upbringing. Hearing Unreal Unearth, a beautiful album about heartbreak, healing, death, and grief among other things, while I was writing an novel about heartbreak, healing, death, and grief among other things was surreal. And wonderful.

It helped to inspire the words I was missing, helped me carve out more cutting prose to capture the depth of my characters' emotions, and most importantly gave me the reassurance that the themes and emotions I was exploring were not singular, but shared. In different shades and presentations, but all coming from a same source of universal human truth.

I can not thank these two enough for the inspiration they've given me, and I can not thank you enough if you've read this much of my ramblings (and suffered my cheesy use of a Chicago lyric.)