#carry the ocean

[itallstartedwithharry]

Book Rec: Carry the Ocean by Heidi Cullinan

What an insightful and enjoyable read!! Equal parts romance and a deep dive into mental health challenges and the reality of life with those struggles. What I found really fascinating was the inclusion of what accommodations can really mean, both for individuals and within a couple. I was surprised how much this book was relatable, and I am so looking forward to reading the next one! Wonderful story <3

Trigger warnings for the book below the cut

tw: discussion of suicidal thoughts and suicide attempt

[llamagoddessofficial]

Beach episode with the bad Sanses

Why does "take my idiot henchmen to a secluded beach to blow off some steam" 100% sound like something Nightmare would do? He'll bring you along too. The boys can't relax when their beloved favourite human isn't there. You're like a therapy kitten a bunch of giant terrifying fighting hounds refuse to go anywhere without.

Horror doesn't like deep water, too many bad memories of a certain fish monster, so he's staying away from the sea. But he does like the sound it makes... the waves are wonderful, they're something other than his own thoughts to concentrate on. He'll sit on the sand, with a hat over his face, listening to the ocean and enjoying the sun soaking into his old bones. Might even fall asleep. For the love of God, keep Killer away from him, his 'prank' attempts on the sleeping giant will not end well for anyone. Don't let him catch you when he's looking tired - he'll drag you up against him and snore into your hair until the sun goes down.

It's weird to see Dust without his hood. You half expected him to even wear it to the beach, but it makes sense he wouldn't. There's enough dust on that thing already, he probably doesn't want to get sand on it as well. He'll spend most of his time resting in the shade (why is he wearing sunglasses when he doesn't have eyes?), but if you ask him to, he'll venture into the sun. You're the only one who can convince him to do anything fun. Out of all of them, he's the one who'll go get you something to eat. He'll randomly disappear, then quietly return with ice cream, or crepes, or smoothies. Just three, though - one for him, one for you, and one for Horror because it'd just be rude to not get him food. He won't tell Killer where he got it.

Killer is having a great time. He will be ogling your beach outfit, it doesn't matter what it is, he'll stare and flirt as often as he possibly can. He wants to play volleyball or football, have you bury him in the sand, take stupid posed pictures, stay until sunset and start a barbecue, he's having an amazing time. This is his dream. If you can keep him company, please do, because it'll keep him on good behaviour - if you leave him alone for five minutes he's going to start annoying the other skeletons. By the end of the day someone is dunking him in the ocean, at least once. Probably Dust.

Nightmare will sit on a chair, under the darkest umbrella you've ever seen, without a speck of sunlight reaching him. He won't engage with the other skeletons at all and it seems like they know to give him his space. He'll be delighted to chat to you, if you come up to him, but other than that he just... vibes there, alone. Makes you wonder why he even came to the beach, since he clearly will do whatever it takes to avoid light.

He bought you along because the other skeletons want you around, sure. But he also bought you because he could tell you needed the stress relief. He likes just sitting back and listening to you enjoying yourself, watching the happy feelings roll off you - they're nice to see, even if he can't eat them.

Not that he'll ever say it aloud, but he planned this day out almost entirely for you.

[classical-bluess]

He's been watching too many nature documentaries

[fumifooms]

[cipheramnesia]

I'm trying to push "just" as a minimizer further out of my vocabulary, not to eliminate but to crack down on using it. I don't need to use it as often as I do, and then I'll poke around and see stuff like "it just happens to intersex people" or "intersexism is just an edge case" or other language along that lines, and that's kinda where I notice the word "just" has some claws deeper in my brain than I would like because it's super easy to roll with that. "Oh well that's fair it's just a little small amount." And that's just fucked up I think.

Cuz that sort of minimizing language has been around forever. Oh it's just intersex people, oh it's just trans people, oh it's just gay people, oh honestly, how much could that part of the population be, ten people? But it's always tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions however you cut it. Like you live in a small town, a thousand people, if intersex people are "just" one percent of the population, maybe ten people there might be intersex and you probably know one or two. You meet a hundred, a thousand people, more in your life, it means you probably met someone intersex or trans or queer or all of that. In a global population of seven billion people you can six degrees your way to famous actors Kevin Bacon and he's one guy. That "just" thing, that easy and agreeable minimizing sentiment, it's tricky and so I'm trying to make it a caution point. It's just language though, just one word that happens to be widely used by millions of people and which directs your brain to think a certain way because language is how we share our brains.

Anyway this is too long.

[cookiecrumbconundrum]

it is all our first time here || on family and growth

recently have been having a lot of difficult and challenging conversations with my family that have actually led to some change. it's not perfect but it's getting better. and that is really so much better than me having given up on our relationship. we can and will improve. they are trying to listen.

right now, gracie abrams | repose, john singer sargent | been a son, nirvana | maria a guzman capron| @/winchesterwhorehouse | musubu hagi | the book of images, rainer maria rilke | ladybird, greta gerwig | aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe, benjamin alire sáenz | your best american girl, mitski | 誰も知らない (nobody knows), hirokazu kore-eda | everything, everywhere all at once, the daniels | vita nova, louise gluck | the kitchen table series, carrie mae weems | e.a. bucchianeri | lecture: critical thinking at the new school, bell hooks & chirlane mccray | night sky with exit wounds, ocean vuong | everything, everywhere all at once, the daniels

[xx-justsomeguy-xx]

noticed that they like to put little parallel moments between current day rafayel and his other lives. i don’t know what to do with this other than rotate it in my brain :3

more under the cut + some spoilers for him in general

left: deepsea riches. he’s teaching mc how to use the fishtail beacon

right: main story, 7-6. he’s helping mc use her evol to resonate with the coral stone

left: deepsea riches. he’s taking mc out of the palace that she’s never supposed to leave

right: nightly stroll. he’s taking mc to investigate a fish pond by akso hospital. this time, he’s the one who’s not supposed to be outside

left: sea of golden sands, part 3. the glowing blue fish appears after he promises to come back for mc one day after she sets him free from enslavement

right: nightly stroll. the glowing blue fish appears after mc chooses to either never make rafayel wait for her again or wish for him to be reunited with the girl who saved him from dying stranded on a beach

left: fragrant dream. he and mc are on a boat. he is gazing at her when he comments on how beautiful the scenery is.

right: blossoms, kindled 3. again, it’s not the scenery he’s looking at when he agrees that the ‘view’ is beautiful.

i’m sure there’s more than i didnt catch or havent seen but these are the ones ive noticed between the cards i have and myth chapters ive unlocked ;w;

[emry-stars-art]

Whalemack!

He’s a gray/grey whale, very nice and VERY big (though about half the size of a blue whale). He’s been mostly solitary for a while, sometimes joining other whales on their migrations, but then he starts collecting little mer children that make travel hard. I’ll probably add some scars from boats/etc to this design. And we need to figure out if mers have tattoos 🧐

[desertduality]

the hermitcraft snails invaded my dream last night but all they were doing was pulling pirate ships across the sand. and the sand moved like water. and then I fell off the boat and got run over

[maplewozapi]

"It’s a fae trap! Look out it’s a fae trap"

Fae trap? In my America? That’s just the wind

As a Native American lemme elaborate it’s-LITERALLY THE WIND get out of there it’s gonna get you

Don’t look at it, touch it, throw a rock at, god forbid you shoot an arrow at it you’ll be carried off to who knows where and then you’ll have to walk all the way back. It so inconvenient.

[maclanahan--mermaid-comics]

"The clouds are still really far away…"

Pose reference by @theposearchives!

[necrotic-nephilim]

what are your favourite batcest ships and why?

AAA i love this question so much. i'm going to limit myself to a top five, because otherwise, i'd just end up listing all of them. the true joy of batcest is they're all so good for such different reasons and there are so many unique dynamics you can explore.

JayTim - it's funny bc, before i started this blog, i don't know if i would've put these two losers as my number one. but because i've done so much deep diving into their dynamic and i write them the most, i think it'd be a disservice for them to be anything *but* number one. their canon dynamic is just. so fun to play with. i truly love all of their interactions, particularly pre-Flashpoint. the concepts of Tim holding such contempt for Jason while Jason is weirdly obsessed with Tim. i'm a fan of Hannibal and Killing Eve and well. if this isn't a Hannigram-coded ship idk *what* is. i like ships where love and hate co-exist and there's no real "happily ever after", just fucked up co-existing, where they crawl back to each other like a bad habit and really, this ship is that so perfectly. the themes of jealousy in the Robin mantle. Tim wearing Jason's Red Robin suit to punish himself. i will likely never shut up about them. even in the New-52, there's such a substance to them, though the dynamic is wildly different. they will always be so weirdly dependent on each other's existence. i love them.

BruDick - you can't outdo the doer, i fear. i think i like BruDick mostly for the history of it, yk. there's genuinely *so much* queer history seeped into the homoeroticism of Batman and Robin, these two have been a symbol for queer people for decades. but the ship itself has so many dynamics i love. problematic age gap, "are we family or lovers", "i can't be in a room alone with you without getting into a screaming match but if you called i drop everything for you". all of it. i especially favor 80s/90s BruDick when they were in their divorce era just because it's so messy. Dick has canonically said he would die for Bruce, even during their arguments. no matter what, these two will always be single-mindedly devoted to each other. there will be other Robins, but none of them will compare to Dick Grayson, for Bruce. it's a unique and complicated bond that has endless layers to peel back. they always crawl back to each other bc no one else will match their level of intensity.

DamiTim - years and years ago, when i was a teen trying to people-please with how i existed in fandom, i used to insist i didn't like batcest and found it icky and gross. but there was one DamiTim fic that was my exception. that fic was my fucking roman empire. i reread it like once a year even though it's not completed and likely never will be i do not care. so now that i've killed the morality police in my head and i let myself ship what i actually want to ship, this ship holds a top place in my heart just bc of that fic alone. but in general i do fucking love their dynamic. similar to JayTim there's just so much mutual hatred in these two that has endless potential. Damian's insistence to not see Tim as a Wayne and as a legitimate brother/heir to Bruce is something you can play a lot if you give Damian an angry, fucked up crush on Tim he doesn't want to admit to. they have so many reasons to dislike each other, so to try to get them to slowly fall in love is a fun challenge. they either have a long complicated forgiveness arc and end up a happy married couple or they are the couple that tries to kill each other once a week. no in-between.

JeanTim - there's like. one person here on tumblr who goes as hard for this ship as i do and truly god bless them bc they feed me. Jean-Paul is too underrated in the batcest scene. once i reread Knightfall, i will have to help popular this tag on ao3. i enjoy both a very fucked up version of this ship during the peak of the Knightfall arc, where Jean-Paul is deep in his murder Batman era and Tim is trying to stop him to no real avail, but i *also* think there's so much you can do with the ship afterwards, where Jean-Paul is trying to make up for what he's done and be a better person and better hero. they're the peak Batman/Robin ship, to me. they truly care about each other, but have a very complicated/bloody history and i just. man i love it so dearly. i've been meaning to write a fic where Jean-Paul goes to Tim post the Sword of Azrael (2022) arc to properly discuss and apologize for all his actions in Knightfall for his personal healing and they end up fucking. it could be sweet and cute or kinky fun bc what is the joy of a character with that much Catholic guilt if you don't give them a weird religious kink.

BruCarrie - The Dark Knight Returns got me into comics and i will defend it till the day i die. Carrie Kelley can be pried from my cold dead hands. i just really love these two? Carrie took one look at that cranky old bastard and decided she was his problem. and Bruce is at a stage where he should be very averse to the idea of having a Robin, he knows it's a bad idea. but he just. accepts her anyway. idk how to explain their dynamic other than she plunks herself in his lap and stitches up his wounds while telling him he's an idiot and he lets her even if he's grumbling about it. they have the biggest age gap of any Batman/Robin ship and for that, they should get like. a dead dove gold star no matter how rare the pair is.

also honorable mention goes to BruTim, because *god* do i love the concept of Tim offering himself up to Bruce as Robin in every way, knowing that there are likely sexual/romantic implications to being Robin. it's one of my favorite flavors of batcest to exist. i don't view them as a "happily ever after" ship, because Bruce will always go back home to Dick, but it's a fun lil dead dove moment.

[puddingcatbeans]

thinking about nicky and erik's video calls slowly shifting to just phone calls because nicky knows it's harder to lie about his stress through a screen. about nicky shutting the door to his bedroom after another night of trying to prod his cousins into eating dinner together and just breaking down in silence because god knows he's had enough practice with that.

thinking about nicky giving in and calling erik at fuck am after the whole thing at the bar and andrew's trial, and erik being this close to dropping everything and coming to get him, i don't care if they're your cousins, nicky, they're hurting you and family isn't supposed to hurt. (but being burned by family is all nicky has ever known about love until erik and the kloses.)

thinking about nicky being unable to visit erik during breaks because he doesn't know if he would be able to make himself come back. about erik coming to him, instead, and for that week, nicky is glowing so much that even the twins have to admit they've never seen their cousin look so happy.

thinking about nicky building a home for himself with shaking hands, and leaving its warmth to do it all over again for two boys that have been locked out for to long.

[sneakydraws]

I ALWAYS KNEW YOU WERE SHALLOW

I ALWAYS KNEW YOU DIDN'T KNOW ME I ALWAYS KNEW YOU DIDN'T BELIEVE IN ME I ALWAYS KNEW THAT I BORED YOU I ALWAYS KNEW THAT I WASN'T PRETTY ENOUGH TO HOLD YOU I ALWAYS KNEW YOU'D GO WITH SOMEONE SMARTER THAN ME I ALWAYS KNEW YOU WERE A SNOB WHY DON'T YOU JUST GO FUCK YOUR BOOKS WHY DON'T YOU JUST GO FUCK ALL YOUR FUCKING BOOKS AND WE'LL SEE WHO'S SMARTER

WE'LL SEE

[gildedfireplace]

chocolate love ˖ .  𓂃 ִֶָ

sea salt ˖ . 𓂃 ִֶָ

groceries ˖ . 𓂃 ִֶָ

[stuckinapril]

my vibe right now