#gwens pen

[dragoninatrenchcoat]

you don't need to touch grass, you need to touch sky. You need to plant your feet on the earth and reach up to whatever unreachable thing is above you. You need to feel the air on your skin--still, strong, sweeping, lithe--and accept whatever kisses--warm, hot, cold, wet--you receive in return. You need to inhale the scent of the place--earthy, oily, flowery, dusty--and pull it into every corner of you, because you are there, in the place, and the place is in you, too, whether it's an empty, hot desert, or a husky tree-furred mountain, or a brand-new place where the rocks are buildings and the plants are in pots, and people proliferate like mycelia, hand in hand. You need to remember that you are here, and you are physical, and you are a piece of it all.

[gwenkress]

The old man narrowed his eyes, this time studying my face, and he said, “Can I see one of the shillings?”

I handed one over, as well as a threepence, for his perusal. He scrutinized the coins with the same intensity with which he had the watches, with a magnifying glass and a carefully-applied light.

“I’m going to assume,” said the pawnbroker, still studying the coins, “that you don’t have a bank account, let alone a phone or credit card. Am I right?”

“You are,” I admitted, filing the words away for the time being.

“Well, I don’t carry this kind of cash anymore. If you have five of these shillings, I can give you three hundred pounds for them and the threepenny. If you’re mindful, that should be enough for a room and a couple meals, maybe a change of clothes for the both of you. If that’s the kind of thing you’re looking for.”

“That’s precisely what we are looking for.” Three hundred pounds! Three hundred! And such a dizzying sum could only afford a room and a few meals? How far was this distant future?

“Then you can come back tomorrow and we can discuss... the rest.” His eyes flicked between the two of us.

Whether we should return tomorrow is something I would need to consider later on. It was enough at the moment not to flinch when I provided five shillings and three pence and received in return three hundred pounds.

[paunchsalazar]

spiders

[irishyuri]

my beautiful lady wife gwen

[superfallingstars]

Snapetober Day 3: Haunt

based on "Sir Thomas Browne No.2 / Death and the Philosopher" by Gwen Raverat, below

[maria-ruta]

alright but jokes aside, wanna guess my favorite spiderverse character? X'D

doodled a bunch of stuff in my sketchbook, I do not have that many colors tho hahaha so it's all pretty limitted X)

[idoodlestuffsometimes]

Story Post 14 (Part 2)

AU MASTER POST

BEGINNING | PREVIOUS | NEXT

[Image ID under the cut]

[IMAGE ID: Two pages of a black and white comic.

PAGE ONE PANEL 1: Gwen glances nervously over her shoulder at Dell. He beckons for her to continue. "It's not that. It's - ah--" PANEL 2: She turns back to the crow phone with a forced grin. "I hear you have a student now!" Dell's face drops in annoyance. PANEL 3: "A human one! How intriguing. I haven't heard of a human on the Isles since the one my great grandmother mentioned." Luz lies on her belly on her sleeping bag, happily reading in her room with King asleep next to her. Behind her, the window is open, revealing a scout brandishing a spear. PANEL 4: "And even that one disappeared, apparently," Gwen continues. Eda appears in the window, casting a spell that blasts the scout out of view. PANEL 5: Luz turns and looks out the window, puzzled, but there is nothing there. PANEL 6: "My human isn't going to disappear," says Eda. She looks over her shoulder at Luz's oblivious back through the window, determined. "Oh no, of course not!" says Gwen. "I'm sure you're doing a wonderful job looking after her and teaching her all sorts of things." PANEL 7: A close up of one side of Gwen's face, her eye looking to the side, knowing that Dell is behind her, concerned and waiting. "Like--," she says. PANEL 8: She leans in towards the phone, gritting her teeth. "--Palisman carving, maybe?" PANEL 9: Eda and Lilith clash. Eda blocks with her staff as Lilith comes at her with her own. "Mom, I'm busy!" Eda cries. "Just spit it out!" "Okay, okay!" says Gwen.

PAGE TWO PANEL 1: "It's about the family business." "What about it?" "Well," Gwen admits. "Palisman carving isn't exactly as easy as it used to be." A close-up of Dell in profile. His head is lowered, expression sad. PANEL 2: A view of an old, hanging wooden shop sign for a shop named "Clawthorne Palismen". It was once a mark of a well-cared for business. It has hand-carved wings, fancy lettering, and a second, smaller sign below it, declaring, "Established 16--" something. But the rest is broken off. The sign is in disrepair, with a, "CLOSED," sign plastered on top. PANEL 3: "A lot of people associate palismen with wild magic these days," Gwen continues. What was once a small, quaint shop sits boarded up and falling apart. It's covered in graffiti, reading, "REMEMBER METANOY," and "WILD." In the foreground, people avoid it, whispering. PANEL 4: A large, desolate field of clear-cut tree stumps. "And with the deforestation of the palistrom forests," Gwen says, "sometimes I worry it won't be feasible much longer." PANEL 5: "But your father can't do it anymore…" A close-up of Dell's hand. It shakes and is covered in scars. PANEL 6: A close up of Eda, guilty and distraught. "...And you--," PANEL 7: A flashback. Eda's cursed form looms over her frightened father, snarling. PANEL 8: A close up of Dell, younger and terrified, one hand towards the viewer, trying to ward off his attacker, the other clutching the side of his face. /END ID]

[criminalcinnamon]

Everyone in this photo is bisexual if you even care.

[dragoninatrenchcoat]

I don't know who to tag, so I'll reblog instead to promote your book! hehe. Sorry for the long post this creates!

Names in Shroud of Dawn follow this rough pattern:

'Mudder' (human) names sound more liquidy and tend to feature Vs and Fs (possibly because zhels can't pronounce them), and potentially are based on Shieliv root words. For example: Haavra, Jeneto, Kervo.

'Zhel' (bug alien) names are rougher and tend to utilize the teeth & back of the mouth. For example: Galetka, Thackaliot, Clotkath.

One name (usually 2-4 syllables) is given to a clutch, or a group of siblings born at the same time, and at some point they get single names (usually 1-2 syllables). A person's full name is spoken as 'single name' 'clutch name', but most people refer to you as your clutch name unless further differentiation is required.

That out of the way, here are my protagonists!

Glicht Aarvam (Mudder):

It's common for city mudders to go by zhel names in order to assimilate into zhel society, so the fact that 'Glicht' is a zhel single name isn't very odd. His earliest memories are of an orphanage, so it's not difficult to assume that he was given a run-of-the-mill name by its proprietors. The "kht" sound in 'Glicht' is common to a certain race of zhels that founded Daketch, where he's from.

At a young age, Glicht left the orphanage and joined a gang of kids. They called themselves "the Aarvam clutch", though technically they were a thand (a clutch not biologically related to each other). They claim 'aarvam' is a Shieliv word, but it's actually a misremembered city name that they liked the sound of.

Fun fact! Glicht refuses to go by his clutch name due to a fallout with the Aarvams. He introduces himself as Glicht and lets people assume that's his clutch name.

Lohak (Zhel):

'Lohak' is a name from a race of zhels to the far north. (No, I haven't named any of these nations yet.) He himself was born in Qazek, which is more full of that race of zhels than the ones that founded Daketch.

Lohak is clutchlock, meaning that for whatever reason, he has no clutchmates. The fact that he doesn't have a clutch name means that he became clutchlock when he was very young (most likely, no other eggs survived to hatching).

Thank you for the tag! This wound up being longer than I expected oops

Name meaning meme

@winterandwords tagged me! Thanks for the tag, Winter - I love doing things like this. To everyone else, feel free to tag me and I'll try to tag you back!

I'm gonna do this for the protagonists of Spymaster. I'll give the literal meanings of their names as well as a few notes about what their names mean historically/sociologically.

📝 Eugene James Wallace:

From Wikipedia: 'Eugene is a common male given name that comes from the Greek εὐγενής (eugenēs), "noble", literally "well-born", from εὖ (eu), "well" and γένος (genos), "race, stock, kin".' Damn that is . . . so eugenics-y sounding. Especially on a white guy from the 1950s.

From Ancestry.com: '[Wallace is an] Americanized form of various like-sounding Jewish (Ashkenazic) surnames e.g. Wallach.' Wallace and Wallach both mean 'Foreigner.' So, together: 'well-born foreigner.'

Wallace's family is German-American on both sides, with his mother being a recent immigrant and his father being the child or descendant of immigrants. 'James' is his father's name. The surname was, yes, Americanized after immigration, and both 'Eugene' and 'James' were probably picked for being very WASP-y names. Eugene and his family are big believers in assimilation - although I think he might get less enthusiastic about it later in life.

Mirsky calls him 'Zhenya,' after the Russian version of 'Eugene,' 'Evgeniy.'

📝 Vyacheslav Halidovich Mirsky:

From Wikipedia: 'Vyacheslav is a Russian and Ukrainian masculine given name. It is a Slavic dithematic name (that is, composed of two lexemes) derived from the Slavic words vyache, "great(er)", and slava, "glory, fame". A common short form is Slava.'

From Ancestry.com: 'Mirsky is a Jewish (eastern Ashkenazic) habitational name for someone from Mir a place in Belarus.'

Of course, Vyacheslav Mirsky is not Jewish - as far as I know, it's not an exclusively Jewish name within Russia, but it probably doesn't matter because it's just a random Russian name that Mirsky's parents picked when they got off the boat from Azerbaijan. Their original surname was Aslanov.

Mirsky doesn't much like his first name or its nicknames; he's very protective of his patronymic, though. Halidovich comes from his father's name, Halid - the same Muslim name as DJ Khaled, just in a different form.

Wallace calls him 'Vee' as a nickname.

Tagging @acertainmoshke, @fitz-higgins, @meerawrites, @dragoninatrenchcoat, and an open tag to anyone who wants to do it! If you steal this and tag me, I will also try to tag you in the future.

[backup-papersnstuff]

Expanding on sherlock au world and characters. Gwen as spirits medium, séance organizator.

Uncoloured version

Other characters sketches and concepts.

[tjarry]

this is for me and me alone

[dragoninatrenchcoat]

Oh wait the post says to send you an ask. Tell me about "evermore but better" on tumblr instead of in DMs! I want to hear everything.

Haha you caught out one of the weirder ones on the list. It's basically the idea of a town that teleports from world to world, and yes, it is inspired by the jenny nicholson video.

Here's a snippet:

From this vantage, Juro could see almost every street of Polurtu; it lay in the basin of a valley, with farm and ranchland surrounding, and trees that crept in from the hills too steep for either. A lake high atop the northern hill fed a river that passed alongside the town and out south, where the valley had continued into those old, familiar forests. Now, the forest had been replaced by a sparkling white void. The void surrounded the town; even had Juro’s view not been significant, still he would have been able to see the unnatural whiteness of the sky, distant with speckled glimmers. He saw that the void interrupted every place precisely where his memorization of the Ritic Forest had failed him. For a moment, he feared that some terrible fate had befallen the forest, and that the strange magic of Polurtu had protected it; but, very soon, he came to realize that Polurtu itself had left the world behind, taking Juro with it.

[messengerofchaos]

i love miles he’s so silly!!

[doublydaring]

Gwens in my James Joyce notes.

[mementoasts]

elias, who thinks gwen is pushing herself too hard: "like i know ur trying to work ur way up at this job but is it worth sticking around when u look so unhappy every time i see u? maybe try something else, aim a little less high?"

gwen, internally: Perhaps murder is the key.

[vexglitch]

Spider gwen:D or ghost spider