#hello I'm emotional

[a-driftamongopenstars]

as we are about to head into the Final Shape, I just want to say, what an absolute pleasure it's been to experience the story of Light and Dark with you all.

since the moment my foot stepped into the Tower, I knew I was there to stay. And I did. this game has been there for me through joy, but quite often through hardship. it carried me when I needed something to show me you can survive and persevere. it is a place where I know a little friend would tell me eyes up, Guardian. where my favorite character's compassion and care brought a smile to my face. a place where my friends and I could laugh together as we explored one of the most beautiful games I've ever seen. it's a game that made me create non stop and allowed me to meet wonderful people I'm happy to call my friends.

it's been such a fucking pleasure. whether you've been here since day 1, five years, just one year or even a month. destiny changes you for the better.

I hope that it continues ever longer ❤️ go in TFS with an open heart and an open mind.

[br-disaster]

Nie Mingjue: *is a little unsteady on his feet*

Nie Huaisang, immediately: 🏃🏃

[tapakah0]

[sky-scribbles]

I was thinking about Gale's conversation with Mystra, and something hit me: the camera angles. They're telling us a lot.

Mystra doesn't appear to Gale the way Shar does to Shadowheart - as a towering edifice, storm and shadow. She looks almost like a human. Someone you could have a conversation with, without an obvious gulf of power between her and the mortal she's speaking to.

But. The camera angles.

Even though Mystra is presenting herself to Gale in this very human image, almost like an equal - the game constantly shows her with the camera tilted up toward her. The kind of shot that films use when they're pointed up at a character to show their power and control and authority. And then we cut back to Gale - and while I don't remember as well what the camera does here, I know we're either looking straight at him or down at him. There's this uneasy shift back and forth as we swap between these shots, with Mystra almost looming, looking down on Gale, while he's in the position of vulnerability.

It's so clever. You look at how Mystra presents herself, and you can understand how Gale could have thought his relationship with her wasn't all that different from being loved by a person. How she could have seemed relatable, and like she understood what it was to be mortal. You can see how Mystra could make sure he didn't see the imbalance in power.

But the game makes sure we see that imblanace, just as Gale is starting to. Mystra might try to appear almost human, but the camera knows who has the power in this situation, and who is left vulnerable and unsteady in her shadow.

[cloysterbell]

Pete, I need you to stay here.

[epikhightechnology]

"I love you, Pete"

[crystaleevee4]

oh

skizz as some kind of,, like... griffin hybrid? for one thing he's already kinda lion coded and also bird coded. and the whole protecting treasure thing. skizz protects his treasure, his friends. hi. and then imp and skizz podcast episode uhhhhh i think actually the first episode. skizz saying "i've always had this kind of... protective aura around you" (paraphrasing i don't have the clip rn) about impulse. being fiercely loyal, a trait often associated with lions at least. hi. hi. griffin hybrid skizzleman. can anyone hear me. hello

[kingthunder]

romanced spawn astarion offers to go to avernus with karlach and also makes me cry

[difeisheng]

一遍一遍來過

They come to Di Feisheng in fits and starts, the way any recollections of the last weeks have, blinks of clarity etched out from indistinct colour slowly coming into focus. The first of them is the last; the final memory a man named A-Fei ever had, before Di Feisheng stormed back into consciousness to take his place. It is short, so short he nearly doubts it happened. But Di Feisheng has always been able to depend on his own senses if nothing else, and so its existence is undeniable.

A-Fei, a boy's voice calls out, fine silk and warmth cradling him as he slumps to hard stone, a split instant before the world fades to nothing. His eyes are already closed, but A-Fei knows who it is, who rushed to his side without hesitation.

Where is Fang Duobing now? Di Feisheng thinks idly, in his spare moments wandering this gilded cage of Jinyuanmeng. Is he with Li Lianhua still, determined to follow that man to the end of the jianghu? For all his fumbling earnesty and pettiness of youth, at least Fang Duobing can be trusted to wear only one face. Unlike others who pretend even now, all rouge-red smile and sickly sweet words, to look after Di Feisheng.

And so the remembering begins.

Next to return, like the first, is a mere flash across Di Feisheng's mind. Of darkness, the even breath of one sleeping falling against his neck, another body rolling over to curl along his back.

What are you doing, xiaozi? A-Fei says, whispered rumble in the night. Fang Duobing, lost in dream, does not answer. His steady weight stills further into slumber.

A-Fei drifts closer to sleep himself with Fang Duobing tucked against him. It will not be the last time.

They shared a bed before, Di Feisheng knows this. Li Lianhua left them no choice. The soft trust of that act, though, is new. He imagines turning his back on someone in sleep, himself and not A-Fei, without even a blade under his pillow.

It is an unsettling thought.

A-Fei, Fang Duobing says in the next memory, A-Fei, and when A-Fei turns at his call he reaches to adjust A-Fei's mask, sword-calloused fingers lightly brushing his jaw.

And—

Do you like this one, A-Fei? Fang Duobing asks, pointing out a bolt of fabric in a dark plum, patterns running across it in an even deeper shade. A-Fei doesn't think he ever came to tailor's shops for robes, like this. He knows no one asked him before what he likes, like this.

He nods, and Fang Duobing smiles in self-satisfaction, sliding Li Lianhua's coins across the counter.

And—

Fang Duobing looks up at him, hand clasped to his mouth after words gone astray, eyes wide and shining. What aspirations do you have, A-Fei? he said, but how far can a man without a past dream into the future?

His gaze is demanding in its curiosity, expecting too much from A-Fei. What does he have left to give to a boy like Fang Duobing, so stubborn in his refusal to ever stop caring?

And then one day Di Feisheng studies the line of his back in a steam-clouded mirror, water from the bath trailing down his skin, glimpsing the faintest of raked marks still yet to fade away—

Fang Duobing gasps into his neck, words half-formed and lost, clawing A-Fei closer by wherever he can blindly reach. The night is a blur of heat and breathless sound, sweat cooling on both of them in the autumn dark, clinging in this village full of ghosts and A-Fei doesn't care. Cannot bring himself to care, driving himself deeper into Fang Duobing, held down to the sheets by A-Fei's grip at his wrist and every snap of his hips.

A-Fei, he hears his name again, caught against the edge of a moan, and A-Fei lowers his head to taste it on Fang Duobing's tongue himself.

In the shadowed doorway, out of the corner of A-Fei's sight, he catches the smear of Li Lianhua's silhouette against the black. Footsteps halted in shock, or maybe amusement.

The wave crests. A-Fei's world tips into blissful white, and Fang Duobing cries out.

Di Feisheng, now, searches for a flower that exists in legends in the name of Li Lianhua. Unwavering, whatever draw toward him it is that Di Feisheng has known , since Li Xiangyi first brought his blade against his own. This has not changed; in this lifetime, it will not.

Yet A-Fei, even in just the briefest of moments scattered like stars, across from Fang Duobing... in all his few months of existence, he could have had a chance to be content.

(Di Feisheng hopes that, at least for one night, the last night of company, he was happy.)

(He wonders, again, where Fang Duobing is, and sacrifices a foolish second to hope for a disappeared man's wish that he might have been, too.)

~*~

(Dear reader, they both were.)

[cloudinal]

Day 4 - By Your Side

[ky-the-squiddy]

Every so often I come across people going on about 'queer is a bad word, I'm not a terf but we shouldn't use that word in community/academic/etc settings, don't call me queer' and just

Okay

You're not queer

I won't call you that, no one should call you that, and anyone that does is being an asshole regardless of their identity or minority status. It doesn't matter what reasoning you have behind not wanting to be labelled as queer, what trauma you may or may not have, what you've identified as in the past and present, and whether or not your preference just comes to not liking the vibe of the word for entirely inscrutible reasons. No one has any right to pry.

If you say you're not queer, then you're not queer, and that's okay.

It just also means that if I, a queer person, talk about the queer community, then I'm not referring to you. If an academic refers to queer history and queer texts written by queer people about other queer people, they're also not talking about you. If a corporation starts using 'queer' in their ads then they can eat shit because fuck 'em, they have no fucking right to use our words when they aren't and have never been one of us, but if a well-meaning ally uses 'queer' as a one-syllable shorthand for LGBTQIA+ in a verbal conversation, then there's no reason for you to get any more annoyed at them as you would if they used the word 'gay' instead.

You have every single right to be labelled or not labelled as you like, and I will stand behind you all the way. If someone is trying to shove 'queer' on you when you really don't want it? Then I will happily, metaphorically, deck them in the face for you. We are still family, whatever you choose to call yourself, and it's important that we stick together.

But

If you aren't queer, and you get frustrated when you see queer people talking about the queer community, take a deep breath, and consider:

They aren't talking about you

[r4pira]

The power

it suits you (I can taste it on you)

inspired by THIS amazing fic by @hazeism

[tosteur-gluteal]

Again, gouache painting I made to relax

[cold-neon-ocean]

one miscalculation

[thefloatingstone]

[bumblingbabooshka]

Tuvok & Janeway both strike me as people who insist they aren't rich* but then they bring up a summer house or something in casual conversation *note: I'm aware that Star Trek humans live in a post-scarcity world with no money but still. I can't help but see the truth and the truth is that Janeway's fridge had an ice dispenser.