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prome-th3us · 4 years ago

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Runes for beginners: introduction

In this grimoire I'm going to go through runes and their meaning in a way that is accessible to everyone. I'm gonna make a post for every rune so it's gonna be a long serie. I hope you will find this useful and if there's something unclear or wrong, please let me know!

I decided to avoid runes magic because I just want to help to get to know the runes a little better. Before practicing magic, you have to understand what this powerful tool is.

Introduction

Runes are not only a writing system, but they were also used as a magical, divinatory and spiritual growth tool. Rune (norse: rún/rúnar) means "segret, mistery". The characters used to engrave the rune, symbol of a certain energy in this world, were called runstafas (runic sticks).

They are an oracle and we can ask them to guide us: they work better if our question is specific and detailed. The lecture of Runes sometimes is obscure: the petitioner must interpret the details and understand them. Runes give us a way to analize the path we are on and to understand one of his possible outcomes: the future isn't static, we can change it with everything we do.

each rune has a phonetic value and a name that identifies its function and meaning; then it has a very specific history behind it and is associated with a diety.

Historical origins

I'm not gonna say much about the historical origins of the Runes because there are so many different theories about them and we could write an entire book just about this topic.

This is what you have to know:

the ancient futhark comes from the alphabet used by the Celts of Lugano (leoponzi) which has Greek origin. The Greek alphabet would have been absorbed by the Etruscans in the 12th century BC. and then by the Celts of Lugano in the VII. From here, thanks to trade, it would have arrived in the far north, with the necessary changes.

The Greek alphabet influenced the Gothic one and then the Germanic peoples adapted it (we can see how the Gothic alphabet is actually similar to both Greek and Runic, then the Othala rune resembles the Greek Omega).

it originated from the Roman alphabet, given the many relationships that different peoples entertained.

Mythological origin

"I know that I hung

On the wind-blasted tree

All of nights nine,

Pierced by my spear

And given to Odin,

Myself sacrificed to myself

On that pole

Of which none know

Where its roots run.

No aid I received,

Not even a sip from the horn.

Peering down,

I took up the runes –

Screaming I grasped them –

Then I fell back from there."

from the Old Norse poem Hávamál.

In Norse mythology, it's Odin who brought the Runes to the other gods. He wanted to know everything and he was envy of the Norns, who already knew them. He went to the Well of urd, the home of Runes, and since they reveal themselves to any but those who prove themselves worthy of such fearful insights and abilities, Odin hung himself from a branch of Yggdrasil, pierced himself with his spear, and peered downward into the waters below. He forbade any of the other gods to grant him the slightest aid. He survived in this state, teetering on the precipice that separates the living from the dead, for no less than nine days and nights. At the end of the ninth night, he at last perceived shapes in the depths: the runes. He's also lost his eyes for the wisdom.

Other important concepts

First of all, to truly understand how runes were used, you have to know at least a little of Norse mythology (I will tell you some books and links in the last paragraph). Then you have to understand what Orlog and Wyrd mean.

Orlog

This is basically karma but without reincarnation. Every person is born completely responsible for everything they do in their life since the first second: positive actions bring positive results, bad actions bring bad results, even in the afterlife. Who did positive things will go to Valhalla (where the heroes and the people who died in battle go) or to Sessrumnir (the halls of Freya). Who doesn't die in an honorable way or who did bad thing will go to Helheimr (the realm of Hel, this means that even who died in a normal way and who had a normal life will go there) or to Nilfheimr (the world of ice and cold, where the Ice Giants live).

Basically we decide where we are going with every choice we make.

Wyrd

A giant cobweb that extends in space and time: each thread is made up of a different manifestation of energy and all together it constitutes the very fabric of the universe. Since we are born, we are in some part of this web so we are also part of it.

Wyrd and Orlog are intertwined: who does good things and has a good Orlog, he will be on a good thread of the web. Wyrd is the fabric of life as well, so the world will be influenced by the positive energy of the man and will give him back this energy.

If each strand is a different manifestation of energy, each type of energy must have a name: the runes. In runic divination, what we see is a reflection of the energies in and around us (or around the person we are divining for). When we want to modify the Orlog, the process is different: we use the Runes as a channel for the energies that we need. We can say that the practice related to the runes is of two types: passive (divination) and active (healing, protection, etc ...).

Aettir of Runes

In the ancient futhark, there are 24 runes divided in three aettir (sing. aett, sets) of 8 runes each. Every aett is dedicated to a different diety:

Aett of Freya. She is of the Vani lineage and is therefore linked to fertility and harvest. She was welcomed with her twin brother Freyr in Asgard at the end of the war between the Aesir and the Vanir (basically the "wae" between the Norse people and the invaders). She can use the Runes, so she's a goddess of magic but also of love, associated with death (she is the leader of the Valkyries) and sexuality. The runes in this aett are: ᚠ ᚢ ᚦ ᚨ ᚱ ᚲ ᚷ ᚹ.

Aett of Heimdall. Of the Aesir lineage, he is among other things the guardian god of Bifrost and Asgard: he has hearing and sight that reach everywhere. Following a spell of Odin, he was born of nine waves and for this reason he is called "son of the wave". The runes in this aett are: ᚺ ᚾ ᛁ ᛃ ᛇ ᛈ ᛉ ᛊ.

Aett of Tyr. Of the Aesir lineage, he is known as the "Father of Heaven". He sacrificed one of his hands to be able to bind Fenrir and is a god linked to justice, loyalty, heaven, defense, war and law. The runes in this aett are: ᛏ ᛒ ᛖ ᛗ ᛚ ᛜ ᛞ ᛟ.

Last things

Ok so for this first post it's everything! I will continue in the next posts to explore every single rune. I just wanted to suggest some links and books if you want to go deeper into the fascinating history of runes.

Here you can find an interesting article about everything I just said, with so many references and here they also give a list of good books (if you can't afford them you can download their pdf from this site)

Anyway if you want to dig into norse mythology you can read:

Poetic Edda

Prose Edda

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs by John Lindow

(other good books can be found here).

And of course, if you still didn't realize this, I fricking love the website Norse Mythology for Smart People, even tho everything I wrote in this post is from "Le Rune" by Marco Massignan (I couldn't find the English Translation sorry).

#runes #viking runes #ancient runes #witchblr #norse heathen #norse paganism #norse runes #pagan witch

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whatstheproblembaby · 3 years ago

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AO3 Tag Meme

@klaineharmony tagged me like last week and I’m just now getting to this, oops. >.<

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

273, although I have collection of <1000 word stories that I originally posted individually on here and FFn, so technically I’ve written closer to 300 fics, probably?

2. What is your total AO3 word count?

497,239. Not half bad for a one-shotter!

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

5, if we count my Newsies/Supergirl crossover for both fandoms. The others are Glee, Riverdale, and Call the Midwife. (God, that’s eclectic to list.)

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

They’re all Klaine fics, to the surprise of absolutely no one:

1. But Now I See, my blind!Kurt/sighted!Blaine fic. (Tbh, I don’t love that I took this prompt and made the big moment in this one curing Kurt’s blindness, but I wasn’t aware of how ableist that trope is when I wrote it. I’m not going to delete it because that feels like sweeping it under the rug, but please know that I know better now.)

2. Unforgettable, a Cheerio!Kurt/nerd!Blaine AU based off this prompt: “You probably don’t remember but you saved me from some bullies once in middle school and god damn it every year you just get hotter"

3. Finally Found the Boy, a florist!Kurt/barista!Blaine AU in which I utilized every trope known to man: “#okay but combine all four: person a works at a coffeeshop #person b works at a flowershop #they start fake dating to cover for person a who's lied to their parents about meeting their soulmate #but then they do whatever thing reveals soulmates while fake dating and start REAL DATING #THE END”

4. Covert Cupid, aka your classic nerd!Kurt/jock!Blaine gift-giving AU. (You know, like Secret Santa, but for Valentine’s Day.)

5. Make A Move, a Cheerio!Blaine based off this anonymous prompt: “a klaine alternate meeting fic where one of them is working at a kissing booth and the other one keeps coming back with money and asking for kisses “for charity” and they basically end up making out in front of everybody bc the kisses are so great okay love u bye” (Yes, I DID use a One Direction lyric for the title; no, I am NOT sorry.)

5. Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Every time! At the very least, I drop a “thank you” and a heart, because I’m just that grateful that anyone has enjoyed my fic enough TO leave a comment. If there’s a more specific comment, I try to address it, too.

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Uh, probably none of them? Happily ever after or BUST, pals.

...

Okay, I literally looked through all of my fics and this drabble is the only thing that even REMOTELY ends angstily. Plenty of my work has some kind of drama in the middle, but I firmly don’t believe in tragic endings.

7. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve ever written?

I’ve only done one proper crossover (e.g., featuring characters from both universes), but I’ve done plenty of AUs based on other pieces of IP! My one true crossover is Just Be Real (Is All I’m Askin’), which mixes Newsies and Supergirl with a dash of past lives/reincarnation. Listen, when you put Jeremy Jordan in two things I love, I’m gonna find a way to combine those things, friends.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I once got called out for using the term “maiden name” in a fic, but I’ve never truly been flamed or anything. Hope that stays true!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Not often, and not outside of the Klaine fandom, at least as of right now. In those fics, I leaned a little more M than E in my ratings, and there were some D/s leanings, but that’s really based on how I saw that pairing. If I ever do smut for another fandom, I may totally mix up my kinks depending on how I see the couple/throuple/etc!

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I think I had some stories posted to at least one of those random pirate sites back in the day? But I’ve never been deliberately plagiarized that I know of.

11. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I’ve definitely tried! Truffles and I worked on at least one co-authored fic once, but I don’t remember if we ever posted it.

12. What’s your all time favorite ship?

I’m only supposed to have one???

13. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Like many Millennials, I’m sure, it was Harry Potter. If you go digging in MuggleNet FanFiction, you should be able to find my terrible acrostic poems from when I was 14.

14. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

Oof, again with the favorites? I have a couple that I’m more proud of than others.

Of my Call the Midwife fics, I love What’s in a Name? the most, simply because I included so many characters and feel like I managed to capture all their unique voices/personalities. And I created a moment I want to see on the show!

For Newsies, my 9k beast We Just Might Win proved to me that I can write more than 2,000 words without having to base the story on another piece of IP, and I’ll always love it for that. (And for Jack, Davey, and Kath, of course!)

I’m proud of all my Klaine fics on some level, because they unlocked a creative output level in me that I genuinely will not ever be able to match again. I think a crowd favorite of mine was my Sound of Music AU, My Heart Will Be Blessed, but if I had to pick a personal fave? I’d have to go with Destiny. Caroline @thehouseofthebrave gave me this incredible prompt for it, and I just love how I filled it.

I think a lot of people have been tagged already, so anyone who wants to do this should tag me as their tagger, but I also want to see @knightsofthegaytable‘s answers!

#also if you have a favorite of mine i want to know what it is!!

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ofmermaidstories · 4 years ago

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I really like your blog because you have this really life loving vibe, the type of people that see all the beauty in the world and stuff, so I wanted to ask you for some advice, if that's ok. By nature I'm also like that, kinda mushy, very heartfelt, but a lot of mistreatment from people in my life made me also very cynical, judgy and distrusting. How do you manage to keep this wonderous mentality about life?

In the afternoon, I like to stretch out on my bed, amid my pillows and my blankets, and soak in the late light and the autumn chill. I follow a grocer on instagram in a city three hours away from me because they post pictures of the produce they sell: pumpkins cut in half, jewel-bright tomatoes held in someone’s hands, sourdough loaves made by a neighbour. On the weekends they offer bouquets of flowers, supplied to them by a woman who bills herself as “a weekend florist and full-time mother” — this weekend it’s red berries and sunflowers, bundled up like babies being brought home from the hospital.

On Sunday it’ll be Mother’s Day: I’ll be spending the day deep cleaning the house and ignoring instagram and facebook (mostly bc they’re boring tho, let’s be real).

I live a two-hour car drive from anyone I remotely socialise with who isn’t the cashier at the supermarket I go to. Sometimes, I get so mad that I have to force myself to mentally and physically shut down, like, complete black-screen mode, sit there and stare at the wall — it’s a self-defence tactic to spare whoever I’m getting angry at, and to spare myself: unfortunately, I’ve developed a bit of a talent for being able to say the right thing in which to hurt someone with. Unleashing it comes at a high price, and I like the people in my life, so I would literally rather bite through my own tongue then let any of that vitriol fly when I’m angry and not thinking straight.

The rubbish trucks come for the bins every Tuesday. On Monday evening, around 9pm, I’ll wheel mine out to the road. There’s no streetlights out here, and I live in a rural area — so on dark nights when we’ve lost the moon, you can look up and see the Milkyway, like you’re standing underneath a river of stars.

I buy myself flowers; the women at the florist in town treat me like I’m their most favourite person in the world (and I eat that shit up). Afterwards I’ll be carrying whatever weeds I’ve bought with me, through the supermarket or whatever, and someone will always comment on them. I’ve lost one of the pearl earrings that belonged to my Grandmother’s set, a woman long gone, now; I’ve also misplaced my favourite hairclip, pale blue with a shinning shell clasp, that I got from a seller that shut down during the mess of last year.

Last weekend, I visited the cemetery; I sat with who I was visiting and watched an old man half a lawn away from me sit in a folded chair and read a book, play a little radio. A couple, visiting one of the plots behind us, carefully took the decorations on it - frogs, lots and lots of frogs - and brushed them off, wiped them down. Reglued a few and then set them all back into place, proudly.

There’s a young boy, interred next to my person, who I never met in life; he was fifteen years old and it’s been five years, now, and his site is littered with rubgy scarves and laminated letters from his friends, photos of them together, photos of them separately, growing up without him. Empty bottles of beer, badly written poems about meeting again. I say hello to him as I peel mandarins as a offering for the possums that forage around the cemetery at night, and occasionally I brush the leaves off his footy scarves and when I go to leave I say goodbye to him, too. After my last visit, I went to the busiest shopping centre in the city and ate braised beef noodle soup, from a place where they make the noodles in front of you, pulling them and stretching them easily. I messaged a friend with updates about my meal, laughing as she kept me company even from thousands of miles away, and then just as I finished, some friends who live in the city asked if I wanted to have some cake with them — from their favourite cafe. They’d given me a key to their home, earlier, so I could come and go as I pleased. The key meant a lot to me, though they’ll never know it; it meant a lot because it felt like a physical manifestation of trust, of them saying that yes, they did want me in their lives, no matter how limited or what kind of time left we had together.

People are multifaceted; like gemstones. We can be mean and delightful and trusting and hurt. I lean into the soft, squishy parts of myself with abandon — a lot of the time it works out. I tell people I love them. I let them say they love me. A couple of times, people have left my life because they didn’t have the space in theirs for me anymore — it was hurtful and ugly each time. Humans can come together so easily, sometimes, that the joy and brightness of it can make you forget how ugly and hard it is when we leave each other in the wrong way. People and things will hurt you. That’s just a fact. Some days you’re not going to have the energy for anything but the self-preservation of being distrustful, or cynical, judgemental, and that’s okay — I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, sometimes we have to be selfish to protect what’s left of our hearts.

I keep a list of things that make me smile. I also keep a list of things that fucking shit me right off. The list of things that shit me is longer than the list of things that make me smile, but it’s because when I see something good — a bright red letterbox, a little kid that’s waving to everyone, a pleasing colour of the sky — I don’t think to write it down, because it’s generally so fleeting and so cheery. It does its job. Find the small things in your day to day that you like to linger over, that make you happy; the bad stuff still happens, and you’ll still have waves where it doesn’t seem worth the effort, but the small bright things fill the moments and remind you that it’s all part and parcel of this universal existence.

Here’s to a gentle weekend ahead, Anon. ✨🌻🍊🌿

#ofmermaidstories-asks #wow someone muzzle me i did not mean to ramble like that lksdfjlksdjfklsdfj #hopefully it was even a fraction helpful though UGH #mer muses on the nature of love and connection and seperation

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thevoidcannotbefilled · 5 years ago

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Web!Martin.... Oh boy. Gonna shake the hornet’s nest with this one, but I’ve spent like three days on this editing and re-editing, and I’m finally satisfied with my kind of an essay at this point.

So, here’s a deep dive as to why I think Web!Martin has merits. (Scroll to the bottom of my essay for my TLDR).

Introduction

First, to get some stuff out of the way:

Do I think Martin is a sleeper agent? Do I think that he has been manipulating Jon this entire time or even in just season 5 for the games of the Web? Do I think he's a bunch of spiders in a Martin suit? Do I think he's regards the Mother as his Mother and accepts that he is her Son? Is Martn actively Webby?

No. Absolutely not. None of the above. The Martin we know is the Martin we began with, just with a bunch of trauma and has gained the ability to set his boundaries.

I find the idea of sleeper agent Martin or something similar to be very counterintuitive to the overall narrative. Not only is TMA about choices, and to have Martin be a sleeper agent would be to deny all of Martin's choices this season in particular, but it doesn't really lead to much. At best it's a gotcha and a surprise at worst it's making literally every interaction between Jon and Martin, with Martin himself, and so on mean nothing for the sake of one twist and make it sad. It's not fun in long term, and so at the end of the day, I trust Jonny and Alex as writers more than that. (Plus we already did the "person is replaced" thing).

Does Martin being a manipulator actively mean that he is a Web avatar?

Short answer, no.

Long answer, I made a post awhile back, and while it was for fandom things, I think it applies well here. What power you choose to align yourself with isn’t necessarily something you’d fully commit to. It is just, if you were an avatar and willing to hurt others for your own gain, what would you find yourself most aligned with. What I mean by that, just because Martin lies and manipulates doesn’t mean that he is Web, however, manipulation is a tool does fit well with the Web, and if he were to choose to align himself to that, I think he could be Webby. However, he is not necessarily a Web avatar because he has no motivation to hurt people.

That being said I do think Martin would be a good fit for the Web if he wanted to be, and I think there will be a point in the narrative that there is a potential that he could become one, even if he does not necessarily choose to be in the end.

Let’s talk about it.

Evidence

I think the best way to describe Web!Martin on my end is this: if Martin had an inclination to be an avatar, he would be the Web because everything from his aesthetics to his skillsets line up with the Web, but he does not have any reason to be Webby and in fact, at the very least as of MAG169, should actively be against the Web’s goals.

But that doesn’t mean his connection to the Web hasn’t been heavily foreshadowed or built up. Not all of these are of the same level, I admit that, so I’m just gonna bold the ones that are the most important. These aren’t in any particular order.

-For season 1 subtext, said he liked spiders In This First Appearance MAG22, in MAG38 Jon says that Martin gives them lectures on the importance of spiders for the environment, and MAG39, “it’s just that whatever web these statements have caught you in, well, I’m there too.”

-IN MAG79, his poem has a line in it that goes, “"the threads of people walking, living, loving" which is very Web-like.

-During the Web statement he read in season 3, he said “that wasn’t so bad, actually!” (MAG110) when he finished after showing open disdain for the others he read. The only other statement he didn’t think was bad to read was the Lonely one (MAG108), a power he canonical has ties to.

-The only person in the show so far of the main cast that has had direct contact with Annabelle Cane. The only other people that have had contact with her are her victims (Creature Feature, MAG110) or her people she used as tools (Web Development, MAG123).

-Let himself be guided to put the tapes on top of the coffin when the tapes, which have shown a direct association with both the Web and the Eye.

- Martin’s “lo-fi charm” and “retro-aesthetic” (various) versus Annabelle “She dressed like a vintage clothing store exploded on her” (MAG69)

-Uses lying and manipulation as his main tactic against people and is acknowledged that manipulation is a skillset of his. By Jonah mostly, but he was able to successfully manipulate both Peter and Jonah.

-In MAG117, he said "I’m not afraid for me, though. Isn’t that weird? I mean, it’s not like I’m going to be safe, like my plan’s not dangerous, but it’s, it’s mine. This last couple of years, I’ve always been running, always hiding, caught in someone else’s trap, but, but now it’s my trap, and, well, I think it’ll work. I know, I know it’s not exactly intricate, but it felt good weaving my own little web." and he then added after it with "oh good lord is Martin becoming some sort of spider person', no, Jon, just an expression.”

-Martin having a bad relationship with his mother versus Mother of Puppets.

-The Web and the Desolation actively dislike one another (MAG139), and fire is Martin’s most hated pain (MAG169).

-Martin is the primary investigator in Recluse (MAG59), Arachnophobia (MAG16), and was the one to find and give the Cracked Foundation (MAG114) to Jon. All of which are Web statements.

-The delivery of the table and the lighter were technically both given to Martin since he was the one who talked to Breekon and Hope.

-Martin was the first one to mention the Web lighter in season 5 in MAG162.

What Does This Mean

Now I will admit none of these things on their own mean Web!Martin. They’re something you might describe a Web!avatar yes, but not Martin on his own (like I said just because Martin can be a manipulator doesn’t mean he is a Web avatar).

In fact, with elements like Martin finding fire his least favorite pain, I adore the meta on Martin’s trauma about giving himself up for other people led to him disliking fire and the lack of care from his mother, also leading to that. It is an excellent metaphor that fits incredibly well with his character. That being said, these factors can coexist. Martin disliking fire can both be a metaphor for his own self-destruction for the sake of others and be hints toward Web!Martin.

HOWEVER, that all being said, even if these moments on their own don’t mean Web!Martin proof, I find it a bit unreasonable to entirely dismiss all of this either. There are too many coincidences lining up with the Web to not be intentional. It could be a red herring of course, but if it is a red herring.....well, Jonny put a hella of a lot of effort into making the Web!Martin red herring considering how much of his little details align so well with the small and big details of the Web.

But assuming that this info does align together in all its Webiness... does this mean Web!Martin?

Again, at the moment, I don’t think Martin is actively Webby.

At his heart, Martin wants to do two things: 1) Protect Jon and 2) Protect as many other innocents he can in the process.

As ironic as it is: "I want to find out what's going on. I want to save Jon. I want everyone to be fine and, you know what? If we were all happy that wouldn't actually be the end of the world” and “I want them to be safe. I need him to be okay” are basically the sum of Martin’s motivations from here to now. Martin wants a happy ending. And he’ll use whatever tools he can to do that.

So asking questions from dangerous people like Simon Fairchild? For the protection of the world from what he thought was from the Extinction.

Burning up statements and burning up the cabin? The Desolation would like that, if it wasn’t for the fact he does so to decrease the fear in the world.

And manipulating others? Peter? Jonah? Both of these weren’t to cause fear. They were at their heart to help others.

Using the tools that the powers use does not mean you’re of that power. Martin’s most effective tool is to manipulate others bc they underestimate him or they trust him to do what needs to be done. People tend to have a single view of him. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have other tactics, but with both Peter and Elias, it’s clear he knows how to use others’ egos against them.

Season 5 and Web!Martin

This ALL being said...... Season 5 is a lot about the nature of power (what to do with it and what it means to use it) and what you can do in inherently toxic systems. We just learned that killing its leaders does nothing when the system itself is built to actively hurt others. That smiting doesn’t actively make things better. The Web is actively doing something at the moment and possibly with the Distortion as well that will probably hurt Jon and Martin.

But.....

I’m worried about the possibility that the Web can promise a world with a happy ending like Martin always wanted and with no other options within the world, Martin chooses to let himself become a tool for the Web. Now to make this clear: Does Web!Martin give a happy ending or even a better world? No. Absolutely not. Can the Web possibly promise to give him the power to get a happy ending? Depends on if Martin will believe it.

If Web!Martin is a thing, it would be in doing so What He Thinks would be in both of their best interests and most importantly as his lowest point and final resort. That he stops believing that they have power to change the world on their own. When he believes he has no power left and all he can do to make the world better is to go to the one source that always seems to understand what’s going on. Because as of yet, he doesn’t have the motivations to be a Web avatar, but we’re slowly creeping into territory where he might think it is necessary to be one.

(We already had best case scenario where the Web asks Martin to join him and Martin says no. He could say no again, of course, but I don’t know if the Web will be as understanding of his reluctance in time).

For me, Web!Martin is on the same level of tragedy as Jon being the Archivist. Yes, there would be choices, but Martin would have been actively been manipulated by the Web just as much as Jon would be hurt by the Eye, even if it’s for entirely different reasons. He would be used as a tool in a greater game. Jon wants to be a good person. Martin wants to have a happy ending. We already know Jon’s desire to help the people around him has gotten him multiple marks. I can definitely see a world where Martin’s desire for a happy ending is used against him by the Web.

I can see a world where Martin lies to Jon because he thinks that’s what’s best for the two of them. I can see a world where he doesn’t lie to Jon but still accepts the power of the Web anyway despite Jon not thinking it’s a good idea. I don’t think either HAVE happened yet. We aren’t at that point, but...

Whatever the case, whatever plan the Web may have it highly involves one Mister Blackwood and his Archivist. And for the Web’s plans, Martin plays a key part of in it.

Other Theories and How Web Martin Plays Into It

So, do I think that’s where the plot will end? With Web!Martin betraying Jon bc he thinks it will be best? Not really. I think a lot of the point will also be that while Martin fits the Web well, his inherent desire for a better world makes it so he’s not an avatar. It’s the same points I made before: aesthetically, Martin fits the Web well and could be a good avatar in association, but he doesn’t WANT to hurt innocents. And ultimately, no matter his potential goals, Martin loves and cares for the world and especially for Jon. There could be a mistake in there made by Martin, where the Web has his clutches in him, but I don’t see a world where that is his ultimate conclusion.

I’ve also seen a theory where Martin uses Webby shenanigans to his advantage against Annabelle Cane. Where the manipulator becomes the manipulated and the tragedy is the sacrifice of himself for the sake of a happy ending he’ll never see.

I’m interested in seeing if Jonah making Martin the backup Archivist goes anywhere, especially with the uncertain connection between the tapes, the Eye, the Web, and the Archivist. Does this have anything to do with why Martin felt like he had to listen to Jon? Does this have anything to do with how he slapped Jon out of a statement? Could both of these elements also have something to do with the Web?

I’m also very intrigued on what Web Development was doing when they have something called a “story-spinner” and yet when the story-spinner was described it sounded almost exactly like an Archivist, but instead when you give a story, the spinner killed someone. Could the story-spinner have anything to do with the previous back-up Archivist? Could they just be entirely separate things?

Who knows what it all means? I don’t. That’s why I’m not discounting anything, especially with something that has so much set-up and subtext as Web!Martin. Whether Web!Martin means full avatar or not isn’t clear to me, but I’m taking any and all potential red-tape moments and running with them. If it means being pulled by a red-herring, so be it, but I won’t dismiss anything until proven otherwise. As long as Martin wants to do good and have a happy ending, I don’t think the Web can fully get him at least not in the ways that count. But I won’t stop investigating the narrative on what these elements could lead up to.

Conclusion

This post was made in frustration. I admit that. There is a distaste for Web!Martin that has been approaching the fandom that I don’t entirely understand. I’m not saying you have to like it, heck I admit, I could be entirely wrong. I also agree it’s a bit annoying that every interaction that Martin and Jon have come up under scrutiny for Martin potentially being Webby by the fandom. That’s why I started this post as I did because I don’t find the narrative of “Martin Is The Evil Bad Guy Manipulating Jon From The Beginning” all that compelling and wanted to put that to rest early.

I do, though, find it frustrating dismissing all elements of Web!Martin because of this. At the end of the day, I find there are too many elements in the text to entirely dismiss it and an outright rejection of Web!Martin can potentially lead to dissatisfaction with the narrative. I make this post as an explanation and exploration of my thoughts, and a way to show why so many fans like the Web!Martin theory. Take it or leave it, it’s fine, but I wanted to gather all my thoughts clearly in one place rather than in a bunch of snippy posts. I hope I’ve done that well enough.

TLDR: Web!Martin for me is a potential, a threat, and a possibility, but not something I think is actively happening at the moment. Martin would make a good fit for an avatar if he wanted to be, but at the moment, has no motivation to do so. However, with the ever decreasing options to save the end of the world, I can see a situation where Web!Martin is a thing that he actively thinks could save it.

That being said, Martin is inherently a character that wants to do GOOD in the world, and as long as that’s the case, even if that motivation is used against him, I don’t think he will be proven wrong that the world can be good and he has the power to make it so, or at the very least, I don’t think his journey will end on a dower note, even if it is a tragic one. The tragedy will be in the cost of saving the world or something similar, and whether or not Web!Martin is the case, I don’t think that will change. That being said, there are many potential theories on what could happen, and I don’t want to miss any of them, Web or not. This post has been made in somewhat defense as to why people like Web!Martin and continue to theorize about it, but also in reassurance that even if we do get Web!Martin that it doesn’t mean a destruction of Martin’s character.

#tma #the magnus archives #tma meta #web!martin #tma spoilers #tma s5 #I made an essay but needed to put my thoughts together #long post #ALSO THANK YOU GAMMI AND CHIN FOR YOUR HELP WITH THIS!!!#edit: my read more died when I edited on mobile gdi sorry

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heirloommtomatoes · 5 years ago

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you’re in a car with a beautiful boy

I’m at least 90% sure this ask was not sent with the intent of receiving a fic as a response but. Here we are. This got way longer and more convoluted than I had intended it to be and I’m jus gonna post it at this point bc i’m losing my mind re-reading it jsksk ! The title is from part 24 of Richard Siken’s poem “You Are Jeff”. Perfect poem for their first kiss, I think! Enjoy reading! :)

Warnings: Two instances of canon-typical homophobic language; canon-typical swearing.

Word Count: 2.6k~

The day Ian Gallagher shows up at his door, red-cheeked, out of breath, and wanting, no — “I need to see you” — needing him, Mickey knows he’s done for.

What comes out is: “I thought you were working today.”

Nice, dumbshit, that’s helpful, he registers the thought somewhere in the back of his mind, but mostly he just can’t stop staring at Ian. His eyes flick over his face, and he doesn’t have time to be shocked by how much he cares.

He’s embarrassed to reveal that yes, he did memorize Ian’s work schedule because he was in fact listening to the guy when he was busy running his mouth at the convenience store. Instinctively, he casts a quick glance over his shoulder. He can’t let Terry see this gay shit, Ian all worked up about some mommy issues and Mickey trying in his own way. To do what exactly, he’s still not completely sure. Comfort him, maybe? He doubts his father would clue in, his head’s too far up his homophobic ass for that, but like hell Mickey’s gonna risk it. Nothing’s gonna touch Ian. Fucking ever, if it’s up to him.

“I’ll meet you there in twenty,” Mickey says a short while later. He closes the door and goes back inside to stand around the dining table where Terry was going over some kind of raid or bust or heist while somehow managing to boss Mandy around every other word.

Mickey can’t focus on anything. He’s going to see Ian in twenty minutes. He’s bubbling with palpable excitement and fear and feelings he has no name for. What if Ian wants to talk about everything? Does he smell bad? What could Mickey say so he doesn’t leave? So Ian doesn’t see what a miserable shit he is? He hates Ian fucking Gallagher for making him care about dumb stuff like this, for making him incapable of hearing a word his Dad is saying to him and his brothers, for making him want to do some astronomically stupid thing like kiss him.

“Mickey, why you over there starin’ like some dumb fuckin’ fag?”

He doesn’t work up the courage for over another year.

Mickey slams the door to his room after running errands with Iggy all morning. It smells stale and one of the posters is curling off the wall in the mid-summer humidity. He’d changed his sheets this morning. The same red ones from the day Ian had burst in here like a maniac demanding the gun back. From then on, the two had been inseparable; no matter how hard their South Side circumstances had tried to pry them apart, every time they came back together like magnets.

Mickey knows he can’t really hide from Ian, and it scares him as much as it excites him. Ian reads him like no one ever has. The guy even had the nerve to smile that adorable smile that makes Mickey’s chest tight when he’d told him he’d rip his tongue out back in juvie. For some reason that Mickey cannot begin to fathom, Ian seems to want to spend time with him. Seems to believe in him.

He had thought himself perfectly fine to live a life half-awake, to spend his days either in prison or in the Milkovich household (one in the same, he thinks - except that juvie doesn’t have Terry), probably die by shivs or bullets or fists, and have his body buried in some unmarked grave all before his 50th birthday. Ian had wedged his place in the timeline of Mickey’s life. There was a before, and an after, and neither of them would ever be the same. Mickey pretends that its not this thought that keeps him up at night.

As soon as he realized that Iggy and Colin and Terry looked at girls and actually wanted them, that it wasn’t just some bizarre social act they all bought into, he knew he was fucked for life. His whole existence feels like some grand joke that everyone is in on but him, and when he lays down at night and stares at his ceiling and thinks about Ian Gallagher, Ian Gallagher, Ian Gallagher, he wonders if maybe he was the butt of it all along.

Ian Gallagher, who knew him and wanted him anyway, who took the time to care about him, who sought him out to spend time with him just because he wanted to. When had their ten minute fucks turned into smoke breaks? When had their smoke breaks turned into —

Mickey’s phone dings in his pocket as he sits on the steps of the Milkovich house, a cigarette dangling idly from his mouth.

Ian

what are ur plans today

He swallows his heart back down as it leaps into his throat, almost dizzying him with excitement. Get a grip, you fuckin’ girl. He’d done all that he needed to do for the day. He’d helped Iggy with some errands in the morning and had planned on laying low, playing Halo 3, and chain-smoking his way through a pack until dinner.

He chews on his lip as he considers what to say. He texts back:

Mickey

don’t have any

He wants to say “why, what’s up?”, he wants to say “let’s go to the dugouts”, he wants to say “let’s do something”, “let’s hang out”, “i want to see you”, “i want you”. But he’s not allowed to want things. Certainly not…this. Whatever this is. He receives a response almost immediately and can’t help but crack a fond smile. Someone’s eager.

Ian

come with me to that abandoned building near the L

you know the spot

That’s how Mickey finds himself sitting atop a wooden platform, watching Ian run military drills below at 1 in the afternoon on a Sunday.

He fires his gun into the sky while resolutely pretending not to be checking out the younger boy below.

“Hey,” Ian says, breathing heavily and squinting against the sun and Mickey finds himself realizing he is made of things he cannot ever have, “You know that guy you beat the shit out of at that club?”

Of course Mickey remembers. His stomach flops at the mention of him.

“He wants me to sneak into his mansion and take all of his crap.”

“Really,” Mickey responds dryly, firing off another shot. He doesn’t want Ian to keep talking about him, “Hi-larious.”

“Can’t get it himself,” Ian continues, as if Mickey cares. And the worst part is that he thinks maybe he does — he cares about everything this alien-looking ginger has to say and he hates it and he can never, ever get enough of it, of him, of Ian, “Divorce. Says I can take whatever I want. He’s loaded. You want in?”

Mickey fires shots at the ground by Ian’s head where he’s crawling under some boards. He’s remembering seeing them at that bar in Boystown, out in the heat and in the sun and in public, cracking jokes and living a life Mickey can only watch from behind glass, from behind bars. Fuck that old guy for getting handed on a silver platter what Mickey so desperately craves but cannot have. Not just Ian — freedom. Though Mickey thinks they’re one in the same these days.

“Jesus! Use blanks, maybe?! Fuck.” Ian shouts up at him, dragging himself up off the ground.

“Bring my cousins?” Mickey asks, refusing to look at him. Every time he does he sees them together and wishes that it had been him, sun-drunk and laughing and free by his side.

“Yeah,” Ian shrugs.

“‘Aight, I’m in,” Mickey fires off another shot. He’s angry at Ian for nothing other than exercising his complete right to see other people since they weren’t really together anyway, he’s angry at that old ass man for being able to go out for drinks with him, touch him, kiss him, and most of all he’s angry at himself.

He feels broken for wanting him. He feels broken for not being able to be brave enough to admit that he wants him. He gets cut on his own self-hatred any direction he turns.

“I dunno what you see in that geriatric viagroid,” he says, forcing himself to meet Ian’s gaze, if for a brief moment.

“He buys me stuff, orders me room service,” Ian says nonchalantly, looking up at Mickey. It’s obvious how much he’s been working out. His shoulders are hard and defined, his chest chiseled through the dark green of his military shirt. Mickey feels the familiar sting of contempt rising in his throat and fires off two more shots.

He can’t buy him anything, let alone room service. The fuck kind of response is that? More than anything, it annoys Mickey because he knows it isn’t really true. He’s bullshitting him, and that gets to him more than Ted or Ned or Fred or whatever the hell is name is ever could. He knows he’s not that superficial. Sure, he doesn’t doubt those are nice bonuses, but he knows there’s more to it than that.

He knows Ian. He knows Ian and he wishes that didn’t have to mean he loves him, but it does. He doesn’t understand how anyone could know Ian and not love him. But he’s not quite ready to admit that yet, least of all to himself.

“He isn’t afraid to kiss me,” Ian adds.

Ah. There it is.

His world has become a breathing thing with Ian in it. Before it was stagnant, stale, drowning. It has become a beast with teeth that threatens to tear him from the careful scaffolding he has built around the most fragile parts of his life.

If he kisses him, then everything he fears he is will be true.

Some dumb fuckin’ fag.

So Mickey brings his cousins later that evening and doesn’t stop thinking about Ian’s comment for the rest of the day. The van ride is full of loud music and rolled down windows that let in the warm, fresh summer air, and Iggy and Colin are endlessly bickering and hitting each other in the back of the car.

“Can you assholes quiet down when we get closer? You’re gonna wake up the old lady and everyone else in the goddamn neighbourhood before we even roll in the fuckin’ driveway,” Mickey says, swatting at them from where he’s sitting in the passenger seat. Ian glances his way with an amused smile that Mickey only just catches when he settles back. He grins in return around the cigarette dangling from his mouth.

“Oh hey, pass one?” Ian asks, holding out his hand. Mickey’s about to give him one before a car speeds around a corner and almost T-bones the side of the van. Ian’s hand snaps back to the wheel to swerve out of the way, and Mickey drops the cigarette to the floor of the van in all the commotion.

“Asshole, watch it!” Ian exclaims as he uselessly flips off the car that’s now long gone down the road. Mickey lets out a guffaw of a laugh and abandons handing him the lost cigarette in favour of placing his own half-smoked one right between Ian’s lips.

The intimacy of the action doesn’t strike him until he’s nudging the cigarette against his mouth and his eyes are tracing the outline of his lips and he can feel the warmth of his breath against his tattooed knuckles. The raw familiarity of the action and the fact that Mickey’s own lips had just been on the cigarette that’s now resting on the edge of Ian’s mouth has his heart racing so quickly he can feel it in his chest like a ton of bricks. Ian casts him a side-glance out of the corner of his eye as he parts his lips to accept it. Mickey takes his hand away and clears his throat, glancing at the rear-view mirror to an oblivious Colin and Iggy.

“Thanks,” Ian mumbles, remembering himself as he snaps out of whatever it had been that passed between them just now.

Mickey wants to kiss him. He really, really wants to kiss him. He’d tried fucking girls and had been less turned on than he was just now doing nothing other than placing his cigarette in Ian’s mouth.

Ian pulls into the drive minutes later, cigarette since burned through and discarded out the window. Mickey tries not to feel the absence of it as though it were his own lips against his and not just the ghost of them stained onto the cigarette.

Colin drags open the side door and hops out with Iggy, zipping open a duffel bag full of guns. Mickey’s grateful for the distraction, for the absolute focus violence requires that he hopes will shove his desire to do something as stupid as kiss Ian out of his head.

“Hey! Whoa, guys, guys! No fucking guns, alright? It’s just a drunk old lady in there,” Ian says, brow furrowed as he looks at Mickey.

Trust Gallagher to be the defender of drunk old ladies. Mickey bites at his lip, trying and failing to ignore the way his chest swells with adoration at Ian’s request. Soft motherfucker. He’s right, though — any unnecessary violence and this could be a way bigger deal than it needs to be. Plus, he’d rather not piss off his only and best friend. He grabs the guns back from his cousins, much to their disappointment, and makes off toward the house.

He hadn’t woken up this morning thinking that today would be the day he’d kiss Ian. Hell, even now he’s sure that if he thinks about it any more he’ll chicken out and never kiss him at all. Mickey Milkovich, with the F-U-C-K U-U-P knuckles, who wears dirt and a scowl like they’re permanent accessories, is going to kiss Ian Gallagher, the freckled boy who protects drunk old ladies and smiles at him like he hangs the damn stars. He figures he was about to storm into an old lady’s house brandishing firearms without second thought or fright. Is kissing someone really that much more terrifying?

Abso-fuckin-lutely.

But there’s nothing between them but the van and Mickey’s fear. And fuck the fear. Fuck it.

He can pretend that he kisses him for no other reason than to prove a point, than to fulfill some implied dare.

At the end of the day, he kisses him because he wants to.

He kisses him because he likes him.

He kisses him because he loves him.

Mickey’s heart is racing so badly he feels that he might throw up and well, what an impression that would leave. Every part of him is shaking as he turns and takes one step, two steps, pulls himself into the van and…

His lips are against Ian’s. They’re so much softer than he’d imagined (and he had imagined, often) and warm and Mickey can feel the breath from his nose against his own face. He tastes like smoke and freedom and something sweet Mickey can’t place -- a fucking Snickers bar? -- but loves the taste of anyway.

His brain short-circuits. He lingers longer than he had intended to, but it’s real and it’s better than he ever thought it could be. He’d kissed Sarah Perkins on a dare back in 7th grade and he’d gargled vodka afterwards to wash his mouth out.

He’d thought himself broken for it just not feeling right. But this…this feels right. Ian makes him feel right. He had expected, hoped even maybe, that it would feel wrong. That he would kiss him and feel as though he had done something terrible, something worse than stealing from an old lady’s home, but if it does he can’t bring himself to care at the moment.

On his tongue, in his touch, with his laugh, Ian has given him the vocabulary to understand himself. To put a name to feelings mostly only understood in the illuminating glory of hindsight.

He’s spent his whole life outside of himself. Is this what it is to know yourself? Is this what it is for everything to suddenly make sense? He isn’t allowed soft things. He isn’t allowed this.

But here he is anyway.

And the world spins on.

He wants to kiss him again and again and again but he remembers his cousins in the house and what he suspects was probably less than five seconds feels like an eternity and Ian’s lips are starting to respond and move and is that his hand starting to lift to touch him? oh shit what if they come back to get him and this is what they walk in on and --

He pulls back and retreats as quickly as he’d arrived, throwing up a middle finger at Ian. Afraid to kiss him, Mickey’s ass.

Fuck he thinks as he runs back to the house, and can’t think much else but fuckfuckfuck, every inch of him charged and shaking and electric.

“Forgot somethin’,” he says breathlessly to the two boys who are, as it turns out, barely paying him any mind as they bicker between themselves about how they’re going to manage picking up a cabinet heavier than the two of them combined. Mickey’s not listening to them as they end up dropping it to split up and tackle smaller bait.

He grins wickedly to himself. He did it. Mickey goddamn Milkovich made a choice that wasn’t about pain or hurt or violence. He’d made a choice that was his and his alone and it was soft. Mickey Milkovich could choose to be soft, and gentle, and maybe even caring.

And if he can kiss Ian Gallagher? He can do anything.

#reposting this in a better format i think #gallavich #gallavich fic #mickey milkovich #ian gallagher #ian x mickey #why is read more not working brruhhh this is so long im sorry #IS it working??? idk #if it isnt #sorry!!!!#my bOYS~!!!!#my writing

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halinski · 4 years ago

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I have so many questions about your WIP folder... like, "BOTTLE"??? and are "BO" and "BOTTLE" two different fics? Also "16. Dreamcatcher!Derek", I'm very intrigued... And since there is a blue moon this month "41. Every Once In A Blue Moon"? (Ignore me it that's too many questions)(though I'd love to know more about your poems, too)

hahahaha, the questions are appreciated :D i actually think that i once posted a thing like this and that exactly this one and the blue moon one where asked for lmaooo but yeah you guessed it, BO and BOTTLE are essentially two different versions of the same fic, one further written than the other, and the other containing more of the initial outlining. It was basically inspired by a story I heard at work (and no longer 100% remember) but it was about finding romance via letters in bottles in modern times or something? I think there was a person who regularly found letters and decided to reply to people who had added an address, and so i naturally wanted to sterek it, like i do with basically everything, and I started writing a fic about Derek living in a basically deserted light house and finding the letter that Stiles addressed to his mother and threw into the ocean. I had a whole long storyline planned out for this! I believe there was even bottles with letters Derek had written to his family that came back to him and he stored away forever to be unread (until Stiles comes along ofc). But another version was that Derek never did anything about the letters, just read them, and there were ofc a bunch of sad ones. (Derek stored the all ofc). there’s diff save files with diff versions (and i believe two different files that have the initial idea i screamed at someone while at work) and in one version I’m pretty sure Stiles was a mermaid like Ariel that collected bottled messages and then found Derek through his letters (who once again probably lived in a lighthouse by the ocean) but that was like at least 4 years ago if not more and i hate mermaids now so that version is absolutely scratched lol I didn’t get really far with any version in written word though and I doubt I will ever really finish it? I mean who knows... but I could totally get all the way into my feels again thinking about it if i let myself... You’re in luck my friend, bc Every Once in a Blue Moon actually contains a part of a poem (i was gonna write a long story poem that would be split upon the separate scenes/parts of the fic) and the fic actually starts with this: //Where wolves run, hunters lie Chasing, chasing Till they all die/ I'm a wolf, my pack is dead My eyes are blue I should have died instead/ To all the mermaids of the sea I'm waiting here Come and take me// as you can see, this too contains mermaids bc i started writing this yeears ago but I’ve decided to transform this fic and actually did continue writing a bit (or well, mor accurately, planning) and it’s now just titled Evil in a different file lmao bc the mermaids are gonna be evil and will represent Kate bc why didn’t i think of that in the first place? as one can see in the poem, it includes a young and pretty suicidal Derek and he goes back to his family’s old vacation home that is now destroyed, and there are memories, good and bad, in particularly one of Peter’s first son, a little boy, completely human, which had perplexed Derek. It includes Derek asking the relentless ocean and horizon /why/ things happen and never getting a reply, and basically him giving himself to the ocean, to the mermaid that impersonates Kate (bc ofc Kate already happened and everyone is dead) and she makes him see her and the torture again (I live for angst, forgive me) BUT then in comes Stiles and saves Derek from drowning and helps him heal. This is kind of a mixture of an au, a different world, with canon as we know it in TW and last but not least! Dreamcatcher!Derek ahhhh This one has always been in my head more conceptually than actually formed into words. It’s basically Derek after the fire and stuff, where he kind of just gives himself to supernatural powers (do we see a theme here *ehem*), he basically kinda loses himself to his nightmares, becomes so used to them, lives in them, he kind of transcends into the dream world? I had a few rough years full of nightmares every night so this idea was just very deep for me back then. And then Derek would go around to other people’s dreams and fight the monsters in the dreams. He was just like an instrument then, helping other people to get some rest, while he worked restlessly. I guess it’s based kinda on lucid dreaming, breaking free from your body and reality. For Derek it’s like... yeah nightmares are /horrible/, he knows best, this is why he does this, but for him personally... they’re better than real life. So he just kind of gives his physical body up and retreats to his mind. This is where Stiles finds him (*hint hint*). Aka Stiles is having nightmares, and Derek comes to him to save him. Of course, Stiles being Stiles is very aware of the shadowy figure that pops up in his dreams and changes everything, and Stiles being Stiles he starts chasing Derek, and Derek is so confused bc most people don’t interact with him in their dreams, certainly not the way Stiles does. So then basically Stiles is the one who catches Derek and brings him back out of the dreamworld, back to real life, back to himself. ...and they live happily ever after in every universe <3 hah sorry if this ended up way too long XD i guess i’m happy to share my ideas bc they might not ever present themselves in fic form ahhh so THANK YOU for getting back into these and letting me amuse myself haha

#wip meme #tag game asks #theladyandthewolves

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sebastien-le-booker · 5 years ago

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I just finished reading six of crows, for the second time and despite the fact that i knew what was gonna happen, it still was a rollercoaster and my heart was broken and i cried and uuuuuuuuuuuurrrgrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgqhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

so, i decided to make a post with my favorite quotes and parts. again, english is not my first language, the book is not in english, so some of the quotes will be translated by me and google translate.

Also, i decided to post this again bc it doesn’t show up in the tags anymore and it kinda took me a while to edit this because of how “amazing” tumblr works...

"We'll be kings and queens Inej. Kings and queens"

“I’m going to get my money, Kaz vowed. And I’m going to get my girl”

Those 2 are probably my favorite and idk why but they are. the one with kings and queens just feels so full of hope and i loved how kaz said those words, i just absolutely love it.

and what got me at the second one, was the “I’m going to get my girl” Despite how difficult it is for him to admit his feelings for Inej, even to himself tbh, right now, nothing else matters but “his girl”. The money might matter, but i think that is more about the fact that he got screwed over and you don’t screw over Kaz, but it’s his girl that matters the most.

“Scheming face. Jesper whispered to Inej.

She nodded. ‘Definitely”

From the same category “Kaz and his scheming face”

“Kaz looked south toward Ketterdam’s harbors. The beginnings of an idea scratched at the back of his skull, an itch, the barest inkling. It wasn’t a plan, but it might be the start of one. He could see the shape it would take—impossible, absurd, and requiring a serious chunk of cash.

‘Scheming face,’ murmured Jesper.

‘Definitely,’ agreed Wylan.”

I love Jesper and Inej and now Wylan being familiar with Kaz scheming face, for me this is sort of like they paid enough attention to Kaz to know what some of his expressions mean and i love the part where it is described how an idea is starting to crawl inside Kaz head. I love it because it was mentioned a lot of the times how smart kaz is, and we see him talk about how he learnt all those tricks from the magicians and set up the plan for breaking into the ice court but now, it’s like we’re inside his brain and we slightly see how it works.

“Fine. But if Pekka Rollins kills us all, I’m going to get Wylan’s ghost to teach my ghost how to play the flute so that I can annoy the hell out of your ghost.”

“I’ll just hire Matthias’ ghost to kick your ghost’s ass.”

“My ghost won’t associate with your ghost. Matthias said primply, and then wondered if the sea air was rotting his brain”

“’When we get our money, you can burn kruge to keep you warm.’

‘I'm going to pay someone to burn my kruge for me.’

‘Why don't you pay someone else to pay someone to burn your kruge for you? That's what the big players do.’

‘Want me to tell you what real players do?’ Jesper said. ‘The pay someone to pay someone else to…’”

I love these scenes because they’re just sweet, casual moments between them and I’m wondering how many conversations like these did they have and how does a conversation like this sounds for an outsider dhsjldfjs

“’I’ll get us out. You know that.’

Tell me you know that. He needed her to say it. (...) He needed to know that she believed he could do this (...) He needed to know she believed in him.”

“He turned his head. They were sitting close together, their shoulders nearly touching. (...) he thought, What happens if i move closer?

‘I don’t want your prayers’ he said

‘What do you want, then?’

(...) a different reply roared to life inside him, loud, insistent, unwelcomed. You, Inej. You“

“Because I’ve been looking for an excuse to talk to you for two days”

“You okay? Inej asked and Kaz felt himself drawn toward her voice like water rolling down hill.”

“Kaz took her hand.

‘Inej, he said, his finger stroking her wrist. ‘If we don’t get out alive tonight, I want you to know that…’

Inej was waiting. She felt hope opening its wings inside of her, ready to fly if Kaz would push it with the right words (…). She lifted her hand and touched Kaz cheek. (…) Inej cupped his cheek in her palm.

‘If we don’t get out of here alive, I’ll die with no regrets, Kaz. Can you say the same thing?’

She could see it took every last bit of his terrible will for him to remain still beneath her touch. And yet, he did not pull away. She knew it was the best he could offer”

"He had felt horror and compulsion, but in spite of the chaos that had taken over them, he had also felt a desire that had remained imprinted in his soul, the hope that it would touch him again."

“’You shouldn’t make friends with crows.’

‘Why not?’

He’d looked up from his desk to answer, but whatever he’d been about to say had vanished on his tongue.

The sun was out for once, and Inej had turned her face to it. Her eyes were shut, her oil-black lashes fanned over her cheeks. The harbor wind had lifted her dark hair, and for a moment Kaz was a boy again, sure that there was magic in this world.

‘Why not?’ she’d repeated, eyes still closed.

He said the first thing that popped into his head. ‘They don’t have any manners.’

‘Neither do you, Kaz.’ She’d laughed, and if he could have bottled the sound and got drunk on it every night, he would have. It terrified him.”

“Kaz seized her hand, keeping it on the railing. He didn’t look at her. ‘Stay,’ he said, his voice rough stone. ‘Stay in Ketterdam. Stay with me.’

He took a breath. ‘I want you to stay. I want you to … I want you.’

‘You want me.’ She turned the words over. Gently, she squeezed his hand. ‘And how will you have me, Kaz?’

‘How will you have me?’ she repeated. ‘Fully clothed, gloves on, your head turned away so our lips can never touch?’

Speak, she begged silently. Give me a reason to stay. For all his selfishness and cruelty, Kaz was still the boy who had saved her. She wanted to believe he was worth saving, too.”

“But he could think only about Inej. Inej had to live. She must’ve escaped the Ice Court. And if she hadn’t, Kaz had to survive to save her”

All of these are all the moments they could have confessed their feelings for each other and some of the moments Kaz thought that Inej is the reason for which the sun still rises and there’s still some good left in the world. Poor boy is trying really hard sometimes but considering the things he’s been through it’s understandable that he doesn’t know how to say how he feels and that he’s probably afraid. But I also understand Inej and why she said “and how will you have me kaz? Fully clothed with your gloves on?�� she wants more than what kaz can offer her at the moment but at the same time she also doesn’t exactly blame him and understands that it’s what he can right now.

Honestly, Kaz is “an idiot sandwich”, unable of showing appreciation like a functional person, but I think, the fact that he lets Inej into her office to feed the crows, or takes off his gloves and shirt when she’s around, it shows how much trust there is between them and understanding. I know they’re not perfect, but I love them both as individual characters and how they are together.

I love the hints to shadow and bone trilogy like:

“I could read to you if i had anything to read. There’s a Heartrender at the Little Palace who can recite epic poetry for hours. Then you’d wish you had died.”

We all know this is about Tolya, who I love very much and I love how everyone seems to be annoyed by his poems and makes them wanna die just so they won’t have to hear them, but that doesn’t stop him.

Or, how Nina says that people in Ravka are starting to question the existence of the saints and that maybe they were just some powerful Grisha bc look at Sankta Alina… she was no saint and she had the same thought about the saints after finding out that Sankt Ilya was just a Grisha.

“Toffee?

Her eyes slid away guilty. ‘Kaz said to pack what we needed for the journey. ‘A girl has to eat”

My girl considers toffee as being essentials and I couldn’t agree more with her. I’ll forever be grateful for having a character like Nina.

“I can tell you’ve never picked a pocket.’

‘And i can tell you’ve never given enough thought to your haircut. Kaz frowned and ran a self-conscious hand along the side of his head ‘There’s nothing wrong with my haircut that can’t be fixed by four million kruge”

Idk what I think it’s funnier, Nina picking up on Kaz hair or him being embarrassed by it. She knew how her words would affect kaz and she went for it

“Inej heard a grunt and then a loud whump as Nina hit the bottom of the shaft like a sack of laundry. Inej winced”

“ Jesper like a limber insect, Wylan in stops and starts, wiggling like a caterpillar trying to make its way out of a cocoon.”

Yeah, ok Inej, sorry not all of us are as good as you at landings and jumping from buildings and all of that… I love that both of these are from Inej pov because this is her thing and she notices

“We'll see what's in store for us tonight, Matthias thought. It's true that tricks are not my language, but I might learn them in the end. "

Uhm… is this the moment this boy started to accept that the Dregs are not That bad and being anything other than a Fjerdan and living your life slightly differently isn’t a crime? *growth*

“’And you're right. I have no right to judge you.’

‘Don't start doing this.’

‘What?’

‘Agree with me. It's a sure way to dying.’

‘I don't like the idea of killing people, either. I don't even like chemistry.’

‘What do you like?’

‘Music. Numbers. Equations. They're not like words. They ... they don't get mixed up.’

‘If only you could talk to girls in equations.’

There was a long silence, and then, eyes trained on the notch they'd created in the link, Wylan said, ‘Just girls?’

Jesper restrained a grin. ‘No. Not just girls.’ It really was a shame they were all probably going to die tonight.”

Two things, Jepser, honey, Wylan will start agreeing with you and it will not lead to anything bad but actually something beautiful called love and you will spend the rest of your lives together and will be happy and in love for the rest of time.

Second thing, I love the “what a shame we could die tonight cause you and I could have so much fun together, oh boy, you’ve got no idea, the things we could do”

“Had he just killed two of his kind? Jesper had only wanted to survive. He thought of tthe banner on the wall, all those strips of red, blue and purple. He felt dizzy and confused. He knew the others were counting on him. He had to move on. But he felt that he had left a part of him in the yard, something he had not even known was important to him, something impalpable like fog. "

This made me cry so hard because, yes, Jesper has problems, it’s obvious from the first moment he’s introduced, but I don’t think he’s entirely aware of his problems and if he is, he is avoiding them and I don’t think he actually tries to understand why he enjoys the things that he does. In this scene, tho he is actually affected by what’s happening, he is visibly shaken up. He is a lot of things and I think this is the moment that he actually understands what his power means, why the other Grisha are choosing to use their powers and fight against the people that want to hurt them for their powers and that simply choosing not to use his powers, deny that he’s a Grisha, maybe is not an option anymore.

#six of crows #kaz brekker #inej ghafa #jesper fahey #nina zenik #wylan van eck #matthias helvar #soc mine

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angelbabylu · 6 years ago

Text

The Art of Losing // AI

pairing: i created an oc for this bc its pretty heavy

prompt: Imagine you and Ashton are married and have a baby girl. You and your baby girl are driving back from a long day at the carnival and you get into a bad car accident.

warnings: this is supposed to be sad okay, warnings for death, drug use, & problematic domestic situations

word count: 5.5k

notes: this is for @myemptywallets who sent me the prompt. i hope this is does your prompt justice. shout out to my love @5sosnsfw ! thanks reading and editing this. love you

title from the poem One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

- before -

There is no sound in the dressing room as Ashton sits typing away at the screen of his phone. He had taken a few photos of the boys during sound check, and now he’s posting them: Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, the works. With his focus buried deep in the world of social media, he is lost to the world around him.

A voice floats through the device on the desk in front of him, disrupting the silence with an exasperated, “Ash.”

He lets his eyes to flicker up to the neutral-faced woman on the screen for a half a second before shifting his attention down to Twitter once more.

“One second, babe. I just need to send this tweet.”

With a heavy breath, she tries to convey her feelings of discontent. Were Ashton paying attention, he would have picked up on it in seconds. Then again, were Ashton paying attention, she wouldn’t be upset in the first place.

“Ashton, I think you guys are big enough now that you can hire someone else to run your twitter account.”

He doesn’t hear her. Or, if he does, he’s too engaged to respond.

It takes a full minute for his head to pop up and his eyes to meet piercing ones, their intensity dulled by the LCD display. She never quite looks the same behind a screen. Something about her felt diluted by the machine that separated them.

“What?” His thick brows furrow, creating a deep V in the space between them. She is opening her mouth to restate herself when his brain catches up.

“Baby,” he scoffs. They had talked about this. “You know how impersonal that is to me. Our fans deserve to hear straight from us.”

This time he keeps his eyes on her long enough to take in how disconcerted she is. Ashton knows that face better than his own. There were hours in years past that he dedicated to learning her every emotion. On that day that Ashton said those fateful words (“Maren Anderson, will you marry me?”), he promised to always do what he could to keep her happy. His current actions were contradicting that vow.

“Mare, you okay?”

The look she gives him says that she obviously isn’t. He feels a twinge in his gut at the realization that he had been neglecting her. Placing his phone back in his pocket (after covertly hitting send on the tweet), he gives his attention over to her.

“What’s up?”

“I miss you.”

It is three simple words, but the weight of them is enough to crush Ashton’s heart. This is why he had become so engrossed in the business side of the tour. Being the band’s personal PR agent is just one of the many tricks he uses to keep his mind occupied. The more menial tasks he finds to consume his days, the less time he spends thinking about to what he left behind at home.

She reaches her left hand up to sweep her hair out of her face, the diamond on her ring finger catching the light, sparkling on screen. Ashton still remembers the day he gave her that ring - more so than the day he had stumbled into Tiffany’s at Saks Fifth Avenue, drugged out of his mind but sure of one thing: how much he wanted her to be his wife.

“Why aren’t you on tour with me again?” He tries to keep his tone light, recognizing what the scrunch of her nose meant. If he allows the conversation to continue with professions of just how much pain the space between them is causing, she will inevitably start to cry. Selfishly, he doesn’t want to go on stage thinking about his wife crying thousands of miles away, with no way to comfort her.

“We’re blaming Eden,” she says, and that is just the segue he is hoping for. If there is one thing that could put a smile on both their faces, Eden is it.

“And where is my little devil?”

His wife is sitting on the couch in their living room, and if the smile she shoots over the screen of her phone is any indication, so is their five-year-old daughter.

“Daddy!”

The scream is accompanied by high pitched giggles as a flurry of dark curls materializes on screen, dislodging the camera from her mother’s hand. In the next second, Ashton is facing the light of his life. She is smiling, as always, her dimples the size of craters on her cheeks.

“Hey! How’s my favorite girl?”

“Once again, your daughter comes on screen, and you forget I exist.”

His wife’s voice comes from somewhere to the left of the device, meaning she doesn’t see the roll of his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he calls out. “Who are you again?”

Neither Maren nor Eden take lightly to the joke.

“Daddy, don’t be mean!” the curly-haired kindergartener chastises.

“Okay, okay.” He raises his hands in defeat. “What are my two favorite girls going to be up to today?”

Maren’s head pops up on screen then, resting her cheek gently on the top of their daughters head. She doesn’t take the phone from Eden, knowing how much she likes to be in control during these family FaceTimes (“She gets this control thing from you,” Maren never hesitates to tell her husband.)

“We’re going to the carnival!”

He catches his wife’s guilty eyes over his daughter’s head. Just last week she had sworn they wouldn’t go to the carnival, citing it as punishment for Eden’s recent unruly behavior.

“We’re only going for a few hours,” Maren tries to explain. “Because Eden was good and cleaned her room today without me having to ask.”

“And I spoil her?” His voice is incredulous, hinting at a conversation they’d had numerous times before.

Eden, too clever for her own good, comments, “You both spoil me.”

The sound Ashton releases is an embarrassingly loud guffaw. Eden is sharp, to the point where Ashton is continuously amazed by her mind. Of course, he remembers watching his younger siblings mature, but something about watching his daughter, someone he helped bring into the world, go from only being able to laugh and babble to now developing her own firecracker sense of wit, felt different. He is immensely proud. And grateful to be blessed with someone as amazing as her.

“Your eyes, your smile, and now your sass,” his wife says fighting a slight smile. “She is her father's child.”

And she is. The resemblance is uncanny. Not only in their looks, but in their personality as well. They are both talkative pranksters, demanding of attention, always in need of stimulation and excitement. Together, they wreak havoc in their house. They are partners in crime. His wife often complains that they needed another child ASAP. It is easy to feel out of place in the Ashton and Eden Show.

“I’m daddy’s child when I’m bad, mommy’s child when I’m good, and uncle Lu’s niece when I whine too much.”

Eden recites the mantra Maren has been repeating since Eden could talk. There are more sayings for the other boys as well. She is Mikey’s niece when they couldn’t get her away from her video games and Calum’s niece when she is melodramatic.

(A few days before they had gone on tour, Ashton had walked into their house to find Eden home from Kindergarten, sprawled out on the tan carpet of their living room. His wife at their record player with a Depeche Mode album in hand.

“What’s going on here?” he had asked.

Maren shrugged. “She came in, threw herself on the carpet, and asked for this album.” She waved the Some Great Reward Vinyl in her hand before slipping it out of its sleeve and onto the player.

“Bug?” Ashton turned to his daughter then, looking for more information.

No such luck.

“People are people, daddy.” She said as if there was some great weight on her five-year-old shoulders only Depeche Mode could solve.

Ashton caught his wife’s eyes. Then, as if there was no other response to the scene in front of them, they both sighed, “She is Calum’s niece.”)

They speak for a while, Eden monopolizing most of her dad’s attention. She is in the middle of a nonsensical story that Ashton was having a hard time following.

“Four, five, six hippo princesses and a dinosaur car chase!” Ashton’s mind supplies, and even though he has no idea what that means, he nods along anyway.

A knock on the door interrupts them just as Eden begins to mention Ali’s tater’s and lasers, or perhaps alligator lasers, Ashton isn’t really sure. She pauses though, all three of their attention shifting to the door as Ashton called the person inside.

It’s three people. Luke, Calum, and Michael stumble through the door of their dressing room looking all fired up and ready for the show. As soon as they see who’s one screen, they do not spare Ashton a second glance.

They crowd around the back of Ashton’s chair and begin to all speak at once, offering varying greetings to Maren and Eden.

“Sorry little bug,” Calum begins once everyone has finished exchanging pleasantries. “We’ve come to steal your daddy away.”

Luckily, Eden does not put up as much of a fight as she usually does.

There are tears - there are always tears. The second Eden hears that her dad has to leave, she begins to cry. Her nose scrunches, similar to the way Maren’s had earlier, and her eyes well up with rivers.

“No please,” She begs her uncle. “I wanna talk to daddy.”

All five adult hearts at that moment shatter. The boys know how hard it is for Ashton to be away from his daughter. Truthfully, it is hard for them to be away from her too. At that moment, Ashton is the only one with a child, and in many ways, Eden has become theirs as well.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, they have done this enough that everyone knows how to calm the five-year-old down.

“Eden,” it is Luke’s turn this time. He crouches at Ashton’s side, bringing himself down to be face to face with the screen of the iPad. “You know your daddy & your uncles will call you after the show.”

“Yeah,” Maren chimes in, her hand gently running through the unruly mop of curls on her daughter's head. “And we have the carnival. If you talk to your daddy all afternoon, we won’t be able to go.”

Eden still doesn’t budge. “I wanna keep talking to daddy.”

“My little sunshine.” Ashton and his daughter are twins. He boasts about knowing how to talk her down. “Go to the carnival. Have as much fun as possible. Then later when you get home, you’ll have twice as many stories to tell me and all the time in the world to tell them!”

At the thought of making more memories to share later with her dad, the kindergartener reluctantly resigns. “Okay,” she pouts.

“Love you, little bug.”

They exchange a round of “I love you’s” before Ashton got up and got ready for the stage.

- after: ashton -

Calum receives the news first. He is the closest to the wings of the arena stage that night, so when their manager rushes on stage, only ten minutes of the set remaining, he is the first one she runs into.

Ashton doesn’t realize that he has stopped playing for a full minute. It is not until Michael and Luke stop playing as well, both their attention on Calum, that Ashton begins to register that something is off.

Later, he will tell them that he knows the bad news is for him from the get-go. How can he not, with the way Calum breathes, “Fuck,” and immediately turns to him.

The arena is almost silent now. What was once thousands of fans yelling the lyrics to She Looks So Perfect is now a mass quiet, curious faces. Ashton wonders if the crowd can feel it too, can feel the realization that his manager’s next few words will tear his life apart forever.

“We regret to inform you that due to a family emergency we will be cutting the show short. . .”

Ashton doesn't get to hear her finish the speech because the boys rush towards him, all but forcing him off stage. He knows his body is moving, vaguely aware of the gentle hand at the small of his back, guiding him through the backstage area. His mind - that is elsewhere. It buzzes with one question only: What the fuck was happening? It takes him a full minute to realize he is repeating it aloud.

He doesn’t get his answer until Calum shoves him into a chair in their dressing room - the very same chair he sat on earlier when talking to his daughter and his wife.

“Promise me you’ll take deep breaths after I tell you this,” Calum commands. That is never a good sign. That phrase is not one that is usually followed by good news.

Ashton looks up and meets Luke’s eyes. He is surprised to find that he and Michael are confused as well. Calum is the only one who knows what was going on.

“Cal, what the fuck is happening?” Ashton says in lieu of the promise.

Calum is silent for what feels like a full minute. Ashton could hear the sound of each second passing from the clock on the dressing room wall. Tick, tick, tick.

It counts down the seconds before Ashton hears, “Maren and Eden got into a car accident.”

Luke and Michael release gasps of shock, both staggering as if Calum’s words are enough to knock them off their feet.

For Ashton, the words don’t quite sink in. He is on his feet before Calum’s next breath. The phrase alone is too much for Ashton to process, but he is aware that it is Mare and it is Eden and it is bad news.

“Okay, I need to - “

He doesn’t get to finish before Calum is pushing him back into his chair. “You need to breathe. We have a flight. The four of us. We leave for LA in 2 hours. The car will be pulling up any second now. We’re gonna go to the hotel, grab what you need, and then we’re gonna go.” He speaks like he would were it Eden in a crisis, demanding and almost infuriatingly slow.

“Do you understand?”

When Ashton nods, Calum shakes his head. “I need you to use your words, Ashton. Do you understand?”

He’s not sure his voice will work. He surprises himself when he’s able to croak out, “I understand.”

“Did you want to try eating breakfast today?”

He doesn’t get a verbal answer. Instead, the mop of hair peeking out from underneath the comforter slowly shakes no.

“You need to eat something,” There is a pleading in his voice. Still, he gets no response from the body tucked tightly in the bed sheets.

Sighing slowly, he closes the door behind him.

Maren hasn’t said a word since they came home from the hospital without their daughter. He understands. Some days he’s surprised he’s able to get out of bed at all. His mother thinks that he’s in shock, that the finality of everything hasn’t hit him yet. Maybe he hasn’t realized he will never see his little girl again, never see her smile, never hear her say a sharp comment, nothing. He thinks she’s partially correct. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he recognizes that this truly terrible thing has happened to him, but if he doesn’t give himself the time to think, the time to mull on just how world crushing the situation is, he won’t snap. He won’t fall to pieces like his wife has. And right now, he has to keep it together for her.

When he gets downstairs, he finds Calum, Michael, and Crystal in the kitchen.

There are a million people staying at his house right now. Luke refuses to go home. He spends most of his days curled up in bed with Maren. From what Ashton can gather, neither of them say very much. They just sit together in silence. Sometimes when he walks by the TV will be on. Other times, they’re crying. But he hasn’t heard either of them utter a word. He’s happy (a funny word at that moment) that Luke can be there for Maren in a way that he can’t.

Mikey and Crystal will go home sometimes. Mostly because Maren doesn’t like seeing Crystal, the small 4-month baby bump a reminder that of the child they had lost.

His mom and his siblings are milling around somewhere. They flew in just a few hours after he did.

God. Just 4 days ago he was still on tour. He shook the thought out of his head. There was no point in worrying about how his fans were reacting to its abrupt cancellation.

Calum catches sight of the motion and looks over him with scrutinizing eyes, “You okay?”

Calum had been his rock in the past four days. Ashton will never forget how he ushered him from one place to the next that first night, getting him ready for the plane flight and the subsequent visit to the hospital. And now, there was no way he could plan this funeral without Calum. They were the only ones strong enough to. Better yet, the only ones strong enough to pick themselves up after a good cry.

Neither of them told anyone about the day at the funeral home. Calum had barely been able to clarify, “We’re looking for child caskets,” before the both of them broke down in tears. That was the only time Ashton allowed his emotions to slip. Even then, he forced himself to regain composure, perhaps too quickly. Ashton is afraid that if he lets himself to really cry, he will never stop.

“Fine.” He responds to Calum’s earlier question.

Eventually, his sister joins them in the kitchen and all five of them make breakfast. It is a little crowded, but everyone just wants to be around each other, so no one complains.

The funeral and wake will be later that day. The wake is being held at his house so of course his mom has been up since the crack of dawn cleaning. Never mind the fact that they could easily hire an entire crew to do so. His mom recruits his siblings, Michael and Crystal to help with the cleaning. Calum and Ashton go over final funeral details. And Luke and Maren. . . they cry and try to gather their strength for the funeral.

Ashton makes it through the funeral, his eulogy, and the wake that follows. He makes it to the end of the week. He makes through seven days of his wife not uttering a word to him. So, he feels weak when the thing that finally causes him to break is his mom leaving.

He had rolled his eyes at the airport when she asked, “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” and all but pushed them onto the plane. He knew they wanted to stay and be there for him, but his siblings still had school. They had already taken a week off. They made promises to see each other the next holiday and then said goodbye.

It doesn’t hit him until he gets home.

There are no more distractions.

The funeral is over.

The few days post-funeral he had spent shopping for and catching up with his mom and his younger siblings.

Now they are gone too.

Michael and Crystal are home together.

Luke is probably curled up somewhere with Maren.

Calum finally went home to his girlfriend, no longer needed to help plan a funeral.

Ashton is alone.

Maybe not totally alone.

He takes a deep breath and climbs the stairs, en route to his room. He knocks but knows better than to expect an answer before pushing it open.

He’s surprised to find that Luke isn’t there. He’s even more surprised to find his wife sitting up, and scrolling through her phone. “Luke went home?” he asks.

She doesn’t even look up at him.

“Yeah.”

Yeah. The first word his wife has spoken to him since the death of their daughter.

He sits gingerly on the bed. His side of the bed. A bed he hasn’t slept in for months.

“Should we. . .” he trails off, looking at her, hoping to meet her eyes.

She keeps her gaze down.

“Should we talk about it?”

For a minute, he thinks she isn’t going to respond. She’s almost robotic in the way she stares at the small device and in the movement of her thumb. He thinks that maybe if he sticks it out, if he sits by her, she will look up at him and they will finally get to talk about it - to go through this pain together.

They don’t.

“Ashton,” Her voice is small. She turns off her phone, but her eyes never leave it. “Don’t take this the wrong way but - “

Her voice is breaking, just like his heart.

“I’m having a hard time okay? I just want to be alone to process my emotions. I can’t talk about it. It is still too painful.”

He doesn’t know what that means. What he’s supposed to do with that information. A million responses roll through his mind.

He eventually settles on, “Okay.”

Before he’s even out the door, he has his phone in hand, dialing a number he hasn’t touched in years.

- after: maren -

The first words Maren says after Eden dies are, “I need to go get Eden ready for school.”

She’s woken up by someone placing something on her bedside table, and for a brief moment, before she even opens her eyes, her subconscious thinks it’s Ashton waking her up to go get Eden. They had done it many times before. He would make her breakfast, a nice gesture, but inevitably wake her up with the clanging of the breakfast tray on the bedside table.

But this time it wasn’t Ashton, and she would never get Eden ready for school again.

When Luke lets out a shuddering breath, reality comes rushing back to her. As soon as her eyes open, she is crying. She has only seen people through her tears recently.

Luke is crying too.

At this point, it’s two days since Eden’s death. One day since they got home from the hospital. The car was hit on the passenger side, where Eden had been peacefully babbling, playing with a stuffed giraffe she had “won for her uncle Lu” at the carnival.

A drunk driver. Dead on impact as well.

The car had spun out, gone off the bank on the opposite side of the road before being stopped by a thicket of trees. She had been conscious until the airbag deployed, causing the majority of her injuries.

Lucky. That’s what the doctor said when she awakened. She was lucky to walk away with a few burns and a broken arm.

Mourning a child felt impossible. If the driver had hit her side and Ashton were planning her funeral, she knows it would be hard, but some part of her thinks like it would be better.

She has experienced life. Eden has not. She’ll never experience the first day of first grade, she’ll never get her first report card, do a science project, have a first crush, bring a significant other home, anything.

The thought swarms her mind what feels like every second of every day. So much so that she can’t speak. She thinks that if she does, all that will come out is a list. A list of things that she’ll never see her baby do.

So, she locks herself away. Luke is the only one brave enough to come and see her - and even then they don’t speak. They cry and listen to Eden’s favorite albums and watch Paw Patrol of all things. All without exchanging a word.

She leaves her room twice in that first week. The first time, she shuffles down the stairs in search of water. It’s expected when what feels like a thousand voices float up from the foyer, getting clearer as she gets closer.

She knows that all the boys are there. They wouldn’t leave Ashton’s side at a time like this.

When she walks into the kitchen where they’re gathered, everyone grows quiet, watching her as if she is teetering on the edge of a break.

To be fair, she is.

She sees Crystal’s baby bump for the first time since the accident and immediately breaks down in tears.

The second time is for Eden’s funeral.

Ashton even gets a fucking priest. Neither of them are very religious, so it feels disingenuous. She briefly wonders if five-year-olds go to heaven. If Eden is somewhere at that moment, being taken care of.

It’s a nice thought. Something easy to believe.

Perhaps that’s why Ashton got the priest in the first place.

She sits in the back and leaves before it’s over.

Ashton tries to comfort her at times. She’s aware of him coming to her door daily, of the food he sends up with Luke even after she says she doesn’t want to eat, of the gentle hand that he places on her shoulder at the funeral that she promptly shakes off.

She loves Ashton.

She does.

But Ashton is Eden’s twin. They were always joking about that. Now, Maren couldn’t look at him without being reminded of everything she’s lost.

She doesn’t expect it when Ashton stops trying.

The day she sends Luke home is the day she pushes Ashton away.

She realizes too late that it’s a mistake. It means getting out of bed and making her own tea.

The first day she tries but finds one of Eden’s sippy cup forgotten at the back of the cupboard. She spends three hours on the kitchen floor crying.

At the end of the second week, she works up the energy to make an appointment with a grief counselor.

“And how is your husband taking all this?”

Counseling is going great until she gets that question.

She doesn't know how to tell her counselor that she hasn’t seen her husband in weeks. She has no idea where he is or what he has been up to. She never even asked him how he was feeling about the death of their first child.

At the encouragement of her counselor, she makes an effort to reach out to Ashton.

Staring at her phone screen for hours, she finally decides on a text.

Dinner?

She’s not sure that he will respond.

He does, seconds later.

He says, i'll be home in 20.

After all that time, Ashton still came running when she called.

She thinks it’ll be cute to bring back some of their old traditions. The first time she cooks for Ashton, it is after spending an entire day wrapped around each other. Naturally, she was wearing his clothes while she did it. Somehow, it becomes a ritual of theirs: her wearing his clothes as she moves about the kitchen, him watching from the sidelines pretending to help.

What she finds in his t-shirt drawer derails the entire night.

When Ashton walks in, she is not in the kitchen preparing dinner, but in the living room, sitting quietly in the dim light of their table lamp.

“Really?” Maren asks. This is the second conversation they’ve had since Eden, and she feels like this will be their last.

Ashton’s eyes finally fall on the bottle in her hand. It’s a translucent orange with a handful of white pills sitting at the bottom. When she shakes it, its rattle thunders through the room. His flinch lets her know that at least part of him feels remorse.

He had stopped taking Xanax before they got married. It was their deal. She would only marry him if he got clean. To know that he was back. . .

Ashton’s first reaction is to downplay it all.

“Eden is fucking dead, Mare. This is my way of dealing with it. Just like yours is to disappear to your room for weeks and refuse to say anything to me.”

Maren doesn’t respond. She knows that if she opens her mouth to speak, she is going to yell. Gritting her teeth, she tries to keep her comments to herself – comments about how her dead daughter is not an excuse for him falling off the wagon.

Her silence only serves to agitate him.

She has to tighten her grip on the pill bottle as he continues, voice rising as he yells, “What so you’re allowed to feel things, and I’m not?”

Anger bubbles inside her. First, he uses their daughter as an excuse to go back to the dark places of his past, and now he is throwing her own grief back at her. She stands, facing him, but tries to keep her voice level, aware of how easy it would be for both of them to start screaming.

“This isn’t feeling things. This is you not knowing how to deal with your emotions, same as always.”

“What the fuck are you on about?” He asks, as if this isn’t a conversation they’d had before, as if she hadn’t once begged him to go to therapy for it.

“When you were on tour, and you missed us, instead of allowing yourself to feel it, you buried yourself in work and pretended everything was fine. This is no different.”

“You’re comparing the pain that I’m feeling over our dead daughter to me missing you on tour?”

“No.” She knows he is purposely misunderstanding her for the sake of argument. She explains herself anyway, “I am saying that just like how you refused to deal with your pain then, you are refusing to deal with your pain now.

“Ashton, our daughter is dead.” He winces at her impassive tone. That is the difference between them. It has taken her months of depression and counseling to be able to say those words. Ashton isn’t there yet, and she knows that if he doesn’t acknowledge his feelings, he never will be.

“Our daughter is dead. And that is not something that you can forget or pretend isn’t happening with drugs. You need to allow yourself time to mourn her. The drugs? That’s not helping you feel things.” She calls back his earlier phrase again, to drive her point in. “That’s helping you burry those feelings.”

He recoils as if her words are a slap to the face.

“Oh get off your fucking high horse, Mare!” Because of the volume and the intensity of his words, now Maren is the one to flinch. It was like this before too, with the drugs. He was easily irritable, prone to blaming his out of control behavior on anything other than himself, “I had to deal with this shit by myself. You disappeared. I had to plan this funeral while I mourned the loss of our child. And you created this distance between us. You! The only other person who understood what I was going through.”

He’s screaming by the time he has finished.

And he’s right.

That’s the painful part. Maren fucked them up first, but if she sticks around, Ashton is going to make everything worse. She knows she didn’t deal with Eden’s death in the best way just like she knows that Ashton isn’t coping in the best way now. If they continue down this path, they’re just going to keep hurting each other.

“I think I’m gonna go.”

“Go where? We’re not done.”

She ignores his angry protests and sidesteps him as she makes her way to the door.

“I love you,” she says. Her back is to him, hand already poised on the knob. “I will never love someone as much as I love you. And that’s why I think it’s best if I go.”

“Why are you always trying to walk away from us?” His voice is small now, barely above a whisper. She can feel him pleading in his words.

He is referring to the first time she gave him an ultimatum. Back then, he had brought her the beautiful ring that still sat on her finger, but he had been so drugged up he could barely get words out. What she told him then is what she tells him now.

“You need to realize Ash that this is bad for you, for the both of us. When you realize that and you get clean, come find me.”

She looks back at him for a brief second, and the last thing she sees before she leaves are the tears running down his face.

end notes: don’t forget to let me know what you think! thanks for reading!

tag list: @5sosnsfw / @bloodmoonashton / @lukescaboose / @5sex-of-summa / @deviantnines / @halcyonnhood / @gh0st-0f-y0u-95 / @aspiringwildfire / @cal-pal-cuddles / @hotmessmichael / @hereforlukescruff / @softforcal / @ohhmuke / @calum5os / @grittyisathot / @calumamongmen / @ashtonandcalslefthand / @asht0ns-world / @colorful-queen-of-the-roses / @peraltiago-drarry / @slowlyelectronictragedy / @myemptywallets / @pagesuponstpages / @fallfrxmgrace / @thefireisgone / @michaelorwhat / @dammitbands

#ashton irwin #ashton irwin fic #ashton irwin blurb #ashton irwin imagine #5sos #5 seconds of summer #5sos blurb #ashton irwin angst #ashton irwin au #ashton irwin fluff #5sos fic #5sos imagine #5sos fluff #5sos au #luke hemmings #calum hood #michael clifford #my fics #jay writes

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sophygurl · 6 years ago

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okay so I saw your fox way post (which i realise is from like 5 months ago so i'm sorry if it's not in your main interests anymore) and I wanted to know what you think would be some good descriptors for the organised comfy chaos that is their house. bc i love the idea of a house of miss-matched over stuffed sofas and everything everywhere that doesn't understand the concept of minimalism but I can't find anything online that looks like what I imagine. Thoughts?

omg so The Raven Cycle in general, and Fox Way in particular, is never out of my main interests so thank you for this!! I actually have a Bunch of other metas that I’ve kinda collected notes for and one of them is actual physical descriptions of 300 Fox Way?

I feel bad because I’ve already promised @sparkly-things metas about Maura and Gray next up ages ago, but hopefully they won’t mind? And I happen to have a lil energy and time today, so here goes with every physical description of the house that I’ve collected during re-reads (may have missed stuff).

This got long, and is perhaps not even what you were looking for, but I hope it helps you and/or others looking for descriptions of the house!

Blue describes the architecture of the house, simply, as weird in TRB. In TDT she expands on that, saying it “was two houses knitted together, and neither structure had been a palace to begin with. Narrow hallways leaned eagerly toward one another.” I’m not sure if she means this literally, as in two small houses on nearby lots got made into one building somehow, or just that the way the house is built just makes it feel that way?

She goes on to talk about a “stray toilet gurgling somewhere” - since we know there is only the one bathroom is she talking about that or does this language mean there is maybe another toilet connected somewhere, like in a basement? Then “the wood floors were as buckled as the sidewalk out front.” Some of the walls were painted in vivid purples and blues, and some had decades old wallpaper (in the same rooms or in different rooms?). “Faded black and white photographs hung beside Klimt prints and old metal scissors. The entire decor was a victim of too much thrift-shopping and too many strong personalities.”

Gansey describes the house as being “cramped with extraneous people and whimsical objects. It hummed with conversation, music, telephones, old appliances.” Malory calls the house “lovely” and seems to appreciate just how many walls there are.

At one point, it’s said that 300 Fox Way is one mile away from Monmouth Manufacturing.

The exterior is a “little bright blue house”. There is a hand painted sign that reads “PSYCHIC” and then “By appointment only”. When turned around, the sign reads “CLOSED COME BACK SOON!” I’m not sure if there is a porch, but there is a porch light referred to when opening the front door, so that’s a good guess. There is a front step, so it’s not a ground level entrance to the front of the house the way it seems to be in the back.

Outside in the backyard - there’s Blue’s large Beech tree, which shades the entire backyard with it’s “beautiful, perfectly symmetrical canopy” that kept out all but the heaviest of rains. There is a high wooden fence covered with honeysuckle that blocked out neighboring lights and the canopy of the tree blocked out the moonlight.

Right off the sliding glass door in the kitchen, there’s a cracked brick patio leading into the yard itself. There are chairs arranged on the patio.

In the kitchen, above the table, is the chandelier described as a “badly designed stained-glass creation” (also described as “the fake Tiffany lamp”) - the one they have difficulty changing the bulbs in. The process of changing the bulbs took at least three hands and was generally left until all the bulbs had burned out - so consider that the kitchen would have different levels of light depending on how far along in this process they might be. The kitchen counters seem always to be cluttered with mugs, teas being made and packaged, essential oils, flowers, pots boiling, etc. There is also a cabinet filled with glasses, either in the kitchen, or close enough to the kitchen for them to rattle when one gets down off of the kitchen table.

Also in the kitchen - the door to the pantry that Artemus takes up residence in.

You can see to the front hall and the base of the stairs from the kitchen, and there’s a main hallway that connects from the kitchen, which is at the back of the house, to the front of the house where the front door is, and so I imagine that the stairs are right there in that front hall area. I also believe there is only the one set of stairs connecting the two floors. The staircase has a railing with a knob on it. In the hallway, there is a table with a clock on it.

The reading room can easily be gotten to from both the kitchen and the front hall, so I imagine it’s off to the other side of the stairs perhaps and maybe there’s a door from the hall and another to the back from the kitchen? There do seem to be multiple doors into the room, and since Adam describes it as a room meant to be a dining room, that makes sense to me. The doors are sometimes closed, so it’s not one of those rooms that is just separated off by archways or whatever.

Anyway, it is described as containing “the candles, the potted plants, the incense burners, the elaborate dining room chandelier, the rustic table that dominated the room, the lace curtains, and finally ... a framed photograph of Steve Martin.” Maura seems proud of that photograph, and makes sure to tell Whelk that it’s signed. It’s also described as having mismatched furniture, with an armchair at the head of the table.There’s a framed photograph of a standing stone on the wall. Also, apparently, there’s a phone in the reading room. There are blinds over the windows.

There’s also a living room, which I’m thinking is further into the house, because you can’t see the front hall/door from there. There is a fuzzy mint green love seat, and a blue striped chair, and a wicker bench in front of the window. There’s also a couch. I’m also guessing this is where the TV is, unless there is a separate TV room as well, somewhere on the downstairs level?

There is only one bathroom, and it’s upstairs. There’s a full bathtub.

The upstairs phone, the one dedicated to the psychic phone line Orla had put in, is in the Phone/Sewing/Cat room, which has green gingham wallpaper and is “full of a multitude of odds and ends”. I’m not sure if the long purple silk Calla does her aerial yoga in is always there, or of Calla sets it up before she does it each time? There are bins of sewing materials, a chair with a pillow on it, and I’m guessing this is the room with the sewing table in it?

Blue had repurposed canvas trees glued to her bedroom walls, decorated with collaged and found-paper leaves. There was a card table shoved against her twin mattress with reading materials on it, and a nightstand with a dim green lamp. Her closet door was covered with glued dried flowers. She had a ceiling fan that was hung with colored feathers and lace, also leaves. And she had copied a poem on her ceiling. There was a bird painted on one wall with a talk bubble that read “WORMS FOR ALL”. A shelf cluttered with buttons and scissors. A rotating fan in the corner. Blue’s room is adjacent to the Phone/Sewing/Cat room.

Maura has her own room, which is next door to the Phone/Sewing/Cat room. Calla describes it as being chaotic and messy and filled with too much shit.

Calla and Jimi share a bedroom. It is my considered opinion that they also share a bed, but this is never mentioned or alluded to. We do know that on Calla’s dresser is kept the three statues of Oya, Oshun, and Yemaya, the Yoruban goddesses.

Persephone’s bedroom was at the end of the hall upstairs, past the Phone/Sewing/Cat room and bathroom, and the door to her room was painted red. She had a desk with a Victorian desk chair, and a “high, elderly twin bed”. There was a shaggy rug.

Presumably Orla has a bedroom somewhere up there and if there are other residents of the house (see the post referred to in this ask for why I wonder about that possibility), then perhaps there are also other bedrooms??

The attic is accessible from the second floor with a door that leads to the stairs that lead up to it. This door is at the very end of the hall, probably past Persephone’s room. A single light bulb lit the attic and it didn’t reach the stairs, so that was a dark stairway. Once up there, there are numerous slanting roof lines which means this is one of those houses with lots of angles and not just one flat or arched roof. There’s also unfinished wood floorboards and areas patched with plywood. There’s a porthole window (along with other windows apparently?), the leads out to the mismatched roof angles outside. Before Neeve moved in, there was nothing up there because Maura was against collecting things.

When Calla and Blue go up to investigate once Neeve’s been living there, they find a mattress covered with throw rugs on the floor; lots of candles, bowls, and glasses cluttered together, bright painter’s tape making patterns between those objects, a half-burned plant stalk on a plate dusted with ashes, and in one of the narrow dormers - two full-length footed mirrors facing one another. Also a statue of a woman with eyes in her belly, a black leather mask with a large pointed beak, a red mask that matched it, a switch made of three sticks tied together with a red ribbon, and a little cloth bag with asafetida tied into it.

After they clear out Neeve’s things and it becomes Gwenllian’s room, the mirrors are still there, and the mattress, but it becomes cluttered with her own mess of things, also including candles and half-burnt plants.

So that’s what I got! LMK if you have more questions. I love this house and the people who live in so very much. Thanks for asking about it!

#300 fox way #the raven cycle #trc #fox way #blue sargent #maura sargent #calla johnson #peresephone poldma #ask me stuff #i swear i'm getting to those other topics soon #charactersoverkisses

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sisterofiris · 6 years ago

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Reflecting on humanity in the Ancient Near East

Philosophy is a well-known field of study. What is less well-known, however, is the fact that the Ancient Greeks didn’t invent it. Okay, modern methodology does effectively come from them - but reflecting on ourselves, and on the world around us, can be traced back to the literary epics and prayers of the Ancient Near East (Mesopotamia, Anatolia and the Levant), 1500 years before Classical Greece. Unfortunately, unlike Plato and Aristotle, these texts are not part of our popular cultural background. As a result, many people assume pre-Greek thought was crude and unsophisticated. Not so!

In other words: move along, Kant, it’s time to learn about Kantuzili.

In this post, I’ll focus on one topic in particular: Ancient Near Eastern reflections on humanity. The Oxford Dictionary defines “humanity” as both “the state of being human” and “the quality of being humane”. The question we’ll be exploring is thus: what makes us human/humane, and why?

Being human

Our first interpretation of humanity comes from The Death of Gilgamesh, a Sumerian poem written as long ago as 2100 BC:

You must have been told that the defilement of being human would bring you this. You must have been told that the cutting of your umbilical cord would bring you this. The dark day of humanity has reached you. The lonely place of humanity has reached you. The wave that cannot be withstood has reached you. The battle that cannot be escaped has reached you. The skirmish that cannot be equal has reached you. The fight from which you cannot escape has reached you.** (The Death of Gilgamesh E 17-24)

In this text, the meaning of humanity is clear: inevitably, we all die. This puts us in opposition to the Gods, whose existence is eternal (even when they do “die”, like Innana in her descent to the Underworld, they don’t perish forever). Being human, then, is having a set amount of time on Earth.

Another Sumerian text, Utu the Hero (c. 1800 BC), expands on this idea:

The life of a human is the blink of an eye. If a human lived forever and always, a bitter force, a painful thing could happen, but it would not be painful for the human. Life is tied to long death, but life is not equal to death. A god can count the days of life, but he cannot count the days of death. (Utu the Hero 46-51)

Here, due to the association between life and death, we have an explanation for human suffering. Note that it’s also possible for bad things to happen to eternal beings; however, eternal life compensates for any harm, so they don’t suffer. On the other hand, since humans have a limited lifespan, we are bound to suffer.

It’s worth mentioning that this worldview is shared by the Ancient Greeks, especially during the Archaic Era. The Homeric epics consistently depict the Gods as being able to experience pain (by being wounded, for example), but always in a fleeting manner. To quote the Iliad:

Such is the fate that the Gods spun for wretched mortals, to live grieving, while they themselves are without care. (Iliad 24.525-526)

The passage from Utu the Hero was later adapted by the Hittite prince Kantuzili (c. 1400 BC), whose choice of words gives it a more intimate spin:

For me life is tied to death. For me death is tied to life. A child of humanity does not live forever. The days of his life are counted. If a child of humanity could live forever, even if human ills and sickness arose, they would not be a grievance to him. (Prayer of Kantuzili 20’-23’)

Kantuzili suffered from some kind of chronic illness, and he spends most of his prayer begging his personal God to heal him. Instead of simply musing on the state of being human, he uses it as an argument: if his life was endless, his chronic illness wouldn’t matter, but since he is human, he should be healed.

Of course, no discussion about Ancient Near Eastern concepts of humanity would be complete without the Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh. The epic revolves around two main themes: the love between Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and Gilgamesh’s subsequent quest for immortality. Again, this ties into the definition of being human, as the Sippar tablet (c. 1800 BC) shows:

My friend whom I loved so much, who went with me through every hardship, Enkidu whom I loved so much, who went with me through every hardship, he went to the fate of humanity. (Sippar tablet ii 0’-4’)

Like previous texts, the epic’s lesson is that death is inevitable for humans, but it also brings up a new point: just like death is tied to life, suffering is tied to love. What prompts Gilgamesh’s desire to escape his lot isn’t pride, but the loss of his beloved. In short, we’re human because we die, because we die we suffer, and we suffer because we love.

Being humane

Beyond the meaning of humanity, the people of the Ancient Near East also asked themselves what it means to be a good human. Hittite texts are particularly talkative on this topic. In his testament, the founder of the Hittite kingdom, Ḫattušili I (c. 1600 BC), states that he is disowning his son because

He did not cry, he did not have mercy… He is cold and merciless. (Testament of Ḫattušili 6-7)

To the Hittites, being a good human - generally a good king, though the concept also seems to apply to common people - meant being merciful. The Hittite word for mercy, genzu-, overlaps with the concepts of love and benevolence. Etymologically it derives from genu-, “knee” or “lap”; thus what makes someone humane is their ability to (figuratively) take someone onto their lap.

The Telepinu Proclamation (c. 1500 BC) is particularly concerned with why we should be humane. When Telepinu came to power, most of his predecessors for the last hundred years had murdered each other to get the throne, but Telepinu insists on a different approach:

Do not kill anyone from the royal family. That is not good. Furthermore, whoever becomes king and seeks to harm a brother or sister, you are his council. Tell him clearly: ‘Read this story of bloodshed from the tablet. Once, bloodshed was common in Ḫattuša, and the Gods placed it on the royal family for you.’ (Telepinu Proclamation 29)

According to Telepinu, the Gods condemn bloodshed, whereas they reward harmony with prosperity. Being merciful, then - he also insists that his family’s murderers “harmed me, but I will not harm them” (idem, 23) - is good, because it restores the good order of things. The parallel between Telepinu’s throne name and the God Telepinu, who restores peace and harmony to a broken world in myth, is not a coincidence.

But what happens when our own humanity is not humane? This question is at the heart of Muršili II’s prayers (c. 1300 BC). To judge by his own account, Muršili is a good human, concerned with showing kindness and mercy; but he is confronted with the fact that the Gods have allotted suffering to him anyway:

I only punished her in this one way, that I banished her from the palace and discharged her from the office of priestess for the Gods. This was my only punishment for her. Gods, put this case down in front of you and investigate it. Has her life become bad now? Because she is alive, she sees the Sungod of Heaven with her eyes. She is still eating the bread of life. My punishment is the death of my wife. Has that become better? Because she killed her, throughout the days of my life my soul goes down into the dark earth. Did she spare me? She bereaved me. Gods, don’t you recognise whose is the punishment? (Prayer about the Misdeeds of the Tawananna A ii 17’-26’ and iii 1-4)

Muršili is pitting one side of humanity against the other: he questions the state of being human, suffering and death, because of the quality of being humane, mercy. If Muršili showed mercy, why would he be punished anyway? As far as I’m aware, this is the first instance we have in Hittite literature, and one of the first in Ancient Near Eastern texts overall, of someone doubting the Gods’ justice. Kantuzili, in all his pain, only ever asked: “What did I do to my God?” Muršili, however, protests: “Gods, what is this that you have done?”

This questioning is the result of a long history of reflections on what we are and why we are, and it doesn’t end with Muršili. Much of Greek philosophy deals with the same issues as Ancient Near Eastern texts, and it’s likely there was some influence (whether direct or indirect). But even without taking later Greek ideas into account, it’s clear that complex self-reflection was already well developed in the Ancient Near East.

As long as we’ve been human, we’ve wondered what that means.

**All translations are my own.

#ancient history #ancient near east #mesopotamia #Hittites #ancient greece #philosophy #damn i love cuneiform #damn i love the hittites #mursili ii #infodump #i've been waiting for the occasion to use that kant/kantuzili pun for 2 years so you'd better appreciate it

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imaghostwriter · 6 years ago

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11/11/11 (or more like 44/11/11)

Rules: Answer 11 Questions, Ask Eleven Questions, Tag Eleven People!

alright, so i had a lot of people tagging me in this one and i was really happy about every single one! but to sum things up a little (and also so that i wouldn’t have to come up with 44 questions myself) i decided to put it all in one post. i will tag 11 people with 11 questions of my own and answer all 44 questions i received under the cut.

thanks to the wonderful @thewritingsofart, @i-rove-rock-n-roll, @writingsonesdreams and @waywordwriter for being awesome and for tagging me! xx

now, here are my 11 questions:

1. if you had to rewrite the earliest work you remember writing, what would you change?

2. have you ever written fanfiction? if so, what was your first fic about?

3. do you have any foolproof methods against writer’s block?

4. have you ever thought about quitting writing?

5. is there an author who you feel influences you as a writer?

6. would you like to have fanfiction written about your works?

7. what is the nicest compliment you’ve ever received on one of your works?

8. have you ever cried over one of your own stories?

9. do you draw about your own stories?

10. have you ever written an au about one of your own stories?

11. have you ever written something creative in another language than english? if so, which one was it? and which language do you prefer?

sooo, those were my 11 questions. now my 11 victims are: @storyteller-kaelo, @metaphors-and-melodrama, @wasted-hymn, @authorified, @writingnosefreak, @quilloftheclouds, @bookenders, @vhum, @madammuffins, @catgirlwarrior, @blueinkblot

and for those who are interested, here are my answers:

@thewritingsofart

1. In what other format do you enjoy reading a novel? Script, Poem, Diary, Illustrated, etc.

i love stories of all kinds, the format doesn't really matter

2. What POV do you prefer reading from? Writing from?

third person, both reading and writing. it doesn't matter if the narrator is omniscent or stays up close and personal with the protagonist

3. Do you remember what your first creative writing piece was?

i remember the first one i created outside of school lmao it was awful but i've also grown a lot since then and i still remember my first work fondly. and tbh i still like the idea so i gottagive little me probs for that. it was about a girl who wakes up with no memories, in a world where everyone believes to have a certain destiny and thus doesn't question what happens to them bc they accept everything to be part of a greater scheme and she starts rebelling against that bc she doesn't want to accept that she was supposed to forget everything about her life and then tons of stuff happens

4. What are you working on now?

a fantasy novel which is a collab with a writer friend that i still know from school and a drama novel, set in the 1960's

5. How do you get in the mood to write?

usually i just reread what i've already written and that does the trick for me but if not then go back to my outline and work a little on that which reminds me of all the cool stuff that i wanna write that's yet to come

6. What in your daily life inspires you to write?

everything and anything. inspiration doesn't come from a certain place from me, it's compeltely random. i just hear or see or read something and it sparks an idea and then i'm stuck with it

7. Do you have a favorite writing snack(s)?

i don't snack much whilst writing tbh bc then i need my hands to write. but i snack a lot to procrastinate and then any snack will do

8. Who do you go to first when you want someone to read/look over your writing?

the friend i do my fantasy collab with is the only friend whom i'm entrusted with almost everything i've written in the last three years and i've even shared some of my older stories with her

9. What got you started in writing for pleasure?

i can't remember if there was a specific reason that got me started. i always liked the creative writing tasks that we got in class so one day i wanted to try writing a book. that was pretty much it

10. How do you create your characters? Do you use a character sheet or another method?

my characters are usually the first thing that come to me so i don't actually use any specific method to create them. they all serve the plot and are built for necessity around my protagonist to create the most believable and most fun dynamic that ultimately leads my main oc to where they need to be

11. If you could have one famous person, from today or history, to read your best piece of writing, who would it be? This includes authors

jane austen probably bc i think she could give me good advice on character dynamics and would smack me on the head for making a man the pov character in my drama novel. but i also think she would be super nice and encouraging in her advice. also she's one of my favourite authors so there's that

@waywordwriter

Heels or flats? flats! i can't walk in heels properly

What’s your favorite Starbucks drink? i don't go to starbucks. if i go to any café i usually get tea if i stay in or coffee if it's to go

Winter or summer both are very uncomfortable, temperature-wise. but i'll go with summer bc it's nice to be too hot for once when you're usually always too cold

Do you write short stories? heck yeah i do!

Favorite author? jane austen bc i always feel good when reading her books

3 words to describe your protagonist(s) going only with daniel from my drama novel: repressed, oblivious, gay

3 words to describe your antagonist(s) well, in my drama novel there is no clear antagonist as in it's not a person and in my fantasy novel the protagonists are kind of the bad guys so i don't really know how to answer this. capitalism? prejudice? believing you know what's best for the people you love and acting on it until your behaviour is downright abusive? none of these are three words but i'm rolling with it

Favorite school subject? constantly changed. when i graduated it was english, german, spanish, art and philosophy

Favorite book(s)? also ever-changing but since i picked jane austen as my favourite author i'm going with pride and prejudice

Favorite music genre? don't have one, it all depends on the song but atm i listen to a lot of old rock

How was your day today? veryyy stressful and emotionally exhausting but i also got to see a good friend of mine that i hadn't seen in some time now and that was nice!

@i-rove-rock-n-roll

1. What part of worldbuilding do you like the least? i'm a sucker for worldbuilding to the point where i procrastinate writing bc i worldbuild too much. there is no part that i don't like

2. Do you write in your own language? If not, why? i do! but i also write in english. at first bc it forced me to simplify my sentences due to a lack of vocabulary but now bc i like it and it gives me the possibiliy to share my work with a wider audience!

3. How many of your characters are orphans or have absent parents? not too many, actually. i think it's mostly a thing in my drama novel where it's 2.5/5 (one being an orphan, the other having abusive parents and one case where i'm not even sure if it's just a very complicated relationship or if it counts as downright abusive but the story doesn't dive too deply into it either). in my fantasy novel it's just 2/6!

4. Do you have any happily married couples in your story? uhhh... now that i think about it.. i don't. wow. never realized that, you really got me there!

5. What kind of visual arts (cinema, sculpture, painting…) inspires you and your stories? all.

6. Did you ever go somewhere and think “this is exactly my story’s setting”? not really. but certain places do sometimes inspire me to set my story somewhere similar. my trip to cambodia led to an outline for a pirate story that has yet to be written

7. If you take public transports, do you ever look at the people around you and imagine their story? yesss, i am 100% that creep that is constantly observing and analysing other people

8. What is the last book you read (or are currently reading)? Would you recommend it? it was "the death of mrs. westaway" and i definetely recommend it! it was a good read. even though i guessed the ending it was still thrilling and it didn't chip away any of the suspense bc the author always kept me questioning myself and always had me asking "but what if i'm wrong?"

9. When was the last time you read fanfiction and what was it about? maybe about two weeks ago? i can't remember what it was about bc it was just small bits of fluff but i do remember that it was a merthur fanfic

10. What is the first thing that came to you for your WIP? Was it a scene, a character, or something else? going with my drama novel: it started out with the idea to write something where the story couldn't stand the way it does if a single sentence where to be taken out. to have something written so minimalistically that only what is absolutely necessary remains but still have it be interesting, engaging and compelling. so i started writing something from the pov of someone who is just the most oblivious rhabbarb the world has ever seen. the rest evolved around it

11. Is there a genre or writing format you’d like to try in the future? not currently. these things tend to come to me with time and as soon as they do i try them out at once bc i can't wait haha

@writingonesdreams

1. How much of your writing is influenced by your daily life? Like does what happened during the day affect what and how you write? not intentionally but when it happens (and i notice it happening, usually) then it influences mostly my characters. their aspirations, their internal conflicts. the reason why daniel is struggling with the expectations of others is bc it's something i experience myself, although maybe not as strongly as he does. but then again, that's kind of a universal experience so it's not that noticable

2. How much of you is inside your characters? every single one of them has something from me but i always make sure to never make them too similar to me and whenever i see myself too much in them i start changing them around until i can distance myself enough from them to be able to write about someone else's experiences instead of my own

3. Do you start writing from the beginning or somewhere else? yes, i usually do

4. What is the most difficult for you about writing? connecting scenes. i never know when to write something out or to sum it up in one sentence and just dive into the next scene. it confuses me to no end

5. What is the hardest part about creating characters for you? my characters tend to come very naturally to me. they're born out of necessity for the plot and thus are fitted to it. i guess what is most difficult for me is reminding myself of the fact that all my charas have a live outside of the plot, except for my protagonist and usually have more than just that one (1) friend

6. What are the themes of your wip and what do they mean to you? both my wips deal with questions of morality, loyalty and autonomy and those are all themes that i spend a lot of my free time thinking about and/or that are very important personally. especially autonomy was always something that i was taught to value as a child and that my parents value a lot as well, even more than most germans which is saying something.

7. What books/movies/series whatever inspired or influenced your current wip the most? i honestly don't know. they're both not consciously inspired by specific media although i don't doubt that i was influenced by a lot of different works

8. What would be the biggest appreciation of your work for you? if someone loved it. if someone would read it not just once but then again just bc they felt like it and wanted to insert themselves into the world again. if someone would love the characters and bond with them. if my work meant something personal to someone.

9. Why did you choose to write this wip and not something else? What’s so special about it? my fantasy novel: i wanted to do a collab with a friend of mine whom i've known for a while now and she only writes fantasy so i thought it would be a good excuse to try myself out in the genre my drama novel: i honestly don't know. i can't even remember how the idea came to me but suddenly i was heads deep in a 1960's period drama about a gay dude and social pressure. i guess it was the way i write it, as minimal as possible, that appealed most to me

10. What kind of scenes do you not want to write/don’t enjoys writing but can’t get around them? scenes where i don't know what's going to happen plotwise but only the feeling that i want to get across

11. What part of the writing process is your favourite? (Coming up with the idea, thinking, outlining, researching, writing itself, editing, reading what you have written, etc) worldbuilding and creating characters bc i get to enjoy the creative process without worrying too much about perfection and editing bc it's meditative and bc i feel proud for completing my draft and don't have to worry about still having to write anything out. but i also love reading what i’ve already written! i guess in the end i have fun with all the parts lmao

#ghostly gabbing #tagging games #me #took me long enough to get to it lmao

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