#i just needed it out of me

[tseecka]

Jayce has always loved his hands, is the thing. They’re big, strong; well-shaped. There are callouses on the pads at the base of his fingers, rough and raised, the skin there deadened to sensation from hours of grasping rough-hafted tools, from cranking on the handles of the bellows. There are scars along his fingers, on the backs of his hands; errant embers from the forge landing on bared skin, places where a chisel glanced off of unshaped slag or where a delicate screwdriver slipped from the head and stuck into his hand instead. He’s always been proud of them, the story they tell of him, his life,, his origins. Talis hands.

He hates them now. Useless, ugly, indelicate things. He stares at them, stomach churning. He turns them over, eyes darting from callous to scar, tracing the deep-cut lines along his palms, follows the heart line all the way over to the back of his hand, to where a star-shaped mark sits pale on the rise of his first knuckle. He balls them into fists, watching the tawny skin turn to white as the bone presses up against it; clenches tighter, tighter, nails biting into his palms, until his eyes squeeze shut and he has to bow his head. He digs the knuckles into his eye sockets, hating, hating, hating. It’s a writhing twisting seething thing inside of him, this hate, this disgust. How prideful, Talis. How prideful to believe that these hands could change the world, could do anything worth doing, could make even the smallest solitary difference.

Wetness slides along the creased skin between his curled-in forefinger and his thumb. He doesn’t know if it’s blood welling up from his palm, or tears squeezing out from his eyes. Does it even matter?

“Useless”, he mutters to himself, lifting his head just enough to drop it back down, knocking stars into the blackness behind his eyelids. “Fucking useless.” He lifts his head again, this time bringing his forehead to rest against the heels of his hands, elbows digging into his thighs. His fingers unclench, just enough to rake back through his hair, then curl again, gripping tight. The thing is that he has always used his hands to solve his problems. Well, his hands and his mind, sure, but—it’s the hands that bear the weight, that lift and carry, that solve, that take up the pen and sketch out the thoughts in his mind, that bring to fruition his thoughts and dreams and plans, and right now they might as well be lumps of clay on the ends of his arms for all the good they can do. He can’t fight this away. He can’t work this problem with forge and anvil, can’t beat it out of formless slag into something beautiful and clean, can’t lift it away—can’t lift it’s weight off of—it just keeps bearing down, heavier and heavier, crushing his lungs, his spine, his--

As though to punctuate his racing thoughts, there is a sudden rattling inhale from the bed. It sounds like condemnation. Jayce lets his fingers wrench tighter into his hair, lets the pain in his scalp land like a punishment, because that’s all his useless hands can do with this. His breath catches, panicked, in the back of his throat, choking more tears out of his eyes as he listens to Viktor’s laboured breathing. What good is it, any of it—what good are his hands, with all their callouses, with all their strength, what good is he if he can’t even do this one thing? He’s not a healer and he knows that, knows that he can’t expect to have the final answer to this, but—something, there has to be something he could do, and weeks of late or even sleepness nights has revealed nothing.

Viktor is in pain, is dying, and there is nothing Jayce and his Talis hands can do.

[void-drifter]

it’s cheaper to buy vegetables here

[kensatou]

(✿◕‿◕) die (ꈍ ꒳ ꈍ✿)

[hinamie]

post-graduation trip airport looks

[sirtouchstarved]

nonononononnononononononon- PLEASE NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASPELPSALSLEPLAPSLEPALPPLEASPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE

PLEASE NO NOT NOW NOT LIKE THIS, BELOVED PLEASE, PLEASE DON'T LEAVE ME LIKE THIS I'M NOTHING WITHOUT YOU

[anna-scribbles]

adrien in my outfit from a few days ago✨ feat. my claws out converse

bonus:

[honeypleasejustkillme]

i thought i was at my lowest but holy shit it gets lower

[hymnoeides]

'Cause I'm stuck with your stories

[yuzuuu4]

(post 2.1 quest) unexpected

[adriles]

when we’re done with our overwhelming grief we’ll eat i guess

[chloesimaginationthings]

Abby went into the pit and made a FNAF friend..

[maiaczy]

Sometimes taking a leap forward means leaving a few things behind.

[a-scary-lack-of-common-sense]

I think I made some of you guys a little sad with my last post, so you can have some happy aftermath twins before part 2, as a treat ❤️

[stromblessed]

Mizu, femininity, and fallen sparrows

In my last post about Mizu and Akemi, I feel like I came across as overly critical of Mizu given that Mizu is a woman who - in her own words - has to live as a man in order to go down the path of revenge.

If she is ever discovered to be female by the wrong person, she will not only be unable to complete her quest, but there's a good chance that she'll be arrested or killed.

So it makes complete sense for Mizu to distance herself as much as possible from any behavior that she feels like would make someone question her sex.

I felt so indignant toward Mizu on my first couple watchthroughs for this moment. Why couldn't Mizu bribe the woman and her child's way into the city too? If Mizu is presenting as a man, couldn't she claim to be the woman's escort?

However, this moment makes things pretty clear. Mizu knows all too well the plight of women in her society. She knows it so well that she cannot risk ever finding herself back in their position again. She helps in what little way she can - without drawing attention to herself.

Mizu is not a hero and she is not one to make of herself a martyr - she will not set herself on fire to keep others warm. There's room to argue that Mizu shouldn't prioritize her quest over people's lives, but given the collateral damage Mizu can live with in almost every episode of season 1, Mizu is simply not operating under that kind of morality at this point. ("You don't know what I've done to reach you," Mizu tells Fowler.)

And while I still feel like Mizu has an obvious and established blind spot when it comes to Akemi because of their differences in station, such that Mizu's judgment of Akemi and actions in episode 5 are the result of prejudice rather than the result of Mizu's caution, I also want to establish that Mizu is just as caged as Akemi is, despite her technically having more freedom while living as a man.

Mizu can hide her mixed race identity some of the time, and she can hide her sex almost all of the time, but being able to operate outside of her society's strict rules for women does not mean she cannot see their plight.

It does not mean she doesn't hurt for them.

Back to Mizu and collateral damage, remember that sparrow?

While Mizu is breaking into Boss Hamata's manse, she gets startled by a bird and kills it on reflex. She then cradles it in her hands - much more tenderly than we've seen Mizu treat almost anything up to this point in the season:

She then puts it in its nest, with its unhatched eggs. Almost like she's trying to make the death look natural. Or like an accident.

You see where I'm going with this.

When Mizu kills Kinuyo, Mizu lingers in the moment, holding the body tenderly:

And btw a lot of stuff about this show hit me hard, but this remains the biggest gut punch of them all for me, Mizu holding that poor girl's body close, GOD

When Mizu arranges the "scene of the crime," Kinuyo's body is delicate, birdlike. And Mizu is so shaken afterward that she gets sloppy. She's horrified at this kill to the point that she can't bring herself to take another innocent life - the boy who rats her out.

MIZU'S ONE MOMENT OF SOFTNESS AND MERCY, COMING ON THE HEELS OF HER NEEDING TO KILL A GIRL TO SPARE HER THE WORST FATE THAT THIS RIGID SOCIETY HAS TO OFFER WOMEN, AND TO SPARE A BROTHEL FULL OF INNOCENT WOMEN WHO ARE THE CASTOFFS OF SOCIETY, NEARLY RESULTS IN ALL OF THEIR DEATHS

No wonder Mizu is as stoic and cold as she is.

And no wonder Mizu has no patience for Akemi whatsoever right before the terrible reveal and the fight breaks out:

Speaking of Akemi - guess who else is compared to a bird!

The plumage is more colorful, a bit flashier. But a bird is a bird.

And, uh

Yeah.

I like to think that Mizu killing the sparrow is not only foreshadowing for what she must do to Kinuyo, but is also a representation of the choice she makes on Akemi's behalf. She decides to cage the bird because she believes the bird is "better off." Better off caged than... dead.

But because Mizu doesn't know Akemi or her situation, she of course doesn't realize that the bird is fated to die if it is caged and sent back home.

Mizu is clearly not happy, or pleased, or satisfied by allowing Akemi to be dragged back to her father:

But softness and mercy haven't gotten Mizu anywhere good, recently.

There is so much tragedy layered into Mizu's character, and it includes the things she has to witness and the choices she makes - or believes she has to make - involving women, when she herself can skirt around a lot of what her society throws at women. Although, I do believe that it comes at the cost of a part of Mizu's soul.

After all, I'm gonna be haunted for the rest of this show by Mizu's very first prayer in episode 1:

"LET" her die. Because as Ringo points out, she doesn't "know how" to die.

Kind of like another bird in this show:

[hinamie]

I'm always pushing you away from me / but you come back with gravity / and when I call, you come home

[deep-space-lines]

IT'S FINALLY FUCKING DONE. I'M FINALLY FREE

UNTIL FRAUD COMES OUT

Tumblr shrinks it down pretty bad so please. please. I am begging you. look at the full sized image and zoom in. This art piece made my friends worried for my mental health I need someone to witness the amount of detail and effort I put into this

also the original sketch under the cut bc I think comparing them is really funny