#i'm pretty burned out

[misscrawfords]

What if I went back to university and did a degree in Russian and French though?

I could live at home* which would help my parents who have problems and are getting old, if I rented out my house that would cover the mortgage and probably a bit more and I could earn some money on the side doing Latin tutoring and hopefully getting some exam marking which would go towards the course fees.

IDK about the French though. I'm only really picking it because I already have an A Level in it and Russian I don't have any qualifications in so I probably shouldn't do two totally new languages. And I mean French is cool…

Hmm.

* back home with parents is very close to a very good university with a very good Modern Languages department.

[demaparbat-hp]

Fire Half-Child

[silusvesuius]

baby👶 drawings. these are very dear to me rn.. 2nd pic is my Nelavis with @barvin0k's Varonur 🩵 last one is a baby bosmer and snow elf, hairiest of them all. although the bosmer was meant to be my girl Barletta too lols

[choccy-sippy]

Spring? No. I'm in hell, the sun is on steroid

[screwpinecaprice]

I was trying to eat noodles neatly and for some reason I got sad midway. So I drew them messy eating a biscuit and a strawberry to combat sad noodle blues.

[yashley]

laura & ashley & imogen & fearne in c3e80 or:

[winepresswrath]

sudden yearning for time travelling teen jiang fengmian lands at lotus pier fic that winds up being about a perfectly nice kid having a varying series of "oh no. i don't like that. that's a lot" reactions.

[redactedshapes]

[cringefailvox]

Yooo you have an Alastor + Vaggie-centric AU 👀👀👀 what are some of the details if you don’t mind me asking jagsjajhsjsk

OKAY SO. back in april, birdsaretoddlers and i were talking about the potential hilarity of a vaggie/charlie/alastor poly dynamic and then we accidentally got way too into vaggie/alastor as a concept, which spiraled into a whole au that has unfortunately not left the discord server but MAYBE. SOMEDAY......

the barest bones of it are essentially that vaggie represents everything that alastor finds most pathetic & baffling in other people: dogged, singular loyalty to a cause & a person based on sheer loving devotion, with no ulterior motives or plans beyond protecting and supporting that person. and of course she rubs him the wrong way extremely frequently, just as much as he gets on her nerves. she's nearly codependent with charlie while alastor would rather chew off his own foot than be tethered to someone in that way. he's the type of sinner who exemplified vaggie's mission as an exorcist, the kind of demon she wouldn't have thought twice about cutting down because he clearly deserves it. he's never felt remorse in his life and vaggie has been walking on her knees for a thousand miles in the desert repenting since the day she fell. they are diametrically opposed.

AND YET. alastor recognizes a lot of his own traits in her as well! she's guarded, secretive, violent, has a lot of trust issues, and possessive of what she considers hers. alastor knows exactly what that's like. but vaggie is mystifying to him, because he cannot for the love of g-d understand what kind of sentimental nonsense could drive her to recklessly put her life on the line for charlie over and over and over again, with no regard for her own safety and NO other motivations besides?? LOVE??? sounds fake but ok.

vaggie also sees some of herself in alastor too, as much as it rankles—she's reminded viscerally of herself in the early days after losing her wings and her eye, suspicious and traumatized and deeply mistrustful of charlie's good intentions. couldn't even fathom that kindness could be genuine in hell. she looks at alastor and all of his trust issues and decides "redeeming this guy is impossible, but i really think i could at least get him to stop biting," you know, like you'd think about a reactive shelter dog who keeps growling at your handful of treats. you'll never be able to take that dog out in public without a lot of precautions and low expectations, but at least at home, it'll trust you not to hurt it if it lays its head in your lap.

for alastor's part, his whole interest in vaggie starts off as a way to cuddle up to charlie (and piss off lucifer), but he rapidly gets way too invested because there's no such thing as doing anything ironically for long, and it's kind of his Move, yk? he worms relentlessly into someone's life until he firmly has their attention, and then when he realizes he's in too deep and tries to withdraw and they cling, he's like "?? leave me alone??" (bird: "the ol vox special gets him literally nowhere") but now VAGGIE is invested too bc she's reluctantly fond of this creepy weirdo who eats deer carcasses in his room and for some reason let adam almost kill him defending the hotel, he doesn't get to just crawl away and die from his injury now that she's finally starting to like his freak ass. of course alastor is a nightmare patient and vaggie's bedside manner is atrocious so they're really bad at it. but they're trying and that's what matters!!

(also, charlie is weeping with joy in the background of all of this—her two biggest supporters, getting along!! kind of!! she's so proud of them both!!!! [alastor has completely forgotten that this venture started off as a way to manipulate charlie. get polycule'd, idiot]).

hopefully one day we'll manage to turn this into an actual fic, but for now enjoy these highlights :]

[mintjeru]

it probably wasn't the smartest decision to start an ongoing 1000+ chapter webnovel when i know it'll consume my every waking thought but here we are

open for better quality | no reposts

[plusultraetc]

final(s) straw

Ironically, none of Nemuri's friends sleep like normal people.

At 12:47 am, Nemuri lets her head fall to the table.

“I hate finals week.”

Across from her, Yamada makes a sympathetic noise. “Why don’t they tell you when you assign a paper that you’re going to have to grade the papers after?”

“Exactly.” She points in his general direction without lifting her head. “I’m so glad someone finally knows my pain.”

It’s not even Friday, is the thing. If it was Friday-technically-Saturday, Nemuri could hike up her big girl pants and get this done, but it’s Thursday-technically-Friday and she has to proctor two exams tomorrow and so all she has to hike up are her most luxurious pink pajama bottoms and even they aren’t really making her feel any better.

She has patrol on Friday evenings. She is going to cry. 

“I’m going to sleep all weekend,” she says, half-affirmation, half-promise.

Yamada makes another note in the margin of the paper he’s grading. It joins a sea of its crimson brethren. “I’m not.”

“Oh, shit, nooo.” She reaches across the table and makes grabby hands until he surrenders one of his own. “Quit your job.”

“Which one?”

“Not this one. You can’t leave me here.”

“You brought me here.”

Nemuri hums with her cheek pressed to the top of tonight’s lowest-scoring final. “Like a mother bringing a child into this world of suffering.”

“Kayama, what?”

She pats his hand delicately and then digs her nails in with one final squeeze. Yamada yelps and jolts away. The dishes rattle warningly in her kitchen cabinets.

“I hope that woke you up, because it did jack shit for me,” she grumbles, pushing herself upright. Yamada shoots her a petulant look, shaking his abused hand loosely.

“If you’re really that tired, take a nap. I’ll wake you in a little bit.”

“Yamada, sweetie, if I take a nap right now there won’t be a force on earth that could wake me.”

“You could sleep on the floor.”

Nemuri blinks at him as he returns his attention to his paper. “Like, on a futon?”

“No. Like on the floor. That way, you can’t get too comfortable, and it’ll be easier to wake up.”

“What?”

He glances up at her. “What do you mean, ‘what?’ I did that all the time in high school.”

He did… what? Floor naps? He did floor naps in high school? Yamada was a year behind her at UA, but she has the vague recollection that he always had really good grades. Like, really good. Like pull an all-nighter, study until your eyes are burning, and then nap on the floor instead of going to bed so you can keep studying good.

“Yamada, what?”

“Why do you keep saying that!”

Nemuri flails. “Floor naps!?”

“They’re effective!”

“They’re ridiculous! That’s something a ridiculous person does!” She would know, and so would he, because their mutual ridiculous person does pretty much exactly that thing. Nemuri reaches across the table and Yamada, beautiful fool that he is, lets her grab his hand again. “If I had known you were taking floor naps in high school, I would have intervened much sooner. I would have made it my personal mission to tank your GPA in the name of sleep.” A horrible thought occurs to her. “Wait, do you still do that now? Do you just curl up on the floor at the station next to your recording equipment and sleep for half an hour?”

Yamada rolls his eyes. “Who do I look like, Aizawa? Of course not!” He pauses. “And half an hour is too long. No matter how uncomfortable you are, you will fall totally asleep after half an hour. Fifteen to twenty minutes is ideal.”

“Oh my god.”

“And you don’t take floor naps in public. You take them in the privacy of your own home where you can lose control of your life but no one is around to see it.”

“Oh my god. I’m getting you professional help.”

“For what? I don’t even do that anymore. I don’t have time to nap.” He waves a marked-up essay at her. “I have three jobs.”

[brynnmclean]

saw a post questioning shipping Senua and Thórgestr and started to reblog it with a tag novel-- felt weird about doing that since this is lengthy and potentially derailing, so making my own post instead. Spitballing under the cut:

First off, any time someone is like, "the real reason people ship this is because they find the dude attractive," this is SO funny to me as someone who doesn't find men attractive IRL and has fiercely loved Senua since I played the first game, like-- actually I find the dynamic between those two characters to be compelling and interesting precisely because of all the baggage between them re: their backgrounds, the rough (put mildly!) beginning of their relationship, all the things they don't talk about, and them finding a common enemy/common ground to work with. The explicit parallels between them stated in-game scratched an itch in my brain. The minute they pointed out the dark rot on his arm, it was like, "oh! hello there! NOW I'm interested in whatever your whole deal is" for me. Also, idk man, I too would follow Senua around after she knocked me into the dirt and then showed me a way to fight the giants that I very much wanted to fight instead of appease.

The idea that Thórgestr was part of the Orkney Raid that killed and mutilated Dillion is VERY interesting food for thought, even if I don't personally have that headcanon (surely there are more viking raiding groups than just the Bjorg). I think the Furies or the Shadow said something similar about Fargrimr (his kin murdered yours, you shouldn't save him, etc.) so I completely get that line of thought, but I think the game left it ambiguous enough that it's up for interpretation. Would I read fic with that premise? Yeah, I'd check that out. Could Senua forgive Thorgestr if his people were involved? Sounds fun to explore.

If (ha, when?) I write fic, I'd have to think more about it especially wrt timelines, like when did the Bjorg start specifically raiding for slaves for giant food sacrifices vs. killing people for resources and wealth? How far off are we from the old gods "dying" and the volcano erupting? Was it indeed a different group of raiders who made a deal with Zynbel, attacked Senua's home, and made the sacrifice at that time to Hela?

At the very least, I think there's a time jump between the end of Hellblade I and the beginning of Hellblade II since Senua wasn't alone on that slave ship and at least one of the (brief) survivors knew her by name. I wouldn't mind exploring that gap of time, too.

In any case I do agree that it would take a VERY long time for Senua to consciously catch feelings for anyone let alone Thorgestr with all their collective baggage. The idea of them having a relationship beyond friendship in the far off future of an AU where he survives is the only one that can make sense in my brain, personally. It would take time! Time they didn't get in the game! But I think there are a lot of different roads that could take, and some of them might be healthier than others. Shipping them certainly isn't forgetting or excusing what happened to Dillion-- or even mutually exclusive from still shipping Senua and Dillion. Or, frankly, also shipping Senua and Astridr, because I can see that ship too.

One of the nice things about all the details Ninja Theory didn't expand upon and that they left that ending so open is that the sky's the limit. I'm VERY interested in seeing fandom tackle this game as we get farther from the initial release.

[rosenfey]

things that are hard to find: writing advice that isn't condescending.

[front-facing-pokemon]

[gemknightau]

Even he must rest sometimes

[cryptic-underground]

The gremlin man has been finished! :D

Took a bit but I'm really happy with it. I was wanted to make him look like he was a cool trading or tarot card and I think I succeeded!

From my two second Google search of: the hanged man tarot card meaning, I got that it usually represents "an ultimate surrender, sacrifice, or being suspended in time." I don't know how fitting it is for os! Mac's character but oh well!

I originally wanted something like the hunger because of backstory things, I couldn't really find any results of it being an actual tarot card(since I'm semi basing from them) so I went with a different one. Still happy with it though.

I wanna draw at least two more things for overshadowed au, also tarot card related, just working out composition for them.

(AU by @lego-sand)