#its an endless paradox i say...

[soggyyycereal]

hOW DO PEOPLE SOCIALIZE ONLINE!!!! rAAAHH!!! I want friends but I'm too chicken to talk first 😔‼️

[animehideout]

I think a lot about jjk men being angry because their gamer girlfriend ignores them 😩

(sorry for the writing, english is not my first language

JJK Men x Gamer GF

a/n: Hello anon thank you so much for your request. I had fun writing this one. I really hope you like it 🫶🏻

( Requests are open )

Characters: Gojo Satoru / Toji Fushiguro / Ryomen Sukuna / Nanami Kento.

Gojo Satoru:

Satoru has been very busy with endless missions lately, getting home really late.

To ease your lonliness, you started gaming.

Well till it turned into addiction.

You were kinda mad at him for not making time for you or at least speak to the higher-ups to take some days off.

But you never talked that out with him, since you didn't have the chance to express yourself.

He surprisingly arrived early tonight, excited to spend the night cuddling with you while watching movies.

But he didn't expect you to have your eyes glued on the screen in front of you while gaming like a maniac.

The room echoed with the sounds of keystrokes and game music.

He jumped in excitement to surprise you but no reaction.

“huh? baby! Im hooome”

“hey” you smiled unenthusiastically at him and quickly turned your focus back on your game.

He raised his eyebrow, watching as you delve into your virtual world, a world seemingly more captivating than his presence.

Would try everything to bring your attention towards him.

He knows his touch makes you weak, so he leaned in wrapping his arms around your shoulders, kissing the top of your head, wishing to draw your attention away from your screen.

“I missed you so much babygirl”

His attempt failed miserably, you just hummed in return completely ignoring him.

When his affection didn't work he started teasing you attempting to provoke you and get a reaction out of you.

“You sure you can play this game? I feel like you suck at this”.

When his teasing fell on a deaf ear as well, his frustration reached its peak.

His calm and amused voice turned into an annoyed tone.

“ARE YOU REALLY GONNA IGNORE ME FOR THAT STUPID GAME Y/N?” he would yell in an unusual harsh tone.

The question hang in the air as it left you momentarily stunned.

“Why the hell are you yelling?” you would question.

“Oh so now I got your attention?! I've been trying to talk to you for half an hour now and all what you did is playing your stupid game”.

His anger was very evident.

He would remove his blindfold throwing it somewhere in your shared bedroom.

“So you got mad because I was focusing on playing my game but you didn't consider that I'm probably the one who's mad because you're never home” you let out of everything, confronting him.

“you're comparing this stupid game to my job?”

Oh boy he fucked up, he didn't get the whole point.

After raging and snapping at you he would give you the silent treatment.

Of course his narcissistic ass wouldn't apologize first.

He's convinced that it's your fault even though he was offensive as well.

You would eventually say sorry and he'll show you his bright smile at the spot.

Both of you would talk things out and find a solution to spend more time together.

“so we good now baby?...can we cuddle?”

“yeah Satoru just lemme finish this round” you would joke.

Toji Fushiguro:

As much as he enjoys your giggles and the way you throw cute tantrums while playing, he HATES IT when you're completely engrossed in your game, oblivious to the way he's sitting there watching you.

Kinda paradoxical.

He wished to have you in his arms.

Or having you on his lap while making out.

But all of these were just thoughts crossing his mind cuz you don't seem like you're finishing your game any time sooner.

And that annoyed him to the core.

“y/n, y/n ?”

“HOW LONG IS THIS GOING TO TAKE”.

You didn't even hear him with having your headset on.

He's very possessive of you and he wants all of your attention to himself.

Especially when you started chatting with your friends, while playing together.

That shit was his last straw.

“Thats it...get your ass over here y/n”

You would look at him in disbelief.

Mouthing “my friends heard you”

“oh trust me I don't give A SINGLE FUCK” he would yell again.

You apologized to your friends and quickly paused the game.

“Are you out of your mind Toji why did you say that”.

“Why did you apologize to your friends while I'm the one you should apologize to”

He would stand up approaching you, narrowing his eyes, clearly pissed.

His giant figure making you take a step back, trapping you between him and your desk.

“Now what should I do to you for ignoring me for too long huh?” he whispered.

You started stuttering, his strong aura did things to you.

His narrow eyes piercing through you, sending shivers down your spine.

“I- I'm s-sorry” you gulped.

“What a good girl...now turn off that computer before I smash it and get your ass on the bed”

Well you had no other options, so you obeyed him.

Unless you want to act bratty which will result in him punishing the hell out of you.

Would spend the whole night cuddling you, literally smashing you in his strong arms, never letting go of you. 🫶🏻🥹

“But Toji I really need to use the bathroom”.

“Nuh-uh”.

Ryomen Sukuna:

Two possibilities, whether you're too bold or you're suicidal and have a death wish to test this man's patience.

They just released this new game and you're completely obsessed with it.

You would spend hours playing it, luckily Sukuna was busy with some things so he didn't notice the way that game took your whole attention and energy.

He wants to be the one taking all of your time and energy.

But when he does notice, oh god, run or pray for your life.

“y/n come here let me kiss you”

“one second!!!”

He would look at you in disbelief.

Cocking his eyebrow, while leaning back .

Even though your back was facing him, you could feel the daggers he was sending your way.

“I said NOW”

“Please baby, I'm winning be there in a sec-”

You didn't even get to finish your sentence when he threw your whole set up off of your desk.

Your eyes would widen in shock.

You don't know if you should feel sad that your whole gaming set up got destroyed or scared that you're the one about to get destroyed.

“You dare to ignore me.. that's bold of you y/n” he would say in his deep voice, making your chest tighten.

“I'll only allow this once, there won't be a second time... do you understand?”

You would nod immediately.

He would throw you on his shoulder taking you to your shared bedroom.

“You need to be taught a lesson after all”

Of course he wouldn't apologize that he got angry at you.

I mean, it's Sukuna we're talking about.

The next day, Sukuna would surprise you with a new gaming computer with complete setup.

You've never imagined him doing this gesture but you truly appreciated that the king of curse actually considered your feelings.

“I don't understand what humans find so entertaining in this game... you should try murder is much more fun..”

You would happily unbox it and place it on your desk.

“Now, Doll next time when I tell you to stop you stop immediately without any stupid excuses”.

Nanami Kento:

Would be home after a long day at work.

Brings dinner with him and expects both of you to eat together while talking about your day and future plans for the weekend.

Only to find you in a dark room, only your computer screen glowing.

“y/n I'm home darling!”

“oh hey there baby” you would simply say eyes still glued on the game.

He wouldn't think much of it even though you were used to jump on him, embracing him in a long hug and telling him how much you missed him.

But lately all what you've been occupied with is this game.

Would give you space, while he takes his time to shower, prepare the table for both of you to have dinner.

“y/n dinner is ready, let's eat”

“yeah yeah I'll be there in a sec Kento” you said, agressively pressing the buttons on your controller.

He would sigh and head to the kitchen, to wait for you there.

Half an hour has passed, an hour and you didn't show up yet.

“shit” you said to yourself when you checked the time.

You ran downstairs to find him on the couch watching TV.

You slowly approached him and sat next to him.

“ken-”

“you don't have to say anything y/n”.

Your heart ached because you know you screwed up.

He would ignore you, his eyes fixated on the big screen in front of him.

You would place your hand on his lap but he would reject you.

“Kento please”

He would start lecturing you.

“You know, that was extremely childish y/n.. I've been waiting for us to have dinner together since the moment I left the morning.. that's what keeps me going.. knowing that I'll come back home to find you..but you did what? you ignored me”

He would be really furious but he kept it to a low and cold tone.

No matter how much he gets pissed he'll never raise his voice at you.

You would look down, embarrassed and feeling extremely guilty.

“I'm your husband y/n , lately you're not fulfilling your duties towards me like I do to you..”.

He is a responsible man, and he believes in efforts from both sides.

You would end up crying.

And he'll end up apologizing even though it was your mistake from the beginning.

He hates seeing you cry, especially because of him.

He regretted getting angry at you.

Between sobs you managed to explain to him that you were trying to win an award by getting the first place in this game.

Would bring you to his chest, holding you close.

“shh I'm sorry.. that's okay. I understand. I'm sorry if my words were harsh”

Would wipe your tears.

Doesn't go to work the next day and spends the day with you while you teach him how to play.

Thank you for reading (⁠♡⁠ω⁠♡⁠ ⁠)⁠ ⁠~⁠♪

[multidimensionalguidance]

The Martian Women: A Warrior's Heart

Now more than ever we see questioned the humanity and dignity of women who do not fit the stereotype of what they are supposed to be, look, sound, or act like. Such cases like Imane Khelif are heartbreaking to witness, specially considering the way these false allegations overshadow the efforts and hard work behind her skills, even more so now as an Olympian.

Imane has her Moon and Mars in Sidereal Scorpio, and the themes of others trying to take control of the narrative of her life and existence is ridiculous and overwhelming. On top of it, her Mercury and Jupiter are both in Aries. She is a huge embodiment of how the Martian experience tends to play out.

They are the individuals who deal with the consequences of being "too much" simply by not being afraid of voicing their opinions, of their appearance, or any other aspect regardless of how conflictive it might be. They have and endless source of power to pursuit their passions, and they often achieve as long as they their ego on check.

Childhood years consisted of a push and pull between not being enough of any of the polarities. Often, attracting unwanted attention and different degrees of aggressive/hostile behaviors (spoken, actions, etc). They learn to project outwardly the results of withstanding all of those experiences, and paradoxically are blamed for having a natural hostile response to a hostile environment or actions.

After being forced to repress their hurt, anger, and valid emotions they learn to channel it towards a goal because their nature (Aries and Scorpio) is to plan, analyze, execute, and repeat all over again. They are the Valkyries, Amazonians, etc who learn collectively how to fend for themselves in all aspects outside of patriarchal laws or standards.

From a historic and folklore perspective, Valkyries were associated and often accompanied by ravens or horses which matches perfectly the nature of Ashwini (horses) and Bharani (crows are similar to ravens) which are both in Aries. These mythical warriors guided souls to their depiction of heaven, and Krittika is ruled by the Sun + has a priestly caste. On different levels of humanity we've always had women who take their necessary place with violent, aggressive, and chaotic driven actions as much as men, yet its forced to suppression the most.

In terms of contemporary entertainment, many other concepts of female warrior or heroic/strong/independent female characters from all eras have Martian placements. This is not to say that Mars is the only representation for these arechetypes, but in terms of characters who have a really grim and/or dark past, it fits very well. Other planets (Sun, Moon, Venus, Jupiter) also have their own depiction of cunning female led roles but their background, characteristic, etc are all different. I will expand with other planets on a different post.

Brigitte Nielsen who was the main character in Red Sonja has her Moon in Aries (Ashwini).

Uma Thurman has her Sun in Aries (Bharani).

Summer Glau from the Firefly series and its continuation movie Serenity has her Moon in Aries (Ashwini).

Saoirse Ronan has her Moon and Venus in Aries (Bharani).

Gal Gadot as Wonder Women has her Sun in Aries (Bharani)

Lucy Liu (Sun in Scorpio (Anuradha/Jyestha) and Moon in Aries (Bharani), Cameron Diaz (Moon in Aries, within Krittika) from Charlie's Angels.

Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow has her Sun in Scorpio (Anuradha)

Peta Wilson in La Femme Nikita with Sun in Scorpio (Vishakha)

They function perfectly well alone and also within a group as as long as there is mutual respect. Society doesn't seem to know yet how to properly behave and treat individuals like them. Martian handle themselves in such a raw and powerful form that those who have weak morals, will power, inner strength, courage, or self expression regardless of gender might feel as if they are being personally attacked.

Now, it is good to keep in mind the distinction between deliberate attack or self defense. Due to previous trauma related with heavy power struggles they can easily feel wounded, and will could show an exaggerated or uncontrolled form of aggression.

It could also simply be intentional because both signs (Aries & Scorpio) tend to become more resentful or comfortable using violence if they understand is fair or justified. They LOVE "female rage". Every film, piece of literature, song, or form of art related to anger, disconformity, sadness, rage, wickedness, and other chaotic expressions connect with their suppressed darkness.

It allows them to fantasize of a world where women are able to demonstrate their anger freely without judgement, specially when justified and valid. They understand other women beyond the nature of their caged self under patriarchal standards, but the downside is that others do not connect easily with them.

This is why despite being the real underdogs of many empowering movements they are often lonely, alienated, punished, and treated poorly. It’s the most noticeable with Scorpio rashi, specifically Jyestha where they naturally attract envy, jealousy, and ill wishes the most. They are the ruthless Scorpios who don't really care about turning off their moral compass if it means achieving their goals. They are often only loyal to their vision and those who fit in it.

It is essential for Martian women to maintain a healthy management of their anger and learn how to release it in meaningful ways. Any type of exercise (gym, cardio, pilates, yoga, etc) or sports can become one of the most common channels to fuel their bodies and release heavy emotional overloads. Staying in touch with their root and sacral points by doing activities that promote you to feel safe, nurtured, grounded, creative, sensual, etc will also be optimal.

Protect your energy in all forms, and stay away from individuals who constantly trigger your fight or flight. The ones who make you feel constantly drained and tired. It can be easy for others to syphon your energy because you always have an abundant amount, so be mindful of the people you entertain, engage, and interact with frequently.

Ensure to maintain a good balance between mind and heart as well. Allow yourself to be vulnerable with others. Prioritize feeling safe and comfortable around others. Learning to control your impulses if you're an Aries, or letting go of control if you're a Scorpio. Protect yourself, but don't shut down completely.

[social-mockingbird]

dangerous habits (pt. 2)

(eleventh doctor x reader)

it’s me again, your favorite procrastinating fanfiction author, (finally) doing a follow-up to dangerous habits! i am a sucker for pet names as stated previously, but i am also a sucker for using them on other people. if you are my friend and okay with it you’re getting sweet-talked out the wazoo. this is dangerous if you have male friends. we don’t talk about the times i called my crush ‘honey’.

you can read the first part here! it’s not required, but it does provide a little more context?  

author’s rec while you read: the flower garden by joe hisaishi

________

He likes to catch you off guard with them. 

Thanks to your habit of losing yourself in thought (you were in space all the time! There wasn’t a weekend you weren’t visiting a new planet! You had a lot to think about!), it was pretty easy for him to appear behind you, warm hands sliding a familiar path around your waist, chest pressing into your back. 

“Hello, dear.” 

“Darling, you’ve disappeared again.” 

“Love, what are you thinking about this time?” 

You were starting to get used to being startled, and that was a strange paradox all its own. It was the worst on his happy days, because the gentle hugs were usually accompanied by the softest kiss to the back of your neck, or your jaw, or, if he felt especially cheeky, your mouth, after he’d spun you around and made you gasp. And, as he liked to say into your skin, he’d never been happier.

So now it was time to turn the tables on him. 

The benefit to having an especially flirty sort of lover is that you were picking up quite a lot of ideas for romantic teasing. Despite the fact that he knew exactly how to push your buttons, you were learning what exactly made him click–and you were waiting for the perfect moment to use your new knowledge. (You’d tried flirting to yourself in the mirror, once, to make sure you knew what you were doing, and made yourself laugh so hard that the Doctor had come running to make sure you weren’t choking.) 

“You sure Hayao Miyazaki isn’t from here?” you ask, knee deep in endless flowers. This planet was nothing but fields and always a gentle springtime. There was a pocket storm rumbling gently in the distance. The sun was a little cooler than Earth’s, so you had the Doctor’s coat draped around your shoulders like a cape, despite the bright weather. 

“Took him here once,” the Doctor says carelessly, a flower stuck behind his ear. “I think he made a film about it later.” 

“Remind me: we’re having a movie night later,” you say, knowing he’d forget. You wade to him, stepping delicately around a rock buried in the flowers to move into his space. You grasp one of his suspenders, pulling him down a bit to your level, trying not to smile at the way his eyes widen, at the way he sputters a bit when you touch him. You smooth his hair down and slide the goggles he’d forgotten to take off out of his hair. Then, you place the flower crown you’d twisted on top of his head, giving it a pat so it would stay. He’d been so wrapped up in watching the oncoming storm that you’d had plenty of time to weave the crown behind his back. It hangs a little down over one of his ears, and he twitches his nose at the smell of the flowers, blinking, adjusting to its weight. The bright yellow of the blossoms brings out the green in his eyes. 

“You’re really handsome, sweetheart,” you say, dropping your voice an octave, and lean up to kiss his temple, right underneath the crown. “Thanks for taking me here today. I love getting to spend time with you.”  

You can see his hands fluttering at his sides out of the corner of your eye. For someone so attractively smooth, he was remarkably awkward. 

“Close your eyes, love,” you say, and when he does, you grab his face and tilt it down, pressing your lips to his forehead, the bridge of his nose, his eyelids. The storm behind you makes the breeze kick up. The Doctor shivers a little and leans into your warmth. His hands come to rest on your hips. You can feel the tremble in his fingers. 

Oh, now you knew why he did it to you. This was fun. 

His eyes flutter open, a kaleidoscope of greens and blues and grays, a little unfocused as you adjust his bow tie and straighten the collar of his shirt. 

“What are you doing?” he says, almost to himself. 

“Flustering you,” you tell him, barely speaking above a whisper, and it makes his fingers tighten on your hips. “Come here, love.”  

You can smell the rain in the air when you grab his lapels and kiss him. It mingles with the scent of the flowers. 

“This is unfair,” the Doctor groans, chasing your mouth when you pull away. You run your fingers up into his hair and the words die in his throat. 

“I’m just returning a favor, Sexy,” you say, pulling him close as the rain comes down. You hold him like you’re leading a dance, wrapping him up in your arms as thunder rolls above your heads. The flower crown drips petals onto your shoulders. Both of you look like wet cats when you finally stumble back into the TARDIS, shivering, giggling, hands full of drooping flowers and each other. 

When the Doctor sneaks up behind you and grabs your waist while you’re toweling off your hair, making you scream and laugh, the TARDIS lights glitter with amusement. 

look at this small precious bean man like what I wouldn’t give to fluster this fool--

(also, tagging @greycircles1​ because you asked me months ago if I would do a follow-up and I wanted to but couldn’t think of anything so I didn’t answer your DM and sorry about that! I hope you enjoy this :))

[causalityparadoxes]

I think Mrs. Flood may be an Osirian. Specifically, Isis / Alozza

If they focus on the Osirian/Egyptian Mythology side of Sutekh, it would make sense: Isis is a goddess that has been associated with a million things. Importantly for this, she is connected to the sky, to rain, and to fate. She was also the sister-wife of Osiris, who himself is associated with cycles of nature. Including, the annual flooding of the Nile.

From there, the name 'Mrs. Flood' tracks! She is both the flood of rain and the wife of its endless cycle. She's also a widow, so of course she would have a married title yet no spouse.

It would make sense to include her specifically, as she is important to the Osiris Myth that Sutekh's history is based on. In it she collects pieces of Osiris that Sutekh/Set scatters after murdering him. After finding them, she resurrects Osiris for long enough to have Horus (or an aspect of him at least). Horus then 'defeats' Set. Which parallels the story in Pyramids of Mars.

Being an Osirian would explain her creepily ominous warning to Cherry. As while she would not be with Sutekh, she would still be a higher being with alien priorities. Her being on earth would also somewhat fit with the dweu. Where Isis waited on earth for Sutekh's awakening. Though not 1-1.

It could also connect back to Ruby, as Isis' has strong connections to motherhood. If Ruby was say, secretly an Osirian, there are options. Especially considering her name's reference to both the Sun and the colour red, like girl is nearly a verbal description of the Eye of Ra. She could be the daughter of Isis herself, maybe a younger aspect of Horus (God of Light but also a god of the Sunday), hidden away as a human. Though that would be a very literal take. Honestly, when it comes to Ruby I'm not sold on anything specific.

Lastly, If they go this direction, I'm guessing the "vital object on a distant planet with no name" that rtd teased, will be related to the Osirians. Since they've already used the Eye of Horus, perhaps the Eye of Ra? It is has been depicted in relation to Isis. It's also often personified as a Goddess so, maybe Ruby herself? A living trap/weapon, idk). Whatever it is though, Mrs. Flood would be instrumental in defeating Sutekh. We'll see.

(Also: disclaimer and apology in advance to both people who actually know about the religions I'm mentioning, and to EU/Faction Paradox fans. For anything I may have got wrong 🙏)

[yeyinde]

IN DREAMS | Price x GN!Reader

Sweet dreams. Warm knuckles. The ghost of your lips pressing against his crown.  He never tells you he doesn't sleep enough, but somehow you just know.

》 WARNINGS: 18+ – MATURE, SMUT | GN!Reader: no use of pronouns, gendered language or anatomy; very soft smut; soft John Price; established couple; gratuitous fluff (does this count as fluff????)

》 WORD COUNT: 4,6K

》 NOTES: Since there were no gender specifications, I kept everything as vague as possible for the descriptions of MC so this could (hopefully!) be easily read as Gen Neutral Reader, Fem Reader, Male Reader, or whatever you prefer. I did my best to exercise as much of the angst out of this as possible but still found myself having to slap my fingers from typing out legions of hurt. This is my BEST attempt at fluff. Sorry.

This is wholly dedicated to this anon!!! I hope you feel better! 🖤 

Waking, he finds, is often easier than falling asleep. 

It's a quick descent into cognisance, the dream he had—long forgotten, never remembered—fading into smoke in the back of his head. The popcorned wall of his ceiling takes its place. A water stain in the corner—coffee brown. A crack above his head. The hairline fracture is just a small river of black that cuts through off-white. 

Falling asleep takes ages, aeons. Lying on his pillow for hours without feeling the talons of sleep dip into his temple. 

Silence is consuming. Crushing. It makes the threads of his thoughts echo in the recess of his mind, bouncing off the walls until they bruise. It leaves its mark in the shape of burning eyes, restlessness. 

Cureless insomnia. 

It's easier with someone else. You. 

Price isn't a man who needs much outside of a stiff drink or a rich cigar. Cures to an age-old conundrum in the form of vice—vices because Price was never a man who could just stop at one—but nothing batters the errant thoughts into quiet disinterest quite like you sleeping beside him. 

The noises you make are loud enough to drown out the ghosts in his head. Soft snores, the rustle of sheets. Your arm draped over his broad chest keeps him locked to the mattress, forced to forego his usual nighttime ritual of rising after trying—and failing—to fall asleep after a few hours. You stop him when he'd normally pour himself another drink, light a cigar on the deck, and watch the ethereal gloom of midnight swell over this little part of Liverpool he calls home. 

Keep him in check.

Though, sometimes, it doesn't work, and he lays awake all night staring at the damned ceiling while you curl up against his side, chasing lavender in your bare palm (a recurring dream, you tell him, and he tries to remember when he last slept long enough to truly have one. He comes up short each time.)

He rises before you, always. Doesn't have the heart to tell you he doesn't sleep. That he stares at the ageing canvass of the ceiling, mind stuck in an endless loop of inanities that are not worth losing sleep but still rake across his mind with a viciousness he knows won't go away until morning, when he wakes in a daze. A fog. 

So, when you ask him how it was, running rheum from your eyes, he lies and says it was okay. 

But he slept last night. Knows it because he dreamed. 

Falling lavender. Knuckles warm, soft against his temple. A voice—susurrus, low; the sibilant echo of sweet dreams whispered against his ear.

Sweet dreams.

Sleep, as an insomniac, is always a double-edged sword. No matter how many hours he spends chasing REM, that fickle mistress, she always evades him in the end. Dancing just out of reach. 

He wakes up feeling worse each time. Over-exhaustion. The paradoxical conundrum of being too tired to sleep. 

He feels the same clutch of evanescent slumber tangles through his lashes, making his lids too heavy to open, but it's dulled. Lessened. 

Price forces himself to keep his eyes open, staring at the blurry ceiling above. He wakes to this sight every morning. A familiar ritual. Three blinks. He watches the ceiling gradually grow clearer. 

His hand threads across the sheets, and where he expects to find the warmth of your skin, he instead meets empty space. The sheets are already leaking the heat you left behind. 

Price blinks, lashing clinging together from the sleep crystallising along the crease of his eyes. He has a headache needling behind his brow, a tension building from lack of sleep, and—

His tired eyes slide from the empty bed to the half-smoked cigar sitting in the ashtray. The empty glass of scotch beside it. 

He's found a cure for woes in the form of a stiff drink—scotch, neat; and a side of spring water—and a perfectly rolled cigar. Vices, of course: the kind that rots his insides, and stains his teeth. 

Cirrhosis. Emphysema. All the ugly little warnings on the back of a tobacco box. 

But it numbs the ache in his bones, and the ghosts in his head, so he considers it an equivalent exchange. 

(Just one that takes more than its fair share when he doesn't oblige by the rules.)

There is a respite from the steadily growing throb behind his left eye when he grinds the heel of his palm into his eyelids. A brief moment of fleeting pleasure. It rears when he pulls his hand away, letting them fall to the sheets. 

Today feels a little off-kilter. 

Without you grumbling about sleeping in beside him, peacefully chasing after lavender, and the same dream clotting behind his eyelids, he feels distinctly out of place. 

His hand slides over to your spot, fingers curling around the cooling sheets. The blankets are tucked in around him. 

Sweet dreams. Warm knuckles. The ghost of your lips pressing against his crown. 

He never tells you he doesn't sleep enough, but somehow you just know. 

You're not hard to find. He can hear the rattle of the old pipes as you shower; the hiss of the water hitting the title. 

Lured in like a beacon, a siren's call, he follows the breadcrumbs that lead him to you. 

Your silhouette is a dark line against the old curtain he keeps meaning to replace, but even the shadow of you seems to dampen the maligned feeling curling in his gut. 

A sight, he thinks, for sore, tired eyes. 

He rasps on the doorframe, announcing his presence. You scare easily, he finds, and he'd rather not get a bottle of your shampoo tossed at his head for the trouble. 

The curtain peels back. You greet him through the cracks, blinking owlishly through the rivulets running down your forehead. 

"Room for one more?"

A wide grin stretches across your face as you nod eagerly before disappearing behind the curtain once more. The spray of the shower swallows the echo of your laughter. 

"Thought you were gonna sleep all day, old man," you call, loud and exaggerated. He watches your arms lift over your head, fingers threading over your scalp. 

You think you're funny. Charming. 

(He does, too—he'll never admit it, of course, but he laughs the hardest when it's just you and him; when the world around you fades into the background, and all he can hear is your effervescent giggles over the words you uttered, the jokes that always come after the punchline. The ones that fall flat, that miss. 

It's funnier, you say. When it isn't supposed to be, you know?)

You wander through life with ease in your gait, a sense of peace in your mien like the world and everything in it is your best friend. Comfortable in your own skin, content with your lot in life. Happy, he thinks, just to be included. To be a part of it. 

Happy to have him in it. 

"Might have," he mutters, affection blooming in the gnarled remains of his heart. 

You bring a sense of chaos to his life that feels like watching a nasty storm brew in the distance from the sanctity of his window. Laughter that sounds like a whip of lightning striking the pavement, close enough to smell the ozone, to have his neck prickle with danger, but far enough to feel safe. A voice that echoes like a thunderclap. Pelting hail. A torrential rainfall. A gale. 

(All his life he was told to run from storms, but you make him want to chase the calamity brewing in the distance; to feel the hazard against his skin.)

"But I couldn't sleep without you snorin' in my ear."

"I do not—!" 

Your words of indignation taper off into a yelp when he pulls the curtain back fully, letting the chill of the mid-spring morning drift over your slick skin. Goosebumps ripple across your trembling flesh—no longer a tantalising tease behind plastic (ohh, you cooed when you first saw the simple navy and blue striped curtain. Very predictable, cap; very you) but bared to his eager, hungry eyes. 

He takes a moment to appreciate the sight that greets him, a low rumble spreading through his chest. "Well, don't you look cosy?"

"It's my day off," you whine, shivering when he draws out getting into the water behind you. "Let me pamper myself a little bit." 

"Don't you get pampered enough?"

"Do I?" 

His hands settle on your waist, nose bushing against the wet space between your ear. When he breathes in, the familiar scent of you floods his lungs. Warm milk. Honey sweet. A touch of loam, something bitter. The acrid tang of your sweat still clinging to your hairline. It reminds him of sex. Of your dewy skin when he has you pressed into the mattress, head burrowed into his neck, he fucks into the tight clutch of your willing body. 

He stirs. Want smouldering low and heavy in his belly. You feel it when he presses tight against your back, but there's no rush. He feels no urgency to seek release. To get off. He just—

Wants. 

Always, really. There is this distant buzz of desire that sits low in his belly whenever you're around. A constant simmer. 

Wanting you, he finds, is the same as craving a draw of nicotine behind his teeth. 

"Always," he rasps, nose running down the length of your neck. The warm spray of the shower rouses him from the last tendrils of sleep, clearing the congealed rheum around his lash line. "You always get pampered, love." 

When you hum, he feels it reverberate through his chest. "You're slacking today then, John."

His hands slide from their perch against your hips, your quivering stomach. Soft skin, slick from the water, flutters under his touch. He dips his hand down to cup your sex in the palm of his hand, feeling the heat of you bleed into his skin. 

"How do you want to be pampered then, love?" 

You lean back against his chest, tucking yourself into the fold of his body where you fit like a mismatched puzzle piece, bent and cut until it slides in. The gaps between your bodies are filled with the steam that curls off the hot water pulsing down around you. 

"Just—fuck, John—," you gasp when his thumb rubs soft circles over your sensitive skin, arching into his embrace. "Just—ah, just this—"

"Want me to wash you?" He presses his hips into the plush softness of your ass cheeks. "Or want me to get you off?" 

His question makes you mewl, thighs spreading to fit more of his hand between them. "A–anything—both—"

"Greedy little thing, aren't you?" 

"Fuck, John—"

Your petulant whine disintegrates into a soft hum when he wraps his arm around your waist, pulling you tighter to his chest. His chin settles on the plinth of your shoulder, watching his fingers trail over your sateen flesh. 

He's content to just feel you. The keen in your naked chest when his thumb brushes over a spot that makes you melt. The harsh pants; soft, languid little noises slipping through your wet lips—uh, uh, uh—interwoven with the hymn of his name. The shudders that wrack through your body when he presses the fat length of him against the plush seat of your ass. Your hips cant, rocking into his hold, as you greedily seek your release. 

Your fingers curl around his thick wrist, thumb and forefinger barely able to lock in the middle, and it's the sight of you wholly in his grasp that ignites a childish sense of glee in his chest. 

He's never been a particularly possessive man. 

The transient lifestyle he led, the one he'd been primed for since he was young, and everyone around him just expected that he'd follow in his father's, his grandfather's footsteps, doesn't allow such luxury. 

And he'd never been the type of man to take it. To want it, to pursue it. He was content with the ephemeral romance that came and went, a flickering flame that bloomed bright before eventually burning out. It was easier. 

Lonelier, too. 

You had been unexpected—a squall. 

Your presence has ripped through his life like a violent tornado, leaving everything turned upside down in your wake. 

You left him wanting. 

It always seemed silly to run toward the thing that could kill you, but when you grinned at him—the recession of water before a tsunami hit—he finally understood why some people chase danger their whole lives. 

He thought he'd have to adjust, to make room for you when there is no more space left. 

But storms don't squeeze to fit. 

They rip through. 

He supposes, then, that there's no need to worry about making room when there are no walls left standing. 

"Give you whatever you want, love," the words are a broken snarl in his throat, bleeding with the tangled remnants of his filthy desire; an aching sense of possession, and hunger. "Anythin' you want. Anythin'. Jus'—"

The empty bed flashes behind his eyes. Your side, now cold to the touch; the heat already fading out from the sheets. Whispered promises in the sleep-stained curl of his hair. 

"Jus' stay—," the mangled plea is a faulty firecracker in his throat. 

His arms tighten around you. Possession, he finds, is a silly thing. Ownership. Covetousness. All of it means substantially little to him when the only home he'd ever known is a duffle bag packed full of clothes he'd never wear. 

And then he comes home to you. The space is saturated with your scent. Little markings around the flat that remind him of your presence. That scream out into the desolate stagnancy of a place that was always covered in a fine sheet of dust, and cobwebs, that you were here. Are here. 

The fridge is stocked. The cupboards are full. 

His bed slept in. Calendar marked with dates that mean something to you—meetings, negotiations, birthdays of people who matter in your life. 

Scented candles run out the stench of disuse. 

The days when your worlds don't overlap, and he comes home to an empty flat in a city he thinks he loves, he's never felt emptier. 

It's harder to sleep those nights, too. 

The whisper of an empty bed haunts him, echoes isolation and loneliness each time he reaches out and can't feel the warmth of your skin. 

"Greedy," you mock, words a breathy mewl that are quickly swallowed by the hiss of the shower. Your fingers tighten around his wrist, clinging to him as he works you through the gentle waves of pleasure, slowly letting you drift toward the precipice of your release. 

It's when the other reaches up behind you to thread through his damp locks, nails scratching across his temple, that he finds himself a little lost under the swell of you. Swept away by your breakneck pace. 

Possession, he thinks, and finds himself drawn to the way your fingers curl around him. How you hold him tight, keeping him locked against you as you take. Syphon your pleasure from the feel of him against your skin. 

Hard, wanting, he barely thinks of himself when he grinds his pelvis into your ass, cock slipping between the globes of your cheeks. Too enraptured by the way you fit in the palm of his hand (in his head, his bed, his house, his life—) to worry about anything else. 

"Tha's it," he slurs the word into your neck, the scratch of his beard catching the droplets that run down the smooth column of your throat. "Jus' like that, love."

You writhe against his hand, strangled noises slipping from between the parted seam of your mouth. It's when his name falls, bitten in half when you snap your teeth together, lips curled, does he realise he's not even kissed you yet. 

His hand slides to cup your jaw, craning your neck until your chin rests on your shoulder. He meets you with a kiss, and can't stop the groan that rumbles out when he feels the weight of your lips on his. 

"You're extra touchy today," you breathe into his open mouth, words curling around his teeth. He tastes you when he swallows, and it soothes the burn in his joints; the ones that ache for nicotine. "What's got you in such a mood?"

"A mood?" He volleys, thumb rubbing the skin of your cheekbone, keeping you locked against him. He isn't ready to forfeit the taste of you, the feel of your lips moulding against his. "What kind'a mood do you think I'm in?"

"You're—," you gasp so prettily when he touches you in tandem with his peppered kisses; back arching in a way that makes him throb. "—clingy," you pant, breath warm and sweet when it ghosts over his tongue. "Needy."

You have this way of pulling truths out of him. Like you know how to crack his skull open, and rifle around inside until you find what you're looking for. A remarkable ability to galvanise his whims into words. 

Price doesn't even try to bite them back when they slip out, syphoned into the air from your pull. A black hole. A vacuum. You consume. 

(And he lets you.)

"Wakin' up," he starts, words trailing off when you buck, clumsily, into his palm. 

He devours you, then, swallowing down each moan and grunt you make as he brings you close to the edge, desperately wanting to see you fall. Break apart in his hold. 

"Tha's it, love." He murmurs, trailing open-mouthed kisses across the smooth column of your throat. His matted beard grazes your sensitive skin until you shiver, whimpering from the coarseness of it juxtaposed to the soft kisses, and teases of his teeth in small nips he plants over your slick flesh. "Come on—wanna see you cum for me." 

It doesn't take much to bring you to the brink. Years of learning your body, of decoding the little places and tricks that make you howl for him, have given him the insight into how to work you to completion. He uses them all, a softer, muted descent up that wobbling precipice, and knows when your toes are dipping over the edge when your nails bite into his skin, and your hips buck into his palm. 

You're a pretty little thing when your eyes snap shut, mouth dropping open as you dive down the vertiginous slope and into the maddening clutch of nirvana. 

His pretty little thing. 

He cups you in the palm of his hand, a fluttering little bird beating against his lifeline, and wonders if he can entice you to crawl back in bed with him, nestled tight under the covers while he spends the whole day worshipping every inch of precious flesh.

Might be able to, he thinks, when you go lax in his hold, chest shuddering with the shocks of pleasure the tips of his fingers bring. 

"God, John—" you whine when he keeps it up, 

 stroking your sensitive, throbbing flesh until your knees threaten to give in. "Stop—I can't—"

You could. He knows your body by now. Knows he could get you off again and again until you were a weeping mess tangled in sex-soaked sheets, begging him for reprieve. He nudges against your mettle each time, rapacious to see how far he can push you until you're overstimulated, and barely conscious. 

Greedy. Always. 

His hunger for you is never satiated. No matter how many times he buries himself inside of you, it's never enough. A ceaseless wanting deep in his gnarled chest to have, to consume. Something in the polluted pit of what was once the heart of a man who didn't think he'd succumb to greed, to gluttony, now wants to devour you whole. Ingurgitate you into his marrow, into the rotted remains of his still-beating heart where you'll stay, safe and sound, forever. 

His fingers itch, even now, to delve deep into your being. And so, he does. 

Tries to, really. But there's a surprising dearth of strength hidden in your body, and he lets you go without a sound when you push against his wandering, hungry hands. 

You twist in his hold, knees buckling as you try to slide down for him, but he stops you. 

"No, love," he rasps, the words ungluing reluctantly from his throat. "Later. Jus' wanna take care'a you for a moment, mm?"

His arm winds around your waist, pulling you taut against him. His cock is trapped between your bodies, leaking prespend over your quivering stomach. Price thinks he could get off like this. Staring at you like this—eyes lidded, cresting in the aftershocks of your bliss; gazing up at him through heated skin, warmed from the molten spray of the shower pelting across your body; lips blistered and bruised from his kisses, and the abrasive scrape of his beard over your flesh—he doesn't think it'll take much to get him there, but he finds he likes the delay a little more than usual today.

Likes the lazy way you lean into him, fingers threading through the damp, matted hair on his chest before sliding your palms down to where he aches. His cock juts up between your soft belly, and trembling thighs—fleshed vermillion, and swollen. Your fingers dance across his weeping slit, catching the thick pre-spend gathering there. The feel of your flesh on him—hot, and softened from the water—sends tendrils of pleasure coiling through his loins. 

He won't last. Not when you rest your chin against his sternum, staring up at him as you languidly work your hand over the head of his cock. Eyes heavy, drunk with the slow ebb of your bliss. 

You paint a pretty picture. One he finds he could stare at all day—every day—if you'd let him. 

Mauldin spools in his eyes. He knows this by the way your hands spasm around him, eyes catching the frisson that flickers across his face, mirrored in your liquid gaze. 

"What were you saying earlier?" You murmur, pressing a kiss to his slick chest. "Waking up—?"

You're teasing him, of course. The impish twitch to your lips gives you away. 

"Wakin' up alone—," he grumbles, hips canting into your grip. "Guess it made me miss you some." 

The impact of the words on you is breathtaking. The sudden bashful dip of your chin, the flutter of your lashes as you drink in his words—it's a sight that tucks away in the fibrils of his heart, kept safe for later when he's all alone in his bed, or off in some corner of the world with bullets raining down on him. 

(You don't have to worry much about bullets, you always quip, the barb in your voice, the teasing nonchalance, dulled by the quiver in your joints. You've fallen out of a helicopter more than you've been shot at.

He's never felt more drawn to you than when you're struggling through the fear gnarling in your eyes to joke about the many ways he'll die just to bring him some iota of comfort.)

His release bubbles quicker than he'd expected, aided when you press a soft, gentle kiss to his thundering heart. A wild storm on the horizon, one that leaves no wall left standing. You break him into pieces without even so much as a murmur. 

Price falls apart in your hands, and he thinks, then, about the promise in his dream. 

I'll catch them all for you, he'd said when you pointed to the whirling lavender petals falling down around you, eyes light with wonder. All of them. Jus' promise me you'll stay—

Your knuckles against his temple. The sun dawning in the curve of your smile. You breathe and he tastes wildflowers on his tongue. 

Stay? You echo, teeth flashing. But—

"I'd never leave you, John." 

He shudders in your grasp, fingers digging into your skin as he pulls you close, slanting his mouth over yours in a clumsy, searing kiss. 

Your name is drenched in benediction when he spills himself all over you, words a hushed gospel over the altar of your tongue. 

You pull away from him, eyes gazing toward the field of yellow sprawled around the hazel boscage. 

When he looks up, he finds thunderclouds on the horizon. A looming storm. 

"It's gonna rain," you murmur. 

He rumbles. "Doesn't it always?"

"Only when you're around." 

He catches a petal in his palm. That shape of it reminds him of the curve of your smile. He tucks it in his breast pocket for safekeeping.

"Best keep me around for a while, then, mm, love?"

The sound of your laughter is swallowed by the crack of lightning.

In life, he finds there is nothing better than a cigar, and a finger of scotch after a round of sex. 

(Or anything, really.)

He sparks the lightener, holding it to the end, and takes quick puffs from the stem. The sound of burning paper crackles as it burns in the flames. 

Price stands on the balcony, eyes aimlessly drifting across the docks. The water is grey, nearly black; shaded by the approaching storm in the distance. A dark cloud on the gunmetal horizon. He tastes ozone in the air; the electric buzz of a gathering lightning strike. 

The morning leaves him feeling off-kilter. The dream—dreaming, even—and the empty bed still sits in the pit of his guts. Uncomfortable, disquieted. 

He's anxious, he notes, fingers trembling around the fat stem of his cigar. Each draw does little to quell it. Nicotine and scotch on little sleep and an empty stomach do nothing to calm his ruffled nerves. A state he hadn't fallen into since he watched Laswell grow smaller and smaller on the horizon. 

He nearly smoked three cigars back to back before Gaz snatched his lighter. 

("Don't think this is helping you much, cap.")

It does. Did. 

But—

Your arms snake through the brackets of his elbows, curling around his waist. He's too tall for you to notch your chin on his shoulder, and so you settle for leaning over, and peaking out around the bulk of his broad back. 

"Lovely morning for it," you murmur. 

He catches your eye, teeth sinking into the stem of the cigar to hold it steady as his hands drop to your forearms. He catches the derision in your gaze. The pointed look you send him, sarcasm dropping from your eyes when they swing, pointedly, between the clock on the wall—barely noon hour—to the cigar in his mouth, and the glass of scotch on the patio table. Wordless disapproval of his mid-morning choices. His vices. 

It makes his lip twitch up, pulling back from his teeth. It's hard to talk around the delicately balanced cigar clenched between his incisors, but years of practice lead him well. 

"Ain't it jus'?"

He likes it when you're close to him. 

Needy, you'd said. Clingy. 

He feels it, too. There's a desperation inside of him, a clawing sense of affection woven with the threads of anxiousness, and it makes him unsettled when you're too far away from his greedy hands. 

His fingers latch around your arms. 

"You should stop smoking so much," you say in that tone he knows well—the one that, despite the subdued words murmured in a soft breath, actually means: stupid old man, you better listen or so help me God—

The same tone his mother had perfected when he was younger. Equal parts hedging, cautious, but firm enough to feel the blooming heat behind them. A caustic warning. One that, translated, means: there won't be another one. 

No more chances when you speak to him like that. None. 

And he gets it. 

He's on the wrong side of forty, and you're tired of the ashes on the sheets, the cigar burns punched through the mattress you just bought (at a steal, you'd said, gleeful and bright, and—fuck). 

So, he says, "sure, love."

(And really, giving up that extra cigar a day seems easy when you smile at him like that.)

You say nothing when he holds you a little bit tighter to his body, keeping you close; but he catches the soft sigh when he relaxes in your arms, and the tension bleeds from his shoulders.

You make a soft noise when he stubs the cigar in the ashtray, and then turns to you, eyes heavy.

Thunder cracks in the distance. The heavens split in two sending a deluge down that rips across the grey docks. Liverpool smells of ozone and wet pennies in the downpour.

Price pulls you in to his chest, hands heavy on your skin. Firm, rough. He's never been a gentle man, but you make him want to try. To be tender. Soft. Whatever you need, and more. Anything, he thinks. Anything.

You echo the call, and place your warm palm on his cheek, lids cresting in that sleepy desire that never fails to make his heart race.

He likes the way you make yourself fit against him - an imperfect puzzle piece - and draws you close when you lean up on the balls of your feet, eager to meet him in the middle. It's a searing kiss, the kind that instantly warms him against the sweeping winds howling through the wet streets below.

Nirvana in whispers. A soft tongue tracing the seam of his lips. He imagines this is the closest to peace a man like him will ever get, and it makes him hold on to you just a shade tigher. A bit more desperate. Unwilling - unable - to let go.

Thunder booms in the aether above, and echoes through his hollow bones. He feels the pulse of it thudding in his throat when it strikes again, and scents the livewire tang of a lightning strike when it cracks across the grey sky in a blinking, evanescent flash that makes you jump a little when it hits.

Price huffs into the kiss when you tremble in his arms, and holds you closer in the bracket of his chest.

"Jus' a storm, love," he whispers, the words a rough rasp pulled from his throat. "It'll pass."

"I know," you murmur, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt when another strikes scorches the pavement.

"Maybe I should distract you, mm?" He peppers kisses across your face, brows drawing together. "Could go for a nap after."

It makes you hum, a soft, honeyed coo. ", Take me to bed, John."

"Gladly, love."

He's never felt more at peace than in the middle of a terrible storm.

(But that should be a given considering they always seem to remind him of you.)

[utilitycaster]

Hi!!! I sent in the message about erathis when I was mostly delirious from sleep dep and clearly losing it - forgive me for not actually articulating what I wanted to ask you 😭

What I was trying to ask is

1) how you interpreted that moment from erathis and if anything in particular stood out to you

And 2) ask if you yourself had any thoughts on the tensions between the goddess of law and civilization working in a way to strike down a bastion of civilization and how this will play out

They’re still pretty open-ended (skill issue I’m sorry) but I really like your approach to the gods so still wanted to ask

So for 1, It's hard to pick. One part is the initial line of "no excuse nor remorse." The thing I have always loved about lawful alignments, paladins, and that general vibe is that to me, conviction is not a belief that one is doing an objective, blameless Righteous Act. It is a belief that one is doing the act that needs to be done, for whatever combination of reasons exist, and shouldering any consequences that result from it. I said this last week and I said it before but I find few things more loathesome than a shirking of one's obligations. This is why I actually find it so repulsive when people are like "but my favorite character has TRAUMA and so everything they do isn't their fault" as some sort of defense; I think people who do not take responsibility for their actions are the lowest of the low. Instead of saying "this is a messy, flawed person who fucked up, and interesting things can come of it" you're saying "this is an outright monstrous void of selfishness and harm, who takes endlessly and never gives, anyway why are you so mean to them."

I also of course love that she expresses her love for Melora and regret that she cannot be there, and I think the part about parallel lines converging and that she did have to break a promise - and that their obligations to mortals may do as much or more harm is ultimately the crux of the entire story. The point is that there is no solution that does not do immense harm to a huge number of people in that moment; and that doesn't simultaneously have endless unfolding consequences that will continue to do harm, and the "no kindness in trepidation; no love in faltering" essentially says "don't draw it out, there is no perfect solution and trying to find it will cut off your options to less harmful imperfect solutions as opportunities pass you." For all I love Trist and Ayden I think it's important to understand that never setting, as Erathis says, lines, can lead to someone's ruin. I don't think you have to be cruel to be kind, but I do think you have to be willing to be seen as cruel when you are being firm to be kind.

2. I've felt pretty sure The Emissary's role is to create the stasis bubbles from the start (and guessed that the stasis bubbles were perhaps divine in nature even earlier), so that is I think how she is squaring it, less than ideally but as best as she can. She mentions justice, and I think on some level she is striking down the city as a collective and trying to save as many individual lives as possible in sort of a divine paradox of tolerance. I think she's essentially saying, again, that there's no good option.

When she mentions justice and drawing lines, I do think of the story of Aeor. I think it's worth recalling that the cultural story of Aeor, such that it exists in modern Exandria, is that it was struck down by the gods (with little other information). As others said, the image this evokes has always been that of immense divine powers unifying and throwing it into the arctic. Last week I mentioned that I think it's rather presumptive to assume the gods here think of themselves as victors, and not merely survivors, and I think Erathis realized this before anyone else, and that she intends to control this narrative. If you strike down a city, freeze a number of its people, but make the story say "If you attempt to kill the gods, you shall be ruthlessly destroyed by both Prime and Betrayer alike" it might give others pause (note that this is prior to the Divine Gate). I think that's also part of it; culture is a part of civilization and that story is at least partly under her domain.

[roxykisser]

classpect titles: identity vs. the narrative

right. here’s something i’ve been meaning to talk about for a while. the assignment of classpect titles.

before i start, i want to make something clear: i’m not here to tell anyone how to identify. i am of the opinion that everyone knows themselves best. i’m not here to tell anyone how to classpect: this is a wacky business filled to the brim with speculation. this is merely an account of my views and opinions.

the classpecting community at large, here on tumblr at least, is very concerned with one’s personality when assigning classpect titles. this approach also necessitates a focus on both class and aspect in tandem; making sense as one full concept, a one and done thing, rather than two components of a title. a title, not a name.

a prince of heart is one who destroys heart. therefore the prince must destroy heart. he cannot engage in destructive behaviour, fall into that class’ archetypal pitfalls and climb its archetypal highs, and also have an arc concerned with identity, see the world in those terms at the same time. he must always be a [destroyer of heart].

it all ends up rather stereotypical; a prince destroys, therefore the prince is bad. a knight protects, therefore the knight is good.

i find it more constructive to look at classes as archetypes, because at their origin, this is what they are. patterns of behaviour one repeats again and again, falls back on when they are at their wits’ end. this is where the narrative view of classpects comes in.

class represents the hero’s internal processes. their values. a sort of concise list of their greatest faults and greatest strengths, like horoscopes in the newspaper. made to be generic. made for the hero to grow with and past them. it makes sense then why most prefer to classpect based on personality: it is easier to look at yourself as a list of traits than it is to look at yourself as a history, a narrative path you’ve walked. actually, that brings me to a good metaphor: your class is your shoes. the trail you walk. your aspect is the scenery.

classpecting from a narrative angle requires a shift in perspective, and acknowledging one stark difference between the hero title of myself and say, the hero title of jake english. we are both hope players, yet one of us is a person. the other is a character. the title system in homestuck is made around characters. the game is deliberately set up to help its players grow, and in doing that sets them on a path loosely defined by their title. people are a bit more complicated.

seeing yourself as a character isn’t easy. it’s almost impossible. characterhood is objective; personhood is not. in a story, we see its characters’ entire arcs in one line, we can clearly identify the inflection points in their stories and which themes repeat again and again. but as people our lives are ongoing; we are not afforded the same omnipotence, the ability to see time all at once.

class is incredibly hard to determine because of this. aspect is a bit easier. it is the themes that repeat again and again in our lives, a backdrop for all else to happen. it is a lens through which we see and understand the world. a light player might see their world as a story. a heart player might see the world as a tangle of identities rubbing up against and affecting each other. the possibilities are as endless as paradox space, which is to say not at all or quite a lot, depending on how you look at things. and how big you are in the scheme of them.

of course some measure of both narrative and personality classpecting must be employed for the most accurate outcome to be produced. one cannot look at the forest’s reflection in the lake and claim to know the beasts within. one cannot build a house with only bricks. but a healthy harmony should be strived towards in order for the result to be most accurate.

if you would like to read some posts from people who know these things better than me, i recommend @classpect-navelgazing, particularly their masterpost, and @urcharactersclasspect, whose opinions i found very particularly eye-opening.

[ko-existing]

Is there an observer? Are there objects observed?

Q: Was wondering what you think about the Double Slit Experiment or Dr. Emoto’s experiments? Does an observer have an effect and is ‘consciousness’ itself something that can be wielded?

A: Are you sensitive enough to notice that your very question is based on an illusory assumption projected by the effect of the Mind? You take it for granted to think that there is an observer making observations. No, it's not actually the case at all. I can say that the effect of the Mind seems to project an effect of observing. But there is no way you can ever identify that there is an observer behind the obvious effect of observing.

Let me emphasize, the effect of observing is an energetic effect of Infinite Radiant Energy. Experiencing an obvious effect of observing does not mean that you can ever determine that there is an observer. The assumption of an "observer" is an imagination from the Mind! Likewise, experiencing an obvious effect of observing does not mean that you can ever determine that there are objects being observed. No, they are not actually objects that you are seeing.

The so-called "objects" or "things" are not actually independent objects or things. They are merely energetic patterns or impressions of Infinite Radiant Energy. The Mind mistake them as "objects" or "things". So, the idea that an observer can affect consciousness is a typical illusory logic assumed by the Mind. You can't even determine that there is such a thing called 'an observer', would become a joke to discuss how 'an observer' affect something else? I hope you can realize that this question is a funny joke.

No, there is no way to find an observer any where in spite of an obvious feeling of observing going on. If you try very hard, you will never be able to find such an observer. For example, there seems to be an "I" behind the effect of seeing. Let's say that you captured that "I", then, who is seeing the "I"? Let's say that you captured the "I" behind the previous "I", then, who is seeing that "I" behind the "I" behind the "I"...? Do you start to notice that this is an endless paradox?

Do you start to realize that you will never be able to reach the bottom of your search? There will always be a new observer observing the old observer. There will be no end for such search. What is interested in pursuing such endless search? the Mind! It's the Mind that imagined out an infinite trap and falls into its own imaginary trap.

This paradox is self-assumed by the Mind itself to fool the Mind itself. Fortunately, SELF is not an observer. SELF is Infinite Radiant Energy that seems to have an effect of observing. And such effect of observing is insubstantial. There is no entity behind the effect of observing and there are no separate entities being observed. Why do the light patterns show up as waves sometimes and show up as particles some other times? Because it is the effect of the Mind making interpretations!

Sometimes, the Mind interprets it as "waves" and sometimes the Mind interprets it as "particles". Please notice, all conclusions reached by the Mind is a lie! Infinite Radiant Energy is neither a wave nor a particle. Infinite Radiant Energy is infinitely greater than and different from whatever the Mind can interpret. Let's go even more profound, the Mind narrates to you that in the double slit experience, the physical medium is something called "light". Actually, light cannot even be determined as a thing called "light".

The concept of light is an abstract concept assumed by the Mind. There is no way to determine what it is and what is going on. Not knowing what it is and what is going on is not a failure. Actually, it's a holy success. Remember, I have said many many times:

The only hindrance to self-knowing is that you think you already knew something. No, you can never know anything except knowing SELF. And knowing SELF is not a matter of gaining some kinds of knowledge. SELF is SELF, this knowing is not a conceptual knowledge. It's a direct knowing which is not the same as the concept of "knowing" defined by the Mind.

[the-darklings]

Hi, I absolutely adore tibyim I know lots of people have said it but you really capture dream so perfectly and I am loving reading the whole story and all of your drabbles. I also love your additional things like your playlist and Pinterest boards. The whole picture you paint is beautiful and I just wanted to let you know that. I know you are accepting some requests for drabbles but if you could possibly do one for dream saying “I don’t think you understand the… effect you have on me.” (From the Pinterest text posts for dream/wanderer 👀). Please don’t worry if not I just love all of your content for this fic, thank you for all you are doing and this whole story is helping me deal with a lot of personal stuff I have going on atm and I just wanted to thank you for adding some rays of sunshine into the world. ✨

pea-sized because i'm about to head off and shower. I've been a bit :/// these last few days, so apologies for the slower replies/interactions. not proofread. We die like Corinthian's lovers.

“I do not think you understand the… effect you have on me, Wanderer.”

Your mouth wobbles, resting agape while you process his words. It's rare for Dream to cut you off mid-speech—rarer, still, for him to do so with sudden, quietly fierce declarations.

"I was just talking," you mumble, your brows knitting at once.

"Yes, quite so," he agrees quietly, still peering at you intently.

Your mouth presses together this time, reading the small tells. Details you've come to decipher in him the way one may solve a puzzle. Dream of the Endless is near impossible individual to read. A tall, severe, often sullen paradox, unmoved in his iron-like convictions and stubborn ways.

Nearly, but not entirely.

Balancing on your heels, you prowl closer, your hands falling to rest behind your back. You stop right before him, gazing at him from beneath your lashes. A small, playful smile plays across your mouth, and Dream's chest expands with a silent, rather telling breath.

"And what effect may that be, Dream Lord?" you ask.

Your faux-innocent, coy question is met with a dry: "A highly vexing and a deeply distracting one."

Your mouth shapes a small 'o'. "Then I'll speak no words, offer you no smiles, and bestow no kisses upon you. It would be rather disastrous if I distracted one of the Endless so terribly. How selfish of me."

Dream's features ease slightly at your teasing, the tiniest of smiles edging across his mouth. "Most selfish indeed. But I'm afraid I will have to renegotiate."

"Oh?" you prompt with a raised brow. "Which part?"

Dream takes a step closer, and the space around you fills with him. The Dreaming, as always, moves with its Lord and cold night, dry books, and daydreams in their sweet, velvety softness wrap around you. An arm around your waist, a steadying body pressing into yours. Endless. With power, few could ever match.

"All parts," he replies.

Your smile widens, your fingers knotting in the lapels of his midnight coat. "Rather selfish of you. If Dream King wants a kiss, he needs only ask for one."

"Nicely, I presume?"

A small hmm vibrates in your throat, implication laid bare, and Dream's silvery, glowing gaze darkens. "Stardust..."

You slant closer, holding him by the lapels, and Dream's soft exhales kiss over your mouth. He leans into you as you did, his grip around you constricting, fingers knotting tighter around you though his features betray little of his internal struggle. You veer left at the last moment, just when heat grazes near your parted mouth, instead skimming your lips across his cool, hollowed cheek. You linger there, imprinting love and devotion there.

This close, Dream's exhale is shuddering, near pained, but it's hard to judge if it's frustration or elation or a wicked mix of both.

"Yes," you hum happily as you pull away, releasing your hold on him. "It would seem I do have quite the effect. I'll be sure to abuse it in the future. You can never escape my evil wiles now."

A deep, rumbling sound builds in Dream's throat. He sweeps his coat around you abruptly, and your delighted, knowing laugh is lost in the pockets of the universe.

You don't make it to bed. Not any tactile version of it anyway.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Radical perfectionism and paranoid reading

This tendency for constant evaluation and the imposition of external standards has percolated its way into many facets of life under Empire. It exists even among radicals: what changes is merely the kind of standards and the mode of evaluation. Is it radical? Is it anarchist? Is it critical? Is it revolutionary? Is it anti-oppressive? How might it be co-opted, complicit, or flawed? What is problematic? What does it fail to do? How limited, ineffective, and short-lived is it? Margaret Killjoy spoke to us about the ways that these tendencies can pervade anarchist spaces:

While I think there’s a decent bit of spontaneity and not-making-rules and such going on in radicalism, I see an awful lot less creativity at the moment. Particularly, I see very little creativity from tactical, strategic, and even theoretical analysis … For a bunch of anarchists, we’re remarkably uncomfortable with new ideas. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that happens because we’ve really honed our ability to critique things but not our ability to embrace things.[167]

Applied incessantly, critique can become a reflex that forces out other capacities. The queer theorist Eve Sedgwick argues that this penchant for constant critique runs through many currents of radical thought, in what she calls paranoid reading.[168] Paranoid reading is based on a stance of suspicion: an attempt to avoid co-optation or mistakes through constant vigilance. It seeks to ward off bad surprises by ensuring that oppression and violence are already known, or at least anticipated, so that one will not be caught off guard, and so that one can react to the first sign of trouble. The result is that one is always on guard and never surprised. By approaching everything with detached suspicion, one closes off the capacity to be affected in new ways.

When we interviewed Richard Day, he suggested that this tendency is linked to being in pain and converting that pain into an incessant search for lack:

In general, I think rigid radicalism is a response to feeling really hurt and fucked up. And the real enemy is the dominant order, but it gets mixed into this big soup, so the enemy becomes each other. It becomes oneself. It’s a finding lacking as such … a finding lacking almost everywhere with almost everyone. And when that lack is found, then of course there needs to be some action: which is going to be to tell, or force, or coerce, or get at that lack, and try to turn it into a wholeness. So strangely enough I’d suggest that rigid radicalism is driven by a desire to heal. And it has exactly the opposite effect: of sundering the self more, of sundering communities more, and so on.[169]

Those of us who regularly find ourselves in pain might find this paradox familiar. Through the constant imposition of external standards, everything can be found lacking, and all kinds of coercive responses can seem justified. An endless cycle ensues: no one and nothing is good enough, and this paranoid stance constantly incapacitates exploration, healing, and affirmation.

Many of us learn this mode of thought through university, or through immersion in radical spaces themselves: we learn to search for, anticipate, and point out the pervasiveness of Empire. Even without the sad rigor of the Weather Underground, we learn to search the bodies, behaviors, and words of others for any shred of complicity. Mik Turje spoke to this tendency when we interviewed them:

I think as a youth I was really idealistic, and I came to the university context, and critical theory, where idealism and imagining something better was stamped out as something naïve. The only option was to master the hypercritical language myself, and one-upping people. I got really good at that. I won all of the political arguments in school, but … I was being a shitbag of a militant, tearing everyone down.[170]

By being immersed in paranoid reading, people learn to find themselves and others lacking. Having been “educated,” one becomes a pedagogue oneself, spreading the word about Empire, oppression, and violence, and in the process one tends to position others as naïve and ignorant.

This is clear in how surprise and curiosity are often infantilized by Empire. They are treated as foolish or “childish”—that is, lacking the educated, rational, civilized, adult capacities of detached evaluation. Paranoid reading and its association with adulthood and rational detachment are transmitted through schooling, founded on patriarchal white supremacy. Based on suspicion, perfectionism, and the penchant for finding flaws in ourselves and others, paranoid reading prevents us from being joyfully in touch with the world and with the always already present potential for transformation.

Crucially, paranoid reading and lack-finding have their own affective ecology, with their own pleasures and rewards. There can be a sense of satisfaction in being the one who anticipates or exposes inadequacy. There can be safety and comfort in a paranoid stance, because it helps ensure that we already know what to do with new encounters. Incessantly exposing flaws can be pleasurable, and can even become a source of belonging.

We think this is at the heart of what destroys the transformative potential of movements from within: the capacity for paranoid reading closes off the capacity to embrace and be embraced by new things. The stance of detached judgment means remaining at a distance from what is taking place. In contrast, experimentation requires openness and vulnerability, including the risk of being caught off guard or hurt. From a paranoid perspective, things like gratitude, celebration, curiosity, and openness are naïve at best, and potentially dangerous. When everything is anticipated, or one can see immediately how something is imperfect or lacking, one misses the capacity to be affected and moved.

[philtstone]

Aragorn/Arwen, 63

#63 -- tujhe dekha toh from dilwale dulhania le jeyenge ok so the soulmatism of it all had me going completely nuts (simrans waking dreams.....i need to lie down) & before i knew it i'd re-read their appendix had 3 literary analysis epiphanies and was neck deep in the wiki page on love death and meaning and the paradox of religion and nonreligion in tolkein i say all that like i didnt just write movie verse kidfic lol. ellie is a shortened version of "nethel" which means sister in sindarin. in a different time in my life i would have named every single one of canon girldad aragorns "many daughters" & also included 5 of them but alas, at this time i am Busy. so we'll pretend that the other 3 havent come along yet. arwen has magic powers she will be fine. enjoy!

“My lady Luthien!”

The words come into Arwen's dream in the common tongue, whispered and full of a child’s awe. He is speaking as if to himself — the text has surprised him, or perhaps absorbed him so that he does not realize his mouth is moving, disrupting the Sindarin read privately in his thoughts with an impulsive, delighted exclamation.

To Arwen it is just as mesmerizing. She cannot know why her dream has brought her here, to this garden of her father’s House she has sought refuge in so many a time. She knows him very little, this child, not ten in the years of Men and so very human about it, with lanky limbs folded up against himself to cradle the book and a mop of dark hair that falls down over his eyes and the very beginning of spots on his chin (of endless intrigue to Arwen, who has only ever seen skin unblemished). 

She has not met him, but knows of him from her brothers’ letters: her father’s ward, sweet and grave and beloved amongst the Rivendell kindred as any novelty in the shape of a child might be. But Estel earns it, too. He is earning his presence in her dream in the same way, sat in the exact spot she always chooses, under bows of trees she has long considered friends. He earns it, though Arwen doesn’t quite know why he’s here. 

Don’t you? ask her thoughts of her self, and she does not answer.

Years pass, and she is home again.

“My lady Luthien,” he says, as she comes toward him, and within his voice is a gentle embarrassment that still manages to tease. 

Arwen, firm in her earlier, gentle rejection (he is far too young), cannot help but find this terribly charming anyway. It is just after dinner, and she has found him behind a pillar to the side of where they dine. He holds his cup in both hands. Until her appearance he was studying the carvings on one stone edifice to their side, and seems in every way his mortal age save one: there is a new and convoluted weight in his eyes that was not there in the early afternoon, when he called so clearly and sincerely to her. It seems to have entered like the broken branches of a sapling swept into a fast-moving stream after a storm. 

“I should be greatly flattered, Estel, to be compared thus,” Arwen says, offering that weight a smile. Estel drops his eyes back to the pillar. He seems to start and stop a few times before actually opening his mouth, and when he does,

“I should like to still be called Estel, for a while yet,” and there is great vulnerability there, in his young man’s eyes. It sneaks into her breast and cups a hand over the breath she draws, and despite the glade, and his youth, and the Truth her father has now shared with him, she is compelled: Arwen’s own hand slides over his knuckles, and they are holding the cup together.

“I will,” she promises. “I do.” 

On the edge of the last word do his eyes flick up to hers, canny in a way that sparks beneath her skin. He lives up to his name, she thinks then (not quite knowing why), and when she writes this to him after they have parted, in the letters they now share, he writes back: so do you.

Before Estel, her experience of Death was altogether different. She knew it first in abstraction and then in keen loss. Now she feels its imminance and urgency, in both grand and mundane ways.

For example, earlier this evening, Arwen thought she might die if she did not kiss him. It was a thought that crept over her swiftly, silent and keen as a fresh ice water brook spilling into open hands, very different from the thundering roar of the river spirits she had summoned to herself – until it was suddenly quite the same, roaring, and it must have shown in her eyes. In the late quiet of the night she came to her rooms and found him, there. 

(She has long since known why.)

The employment of her tongue is not new, but pulls a murmur out of him regardless. “My lady Luthien,” he starts, speaking almost directly against her mouth, with a wry amusement that is not so unburdened as to be playful and not yet a warning, either, and then he is properly startled into, “Arwen —!” when her next kiss includes a bite. The rasp of beard against her chin is uncomfortable and delightful. She can feel the rumble of her small victory in his chest. Aragorn has always done so much with just the two syllables of her name.

When she has lost all breath she pulls away, and does not pant — sweet air made salty by urgency comes in and out of her lungs in discordant sighs — but her lips stay hot against his ear and she feels every press of his fingers against the slope of her waist, burning. She thinks of death again; she has fought it off. Twice in one week now, in very different ways.

Aragorn does pant, in his own way. He lets out a quiet gasp and drops his head against the side of hers, not trembling but finding some stronghold deep within himself that begets composure. 

Slowly she begins to comb her fingers through the hair at his temple. In the dark alcove of her rooms (safe), they sway together.

“Tomorrow,” he murmurs, and she knows: tomorrow the council is held.

“I meant it, earlier,” says Arwen softly, into his hair. It has begun to grey, the strands too hidden yet to shimmer in the moonlight but there nonetheless. Every so often she will catch a glimpse of them and it will leave her wordless, and desperate to touch him. “Your fears are not the truth you think them to be.”

“Arwen.” She can hear the desperation that threatens to choke his own voice. Duty turns the peaceful twilight of her home into a foreboding shadow. There are two large warm hands on her face before she has noticed them move, and then she feels the wetness of her own cheeks: she had not realized she was crying. 

“I did not know it would be so momentous to love,” she says, while he wipes at her tears with war-roughened, gentle fingers. So many things about Men are a paradox. So many things about this man. 

“Meleth,” he says. 

“I meant it.” She repeats herself. “I know who you are in my heart, Estel.”

“You do,” he allows her, and she is not certain he believes it to be enough. No matter, Arwen thinks: her own belief will sustain them. It must, long enough that he has hope for himself as well as for Men, and then they might cross through the door, to the other side of the Dark.  

The Queen finds her husband in Faramir’s study, reading.

“My lady Luthien,” she is greeted, words threaded full of the subtle humour that has turned her head for over sixty years.

Arwen clasps her hands over the laden basket she packed without needing any kind of foresight and sighs thinly. 

“I did expect, mel nin, that you had gone the whole day without food, but I had thought you would be found holding grave council, or visiting the head healer, or even – forgivably – in the stables. Instead, you are here, nose-deep in an ancient poem.”

“It did not come to you in a vision?” he asks, and raises his eyes just enough to catch hers from beneath his lashes. This does nothing to diminish the focus etched into his dark brow, nor the way he holds himself (always it calls to her – it does not matter the shape), nor the deep blue of his mantle sweeping against the floor; he has not paused to change since returning from the Southern Wall. Whatever peace he thinks his feigned innocence will win him, she cannot know.

“Your Steward told on you, my love.”

“Aaah,” his face falls, so dramatically it is amusing.

She holds up her basket. “I have lunch.”

“My beloved wife has developed the sensibilities of a Hobbit,” Aragorn says, in her people’s language.

“Hobbits are good and noble creatures,” she retorts. She always argues better with him in Sindarin anyhow, “and have traditions from which we might learn.” She arches a brow: “Estel.”

“I am eating,” protests Aragorn, somewhat weakly. “I mean – I will.”

“You might do so now. With me – there is no one else here.”

It is a potent suggestion, she does acknowledge. She watches him think about it, proud to note all the little tells which she has known since he was a barefaced and impulsive young man. The same canny look sparks under Arwen’s skin. Once, decades ago, she had met him in the wild woods beyond her father’s borders in a stolen moment between darkness and duty, and convinced him to bathe with her in the river. She remembers her joy at seeing his wet dark hair plastered all over his forehead. She remembers his own joy, and how it fought off the lonesome blanket of the gathering shadow.

“Your thoughts are of something I know,” Aragorn says now, suspicion arching his tone and narrowing his bright eyes, no longer that of a young man but still full of a life that thrills her. “Some joyful mischief that you’re going to coax me into again, no doubt.”

“There is sadly no river in the palace.”

“Aaah,” uttered in a very different tone from before. His eyebrows twitch out of their focused furrow and his face warms with the memory. He lowers his book a little. “Arwen …”

But he does not move from his spot behind the desk, so Arwen places her basket down and sweeps forward, intent. The silver in his hair streaks liberally now, and lines furrow down his cheeks when he laughs – often – but otherwise Aragorn remains mostly unchanged from the presence filling so little yet so much of the many years of Arwen’s memory. Affection rushes through her, swelling like the river, growing like the trees in Lorien. That glade, too, is a memory full of joy. He is much better suited to a beard, though. Arwen tells him this.

“So you have said many many times,” Aragorn says, chuckling. “I have no plans of removing it from my face, beloved.”

“I know,” Arwen hums. “I am only observing.”

Slowly she comes around the desk, on even steps, until they are very nearly touching and she can fold her hands over the top of his book. She takes a long moment to look at him, and though she in her chosen mortality no longer carries the same potency of power that Tinuviel’s blood held before, she conducts her habitual scan of his spirit, the truth of it ebbing through her fingers where they touch. Beyond her duties as Queen (of which there are many, and she both capable and willing) this is what Arwen knows most deeply in her heart how to do. 

Finding Aragorn no more burdened than usual (though perhaps a little distracted) she leans in to whisper in his ear.

“Ah –” he clears his throat and touches two long brown fingers to her arm. Unexpectedly, then, Aragorn stage whispers, “We are not … as alone as it seems.” 

“What exactly do you mean?” Arwen, paused very close to his mouth, is compelled to whisper back.

And then,

“It’s alright!” comes a familiar little voice from seemingly nowhere, and all at once Arwen looks down to see the outside shape of the King’s voluminous cloak wriggle. Her mouth parts in surprise. The whisperer continues importantly, “You may kiss Ada if you like, Naneth. We are not looking!” 

“Ssssshhh!” materializes a second, equally familiar little voice.

Arwen tilts her head, mystified, as her husband sets his expression into something communicating exclusively the secrets and patient indulgences of fatherhood. Then he jerks his chin towards the door, eyebrows raised and everything, not a moment before there sounds the sharp cadence of what can only be a young boy’s footsteps (and Arwen would know this boy’s as she knows her own heart) and into the library bursts their only son. 

At the sight of his parents, Eldarion comes to an abrupt halt, and tries very hard to compose himself. 

“Ahem,” he says, straightening. She sees the way his body moves to mimic his father, and also the grass stains on his knees, and the disheveled mop of his curls that means he has definitely spent the last hour running around in the gardens. Arwen is unbothered by this. “Hello Ada, hello Naneth. Have you – have you seen my sisters?”

The front of Aragorn stays conspicuously still.

“Your sisters?” asks Arwen, clasping her hands demurely before her.

“I am afraid my attention has been elsewhere,” says Aragorn gravely, holding aloft his book.

“Indeed,” adds Arwen. “So much so that he has forgotten to eat.”

Minutely, the cloak quivers. 

“Hmmmm,” says Eldarion, lost in focus. “I must find them to create an alliance with the brave rangers in the North,” he speaks, almost as though to himself – he is really giving this quite a bit of thought. He is so absorbed that she could be in Rivendell again, drawn by a dream into her beloved, occupied glade … “For we must defend the townspeople but I cannot do it alone.”

Arwen blinks. Her heart is filled with tenderness.

“They have assigned you the role of orc again?” Aragorn is guessing, sympathetic.

Eldarion droops only a little before springing back up with full confidence. “Yes! But I am determined that we will create an alliance. I am a good orc, you see.”

With hasty goodbyes, he rushes away, taking the excitable sound of his footsteps with him.

A moment of quiet passes. Aragorn’s cloak begins giggling, so he spreads open his arms and herds them out one by one. 

“You must go quietly now, down the hall and into the gardens,” whispers their father.

“Naneth,” begins their youngest, halfway out the room, “Naneth, do you think if we formed a nalliance –”

“An alliance,” corrects Aragorn, still whispering.

“Shhh,” interrupts the other, “or Eldarion will find us!”

“But he must be getting lonely!”

“Oh, ellie …”

Their little voices trail out of the door.

“I believe an alliance would work,” Aragorn offers Faramir’s many inert books, speaking at a normal register once more. The study now empty, Arwen turns back to her husband. His eyes are twinkling. She does not say anything, but moves toward him, as she has done so many times before, and lays her head to rest against his shoulder. In moments the book is tucked away, and the warm hands she knows so well are cradling her arms. 

After a moment he says, “You are well? Arwen?” a gentle question in her ear. Arwen nods. She can now say what she knows, and why they are here: 

She sustained them, and there was hope to be found. 

Aragorn’s fingers rub over the gauzy sleeve of her dress. “Did you have your heart set on lunch?” he asks quietly.   

“I did,” Arwen says, and turns to hold his eye. “I do.” 

[galebrainrot2024]

Gale Seeking Godhood Part 6 Paths 2 & 3

Bear with me because after this part, paths 2 and 3 will diverge thus this one is shorter than usual. Hope you enjoy!

Gale POV

“See you soon.” Raphael's words spun in an endless web, muddling Gale’s mind. Now, more than ever, Gale was at a crossroads. What did Raphael mean when he said that celestial would quake? That he had presumed every possible outcome - that ambition was a delicious sin… and a dreadful weapon. Spewing useless nonsense, as always, Gale thought. 

Gale had come this far and he didn’t intend to let an insignificant fool of a devil dissuade him. When he went to sit, he noted the parchment that was left on his desk resting atop the Annuals of Karsus. He fingered the page, the paper heavier than expected. It read: 

It is a great paradox among wizards who so value the art of learning, that we believe ourselves ever cannier than the ones who came before. If envy is the disease of the artist, hubris, is that of the wizard. Though I fear my warning will fall on deaf ears, I will say it again: the closer, a wizard creeps to the domain of the divine, the closer oblivion creeps with him. 

I thought myself an equal to Mystra and devised a plan to make myself her equal. I would pluck one strand of Weave and contain it within an amulet I spent the better portion of the years devising. How regret instantly heaved itself upon my head. I was trapped within the amulet instantaneously, and passed around from collector to curio-hall for the better part of a millennium. Only now that I am freed, with barely the strength to hold my quill, can I leave this final warning as a testimony. 

Gale snorted and rolled his eyes. The drama of it all was starting to grate at his nerves. A wiser mind perhaps would have recognized the clear warnings, despite the message being delivered by a devil. A more sensible person may have heard the concerns of their loved ones at least if not that of the cambion. Gale did not realize that within Raphael’s words there was truth yet to be heeded. 

Gale sat at the desk, putting the parchment to the side and ran his fingers over The Annals of Karsus. Within these pages was the preamble to Netheril's downfall, committed to parchment by the very hand that wrought its destruction. He had gotten to know the pages intimately, perhaps more so than himself. 

As he felt the rough pages a memory returned to him, the moment that you and he entered the vaults at Sorceries Sundries, the moment you handed the book to him. He had been filled with awe, curiosity, and an intense need for the Crown when he held it in his hands. He allowed himself to fall into the memory.

“That devil Raphael was telling the truth. There is no doubt – the Crown of Karsus is what’s controlling the elder brain. And this – this is no mere journal. It contains the original plans for the crowns construction. His designs for godhood.”

He remembered you asking, “A design you can follow?” He tried to picture your face, tried to attune to the emotions that flashed before him, but that was lost to time. He was so enthralled by the possibility the crown offered he had paid little attention to your reaction. This realization sends a pang of regret through him as the memory unravels.

“Not from scratch – unless you happen to have several pounds of the purest Netherese metals in the pack of yours?” Gale had said cheekily, “What’s called for here is something altogether different. If we can collect the Crown’s setting, the three Netherstones, and with the correct invocation of certain spells and gestures, detailed in these notes… I think I could reforge it. It could be the best thing that ever happened to me.” Gale quickly amended, “To us. Just think of it… the power of the Gods in mortal hands at last. We’d be free of doctrine and dogma, confined only by the limits of our imaginations. We must discuss this further. Privately. Find me later and I will show you something truly divine.”

Gale held his head in his hands, his elbows resting on the desk at present. As the memory continued, he was wrought with the worry he should have done something different. Had you meant it? Had he pushed you too far, projecting his wishes onto you? Had he been so blind? His stomach churned as he thought of the moment he shared the outer planes with you, searching for your trust. Ensuring your belief in him. Declaring his love and devotion for you. 

“Few mortals ever glimpse what you’re about to see - but don’t be alarmed. I’m here with you. Open your eyes.” Gale remembered how your hands lithely pulled at the strings of the celestial planes, the vibrant and surreal colors swirling around you. How lovely you had looked as you both marveled at the abyss. Gale was beaming, his eyes fixed on you. 

“The outer plans… this is where the Gods dwell. Where they observe us from afar. Where they make play things of us. They would keep all of this from us – the power, the possibilities. They only want us to serve them, pray to them… and ultimately die for them. But what if we didn’t need them? What if we wielded their power instead and helped ourselves in all the ways they refused to. I could make that happen. I could make this illusion a reality, with you by my side.” He remembered holding your hands in his, how you both seemed to shake and buzz from the adrenaline of it all. How bewildered you appeared and how beautiful in the realms above. He had never been so in love with you. 

“Claim Godhood?” He remembered the uncertainty when you said this so he quickly reassured you.  

“I don’t want to join them, I want to better them. A Gods power paired with a mortal conscious, a mortal heart. The tadpoles, the orb - these threats to our existence – the gods could aid us if they wished, but instead they cower behind Ao. So let us act ourselves. With the power of the crown, any foe would be rendered impotent. Any obstacle would be dwarfed by our mite. I used to believe Mystra’s forgiveness was worth dying for. But I was wrong. You showed me just how much I have to live for.” Gale had pulled you closer, his brown eyes pleading you to understand. To accept him. “With you, I forget my goddess. I love you. Tell me you feel the same way. Tell me you want what I want. Please.”

His heart had sunk, your next words stung: “That power will corrupt you even if you can seize it.” 

Gale had insisted, “I won’t, I swear to you. It’s merely a tool – a means to an end. You told me once to choose you, the one who loved me. That’s what this is all about. Do you doubt me?” 

“If you believe this can be done.. then I believe in you.” Relief had flooded him then as you leaned in to kiss him, your lips crashing towards one another. Yet now, as he reminisced, your warning rang more clearly.

The power will corrupt you.

Gale scoffed, standing so abruptly that his chair nearly fell back. He felt betrayed - more than betrayed. He felt abandoned, left to lick his wounds like an animal despite sharing in that intimacy together. Despite you saying this is what you wanted, too. Did you have so little faith in him? The feeling was somehow worse than when Mystra cast him out. It felt more visceral. Human. 

Gale sighed, rubbing his face with his hand anxiously. He was second-guessing things. This was the trouble with being clever - he had to be right, probe all avenues, consider all possibilities. He knew when he overindulged in impulsivity the results were often catastrophic. Yet, when you walked this path beside him he was confident in his actions - confident seizing the power of the crown was in your best interests. 

Now, he was not so sure. 

He once thought himself someone of reasonably sound moral judgement, his entire purpose of reforging the crown to behold a new kind of God. A better God. As he sat alone in his study with nothing but his thoughts for company, he wondered whether or not he was making the right decision. At the precipice of Godhood and he was sweatier than a bugbears armpit. He had never felt more alone.

He chewed on his lip, mulling over the memories and over what Raphael said. All of it would be irrelevant if he couldn’t decode the final markings in the text and Raphael would eventually find the stones if he didn’t act. Sighing, he sat back down and opened the heavy book to try again. 

[dailyadventureprompts]

Hey, I wanted to take a moment and say that I really enjoy the blog! Thanks for all the time and effort that you put in it!

I was also wondering if you might be able to provide some help? One of my players has been trying to make a patron that has a strong theme of sorrow and woe; without dipping into Fae territory. They’ve reached out to me to help and I’ve got absolutely nothing! Any ideas or concepts you might be able to make?

Monsterhunt: Thousandfold Sorrows

The hardest part of moving on is finding the way forward

A spirit of the plane of mirrors, Thousandfold Sorrows hunts those riven by great grief and loss, harrowing them with visions of a moment from their past from which they are unable to move on. Pain, shame, false hope, as the victim's mind is fractured by a multitude of emotions reality starts to go with it: different versions of their life playing out the possibility of what could've been.

Adventure Hooks:

A tragic cart accident goes even more awry as an out of control wagon runs into a girl walking down a busy market street who proceeds to shatter into thousands of mirrored shards infront of all the onlookers, horrifying the boy she was out on the town with. Stranger yet, the girl's description matches that of a young woman who went missing from her job at an antique store some weeks ago, as well as numerous other incidents all around the city. As it turns out, the shopgirl has fallen victim to Thousandfold Sorrows while she was lamenting wasting her youth in the dusty old shop instead of out there living life. Now she wanders the labyrinth of the mirror dimension, and the only way to get her back is to convince one of the impulsive duplicates that've slipped free in the previous days to take her place.

Seeking to undo the mistakes of the past, an aging mage has summoned Thousandfold Sorrows to ruminate on a tragedy from his youth, where the lives of his closest friends were sacrificed in the process of averting a magical disaster that would have ravaged the countryside. Increasingly desperate to know if he really did make the right choice, the mage has had Thousandfold sorrows run through endless permutations of events, eventually causing a chain-reaction of mirror magic that's split the local area (and nearby village) into three time lines: The present, the idealistic past, and an alternate version of events ravaged by wild magic. Caught in the middle, the party must discern the boundaries between truth and illusion and overcome paradoxical hazards in order to set the land right once again.

Like many creatures of the mirror dimension, Thousandfold Sorrows does not bear explicit ill towards those it haunts, instead existing in a state of perpetual reflection from a very limited viewpoint. It can communicate only through flawed reccolection, asking questions (sometimes radically inappropriate ones) about what its quarry WANTS as it desires to understand. One could perhaps say that it is hyperempathic but when that empathy is focused on something the quarry would really rather be left alone, conflict and tragedy will invariably ensue.

For the asker: Using Thousandfold Sorrows as a warlock patron will require your character to create a rough outline of their character and something tragic in their past, then have the mirror spirit relfect it back at them over and over and over as it tries to empathise. As for actual stats, I'd recommend searching 3rd party mirror magic and the unearthed arcana subreddit.

If you're not feeling particularly mirror focused, I could also recommend a number of possible patrons:

An engine of doom, pushed beyond its appointed rest

The Demon queen of despair and decay

A corrupted pagan god of being trapped in pain

A number of patrons in the "Compendium of forgotten secrets: awakening" one of the best and most thematically interesting warlock books out there, give it a google.

Art

[katiesautisms]

Ever hate something so much you develop a mini hyperfixation related to it?

Anyways heres a Minecraft fan fic I wrote :]

The air settles. The heat cools down to a frigid breeze after the spectacular battle. Purple eyes from the land's natives point to the now empty throne once belonging to a beautiful creature.

The man, wiping blood from dented armor, felt remorseful of the animal. Not because of her death nor her blood on his hands. No, but because he could tell she was in pain. Somewhere in this dark, cold dimension, the animal's soul moves on, free from the shackles once afflicted upon it.

The man takes notice of a newly opened portal where the dragon once stood. What lies beyond there? Is it home, or something else entirely? Something far beyond what his mind could comprehend? When entering this dimension, he knew very quickly there was no way out. Even before entering that dark, horrifying portal, the man knew that once he was in the abyss, it was his final stop, it would be the word right before the period.

With nothing else to lose or gain, the man closes his eyes and leaps into the newly opened gateway.

He opens his eyes to see himself in a dark, yet comforting plane. Pixels far and near float carelessly in the space, colored with teals and blues. Two massive celestial beings materialize in front of his eyes. They seem so far away, but they still take up the man's entire field of vision. One is the same blue of a beautiful summer day, the other a green akin to the leaves of a thriving tree. One of them speaks.

"Welcome. We are happy to see you here."

It's voice was paradoxically horrifying, striking fear into his heart, but also disarming. The man's instincts told him these beings were safe, they can be trusted. The man listens, and the other one speaks.

"I am the god of creation, I was the one who created every color and soul you've seen. And you...you were created for a purpose. You've freed a tormented being from eternal imprisonment and gifted her with internal and external peace for the first time in her conscious being. But you are beyond all of that, are you not? You have blood, eyes, skin. You felt pain and you felt joy. You are alive, and you are more precious than a shining gem."

Its grateful and somewhat gloomy tone matched the stunning green that painted its body.

"And I am the god of dictation, I control what she created, I instruct it to do what it is supposed to do."

"It goes without saying you've done well. You've completed your purpose and then some. Well done."

Flat and emotionless, its voice was powerful. When this being spoke, it made it easy to fully understand every little word it said. The deep, seemingly endless blue that is her color, it matched as well. The god of creation spoke once more

"We are the gods that formed this world, we've seen its past and you are its present. Please do forgive us for bringing you here, but we wanted to see you up close, you're a result of so many beautiful lights and darks of this world."

"Perhaps there is something we can do for you. A question perhaps?"

The man thought to himself, trying hard to keep his comprehension of where he is in tact, he tried to think of a question to ask the two gods. Then it came to him, something he wanted to know ever since he suddenly blipped into existence. The man spoke up.

"I've wandered this world to hell and back, I've seen corpses that look like me rise to attack me, I've seen men in their villages live and trade peacefully. But I've also seen buildings long abandoned, traps made to keep others out. Please, please tell me, what happened to my people. Have I truly been alone this whole time?"

The man started to choke up, small tear formed in his eyes.

The gods' faces formed a somber expression.

The god of creation spoke apologetically, "Oh, dear, your people were a beautiful civilization. They've conquered the land you've set foot on..."

The god of dictation interrupts, "One day, a tragedy happened. And they were wiped clean off the surface of this world."

"What happened to them then? What took them all out? What could have possibly killed an entire civilization?" the man desperately screamed.

And they answered, their words striking ungodly fear into his soul, and into theirs as well. Their voice in unison echos in his mind, it doesn't make sense. It can't be true, an answer that should not even be in the realm of plausibility. The space around them turns into a monochromatic hue, greys and blacks emit a foreboding field as the gods repeat their answer:

"We don't know."

[lazynickname]

I just realized something about the Darkness devil in Chainsaw man

TW: self harm mention ofc, he represents the fear of darkness and unkown, which is very well represented by those astronauts, those who are direclty confronted to the endless darkness of space, in his (magistral) introduction:

But I don't think it represents just that, I have a feeling its a reference to a sci-fi book by chinese author Liu Cixin: Dark Forest (2nd book the the three body problem trilogy). In this excellent book, the author reveals his own answer for the Fermi paradox (there should be aliens everywhere, but we don't see them): The Dark Forest theory. Basically, it says space civilizations intentionally hide from each other, lest they be destroyed by a rival specie, hence the metaphor of hunters crawling through a dark forest, shooting at whatever they find to avoid danger. Its really an excellent book, I recommend it.

"He had been standing on the aft platform at the time, a platform enclosed in a transparent dome that made it seem exposed to space. The stern of the ship faced the Solar System, where the sun was by now no more than a yello star just a bit brighter than the rest. The peripheral spiral arm of the Milky Way lay in this direction, its stars sparse. The depth and extense of the deep space exhibited an arrogance that left no support for the mind or the eyes. "Its dark. Its so fucking dark", the captain murmured, then shot himself."

It is also to be noted than the patch on the astronauts strongly resembles the description of the emblem of the Solar Fleet in Th Dark Forest (the sun with 5 arrows/lines poiting out), although that may be a simply coincidence.