#its purely self-indulgent

[bleughhhhhhh]

Here's a snippet from the beginning of my fanfic :)

Regulus is staring in a mirror, that seems to be all he does now. Well, either constantly staring into mirrors or covering them with whatever linens he can collect to avoid them for weeks on end. He’s been doing this since he was seven and his parents made him pierce his ears. He didn’t want to but they said his dresses would look ‘improper’ without earrings. 

That was the first time he decided he hated them. 

He still remembers the fit he threw, screaming and crying, until his mother got tired and petrified him while she stuck those needles through his ears. He remembers Sirius taping ice to his ears afterwards to try and numb them. He remembers watching his brother as he took Regulus' dresses and threw them into the fireplace when Regulus asked. He remembers that it ended with Sirius having a scar on his back that’s never gone away. 

That was the last time Regulus reacted like that. 

So now Regulus is staring into a mirror and gripping a pair of scissors like his mother is going to try and rip them away from him. 

But she’s in London and Regulus is all the way in scotland. 

Regulus is in Scotland, at Hogwarts, and his mother is in London, so he is going to cut his stupid fucking hair. 

[dandelion-roots]

yosano-san was supposed to be taking the afternoon off...

[id in alt]

[cloudyydraws]

more mario and luigi doodles but i took their mouths away

+ extra unfinished stuff under the cut

[princenotsocharming]

There's things I wanna talk about, but better not to give But if you hold me without hurting me You'll be the first who ever did Cinnamon Girl, Lana Del Rey

[platoapproved]

O YOU whom I often and silently come where you are,          that I may be with you; As I walk by your side, or sit near, or remain in the          same room with you, Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your          sake is playing within me. —Walt Whitman

[cuubism]

I didn't even share any exterior shots with you all. Failure.

Go to the New Inn it only takes an hour and a half to get to from central London 😂

Can't miss it the sign is painted on like 50 times, presumably so Dream would DEFINITELY find it.

No WAY Dream can miss this. Well, maybe he can, he can be a bit dense at times.

THE NEW INN! TOP LONDON ATTRACTION! (in my heart)

[moondirti]

Who from the 141 speaks the best arabic do you think? From one arab girl to another, it’d be so hot if any of them were fluent 🫠

if my memory serves me correctly, we get a bit in the first campaign from price. to me it seems to be a basic knowledge. a few sentences he picked up on the field and memorised to make his job easier. evac orders, cardinal directions, how to ask for water, food, medicine. that kind of stuff. pure utility, though that’s his approach to most things.

i like to believe (call it bias or whatever) that gaz is fluent. this ties in to my headcanon that he’s the only member who attended and graduated uni, but he strikes me as someone intensely curious about everything. introducing him to something, be it language or cuisine or a skill he hasn’t mastered yet, is like knocking down the floodgates. it’s his time in urzikstan that does it. hearing the way it rolls off farah’s tongue (let’s ignore doumit’s canon pronunciations), or how she’s able to translate a long, winding, clumsy sentence to something short. beautiful.

there’s a word for everything, he finds. one for the state of gossiping with your friends over morning coffee. one to congratulate someone on their cleanliness after a haircut. one that means may you be the one to bury me, for it would be unbearable to live without you – that is used so casually in conversation, kyle is stunned when he learns the true meaning. it doesn’t hold the same expectation, the same trepidation, as it does in english, though it retains its weight all the same. he wonders what makes a language so special that its intrinsic devotion has found a common place within its cultures, and he sets to find out.

this turns into a thing. more rambling under the cut.

the largest learning curve is the alphabet. the sounds that don’t exist in his mother tongue. he’s especially hard on himself when it comes to enunciating them properly – half the beauty is in the way words flow together, and there would really be no point in indulging in arabic’s more lyrical aspects if he’s off pitch. he gets the hang of it eventually, of course, one too many vocal exercises later.

the weathered dictionary he picks up at a second hand store teaches him that most words have three letter roots, and that it isn’t so easy as to look them up alphabetically. picking up new vocab becomes infinitesimally harder, then. for twelve million choices, the distinction between some words comes down to diacritical marks. necklace, decade, contract, held, complicated, and knots are all spelt the same way, yet pronounced ever so slightly different — a fact he learns the hard way when he tells the cashier at the kibbeh place he frequents that he likes her decade.

reading. reading is what helps him get over that.

(he probably should touch on basic grammar first — nouns, verbs, particles, sentence structure, that sort of stuff — but figures he'll pick it up as he goes, basing his methodology on an inability to remember any rules for the english language. he grew up hearing it, reading it, watching it, surrounded by it, so it just is what it is now. why work so hard on task books made for kids, then, when he can just get right into the meat of the matter? acclimatise through force.)

he picks up stacks of books upon books upon poetry. naguib mahfouz. ghada al-samman. al-mutanabbi. mahmoud darwish. it takes him a month to get through the first, and another month for the second. which only means he really takes his time with them, roving over the same line until it's etched into his memory. the cadence, the beats for pause, the way a word he has to punch from his throat is followed by one that lilts, all sing-songy. eventually, he starts to (inadvertently) mimic that sweeping manner of speech, employing it in contexts which certainly don't call for it.

the cashier — the very same one whose age he mistakenly stressed, despite the fact that she couldn't have been much younger than him — is far too nice to say anything about it, smiling instead, endeared, while he waxes poetic about meze.

farah calls him out immediately the next time they catch up.

apparently, no one speaks in classical arabic anymore, go figure. it would be like talking in shakespearean english, she tells him. he imagines it, iambic pentameter and all, and cringes, newly determined. his own research unearths (though it wasn't really a secret) the fact that there are roughly 25 different dialects belonging to different regions — and while some are pretty similar (syrian and lebanese), others could classify as a whole other language on their own (moroccan).

reddit tells him what he already knows; that the best way to learn is through exposure. there are no dictionaries for patois. and farah, despite her total enthusiasm at his interest, is far too busy of a woman to help.

(really, it just gives him an excuse to finally do what he's been meaning to.)

the next time he's craving kibbeh, he's fixed on not making a fool of himself when he asks the cashier out to lunch.

[eudaemon-m]

0 thoughts

[mildcrow]

drawing Ianite for 12 year old me!!! Happy 10th birthday to mianite :)

[spirk-trek]

this one by merle decker (for nome fanzine, 1981) is so sweet it's getting it's own post. loooook. falling asleep in someone's company is so intimate and vulnerable, that moment between sleep and awake when you wake up and see your favorite person, and spock being concerned for an overworked jim???? it's canon but i still need MORE

[aaaamsy]

‧͙⁺˚･༓☾　　☽༓･˚⁺‧͙

Xiao knows he doesn't deserve you.

You've told him before how much you dislike the way he thinks these things; his hands stain all that it touches, not a single life left unscarred by the presence of the vigilant Yaksha. Even straying near the adeptus could leave a mortal kneeling, and not from worship. His hands hurt, covered in blood from both guilty and innocent. He uses them to claw, grip his spear tight in the midst of battle, to reach and grab all he needs to destroy. Xiao does not know how to do much more, how to use them in such a gentle manner the way you do for him. The flowers by his bed tended to with such careful touches in fear he'll ruin the few gifts he's ever received. The nervous way he holds your hand in case you'll notice how desperate he is to keep you, to have you love him. A man like him has no right to have such a bright star stand next to him as if they were the same, as if one doesn't exude destruction and the other represents all that is good in life.

Every touch, all the miscellaneous trinkets, every time you call his name, oh how he savours it all. He kisses you like it's the last time he'll ever have the honour, grip tight and careful, feelings flowing over where his words could never replicate. There was never a world where he ever thought he'd ever have the privilege to love, to be loved, and to have that special person be you, after everything.

The remnants of battle still linger on him and everything he does, there is not a moment of rest when all he knows is to fight, war does not bode well on one's mental state. Yet the Yaksha is one made to hurt, to kill and erase, to cleanse and protect. With nothing but the threat of tomorrow, his days are spent wide awake. His mind is loud, the voices that stain him remind him so at every moment, they never really go away, it's almost like he never left that place. You take his hardened soul and put it to rest, he never knows how you do it but he's always too weak to resist, as if he'd ever pull away from you. A quiet respite in the arms of war, a soft smile when the world bleeds too much, someone to keep him company when all have left.

But that's all he is, a man sent to hurt, he's never known to be anything else.

Yet, soft, untainted hands roam all over the face of a murderer like you were the lucky one, as if the thoughts that have plagued his head for millennia are simply wrong. That everything he was, that he is, is in fact, good enough for this. That he is good enough for you.

It's a silly thought. He isn't one to doubt your word; he would slaughter all the Gods in the sky and below if you'd say the word. But this, how you say such fickle sentiments of his true worth when he knows better. It might be the only thing he'll never believe you for.

In the darkest pits of the moon he wonders when you will be punished as well for staying with someone like him, your deeds will come back to haunt you, you will not stay. It's not something he's ready to face, the thought of the night sky without you by his side. He's grown much too attached, it scares him. Soon enough you will realize the weight of his sins, how his hands represent the lives he's cut short, the pain you will face because of him. And you will leave, you have to. He's thought much about it, in the life of an immortal like him, things like this will become a mere memory soon enough. He won't blame you once you find your answer, if one day you chose to turn your back on the man you swore to stay with he will merely nod, watching as you find a better life for yourself, a better partner who will surely give you more than he ever could. Still, the thought brings the stinging ache to his heart, every time his mind wanders to the point, the uncomfortable notion of wanting to keep you holds him.

Xiao is not a good man. Not in general and definitely not for you. He's cold, indifferent, he hurts. He hurts you more times than he might be aware of it; every time you flinch, all the times you've backed away, the days where you leave and don't come back. He wonders what you see in him, how you've managed to endure this long with him by your side, surely it must be tiring.

But he's selfish, with you at least. He wants to keep you for as long as you allow him, to hold you in the sea of violence for as much as he wants. You bring him light, and like a moth, he would gladly be burned alive if it meant you would shine for him for just a little longer.

You told him once that you loved him, it made his heart stutter like he believed it, like he deserved it. He doesn't doubt your affection, he shelters it, hides it away for only him to find. But it's so difficult to believe, to believe that after years of suffering that this would be one time where he was given his hope, that this would not end up like all the other blessings of his past. His freedom payed with the price of thousands of lives, his friends taken by the Gods they were sworn to keep, and you, Xiao would die if anything were to happen.

No act of kindness nor passage of time will soften him enough to be able to hold you in the way you deserve, yet despite his aloofness, despite his sharp words, you're still here.

During the nights where the stars dim and the voices dig a little deeper, it's you by his side that makes the hurt a little more tolerable. You don't posses any otherworldly power, you don't cure his head from the world he's constantly stuck in, and you don't offer him anything more than your company. But he'd go through a thousand wars if it meant getting to come home to you for one more day, he'd pray to every God in this world dead or alive to keep you by his side, he'd endure all the anguish of the damned if it meant you'll still love him at the end of the day.

Xiao is not a good man, his hands are stained and rough, his heart yearns selfishly for something he can't keep, he's rude and uncaring. Yet for once in his doomed life he wishes to believe. You tell him you love him, and he wants so badly to believe you.

Xiao wants to deserve loving you.

[helixcraft]

Before his banner ends, trying out a new style....

[paper-bag-arts]

uh um uh *javeys your over the garden wall*

[metalbeetal]

anyone else do this or just me

[rookisaknight]

I'm generally not a fanon supremacy person I generally find the process of turning a character into a fandomized oc pretty obnoxious but Sharky Boshaw is an exception. Every piece of fanart drawn by a transparent bisexual makes me forget this man was written to be epic by straight dudes in 2018. Please give him ADHD even harder its important to my well-being

[chestcongestion]

More of me living up to my username afsdfdfg, I don't even know what to call this...coughing mess?? Cause that's basically what it is.