#needed a change of medium

[mothiepixie]

Little Lies

Horror x Motti, Bad Sanses x Motti

Word count: 951

Horror ruminates.

---------

Their arrangement is all casual, or it was supposed to be. They all agreed upon it that their relationship was simply to get out of Nightmare's face and to dump the three at Motti's place when he had enough of their antics. Neither of them anticipated it growing more than just a place of repose. However as time went on things changed and mostly for Horror. 

He wouldn't dare admit it to anyone, let alone to Motti. He's still not sure where he stands with her and part of him is afraid to know, yet, here he is with her laying on his chest like his body was made to caress hers.  

His phalanges combed her hair as gently as he could, but she didn't seem to mind the occasional bump or tug.

He liked this. 

He wants more of this. 

Just the two of them together alone and living in domestic bliss, but even Horror laughs at his own desires. Him? Playing house? Is he even allowed that?  But if not, then what have they been doing all day? She cooked him a full meal and he helped lift the couch so she could vacuum under it. He attempted to help dry the dishes but broke a few, and now they're cozy up to each other watching a dumb B-rated thriller. 

It tugs at his soul and his head pounds from the thoughts swarming. Motti and him used to be at each other's throats; the very sight of each other could ruin their day. He is not at all sure when that changed. All Horror knows is that it began to irritate him when Motti would neglect herself from overworking and then putting Killer or Dust above her own needs. What a stupid girl. 

He gets irritated at those thoughts, his brow furrowing and he has to stop himself from growling. He can't deny that if Killer or Dust was out of the picture Horor would be a lot less territorial, a little easier to deal with, but he's nowhere near ready to open up to Motti about how he feels or what he really wants. 

Everytime he catches a glimpse of himself he gets an ugly reminder of what happened to him and, truthfully, he doesn’t understand how Motti can stand looking at his face. Some days he can’t even look himself in the eye as he’s just constantly reminded of how different he is from his old self. 

A yawn causes Horror to steal a glance down at Motti and watches as she tries to keep her eyes open. He sighs and runs the tips of his phalanges along her arm. 

He wants to laugh at himself, he really does, because he knows that if the core didn’t shut down and caused the magic in the underground to go haywired he still would have been his charming, pun loving self. Now look at him. A massive beast with an unsightly hole in his head and a former shell of who he used to be. 

He hates having to think how Motti would have instantly liked his old self and she wouldn’t have met this jaded old bastard. It would have been so easy to sweep her off her feet, just a pun here or there, casually dropping hints and making her feel like he was her everything. But no, instead, Motti got an insidious freak with a quick temper and more LOVE than he ever thought was possible. She would not feel so safe curled up on him like this if she really knew what he had done or what his hands were stained with. 

Even if he never ate a human Horror can’t bring himself to tell her the truth. The thought of her eyes looking at him with disgust causes his old bones to ache with a feeling he can not yet discern. It’s kind of pitiful that Motti can wear her heart on her sleeve and opened up to him more than he has even graced her with. Yet, he has resolved to himself that he will keep it that way as long as he can. If he can continue to make believe and fool himself that he’s all she wants, he can live with that. Live with the lies and live with the love she gives. 

He’ll tolerate Killer and Dust for now.  Since he has yet to tell Motti he doesn’t want to share because then that would mean he would have to admit that he cares for her in a manner that he hasn’t felt like for some time, if ever. Would she even look at him as a partner? He doesn’t particularly believe that even with how she treats him now. Maybe it’s because neither of the other boys are here to keep her entertained… 

His soul drums against his ribcage, his anxiety spiking. That’s got to be it. She got tired of being irritated by him because Killer and Dust can’t be around all the time. Even if they do mundane things together that she doesn’t really do with the others, it must because he’s just a massive heap of bones. How can she give and receive any sort of affection from him? 

Maybe he is just the placeholder after all. 

Horror growls loudly while his eye forms into a slit and his mouth pulls into a harsh snarl. Motti becomes alert, snapping out of her drowsy state and goes to look at Horror but her world spins as she’s dropped to the floor. “Wha-” Before Motti can finish her sentence Horror shortcuts out of her apartment. Dazed and confused, Motti just stares at the spot where he once was. 

[bixels]

As cameras becomes more normalized (Sarah Bernhardt encouraging it, grifters on the rise, young artists using it), I wanna express how I will never turn to it because it fundamentally bores me to my core. There is no reason for me to want to use cameras because I will never want to give up my autonomy in creating art. I never want to become reliant on an inhuman object for expression, least of all if that object is created and controlled by manufacturing companies. I paint not because I want a painting but because I love the process of painting. So even in a future where everyone’s accepted it, I’m never gonna sway on this.

if i have to explain to you that using a camera to take a picture is not the same as using generative ai to generate an image then you are a fucking moron.

[nimbusclan]

Moon 9 Part 1

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NimbusClan is back :)

--

“Fog?” Moonstar calls out from where she’s busy scratching shallow grooves into the earth under a large evergreen bush, the only plant in the area that has more than just a few stubborn leaves still clinging to its skeletal branches. There’s a haze of mist that hangs suspended in the clearing that hides her brother from view, but she knows he’s somewhere nearby, prodding around for moss that hasn’t been soaked through yet. 

In an effort to let Fogfreckle feel useful after his long few moons cooped up recovering from the eagle incident, she’d asked him to assign her a task, as deputy. It isn’t much – there’s not much for them to do that isn’t hunting and keeping an eye out for potential camp spots – but he’d beamed all importantly when he told Moonstar to find somewhere for them to sleep tonight while he gathered moss for their nests. 

A sense of pride had warmed Moonstar like a sunbeam. Eventually, when there’s an actual Clan for Fogfreckle to really boss around (and there will be, swear to StarClan), she knows he’s going to make a great deputy.

“Is that what this stuff is?” Fogfreckle calls back, his voice drifting from the fog somewhere to Moonstar’s left. With a snort, Moonstar backs out from under the bush and heads in his direction, peering through the thick haze until the shape of her brother is visible in the mist. He’s batting at the air like he’s trying to scoop the low-hanging clouds into his paws.

He looks almost like how Moonstar would imagine a StarClan cat outside of a dream to look. His pale pelt is ghostly with the heavy hang of clouds shrouding him, and his cobalt eyes glow with a dim blue halo.

She grins at his antics, suffused with an amusement that chases away the pervasive damp that’s trying to work its way into her fur. Flickering across her mind like a hummingbird’s wings, a sharp pang of nostalgia for their kithood washes through her, painful and heartfelt and gone in less than a heartbeat.

“Don’t be a smart-ears,” Moonstar chides her brother, flicking her tail against his flank. “I’m nearly finished with the dens; do you want me to help you gather moss?”

“That’d be great, actually,” Fogfreckle  mews. “I think I’ve found just about everything in this clearing that’s still dry. I got lucky with a hollowed out log, but we could use a bit more.”

Meowing an affirmative, Moonstar picks a direction at random and trots off into the cold, unfamiliar mist, mouth open to scent her way. The heady smells of damp earth and dripping branches fill up her senses. The blurry, unfocused leaves hanging still and silent in the trees press against her ears and muffle even her own pawsteps.

“I can hardly see past my own whiskers…” Moonstar muses quietly to herself. She squints into the fog. It’s thick like cobweb and sticks to her fur just the same.

Moonstar picks her way across the damp grass of the woods, heading for where the trees thin out on the cliffside. She’s hoping for a bit of wind that may whisk some of this fog away. It’ll be easier to find moss if she can actually see it. The ground starts to slope down towards the cliff, so Moonstar angles herself to slide carefully along the grass.

The silence is eerie. It makes Moonstar miss her Clan - the old NimbusClan - and the hustle and bustle of cats going about their daily schedules. She aches for the regular ho hum of days where she knew what happened next, where the hunting party would return with plump freshkill from the meadow and where she got to work on sparring with her brother and mentor in the shade of the mountain. The constant undercurrent of meows in the camp, days that were never spent in silence.

She puffs her fur against the chill and the memories.

Every day since she and Fogfreckle left the wreckage of the landside behind has been uncertain. Full cycles of the sun and moon filled with the unknown. StarClan decided that she deserved to be leader, but most days, Moonstar feels as incompetent as a bumbling kit. She could run a Clan that worked like a real Clan, she thinks. It would be easy, even, with a plan to follow.

Hissing, Moonstar remembers that she’s supposed to be hunting for moss. She doesn’t do well with this loneliness – she gets too lost in her thoughts. Some leader.

The ground slopes down sharper still, and she adjust the angle of her body and flicks her tail out behind her to adjust her balance. The wet grass beneath her paws isn’t much to hold onto.

A whisper reaches her ears then, a sigh of the wind, except none of the trees sway their leaves and the bushes don’t quiver. All is still when Moonstar jerks up her head, glancing around for the source of the noise.

“Hello?”

The murmur is there again, wet like water and blurry like fog, and Moonstar can feel the thick weight of eyes on her pelt, prickling there like ants. She whirls around, sure she’ll find somebody, some cat, maybe a predator, watching her through the fog, but the damp grass slips out from under her paws.

Flailing, Moonstar looks down in horror as the ground falls away underneath her, the mountain sloping steeply down at the edge of the treeline. Distracted, she hadn’t noticed how close she’d been to the edge.

She hits the scree slope hard, her teeth gnashing together and her paws skidding as she tries to find her footing. The mountain is steep and the gravel underpaw is loose and sprays out from under her as she tries to sink her claws into it.

Larger rocks dislodged from her descent tumble past her like clumsy kits, knocking into each other with bangs and cracks that quicken her pulse and claw at her lungs. The sound echoes across the slope, fenced in by the fog that surrounds her on all sides like a stranger’s breath too close to her face. Memories wreathed in scent and sound clamor for attention in her head, there and sudden and real and bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.

She can smell it. The tang of blood, sharp, filling her nostrils, choking her with the thick scent of it. The wails of her Clanmates and the deafening, roaring crash of boulders falling into camp pound in her ears. Sharp stones dig into her paw pads as she races down the slope but she feels like she’s an entire mountain away, that night rushing back to her like she’s there all over again, living it for the second time.

“What’s happening?”

Moonstar lifts her head, blinking blearily as the earth under her rattles her awake.

“The ground is shaking!”

Her brother is pressed to her side, familiar and warm in the dark den.

“Rocks– it’s a landslide!”

Dark. It’s too dark.

“The apprentice den! It’s blocked!”

She can smell it, now. Blood. Her Clanmates are wailing in fear.

“Fogpaw!”

Moonstar leaps to her paws. The sound is so loud. She thinks her head is going to split open from the thunderous noise.

“Moonp-!” CRACK.

Moonstar’s heart races, thundering in her ribcage as loud as the rocks that tumble down alongside her. Desperately, Moonstar claws for purchase on the slope, but there’s nothing more she can do but open her mouth in a horrified wail as the cliff she’s sliding straight for rushes up to meet her.

She flies off the edge of the cliff, suspended in air for a long, horrible moment until her stomach reacts first, dropping before the rest of her body can follow. As she falls, she feels like she’s going to be sick. She flails her limbs for something, anything to grab onto as the edge of the cliff swallows up her vision.

[Previous] [Start] [Next]

[somedudenamedruiz]

More Deadwood headcannons, courtesy of my brother. Can you tell the type of place we live?

[epsilonhybrid]

my first attack of the year for @buck120lover !! i was rabbit anon all along

[fxnker]

im this close to giving these BASTARDS a big chop because i struggle so much to draw their original hair length. stupids. also did i tell you guys that i love paolox WOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!

[chiariuchiha]

@holy-havoc

Just this one time - please.

She tried to ignore the overgrown stone steps leading up the hill to her left, the shadow of the shrine buried in the trees looming just near her feet. One step forward, past the entrance, then another. One more.

And then, of course, there she was. Her sister appeared before her, no ethereal shimmering into life like ghost stories might describe, but before her, materializing instantaneously, looking as real as she could, despite what Chiari knew to be true. Her foot was tapping, eyes sharp, expectant, demanding - not looking at her at all, but through her. She was exactly how Chiari remembered her, all stubborn-willed, brow furrowed in dramatic annoyance.

Chiari exhaled in a slow and bitter sigh. Her eyes drifted downward to the remnants of her hunt earlier that day and the mess it had left of her clothing. Blood, dark and thick had seeped through the top layer, and was just beginning to dry, darkening in the fabric.

What a bitch this will be to clean.

It wouldn't be the first time, nor the last, but she opened her mouth anyway to offer some half-assed excuse, a weary explanation that she cannot possibly enter the shrine. Not like this. Not filthy with the remnants of a life stolen, seeping into her clothes. When she glanced back up, though, the excuse died in her throat at the sight of her sister, silencing her with a single gesture.

One arm lifted, one slender finger pointing upward through the torii gate. Silent. Unrelenting.

Chiari shook her head once, lowering it again, but didn't debate it. It wasn't worth the sacrifice of air to argue with the dead. She's tried time and time again, and her words only serve to sink her into a deeper hole. The blood on her clothing should bar her entry. What disrespect she would offer by bringing death's stain to these grounds? But she took the first three stone steps up anyway, pausing only just before the torii to look back at the apparition that surely was but a figment of a broken mind. Her sister - or perhaps the ghost of her, raised her eyebrows as if to say 'well?" and she turned and stepped through the gate.

The path up the steps is long but not arduous, each flattened stone step already worn with the imprints of footsteps from many a traveler, though this shrine was overgrown, in disarray, being consumed by the forest itself. A familiar weight settles in, heavy in her chest, suffocating. That cold, sinking certainty of what awaited her at the top - and they were always waiting.

They never seemed to let her pass by one of these, no matter how forsaken, how neglected the shrine might be. Maybe it was part of her mind forcing her to honor a ritual she no longer understood, or perhaps something to reconcile her actions, or maybe they required it because the veil was thinner here, they could speak freely, openly critici - No. No. They're all hallucinations. They were never real.

By the time she reached the final step, she hardened her resolve. Not this time. The shrine was nearly in ruins, the simple stone altar all but crumbling on one side, but the incense burner somehow remained upright on its tilted surface. Sunlight breached the roof through holes where weather and time have eaten away at the wood shingled roof and rafters, catching the altar in a dappled ray of warmth. She knelt quietly on the moss-coated stone floor, the mat that would have once resided there long worn to only threads by time. She reached for the incense, plucking one stick, rolling it between her fingers. This one, one of the few unburned, may still catch.

Focused on her task, she took the small metal hammer that lay discarded on the ground and struck it against the steel plate until it glowed a faint orange hue. The smell of heated metal stirs something nostalgic in her. As dismayed as she was to find herself kneeling at a shrine once more, she found strange comfort in the sanctity of the familiar motions. A single brush of the incense along the heated metal ignited the tip, and the smoke began to curl upward in a mesmerizing swirl. With practiced ceremony, she placed it in the small burner and pressed her palms together, closing her eyes, bowing her head.

The silence stretched on, and she felt the flicker of doubt in her resolve creeping up on her. She could almost count off when the cacaphony of murmured criticisms would begin, and they do, the apparitions surely devised by her own mind encircling her from behind. It was a test of wills, and she fought to ignore them, eyes pinched shut in concentration, overwhelmed with the accusations of cowardice, of cruelty, of monstrosity. Every insult landed with the weight of memory behind it, but still she kneels, rooted by ritual, stubborn in silence. Her face contorted with the strain to stay silent as the moments passed, and maybe that's why she never heard anyone approaching, all of her willpower concentrating on shutting all of it out. Finally, when it was too much, when she could feel her heart pounding at her temples and her teeth had been gritted for long enough that her jaw ached, she let out a resounding "SHUT. UP."

[gregwithagh]

JON DOODLES

+ the distortions under the cut

++ a close up of the one i really liked

[clumsypuppy]

OWWWWWW

[ahli-stuff]

WHATEVER YOU SAY BEAUTIFUL!!!

Bsd 120 raws

Fyodor’s little stretch…!

My thoughts? Honestly, it’s a bit of a nothing chapter (I say as I don’t know what any of the dialogue is but I know it’s just going to be Fyodor explaining more space-dimensional bullshit manga logic). It is exciting to have Fukuzawa face off against Fyodor, but Asagiri pulls this SO often man, where it’s like “A new challenger enters the ring” every chapter and multiple times per fight.

And this fight really should’ve been Akutagawa’s time to shine. I know he’s going to get back up, but man.

[utilitycaster]

VERY glad that Evontra’vir said “the titans are dead” because like there are currently living beings that will suffer if Ludinus’s plan succeeds and they just don’t seem to matter compared to titans that died a millennia ago??? (After trying to wipe out mortals themselves)

Hey anon,

Agreed. The thing about the titans coming up is that it does, actually, make a lot of sense for the two characters who have been most vocal about it - Ashton and Laudna - to feel this way! But it doesn't come from a rational place; it comes from profound trauma and loss about which they can't be objective.

Taliesin talked about this on 4-Sided Dive: Ashton is grabbing on desperately to the one piece of information they know now about their missing childhood and is "leaning into it...probably before he should." We know this about them; Ashton's been emblazoning themself with the Hishari and Dunamancy symbols without having a single clue what they were. The titans are part of that. Did you notice how he keeps saying "things are changing" and didn't actually like...provide any meaningful information? Again to quote 4SD: "...there's not a lot of judgment happening about whether or not that's a good thing or not, and what it actually means." Like, I think that, based on Ashton's past position of "don't kill everyone for your goals, that is shitty" if they did stop, and process, and set aside that strong emotional factor that's in play (which is not something I'd expect them to be able to do easily!) They'd realize that the titans returning, were that possible, would be cataclysmic. But that's not what they're thinking about right now. I think Evontra'vir bluntly stating that the titans are dead was a needed splash of cold water on that line of thinking.

My thought re: Laudna is that it's slightly more metaphorical. Consider her backstory: a conquering force swept in and destroyed most of what had been there before. She is a relic both of that earlier time and of that conquering force, and the subjugation she experienced never truly stopped, even though Whitestone has moved on. Of course she'd see herself in the titans in the telling of stories about the titans! People like Percy get to return and revitalize and build a new family and grow old and happy and die, despite their trauma, and she's caught between life and death forever. Of course she'd relate to some half-buried thing that people call monstrous and ancient and displaced! But that doesn't actually help her do anything about her situation and it's not a philosophy that really is useful in understanding the larger geopolitical (and, frankly, cosmic) reality happening right now, because, yeah, if you let the titans back, people will die.

For both these characters - who have spoken to each other about being physically altered and left for dead, alone, in ways no one else can quite understand, I think there's something immensely seductive about the idea of something older than the gods, something defeated but could rise again, which both is relatable to their own situations and comes neatly packaged with a reason why it didn't save you when you called out. But it's still a fantasy. It's not real, it's not going to happen, and so it's important that Evontra'vir, who as Jirana said, does not mince words, called it out for what it is. The titans are dead. Something of their essences does remain for you to use to make a choice. You are going to have to do this using your own judgment; you are doing the saving; stop worrying about the dead and start thinking about what you will do to serve the living.

I think an emerging theme of this campaign - and arguably a secondary theme of the past campaigns, and really, the theme of D&D if you think about it, is that the person you developed into because of your trauma, and the coping mechanisms and behaviors and presentation you developed as a result may eventually cease to serve you once you find a support network and begin to be given more and more agency within the world; and indeed, if you cling to these things they will begin to hurt those around you, and eventually you as well. I think "The Titans are dead" is one way to very, very bluntly and effectively communicate that.

[antlerkitty]

Me: *Unable to understand much of the things going on on my Tumblr page due to cognitive issues/regression and needing simple explanations.*

Also me: *Struggles not to use the most confusing complex wording ever in my own posts, that even I don’t understand sometimes.*

[ducktracy]

i know it’s kind of redundant given that a lot of my blog functions as a historical archive in itself, and especially my reviews where i try and post every bit of production art i can find coinciding with the short being reviewed, but i’m seriously considering starting a side blog of exclusively posting LT production art because there have been too many times where i’ve seen some production art, went “i love this!”, forgotten to save it and never found it again. much to ponder

[x-adoringvoid-x]

🖤Personal Space🖤

[ohdeargodwhy]

Trying oil painting for the first time and realising that painters stand far away from the canvas:

1) to get a better overview of the whole piece and not get trapped in detail

but maybe more importantly:

2) to avoid accidentally smudging the whole thing to shit by accidentally brushing against it ;;_____;;

[aa-aaronsautism]

The problem of changes

(in this case changes of ingredients and packaging of safe foods)

Yesterday we went to grocery store to get the juice which I was able to drink the last months. i need this juice to drink anything at all. drinking water is hard for me and I have big issues to stay hydrated.

I was glad to have that juice because it was perfect. It was cheap (that’s important because I need much juice per week and we can not effort other juice), it has a low caloric ratio, it was easy to get in every city in my country so I don’t have trouble to carry many packs with me when I travel or have appointments in other citys, the taste was perfect to me, the consistency was perfect (not to watery, not to juicy), the packaging, the size of the opening for drinking.

In short this juice is a important piece of my daily life and a routine.

So yesterday I went to the drink section in grocery store and go to the place where the juice stands normally. But it wasn’t there. I directly became frustrated, because I need to buy this juice to be able to drink something the next three days.

I panicked a little bit and looked at other possible places where the juice could be.

Than I saw the bottle from the picture.

In the first moment I was glad because I thought this is a good alternative. But no no. I got it. They changed the package from my juice to this bottle. Same picture as on my juice, same name, everything the same except the packaging. That’s what I thought in that moment. But the change of the packaging stressed me out directly. Because I don’t understand the change. But I was able to calm me down a little bit because I could tell my brain that my juice in a new packaging is better than no juice.

With these mixture of happiness to can drink at all, and frustration and stress because of changes we went home.

At home I try the juice directly because I was very thirsty. Haven’t had drink the whole day.

I got more frustrated, the feeling of the bottle is a other feeling than the Pack before. It’s cold and slippy, the stability is bad - so wobbly. The feeling of the opening on my lips is different. The opening is much wider than from the pack. I even got more and more frustrated because I realized that this bottle was now a daily struggle to me.

I was in massive overload. But I needed to drink, I was so thirsty.

I took a sip… an hell no. The taste is so different. I got a meltdown because I couldn’t handle the changes.

After a time I could think straight again and tried to tell myself that it is only the bottle. That it’s only the bottle that causes the different taste. And that I should got over it and don’t act like a little child.

But no no. It’s not just the bottle that changes the taste for my brain.

They also changed the ingredients composition of the juice. The proportion of the ingredients are different. They changed the proportion of carrot juice down from 8% to 5%. I don’t imagining that the taste is different. The taste IS different.

But it’s pain and suffering.

Now I have a problem. What should I drink? What if I’m not able to get used to the changes? I need to drink. I normally drink not enough. And now I have even bigger issues to drink enough.

Why did they change it. I can’t understand.

I try to think rationally. But my brain steps back to frustration and stress only if I see the bottle.

Changes of safe things like food, drinks or items are enormous stress for autistic people.

Changes are so much. Changes are too much!