#out of order but what do you expect

[blackkatdraws2]

There are more things in the Parable than Stanley knows about. [Blank Scripts AU]

[s0fter-sin]

ghost stares at the ceiling, chest heaving in a harsh pant; sweat ice on his clammy flesh and soaked into the sheet he restlessly kicks away.

ears still ringing, his fingertips blindly drift down to trail along his vivisection scar. he half-expects blood to smear in their wake. his own line of solomon, who ordered him split in twain; half of him given to a grieving mother and half left with the grieving to be.

just for both his broken halves to be rejected.

what did it make him that his mother grieved him more than she loved him? that she begged to be relieved of him more adamantly than she begged to receive him? why did his worth spill out with his drawn blood? why was his pain lesser than hers?

his hand flexes, digging into the raised scar like it’ll part beneath his fingertips to plunge into his mangled insides. no one knows the cruelty of reforming the halved; his name, his being, not nearly as important as his body when he was stripped from himself. no one knows the pain of healing and understanding losing pieces of yourself means losing your value along with them.

how many more pieces did he have to lose before he was halved once more? before his very presence incurred grief so strong it was better to be rid of him than cradle his bloodied remains?

did the infant fight himself? did he age always at odds with himself; his halves never truly whole? he hopes he wasn’t, that he was spared the loss of self; the fear that one may be welcomed over the other.

who will he lose when the inevitable comes? when he’s ripped apart again? simon? or ghost? is it better to be cursed with choice just like his mother or live with an aftermath chosen for him? does it matter if in the end, he convinces himself there was nothing of him left to lose?

his head lolls to the side and the wild buck of his chest slows. he watches johnny beside him, his face lax with the rare peace of sleep; his cheek squished against the pillow, his lips pursed as long breaths escape him.

johnny. soap. never torn asunder but two all the same.

he carefully reaches out and ghosts his fingers along the jagged scar on his chin. even in sleep, he presses into his bloodied touch. he’s never fled his half-flesh, never shies away from his gore as it spills unbidden from his cleaved torso. he holds on where his mother let him go; cups his stomach to hold his insides in place and never minds the blood that drips through his fingers.

simon will never let him become his own solomon and cannibalise himself. he will never let him question which half of him has more value; which pieces he can afford to lose before he’s cast aside.

ghost’s soap. simon’s johnny. his.

whole, in any incarnation.

[kagoutiss]

green beetle black beetle

[musubiki]

worst hostage ever. (prev)

[unordinaries]

unordinary 340 spoilers

so i’ve been thinking about it and on one hand, isen suggesting they leave john and run is a pretty sobering moment because he really is just clinging to the first real opportunity he has to protect his best friends who won’t stop getting into situations where he quite literally can’t but on the other hand it is also kinda like. (gently grabs isen by the shoulders) hey man. we saw valerie’s level. i think you’re gonna need that guy later

[gideonisms]

Does a podcast ever release a take you disagree with so strongly it makes you question everything you heard on it up to that point

[krispiecake]

tell me why i can hear another tenants fucking music from my flat. HE DOESNT EVEN LIVE IN MY BUILDING. HE LIVES IN A COMPLETELY SEPARATE BUILDING ON THE SECOND FLOOR AND I CAN HEAR HIS MUSIC FROM MY FLAT. MY FLAT WHICH IS IN A DIFFERENT SEPARATE BUILDING.

[front-facing-pokemon]

[tactax-art]

Hey! I loved your art of god of explosions soap and alb ghost. Do you have a post going into any of the lore/world building? I love creature aus! If you don't already have a post, I'd love to hear more about it! (Also what's an alb?)

I've not shared anything anywhere yet! Just the two drawings. Not super solid on the world building yet, so I'm gonna wait with sharing that for now until I have a better grip. Do intend to write a fic for these two when I've got some scenes together though!

Ghost being an Alb is generally inspired by the german "Nachtalb". I'm not aiming for him to be precisely that, but it was my jumping-off point. Also I grew up on the 'Alb' spelling, but that might be a regional thing? No idea why in english they quote it only as 'Alp'.

Ghosts abilities aren't something I've completely settled on yet (gotta keep my options open for plot and angst, you never know *rubs hands*), but he's a kind of fear entity.

Alb's are myth's answer to sleep apnea, sleep paralysis, nightmares, and night terrors. As such he sustains himself on consuming dreams (rare) and breath, and causing fear (more effectively when it's during people's rest but also when awake), nightmares etc. I'll probs keep some of the mischief Albs are known for, not that anyone would believe it's Ghost which he finds super funny, and also some shapeshifting.

His body is sand based, as a nod to the sandman (folklore), golden sand being dreams he consumed and black his base being from nightmares/dear. His bed's full of sand. His gear is full of sand. He prefers knives to guns cause guns and sand don't mix and having to keep it all together is so annoying. It's rumoured Ghost can control shadows, but it's actually his own black sand he moves around.

I'm pretty sure the skull mask is his actual face, and him making it gold is bragging about eating dreams (not that anyone would know, but it's enough that ghost knows, and considering that there's a god of dreams they're not exactly easy to get ahold of).

The tag is: #tactax mwii creatures au

[schizononagesimus]

🎶 they tried to make me go to rehab and i said PLEASE PLEASE HOLY FUCK I FEEL SO BAD WILL NOBODY HELP ME I CANT STOP WHY DOESNT ANYBODY NOTICE HOW BAD IT IS PLEASE HELP

[seaofreverie]

I want to visit a place i've been thinking about visiting for several months now but that's scary

[crescentfool]

🎆✨

[inferno-silentdragon]

Another omori pixel doodle while I procrastinate

[mcybree]

Thoughts on 3rd life mirror birds. 3rd life big dogs. 3rd life property police. They fascinate me and I think you have thoughts on them but I might be wrong..either way

i do in fact have thoughts on them but i think if i talk about 3l!flower husbands publicly any more rn I’ll get so self conscious I’ll explode on the spot. this being said i have still yet to watch evo but its been on my list for forever bc of 3l!property police specifically… i really love martyns petty grudge against jimmy for those first two episodes he acts like he’s 12 and really pissed off on the playground. anyways i think that martyn going from being concerned for his friend to Just Fucking Lying to split up Scott and Jimmy, because he took personal offense to Jimmy being unwilling to drop everything to go live with him on the spot is the funniest thing in the world. Girl it’s not about you

[the-busy-ghost]

Alright uninformed rant time. It kind of bugs me that, when studying the Middle Ages, specifically in western Europe, it doesn’t seem to be a pre-requisite that you have to take some kind of “Basics of Mediaeval Catholic Doctrine in Everyday Practise” class. 

Obviously you can’t cover everything- we don’t necessarily need to understand the ins and outs of obscure theological arguments (just as your average mediaeval churchgoer probably didn’t need to), or the inner workings of the Great Schism(s), nor how apparently simple theological disputes could be influenced by political and social factors, and of course the Official Line From The Vatican has changed over the centuries (which is why I’ve seen even modern Catholics getting mixed up about something that happened eight centuries ago). And naturally there are going to be misconceptions no matter how much you try to clarify things for people, and regional/class/temporal variations on how people’s actual everyday beliefs were influenced by the church’s rules. 

But it would help if historians studying the Middle Ages, especially western Christendom, were all given a broadly similar training in a) what the official doctrine was at various points on certain important issues and b) how this might translate to what the average layman believed. Because it feels like you’re supposed to pick that up as you go along and even where there are books on the subject they’re not always entirely reliable either (for example, people citing books about how things worked specifically in England to apply to the whole of Europe) and you can’t ask a book a question if you’re confused about any particular point. 

I mean I don’t expect to be spoonfed but somehow I don’t think that I’m supposed to accumulate a half-assed religious education from, say, a 15th century nobleman who was probably more interested in translating chivalric romances and rebelling against the Crown than religion; an angry 16th century Protestant; a 12th century nun from some forgotten valley in the Alps; some footnotes spread out over half a dozen modern political histories of Scotland; and an episode of ‘In Our Time’ from 2009. 

But equally if you’re not a specialist in church history or theology, I’m not sure that it’s necessary to probe the murky depths of every minor theological point ever, and once you’ve started where does it end? 

Anyway this entirely uninformed rant brought to you by my encounter with a sixteenth century bishop who was supposedly writing a completely orthodox book to re-evangelise his flock and tempt them away from Protestantism, but who described the baptismal rite in a way that sounds decidedly sketchy, if not heretical. And rather than being able to engage with the text properly and get what I needed from it, I was instead left sitting there like:

And frankly I didn’t have the time to go down the rabbit hole that would inevitably open up if I tried to find out

[da-riya]

Highlights from my EU4 Austria game up to 1600s