#pain agony etc

[flowers-of-io]

alone, finally prompt for xivu >:3

Read on Ao3

On the day of Savathûn's death, Xivu Arath is crowned Queen of the Hive.

Oryx would find beauty in this, she thinks -- in the finality of this shape, the Osmium Kinghood chiseled and defined far beyond anything he could have attained. He would be proud of how far beyond the event horizon of his ambitions the Hive have moved. He would've been glad, seeing her carry his legacy on to such glory. She focuses on this furiously.

She thinks of this as she takes up her sword, thinks of it so hard it hurts, and rams the blade hard into the ground beside the hundreds of others encircling her throne. Its time has passed. She will forge a new one, a better one, longer and sharper and worthy of a Queen. A sword she can pierce through the shell of the Traveler-egg.

Tribute flows up the billions of tithe lines as she walks through her throne world, straight into the hungry jaws of her worm. It is sickly sweet on the tongue. With no one else at the top of the chain she is feeding more richly than ever before, the intake of power almost dizzying, filling her up in a steady stream. This is good. This is right. She is powerful--the most powerful that she's ever been, powerful enough to cleave the universe in two and scrape out its truths like the pit from a fruit.

She walks through the throne world, and the universe shrinks away from her in horror. Her presense thunders across the emerald sky. Her lieutenants, squadron captains, the lesser Hive--all sink to their knees as she passes, heads bowing before the sole Queen of the Hive.

This is good. This is right.

The forge empties out the moment she enters, the tall winged door shutting behind her. She picks up tongs and a hammer, each as long as an Acolyte is tall, and moves to pump the bellows that unfold to the height of her shoulders. Fire roars. Xivu hammers the iron with all her might--the might of an armoured frigate, of a row of mortar cannons firing at once, of a full-throated battle cry. She hammers, and the steel gives in under her hand. She hammers, and the fabric of the universe vibrates like a taut membrane, her will ringing upon it with each strike. The bellows holler deafeningly. The handle she carves from osmium, silvery and crumpled and sharp like she is sharp; she knows it will be wounding her until her skin toughens to fit the hold. A plume of vapour hits her face as she sticks the sword into the water bucket with a hiss.

And then everything falls quiet.

The fire still rages, but it is a murmur after the deafening ringing of metal against metal. Through the shut door no sounds of battle slip in from the outside. The sword--dull, heavy, half her height--sits in Xivu's hand, fireglow flickering off the blade, and the sound echoes in the chamber as she gives it a swing and rams it against the stone rim of the hearth.

She struggles to hold herself back from ramming it again, maybe along with shoving the anvil to the floor and kicking the bucket for good measure. Anything to kill the silence--this insistent ringing that is the furthest thing from sound drilling into her skull--but she manages, and only tightens her hold on the handle until the osmium cuts through her skin.

She will grow from this. She will sharpen this blade, and every drop of blood she feeds it will be a testimony of her might and the proof of her rule. She will continue to earn her place at its edge. It is good, it is right. She focuses on this.

She swings the sword again, so hard her wrist joint screams in pain, and the sound of metal hitting stone ripples through the empty forge.

[vesmoth]

thanks to them destroyed me so i drew a screencap to cope

[bearsgrove]

send help i think im falling in love with a friend ughhhhhhhhhh

[wulfhalls]

"Rings of Power showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay say they took Season 1 criticisms into account as they prepared for Season 2: "I wouldn’t say we're over-correcting for any of it, but we’re certainly listening to people’s responses."

And we got: YOU THINK YOU KNOW BETTER THAN ME??? STUPID FANGIRLS!!

crying laughing can't believe our bad luck

licherally u have to laugh u really do otherwise you'd be on the floor wailing weeping withering haha

[cadmuslabs777]

I miss him sm it's unreal

[aibafiles]

oh no if ryuki makes it hes up against gottie next

[wickmitz]

I decided to start talking about Wick and Rocky's relationship because I like their dynamics too, I like seeing Wick scared of Rocky and Rocky being aggressive with him, which is unusual because Rocky is rarely aggressive with anyone, but of course Wick is an exception to rule

Also my mini opinion about their possible relationship, I think that if Rocky didn't have to fight for his place, then he and Wick could become friends, or at least tolerate each other a little, I also see some superficial similarities, their gentlemanly and romantic natures, and their common love for explosions (remembering the quarrymen chapter), but this is my assumption, I think that I don't understand the characters' personalities well, so I can be wrong in this assumption, something like that. So, what do you think about their relationship?

for starters, i cannot thank you enough for this ask! as i’ve said previously, i have many thoughts on these two, so it’s nice to finally be able to share some of them. although given the extent to which i think about them, i apologize in advance if this is sloppy and sort of everywhere … while i’ll try to structure things the best i can, i cannot promise i’ll succeed! but hopefully this is an enjoyable reply nonetheless.

one of my favorite things about rocky and wick’s relationship is absolutely how aggressive rocky is towards the aristocrat ; he is prone to glares and cruel jokes and borderline hissing whenever the man is within his line of sight, or can be brought to a wailing-fit over the mere mention of his name from miss m’s mouth. there is a childishness to it, but a very prominent threat as well in spite of rocky’s usual incompetence. so he goes out of his way to posture around wick, readily lying and adorning himself with the gangster drapes he so badly wants to wear, in the hopes that it intimidates … will even badmouth wick’s family and make fun of his name and rock related obsession to mitzi, and so on so forth! yet all of this is very reminiscent of schoolyard bullying rather than anything too severe, though we as the audience understand rather quickly that rocky would bash wick’s head in with a tire iron if he could. ( translation : if it wouldn’t earn the tears or hate of a certain beloved mitzi may ) and it’s all very intense despite the absence of actual violence! and i understand why many fans see this as unusual for rocky and believe that it’s only wick who makes him act so aggressively, but i’d argue it isn’t really wick at all that prompts such scary reactions from him … and that rocky is a deeply angry character who’s a.) been boiling quietly for a long, long time and b.) has turned wick into a punching bag of sorts for this inner world of resentment and hurt. basically, when he’s judging the well-to-do or poking fun, his eyes don’t look at wick and actually acknowledge him as sedgewick sable ; instead this is a being, something vague and metaphorical, who threatens to upseat rocky’s permanence in the lackadaisy and steal away his savior, and he’s had a hand in the violinist’s misfortune for a long time.

obviously, rocky doesn’t think wick robbed him of his family twice over and made him homeless, but he is channeling the fear and anguish of those events into his loathing for wick, if that makes sense? it’s easier that way -- to finally have an outlet for everything bleeding inside of you, to be able to bite and claw at something without feeling conflicted or having to take personal accountability for your own mistakes … which is something that i think rocky does struggle with to a degree. he is sort of a finger pointer! his pain has to be worth something, it has to be for someone else ; spending years homeless and losing his last bit of family was for freckle, and the scrambling of his literal brain was for mitzi, and that means he can’t ever be angry with them! well, except that he is, somewhat, but he buries it deep down instead of feeling it. with freckle there is a sense of strain between them -- an air of ‘you owe me’ from rocky to freckle as he uses freckle to appease miss m, and he constantly pokes fun at his cousin too. it’s lighter than his jabs at wick, but there’s a constant pestering, a reminder of how good freckle has it : how he’s got the mom and the house and the job and the girl most notably. i don’t think rocky is intending to come across as mean, and to his credit he hardly does! but it’s rather clear to me that some part of him, some hidden and deeply hurt part, is rather indignant about taking the fall for freckle all those years ago. which he can’t understand, because how could he? he made that choice, he decided to take accountability for something he didn’t do because he loves freckle and knows it’d be so easy to believe this family tragedy was roark’s fault ; the devilish child he was, all troublesome and too broken to properly fit anywhere. so there is a disconnect born here, where rocky can’t comprehend that he’d be angry at freckle, so instead these not so great feelings are placed elsewhere and silently boil over time. and with mitzi … i don’t think he’s angry at her per se, but there is a frustrated and desperate chorus of : why him and why not me, when i’m the one out here dying for you? which is certainly unpleasant. of course, rather than allowing those feelings to be more aimed at miss m, whom he feels unloved by, he ( again! ) represses these emotions and allows them to fester into his greatest fears and fantastical complexes. i think there is a lot of other miscellaneous anger he could have towards others too … perhaps some part of him is sore upon seeing ivy’s normal lifestyle, watching her go to university and knowing that’s been taken from him. or an ache felt when hearing stories from zib and the band and how they used to travel successfully, living as nomads, and rocky is all too reminded of his similar lifestyle and how he couldn’t make it work as effortlessly. people with immense trauma are more prone to irrational anger and jealousy, to viewing everything around them as unfair and believing it’s even more unjust that so many people get to live comfortably while they’ve suffered. a situation that gets more messy when you’re someone like rocky, a man who’s willingly made choices that have harmed himself and wants to continue on with his smiling, bumbling fool of an act. he does not want to be angry, does not want to see it within himself, i think, which leads to an accidental increase of it.

all of this is to reiterate that wick is a scapegoat for rocky and nothing more. it’s why he’s rather hypocritical whenever it concerns the man. for example, it was stated by tracy that he looks down upon wick for his excessive presence at the bar, yet he appears to enjoy hanging out with zib -- who drinks just as often! he makes fun of how all wick ever talks about is rocks, when he himself is prone to poetry rambles that people find irritating or boring, and etc etc. this is also just a human nature thing, to critique someone you heavily dislike and even going as far as to belittle things you love or do in your own day to day because you just hate them that bad! but given rocky’s willingness to befriend anyone, it more so reeks of a dehumanization element. wick is every obstacle in his way, every divine force that threatens to send him packing again, so he is equal parts unnerved by wick’s presence and angry about it. it is mostly a fear response we are seeing, an emotion that’s morphed into long held resentment and anger. so his actions are extremely defensive, with him trying to push wick far away and keep him and mitzi separate, like some sort of animal attempting to ward off a threat that’s come too close to their home. despite the loaded animosity there, this hate has hardly reached its peak … but it shall only grow more intense as things continue onward i’m afraid, since as it stands ( in the comic at least ) rocky is at an all time low … and is ten times more desperate. i’d honestly say wick has become so warped in his mind’s eye that he can only strive towards ‘winning’ over the other man, because that’s all he can see anymore. i think mitzi implying that wick willingly helped her out, the intense head injury, and rocky’s fragile emotional state is exactly what pushes him towards premeditated murder in look-see. i don’t know how people perceive that arc, but to me it’s very clear that rocky actively sought to see the deaths of wes and fish that night. going as far as to lament that he’d be, “very disappointed if ( he ) dreamed them,” and purposefully luring the marigold duo away to have freckle pick them off. while you could argue that this was a smart move, in a gangster sort of sense, there’s still no denying that rocky is oddly chipper about the whole thing and is now seeking death out ; whereas before his methods of vengeance were just, well, ruining people’s livelihood but ultimately leaving them alive. this isn’t to discredit the fact that rocky is going through something! he is in a very muddled and dark place, mentally and physically, but even tracy has said that the head injury hasn’t changed rocky’s personality -- it’s only brought things to the surface.

source : q&a with tracy .

which, yeah! makes sense! head trauma can cause a person to become a wreck emotionally ( think mood swings, irritability, etc ) but it doesn’t completely morph someone either. personality changes may occur, but it’s not like you’re being rewritten entirely, you know? and given tracy’s old statement, it’s clear that ‘personality changes’ aren’t a side effect he’s suffering from. something that adds to my beginning statement, which is that rocky is a deeply angry and troubled person, more so than fans give him any credit for.

however, to touch upon your mini opinion about these two, i actually wholeheartedly agree that rocky and wick could become friends if circumstances were different. they do in fact have many superficial similarities, but one of the more prominent things they deeply share is never really belonging in the groups they frequent. this is more overt with rocky’s character, yet wick faces it too in subtle ways. the well-to-do crowd, seen through the investors, find the gentleman to be lacking in about every place imaginable ; to them he is an obsessive freak who cares too deeply for meager rocks, something they constantly mock him for, while he’s also being noticeably set apart from the rest of them … he seems younger than the investors, more excitable, passionate, and a little less experienced, and doesn’t seem to care for money or reputation as much as them either. there is a constant rubbing between him and them, where what he enjoys is seen as wrong, such as his love for the lackadaisy and his choice in paramor, a grieving widow with extremely dangerous ties. we also know that wick doesn’t have many friends at all, with the only two he has being lacy and church ( church is listed as such on his character profile, in a sort of tongue-in-cheek way ), both of whom work for or with him. they are obliged to hang around, and while they care in varying ways, they are prone to judging him just as much. honestly, it’s not shocking that wick seeks refuge at his chosen speakeasy! but even there he is rather distant from everyone else. he doesn’t speak to zib ever in the comics, nor seems all too close with viktor, ivy, or horatio … it is merely mitzi he is close to, even if he knows of the other people who work there. and, once again, wick very obviously doesn’t fit in. he is not gangster material, could never be an atlas may replacement, much less someone who could get his paws dirty in such an active way. so he has his feet in two different worlds and doesn’t know how to fit into either of them, or which one he actually wants to fit into more. i think in many ways rocky could relate -- these are two very lonely people who wish to belong somewhere and be accepted by some group or another but go about it in all the wrong ways. wick, who is too hesitant to fully commit to what he wants and is worse off for it, and then rocky, who obsessively throws himself against what he wants until he breaks every bone in his body. they also have explosives to bond over, lol, and other miscellaneous things like their taste in women i suppose … but this potential bond adds to the tragedy of lackadaisy, where we see two people who on every level should get along but we’re burdened with the knowledge that it’s an impossibility anyway, because there’s no removing the circumstance of which they’re in.

though i like to believe that despite wick’s fear of rocky, he maintains a kindness towards him regardless. i think his worries about rocky are rather surface level … he doesn’t know the boy at all, really, and thus can’t make heads or tails of him, hence him believing the lie in balderdash. so when i’m feeling particularly self indulgent, i like imagining a world where they’re forced together and sort of ‘stuck’ together ; to which rocky finally breaks and exposes his wounds to wick, in every sense of the word, and wick finally gets him. the aggression, the possessiveness of mitzi … it is all fear and desperation and a profound sadness, things he’d sympathize with. if rocky was able to explain that he loathes wick because if he saves the lackadaisy then mitzi won’t need him anymore and that it’s not fair that wick gets to so easily fix things when rocky would give his soul for his home, for her, and how wick could render every sacrifice he’s already made for naught by smoothing things over with some greenbacks and he can’t lose this, he just can’t --! … which, well, wick is too kind of a man to be able to do anything except feel awful, even though it’s not his fault at all. here we have two people who could coexist! and they should, since rocky logically can’t do every speakeasy job ( band member, rumrunner, mitzi’s shadow, also the guy who gets the money for the hooch ) by himself, just like how wick can’t save the lackadaisy with only his cash and limited booze stash. it’d be a joint cooperation, a collaboration between them, both equally important in the grand scheme of crime’s every turning wheel … but rocky’s rage and fear won’t let him see that, and likely never will. still, in scenarios where everything ends up alright for the lackadaisy and the people involved in it ( which is not how canon will go, by the way ), i fancy wick and rocky getting better within their relationship. rocky will always be prickly and quick to upset around the other man sadly, but perhaps he could see wick in a softer kind of light. or at least understand vaguely enough that he isn’t out to get rocky, so to speak. and then maybe wick learns that pancakes soothe rocky’s ire and poorly makes them anytime he wishes to talk to the man, and other fun things like that! but you should have more confidence in your character analysis skills, because you were spot on ( at least in my eyes ) about them potentially getting along if things were different. it’s certainly a fun aspect to play around with, and is important to note when discussing their relationship so you can fully understand just how warped rocky’s perspective on things are. and how unstable and traumatized he is too, of course </3 sidenote, but i also hope that throughout everything i’ve said here, or anything i’ve said before on my blog, that my love for rocky and my own sympathy for him comes across well enough. while he’s deeply flawed and i have no qualms discussing said flaws in depth, i also don’t think of him as some insane freak who’s evil at his core or anything like that. honestly, i adore analyzing him so much as a character because of how far down his issues go! he’s very well written, i’ll say, as is wick and many of the other characters, but i digress.

once more, thank you for the ask! i’ll end this here because i fear if i don’t i’ll start going in circles, since their relationship is so vast and very important for rocky in a character sense. hopefully i shed some more light on it though! i love these two to bits and pieces and i wouldn’t be half as invested in lackadaisy if their dynamic wasn’t so monumental -- at least to me.

[ghostsghoulsandhatboxes]

guys. im. theres more concept art from that old canceled HM cartoon (found by @poketheplatypus ty man)

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A post shared by Alex kirwan (@alexkirtoon)

"...before we were informed that theme park rides were too valuable an IP to be wasted on animation."

raiding disney hq right now WHAT DO U MEAN WASTED ON ANIMATION THIS WOULDVE BEEN THE COOLEST THING EVER i am going to SCREAM

[cannibalmetaphor]

well i have finished the terror

[storytellering]

sketch commission 1 <3

[kordbot]

I'm very insane about our sillyguys so I drew a thing. patches belongs to @hackingmachine , steven is mine [though he's just a hand and bloody puddle on the floor] the song is photographic memories by steam powered giraffe !!

[visionsynth]

actually horrible doodle dump

[howdidthisevenhappenanyway]

*taps microphone* so i’d just like to talk about all the little kids in coruscant who would absolutely be out of their mind with love and awe for the corrie guard, and their fire engine red painted armour

these kids

these kids would wait at their windows to watch them drive past their window on a scheduled patrol. they’d be so thrilled to see them in the market. or when Fox is standing next to Palpatine in the press in his extra red paint

their parent will be like ‘want to talk to them?’ and the kids will get all shy.

they might even draw pictures of them to give to them

because no matter what the adults think, abiut flesh droids or military police being given more and more responsibility (that theybwould see as power) as the war went on, but little kids know what’s up. they know how cool garbage men are, and fire men (with the shiny red paint), and other civil servants that adults don’t think are awesome but kids know

and you know, you just know that Sergeant Hound, with his cute mastiff and awesome bucket paint would be the absolute pinnacle of coolness to an eight year old coruscanti child

[coffee-without-anesthetics]

knowing people from different friendship circles but who share an interest is like,, i want to organize a playdate,,,,,,

[swordmaid]

pre travel anxiety taking me out so bad

[penciltopbear]

They're taking my TEETH