#readings were too big.

[lunapwrites]

2023 Recap and New Year Reading

One thing I think I'm proud of this year is how I approached bullet journaling. Despite sometimes going weeks at a time without making entries, instead of giving up I just went "ah, hell, we'll try again next month" and went about setting up the next few pages. That's... progress I think.

Anyway one of the reasons I bring this up is because last year, when I started this thing, I kicked off the year with a rune and tarot reading. And I think overall they were pretty on point, even if I was refusing to see the VERY COMMON THEME in all of it. Like... what brand of copium was I on that I saw 3 of Cups with the Empress and the Ace of Cups AND Death and went "Yep nope nothing to see here folks! Having a normal one!"

[This would be where I would stare flatly into the camera, Office style.]

The overall theme of 2023 was change. My partner and I did a lot of evaluating where we were and where we wanted to be, and started making moves to get there - some glacial, some... a lot quicker than I had expected lmao. But I think with my reading, my issue was that I made everything too broad and didn't focus on what was most on my mind - which turned out to be exactly what's on my mind now, and how it related to my existing commitments - including my fandom presence and writing. Which... has been difficult this year, particularly with being sick in one form or another for half of it.

With all of that said, 2024, it seems, is shaping up to be the transitional year - I pulled the Magician, which lends itself to a lot of power and potential. For the first half of the year, there's going to be a lot of good (or at least positive leaning) vibes up until April, supposedly - the Sun, Justice, the Empress (again), the High Priestess... all major arcana, all BDE cards. A lot of the messaging is about joy and balance and trusting my instincts. The vibes will be immaculate and everything's going to fall into place.

...Until May, which is when we can expect the Bean to make their appearance. Which... well, Five of Swords wasn't exactly the most surprising pull here. That is going to be a rough, scary transition, and I already knew it would be. But it's not forever.

We're (probably,) going to get our shit together a bit over the summer and into fall (Knight of Wands, the Chariot, 9 of Wands, King of Pentacles, the Fool) and then we're up for a setback of some kind in November (10 of Swords.) Given the context of the Fool and the overall timing, I think this is going to be related to moving Bean into their own room, and could be as simple as difficulty adjusting (for both of us tbh.) I'm not really seeing anything that indicates major issues, but the final card of the year (Judgement) is giving me a bit of an empowering message here.

Taken in aggregate, the message is clear: I have everything I need to succeed, so long as I remember not to rush important decisions and to ask for help when I need it. We can and we will achieve the balance I so desperately crave if we put the work in.

I did also do a rune reading, which overall seems to support the tarot one and gives me some additional context: likely looking at some conflict with work and family in the coming year (which I expected and which is already occuring to an extent) and my overall well-being is going to take a hit (also expected) - thurisaz and othala (r). However, my biggest pillars (my partner, my friends, and my overall... domestic situation? Home and finances lol) are going to be solid and are positive enough, in my view, to compensate - dagaz, uruz, fehu, jera, laguz. And of course the messaging is all the same: go with the flow, don't be fucking stubborn, ask for help, act with deliberation - tiwaz (r), perthro (r), eihwaz, ingwaz, mannaz.

Anyway. Yeah. Lots of big changes coming obviously, and I don't know what things are realistically going to look like six months from now, but I know whatever it is I'm going to do my best, and I'm gonna remember to breathe.

... And hopefully I can forgive myself for the times I mess up as well as I did with the bullet journal this year lol.

[crowkip]

ᯓ★

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Who is this sassy lost child?

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[bixels]

The idea that uni protesters are "elitist ivy-league rich kids larping as revolutionaries" on Twitter and Reddit and even here is so fucking funny to me if you actually know anything about the student bodies at these unis. Take it from someone who's going to one of the biggest private unis in the US, 80% of the peers I know are either from the suburbs or an apartment somewhere in America, children of immigrants, or here on a student visa. I've heard about one-percenter students, but I've never met one in person. Like, don't get me wrong, the institution as a whole is still very privileged and white. I've talked with friends and classmates about feeling weird or dissonant being here and coming from such a different background. But in my art program, I see BIPOC, disabled, queer, lower-income students and faculty trying to deconstruct and tear that down and make space every day. So to take a cursory glance at a crowd of student protesters in coalitions that are led by BIPOC & 1st/2nd-gen immigrant students and HQ'd in ethnic housings and student organizations and say, "ah. children of the elite." Get real.

[surreal-duck]

some business to take care of

[factual-flittermouse]

DC confirms that the bat cave is just part of a really huge cave system, and that’s just how Batman gets around without people seeing him. Some people question how nobody else has discovered the batcave if this is true, but it /is/ Gotham - there’s a man eating pseudo crocodile and a zombie in the sewers. Would you risk it?

[starry-bi-sky]

blood blossom danny except i briefly talk about his version of the accident

It all happened so fast that Danny doesn't really remember dying at all. It was like, one moment he was alive, the next he's dead. He remembers hitting the button, and the lights coming on, and then a great big flash.

Then he was outside of the portal.

He thinks he may have been screaming, but that's not true at all. The only sound he made was a split-second, startled gasp as the portal turned on, that was cut-off before he could finish the noise. The only ones who were screaming were Sam and Tucker; Danny was dead before he could feel anything.

The most vivid thing to him was the terror before the light. The blood rushing moment of mind-numbing fear and cold revelation that he was going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it. A weird sort of resignation, desperation, horror, and static calm that hit him all at once.

He was extremely disoriented when he woke up. Like waking up from a long nap and struggling to comprehend what the day or time was, but knowing instinctively that time has passed. He didn't stay in his ghost form for that long either, further cementing his confusion.

From the moment he hit the button to the few minutes after he woke up is an unsolved jigsaw puzzle to him.

It took him about a day and a half to fully remember what happened beyond 'went into the portal, then suddenly i was out of it and everyone was freaking out', and then a week to process.

Sam and Tucker remember his accident better than he does. They say he was in a daze after he woke up, before he recognized where he was. And he kinda just... squinted at them like he didn't know who they were, and said something in a language they couldn't understand. He was terrifyingly calm and passive, and still smoking.

(They later find out its ghostspeak. He was asking them where he was.)

It was only the moment he realized where he was that he transformed back into human. That's the moment where Danny's memory officially cuts back in for him. His first time as a ghost, and he doesn't really remember it that well.

[crow-caller]

started playing fallen london cause of your blog and i absolutely love it! Thank u :)

Excellent!!! If I have any power, let it be used to get people to play fallen london and its related games (sunless seas, sunless skies = Survival exploration, mask of the rose = visual novel)

[chronologically-challenged]

I think that the party's communication issues can be summed up as "man, is it awkward to tell someone that you want to spend the rest of your life with them if you've only know them for a few months? Probably."

[jonsnowunemploymentera]

Something that’s always missing whenever people talk about Lyanna and the Kingsguard at the Tower of Joy is that these things should always circle back to Jon Snow. He’s our main character here. Rhaegar and Lyanna, as well as the Kingsguard, are all dead. They were dead before this story began. This tiny section of text is meant to give color to Jon — who is alive, and whose story is currently unfolding. The events at the Tower of Joy, told entirely through Ned’s fever dream for a reason, essentially serve as one thing: fantasy protagonist myth building 101. Three wise men, a legendary magical sword, some of the greatest knights of an era, a dying queen lady, the end of an age, a dead prince, a dead king, and then here comes a soon to be completely orphaned prince whose life hangs on the balance and whose survival depends on the compassion of one lord and his wizard friend. GRRM is literally retelling King Arthur’s backstory through Jon. This whole thing is one giant literary allusion to Uther and Igraine and the boy king Arthur, to Lancelot and his Joyous Guard, to Guinevere, and to tragic romances. It reads as an ode to Arthurian fantasy and is meant to backdrop the main protagonist’s fantastical origins. The Kingsguard are there to play into that. Their presence at the Tower, in that moment, was never about Lyanna; not solely, anyway. Their presence is tied to Rhaegar’s last surviving male child, and the language used suggests that they had chosen their king, for better or worse. Any discussion surrounding the Kingsguard’s presence at the Tower that focuses on anyone but Jon completely misses the point imo.

[genesis-rhapsodass]

Just a found family on their way to a gentler life (hopefully)

So there's this really good fanfic by @eaymtb of Cloud being sent back in time together with child remnants that's got me SO hooked, I've been wanting to draw something for it for ages so here's some art of the boys on their way to Wutai

[psychomusic]

oc time again! + her town & culture (heavily inspired by pre-roman italic populations)

she is suri sauthon. her story is linked to my swtor imperial agent, tar'x, but most of her life except for the one year away where she meets him, is spent in a town in the mountains of mirial.

despite mirial being cold and desert, and many cities developing underground, her town flourishes thanks to a force nexus, venerated in the form of an ancient, sacred, alive crystal. the ecosystem of that mountain depended on what "the horned crystal" was capable of giving them, but mirialans couldn't live off of that alone, so they developed trade and some rudimental technology, even if oftentimes it was bought thanks to the highly profitable trade of a plant used to make medicines that slowed down aging and had overall healing properties.

note: everything that's generated by this nexus has these healing properties BUT they have to be processed, except for those who bathed in the waters of the cavity under the crystal - the "real" nexus, but not the worshipped one. the waters were sacred but they were not thought to be miraculous, unlike the crystal, who instead was thought of as the keystone of the ecosystem: without it, everything would fall apart (and that is partially true: the cavity was the "real" nexus but thanks to the crystal, also strong in the force, the properties were spread all over the mountains). those who bathed in the cavity's waters - so, all of the town, who had a sort of baptism there - could eat the plant, make whatever food with it, and not only that plant, but everything generated by the nexus, that, again, had similar properties. this allowed people to live up to normal life-spans without advanced medicines or, much, really. to those who didn't live there, though, after the processing, had incredible effects, slowing down aging - for those who took it regularly - and making people able to live up to half a century more than the average]

originally, there were four tribes of nomads that lived thanks to horned farm animals that decided to settle down into one bigger town and other smaller settlements, to live off of transhumance. this division of the tribes stayed into the political and social organization: every person belonged to one tribe specifically, and had slightly different rituals and culture. for examples, each tribe had their own priests and healers, with different techniques and traditions. the town, tho, was guided by a group of people in the high priesthood, a position you could reach only by having earned the trust of all tribes. those high priests had many roles: they guided the people into sacred processions common to all the tribes, they managed the trading with outsiders, they did the maintenance of the temple of the summit (the one that functioned as casket to the crystal) and created a special liquid to offer the crystal that helps it grow.

this particular temple was important because 1. it was very visible, from every angle of the town, and it became an important identity symbol; 2. it stored the venerated horned crystal; 3. it had the altar where sacrifices were made for the crystals. that altar had a hole connected to the cavity, that allowed the liquids to reach the underground; 4. it had various symbols: statues representing each tribe + the high priesthood, and typical mirialan tattoos carved into the wood of the trees that served as columns for the temple, symbolizing 8 values that who dared to enter HAD to have; 5. it was on the way to an important lake (called "mother lake" because the lake the town was built around to depended on the waters of that other lake) where they traveled to in important processions; 6. it was said that a the wizard who unified the tribes made it with its magic, making the plant grow to hold the temple's roof. this wizard was, actually, a force user, obv.

BACK TO HER THOUGH: she's daughter of one of the high priests, who was in charge of managing the trades with outsiders, and lives in a house on the mountains with her mother and him. her parents are from different tribes (that's one of the things that earned him trust from the 4 tribes): when a child is born from two different tribes, they don't pick one to allign to, but they're usually linked automatically to the one with more relatives in it (in her case, the father's tribe: she had many uncles and aunts on his side while her mom only had one sister).

later, though, she got quite tied to her mother's tribe due to a mysterious illness that only her mother's tribe healer was able to cure. she spent 4 years (from 10 to 14 years old) living with the healer and learned her secrets. to better study, she wrote them down. when she returned home, she studied to become a priestess with her father. at 22 (the average age: you can't become priest before your 20s), she was supposed to take a test and become a priestess, but the healer of her mother's tribe died and the tribe asked her to take her place. she couldn't technically do that, but both tribes estimated both her and her parents and she was allowed to become both. she then decided to try to become a high priestess, and became one at 25 (a quite young age). being part of the council, she tried to convince the various tribe healers to unite their knowledges and write them down, and eventually made it. healers still remained tribe based but they now had an "upper, inter-tribe level" similar to high priesthood.

years later, the sacred horned crystal is stolen from the temple by some Hutt mercenaries looking for a profit. given the trust she has earned from all the tribes and the fact that her father is the high priest that deals with outsiders (and she's been hearing stories and advice about it since she was little), she is the one tasked with getting it back. without the growing crystal, the keystone to their ecosystem, the village would have lasted only a few years. in hrr quest, she meets imperial intelligence agent tar'x laran and, as they "solve the mystery" and fight to have it back, they get closer. they'll get married and have a daughter, Vegoia (who's the only one who actually will get to the plot of my story. this was all background)

[crystalpallette]

frye inspires this sort of manic "i can do whatever i want" kinda will in people and god. I sure did do whatever I wanted here

[chalkrub]

For that ask meme... I guess you liked Where the Wild Things Are as a kid!

i wish i knew it back then, alas i missed out! i do love it now though, and i would've loved it as a kid

[kit-screams-into-the-future]

wanted to try my hand at a fake screenshot thing with a scene from one of the bttf fics of all time, Time Is a Flat Circle by @fourth-dimensional-thinker! i set in to draw only the "little canary" line but. as you can tell. my hand slipped and fell down a 6 story building

if you haven't read it already please check it out PLEASEEE it's very good. i read the whole thing in basically one sitting. the vibes are perfect for the spooky season too!

versions without the filter/subtitles under the cut:

[bonesandthebees]

sigh feeling nostalgic for my old fics/the old community these days. I miss it man.