#semicolons my BELOVED

[sunnysidedown58008]

i think i just want someone to share tea with; by the time i've finished my first cup, the pot has already gone cold

[that-bitchdanni]

hello i love writing and i love introspective looks into the Self and i love conversations with no real conclusions or winners and i miss school i miss education and sitting down and writing a piece within a set of rules and restrictions no matter how loose or confined they may be and it makes me sad to think that university would be such a fun place but the pandemic really ruined me academically and now unfortunately i’m in a place where any amount of stress at all sends me into a downward spiral where i close myself off and crawl into my bed and want to die (or bounce off the walls and go insane) and it’s just kinda unfortunate yk? we’re working on it though

not the point. i wrote this about a year ago and i’m sure it was several days late or more and i really agonized over it. because i didn’t like myself, yk? like genuinely deep deep down i thought i was a miserable unlovable deeply vile unlikable cruel bastard of a person. and it agonized me. because i’ve always been nice. i’ve always wanted to be nice. and happy. and lovable. my entire existence screaming into the void one way or another “love me! like me! take care of me! don’t leave me” alas. we’re moving through it. but at that point i had been coming to terms with this new and unfamiliar but right way of being. it was strange. but as one does i can’t just have one strain of thought oh no no it was spring! spring means hope if only a sliver. recently the thought that maybe i wasn’t such a miserable unlovable bitch after all. it was strange. i was trying but i didn’t really know how. but i wanted to. so i have this

it’s really fun writing an assignment and finding yourself in it a bit. whether it’s a piece about the self or of a purely academic genre. i miss it. reading it back i feel a sort of ache i think. of the person i was. of the person i am now. agonizing in the dark. living with being content. with trying. who i was when i wrote it, who i was trying to be. that sort of clarity of thought that comes when you have to get it out in a legible logical markable sense. i was in highschool and i was hurt and sad and sheltered somewhat from most indépendant life experiences and it carries a somewhat juvenile tone, but i still enjoy it.

And i also think it’s very good (excluding some minor word and punctuation choices) so there’s that too

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

live with me forever now (just not for long, for long); October '23

Fall Out Boy, Heartbreak Feels So Good // The Farewell (2019) dir. Lulu Wang // Fall Out Boy, Hum Hallelujah // unknown // Amy Hempel // Erin Slaughter // Sally Wen Mao // Richard Siken // Laura Makabresku, The Anatomy of Melancholy // Trista Mateer // A Softer World // unknown // The Farewell // Hosho McCreesh // unknown // Fall Out Boy, Heaven, Iowa // The Farewell // Kaveh Akbar // locket engraved with words by E. E. Cummings (source unknown) // Panic! at the Disco, Trade Mistakes // Hieu Minh Nguyen

[crumbleclub]

consider.

where william is obsessed with certain people and keeping relationships frozen in what he considers perfect condition, so much so that he will destroy everything to try and 'fix' things; michael struggles not to cut people off entirely over the smallest of things because he's so afraid to see a bad ending.

[arisenreborn]

Last Line Challenge

Thank you for the tag @fangbangerghoul!!

Rules: in a new post, show the last line you wrote (or drew) and tag as many people as there are words (or as many as you feel like).

The wound itself didn’t ache particularly much, but she was well-aware of the emptiness behind it; no one could survive such a thing without some greater power behind it.

tagging: @soloavengers, @linashirou <3<3<3 whatever you feel comfortable sharing, feel free to ignore!

[star-bear-art]

Musings Hvinidyr couldn’t bear to commit to the journal at the bottom of his pack, 1352 DR

The sun, relentless and cruel—it rises.

V rests peacefully, entangled in long grasses perhaps an arm’s breadth away from me, whilst I fight my way out from under thick swathes of stiff tent canvas and the dubiously softer furs of my bedroll. V had warned that my shelter couldn't possibly withstand the night’s breeze; lying once more, or so I'd thought, they’d donned the great airs of a flamboyant haruspex picking through offals as they rifled through their pocket and played at divination. The disorder of its puportedly portent contents were (are) stark: A lone rib-bone signifying victory, or perhaps hubris, depending on the day; a rusted copper that V rarely drew in readings, markings long worn into a comfortable divot through idle fiddling; the button off my old cloak that they stubbornly hung onto, and swore up and down to be a token of good fortune. There was nothing sensible about it, any of it, nor did they earn anything beyond my ire when they prophesised with unearned gravitas that I'd wake smothered by my tent.

I had laughed, though V had laughed louder. I’d been too distracted to hate them for it, then, and now it hardly seems worth the bother.

V’s portrait is ever-striking in the sun. Occasionally I wonder whether I fell for V the first moment I saw them haloed in its light, glowing golden-brown and warmer than anything I'd ever known before. There's God in their face, one of them, at least—I'm not sure which. Lolth is bitter as cheap wine, Eilistraee is saccharin and sanguine both. The Morninglord is—is cliché. Trite. I’d need to unearth the Gods of my parent’s parents’ to read V in their devotionals.

I’d need faith for prayer, too, and I'm too empty for such ridiculous excess. I can only track the steady swell and ebb of their chest as they bleed breath into the air, instead. I do. Devotion weighs on my mind, in my mind, as I trace with my gaze the outline of their face against the dawn and set my heart to hoping they’ll never wake.

They wake regardless, naturally. Laughter’s the first sound off V’s lips, and I wet mine as I hear it, watching them rise and lean over to tug at one corner of my canopy’s corpse.

“Quit moping, Hvini,” V rasps, voice gloriously low and decadent, “I’m always right. One of these days you’ll get used to it.”

“Unlikely. Wasn’t it just yesterday you promised that lady you’d—argh!”

V’s finger had been smoothing over the furrow in my brow, at least until they'd flicked it heartlessly against my forehead; a clear declaration of war. I pounce far before they could even think to—at least physically, I undeniably outmatch them.

Not that it's particularly difficult. V’s hands have never known the callouses of bearing arms, nor do they carry themself with the graces of a duellist. Rather, they flounder, gallivanting through moorland and forest alike with all the grace of a befuddled puppy—easy to roll into a tackle, so long as they're caught off-guard. Taut muscles fit for pack-bearing are useless once my legs are around theirs, hip-on-hip and hand-on-wrist, arms locked fast enough that I'm hardly panting. For an orator, their lung capacity is pathetic. Their flush is... distracting, however.

“Hvin,” comes a breathless little whine from V, pinned firmly underhand, “Hvin, your hair is in my face, it’s ticklish. Let me up!”

Their tone is hard, perhaps, yet their face is anything but���their cheeks curve up and around the smooth crescent of their smile, still smirking at me despite... everything. Shaken, I withdraw enough for them to sit ‘til my weight is settled in their lap. It's a nominal improvement.

“Right. Lovely as your enthusiasm is, maybe we could direct it to packing up your—tent—and getting back on the road?”

“The infamous road you keep promising is always ‘past the next copse’ or ‘a few more minutes downstream’?”

“The very same. The sun waits for no mortal, and my legs are cramping. So, Hvini?”

V’s smile is violence, sweet and unburdened—easy. They're so easy. Mood spoiled, I hiss concern through a sharp exhale, sounding mulish and juvenile and rank. It’s entirely reflexive, mortifyingly so, even, but startled by the reminder of the day ahead and rebuffed only by their saintly amiability, it's hard to care.

“We could stay. We don't have to leave, you don't have to leave.”

“And what would we do, Hvini—Hvinidyr, seriously,” they pin me with their gaze, catching my arm and leaning in with too-sweet concern, "Romp around the wilderness for the rest of our lives? Beg a living off my parents? The Harpers have what I want, and what you need. You deserve better than rotting in a bog with me ‘till we turn old and grey.”

If I need family, I'll find it in you, I don’t say. I’d rather a day loving you than a decade safe.

I am a coward, and V is bright: brighter than the sun, bright enough that it hurts to stare. I am a coward, and so I look away. The sudden hush is a world, and a continent, and an acre between us—stretching far beyond as I fall back from their tenderness. Their hand slides from my wrist to the dew-slick grass, our fingers brushing as they depart.

The little contact sparks a soft coalescence; the quiet narrows and departs until there’s hardly a heartbeat between us unsynched. Mute and still, our silence is 6-foot grave shared by two bodies, each wet breath falling like sodden mud to bury us.

Willful ignorance can’t untether me from time, from the the unspooling day. The carol of morning passes, packing up camp is as trivial as ever, and V refuses to allow me solemnity for long. They set a thankless pace into the dense woad and heather bracketing the forest ahead, carving messy paths through undergrowth as clouds loom above and threaten rain—there’s hardly a moment to catch my breath.

They march us onwards, needlessly chattering all the while. I’m not certain I could carve out more space for introspection even if I wanted to. The shape of V’s deflection feels so drastically different from mine, in moments like this, filled with swift speech and sound and sprinting where we could otherwise walk, but it’s a reprieve all the same. Despite myself, I find myself... grateful for it.

-----

OKAY OKAY OKAY mm so MASSIVE thanks first of all to @thedomesticanthropologist for their invaluable help editing this it would not be half so readable without their assistance. I am not a writer generally!! But Hvinidyr's plight has gripped me, what can I say </3

This and my previous (first!!) piece of art featuring Hvin and & V marks the beginning of our canonical timeline exploration! All future posts taking place in the canon of Winnie's life will be dated for my sanity because none of this is going to be linear. There's so much yet to write and draw about Hvin's life and how the major events and people in it change him, and I hope I can (continue) to do them justice!!! We'll get to some bg3 events/characters and their interactions with hvin soon, I swear, I am just. having SO much fun with him. Does it show???

[qunaributts]

I do not punctuate with logic. He who punctuates with grammar rules has forgotten the face of his father. I punctuate with my heart.

[retrograderesemblance]

was reading the wi.kipedia for the book j.uly's people and my new life goal is to write a book only for it to be b.anned in schools for this reason:

[irisvienna]

putting my essays in hemingway editor is so funny bc the whole thing is highlighted in red

[quiverwingquack]

Temp tattoo is here! If I end up liking the design after it washes off in a couple weeks I’m gonna get it done permanently

[dickbagshasthoughts]

Fuck run-on sentences, all my homies hate run-on sentences. Learn to use semicolons like a person.

[knittedbond]

cautious, but hopeful,

[icapturedthecastle]

heartbreaking: this author had to take out a semicolon and just use a period instead because they ended the sentence with a regular colon.

[missing-a-place-ive-never-been]

[geekwiththegoggles]

[writeouswriter]

Hey guys, I'm throwing a party in my run on sentence and all the punctuation is invited; that's right, I'm looking at you, my guests of honour: colon, semicolon, and em dash—my beloved, beloved em dash.