#stick with me on this one

[morihaus]

Hungry

The night is dark, as all nights have been for some time now. Distant constellations in the heaven and braziers burning along the walls of the city are the only spots of light now that the sun has departed from the lands called Akavir. Darkness laps hungrily at the periphery, claws scraping against the borders as the flames flicker and dance up above.

A cub named Oanir kneels in his mother's tent, poking his head out to look up in wonder at the void of the night sky. Little embers pass far over his head as the winds whip at the braziers, and while beautiful, they do little to answer his questions. "Mama?" Oanir pokes his head back inside to turn and look at her, his mentor in all matters of the world and living in it. "Where did the moons go?"

His mother is large and powerful, larger than most of the other women he's seen in the towns they stop at. Her face of orange and black fur is crossed by a patch of scar tissue that travels across her snout and eyebrow, a keepsake from an old hunt. She turns her amber eyes, bright even in the night, towards her student. "Who taught you about the moons?" The low growl of her voice is purely curious in tone, for there has been little need to teach him. "Folk in town." He answers simply, walking over to lay beside his mother as they talk. "They talked about the moonless nights, then told me when I asked what a moon was." "And you took them for their word?" She asks. Oanir makes a little face, bunching up his snout and shaking his head. "No! To your teachings only." He recites, then drops all pretense of seriousness. "So what were they? Where'd they go? Did they get knocked out of the sky?"

She closes her eyes and a laugh rumbles against her throat. "Precocious youth, pestering the Walled as you do. But if you want to hear the true story, then I shall tell you, but only once. Commit the lesson to your memory."

Once certain Oanir is focused, his mother begins the story of the moons and the tiger goddess.

"I have already taught you of Vetar. She is the mother of necessity whose first action created our world. She dwelt in the dark void behind the stars, in the shadows of heaven, and she stalked and killed her prey like us, but no other god understood her way, they drifted through endless lives of comfort, ignorant to challenge and victory. From the very beginning, they ostracized her, and her greatest enemy was Unul, who abhorred all change."

Well-preserved memories flash through the young cub's mind. He remembers his mother's lessons well, especially her tales of Vetar and her children; Sakoar, Krakar, Prunar, and of course triumphant Sotar, who first proved that tiger could prevail against nature. Tales of the gods were his favorite, but he has not yet heard the name Unul. His mother has decided it is time he know the face of their enemy.

"Unul claimed all lights and all touched by light for his Tun, his domain where his rule was law. He and his slaves brought light everywhere, so that no one could escape him. Only the void was free, yet at the same time, it was barely anything at all. So Vetar and Rakhan devised a Tun of their own… this story, I have told you before." He knows she will not repeat herself, for their time together as mother and child is to be short. No second can be wasted on repeated lectures. "At first, Unul ignored the two. It was a slow process of hunting, killing, and molding corpses into the earth, the sea, the plants, and the animals. But it could no longer escape his sight once Sotar achieved the mastery, and soon, many from Unul's Tun traveled to Vetar's, eager to take part in this glorious game and claim the rewards for themselves. So Unul did what he always did… he sent his armies of lights to steal this place for himself."

Oanir's mother stares straight ahead as she speaks, resting a massive paw on his head as if to physically hold his attention. He can almost see her laying with her own mother in a time long since past, listening as she explained the same story with the same posture, the same practiced tone, so that she could survive to carry it to him. "The lights he sent were his strongest, for only they could pass the field of darkness Vetar and Rakhan had planted around their world. The first was Surah the Great, the largest and most powerful light in Unul's army. But he is as great as he is lazy, and he can only do half the job himself, bathing the world in the light called 'day' to make it harder to stalk and hide."

Oanir is amazed to only learn the true name of Surah now, having seen him nearly every day. He and his mother prefer to rise for the hunt as he sets and rest as he rises, though the young cub never thought this was owed to any sort of enmity. To think, all this time, he has known the face of one enemy.

But now, his mother moves on to explain those he has never seen: the moons.

"To battle for the last bastion of darkness called Night, Unul sent the twins Nakra and Rilak. While not powerful enough to win the Night, they were masters of illusion and madness. "Nakra was the Furious Belief. She tempted us with images of the unreal world of Unul, of abundance and lazy revelry, to lure us back to that accursed plane. She sent us into fits of lunacy, making us careless and weak. Her brother Rilak was the Scolding Essence. He weathered our resolve with false visions and dreams of our death, twisting our instincts into terror and fear. He preached that our world was meaningless suffering and tried to make us submit. "Both yearned for our failure. They tempted us and beguiled us so that we would not survive, and then, they would try and snatch our souls away to Unul's world. But we were protected; every night, Rakhan's ghost would lead a hunt through the void, backed by the Shadows of our kin who failed to survive, and chase Nakra and Rilak across the sky. They were bitten and eaten by the Shadows, who are always hungry, and so their ill light would wane until there was nothing left, keeping us safe and letting our dead remain part of this world. However, the twins would always return, and on the rare nights they shone their brightest, our ancestors would be at their most guarded, for they had to hide not just from prey or predator, but from the heavens above."

Then, she looks down to Oanir. She closes her eyes and straightens her ears up, a smile rises in her tone. "But this all changed very recently. Let me tell you a new story… about how our hunger swallowed the moons."

The cub's eyes are wide and insistent that she continue.

"Long have the Children of Vetar wished to undo her enemies. We have always called our foolish kin back to the jungles where the hunt began, even as they plug their ears with dragon's tongue. So many now walk the path of Unul and Bornaka, we must remind them of the true way of living and put an end to their madness. "Madness is the work of the twins. The twins impose their order of ethereal light onto our perfect world of shadows, they thieve our dead and mock their hunger by refusing to lessen, always returning, never extinguishing. It was decided that they would be our example. They would be our prey, and the whole world would remember the hunger that birthed creation. "We gathered in the clouded forest to the east, our actions shielded from the foul light of the moons. Our grand hunt began, not for sport, not even for survival-- we were not hungry for flesh, only for destruction, for revenge. Hundreds of us died, but in their failure, there was still a job to be done and glory to be gained: to join Rakhan's heavenly hunt and devour the prey once and for all."

His mother's voice is loud now, and in her eyes he sees the hunter's thrill. A faint red glow that pierces through the night, guiding teeth and claw to one's prey.

"And they did it. Of course, I do not have to tell you this. You, my fortunate son, have never been subject to the foul glow of the twins, not a night in your life. Nakra and Rilak are dead, and you, you are alive, here to inherit the darker world. For this reason, you are favored by Vetar." She leans her neck down to plant a small kiss upon Oanir's head, wetting his fur with her tongue. "The lesson of this story is thus: it is inevitable that we Children of Vetar reclaim what is hers from light and its lazy worshipers. The Walled can ignore this truth no longer, for now, even in their cities and empires, they finally remember the old fear: the fear of prey."

Then, his mother stands, her body seeming to shift and change in the darkness of their tent. She's larger, even more hulking and bestial than she was before. Her fur isn't just thicker, it's darker, more stripes than orange. Her limbs stretch and warp, like those of a long shadow. It's time to hunt.

Oanir's wide eyes remain upon her as she walks to the exit of their tent. He will always remember the delight on her face, the lilt of her voice, and the fire behind her words. He will remember the story of Vetar and her enemies, and of the time he was born in, when the void reclaimed the night.

But he still has one question left. As he stands up to follow his mother, he asks her. "Even the Tiger Dragon?"

She turns to look down at him, now with long, dagger-like teeth. She bares them not in anger, but in excitement. "Yes," she purrs. "Even him."

[lotrmusical]

poll time. yes this is just a ploy to get people to recommend me poems

if yes, let me know which poems/recite some for me in the tags!

[egophiliac]

HAPPY HALLOWEEN here's some seasonal guys! 🎃

[m00nbuggies]

theyre bffs guys

[forgettable-au]

FORGETTABLE-AU (Page 40-43)

* I didn't know the lab could look so creepy...

[BEGINNING] [PREVIOUS] [CONTINUE]

[evilwizardcrab]

my main grievance with the tma fandom is that JonMartin is just, an Objectively Bad ship name. I'm sorry but in a world of Lonely Eyes, Door Keays and Terminal Velocities fucking Jonmartin? seriously?? Jon and Martin? yeah i sure hope it does. that is certainly the two main components of that ship. 10,000 people following the ship tag, 9900 fics on AO3, over 5 years of podcast and not a single person managed to popularise a ship name beyond literally just. smokshing their first names together. and don't get me started on "Jmart". that's not a ship name. that's a cornershop 12 year olds go to buy monster. wheres the magic? the ~spooky~? the "first date is essentially the apocalypse"? we are getting a bad grade in ship names, something that is both Normal To (Not) Want and Possible To Achieve.

[unrelatedsideblog]

bleping doodles idk

[a-scary-lack-of-common-sense]

Eldritch/not-entirely-human Grunkle Stan stories have been eating away at my brain, so I have a silly little concept of Mimic!Stan.

He and his Mystery Shack are both mimics that lure tourists in as a literal "tourist trap" to gather and devour them! Since the house is alive, it raises a few (read: several) child safety concerns that lead to a LOT of rules to be created for Dipper and Mabel to follow when they eventually arrive, such as:

Be careful not to get lost in the winding hallways! The Mystery Shack is bigger on the inside, and you don't want to end up in the wrong areas.

Don't go through randomly appearing doors, they may eat you.

If you think you feel the walls around you breathing and the floor beneath you shifting, no, you don't.

If you think the walls feel a bit damp, you're imagining it.

Watch your fingers around windowsills! You wouldn't want to lose any of them.

Don't linger too long under the doorframes; it may start feeling like they are slowly constricting around you.

[chalkrub]

new guyyy whom i love from a design trade

he's a demigod cimera knight who was brutally defeated and then spared by a tyrant queen, with the caveat that she cut off his goat head and uses it as a hostage to keep him loyal to her. unfortunate but what are you gonna do

[ohitslen]

Average university experience

[fixing-bad-posts]

Quick, hit me with a follower-losing take!

sometimes, burying your gays is not only okay, but critically necessary to telling a good story and honouring your thematic arcs. and "good representation" is an undefinable, largely useless pursuit.

[vaxxman]

Could I request Medic having The Mom Grip on Scout’s shoulder after the speedy moron almost let a mercenary secret slip while they weee getting groceries?

Three Europeans and two Americans walk into a grocery store in New Mexico.

I hope this is the right meme.

More silliness below.

This comic is the antithesis of the "wtf is a kilometre" joke.

The faces they make when they can't quite identify the type of brown bread in the bread aisle.

You don't know how [insert nationality here] you are until you go overseas and things are different.

Spy obviously has no problems with pretending to know how much a gallon of milk is, he just peeks into his conversion chart notes, pretending it's his shopping list.

I want to think Heavy is completely fine with having to readjust to a new unit system, he just eyeballs most practical things anyways by holding them up and mumbling about how they approximately weigh like a chicken or his kettle bell etc. He's always been living in practical ignorant bliss.

Medic has a peer reviewed meltdown the first time he realises there's no uniformity in "a cup of ____" because every object has different densities. He's diligent about memorising the conversion rates for ounces, pounds, the most common things etc., and recovers ok. He goes through the same stages of grief rage when he finds out about distances and lengths.

Just remember four inches are 10.16 cm and pray no one asks you to specify anything bigger than inches.

Everyone does a mental victory lap when they manage to guess how much Celsius the weather is because they keep forgetting it's Celsius*5/9+32=Fahrenheit, Engineer reminds them patiently.

The true victories are the correct temperature guesses we've made along the way.

One time, a friend asked me if I actually knew how much a tablespoon of flour was in gramms to convince me that metric users also make use of volume based units without thinking about them. But little did she know a heaped spoonful of 405 flour is about 15g and a level tablespoon is 10g.

They claim Oolong just tastes better when it's boiled to 80°C exactly with a Bunsen burner.

You only asked for one scene but somehow I came up with a bunch of other things. This post was drawn across 2 months so the artstyle is all over the place. Thanks for your ask!

[contagious-watermelon]

Why do I keep seeing transmascs and trans men insisting or implying that all trans men are "female socialized," or "understand the female experience," or "navigated the world as a woman." Because yeah, sure, that can be true for some people. especially if you weren't gnc at all as a kid and didn't crack your egg until well into adulthood, it makes sense.

But they don't stop at saying they had that experience. It always comes with an addendum that trans men, as a group, all can relate to this experience. I don't know about the entirety of my demographic, but I never got even a little bit of what some of them talk about. I didn't even believe that women were scared of going out at night until I kept consistently seeing them say it, online or wherever, for years. I never realized catcalling was a thing until I saw some women complaining about it on reddit.

But they posit it as some sort of, you're safer than cis men, right? You know what it's like? Which, on top of being patently, demonstrably false in the case of myself and many other trans men, holds some unpleasant and often outright hostile implications about trans women. And they always deny it, but if you can't even conceptualize someone like me who grew up gnc, and never got the bulk (or any?) of whatever we consider to be 'female socialization,' what does that say about what you think trans girls went through, growing up? I don't want to speak for them, as I've never experienced that firsthand, but I can guarantee that (if you're even a little bit obviously trans) people don't treat you like a cis kid of the opposite gender. By and large, they don't get treated like cis boys.

It just makes me mad that we're taking this inaccurate framework that (ever so conveniently) puts trans people into the box of our assumed birth gender, and trying to fancy it up and use it with a faux-progressive veneer; never mind the way that transphobes use it to bar trans women from being athletes, or using the bathroom, or having access to any gendered resources they need. It would be bad enough to try and dust it off and use it even if it were largely accurate, due to the aforementioned connections to outright transphobia, but it literally is patently false. Not in all cases, obviously, but why are we trying to revamp this untrue, inaccurate generalization and pretend that we can make it 'trans-inclusive?'

[zebratimw]

"All those empty rooms

We could have been anywhere, anywhere else

Instead, I made a bed with apathy

My heart knew the weight

Ten years worth of dust and neglect

We made our peace with weariness and let it be..."

(Song: The Moon will Sing by the Crane Wives)

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

finally at that age where i'm thinking i should get a tattoo. not bc i feel strongly about it, just seems like a waste not to. i've got so much skin i'm not using

[sygneth]

"The Fall of the Starmaker"