#swords united

[stankworth]

after many years of being strong // may you have the chance to be gentle again

[hrodvitnon]

"Hey," said the signal I hear in my head, "you should draw Durandal, from that fic you wrote. And give her a sword." So I did. Might color her later.

[toacody]

Mirage

Swift and fleeting.

Source

Creator: Garvox

[emotsper]

some szai fe au sketches + shizu in color

[1071png]

quick redraw i did of the Mihawk seraphim because hes so so cute i wanna squeeze him in my hand like a stressball 🥺

[justagaycryptid]

Do u follow the Erdtree? No?? Gores you

[approximateknowledge]

underworld part of volume 26 be like: kirito and eolyne fighting for their lives trying to escape istar's unauthorised military base on admina while setting free the divine beast kept there for unethical bioweapon production

kirito's internal monologue the entire time: "oh god istar looks so pretty what the hell how can someone be this beautiful and also eolyne still reminds me of my dead boyfriend best friend did i mention he looks hot? anyway istar's doing some fucked up shit here but dammit they look good doing it did i already say they look absolutely stunning? want me to repeat it again? ill say it twice on the same page don't test me!"

(i am not exaggerating)

[ball-of-butter]

i love that red queen puts family as the chief unit of love even above true romantic love like that for some reason is SO overrated in ya media. i dont think of the characters within friendship or romantic groups first, i unconsciously catergorise them into their family.

cal loves mare but cal will put maven first always and he loves his dad and his image so much he’s willing to sacrifice his character and relationship with her to fulfil the expectations set by his family and its not until realising what his MOTHER wanted for him that he lets go. and mare loves cal but she will always put her siblings and parents first which is why everything started with gisa and shade’s loss and it ended with her sister and the loss of her brother too. maven loves mare but he loves elara more even if she twisted him and elara loves maven more than the entire kingdom and thats why she twisted him. and elara couldn’t enact her plan to make maven king without getting rid of his love for cal first!! when shade gets killed mare HAS to kill elara because that is the only way she can make sure her pain is even with at least one person.

cameron does everything for her brother’s safety, she was willing to abandon her morals and dehumanise anyone standing in her way if thats what needed to happen. and after morrey was safe she quit— nothing was worth losing herself over except him. farley and shade’s love was so pure that it brought life and family to the farleys who were already broken with the grief of being halved. their love brought a daughter named after the death of the woman that destroyed the family, and it was so healing.

and that is what KILLS me about the samos family!!! that compared to all this unconditional loyalty— the samos family is a continuous act of playing at love and loyalty, when in reality volos and larentia could not care less about their children because they dont know how to. silver society never showcases this love and so then you have so many parents fucking up their kid in so many ways but doing it out of love because thats how they see it— all except volo and larentia.

so the samos family is an exception. i cant think of evangeline without thinking of elane and ptolemus and i cant think of ptolemus without thinking of evangeline and wren. thats their family. and at least evangeline and ptolemus experienced real love with each other, even if they were never taught it (evangeline’s fear over shade’s death was proof that she could imagine a world without him and it was one of the few times she was genuinely scared in the series).

[reasonsforhope]

"Construction of a massive municipal park—over 20 years in the making, is finally underway in the city of Irvine.

They say if California became its own country, it would have one of the world’s largest economies. The new Great Park of Irvine is a reflection of the always lofty ambitions of the state, and is expected to dwarf Central Park by more than 500 acres.

It was on May 23rd this year that the “Great Park Project” broke ground on the long-derelict El Toro Marine Corps Base, 21 years after voters approved a ballot measure ordering the state to create a park on the site.

Expected to take another 10 years to complete, the park will span 1,300 acres and include several museums, an amphitheater, a veterans memorial garden, an aquatics center, a sports complex, and not one but two lakes.

“After many years of community input and after the last year of intensive planning and design, we are excited to be launching what is a $1 billion investment to establish the world’s next great metropolitan park,” said Irvine City Councilman Michael Carroll who serves as Chairman of the Great Park Board...

First item of work on the agenda is to demolish and clear away 77 old military buildings while leaving the El Toro air traffic control tower which will be leased by the FAA. However a portion of the Irvine Great Park, as it’s being called, is already open to visitors and includes a soccer pitch and some other amenities including tethered balloons to take visitors up into the sky."

-via Good News Network, July 12, 2023

--

More of this, please!!!

Also, I checked, and somehow the tethered balloon thing is not only real it's actually free. They go up 400 ft in the air

[justaz]

once merlin puts arthur to rest, the world around him disappears and he’s in ealdor staring at his mother’s back. his sobs from the lake grow worse at the sight of his mother and he wails like he’s a child again, calling repeatedly for his ma. she spins around and finds him, without asking any questions she dashes forward and pulls him into a hug, holding his weight as he falls apart in her grasp, choking out nonsensical words and soaking her dress with tears, snot, and drool, his overwhelming grief causing him to ignore any sense of shame he might’ve felt at such a scene.

he doesn’t remember explaining anything to her, frankly he doesn’t remember much beyond the cries he pressed into her shoulder, but she says he’s been in ealdor for a week. she’s clearly worried and asks, no, begs him to eat or drink but he doesn’t feel the need or desire to, and even if he did, he simply doesn’t have the energy to bring the sustenance to his mouth. she cradles his head in her lap and runs her finger through his hair like she did when he had a nightmare when he was younger. it’s almost enough to make the entire thing seem like a horrible, horrible dream. but theres blood on his tunic where he held arthur’s body to his own so he knows it’s not true.

his mother doesn’t ask any questions, the look in her eyes telling him that she knows anyway. perhaps his nonsensical babble created a clear enough image for her to understand. maybe she just saw the broken look in his eyes and came to the conclusion on her own. she doesn’t mention him. merlin isn’t sure if he’s relieved about that or not. in the end, he brings it up, he asks how she was able to go on after balinor left. he asks how she was able to pick herself back up on her own two feet and carry on life as normal after receiving his letter informing her of his passing. she says sometimes she can’t, sometimes she lays in bed and listens to the birds sing and can’t help but hate them. she says she lives on for him anyway. she pushes herself up and makes food and works in the fields even when she hate the world around her.

merlin tries to relate, tries to understand, tries to imagine himself getting up every morning and living on in his name. he can’t. his parents loved each other, he knows that, but they were their own people and were able to stand the years apart. merlin…merlin is arthur’s, even in death. everything he is, everything he’s done, has been for arthur. he is half of merlin’s soul, the center of merlin’s world. how can anyone expect him to move on as if he’s capable of being alone? how can anyone expect him to function as if half of his soul, half of himself, isn’t dead in a lake? merlin can’t do it, he can’t imagine living a life without arthur. he barely got through the week and that’s only because he was passed out for a majority of it. how could he make it a year, much less another fifty?

he can’t. he can’t do it. he can’t breathe, he’s in agony, the world around him doesn’t exist anymore. not without arthur.

he’s back at the lake now, tears still streaming down his face despite the pounding headache from dehydration yet it doesn’t matter, not anymore. none of it does. he stumbles into the lake and sends his magic into the water to tug excalibur from the depths. he can feel freya pulling the sword back, but his magic overpowers hers easily and the sword springs from the lake, gleaming in the afternoon sun. freya’s face appears in the ripples of the water next to him, her expression pleading and sorrowful. merlin whispers an apology before turning back to the sword, staring at the sharp point of the blade. he brings it closer to hover just over his heart, the metal pressing against his skin but not enough to draw blood just yet.

peace washes over him. the sun warms his skin and the water cools him to keep it from being unbearable. the birds sing in the trees as the wind whistles through the leaves. merlin stares up at the brilliant blue sky and pure white clouds roll by, images of bunnies and birds and crowns and horses staring down at him. he wonders if avalon will be this peaceful, if he and arthur could lay out in a field for eternity, basking in the sun and laughing as they point out misshapen clouds that supposedly look like the other.

he plunges the sword into his chest, right through his heart, and falls back into the water. bubbles trail out of his mouth up towards the surface, blood spills from his wound and mixes with the water. he closes his eyes as he sinks further and further. he knows when he opens them, he’ll be with arthur once more. it’ll all be okay. he doesn’t feel his body hit the bottom before blackness fills his mind.

arthur awakens from his fitful slumber in a bed that is not his own. he squints at the room, or rather hut, around him and finds an old man hunched over a book in the corner. arthur tries to speak but all that comes out is a squeak of air, his throat too dry to speak. the man hears and whirls around to begin treating him once more, prattling on and on about how he found arthur in the woods outside his village donning shiny clothes which he discarded bc of the blood staining them yet he couldn’t find a wound. arthur’s hand reaches up to his side but there’s no stab wound there, not anymore, though he does sport the scar. he remembers how he got it, he remembers stumbling away from the battlefield, he remembers being found by merlin- merlin.

he asks the man about him but he seems confused and denies ever knowing someone by that name. arthur climbs out of the bed (the flash of golden eyes) and hastily pulls on his armor (“i’m a sorcerer. i have magic.”). he’s out the door before the old man can protest. he’s in a village he doesn’t recognize, they must not be anywhere near camelot (“i’m still the same person.”). he turns to the old man hobbling out of the hut and demands directs to camelot. the man stares at him oddly and scratches his ear before informing him that he’s never heard of a camelot before (“you’re my friend and i don’t want to lose you.”).

he instead asks for directions to the woods where he was found and sets off in that direction, the old man shuffling after him (“me, i was born to serve you, arthur.”). it doesn’t take long to reach where he was found. if the old man had carried him home it couldn’t’ve been much of a hike (“and i’m proud of that.”). he steps into a clearing where the man panted that he found him here (“and i wouldn’t change a thing.”). it’s no where near the lake where merlin held him as he took his last breath, it’s no where near camelot. the man didn’t even recognize the name of his kingdom (“it’s not why i do it.”).

arthur sits in the grass as he thinks on his next move and the man who watched over him sits next to him (“i’m not going to change now.”). he speaks lowly of a prophecy about a man from a time long forgotten sent on a journey, a quest, to retrieve what has been lost. he says how the prophecy led many to a sword lodged in stone (“i’m not going to lose you.”) but no one could pull it free. he points out arthur’s armor and calls it odd, he mentions camelot, a kingdom of which he’s never heard, and gestures around the clearing where he found the mystery man. he concludes that perhaps the prophecy spoke of him (“i can’t lose him.”).

arthur, with no other options, follows the man’s directions to a lake. not exactly lake avalon but close enough. theres a small island in the center that seems more like a hill. the sword, his sword, excalibur is buried in a stone covered in moss, misshaping it’s actual form. arthur wades across the water and climbs the hill. he wraps his hands around the hilt of excalibur and closes his eyes. he imagines merlin confident and reassuring expression as they and all his men stood in the woods around this damn sword in a different stone however long ago it was. he breathes in and out (“he’s my friend.”) and pulls.

excalibur comes free just as it did before. arthur watches the metal pull free and as it does, the moss on the stone falls away revealing its form. it looks like a collapsed figure, excalibur having been lodged in it’s chest, right where it’s heart would be. arthur squints at what looks like the head and feels a flash of familiarity. the stone slowly fades away from the hole where excalibur was all the way to the hill. as the stone fades, it leaves behind skin and clothes and hair and…merlin.

arthur drops excalibur and falls to his knees to hold up merlin’s limp form. he feels warm, as if he didn’t just spend however long with a sword in his chest as a stone. he’s not breathing. why isn’t he breathing? arthur grasps around, shifting his clothes out of the way to find the wound where excalibur had once been. the skin is stitching itself together with tiny golden threads. arthur looks back up at merlin’s lax face as the wound fully closes. he inhales sharply as his eyes fly open, glowing gold, and all around him it seemed the world finally inhaled after suffocating for millennia.

merlin exhales and golden sparks shoot from his lips to flurry around in the air. the grass under them grows longer and curls around both his and merlin’s body where they rest against the ground. the water around their island clears from the murky brown to a blindingly clear blue. the air is crisp and clean, the sun brighter and warmer, and one soul finally whole again.

[gabbyp09]

[basilknell]

hussars? where are the hussars? hussars are cool, can we see them?

Clutching your shoulders. You are my new favorite person, even my brother who has an account named after winged hussars won't let me talk about them anymore.

Anyways it was just a very fast and totally armor inaccurate sketch of Skrzetuski from Trylogia but I almost certainly will be drawing more as I read.

[mooniespring]

THE EARRING!!! HE HAS AN EARRING!!

[jadeazora]

Here's Larry and Kabu's Sync/MAX moves and event trailer, it drops tomorrow! (As per usual tho, Horizons comes first, so I'll cover it Saturday instead.)

Ceruledge (and some additional Holowear) is also now playable in Pokemon UNITE!

[skyyxlite]

guys i think vegito is really bad at naming things

[nickysfacts]

All hail both the princess of Hyrule and the flapper of America!

✨👸🏼📚

📚👩🏼🖌