#thank a phoenician

[kramlabs]

Repost and reminder

[johnychen]

Spaceship Earth On Ride Low Light 4K POV EPCOT Walt Disney World 2024 03 02

[its-hell]

I would like to know what your favorite color is :)

Purple :) if you hadn't guessed by theme

[axolotlonamelon]

The Rise and Strength of Newtopia

The Newtopia Trilogy: 1/ 2/ 3

The majority of Newts aren't actually found in Newtopia!

When the city-state was gaining prominence on the continent, they became masters of shipbuilding and maritime trade, setting up small villages along the coast (a very undesirable location due to the deadly salt and lack of proper farmland) where there were harbors to protect their ships and plentiful resources to build more.

These communities were isolated both due to their peripheral location and dense tree coverage. This served them well as they were able to stay out of the way while the Toads and Frogs wared. They were able to become safe hubs of trade and refuge for amphibians (mostly Axolotls) escaping the conflict.

As Newtopia itself has always been one of the most fortified in all the land between the sea surrounding it and the strong fortified walls keeping both the salt and invaders out, ships are the only way in and out... and the only ones with ships are the Newts.

This allows these outposts to monopolize trade between the Newts and other amphibians, growing their own power in the process by obtaining raw materials, processing them into luxury goods such as jewelry, Newtopian wine, and dyed clothing, and becoming associated with high status.

When King Atlas Leviathan decided to take advantage of the weakened Toad and Frog communities with the power of the music box, they fell quickly.

Due to the Newts' isolation and culturally developed fascination with the mainland, most who left would write all they could learn about other amphibian cultures, nature, and history. They gained a well-deserved reputation as scribes and scholars, with the Newtopian Library and University becoming stuff of legends. While Axolotls were occasionally allowed into the capital, they are famously dismissive of outsiders.

[moodymisty]

Author's note: Inspired by this post, and @kit-williams life changing addition

Relationships: Mortarion/Fem!Reader

Warnings: Some NSFW references

“Care to play a game with me brother?”

Sanguinius looks to Guilliman with a smile that he does not return.

“Not particularly. Though I imagine this wasn’t actually a question.”

Sanguinius smiles wider, before pointing someone out among the crowd of bodies.

“Do you see that young lady over there, in the purple?” Guilliman spots you among the crowd of marines shuffling to return to their drop ships.

“Yes, and?” Sanguinius has the expression of a man who knows something his others do not, which fails to amuse Guilliman in the slightest.

“She is the lover of one of our brothers. Care to guess who?”

Guilliman gives him a look of surprise that is uncharacteristic of him. He had assumed you were a remembrancer, a navigator perhaps that looks oddly more human than they usually do.

“One of the Primarchs has taken a consort? That is-“ Sanguinus waves his hand and brushes off the man’s words.

“Unimportant. Guess.”

Guilliman sighs- displeased at being interrupted - before he looks back your way, and thinks.

“Vulkan.”

An obvious choice; Vulkan is both kindhearted to unaugmented humans and is frequently around baseline populations, but Sanguinius shakes his head.

“Fulgrim.”

He’s had wives before, though he thought the Phoenician swore off it because of heartbreak. Sanguinus shakes again.

“…Magnus?”

Guilliman's voice raises in a now genuinely questioning tone. The fabric of your robes is similar to that of the Thousand Sons, but Sanguinius shakes again- Guilliman expresses his distaste.

“Sanguinius this game is ridiculous and I-“

Guilliman stops when he sees Mortarion walk up to you, saving you from being lost in a sea of marines. He looks down at you with his discontent neutral expression, the decayed skin of his lips shifting with thinly veiled irritation. His limp grey hair falls in chunks around his face, and without his mask, he lets out a cough before composing himself.

He reaches a hand out to grab your arm, and you bite your lip. You say something Guilliman cannot hear nor read off your lips, but it’s something that visibly surprises the primarch.

Guilliman is stunned into silence before quickly stammering.

“That is not true. There is absolutely no-“

Sanguinius laughs, overjoyed to see Guilliman’s genuine shock.

“Oh I have proof brother. Besides their loving gazes in public eye, my Sanguinary Guard… Quite unfortunately seemed to pass by Mortarion's private quarters on the way to mine and overheard some disquieting things.

“Mortarion!”

There was the sound of wood slamming against the wall, the sound of flesh and skin. A woman’s screams echoed through the walls as more concerning sounds slipped from the safety of the primarch’s chambers.

“Mortarion! Please!”

Sanguinius is still disquieted by it. ‘Mortarion is torturing serfs’ his guards had thought and told him, before their helmet recordings had realized they greatly misunderstood.

An awkward conversation, that had been.

What a beautiful woman you were, smiling up at Mortarion with eyes so full of love Sanguinius hadn’t thought it possible. To think you love a man stuck in a cycle of disease so readily and fully.

And deeply, judging by the slamming his guards had overheard.

Guilliman looks a bit paler, watching Mortarion shove you forward to follow his men.

“I… must go. I would thank you for your time but given what I have learned today, I quite honestly don’t believe it deserves gratitude.”

Sanguinius laughs with his entire chest, patting Guilliman on the shoulder.

[opencommunion]

Hi opencommunion - you are one of my favourite Tumblrs and I love hearing about Lebanese history from you. You say you are antiPhoenicianist - I hope you would tell us more about it. Hope you're having a great day.

aww thanks, I love your blog too <3

Phoenicianism is a Lebanese ethnonationalist ideology that basically argues that Lebanese people are ethnically/culturally unrelated to (and, implicitly or explicitly, superior to) not only other Arabs but other Levantine peoples. It's a secular ideology but it's extremely Islamophobic, so it posits that Lebanese Christians (especially Maronites) are the "purest" Lebanese people with a direct line of descent from the Phoenicians, who are portrayed as an almost supernaturally heroic and advanced culture who were supplanted by savage Arabs from the south (you probably recognize this as a Zionist talking point; more on that later). It's a narrative of Lebanese history that originates from rich European-educated Lebanese and their French & English orientalist buddies, and it bears all the hallmarks of European ethnonationalism and scientific racism. In my experience ascribing to Phoenicianism is associated with class and it doesn't represent the majority of Lebanese Maronites, who do consider ourselves Arabs. My family are dyed-in-the-wool Maronites from Wadi Qadisha, the cradle of Maronite culture, and for as far back as our family histories go we've always described ourselves as Arabs, with religion being the only difference—and an unimportant difference—between us and our Druze and Muslim neighbors. Phoenicianism predates the Zionist occupation but it started to take shape around the same time as Zionism, and is based in the same core orientalist myth: that the ancient Levant was populated by strictly separate and homogenous ethnocultures with exclusive claim over portions of the land, which were later supplanted by Arab Muslim invaders who oppressed a tiny remaining local population. (In reality, of course, SWANA cultures have always been internally diverse and mutually influential, and "Arabization" in the Levant was characterized by organic cultural shifts among local populations, with Arab culture influencing and combining with local cultures rather than replacing them). So when the Zionist settler project arrived they found easy allies in Phoenicianism. This relationship eventually culminated with the settler state backing the fascist Lebanese Phalanges Party (Kataeb in Arabic, a direct translation of Falange, the Spanish fascist party that inspired its founders) in the Lebanese Civil War. Israel used the Phalanges as a proxy to fight the Palestinian resistance in Lebanon, and it was Phalangists who collaborated with IOF to carry out the Sabra and Shatila massacres. This is the cruelest and ugliest moment in Lebanon's history and Phoenicianism enabled it; Phoenicianism enabled the cognitive dissonance necessary for Lebanese to participate in the occupation's genocide against our siblings and act as footsoldiers for the European fascist agenda in our region. The Phalangists and Zionists lost the war but there is still a Phalangist presence in the Lebanese government, and Phoenicianism is unfortunately alive and well among the Lebanese right wing at home and in the diaspora

[whencyclopedia]

According to UNESCO, an estimated three million shipwrecks are scattered in the oceans’ deep canyons, trenches, and coral reefs and remain undiscovered. These shipwrecks preserve historical information and provide clues about how people lived in the past. The term ‘underwater cultural heritage’ refers to traces of human existence and activity found on ancient sunken ships or retrieved cargo such as bronze statues and priceless artworks. The Spanish treasure galleon, Nuestra Señora de Atocha, is the world’s most valuable shipwreck, estimated to be worth over USD 400 million. It was part of the Tierra Firme fleet of 28 ships bound for Spain from Cuba in 1622 and carried the Spanish Empire's wealth onboard – creamy pearls from Venezuela, glittering Colombian emeralds, and over 40 tons of gold and silver. The Atocha sailed into a hurricane off the coast of Key West, Florida, and sank. Its riches were discovered in 1985 by famed treasure hunter Mel Fisher (1922-1998). Thanks to virtual exhibitions and tours, you do not need diving skills to explore the oceans’ underwater cultural heritage. You can take a panoramic tour of Henry VIII of England’s (r. 1509-1547) favourite ship, the carrack Mary Rose, which sank in the English Channel during the Battle of the Solent on 19 July 1545. Want to see a 2,700-year-old Phoenician shipwreck submerged in the central Mediterranean? The virtual museum ‘Underwater Malta’ has a 3D model of the ship and app on Google Play. Fascinated to know what the wealth of the Spanish Empire looked like? Take a tour of Mel Fisher’s virtual treasures and the Atocha. There are countless virtual maritime museum displays, but let us take a look at five shipwrecks with interesting stories to tell.

[harmoniouseclipse]

Woe fankids be upon ye

Doing a little series where I took some ship requests on my instagram to make them fankids, this one is for me tho (jeanlisa to kick it off whoo 🙌🏻) The lineup so far is Cytham, Kavetham, Lionfish (aka Freminet x Gaming aged up probably idk how old they are canonically), Cynonari, Jealuc, and Beiguang, and feel free to send me some other pairings you wanna see (as long as they are legal pls otherwise I will ignore it 👎)

I'm gonna ramble about some headcanons and lore for them under the cut, continue with caution bc I'm insane

These two are my brainrot rn, don't even joke lad. And I wanna tell yall their name meanings too bc I like them a lot 🥹 Zephra's means "west wind" derived from Greek, and it's the feminine version of Zephyr. Tyrian was a type of purple dye used by the Ancient Phoenicians, huge huge HUGE thanks to my pookie bear @miothefish for helping me out with his name!!! Also he has Lisa's butterfly earring and you can't see bc of the angle but Zephra has the rose that went in her hair holding her ponytail <3

I'm also making a massive family tree for the characters as a go along, and just the jeanlisa tree is taking up half of the canvas bc of the KoF and Sumeru characters since Cyno is their uncle and the rest of the gang are their honorary uncles 😭 I'll be posting that once the series is done/all the requests are finished/I run out of ships and otps I enjoy

Here's an alternative version with some more info on most of the characters I wanted to briefly mention in their relation to them; Tyrian likes calling Eula his aunt too even though she was never really considered one for them so it's kind of like her unofficial title she pretends to dislike but she loves it and dotes on Tyrian 🤭 She and Diluc also helped train Zephra with a claymore and Diluc kind of became a parental figure to her in her teen years after Lisa's passing 🥺 She also feels like she's outshined by Jean and that she's not smart or powerful enough to follow in Lisa's footsteps (something that Lisa wouldn't want anyways bc it led her to her death ��) rip zephra she's just like me fr

And yeah some Kaeya angst bc he's still going thru it I fear, and Jean is single mombossing but she's worried for zephra which me too dawg, im afraid to say she might be cooked 😦 Zephra is also kind of like a weird mix of Lisa when she was her age and Jean, where overall she's well-mannered and kind but she can be competitive and feel the need to push herself too much and pull a few strings to get what she wants from time to time. Tyrian is a ray of sunshine tho, he has not yet witnessed the horrors 💔 I do think that Jean is also a lot easier on him than her mom was with her so that also helps. He's very shy tho and wants to stick with Zephra or Razor most of the time, and they both have some nasty tan lines from going out with Razor and Klee and Fischl a lot 😔 Cyno also freaking loves them and dotes on them and Tyrian is getting a TCG addiction because of it smh, Cyno is also one of Zephra's favorite people and when she's in Sumeru she stays with him and Alhaitham (bc in my universe they are married ough I love cytham)

And (I think?) Klee physically and mentally ages slower than humans so I think she'd be technically 9 or 10, and Zephra is left with babysitting duty most of the time if she's home on break or smth 😭 Klee really looks up to her tho

Also, I wrote Tyrian's last bullet point like he was super young when Lisa died, but I think he was around 7 so he actually remembers Lisa better than I intended it to sound, he was just younger than Zephra (who was 11 at the time) and just didn't have as much time with her as Zeph did, but his most fond memory of Lisa was reading with her and she probably taught them some potion-making skills too.

I think there will be some abyss angst in here too at some point, since I hc Lisa to be probably an Abyss Lector/Harold (I forget which is which) um so thinking that Zeph and Tyrian experiencing some not normal things happening and Jean doesn't know what to do since Lisa also didn't really know what that dog in her was until it was too late 😔 That's what Kaeya's for tho since he's like the heir of the abyss???? Go off king. Also some touchy ragbros angst bc Kaeya is scared for Zeph knowing how close she is with Luc and he doesn't want him to push her away because of her being from the abyss or smth (they mostly made up but it's still a fear in Kaeya's mind both for him and Jean's kids)

I think that's all I wanted to touch on for now?? Mainly just thinking about domestic fluff and angst all the time now 🥺 Zeph not being able to be open with Jean bc she feels like a disappointment but Jean would literally actually die for her and shes proud of her no matter what ough im going to lose my freak dawg guess who my favorite fankid is it's super hard ik

Send me asks or dms or whatever for more ship requests!!! I'm having so much fun with this dawg 🫶🏻

[remembrancer-of-heresy]

Conversations on Love

Summary: You catch Fulgrim's attention and you both start talking about perfection.

Fulgrim/fem!Reader

Warnings: light angst and obsession

Word count: 1614

Author's note: he's so delulu, love him

Song: Depeche Mode - World in my eyes

You were one of many remembrancers who had benefited from Fulgrim's favor. A talented individual with a unique style. And yet there were many such talented people on the Emperor's Pride. Each one was determined to prove themselves and meet the Phoenician. How did you manage to do this?

Probably because you did not seek to meet him.

The Pride of Emperor kept a strict record of remembrancers. Not one of you sat idle. All your achievements were known to the leadership. Not to mention the desire to visit this or that hall. Or requests to meet Fulgrim. Of course, all the remembrancers expressed a desire to meet the primarch.

But not you. And in truth, you were surprised by this outcome. And in some ways, you even envied your colleagues. They are not afraid to take steps and are ready to try their luck in their endeavors. You did not consider yourself important enough to personally meet the primarch. Not to mention that you didn't want to distract him.

Besides, you are the remembrancer of the 28th expedition first and foremost. You must record the greatness of the entire Legion. The Space Marines, the soldiers, even the serfs. Each of them contributed to the Crusade. You were just finishing writing about the workers when you were scheduled to meet with the Primarch himself.

You did not feel any deep joy. Rather, a feeling of anxiety and tension. Lord Fulgrim was in the middle of cleaning Laeran. And you were sure that despite the Space Marines' assurances about the ease of the operation, it must have been difficult. But still, the Primarch decided to make time for you.

Perhaps to look into the eyes of a girl who decided that records of the work of cleaners were more important than an opus about the Phoenician. Right now, he was reading your notes. With an incredibly noble and refined, but still cold face. Only a raised eyebrow betrayed his surprise at your choice of topic.

“It’s a rather unusual topic, but I must admit your talent. However,” the man carefully places your notes on the table. You were one of the few remembrancers who still preferred paper. “You can use your skills in another field. Why don’t you write about the exploits of my sons?”

“Thank you for this honour. And yet,” you swallow, rubbing yourself under the beautiful violet gaze. “I’m sure other remembrancers can do a better job than I can. I’m much better at writing about simple, yet important, topics. The serfs make a huge contribution to the expedition. So do the Space Marines… Especially the Emperor’s Children! B-but…”

“But?”

Oh Terra, are you really going to refuse the Primarch? He will laugh at your choice. He probably already despises you, and you will soon be returning to your home world. But since you’ve already started, there is no point in stopping. If you’re going to disgrace yourself, then go all the way.

“I’m a little afraid of war. N-no, I’m downright afraid of it. Bloodshed and all that cruelty are not for me.” you swallow, fiddling with your hands. “I prefer to write about peace. A-and so I joined your expedition, my lord. To show the Legion not only from the point of view known to all. But other sides as well…”

You don’t know what to do with yourself. It would be easier to fall into the ground. However, looking at the primarch, it seems to you that you would rather soar. He was smiling. Not the charming noble smile that he usually gave to mortals. Not the mocking and evil one that you were afraid to see. No, it was a calm and peaceful smile… filled with sadness.

“Peace, that is what we strive for. However, we cannot achieve it without war.” - the man leans back in his chair, relaxing from talking to you. The high spirits suddenly evaporated and you wonder. Are you talking to the primarch or his double. Or is this the real Fulgrim. - “I realized that back on Chemos.”

“Your home world?”

“Yes. Now it is a fragrant land, full of abundance and beauty. But before it was a desert, where every worker was exhausted from labor. A world where parents abandoned their children too early.” - the man speaks more and more quietly, immersed in memories. You can't help but admire this spectacle.

“It was necessary to wage wars to unite Chemos. I am a warrior and strive for perfection in this art. However, I was not delighted to spill the blood of the human race. But sometimes it was necessary. Fortunately, there were other ways. Trading resources, providing protection, political marriages-”

Your mouth falls open in surprise and Fulgrim falls silent. Chuckling at your astonished look, the man smiles. For a moment, you again see the same perfect primarch that millions see.

“Surprised? Yes, I have been married several times. A very effective way to unite cities.”

“Oh. I would never have guessed. Where are -” You pull yourself back, realizing how many years have passed since the Primarch was found.

A feeling of sadness and tenderness grows in your chest. You are just a mortal girl, you should silently assent. But you cannot shake the thought that the Primarch turned out to be much more human than you thought.

“Do you miss them?”

The man smiles, almost patronizingly. His posture and voice are relaxed. But you see how his eyes turn into ice. Usually people close themselves off from their pain, just not to feel it again. But Fulgrim is not an ordinary man, he is a Primarch. Isn’t he?

“You could say that. But human life is too short, and I, the Emperor’s son. Must bring the light of enlightenment to all corners of the Galaxy. I cannot… think about the past.” - the Primarch shrugs. - “Besides, love is imperfect, and I”

“I disagree.”

Fulgrim is silent. His violet eyes are filled with a storm of emotions. Anger and resentment that you dared to contradict him, to disagree. And interest from something new.

The Primarch is perfect, he was created by the Emperor of Mankind himself. The greatest creation of science. People like him know better what is needed for mortals. They understand the world as it should be and cannot be wrong.

And yet you did not agree with him.

“I think love is beautiful and it is what continues to move us forward.” - you are embarrassed by your confidence and lower your eyes to the floor. - “Parents and children, siblings and friends support us. We change for the better for their sake and want to make the world happy for their sake.”

Your cheeks warm and you say shyly to yourself. “And romantic love is wonderful. So much of art is dedicated to this side of humanity.” You almost tremble when you dare to look at the Primarch again. “Without love, there would be no humanity.”

You would be lying if you said that time stood still. Like many mortals, your breath was taken away by the sight of the Primarch. But still, you managed to collect your feelings while sitting in his chambers. Now you dared to communicate with him as an equal. You should have felt shame or fear, nervousness.

But instead, a clear certainty settled in your soul like a warm flame. You were right, you did not doubt. Love is an incredible feeling that could not be denied or pretended not to exist. And you would even dare to call it true perfection.

“An interesting observation.” - the man looks at you carefully and you cannot help but notice how much the atmosphere in the room has changed. But it was too difficult for you to grasp what this feeling was. - “I will take it into account. You may go.”

***

You nod, confused by the whole conversation, and quickly leave the chamber. Leaving the man alone with his dark thoughts. Which he desperately wanted to suppress, to master his feelings.

He was a primarch. Above any mortal. And this was not bragging, but a simple fact. Fulgrim was obliged to lead humanity to the stars. To bring knowledge and art to the forgotten corners of the galaxy, to win every battle. To know perfection.

He was irritated by your unwillingness to submit to his will and to know the true nature of things. He could blame it all on the mortal mind. He could come to terms with the fact that you are not ready to understand the universe. But Fulgrim would be a liar if he said that he did not think about your words.

The man's gaze involuntarily touches the busts of his adoptive parents. They loved each other, did they not? Tullea and Corrin were enchanted by the Primarch and yet… it was their love for each other that turned them all into a family. They painted the dark world of Chemos with their feelings while Fulgrim was still a child.

He did not love them, but he pitied them. As he did his wives. It is an imperfect feeling that the Primarch was forced to give up. His path lies among the stars to glory and victory. So why can't he get your image out of his head? Is your faith in love so strong that it could shake his foundations? Nonsense. An imperfect creature, that's what you are.

And yet the Primarch makes another appointment, ignoring a strange premonition. A moment of weakness, nothing more. Fulgrim is still far from perfect. And talking with you should help the Primarch transform this burning impulse that torments his heart. In the end, he is above it.

[gaiaseyes451]

Ostinato - A New Good Omens FanFic

Rated: Explicit, One-Shot, 11k (Read here on AO3)

A massive thank you to @and-his-hands-were-24-crows for this utterly gorgeous sketch!!! *swoons* Check out their AO3 at The 23rd Crow! Summary (Read on AO3): It has been six months since Aziraphale ascended to the highest ranks of Heaven. It has been six months and Aziraphale will not answer any of Crowley's attempts to contact him through conventional methods so alternative tactics must be employed. Crowley uncovers an ancient summoning ritual discovered by humans, rooted in magic and steeped in power of music. If the angel will not respond to Crowley willingly, then the Supreme Archangel will no longer be given a choice.

Excerpt: With three keys, one for each lock, he opened the heavy auditorium door. The twists and slips and chains of the deadbolts barred it against unwelcome human presences. 

On the stage, he took painstaking care to create the sigil required for the summoning ritual—a cipher of concentric circles on the matte black boards drawn with stark white chalk. His intricate script wove them together, nearly incomprehensible for the multitude of languages and sheer number of times their names were repeated. It was impossible to tell where one ended and the next began. He wove the disparate languages together with a transcendent grace: angelic characters, demonic runes, Sumerian, Phoenician, Hebrew, Latin, Sanskrit, Arabic, Mandarin, Hindi, Greek, Italian, Prussian, German, French, English– the history of an existence that had always belonged to the both of them.

Thanks to @voluptatiscausa, @malachitegrey and @adverbian for organizing the High Pollen Count! Event and encouraging us folks who ran with the vibes instead of the pollen itself to still participate. 🤣

And a huge thanks to my beta's @hakunahistata, @the-literal-kj and @paperclipninja. As always a shoutout to @goodomensafterdark for supporting the wonderful writers' community.

[vidavalor]

Hi! Hope you’re having a great day! When Crowley said that both he and Aziraphale speak every language in the world, how do you think that would work? Like, do they have the potential to? Or do they just switch to a language by default? Do they kinda have to spend some time around a certain region to speak those languages? Thank you for your answer!

Hello there! Hope you're having a great day yourself. *all the chocolate cake for you* 💕 What a cool question! Sorry it took me awhile to get back to you. I'm flattered to have a bit of a backlog happening here 😳 & I also was taking some time to mull this one over as it's a really fun topic.

What might it mean for Crowley and Aziraphale to "speak every language in the world?" and how might that work?

I've got a couple of ideas that also involve a look at Aziraphale's halo and the "one big avocado" joke while we're at it...

I think that this question contains a bit of chicken-and-the-egg. To show you what I mean by that, I want you to look again at the scene in the gif below but, instead of looking at Muriel, Crowley, and Saraqael in the foreground of it, look at Michael and Uriel in the background:

If you look at the scenes of Crowley and Muriel watching the footage of Gabriel's trial, you'll notice that Heaven's Zoom things-- that are somewhere between a skyscraper and a computer tower in appearance-- are marking information in what are known as ideographs.

An ideograph is a symbol or a picture that stands for a word or a concept. The foundations of every language on Earth are all rooted in different forms of ideographs that, along with some basic sounds, are believed to have evolved towards letters and words and into the modern spoken and written languages we use today. Some of the most well-known ideographs that we know of include things like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Phoenician alphabet, and the runic alphabets.

[I did a post on Crowley's use of "ngk" that talks about its origins relating to the Greek alphabet and touches on ideographs a little, if you're interested in more on this topic.]

These same symbols in the "Heavenly Zoom" screens alongside Michael and Uriel in the Gabriel trial video are also being shown as the timestamp/data markers on the video Crowley and Muriel see of Gabriel riding the lift/elevator down to Earth when he ran. Runes are also part of the markings of the magic circle in the bookshop floor that Aziraphale uses to connect to Heaven.

He and Crowley cover up that foundational circle with a rug decorated with lotus flowers, symbolic of Eastern spiritual influences and trauma recovery, and appear to more commonly use the spot that can be used to contact Heaven as a meditative spot. It's also where they do the Gabriel miracle, seemingly as a way of calming and focusing themselves to be able to perform it.

Visually, the series is using ideographs in the floor & the rug to reflect evolution in Crowley and Aziraphale's life from the runes in the floor evoking Heaven to the lotus flower rug which, while also symbolic in ancient religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, also have more relevant and modern symbolism reflecting the journey towards enlightenment and the persistence and ability to transcend obstacles born from trauma.

It's symbolic of the idea that, in their World of Carpets that they've made together, Crowley and Aziraphale are very much like a lot of people with Christianity-based religious trauma and other issues whose spirituality has gone a bit Buddhist, if at least in using tools like mindfulness in a secular way (see also: the breathing in the sushi and the magic shop scenes, etc..).

The Angel of The Eastern Gate, ya know?

Anyway, the point is that the foundations of all Earthly languages are ideographs and we've seen a few scenes show that Heaven uses those in internal documentation. This, as The Voice of God would say, proves two things:

All of the characters on our show share the same foundation of languages. It all comes from Heaven and the language of the angels. The demons were angels so this is their foundational language, too, and it's the same as many early human languages, which means that, just as the angels and demons pre-dated the humans, the foundations of what we think of as our human languages actually, in the Good Omens universe, come from the angels and demons, and...

Heaven is still sending internal emails and documenting files using this picture stuff from over six thousand fucking years ago. 😂

It's symbolic of how slow evolution in Heaven is and how they do not view evolution as actually a good thing.

Relevant to this is that, in the Ineffable Bureaucracy flashback, Beez and Gabriel sum up one of the big themes of the story really succinctly when they talk about how both the angels and the demons are both living for Armageddon-- "if you can call that living," as Beez puts it.

You can't. Gabriel and Beez agree that it's not.

Like Crowley and Aziraphale, they have seen the truth of things, which is that the ones who are really living are the humans. The angels and demons are socialized to believe that they're superior to the humans-- magical, quasi-immortal, not in need of any of the revolting trappings of humanity, like food and love. Our main four characters, though, have figured out that this isn't true and that the ones who are really living are the humans. Not coincidentally, then...

...Crowley, Aziraphale, Beez, and Gabriel-- the four characters who have made an effort to spend time on Earth during its evolution-- are also the four most linguistically adept supernatural characters on the show.

What we're saying is that, since the angels created Earth, it means that the beginnings of language on Earth in Good Omens actually comes from the angels, which means that all humans, angels and demons share in common the same foundations of languages. This is where human evolution of language comes into play and we can see more then what it might mean to speak all the languages of the world.

Language is not a passive thing. It is constantly evolving. The evolution of language is a collective effort by all of those participating in it by speaking that language. It carries the weight of the past in the history of its words but it also is sometimes how people, consciously or unconsciously, seek to evolve from that past.

We first learn to talk by mirroring the vocabulary and speech patterns of those around us and we keep doing that, in different ways, throughout our lives. Slang becomes popular by people picking it up from one another and spreading it. Words take on new meanings and evolve or fall out of fashion in accordance to the times. Why we say what it is we say and how we came to say it and what these words mean now and used to mean and their relationship to other words is known as the study of etymology and Terry Pratchett's novels, including both Good Omens and the Discworld novels, are love letters to this field of study.

The figurative language of both is developed off of a love of word history-- Aziraphale's discus halo, for example, is the same etymological joke that is why Pratchett's novel series is called Discworld. The word halo was originally not a religious term but a scientific one and described the disk of light visible around objects in the sky. As a result, halo, in its earliest origins, was also a word used to describe many disk-shaped things on Earth-- the discus and the sport named for it chief among them.

Also, disk-shaped platters (the "go on" temptation trays of food in Good Omens and dinner plates). Halo was an early word for some gardens and the original term for what evolved to be knowing as a threshing floor-- a space into which oxen were penned to process grain.

The original halo, as we mentioned, was light *around* an object in the sky, which is different from how it evolved to be light *above* a religious figure in art work when the word was basically stolen from scientific circles by religious people. A visual reference to this is the contrast between Aziraphale's halo in S2 versus the human performance artist dressed as a human-like angel with a halo above her head when Gabriel is jogging in the park in S1.

In Good Omens, the definition evolution is also there in Aziraphale, a religious figure (an angel) with perfectionist issues having the halo around his head and not floating above it. He's a deity in the way that the humans would draw it in art but his halo doesn't reflect perfect, pure, godliness-- it reflects his humanity and the pressures of trying to live up to what others say reflects God but which he doesn't truly believe does. Aziraphale's halo is symbolic of his mental health struggles and the pressures we put on ourselves-- it's crushing his head in and causing the anxiety attack we're seeing him fighting as he takes it off.

Good Omens is a Discworld-adjacent novel and The Discworld?

It is about us and our own halos.

We're all the objects in the sky and we've got a complicated ring of light around us. We're amazing, celestial beings but we're also so very human.

The story is in the etymology: Halo = Discus. Discus = Disc. Us.

Discus is also the root word of what we can do to help us manage our halos-- discuss stuff. Get out of our same daily rounds and talk about our frozen peas. Put on some round records or some compact discs and dance on the heads of our pins. Maybe to some disco, so we won't discorporate.

The other word related to halo and that comes from discus is desca, the origin of the word desk.

It originally just meant any table. If you've got a table or a desk, you've got a mind, you've got a life you're trying to lead. Doesn't matter if you're borrowing it or sharing it or if it's yours or if you've got one or more than one. Doesn't matter if it's clean or cluttered or what's on or in it-- if you're using a table of any kind, you're writing something, making something, eating something, doing something, thinking about something.

You're living life in the Discworld.

In Good Omens, one of Heaven's few material objects are desks because the supernatural characters are members of the Discworld, too-- they just mostly like to pretend that they're not.

Aziraphale's discus halo is both an etymology joke and etymology-based figurative language in one. It's what the Discworld is, in a visual pun. So, what does this all have to do with speaking a language?

Well, for one thing, it shows how language-history-driven a story Good Omens is. It also helps to show that the characters who are the deepest into understanding what it is to be a part of the Discworld are the ones who are letting themselves live.

*cues up the Queen* Ooh, you're making me live...

And what is a big effect of letting yourself live in Good Omens? What is one of the most notable by-products of these characters who do, namely Crowley and Aziraphale?

Their more adept language skills.

It's the humans, by and large, who are living so it's the humans who have evolved language from its Heavenly foundations. Heaven still using the ideographs symbolizes how they have struggled to evolve because evolution isn't seen as positive there. They think themselves superior with nothing to learn and have no curiosity about how their relatives on Earth are living. They think they know everything and should be inflicting their lunacy onto the humans, who are the ones really doing the work of figuring out the Discworld.

Crowley and Aziraphale have been living on Earth since its beginning and so they are basically walking, talking etymological dictionaries. They came into it knowing the foundations of all languages and then they have become a part of its evolution alongside the humans.

Several historically anachronistic scenes also indicate that Crowley and Aziraphale themselves are responsible for contributing various words and phrases throughout history. That alone would be its own meta but part of the enjoyment of language in the series is seeing our main characters use words that were definitely not otherwise in use in the eras in which they are in during any particular scene-- like Aziraphale using "America" in 3400 BC and "restaurant" in ancient Rome and Crowley being "down with" something in 1827 on the same night he's originating the "you say potato" at the heart of a song that wouldn't be written for another century to come. Crowley's first lines in the series in 1.01-- "well, that went down like a lead balloon"-- are historical anachronisms and absolutely hilarious, as here's the first human beings, basically naked and shoeless, just leaving the Garden of Eden, and thousands of years away from understanding concepts like lead and inventing balloons, let alone inventing an idiom connecting them.

When you think about it, Crowley and Aziraphale would be contributors to human language just by living on Earth for so long because that is how language evolves. We pick it up from one another. The popular fan theory that humans began using "angel" as a romantic pet name after hearing Crowley call Aziraphale that is this same sort of thing-- and the show suggested that it's true in S2 by having Nina adopt it for Maggie after hearing Crowley use it to describe Aziraphale. Also seems like an opportunity for my favorite linguistic historical anachronism in the series:

Crowley and Aziraphale's ability to know human language better than the other supernatural characters reflects that they have been living human lives, which the show has argued is what living is.

Basically all of the humor with regards to language in Good Omens comes from where the angels and demons seem to have not been on Earth that much or have not been updating their internal language computers and are therefore confused by ways in which language has evolved.

Everything from Shax's toast/toste to Hastur's ciao/chow confusion... from Gabriel's "keep the status quo static and, uh, quo-y" to Michael's humorless inability to understand Crowley's shuhite/shoes homophonic joke... from "surrender the angle" to "transferred from another human settlement"... are all jokes that reflect that the angels and demons are missing information regarding where humans have taken language.

There's even a joke that is about the supernatural characters struggling to understand language evolution and that's the "one big avocado" joke from both the book and the show. It's a joke about the inability to understand wordplay enough to tell a joke that is actually funny. Part of the humor of this joke is that it is just fucking terrible the way that the characters tell it 😂-- not terrible in a so-bad-it's-good way but just terrible-- but what also makes it funny is that it could have been very funny if only they were able to piece together the elements sitting right there that make it amusing. They are so close to having a decent joke here but they just can't quite get there. Making matters funnier? They lack both the knowledge and the self-awareness to actually see the puns sitting right there in their own conversation.

The humor is that Famine (in the book) and Eric (in the show) are essentially trying to make a pun but they don't quite get wordplay. They can see some potential in the fact that the end of the world is apparently going to happen in a place that also grows avocados. They sense something of note or meaning in that but they don't know what to do with it. They can see that it's all weirdly absurd and they can feel something there but they don't know enough about words to make something out of it. It reflects that they don't know enough about Earth to see that Armageddon is not a foregone conclusion and that it is really about all of them and their own personal Armageddons. The best they can do is just say it with verbal italics-- that Armageddon? It's gonna be one big avocado-- but they're mainly just mimicking a humorous tone here without having the words there to justify the tone and make it actually funny.

They've basically understood the human need to go at life with some dry, absurdist, gallows humor but they aren't sure how to replicate that themselves beyond tone. In the novel, the "one big avocado" joke is a conversation between The Four Horsepeople of the Apocalypse who have gathered to ride but are talking about how they are surprised that Armageddon is taking place in this village called Tadfield. The joke is in none of them actually knowing the etymology of one of the most well-known etymologies of any word on Earth in history-- Armageddon, which is derived from the name of the ancient city of Megiddo. They are The Four Horsepeople of The Apocalypse and they don't know the origins of Armageddon, which is their entire purpose for existence. 😂

Famine gets closest to the etymology by saying that he thinks that Armageddon is "somewhere in Israel" from what he understands but also admits that he "always meant to look it up" and isn't totally sure. Pollution thinks Armageddon is in "Pennsylvania or Massachusetts or one of those places", apparently equating it to places associated with the beginnings of the American Revolution.

[There is, believe it or not considering some of the city names in the United States, not a single town or single city in America named Armageddon. Not just in Massachusetts or Pennsylvania but in the entire country. I know because, unlike Famine, I looked it up when I first read the book.]

Thematically, Pollution is close but no cigar and doesn't have a clue how close they are to getting the themes of freedom and autonomy that are associated with the positive aspects of the complicated old duck that is America running throughout the story, which are reflected in the tv series through things like Gabriel, The Them's "39 flavors of ice cream in America" scene in S1 and, of course, Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death. Pollution ain't smart, though-- and for A Character Who Is Actually A Concept, they're amusingly terrible at, well, getting concepts... which is so to help us better see that by seeing what it is that they aren't understanding.

Both of them are showing that they have no idea what Armageddon means because they don't understand how the word came to be. The joke both suggests that it's important to the story to consider that Armageddon has different meanings in it and that the word choice in the story is very specific and looking at word origin, in general, is key to story comprehension. All of this is obviously true in life outside of Good Omens as well and one of the messages of this story and, I've found, running throughout the novels of Discworld that I've read.

Eventually, Megiddo is brought up and Famine is surprised that Armageddon would be what it was known for (despite Armageddon as a word being literally derived from the city of Megiddo 😂) because he "thought that was where they grew avocados."

Death-- the only one who kinda knows what's up with the words here-- finally chimes in to answer Famine by saying, in response to the avocado-growing place, that that's "MOUNT CARMEL."

Death means Mount Carmel, California, which is known for growing avocados, and which also shares a place name with the mountain range that encompasses Megiddo, the place whose name formed the origin of the word Armageddon. They do grow avocados in Megiddo but if you lined up everyone on Earth and asked them to describe The Velvet Underground tell you a place famous for growing avocados no one-- no one-- would say the fields of Megiddo. One of the top three answers, though, would be the mentioned region of California.

Famine replies to this as Eric does in the show-- that Armageddon then is going to be "one big avocado"-- and the humor, on one level, is in his inability to make a decent joke because he can't understand words enough to pun. On another, though?

If we're a little more word-savvy here and applying these guidelines the story is suggesting to the story as we go? If we get that the story is Armageddon but that Armageddon is really about a person's own mental health crisis and struggles in the Discworld and the whole destruction-of-planet-Earth thing is plot but more metaphorical than anything else? Then, our next question might be what the deal is with involving avocados in the joke about Armageddon's word origins and the inability to play with words being what humorlessness is.

Is there additional humor in that, beyond the actually funny Mount Carmel part of the joke that the characters don't get but that the reader/viewers can? Is there a level of this that is funny in a way where the characters making this terrible joke ironically don't realize that they have, on some level, actually said something funny? There are in a couple of ways...

One is that avocados are sometimes euphemistic in English for balls (in the testicular sense, obviously). It also originally had the alternate names of the alligator pear or the avocado pear, which is homophonic for pair... which can be used to refer to balls, as in look at the pair on him, etc.. Word-wise, avocados are actually, ironically-- pardon the fruit pun-- perfectly ripe for punning.

Knowing literally any of this would have meant that Famine or Eric could have actually made a very funny, punny, dirty joke out of the avocados simply by referring to two of them instead of the "one big avocado." This is all without even adding in the element of Armageddon and destruction as sexually euphemistic and the innuendo potential there...

If you were talking with Crowley about avocados being grown where Armageddon was scheduled to take place, he could instantly come up with about twelve dirty puns off the top of his head and be grinning within seconds, having fun with Aziraphale being faux-scandalized (and then the angel being just as filthy in response 😂). It's because Crowley canonically loves word history and has a special fondness for homophony, which would be a big part of avocado-related humor ("So I am. Bildad the Shuhite... need any shoes?"). He loves to play with words. So does Aziraphale. They would be flirting about avocados and Armageddon effortlessly whereas characters like The Four Horsepeople, Hastur, and even Eric (who at least appears to be trying) are lacking in living enough on Earth to really be able to develop a sense of humor through understanding language.

The avocados are also obviously tied to the use of pair/pear/pare in Crowley and Aziraphale's private language, too. (And the related appear/disappear being used euphemistically for an orgasm.)

Finally, there's another little joke in there with the avocados-- one that's more for us than anything else. Avocados bringing up pears and pear being homophonic for pair means that Armageddon-- which is the story of Good Omens-- going to be "one big avocado" means that the novel was predicting that Good Omens was likely going to produce "one big pair."

It did and still does: Crowley and Aziraphale.

Those two fruits have spent the last couple of decades being one big avocado, have they not?

So, the story is saying that fluently speaking a language is best reflected by a person's ability to play in it. Crowley and Aziraphale, we have learned, know how to play with words using every language in the world not just because they knew the foundations of those languages but because they have been participating in the evolution of those languages as humans of Earth for the last six thousand years.

To be fair to these supernatural characters who aren't so hip to words, though? Plenty of humans are missing this stuff, too. That's a big part of the joke, as well.

A lot of us don't know what it is we're saying when we choosing the words we're choosing to say or how it came to be that those words exist in the first place. The discovery is part of the process of living. No one's going to know everything, all of the time. The point is to be curious and ask questions. Those who do at least have that going for them because their mind is open to new information.

And, even if you've spent six thousand years steeped in the evolution of human languages with your equally word-horny partner, you're not going to get everything. The two of you could have written some of the most analyzed passages of Shakespeare and poetry and influenced some of the most popular music ever made but you're still never going to know everything. Things are going to slip by you unnoticed, like your hellcat of an old pal, Jane Austen, having written books, or the fact that some English-speaking women have developed this linguistic habit of insisting that they are not crying when they are, in fact, obviously sobbing.

So, how does a supernatural person like those in Good Omens keep up with all the evolution of language? If they originated it back in the days of written language being pictures-meaning-stuff and we're now in the year 2023 in the series? Can you imagine barely being on Earth for thousands of years and just getting like magical equivalent to bad software updates on language and then coming to the planet from time to time and trying to navigate it? You'd be completely and utterly fucked. They're all actually impressive to be able to speak as well as they do.

I kind of don't blame Shax for confusing toste with toast or Hastur for not being able to tell the difference between an Italian greeting and slang for food. They're not doing half-bad with this, in my book, especially when you consider that they have to understand every language on the planet while most of us know far fewer. Most humans struggle to keep up with language evolutions within their own lifetimes just within their primary language or languages, let alone be able to deftly play in every language of the world.

Hastur raising his hand during Crowley's presentation and asking what a computer is? It's one of the funniest punchlines in the series because it emphasizes how clever Crowley is with words to a point that he's absolutely running circles around the other demons, especially with this word-nerdy Odegra presentation... but it's more than that.

It's also showing that Hastur actually has a quality that many of the others do not: he's curious. He is willing to ask questions. It matters more to him to understand what a computer is than it does for him to admit that he doesn't know. That might well be the most (and maybe only? lol) admirable thing about Hastur but he isn't the only one with that promising interest in learning more.

Books are books and they are also, symbolically, people, as Muriel pointed out-- "like people, only portable." We learn language from both reading it and speaking it-- from both literal and figurative books. Not only does Muriel pick up pleasure reading in S2 and all the language (and countless other) benefits that can have but they are one of the examples of how we mirror the language of others around us and are collectively evolving language together.

Music is language, too, as Beez shows by evolving their and Gabriel's private language to include a song written by a human that they then use to discuss how they feel about one another and which becomes a part of not just their own world but those of the people around them when others later hear them singing it.

Muriel adopting Aziraphale's "jolly good"; Nina taking Crowley's "angel"; Crowley and Aziraphale so mirroring one another's language that the show is incorporating our biological tendency to do so and how that informs language into its storytelling.

Living beings will mirror the languages of those around them, as it's actually how we learn to speak in the first place. You speak to babies so much in order to teach them vocabulary through repetitive connections being made between the physical and the linguistic. As older kids and adults, we still can and do still pick up the words and speech patterns spoken by those around us-- for better or worse-- and some word evolution can happen from hearing them incorrectly or misunderstanding what was said.

One of the funniest jokes in the series is an example of a human doing just that, in a way that shows what a dirtbag he is:

The humor here is coming from both the fact that Glozier hears the name of a company or a product-- Betamax-- as the name of a person-- Peter Max-- because he sees people as something you can buy... but also from the fact that he has been spending so much time with German-born Nazis like Greta and Harmony that he's begun to process all language as if it's coming to him spoken by someone with that accent-- even though both he and Aziraphale are English, so there should not have been an issue. Glozier's gross and also, in his case, treasonous, affiliation with the Nazis in this moment is humorously shown through his de-evolving language skills.

The idea, then, is that while you can have knowledge of the basic tools to speak a language and get through enough to be understood by knowing those tools, it's through engaging with the world around you that you really and truly speak a language.

The angels and demons are so isolated that they might have originated language but they now have huge gaps in their linguistic knowledge because of humans being the ones who are really living. Their repression is shown in their inability to fully and effectively communicate.

What the show does with Crowley and Aziraphale, then, is take two beings who have been on Earth since the beginning and who also happen to both be very into words and show their ability to understand and navigate life on Earth as reflected by their much, much deeper understanding of language by comparison to others around them-- those from Heaven and Hell and, often, from some of the humans of Earth as well. The story also shows how imperfect they are with it, though... reflective of how human these supernatural people are and how imperfect we all are here in the Discworld.

So, the point is that language evolution is reflective of human evolution. We create and evolve words to express ourselves in the current moment and, often, to contrast with what came before, or to be aspirational for the future.

Some words are stubbornly impervious to time; others are almost instantly dated. It's messy and it's organic. It can reflect the worst of humanity and the best of it-- sometimes, in the same damn word. Some words will disappear into other words, forever obsolete. Some words will disappear and then return, riding waves of social change. Words will be warred over between different groups; they can be derided and then reclaimed. They can have intense, divisive histories, or they can have completely batty and silly ones. We're all changing languages every day with the words we are choosing to say. It's humanity's collective project so it's a great choice for reflecting what living is in a story that is really, fundamentally, about the business of living.

The extra-funny part about the mention of Crowley and Aziraphale speaking every language in the world is that they are so adept at language that they are able to play in it and have, as a result, invented a private, hidden language of their own.

One of the founding principles of that hidden language is that the words being spoken are not just the ones on the surface but the words that are hidden within those very intentionally chosen words. Crowley is actually using that language when he says that he and Aziraphale "speak every language in the world." The word he's saying that is not heard on the surface but that is heard as Nightingale Speak to Aziraphale is the word peak.

Peak, as in to excel and reach the top of a field and, also, peak, as in a top, a summit, or a climax.

"You speak every language of the world. We both do." is a statement of fact on the surface. It's also an example of them excelling at language and being word nerds because, in the hidden language they developed not just to mask their speech for safety from outsiders but to romance one another, it's also saying:

"You get off on words. We both do."

[eintausendschoen]

what’s your opinion on Leucothea?

First of all: 💙💜💙 That's such a lovely question, thank you so much, because... *sigh* I am missing Leucothea in EPIC so badly (of course I understand the need to cut corners to keep the narrative concise)!

Mainly because her part in in the Odyssey keeping Odysseus safe from Poseidon's wrath was always a bit funny for me. Just Poseidon's reaction to seeing Odysseus abandoning his ruined raft dressed in Leucothea's veil! He goes shaking his head at it like 'ah whatevs, you'll face enough pain anyway, why bother' and just goes back to his own business... 😂 ... bit anticlimactic. (I strongly imagine WolfyTheWitch's Poseidon with that xD)

But! Leucothea!

She's supposed to be protector of mariners after all, but from what I remember her backstories/myths sum up to "no good deed goes unpunished", I'll try to put them below, but I'm not an expert.

So - you asked, and I did a gigaton of research into the sea goddesses :)) but it's all myth and hard to pic out facts for a non-historian like me with limited sources, so here's the bits that stuck. Which is still a lot. Sorry, textwall incoming. 🙏🙇‍♀️🙏

I just love how myth and lore transforms with the cultures they belong to and I live and breathe for tidbids from the bronze and iron age! Here you go:

As Ino, she'd be fostermother to Dionysos punished by Hera via proxy (driving her husband mad) for helping the child, and casting herself and her son into the sea as last resort. Both were made deities of the sea, protecting the sailors (her) and harbors (her son, mainly Corinth as far as I could discern, worshipped as Palaemon).

I also remember a temple where Poseidon was worshipped alongside Leucothea and Palaemon, which is quite and interesting parallel to the phoenician trias of gods (father, mother, son) that you could know from a wide range of biblical texts maybe as Baal/Astarte/their offspring. (And that part is tremendously interesting because Astarte transformed into the greek godesses Aphrodite and Artemis, as well as the egyptian Isis, and was a goddess of sexuality, fertility, war and the hunt, protector of mariners again and associated with horse and chariot). These cults died with the Bronze Age collapse, or were overtaken and transformed by other religions.

But back to backstories: As Halia, she'd be Poseidon's wife, and again the punishment by madness theme strikes here: her relatives are driven mad by an Olympian (this time Aphrodite) and lost.

Her name meaning 'saltwater'. And that I find really interesting because, with Poseidon being a storm god, is a big parallel back to the myths of Tiamat (saltwater ocean in which the land was born) and Abzu (cosmic sea of sweet water - the sky ocean aka the god of storms and rains and atmosphere) from ancient Babylon, who created the whole of land and sky in their union.

Tiamat (as wild, untamed nature) was later fought by Marduk, a male god and cultural hero, representing the triumph of human culture over primal chaos, but also patriarchal society over matriarchally led tribal society.

In my fic I tried to incorporate Leucothea Halia's aspects into Amphitrite, her being an ancient saltwater goddess, a 'white goddess' in appearance with lots of silver and reflective scales and eyes, association with white birds and bright sunlight.

And lastly, because I loved the question so much: What's your ideas about her? :) Would love to hear 💙✨🙏

[onestrangechild]

Ferrus Manus stood looking out of the observation deck aboard his ship, hands clasped behind his back, the silver of his arms grating against the ceramite. He wasn’t disheveled, but a fine almost film-esc shadow of stubble spread across his lower face and his hair he kept professionally short was an absolute mess. Ignoring the hair, he was covered in soot and grime from either a battle or a forge even he didn’t remember exactly. You might call it uncivil, he would call it practical. He has a war to wage, an eternal war, he didn’t have much time for something like a shower…

“M’lord, your brother Guilliman wished to alert you he is on his way. He wants to speak about the crusade with you.” One of his sons said, their voice echoing slightly in the vastness of the mostly glass deck.

“Heard. Thank you, my son.” The Iron Father replied, turning partially to said marine then back to the star-spotted nothingness

This marine was a loyal son, naturally, so he turned to walk off. But there was something bugging him in his mind, a little detail that was probably pointless, but still it begged to be acknowledged. The marine trusted their instinct, leaning back into the doorway a moment

“Fulgrim will also be in company, M’lord. Apologies.”

One of Ferrus’s hearts stopped for a beat.

“WHAT!?” The Iron Father shouted, reeling around 180 with a look that some would dare call panic: eyes wide and brows angled sharply. He grumbled something in Medusian, pinching the bridge of his nose as he starts walking one way a few steps, stopping, turning and walking a few more steps, then repeating. The marine watched his father pacing, feeling a bit awkward and maybe regretting putting him in such distress, he trusted Ferrus would… probably be fine. So he left.

“By the throne, the nerve of my brothers I Swear!” He gripes to no one, storming out of the deck and through the halls of his ship. One hand would change into a slab, fingers melting and forming into a perfect flat and reflective surface. The other would melt just enough for peaks of metal to start hanging like stalactites from his palm. He would look into the metal mirror and brush his hair, brows still furrowed in his usual scowl

He grimaced when his improvised comb grabbed one of the various knots in his hair and pulled on his scalp. He mumbled some complaint and was a bit more gentle on his hair, pulling the comb through a bit more gently. Then he saw one of his officers, and a thought struck him

“You, Sergeant! Give word to yours and the other companies: all marines aboard will have their armor polished so clean you will see your reflections clearly in them.”

“Yes, father!” The marine barked, turning and jogging back somewhere Ferrus didn’t have time to check. He slipped and ducked into several different hallways until he was at his own quarters.

“He complains to me for Hours about Horus giving him no kind of heads-up. But then when he comes to My ship, Nothing! Didn’t even Try to Vox me I bet the-… Ooouuuugh I could Strangle that Phoenician!”

His words echoed in the simple, spacious quarters. He walked over and onto a pedestal with the Mechanicum insignia on it. He raised his arms and several mechadendrites began to remove parts of his armor. He would look up and order the machines to polish his armor until he said stop, and only until he said.

“I am No Where NEAR presentable, dammit! I can hear him now: ‘Brother, you look like you just climbed out of a Trench, come let me give you a spa day hohohohohohoo~’ GAH!”

His hands would change to normal, and no sooner did they before he would face palm hard enough the slap rang out in the room much like his various outbursts of exasperation. As soon as his armor was off, it was to a shower. It didn’t do much for the smell of sweat, soot, and oil that clung to Ferrus like a rot but it at least cleaned his skin.

He stepped out from the shower in between what looked like a pair of Volkite exhaust vents, raising his arms and turning himself slowly in a full circle. Once dry, he stepped away and to a proper mirror. He brought his hand to his chin, tilting his head up and dragging his fingertips across the abrasive stubble of beard hair trying to invade his face. He let his hand limp, one hanging finger melting like wax and contorting itself into a simple blade without a tip.

Ferrus raised the blade to his neck, broadside against his skin and blade angled all wrong. As soon as the cooled Necrodermis kissed his skin he remembered something.

A memory forced itself in his mind, he was standing right where he was and about cast away such “rebellious keratin”, but before he’d even made one stroke his brother Fulgrim would swoop behind him like a bird of prey. Without a word, the Phoenician would take Ferrus’s hand and pull it away, lathering the Iron Father’s face in some kind of white foam. Then he brought the impromptu razor back to Ferrus’s neck and tilted it at a better angle

“Shaving is an art you practice in yourself, brother, please have Some reverence” he would snicker softly, patting Ferrus on the side of his face as gentle as a mother. Not in any kind of mocking sense, but friendly brotherly banter.

Ferrus broke from his self-imposed trance. He didn’t have time for this.

He angled the blade better, and in as few strokes as it required he sliced away what hair dared to try and grow on his face.

That was better.

He reached into one of the various shelves dotted around the room and squirted a little puddle of gel into his metal hands, the various grooves and gouges filling in to make his hands a near perfectly flat surface. On the other, he would recreate that impromptu comb.

One hand lathered, the other brushed. Another lesson graciously… but unrequestedly… given by his flamboyant brother.

“There.” He mutters to himself, looking again into the mirror. His eyes immediately locked to the space between his brows. Yet more rebellious keratin wished to spite the Iron Father’s face. He grunted, relaxing his face muscles and with a stroke so masterful any mortal swordsman would weep, the hair was dealt with. But now, a single dot of red betrayed his pale complexion, and grew steadily.

Ferrus scowled, the slightest of pinprick tingling fading in seconds and the blood disappeared onto a convenient rag he had nearby.

“Better.”

The Iron Father would step back to his armory, the mechadendrites whirring and hissing their industrial songs as armor clanked and clattered into place. Forge Breaker sat peacefully nearby on its own rack, away from the vast collection of other weapons and war gear. He looked at the hammer, hefting it up with one hand. No, he didn’t want to seem angered, throne knows his brothers don’t need any more reason to call him a rabid war-monger. But he didn’t set it back, inspecting the strike face and each detail his brother had spent months in his own forge grafting onto this simple block of plasteel.

His contemplations were interrupted by one of his sons, a marine knocking on his door. Ferrus closed his eyes and growled softly to himself, he was daydreaming again. He turned to the door as it opened itself, and the marine stood at tall and proud with his armor polished so cleanly the black seemed to pull light into it and never let go

“My lord, is this acceptable?” The marine asked.

Ferrus set down Forge Breaker onto its rack and motioned his son to come closer. He inspected the marine with the eyes of the yet unborn inquisition, the silver seeming to beam like Volkite Cannons into every imperfection, ever dent, every chip in this marine’s armor… but they didn’t have time

“Yes.” The Father said, dismissing his son back to his brothers.

Then with his own all judging eyes he scanned his own armor. He scowled and his hands began to warm, glowing palms forging the ceramite back into shape as he walked out of his quarters.

On either side of the halls, Iron Hands marched in lock step with eachother, each armored bootfall pounded into the linoleum within microseconds of eachother. Ferrus felt a bit of pride as he marched to the hanger along with them

[thesiltverses]

Hello! Have you heard black sheep by poor man’s poison? It’s so carpenter and Faulkner coded I could swear you had that song in mind when you wrote it. It was the first song I added to my silt verses playlist when I made it

I have not heard either of the songs you recommended (or the bands!) but I just checked them both out this morning after spending a month glued to sound design, and I enjoyed them a lot, so thank you!

Poor Man's Poison reminded me a lot of The Devil Makes Three, this sort of straight-faced Weird West music, but I really liked Rabbitology's Bog Bodies, which took me back to Seamus Heaney's bog poems, which were very much an influence on the show as a whole.

Quick, let's have a bog poem:

BOG QUEEN I lay waiting between turf-face and demesne wall, between heathery levels and glass-toothed stone.

My body was braille for the creeping influences: dawn suns groped over my head and cooled at my feet,

through my fabrics and skins the seeps of winter digested me, the illiterate roots

pondered and died in the cavings of stomach and socket. I lay waiting

on the gravel bottom, my brain darkening, a jar of spawn fermenting underground

dreams of Baltic amber. Bruised berries under my nails, the vital hoard reducing in the crock of the pelvis.

My diadem grew carious, gemstones dropped in the peat floe like the bearings of history.

My sash was a black glacier wrinkling, dyed weaves and phoenician stitchwork retted on my breasts’

soft moraines. I knew winter cold like the nuzzle of fjords at my thighs—

the soaked fledge, the heavy swaddle of hides. My skull hibernated in the wet nest of my hair.

Which they robbed. I was barbered and stripped by a turfcutter’s spade

who veiled me again and packed coomb softly between the stone jambs at my head and my feet.

Till a peer’s wife bribed him. The plait of my hair, a slimy birth-cord of bog, had been cut

and I rose from the dark, hacked bone, skull-ware, frayed stitches, tufts, small gleams on the bank.

[wallcreeper-and-oro]

terminal.find(WASP-132d) terminal established connection.find(omni_net) connection established omni.id.vericode(Y/N) (Y) {vericode entered} connection verified - lancer 910372

⋆𖦹 Hello!

Uh hi there! I'm new to all this omni-net thing but Kanmi says i've gotta introduce myself so hello omni-net!

My name is Coryander (or Cory but Thebe's the only one who calls me that)! she/her only please and thank you! oh ya my callsign is Ouroboros (or Oro for short) and I currently pilot a swallowtail chassis named Wallcreeper (like Tichodroma muraria)!! uuh i'm pretty new to this whole piloting thing too, well like piloting a big mech i've "piloted" my old ship a bit.. but anyways Wallcreeper's been a nice experience so far!

Kanmi says to tell you all who we are (whoops) uh i'm a part of a little lancer squad unofficially called Dido's Divers (after our leader, the Dido), it'll mostly be me on this but i might talk about my other crew-members too!

um okay let’s seee we got

myself Coryander! (callsign: Ouroboros) - Swallowtail pilot!

Thebe! my best friend! (callsign: Neutron) -

Thebe’s a Tokugawa pilot, seems pretty scary to me but she likes the heat of the battle!

Kanmi (who’s here helping me do this, thanks kanmi) (callsign: Rosy)-

our resident Drake pilot

Liza, my mentor (callsign: Sour Patch) -

Tortuga pilot (it’s so big… and scary, Liza nice-ish though)

Dido, the leader of our little crew (that’s her callsign, i haven’t asked her name and she hasn’t given it soooo Dido it is) -

Dido pilots a very scary blackbeard

uuh Kanmi says i gotta say that both mine and Thebe’s mechs were salvaged legally, they were? i’m not sure why he put that in bold? oh also we’re not affiliated with any manufacturer or any other independent company and we follow the pillars and all that good stuff

uuum i’m not sure what i’m gonna do on here but hi i guess! this is Ouroboros signing out!

OOC: hiiii so um im trying out this whole thing, we’ll see how it goes but ya! meet Coryander (spelled the phoenician way)!! she’s pretty cool i think! a bit green but i think she’s neat! she’s got her nice little crew right now and her best friend and all will be well!!

this is the sideblog of @moons-among-distant-stars, so i’ll follow anyone from there!!

uh if you’ve somehow found me not from that account then hi i’m very new to lancer and even newer to lancer rp (or any online rp for that matter) but i think lancers very cool and i really like the story y’all’re telling on here!!

so please enjoy the story of my little transfem pilot and her silly crew!!