#the cycle is now complete

[indigowallbreaker]

squeezing hand for comfort and encouragement from the hand prompts for syldue (any mermaid arrangement you like!

It's Dedue's turn to be a mermaid! This one is kinda canon-adjacent, you could say?

(Taking MerMay Rarepair prompts until the end of May!)

--

Some part of Sylvain wondered if he should take his clothes off. He had been standing waist deep in the ocean-- still wearing his jacket, shirt, pants, and sandals-- for some time now. The part of him not wondering about his attire was contemplating the orb in his hand.

The orb was made of translucent green glass, with a turquoise gem suspended in the middle. It weighed almost nothing. Sylvain held it up to the morning sun, watching the way the light cast greenish freckles on the still water around him.

"You disapprove," Sylvain stated.

Not far ahead of him, about where the shore dropped off into deeper water, was Dedue. The merman's long, thick tail was teal, with a jagged stripe of orange and yellow scales around his torso where it met brown skin. His white hair was pulled back with a hairtie Sylvain had gifted him back when they first met.

Dedue frowned at Sylvain's words. "I only worry."

"You're good at that."

"You said yourself that this spell from Annette is temporary," Dedue went on, swimming close enough that he had to lay across the sand. "I know you wish to escape the burdens of your crest, but I worry you will forever mourn a life you cannot get back to."

Sylvain lowered the glass orb. "I can just ask Annette to make more. Or a stronger one. Or even a permanent one, if I gave her enough time!" He said it like it was a joke, but he could tell Dedue saw right through him.

"Remember that life in the ocean has its own struggles."

"I know."

"You will be trading crest problems for other ones."

"Yeah, but..." Sylvain moved forward, the water now up to his thighs. He reached out and took Dedue's hand. "The ocean's got you. That's enough for me."

Dedue's steel grey eyes rounded before he let out a warm chuckle. He squeezed Sylvain's hand. "I am not trying to talk you out of this, you understand. There is much I wish to show you under the ocean."

Sylvain grinned. "Can't wait." He knelt in the water, soaking his clothes with a sense of finality. Taking a deep breath of air-- his last for the next 24 hours-- Sylvain clutched the orb in his hand.

It cracked, fractured, and broke. The gem that had be suspended inside grazed Sylvain's palm.

Pain instantly spiked through Sylvain's chest and he gasped, a sharp thing that only hurt him more. His legs cramped horribly. Shutting his eyes tight, Sylvain grit his teeth, back bowing as he tried to hold in another cry. Dedue was speaking to him but none of the words could make it past the pain.

Squeezing Sylvain's hand again, Dedue pulled Sylvain under the waves.

Cool saltwater instantly soothed Sylvain's body. Dedue pulled Sylvain deeper, until the sand disappeared from under them, and Sylvain unfurled.

A sunset orange tail trailed after him. Slack jawed, Sylvain ran his hand across the delicate scales, marveling at the subtle stripes of turquoise just visible when the tail turned the right way. When he turned his tail the right way. Sylvain flipped his tail giddily. It was so easy to control, as if his torso had always ended in a mermaid's tail.

"It worked!" He exclaimed, probably unnecessarily. "Dedue, I can--"

Dedue kissed him. With one hand against Sylvain's lower back, Dedue wrapped his tail around Sylvain's, lacing their fingers together. Usually their kisses caused one of them to be in some awkward position to accommodate the other; Sylvain kneeling in seashells or Dedue craning his neck up. Sea and land weren't meant to fold together neatly.

This was the closest they had ever been to one another. And it was heaven.

Sylvain rest his free hand on Dedue's shoulder, sinking into the kiss. He wasn't sure if the tail tangling part was a typical mermaid thing or Dedue showing relief that the spell worked-- and he didn't care. Sylvain had water in his lungs, a strong hand in his grip, and Dedue over his mouth. Nothing else mattered in that moment.

It was Dedue who pulled away first. He touched his forehead to Sylvain's, uncurling their tails but still holding Sylvain close. "How do you feel?" He asked.

"Better than ever," Sylvain replied, lips still tingling.

"Good." Dedue drew back with a smile. "Then let us be off. The Duscur Sea awaits."

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

going through my old journals as part of therapy homework and i'm reading a section written in the emotional wreckage of a full-on breakdown when i get hit with this line:

There is never a satisfying answer to ‘Why didn’t they love me?’

like wow babe. good fucking point

[bunnieswithknives]

OK JUST A LITTLE THING BECAUSE IM INSANE @cubbihue

Song: Plastic by Cheekface

[peace-hunter]

tfone au where OP is created as the last of the primes but way after them, a sparkling born at what were thought to be the last days of the war against the quintessons, the beginning of a new generation of peace after eons of war. a child meant to be loved and raised knowing nothing of war nor sacrifice.

he's kept mostly out of the spotlight by his siblings, who don't wish to expose him to everyone's optics so young, and want to wait until the war is done and over to properly introduce him to their people.

except of course the primes are betrayed and murdered by sentinel, the war is lost and everyone who knows and cared for the truth is either banished or outright killed in order to suppress it.

and the high guard, the ones the primes trusted the most, the ones that were supposed to protect them, the ones who failed in their most important duty, have to make a choice. to take the last prime, their last hope, with them to the surface, a hostile environment where there's little to no supplies and where they'll be hunted down by both sentinel and the quintessons as the biggest threat to their regimen.

or hide him in plain sight. place him where sentinel won't think to look for him. one more sparkling among many. and hope it will be enough to keep him alive. pray to primus that he'll protect his last child long enough for them to come back for him when it's safer (even if most of them have already lost their faith on him when he allowed the rest of his children to be massacred like that)

they almost lose their resolve when they realize they will have to take the little one's cog away in order to make him blend in with the rest of the newborns (and oh do they burn with murderous intent when they see what sentinel has done to their people but it's not the time yet-) but in the end they decide an impaired little prime is better than a dead one.

and so in the chaos of thirteen dead primes and a sudden energon crisis, a little sparkling who very few mechs really knew about and even fewer had seen completely vanishes. and in the depths of iacon a mech in charge of a new batch of newborns scratches their helm in confusion as they realize they must have miscounted the first time.

optimus prime is quietly erased from any official records by sentinel, written off as dead when they find a sparkling's frame mangled beyond recognition after an attack on the base of those rebels that insist on being a thorn on his side. killing the sparkling hadn't been precisely in his plans, he probably could've found some use for it after all, but he's not particularly upset about it either.

and orion pax grows up with an ache on his spark that tells him he's missing something far more important than a t-cog and dreams of gentle and loving hands, cradling him against the frames of mechs he cannot recall the faces of.

[fluentisonus]

chiens-loups

[ravennhearted]

Me (whispering to myself as I hit play on Merlin s1ep1 once again): And like the cycle of the year, we begin again

[vynnyal]

Turns out Sunlit Trail isn't quite done just yet, so after all that they just send you to a dead end 😂

[persephoneist]

what if a guy was at sea for 10 years. would that be fucked up or what

Notes under the cut

odysseus has very small/beady eyes and a persistent smile, even when he's being serious

wavy hair to look like the waves of the sea, has gray at the temples that looks like sea foam

scar on his cheek is actually from his late adolescence/time in Sparta, not the war

Penelope has blue-green eyes like the sea.

earrings are made to look like loom weights

the diadem is actually odysseus/laertes', not her own

theyre actually the same height, odysseus is very physically unassuming

[variksel]

taking a DEEP BREATH yeah but have you considered that taylor broke the cycle in the exact way than his friends did, through love, and his character development might have been more subtle yeah but it was still extremely there and taylors ending was SUCH a good addition to the message at the core of season 2 because it says "hey your parents fucked up and YOU DONT HAVE TO FORGIVE THEM"

taylors character development was realizing that his dad FUCKED UP massively. and maybe he had justified reasons for it, even. just like the other dads, he had reasons for why he did what he did. but that doesnt erase the fact that it was fucked up, and that nicky hurt taylor, and that the damage is irreversible. and taylor doesnt have to forgive that, he doesnt have to put up with it.

i think its so good and important that linc and norm for example forgave their dads and love them at the end of all of s2. they chose their fucked up dads and they broke the cycle of fucking up, but its equally as important that taylor did that too by choosing to NOT forgive his dad. and at the end of the day he broke it by choosing love, by seeing who his dad really is and choosing to love his mom who was always there for him instead of the deadbeat with good intentions

"this is as good as it gets." and for taylor, that wasnt good enough

[tblsomedoodles]

Just a young Rider with his baby dragon. Nothing bad will happen to them. honest.

Rereading Eragon (b/c reading fourth wing and Iron Flame only succeeded in making me want to read something that actually focuses on the dragons/dragon riding aspects. b/c that's why i was there) and thought, hey this would be cute to draw for a speedpaint.

My computer thought otherwise and decided to shut down when i was almost done, corrupting the video.

The doodle got save (thank you csp for your recovery feature!) but yeah, no speedpaint to go with it.

So back to the drawing board. Literally. (and the speedpaint is already late too : / )

[natjennie]

I said something along these lines when s5 came out too but I'll say it again in hopefully a more coherent way. I think the christmas special finale was beautiful. who knows maybe I'll change my mind later but for right now I think it really perfectly highlighted something that I think a lot of people in the fandom don't acknowledge, which is that the ghosts exist without alison.

robin has been alive for thousands, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of years. the ghosts' story was never just about alison. we were introduced to them before we were introduced to her. she was our "main character" as much as she was because she was alive, but what the fuck is the title of the show. they "lived" for decades and centuries before her and will continue to decades and centuries after her. the show opened on them living their.. deaths. fairly happily. they had clubs and talks and sat together and played chess and lived. without her. if it had just ended with them all relying on her for everything for the rest of her life in that house, it wouldn't have meant anything.

and if you think of alison as a personification of the audience, of fans, and the ghosts as a personification of the show, it is literally directly a goodbye. alison leaving button house was not an end, just as her inheriting it wasn't a beginning. the ghosts' yknow. lives. didn't begin when she walked in the door, and they're not over just because she's gone. we just stopped getting a peak into their story. I mean for god's sake, we didn't see them when she went to her room and started talking to them. she closed the door on us. we as an audience aren't privy to their world anymore. that doesn't mean they're not still there.

and also development as people, kitty's jealousy, thomas' infatuation, fanny's judgement, it didn't all magically disappear because that wasn't the end of their story. they didn't miraculously become perfect people, that's what the whole fucking show has been about. that you can be loud and obnoxious and fuck up and not be there when you should have been and be overbearing and lose your cool and forget something important and it'll all come out in the wash. that you're always constantly growing and learning and trying to be a better person, for yourself and the people you call family, and they will still love you because how can they not. that saying goodbye doesn't mean the love wasn't worth it and that endings are never really endings. that the love lives on. it's what the whole show is built on. she visits them. and they live. that's it.

[ravenkings]

i think a big issue with american politics atm that no one ever wants to just come out and admit is that republicans are much more willing to "play dirty" than democrats, and this is why democrats keep on getting caught on the wrong foot, and lbr this stretches back at least as far as nixon and watergate. this is not to say that democrats aren't above political skulduggery from time to time, but overall imo, there's much less of a tolerance for potentially underhanded tactics. as a result, the dems keep getting caught off guard and playing defensive bc republicans have no compunction of taking the underhanded shot that the dems would never think of returning bc they consider themselves above it.

[otrtbs]

you don’t even like regulus :-(

lies! regulus is like my second favorite guy

since when did not wanting to smash someone equate to not liking them 😭😭😭

[basileus]

I enjoy time loops and I enjoy regression fiction but there is something so full of love about a character looking at another character stuck in a cycle of suffering and going, "No. This is the last."

[the-voldsoy]

Listened to the Ethics Town finale yesterday and oh my god!! Artemis!! Everyone becomes mayor because they think they can do better, but they never can, because it's not the person in charge that's the problem, it's the system itself!! It's a violent cycle, what's seen as old and outdated and wrong is pushed out and replaced by what is seen as new and positive and right!!! But without a drastic change to the fundamentals of the system, nothing can change in any way that matters!!!! It's an ouroboros of politics and morality and ethics!!!!! You've got to bite off your own tail to make things better!!!!!! Oh my god they can't hear me, they're all just characters in a story and they know it!!!!!!

[nereb-and-dungalef]

I keep drinking coffee thinking it's gonna make me Productive and then instead of doing the work I actually have to do I just compulsively make spreadsheets :(