#there was nothing inevitable about it.

[itsyveinthesky]

1,000 days of war in Ukraine captured in images

[madamemiz]

sad: falling out of a hyperfixation

tragic: watching your beloved friends and mutuals fall out of the hyperfixation while you're still in it

[vaguely-concerned]

the fact that irving canonically survives through the end of asunder to be at wynne's funeral is so fucking funny to me. nothing but love and respect for MY unstoppable cockroach morally grey machiavellian mage dad!!! he's survived in his position through multiple attempted rites of annulment and blood mage plots popping up left right and center around him. the chantry keeps trying to stamp him out but his dodge game is simply out of this world, divine. civil wars, political machinations and minefields, chantry atrocities, this wily old motherfucker is dodging and weaving his way through it all, not-quite-no-hits-taken-running-it-but-honestly-close-enough-under-the-circumstances style. if solas does succeed in tearing down the veil I would fully believe that one of the like three people still alive at the end of it all would be a very weary 90 year old first enchanter irving going 'oh this shit again huh'. the maker has cursed him for his hubris and his paperwork is never finished (affectionate, it's fine he canonically loves paperwork)

[lazylittledragon]

ok i swear i'm not going to talk about my breakup forever but the thing that just keeps bothering me:

i know that not getting what you need in a relationship is a COMPLETELY valid reason to end it but also. i feel like having a very vulnerable moment where i opened up about my struggles with intimacy and being relieved that i didn't have to keep doing things i wasn't comfortable with, then being dumped a YEAR later because of my lack of intimacy. is something i should be allowed to be very hurt by???

[misc-obeyme]

"Can you see us in every timeline?" you ask.

Barbatos smiles down at you, meeting your bright and curious gaze. Your head is in his lap, both of you stretched out on a soft blanket in the castle garden. Barbatos is leaning back against a tree, a cup of tea held in his gloved hands. The sky drips with stars.

"I see many possibilities," he says, his voice eternally gentle, forever content to answer your endless questions.

You reach up and brush your fingers through his strand of bright hair. "It's just that I wouldn't be the same person without you," you say. "And the thought of there being other mes in other timelines that aren't with you… well, it makes me sad."

You blush a little at this admission because it sounds silly when you say it out loud.

Barbatos chuckles softly, but he puts down his teacup. He takes your hand, even as your fingers are still entangled in his hair. He puts his other hand against your cheek.

"We may not find each other in every timeline," he says. "But I have found that the echoes of each timeline ripple through the others. You are inevitably linked to every other you."

"But they won't feel what I feel," you say.

"They will have impressions of your feelings," Barbatos says. "Have you ever had an inexplicable feeling of hope or despair wash over you? That is a reverberation from yourself in another timeline."

You consider what he's saying. That somehow, you in your present time and space can impact the lives of other yous, if even briefly.

"What do you think they feel from me?" you ask.

"I cannot predict it," Barbatos says. He smiles and the way it lights up his face is so entrancing, you lose yourself in it. "I can only hope they receive soft moments where they feel my love, every time I see you, every time I touch you, every time I kiss you."

Your fingers squeeze around the hand that's holding yours and you lift yourself up to kiss him. His arm moves behind your back to lend you support as he returns the kiss - soft and sweet and with the lingering taste of hellfire rose tea. In another timeline, an unexpected warmth floods through you.

masterlist | Thank you for reading!

[thenightshadowqueen]

“What happened to the young boy who came into my chambers just a few years ago?”

Well, I mean, everyone he’s ever loved is either dead or about to die, so I’d wager on that. I mean, I could be wrong, but.

[thelaurenshippen]

okay, but, like, THAT'S how you do a villain story. in the FIRST scene, you watch him shoot a man in cold blood. the show tells you right away "this man is not a good man".

but then it gets you to sympathize - look at how much the world has stepped on him. look at how terrible the whole of gotham is. and even when he kills more people, does more terrible things, you still root for him. because it's fun to watch someone be terrible to terrible people. you root for sofia too, because if anyone deserves revenge its her, but you're rooting for both of them somehow.

and then the show tells you "when he was a boy he killed his brothers". but even still, you want to see what he'll do. the show is called the penguin, you want to see the penguin rise. when he lets his mother's finger almost get cut off, you pity him. he's a sad, broken thing. how could he be anything but bad? but he loves, so there must be something else there.

but then. but THEN

the show always told you: "this is the devil". but you thought, maybe the devil can make hell a little more bearable for some people. the devil is so often nuanced, sympathetic, complex. maybe he's like that.

you're wrong. there's nothing good within him and YOU rooted for him to succeed. you wanted to watch the destruction. and now you have to live with the consequences of thinking, even for a second, that he could be redeemed.

[crystalpallette]

so I finished side order recently

[rayactive-factory]

<✨🐏🌙>

[wordsinhaled]

Edwin holding both of Charles' hands in his and telling him, "You cannot hurt me in any way that matters."

"I have been hurt beyond imagining and you have witnessed it firsthand, Charles. Do you remember it, as I remember it—clear as day? That was the worst agony imaginable. Unspeakable. Insurmountable. And you were wounded tenfold at the sight of it. You cannot hurt me in a way I will ever hold against you. And moreover you will not. No—don't look at me like that—I know you will not. Because you would sooner destroy yourself than cause me an iota of intentional pain. Your soul revolts against the thought of hurting me, does it not? Just as mine riots against the thought of you in pain. You saved me from hell—and Charles, you must not consign yourself to one of your own for fear of hurting me. Not when I am here to love you. Our love is not without risk, Charles, but it is a risk that is worth the reward."

[gingermintpepper]

One of my biggest pet peeves is the assumption that something has to be sad for it to be tragic.

I've always been a big believer of the 'Apollo has an awful love life'/'Apollo is plain unlucky with love' line of thinking but it does bother me that the general reasoning for that statement is given to the concept of 'Apollo is somehow undesireable and thus rejected' (Cassandra/Daphne/Marpessa) or 'his lovers die young and thus their love is unfulfilled' (Cyparissus/Hyacinthus/Coronis). I personally think that's a very unfortunate way of looking at things - not only because it neglects the many perfectly cordial entanglements and affairs Apollo has had, both mortal and divine - but because it presents a very shallow interpretation of the concepts of love and loss and how loss affects people.

Apollo can still grieve lovers that have a long, healthy life. The inherent tragedy of an immortal who knows his lovers and children will die and cannot stop it does not stop being tragic simply because those lovers and children live long, fulfilled lives. The inherent tragedy of loss does not stop being tragic simply because someone knows better than to mourn something that was always going to end.

What is tragic is not that Apollo loves and loses but that loss itself follows him. Apollo does not love with the distance of an immortal, he does not have affairs and then leaves never to listen to their prayers again. He does not have offspring and then abandon them to their trials only to appear when it is time to lead them to their destinies. He raises his young, he protects the mothers of his children, he blesses the households that have his favour and multiplies their flocks that they may never go hungry. He educates his sons, he adorns his daughters and even in wrath he is quick to come to his senses and regret the punishments he doles out.

Apollo loves. And like mortals, there will always be some part of him that wishes to protect the objects of his affections. Apollo, however, is also an emissary of Fate. He knows that the fate of all mortal things is death. He knows that to love a mortal is to accept that eventually he will have to bury them. There is no illusion of forever, there is no fantasy where he fights against the nature of living things and shields his beloveds from death. Apollo loves and because of that love, he also accepts.

And that, while beautiful, is also tragic.

[protosentry]

PARKOUR VILLAIN 🗣️‼️

[holdmymetaphor]

in like the second to last episode when taub was like why dont u respect wilsons wishes to die

house yells at him about how hard it has been to choose to live

and then we cut to other doctors and nurses and patients who hear him yelling this taboo thing, looking at him like hes weird and wrong and making a ruckus

ugh. houses reaction to it hurts me. its just such a clear reminder of how alone he feels/is.

[hallowclave]

She para on my humans till I [GRUESOME SOUNDS OF BUG FUELED VIOLENCE]

Redraw of a skitter design I did a little over a year ago, comparison under the read more

And the sketch. As a little treat. Just for you.

[thegreatyin]

scoundrel?? what scoundrel???? the magnificent mr cards (who ironically has more of a flower aesthetic going on) is completely unrelated to any "bandaged scoundrels" running around the neath. in fact it's never heard of the word scoundrel ever in its entire definitely long definitely ancient life. but yknow, hypothetically, if it did know the scoundrel, it's confident that they're really really really handsome and cool and epic and they're almost just as amazing as it is and you should totally donate all your valuables to them and stuff

aaand because i like them too much, have a transparent version. the Creachure. the Thing, even.

[vaguely-concerned]

Thinking about the symbolic weight of smoking in the TLT universe that comes to the fore in The Unwanted Guest -- the way it moves through from person to person: Pyrrha smoked, and Augustine wanted to impress her in all her stone cold fox MILF James Bond glory (and tbf who wouldn't) so he started too. and even though as far as he knows she's been gone for a myriad and is never coming back, he keeps the habit. Ianthe sees something in the hollowed-out Faberge eggshell of Augustine that resonates with her, all that gilded eloquent emptiness and disdain through the ages, so she picked it up from him to try to emulate it. She picked it up so hard that Palamedes -- the exact spiritual antithesis of the 'smoking! on a space station! what a powermove' ennui Ianthe so admired -- spontaneously unnerded enough to even known how to, simply from a sort of contact contamination of the soul.

G1deon and Augustine sharing a jittery smoke after their near-Harrow experience during soup night, and it's the closest thing to any real sense of brotherhood that remains between them. Pyrrha going ten thousand years dying both literally and for a smoke (and then Camilla sold her fucking cigarettes (for a third of what they were worth, probably Pyrrha's own good, and also more importantly grocery money). what an entirely haunted time to be alive etc.). Augustine and Mercy trading a cigarette back and forth in the middle of their collusion over the love and murder of god.

An act of small and measured self-destruction in the name of something a little bit like connection when you're stuck somewhere in yourself where love itself dares not or cannot tread (ritualized, transmissible)..........