#they also don't talk much which is great

[naffeclipse]

I HAVE THR GREATEST IDEA!! Raindeer centaur!Y/n with orca!Eclipse and she finds two calves of sun and moon raindeer centaurs and bring to eclipse how would he react??

Oh my gosh, Reindeer Centaur Y/N!! You'd have a thick, brown coat and velvet horns. Strong and stout, you traverse the ice and snow with a silent forbearance.

Eclipse sees you before you ever see him. He's immediately enamored by the beautiful centaur trotting around snowbanks—he has to see you up close! It takes patience, but he follows from the coast, and he's rewarded. He finds you. He introduces himself the only way he knows how.

You kneel at the water's edge, hooves folded underneath your body as you wash your hands in the thick salt. The taste warns you to not drink it, but it does well cleaning away the sweat and grime from constantly moving. You lower your hands, cupping a gentle handful to wash the fine, velveteen fur of your neck when you realize a face is staring at you from below the surface, grinning.

You slowly straighten where you sit and he follows, emerging from the water in soft splashes and a gleaming gaze. He sizes you up as if deciding where to take the bite first. You, calmly, regard him, and listen to his gushing of how beautiful and handsome you are! He flicks his tongue over his teeth when he tells his name. When you share your own, you study how his claws thrum against the ice and how intently he locks eyes with you.

He often calls you 'my dear' and adores touching your antlers and stroking your thick, velvet fur. You take your time letting him close. When you're not racing along the ocean shore, you'll watch Eclipse breach, showing off with grandiose splashes before he pops up to catch your reaction.

On one rare occasion, he convinces you to lie down on your side, four cervine legs sprawled out, and lay your head on his stomach. You're both quiet the sight, a centaur and a siren, sprawled close together, but you don't mind his claws petting through your hair and scratching between your antlers so long as he's gentle. He sings you lullabies that lull you to sleep (you swore you wouldn't drift away so easily but he had other plans.)

When you're ready, you stroke his head fins and touch his flukes. He's practically beaming under your interest and snowflake-soft palming. He melts when you allow him to press his cheek against the velveteen fur on your reindeer half. He's clingy, but you gradually settle into his constant touches and affectionate affirmations with your treasured time.

Later, much later, when you cross a field, and discover two small bodies with bumbling cervine legs struggling through the snow, you calmly take a calf of beige and buttery yellow colors, and the other, blue metal and silvery, under your arms. They're just old enough to hold themselves up. They bawl, not yet having found their words. The twins nuzzle into your fur. It's not a pretty picture—two abandoned centaur young, but it's nothing you and Eclipse can't handle.

He accepts them without hesitation as you thought he might. It's not a question of acceptance but a matter of finding the right manner in which to tend to the children. You gently point out to Eclipse how the nub markings show how the buttery-yellow babe will have horns like a blossom of petals or a fan of sun rays, and the blue metal babe will have a singular horn like a shooting star or the crescent curve of the waning moon.

(He names them Sun and Moon, and you agree; it fits them fine.)

Eclipse watches over the three of you at night, quietly lapping at the ice's edge while you hold the babies close and provide them with warmth. (Eclipse laughs when the babes attempt to suckle on you, much to your bemusement.) During the day, he stows away though never too far and you find good moss and ferns that Sun and Moon can nibble on. You watch over them, minding predators and coaxing them to stabilize their gangly legs and hold themselves high. Evening falls, and you reunite. Eclipse plays with them tenderly, keeping them from falling into the sea but stimulating them to build their strength and their mind. They take to you both, much to your silent fondness. It's an odd little sight, but you're a family.

You wouldn't have chosen any other.

[perilegs]

i'm still getting the hang of making gifs but it's already interesting to see the editing magic happening

[thaliagrayce]

y'know what we don't talk about enough? Hazel died. We talk about how she grew up in the 30's and 40's and we talk about how out of place she feels in the modern world, but! She died! She was dead! She has spent more time dead than alive, and not by a close margin!

How does that effect a person??? We got some of it in the flashbacks, but once those caught up with her present timeline and she shared them, they just kind of... disappeared. And she was a regular girl with some weird past experiences. That's one way of doing it, sure!

I think it would have been a lot cooler if she was just a touch creepier. If she felt a little bit Wrong. Yeah, in general she's more approachable than her brother, she's more sociable and less closed off, but. If you actually spend any time with her, it can be difficult to tell which child of the underworld is actually more unsettling.

Hazel is bright of personality and has a dazzling smile, but sometimes she'll just... shut down. She'll go completely blank for like half an hour and nobody knows what to do with it. Sometimes she forgets she's alive. Sometimes she'll spout the grimmest shit you've ever heard like it's nothing, she won't even notice it's weird until the room goes quiet. She spent decades in Asphodel, which is designed to make people forget about themselves and wander around for eternity, only she didn't have the luxury of forgetting! Wild! After she comes back to life, sometimes she forgets that she's allowed to Do Stuff now. She can spend so long sitting and staring at nothing. Sometimes she'll start crying on cloudless days because it hits her again that she can actually feel the warmth of the sun on her skin and she can hear birdsong. Every little mundane experience is a blessing and she will make you remember that in the most foreboding way possible.

[edwardwonghaupepelutivrusky4th]

wah i looove their designs and animation...

[blujayonthewing]

mostly I prefer to play in the space and explore/ build on flavor text given by the books rather than outright reject or contradict it wrt things like races and classes in dnd but once in awhile I'll suddenly remember that canonically lizardfolk don't experience emotions and only respond to threats by logically assessing them as such because they're too primitive to feel fear

[pardonmydelays]

god i love sundays

[crehador]

the current state of the one with the clones is me whispering to clone!ichiro you have got to fuck him faster than this and him hissing back i am fucking trying?? because this 4p clone sex pwp is now

and there's still. there's still no fucking p.

[sichore]

I've spent like, the past two weeks or more trying to draw curls and it's just not happening. when do I admit that I'm just washed up and can't do this anymore lmao

[brown-little-robin]

.

[lord-squiggletits]

I was at a "making friends" kind of social event just this past week and ended up having two subsequent conversations with different people that gave me an interesting reflection on my own reasons for writing without me even intending to make the conversation about it.

First conversation: The person talked about the feeling of awe from being at a music concert and how incredible it is that so many complete strangers can be united by a singular love of music. I related to it with regards to my own writing and how many people have read my stuff. Ended up telling this guy about some of the AO3 comments I've gotten from people to the effect of helping motivate them to live/just reflect on life in general. Somehow went into a tangent about a suicidal friend of mine who died when we were in high school, and me saying that maybe the reason I write so much about the things I do is because of the influence his death had on me. And the other person ended up asking me, 'So do you think it's like every time you write, you're doing it in his memory in a way?'

Subsequent conversation was with someone who was a psychologist for a day job, and I ended up telling them that I was kind of thinking of getting a degree in psychology/therapy one day because writing about mental health issues had gotten me so interested in the world of helping people heal themselves. But then I was also like, "Well, I don't know, it could be that I don't need to become a psychologist to help people with mental health. Maybe helping people by being a writer and telling stories is enough."

It was just a surprising, but topical realization for me to have talking to a bunch of strangers. For someone like me who's often preoccupied with doing and having knowledge and expertise, I often fall into the idea that you need to be directly involved in helping people to really be making a difference. I've literally had thoughts in my mind along the lines of "I'm so smart, hardworking, and dedicated when it comes to writing, but wouldn't it have been so much more of a net gain to the world if I'd decided to be this passionate about something like being a doctor or activist that actually helps people?" It's not like I truly regret being a writer (or ever will, because there's nothing else that I love so much), but in my bad moments I truly do sometimes think "Why does it make a difference if I entertain people or make them feel nicer for a while if it doesn't actually change anything in the world?" To quote one of my favorite Transformers fics of all time, "There was nothing that would have been more worthwhile, but that didn't rule out the possibility that the whole damn universe was wasting its time."

I guess the answer is that making someone feel better, even in a small way, is changing the world, even if it's just a few people, and even if it's just as simple as making someone's day better.

[my-thoughts-and-junk]

my 1 (one) stardew opinion is shane should not have won the bachelor poll

[benevolenterrancy]

hi! I recently came across your tgcf fics, and I wanted to say you’re a phenomenal creator. the recovery series fic and the gloves fic and just all of them. thank you for your content and great attention to detail.

do you have any thoughts/hcs on FXMQ and Xie Lian you’d be willing to share? within the original story or the universes of your fics!

Thank you so much, I'm glad you're enjoying them! (ﾉ*^▽^*)ﾉ.｡:*☆

hmm, random thoughts about the FXMQ... a silly headcanon: Feng Xin has very much been hoisted by his own petard by heckling Mu Qing! That is to say, he'll harass Mu Qing relentlessly about something stupid only to be confronted with a similar situation and realise that there's absolutely NO way he can act in anyway similar to Mu Qing or he'll never hear the end of it.

(For example, he has tolerated some truly atrocious divine statues in the past because he's heckled Mu Qing so much about how picky he is with his divine statues that there's no WAY he can say ANYTHING without seeing that smug bastard's face in his head so he just has to bite his tongue and tolerate some unspeakably ugly statues.)

Mu Qing doesn't generally suffer from similar overthinking (he'll just prepare to kick FX's ass if he dares to say anything about it) except for things more directly related to himself. I think he genuinely finds sewing/embroidery/etc rather relaxing work but he'd rather die than have anyone ever see him do it because he's made such a big deal about not doing that sort of "servant" work anymore.

(He actually really enjoyed stitching Ruoye back together because it gave him the perfect excuse -- he's returning a favour!! and Xie Lian is hopeless!! of course he had to!! -- and he secretly considered using white thread to embroider some invisible little designs just because he doesn't quite want to stop... only he knew he'd get caught if he messed with Xie Lian's spiritual device like that and gave up the idea)

[cemeterym]

i'm begging my uni to stop making every fucking student social activity something where you have to walk around a bunch if you are a slow walker who cannot help it they literally want you dead

[bumblingbabooshka]

Live Fast & Prosper

[kumakuma-circus]

just randomly remembered that during my like 10+ attempts at the shadow yukiko fight i more or less consistently ran out of revival beads so yosuke was just dead (well unconscious but whatever) on the ground for like half the fight gfhfjvhfhfhd-

[tortoisesshells]

Oooh! Can you tell me more about no longer sparkles off in smoke? 🌻

It's not much right now - partly because I've got a crisis about what the story is supposed to be. I started thinking about it as a post-script/series of missing scenes after Laura Murdoch Collins's (apparent, temporary) death/the end of the Phoenix arc in D.ark S.hadows, because the show ... never really assigned any emotional significance to it - the David lost his mother again, after she tried to kill him; that Roger was made a widower by it, even though that marriage was DOA; that Burke lost someone he had loved, and one of two people who could have proved that he'd been falsely convicted of manslaughter 10 years ago - setting aside the latest proof of supernatural monsters running around Collinsport. Then, too, there's Josette's ghost's disappearance from the narrative, and how that affects Vicki - who's depended on her intercession at key moments?

(whenever I talk about this show, please know I am aware of how nuts I sound.)

But now I'm not sure - is it more about Laura and her past lives? is it about Vicki's own ambivalence about what happened? Am I trying to compare and contrast Laura and Josette as women dead before their time, continually haunting the Collinses through the generations?

I suppose some of that ambivalence is coming out in the different starting paragraphs I have for it:

There was no question of finding jasmine in Collinsport, at this time of year or any other; Vicki had only, with Mrs. Stoddard’s permission, to take the flowers from the greenhouse that would best suit the grave, and hope that Josette would take them in the spirit they were given – relief, gratitude, friendship. It was only that on her way out the door she crossed paths with Burke, returning David, and on telling him she was going to Eagle Hill he offered to join her.

versus,

Laura Murdoch Collins wasn’t dead, and there wasn’t anything but her ashes to bury; Vicki had laid down her handfuls of hothouse blooms on Josette Collins’s grave as thanks to her, but there was no easy place to remember Laura – not until she and Burke had gone on to the old Stockbridge burying ground, and stood solemnly by the still-disturbed earth of one of Laura’s former graves.

"I'm sorry," she said, at long last.

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