#v: dark light

[demadogs]

The Vale of Shadows is a dimension that is a dark reflection or echo of our world. It is a place of decay and death. A plane out of phase. A place of monsters. It is right next to you and you don't even see it.

Stranger Things season one (2016)

[whatisamildopinion]

Kyoto- Phoebe Bridgers

Pro-tip: don't think too long about how Moonshine and Bev have ouroboros arcs with family members and devils and saving the world at great personal cost. Don't think about it too hard. I definitely haven't (lying)

[finartin]

"Don't cry, Red! You dummy! We're not leaving each other, we're joining together!"

Day 5 of Four Swords: Winter's Delight

@fswintersdelight

[mixanji]

his eyes really do be 👁️👁️

[achillesreborn]

antidepressants worked too good, i've converted to Catholicism

[liilithmin]

I'm sure there's a lot of fun out there

𓇼𓏲*ੈ⣠⠾⠛⠶⣄⢀ —𓇼.,¸,.𓆝.,¸,.* —𓇼,¸,.𓆝.,¸,.*—

[therealjasonx]

Absolutely no one:

Me:

[ex0rin]

TWD: Dead City S01E06 | Doma Smo

[clockworkbee]

When Elias Veturius changed his grandfather's mantra to one of his own for Laia, and when Kell Maresh used the antari commands to teach them to Lila but also make love to her, and when Julian Blackthorn used the very parabatai vows' that forbid love to defy them and express his love physically to Emma and when Cardan Greenbriar kind of begged Jude to lie to him when he always dreamed of that coming from her? That's EVERYTHING to me 🤌🏼

[ayatxt]

⟡ 🧦 ʚɞ ⁺˖ ⸝⸝ @thsv

⟡ 🐐 ʚɞ ⁺˖ ⸝⸝

[hooked-on-elvis]

December 2, 1975 at the Hilton Hotel, Las Vegas, NV. Opening night. Elvis was wearing the V-Neck suit with the Original belt. ♥

[nwtzy]

˚୨୧ maybe we could be

slow dancing . ੈ✩‧₊˚

[milkbreadtoast]

IDK... IDK!!! 🫥

[swordheld]

hi! your blog is one of my favourites and i absolutely adore reading your thoughts. my grandfather recently passed away and it feels like i lost myself with him. how do i continue living after this? there is this constant weight on my chest and it feels like an emptiness has made a home inside of me. how do i go on when it feels like the world crashed on my shoulders?

hello, love! this is so very sweet and kind of you, and i hope you're treating yourself gently and kindly right now - there aren't words for a loss like this. that heaviness is difficult, and hard, and painful. it's okay if things don't feel okay, right now, or even soon - i think that's something that a lot of the people i know that have gone through similar grief feel: like they should be able to get back to a relative 'normal' in a [insert far too short period of time].

but it's okay if it hurts. that's where i'd like to start. you're allowed to feel that emptiness, that world-crashed feeling that goes beyond words, beyond time. don't feel like you have to rush this to feel some sort of better. things get easier with time, i promise you this, but sometimes painful feelings are important to feel, too. cry, scream, feel your emotions. they're a part of you. grieve.

it's perhaps a little silly, but when i think about death i always think about a couple of space songs: mainly drops of jupiter by train and saturn by sleeping at last. there are perhaps others that speak to the emotions better, but these two have always hit something a little deeper for me, and are popular for a wide-reaching reason.

and while personally i don't know much about grief like this, i do know a lot about love; and i think they're a lot of the same thing.

the people we love are a part of us, and this is why it takes from us so deeply when we lose them, because it does feel like we've lost a part of ourselves in the wake of it. but it's because they were so central to our experiences of living - our lives, that the separation introduces a hollowness - a place where they used to be. a home that now goes unlived in.

an emptiness, like you said.

but just because they're not here physically, doesn't mean he's not still there, in your heart, in your life, your memory. you can hold him close in smaller ways, as well: steal a sweater, or cologne/scent for something a little more physical and long lasting for remembering. hold onto the memories you cherish, the things that made you laugh, the ease of slow mornings and gentle nights. write them all down, slide a few photographs in there, go through it and add more when you miss him. keep them all close, keep them in your heart.

you're not alone, in this. he's still there, with you, it's just - in the little things.

he's with you in the way you see and go about your daily life, in doing what he liked to do, in the ways he interacted with the world that you shared with him. the memories you recall fondly when the night is late or the moment is right and something calls it into you like a melody, an old bell, laughter you'd recognize anywhere.

but i think, perhaps most importantly above all others - talk about him. with your family, your friends, his friends, strangers; stories are how we keep the people we love alive. the connections they've made, the legacies and experiences they've left behind, and so, so many stories.

how lucky, we are - to love so much it takes a piece of us when they go. grief is the other side of the coin, but it does not mean our love goes away. it lives in you. it lives in everyone who knew him, in the smallest pieces of our lives.

the people we love never really leave us, like this: they're in how we cook and the way we fold our newspapers, our laundry, in the radio stations we tune in to and the way we decorate our walls, our photo albums. they're in the way we store our mail, organize our closets, the scribbled notes in the indexes of our books. the meals we love and the drinks we mix, the way we spend time with one another. they've been passed down for generations, for longer than history - and we are all the luckier for it.

think about what you shared with him, and do it intentionally. bring him into your life, like this, again. whether it's crosswords or poetry or sports or anything else. if one doesn't help, try another. something might click.

i hope things feel a little easier for you, as they tend to do only with time. i hope you find joy in your grief, even if it is small and hard to grasp at first. know that your hurt stems from so much love that there isn't a place to put it properly, and that it is something so meaningful and hurting poets and storytellers have been struggling to put it into words and sounds that feel like the fit right for eons, and that it is also just simply yours. sometimes things don't have to make sense. sometimes they just are - unable to be put into words or neat little sentiments, as unfair and tragic as they come.

but i promise it will not feel like this forever. your love is real. and perhaps, on where to begin on from here - i think it's less on finding where to begin and just beginning. and you've already started. you've taken the most important and crucial step: the first one. wherever you go, after that, from here? you'll figure it out. you always have, and you always do. it'll come, as things always do. love leads us, as does light - and you're never alone in your hurt. in your grief, your missing something dear to you. i think if you talk about it with others, you'll find they have ways of helping you cope as well - and they have so much love of their own to spare, too.

as an aside, here is the song (northern star by dom fera) i was listening to when i wrote this, for no other reason more than it makes me think of connections, and love, and how we hold onto the people we love and how they change us, wonderfully and intrinsically. it's a little more joyous than the others i've mentioned, and plays like a story, and it made me think of what is at the core of this, love and stories and i am here with you, and maybe it'll bring you some joy, if you'd like it. wishing you all my love and ease 💛

[throughtrialbyfire]

more cicero thoughts because i've been thinking about this so much. this post will specifically focus on the dynamic between he and the night mother, and is sorta headcanon-based but i have so many thoughts and need to get them out.

i definitely think there's a lot to be said for how cicero's attachment to the night mother can almost be described as oedipal, but i also don't think it quite extends that far, nor do i think he hates her. i believe his experiences, his emotional attachment, his investment in her is religious devotion. it's worship. it's a deep and unwavering sense of loyalty and duty, to sithis, to the brotherhood, to the night mother.

yes, i do think he loves her. yes, i do think to some degree he despises her. wouldn't you? alone, for eight years, with nothing but a corpse you're expected to take care of every single day, to keep clean and sanctify, falling into routines, the only one to talk to who can never talk back? this also probably leads to an unhealthy degree of emotional projection on cicero's part towards her, but i won't get too into that here.

this desire to be chosen by her, then, must feel like release. it's relief from a silence never-ending, it's a sort of validation, a grasping back of hands he's been extending for eight long years. the silence he describes in his journal is cruel. it's rage, wrath, it's ever-present and makes him feel small. but then, as the years pass, he accepts the silence as all he will get. because even though he's done everything (the only survivor of two sanctuaries, three if you spare him. the only one who has tended her, devoted his entire being to her and worshiping she and sithis, carrying her casket from cyrodiil to skyrim and spending every damned day thinking about the night mother and sithis and his loyalty to them) he is not the listener. he knows. he knows he will never be the listener, the night mother has not chosen him (as he states, he remains "unworthy"), despite sacrificing everything.

still, he is the keeper and he would do anything for the night mother, even if it destroys him, because now she's all he has. he has nothing else attaching him to a former life, and he's devoted his entire life as keeper to her. he's reverent towards her because she's all he has, perhaps she's his god more than sithis in a way, because at least she's tangible. she is something dependent on him, and as such, he's codependent on her. and this devotion is religious and unholy. it's a mixture of hatred (feeling unworthy, feeling as though all his effort has gone unappreciated) and the intense love (she is quite literally a divine being to the dark brotherhood, tantamount to a mother mary - would this make him a Christ or a Magdalene or something else entirely? anyways) and the religious devotion and the earthly rage of not being enough. being passed over by her hand and her voice reaching someone who only just joined, or only recently became aware of the night mother.

frankly, in cicero's shoes, i'd lose my mind a little bit, too.

[sayxit]

PHOTOBOOTH