#vriting

[nozoomie]

Her body aches. More than after a full day of sparring with Xander, more than an entire evening of learning Hoshidan etiquette from Ryoma.

More than after a full day’s march or the night after a raging battle, her body aches.

She shifts in the bed, groaning as the small movement sends throbs of pain throughout her.

She wants to go back to sleep, to stop thinking, to let the pain fade away into the void of sleep. But something keeps needling at the back of her mind. Something she can’t ignore.

It takes much more effort to open her eyes than she’s used to, but Corrin somehow half-manages it. The one eye she was able to peel open immediately squints from the light coming in from the near window, drawing out another groan of discomfort that sends waves of pain down her body.

Steady.

She takes a moment to compose herself, slowly lifting the eyelid once more, letting it adjust to the dim evening light of the room.

Deep breath in, deep breath out.

Now accustomed well enough to the light, Corrin opens her eye as wide as she is able.

The ceiling that greets her is an unfamiliar one, the window devoid of the panes that her retainers so painstakingly polish.

Where... is she?

Corrin quickly sits up and immediately regrets it, gasping in pain as she moves against her body’s wishes. There’s a clatter of noise from the adjacent room that Corrin doesn’t notice as she looks down at herself and sees the bandages seeping with blood littering her body.

The memories trickle in and dread creeps into her heart.

The ambush. Gunter. Her family. Azura.

Azura.

Where is Azura? Dread begins to turn into cold panic as Corrin twists and turns, ignoring the lances of pain stabbing into her with every movement. She scans the room, looking for any sign of the other girl, ready to bolt out of the bed, wounds be damned, before the door pushes open.

And her world walks in.

Azura enters the room. The cold that was threatening to subsume Corrin steadily gives way to warmth, and a relieved smile forms on her lips.

Azura hasn’t noticed her yet, eyes downcast and fixed on the contents of the pouch she brought in. The natural grace that she carries herself with would lead Corrin to believe she escaped unscathed, if not for the uncharacteristically plodding rhythm with which she does so. Corrin’s chest tightens seeing Azura like this, but — she’s here. She’s here, and she’s alive, and she’s safe.

And that’s all that matters to Corrin right now.

Instinctively, Corrin’s hand feebly reaches out to Azura, to feel her, to make sure that she’s real and not a trick of the light. Corrin’s mouth begins to move, intent on forming words, but all that comes out is a strangled noise that makes her throat burn. The noise startles Azura and her head shoots up in alarm, and then relief floods in.  

The tears follow soon after as the bag falls to the ground, herbs and bandages spilling out. She takes a hesitant step towards the bed as if in disbelief herself, swallowing a lump down before taking another, then another, then another, each step quicker than the last. She throws herself down at Corrin’s bedside, hands shooting out to grab at the injured girl’s own, before recoiling as if burned, just shy of contact.

Azura takes a breath, before taking the proffered hand into her own, with all the tenderness and care in the world. Corrin’s fingers flex slightly upon feeling the other girl’s warmth, tears beginning to roll down her own face. Azura’s sobs intensify as she gently lifts up Corrin’s hand, cradling it against her cheek.

Corrin’s thumb strokes against Azura’s face in wonder, wiping away tears.

It’s going to hurt like hell, but Corrin needs this more than anything. She squeezes her hand as much as she’s able to, drawing Azura’s attention, before opening her mouth and forcing it out.

"Hey Azura."

Azura’s face finally breaks into a smile, before melting into laughter at the casualness with which Corrin says it. She tightens her grip on the other girl’s hand, pressing a kiss into her palm. Azura’s own voice, normally so serene and smooth, is hoarse and ragged from crying.

"Hello Corrin."

It sounds just as beautiful as she remembers.

[vickysaurus]

So I have many thoughts and feelings about the Princess’s heart, and I’m gonna put them down in no particular order.

So first of all, the heart is symbolically the source of emotion, and love in particular. And, as the loading screen reminds us, this is a love story. And in this love story, the only way you can ever slay the Princess is to stab her in the heart.

One route I think has particularly powerful heart-related symbolism is the Wounded Wild. You have just extracted yourself from the co-dependent and rather unhealthy relationship Networked Wild represents, and you are immediately greeted with the wounded Princess, looking absolutely devastated, with her heart literally bared to you. You, her former lover, can still very easily reach it to hurt her. In fact, that’s what she expects you to do at this point, though even now you get the option not to use her vulnerability and instead cut her free and help her move on too.

And then there’s Razor, who in her pursuit of the cruel joy stabbing you brings her makes herself into more and more of a living weapon, but even at the end, what remains of her original self is her heart. And in the Empty Cup ending, when you strip away all her weapons and sharpness, that’s all she is left with, much smaller and more vulnerable than she was before the whole process started. I do wish we would get the option to slay her or cradle her heart before Shifty takes it away.

The heart symbology plays a huge role with so many princesses. Wraith has become a fucked up skeleperson, but the one fleshy part of her is her chest, where her heart sits. And, in fact, she bears the X-shaped scar of how you previously hurt her there, belying her apparently cruel and monstrous form. When Beast literally consumes you, she also brings you right up close to her heart, to her own downfall. To slay Spectre, you have to let her possess you so her heart becomes your heart and you can slay her by stabbing yourself. Even mighty Apotheosis is brought down with a single strike to the heart. A strike from her counterpart in this love story, who still has this power despite her spending this entire route treating you as less than her.

Finally, the ‘bossfight’ against Shifty is all about finding your way to her heart in the cabin, in order to get through all that divine confidence. Whether you do so to slay her or to get through to her and work out a better solution than the two you’re presented with is up to you, but either way seeking her heart is once again the solution.

There’s not really a specific point to these thoughts, but I really love that this is a game about finding your way to the Princess’s heart, one way or another, literally and/or metaphorically.

[vickysaurus-art]

The Prisoner and the Slayer both know the Narrator will possess him if he tries to free her. Can they establish trust between them and come up with a plan to outwit the Narrator when He can hear every word they speak?

[bing-iplier]

the truly frustrating thing is I want to learn how to write characters from different countries better, but most search results only talk about phonetics and such. and I don't Want that

I want stuff where it's like "a common mistake in X language when speaking English is they don't use Y" and such but most articles I read are not helpful even in that regards

[shibalen]

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY (haha)

☆ note: for my precious peach blossom @cy-inky who recently came out as a Cyno simp. hop aboard maties to this new awesome ship <33

"You're still up."

Your body flinched at the sound of Cyno's voice. He watched you spin on your heel and hide the polearm behind your back as though he hadn't just seen you awkwardly swinging it around.

"Yeah well, I couldn't sleep." You shrugged with a laugh.

Although your voice rang with its usual cheer, Cyno's keen eye did not miss the pale undertone of your skin, the dark circles under your eyes that were trying to sink away from the moonlight. It was evident you hadn't lain down even once these past several hours. He frowned, crossing his arms, but seeing you tense at his actions Cyno realised he was acting more like the feared General Mahamatra than someone who had vowed to protect you with his life.

With a sigh, he opted for a different approach as he walked up to you. Desert nights were not kinder than its days: temperatures dropped rapidly after sundown and could even reach freezing. There was chill in the air tonight as well but you had stayed outside your tent to practice. Even if Cyno thought there were more reasonable things one could be doing at this hour, your resilience had always impressed him. He was not going to take it lightly now.

"Let me teach you."

"What?"

"You were trying to use a polearm, right?"

A sheepish chuckle escaped your lips. "Hehe, busted . . . "

"Here." Closing the distance between you, Cyno reached out and skillfully guided your hands to hold the weapon correctly. Patiently, he let you get used to the unfamiliar style. "Like this. Both your grip and stance must be firm. Now find the centre of your gravity."

Your eyes went wide with awe as his instructions immediately improved how the weapon felt in your hands. "Don't think twice now. Focus." Cyno continued to fix your posture and stance but was pleasantly surprised by how fast you learnt. The determined glint in your deep brown eyes never faded.

✩

"But why?" You were huddled together in a blanket by your campfire, finally resting, when Cyno asked you this.

"I want to get stronger," you answered, no hesitance, which perplexed him further.

"You are already apt as a mage. Lisa praised your talents."

"I know, I know." It was your turn to let out a heavy sigh. "But I want to do more than that. I want to protect you too, Cyno."

"Protect . . . me?"

"You said it yourself, that in your line of work someone is always unhappy with you, that someone's always after your head. I can't fight these people with just spells, you know."

Cyno hadn't expected to hear such words in his life, their arrangement did not make sense to him straight away. Why would anyone think he needed to be protected, yet it seemed to you as clear as a scorching desert day that this is what had to be done.

It was never in his plans to let anyone as close to him as you were now. But even then he could not judge you, not when the entirety of the galaxy above you both was reflected in your gaze, shining vividly with passion and ambition. The only crime you were guilty of in the end was stealing his heart.

"Heyy, don't laugh!" You slapped Cyno's shaking shoulder lightly. "I won't laugh at your jokes anymore if you make fun of me."

"Don't worry. I wasn't laughing at you," Cyno assured. He turned to you and placed a cool hand on your cheek. In the moment that you were mesmerised his lips left a soft, lingering kiss on your forehead. He did love to see your eyes crinkling in response, that brilliant smile of yours once again on your face as it should have been.

If he was now under your protection, he was going to make sure your heart would always be at ease.

"I'll show you how to fight," he said. "But next time we should only come here to stargaze."

[vickysaurus]

Here's what Mars gets! Phobos, its nearest moon, is tiny compared to ours, but it's also much closer by and the Sun looks smaller because it's farther away, so it still manages to cover up a decent chunk of the Sun. But nothing like the perfect eclipse we have.

The gas giants have plenty of moons, but because the Sun looks much smaller from them as it's so far away, the bigger moons just blot out the entire Sun when they pass in front of it. Of course, we don't really have photos of this from their non-existent surfaces, but we can see the moons' shadows dancing across the planets' clouds!

Now, this happens all the time on Jupiter, every single orbit of the four biggest moons, since they orbit in almost a flat plane seen from the Sun and Jupiter is such a big target for the shadows. But it's much, much rarer on Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, which just like Earth are tilted. The moon shadows only hit the planets during the two spots in the planet's orbit when the moon orbits happen to cross in front of the Sun. And considering how long these worlds take to orbit, that makes it very rare! Which is why there's no real pics of this happening on Neptune, where the opportunity only comes around once every 82 years! And even then, only one of its moons would cast a big enough shadow to see from Earth with Hubble or JWST, since Neptune is kind of far away and we sadly don't have any spacecraft orbiting it.

NO OTHER PLANET IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM GETS TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSES!! THE SIZE AND DISTANCE OF OUR MOON FROM EARTH AND THE SUN MAKE THE PERFECT CIRCUMSTANCES TO GET TOTALITY!!! THE EARTH AND MOON ARE SOOOO COOL AND OF COURSE OUR SUN!! I LOVE LIVING ON EARTH I LOVE YOU EARTH I LOVE YOUUUUU MOON I LOVE YOU SUN

[hetalian-veteran]

There are two kinds of Hetalia fanfic writers when it comes to writing dialogue for the Germanics.

"You have people who will write their speaking lines like this."

And then...

"Jou have people who vill vrite their shpeaking lines like zhis."

[julia-jck]

Me: This artist’s really cool, I want to interact with them and get to know them!

Anxiety: No

Proceeds to spam-like and reblog art

Aww, thank you! I love interacting with people online, so no need to worry on that part! ^w^

Always feel free to chatt or interact with me, any of you. Just know I'm a slow reader and writer, lol

(And I'm pretty sure I know who you are as I can hear you spam reblog and likes as I'm vriting this, lol)

[nozoomie]

Azura's eyes drift shut as she settles herself in bed, cup of tea cradled in her hands. She brings the cup up to her mouth, inhaling deeply to savor its earthy aroma. A smile teases at her lips as she acknowledges Corrin's marked improvement. She tilts up the cup, taking her first sip and feeling the warmth begin to diffuse through her body, banishing the morning chill. 

It's a poor substitute for her wife, but being a generous queen, she manages to find it in herself to forgive Corrin for her early absence. The kids had wanted to do something special today, and Corrin was needed to supervise. 

The smile on her face breaks out in full at the thought. It wasn't that long ago that Azura had resigned herself to her fate, heir to a dying kingdom, destined to fade away along with its memory. 

Until Corrin crashed into her life and grabbed her hand, turning all she knew as truth on its head. 

Anankos is defeated. The curse on Valla is broken. Hoshido and Nohr have ceased hostilities. 

And perhaps most miraculous of all, Azura is happy. Truly, incredibly happy.

She had never dared to hope for any one of those things coming to pass, let alone all four. 

At first she even had trouble believing it. Azura would wake up in a cold sweat, convinced that it was all nothing but a wishful dream, that Anankos' claws were still sunk into the world.

And Corrin was there too, holding her through it all, whispering sweet reassurances to her and banishing the doubts with every kiss, every embrace. 

She was rescuer and protector both, her knight and her dragon. 

She takes another long sip, rubbing the silver band on her finger fondly, when the pitter patter of two excited sets of feet sound through the door. 

Azura perks up at the noise, excitement bubbling, she quickly downs the rest of the tea, apologizing to the Corrin in her head.  She sets the empty cup on the nightstand, before mussing up her bed head to legendary status, and throwing the covers over herself, feigning sleep.

Soon enough, the sound of Corrin's familiar gait joins her family's rhythm.

"Okay you two, ready to wake Mama?"

Giggles ensue and Azura has to fight to keep her face from splitting into a grin as she tries to maintain a calm sleeping expression. The door creaks open and the trio take slow, careful steps towards the bed. 

"Be quiet Kana!"

"Nuh-uh! That was you Shicchan!"

"Shh!"

The children immediately freeze and pipe down as her wife shushes them, and a moment of absolute stillness passes before the kids brave another step. 

Azura has to pinch herself to school herself into submission. It has mixed results if Corrin's snort is anything to go by. 

"Shh!!!"

Azura purses her lips as Corrin takes her scolding, but thankfully she manages to persevere.

Another  pregnant pause before the advance resumes. Finally, the kids come to a stop next to her head.

"Is she asleep?"

The proximity of the hushed whisper forces Azura to use every drop of experience she's had in performing on stage to remain stock-still as her children inspect her.

"Check her breathing! Auntie 'Ruka says that's what she does when she puts people to sleep."

A tiny hand hovers in front of her nose for a few seconds before it retreats.

"Mmm... I think so..."

"Did you do it right?"

"Of course I did it right!"

"Kids..."

Kana and Shigure gasp, ceasing their bickering. Azura can feel their stares boring into her, trying to see if they woke her up. Eventually, they exhale in unison, seemingly satisfied.

"... Okay, on 3, alright Kana?"

"Mhm!"

"1..."

Azura's hands grab the covers as subtly as she can manage.

"2..."

She swallows thickly as her body tenses, getting ready.

"3!"

When Shigure gives the signal, Azura bursts out of the covers with a shout, throwing the blanket around Kana and Shigure, who gasp in surprise. She scoops her wrapped up children up into her arms, spinning them around, delighting in the giggles that fill the room as she does. 

"Mama!"

"See! You didn't do it right!"

At last, she lets her own laughter spill out to join them, as she slows to a stop and setting them back down. She kneels down, pressing a kiss against their cheeks. "Good morning, my treasures!"

"Morning Mama!" They say in unison.

Azura beams, hugging them close. "Good morning, beloved."

Corrin steps closer, a content smile on her face, carrying a tray in her hands, stacked high with pancakes and strawberries. She sets it down on the nightstand, pushing aside the empty teacup before she bends down and presses a kiss against Azura's forehead, to which the singer lets out a pleased hum. 

"Happy birthday, Azura."

Azura's cheeks might very well break at this point. "Thank you, dear."

The kids start to squirm and whine in her arms at that.

"Mom! No fair!"

"We were gonna say it first!"

Corrin huffs a laugh, before wrapping up all three of them into a hug and pulling them down into the bed. "Hey, you had your chance!" 

Azura chortles, pressing a kiss against the tops of the kids heads. "Even if you weren't the first, may I still hear it, my lovelies?"

The two tufts of hair in her arms nod vigorously and wriggle their way out from between their parents, "Happy birthday, Mama! We love you!" 

Five years after the war, Azura enjoys a life she never dared to dream of. 

A peaceful world, a full heart, and her own kingdom that is anything but silent. 

[vickysaurus]

Heya, just wanted to clear things up a little! Yes, the Roman Empire did include Egypt after they conquered it, which happened during Cleopatra's reign. She was in fact the final pharaoh as a result, and after her time Egypt was a Roman province for the next six centuries!

Now, this all happened during the 1st century BCE, while the final mammoths went extinct on a distant Siberian island around 2000 BCE, so Cleopatra was not around at the same time as mammoths... But Egypt itself was! In 2000 BCE Egypt was already over a thousand years old, and the pyramids had already stood for 600 years!

Now what that also means is that in 30 BCE when Cleopatra died during the Roman conquest of Egypt, the building of the pyramids was 2600 years in the past... Which is a longer time than the 2054 years between now and Cleopatra's time! Which very much does fuck with the brain.

Reconstruction of bust of Roman emperor Caracalla.

[vickysaurus]

At the Prehistoric Planet watch party last night, someone made a really interesting point: if a maniraptoran dinosaur had survived to the present day, we'd almost certainly think of them as the bird equivalent to monotreme mammals. They wouldn't be seen as a different group - they'd be 'those weird birds with the teeth and tails who can't fly'. The same way you'd never classify a platypus or an echidna as anything but a mammal - just a rather peculiar one with a bunch of strange primitive traits - our definition of bird would just be a bit wider.

In fact, the common ancestor of dromaeosaurs and birds lived more recently than the common ancestor of monotremes and other mammals!

[vickysaurus-art]

The Adversary accidentally knocks herself out while fighting the Slayer, and he decides to take care of her rather than listen to the Narrator. How will it affect their next fight?

This one's a double feature, the second chapter with the continuation of the story in Eye of the Needle will be up in a couple days! Content warnings for graphic descriptions of violence and temporary character death, because it's an Adversary story.

[sedimentary--croc]

opinions on artificial intelligence?

Artificial intelligence is useful, but can destructive. Its definitely beneficial in healthcare and education, but its also replacing peoples creative passions like art and vriting. You just have to find a balance.

[vickysaurus]

It's fascinating to think of how the Cretaceous world would have responded to the climate shifts of the Cenozoic. The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum wasn't that far off and I could imagine it causing issues for the largest dinosaurs - perhaps that's when the tyrannosaur extinction speculated above would happen, but I'm especially thinking of sauropods. In our timeline it only caused a minor extinction event, but then we really didn't have many of the kind of giants that would struggle with it in the Paleocene. Many of the modern mammal groups really came into their own afterward, and while whatever groups of animal became major players would be a complete crapshot, I imagine it would still be a bit of a biosphere turnover, with many of the old giants disappearing and new groups showing up. Perhaps including some (very different from our own timeline, probably not even placental) mammal groups. A reasonable point to call the end of the Cretaceous in this timeline.

Andrewsarchus and Paraceratherium show there was still plenty of space for new giants on land afterward - though of course all of those niches are dependent on how the rest of the biosphere looks, not just on the climate. I imagine mosasaurs would still be going strong in the roles of basilosaurid whales for a while, but may have vanished in the Eocene-Oligocene Extinction Event like those. Perhaps, like in our timeline, massive filter feeders would swim around afterwards as well - a new branch of mosasaur or plesiosaur maybe, or perhaps the whale sharks would be a lot more diverse than in our timeline. Or something truly weird like gigantic ammonites?

The Oligocene and Miocene cooling and spreading of grasslands (though it very well may not be grass but something else entirely in a similar niche) would be the next big event. Herbivores would need to adapt to quite different environments and tougher food. I'd like to think pterosaurs would do quite well with all the new open space. Speaking of flyers, birds would likely still be a major dinosaur group, though our own crown birds would be much less diverse with more niches already filled up. But on the other hand, toothed birds would likely stick around and may be filling some of the bird of prey niches - the ones that aren't taken up by pterosaurs. I doubt there'd be ratites and terror birds in a world with dromaeosaurs and ornithomimosaurians surviving, though.

Finally, the Quaternary ice age cycle leading to modern fauna. Feathers and fur would be a great investment - descendants of dromaeosaurs, in whatever strange forms they have taken by this point, seem like they'd just get fluffier. The ability to migrate along with the rapid climate shifts is also very helpful, I do think there'd still be pterosaurs, though they might huddle around the equator during ice ages.

Finally, a major thing to consider for the entire Cenozoic is that it's a world of separate continents. The cretaceous already saw continents developing their own unique fauna, and that pattern would only be likely to increase. You might see some very odd ones, like a South America where the top predator is a carnivorous hadrosaur that invades North America once the Panama isthmus appears, while Australia ends up with gondwanatherian mammal megafauna.

Pretending End Cretaceous mass extinction event never took place, do you have any thoughts on speculative evolution and how dinosaurs and their contemporaries may have evolved through the years?

Like the explosion of mammal biodiversity probably wouldn’t have taken place, but what else? Assuming other global processes like plate tectonics, and the accompanying changes in currents, oxygen cycles etc, if you only take away the asteroid and it’s direct consequences, how do the dominoes fall?

Well, AFAIK the asteroid wouldn't have had any long term affects on the planet's tectonic activity or the climate. It was an apocalyptic event for sure, but depending on what scientist you believe, the immediate effects of the impact were over anywhere from a couple thousand years to only a few months.

So the plates would still move the way they have in the Cenozoic and the climate would still cool down and dry up due to the Earth's orbit and Milankovitch cycles. There would still be an Ice Age and animals would have to adapt to it.

The main difference would be life of course, and I cannot stress this enough, everything would be different. There would be no placental mammals, plant life would be mostly angiosperms but not in their total domination we see today, teleost fish wouldn't fill almost every aquatic niche like they do today, and of course there'd still be a shit ton of dinosaurs.

The thing about the asteroid was that it basically wiped the earth clean of entire clades, and those vast expanses of open niches is what kickstarted the biosphere we know today. There would be literally nothing in common with our "timeline" if it hadn't hit, except for some extreme cases of living fossils like Triops or Lepisosteus. No Mackerel, no Poison Dart Frogs, no Rose Bushes, no Great White Sharks, no Leopard Slugs, no Bears, no Giraffes, no Komodo Dragons, no Coconut Trees, no Crows or Ravens, etc.

In that sense though, 66 million years isn't that long in the perspective of the Mesozoic, so there wouldn't be anything crazy different from the Cretaceous. I doubt we'd see any dinosauroids for example. There would still be big sauropods and big theropods to hunt them, there would still be pterosaurs and marine reptiles of all kinds, there'd still be Ammonites and plenty of lobe finned fish, etc.

I think it's safe to say the arms race between armored Ornithischians and Tyrannosaurs would fizzle out, and much like the Stegosaurs and Carnosaurs of the Jurassic, they'd go extinct to make way for other animals to take their place. Maybe gigantic dromaeosaurs and quadrupedal ornithomimids or extremely armored sauropods and pterosaurs with bone crushing beaks, the possibilities are endless and I'm sure there's a million speculative evolution projects out there trying to answer that question.

Basically, we wouldn't be here making these posts.

[witski]

i vant to vrite however... i mostly want to do my own original works rather than fanfics ive had on the back burner bc i think im just not super interested in them anymore. hwoever im like oh yeah no ones gonna read those so who cares but also who cares if no one reads them if im happy?! with them!?

[mythtiide]

i vaugnht to vrite someving