tarsic

[tarsic]

skyless horizon

from a distance it looks the same. home has never changed before now. but it is beginning to change, the sky is falling apart before your eyes. see the ash in your hands, know that it comes from the caelum above. see the scraps on your shoulder, know that it was torn from the blues never again remembered.

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雪夜静悄悄的，藏住了人性的溃散。

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学术界的天边星。他的父母曾告诉他，你往天边望去，一直往前走，不要回头想念故乡。他也很听话，说忘了就忘，跟随着前人的脚步踏着他们曾走过的痕迹。对那海中的一切也挥然散去了。

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人总是会有希望的。虽然你一次次地对外声称你坦然接受了一切，内心那股熔火仍烧着，点起最后的期待。他对你说他愿与你合作，也不过是一夜的交情，在那场星空下的誓言也只是一句话而已。

[tarsic]

the sun always comes back up again. why do we still try, then? what can i change?

he's standing in the subway tunnel as the air rushes past. it's nearly empty, him having come off the last train of the night, and the flickering lights illuminate his shadows. they accompany him as he walks home, and they do nothing to make it at least feel like there's someone else here. most people are afraid of the dark because they're afraid they aren't alone. he's afraid of being forced to confront that he's alone.

as he climbs the stairs, the night sky comes into view. there was a solar storm today, but he missed it with how busy with work he was. there are no more chances to see an aurora tonight. there are no more chances to live—but isn't that what everyone has to concede?

hm. the hazy clouds before the moon do provide some lighting, but the blaring streetlights which are undoubtedly messing up migratory birds' paths are more than enough to eliminate any chance of seeing the stars.

he'd be interested in the stars. he would talk for hours about them, probably stopping only when he realized his audience had already fallen asleep.

i'll see him tomorrow.

every morning he wakes up a completely different person. it's strange how between midnight and dawn, his emotions seem to be stuck in one position.

[tarsic]

when humans feel threatened, they revert to their base animal instincts. but tell me, when a machine feels threatened, what does it do?

[tarsic]

zhongli's horns are forked and branching, with nodes and sharp points of growth that betray his half-qilin nature.

azhdaha has long horns that curve backwards, twisting slightly at the ends and elegant and solid in their structure, different from the fragile beauty of zhongli's almost deer-like prongs.

[tarsic]

what if. jing yuan bloodborne au

hcq are all really good hunters and then obviously they either get turned into beasts (baiheng) or go insane (jingliu and blade) or just die normally (dan feng) leaving only a child behind in their wake

no but actually

jing yuan as djura

he knows these beasts were once people, he was an old hunter, but now he guards what is left of old yharnam in an attempt for what is remaining to just be

and dan feng leaves dan heng behind, and jing yuan has to explain to this small child that his older brother's probably dead but in pg terms, and try to get dan heng out of yharnam just so he has a chance of living a normal life

and then dan heng comes back. with the astral express crew.

and in the meantime blade and jingliu are just kind of off gallivanting in the hunter's nightmare micolash style

i am onto something here

[tarsic]

he keeps himself busy and surrounded by people just to stop thinking. a short meeting with his advisors like a piece of gauze haphazardly slapped onto a gaping wound, a stack of paperwork like a child's dam built on the delta of a river.

but it's always at the end of the day, when everyone has left and gone to their own homes (just like what they—), when the lights have dimmed and the luofu's skies display an artificial night (just like his eyes when he—), when the carefully controlled temperatures drop (just like her blade, wild and sharp in its fervor—) that he feels the unyielding ache in the center of his chest.

eight hours later he's back in the daylight, eyes half shut as he sits before his desk, not fully processing fu xuan's words but not ignoring them either. he's lucky, at least, to have something left. there are still people here who need him, and he can't leave just yet.

[tarsic]

车

[tarsic]

近在咫尺 (to be just out of reach)

an "outsider's" perspective on the sedition of imbibitor lunae

it takes only two weeks to change the course of history.

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50 posts!

[tarsic]

6/8/2023

to izzy, the ship is a horror story. to have all your rules that you've learned to stay alive suddenly flipped on their head--how does one cope with that? edward adjusts. izzy can't.

the revenge crew treats izzy like a human person, with kindness and respect, and he just physically cannot reconcile the ideas that the people below him are nice to him and that they don't want anything. and he can't live with how edward doesn't seem to want to be in this authoritative role anymore, and he has noone to obey.

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in which izzy is an scp: 5/26/2023

edward teach and stede bonnet died three hundred years ago. izzy's been waiting for them ever since.

somehow, izzy can't die. he floats around on the wreckage of the queen anne for about two months after everyone leaves for the revenge, and he tries to drown himself several times, but every time he just wakes up again on the tattered wooden deck.

and eventually the foundation finds him, this acerbic pirate who was forced to live well beyond his years, who wishes only for death and is too afraid to start caring again. and the foundation makes it easy, treats him like an object rather than a person, but they don't offer any way out of this life either. they just keep him there, forever in stasis, but at least he can finally talk to people.

at least these people care about him.

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bird: 5/22/2023

"olivia says she's worried you might eat her," buttons says. izzy, whose absolutely massive wings probably do appear quite menacing to a gull, tells buttons, "i'm far more likely to eat one of you instead."

[tarsic]

4/23/2023

he gives in as the fiery sun sets with a blood orange moon hanging right beside, as a pair of eyes hovering in the burning sky. the two dots blink and dark flashes across the sea, but the light from the fire that's melting his skin off makes up the difference. his skin splits down the middle first, and the scent of burning hair permeates the air even on the deck of the other ship. the fat sizzles and drips next as his flesh cooks, and soon there's only a half-standing pile of bones in a puddle of meat. and as his body dissolves, the fire spreads to both ships, lighting up the crimson sky with bursts of yellow and white.

edward saves some of the ashes in a jar, and somehow kept enough coals to start another, smaller fire. this one is contained, fed regularly and managed with care, and ed likes to think that in a way it's an extension of izzy. even in death, his fiery temper stays with the legend of blackbeard.

the prince of pirates and blackbeard's first mate, drowned and burned respectively. one down in a storm, one down in doldrums. they'll meet eventually, and they'll find their own way to a new home.

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3/17/2023

they've been expecting izzy to snap, but not quite in the way he did.

when izzy snaps, the winds bend around him. "you know what, ed? i've fucking had it. calm the fuck down, you keep fucking saying. yeah i'll calm the fuck down, see how you like it." with that, izzy leaps into the air, before immediately smashing back down to the deck in a seemingly practiced move that brings rain and hail, somehow, even though they're in the middle of the tropics, pouring down on them. "see if i care when your crew kills you out of paranoia as you all die of thirst." and izzy takes off again, flying directly into the center of the clouds where the color is darkest.