FINI.

ROSALIND SWAN.

[philosophybits]

‘Look at me’ is one of the most fundamental desires of the human heart.

Bertrand Russell, What Desires Are Politically Important? (via philosophybits)

[swvnsong]

one example of a significant change in their backstory now that the world’s changed.

SEXUAL ASSAULT TW

rather than rose’s career downfall coming from a rejection of someone she loved, her rise in the music industry is halted after a long-time and once-trusted producer sexually assaults her. following the assault and time to process, rose eventually confronts him before going to the head of her label to expose what he had done -- and they decide to silence her and cover up the event rather than air this out to the public. while her current fame isn’t at the same level it was in canon, nor is she in a public state of shame -- rose is privately fighting against her company, who has consistently decreased her releases/concerts in an effort to slowly push her out of the public’s eye.

[sagamemes]

modern au headcanon questions.     designed to fit historical and futuristic muses, people with reincarnation aus, and muses who live in magical worlds—anyone who wants to toy with the idea of their character’s life in the same world in which we live in.

opinions on the following things: ugg boots, electric scooters, starbucks, shaved sides haircut, selfie sticks, beanies.

how is their social media presence?

what did they study / what are they studying?

what do they ( plan to ) do for a living, and where do they aspire to go with it?

top five favourite things not available in their canon verse.

how technologically savvy are they? for example, do they know the parts of a computer, do they have a smartwatch, do they know what a browser is?

one example of a significant change in their backstory now that the world’s changed.

describe their closet.

how do they like to travel in the 21st century—both day to day life, and possible international travel?

what are things they are more or less open about now compared to their original world?

thoughts on sports.

name a few of their favourite pieces of popular culture.

show us what their last ‘sent’ text message is from five different text convos.

favourite and least favourite thing about living on this era.

how does their diet look like?

[roleplayermemes]

Texting Meme:

Send me ☺ for a loving/affectionate text

Send me  ♣ for a drunk text

Send me ♥ for a sexual/naughty text

Send me !! for a threatening text

Send me ☼ for a morning text

Send me ?? for a strange/vague text

Send me ► for a text not meant for you

Send me ↕ for a scared/worried text

[swvnsong]

YOU DO WHAT YOU HAVE ALWAYS DONE: YOU CHOOSE THE WALNUT IN YOUR THROAT. YOU CHOOSE TO CRACK IT. YOU CHOOSE TO FEED IT EVERYONE WITH AN OPEN MOUTH.

[swvnsong]

sergeantfcx​:

each time rose appears before him, it is as if she is stepping out of a dream, conjured as some sort of melodic respite from the horrific clarion call of his own terror and guilt. he is unworthy of every gentle touch she has ever placed on his shoulder, every note that has ever been quietly uttered for his benefit on a sleepless night, and yet in his eternal and unending selfishness, he cannot find it within himself to turn her away.

should the man who struggles to keep his head above the freezing waters of the arctic seas truly be scorned for reaching hungrily for the rope thrown to him?

he laughs as she eases in beside him now, as if she were born to wrap her arms around his own, to rest her chin on his shoulder. once more, he supposes, he will drink from the proffered relief of a moment’s more of her time. “you must forgive me darling one, there isn’t a patch of snow where your foot has tread that could be considered anything less than incredibly fortunate. i am, however, afraid that if you get too close my poor luck will somehow seep through my royal garb.”

he smiles warmly, presses a kiss to her forehead. “to tell you the truth, i threw the first couple of rounds for the benefit of the men. there’s something about seeing a commanding officer brought low that does wonders for camaraderie. the others were simply because i’ve always been awful at cards.” he shrugs one shoulder, meets her gaze. “the only thing i lost was a ration of tobacco, but i’m afraid my pride gained a few new bruises. your presence is doing something for the latter, though.”

he takes her hand, and presses a kiss against her knuckles, every inch the false king his makeshift crown makes him out to be. “how have you been? anyone in need of a court martial for slights against your person?”

what happens to the rope that misses the grip of the salt-drowned sailor? it floats with only a single knot on the shore, the other cut-end in the water, never able to go anywhere but the infinite directions the tide pulls it. no better than the things cast overboard in haste, hatred, or emergency. flotsam. jetsam. if she could not reach him, she was worth nothing.

“that’s better,” she says, because they are together, and he still smiles to see her, and so it is. “i think i shall have to take my chances sergeant fox, and in case of emergency — why, i’ll simply have to resort to charm.”

his lips are on her forehead and there are not butterflies in her stomach but a great grey owl, wide-spanned, the tips of his feathered wings brushing up against the very extremities of her stomach. she leans into the warmth, and rose thinks it would not be so bad to keep him there. ribs were followed by the word cage, after all. “now jack, you truly are the queen’s pride, aren’t you? throwing a game for the sake of your officers. no matter, i shall sit here positively stitched to your side until they’re all green with envy.” 

“why, indeed, let’s see —” rose takes her hand from his only when the comfort-warmth of the kiss placed there has cooled (warm like a blanket, warm like a spine-of-august summer night) to display her fingers before him. “There was Charles the porter, and that roguish Vlad with his imp-horns, oh  —” with two fingers laid out and the remainder curled into her palm, rose cants her head in exaggerated expression. “and that bitter-looking man down in the tent of wonders - the one whose mouth is always pursed as if sucking on a lemon rind. i’d like them all put into the brig immediately, for their company when compared to yours was absolutely criminal.”

she pauses a moment, looking to jack. “do we have a brig? —  do all vessels have brigs, or only pirate ships?”

[lestatgifs]

with @swvnsong​​ at the theatre

wooden barrels and crates make up the flimsy timber stage that has been the subject of her attentions for the time being. the show the seamen have put on is quite simply atrocious, filled with breaking falsettos that would make the ears bleed and populated by sweat-slicked white-painted faces that make the already comically rouged cheeks of the would-be actors  (  though to call them actors is already a show of such excessive generosity that tara is not known for  )  become distorted and runny, turning them all into mockeries and parodies of actors instead of a good-faith adaptation of them.

yet for all its crass humour and cheap entertainment, tara finds herself enjoying the proceedings. if one asked her why she found herself in such high spirits, perhaps she could pin all the blame on the dark-coloured liquid that now kept her hand warm; but the glass has been there for a while now, with her nary taking a sip from all throughout. 

from all around her, bawdy jokes and tavern songs get sung to a dizzyingly frequent degree, sung once and over again, before switching to a mockery of an opera song midway through with the call of one from the audience. the actors on the stage strain to keep up, acting out pantomimes in concordance with the lyrics, their voices as shrill as a banshee, though it gets downed by the chorus that surrounds tara like a tempestuous wave. thus they go from one performance to another, no sense of order to the men, only ephemeral tableaux that doesn’t even play at seriousness before it gets swallowed up by laughter, prompting a scene-change before an act is properly even finished.

she’s seen enough, or perhaps she’s seen less than enough. tara extricates herself from the firm grip of someone who has caught her on the shoulder, thinking her a fellow crew member, before trying to find either open air, one that isn’t slicked by the salt-taste of sweat and the humidity of so many people packed together, or a proper glass of alcohol, whichever comes first. they reach the edge and find a gruff sailor asking them their pick of poison, prompting her to down the glass of whiskey in her hand to ask for more of the same.

it’s in this makeshift bar that she spots the songbird, the one whose songs the men have been singing more and more and a familiar face to tara, whose lips curl up in an imitation of either a smile or a smirk upon the sight of the other.  ❛  well,  ❜  she says, the pads of her fingers tracing the crystalline edges of the glass that has been served to her,  ❛  you are certainly what i would hazard a fortuitous sight for such sore eyes such as mine.  ❜  she tips her head to the stage, where a sailor is dressed up in a poor imitation of a scullery maid.  ❛  you ought to show them how it’s done.  ❜ 

[swvnsong]

she watches the opera and laughs because that seems the thing to do, and she imagines a pearl in the centre of her soul because the law of nature states you earn something beautiful when swallowing sand and grit and salt, but the truth is that it feels no different than a stone or snarl in the pit of your stomach.

when facing a thing of parody, is the true joke found in the mimic, or the original? rose imagines she should ask a philosopher. or god. whichever was met first in the tundra.

and indeed did it prove hard to place a finger upon which of those descriptions tara tripathi better occupies.

“ah, that must be attributed to the horseshoe i won from the gambling tent — nearly a disappointment of a prize, if the other offer from the house hadn’t been a kiss from a porter who looked decidedly not at all like our royal guards.” rose looks at tara, and wonders where the hypnotic qualities of music fall short, if a serpent would dance for a vocal tune rather than an instrument’s melody. she thinks of the woman as no serpent, but there is venom in the past memory, and she wishes to see it sway rather than be looked head-on. “i am not so certain they would take my substitution at this point. they seem quite enraptured by the spectacle before them, and i’m quite sure i have never looked so appealing — or voluptuous.”

[wordsnquotes]

She was still holding out for something that wasn’t going to happen. She was good at waiting. That seemed like a sad thing to be good at.

Ann Brashares, Girls in Pants  (via wordsnquotes)

[swvnsong]

hattiechllds​:

“Yes, well, your career was rather centered around it was it not? Though, the public was rather interested in the rest of you once that faltered,” the words come without a thought, an observation.

“That said - you actually look lovely. Better than I last met at least. I’m glad to see it, I was quite the fan before, might still consider myself one. I was a bit sad to see you here rather than attempting a return to stage.”

it seemed among her trunks and ink wells and leather-bound notebooks, hattie childs had brought a sledgehammer with her on the voyage to the cold north. the public was rather interested in the rest of you. she slams it between rose’s ribs as casually as handing her a letter, and rose wonders if it is in the natural disposition of writers to enact violence in their written and spoken words.

“thank you,” she sniffs, looking over her shoulder, finding no answer to hattie’s last comment but the gaps of air in her throat. “perhaps you missed my last concerts.” she slips the bitterness into a silk dress, stepping into it foot by foot, until it wears something soft to touch. “understandable, as they were at smaller venues.” i attempted to keep my place, don’t you know? “the promethean is as grand a stage as any when you account for the audience — no more worthy souls than our brave crew, wouldn’t you agree ms. childs?” 

[swvnsong]

aveaugvstus​:

if augustus were a man of greater eloquence, or poetry, he might have the words to adequately describe the strangeness of seeing england’s darling siren here. try as they valiantly have, the painted tents and brightly coloured masks and costumes cannot disguise the rugged wilderness of godhavn and its true nature. this is no place for someone as once-beloved as her. the arctic promises only cold and endless, desolate nights, a voyage for lost souls with hardened hearts and little to lose.

“now, miss swan, we both know that isn’t true.”  he grins, teeth flashing against the gilt of his skin. he lets the the guileless remark linger as it is, attention flickering back to the farce playing out before them that has risen to the crescendo of a solo from the lead actor that isn’t entirely off-key. as if to demonstrate how deeply engrossed he is by the display of unexpected prowess, he tilts his head and purses his lips in a circumspect manner.  “there is certainly… a charm about them. however i believe in this case the eye of the beholder may be of poor sight.”

sentimentality is a foreign thing to him, an embellishment to romance and softness one would be hard-pressed to come by in the ranks of the royal marine guard. what little augustus knows of the art of romance he learned from tales of the risque, aggrandised exploits of senior officers, and occasional expeditions to the theatre and opera. kindness, though, he knows well. 

and it is too sad a thing to see someone suffer quietly amidst all the merriment and music, and to do nothing about it.

she closes her eyes—and even now she shimmers like a beacon lit from within, brighter than the bonfires illuminating godhavn, perhaps brighter than even the stars.  “oh, i may still hold your hand if you so please, miss swan,” he says, letting slip a light, low chuckle.  “i am at your command.”  gently, delicately, he takes her hand with one of his, fingers cupped around the silk-smooth brush of hers, and places the little gift in the center of her palm.

it is only large enough to take up half the space of her hand, smaller than when he’d held it after inspecting it with great care at one of the market stalls by the tent of wonders selling handcrafted, artisan wares.

“it isn’t much,”  august is swift to reassure. just a little carved nightingale, so finely carved out of pale birch that it appears as if it might take flight, or sing, in the next flutter of a heartbeat.  he is still holding her hand, he realises with a slight flush. but to let go all of a sudden would be abrupt, and ungentlemanly, surely.  “i thought of you when i saw it, is all.”

if he saw her as a lighthouse, it could be forgiven. it could, in fact, be understood, for sailors on on water looked for a beam to draw them home, and rose had been stacking long wicks inside her stomach without looking for what lay at the end of them. she would light herself up no matter the cost, and had yet to realize that though lighthouses guide seafarers home in the dark, they do not rest in the tall turret. they kiss the beach around them and walk up the long grey path home, up over rickety wooden stairs and gravel trails, and rarely look back on the way to their bed. 

they may be thanked for the journey, but they are never a destination.

“a foolhardy soul indeed to offer up rule of your body and schedule so lightly,” she jests, and perhaps it is funny because she has never followed her own warnings, but the amusement falls from her face and rolls in the soot when she opens her eyes. 

it is so smooth and pale it appears for a moment the bird has been sculpted from soft white soap, and as she runs a single thumb over it rose expects the wing to warp and smudge. the anticipation holds as she does it once again with the right thumb — having discerned already that the wooden creature was not quite so delicate, the suspension holds only due to the assumption of her own nature. i have marked every pure thing placed in my possession.

she stands there like that, a beautiful thing with no purpose holding another lovely, useless object in her hands, and wonders which she values more: the trinket in her palm or the warmth under it. when rose speaks there are broken bones in her voice, the left-overs of violences that had been made on her. it limps in the space between them, jagged and slow.

“it’s the most beautiful thing i have been given in quite some time, mr. sutherland.” she looks up to august with salt in her eyes, as though she has used them as buckets to carry the sea-water from whence they came. “well,” she smiles. it is a crescent moon with a fishing hook caught on the curve. it pulls and pulls with the weight of something new-snagged until her lip trembles. she casts off the line because that’s what women do, and rose pulls one hand out from the fox trap they’ve made to squeeze his own before retrieving it entirely. “perhaps i should find the captain — it seems i’ve found the best prize to be found in these foreign waters. we must turn the ship around.” 

her hand comes to rest, bird-perch gentle, on his arm as she leans in to place a kiss on august’s soft cheek. he smells of salt and myrrh and something sweet that frightens her.  

“thank you, august.” eye to eye like glass balanced on a wheel. “i love it.”

[swvnsong]

There are some things we were never meant to be to one another. I see that now.

rose chews her bottom lip. she would like to tear into it until the flesh rips from her like skin off a plum, red pulp soft enough to dig your fingers into, until she is a set of eyes with a gaping wound and there is blood in place of a mouth. or perhaps it is all blood already. she tastes metal, she has no tongue. the pit in her throat is the same kind found in stone fruit.  ( MEMORY: falling out of a doorframe linked like two sets of pink intestines tangled together. opera glasses on the parlour floor, unseeing eyes watching you unravel like god. you’re bleeding, no — you’re kissing everywhere. all that blood is only lipstick. it’s only bruises. euphoria — for the first time in weeks it is not the pipe. bottles on the bedside refracting morning light, replacement for church glass. ) “oh.” plum-girl with the unpeeled mouth, all red gums. ( CHORUS: you didn’t love him. it doesn’t matter. nobody has ever loved you. ) “yes.” didn’t you let him have a bite, too? ( CHORUS: TRAMP! HARLOT! WHORE! YOUR HEART IS INSATIABLE. ) fruit that offer themselves up for feeding don’t get to fucking speak, girl. “that’s true.” 

[swvnsong]

for — @paintedsins​

location — snow’s tent

when — the moment calamity becomes the natural state

she’s slanted. that’s the way she gets when she’s drunk; leaned to the side, a shoulder of her fur coat fallen off, the part of her hair raised and flipped over in a messy concession to the state she is currently existing in: a girl with her feet on the ground but an angle to her mind and body. it’s in her mouth as much as her body: the way her syllables stand slightly straight, but rush into one another at the tail. the thoughts inside her skull curl into themselves, turning into perfect little balls that roll and gather in the corner of her skull as her mind wanders and tilts.

rosalind is drunk, and she is slanted.

there is only one place and person to exist at a leaned angle, and that is in the arm-crook of a man whose existence tilts at an angle which brings him closer to both god and insects all at once. 

how strange, that nobody ever seemed to consider the two might share a residence. 

“blow a kiss to the spirits and dearly departed, for you, my dear, must now depart!” she calls into the void of the black tent, the scarlet of her alight in the dark as a slit of flame or a new gash. feathers fall as drops of blood - unexpected tribute. “you have served them long enough, and now i call upon you to remember your oath and service me.”   

[wilccard]

— July 4th, 1845; TENT OF WONDERS / open to all.

                — The space they moved between was not built, but born. It seemed to materialize out of nowhere on the shore, a grand canopy in sweet and solitary contrast against the harbor. Their attempt, though of a  poeticism and no mistake about it, stood at odds with the . Those wooden cabins, scrammed together on a lick of land, and the sediments of lava, uncanny like God’s makings at the beginning of time. Despite the fact that Vladimir knew how many people worked to erect the tent rows - landlubbers and waisters and scores over scores of petty officers - it still looked very little like a joint effort. It looked very little man-made at all. In fizzing succession, the tents tailed on one another like a serpent, with scents, volleys of sound, and distinct flashes mixing in between each. And the blood-spring, the source of all this outpour, was at the Tent of Wonders.

              It was a striking thing. An array of wicked devices, stacked up like some daguerreotype in motion - there was no way to gain a sense on where you stood, or who else was beside you. They called it a maze; Vladimir found it missed the mark. It wasn’t one, not quite, not anything you wouldn’t have in the circular corridors of a London townhouse. But the light - oh, the light cut right through you. It made fine work of it. It was this strange, unearthly light he came here for, to see it twisted and warped by the projector. The mind recoils to see it - the mind recoils, also, from trying to figure out how the bloody damn it lasted the journey in top shape. Vladimir leans on the heels of his feet, strangely at place here, strangely unfazed. Before the moving shapes, he finally reaches the end of questioning - it moves one to the point beyond perplexity, beyond doubt. A wonder can silence you. A wonder can make you talk. On the cusp between both these states, he addresses the other merrymaker who entered the tent in his wake, disrupting the amber balance within. A change as heavily felt as someone sitting in bed beside you. “Have they called off the rum hounds? They let you amble on without trying to stick a glass on you?”

[swvnsong]

“ah,” he makes no greeting so she foregoes her own, forever bound to the ouroboros-mimick of a woman who follows a man’s lead. inevitably she would be found with her own foot in her mouth or his fast down her throat. for now, the only thing on her tongue was gin. “what are the hounds to a swan?” they stuck my feathers on with tar and called it natural selection -- but never mind the science. “they could not touch me no matter how they jumped, mon petit monstre.”

“asides,” she looks up at vlad from beneath lashes and the dirt of things they buried. both are dark-coloured. “i already have a glass.”

[swvnsong]

Mine your courage from a different lode now.

“i fear my arms do not bare enough strength to start digging in new places -- they are sore even now from what i have carried here.”

[swvnsong]

That’s not how I see you.

“oh, do we speak of sight now, ms. childs? how unusual - i was sure your opinion of me relied on the sense of sound. that is what your piece was dictated upon, was it not? i shall ready myself for a review of what you find in the look of me.”

[terrorhqs]

The following sentence starter prompts are based on The Terror (AMC). Please feel free to adjust pronouns (and anything else) accordingly.

In this place, technology still bends the knee to luck.

There is nothing worse than a man who has lost his joy.

I tell you, one glance from him, I have to remind myself I’m not a fraud.

You may be a warning of things to come.

I’ve come to repair our bonds.

Perhaps it is I who’s unable to truly bring him into the bosom of my confidence.

How any man achieves his post on an expedition is less important than how he spends it.

Explorers are made of hope. They breathe hope.

I can’t very well ask him to stop breathing.

You weren’t sleeping either? If only sleep were as simple as closing your eyes.

Either you’re a clairvoyant or I’m not doing half the job I think I am concealing my thoughts.

I learnt early: those who are quickest to tally your value often do it on your spots alone.

Perhaps I would have done better to have played your game and gulled the world.

Fear is a choice.

Ignorance is a choice.

I never want to feel ice under my boots again.

Then there will be the angels with songs lovelier than you’ve heard.

As a trusted friend once put it… This place wants us dead.

You should cherish that man.

That is how you already see us? In need of saving?

You’ve made yourself miserable and distant, and hard to love, and you blame the world for it.

I should have curbed these tendencies, rather than sympathized with them, because you seem to have confused my sympathy with tolerance.

At sea, a man can find spiritual benefit in the collective.

Your crisis is an opportunity for you to repair yourself. You are in the world’s best place for it.

The past tense is a very sturdy thing. It’s earned, but it does take for granted that one has survived.

Keep your pity. You’re going to need all the pity you have for what’s coming.

You can be whatever you need to be now.

I am a fake.

I challenge any biographer to tally up your acts of valor and then call you a fake.

It’s all vanity. It always has been. And we are at the end of vanity.

I’ll give you some advice: don’t indulge your morals over your practicals.

Do you believe a man has a soul?

What in the name of God took you so fuckin’ long?

This place is beautiful to me, even now.

Do you know sometimes when people are near passing I’ve heard they speak of a radiance like a million daybreaks all in one.

You abuse your freedoms.

There are some things we were never meant to be to one another. I see that now.

God sees you. Here more than anywhere.

I mean permission not granted!

There is wonder here.

You said you wanted the truth.

Look at your face.

That’s not how I see you.

I’ve never said it out loud before now.

I always felt I deserved more.

No one can convince me that optimism or confidence is warm enough.

What else do you require? Respect? Well, earn it.

This kind of darkness, do you see it among us here?

I don’t need to see it to know it’s here.

Mine your courage from a different lode now.

Are we brothers? I would like that very much.

[yusterday-deactivated20130321]

I identify w tinkerbell a lot because she needs attention or she dies and that’s pretty much me