#normal times

[architect-of-the-conspiracy]

Woah are you kidding? I'm so down for a toxic uncomfortable relationship where you break me to the point that I'm scared to be around you god YES that would be great!

[key0-m0ve-al0ng]

When I'm just vibing and suddenly everything looks New and Different and the song I've listened to 500 times sounds different and my mood changes and I have to remember what I was just doing

[spellsparkler]

22 :)

22: "It's like they always say..."

“Disgusting,” Wyll repeats – the point as accurate as it is unnecessary – and Row, staring up through dappled leaves, gestures lazily at him. They blink, careful. It doesn’t feel tender; their eyelid doesn’t stick. They kind of thought they’d be able to feel it more, but it doesn’t seem to make much difference.

“Your feedback is noted,” Row tells him, and lets their arm drop back into the dirt.

They’re lying on their back in the scrubby grass, the stuff lurid-green and itchy against whatever of their bare skin it can reach – hands, neck, lower back where their jack is riding up. The tree branches rustle up above, sending leaves drifting down around their head. Past that, the sky gleams, blue as cobalt pigment and utterly cloudless. It’s hot. They’re sweating something horrendous in their one dear shirt. Even the jack is probably beginning to smell.

Wyll is pacing around somewhere to their left. He’s got ridiculous amounts of energy – comes of spending years on the road, maybe, but it just makes him seem like a farmland dog. He seems like the sort of man that would need to be walked daily before he could get anything done. But he’s staying with them, kindly enough, because the others went ahead – nominally to scout a path, and actually because they looked justifiably disgusted almost to the point of illness, and Lae’zel in particular looked like she wanted to enact violence on something. Row suspected the thing would be them. They can’t even really blame her. But Wyll stayed, when the rest went off to do something else down the little dirt track, to make sure that Row doesn’t drop suddenly, startlingly dead or explode into a mass of tentacles. It’s very sweet of him.

(Nothing is happening. It doesn’t feel different. They might be able to see a little more, or a little clearer, but it’s hard to really tell; they aren’t dying, though, and their number of limbs remains steady. They’ve got the very barest edge of a headache, but that’s as much from staring into the sun for ten minutes as anything else.)

“Ugh,” Wyll says again – his revulsion is beginning to feel a tad performative – and he skims the edge of their field of view as he turns around, they think, to look at them. “How are you feeling?”

“Two eyes, all my hair, no beak,” Row reports. “I think we’re good.”

There’s a pause; Wyll’s horns come properly into their vision, followed by a vague peripheral smudge of his face. “Yes,” he says, “but how are you feeling? Did it – do anything?”

Row squints up at the quivering leaves.

“It didn’t kill me, or anything,” they say, because that had been their main concern – and not a very big one, seeing as they still did it. “Didn’t really hurt. It doesn’t feel any more crowded, back there – I’m not sure how that works. It doesn’t feel that different, yet.” (It doesn’t; it all feels a little sharper, the things the first tadpole gave them taken a little closer to the bone, but it isn’t as changed as it feels like it could be. Should be.) “But it will. I’m certain of it.”

Wyll thinks about this, if the slow tipping of the horns is any indication; “All right,” he says, and then he appears much more distinctly in view, face silhouetted against green leaves and blue sky. “Disgusting. Why?”

“You don’t need to keep saying that,” Row says, squinting at him.

Wyll twists his lips, wry. “You said you didn’t trust our nighttime caller,” he says. “So why in Balduran’s name would you put that in your eye?”

Row scrunches up their face. “Don’t sound judgemental,” they complain, largely facetious; “What, you’ve never gotten curious?”

Wind rustles its merry way through the leaves, sending one dried-out brown one fluttering down between Wyll’s horns. He raises a brow. “I’ve done many stupid things out of curiosity, but voluntarily housing an illithid parasite? That would be a first.”

Barely even a headache, and two tadpoles swimming around their orbital nerve; Row presses a finger to the hard-curved bone of their eye socket. Wyll’s brow furrows. He says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to call you stupid.”

That makes them snort. “You can,” they say, and shove themself up to sitting. “It was.”

After a moment, Wyll sits down in the dirt next to them. “Then why?” he asks – and why, indeed?

(Why would Row do such a thing? What reason would be consistent?)

(They know why they did it, of course – for the sixth sense the worm bestowed upon them the first time, garishly colourful and bitter-sweet on the tongue, the spider’s web of links between them all and the easy paths to follow down. Wyll’s body sits next to them, blood-warm and sticky with sweat, and Wyll sits next to them, and they can feel him there, all open spaces and effort. And disgust, right now, which is still fair enough. It feels tangible and present in a way that people so often aren’t; like his mind is a plum in their hands, the skin thin and smooth and yielding under the callused pads of their fingers. He would notice if they dug their nails in to reach the flesh, which is why they don’t, right now, but they could. It’s there. And the surface is mapped out, simple as anything, in the space behind their right eye.)

(It’s been, what, a week since the crash, and with all these new colours to watch – new cartography with every new face, charting what they want, what they don’t, how it all pins together – Row hasn’t slipped up once. Not with any significance, anyway. They’re a social person, but it’s never been this easy.)

(They look at Wyll, and they could crack him open like a walnut shell and make a home in the feast of his organs, and if they play it right then he would want them to.)

But no-one likes it when they say it like that, so they shrug, carefree, and say, “Honestly, I don’t know. I saw it crawling out and – I don’t know, Wyll, it just seemed friendly.”

“The tadpole,” Wyll says. “The parasite.”

“Yes!” It was friendly – very excited to see them, and quite desperate to make itself at home somewhere less exposed than the open air and a cooling corpse. It was mapped out, clear as their companions. “I’m not saying I thought it through. But I got curious, and it would be dangerous to just let it roam free, and surely two tadpoles isn’t much worse than one as far as removal is concerned.” It had been a snap second decision; perhaps they should have thought about it more, but Row’s never been good at worrying about consequences – never been able to fear anything other than imminent death, and that didn’t seem likely. They might be doomed for all eternity, but eternity comes later. “If it’s bad, at least now we know. And if it can help, we need all the help we can get. It’s like they say, you know – a tadpole in the head is worth two in the jar, or whatever.”

“Perhaps,” Wyll says drily, “that’s a newer Baldurian idiom that I’ve missed in my time away.”

There is a pause; some sparrows twitter in the distance.

“I understand some of that impulse,” Wyll starts, and Row tips their head to look at him. “But unknowable powers come with unknowable consequences. We would be rash, to take anything we’re offered until we know what it will cost.”

There’s hair in Row’s face, its curl dragged-down and greasy. Wyll is a better sport about himself than some of the others, they’ve learned; there’s a line they don’t want to cross, but he takes jibes easier than most, and he likes banter. “That’s good advice,” they say, considering, and they crane their neck, flicking their gaze just above his eyes. “Do you follow it?”

He smiles, lips droll, and leans over to jostle their shoulder with his elbow. “As I say,” he says, “not as I do. Do you think we can catch up, now, or should we give Lae’zel more time to cool off?”

[new-eyes-extra-colors]

a little snippet from the omega ruby oneshot i'm working on.

“Groudon isn’t the only one of their ilk,” Maxie said, and everything crashed into May at once: Groudon. They were out here for a reason; she wasn’t just sightseeing with her new best friend. They had to deal with Groudon.

“Not the only giant scary world-ending monster,” she said shakily. “Okay.”

Maxie frowned and held a hand out halfway to her arm, like he was about to touch her but thought better of it. “Ms Maple, are you alright?”

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine.” She waved a hand dismissively. “What were you saying?”

He narrowed his eyes like he didn’t believe her, but continued anyway. “I was saying Groudon has a counterpart. Their equal and opposite, the incarnation of the sea itself, Kyogre. Rayquaza is supposed to keep the two of them in balance. I didn’t think of it at the time since we had other more pressing concerns, but I wonder why Groudon’s rampage didn’t attract Rayquaza’s attention. By all accounts it should have.”

May fiddled with her bracelets, running her thumb over the cool polished surface of her key stone. “Lugia’s the incarnation of the sea,” she said.

“Wh—oh. Yes, I suppose you would think that.”

“It’s true.”

“I have no rebuttal,” he said. “My expertise is in Hoennic mythology, not Johtoni. Though I will say, given recent experiences, your gods seem more… benevolent than ours.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” It had been all over the news, about a year before her family had moved to Hoenn: Lugia had appeared in the Whirl Islands, just off the coast near Olivine, to partner with that boy from New Bark who bested Team Rocket for what was hopefully the final time. May had compared herself to that boy a lot over the course of the last two years, but never did she expect she’d also be dealing with a partnered legendary. All things considered, she would trade Groudon for Lugia in a heartbeat.

That was a mean thought. Groudon was her responsibility now, no matter how scared she was, and whether she liked it or not—and if she wanted this to work, she needed to like it.

[unusualshrimp]

i dont know how to be casual about people. either i dont give a shit about this or i literally daydream elaborate situations where i die for u

[nicholassabalos]

Earth (c. April 2020)….

This image of a drifted-over highway in desert Dubai, United Arab Emirates, looks a lot how the entire world must feel about now....

....our normal lives -- whether easy, rough, or somewhere in between -- seem far away and long ago....

....drifting over....drifting away...

....and frighteningly out of reach for the foreseeable future....

....as we collectively are coming to understand in our bones that, when it’s safe to go back to some semblance of living again, it sure isn’t going to be the same.

 For generations to come, I sense we will refer back in time to “before the virus” and “after the virus”....

(Much like my parents always refereed to “before the war [World War II]” and “after the war”....when talking about their lives. They were in their teens during WWII.)

Meanwhile, the four walls at home seem to get closer and closer.

We all just want our “normal” back! (Or, at least, something close!)

Real soon! (I repeat: “Real soon!”)

                                      ___________________________

>>Photo: Oliver Wong

[chronicsyd]

Ok so we’re watching this video on Kira Knightly who has said her daughter isn’t allowed to watch The Little Mermaid and Cinderella because “they’re about girls who just wait around for guys to save them” or some other nonsense. First of all, tell me in Cinderella where she just waits for the guy to save her.

She works her butt off every day working for an ass of a family. She decides to go to the ball only to have that same ass family destroy something she worked hard on with some help because the mice SAW how badly she was being treated. And she was helped by her fairy godmother after YEARS of abuse for one night of fun.

The prince sucks so much that he never got her name. Sure Cinderella was running out but she had to get home BEFORE her ass of a family got home. The prince can’t remember faces so he uses a shoe to find her.

The only reason Cinderella had to wait AT ALL during the climax is because her stepmother found out and LOCKED her in her room. But she had her mice friends who had always been there for her to help her out.

So yea VERY wrong on that movie you are. (And I’m going to say it; the 2015 live action SLAUGHTERED the original)

With The Little Mermaid it kind of makes sense because she abandons her people, becomes a new species, makes a deal with someone who everyone knows is dangerous, etc. all because of a crush?! Not to mention her father has to save her from this said deal.

But at the same time if Kira Knightly is picking off Disney movies because “they’re waiting for men to save them” she should pick off MOST of the Disney Princess films. Not to mention people forget these are different times now.

These movies that people are SO mad at came out in the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s etc. where this kind of thing was NORMAL. In snow white it was only 16-17 years after women got the bloody right to VOTE! Let alone be able to do things by themselves.

The reason people were so pleased by Mulan when it came out was because it came out in 1998, sure 10 years before now but we were taking steps in the right direction. Sure people have the “right to their own opinion” but most of the time they can’t hold that opinion for shit.

(Sorry but we all know this is true.)