I am the sea and nobody owns me

shelby. 30s. she/her. wereadtoliveathousandlives on AO3 and Discord, we_read_to_live on Twitter (come find me!)

[marmot-bee-person]

some ted lasso textposts with varying levels of in characterness but i find them funny so

1/?

[womenandbooks]

[mermaidenmystic]

The Dream of Hébé or Hébé after the Fall (detail) ~ 1880 ~ Hugues Merle (1822-1893)

[windows-in-art]

Ellen Fasthuber-Huemer

[dayeadomingo]

We were so enthralled by this leaf on our walk back from dinner last night

[starspork]

We Raise Our Cups really fucks with me. It’s brutally hopeful. It’s a farewell to Orpheus. Sure. everyone knows that. but. its also a call to action.

Hadestown is not subtle in how it shows the power of revolutionaries, of love and hope and human compassion over that of the capitalist cycle of abuse. WRoC is talking about Orpheus. But it is also talking about every person with that revolutionary spirit.

Orpheus is all of us, and every person who stands against exploitation, is Orpheus. The theme is there, but it’s especially strong in Is It True, where he stands against the Fates themselves to challenge the world, only bolstered by the normal people that stood up and heard his words and showed him the power of words.

When Persephone asks where Orpheus is now, it is not entirely that she wonders where the man himself is, but also that she is pouring a drop to every person who holds his legacy and fights for the cause.

Then they praise the birds who sing in the night and the flowers that bloom in snow. A metaphor for those people who fight to make beauty in inhospitable places, who strive for good in darkness.

“To Orpheus, and all of us”

To Orpheus, to those who hold his spirit, to those who lead revolutions, and to those who follow him. The cycle of Orpheus and Eurydice is a love song. It is a tragedy. And yet we all know that one day. one time. they will make it out together. It is on that day, when an Orpheus finally manages to bring their Eurydice back, that the revolution succeeds, and the Shades get to follow their path out of Hades. And the mortals get to live free from the poverty and despair of their oppression.

We sing the song even though it is sad, because we know that spring will come and the world will go back in tune once they make it out together. And Hades can take the seasons, the food from our mouths, the fire from our stoves, every ounce of gold from the rivers, but what he cannot take, nor any other like him, is our songs and the cries of an impassioned heart. And may those songs inspire a thousand Orpheus’ to journey to defeat Hades. Because eventually one will win. It only takes one.

So let the song reach the next Orpheus, wherever they are wandering. Alone on this Earth. And let the song comfort them as they start the cycle again.

[jpinesart]

something i adore about hadestown is that it still meant something, y'know what i mean? like okay, no orpheus's song did not convince hades to give up his empire. hades' love for persephone isn't enough to deconstruct the machine he's built and has convinced himself that he needs in order to protect what he has. but he let them go. he saw the love eurydice and orpheus had for one another and it convinced him to let them try. orpheus may have turned around but they still walked, they almost made it. doubt set it but they were right there. that's further than anyone else can say. nobody else had made it that far. who's to say someone else can't make it a few steps further? persephone is able to leave the underworld and go home again when she needs to. spring has come again, if we're lucky autumn just might too. will this change be permanent? we don't know. but it's something. it doesn't knock down the wall but it's one brick out of it. and that means something. it wasn't all for nothing. it's a crack in the wall. there's a reason we keep singing this old song.

[farewell-to-lorien]

Battle of Five Armies

There and Back Again

Tom Bombadil

The Fellowship of the Ring

The Two Towers

Battle of the Hornburg

Battle of the Pelennor Fields

Battle of the Morannon

Evenstar

Red Book of Westmarch

Art by Wavesheep. Part I | Part II | Part III. 

[raeldazla]

Every time I have seen Hadestown - on stage or in the movie theater - people gasp when Orpheus turns around. I just love how it's so old and yet everyone is still always hoping that this time

[moonlit-sunflower-books]

friends to lovers never had a bad track. “scared i’ll ruin what we have” SLAPS. “friendship cuddles while secretly dying inside” BANGER. “teasing each other and holding eye contact for a little too long” KILLS ME. and don’t even get me STARTED on “screaming i love you in the middle of a heated argument.”

[fifi2930]

It's my birthday later this week, so I wanted to give the fandom that's loved me so well a little treat as a thank you ❤️ here you have it, a fluffy/smutty one-shot written solely to indulge my Colin in glasses agenda 🙂‍↕️

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[rootlessly]

okracoke, 2026 may

[lazer-exe]

I'm gonna say it, I do think that even the laziest person imaginable should have a roof over their head, food in their stomach, and access to healthcare

[lara777s]

[rlyehtaxidermist]

the only reliable, effective way of "protecting children" is education. but people don't want to hear that because they don't actually care about protecting children, they care about protecting a mythologised ideal of innocence

[pregnanthudsonwilliams]

not naming names but some of you are so creative and talented it's an honor to have you in my phone

[oddarette]

“Do Dead Malls Go To Heaven?”

Experimented a bit with a new way of detailing the tiles. Kinda like it? This particular piece took a hell of a lot of work. I’d love if you shared the vibes it’s giving off, for research purposes 💖

[wandringaesthetic]

You should only write in present tense with extreme caution.

not because it's bad or anything but because if you do it even once you're going to be editing the bits where you shifted tenses out of your writing for the rest of your life

[corvuscorona]

if u write in present tense enough times in a row, you can switch this problem around & get confused when your present-tense narrator is talking abt something that happened in Their past. I recommend this bc it keeps u on ur toes

[ach-sss-no]

guys i made my first blackout poetry

[heywriters]

^^^