#Parallel Musing

[nothatsmi]

The heavy world's upon your shoulders, will we burn on or just smolder? Somehow, I know I'll find you there. Oh, you wanna see if you can change it (change it), still, I know I'll see you there.

↑ I put this verse but they all work, somehow (i wanted to do an even longer drawing at the beginning, sheesh).

Linking music with content is my absolute favorite thing to do. I did it with aftg, and also for trc with this post (muse!!) and obviously the animatic, which happens to have turned 1 year old very recently (happy birthday).

Anyway, I'll do a trc reread soon, last time was two years ago (!!), i've read extracts since but it won't do for much longer.

[septemberkisses]

March - the month of dreams and hopes.

Excerpts from:

Warm Moon by Mary Oliver • With the Fog So Dense on the Bridge in Almond Blossoms and Beyond by Mahmoud Darwish, tr. Mohammad Shaheen • The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab • Pinterest • March by Hannahrowrites • Great Expectations by Charles Dickens • To March by Emily Dickinson • Worth the Wait by Schuyler Peck • Sylvia Plath, from a letter to Aurelia Plath written c. February 1953 • Second Dedication by Anna Akhmatova, tr. D.M. Thomas •

[compulsivewriter]

Hot take: The way Jack Wolfe played Gabe Goodman, I tend to believe that had he survived infancy, he'd be the kind of big brother to Natalie that Connor Murphy never was to Zoe.

[kandadze]

The loneliness of what we did; the loneliness/ of what was done to us.

Tony Hoagland, Application for Release from the Dream: Poems, The Complex Sentence

Fangs of Fortune, ep 16/ ep 9/ ep 25

PSH coming to with blood on his hands made me flash back to the other two similar scenes in the show, the main difference being, PSH is the only one who, indirectly and unknowingly, but still, had a hand in his own tragedy, whereas ZYZ and ZYC had no say in what happened to them.

PSH ran and was eventually hunted and killed; ZYZ ran, if metaphorically, hunted by his own conscience and the fact that if he died, someone else would take his place; ZYC stayed to face the consequences and his imminent death - which at that point of the story was quite certain.

Knowing what we know about these characters - especially ZYZ and ZYC - their responses to this horrifying awakening make sense; I also think that out of all three, ZYC was the most fortunate. He didn't actually murder anyone; he wasn't alone; he had someone with an intimate understanding of what he was going through; and, maybe the most importantly, he had options. There were still things that he could do to influence his fate. The initial change was forced upon him, but he took full responsibility for what he was going to do about it.

[merrycatblackwood]

"lovers spend years denying what’s ill fated. resentment rotting away galaxies we created, stars placed and glued meticulously by hand next to the ceiling fan. tried wishing on comets. tried dimming the shine. tried to orbit his planet. some stars never align. and in one conversation, i tore down the whole sky. spring sprung forth with dazzling freedom hues, then a crash from the skylight bursting through."

space-themed imagery from lover onto ttpd

[angrybubbles]

Book!Devils Minion chased each other for 12 years before Daniel was turned at the brink of death.

Show!Armand was with Marius for 12 years before Armand was turned at the brink of death.

[slugcatmusings]

So I was throwing myself back into hell again (starting to replay the Watcher), minding my own business, when I suddenly had a flashback to that one lore pearl from Subterranean (it’s the teal one, I think), and went “wait… wait a second.”

“If you leave a stone on the ground, and come back some time later, it’s covered in dust.  This happens everywhere, and over several lifetimes of creatures such as you, the ground slowly builds upwards.”

Implying the dust falls from the sky, since the Void Sea is what lies below, right?  So… if it’s falling from above, somewhere…

(Endgame region spoilers below the cut)

There are falling stars in Outer Rim.  The sandstorms here have the same green as the stars in it.  There are things in the background apparently called STARCATCHERS.  The architecture here is OLD.  It’s Depths architecture, the same civilization that predated the Benefactors/Ancients/whatever you want to call the iterators’ creators by who knows how long, and it’s being buried in the sands by the ever-blowing sandstorms.

I looked at Shattered Terrace next since it’s the other ending-related endgame area and… 

It’s newer architecture, more akin to the architecture we see in the base game, but it’s falling apart.  Bits of rubble are floating off in defiance of gravity, while other parts of it have collapsed and been worn down into the dust you see blowing on the wind. 

In Outer Rim, we see the ground being built up with stardust.  In Shattered Terrace, we see the world dissolving.  The two endgame areas of the Watcher are representations of the beginning and end of that very cycle of the world that Moon explains to us with the Subterranean pearl.

[kinardsevan]

𝐢'𝐦 𝐠𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐚 𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤

listen. i'm still so convinced it's Tommy up on that crane in 807 that my brain keeps writing scenes 😂😂😂😂 so have this:

"Buck, you need to-"

He can't hear Bobby's words as he races up the ladder, panic rising faster and faster in his chest.

"Hey no no no no no!" He yells, throwing himself over the side. His hands grasp tight around Tommy's. "Stop stop stop! Please!" The words are coming out of him in sobs, but large hands grip around his wrists and a moment later, the older man tilts his head up and his eyes lock with Evan's.

"Ev-..." He cuts himself off, his voice wobbly and raspy from his current predicament.

"Just stop," Evan replies, snuffling as tears run down his face. "Stop moving, stop- just stop."

"Ok," Tommy replies, his voice weary as his fingers tighten around Evan's wrists that much more. The blonde glances up toward Chimney on the opposite crane. He's still working to get the harness unstuck, but apparently only having mild success with it.

"My legs are numb," Tommy states, blinking slowly. Chim looks up at them.

"Fuck this. I'm going to cut him down. The 217 can get the line fixed," Chimney states before heading back down the ladder in quick succession. "I need bolt cutters!"

"Evan," Tommy rasps. His hands are sweaty now, hanging onto the other man's arms.

"No," Evan replies, his voice tinged with anger now. "You have to hang on."

"You have to let go," Tommy counters to him, his voice exhausted. "Evan-" His grip slips on Evan's arm, and beneath them there's scrambling to get the inflatable placed properly. He glances over at the other crane as Chimney finishes reascending it.

"I can't," Evan replies, his own voice strained as he grips onto Tommy's arm with both hands now. "Fuck, Tommy, I can't."

"Why not," he asks wearily.

"Because!" Evan yells at him. Several tears fall off his face in quick succession, one landing on Tommy's own face as it continues its descent downward.

Somehow, even from beneath him, even with most of his blood volume hanging out in the lower half of his body with no way to make it circulate properly, Tommy manages to give him that look, the one that says he's really paying attention.

"Evan." He says it like it's Evan who needs to be talked off the ledge, like he's the one hanging in the middle of the air being held up by a crane.

"You don't get to give up now," Evan growls at him. "You already did that to me once this week."

"Are we really talking about this now," Tommy asks him. His fingers slip a few millimeters, but Evan curls his hand tight under Tommy's elbow, trying to pull him up.

"Seems as good a time as any," he replies. A humorless laugh slips out of him.

"I've almost got it," Chimney calls from the other crane.

Evan gulps. "It was too much, too fast," he states. "Asking you to move in. I s-said things that made it sound like I wasn't invested-.."

"It's fine," Tommy replies, sounding mildly exasperated.

"No its not," Evan argues, squeezing tighter on Tommy's arm. "it's not. Because it made me sound like I was asking you to move in because it's the easy option, like I wanted you to stay without any consideration of what your life looks like outside of what we are. Or were."

Tommy stares up at him, still blinking slow and long. Evan pulls his arm up inches higher, trying to take more of the weight off of his lower body.

"But it's not that," he says, sniffling again. "I lept before thinking, a-and made it into a thing that it wasn't and has never been." He sniffles again. "I didn't ask you to move in because I wanted to be impulsive. I said it because I want a life with you, a-and I was afraid to own that and what that means for me." He pauses and gulps, lets out a breath. "I was so pissed at you for breaking up with me, a-and you were doing the same thing I did. You were protecting yourself." Tommy stares up at him, eyebrows quirked slightly in confusion.

"I thought if I didn't say it, it was safer, that we-..." He shakes his head at himself as he feels the tension pulling Tommy back toward Chimney starting to wane as the bolt cutters work through the metal. "But I also want the whole damn thing with you. I'm not in it because it's easy, or because you were the first man to kiss me. I'm in it because I'm in love with you."

Tommy stares up at him still, giving him that damn look again, and the slack goes looser, his weight becoming even heavier on Evan's arms.

"I love you," he repeats. "I love you so damn much."

Tommy grants him a weary smile. "I love you too, Evan."

His weight falls entirely on Evan then, and both of their arms jerk out straight, Evan leaned roughly over the crane as he tries to keep holding on.

"Evan, let go," Tommy tells him.

"Please," Evan begs him, and he's not even entirely sure what it is he's begging for. "Tommy-.."

"I love you too," he repeats. "But you have to let go."

Evan gulps, forces a breath in, forces his tunnel vision to open up, and realizes the inflatable is ready and will catch Tommy. "I'll meet you at the bottom."

"Sounds good," Tommy rasps. And then, against everything that tells him he should, Evan lets go, watching as Tommy drops the 30 feet onto the inflatable crash pad. As soon as his body hits, Evan is already double-timing his way down the ladder. He makes it down in what he's sure is record time, running past everyone else to get to Tommy's side. Hen already has him on a stretcher, attached to a dozen leads and assessing his legs.

"Risk of compartment syndrome," she states. "Likely dislocation of the left hip. He needs x-rays and we need to go."

"I'm going with," Evan announces, refusing to hear reason to any other option. His hand is tight in Tommy's as soon as he's next to him, his other hand combing down the other man's hair as he stares down into those blue eyes. They're already brighter from his circulation picking back up. "I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you."

"Good lord just kiss the man already," Gerrard calls from the back of the crowd. Evan whips his head around and Tommy leans up off he gurney, both of them giving the old grump a shocked expression.

"What?" He asks. He has that grumpy look on his face once more, like he still thinks that their lifestyle is beneath him (at the very least). "We all know it's what you're thinking. I just said it."

Evan turns back toward Tommy, and the blue eyes meet.

"My boyfriend's sister once said there better ways to get someone's attention than this," Tommy says. Evan lets out a laugh, color flushing through his cheeks at the dignification of boyfriend. He curls two fingers under Tommy's chin and kisses him, both of them ignorant of the whooping and hollering happening around them.

"Like that," he whispers when they finally part, pressing his forehead into Tommy's. Tommy has a hand fisted around Evan's shirt, keeping him close.

"Yeah, that works," he whispers back. "I love you, too, Evan. I love you, too."

[sinligh]

You seek approval,

my subconscious implemented in my dreams. you build up illusions of yourself

and like a bridge thread of a spider web you give them to others

silky, sticky yet somehow,

you’re smooth enough to lure them to wrap you in all that you desire,

even if it’s their own pleasure.

you’re not stuck you’re waiting, for an ending or a beginning

an unsolicited death, an indefinite life

you fear your own madness but the edge of it is what you live for.

you wait, and wait and wait for love to visit the fragile home you made for yourself in this temporary world

but it’s not what you want, is it ?

because the moment it knocks on your door you rush to the arms of another,

paranoia or melancholy? It doesn’t matter.

you writhe and hiss until you shed a skin of a past life that you held on

For acceptance alone, if nothing else…

what is it that you truly desire?

•••

• Quotes: Susan Sontag/ Edgar Allan Poe/ Emily Dickinson/ Halsey/ Sylvia Plath/ Christa Wolf.

• Original context: Sinligh

• Art reference:

1. Art by Edward Burne-Jones. 2. Art from Sedmikrasky (Daisies). 3. Dave McKean, "Sandman" graphic novel. 4. Art by Roberto Ferri. 5. Painting by William Oxer. 6. Craww's "Woven".

[psychopomp-namine]

the way everyone has a dislike in their profile that actually says something integral about their character. lu guang doesn't like plans getting messed up, cheng xiaoshi dislikes loneliness, xia fei with owing favors, vein with lying...

and then you have liu xiao, who dislikes... cilantro. and fish mint.

(shakes fist) (putting him in a glass jar and shaking vigorously) learn to be vulnerable!! tell me something about yourself!! I guess him liking movies lines up with the theater metaphors, and there's him liking chess, but that. doesn't count methinks

[septemberkisses]

September - a soft goodbye to summer, whispered gently by the rustling leaves of autumn.

Excerpts from:

The Letters of Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath • The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien • Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos by Julia de Burgos • Peggy Toney Horton • The Whole Story and Other Stories by Ali Smith • Albert Campus • To The Tune 'Soaring Clouds by Huang O. (tr. by Kenneth Rexroth & Ling Chung) • September by Earth, Wind and Fire

[cruel-hiraeth]

Every ten years, two young adults from your village are offered to the King of Curses as human sacrifices.

A pair of souls plucked at peak ripeness is all that will appease the mythic monster. Otherwise, the selection process is random—or so the elders claim; you suspect that happenstance alone isn’t why the chosen are always orphans. There’s no harm in throwing away the lives of those who have neither social status nor loved ones.

Who will mourn their loss?

Since you were a knobby-kneed child, you assumed you would have to forfeit your existence for the “greater good” (though you never believed your meager life would account for much). Whispers have followed you like a shadow for as long as you can remember.

Rumor holds that your parents abandoned you to the elements because you consumed your twin in the womb; you were born a demon, a cursed child. The only reason you walk the earth today is because a monk took mercy on a wretched babe, delivering you to an orphanage for a life of isolation and servitude.

It’s a somber morning when it occurs: inky clouds are a funerary shroud over the earth. Your breath remains steady when a procession arrives at the door of your master’s home, announcing that you bear the honor of representing the village this year. Unable to so much as gather your few belongings—what does a spirit require in death?—you leave the residence immediately, heart heavy with foreboding.

The next several weeks are a blur. You reside in a crumbling temple on the outskirts of the village where you begin the purification process—an endless cycle of fasting, meditation, and ablution. Here you meet your companion on this journey to premature death: a fellow orphan named Itadori Yuuji. To your knowledge, you have never met him before; you’re positive that you would remember him if you had.

He’s too striking to forget.

Itadori is tall and broad, his skin sun-warmed and tawny, with freckles smattering his shoulders and face. His eyes are swirling pots of honey, smoother and richer than anything you have ever seen—is the gilt nectar as luscious and sweet as they claim? The shock of hair atop his head is a coppery gold, more befitting of royalty than a poor farmhand.

But perhaps his most distinct features are the identical, crescent-shaped scars that outline his eyes. You wonder how they got there and what they mean. Are they an omen? A generational curse? A mark of death? You never muster the courage to ask him, though, as the day of your offering is upon you.

The wind whips the hem of your silk robes, the chilly air seeping into your bones, a shiver wracking your frame. You wobble to you knees before the shrine as you begin reciting the sacrificial rites—the elders standing back at a safe distance—waiting for the King of Curses to claim you. Your heart is a storm: sorrowful rain, vengeful thunder, thrilling lightning. Amidst the chaos of your thoughts, Itadori grasps your left hand, his palm dwarfing your own.

“It’s going to be okay,” he whispers.

You glance at him in your periphery; a knowing smile tugs at the corners of his lips. What makes you so sure? you want to cry out. You taste the words on your tongue as his scars crack open to display another set of eyes a bloody claret, dark tattoos unfurling across his face and limbs. He now speaks with a gravely voice, much deeper than he ever has before:

“This isn’t the end, brat—it’s merely the beginning.”

[mistressemmedi]

The many layers of this image, especially in 2025 💀

[speakofshinee]

TAEMIN - 'Eternal' Track List ♥︎

[palamedespoetry]

actually i'm not keen on discussing the plow™ or whether odysseus was "justified" for killing palamedes or not because it's the only story people talk about in regards to palamedes at the expense of. everything else. so it's basically annoyed my interest out of the subject i think

[aparticularbandit]

i love how we talk about natsumi as fuyuhiko's little sister but like.

they're twins. she's a younger twin. they're the same year in school.

but she's always gonna be bratty little sister energy.