#got afterthoughts

[reminiscentrainclouds]

But as it is And it is We're just two slow dancers, last ones out We're two slow dancers, last ones out

[okartichoke]

"...I'll eat my cravat. (with a butter knife)" Starring Miles Edgeworth as Miles Edgeworth

[sleepyzllover]

Im going back to my roots (i missed Them so much)

[randomwriteronline]

He was taller than them.

Infinitely so.

They knew he wasn't that big - not compared to everything else around them, from the walls closing off his fortress to the island it sat on, to the silvery sea around it or the body it was still housed within. He wasn't even that big compared to them, and they knew that too: he was only about a bio taller than them, maybe a little more, maybe only half. A sizable, immediately noticeable difference, but it wasn't that much. It wasn't enough to make him appear so gargantuan and frightening. They had stood beside similarly large beings, and while a slight awe had made them queasy it had not been so oppressive.

But there was something about him that made him larger than life. Something that crawled out of him like white marble maggots from a white marble corpse, a strange perfect imperfection that made them feel minuscule.

Perhaps their incomplete number worsened it.

He watched them, impassive.

From how close they were to him (they could have walked up to him; they could have turned that small distance to zero and stood directly in front of him; but they didn't. They couldn't. Something inside them couldn't. Something inside them wouldn't.) they could notice that one of his eyes was not facing them: it was stuck halfway upwards, forever gazing into the sky, while the other continued to stare down at them without so much as a glint of emotion. Despite having all the appearance of a mistake on someone's part, that strange physical quirk had not been fixed. Evidently, it was not an anomaly.

"Good." Artakha said.

His voice held no warmth, no anger, no grief, no bitterness. It was clear and smooth, like polished crystal, and wholly pleasant in its completeness. Something about it almost had them recoil and flatten as if they had been just welcomed into a lethal trap of a lair by the famished growl of a gigantic drooling beast.

They had not expected he would have come to greet them himself. He never had before, delegating his disembodied words and the mechanisms of his fortress to do such a thing for him. Yet this time he had taken it upon himself to walk away from his chambers, from the pristine faintly hued greys that snaked behind him into the deeper parts of his small realm, to stand before them as he did now; in their arrogance, in their hope, they had thought upon coming back to their senses after the surprise of truly seeing him that it must have meant something.

But his tone was calm and empty, a white room with carefully set pastel toys, an environment so quiet and sterile that it smelled potently of the dust it looked to have been blanketed in.

In a strange way, it appalled them.

"You have come back to me." Artakha continued.

His mask glowed softly, golden and splendid. The runes deeply hetched upon it made it seem beyond ancient.

Against the barely visible backdrop of his reclusive kingdom, the glimmer distorted the kanohi into the garbled image of a small, sickly moon, incapable of offering all that sat around it the full strength of the light it could barely reflect.

He did not extend his arms towards them.

"Come now." Artakha ordered passionlessly. "Your work is done."

Something about that shook them from the hazy torpor threatening to devour their brains in too small bites.

"We're here to help evacuate the inhabitants of the last remaining islands," Tahu explained, mortified that his voice was even leaving him and yet unable to place why he felt that way, "The robot's insides are not safe - besides, there's so much to be done outside, and we-"

"There is no place for us in that world." Artakha cut him off.

He had not moved an inch.

They knew instinctively, uncomfortably, that his 'us' included them too.

"Our only purpose is here." Artakha stated. "We are not needed outside the bounds of this body."

"But there is life out there," Gali argued, though the mere act of speaking made her bones want to crumble in anguish to shut her up: "There are people who need us, who could use our help! There is so much to be rebuilt, and all of us-"

"You were made for this world, as was I." Artakha interrupted her.

Their lungs shriveled.

Their bodies hurt.

He remained unblemished in the face of their visible agony, perfect and still; his skewed eye ignored them as it continued to watch the now forever dimmed heavens, hanging lower and lower each day as the metal holding them aloft bent under the weight of age and abandonment.

"There is no such thing as a 'life' awaiting you in that world of real things." Artakha told them. "We are tools to be preserved: if your service will ever be needed again by Mata Nui, I will allow your deployment once more."

"And then?" Tahu coughed. He could swear his arms were melting off of him.

"Then you will return to me." Artakha answered. "As you have done now, because that is your purpose, and that is your only existence."

"And yours?" Gali hissed. Her head felt about to split into a thousand pieces.

"My purpose is to remain here and create, and see that you are used well." Artakha answered. "It is my only use; there is nothing other than this."

He spoke with the certainty of a man off to the gallows, the kind who knows well no dashing stranger or loyal friend will come to save him, and who thus accepts the coming execution with the mellow tiredness that brings the cattle into the slaughterhouse; but unlike the convict marked for death he held no sadness, no despair in his words, no roaring blasphemies nor tear-soaked regrets, not even that drowsy desire for it all to be done. He felt himself not a victim, and not like a victim he spoke, for that was not what he was.

He spoke like a machine that knew why it had been made, and that its function was now unnecessary. There was no poetry about it, and there was no injustice either. The world had begun with duty, and with this new lack of duty it would simply stop to one day begin again: he had known it would have happened since the start.

He had been made to wait until the lack of purpose passed, to one day be put to work again.

But they could not accept it.

They could not, because they were not him.

They were not machines. Not fully. Not anymore.

"We can't leave it all behind," Onua said softly, because his throat was coarse and dry as though burning inside his neck, "We have our Matoran to take care of - our Turaga, too - our friends, our-"

"You have nothing but your duty and yourselves." Artakha corrected him.

They flinched.

"As I have nothing but my duty and my creations." Artakha continued.

Few were aware that he had no brother anymore.

They did not inquire how he had come in possession of such information: beyond their inquiry being a waste of time, certainly it had not reached him in the same way it had them. Like for his reason of existence he simply seemed to have already known, somehow, that his only kin's death upon return would have been inevitable.

After all, one does not keep a broken instrument.

"We're not complete," Lewa fought back feebly, struggling through the tightness that threatened to crush his middle into a jagged heap, "Kopaka and Pohatu - they are-"

"They will come to me eventually, as you have done." Artakha sentenced. "And in the most dire of cases, I will simply make them once more."

The weak glow of his mask sent chills down their spines and almost sent them to their knees.

He had said it so carelessly. Without any inflection, any intonation, any difference in his speech. His voice had remained polished and clean, sanitized, pale colors melting into a greyish nothingness as though the images he conjured through them had not been nightmares woven into song.

He watched them as they contorted and writhed in place as composedly as they could, still slaves to the stilling awe he commanded. He did not blink.

"How many times have you made us?" Onua wheezed. Dark spots stole the sight from his eyes.

"For now, once." Artakha responded.

They wanted to cry.

They wanted to scream.

They wanted it to be over.

"We can't stay." Lewa breathed. He felt only an impossibly wide, horrible, biting cold.

The waves rocked behind them softly, gently, anchoring them to their bodies and selves as they struggled to do so on their own.

He remained unperturbed.

"Come now." Artakha only repeated. "You are to be preserved in sleep: that is my duty as well. You overshot your time active - two weeks had been calculated as the maximum amount it would have taken for you to deal with any issue; after all that has happened whilst you were awake, I assume this will be a... Pleasant... Change of pace."

(He said 'pleasant' strangely. As though he was using that word only out of politeness, without intention, without understanding it. As though the very concept behind it existing was alien to him.)

Then he turned, and walked through the open gate once more.

He did not look back when it became clear no other footsteps would have followed his own; he did not stop when the heavy entrance to his realm closed definitively behind him and he found his fortress once more lacking his most useful tools.

He walked to his chamber, passing the Matoran he had been given across the millennia: they worked in thoughtless silence, as Matoran were always meant to do, some repairing the signs of age upon the floors and walls, some taking materials to their rightful places, some finishing up the count of this or that's inventory, more still tinkering away much like he'd long been used to - perfect clanging cogs of a well-oiled clockwork. Soon enough they would complete their endless work, for nothing else would be there to be done; only then they would stop, and sit, and wait, in a blank torpor that fools might have called sleep, in order to be ready to return to their duties when their toiling would once again be required.

He arrived to the room (not the forge, not for now) and stood before his useless throne; there he stopped, and sat, and waited, staring forth with one eye as the other gazed upon the ceiling in a vaguely aware torpor, patiently existing in a stasis borne of lack of duty.

He was ready to remain for ages.

He had been made to, after all.

But movement distracted him.

A crooked thing walked into the chamber, smiling.

He recognized not the vessel, but the neutral miasma which slithered from its mangled form: it wriggled through the space around him like larvae burrowing in prey, used to permeating every mind it touched, and only regarded him curiously when it found him impervious to the complex, confusing charm of its ever winding workings.

"You." Artakha said dispassionately.

The crooked thing stood before him, smiling.

"There is nothing in this world for you." Artakha stated simply.

"The toys belong to the box, the box belongs to the child, and the child belongs to the parent."

"Leave my realm at once." Artakha insisted without animosity. "There is nothing for you here."

"In the smith's forge the furnace is indeed king amongst the tools, but a tool itself nonetheless."

"I am aware of myself and my duty, my eternity." Artakha spoke. "You cannot impede my function."

"Of course I can!"

He stiffened suddenly; his neck bent under the weight of his head and his body sagged where he sat. His chest convulsed briefly, just enough to push a murky liquid through his crevices, coating his body in blackened rivulets doomed to dry out.

His mask laid cracked and half made dust where it had fallen from his face.

He did not move.

The crooked thing turned, and walked through the door once more, smiling as it crept out of the fortress amongst heaps of stilled machines, crumpled into a pantomime of its mangled shape and silent even of their inner mechanical song, that until moments earlier had been so hard at work on maintaining the broken life-sized diorama of a bustling holy island.

[lousycapy]

I’m still pissed at the team orders. So here’s a breakdown of why they really sucked and I hope McLaren works on there gestion because with how Oscar was reeling Lando in I don’t want to be kept from racing action by team orders anymore.

First I made a summary of what happened on the lap delta times graphic from RACEFANS if you don’t want to read the whole post, so thanks to them for the graph and compilation of team radios.

Alright, now for how it went. Oscar had great pace and was slowly catching up on Lando, whether Lando was going full pace I’m not completely sure but I’d like to believe when a car gets within a second of you, you go all in to stay in front*.

On lap 28 Oscar was told about backmarkers being ahead. He keeps closing in on Lando knowing there will be traffic ahead and gets within DRS.

On lap 29 he’s told to hold position until they pass the backmarkers and transition to dry. First off, pretty unclear what “transition to dry” consists of, and second, couldn’t you have told him he’ll have to hold position before he killed his tires to reach Lando and get a chance to overtake? Like, ideally way earlier but at least on lap 28 when you told him about the backmarkers? So he could keep more juice in his tires for when he can go racing again?

I get the idea to delay the racing a bit to get safely through the backmarkers, but kind of a bitch move to kill his momentum so abruptly.

Then on lap 30 Lando and Oscar have both cleared the backmarkers, and that’s where people keep being confused because Oscar is not told he can start racing again, he actually asks if he has the go ahead now that the cars have been cleared and is told to hold position still. At this point he’s still within DRS range.

On lap 31 he makes the mistake in turn 6 that costs him the DRS.

And finally, on lap 32 he’s told he can start racing again. My issue is that I don’t get why we had to wait for lap 32. Why wasn’t lap 30 a good moment to go again, with the backmarkers behind? Even if they wanted a bit of a gap to those cars, why wasn’t lap 31 fine? No, they really waited for when he wasn’t a threat anymore to say he could go racing.*

Obviously it’s his fault if he didn’t have the opportunity to race Lando anymore by going off, but man did McLaren fuck with his pace. Let him kill his tires, then told to hold position when within half a second of his teammate (so he killed his tires for nothing), weird delay to get the go racing and now he’s fallen behind, and his tires are more used than he would’ve liked for nothing.

And it’s not like it was a rushed decision and they couldn’t tell Oscar was gonna get close enough to race Lando, he had been putting in laps faster than him consistently for a while now. It felt inevitable he’d get within DRS and would want to have a go at a home race win.

It was poorly managed from McLaren and I’m mad they didn’t learn from their mistakes in drivers management from last year, feels like they’re incapable of dealing with two drivers at the same time. I really wish they work on that and fast because it’s unfair to let Oscar rot when he’s still in the running for higher positions, even last year their only strategy for him was “chill and go long” whilst they focused on Lando.

*precision in the comments on Lando’s pace and lap 32/Lawson

[srue-on-fire]

Everyone wants Ravi to become a main. Meanwhile me looking at Eddie and wondering when he’ll be treated as a main:

[brw]

Small compilation of Charles looking kind of cunty in X-Men: Children of the Atom

[miilkybnn]

your roach and ghost designs.. I’m very much in love with <3

mwuah <33

[gosteon]

TWO! OF! THEM!

[trobedtism]

every time i remember that the roy siblings didn’t think to go get connor for that phone call a piece of my heart shrivels up and dies

[acespeon]

thinking about how Stan never had a chance in the school system and with their father's disdain for him and Ford was lifted up and praised as genius and given every opportunity to succeed

[potatoplace]

......

But none of it made sense, it wouldn’t make sense that you went from being in the middle of a well lit intersection… To being in a bland, yellow corridor, completely alone.

[axellis]

https://www.tumblr.com/axellis/755289937639882752/if-you-see-these-ppl-in-your-vicinity-run-far-far?source=share

Now I'm curious how they'd end up in a polycule in the first place lol

my face when i get to talk about lore

i wrote a whole lot so im gonna put it under a readmore but TLDR:

hollyberry & powdered sugar have known each other since they were littleeee-- before she finds her soul jam & everything! so they were already pretty close. in my head powdered sugar is at the very least acquainted w/ the others. hollyberry & powdered sugar were adventurers together until the berry families get united & the hollyberry kingdom is founded.

hollyberry & powdered sugar both fight pitaya! pitaya isn't one to back down and rest, but powdered sugar is insistent on bandaging the dragon up. hes just not one to leave someone injured. this quickly becomes a cycle where they fight and powdered sugar patches it up before it thinks about flying off. pitaya starts not minding (bc then it can get back to fighting faster)

this is at the very least the beginnings of their relationships w/ eachother.

as a brief summary: powdered sugar is able to get pseudo-immortality but has to stay in an inn of his founding in order to keep it up. the inn is created post-dark flour war and powdered sugar presumes hollyberry to be either dead or missing

so when a certain unnamed huntress comes across an inn and sees her childhood friend of so many years ago-- safe to say they're both surprised to see each other! hollyberry doesn't really ask, but she will still try to visit.

...but by legend of the red dragon she's starting to think that some answers on how powdered sugar is still alive after YEARS are needed. especially if it's some kind of sinister magic. this story powdered sugar gets to tag along with ^___^ by force. but it also lets the trio do some necessary rekindling that eventually pushes them into considering romanticisms

im actually like writing the legend of the red dragon retelling w/ powdered sugar's inclusion as a fic but idk if ill ever post it

post legend of the red dragon i think pitayasugar happens first. they kind of always had moments but never really talked about it. hollyberry & powdered sugar sort of resolve themselves into thinking that they'll just be friends for eternity. until eventually somebody pushes them into getting together. (like no you two making out w/ eachother when youre drunk is NOT typically a normal friend thing!)

but yeah i think theyre all cute together and um ilike them a lot smiles i think theyre very complicated but also so uncomplicated bc thats just how it is when youre friends/lovers as immortal beings

[doink-boink]

Crappy doodle I drew on my friend's iPad <3

[feverishsleep]

the beautiful samarie. love weird girls

[primordialruin]

The Taking of Persephone, or rather The Annoyance of Lilith

inspired by the thread with @lettherebemonsters