#musing: Henry

[madeleinefjall]

i'm normal about them

[arylleth]

I adored you. You were so soft, so diabolically angelic looking.

[petiteclover]

SALLY MANN

Henry Diltz • 1967

[thedemonofcat]

Kaer Morhen keeps a lot of magic objects.

One of them is a mirror that shows you the most beautiful person in the world; however, it does so based on your subjective opinion. Beauty is inherently subjective, so the spell couldn’t work in an objective manner.

The young witchers used to dare each other to stand in front of the mirror. A risky thing to do if the person who showed up in the mirror was another trainee. Or—gods forbid—an instructor.

Nowadays, it just gathers dust in the crumbling Keep.

One cold winter’s day, Geralt stumbled upon a mirror locked away in some forgotten storage. At first, he was startled to find it didn’t show his reflection. Instead, it revealed the image of a strikingly beautiful man with blue eyes and brown hair.

The man in the mirror exhaled, fogging the glass just enough to trace words with his finger.

“Help me.”

Logically, Geralt knew he should probably question why someone had trapped another in a mirror. But in that moment, his instincts took over. Without thinking, he reached out a hand. To his surprise, it passed through the glass, allowing him to grasp the other man’s hand and pull him out.

The man stumbled free, brushing off centuries of imprisonment with a sigh. “A hundred years trapped in that blasted mirror,” he muttered, his voice lilting like music. He glanced up at Geralt with a bright smile. “I’m Julian, by the way, though most people—well, most people did—call me Jaskier.”

“Geralt,” the witcher replied curtly, his eyes narrowing. “Why were you trapped in a mirror?”

Jaskier sighed dramatically, as if recounting an age-old grievance. “I was a Muse in training,” he began, noting Geralt’s confused expression. “You know, a Muse. We inspire mortals—help them create art, music, poetry. I was being groomed to become the next Muse of Music and Poetry.”

“I’m guessing things didn’t go as planned,” Geralt said dryly.

“Oh, it was going splendidly at first! I’d even reached the part where I gained immortality,” Jaskier replied, a note of bitterness creeping into his tone. “Then some sorcerer decided to trap me in a mirror just because I refused to become his personal Muse.”

Geralt raised an eyebrow. “So you’ve been stuck in there all this time?”

“Not just stuck,” Jaskier said with a huff. “The sorcerer, you see, was a terrible narcissist. He cursed the mirror to show only the most beautiful person. Naturally, he assumed it would reflect himself. Spent so long admiring his own face that he didn’t even notice the mob coming to kill him.” Jaskier grinned impishly, then leaned closer to Geralt. “You, my dear Witcher, are the first person to actually see me in a century.”

Geralt stared at him, unsure whether to be flattered or exasperated.

[henrysmuse]

these beautifully tragic little gods who smoked too much, read too much, felt nothing, and pretended to feel everything

[mythuzalasheir3]

it just occurred to me that Ford and McGucket are both reminiscent of different fictional mad scientists.

Ford is Frankenstein, doing dangerously unethical mad experiments in his basement and hastily trying to fix his mistakes and ending up making it worse

McGucket is Jekyll, experimenting on himself to create a version of himself that is completely unburdened and ends up losing himself in the process

[henrys-eulogy-aflame]

… a corpse, you say?

tw for blood, injury, gore, self-harm

thats what they call me. a corpse. rotting, covered in disgusting flies, eating away at me. eating away at my soul. i didn’t believe them. i’m no corpse, no dead boy. i just made… a mistake. a terrifying mistake. i gave up myself to a creature that took ownership of me, he ravaged my very being. who am i? the insectine horror that i saw as a father has destroyed Henry Ripley, and left behind a deteriorating shell.

when i saw myself in the reflection of a puddle formed by days of rain, all i could see was the corpse the other children speak of. though the sun had tanned my skin, it betrayed a pallor of one malnourished and dying. my lips could not move, no, they leaked blood, blood in a steady stream down my body! my face torn open at the jaw, showing bloodstained bone. in and upon the wreckage of my being, there were the flies. hundreds, lying within me. spreading blood and pus as they crawled down my neck. their incessant warning buzz fills my ears once again. i cannot feel my face any longer, matted hair falls beneath my eyes as the insects swarm into my wounds—

i grasp at my face, pulling away from the water. nothing. skin only scratched slightly, lips able to open and pant and gasp for air. i crawl back, legs too weak from what i’ve seen. the flies still touch me, still crawling up the skin that is—for now—unmarred and whole. hands holding my own face, i could swear i felt the repugnant feeling of blood between my fingers, pouring from my face, but when i hold them up to my eyes, they are clean save for dirt.

i live and breathe fear. scrambling into the forest, far from the reach of my own monstrous being. the thorns and twigs scrape at my skin but i do not care. anything to get far away from the cursed mirror that showed me a corpse, not a boy. curled upon rocks and leaves in the forest, i cannot catch my breath, nails digging into the palms of my hands. the more i gasp, the more panic i feel. urging myself to snap out of it, I scratch at my own wrists, arms and chest with the sharp twigs that lay beneath me. nothing works, nothing makes me feel whole. like myself.

where is everette? oh, sure he will come back soon. come back and find an empty clearing, where i’ve run from water of all things. i can’t bring myself to go back. with my actual blood smearing over my skin, i curl up and weep for the loss of myself. my humanity.“who am i?”

who have i become? can I ever be henry again? that young, naive little boy, who’s only worrying about making friends? or even the version of me that killed for sport, that hunted, and screamed and cried all on my own? free from the fly man’s clutches.

that night, it rains again. upon awakening, the first thing i see is my face reflected in the surrounding water. a bleeding, destroyed face, swarming with the agents of my father. a sunken face that looks past the grave. disgusting flies crawling in and out of my self-inflicted wounds.

(mentioned: @we-are-richard-lotf, @everettes-requiem)

[muse-of-tomfoolery]

You cannot tell me Henry Oak doesn't make his kids wear those wide ass ugly ass barefoot shoes

[pushing500]

Ivy's first night away from home by herself!!! Ahh! She's growing up so quickly. The world needs to see her artistic talents, so off to the Annual Expo she goes!

We love a hodge-podge of stalls at the art and culture expo.

The sculpture they gave Ivy as a reward for her storytelling only had a beauty rating of 2, so we sold it to the first traders who would take it. It didn't match our aesthetic anyway.

And then Jut got a title from The Empire. I'm not sure why. We didn't do any quests for it or anything. Maybe they just heard that he has pretty green eyes now and decided they wanted him in their ranks? Who even knows with The Empire? Those guys are weird.

First | Next | Previous

[hazel-not-wong]

when my card declines at therapy so they bring up the fact that morrigan probably saw a brother (or even a father) figure in mildmay only for him to betray her, ruining her confidence in older male figures.

[arylleth]

“love means constantly saying you’re sorry, and then doing better.”

[peoplematchingartworks]

[compulsivewriter]

Whoever thought of "Jazzpiano" for Natalie and Henry from Next to Normal is a genius.

[r1ver-6]

There’s an early ad for Psych out there that bills it as the “New Fake Psychic Detective Series”. Like, that is so unserious. Imagine (or remember) you’re an 18-35 year old scrolling through the USA channel and you hear those words in that order. How do you even decide to watch it😂 That sounds so fake! I know they make a joke about it in the show, but when you actually hear it ADVERTISED as that, it’s so surreal. And then, you realize that people loved it so much that it got 8 seasons, 3 movies, and a constant stream of fanart, fics, and support for nearly 20 years. I love this fandom so much. Every character in the show is at least a little insane, and I think each Psych-o is too! It’s the best🍍

[simsim54]

blond haired emotionally repressed princes + dark haired anti monarchists boys with curls the other one is obsessed with + them playing a piano together = best scenes ever

[henrysmuse]

current hobby; wandering around country houses and pretending that Henry is going to buy it for me as our engagement present