arcvist

[arcvist]

i remade!   jon is now at archivis,   and all my sideblog muses are now at oculim.

if we have plotted threads, i’ll prob continue them, just make sure to @ the new blog when you reply. unplotted stuff will probs be dropped unless we’re close friends. i’m gonna be keeping my following count / thread count real low on the new blog so i don’t get overwhelmed. catch y’all on the flip side!

[arcvist]

kinda wanna remake

[arcvist]

HELP NADIYA W/ RENT

hey !  here’s the situation in short:

i’m  not  sure  if  i  can  make  rent  this  month  & i have to ask for help, here’s my  PAYPAL / KO-FI .  if you can’t send money, reblogging the post is enough, both have my infinite thanks .  if you would like something in return,  i  have  a  commissions  post .

i genuinely didn’t want to do this & i hate asking for help, i really, really do, but w/ the pandemic & everything all my job opportunities have closed down & my dad, who usually helps me out in a pinch w/ spending money & rent has had financial issues too & can’t afford to help me out atm .  my boss is also being a huge dickhead & refusing to pay us because he thinks we’ve asked for too many hours even though he already basically only throws his pocket change at us, so i’m in a very unstable situation when it comes to paying rent .  i’m asking for help now rather than later when things would get really bad & my landlord comes knocking on my door .  i need about €300-€400 depending on whether my boss finally pays me or the rent relief check cashes in, i’ll keep you guys updated if any of these miracles happen .  as for commissions, i’m off for the 14th-16th period as i have a take-home exam to write but afterwards i’m more than happy to work on them full-time, depression willing .  again, you don’t have to donate or anything, reblogging the post helps me out too, i’ll be in eternally in your debt either way .  thank you

[arcvist]

eyesolate‌.

“   what do you see  ?  ”   martin murmurs into the dim light between them , knowing jon won’t elaborate without prompting , yet not sure even as he does , that he wants to hear the answer ; martin can admit , he’s fearful of truth or gentle lie in equal measure.    but every word between them , rumbled into his skin wearily with jon curled in next to him , familiar weight and the itch of old , inherited wool blankets  —  it keeps martin here. tethered.

and perhaps it’s martin’s particular fear of it which keeps him open to such fickle frailty as feeling alone , when outside the world slowly ends , and ends , and ends.    like a sheet of ice on the window pane on a chilly morning , back when day was distinguishable from night , the frost is there whenever martin opens his eyes from unremembered nightmare , chill set deeper than his bones , and even the slow decay just behind these ice-capped walls can seem worlds and worlds away.

over again ,  jon melts the frost back.   the heat of his cheek against the back of his hand , slow blink of eyelashes against the top of his knuckles and the flutter of jon’s breath as he speaks —  he pours like hot water over the gathering frost of martin’s skin —  that swelling feeling of love , one of martin’s few , sacred , respites from the fear he wears now in place of routine feelings like hunger , weariness , boredom.

he doesn’t quite want to tell martin what he’s watching      —      it would be so easy to not say it,      to pretend all is still as it was for only a moment.      (      that they could lay here,      hands entwined,      without the world ending around them.      who could ask for more?      )      but denying martin anything feels like a crime,      and jon      —      jon owes him answers to anything he wants to know,      because it is jon’s fault they are here,      here in this cabin and here in this aftermath of a world.

‘      they’d holed up in the back room of the bookstore in town,      the one we went to the second week here when we’d read every book on daisy’s shelves three times over.      ’            his voice is low,      stays quiet,      as if narrating his collection of horrors won’t automatically ruin the silence.            ‘      there were about a dozen of them,      the only people left in the village.      but they could not evade a hunter’s senses,      no matter how many planks of wood they sealed over the windows,      and no matter how many weapons they’d brought into their sanctuary it’s no match for sharpened teeth.      ’

he closes his eyes.      his breath trembles its way out from his lungs,      and he tries not to think about what he isn’t telling martin      :      that the group had had two children with them,      that they’d huddled together and trembled,      that a few of them had run but would almost certainly fall to another fear sooner or later,      for nothing remains untouched for long in this new world.      that the whole scene reminded him more of gravedirt and another hand in his own,      and now he cannot stop thinking about daisy,      likely-dead a ten hours’ drive away.      that the two of them,      in their lonely safehouse,      are the last people for kilometers around.      (      if jon even still counts as a person      —      perhaps martin is the only one left whole and unmonstrous.      )            ‘      a few escaped for now,      though the hunter seems to be following      —      they so enjoy the chase.      but most of them are gone.      the village is empty,      now.      ’

[arcvist]

every week tma comes into my home and kills me where i stand and frankly i am sick of it

[arcvist]

tfw you’re a lonely/weird kid who reads too much and are traumatized by an antediluvian entity at age eight specifically

[ @arcvist ] 

[arcvist]

ok thats enough writing for the week

[arcvist]

@eyesolate​, continued.

eyes closed , martin breathes slow and deep , steady despite the distant howl of outside horrors.   he guesses jon already knows , in that awful reflexive way of knowing , the answer to the question , despite his lacklustre attempts to feign sleep and put the other man’s mid at ease  –  a night , perhaps jon might think , of whatever brief peaceful slumber martin could manage with the world as it is.   just once without his every nightmare – of thick , swathing fog and the cloying smell of rot and smoke , and the feeling of insects beneath his skin squirming and itching – being broadcast straight into jon’s mind like some godawful guilt trip from the universe.

“  well , you’d know if i wasn’t , wouldn’t you.  ”   a slow sigh and martin rolls onto his side ,  offering his response not unkindly into the cool space between their bodies. he can’t see in the darkness if jon is looking at him , can only barely make out the long silhouette of him in the dull flashes of lightning or beholding which make up the skies now ,  still managing to penetrate the otherwise blacked out room.  their going to bed together is more habit than necessity by now , just some semblance of keeping time , keeping routine , keeping each other grounded.

martin’s hand instinctively searches for jon’s , laces his cool slender fingers with his own , warmer from beneath the woollen blanket ,   “  everything ok ?  ”

jon’d hoped martin was peacefully and dreamlessly asleep the same way he hopes that all of their friends in london are safe and that this changed world will be proven a horrible dream in the morning      :      with full brutal knowledge of the foolishness behind it.      hope isn’t kind nowadays.      he’s not prone to the easy denial martin falls into,      cannot imagine the ruins being put back together by any hands,      particularly not the ones who’d caused the destruction in the first place.

the village below is far enough that it had been a chore to walk there,      when walking anywhere was still an option,      but not far enough to elude his everpresent sight.      tonight he’s watched a hunter attacking.      the few remaining people stand their ground but their petty knives and guns are hopeless in the face of such sharp teeth,      gnawing and tearing and gnashing and      —      jon thinks of daisy and wonders if she,      somewhere in london,      is doing the same.      clawing her name into the bones of the city.      it isn’t the first time such destruction has forced its way behind his eyes,      but it’s the first in a long while that this particular comparison has come to him.      enough to make him dislike being alone with his thoughts.

‘      define okay,      ’            he says.      there’s no immediate danger to the two of them      —      in the ruins of their world,      this is what passes for okay,      so he nods in the dark,      hoping the sound of it will suffice if martin cannot see him.      shifts closer in,      nestling his cheek against their joint hands.            ‘      i’m fine,      just      ...      thinking.      watching.      ’            no need to worry martin with what,      exactly,      he has seen.      it isn’t as if they can help those people;      by now,      nobody can.            ‘      i suppose that’s all i’m ever doing nowadays,      isn’t it?      ’

[arcvist]

there has always been an extent to which mike understands him,      a way no one else could      —      sitting in a tree’s changing colors during school breaks and trading books when they simultaneously reached the last pages isn’t altogether different from their present,      sitting on the archives’ roof,      jon with a cigarette in hand and a half-scowl on his face.      mike may have chosen the endless sky in a way jon cannot recall giving himself to the ceaseless watcher,      but they’ve paralleled themselves once again.      he thinks the word monstrous about himself but can’t quite apply it to his friend.      becoming,      at least.      present-tense,      past-tense.

‘      it isn’t fair,      the depth of my looking.      the threat of my looking.      ’            jon can say these things because mike knows jon’s fears.      he’s as honest with mike as he is with himself,      which means more on some days than others.            ‘      even when i look away i am still looking.      how much can you change and get away with it,      before you turn into someone else,      before it’s some kind of murder?      ’            it isn’t a new conversation.      it weighs on jon’s mind just the same.

@ofvast,      sc.      /      portrait of fryderyk in shifting light, richard siken.

[arcvist]

yesterday,      jon’d ventured into the village alone,      leaving martin napping on the couch as he stocked back up on tea.      the shop clerk,      a nice old woman who’s name martin would know but jon only capital-k Knows and that isn’t the same at all,      had asked how’s your husband doing,      and jon had stumbled over his words,      stumbled his way back to the safehouse with a careful longing wrapped tight in his ribcage.

now,      sitting on the safehouse sofa across from martin,      he thinks about that.      thinks of domesticity,      of staying here      :      replacing the moth-eaten curtains with new ones,      filling the cabinets with novelty teacups they’d collect whenever they traveled,      keeping the mismatched kitchen chairs for the charm of it rather than a lack of time to buy new ones.      it’s almost guiltily he thinks of these things      —      back in london,      daisy is still missing,      basira still cleaning up the aftermath,      melanie still adjusting to newfound blindness and so many still dead,      but here it’s quiet.            ‘      the future is an eye i don’t dare look into,      ’            jon says      —      the irony there is hardly lost on him.            ‘      and i know it’s hardly realistic,      but.      i keep finding myself thinking of staying here.      growing old here with you.      ’            jon’s staring into his just-emptied tea mug as he says it,      like a yearning for a future is the most shameful confession he could make,      his voice softened with it.            ‘      it’d be nice.      ’

@eyesolate,      sc.      /      dear no 24601, sophie collins.

[arcvist]

it’s cacophony,      it’s late-august heat and the roar of the air conditioning unit they’d stuck in the small window of the archives to keep the sweat off the documents,      it’s a city’s worth of fear entering his mind at once.      london is so loud it’s near-unbearable.      martin’d been right about leaving scotland,      but sometimes jon wishes they were back      —      quiet safehouse with the curtains drawn,      and he could pretend it was alright,      say his i love you’s and pretend not to hear martin’s insistence that it wasn’t jon’s fault,      the wrecked world.      (      his voice had read the statement.      his body had been the ritual.      every part of him lead to this      :      the day everlasting with no moon or sun in the sky to tell the difference,      just unblinking eyes.      —      his own.      the ones above.      where’s the difference?      )

he’s left martin behind for this,      kissed his forehead and said he’ll be back soon,      left him with basira and georgie and melanie and the relative safety they provide.      supply run,      he’d said.      jon is safe in this world,      respected by monstrous things.      he’s never been a convincing liar but there’s enough trust between them that it doesn’t matter now      —      he says he’ll come back,      so it doesn’t matter where he’s going,      because that will remain true.

he goes to the archives.      supply run can mean a lot of things,      in the end      :      if he’s looking for more tapes,      more statements,      more clues,      it still counts as sustenance on some level.      london’s a nightmare but the archives stands tall and proud and monumental.      in a dead world,      this building is more alive than it ever has been.      within and more alive than he’s ever been,      jon presumes      :      jonah magnus.      (      jon isn’t surprised.      doesn’t have surprise left in him,      he doesn’t think.      )

‘      don’t laugh,      ’            jon says.      exhaustion in his voice      —      he no longer sleeps but he is so tired,      a bone-deep kind of tired.      when he was eight years old and had just seen a boy devoured by the first of many monsters he’d eventually behold,      he’d gone home and slept for nearly two days,      woken only when his grandmother threatened to take him to a walk-in clinic to have his health looked at.      this isn’t normal,      she’d said,      not knowing how right she was.      this feels like that      :      trauma-tired,      exhausted not in body but in memory,      in existence,      in the ceaselessness of it all.            ‘      ruin nests inside each thimbled throat.      i hear them all.      thousands of them.      do you hear them too,      jonah?      ’            or have you condemned me to this alone?

@watcheir​,      sc.      /      seventh circle of earth, ocean vuong.

[arcvist]

poetry starter call!   reply w a number between 1 & 6 and i’ll flip to a random page in the corresponding book and give you a starter based on / incorporating a quote there!

[arcvist]

                  ‘      𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚎𝚍   𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎   —   𝚒𝚝'𝚜  𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎  𝚒  𝚌𝚊𝚗'𝚝  𝚖𝚘𝚟𝚎  𝚘𝚗  ;  𝚊𝚗𝚍  𝚝𝚑𝚎  𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚎  𝚒  𝚜𝚝𝚛𝚞𝚐𝚐𝚕𝚎 ,  𝚝𝚑𝚎  𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚎  𝚒'𝚖  𝚜𝚝𝚞𝚌𝚔.      ’

                                                            promo by @arcvist  .

[arcvist]

some kid jon headcanons

big undiagnosed adhd. jumps between hyperfixations so fast literally no one can keep up. also big undiagnosed anxiety, constantly looks like he’s on the verge of a panic attack, but it’s fine, he’s fine

some of his longer lasting interests: mythology (especially after the mr spider incident, he starts wondering how much of these types of stories is true, but mostly he just enjoys seeing how people justify things they don’t understand in metaphor), paleontology (his favorite dinosaurs, definitively, are ankylosaurids. he likes herbivores with armored shells - thinks there’s something nice about being kind but having a tough exterior, being able to defend yourself), fairy tales (this one he’s quieter about, because it seems childish to him, but he likes reading all the different versions of the same stories and seeing the differences between them)

bullied pretty badly in school — tiny scrawny kid with too-big-for-his-face glasses and a big stack of books in his arms is always a prime target, after all, and as a result he’s slow to trust other kids. he’s always a little bit wary that any kindness is actually a trick and will backfire on him.

gets detention often for the stupidest things — reading books at recess instead of playing with other kids, “talking back” to teachers (he has a lot of strong opinions about subjects they talk about! that’s hardly his fault!), etc.

librarians love him! local kid constantly begging to help shelve books, please, give him things to do. he will end up checking out half of the books he’s tasked to shelve but hey, that works too, right?

in general, he constantly feels like he needs to prove it’s okay for him to be places. he feels like a burden on his grandmother and that carries into every interaction he has: he goes over to a friend’s house and spends most of the time helping their parents with chores, he joins a community theater club in his last few years of high school and always stays an hour extra to help them put away the chairs and props, etc. (insert that quote that’s like “you don’t know how to be loved so you settle for being useful” here)

he doesn’t get as... prickly as he is in canon until he moves away for uni. once again, he thinks he needs to prove he’s allowed to be there, somehow - so he exaggerates his accent to sound more posh, he’s standoffish because nobody here knows he was bullied as a kid and he isn’t going to let that happen to him again

[arcvist]

any last words for your future selves? yes, fire tim.

[arcvist]

that new episode was a LOT im gonna try to write after i get some food

[arcvist]

gertrude is getting little a sideblog as a treat