#...that got away from me a bit maybe

[windwardrose]

you're so right about how much the child annoyance comes out in dune!! At a certain point it became frustrating how firmly he avoided in any way having his children characters act like children, or even slightly childish. crazy

Look, weird kids are my vocation, my job, and my delight. I am a Weird Kid in all but age still. We were absolutely robbed of what there could have been with Alia and I will die on this hill

-

Alia's born and she stares too much. She watches people come and go and always knows where to look for things in the room. she has night terrors that leave her blinking her strange eyes into the dimness long after her tears have ceased. A little older and she has dreams that Jessica shares and sometimes Paul too, of blue water and endless flames, of planets she's never seen, of the sands parting for a worm, the skies filling with warships that haven't been seen for thousands of years.

Alia babbles in tones that belong to no language her Fremen nurse has ever heard, and reaches out her arms for the Reverend Mother to put herself skin to skin, calming that way and finding solace in Jessica's arms with the same heartbeat echoing in her ears that she has always remembered the rhythm of, since the first days when the light and the pictures came to her. when she pulls to stagger upright on Jessica's skirts she screams and cries at the indignity of unsteadiness and falling, when she fumbles her toys with fat soft baby fingers she frowns and tries again, and again, trying to get her body to understand what her memories somehow already tell her.

she loves auntie Chani, whose eyes are as blue as hers, as blue as the blazing sky and the water that she has never seen but still knows. she loves Brother, and when she can walk she finds him in the corridors on quiet days, and clings to his back and whispers lisan al gaib into his ears, and laughs and pulls his hair when he startles at her words. he holds meetings with the fedaykin with her on his hip sometimes. she watches the sketches of battlefield plans unfold with a thumb in her mouth, and points; sometimes this means Paul needs to rethink a stratagem, and sometimes it means Alia wants to see the rock he's using for a token, and rub it between her fingers and lick it so that it shines in the lamplight.

when little Leto is born Alia watches him for hours and hours, with wide sad eyes unblinking. she never wants to leave him alone. she never wants auntie Chani to leave him either, because he's in danger, she knows that he is. (if you ask her she can't remember why. something about men in bright armor.)

her pictures are far too complex for a child her age and she'll lay there on her stomach drawing for hours, re-sketching lines with her tongue at the side of her mouth, hand in a fist around her chunk of charcoal, shrieking if anyone tries to make her leave. she always wants more than she can do. heavier things to pick up, bigger projects than she can take on. she cries with shame when she fails or has to go to bed in the evening, and smacks her head in frustration when she can't get the words out, or falls back on languages that not even brother understands.

Jessica holds her when she's in a tantrum, and rocks her, and they talk without words, the two of them; and they walk together in those memories and dreams of so many generations, then, mother and daughter, till Alia sleeps and wakes again and scurries off to go help catch mice in the storerooms with the other children.

(the other children don't know what to do with her. she always tells such strange interminable stories with names they don't know, when she plays with dolls or pretends with them. she gets upset if you tell her she can't do something. she gets upset if she tries, because she says she can, and then she falls or forgets a step and gets angry. never at the others. always at herself.)

she knows how to use a knife, just like any child of the desert. when she needs one, in the end, tear-stained and silent in the shadow of her enemy, she has one to hand.

and when brother takes flight with his army into the great unknown of space, she recognizes the sight from somewhere behind her eyes, and sits cross-legged on the sandy ground till the dots of his ships are gone.

she is Saint Alia of the Knife and she is four years old and she holds a thousand years of memories, a hundred hundred stories within her, and she knows this is somehow still only the beginning.

(but for now, she wants her mother's arms around her, and the Arrakis sunrise above the ridgeline in the morning when she awakens.)

[minticecodes]

uhh i got carried away. @put-me-out-of-my-destiny ty for the request, it was (too) fun.

[ID: Image one: Illustration of fem V in Eva's outfit, a black longsleeve gown with slits up the legs and shouders, high heels, and red shawl bunched across her arms. Her tattooed legs are visible through the gown slits. She stands on a ruined battlefield, book open in one hand and cane used in the other. Her expression is serious as she reads from her book. At her back is a translucent Eva, face turned away with hair and clothes billowing in the wind, as she reads from her spellbook.

Image two: Greyscale portrait of fem Vergil in Eva's outfit. She has a slicked back mullet and dark eyebags, and gazes aside seriously, hand at her chest. There is a hint of cleavage. Image three: The same portrait of Vergil, now with red accents (and less eyebags). She holds a rose close. It's bright red and alive, despite the seemingly wilting edges; the thorns send blood dripping down her fingers. Her lips are red; the lipstick's been smudged. End ID]

(a couple outfit alts under the cut (and white hair V)

[ID: The illustration of fem V, with white hair instead of black. End ID]

[ID: Illustration of fem V, sans Eva, and wearing the shawl the same way Eva does; draped over her shoulders and arms, with the ends coming down just past her knees. End ID]

[ID: Illustration of fem V with white hair and no shawl. End ID]

[my-rose-tinted-glasses]

From now on, wherever I am, that's your home.

Blue Canvas of Youthful Days Episode 8

[steeltwigz]

marshbow nation this ones for you!

[jojo-schmo]

Gently kisses you like you’re my greatest treasure, my most precious partner

bonus for top right doodle:

[vultursvolans]

˚˖𓍢ִ໋🦢˚ 𝓻𝔂𝓾𝓱𝓪𝓲𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓶

there was an ache in my heart when i awoke in a strange, beautiful world that wasn’t my own. even as months turned to years, i still missed the familiar skies, the voice of loved ones and the home i had left behind. i wrote letters that went nowhere and whispered silent prayers that reached no one. it was like i was plucked from my own reality and placed in a world where i didn’t quite belong.

yet, as much as i longed for home, i was determined to learn in this new life. sumeru became my sanctuary and the akademiya, my solace. i learned their languages, customs, and secrets while sharing stories of the stars, landmarks, and beauty of my own world. the scholars listened, fascinated by the similarities and differences, but none more than al-haitham—a student assigned to guide me through this foreign land. he was a quiet presence. thoughtful and curious. he did not pity me.

and over time, he went from guide to peer to something more. over time, i wasn’t just seeking knowledge but also him. but what was the point? what was the point of falling for him if one day, i could just disappear—vanish back to my world, leaving him and teyvat behind? this could slip away at any moment. this might be as fleeting as a dream.

despite all reason, i still found myself loving him deeply. in a world that wasn’t my own, he had become my home.

𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐬: very slow burn, mutual pining, friends to lovers

𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐔𝐒: 22.10.22 | playlist | genshinverse ryu | home for christmas (fic) | moodboards

𝐀𝐑𝐓: silk & moonlight | modern au | akademiya days | season of love | minecraft |

[sickosdotjpg]

honestly think one of the hottest things a person can do is sneeze into the cowl/collar of a turtleneck sweater or similar

[bowsbar]

thoughts on finale: entirely serviceable if not eyeroll inducing at some parts and hair-pullingly obtuse at others. i dont like box existing but 1. everyone saw it coming from a mile away and 2. for a show with intentions (in the later stages of its production and writing) to tie up all loose ends and explain everything logically it would make no sense to Not explain box in some capacity and the explanation they did give works fine. i have no issues with box as a character shes cute i liked her interactions with suitcase oomf is obsessed with sinjin drowning it all works out.. buttt it is that second bullet that wears at me like chronic back pain in a more general sense relating to ii. ive talked about it before, its the evolution of ideals with where the writers want to take the show. i feel like ii works best either when its Being goofy (early ii2 is peak) or when its taking itself extremely seriously (ii14 was good), but they try to mesh those two extremes into one being and it does not work whatsoever. you can watch the slider go from one extreme to the other going from season 1 to ii2 finale. Theres really no cure to this, the conditions they evidently worked under of We must make it serious and We cannot retcon past episodes created what we got and While there is so much i can nitpick and a lot of things i dislike about it, when looking at it as a whole i think the final product is.. serviceable. ii's writing is a victim of circumstance, with the circumstance being A passion project stretched across more than a decade of production that (keyly) started when the creators were children. i just wish something ive spent so many hours thinking about and talking about and bonding with others over and creating fanart for had a more solid foundation. i appreciate what it is while simultaneously mourning what couldntve been. i hope that makes sense

[batsplat]

It's a thing I already knew but all your beautiful analysis really made obvious (to me) how much of a grudge holder vale is. That man is never letting it go he's gonna hold his grudges into his grave

you know, I do think this is an interesting issue, because I'm not sure this is true of all his grudges. just sticking here with the grudges he accumulated in his capacity as a competitor, rather than just his general approach to life or whatever... how you judge this will kinda depend on how you feel about the 'reconciliation' he's experienced with some of his rivals - and whether you read the whole thing as sincere or not. now, personally I reckon he still dislikes biaggi, but also you are allowed to just dislike people so I'll give him a pass for that. some of the others, I'm a little more convinced by the whole reconciliation schtick

let's get valentino's take:

interesting that he mentions those three together, isn't it? and like, he's still not messaging biaggi or inviting him to his home - "even with max" kind of tells you all you need to know - but the other two? they said some proper nasty things to each other over the years!! I mean, the casey rivalry, there's some remarks from both sides where quite frankly I think I would struggle just a touch to get over it

I don't know, obviously this could all be pr stuff, but I kind of feel like... y'know, why bother? it's 2022, you're retired, who gives a fuck? sure it's a good look to be all magnanimous, sure it can be a bit of a way of twisting in the knife to the guys left in the cold, but also, who would care if you don't play nice? I think especially with jorge, you surely don't need to do all that, inviting him to your home and dancing with him... (which, again, some of the spats those two had...) and with the casey rivalry, if there's one guy who's still hung up about what happened between the pair of them, it's obviously casey (speaking of blokes who can hold a grudge). maybe this is giving valentino too much credit, but personally I buy it's more or less sincere. there's nothing to really indicate he's still particularly bothered by any of their past disagreements - he's basically going for the 'all's fair in love and motorcycle racing' approach. he knows he was an asshole, he accepts they were assholes too, whatever, that's how these things work. he's generally a fan of drama in rivalries, unsurprisingly, and he was happy enough to contribute his fair share - but he does see it as fundamentally being part of the game

to point out the obvious, check out who he's left out: sete and marc. that's where he can't let go of the grudges... because it's not about the offence itself as much as it is about the betrayal. this is the thing with valentino, right, it's about what kind of bond you had with him. if you weren't his friend in the first place and then piss him off as a rival then, y'know, whatever. obviously he's going to be vicious in trying to get back at you, but also he's really not going to waste his time feeling too aggrieved by it. I mean, think about how all the bullshit between him and casey dropped off sharply post-2012... from valentino's end anyway. think about how jorge and valentino pretty quickly got on again whenever they weren't fighting for supremacy within yamaha. they weren't friends in the first place, then they were enemies for competitive reasons for a while there, then it's over and valentino is basically happy enough to call it bygones

but... if it's a certain kind of bond you had with him and then you wrong him... that little mental list of all his past grievances, all your past transgressions, that's where it comes in. that's where he ices you out. denies you any emotional warmth. ensures that any interaction going forward is conducted entirely on his terms. where even any public 'reconciliation' won't truly be sincere.... or, certainly he's not going to forget what happened. if something else happens... it's like you've always got the potential of triggering this lingering resentment, in a way, where all that past stuff is still primed and ready to be called upon. he certainly doesn't just let it go

or, as he puts it in his autobiography:

Biaggi and I never talk to each other. I mean, we've never had a real conversation, anything that's lasted more than the requisite time to insult each other or put each other down, in the nastiest way possible. In any case, I don't hate him. It's true, we've never been friends, but hatred is something different, and that's too serious a word to describe our relationship. Far too serious. No, we have a reciprocal antipathy. No doubt this is a result of what we do for a living and the fact that we both want to win every single time. And perhaps it's also a function of the fact that we have very different personalities and very different ways of seeing things. Still, I don't think this means we hate each other, as some journalists have written. I think I could feel hatred for someone, but only for someone far worse than anything Biaggi has done. For example, if I were betrayed by a friend, then, yes, I could hate him. But Biaggi will never betray my friendship for the simple reason that we are not, and never have been, friends. Our relationship is very clear: we compete on the track - outside the track, each goes his own way. You could say we detest each other cordially.

... I mean. he said it, not me. and given this book was first published in '05... biaggi can't betray his friendship because they were never friends... I'm not saying he's thinking about sete, but it has to at least be a possibility, right? he's talking about one rivalry here and refusing to even mention the other... and the one he's refusing to mention is the one where he was friends with the other bloke. I don't know, maybe that's reading too much into it! and anyway, even if this passage wasn't really about sete, it's obviously still revealing. "detest each other cordially" is essentially what he was doing with casey and jorge (or from his point of view in any case, not entirely sure they'd agree with that). the grudge comes when he feels let down by you... and then, yes, he'll never let it go

of course, he's willing to set aside his grievances for a while if there's sufficient motivation for him to do so. in 2009, when he had so definitively won that rivalry with sete, why bother kicking up a fuss? in 2016, quite frankly it was just too much, and it was getting to the point where it was obviously hurting him too. on the one hand there was the media furore that had been going on non-stop since sepang, on the other hand it was also hurting his own approach to racing. there's reports from the time how visibly aggrieved he still was in the first few races of the season, and it took until they got back to europe for him to... y'know, have fun again. it's not sustainable to be walking around with a constant dark cloud over your head and broadcasting burning resentment towards your two main rivals. certainly not for someone like valentino - he needs to be having fun! the slight rapprochement needed to happen, in a way, because otherwise those years would have been even worse for everyone involved. but that doesn't actually translate to forgetting any of those grudges. this is about convenience more than anything else

goes to show, really... most of the time he doesn't take these things personally. I talked about it a bit in this post, how maybe it's also something that changed over time for him: the question of whether he was willing to develop these kinds of bonds in the first place with competitors... because he does possess a certain level of self-awareness in terms of what these kinds of rivalries are like and what they do to interpersonal relationships. ideally, you don't want to be hurt by a friend like that, right? better not to have that kind of emotional attachment with your competitors in the first place. how unfortunate it'd be if all those years after sete the circumstances aligned for him to see a competitor as something like a friend again... because, after all, those are the only people who could betray him. those are the only people where he thinks he could truly hate them

[thegreatyin]

honestly part of the reason i've been really looking forward to finally playing light fingers (aside from the obvious horrors and whatnot) is because it, alongside bag a legend, contains a Choice™ i to this day am Extremely Torn About Making. like i've known for ages that the Choice™ exists in this ambition and STILL i am undecided about it. this Choice™ is of course. well. let's just say that by the time this ambition ends, caeru may not be the only catboy around town

[zoomimal]

In your opinion what are the most important areas F1 needs to work on to be more inclusive to omega drivers? ~ Luci

Ah a very serious matter, and one I am passionate about.

First off, I believe stewards and FiA officials should receive training in reading omega body language and how to properly accommodate non-disruptive behaviors. Currently the only training they receive of this sort is for conflict de-escalation between alphas (and the fact that alpha ‘accommodations’ are focused almost solely on their potential for aggression is a whole other rant I could go on but will not here). Better awareness of omega non-verbal cues is badly needed, and we got yet another clear demonstration of this after quali in Jeddah. As you yourself said, it was incredibly distressing to witness Charles being dragged away from Max like that, and all for what? To make sure the schedule was adhered to? To keep up the laughable facade that Max and Charles aren’t bonded just because they haven’t spelled it out on instagram yet? Charles was clearly so upset by it, and Max was visibly distressed about it too! Yet the official seemed to have no concept at all of what he was doing beyond ‘come on silly omega, you’re holding things up and need to be elsewhere’.

This actually brings me to my next point - the blanket ban on publicly visible scenting in the paddock is atrocious, explicitly anti-omega, and should be done away with.

As we all know, scenting, especially casual light scenting, is such an integral part of omega social interaction, hormonal/instinct regulation, and emotional well-being. (It is of course important for alphas too, but again, that’s another discussion). Using this latest incident with Charles as an example again, both he and his bonded mate had just performed incredibly well in front of thousands of people, of *course* he would be keyed up and his instincts would be screaming at him to reenforce their bond after that. Just a light scenting to calm his instincts and Charles would have been settled and ready to move on to the next thing, but because of the ban he couldn’t do that and instead had to resort to more extended proximity and eye-contact to settle himself enough to comfortably leave Max’s side (which then of course also got interrupted because anti-omega bias is systemic in F1 just like it is in many other settings)

Yes I do acknowledge that there have been instances in the past of scenting being arguably taken too far for a professional setting, but anything that crossed the line could be covered just fine under the injunctions against disruptive behaviors. Even in countries with strict ‘decency laws’ the FiA could, if they cared to, easily provide a space for omega drivers to step aside for a moment to quickly and discreetly scent with a mate or pack member as needed. (And before the ‘Alpha Rights’ crowd starts whingeing about this being somehow unfair - yes of course this should be available for alphas to use as well if they want to!)

I have even more thoughts (like how the restrictions on nesting in drivers rooms in the name of ‘professionalism and preventing unfair advantage’ are both infuriating and archaic), but this answer is already fairly long so I’ll leave it off here for now.

( @charles-leclerc-official I finally finished answering your ask! XD)

[icewindandboringhorror]

Recent-ish things ~

[daz4i]

grumbling grumpily bc i unfortunately have to admit that i am indeed getting better >:( like i actually feel excitement again for example. smh. i look forward to going out and being with people??? i am way more agreeable to trying new things and i let myself approach them with an open mind so i often end up enjoying them??? this isn't me this isn't my heart .

[themagistersbirthright]

we r cunting it up in here to a severe degree

[arielluva]

the epic highs and lows of starting to get obsessed with something; giddy enjoyment and bliss followed by frustration that you can't stop thinking about it and feeling ill about it but also not really? all feelings ive experienced in the past like. not even 2 days. release me

[leofrith]

hello leovor community. 🧍🏻‍♀️