#I'm falling asleep just typing this

[tardis--dreams]

I'm awfully asocial and i have an awful lot of work to do for university so while this also makes me want to kill myself I at least have a good excuse to not do any group activities people seem to be into here

[invinciblerodent]

Me, waking up at 5 am in a cold sweat: Mystra's human appearance being uncanny perfect and statuesque, but honestly overall unremarkable, shows not only her vanity, but also the immaterial and immature nature of the love Gale had for her. Like a vain and petty goddess with a taste for young wizard boys would, she purposefully and artificially designed her appearance for broadest appeal (conventionally attractive white woman, roughly maybe 30-ish? She literally looks like the post-PS "perfected" version of so many models who work in advertising), and has foregone personality in the process-- which is something with which young Gale was unconcerned, because he was just so enamored with the illusion of perfection that he didn't even seek substance, or anything past that veneer until much later, AND when he did, he got punished for it severely.

Gale first being so enamored with her that he has to conjure her face just to gaze upon it, THEN falling for a character with a more niche, more "human", flawed appeal (such as a stout, hairy, scarred-up lil blue dwarf man with a funny mustache, and a silly lil beard to conceal his weak chin), THEN seeing her AGAIN and not even thinking for a single moment about her beauty is. 👌👌👌

He's standing IN FRONT OF the goddess who once dominated his every thought, and he's just thinking "this conversation is uncomfy, I wish my boyfriend could have come with me :c".

Fkin king shit tbqh

[toasteaa]

Thinking about that cursed sovereign au again...

Nothing super substantial, I don't think. Just Neuvillette getting distracted while trying to find a way to break the curse and finding himself fascinated by the intricacies of human life. How his previous prejudices turn into genuine interest in the way humans interact with the world around them. How they live and grow and work and change in the slightest ways. How their cultures and customs are long lived and influential (as are his own) but each individual human has their own way of going about each daily ritual.

If he's to find a way to break this wretched curse without being caught or his true identity being suspected, then he needs to blend in as well as he possibly can. At least...that's what he told himself. But then he starts asking questions about humans with a little glimmer of interest and curiosity in his eyes. Mimics their rhythms and rituals even if he does not understand them completely. Finds that need to break the curse just a hint less pressing than it had been when he was first forced to take this form.

And of course, there is still that very present and urgent need to return to the sea properly. To be amongst the waves with fins and scales and to hear the water speak to him as it has for the past 500 years - and longer still in terms of his kind. But...now there is another desire inside of him as well. To touch and feel and know this world that he's been thrust into with hands that he'd never believed he would have but...he always secretly desired he did have.

A double edged sword of a curse; robbed of that he has always known - the power that he already had to fight to keep for his kin - and yet it has given him the freedom to walk amongst humans as though he were one of them. See the peace that followed the horrors of war centuries ago. Feel the warmth of the sun on human skin instead of a dragon's scales. The solidness of the earth beneath his feet instead of the security of water that surrounded him on all sides.

...The softness of a human's lips - their soft, even breaths - when he steals a moment to run his thumb over them while they sleep.

A step too far perhaps - one that finds him holed up back in the room that same human had so graciously given him. A step that he has to convince himself was made out of curiosity and only curiosity...and not from these new, human emotions blooming within him. Another reminder that he is not human. That this is not his world. That this curse - this wretched, awful curse - was made to weaken him and force him to submit to that witch of an Archon. He needs to break it. He has to.

Before he completely forgets himself in the longing he's long held for this world.

[zukkaoru]

HI FRIEND!! i feel i should not be seeing you on my dash at this timing 💞 how are you tho

it's fine i just have insomnia and wake up at unreasonable times. anyway i'm doing as well as i can be considering it's almost 5am👍 this is better than last night though i was awake for like four hours in the night

[theragamuffininitiative]

Okay tell me ALL about your fairy tale retelling WIP, I am most curious!!

hi hi hi!

Brief lil disclaimer here: I wrote this story as my nanowrimo project back in erm 2021 and have barely looked at it since. (working on that!) Everything I am about to say is based on my memory of how the story was working at the time and a couple glances at my documents tonight - and if I say something in this post that I like better than what I originally had, I will run with it. XD

Right then!

Tsarevitch Ivan, the Firebird, and the Gray Wolf is a Russian fairytale classified as a 550 on the ATU folklore index (a fact I sprinkle in not to be pretentious but bc I recently discovered the index and it is fascinating). This basically means the story revolves around catching a mystical bird, sometimes a phoenix, and involves a princess, usually a horse, and some supernatural animal helper. In my retelling, I also take from the Grimm Brothers' The Golden Bird version.

As you know, I fell into the intrigue of this tale when visiting an art museum displaying Vasnetsov's A Knight at the Crossroads, which is a reference to this tale. Now, Vasnetsov also painted Tsarevitch Ivan on a Gray Wolf:

And it's just so????!

In my retelling of this fairytale, our hero is a bit of a simple boy. He is content with simple things and a simple life after his near-death at a young age to a mysterious wasting disease spreading across the land - a madness that robs the infected of sleep and appetite until they go insane. The only cure is the fruit of an equally mysterious tree. Ivan fears his healing may have not been complete, for he has not felt the need for sleep or food the way he ought to ever since.

When fruit begins to disappear from the closely protected tree, the threat of losing the cure drives Ivan into action. An enchantment of sleep shields the thief from being captured. Here, Ivan's curse is a boon, as he alone sees a great golden bird steal the fruit. Although a great company set out to capture the bird, Ivan becomes separated from them and lost. At an ancient crossroads that promises death in every direction, he meets the Wolf, the instrument of the crossroads' doom. When the Wolf unexpectedly takes Ivan to find his missing companions, they discover the whole company has fallen to the madness - Ivan's brother among them.

It is no disease, but a curse.

Ivan, now with the Wolf, seeks aid from his best friend, the Princess Evolett, who was to be wed to the prince of the neighboring country and seal a treaty of peace between them. But all is not as it seems in these foreign lands, and Ivan must work with the Wolf to capture the golden bird, protect the fruit tree, rescue Evolett, heal the madness, prevent war between the two kingdoms, and defeat a dark enchantment for good - if the Wolf, the madness, or a multitude of other enemies don't kill him first... [ramble continued below the cut]

I love, love, love playing around with the fairytale motifs in this story.

For example, the original fairytale has a very episodic, repetitive sort of scavenger hunt that Ivan is forced into. I messed with it a lot to give the different elements their own, interconnected importance: the tree is a magical cure, the bird has magical elements of its own, the golden cage from some versions of the tale is a metaphor for the princess's imprisonment, the inns are not merely symbolism for laziness but traps laid by a powerful enemy to serve a dark purpose, and nothing is as it would seem - least of all Ivan or the Wolf.

The characteristics for Ivan specifically came to me while watching Mal in the first season of Netflix's Shadow and Bone.

I really love Mal's stubborn tenacity, fierce loyalty, and simplistic personal goals in the face of all the complexity and conniving of everything around him. Since this fairytale showcases a "simpleton" character, I wanted to show that character at their very best.

Also! I love writing Ivan and the Wolf. Ivan's plucky, irreverent sense of humor set against the Wolf's stoic, utterly dry and cold attitude is so much fun to play with. 👏

(tried to credit the images by link, not sure if that worked)

Excerpt from Ivan meeting the Wolf:

Then the wolf made a guttural, whining sound from the back of its throat, a sound which rolled forward out of its mouth and formed into four distinct words. "Will you kill me?" Ivan stared at it.  Having never met a wolf before, he couldn’t say with absolute authority that they did not speak, but he also thought that if they had, someone might have mentioned it to him once upon a time. This one, however, most assuredly had spoken. He supposed he should have asked it to repeat itself, or even agreed with the sentiment and at once lifted his weapon. Instead, he considered the question posed to him. "I don't think so," he said in the end. "Not unless I have to.”  He didn’t add that this was because he didn’t think he could beat the wolf if he tried. There was something else at work here, as he had feared, and he needed to find out what the game was. In his head, he noted that this creature was not merely a wolf, but the Wolf. The wolf made another noise, and this sounded like a quiet, “Ah, then.” “What will you do if I come down?” Ivan ventured to ask. The Wolf blinked lazily. “I have deprived you of your mount,” it stated. “I have come to take you where you must go.” That didn’t sound promising, although slightly better than admitting it wanted to gobble him up. “Are you fae?” Ivan called to it. He felt he remembered something from his father’s stories that the fae had to answer truthfully the questions you asked them directly. “I am not.” Enchanted or a liar, then. A wolf given the tongue of man. It also seemed to think something like a man, though its tone was distant and cold. “How can I trust you?” he asked it. The Wolf stared at him, not responding, and cocked its head. So maybe not the thinking of a man. Maybe the concept of trust was foreign to it still. He tried something less abstract. “Are you going to attack me?” “That is not my purpose,” said the Wolf. “There is an inn, a long distance from here. You have strayed from the path and it took me some time to find you, but I can lead you there, through ways horse hooves cannot tread, before the Wood grows dark.” “Is leading me to the inn your purpose?” “It is.” “Why?” The Wolf had to think about this, and Ivan thought again that it didn’t seem to be comfortable with questions that involved reasoning beyond cold facts. “The crossroads demand a price from everyone who passes through them. The price is set by your choice and you have chosen. Now I will take you where your path leads.”

Yes, I'll take "uneasy partnerships founded on enmity but sealed in friendship" for $500, thank you.

A messy music playlist I haven't touched since NaNo writing: here It's a story of family, loyalty, honor, and simple truths more powerful than any deep enchantment. 🥺😭

Excited to write Evolett more, she is a spitfire and impressed by no one (even when probably she should be, for her own good lol). Ivan's father was an adventurer in his own day, and I love writing little nods to his offstage capers - there's an invisibility cloak!

Ivan's brother is kind of a jerk. 🙈 But hey, still family. And he's less of a jerk than the guys in the old fairytale ok. 😅 Probably.

Ok, I feel like that's a pretty boring ramble, but I have tried to type this up about five different times so here we are! I have shed tears over Ivan and the Wolf, and lived in the nonsense from the random old woman running the dilapidated inn next to the one that breathes enchantment, and sketched out the borderlines between kingdoms and the unseen shadowy arm reaching across borders to ensnare them all, and written a lot of dog jokes. I love this one, I can't wait to get back into it. 😊

Thank you for asking and letting me ramble! 💛

[halibellecter]

"Alright, think we're ready to head back to base, that's the superweapon and the hostages accounted for... wait, who was getting the medic?"

"That's us. We got her."

"She would've run out of supplies about a week ago, anything you need to patch up before we move out?"

"Nothing we couldn't cover with our IFAKs."

"........at the risk of making my headache worse, what?"

"Well, she was pretty shaken up but no major injuries, so between the standard issue bandages, Washington's spare knee brace, Felix'.... um..... 'special anti monologue pills', and the benadryl I carry as backup in case those don't work..."

".........Locus, you know she's *little*, right, you didn't need to give her that much---"

"She and the hat man are having a nice little chat." [a chuckle into comms, then,] "See you back at base."

[fly-sky-high-09]

Am I allowed to use the word depressed because I don't know how else to explain my mood

[wereshrew-admirer]

you ever blink and realize you wrote a 3K introduction into what was supposed to be a pwp fic in a few hours... at work? woops,

[betty-burnout]

got a cpap prescription finally but i feel like it's about to make my bedtime routine a) strict and b) somewhat alien

[the-insomniac-emporium]

i wanna write. i wanna tippity tappity type the lil keys like clickity clackity but oh mygodddddddddddddd why the fuck am i so sleepyy. i legit feel like I took a dose of my ngiht meds but I know I didn't??//?

[indecisive-dizzy]

somedays when I'm waking up very slowly I get sleep social media scrolling where my brain comes up with Fake Tumblr Posts (or bird app posts).

I woke up with the knowledge of post I'd frankly love to see, but alas,,, it's not real.

[iguessitsjustme]

I need you all to know just how much I love Tinn's parents, but especially his mother. I could write a whole essay about her and why she's amazing

[barkingangelbaby]

dude...

[bcneheaded]

HI HELLO if anyone's wondered where I've been....... its been either work kicking my ass lately OR.... elden ring. JJFJDFSD

[red-moon-at-night]

Es 🤝 Yumemi

Sleepy time gang

[strangedisciple]

man im so sleepy