#earth's long shadow

[glyptolite]

Ed Valigursky's cover for Poul Anderson's Mayday Orbit (b/w Kenneth Bulmer's No Man's World) featuring interesting alien hieroglyphics.

[blu-ish]

Familiar light✨

[son1c]

i got you

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 291

You know what? I’m feelin’ a Prompt with the whole halfa family, all the clones and everything. 

See, Danny? He’s grown up, he’s moved out, started looking at colleges himself after spending a few years travelling and learning about himself without the threat of a ghost attack. 

He’s kept in touch with his friends, both living and dead, and ignores Vlad for the most part now that they’ve reached a truce of sorts, and honestly? He’s just living his life. 

But see, it’s kind of hard to figure out what college to pick, with his admittedly not-great choices. Look, he might have a new-ish ID but he’s still visibly not exactly human (though thankfully doesn’t have to worry about the GIW after a… summer activity that ended with several missing buildings) 

And most people he goes to? Finds him ‘too unsettling’ which excuse him?? How is he unsettling? He’s a twenty-five year old with six kids ranging from one to six! How is that “scary” huh? Ancients, and all this is making him use the cash he’s saved up over time. 

And then- as though all of this isn’t stressful enough and he’s not genuinely worried that he won’t have enough money to feed the kids if he goes to school- a hero nearly trips over Jordan and starts freaking out. He is so fucking done. 

[morninkim]

37 years old but everyone keeps calling her girl

[fanofspooky]

Do you have a favorite Vincent Price movie?

[shrineofshadow]

"waaah everyone's being too negative about the live action sonic" you must be new here. I won't rest until the movieverse is more hated than Shadow the Hedgehog 2005 was when it first came out

[introspectivememories]

can't stop fucking thinking about sun/moon shuggy bc shanks is the sun always and buggy is forever the moon. buggy will never be the sun, he will never shine as brilliantly as shanks or anyone else. and the moon makes no light of it's own!!!! it only shines bc the sun's light reflects off of it!!!! buggy never shines by himself!!! he will never make his own light!!! buggy who is always second best, shining only from the light shanks gives him. even worse, you only ever see half of the moon illuminated at one time!!!! shanks who gives buggy the light he needs to shine but only for certain parts of buggy!!!! never all of him!!!!! buggy never shines fully and he never will bc buggy is the moon, he isn't a star or a comet or a meteor, he's a moon and moons don't shine by themselves. and buggy who devotes himself to shanks bc he wants to shine, by god he wants it so badly he aches somedays, but shanks is the golden child, shining with splendor, and buggy knows when to stop fighting a losing battle. he sticks around for years drawn in by the gravity of shanks' orbit until loguetown, and as his captain's head hits the ground, buggy feels himself splinter into thousands of little meteoroids. he leaves shanks standing in the rain and thinks to himself, i will shine by myself or i will die trying

[tuxedo-floracat]

Gave all my Primal Tundras their respective elemental auras now that we've reached the end of this fest cycle!

[janeyshivers]

i'm sick of modern politics ruining JRR Tolkien's original vision

haha you thought this was gonna be about wokeness or Rings of Power or something didn't you dipshit. actually its about how Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor (2014) has a bizarre hard-on for slavery apologia because it's unacceptable to call out the modern slavery we see in the prison system.

pretty much as soon as you start Shadow of Mordor, it draws a very hard line between the orcs in Mordor (bad, nasty, are using slaves to fuel their war effort) and the Men of Gondor (flawed but heroic, built and maintained the Black Gate with """prison labour"""). the slaves in Mordor must be liberated! most of the missions revolve around this! but the fact that Gondor also uses literal slaves is never brought up, because it's always elided as "prison labour", which is the same thing as slavery, with the crucial difference being that it's just the modern version that's still legal in modern-day prisons. and god forbid we bring any degree of focus to how the protaganist faction of mostly handsome white dudes actually engage in this kind of shit constantly, because that might almost border on social commentary. can't have that!

ok, that's shitty on its face, but i also think it actually misses a great oppurtunity to underscore Tolkien's original stories. don't get me wrong, i'm not trying to argue that the dude was a prison abolitionist or whatever. what i am arguing is that he was writing about Gondor as this kingdom that's slowly slipping into decline, corruption, and ruin because the royal line was broken. do i agree with that? fuck no, obviously not, royalty are parasitic swine and every kingdom on Earth would be better off without them. but if you're writing a modern followup to Tolkien's stuff, the slavery shit actually gives you a real oppurtunity to build on that. with a little tweaking, you could turn the slavery/"""prison labour""" dichotomy into a real illustration of how the slow rot of Gondor going to shit is making space for Sauron's return.

considering a lot of the Outcasts in Mordor who end up enslaved escaped from under Gondor's thumb, you could make a real argument that Gondor's breathtakingly evil policy of using slaves to maintain its defences was not only morally bankrupt by itself, but also delivered a population of defenceless slaves with nowhere to run to right into Sauron's lap. like the underfunding of the Rangers, like the lack of maintenance of alliances with kingdoms like Rohan, Gondor's weak and ineffectual political system under the Stewards is actively accelarating Sauron's return to power. again, i don't agree with making a story about how only the return of the king will fix the kingdom's problems, but if you're making a Tolkien story, that's the wheelhouse you're operating in.

the bones of this reading are in the game, but they're undermined by the game seeming to be utterly reticent to capitalise on it. at no point does a liberated Outcast slave say "hey actually, fuck you Talion, you and the other Rangers were as bad as the Uruk are". they are only ever deferential and grateful. even Dirhael's wife, who thinks Talion is a dick, doesn't go there. the orcs who are like "we're not so different, you and i >:)" only talk about how you like killing orcs, not the fact that you BOTH KEPT THE SAME FUCKING PEOPLE AS SLAVES. like it feels very deliberate that they don't go into this at all, like the devs are hoping you won't notice. this is ACTUAL "modern politics interfering with the story and themes of the game", far, far moreso than any like, black elf or woman with a big sword or whatever the fuck they've ever put in a Tolkien adaptation. the writers were too scared to commit to an idea that would have jived incredibly well with the themes of the story they were spinning off from, because it's a taboo to point out that the way prisons treat people in modern society is absolutely monstrous. genuinely craven shit.

[linnaealyn]

They're just shooting stars, little one.

[zlobonessa]

hm. i feel like I'm not unhinged enough for the past few days. here's my old-but-reworked omegaverse headcanon tier list.

[cuubism]

Whenever you post another Hope/Morpheus fic snippet my brain does this:

that's kind of what they are doing to my brain right now too 😂 i need them to get out of my house

(it's based on this post i made ages ago btw, that's what this fic was birthed from. it wasn't supposed to get this long XD)

I'm so glad you're looking forward to it, that makes me happy :)

here's a snippet. 1789 meeting. tw violence

--

Morpheus was hardly shocked when the goons stepped forward, though Hope looked between them in surprise, as if he had truly expected he might be able to negotiate his way out of this. And argument or not, Morpheus was not going to let these men step near him. He stood, which effectively drew both men’s gazes to him, discreetly picking up cutlery as he went. Morpheus had had plenty of occasions in life to need to know how to fight, and he was lightly built in comparison to lots of other men so he’d learnt to fight fast and dirty. He went for the man closer to Hope first, catching him about the wrist as he swung his blade, twisting so it dropped from his grasp and landing a hard jab of the heel of his hand into the man’s solar plexus. The man dropped to the floor, and Morpheus spun for the other, just missing the slash of a blade at his shoulder. He ducked under the blow and brought up the fork he’d grabbed from the table, spearing it right into the man’s eye, ignoring the spray of blood and the scream. He was calm, felt nothing about it other than the need to stay between Hope and these men who would do him harm, though perhaps he should have felt more, fear or regret for the violence. But he didn’t. Having downed both of the lady’s goons, Morpheus turned again—only to find the lady herself holding a knife to his throat. He expected to have to shove her off and possibly get his throat cut in the process—not that it would be permanent—when Hope stood and slipped between them, quiet as a flicker of light, and touched two fingers to the lady’s bare sternum. She gasped as if he’d plunged a blade into her chest instead, and stumbled back, eyes wide, dropping her knife with a clatter. She looked utterly dazed, far off, and as Morpheus watched, tears fell from her eyes, one after the other, and she clutched her chest. And then fled. Morpheus watched her leave with curiosity. Somehow, he hadn’t expected Hope to have any defensive abilities—he was always rather the type to negotiate with a burglar that they should be making better life choices—but in retrospect it was obvious that an Endless would be able to defend himself, even if he didn’t often use it. When Morpheus looked over at him—he was really standing quite close, which Morpheus tried not to think about—Hope was openly gaping at him. “You— you stabbed him in the eye.” Morpheus raised an eyebrow. “And?” “With a fork.” “Yes, I thought pulling a proper knife might be more conspicuous.” Morpheus couldn’t tell if the man was dead. He was certainly down. It didn’t really matter. “Vicious.” Hope looked at the fallen bodies. “Fates. What a turn for drinks to take.” “I suppose you hoped for better,” Morpheus said, and Hope grinned at him. “Always do.”

[extravalgant]

(leans in your askbox like someone leaning around the corner)

Excuse me but did I hear correctly that uhm... .. . . you wrote something about Duncan? Duncan GruncanWuncan? And that you might post that? (holds out both of my palms like a starving child) Could you perhaps.. . . .. maybe spare me a glance? Just a silly willy little peak? Bit of aaaaaa preview?

(nah I'm just playing you don't got to if you don't want to LMAAAOOOOO but if you ever do post that thing about Duncan I would LOVE to consume that 👀 because I love Duncan and I love other people's writing a normal healthy amount)

ITS ALRIGHT BAHAHA I WAS GOING TO POST IT EVENTUALLY!!! nothing too long or big since it was just a couple musings i did about the necromancers in game when i was on my break at work >_^

i have written about him here and a bit here if u do wanna see more heehee hoohoo

since its so short i can share it right here and right now but some parts of the responses (particularly morganthes) might be wrong or i misremembered something just on the basis that i was too lazy to go back and double check LOL

necromancers always have something to prove

malistaire drake, who sets out to prove that the dead can return — that love would conquer all, that he could make deities older than him, older than the current spiral, bend to his whims and wishes. 

morganthe, who sets out to prove that she can master astral magic, that if she can't, then she'll force it to. to prove to merle ambrose that she's still the capable young wizard that was proud of her, once upon a time. that she didn't deserve to be casted out by her peers and stripped of the magic she loved so dearly. that she could spin a better spiral, weave a better world. 

duncan grimwater, who sets out to prove that he is useful. that it's not just the wizard (now savior of the spiral, now arcanum scholar, now arcanum liaison) who has the potential to take their magic to new, greater heights. that he is loyal, that everyone deserves second chances – that he wants someone, anyone, to look at him and see the potential for something more brimming underneath. that he is worth all the effort.

malorn ashthorn, who sets out to prove that if there is no one else to turn to, then he is there. to prove that his stay at the end of the path, where the old death school used to be, was purposeful. to guide and shepherd new and fresh novices, to become the gentle hand that nurtures the knowledge of death and the way it is taught. to stay as a constant, in everyone’s life.

and you... what were you trying to prove? it seems that everywhere you turned, someone was always doubting your intentions. shadow and necromancy were two sides of the same coin, parallels in the way they demonstrated their magic. shadow took and took and took, and all necromancy wants is for you to feel safe, to feel secure. even if it means taking it from something else.

[basslinegrave]

thinking about the sonic 2 premiere i went to alone, at like 3pm (it was def early afternoon but not sure when) with just like 5 other people in the room (moms with kids) and how everyone left before the credits ended and i was sitting there Gripping the fuck out of the seat in front of me after the whole movie and then seeing post creds shadow i yelled (quietly) (sorry to the staff guy coming in to clean) it was the best movie experience ive ever had cant believe its been almost 2 years now

also the very next day i went to see it again with a friend to show him what the fuck i just saw and also make sure what i saw was actually real and not a daydream

[astranauticus]

thinking again about the time i said set me free by floruitshow is very 0x51 bc like theres definitely an orv animatic idea in there somewhere but i feel like translating that song to english already took a year off my lifespan