#from beyond the sky

[weepingtalecowboy]

Fanfic prompt:

Four knows a lot about illegal and forbidden warfare

About how to get information in a very disturbing and cruel manner

And more

Because Vio was taught by the same kid who burned down almost all of Hyrule

There is no way Shadow or Vaati respect Warfare

They probably use it as a to-do list

And Vio was dragged along and given hands on experience how to torture people

And four sometimes forgets that it isn’t fine to put salt on the fields of his enemies thereby ruining food production for generations

Or that getting tied to a stake and getting threatened with death by public execution

And dark magic like necromancy and stealing people’s life souls

Is considered a war crime

Warriors who fought in an unhonorable war against evil is genuinely disturbed by four's knowledge of their tactics

And how four sometimes accidentally thinks the same way or similarly to a monster or dark mage

Wind considers himself a master criminal but the second four opens his mouth

He has to tune him out for his own sake

And remaining innocents (he literally can’t even comprehend most things four implies because he still is a kid)

Four has done things

You don’t know how to torture people with such success if you haven’t done it yourself

That little man has skeletons in his closet

[notbecauseofvictories]

This is going to sound negative, but I think Snuff deserves to be the last Discworld book. I mean, Raising Steam is good in certain ways, a fond elegy to the characters and plots a reader has come to know so well. I don't even object to the visceral pleasure of the earlier novels giving way to something diffuse, harder to pin down. (Unseen Academicals felt like this---a wonderful novel, but not actually a victory; just a plot that rearranged matters in an interesting way.) But there's a sort of...ill magic setting in, by the time you get to the scene where Vetinari gives medals to our wonderful shining heroes of the railway.

Namely, they're too good at this.

Vimes uses the Summoning Dark multiple times, and without even the terrified self-doubt he was showing in Snuff. (I have other issues with Snuff, but that was an interesting thread to pull.) Vetinari not-too-discretely points the Black Clerks at a problem, and it is solved; when necessary, he goes undercover working on something he personally considers vaguely distasteful, and yet becomes the center of a folk song. Moist neither sleeps, nor eats nor makes love to his wife (except sometimes, too rarely in his opinion) but rushes all over doing the railways' job for---what? for why?

They're too good, they've climbed too high; Vimes and Vetinari are edging into myth while still being alive, and Moist was already half of a song anyway, has been since he put on the golden suit.

I'm not saying it's not an interesting setup, because strangely it is. But it feels like the start of something, not closure at all, because what else is Discworld good for if not to tackle the fact that everything glowy and laden with awe will not remain such. Because, you know, that's how the world works.

[rogloptimist]

LAKE MISSOULA x JONAS VINGEGAARD

credits under cut!

lake missoula - richy mitch and the coal miners // jonas vingegaard - team presentation, tour de france 2024 // jonas vingegaard, tadej pogacar, and remco evenepoel - podium ceremony, tour de france 2024 (belga images) // tadej pogacar and jonas vingegaard - tour de france 2024 // wayward son - rainbow rowell // jonas vingegaard - stage 21, tour de france 2024 // it's down to legs - caley fretz // jonas vingegaard - stage 20, tour de france 2024 // jonas vingegaard - tour de france 2024 // jonas vingegaard - stage 11, tour de france 2024 // a poem on hope - wendell berry // jonas vingegaard and remco evenepoel - stage 19, tour de france 2024 // quora user shulamit widawsky // jonas vingegaard - stage 21, tour de france 2024 (getty images) // jonas vingegaard - stage 21, tour de france 2024 post-race interview (flobikes) // 'now the fight is over': jonas vingegaard concedes tour de france battle for yellow, but still aims for second - adam becket // jonas vingegaard - stage 19, tour de france 2024 post-race interview (flobikes) // video: jonas vingegaard and matteo jorgenson consoled after heart-breaking end to stage 19 of 2024 tour de france for team visma | lease a bike - kieran wood // jonas vingegaard - tour de france 2024 // jonas vingegaard - tour de france 2024 // 'probably the hardest moment of my career'-- jonas vingegaard on his crash and fight to be ready for the tour de france - stephen farrand // jonas vingegaard's tour de france was a venn diagram - iain treloar // rise up and salute the sun: the writings of suzy kassem - suzy kassem // jonas vingegaard - tour de france 2023 // jonas vingegaard - stage 21, tour de france 2024 // jonas vingegaard - stage 11, tour de france 2024 // vingegaard exhausted after tour de france: may cut season short - sjoerd valkering // jonas vingegaard and tadej pogacar - stage 20, tour de france 2024 (belga images) // the thing is - ellen bass // "if you had told me four months ago that i would be second, i wouldn't have believed you" - jonas vingegaard disappointed but proud of his tour de france - ondrej zhasil // jonas vingegaard and tadej pogacar - stage 11, tour de france 2024 // jonas vingegaard - stage 11, tour de france 2024 post-race interview (nbc sports) // alfred lord tennyson // jonas vingegaard and tadej pogacar - stage 11, tour de france 2024 // remco evenepoel and jonas vingegaard - stage 21, tour de france 2024 // jonas vingegaard and tadej pogacar - tour de france 2024 // matteo jorgenson and jonas vingegaard - stage 19, tour de france 2024 // matteo jorgenson and jonas vingegaard - tour de france 2024 // jonas vingegaard and tadej pogacar - podium ceremony, tour de france 2024 // jonas vingegaard and wout van aert - tour de france 2024 (team visma | lease a bike)

[artashipatrick]

I think they are so deep in each others emotional and professional lives, it’s inevitable that they sort of feel like mirrors of each other. They’re also drawn to each other because they recognize that the other has in his game and in his life what the other is missing, and vice versa. So I think when you meet somebody like that, you’re inevitably drawn to them because you recognize there’s something that makes them different from you in a sort of exact way. (Justin Kuritzkes)

“You are attracted to the thing that you kind of want to be, but you don’t think you can. So you almost want to consume them, to be them.” (Mike Faist)

[pixlerelish]

🤍 Raees moodboard for @misha-69innit 🤍

[chillinglikeashilling]

In Defense of Wizard Steel

I may be under reacting because I can't think of an extremely terrible immediate result off hand from getting someone- not even specifically a Witch by the wording- to sing where a magical artifact might capture the sound.

The geas and the mind wipe are much more concerning, but I would be more concerned if Suvi was more concerned. Suvi knows a lot more about the laws and rules of magic than we the audience do, and Aabria often turns to Brennan as the source of those laws and rules to confirm Suvi's knowledge.

Not only did Steel give Suvi the option to back out of the whole thing in narrative, Brennan gave Aabria a chance to resist the mind wipe mechanically. Both the PC and the player declined (for different reasons of course but still).

I don't think it's going to be inconsequential at all! I just don't think it's going to blow up the way we might expect, if only because we know how Wizards operate. Wizards are slow to move in a way that most Witches and Spirits are not. It's the exact reason Ame ended up fleeing the Citadel right? Wizards are slow to get going so if anything I think the successful completion of this mission (should it happen) would come back to bite them in an arc or two.

And besides that Brennan is already toying with our ideas of what we (and the Witches) expect from Wizards and vice versa. Part of Ame's panic is that she expected Steel to bar Suvi from coming but it was a Witch that refused Suvi.

Also addressing Steel's actions and thoughts directly here:

Steel was told by Ame and Suvi that the Witches are going to destroy Ame

She was also informed that when the Witches reached out to Ame, they did so in a manner that either broke through or avoided the Citadel's defenses

Steel is also aware of the danger of Witches in a way that other Wizards are not even though that's still very limited

And lastly Suvi is important not only to Steel but to the Citadel. I don't think she's worth burning over what seems like a very hastily put together plot.

So, at this time, it seems like Steel and the Citadel are reacting to the information they have been given and are responding in proportion. Whatever the artifact does or the aim of this mission I don't think it's meant to be any active danger to the people at the Castle so much as a fact finding mission, and I don't think it would be anything that the Witches might kill or even hurt Suvi over if it was discovered.

The Citadel is already dealing with a war, it does not make sense from what we know to antagonize an enemy that they don't know anything about (yet). It definitely does not make sense to endanger the Apprentice Archmage, or the only Witch fron this coven they have access to, to do so.

[cosmic-ships]

New pinned post!

{Current fixation: Anakin*}

Hey there welcome to my self-ship blog! My name is Kaden or sometimes I go by cosmic. (They/Them) I'm an adult from Canada! :D

Here I will spread the love and admiration for my f/o. I am very uncomfortable with sharing my f/o, blocking is preferred if we share.

{Carrd} {byf//dni} {About me} {Tags}

If you are a general/fandom blog you can follow me if you're respectful and don't gush to me about my f/o- You can ask questions about my ships with them but please don't gush about them to me, I will block if that's the case. Show me respect and I'll show you respect.

Pr*shippers // Neutral DNI.

*- Note: My ship with Anakin is in a completely different universe than Kylo! // colour banners made by @/cafekitsune

[fareehaandspaniards]

Gremia as a core concept (of all things)

So, I've been seeing mentions for a long time that the name Gremia can be found quite often in cut content. We have: Altar of Gremia

as well as Tomb of Gremia and Chapel of Gremia. As well as Gremia's Blood Hunter Set.

Let me just put a link on the website - Here

Also, the Madman's set was called the Gremia Set. As was Forgotten Madman, which has internal name Madman of Gremia.

So where do we stand with this? Gremia in the early concepts of the game was either a land or a Great One, or maybe both. But that it was the Great One is confirmed by the Tomb and Chapel locations. Gremia existed in the lore of the game before Oedon took its place.

Based on the fact that Gremia's altar is a female, I can also assume that the deity it was associated with was female?

Bonus justification for this is the roots of the name Gremia. As @fantomette22 pointed out, the name Gremia is most likely a variation of “Jeremiah”, which is a strong reference to King Jeremiah from DS3, which in turn is a reference to Old Monk from Demon's Souls, which in turn is a reference to LOVECRAFT. Uh-huh. “The King in Yellow.”

Jeremiah is a prophet, his name literally translates as “the Lord will exalt” or “the Exalted One” (And also “may the Lord exalt”, “the height of God”). But he is also a “weeping prophet” and also “Blessed Theodoret even calls him ‘the mother of Jerusalem’ for his truly maternal love,” suggesting that the Great One who bore the name Jeremiah (Gremiah) may well have been female.

Where is our wonderful, popular and universally loved NPC located? In the Chalice of Izs, on the call for Ebrietas! And you can also find Ebrietas in Yharnam by going up through the Chapel of Oedon (Gremia). There feels a kind of connection, as if one comes from the other. It really does feel like that!!!

Also what do we know about Ebrietas? She is a mourner. And when a player finds her, she is crying over something outwardly resembling Rom (but with a couple of differences). And the prophet Jeremiah comes to mind again, weeping and mourning. Perhaps the Great One Gremia looked the same way Rom looks, for Gremia is “exalted” like Rom.

There is a parallell between Gremia and Ebrietas, and since Gremia may be a female deity, we can assume that Gremia is the mother (/father??? both???) of Ebrietas!

It's worth noting that out of all the NPCs with default faces, Gremia is the one with that face that can be seen and considered unlike Annalise, Eileen. So I can safely say that this face is his. And it just so happens to be the one that is taken as the “default” face.

So we have a regular NPC, the Tomb Proscpector in the Chalice of Izs, who bears the name of the Great One, summons to Ebrietas, and serves as the basis for all other faces when creating a character. (aaand has uniiique baaatle style)

Bottom line: Gremia is Sky and mother of Ebrietas. Sky and Cosmos are one! And his face is supposed to be worn by the hunter of Yharnam. That is, the hunter is the reincarnation of the lost Great One, an echo of whom wanders in the Chalice of Izs (or once did). It turns out that Gremia is reborn time after time to end the Nightmares of Yharnam 😎

[s0fter-sin]

i’ve stopped expecting interesting animation from bones. the star and stripe fight is cool but like every other fight/moment in mha, it’s only cool bc the source material itself is cool; bones does nothing to elevate the manga

they rarely try to experiment with colour and style. i saw so many colourings of the moment star and stripe made a giant version of herself out of the air; people made her look like a cosmos, like it reflected and bent the sky around her, doing so many inventive things and for the anime to just make her an outline against that godforsaken sky? i’m disappointed

but people will take me saying i’m disappointed and spin it to me saying the fight was bad. it wasn’t, just like most fights and moments in the anime aren’t bad but that’s all bc horikoshi knows how to draw. they never do anything beyond that; they never try and adapt it. whether it’s bc of time, direction, budget, or what have you, they will never do something truly inventive with their colouring

i’ve said this before and i’ll say it again, it’s not just that the sky is blue; it’s what the blue sky represents and that is an unwillingness to broaden their colour palette or atmosphere to support the changes in the tone of the story. the story isn’t just “will midoriya get into his dream high school and achieve his dream job?” it’s child abuse and societal systems and their dysfunctions, it’s racism and morality and is it right to try and save someone who’s determined to destroy the world just bc they are also a victim?

look at the finale of atla, a show that mirrors the narrative tone of mha; it starts out bright and colourful and vibrant to match the happy and small stakes nature of the story and as the tone of the story changes, the environment changes to reflect that. the siege of the north pole? everything goes blood red when the moon spirit is threatened, then goes completely desaturated when it is killed with only fire bending having any colour. the day of black sun? uses a solar eclipse to change the lighting. the entire sozin’s comet fight? has red skies and lighting to show the threat

bones abject refusal to change anything about the art itself is a detriment to horikoshi’s complex narrative

[capricioussun]

ohhh glitchfell???

Glitchfell!!! It's funny you mention that specifically, because originally it had just been to separate Dos specifically, but I've actually been developing it on its own on the back burner...

Dos is still sort of the star of the show, since, well, he’s the reason it's glitchfell. Dos is [REDACTED]. However, his creator made a fatal flaw when trying to fix a previous mistake and it completely fucked Dos' code. At first, it was just minor glitching and stat instability. But as he got older, and the attempts to fix the mistake only continued making it worse (sort of), by the time he was a young teen, the glitching was causing problems in the Main Code, so when a particularly bad episode hit, he unintentionally collapsed the timeline and threw himself to a "neighboring" au.

...or so he thought (and how I'd initially written it lol).

But I've been working with, at least an alternate "timeline", where the au didn't actually collapse when Dos was thrown. Rather, it became corrupted. It wasn't too bad at first, more like Glitchedswap, where there were new tics here and there, but things could continue on as normal.

Unfortunately though, a tree cannot grow from a severely damaged trunk. At least not well. The damage was done, and as time went on, the corruptions only continuously worsened. There's a good likelihood it would have collapsed on its own by the time Dos met Void, there's just no way an au like that could sustain itself after a point, but it's incredibly interesting to think about how far it could've fallen before that point, and if it's possible anyone from it could've been saved before then...

Or if anyone would've put them out of their misery before it got so bad.

[sincerely-sofie]

ALSO IVE BEEN MEANING TO ASK THIS!! BUT!!

I’ve noticed Twig’s tail flame changes color- Is it emotion based? Or purely for aesthetic reasons? Either way, it’s a fun detail and I love her design as a whole.,,,,

Short answer: Yes! It is emotion based, and thanks so much for liking my little litzard’s design!

Long answer: Oh man do I ever have a tangent to go off on.

Originally, I couldn’t decide what color I wanted Twig’s tail flame to be. The Pokédex states that charmeleons will spew blue-white fire when excitedly going after opponents, which I thought about making her tail flame, but I just couldn’t commit to one color. It was a struggle and I was starting to decide to just give up and give her a standard yellow-ish orange flame… but then I remembered @modmad, the creator of a webcomic that has greatly influenced my creativity throughout the years, and a major character in said webcomic, RGB.

RGB is a man with a television set for a head and a color bar for a mouth, and the colors are constantly bleeding off of his screen. Already a neat design, but here’s the kicker: all those colors mean something. Yellow is fear, cyan is sadness, green is happiness, magenta is curiosity, and red is anger.

This character can only emote so much using his “face”, but Modmad hacked the system and basically made an emotion percentage bar which people can use to judge what exactly RGB is feeling at any given time. It’s pretty simple to grasp what his main emotion is based on which color is bleeding the most, but it gets super fun to dig into the implications of any other colors that are bleeding as well.

It’s similar for Twig, though I’ve only recently outlined the complete meanings of her tail flames and haven’t drawn them in action very much! You may have noticed that her tail flame’s color tend to lean towards a magenta / fuchsia when she’s having unpleasant flashbacks. That’s because that shade of fire indicates fear!

I really didn’t have too much of a personal guide to the flame colors before now— my guiding principles were “fuchsia = scared beyond all belief, neon colors = stressed / excited, softer colors = chill / tired”, but with this handy dandy lil chart I recently made, I’ll be able to be a lot more consistent going forward :>

Thanks for being interested in this little detail! I didn’t think anyone would notice, so it’s super fun to get to talk about it in-depth! Enjoy a happy lil etymology geek Twig admiring a dictionary Celebi gifted her as my thanks :>

[octarinespill]

Tom Jean Webb - From Beyond & Afar, 2023

[bishops-of-the-old-faith]

Just wanted to say thanks for everything you’ve done up till now.

I’ve been here close to the beginning to this account and I’ve loved every second of it, cannon or not.

Keep being yourselves! <3

WAUGH thank you so much ;w; it's been a joy for us i'm glad it is a joy for others

[meatriarch]

yknow im probably going to sound a bit overdramatic for a moment with this sorry but,

ive said like two lore streams ago or w/e that im not going to let myself get as heated as i did at the start with how gun's been handling ( read : forgetting she exists ) maria all this time bc at this point i consider my portrayal of her an oc, as i essentially feel across the board with my other texas muses frankly but like.

i do think, while i was obviously thrilled to no end that they announced maria & she was playable etc, i do think the execution of her in-game really sincerely disappointed and pissed me off so badly. like yes end of the day shes a bunch of pixels etc etc whatever sure but its like. genuine frustration at how absolutely sidelined she has been since day one. and i know theres plenty of valid arguments for other characters receiving similar treatment ( ie. sonny ) in a variety of ways, and i do get the angle of maria initially serving as a haunting of the narrative, haunting her friends and sister and being more of that sort of invisible presence rather than physically there in the moment like they all are - but its severely disappointing to see just how little they give a shit about her, both in lore & in gameplay etc.

model-wise? shes completely fine i adore how she looks and everything shes beautiful shes adorable shes exactly as babygirl as i hoped and imagined her to be & look. but shes otherwise both so underwhelming and so borderline useless ( being generous ) and her ability is just the most uncreative pointless thing i feel they could have thought to give her. like. theres so many pieces i can rip apart for just that alone but i dont wanna yap for an eternity lmao

i just wish they gave an ounce of a shit about her. and like sure yes they could easily alter things or add on things on for her in the future etc. sure, yeah, fine and all but its just... i dont think im going to forget how sloppily put together they made her. or how they've consistently forgotten & disrespected her all these months. and with them branching away from her & the friendgroups' story into other victims' as time passes, their already sheer-ass attention spans are only going to grow thinner across the rosters and i guess in my eyes theyre just never going to make up for any of how they treated her character. and like yes thats fine bc i & others will do her infinitely better justice than they ever will but its still just like... its still disappointing.

like so much went wrong with that release day that i think i was just trying to cling onto the excitement of her just being playable but everything else, certain other complaints etc i wont get into, made me think that disappointment in how she was executed was an exaggeration on my part bc im too attached to her lmao and so i kinda just internalized the disappointment i think but it really is just like man. i feel like ive lowkey been in mourning of her since she was released. no faith at all that they are ever going to give her an ounce of dignity outside of how her model looks.

and again. i know i and the fandom do her infinitely more justice than they ever will at this point and that fact alone does make up for this all, i just wish she was remotely fun to play as and didnt feel like such a slapped together, zero-thought, near copy-paste non-asset in-game. i play her bc i love her but she also just makes me fucking sad LMAO

.

[spellsparkler]

9!

9: Catastrophic weather

The world is breaking apart.

It isn’t, probably; this is probably normal, up here, where the streets don’t need lighting and half the space is just endless emptiness. This is probably normal, the cavern-roof-that-isn’t cracking into pieces, the sounds of it like rock sloughing off into the oil-black ocean, the wet. The smell, too, like nothing they’ve smelled before – green-soft as the grass under their feet, which doesn’t actually look as green as everyone said it would, but then everything’s much darker and shattering-to-pieces-er than anyone said, too – and the cold, and the dark that’s a different sort of dark, and the wet, plastering their hair to their forehead in a sticky-smooth way like they’ve just gone swimming. And there’s more water. And there’s more water. And Yrre stands, fresh out the Underdark, on some sort of slope that they can’t quite make out because it’s not nearly so light as everyone said it would be, what must be grass crinkling under their boots, smelling soft and airy and spring green. And they’re drenched to the skin, which doesn’t bode well for their pack.

And there – again – the world splits open with a vicious light like nothing they’ve seen before. Breath catches, air-bright and still-stiff, in their throat, and then they’re almost knocked down, and the whole world rumbles, and they’re a little bit afraid for their life. When they try to kick-start their breathing again they suck water up their nose and start coughing. Their clothes are dragging. Hair, pearl-grey and shorn short, spatters itself as best it can across their face. Again, they’re sent staggering back a few steps, nearly tripping over their feet in the pockmarked dirt. Their feet are almost dry in their rothé-leather boots.

Yrre is not silly, nor are they a child; they’ve prepared for this, for weeks, months, but it’s all so much – another white-bright crackle, another peal of sound, and every time their breath turns brittle and hollow. Maybe terror, maybe awe, maybe excitement, hot and quick in their veins. They keep gasping, which means they keep sucking in water – and they have prepared, they have, but damn it all, no-one told them it would be so wet.

But they have prepared. When next they’re sent stumbling, they know that it’s wind – a bluster, a gale, rather stronger than they ever imagined it because it always sounded so tame. Air is oft-stagnant, down below; Yrre had imagined a more vigorous version of the drafts that cast themselves coolly across the under-seas, and this is not that. This is a bit like being hit in the face with a hand that’s larger than your entire body. It’s like the air that wraps around the world is vibrant and alive and really, really wants Yrre to sit down. Their waterlogged clothes are flapping with the force of it. They still can’t catch their breath.

And as the water pelts down, they know that it’s rain; distinctly uncomfortable, and very cold, and a common phenomenon, they understand, crucial to the overland earth and kind of frozenly unpleasant. And the rain comes from the sky – which is such a strange word, so sibilant – which can’t be seen right now, in the dark, but which Yrre knows is supposed to be about as blue as blue can get, except sometimes, when it’s orange or purple or black with the white dots of stars. It sounds indecisive. They like it.

And when it all cracks in two, the soft, swollen patterns of the clouds illuminated, the grass of the strange sodden hillside they stand on momentarily lit in cold glow – they know that’s lightning, they’ve seen it before, except no they haven’t, clearly. Every spark-spell they’ve ever seen must have been utter shit because they thought it was striking and interesting and had fascinating potential for use that people didn’t seem to consider but none of it was anything like this, crawling out of a burrow-hole in the sodden earth to find the whole fabled new world crackling to pieces, drenching you in vicious rain, catching glimpses only when the sky splits with clear light. The hair on their neck stands on end. Their heart stumbles in time with the thunder’s rolling. Nothing has ever been like this – the abstract shapes, the frozen cold, the quivering of the wind-blown air like it’s caught up in anticipation. The wind whips hair out or their face. For a moment, Yrre feels swallowed up by the sensation; the world is gilded in frost and silver. They want to peel the dark-hidden sky away and get to the place where the lightning comes from.

It’s called a storm, Yrre remembers. They don’t have them, down below. They whisper the word, quiet on rain-drenched lips, swallowed up by the freezing noise of it all. They think they love it. All their stuff is definitely dripping wet by now.

Lightning cracks again, sharp and fierce and bitter-bright, and Yrre laughs, joyous and breathy. Something sparks in their gut. They know they’ll stay in the storm until it weathers them to ash.

[abyssalpriest]

Damnit lev lmfao. I was thinking about Shiva wearing corpse ash being resonant for other reasons, something about his relationship with the Bright Skinned Ones and death and whatever. No, no. More fucking importantly: Oh I wonder why Shiva is known for. you know. wearing bodies. his appearance is a mass of bodies joined together. yeah