#have this weird fairy tale

[bookshelf-in-progress]

Stars and Shadows: A Fairy Tale

An extremely experimental piece I've decided to submit for @inklings-challenge.

If you wait patiently, there will come a day--in a month, in a year, in a hundred-thousand hopeful days--when you will stare outside into the deep blue-black of a cold winter night and not be able to tell the snowflakes from the stars. It will call to your heart and pull you from the warmth and light of home--wrapped up in coats and boots, scarves and gloves, and one thick woolen blanket thrown over your shoulders like a cloak--in the hope of becoming, even for a moment, a part of the beauty of this moment of creation.

The cold of night will bite your face and steal your breath, but in a moment, you will find yourself racing across the white expanse, snow crunching beneath your boots, soul expanding toward the shining heavens in one upward rush of joy. As soon as home and family are safely out of view, you will slow from your sprint and find yourself content to amble, and wonder, and be, with the shy, slender moon watching patiently above.

You will carry no light, for the world will be light, with the moon and the stars and the snow wrapping all the world in bright illumination. Your breath will shine before you in delicate white clouds, your very life made visible for the fragile, lovely thing it is. In the silence you will hear the snowflakes fall, hear the hushed sound of your footfalls, feel every beat of your strong and pulsing heart.

And then, if you close your eyes and listen long enough, just at the moment when your heart is near to breaking from the beauty of it all, you will hear a cry. For a moment you might think it a phantom of thought, your own soul giving voice to all the aching loveliness that surges through you, but then, you will hear it again. Over and over, thin and wailing, the cry of a child newly born horrified to find the world so great and cold.

The sound will travel like an arrow in that crisp, cold air, and you will follow it without hesitation--over a rise, down a hill, through a twisting stand of trees and countless banks of snow, and at last to an old well, such as you've only seen in illustrations--a construction of wood and stones, covered with moss and aged with time, that you can say with certainty was not there a day before.

Standing by that well will be, not an infant, but a child. A little girl three years old, reaching desperately for the rim of the well and crying for water. Everything about her--her skin, her hair, her eyes--will be white as the snow she stands in, and she will gleam faintly with the light of the stars above, and she will wear nothing but thin, white rags, torn at the edges and singed at the ends, a ragged line of ash the only color in her form.

You will notice all these things and think it strange, and then you will forget everything because the child is crying. You will find a wooden bucket on a chain by the well, and in sheer desperation you will throw it down, though there will be nothing but ice in an open well on a night so cold.

But to your shock, you will hear a splash, and you will pull up a bucket full of liquid water that looks like light itself. You will give it to the girl--you would not dream of taking even a drop for yourself--and she will drink with cupped hands and lapping tongue, and gaze at you with silent gratitude.

When she has drained the last drop, the faint gleam of light around her form will become a white glow. She will seem a bit taller--perhaps a bit older than you first assumed--and for the first time, she will seem to feel the cold. She will shiver and wail and curl in on herself, and you will suddenly understand--or at least bless--your mad impulse to take a blanket out into the night. You will take it from your shoulders and wrap it round her form, head to foot, with only her shining white face peering out. Then you will take her in your arms, settle her on one hip, and carry her across the vast expanse of snow toward your home.

It will be a long trip--you have walked a long way--and before you have gone far, the child will grow too heavy for your strength. You will look to her and find that the blanket you have wrapped around her no longer seems so large, and clings more closely to her form--like something between a deep blue dress and cloak--so you will feel safe in setting her on the ground and letting her walk beside you, her thin white hand in yours.

You will wonder for a moment if you've fallen into a dream, for all seems so strange and perfect--the light, the snow, this silent child--but the bite of the cold and the burn of your legs will assure you that you remain in the waking world. Yet you won't think to question the child--who or what she is, or from whence she arrived--because she is so like the snow and the light and the stars of this crisp, cold night--things that do not become, but simply are. Your wonder make peace with the night's mystery.

The way back will seem longer than you remember--the trees taller, the stars brighter, the air colder. The night will seem large and you so very small, but you will not be afraid, for there is one beside you too innocent for fear. You will walk in the tracks you left on your way, stretching between footfalls that seem much more distant than you expected. Yet the moon will look larger, and you will take comfort in that. You will need the comfort before long.

For just when you are in the very midst of the trees, you will hear a sound from the shadows--dark and dangerous, like the growl of a wolf or the rumble of a distant train. And then the shadows will seem to take shape, growing arms and legs, teeth and claws, and they will gather in a great black wall that blocks the way you mean to take.

The voice that speaks will be less of a voice, and more like the clench of fear in your chest, the monster that mocks you as you lay awake at midnight with all the shame and sorrows of your wasted youth.

We will have the child.

You will know that the voice promises death for disobedience, and you will know to the depths of your soul that you would rather die than obey. You will hold the child close, and she will cling to your neck, and you will sprint with all your strength back toward the well. The shadows will surge and swirl around you, grabbing at your clothes, tearing at your face, and once--only once--drawing blood that drips a red path upon the snow.

You will sprint through the snow and twine through the trees, each step seeming a mile, each moment a lifetime. The shadows will gather--closer, darker--and the light of the child in your arms will fade with fear.

At last, you will see the well at the base of the hill, seeming to shine in a circle of light. If you can reach it, you know, you will be safe--every childhood game seeming suddenly like training for this very moment.

And yet, at the very edge of the clearing--somehow you always knew this would happen--you will lose your footing and fall face-first into the snow. You will shield the child's face from the snow by holding her close, and you will shield her body with your own. The shadows will fall upon you, tearing you to pieces. Your very body will seem to dissolve in pain.

Through their snarling, the shadows will promise relief, if you will only relent--the child's life for yours. Not so great a sacrifice, is it, for a child you've known for mere minutes? These words will tear at your mind, but it is your heart that will reply, drawing strength for defiance from you know not where. And you will. not. move.

You will feel the night fading--the stars and the snow and even the cold growing distant, like some faraway world in which you have no part. Even the pain will seem like something happening long ago and far away to some ancient hero in a dusty, tattered book. Yet you will feel the child beneath you, her beating heart still alive against yours, and that hope will keep you clinging to the tatters of breath in your body.

Then, at last, there will be light. So bright that it blazes white even through your closed eyes. The shadows will crumble like ash, retreat like the dark from a flame, and the destruction of your battered form will cease. The child you shelter will cry with joy.

A gentle touch will lift your shoulder so you lay on one side, and attempt to pull the child from your arms.

With a cry of defiance, you will hold her with what remains of your strength.

But then a voice will flow through you, lovely and feminine, like water and winter and moonlight given tongue. Peace.

Peace will come, perfect and pure, and you will release the child without fear. But without her presence, your need for strength will fade, and all your pain will come rushing in upon you, dark and hot and crushing, and you will have no strength to hold it back.

Absurdly, you will be most aware of an all-consuming thirst. Tears will pour from you--precious, wasted droplets. Then it will be you, and not the child, who cries for water. Then it will be the child who will draw water from the well and put the shining liquid to your lips.

You will drink, and the first mouthful will bring the cold climbing back upon you. But you will welcome it as re-entry into this world, and drink deep, again and again, until you find yourself freezing, but wholly alive, your wounds as if they never were. You will sit and gaze up at a woman dressed in midnight blue, as white and glowing as the child, who clings to her as she would to a mother, and you will find yourself alight with the same glow.

You have served my daughter well, that lovely inner voice will say again. Come and be at peace.

She will turn your eyes toward the heavens, and offer you a place there in the shining light, far from the troubles of this dark world. It will draw you as the snowflakes drew you from the warmth of home, so many long moments ago. Yet you will find yourself standing, and bowing your head, and with utmost humility refusing the honor. You will not leave this world, be there ever so many shadows, while there is still more beauty to behold.

The woman will smile, pleased with your answer, and the light surrounding you will fade. And you will see your home alight on a nearby hillside, waiting for your return.

You will say your farewells to the child--who embraces you with gratitude--and turn your path toward home. The child and her mother will do the same, fading as the sunset fades with the coming of night. And you will notice two stars in the sky above where you had noticed none before.

You will smile up at them and walk home--warm, alive and fearless. There will be no more shadows lurking along your path. But high above, and all around, you will know there is--and always will be--light.

[anghraine]

ngl I always find it wild to see Star Wars stuff that's like "if you think about it in terms of realistic statistics/science then..." about almost any aspect of it.

I mean, what about the Star Wars films gives the impression that this universe abides by realistic statistics, or realistic anything else? SW is broadly a fantasy epic projected onto an IMAX screen with a space background painted on it. Yeah, the planets and moons in the films almost always have improbably limited biomes and two major locations max, because narratively these locations are usually just fantasy city-states with space aesthetics.

Starships travel at the speed of plot and we simply jump past the amount of time that presumably is passing, and sort of imply the passage of that time through shifts in the character dynamics. But this passage of time cannot be analyzed with any kind of consistency because the only logic governing it is the pace of the story.

Just how long did it take the Empire to send a full contingent of forces to Dantooine, search the entire planet, find the Rebel base, and then report back to Tarkin between one scene and another? No one says and no one appears to care. How long did it take Han and Leia to reach Bespin and what exactly went on between them while Luke was, in the same time frame, going through a protracted training over multiple days at an absolute minimum? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

How do giant space worms survive inside asteroids that somehow have an Earth-approximate gravitational field and I guess an atmosphere? Shhhh don't think about it. The point of the sequence is not "how does the giant space worm subsist off this random asteroid and how does it breathe and how does gravity work in this context, seriously" but that the giant worm sequence is fucking sick.

There's probably some after the fact EU justification invented by people who had nothing to do with the original writing of the space worm (or perhaps there are several mutually incompatible explanations) and I am profoundly disinterested in them. Nothing could make this even slightly realistic and it was never intended to be. Star Wars sings space shanties at scientific/mathematical realism as it sails past on a completely different ship going in the exact opposite direction.

And I do mean "sails" because while astronomy might tell us that space is unfamiliar and wild on a level we as Earthbound lifeforms can barely comprehend, Star Wars understands that space is basically an ocean, yet with stars and cool but survivable planets in it, or sometimes it's air but combined with a super cool space background so you can have early 20th century aerial combat that would make no sense in actual space conditions and doesn't need to.

"If you consider relativity, then just running the Empire would be..." General relativity does not govern the galaxy far, far away. Space magic does. I'm not sure there are even time zones.

[queerofthedagger]

of course it's less likely for a fairy to turn up on my doorstep than for a walrus, that isn't the point. the point is that if it knocked and i opened the door, the leap from, having read fantasy for 20-ish years where fairies might as well turn up on your doorstep and as such it's 'oh so they do exist. rad', is far less huge than, 'whatever the fuck is a walrus doing in the second biggest city of the country. on my doorstep. how did it knock. who let it into the house.' would it be more likely? yes obviously. would it still be more surprising also? 100% yes. I'm a millenial do you know the shit i've seen that people kept telling us kids were impossible. come on now. the fairies might as well happen

[rowanisawriter]

wip wednesday (finally)

i found a snippet i can share without forty pages of accompanying context because of how obscure the AUs that haunt me are lol here is achilles being sad in troy from an upcoming chapter of glass slipper

.

He isn’t entirely sure how long they’ve been here, fighting and waiting for fighting. Sometimes it feels like he was born here on the sand, listening to the familiar crash of wave after wave on the shore. Here, the sounds of the water mix with the always chattering, running, cleaning, clamoring, drinking, laughing, crying soldiers in the camp. He can’t pull apart the sound of the waves from the sounds of the soldiers. Dimly, he knows Phthia’s waters sound the same, but the way the camp’s ambient noise has woven in with the ocean’s makes him feel as though he’s on an alien planet, that this isn’t a real ocean, that these aren’t real people.

[roomba-mangga]

and for today's melini family brainrot i will now cry over how archetypal damsel-in-distress yaad recognized that his captor was just as trapped as he was if not more so and then proceeded to rescue him from their shared cage astride a horse

[rawliverandgoronspice]

I don't get why people hate the timeline so much, its not like you can't pretty much completely ignore it when you play the games. The only time it even approaches mattering to the story is when there is an explicit sequel like botw and totk or zelda and zelda 2

Hey sorry your ask got lost in the sauce of my broken tumblr, but: yeah!

I mean, I get why in some sense. It's been a heated point of debate and I think some people understandably resent the space it has taken not only in fandom discourse, but in how people began to understand the game and its narrative aesthetic choices. There is such a thing as over-rationalizing everything to hard logic, and sometimes it's just not the fandom for that --especially when you begin to forget it's all just fan theory and start to forget what the games are supposed to be like and evoke beyond just strict facts displayed in a linear way.

What I think bugs me with TotK in particular is that it both evokes and relies on continuity and the idea of a timeline, of archeology, of history itself, while being so loose and vacant with it that it both is doing Timeline Shit while also completely failing to understand why some parts of the fandom were invested in Timeline Shit to begin with.

But that's just my two cents of course!

[prosebushpatch]

the slippers are made of glass because its awesome where's your whimsy, where's your basic human decency if you don't like it kindly enjoy another genre that isn't FILLED WITH impossible dresses made of moonlight or silver. I'm sorry, you need someone to explain how a glass slipper wouldn't be impossible to dance in? a glass slipper that came from a FAIRY Godmother? Are you going to nitpick spinning straw into gold, too? You sound like the people who complain about musicals having music. It's about the beauty in imagination. It's about emotion manifesting impossible things. You don't have to like it. You don't have to engage with it. but that is the Point of this genre. the slippers are made of glass because it's awesome.

sometimes that's all it needs to be.

[solovelyanddry]

Imagine watching an adaptation of The Yellow Wallpaper where the husband was proven to be correct in his treatment of the narrator and you will begin to understand my problems with Poor Things (2023) as an adaptation (and, frankly, as a film).

[isawthismeme]

[my-current-obsession]

My hyper-specific type when it comes to otome guys:

- Absolutely pathetic - Cannot speak to a girl normally to save his life - Tries to be calm/aloof, but turns tsundere when flustered enough - A good and pure man at heart, yet does some questionable things - ...Little Red Riding Hood???

[lavendersblues]

Oh SNAP — in the novel Hugh pickpocketed Challe’s wing off him!!! Wasn’t expecting that!

[caliburn-the-sword]

i've decided that henry should have been more snow white-ified. because within storybrooke he's literally another retelling of snow white, they should have gone the complete opposite direction they went with enchanted forest snow by making him the most biblically accurate disney snow white possible save for the fact that he's literally a 10 year old boy. imagine how uncanny it would've been for emma to see that he has such a knack for animals that he almost seems to understand them (he does). let him burst into song. etc etc

[litl-rat-dude]

People posting that "i opened the door, i closed it " thing on twitter has me thinking about how i accidentally got into twst because i originally looked into it since i thought the concept was hilarious, but then i got to riddles post overblot scene and it was over for me

[henriiiii-1001]

( I put that Malus calls Ces' mom "sis" because they could either be biological sisters or just sisters-in-law And it's Amanda accompanying Evie cause Cesar is still a frog at this point ) [I know you got plans for Amanda but I wanted to try and write her before shizz starts going down]

-Ladies of the Torres-Miller annual ladies picnic , lunch is served

*Torres side of the table going excited*

-You know, I heard that in Yonder one of the king's brothers is still single. You could tell her (Ces' mom) that it's still not too late to start over, sweetie Malus : Yes mother, I heard you the first thousand times

-Now presenting : the first course

Evelin : Look at this big girl sitting at the grown-up table! >:D

*awkward silence*

Evie : I'm too old (teenager) to be sitting at this stupid kids' table! Amanda : It's not stupid! You can eat all the fruit you want! :D And it's all fresh!

Evie : *gasp* It's starting to happen! Amanda : What starting to happen? Evie : Grown-up stuff!

*just adults arguing over irrelevant stuff Ig lol*

Malus, whispering : Sis, do something! -Oh, right, of course

-Ladies! There's no need to fight over such miniscule matters! We're all royalty as you know, and there is a way we can settle this petty dispute like the civilized we are. With... FLAGS!

Everyone else except M : FLAGS! Malus : Oh dear Lord....

*Evie finishes explaining the basics to Amanda* Amanda : Ooh..... Evie : I am so ready for this-! Malus : Absolutely not Evie : What?! Malus : We can play something else after all of this, but you are not going to play flags Evie : Why not? You played flags when you were my age...! Malus : I did a lot of things at your age that I won't allow you to do Evie : >:( Malus : *sigh* I know it's boring to be the oldest at the kids' table, but you are not ready to be the youngest at the adults' table. Now go and help you little cousins cut their fruit

Amanda : So uh, we obeying? Evie : Oh no.... I'll show her that I'm old enough for this!

*epic time skip*

*Also Malus being good at sword fighting if you want*

Evie : Mom...? Malus : Are you alright? Evie : Damn mom, those are some pretty good moves with your big ol' sword and stuff Malus : Eve, you won't believe what just happened : I just met your twin sister! She was made out of grapes(?) Evie : ... Malus : I don't even remember giving birth to her. Sis, did I ever give birth to a grape baby? -No, I only remember you having one child, Mal. Malus : Thank you sis- -Her name is Evie :) <- She's got a concussion Malus : Alright, why don't you just lay back down...

aawww this is all super cute!!!! didnt expect it to be lil quotes but it's cute!! :DDD

evie wanting to be a grown up so bad kinda fits her character!!! :DDDD

[dinosaurcharcuterie]

I just realized I don't want gender neutral bathrooms and changing rooms just for gender reasons. I don't even want them just for practicality reasons, or just for economic reasons.

I want gender neutral hygiene spaces because, in my experience*, women who are bursting to get out of a sports bra and/or pee are wont to say unkind things and excuse it as "between us girls", and men do not wash properly if they think the bro code protects them.

[always-a-joyful-note]

A book rec perhaps?

I don't know...but to the ORV fandom and those who like books and media with heavy meta themes and philosophical musings, I recommend Sophie's World.

What is that you ask?

Well, my friends...it's a book by Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder (I read the translated to English version, of course) that follows a 14 yr old girl named Sophie as she randomly starts receiving letters in a philosophy course and finds herself semi-adopted as a student under an old philosopher.

The book gives Sophie and the readers a sort of intro course into western philosophy and worldviews from Biblical mythos to Plato to the scientific eras whilst also incorporating a seriously wild metafictional plot that explores the relationship of fiction to the real world.

I can't say much without giving spoilers but the book is WILD and absurd in ways that will eventually make sense(ish). It makes you really think about the things that can be done with writing and the awareness that knowing philosophies/worldviews/etc. can bring into a "created" being.

It's been a hot while (years, I think) since I've read the book but I was suddenly reminded of it randomly (don't know how) and thought, "Huh. I think ORV fans who enjoyed the meta of the story and some of the philosophies it introduced would like this!"

In short, if you like takes on the relations of fiction to the real world and Thought(tm) that relies on Weird Twists, as well as a cleverly and easy to follow introduction to western philosophy/worldview, not to mention a pretty engaging plot with fascinating characters you will want to study under a microscope....Sophie's World does it really well.

Content warning? Like I said, it's been a few years since I read it, and nothing in particular struck younger me as problematic enough to remember. The book was written in 1991, so there could be some slight sexism (don't quote me on that). It also deals with a buuuunch of philosophies that discuss heavy themes and I recall references to sex and some slight psychological twistiness, but I think it's safe to rate it as PG-13. (If anyone who has read the book recently and knows better please feel free to add/correct any discrepancies in my recommendation)