#ive been tagging things and posting like normal

[soggypotatoes]

ugh ok so like

I dissociate a lot, have my whole life, but a few days ago I experienced a complete switch over for the first time and it's still ongoing

like. I had therapy that day and I walked in and was like. acting very normal, because I can do that, and she pretty quickly asked '...have we met before?' and I've seen her every day since then so we're trying to work it out

I honestly thought at first that I'd died and been reincarnated into a living body by accident... but after seeing her a few times and trying to figure out who I am I see what's happening. it was scary but I'm adapting. I don't think this will last much longer. apparently something extremely triggering happened on Sunday and I actually passed out and woke up like this. I'm ok though. this is happening to keep me ok. like I'm totally fine, not really stressed about things, except for the fact that I'm dealing with a lot of fatigue.

still not sure who I am or why this is happening. but there ya go.

✌️

[quirkycritters]

First week’s worth of Art Fight attacks COMPLETE!! (I do friendly fire and revenge pspspspsps)

In order, these are for @peskypawz, @ssseriema, @secretgaygenttomura, @bunbiiit, puritypaws, @little-angelbun, and @artnerd1123 !

[frizzle-mcshizzle]

wow y’all where no where near this supportive when i was witch hunted holy shit

the posts that where made general attitude was “if you’re prolife fuck go yourself and block me” or “im pro choice if you have a problem with that block me” i had to literally tell the only person who supported me the whole time not to say anything out of fear they would get targeted too, i didn’t have this kind of support. what i posted wasn’t even supposed to go on that blog, it wasn’t reblogged intentionally, and it was taken down quickly. i was still witch hunted for it two months later.

its just a little funny to see who and what you’re all willing to publicly support and what you’re not.

[b4kuch1n]

fuck it sk8 sketches from da sketchbook. get sk8ed idiot

[serendipitous-mage]

AHAHAAHAHJAAJSBSMDJDNDKMXBWHXI???1??!?!!??

[night-dark-woods]

Yet she had also decided that she felt a strange kinship and sympathy for it, this cornered, desperate god, making infinite sacrifices out of its people.

I'm on a "rereading Forsaken loretabs" kick and I'm rotating this line in my head. Mara constantly sacrificing herself and her people to protect the solar system as a whole. Her sense of duty. Determined and deadset on saving everyone and the thing is she does she DOES save everyone!!! But does that make it worth it does that make it right!!!

What got me started again was the last line on the loretab of this year's Dawning ship (Hiera Hodos - which also... thats the Sacred Way from Athens to Eleusis, as in the Eleusinian Mysteries that Mara's throneworld is named for...):

And Mara walks alone, between the City and the dark outside.

Which made me think about this part of the Savin loretab (Title is also from this loretab):

Perhaps the Earth would be better off if the Traveler vanished or was destroyed, she thought. Even in the Reef, she felt as if she were living next to a torch held up in a dark wilderness, calling out across the galaxy to hungry things with too many eyes.

And so now I'm down the "Mara and her god complex" rabbithole again. Under a readmore because it's long:

If you have grace, then see our sorrows, but swallow back your tears. We were made to pay this price. I led us to our fate. (Archiloquy)

She feels this absolute guilt from the very beginning because she saw deeper meaning in a freak accident:

Because I asked us to leave, Mara thinks. Because something came out of deep space and killed the man next to me, and I saw the omen, and I said we should go. And now I feel like a coward. (Cosmogyre II)

And then you combine that personal guilt with her mother and Alis Li telling her she's responsible for what others think of her and that she is capable of more than those around her:

"It is one thing to have a particular power over people, Mara. But it is another to deny that you are using it." ... "Mara, you are an Auturge, a volunteer. I cannot order you to stop, and your work is exemplary. Are you putting anyone else in danger with your… art projects?" "No," Mara says. "Just myself." "False!" Li barks. "That is a selfish answer. You are now a symbol to my crew, a house god. If you were to die, they would lose something important, something Human that they have created out of loneliness and void. It would be an unforgettable reminder of the hostile nothingness that surrounds us. When you endanger yourself, you endanger that symbol. You are part of this mission's behavioral armor, Mara." Mara is thunderstruck. She's never thought about it this way. "All I did was take some captures. I didn't ask to be anyone's… mascot." "You presented yourself as a conduit to secret knowledge," Captain Li counters. "People made something out of you, Mara. Please take this from a starship captain: What people make of you, what they create of you—even without your consent—becomes a kind of responsibility. If the Mara they see when they look at you is good for them, then you have some duty to be that Mara." (Brephos III)

And you put all of that on the shoulders of an already self-important and borderline suicidal 19 year old who is convinced she's seeing secret meanings in things (and she is!!! Is the thing!!!) You cannot tell me she's not, given that her favorite enrichment activity is going on EVAs and taking off her suit in order to experience this:

The void boiled the water off her skin. Her body swelled with unchecked pressure until her undersuit forced it to stop. Alarmed cytogel crawled down her throat, hissing emergency oxygen: not enough. Her skin blued with cyanosis. She was bathed in the most profound emptiness. She recorded all of it at the neural level. The exquisite darkness. The sense of fatal independence from all things. There are those who will give anything to feel that void. (Brephos II)

And then after they are in the Distributary she keeps her idea of the duty of the Awoken to herself for so so so fucking long and plays such a long game and sacrifices her own people in that game to keep the Awoken from being truly comfortable in the Distributary:

"I have worked for many hundreds of years to arrange this outcome," Mara says, forthrightly, but without the courage to look Alis Li right in the eyes. "I have nurtured and tended the Eccaleist belief so that there will always be Awoken who feel uncomfortable in paradise. Guilty for the gift of existence in the Distributary. People who'll come with me." (Nigh I)

And all for the sake of her eventual goal of returning to the real world and saving the solar system that she is absolutely completely incapable of abandoning, regardless of the cost:

"Do you understand what you've done? Have you reckoned the full cost?" She has convinced tens of thousands of Awoken to abandon their immortality. She has deprived the Distributary an infinite quantity of joy, companionship, labor, and discovery: all the works that might be accomplished by all the people who will join her in her mission to another world. When she lies awake at night, seized by anxiety, she tries to tally up the loss in her head, but it is too huge, and it becomes a formless thing that stalks her down the pathways of her bones like the creak of a gravity wave. "Some infinities are larger than others," she tells her old captain. "I believe… we are here for a reason, and this is the way to fulfill that purpose." "And how much would you sacrifice? Your mother? Your brother? Are the Awoken real to you at all?" Alis leans across her pinned hand, viper-fierce, striking. "Do you think my people were made to die for you? "Not for me. For our purpose. For our fate." (Nigh II)

And she is so so so deeply aware of that cost, in Fideicide II Alis Li knows that "Mara knows the unthinkable value of even a single Awoken life," and she is so deeply deeply guilty about that. Like when she does tell Alis (and Sjur, eventually) we get to see her the most fucking vulnerable we ever do and GOD.

"No," Mara says, with her heart in her throat, with trepidation bubbling in her gut. You cannot keep a secret buried like a vintage for so many centuries, and then unbottle it without any ceremony. "The boon I ask is your forgiveness." Then she explains the truth. She tells Alis Li what she did: about the choice Alis Li would have made, if Mara had not made her own first. It's only an extension of what Alis has already deduced. When she's finished, her ancient captain's jaw trembles. Her hands shake. A keen slips between her clamped teeth. The oldest woman in the world conjures up all the grief she has ever felt, and still it is not enough to match Mara's crime. "You're the devil," Alis Li whispers. "I remember… in one of the old tongues, Mara means death. Oh, that's too perfect. That's too much." She laughs for a while. Mara closes her eyes and waits. "You realize," Alis Li says, breathing hard, "that this is the worst thing ever done. Worse than stealing a few thousand people from heaven. Worse than that thing we fled, before we were Awoken—" "Please," Mara begs. "Please don't say that." Alis Li rises from her chair. "I'll support your fleet," she says. "I'll use every favor and connection I have to get your Hulls completed and through the gateway—and I will do it so that I can hasten your departure from this world. I will do it out of hate for you; I will do it so that every good and great thing we achieve here will ever after be denied to you, you snake. No forgiveness. Do you understand me? It is unforgivable. Go. Go!" "I'd be very glad if you didn't tell my mother," Mara says. (Nigh II)

The last line there fucking kills me. "I'd be very glad if you didn't tell my mother." God. And then when she is brave enough to tell Sjur, to try again after last time backfired so fucking spectacularly, Sjur forgives her:

"I was first," Mara says. And she explains the missing half, the first half of the sentence: I made the rules and initial conditions that deceived her into believing she herself had decided It ends like that, where the rest picks up. Sjur Eido looks at her in expressionless silence. Sjur Eido's hands stroke the seam between Mara's skinsuit and the glassy petals of her helmet. Long ago, this woman betrayed her oath and went to serve the Diasyrm, a woman who cried out in anguish at the curse of physicality and the possibility of suffering. Long ago, this woman threw away her whole life to punish the highest crime she could imagine: the denial of transcendent divinity to those who might have claimed it. "You're the devil," Sjur says. "You're the lone power who made death. You allowed the possibility of evil. You might be responsible for more preventable suffering than anything that has ever existed." Mara cannot shake her head or even nod. "Well," Sjur says, "if you hadn't, none of us would be here. I guess I don't see what else you could've done, if you cared about those we left behind. If you wanted us to be able to go back and help in the fight." She leans forward and very gently kisses the inside of her helmet, where it meets Mara's: in her mind, in that place that is bound to all other Awoken, Mara feels the touch of gentle lips. (Tyrannocide III)

And like, those chapters also make me lose my mind because of the twofold meaning of the title- Tyrannocide because she is killing Oryx, yes, but also because she herself is dying. The self-appointed (and only ever real) Queen of the Awoken:

We are risen from man and fallen from heaven. We are made again in the fall. What was once us will not ever again be us. I am the uncrowned ever-Queen and my only diadem will be the event horizon of the universe, which is my dominion. By falling, I will rise. (Palingenesis II)

&

"Mara, with all my respect, all my genuine gratitude for bringing us here," Esila sighs, "who died and made you Queen?" Mara says nothing. But she thinks: Everyone, Esila. All of us died and made me Queen. (Revanche II)

&

On the day the Fallen struck, Mara was proclaimed Queen. It happened swiftly, though after no little debate among the people, for everyone was afraid of a monarch who could speak to their thoughts. Yet they feared more to deny her power and sovereignty, for they had come between worlds in her name. To refuse her would be to refuse their choice. (Revanche V)

And the thing is that she is their queen in such a real and tangible way like she made them she made their fate she can sense every single one of them and feels their deaths and at the same time as she is sacrificing them for The Greater Good she would do anything to save them:

Mara crawls through compartments choked with vaporized coolant. She keeps low and clutches the breather to her face. All she can think of is Kelda Wadj's last message and the data attached. "Mara. The paracausal effects are strongest around you. Whatever's happened to us, you are the locus. I cannot overstate how subtle and how important this discovery might be. Mara, when we use radioactive decay as a trigger for simulated bombs—bombs that could harm Awoken—the trigger atoms are a thousandfold less likely to decay near you. People are literally safer when you are around." She has to get into the riot. She has to protect her people. A horrible groan vibrates through the habitat structure, and then, with an apocalyptic shudder, something tears off the Reef. A ship. A ship is leaving. Mara has failed. ... She rolls onto her back and stares up into the swirling vortices of coolant, seeing faces, futures, the lives she has just lost, the lives she might yet lose. She brought her people here to die in the sense that she brought them into mortality—but she never wanted it to happen quickly. (Revanche IV)

And she keeps losing people and losing people and losing people. So many of the Distributary Awoken defect and go to Earth:

Nasan purses her lips. "I want them to understand that you are—that you—that you are good. That you aren't what they think." Seeing Sjur bristle, she holds up her hand. To her relief, Mara makes a slight warding gesture as well. "And if they know that and still wish to live apart from us on Earth, that's fine. That's their choice." "I don't need them to understand that," Mara says softly. There is the faintest husk of grief in her steady voice. (Chords of Meaning)

And then she loses Nasan too and she comes back as Orin and the Traveler has taken yet another of her people from her (and brought them back wrong!):

"Woof," Sjur Eido says when she sees Orin for the first time, "Mara's gonna hate this." She crosses the detainment cell to get a better look at Gol. "Figured this might happen eventually, but I'd always hoped…" She pulls at the nape of her neck, then gives a little half-shrug: well, what can you do. (Queenslaw)

And then she loses Sjur when she is taken/killed by the Nine:

"This was on her body, Your Grace." A strange coin lay at the center of Abra's outstretched palm. Mara took it between thumb and forefinger and held up it to the cosmos with dainty contempt. Weregild, she thought. Powerful grief filled her chest, as thick and caustic and heavy as unset concrete. (Oathkeeper)

And she turns to Orin for assistance with that and then because of that (!!!) loses Orin again as well:

On the day that Sjur Eido dies, she receives a call from Mara Sov. "I would ask for my boon," the queen says with shaking voice. It is the first time she dares to trust a Guardian. It will not be the last. (Debt)

&

On the day she leaves to find the Nine, the Techeuns name her Orin the Lost. (Synesthesia)

And then she answers the question Alis Li asked her so long ago about whether she is willing to sacrifice her brother (a resounding, grieving, determined yes):

Mara will begin the end of that Queen's brother today. She knows what that means for the fate of her own. An eye for an eye. She must think now of the fate of entire cosmos—and of her tender, half-assembled answer to the cold sword logic of the Hive. She must not grieve. She must not fear. (Tyrannocide IV)

And then at the Battle of Saturn all of this loss she has been dreading and yet causing for millenia finally comes to fruition and she then will have a good long time just sitting with that in Oryx's throne world:

This is the moment of absolute sacrifice, the incarnation of Awoken doom: to give up their lives in defense of the world they once abandoned. The sense of their great dying rips at Mara like a sob. (Tyrannocide V)

It's just like. Such a classic and compelling and well-executed examination of do the ends justify the means? (Seth Dickinson at it again! In so many ways Baru is Mara is Baru is Mara!!!) Every one of her actions led to this point, to defeating Oryx, and was that not worth it? And yet how could it ever be worth it?

I think especially the outside perspectives from Earthborn Awoken & Guardians are really interesting on that front because while they still have the connection to Mara - "However, there was always in their souls an itch, a vector pointing to a distant place in the Asteroid Belt, where their Queen still dwelt." (Revanche V) - they did not choose to follow her and they do not have the same loyalty:

Zavala:

"She was a charlatan," Zavala says, quietly. "Fighting a war that existed only in her mind. Dragging you all behind her. Any of you who will admit that are welcome in my City. But I will not take in whatever conspiracies she left unfinished. If you come to us, you come to join the City." (Refusal)

Arach Jalaal:

She speaks. "Earthborn. Did you mourn for her?" He thinks she will know if he lies. "I respected her, yes, but I despised the way she seemed… entitled… to us all. I never regret choosing the path I did. I was Awoken to continue the search we started long ago. The quest for worlds worthy of our lives." (Fleet)

Master Rahool:

We long feared that if it were intercepted by her Majesty your Queen, it would be denied or manipulated to serve some need of her own. (Of Earth and the Reef)

Mara is just such an incredibly compelling and complex and interesting character and she is so stubborn and full of herself and self-righteous and she saved the solar system and she doomed her people to mortality and she's always right because she has to be and because she makes it so and she keeps secrets from everyone and has lost more people than many people ever meet and she has felt every single one of their deaths. She is everything to me.

[thirdtimed]

ive never had engagement to this extent on my art cross platform between tumblr And twitter before... it's so surreal to me. thank you all for the kind words!!!

[yanderespamton78]

in case its unclear, by keyboard i mean like computery keyboard

[mykocalico]

in a mouse+mspaint mood again. i drew that taiga a while ago and today i got the urge to draw her as baby bc it’s funny. and then i did it to rusty too cuz they are iconic trans bffs <3 yes he's always had a silly little different color strand of hair. it’s very main character of him lol

[arvoze]

the power i will receive in a matter of days will be astounding. watch out

[arcaneyouth]

rapidly approaching my 21st birthday is hard and weird but not for any normal reasons thats for sure

[waywardsalt]

ive spent like 20 minutes trying to world this eloquently but i give up; im a big fan of linebeck just. not being capable of watching over kids not the person to be the guardian of a group of young people he struggles to take care of himself at times and has so much shit going on that it takes about one conversation with oshus for the old man to realize that this guy is. not doing great

[louismygf]

Louis Birthday Tag Game 🎉

thank you @faithinlouisfuture for tagging me 😽😽😽🫶🏼 mwuah!

when did you become a louie?

i don't exactly know when bc i remember for the longest time denying to stan louis (or anyone for that matter) 😭 but late feb (completely missed the defenceless project bc i didn't have twitter then lol) to april of 2021 i think... february being like, oh this guy from one direction is neat i really like his music and april being, wow i have fallen in hell in love with louis tomlinson he is the only man ever

your earliest fandom memory?

WELL, on tumblr, i remember long hair louis with a guitar walking through an airport trended. immediately after he posted the rockstar pic (april 10) of him on instagram 🙏🏽 AND THEN, as a twitter user... this is so cursed but #iheartawards #louies #bestfanarmy 2021 😭 i think i once told myself i'd only keep up with louis on tumblr but not on twitter,, but because i already made a twitter account in april (solely for voting), it just stuck and thus, after iheart voting ended, my stan twitter account was born lol

your favourite song (one off walls, one off fitf)?

i tend to pick two favorites so for walls it's fearless and only the brave and for fitf, all this time and lucky again

your favourite music video?

walls <3 and miss you when im feeling silly hehe

favourite gig?

ltwt manila 2022 😔😔😔😔😔😔🫶🏼 it meant the world to me 😭 louis was so happy and the crowd energy was so good. i don't know if anyone went live for my show but believe me when i say it was loudddd sksks louis was chatty and smiley and interactive and of course so so pretty. vocals were on point i could actually cry recalling the memories of him singing but Ugh it was 😔🫶🏼 those couple of hours were one of the best times of my life for real not even joking

favourite louis hair?

i love when louis' hair is on the longer side, live from london, walls hair or fitf but a bit longer, actual long hair louis Unstyled (now imagine how he'd look if it were styled), afhf hair of course like his hair in the documentary with him sitting and talking wearing his favorite black sabbath shirt And his hair wearing the iconic first ever 28op shirt. basically! long hair OR fluffy and messy <3

favourite louis interview?

the zach sang interviews and his interviews with olivia jones for total access

suit louis or tank top louis?

tank top 😋 but only by a tiny bit difference, he looks good in both!

favourite louis tattoo?

28! and the rogue + spiderweb is sick like the placement is v cool i think... tiny smiley on his thigh and duh the x smiley face too on his arm

favourite louis bodypart? (c'mon we all have one!)

big heart big brain big ass, the holy trinity. and actually also his hands,, and waist.... and. thighs yum...... and. ok im stopping here

thanks again for tagging me <3

[raredrop]

i mean i know the full context is different...but its kinda funny a lil when we make fun of kids censoring words when we used to do st//ff l/k/e th//s

[ragnars-tooth]

Periodically i go through my camera roll and redraw characters as all the shit in there

These ones are like 4 months old but they make me laugh every time i flip past them lmao

[silverislander]

fully intended and foreseen consequence of coping better with my anxiety is that this blog will at some point inevitably become More Cringe and that point is SO close on the horizon. if you get mad at me for posting things i like on my blog that is for me you clearly have more issues than i do for worrying abt that possibility for hours on end