#kin 2021 imagines

[nisaetus-nerd]

Blog cover by @/katiethecreature.

🦅 Introduction 🦅

Salutations! You may call me Captain, though I also go by Theory, Phoebe, and Payne (as well as various kin names/nicknames). I am 16 years old and autistic, with an interest in ornithology, the sciences, and ghost-related fiction.

I am not a particularly sociable person, but I hope to interact with like-minded individuals. This blog will consequently focus on my experiences as an avian therian.

Tumblr is not where I am most active — if you are looking to reach me, please do so through my Discord (@sayornis_spectre). [Excuse the different user; this account is a bit of an incognito one.]

(More under the cut!)

🪶 Theriotypes

(Flags were designed by me and entirely free for others to use — they signify a Wallace’s Hawk-eagle therian and Common [Eurasian] Kestrel therian [though the flag is specifically based on female kestrels].)

Wallace’s Hawk-eagle (Nisaetus nanus)

Common Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus)

I am also a Lemon Shark (Negaprion brevirostris), along with Falco- (genus) and Carcharhinidae-hearted (with heavy emphasis on Blacktip Reef Sharks [Carcharhinus melanopterus], which is more of a midst-type).

(I have a variety of other additional kintypes and heart-types, though my experiences revolving around these are not the focus of this blog.)

If you are curious about the shark elements of my identity, visit my side-blog, @negaprion-nerd!

🪶 Pronouns

I predominantly use bird-themed noun neopronouns, as my gender is largely influenced by my alterhumanity. Not all of my preferred pronouns are listed — feel free to experiment with others. The only one notably off-limits is ‘tweet’ (as a noun neopronoun); this has been used in an offensive manner towards me in the past and has negative associations.

chirp/chirp/chirps/chirpself

ghost/ghost/ghosts/ghostself

bite/bite/bites/biteself

beak/beaker/beakers/beakerself

it/it/its/itself

The comprehensive list of my pronouns (and names/nicknames) can be found in this Google document.

🪶Interests

My non-bird-related interests will seldom be mentioned here; I am listing them purely as conversational starting-points (I have no objections to chatting about shared interests — feel free to approach me about any of them!).

Despite this, keep in mind that these are my interests, and not always my areas of expertise. Though I know a considerable amount about some of the listed, I may just be looking to research into them. Do not ask me for information of the following; this makes me uncomfortable.

(It should be noted that I have left many of my interests unlisted.)

🧪 General

Ornithology (this is my most dominant special interest!)

Natural Sciences as a whole (this is another special interest of mine)

Natural History (I am utmost intrigued by animals and fungi)

Evolution, Taxonomy & Genetics

Falconry & Birds of Prey

Sharks

Ghosts

🧪 Media

BBC Ghosts

Dead Boy Detectives (TV)

BBC Merlin

Luca (2021)

Ghostbusters (Movies)

Rio (Movies)

Bluey

Ducktales (2017)

Six of Crows (Duology)

Lockwood & Co. (Book Series)

Sherlock & Co. (Podcast)

Imagine Dragons

🪶 Tag Key

#captips posts revolving around things I like to do to feel closer to my theriotype/s.

#nis-art-tus posts including art/crafts I have made. I am mostly a digital artist, but I do dabble in physical mediums.

#facto tinnunculus miscellaneous bird facts, perhaps relevant to avian therians.

#cap’s userboxes all fulfilled userbox requests will be tagged with this — anyone is welcome to use these userboxes, regardless of having requested them or not, so long as I am credited. (There may be exceptions, which will be stated within the post itself.)

🧪 As of the 5th of September (2024), I no longer take requests.

🪶 Userboxes Hoard

Please do not use these without my prior approval. Some of these userboxes are tailored specifically to my personal needs, and I am therefore uncomfortable with them being used by others.

🧪 Userboxes by Others

Userboxes by @/katiethecreature.

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

so, i have this. interesting Exile kin memory, that's really funny if you think about it.

so, for one thing, i was in Exile for A Few Months (Late Nov. 2020-Early Feb. 2021), and Dream, upon getting thrown in jail, sent Punz messages basically going "Hey, uh, Tommy's still in Exile, do you think you could go check up on them? Maybe keep her in the Lab 'til I get back?" and Punz went "Uh...sure, man." now, you see, the thing about Punz is that they had Limits.

one of those Limits was child abuse!

so i want you to imagine for a moment: he shows up to Logstedshire, looking for me, only to find me nearly half-dead in the woods, delirious from sickness, and very clearly injured.

...yeah, they chose to take me back to the main area, despite my protests (because, keep in mind: Exile).

but, now imagine this with me, if you will:

you are a person on the server. specifically, you are Jack Manifold. things have been much more calm since Dream was put in jail. people can finally start to Do Shit without being constantly worried about The Green Bitch lurking in the shadows.

out of nowhere, you see Punz, the local mercenary, carrying this almost unconscious kid, who you've all believed has been dead since Christmas, and tells you "Hey, I found Tommy in the woods." they do not elaborate much from here, despite your questioning. they pretty much dump this, and i cannot stress this enough, half-dead, like we're talking On Death's Doorstep, kid who's delirious from pain and some sort of sickness, who is rambling on about how "Dream's gonna be so pissed when he gets back" on you before leaving. you still don't understand why he couldn't have just taken this kid over to someone like Tubbo, Ranboo, fuck, even Quackity, y'know, people who were actually close to them instead of you.

this kid threw you into lava and, from your perspective, didn't even try to help.

but...she's shivering. he can hardly even tell where he is, who you are. they're covered in bruises, cuts, scars, and she's got the worst black eye you think you've ever seen.

he doesn't look like he'll live long enough for you to get him over to Snowchester.

so...what else can you do? time to break out some blankets, Strong regen potions, and some soup. you also need to inform Tubbo of the...surprising news.

this'll be a Long couple of weeks.

(like, if you think about this, this is all rather sad and almost disturbing realistically speaking. but like. it's also really fucking funny if you think about it. like, Punz found me Practically Dying in the woods and instead of, y'know, Actually Helping with my injuries (they knew how potions and shit worked, i know that for a fact, as well as some basic first aid), they take me to Jack Fucking Manifold of all people and say "Alright here ya go your problem now." like. he cared about me, don't get me wrong, but like. That was Punz's first plan, apparently!)

Jack manifold be like “I said I’d be worse but Holy Shit”

[fictionkinfessions]

Dear Twilight

Regarding your recent question about how long it took to realize we were ‘kin, for us it took a few years.

We got into Undertale and the AUs back around 2018/2019 if we remember correctly, and we had always had a strong connection to a certain few AU characters: Nightmare Sans, Gaster Blaster Sans, and kinda Lust Sans. We didn’t think anything of it at the time since we were young , and just thought it was us really liking the characters.

Constantly imagining ourself with Nightmare and GB’s abilities, being part of Nightmare’s gang, and our somewhat strong attraction to Dust Sans despite us never experiencing any sort of attraction before, if we were older then, probably would have clued us in on something else going on.

These connections lingered for years, even as our hyperfixation on Undertale came and went. It wasn’t until June 12, 2021 that we realized we were ‘kin, and we kinfirmed Nightmare that October at a volleyball game of all places (we were a benchwarmer and had plenty of time to think lol). GB was later that year, and Lust was last month.

-Nightmare Sans/Gaster Blaster Sans/Lust Sans (Undertale Multiverse, #🌲⚠️💫)

]

[maerinhearts]

I need a safe space to talk about something in my life.

TW: Death

In February 2015, my paternal grandmother passed away. A lot of my family assumed my grandfather would follow soon after, but he didn't. I was at college in Pennsylvania when it happened, and my older sister, along with my grandfather, got in the car the very next morning to come pick me up for the funeral. I was very close with my grandmother so that was really hard on me.

In May of 2015, on my 20th birthday, I went to visit my grandfather as I had just gotten home from college and wanted to spend time with him. My grandma always kept track of the birthdays for grandpa, so I didn't expect to get a "Happy Birthday" or anything like that. However, he told me on that day that if shooting himself in the head wasn't a one-way ticket to Hell, he would do it. But he can't, because my grandma is in Heaven and he wants to be with her.

I'm sure you can guess how much that hurt.

I distanced myself pretty far after that without really realizing it. Plus, I have an older brother that I have not spoken to since late 2015 for certain reasons and they always took his side, even though he was in the wrong. That's a story for another day though. I always felt ostracized and like I didn't matter much to that side of my family so I distanced myself even more.

In February of 2019, my paternal aunt revealed that she had Metastatic Breast Cancer, stage 4. It had spread to her lymph nodes, her joints and her lungs. We weren't sure how long she had, but I vowed to spend as much time as I could with her. Then COVID happened. She loved camping. So the summer of 2020, when things started opening back up, I started going camping again so that I could see her. And in October of 2020, she passed away when the cancer spread to her brain. Her death was hard for me, I was very close to her as a child.

In May of 2021, my older sister and i received a phone call that my father was dying. He had Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and had been in a nursing home for 10 years. The nursing home stopped caring for him and he was starving by the time he got to the hospital. He could barely talk anymore, and he was a choke risk. The doctor gave us two choices that my sister and I had to make as his next of kin: permanent feeding tube surgery that he had a 5% chance of surviving or moving him into hospice and letting him die peacefully. We chose hospice. I won't go into full detail about the whole thing as his death was very traumatic for me, but he passed in June of 2021.

My grandfather has disowned me god knows how many times for not talking to him while grieving. And I can't imagine how it must have felt to lose your wife and all your children. But we were grieving too. He said some hateful things to me over the years. But even then, when he got rushed to the hospital on the evening of January 14th, I was worried. And I rushed to the hospital on the 15th to see him. His kidneys were failing and he was actively starving due to a mass partially obstructing his esophagus. He had stopped eating completely because he started choking. But he didn't tell any of us. He was rushed to the ER because my baby cousin found him collapsed on the floor. He got out of the hospital later that week and into a nursing home for physical therapy. But he just kept getting worse and worse....

We rushed him to the ER last Tuesday morning, January 31st. We needed him to have emergency feeding tube surgery. Only to find out that he didn't have long left. It was rough... we didn't get moved to a room in the hospital until 4 AM on the 1st. My sister and I didnt get any sleep that night. And we moved him into Hospice at 3 PM later that day... where we spent the next 4 days with him.

He passed at 1:58 AM this morning, February 5th, and I feel fucking lost. So lost. My dad's entire family is gone, and I'm only 27. His last day of consciousness was spent yelling at me about anything because he wasn't sane anymore. I got yelled at about flowers on the floor (there were no flowers) and I got yelled at for not holding his hand.

I'm so exhausted. I'm tired. I'm tired of the people around me dying. I don't want to go plan his funeral tomorrow. I can't say goodbye to the last living link I had to my father. And it didn't help that the situations were similar and they looked the exact same laying unconscious in that bed...

And no one understands how I feel. My sister and two cousins might, but honestly, none of them have the same views on death as I do and none of them understand any of how I have felt for the last 8 years alone. This fucking sucks. I had to driving home at 3:00 this morning after getting all my stuff packed up. I cried the whole way home. I watched him take his last breath and yet it doesn't feel like any of it has happened at all.

I know that people have probably been through something similar, but I just can't help but wonder why me? I'm just fucking tired...

[can-of-pringles]

Arith and Iriel Masterlist

[I'm only including information I still consider relevant, to help keep this list as up-to-date/efficient as I can]

Toyhouses: Iriel Arith

Good Omens OCs aesthetics sideblog: @saltandsugarcore

Spotify Playlists

Arith's playlist

What Arith would listen to

Iriel's playlist

What Iriel would listen to

Arith x Iriel playlist

Fanfiction Masterlist

Arith and Iriel fluff alphabet (12/10/2022)

Lucky, a fanfic by @/practically-an-xman (12/13/2022) (bonus memes I made abt it)

Headcanons/General (from oldest to newest)

What type of angels Arith and Iriel were/are (10/29/2020)

Wandavision AU (2/7/2021)

Arith & Iriel: affection ask meme (2/9/2021)

What Arith and Iriel would've been like as parents (2/9/2021)

Arith & Iriel: work ask meme (2/11/2021)

What if Arith and Iriel had more kids (2/18/2021)

When Iriel found out the truth about heaven (4/13/2021)

Mentioning Arith and Iriel's wedding (slightly outdated because I am as of this post, writing something about it) (7/29/2021)

Who Arith and Iriel kin (9/19/2021)

OC-tober day 9, Arith and spicy foods (10/9/2021)

Song analysis (Arith's spotify playlist) (1/31/2022) part 2 (2/5/2022)

Me and @/shenanigans-and-imagines' OCs interacting (2/23/2022)

Arith's voiceclaim (4/23/2022)

Good Omens OCs and their wings (4/28/2022)

Iriel stimming with her wings (9/13/2022)

Arith bingo ask (9/20/2022)

Major angst (9/27/2022)

Iriel appearing as a deer to humans (10/13/2022)

Character dynamic (11/13/2022)

My OCs and their handwriting (12/2/2022)

Arith and Iriel and the afterlife (12/6/2022)

Iriel and her eyes (12/30/2022) (updated: 12/31/2022)

Arith and why he doesn't hunt deer (1/1/2023)

Iriel and Arith and their horses (1/13/2023)

More Arith facts (1/17/2023)

Art/Edits/Videos/Etc. (From oldest to newest)

First painting of Iriel (7/16/2019)

First sketch of Arith and Iriel (7/22/2019) and the redraw! (12/19/2022)

Iriel and her horse, Rose (not completely canon anymore but idk it depends) (7/26/2019)

Arith drawing (2/1/2021)

Arith and Iriel colored sketch (2/4/2021)

Arith moodboard (2/12/2021)

Arith and Iriel Valentine's day moodboard (2/14/2021)

Name meanings aesthetic (9/8/2021)

OC-tober day 1, Iriel and her horse (10/1/2021)

OC-tober day 11, moodboard (10/11/2021)

Some old art (12/30/2021)

My good omens OCs and their hands (art) (1/15/2022) added feedback/analysis from @/practically-an-xman (3/20/2022)

Arith and Iriel painting based on Running Up That Hill (1/25/2022)

Newer Iriel painting (1/28/2022)

Arith painting (2/2/2022)

Arith and clothes he would wear (3/14/2022)

Ghibli scene redraw Arith and Iriel edition (3/17/2022)

Iriel and clothes she would wear (3/20/2022)

Arith and Iriel art (4/1/2022)

Arith's wings (4/28/2022)

Arith sketch (4/30/2022)

Arith dressed up (7/5/2022)

Iriel's death and flower symbolism art (tw blood) (8/3/2022)

New Iriel painting (9/7/2022)

Arith and Iriel collage (9/12/2022)

Iriel moodboard (9/18/2022)

Arith and Iriel cuddling sketch (9/24/2022)

Gifset of Arith's faceclaim (11/16/2022)

Arith and Iriel doing each other's makeup sketch (11/25/2022)

Arith and Iriel as textposts sketches (12/6/2022)

Iriel and baby Kaia sketch (12/16/2022)

Iriel and her wedding dress (12/17/2022)

Arith painting (tw blood) (12/18/2022)

Short Arith and Iriel animatic (12/20/2022)

Gifset of Iriel's faceclaim (12/30/2022)

Arith and Iriel interior design moodboards (12/30/2022)

Lucky scene redraw (1/2/2023)

Arith Urstyle set (1/9/2023)

A fake old painting of Iriel (1/14/2023)

Some soft Arith and Iriel art (1/17/2023)

Random Notes

Daily Ariel Quotes

Incorrect quote (4/11/2021)

OC-tober day 8, mentioning favorite candy of theirs (10/8/2021)

Incorrect quote (2/1/2022)

Kinda incorrect quote (2/1/2022)

Arith and Iriel text posts (4/6/2022)

Arith meme (4/30/2022)

Incorrect quote (5/2/2022)

Incorrect quote (5/2/2022)

Alternate faceclaim for Iriel? (5/11/2022) and another one! (11/16/2022)

Arith text posts (5/30/2022)

Incorrect quote (6/27/2022)

Incorrect quote (7/5/2022)

Arith meme (9/4/2022)

Iriel meme (10/22/2022)

Incorrect quote (10/26/2022)

Incorrect quote (12/16/2022)

Meme (12/21/2022)

Cue convo but Arith and Iriel edition (12/29/2022)

Incorrect quote (1/16/2023)

[missypup]

I posted 2,842 times in 2022

That's 2,842 more posts than 2021!

157 posts created (6%)

2,685 posts reblogged (94%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@calkestiis

@mandosmistress

@obi-wobi-kenobi

@beroyas

I tagged 713 of my posts in 2022

#codywan - 58 posts

#❤️❤️ - 55 posts

#kenobi spoilers - 47 posts

#star wars - 40 posts

#bobadin - 33 posts

#the mandalorian - 26 posts

#ao3 fanfic - 24 posts

#din djarin - 24 posts

#wolf 359 - 23 posts

#ao3 - 20 posts

Longest Tag: 136 characters

#but also would bend double weeping at his lack of proper education on in-depth mandalorian history and culture that were denied from him

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Din Djarin having an absolute crisis over his identity now that he’s “Mandalorian no more” by the Tribe’s Creed is honestly such a good parallel to Boba Fett who doesn’t doubt for one second who he is despite being a literal clone.

(No wonder they’re made for each other)

116 notes - Posted March 16, 2022

#4

Being a fanfic writer means: telling yourself you’ll write 10 chapters MAX, just to make it short and sweet, then realizing in chapter 8 that you lied.

264 notes - Posted March 16, 2022

#3

Imagine Din “no thoughts, head empty” Djarin going to leave Tatooine and Boba “emotional instability” Fett just pouting for weeks because he’s pretty sure they’re married by right and his husband and new son just flew off.

This is why Fennec Shand drinks so much.

264 notes - Posted March 6, 2022

#2

BobaDin (plus clan mudhorn) headcanons that just make sense:

Boba Fett would let Din take as long as he needs to take his helmet off in private

But if Din were dying from an injury he would rip it off without hesitation

They’ll speak Tusken in the streets of Mos Espa to freak people out

(But they’ll speak Mando’a in the bedroom)

Grogu is kin. Period. Boba and Din probably said the adoption words together

They’re both bad at asking for attention - but both really good at giving attention so it evens out

Keldabe kisses

Sometimes they’re sharp as tacks, sometimes Fennec swears they share one brain cell. There’s no in between

Grogu is spoiled (they argue over who is worse: Boba or Din. But it’s Fennec.)

Din calls Boba King of Tatooine to annoy him

—Boba retaliates by calling Din princeling

There’s bets over what Grogu’s first words will be (it’ll be a swear, they’re all sure)

313 notes - Posted March 7, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

When Obi-Wan tells Cody he was chained to a pole and Cody hesitates to say “entertaining”— that is definitely ‘I want to see you chained to a pole’ subtext.

722 notes - Posted April 16, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[quaelgeist333]

I posted 6,758 times in 2022

That's 5,701 more posts than 2021!

57 posts created (1%)

6,701 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@pocketspores

@meenah

@sootslash

@pigeocore

@jivs-jam

I tagged 138 of my posts in 2022

#warriors - 37 posts

#warrior cats - 25 posts

#pokemon - 14 posts

#wc - 10 posts

#my art - 8 posts

#sexyman descendants - 8 posts

#tf2 medic kids - 8 posts

#frecklewish - 7 posts

#garry kids - 7 posts

#warrior cats au - 6 posts

Longest Tag: 133 characters

#bob mortimer will always be my vc for him idc if the rest of the cats are american whenever i try to figure out voices he will always

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Decided to give the sexyman descendant sibling groups individual tags for myself and others convenience

They're pretty obvious with being #garry kids and #tf2 medic kids

6 notes - Posted October 6, 2022

#4

Be gay do crime is their motto!

Some stuff

Thing on nose is also a piercing!

Less unhinged like their dad(s?), because they actually have friends who they can rely on and good parents.

Will offer to do your top surgery when they finish education

Knows german, english and latin

Has multiple replicas of the cane in case of something happening to it

The e bass idea comes from ludwig being able to play iirc violin, And basses are background, necessary and support but can play on their own

Can't wait to share all stuff that group facts

8 notes - Posted October 4, 2022

#3

I need to rant about this because it happens time and time again

Person: able bodied people introducing a disablrd character just to have them to be sad about it and suddenly being cured and being happy is ableist

Other person, umprompted: YEAH WELL I'M DISABLED AND WISH I WAS CURED SO IT'S NOT

OH MY GOD SHUT UP, YOU'RE A PERFECT EXAMPLE WHY IT'S BAD, THAT SHIT TEACHES DISABLED PEOPLE THEY'RE BAD AND SHOULD FEEL BAD AND HOPE FOR A MAGICAL CURE BECAUSE IF IT DOESN'T HAPPEN YOU'RE USELESS WHICH IS SHITTY.

Picture a child that's disabled, may it be by birth or by accident, they never see people like them and makes them sad. Then they hear of a show with someone with their disability and they're excited, but when they watch the character is either belittled or is just used as pity that apparently it makes them useless and that they're wrong until they're "fixed" and everything is great. Imagine the sadness of that child, maybe the start of self hate.

Because it's likely they will never ever see a character that isn't that or just toxic positivity, imagine the resentment at themself.

Congratulations, you wanting this stuff to maintain causes this to happen to a lot of kids.

11 notes - Posted November 29, 2022

#2

The tf2 comic isn't out yet because one of the bot snipers eats a gun and always crashes the stuff where they save the script

14 notes - Posted September 30, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

I look at this fucked up character and analyze for a bit before going "oh, they had a hellish childhood with lack of good parental support, having lost much of their autonomy, probably even having people try getting rid of it once and for all by trying to control their emotions making them cling to anything where they can get autonomy, even if it's murder or any other violence because that's the biggest factor of autonomy, being able to decide if someone lives or dies." and adding them to my kin list

16 notes - Posted September 23, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[sistahscifi]

This week's Sistah Scifi Wine Down Wednesday guest is Gwendolyn Wallace!!!

Gwendolyn graduated from Yale in 2021 and currently works for the International African American Museum. A budding herbalist, her debut children's book Joy Takes Root was inspired by her own experiences gardening with her grandmother in South Carolina. Celia Lee at Simon and Schuster has bought Imagine New Suns, a picture book about the life of Octavia E. Butler, written by Wallace and illustrated by Hayden Goodman. Publication is slated for summer 2026.

Gwendolyn is joining our month-long celebration of Octavia E Butler's Parable of the Sower in partnership with Seattle Reads 2024 organized by The Seattle Public Library and Clarion West!

Last week, Nisi Shawl (Clarion West Alum, author Everfair and Kinning) and Andrea Hairston (Clarion West Alum, author Redwood and Wildfire, Will do Magic for Small Change, and Archangels of Funk) discussed Octavia E. Butler's legacy, Parable of the Sower, and how their work is influenced by the venerable Octavia E. Butler.

Join us: @sistahscifi | https://sistahscifi.com/pages/events

@OctaviaEButler @Nisi_Shawl @DangerWomenInc @TorDotCom @7StoriesPress @SeattlePublicLibrary @ClarionWest @g.m.wallace @simonandschuster @helloceliaaa @haydenbadman @iaamusuem

#OctaviaButler #OctaviaEButler #Library #ParableoftheSower #SistahScifi #NisiShawl #AndreaHairston #ImagineNewSuns

[moondeerdotblog]

The word substitution I'm totally claiming as pre-Kota-class progress this morning:

…

What follows is the progress made on the rewrite of an essay from February 2021 that, once completed, shall comprise the book explaining all the sh$t some other f$&ker really oughta have figured out by now. Be better American intellectuals.

On Dragon Weaving

What I Suppose We'd Call the Preamble

Honestly, I haven't a clue why, in February of last year, I found myself pondering the web of dragon mythology that so ensnares the imagination of man. Of how the machinations of my mind materialized the path it would then travel, I've an even clumsier grasp. I believe there is something significant to be found within the folds of fumbled expression held by the essay I had composed. Now, a year later (finding myself in possession of more diversely and formidably equipped faculties), I shall recompose its art and prose, hoping to attain a composition that more capably communicates that which I have to say. It shall begin with a declaration. It shall end with an appeal. Two waypoints shall lie between the beginning and the ending. With a little luck, journey's end shall bring clarity to the both of us as to how and why the path was chosen.

The Introductory Bit

I find them fascinating, the common threads with which disconnected hubs of humanity weave their native narratives. The similitude with which humanity engineers itself by independent means astounds. It warrants remark, in this digitally polarized age of humanity where tribal gutturals dissemble themselves as discourse, the resemblance that runs through the clutch of reflections caught by the collective looking glass.

Such abstraction, deer reader, may satisfy my selfish need to soliloquize; however, it achieves very little in the way of conceptual connection. We need something concrete, an example exhibiting qualities consistent with the previous prose. What, though? Which player shall I pluck from the troupe?

Of course, it's f$&kin' dragons. I named this f$&kin' thing On Dragon Weaving, how the f$&k would I ever work this f$&ker into an essay befitting of the name were I not, inevitably, about to begin talking about dragons? I mean … I name-dropped the little f$&kers in what I believe we've settled upon calling this essay's preamble. Let's hop f$&kin' to it, shall we?

The Bit About Dragons

Sooo, I painted us a subset of dragons arbitrarily selected from the set of humanity's mythoi, two of which you've just seen. Since you're reading this in English (one would assume since I'm writing it in f$&king English), there is a strong chance that global Westernization has narrowed the scope of what you think of as being a dragon. The Game-of-Thronesian1 depiction at the very top likely screams dragon while the fella that follows, the recreation of Bertuch's illustration from the succinctly named Bilderbuch für Kinder: enthaltend eine angenehme Sammlung von Tieren, Pflanzen, Blumen, Früchten, Mineralien, Trachten, induced an assessment of some form or fashion whether he fits the bill. I have no interest in browbeatingly badgering you about what makes a f$&king dragon. I simply thought I oughta point this out and inform you how this essay shall define one. It basically boils down to this: if it's a giant serpent, you can probably get away with calling it a dragon.

I originally began the globetrot in Ancient Egypt; however, taking what I've just relayed into consideration, I think Ancient Greece may be the better initial destination. The reasons are threefold: ⑴ Those for whom the previous passage applies likely received a western education that included at least a little taste of Greek mythology; and, the backbone of Greek mythology is a dragon bone. ⒝ The etymological origin of dragon is the f$&king Greek word drakōn. (𒄩𒂔𒌈) Some Greek dragons had wings, like the burdened beasts Helios had hauling his chariot about the sky ; but, the majority of the little f$&kers looked more like snakes.

Ancient Indo-European Dragons

Looking like a snake would be totally on-brand for a beastie known to the world as the Lernaean Hydra (which is English for Λερναῖα Ὕδρα) since the word ὕδρα (pronounced hydra) means "water snake" in Greek.

Hera raised this particular hydra for the sole purpose of killing one mighty annoying demigod by the name of Heracles (pronounced Ἡρακλῆς). Buddy's birth-name was actually Alcaeus. Hera sent two serpents to end the boy in his crib. They failed. He'd hoped changing his name to glory of Hera would get her off his ass. It wouldn't. Hesiod's Theogony tells us that the Hydra was the offspring of Typhon and Echidna, two badass MFers, living in the lake of Lerna in the Argolid.

With multiple heads (one of which was immortal … all of which would grow back), poisonous breath, and blood so corrosive it could kill with a whiff, the Hydra was f$&kin' fierce. King Eurystheus gave Heracles the task of slaying this sucker as his second labor (during his post-murdered-my-wife-and-children atonement tour). They battle. Heracles wins. Yada yada yada, let's move on, I'm bored.

The kētŏs or κῆτος (latinized as cetus) I have to show you appears to exhibit a few more of the physical traits we might expect from a western dragon (I mean … compared to a snake).

The depicted mosaic was discovered in the floor of an ancient Kaulonian residence now referred to as the House of the Dragon. His attack position pose would suggest that this little fella served as the last line of defense against malevolent forces for the adjacent banquet's airy ambience. The Museo archeologico dell'Antica Kaulon, the mosaic's current home, describes the discovery as, "a polychrome mosaic depicting a sea dragon and … framed by a pattern formed by sea waves."

Let's review. The Lernaean Hydra looked like Hera tied herself a handful of water snakes in an overhand knot, like they were auditioning to play opposite of that little, problematically portrayed Japanese Beetle in an episode of The Blue Racer. The Cetus, by comparison, looks all kinds of dragonish. The museum calls him a sea dragon and his place of birth the House of the Dragon. What about a creature whose name f$&king ends with Dragon?

Meet the Colchian Dragon (Δρακων Κολχικος), guardian of the Golden Fleece until Jason and his merry band of Argonauts came calling.

So … yeah … he looks like a f$&king snake. Like I said, if it's a giant serpent, you can probably get away with calling it a dragon. They are all dragons. Just go with it.

Afro-Asiatic Dragons

Leaving Ancient Greece in the rearview, we'll now drop our bucket deep down within the well of humanity to probe Terrestrian time before the Biblical flood. Like Johnny Cash, we're going to Memphis, in Ancient Egypt, to have us a look-see at Apep (pronounced 𓌇𓊪𓊪𓆙).

Mention of this particular deity began appearing early in the 22nd century BCE as the sun was setting upon the authority of the Old Kingdom. As chaos incarnate, oppugnant to order and light, no doubt Apep was frequently sighted walking in Memphis near the collapse of the Eighth Dynasty. And get this, when Isis, Set, and Ra jacked Apep (as part of their Egyptian power grab), tossing him into the underworld … Apep was having none of it. Every morning thereafter he'd make his way back to the horizon, ahead of Ra, and force that f$&ker to defeat him in battle just to put the sun in the sky. And in the event of a solar eclipse … an eclipse meant that Apep managed to swallow that f$&ker … the sun returning to the sky only after Ra's companion gods manage to topple Apep and cut open his stomach.

Before we exoduse ourselves out of Egypt, we simply must allow ourselves a proper peep at the world's most interminable orbiculate ophidian, Ouroboros.

A manifestation of the snake god Mehen, Ouroboros may be found inscribed upon the shrine of a sarcophagus as part of the Enigmatic Book of the Netherworld where he represents the beginning and the end of time.

Drawings of Ouroboros would later begin popping up in early alchemical texts like that of Cleopatra the Alchemist, whose work The Chrysopoeia of Cleopatra contains an illustration (not pictured) of the serpent along with the words ἓν τὸ πᾶν (the all is one). The inside of my left leg happens to have this very same illustration (also not pictured) just above the ankle.

Chuck yourself a dart at any wall-hung world map and chances are you'll strike land where Ouroboros dwells. In Norse mythology, exempli gratia (the WordHippoist's for example), he appears as Jörmungandr, the World Serpent—who would grow so large he could encircle the world, grasping his tail in his teeth. Come Ragnarok, it is the poisonous breath of the Midgard Wyrm that kills the mighty Thor.

Middle Aged Indo-European Dragons

Germanic myth, Norse inclusive, is simply dripping with dragons. Just look at the Vikings … I mean … they sailed f$&king drakkar.

The dragonhead(s) carved into the stem of these large longships were said to offer protection from evil spirits while at sea. Such power did these wooden drakes possess that Icelandic code of the time, Grágás, bade the Vikings remove any such dragonhead upon their return so as not to intimidate the spirits of their native land.

The three carved heads on the ship above identify the bow-based bulwark as a dragon named Zmey Gorynych, let's gallantly gallivant into Garðaríki for a formal introduction.

Garðaríki, by the way, is Old Norse for Kievan Rus'. The Garðar were the Rus' people, Norsemen that had decided to pop on over and take up ruling the river routes between the Baltic and the Black Seas. You zmey have deduced from all those f$&king letter 'Y's, we've crossed over the Germanian border into Russian folklore territory.

Zmey was all about the bylina (Russian heroic poetry). Totally tracks that he would frequently transform himself into a handsome youth to engage in the art of seduction.

Don't let his pervish proclivities prevaricate (yeeesss … I f$&king see the problem … but WordHippo sticks that sh$t in my head … and I can avoid alliteration like Murphy can avoid running head first into a thumpish engagment with the thick, full-length windows that monopolize wall space around here when she's so f$&king excited she can take no more).

Zmey is a proper red-scaled, fire-breathing western dragon with blood so poisonous the Earth itself will refuse to absorb it. This little f$&ker would even go all eclipsical from time to time by taking a bite out of the f$&king sun.

A dark age development, the western dragon is typically depicted as large, fire-breathing, scaly, horned, four-legged, bat-winged and in possession of a long, muscular prehensile tail handy for curling up cozily inside its underground lair. Between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, that dragons were living, fire-breathing creatures was common f$&kin' knowledge.

The first known portrayal of the fully modern, western dragon appears in a medieval manuscript circa 1260ish.

This little f$&ker is the kind of dragon that most of you were probably picturing upon first taking it upon yourself to read this … this what? … whatever the f$&k it is you want to call this thing you're reading now … like right now … like your eyes line up with this blinkity f$&king cursor now … like *slap* *brief pause* *blinky eyed head shake* … what say we head east and have a look at what the rest of you were picturing.

Sino-Tibetan Dragons

While the Western dragon roots itself to the hero-versus-giant-serpent motif of Proto-Indo-European mythology, it is the Chinese dragon that is birthed by Proto-Sino-Tibetan mythology. From what I've gathered after a seriously soft amount of internet research, the linguistic trip taken by the Western dragon from the Proto-Indo-European word *derḱ- to the Modern English word dragon has a parallel in that taken by the Chinese dragon from the Proto-Sino-Tibetan word *rŏŋ to the Modern Chinese word lóng (pronounced 龙 … or possibly 龍).

The dragon's permeation of East Asian culture is next level. The legendary Chinese sovereign, Huangdi, was said to have taken the form of the Yellow Dragon to ascend to heaven. As the Yellow Emperor is seen as an ancestor of all Chinese people, they sometimes refer to themselves as children of the dragon. In Chinese popular religion, the Yellow Dragon would become one of the five deities composing the fivefold manifestation of the supreme God of Heaven.

Another of the five, the Azure Dragon, would find himself depicted on what would become China's first national flag, that of the last imperial dynasty, the Qing.

Traditional Chinese architecture calls for the erection of a spirit screen, or screen wall, for keeping out evil spirits. Take this concept, toss in a dragon motif, multiply ninefold, imperialize it, and you've got yourself a Nine-Dragon Wall perfect for placing in one of the imperial gardens or palaces you happen to steward.

The dragons battling it out below over the flaming pearl depict two-sevenths of the Nine-Dragon Wall found in the Beijing-based former imperial garden, Beihai Park.

The prickly pair have good reason to covet this fiery little orb. These little treasures are guaranteed to be holding some high-value commodity—wisdom, power or prosperity, perhaps. Maybe something tangible like thunder or the moon. If it's top shelf, the pearl may embody immortality or even the universal Qi, progenitor of all energy and creation.

As the Indo-European mythologies would emerge, so would the Sinon-Tibetan. Take one part Chinese dragon, one part native legend, stick the parts together, and you'll have yourself a Japanese dragon not unlike the one Hokusai painted onto the ceiling of the Higashmachi festival float in 1844.

It's the three toes on the feet of this handsome fella, along with his slender serpentine physique, that give his origin away. As it happens, the number of toes kinda became a thing. During the Zhou dynasty, this number came to represent rank, therefore most Chinese dragons you come across are gonna have a full five toes. The working theory in Japan, however, was that all dragons were of native origin with three toes per foot. If a dragon wants to leave Japan, it can expect to sprout some toes. The greater its distance from Japan, the more appendages it shall acquire. The toe count gets capped at five when a dragon reaches China.

Operating under this logic, it totally fits that Korea would be chock-full of four-toed dragons like the Blue Dragon in the Koguryoan mural.

Of course, the Koreans believed the four toes on their dragons clearly demonstrated their superiority to the three-toed dragons of Japan. It's that fourth toe that enables the dragon to clutch those pearls. Note that there are four-toed Chinese dragons. When dragon watching, observe the beard. Korean dragons tend to have long ass beards.

Let's keep heading east, I really want to look at some dragons with whom the descendents of Paleoamerican cultures would become acquainted.

Algic and Uto-Aztecan Dragons

Dragons flourished all across the pre-Columbian Americas; however, getting to know them is a f$&king challenge. Genocide and forced assimilation kinda tend to disappear the afflicted culture. Consider the case of the Piasa Bird found in Alton, Illinois.

A pair of these suckers were absof$&kinlutely painted upon the limestone bluffs above the confluence of the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. How do we know? A Frenchman told us what he saw during his 1673 expedition of the Mississippi River. As to what he said, here's the valuable bit:

They are as large as a calf; they have horns on their heads like those of deer, a horrible look, red eyes, a beard like a tiger's, a face somewhat like a man's, a body covered with scales, and so long a tail that it winds all around the body, passing above the head and going back between the legs, ending in a fish's tail. Green, red, and black are the three colors composing the picture.

The 1917 publication from which I've pulled his account also includes a helpful little footnote. See if you can spot the problem:

These pictographs on a rock near Alton, Illinois, were called "piasa" and supposed to represent the "thunder bird." They were quite distinct when described by Stoddard in 1803; when visited in 1838 only one could be seen, of which traces were discernible as late as 1848, soon after which the rock was quarried down.

I mean…

⒜ The account from 1673 doesn't say sh$t about what these things are called. ⑵ The footnote from the publication doesn't say sh$t about who mentioned the things oughta be called piasa. (ᓭ) They quarried … the fucking … rock.

Before moving on from Marquette's account, I wanna show you the least valuable bit. Picking up where we left off in that first quote:

Moreover, these two monsters are so well painted that we cannot believe that any savage is their author; for good painters in France would find it difficult to paint so well, and besides, they are so high up on the rock that it is difficult to reach that place conveniently to paint them.

I believe the Illini response to this was something like ᐃᒃᓯᕚᕐᓂᖅ ᕿᒥᕐᓗ (pronounced sit and spin).

It gets better.

The painting I recreated is by Herbert Forcade. He made it in preparation for painting the f$&ker back up on that limestone bluff. In 1924, he totally did. In the 1960s, they totally blasted that shit to make way for the Great River Road.

It gets better still.

Curious how the Piasa Bird got its name? Let me tell you. In 1836, local Professor John Russell of Shurtleff College published an article with the deets he claims to have obtained from the Illini. Of the stream below the bluff, he has this to say:

This stream is the Piasa. Its name is Indian, and signifies, in the Illini, 'The bird which devours men.' Near the mouth of this stream, on the smooth and perpendicular face of the bluff, at an elevation which no human can reach, is cut the figure of an enormous bird, with its wings extended. The animal which the figure represents was called by the Indians the Piasa. From this is derived the name of the stream.

Okay, so far, we have a real portrayal of a Native American dragon … given to us by a small-minded Frenchman. We add to this the naming of the thing some one hundred sixty-three years later by a professor from a Baptist college (further confirmed in the footnotes of a book published some seventy-six years after the prof's article). What we seem to be missing is some authentic Illini legend of this creature. Have we one of those?

As it happens, we do have one of those, provided in the very same article that gave us the beast's name. Search the internet for the bird's backstory, and you'll find the Legend of the Piasa Bird repeated in countless places. Why haven't I told you the legend? 'Cause the f$&ker admitted he made the whole thing up. You've got about a 50/50 shot of being told that alongside any given one of those repetitions.

Can you believe the dragon exhibition was originally gonna end here? Exploring the erasure of a people's origin story from the annals of history kinda pulled us off course, so I thought it best to square things up by painting one more to pull us back. I then constructed a segue that must make the gods of grammar and style weep (and not in a good way). Easily surpassing the forty word mark utilized by Ulysses to trigger sentence splitting suggestions for me to ignore, this beast also happens to count among its possessions three commas, two dashes, a colon, a pair of parentheses, and my approval (so, I'm keeping it). Allow a little extra time for its digestion. I'm sure it'll be fine.

From a dragon mythologized and then quarried by the white man, as if it weren't but hillbilly graffiti—sold twice for a profit, first as so many slabs of limestone and next as an attraction by the city of Alton—before being appropriated by Southwestern High School (home of the Piasa Birds and a standalone replica that spits f$&kin' fire), to a dragon colonialism would not erase: we're heading south to see Quetzalcōātl.

The name Quetzalcōātl is a composition of two Nahuatl language words: quetzal or beautiful feather and coatl or serpent. This fella lay at the end of the mesoamerican feathered serpent's evolutionary timeline. By the time his likeness was being drawn into pages, he had a pyramid dedicated to his worship—the world's largest pyramid. We can probably blame the Toltecs for his naughty noms. They linked war and human sacrifice with celestial bodies. They also anointed Quetzalcōātl the god of the morning and evening star.

The Aztecs maintained his solar deification, along with the death and rebirth associations that came with the position. They did manage to round him out a bit by anointing him the god of learning, science, crafts, arts, and agriculture. Oh, he also created humanity in this fifth cycle of the sun we're currently living through.

How can we know all this about Quetzalcōātl yet remain so ignorant about the Piasa Bird? His stone wasn't quarried. His story, written by native Nahuatl speakers, has been preserved. Moctezuma had himself a f$&kin' library. What I've recreated up there is a page from the divinatory almanac included in the amatl known as the Codex Telleriano-Remensis. Shown on the page are the 14th trecena, Quetzalcōātl, and some gloss that explains his significance.

Towards the Making of a Point

So, why have I shown you all these dragons? Presumably, I did so to support the flowery language from the introductory bit poetically waxing the common threads running through narratives woven independently. Maybe I went through all that dragon mythology to draw out common motifs—motifs such as the tendency of a dragon to control the weather, to rule the water, or to temporarily block out the sun–perhaps, touch on the possibility of shared catalysts such as unearthed dinosaur bones, large reptiles, or the compulsion to explain natural phenomena.

This may have been my intent when I began typedly exploring the thought in February of last year. I can't be certain, as the memory has frayed, its clarity now lost. I haven't the faintest how other writers go about their business, if they know already the shape of the thing they intend to create. Me, I never know where I'm going. I write like I'm transcribing a thought experiment in progress. I freeze in amber some rumination, then reflect on its implications. Reflection spawns the next item to be resined or the dishes are done, man.

I am almost certain that it was writing in this manner that caused my focal point to drift. Reflecting on the commonalities immediately drew my attention to the discrepancies. Reflecting on the duality, I found that each side held value—so I considered them both. I shall now do so again, perhaps with a bit more care, and with the benefit, this time, of knowing where I want to go.

Some Woven Dragons

My mind gleans meaning via metaphorical odyssey. This particular expedition's point of origin practically presents itself. Threads are but thin yarns, after all, and what are myths if not stories? Let us explore the storyteller and the threads of thought with which his yarn is spun.

Consider this, a picture tells a thousand stories while it also tells its own. Stories are recursive constructs. A picture digitally displayed encodes these stories within its pixels. A picture printed to paper encodes these stories within the pigments of its ink. A picture woven as a tapestry encodes these stories within its threads.

The storyteller spins a yarn for transmitting select information as a recognizable pattern from which meaning may be gleaned. The raconteur, with his hanks of yarn, is a weaver—carefully crossing threads until a tapestry takes shape that tells a thousand stories. There are many such tapestries to be found in our histories whose shape is that of a dragon. I've painted two of them for us to examine and see what we find in their threads.

Some Apocalyptic Threads

First, we'll look at the recursive story composition woven into a portion of the twelfth panel of the third Apocalypse Tapestry, conceptualized by Flemish painter Hennequin of Bruges and constructed inside the Parisian workshops of Nicholas Bataille.

I suppose we should briefly go over what I mean by recursion before I continue. That this first example is actually a portion of a fourteen panel tapestry kinda plays into the whole recursive composition concept. Clearly, each panel tells a story. The tapestry in its entirety also tells a story. It's a story within which each panel's story happens to be embedded. A story made of stories. This, for those of y'all without a background in mathematics or computer science, is recursion in a nutshell.

Within each panel, the weaver tells a story, perhaps more than one. It's important to understand that the recursion does not necessarily, in fact, it's unlikely to, end with these stories. Short of the telling of a story fabricated entirely within the mind of a weaver that had managed to master textiles whilst whiling away on the deserted island upon which they'd washed up as a baby to be raised by some language-less species, the story told by the weaver incorporates stories that predate the tapestry's creation. If you aren't quite sure what I mean, I think you will be once we've dug in a bit. Time for some story extraction.

We needn't know the tapestry's origin, medieval France, to surmise that what stands before us (with a weird little buddy) is a western dragon. If you look past the head and wing count, he kinda looks like the dragon from that medieval manuscript. Had I shown you all eight of the panels from this tapestry in which our fella makes an appearance, many of the Indo-European dragon motifs would catch your eye, most notably the dragon's mastery over water, his harassment of a maiden (whose baby he wants to devour), and a bout with spear hero. How many stories, by the year 1375, must lay in the lineage of the western dragon?

Here's where it gets interesting, we've barely scratched the surface–for the majority of this tapestry was woven with yarn spun by John while in exile on the Greek island of Patmos2. He was all:

12:3 καὶ ὤφθη ἄλλο σημεῖον ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, καὶ ἰδοὺ δράκων πυρρὸς μέγας, ἔχων κεφαλὰς ἑπτὰ καὶ κέρατα δέκα καὶ ἐπὶ τὰς κεφαλὰς αὐτοῦ ἑπτὰ διαδήματα, 12:4 καὶ ἡ οὐρὰ αὐτοῦ σύρει τὸ τρίτον τῶν ἀστέρων τοῦ οὐρανοῦ καὶ ἔβαλεν αὐτοὺς εἰς τὴν γῆν. καὶ ὁ δράκων ἕστηκεν ἐνώπιον τῆς γυναικὸς τῆς μελλούσης τεκεῖν, ἵνα ὅταν τέκῃ τὸ τέκνον αὐτῆς καταφάγῃ.

You may (or may not) be familiar with John's story. Were he translated into English, he'd be all:

12:3 And another sign was seen in heaven, and behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven crowns, 12:4 and his tail is pulling one third of the stars from heaven; and it threw them to the earth. And the dragon took his stand in front of the woman who was about to deliver, so that he might devour the child whenever it was born.

So, yeah, this isn't just any old dragon. This is that apocalypse. Those were passages from ΑΠΟΚΑΛΥΨΙΣ ΙΩΑΝΝΟΥ (pronounced The Revelation of John (and that's a wrap on pronunciation jokes)). This is f$&kin' Satan, as John lets us know a few passages later:

12:9 καὶ ἐβλήθη ὁ δράκων ὁ μέγας, ὁ ὄφις ὁ ἀρχαῖος, ὁ καλούμενος Διάβολος καὶ ὁ Σατανᾶς, ὁ πλανῶν τὴν οἰκουμένην ὅλην – ἐβλήθη εἰς τὴν γῆν, καὶ οἱ ἄγγελοι αὐτοῦ μετ’ αὐτοῦ ἐβλήθησαν.

Translated here into another run-on sentence (see … my writing style ain't faux-pas-matic … it's f$&kin' biblical):

12:9 And the great dragon was thrown out, that ancient serpent, which is called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world, he was thrown to the earth, and his angels thrown along with him.

The fella on the right is some bearionard John just calls beast. Our dragon, here, happens to be passing along his power (which I guess he keeps in a scepter ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). I better just let John explain:

13:2 καὶ τὸ θηρίον ὃ εἶδον ἦν ὅμοιον παρδάλει, καὶ οἱ πόδες αὐτοῦ ὡς ἄρκου, καὶ τὸ στόμα αὐτοῦ ὡς στόμα λέοντος. καὶ ἔδωκεν αὐτῷ ὁ δράκων τὴν δύναμιν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸν θρόνον αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐξουσίαν μεγάλην.

Which not a one of you are gonna f$&kin' understand, so here's a guy explaining what John explained:

13:2 And the beast which I saw was like a leopard, and the feet of it like a bear's, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion. And the dragon gave his power to him, and his throne, and great authority.

Having sufficiently covered the whole stories-made-of-stories angle and drawn out the more interesting bits of this particular great red dragon's story (browbeating y'all with ancient Greek I sure as shit can't read along the way). Let's move on to the kesi (silk tapestry) I painted.

Some Benevolent Threads

Woven two hundred years later, give or take, on another continent entirely, this happy little fella likely hung about upon an altar as part of a ceremonial arrangement.

The museum that restored this particular tapestry says it was originally part of a larger hanging. I am entirely ignorant as to the contents of the accompanying panels. Seeing as I've already made my point about recursive composition, I think we're fine with what we've got.

Just as western dragons carry their Indo-European roots, Chinese dragons carry their Sino-Tibetan roots. This little cutie likely landed his gig on account of his standup delivery of prosperity, good luck, and rainfall to those in his care.

"How does he make it rain?"

Glad you asked. You see Zhuang Zhou 莊周 clued us in circa the third century BCE in The Revolution of Heaven 天運 chapter from the Outer Chapters 外篇 of his book, Zhuangzi 莊子 (the book would go on to become kind of a big deal):

龍合而成體，散而成章，乘乎雲氣而養乎陰陽。

Which, per translation by James Legge, amounts to:

The dragon coils itself up, and there is its body; it unfolds itself and becomes the dragon complete. It rides on the cloudy air, and is nourished by the Yin and Yang.

So, what we appear to have is a dragon flying about munching up Yin and Yang.

"The f$&k that have to do with rain?"

We may ascertain the f$&k it doth from Guo Pu 郭璞, who documented the whole process in the Flow of Qi section from the Inner Chapters of the Zangshu 葬書, a book he wrote some time in the late third or early fourth century CE (the first book known to mention feng shui, it also would become kind of a big deal):

隂陽之氣即地中之生氣故噫為風升為雲降為雨凡所以位天地育萬物者何莫非此氣邪斯蓋因曰葬乗生氣故重舉以申明其義愚嘗謂能生能殺皆此氣也葬得其法則為生氣失其道則為殺氣如所謂加減饒借吞吐浮沉之類並當依法而剪裁之不致有撞殺沖刑破腮翻鬬之患也

Which amounts to the following, if you're asking Stephen Field:

The qi of yin and yang breathes out as wind, rises up as clouds, descends as rain, and courses underground as vital energy.

You'll recall that we have a dragon flying about, munching up Yin and Yang. The exhalant air in the dragon seeds the skies with qi extract obtained from such a meal. In other words, he makes clouds with his breath (one assumes, deer reader, that you can make the leap from clouds to rain on your own).

Notice the flaming pearl there in the center. Were the dragon not flying about sucking qi out of Yin and Yang, that little orb is likely chock-full of qi. The bestowable gifts he might conjure out of its contents are countless. Useful fellow to have in your corner either way.

Now that we know what he's doing there, what might we uncover as to how he looks doing it? Here it helps to know the birthdate for our benevolent buddy. This particular kesi was created in the tail end of the Ming dynasty, which places his birth near the end of the sixteenth century or the beginning of the seventeenth century. It also places him near the tail end of the Chinese dragon's evolutionary timeline, so he's chock-full of the symbology he's inherited.

His cloud dragon heritage dates back to the Neolithic period, which ended around 1700 BCE. The flying dragon (Feilong 飛龍; fēilóng) began popping up in classic texts some time before the fourth century BCE. Don't believe me? Check the Qian ䷀乾 hexagram of the Yi Jing 易經:

九五：飛龍在天，利見大人。

If Richard Wilhelm is to be believed, this translates into English as:

Nine in the fifth place means: Flying dragons in the heavens.

Check those fully five-toed feet of his. We know from our previous discussion that having five toes is totally a thing. The missing toe on his front left foot may have been purposely removed upon the tapestry's removal from imperial China, as was customary. The rest of the dragon's body parts also seem to follow precedent. Everyone seems to want to credit Wang Fu for its documentation. The nearest I could get to the original (which may have been lost) was through the entry for dragon 龍 found in the 43rd volume, One of Scales 鳞之一, of Compendium of Materia Medica 本草綱目–an encyclopedia first published in 1578 (the most complete and comprehensive book written in the history of traditional Chinese medicine, it would join the others I've mentioned as kind of a big deal):

時珍曰︰按︰許慎《說文》︰龍字篆文象形。《生肖論》云︰龍耳虧聰，故謂之龍。《生肖論》云︰龍耳虧聰，故謂之龍。《梵書》名那伽。時珍曰︰按︰羅願《爾雅翼》云︰龍者鱗蟲之長。王符言其形有九似︰頭似駝，角似鹿，眼似兔，耳似牛，項似蛇，腹似蜃，鱗似鯉，爪似鷹，掌似虎，是也。其背有八十一鱗，具九九陽數。其聲如戛銅盤。口旁有須髯，頷下有明珠，喉下有逆鱗。頭上有博山，又名尺木，龍無尺木不能升天。呵氣成雲，既能變水，又能變火。陸佃《埤雅》云︰龍火得濕則焰，得水則燔，以人火逐之即息。王符言其形有九似︰頭似駝，角似鹿，眼似兔，耳似牛，項似蛇，腹似蜃，鱗似鯉，爪似鷹，掌似虎，是也。

It turns out that tracking down the consensus for what this translates to in English is some bullsh$t. My favorite comes from the book Mythical Monsters, by Charles Gould 3(whose translation earns points for being question mark inclusive). Stick a pin in what Wang Fu says and that wooden foot-rule; otherwise, we're golden:

According to the dictionary of Hü Shăn, the character lung in the antique form of writing represents the shape of the animal. According to the Shang Siao Lun, the dragon is deaf, hence its name of lung (deaf). In Western books the dragon is called nake (naga). Shi-Chăn says that in the ’Rh Ya Yih of Lo-Yuen the dragon is described as the largest of scaled animals (literally, insects). Wang Fu says that the dragon has nine (characteristics) resemblances. Its head is like a camel's, its horns like a deer's, its eyes like a hare's, its ears like a bull's, its neck like a snake's, its belly like an iguanodon's (?), its scales like a carp's, its claws like an eagle's, and its paws like a tiger's. Its scales number eighty-one, being nine by nine, the extreme (odd or) lucky number. Its voice resembles the beating of a gong. On each side of its mouth are whiskers, under its chin is a bright pearl, under its throat the scales are reversed, on the top of its head is the poh shan, which others call the wooden foot-rule. A dragon without a foot-rule cannot ascend the skies. When its breath escapes it forms clouds, sometimes changing into rain, at other times into fire. Luh Tien in the P’i Ya remarks, when dragon-breath meets with damp it becomes bright, when it gets wet it goes on fire.

It's the near sentence for sentence translation correlation and his marking of what he wasn't sure was correct that I appreciate. We can combine this translation with the two things James Legge grokked that Gould missed (it's worth noting that a footnote in Gould's book totally makes Legge look foolish for mistaking hare for demon and totally harshing the whole nine-animal vibe of a benevolent being). Visser's translation4 specifies the belly as that of a clam(-monster) or shen 蜃. As the belly referenced is meant to be internal (don't think so? You show me where the belly is then), what it is meant to resemble doesn't much matter short of need arising for the proper disection of a dragon. Visser's other contribution is the substitution of the poh shan or wooden foot-rule with a thing like a broad eminence (a big lump), called ch'ih muh (尺木) (it's possible that the poh shan refers to some kind of baton or small staff capable of gifting flight to dragons without a ch'ih muh).

Let's evaluate how much of Wang Fu's story we see coiled before us. I can't in good conscience try telling y'all that any of those feet have tiger paws. I already dismissed the belly as unknowable. May as well add the eyes, and the throat scale direction to that list. I'm calling the other seven similarities present, as are the whiskers and the ch'ih muh. Whether the pearl is there appears to be a toss up, depending on whether that green thing could be a pearl and whether that flaming pearl would also count. Those happen to be backfins running the length of him, for what it's worth–and those flamboyant little arm and leg dangles, well, it's quite possible that these flame and cloud patterns are vestigial wings tracing back to the yellow dragons of the Shang and Zhou dynasties.

The Tapestrial Consideration

Consider the threads appearing in both tapestries portraying both dragons as giant, four-legged, scaly, serpentine, multi-horned, multi-clawed, multi-fanged, duad-eyed, flight-enabled, mythical, mystical, water-manipulating, power-bestowing beasts. If you find the mental exercise of exposing the traits shared by these two tapestries, then you, my friend, must possess an evolutionally developed human brain wired for pattern recognition. My uneducated guess (formulated in realtime) as to why the brain focuses pattern analysis on either the similarities or differences observed between two subjects goes like this: the brain provides a snap judgement estimating whether the two subjects are more similar than different or vice versa and then proceeds with drumming up support. Whether I'm way off base with the sh$t I just shoveled is kinda irrelevant. Isn't it those uncommon threads that hold the most interesting bits?

I mean, the great red dragon depicted in the first tapestry happens to be Satan incarnate. The woman the dragon spotted in labor, around whom he'd been hovering in anticipation of some baby noms, had fled into the wilderness upon delivering her son (who'd been taken immediately up to God) leaving a hangry devil in her wake. The dragon must have followed after the child because before you know it, he's up in heaven with faces full of spear tip courtesy of Saint Michael and his cronies. The dragon would not be defeated, but he would be cast back down to earth. The hangry, thwarted dragon, in need of an outlet, would persecute the woman responsible for taking baby off the menu. Wouldn't you know it, just as the dragon begins closing in on his target, some m0therf$&ker goes and gives two wings to this woman so that she might fly off into the desert. Uber pissed at this point (or perhaps nausea was setting in for lack of nourishment), the great red dragon upchucked a river in the woman's general direction, hoping to drown the witch and be done with it. To the behest of the woman, the earth swallows the river. The dragon had just slipped into beast mode, attacking any commandment-keeping m0therf$&kers within reach, when, standing upon the sand of the sea, he saw the beast rise up out of the sea. It's this moment that's captured by that first tapestry. Our great red dragon, likely f$&king over the whole sitch and looking to pass the baton, is depicted passing his power and throne to the beast. Ain't nothing like that happening in the second tapestry.

So, what is happening in that second tapestry, within the uncommon threads? Feels worth mentioning that this second fella is cute AF. He also happens to be zipping around in the clouds with what are vestigial wings at best (and flapper tassels at worst). It's the ch'ih muh atop his cranium that renders him flight enabled, you'll recall. The dragon with the smile hovers ready mediate spiritual matters with the voice of a gong. Fluent in the manipulation of condensed primordial qi ( yin and yang) modulated by the primal taiji, one might convince him to manifest some particular aspect of wanwu 萬物 (the myriad things). Prosperity, good fortune, il ya beaucoup des things our cloud dragon may be willing to impart–rain seemed to have been a popular choice. Ain't nothing like that happening in the first tapestry. How satisfying it is, viewing them both, when there is so much to be told by either one that you would not hear from the other. Were I to reach between the lines and, abducting your mind, force from you a fabrication—something new and neoteric, tell me a story, weave me a dragon—which factors might mine eyes pluck from its picks?

The Crux of Innovation is Seed Diversity

Everything old is new, and yet, the truly innovative is never old. The key is in the recursion. The fibers with which the modern storyteller's yarn is spun are harvested by retting the plants born of seeds dropped by tapestries such as the pair I've shown you. To what degree the freshly woven tapestry may be considered innovative shall be governed by the composition of the threads and the pattern of the weave. The crux of innovation is seed diversity. What might it look like, the dragon one might weave with threads of both Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan ancestry?

As it turns out, I've already shown you how such an amalgamation might present itself. Remember that cute little cetus mosaically immortalized by the Greeks? Well, it's highly f$&kin' probable that threads of his story were woven into our cute little tapestrified cloud dragon. You see, before Wang Fu was rattling off the dragon's nine similarities, Chinese dragons were looking kinda like the ones carved into the side of this fish:

What changed? Hellenistic Greece expands east into Central Asia under Alexander the Great, some time in the fourth century BCE. The tail end of the second century BCE would see the Han Dynasty expand west into Central Asia. The primary point of contact would be Dayuan, populated by Greek colonists and Greek descendants displaced by the Persian Empire. Emperor Wu commissioned Zhang Qian to take an embassy west, which arrived in Dayuan sometime in 130 BCE. After some years of mutually beneficial trade, Dayuan would send envoys east to the Han court. Arrogant and overly confident, these envoys would dismiss adherence to Han ritual and decline Emperor Wu's trade offer for some of them Ferghana horses.

Emperor Wu's desire for these powerful, blood sweating stallions was nuttin' to f' wit'. He required them to combat his nomadic rivals. The soil in China lacked selenium. The horses they bred were underdeveloped. Those Zagros Mountain horses, on the other hand, well, Chao Cuo 晁錯 puts it this way:

上下山阪，出入溪澗，中國之馬弗與也

Which amounts to the following in English:

In climbing up and down mountains and crossing ravines and mountain torrents, the horses of China cannot compare with those of the Xiongnu.

Chinese horses, you see, were too weak to support the Chinese soldier. Thus began the War of the Heavenly Horses. Han's second expedition army would finally take Dayuan around 102 BCE, opening up the Silk Road, upon which our Greek sea serpent friend's likeness would march its way into the minds of Chinese artists interested in such things. It's at this point that the cute little cloud dragon, as we've come to know him, begins replacing the neolithic representations like those born by that fish. Long snout, bridged nose, pointed ears, horns, beard, coiled reptilian trunk equipped with claw-footed appendages, those supernal lumps–these become part of the story. The backfins alone were enough to sell me on the cross-bred threads.

Waypoint, The First

Surely, deer reader, it won't have escaped notice, the degree to which I've taken the simplest of metaphors and evolved it into a ball of chaos such as one might create when one's patience cracks before the puzzle of how some tangle of cordage might be properly unknotted, the attempt devolving into a desperate game of tug and pray, before abandoning the task altogether. I shall pause for a moment and untangle my metaphorical musing thus far, drawing order from the chaos. I believe this will provide you, deer reader, with the better starting position when I've purposefully mixed the metaphor once more into another puzzle you must untangle.

We started with the imagery of common threads among narratives; but, the metaphor proper began with the storyteller spinning his yarn. I then introduced a variation of a picture is worth a thousand words–a picture tells a thousand stories–to acknowledge the recursive nature of stories. Perhaps I ought mention that yarn and thread are interchangeable in all but the most vocational of vocabulary settings. Having established the picture's plentitude of stories, we considered, metaphorically, how these stories must be encoded by various pictorial mediums–the last of which being the tapestry encoding stories within its threads. It's at this point, just before the dragon tapestries, that our working metaphor evolves into that of the storyteller spinning yarns with which the masterful storyteller may weave a tapestry. With me so far? Good. Laying it out like this is as much for helping me to keep it straight as it is for keeping you on track to follow it end to end.

We flexed this evolution by presenting a pair of tapestries and decomposing the stories with which they had been woven. You must have felt, deer reader, as if I was beating you over the head with stories are recursive. Perhaps I did, but, two more morsels of meaning were plated and served between the beatings. Titbit número uno, it's important to understand just how far back the origins of the embedded stories might go. Hell, with enough generalization, I'd put my money on being able to recursively trace at least some aspect of any story until one reaches prehistory. Tidbit numéro deux, the common thread motif with which we began just might have successfully primed you, deer reader, for considering the commonality question while digesting the tapestry narratives.

Which threads were shared by both tapestries? Which were not? What magnitude the value of the common threads? What magnitude the value of the uncommon threads? As I intimated at the tail end of Towards the Making of a Point, these were the questions I asked myself when reflecting upon what I'd written thus far while composing last year's essay.

Whether you were primed or not, the tapestry presentations were followed by my consideration of those metaphorical threads with which each tapestry was woven. In so considering, two more questions were spawned. What if we make the context that of incorporating some subset of these threads into a brand-new weave? What if we select our threads aiming to innovate?

The heart of this essay would spring from my answers. I determined diversity drives innovation. The metaphorical twists introduced to support such sentiment are the last to be untangled. We must modify our metaphor to express the value of difference gathering when one endeavors to innovate. To do so, we prepend to the structure, leaving the current evolution of the metaphor otherwise unchanged. We've already established that, within our metaphor, a storyteller spins yarns. Well, these yarns, themselves, must be fabricated. We assume a plant-based fiber, such as cotton, flax, hemp, or bamboo, for our metaphor. We can then say a storyteller grows plants to harvest fibers for spinning yarns with which the raconteur weaves tapestries.

The final modification of this stage sacrifices the scientific in order to more adequately express the essay's focal shift. We'll purposely mix or metaphor with another, a seed planted in the mind. We'll imagine that the threads of our tapestries drop seeds. Once mixed, our metaphor becomes a storyteller gathers seeds dropped from previously woven tapestries to be grown and harvested for the fibers with which yarn shall be spun, hanks of which the raconteur weaves into new tapestries. The metaphor thus modified, I make my claim: the crux of innovation is seed diversity.

Perhaps, deer reader, I have been indulgent, or overly thorough, with this metaphorical recap. At the very least, its writing has helped me to untangle just what the f$&k it is I'm trying to say. The curl thus straightened, let's crank up the humidity. It's time to complicate some sh$t. We shall tweak our metaphor to better suit our destination. Thus far we've been considering common and uncommon threads, in the non-literal sense, within stories told by tapestries, in the literal sense. I presented literal dragon tapestries, each literally telling its own dragon story. I then conducted a comparison of these stories by discussing non-literal common and uncommon threads. Literally identical threads were not woven into each dragon for the purpose of portraying its serpentine quality.

It's not, deer reader, that I felt as if you may not have been keeping up. I wish only to prepare you for the metaphorphosis to come. I'm about to entirely reverse which bits of the working metaphor are meant literally and which are meant non-literally. Prepare yourself for a discussion of the literal threads with which some metaphorical tapestries were woven.

The topmost painting depicts Drogon, one of Daenerys' dragons, as he appears in episode six of the fourth season of HBO's Game of Thrones. ↩︎

Palmer, David R. The Revelation of John: The Textus Receptus Greek Text, Alternating Verse by Verse with a New English Translation from the Greek. Amazon Digital Services LLC - KDP Print US, 2019. ↩︎

Gould, Charles. Mythical Monsters. London : W.H. Allen & co., 1886. archive.org/details/m... ↩︎

Visser, Marinus Willem de. The Dragon in China and Japan. Amsterdam, J. Müller, 1913. archive.org/details/c... ↩︎

[stillcrazyin2023]

supernatural was only good because I was queer ~ a timeline

2013 me:

*watches supernatural, seasons 1 and 2 at a friend’s house for the very first time*

*tries not to let friends see me blushing

*it finally happened, a boy I’m genuinely attracted to, I guess I won’t die alone, maybe?*

2015 me:

*huddled in a blanket burrito at 3 am, 20 episodes into a day-long binge, fully steeped in every available spn soundtrack on YouTube, probably wearing a flannel under my blanket, crying over young dean’s ~trauma~*

*i just feel so much sympathy for this character*

*I relate so much to this fucking fictional character* *why do I relate so much to this broken goddamn character?*

***

*spends entire summer obsessing over this absolute wreck of a show*

*searches angsty spn fan art on Pinterest*

later 2015 me:

*walks around my college campus in hiking boots and a flannel-hoody-canvas jacket combo with a scowl on my face and rock music blaring in my ears*

*I just think he’s a good older sibling and I just want to emulate him so I can be a better older sibling to my younger sisters*

*searches dean-inspired outfits on Pinterest*

*learns about “coding” and “kinning”*

*chuckles to no one in particular, I’m so Dean-coded*

*stumbles upon the hillywood show*

*stumbles*

***

2016 me

*continues to obsess daily over Dean posts on Pinterest*

*I wish I could cut my hair*

*doesn’t*

2017 me

*still wearing five layers of flannel and a hoody at 3am*

*searches adult tomboy on pinterest*

*searches not boy not girl gender on pinterest*

*learns about non-binary gender identity*

*panics about not feeling real*

*what person would ever be attracted to a person who’s not a person?* (obviously a naive and uninformed take on my part, but my immediate reaction nevertheless)

*hides hair under a hoody and goes to strike best “blue steel” in the mirror at 3 am*

*feels giddy*

*takes selfie*

*good thing that’s out of my system*

2018 me

*tries dating a guy friend*

*breaks up after a week*

*friendship goes up in flames*

*starts watching lesbian bloggers for relationship advice*

2019 me

*regularly researches gender and sexuality terms and flags to remain informed as an ally*

*reads about comphet master doc on Reddit to better understand why I felt pressured as a straight woman to date my male friend*

*nods along, yes, i understand, even straight women experience comphet*

*unironically reads the first 5 chapters of Stone Butch Blues in order to better understand the lesbian identity and history*

*as an ally*

*a really good ally*

*hypothetically imagines self as Jess*

*for educational purposes*

*and like, allyship*

*cries*

*wants to cut hair*

*doesn’t*

2020 me

*if only I knew how long we would be out of the office, then I could try cutting my hair and have time to grow it back before returning to the office*

*rewatches seasons 1-6*

*watches lesbian couples vlogs “because they’re entertaining and I’m an ally, and I just really appreciate their healthy relationship”*

*downloads tiktok*

*entrenches self in queer tiktok*

*ally*

*watches tiktok claiming all lesbians are Dean-coded*

*pauses*

*scrolls*

*does not cut hair*

2021 me

*I’ve been out of the office long enough. I think I can finally cut my hair*

*feels at home in body*

*that’s neat*

***

*I need to be sure about this before I comes out*

*revisits Stone Butch Blues to make sure I’m sure*

2022 me

*hears about trash spn ending*

*hmm, i wonder why I liked such an objectively trash show in the first place*

also 2022 me: *is a raging masculine-of-center non-binary genderqueer butch lesbian*

Dean Winchester: *is subtextually (canonically) an angry, repressed, oblivious bi person, whose every inexplicably cringe action as a straight man makes 5000% more sense for someone struggling to reconcile queer masculinity without a blueprint*

[ropeadope]

Cultural Identity

What’s in a name? For many of us it is taken for granted - our identity since birth, a direct connection to our heritage. Yet millions among us do not have this privilege; their names were taken and replaced with the names of the colonizers. As we navigate the uncertain waters of the 21st Century, we look to the past to identify, clarify, and narrate the true stories of our evolving culture. For this we need leaders - those who recall and share with us the heritage that has been written off. Music holds a central place in this process, as it cannot be removed from a culture in one generation. And so, we look to those that hold both the understanding and the rhythm of the past to inform our path.

Today we focus on the personal journey of a cultural anthropologist of the musical kind:

Multi-instrumentalist, producer and Chieftain and OBA of the Xodokan Nation of New Orleans, Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah announces the release of his fourteenth studio album and first under his reclaimed name as a distinguished tribal leader. Previously known to many as boundary-breaking jazz auteur Christian Scott, Chief Adjuah continues his legacy as a sonic architect and pioneer on Bark Out Thunder Roar Out Lightning, out July 28, presenting a stupendous body of work that aims to save the rock ‘n roll and blues of tomorrow via the excavation of their storied roots and past in New Orleans, the Diaspora, and West Africa. In a first offering from the album, Chief has shared standout single “Xodokan Iko – Hu Na Ney,” a familiar melody is re-imagined as a call to the emancipatory energies of the venerated ancestors and self-liberated leaders of the African Diaspora and maroon communities of the Americas. “Xodocan Iko – Hu Na Ney” inspires future leaders to continue to face off and rise against opponents of freedom. It is a revelatory acknowledgment of today’s valiant leaders that also honors those who fought for liberation before the Emancipation Proclamation and Juneteenth.

The culmination of over two decades of trailblazing 21st-century music, BOTROL is a riveting exhibition of genre blindness and a comprehensively sharpened ethnomusicological approach to limitless fusion. Make no mistake, this is not a jazz album but rather Chief Adjuah’s new vision of the future of music and a reflection on the past, centered around storytelling and song. On BOTROL, Chief replaces his trademark trumpet here with a new instrument of his own design—Chief Adjuah’s Bow, an electric double-sided N’goni/Kora/Harp. BOTROL bridges past and future by marrying New Orleans culture and the folklore, ceremonies and rituals of the maroon and Afro-Indigenous chiefdoms with his own innovation: Stretch Music. The result is a spellbinding exhibition of Afro-New Orleanian and West African expression where music, dance, and cultures unite.

“Everything from call and response to thunderous drums, music that lives with us in celebratory, proclamatory, preparatory, joyous, and determined moments of our journeys. It was without measure the amount of healing it did to sing the old songs the old way and the new, the new. The Album is a part of my journey into Chiefdom, the gathering of community, and the inspiration it created and continues to foster.  It is another kind of Ancestral Recall. Bark Out Thunder Roar Out Lightning was performed on Chief Adjuah’s Bow, a double-sided harp I created in 2021. It was built to serve as a bridge to the African forefather nations of the blues and its descendants, places like Mali, Senegal, Ghana, Benin, and Nigeria, and Instruments like the Ngoni, Ankoting, and Bolon. But now in a plugged-in, lightning in a VOX  and smokin’ pedals kinda way. Each record is sung and sewn with the song and story of the Xodokan Nation, and that of the Nations of my kin, ancestors, and predecessor Chieftain. My Grandfather who led many nations Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr. of the Guardians of the Flame and my uncle NEA Jazz Master Big Chief Donald Harrison Jr. of the Congo Square Nation. It’s that roaring sound of the Maroon Nations of New Orleans. Drums make thunder and boom, tamborines ring through time itself it seems. And other times it feels like it's hailing a future of Rock n Roll that's fully connected to all these skeleton keys, threads, and seeds. Each thread unites in possibility. Simultaneously centuries-old and focused forward—a Sankofa’n approach to Rock n Roll, Blues, and yeah Stretch Music.” (Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah)

from ropeadope https://ift.tt/fYL27dQ via IFTTT

[psychedelic-ink]

😈- 7 MINUTES IN HEAVEN: send me a character and a prompt from this list (+18 only)

“come here. sit in my lap and tell me what you want,  [chosen term for sub]” with michael kinsella😖

✨ seven minutes in heaven masterlist ✨

pairing: michael kinsella x fem!reader

prompt: ❝ come here. sit in my lap and tell me what you want,  [chosen term for sub]❞

warnings: dirty talking, the use of slut & whore, dom!micheal, sub!reader, lots of clothed grinding, fingering

a/n: anon i dont know who you are but thank you, getting this request made me so so unbelievably happy

+18 content under the cut | minors dni

You nervously stare at Michael from the threshold of the study. He was typing away something, what it was you had no idea nor did you had the urge to ask. You were supposed to be a sleep, the cold air going through your nightgown and making you shiver. Taking a step inside, you flinch at the way the wood creaks under your bare feet.

Michael straightens up and turns to you with ease thanks to the revolving chair. He raises his eyebrows.

"What are you doing up so late?" he asks. "Did I wake you?"

You shake your head, walking and standing an inch away from him as he looks up at you with concern.

"Couldn't sleep," you mutter, averting your gaze. "Missed you,"

A small smile tugs at the corner of Michael's lips, if you didn't know him the way that you did, you might've missed it. You know that he wants to act as if you not being able to sleep without him doesn't make him happy, but it does. That wasn't all. You had an itch that was begging to be scratched. The heat between your legs made you toss and turn in bed with frustration, you needed him to put that fire out.

He seems to understand this by the way your pupils dilate, the way you bite your bottom lip as you stare into his eyes longingly. Michael's hand comes down to his lap.

"Come here. Sit in my lap and tell me what you want, pet."

Your mouth salivates upon hearing the name he gave you months ago. A shiver climbs up your spine and your lips part with a gasp of air. You do as he asks, straddling his lap as he wraps his muscular arms around your waist. When he gazes upon you all you can do is stare at his lips.

"Tell me what you want," he repeats.

"I--" you swallow, your tongue suddenly feeling two times too big in your mouth. "I want...I want to...have sex,"

A pout forms on your lips when he chuckles.

"That's quite frank of you to say," he teases, leaning closer. His breath ghosts over your face. "What makes you think I have the time to fuck a dirty whore like yourself?"

Your legs tremble at the way his voice goes down an octave, your loins begins to burn with anticipation and a whine escapes your lips. Then, much like a tidal wave, a sudden rush of pleasure washes over you when Micheal grinds his hips up against your core. Your hands claw his chest and you moan, his smile widens, grinding up into your clothed cunt once more.

"Fuck," he groans, hands on your hips. "I bet I can get you to cum like this-- My sweet, eager, perfect slut--"

"Yes," you breathe out. "Please Michael,"

He tuts, "Poor thing..."

His hands guide you as you begin to roll your hips, you can feel the prominent bulge under his sweatpants. It makes your thighs tremble. The way his fingers squeeze your ass, the way he groans into your neck as your grind your dripping cunt makes your mind go numb. Your panties now completely see through. Your insides clenching, you moan out his name, wet lips parting as you bury your face into his neck.

"That's it, you're going to feel so good after this-- Come on, cum for me,"

Michael starts to thumb your clit, his fingers rubbing between your clothed folds and humming as he feels how wet your truly were. The movement of your hips becomes sloppy, uneven, uncalculated. Your breathing ragged as he mercilessly plays with your engorged clit. Saliva dribbles down the corner of your lips as you chant his name over and over again, begging him to push you over the edge-- And he does.

Your toes curl and your back arches, Micheal doesn't stop playing with you as your cunt gushes with slick. A raspy groan rips from your throat as the overwhelming bliss of pleasure hits you like a truck. You can't help but start to bounce up and down on his lap, as if his cock was inside of you, and when you did the way his thumb grazes against your clit sends jolts of electricity up your spine. Everything about him feels so good. It makes you crave more. You need him.

"Now that's a good pet," he purrs, leaving wet, open mouthed kisses all over your neck. "But you're not satisfied are you? Not yet anyway,"

"N-No," you moan, hips still grinding against him. " 'Need more,"

"I know you do," his lips touches the side of your chin, nibbling your sensitive skin. "And don't worry, I'm not going to stop until you pass out-- That way you'll have to sleep."

[noragamibigbang]

Noragami Reverse Bang 2021 Final Line Up

The Noragami Reverse Bang 2021 is officially over! We hope you all enjoyed participating. Below are previews of all the art and writing created for this event, with links to everything.

Thank you all for your enthusiasm and support, and we’ll see you next time!

[Full AO3 Collection]

Week 1

August 28-29

Artwork 1: by artist @oneofyatosfollowers with inspired fic ‘Till Death do we Meet by writer @rach16 

Summary: In an alternate universe, Yato is the slightly overworked Grim Reaper, who only has his assistant Yukine for company. His job is to take the souls of those who died from the mortal world, to their rightful place in the afterlife. He coincidentally happens to meet Hiyori Iki one day, a mysterious, and very beautiful high school girl who has the unique ability to see him. As the girl and the Reaper become friends however (and maybe more than friends), dark forces are on the rise, threatening everything Yato has worked for…along with everything he ever loved.

View & Read: Art | AO3 

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August 30

Artwork 2: by artist @maybemacdc with inspired fic Normal Girl by writer @ohplagg 

Summary: Nora is living her best life by being the normal middle school student that she always longed to be with her new friends and her two parents that love her so much.

View & Read: Art | AO3

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August 31

Artwork 3: by artist @/crystalline.arts (Instagram) with inspired fic Divine Blessing by writer @thedeliverygod 

Summary: He wasn’t sure if he was ready for any of this. He appreciated his friends' concern and they probably just wanted him to actually do something instead of walk around in a daze all day, but he was still healing. Yukine was helping him keep it together, but a giant part of him was missing.

View & Read:   Art | FF.Net | AO3

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September 1

Artwork 4: by artist @yatosaurus with inspired fic by writer @royai 

Summary: The third time Koa saw Haru was on a bridge. Sunset weaving through meandering clouds, and Haru’s eyes with dark hammocks beneath. He leaned halfway over the railing, wind rippling his short, blonde hair. He was neither a boy or not a boy. An ambiguity or, more likely, an other. People never were good at confronting the other.

View & Read:  Art | Tumblr

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September 2

Artwork 5: by artist @lotusblossombloom with inspired fic You Are My Blessed by writer @runningonsunshine19

Summary: It has been weeks since Yato reincarnated, and Yukine has been watching over him all the while. But it isn't always easy seeing the person he knew and loved so well as a child without any memories of what brought them to this point.

View & Read: Art | AO3

Week 2

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September 3

Artwork 6: by artist @swatato with inspired fic Desolate by writer @hallucxnatingblog

Summary: Snow falls from the sky as if it is in slow motion, landing gently on his cheeks and eyelashes. Feeling his fingertips freeze by the second, he shoves them deep inside the pockets of his clothing and comes to rest under an abandoned building. He sighs, breath taking the form of a cloud. Yato is not fond of winter.

View & Read: Art | AO3

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September 4-5

Artwork 7: by artist @/spilledpeaches (Twitter) with inspired fic A Found Family by writer @blackvelvetinfierno 

Summary: Now that Father is dead, Nora founds herself living at the house where Yato, Yukine, Kofuku and her shinki Daikoku reside. She realizes this might be her real chance at having a family and she won’t let go this opportunity.

View & Read: Art | AO3

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September 6

Artwork 8: by artist @blackvelvetinfierno​ with inspired fic Bathhouse of the Gods by writer @origami10 and beta @xxevrex

Summary: Yato, Yukine, and Hiyori visit the bathhouse of the gods for the first time, accompanied by Bishamon & Kazuma and Kofuku & Daikoku, and get into a little more mischief than everyone bargained for!

View & Read: Art | AO3

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September 7

Artwork 9: by artist @blade-of-hope​ with inspired fic Promise Everyday to Change by writer @midori-verte and beta @sondeneige

Summary: Yato had never imagined meeting someone like Hiyori, let alone that the kindest and bravest person he'd ever met would want to stay by his side and protect him. But Hiyori is constantly in danger because of him, and the link between her soul and body is becoming frayed. How can Yato call himself a god, when he can't even protect his only follower?

View & Read: Art | AO3

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September 8

Artwork 10: by artist @hakucho-art with inspired fic Longer Than Kin by writer @runningonsunshine19

Summary: When Hiyori is unexpectedly killed, Yato must make the decision whether or not to take her soul as his shinki.

View & Read: Art  | AO3

Week 3

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September 9

Artwork 11: by artist @littlessushi with inspired fic Do you remember...? by writer @shikonotama 

Summary: It's already been six years, since Hiyori Iki had decided to move away to accomplish her goal to become a physician. As she did not have any contact to Yato, Yukine or any of the other people from the far shore in the past six years, her memories had become blurry. Up until the day she encounters a black stray on her way back home. Will she be able to regain her memories with her friends?

View & Read:  Art | AO3

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September 10

Artwork 12: by artist @invertedgoogle with inspired fic Seaside Confessions by writer @justxaxstrayxkid

Summary: Current Ebisu and an incarnation from the Heian period share a conversation while watching the sea. 

View & Read: Art | AO3 

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September 10

Artwork 13: by artist @invertedgoogle​ with inspired poem Yukata and Goldfish by writer @justxaxstrayxkid​ 

Summary: Hiiro spends a day at a summer festival.

View & Read: Art  | AO3

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September 11-12

Artwork 14: by artist @caharom with inspired fic Operation: Get Hiyori Back by writer @smritz444 and beta @leopah

Summary: "The nerve of that girl, to romance a god. And Yato, of all the gods she could've chosen." Four-thirty a.m., on a cool summer night, Kazuma got a call. A distressing call, from a distressed delivery god, who was sure he was going to die. Kazuma's used to cleaning up messes, more cure than prevention, but this was one disaster he would not let come to pass.

View & Read: Art  | AO3

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September 13

Artwork 15: by artist @stray-tails with inspired fic the roots that clutch by writer @/Scytale (AO3) and betas @beautiful-fiscal-siren & @/alamorn (AO3)

Summary: While making masks to control the phantoms, Ebisu enlists the help of an unusual regalia.

View & Read: Art | AO3 

Week 4

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September 14

Artwork 16: by artist @sunny-capriccio with inspired fic Good Omen by writer @/Amystis (AO3) and beta @leopah

Summary: Of all the places Takemikazuchi could fall asleep, it had to be here... Not only does Kiun find himself in a rather peculiar situation, he also learns a lot about his relationship with his master.

View & Read: Art | AO3

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September 15

Artwork 17: by artist @slavhew with inspired fic Stay by @thedeliverygod

Summary: The words rang in Yukine’s ears and he pulled his hands into fists against the ground as he yelled out, “No, no! This can’t be happening! I can’t lose you both! Not like this…” The tears started to spill out of his eyes and he reached out to cling to one of Yato’s arms, “I’m so sorry for everything… I was so stupid and selfish. Please, don’t leave me…”

View & Read: Art  |  AO3 | FF.net

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September 16

Artwork 18: by artist @lumiccu with inspired fic Forget Me Nots by writer @asanoyas and beta @danytheshygal

Summary: Nestled against the corner furthest from the front entrance was the checkout counter, and behind it stood a young woman. Her long brown hair was held back from her face by a bandana, and an apron was tied around her front. When she noticed them, her soft features rose into a smile so big and bright she had to squint her eyes. Yato did not consider himself above cliche, and so would readily admit that his heart did, in fact, skip a beat. In which Hiyori owns a flower shop, Yato causes a minor disaster, and somehow things end up working out, in the end.

View & Read: Art | AO3 

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September 17

Artwork 19 : by artist @ayyydrie with inspired fic Ghost Number Seven: Yato of the Trash Can by writer @oneofyatosfollowers 

Summary: Fretting and desperate over the reputation of her family's hospital, Hiyori Iki knocked on the lid of a trash can and made a wish to the school's seventh mystery, forever binding her to the young boy wielding a knife. Now, Hiyori must be strong as she stands beside a wish-granting ghost and a rejected exorcist as they fight in a war between the near and far shore.

View & Read: Art | AO3 | FF.net  

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September 18-19

Artwork 20: by artist @ayyydrie with inspired fic Like a Fleeting Dream by writer @herstrayskies and beta @asin-ka

Summary: Hiyori Iki, a 20 year old college student has been able to see ayakashi since she was a little girl. Her grandmother, who raised her, taught her how to protect herself from the ones that would cause her nothing but misfortune. One day on her way to class she runs into a hungry ayakashi she's never met or seen before. Despite her grandmother's warnings Hiyori decides to take a leap of faith by offering him a meal. A Kakuriyo AU.

View & Read:  Art | AO3

Week 5

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September 20

Artwork 21: by artist @mochakat with inspired fic The Yato-gami I know by writer @ohplagg 

Summary: “My name is Sakura,” she decides to try a much simpler approach “what’s yours?” The man with his right hand still holding half of his face and with a skeptical look writes on the dirt. 夜卜 Ya…to? AU where Tenjin never fired Tamanone.

Read: Art  | AO3 

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September 21

Artwork 22: by artist @viinas with inspired fic sins of the father by writer @kofubisha

Summary: The hand against his cheek is warm and sweet. Freckled. He knows it before his eyes open. She smiles down at him; his heart stumbles. There it is. That tender ache that he has never felt before, nor since. “Welcome,” she whispers, and, at last, he realizes where he is. Ah. So he has killed me.

View & Read:  Art | AO3

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September 22

Artwork 23: by artist @shinkimiope with inspired fic Golden Hour by @skadventuretime and beta @xxevrex

Summary: Two friends catch up under the cherry blossoms.

Read:  Art | AO3

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September 23

Artwork 24: by artist @/nahrgles (Twitter) with inspired fic on streamed buns & the nature of friendship by writer @relv07 and beta @beautiful-fiscal-siren

Summary: She must have bought Yukine the steamed bun he was eating, because Yato was pretty sure that he had taken all of Yukine’s money. Yato’s stomach growled. He wanted to be eating a steamed bun and talking to a pretty goddess.

View & Read: Art  | AO3

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September 25 - 26

Artwork 25: by artist @sunflowarfid with inspired fic Untimbered by writer @yatoholmes and beta @onesmolbirb

Summary: When Hiyori decides to throw a surprise birthday party for Yato, what better gift could she give him and Yukine than her childhood treehouse, located in the forest of her uncle's business? However, misunderstandings ensue the day of, and a generational family curse doesn't make it all the better...

View & Read: Art | AO3

Week 6

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September 27

Artwork 26: by artist @artfool with inspired fic sugar-pink blossoms by writer @muffindounat and beta @sxltedcxramel

Summary: Cherry blossom petals symbolize new beginnings, maybe this time around, it’s something Yato can finally look forward to?

View & Read: Art | AO3

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September 28

Artwork 27: by artist @mochakat with inspired fic Ties Both Broken And New by writer @kalu-chan and beta @puffkine

Summary: Yato is bound by many ties - Those from his past, binding him to Father and Nora, and those from his future, connecting him to Hiyori and Yukine. Which ties will break? Which ones will hold and grow ever stronger?

View & Read: Art | AO3

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September 29

Artwork 28: by artist @nuovanestra with inspired fic Severed Agency by writer @starship--phoenix​

Summary: Kazuma was not a hero. He was barely even an assistant. He didn’t graduate from a hero school, didn’t have a hero license, didn’t have an offensive quirk. By all accounts, he should have faded into obscurity, just another office worker in a sea of office workers. Yet Bishamon had taken him in. She saw worth in him and gave him a place at her side. She showed him that his quirk was not useless. Even as young as she was, with as many sidekicks as she had, even though Kazuma was inexperienced, she still helped Kazuma be more than he thought he ever could be. She still believed he could be valuable to her. But he was not a hero. So why had it fallen on him to save her? Why was he making his way down grimy back alleys, following rumors and overheard whispers he’d picked up from sidekicks at the agency? Why was he looking for a villain to save the strongest hero he knew?

View & Read: Art | AO3

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September 30

Artwork 29: by artist @crab-milk with inspired fic Stray by writer @invertedgoogle, pinch hitter @oneofyatosfollowers, and beta @sxltedcxramel

Summary: Two strays meet, and have their paths intertwined, aka Nora adopts a stray cat.

View & Read: Art | AO3

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October 4

Artwork 30: by artist @onehundredfallenpetals with inspired fic I want out of here by writer @sondeneige and beta @midori-verte

Summary: As much as Haruki enjoys the quiet before dawn he also loves the feeling of the city coming alive around him. Being a part of a crowd is another kind of hiding, another kind of privacy.

View & Read: Art | AO3

Week 7

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October 5

Artwork 31: by artist @/PokeCardzz (Twitter) with inspired fic Come Away Home by writer @veenaas​​

Summary: There cannot be another place on Earth where the slate sea foams against the rocks like it does in Gelwe, nor can there be a place where the salt breeze stings so sweetly. It must rival paradise. Hiyori would like nothing more than to leave it. In the little coastal town of Gelwe, there are many things that a proper young lady simply does not do. Top of the list is associating with the crude, gruff, rough crowd of sailors that spill into port every week. Hiyori Iki (one of those proper young ladies) dreams of excitement and adventure and is unimpressed by any of the town's eligible bachelors. When she meets an intriguing young man by the docks, however, she makes a decision that will shake her family and town by the roots: Hiyori Iki is going to run away with a sailor.

View & Read: Art | AO3

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October 6

Artwork 32: by artist @taylizart with inspired fic Second Time is the Charm by writer @sondeneige and beta @midori-verte

Summary: Yato and Hiyori are new to this whole dating thing. And maybe Capyper Land is a rough place to visit as one of their first real dates. Hopefully, things go a bit better than they did last time. Either way though, Yato is going to enjoy every minute that he and Hiyori are together.

View & Read: Art | AO3

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October 7

Artwork33: by artist @hakucho-art with inspired fic The Same (Internal) Battle by writer @oneofyatosfollowers 

Summary: As Yato fights to kill his father and save all he cares about, doubt starts to creep in.  

View & Read: Art | AO3

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October 8 

Artwork 34: by artist and co-writer @eerna​ with inspired fic Perennial by writer @leopah 

Summary: Hiyori follows his gaze downward, where she can just make out the extravagant costumes of Heaven’s upper class twirling in the streets. They’ll probably be at it until dawn, when the Regalia head out. And then they’ll go back out the following night, and the one after, and the one after that, and every day that follows; an endless parade of indulgence, gods among men. “Sickening, isn’t it?” says Yato.

View & Read: Art | AO3

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October 9 - 10

Artwork 35: by artist @holly-wee​ with inspired fic Yesterow by writer @yatoholmes​ and beta @sondeneige​

Summary: Today passes by too soon for the ones who long for yesterday and tomorrow. 

View & Read: Art | AO3

[unusual-raccoon]

Indebted by Unusual_Raccoon

Fandom: Kin (TV 2021)

Rating: Not Rated

Relationships: Michael Kinsella/F!Reader, Michael Kinsella/You

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Western, Alternate Universe - Historical, Historical Inaccuracy, Crimes & Criminals, Bandits & Outlaws, My First Work in this Fandom, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Falling in Love, Propositions

Word Count: 8k+

Summary: The daughter of a doctor in a small town in the West, you never imagined being accosted by criminals. Even less imaginable, was turning to the very family that extorted your father for money in your hour of need; yet, that was exactly what you did.

Link

A/N: for some reason tumblr keeps having a heart attack when I try and paste the fic on this draft. So, apologies to those that prefer reading on here. Just tap the link to read.

[actualbird]

I got distracted reading 4-04 and 4-05 i totally forgot the actual thing i was supposed to ask you today, what are your thoughts on the kinds of shows the nxx team wouldve watched as kids growing up. MC and Luke have apparently watched animes and even dressed up as characters but i have this need to know the finer details. LIKE. WHAT DID YOU WATCH SPECIFICALLY?? And i remembered you said luke was the one who probably understood most of the terms zangr was saying so like?? Luke do you like these kinds of things?? -Marsh

MARSH, thank you so much for this ask and for the SPECIFIC WORDING "watched as kids growing up." because that makes me have to go back in time and thusly uncovering by far my favorite yet most under-utilized and never-brought-up detail of tears of themis:

the story of this game takes place in the year 2030

DO U HAVE ANY IDEA HOW FUNNIER THIS MAKES SHIT???? AND ALSO HOW MUCH MORE SENSE STUFF MAKES??? let me explain myself by going thru all the boys one by one

luke pearce

YEAH HE SAID HE AND MC WERE RLLY INTO ANIME AS KIDS. luke pearce who is 24 years old in 2030 means that from the Important Media Ages (12-15) it was 2018-2021. this period of time, anime started getting more and more accessible, most notably getting on netflix and stuff like this. so like all the anime on netflix rn? yeah luke's watched them.

though because i kin luke, imma say that his fave is fullmetal alchemist: brotherhood. ive got no characterization proof for this, i just want to give him this honor

additionally, luke is a HUUUUGE fan of the original Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle novels (ACD Sherlock) and i think this would have pushed him to watch like, just every popular sherlock media adaptation there is. he personally liked Elementary better than BBC Sherlock. he generally just gravitates to the adaptations that dont forget about the heart of all of the characters.

also also also, luke likes action movies ranging from "hey this is "good" to critics" to "this is a shit movie but MY GOD IS IT FUN!!!"

artem wing

artem wing who is 29 years old in 2030 means that from the Important Media Ages (12-15) it was 2013-2016. but also artem is a MOVIE SNOB LMAOOO, hes That Guy with the Opinions On Film and you bet that his analytical ass was into just the most extra shit to watch those days because no teenager is chill, every teenager has some kind of ego, i dont know what movies he would have watched at that point to be the Smartest Teenager About Movies, but he sure did watch them

though artem also is very into sci-fi literature and 2013-2016 had a BUUUNCH of huge sci-fi movies. Pacific Rim, Gravity, Interstellar, Arrival. Arrival is deffo artem's fave, dont fight me on this, i can explain further but not in this answer bc it will get LOOONG LOL

artem also is into "classics" which uh. wait artem what do you Mean by that, what is a "classic" for somebody born in 2001??? i dont really know exactly what he means by "classics" so i just take it to mean he's a slut for period dramas which leads me to my closing point

"Once upon a time, when [Artem] was younger, around 17 years old, he pondered identifying as asexual or as one of the subsets under that term, but he put that aside after he first watched Pride and Prejudice (2005). He had then acquired a recurring fantasy in which he would be sensually accosted by Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy in a secluded study after months of furtive, charged glances, lingering, split second touches, double entendres classily and subtly masked but still implying a repressed yet voracious—Moving on." -an excerpt from my comedy smut fic where artem goes thru a crisis. yeah. yeah. Pride and Prejudice dir. Joe Wright was his bisexual awakening.

MOVING ON!!

vyn richter

vyn richter who is 27 years old in 2030 means that from the Important Media Ages (12-15) it was 2015-2018 but honestly that doesnt help me AT ALL LOL BECAUSE VYN IS A TOUGH NUT TO CRACK.....

like honest to god i cant even imagine vyn as anything other than an adult KJBSJKFS (which is depressing, if i think about it more... but also what vyn would want, i assume he would hate for people to have known him as a child, imperfect and shunned.....which is ALSO DEPRESSING. VYN, U GOOD???)

okay yknow what im not studied enough in Vyn Richter Studies so i will come back to this once ive gotten more of his story and know more of his (what im theorizing to be a SHITASS TERRIBLE) childhood history. so vyn, i guess ur safe from me....ur safe FOR NOW, THAT IS....

marius von hagen

marius von hagen who is 21 years old in 2030 means that from the Important Media Ages (12-15) it was 2021-2024. good fucking lord, marius was born in 2009 and that makes him so young that his Important Media Ages arent even DONE HAPPENING IN OUR CURRENT TIMELINE, JESUS....

2021 is an interesting era of entertainment because it is getting steadily more and more apparent that corporate greed is trying to swallow up good storytelling; movies and shows are made as fast food products to be consumed immediately and thrown away just as fast. there are smarter posts and articles talking about this, but my point here is that marius "believes SO MUCH in art and art's capability to make a difference" von hagen would HATE THIS SO MUCH and, through spite, get into a lot of indie medias that dont necessarily sell. smaller movies, tv shows that got cancelled way before they should have.

oh, hey, MARIUS WAS 12 YEARS OLD IN 2021, yeah he could have watched The Owl House and threw a fucking FIT when disne/y nerfed the show's third season. he has not forgiven and he has not forgotten.

regardless of his age, marius, at some point in his teens watches Vincent and the Doctor (s5 e10 from Doctor Who). for those who dont know this episode, it involves Vincent Van Gogh and a bunch of sci-fi stuff but, at the end, a scene where Van Gogh is taken to the future and shown the impact his art has made on people. please watch it, if you havent it, it's very good and no words can do the experience justice.

anyway yeah marius watches it and it makes him FUCKING SOB

yeah so these are my takes kdjbfdsjfs

[cherryblossomfreak]

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

Don't let ANYONE make you feel like shit for your kintype(s). Even if it's "weird." Even if it's "common." Even if they call it "cringe." I don't care if you're a comic book villain (I can relate) or you identify as Jesus Christ himself - identity is a complex thing, and kin or not, we're all trying to figure ourselves out. The people who judge you are just like any bully or abuser. They hurt you because they hate themselves. It's cliche, but it's the truth.

I'm 27 years old now, and I am OVER this shit. In July of 2016, years of mild hallucinations/delusions evolved into full-blown schizophrenia... for years, I was on the fringes of the alterhuman community, but it was during a two-year long psychotic episode that I discovered a number of the kintypes that I continue to identify as today - Sunday, May 23rd of 2021.

The "worst" one? The most "cringe?" I occasionally shift into "Dark Knight Joker." I'm not imagining this or trying to be "cool" - in all seriousness, I experience remarkable personality changes. The way I walk changes. The "voice in my head," the voice of my inner monologue changes... and it doesn't matter what you, me, or anyone else thinks about this fictotype - it is what it is. And if you're dealing with a kintype/fictotype that people want you to be ashamed of, that people laugh at to make themselves feel better - fuck 'em.

I see the videos people share on "cringe" subreddits. They HATE us... from the teen wolfkin wearing fingerless gloves and howling out of pure joy to the 30+ year old angel mourning the loss of their heavenly bodies, still trying to make peace with the human in the mirror... vulcan, fae or otherwise, they're going to mock you - and do you want to know why?

Because we're outcasts, and yet we don't hate themselves like they do. They have killed every last inch of themselves to fit in, and it's still not good enough - they still can't stand to even LOOK at themselves, inside or out... if I've learned only one thing in life, it's that most people died a long, long time ago because they were afraid of being alone... afraid of being hurt. Afraid of being rejected.

Please hold your fucking head up high. I'm Joker. I'm a trickster god/alien named Key who hisses and has floppy ears. I'm a "spirit of death" that loves hoarding pretty rocks and talks like an old crone... I'm a coyote. An angel with eyes adorning my arms, from the back of my hands to my shoulders. Sometimes I'm the Crow, still grieving the suicide of my first love... sometimes I don't know who or what I am - but in those moments I feel ALIVE. I'm not ashamed of myself... and whether you're a teenager taking your first steps or a graymuzzle loved all over this little community, you deserve to LOVE yourself - in spite of everything and everyone.

And know this: I love you, too. Love is a hard thing to come by in a world that treats us like we're a joke, like we deserve their laughter and scorn... all for daring to believe in and be something more than human.

And I pray that one day we feel like ourselves again... I don't know about you, but for me this hurts like hell. Stay strong.

- from "The Vague Diaries"