#somewhere to Contemplate

[ancientsignal]

don't worry about it , it was worth it . think about their reunion I’m astral projecting it into your brain.

❝   …   i suppose it was. in a way.   ❞   cyrus expected to be trapped in the distortion world for all time.   he was resigned to his fate,   one he knew might end in his demise.   time behaved differently in the distortion world   ⸻   he was unsure how and if he would age, if he would die of age,   or if his body would even decay.   all natural processes were warped,   out of sync from his own dimension.   he assumed,   as was logical,   that he would remain there for arceus knows how long.   and he was trapped in there with   …   not a monster.   an animal.   an animal that clawed desperately at the bars of its enclosure for even the most minute chance that it might escape.   and it did,   for a time.   and he did.   but that time alone,   away from his dimension,   he had time to think.   it felt like years that he thought.  nothing but thinking.   he came to the realization that all of his goals were for nought   …   were they,   really?   he grew to be more at peace with himself,   his own emotions,   and the knowledge,   will,   and feelings of others.   it will be a process to continue this growth,   but to continue thinking as he once did will most certainly lead to his doom.

and here is saturn,   still attached at the hip.   all the commanders are.   they insisted on tagging along with him,   no matter what the future looked like.   he wonders just how long that will last,   now that he is a new person.   ❝   for me,   it was.   saturn   …   i’m sorry.   i have to imagine you must feel differently than what you say.   ❞

[hyeocat]

Why go do work when you can draw big man instead?

[estrangedandwayward]

Arthur and Zoe from house on the cerulean sea

Full drawings of both under the cut

[fistfuloflightning]

When Ming Fan finally fought his way through the underbrush to where the Rift had appeared, it was already too late. Shizun and Luo Binghe stood at the edge of the yawning chasm, swords unsheathed and pointed at each other. He hadn’t thought much of it when Shen Qingqiu had flown past him so soon after the earthquake that had torn open the Rift, but he could now see there was something very wrong. Shen Qingqiu’s back was turned to Ming Fan and his face hidden, but he could see plainly the fear and confusion on Luo Binghe’s face. Along with the glowing, damning mark on his forehead. Something demonic.

Ming Fan gripped the foliage, forcing himself not to run out. Not yet. He’d end up dead or wishing he was. He had mocked Luo Binghe early in the Conference, yes, but he knew the younger boy had done nothing to merit this kind of punishment—!

In a matter of seconds, Xiu Ya had stabbed forward, Zheng Yang had shattered, and Luo Binghe had staggered back into the Rift.

Everything seemed to still.

Ming Fan sucked in an breath and darted out of the foliage—but it was too late. Luo Binghe’s arm vanished over the edge just as Ming Fan ran past their shizun. He lunged forward the last few feet, fingers clawing at Luo Binghe’s forearm just in time. Caught, held. The sudden weight had him crashing again against the ground and the wind was knocked out of him. The taste of charred earth mixed with that of fresh blood where he’d nearly bitten his tongue in half.

But that was inconsequential. Not when he could feel the weight at the end of his arm that told him he didn’t fail. Even when the only person he needed to acknowledge that fact was someone he couldn’t stand. No one deserves to die like this, Ming Fan thought viciously. Not even him.

Dangling below him, Luo Binghe’s eyes were wide with terror and confusion, at odds with the damning, demonic seal glowing on his forehead. But there was something like gratitude there as well, out of place and so painfully frail.

For a fragile second, it felt like they were breathing the same

“Shixiong—”

With a cry, he was wrenched from Ming Fan’s grip and into the Abyss below. Ming Fan’s cry was strangled in his throat.

He didn’t know how long he remained there, clenching the burned grass with white-knuckled fingers and straining his eyes to see through the acrid smoke that rose from the chasm for even the barest glimpse of Luo Binghe. But time moved on and the Rift sealed shut and when Ming Fan blinked and once more became aware of his surroundings, he realized he was not alone.

Shen Qingqiu loomed over him like a stone Buddha, face cold as jade. His spiritual sword was once more sheathed, his robes neat and not one hair out of place. As though he hadn’t had a hand in what had happened here.

“You… you killed him,” Ming Fan breathed, still unable to fully process what had just taken place. But that’s what it was, a death sentence fed to the hungry maw of the Endless Abyss.

Shen Qingqiu. “He was a stain upon our sect.”

Ming Fan could feel the rage slowly rise. “He was a disciple of Qing Jing Peak. He was your disciple.” Acknowledging it was like vinegar on his tongue but a boy was dead because of him. He stared at Shen Qingqiu as if seeing him for the first time. Stripped of his elegance and his masks…

“He was a demon.” Shen Qingqiu sneered down at him. “There is no need to explain to you why he needed to be eradicated.”

Ming Fan tore burning eyes away from that frigid, impassive mask. He couldn’t bear looking at the man he had so long idolized. Instead he stared at the ground, in fear he would do or say something he could not undo. And beside his knee he saw slivers of metal.

The shards of Zheng Yang, tangled in the burned grass. Ming Fan’s vision blurred and his breath grew sharp and ragged, anger slamming into him full force. He wrapped his fingers around the pieces, the razor pain of their edges grounding him as the rest of his world unraveled like poorly woven cloth. His shizun had failed him.

And he had failed his shidi.

[aelisinsims]

recent progress ^^

[raeezor]

soooooo anyway @electricbluebyicehouse has me obsessed with the image of a bartender vi... shaking up drinks with those ungodly arms 🤭

[zuhuraha]

contemplating a comeback here

[mismess]

There is this one Elvis Presley table at a local antique shop that was obviously made by someone cutting out images of elvis from like magazines or something and mod-podging them onto the table with a layer of glass placed on top of it, it has been there for YEARS, nobody wants it.

and I love it. I want it. If it is still there when i eventually move out I WILL buy it as my first piece of furniture. This will be my dinnar table. I do not hold any particularly strong love for Elvis.

[fisheito]

Meanwhile, in the interdimensional kuya group chat:

White kuya: idiot.jpg White kuya: whose man is this . Can't even use magic. Only thing he's good at is embarrassing himself. Come pick him up Pink kuya: lol not mine Purple kuya: lol not mine

[mjrdm]

does this . make sense

[jeannes-world]

How do I finish my work when all I can think about is Jayvik in every goddamn situation possible ?? Especially them doing it in every position the human body is capable of, in their workshop ??? I've got a disease and it's called "shipping way too hard when I could do these things with someone else" 😔

[gwengoodrich]

I’m just imaging a situation post-Trespasser where my Warden Aeducan has really settled in to her new life as the Divine’s trophy wife, and one day, Leliana tells her “Don’t be mad, but I may have promised Inquisitor Lavellan that you’d have tea with her next month and give her some advice on navigating her post-world-saving life.” And of course she says yes, both because she loves her wife and she knows what happens to people who go against her wishes.

Unbeknownst to either of them, Varric learns about this and suggests to Hawke that she visit Lavellan the same day, to help lift her spirits, y’know? Merrill can come too and chat with Clan Lavellan’s Keeper.

Cut to Aeducan walking in on perennial fuckup Marian Hawke giving Lavellan some truly atrocious, if humorous, advice, and Hawke having to contend with the goddamn Hero of Ferelden strolling in to save the day once again.

And once the three of them get to talking, Aeducan has to be very careful, because she recognizes that it would be incredibly insensitive on multiple levels to other two women to say things along the lines of “Yeah, so my brother dying, me being forced out of the only home I’ve never known, then conscripted into a paramilitary organization that was completely foreign to my culture was honestly the best thing that ever happened to me. I got to save the world and receive near-universal fame for it, including being religiously venerated by my own people. Speaking of religion, my wife is considered something of a radical by her peers, but in spite of that, she was able to rise to a position of power, letting her push through reforms that include marrying me, cause she loves me so much that she’s not afraid to show me her ruthless side. Now we live in the lap of luxury together, being influential girlboss wives.”

In the end, they mostly engage in some good-natured shit-talking of their mutual friends and acquaintances. Before she leaves, however, Aeducan does encourage Lavellan to continue her painting and even offers to put in a good word with Leliana about commissioning some official Chantry murals from her about the history of the Inquisition.

[lookinghalfacorpse]

ngl i always assumed your version of techno was immortal, is his life span the same as any ordinary piglin?

yes!! i headcanon piglins living around 900 years, and ctechno is about 500 during the events of canon

[euelios]

i know it’s a cheque but jesus christ.

got stiffed several thousand dollars of pay bc of a clerical error by an organization that has professional accountants and HR professionals, and if i didn’t have an anxiety attack at like 1am i would also have missed it bc. idk. i thought it was on purpose? bc i had faith and also apparently im a fucking idiot. (they’ll pay me back next cheque but like. jesus)

someone called me “dismissive and discourteous” over an email and now i have to defend myself to the stupidest motherfuckers on campus at 6am.

i’m behind on my actual research that i want to do and ran into my supervisor at random and had to just admit that i have fucking nothing done. and then i get to my other job and it’s basically just chatgpt shit.

so. that’s fun. everything is converging in exactly the way that would make me contemplate eating glass.

i’m trying not to develop a fucking complex here, bc it really is not that deep, and stupid toxic people are going to exist everywhere and i might as well get used to it. also it’s dangerous to stake so much self-worth on changeable external stuff. but my god. i—have never felt smaller and more irrelevant and worthless in my life. i am so burnt out. i have never had less to offer than i do right now.

like yeah it’s a cheque and a decent one at that once they get it rolling but fucking—don’t pretend that it matters that it’s me in the job yk? i already regularly struggle to convince myself that it matters that i exist—because it has to, what the fuck—i really don’t need to spend 40h/week faced with incontrovertible proof to the contrary.

[lobotomy-maybe-bestie]

watching cadfael get in trouble for breaking the prior's rules kicking my feet going yessss make him lay prone on the floorrrrrr

[contemplationofapoint]

The Millennium Moment – Somewhere In The Middle

By Kevin Ray Mitchell

Copyright November 16, 2024

This is either A Forward, an Epilogue, or a Prologue of what was written over the course of approximately a year a little over two decades ago.

This a thing. It is an abstraction. It is a diagrammatical cut. It is of a time and place. It is a self-referential open ended closed system, systematic and meandering spiral of infinite introspective geometry that is paradoxically contained within a dimensionless moment. It is somewhere always in the middle of what is bound and boundless. It can be a fictionalized journal crafted over the period of a year at the turn of a year, decade, century and millennium. In short, it is what it is.