#there is always a lighthouse

[blood-orange-juice]

@theatrevelyan

This didn't fit into a comment so I had to write a post.

They do have similar vibes but hear me out!

In "classic" heroic myths hero is usually special in some way. By descent, circumstances of birth or whatever. Modern stories recreate it more often than not, very few actually try to subvert it.

Being Parsifal's descendant would be exactly that, making our boy a classic Hero With A Calling. And one important thing about Childe is that he's hero-shaped (if you squint) but not a hero.

Genshin has a different cool thing though!

Stories are important in some way, they tend to repeat themselves in each world cycle, with completely unrelated people playing the same roles. Sometimes with different outcomes but the core story is still recognisable.

This it what Nahida calls samsara. Not the real world Buddhism samsara, just this tendency of stories to be reenacted. Somehow they are the core of Teyvat.

And I believe that is exactly what's happening to Childe. He's not some important person's descendant or reincarnation, he's just another one in the line of idealistic boys obsessed with knightly tales, who had the misfortune to be fitting enough for a particular story.

Like Enkanomiyan Ajax and Old Monstadtian Parsifal and probably many others.

There's always a whale-dragon beast, there's always lost hope, there's always a treasure which brings misfortune. There's always a beautiful woman with whom he's separated when they are betrayed by others.

(Tsaritsa spoilers?)

They always succumb to illusions. There's always something... questionable about them.

So he's just that. A random guy who randomly fell off the edge of the map and by sheer strength of belief, wanderlust and stubborness summoned an eldritch god, linking himself to it and to a type of story.

He's still nothing special (not like he cares).

It still doesn't bode well for him.

[mrs-gauche]

"It can be argued that an immortal would have to be distant, or eventually all it would know is loss. What would our world look like to such a creature? What actions would they be capable of when everything except themselves is fleeting and therefore of little relevance to eternity? If we as elvhen discover a path back to what we were, we must be sure that the path is wide enough for all. For the individual who stumbles into that journey, who endures when all else is dust, can only be alone." - Keeper Ilan'ta

[nedlittle]

so i work for a small regional museum. remotely, i should add. the museum itself is about 2000km west, so i've never actually been there but i research and write articles about local history for them. and because the town was only formally settled in the 1920s and a lot of the museum's supporters are older, the majority of the history i write about is within, or just outside of living memory. this means that people will comment on our posts with memories or connections of their own. they'll tag their friends and family and say 'remember this?'

a few week ago, i wrote a week's worth of posts about immigration, largely displaced persons in the aftermath of the second world war. there was an outpouring of memories and people tagging their family members and sharing them. our notifications were blowing up with people saying "thanks for writing about my uncle" and "i knew them when i was young, but i never knew their story" and "she looks so beautiful here" and "our families used to get together for dinners, i'm still friends with his daughter."

regular people, non-historians, are inclined to think of history as a monolithic past leading up to the present; an easy timeline of textbook names and events. and we think of museums largely the same way. you have the louvre and you have the smithsonian and maybe a modern art museum or a niche museum for skeletons or canoes or one specific guy. museums are reserved for the big things, but they're also for the little things and people that will never be in textbooks.

and i'm thinking about the way people responded to those posts, seeing their own history remembered with the same reverence as the big stuff. maybe you never knew the people being written about, or maybe you did, and for a few days, they are alive again, and your neighbours and your classmates and your councilmen are remembering your family, and they are alive.

[frodo-packins]

The Lighthouse (2019)

[bkbs-art]

Reach for YOUR star ✨

(I turned this into a bookmark and print! you can grab one if you'd like hehe)

[atopvisenyashill]

what do you think of waymar 😭 george wanted us to dislike him?

no, i don’t think george wants us to dislike him at all! rather, i think waymar is our introduction to the themes george is most fond of - the arrogance of the noble class, the concept of a true knight, and the randomness of death.

our introduction to waymar royce is kind of quintessential spoiled little lordling. his clothes is too fancy, he’s dismissive of the smallfolk who clearly know better than him, he’s got that shiny knighthood but he’s not all that impressive, he doesn’t even have the right type of horse for ranging! he mocks both gareth and will, despite them being more experienced than him, and despite gareth being an “elder” of a sort. for waymar, the idea that gareth could have a better understanding of the situation is unthinkable. when gareth tells the story of frostbite in an attempt to get waymar to turn back, waymar dismissed him wholesale. he leads them, unknowingly, to their doom because he is simply too arrogant to see the sense in what gareth is saying. not only is that entire dismissive attitude prevalent in the story, but someone marching themselves and several innocents straight to their doom over their pride is a HUGE issue throughout the series as well. just as varys says - it is always the innocent, the peasantry, who suffer the most and here, poor gareth and will are forced to pay a price for the foolishness of someone they KNOW is less experienced.

and then the others come.

There was a faint blue shimmer to the thing, a ghost-light that played around its edges, and somehow Will knew it was sharper than any razor.

Ser Waymar met him bravely. "Dance with me then." He lifted his sword high over his head, defiant. His hands trembled from the weight of it, or perhaps from the cold. Yet in that moment, Will thought, he was a boy no longer, but a man of the Night's Watch.

The Other halted. Will saw its eyes; blue, deeper and bluer than any human eyes, a blue that burned like ice. They fixed on the longsword trembling on high, watched the moonlight running cold along the metal. For a heartbeat he dared to hope.

He won’t win this fight. He knows it, the Others know it, and Will knows it. But the fact that Waymar has doomed himself and his men to death doesn’t matter here; what matters is that he doesn’t give up! When faced with a monster from a story book, an impossible nightmare, Waymar picks up his sword and he fights, and for a moment, Will has hope.

That’s why it’s Waymar in the prologue. He’s not an exemplary sort of man, he’s not particularly smart or skilled or kind or even overly cruel or stupid. He is a very normal, common type of man who led a very normal life until this moment. But he still tries.

And so does poor Will! And so does Gared! Will is terrified as he hides in the trees, watching Waymar fight and die, knowing that going to help will just get them both killed. He’s not particularly brave, but I would say he’s smart! Genre savvy even, when he knows the fight is hopeless and makes the decision to keep hidden and fight another day. Gared flees (and it’s interesting that we have the theee main fear responses here - fight, hide, and flee) but he’s so traumatized by what he’s seen that as he’s questioned he can’t give a good, clear answer. And then he’s uselessly, needlessly killed by our shining example of chivalry and honor in Ned Stark, his head kicked like a toy by Theon Greyjoy. As Jon says, he only dies “well” because he’s shell shocked - he is confused and deeply afraid in his last moments.

the three of them - gared, will, and waymar - are the entire series diluted down to one chapter, to three unextraordinary men. but with them lies a lot of the point of the whole story. and waymar specifically, for me, is about all those moments of bravery in the face of unbeatable odds. he’s a very normal, very flawed person who reaches down deep in himself and finds something good and brave at the very end.

[logray]

THE LIGHTHOUSE (2019) THE GANG GETS CURSED (2023)

[robinette-green]

Always a Lighthouse

@muzzlemouths and my Bioshock AU

My art skills have leveled up so I figured I’d redraw this piece.

Old version under cut

[vse-kar-vem]

everybody's waiting at the ball 👁️🪩💡🌟🕯️

[thedeadthree]

𝐃𝐑𝐀𝐆𝐎𝐍 𝐀𝐆𝐄: 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐕𝐄𝐈𝐋𝐆𝐔𝐀𝐑𝐃 ➸ irulanne . the rook .

𝐌𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐍 𝐖𝐀𝐓𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐒 . 𝐄𝐋𝐅 . 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇 𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐑 𝐌𝐀𝐆𝐄 .

-`. template by @kanos . coloring . icons .

✧ ― 𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 (ask to be added or removed or interact 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞!!):

@pavus, @wlwaerith, @shadowsofrose, @grapecaseschoices, @nokstella

@queennymeria, @risingsh0t, @carrionsflower, @leviiackrman, @griffin-wood

@confidentandgood, @aceghosts, @tommyarashikage, @shadowglens, @yharnams

@anoras, @theelderhazelnut, @florbelles, @celticwoman, @pinkfey

@kyberinfinitygems, @cloudofbutterflies92, @carlosoliveiraa, @shellibisshe, @adelaidedrubman

@lavampira, @capelizabeth, @socially-awkward-skeleton, @statichvm, @unholymilf

@aezyrraeshh, @imogenkol, @aceghosts, @full---ofstarlight, @ellierenae

[cctinsleybaxter]

Artists who admit to not knowing small details about their characters and worldbuilding have inadvertently given better advice than any character design post on social media tbh. as fun as it is to come up with what your guys would order from a restaurant or the contents of their backpack or their favorite color I've run into very few people who can leave that stuff in a story (or even leave it offscreen as paratext) without it being distracting and poorly written because it's rarely in service of the narrative. a lot of that is def just down to personal taste, but it feels more like designing characters for a TTRPG

[inkskinned]

i had a dream that the clouds looked like you, pink in the sunset. you were the ghost of a lighthouse and when we fell in love all your shackles fell off in great grey chunks. we became fish-squid-humans, unkillable and round as the sun. our children were whales, and we grew past the size of cruise ships. i cursed poachers with my own blood; only to relent, knowing the pain of drowning just close-enough, warning them: do better. be well. don't make a mistake you can't come back from.

how quietly you've slipped inside me, little seal shifting me under the water. this little dance we are both stepping, our hands just-quite not-touching. like mermaids, sometimes i think our form is the shape of the ocean. sometimes i think we are too horribly human, too terrified of the rip and torrent.

i have thought about my hand in your hair enough, and the curve of your cheekbone, and how you wait for a moment to gather your thoughts before telling a joke. i have thought about the tension that grows in cables between us, a little spined bridge neither of us will cross unless the situation dramatically shifts. i have thought about the way you tilt your head when considering something i blurted, how you show just-half of your smile when you know more than i did.

what even are you two? she asks me, stirring her coffee, her brows knitting. i shrug noncommittally.

somewhere, we are mermaids, eternally. in this world, for now - i tell her: i think we're just... enjoying.

[thyredwarden]

two things i'm so looking forward to in dav

companion banter about magic/mages

their rooms in the lighthouse

[greysfields]

on friendship, the strength that keeps us standing

Frog and Toad // Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six // Queen, You're My Best Friend // Gilmore Girls S3 Ep 22 // J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King // Shadow and Bone, Deleted scene // Bruno Mars, Count on Me

[privateraelle]

[pand1on]

working through my movie list finally. Biggest smile on my face when a film is less than 2 hours long