#urgency of thought

[pratchettquotes]

"A splendid people with much to recommend them," said Leonard. "I always thought it was the presence of the desert. It leads to an urgency of thought. It makes you aware of the briefness of life."

The Patrician glanced at another page. Between a sketch of a bird's wing and a careful drawing of a ball-joint was a little doodle of something with spiked wheels and spinning blades. And then there was the device for moving mountains aside...

"The desert is not required," he said.

Terry Pratchett, Jingo

[fishofthewoods]

Did I have tasks I was supposed to be doing this evening? yes. Did i black out and write a poem about rabbits instead? yes.

[marblerose-rue]

i may be a bit too late but here's squilf playing with her tail for the squilf anon!!! i hope they see this :,-)

[i-eat-deodorant]

what really fucks me up is that there’s no way the attack and binding of narinder to the afterlife wasn’t premeditated. all the bishops were wounded; they fought him at the same time. chains large and durable enough to hold a god for centuries had to be forged. if narinder attacked first, then he would’ve chosen to take everyone on 1 to 4, which is just a phenomenally dumb idea when he could’ve had better chances cutting them down one by one. 

whatever shamura saw in narinder’s hunger for power, it scared them enough to coordinate an attack on their sibling to lock him away permanently. and that’s fucked up. 

[magistralucis]

@courgowr: Huntmaster came to Solemnace prior to biotransference from an unnamed dynasty and appears to have been a notable figure in his own right. Perhaps to reflect this, he is now consistently 'the' Huntmaster and not just 'Huntmaster' like he was in previous texts, and also more lovingly insane

[m1d-45]

[cryo anon]

Yes! That’s exactly what I was getting at! Now, going off that…

Imagine that after a long time dedicated to healing, Ayato hears from Thoma that you’re trying to open up to people again. You’ve been spending more time outside and even initiated conversations with some of the household staff! You haven’t ventured out of the Kamisato estate yet, but still, it was progress. He’s relieved (and a little jealous of Thoma), but he also knows that you’re still in a delicate place so he continues to ensure that you never see him. The last thing he wants to do is to undo the progress you’ve made. Nonetheless, he still hopes that one day, he’ll be able to earn your forgiveness and stand in your presence again.

That day comes sooner than he thought it would. He had just returned to the estate when he chanced to hear a strangely familiar laughter from the garden. He’s certain he’s never heard it before. He would definitely remember something that makes him feel so elated. Nonetheless, there was something about it that makes him feel like he should know it. Before he could figure it out, his legs had already brought him to the garden. He realised then and there that it was your voice that he heard. Of course it was. You were in the company of Thoma, his sister, Taroumaru, and many, many other animals. It was a beautiful, idyllic scene. He could watch it forever were he permitted, but he knew that his presence would only be a stain on such pure beauty. He forced himself to turn away.

Little did he know that the wind had already alerted you to his presence. While you appreciated his thoughtfulness, you also knew that you can’t avoid him forever. After all, he was doing only what he thought was best during the hunt. It wouldn’t be fair to hold it against him. So you steeled yourself and called out, “Won’t you join us, Commissioner? You must be tired after such a long day.”

(cryos last relevant ask can be found here, christ that’s so long ago-)

the first thing he notices is that your voice isn’t rough anymore, that though it’s quiet it’s not as raspy as it was. the second is that you’d called for him, his feet stopping on instinct at the call of his god.

he turns slowly, as to not startle, taking in the scene again. you really do look beautiful, the sun pulling out details in the color of your eyes, the various accents on your kimono perfectly complementary. thoma did an excellent job ordering your clothing, not that ayato would expect any less for someone of your status.

“are you certain?”

he surprises himself with how soft his voice is, watching the way your fingers sink into taroumaru’s fur instead of daring to make eye contact. he looks comfortable, chin resting on your knee, and for the briefest of moments, ayato feels almost jealous.

and then it passes.

you nod, tilting your head to invite him over, and he only hesitate for a second before walking toward you. there’s a space between ayaka and thoma, one that he slowly fills. he’s certainly going to leave here with more than a few dirt scuffs on his clothes, but he can’t find himself caring, folding his hands deliberately in his lap.

you prompt thoma about the story he was telling, and he continues, hands waving as he tells you about a particularly stubborn civilian that was harassing a merchant in the city. you listen, seeming just as at ease as when he first saw you. as if he wasn’t there at all.

a bright blue butterfly flaps through the air, landing on a snack tray in the center. you extend a hand toward it, “thankfully you were there, right?” and it climbs eagerly into your hand, letting you deposit it on ayaka’s knee instead.

it’s so easy for you, how nature bends to your will. your attention is entirely on thoma’s story, and yet you can calmly move around what would flee from most’s touch. the world trusts you, trusts the delicate wings of a butterfly to your companions, and he… he’d…

his hands tighten, nails digging into his skin. not here, he chides himself. not when the air is so calm, not when ayaka is chiming in about a seller that increased the price for her when the same thing was being sold to another for cheaper, not when the wave of her hand startles the butterfly enough to send it flying away, back to you. his betrayal doesn’t have a place around the maple snack board, among the half-empty plates and bowls atop it, among your laugh in the air as the butterfly lands on your shoulder.

ayaka picked up a piece of dango, and he accepted the one she held out to him.

idly, he wondered which flavor was your favorite.

[sparring-spirals]

Placing such a hard time limit using the Calamity was exceptionally good and also inherent to the tragedy of it and im thrilled by it. Don't get me wrong, forced time limits in tragedies and doomsday stories are common for a reason. They work, and they work well. but just, within the context of EXU Calamity, its really getting me.

because its always about not having enough time, right? its about expecting that you'll have more. There's complacency with power, and mistakes, and wealth, but maybe what the Ring of Brass were most indulgent with was time.

(you always think you'll have enough time, more time, another replenishment, another deal, another broadcast, another batch of bright children. youll get another time to hash out an argument with your father. you'll get another time to stay home with your kids and get to know them. you'll get another time to apologize and explain and fix your broken relationship. there's just something else, right here, right now, that should get done first.)

The Ring of Brass were rich, in so many ways. They had power, and wealth, and a million responsibilities, and so maybe they would've argued they had ZERO time, actually, and they just needed to sort everything else out first, and they'd have enough time to figure everything else out later.

but that's the point, right? There's never really a good time for this. for the important stuff, or the end of the world.

(Laerryn was, perhaps, the primary person in the Ring Of Brass operating under a time limit from the get-go, trying desperately to get the Leyline working, because if it wasn't now, it would be never. Because Quay wouldn't live that long. But even she assumed that was the extent of the time limit, that for Everything Else, there would still be time.)

(And is that such a ridiculous expectation? Is that so foolish of her? Of all of them? You never expect the world to end. You don't have infinite time, sure, but- you've got tomorrow, or next week, or- just not now.)

And so it is tragic, but it is also weirdly satisfying, to see the way time got shattered and stretched and sped throughout that last episode. The first second lasted forty minutes. They get maybe two hours at the hands of a damned demon, and its the best blessing they've ever had. Rounds are six seconds. A broadcast is maybe thirty. A healing word, a Wish, a Wall of Force, all buying paltry seconds that make all the difference. The dawn is coming, Avalir is landing, there's so much that has to be done, and that won't get done. We watch them make hard decisions, over and over, and over, and we keep saying "there's not enough time". Because of course there isn't. There could never have been.

[dilfenthusiast]

I feel like every time I drive at night there’s someone driving with their high beams on. And I’m not even talking about headlights that are bright LEDs, I mean actual high beams. Either someone driving at me and blinding me, or someone driving behind me and retina blasting me via mirror reflection and lighting up my whole car cabin, making it hard to see the road in front of me.

And don’t even get me started on the number of people driving with their headlights off because they think their Daytime Running Lights on and they think it’s enough? But then their tail lights aren’t on and you almost run into them because they’re driving a black car.

I’m starting to believe that it’s a detriment to society that we allow people to “learn” to drive from their parents. Like if their parents are shit drivers and don’t know about cars and don’t explain how to use their cars, we perpetuate the problem. Genuinely starting to think we should move towards driving schools like Japan in order to get a license, not just memorizing road signs and then being released onto the road.

“I failed my permit test 5 times and my driving test 3 times before getting my license hehe” you should not be driving. Honestly.

And I understand this also leads to discussions of public transit (more people who don’t like driving and don’t want to should have the option of a robust and reliable network of bus and rail) and privilege (driving schools cost money, not everyone has parents who can teach them) but like … that’s for another post.

[aquared]

i just had the craziest most genius au related idea ever i need to make troll crowbar right now oh my god

[arataka-reigen]

Although I definitely loved the episode, I did think some of Yor's lines were very rushed, like the VA had to read them as fast as possible to fit every word into a single scene

[invinciblerodent]

Now that I'm about halfway through act 3, I do feel like the narrative right now is doing Orin's character a pretty big disservice for me.

Mainly in that her presence is so ubiquitous and so straightforward that I just... don't have the time to be afraid of her.

You stumble into her cultists all over the city with some frequency, yet they're all pretty easily defeated. She kidnaps someone from your camp, and yet (as I've learned) you have all the time in the world to rescue them without them ever coming to harm. She has shown up three times already (twice before I would have even gotten into the city proper!), without ever as much as drawing a drop of my blood- even the blacksmith dies off-screen. All the notes she leaves, all the little nods to her presence, it feels like she's everywhere, but for all the bloodshed promised, it's mostly all done by her lackeys, and she herself... really doesn't show a lot of it, which then kind of makes it seem like this intimidation play (and fabulous performance, but performance nonetheless) is all she can do to me.

For this character I'm playing, she kind of comes off as if she was just obsessed with getting attention, which is less threatening, and more just... kind of pathetic?

Gortash did it kind of right by making himself actually scarce- I'm finding notes and hearing whispers about just how many pies his fingers are in, but that's it. I have time away from him to build him up into a threat in my mind, because I met him once so far, in what was a moment of triumph to him, and I'm not foiling him left and right while he stands by, twiddling his thumbs and proving to be of no real threat to me. I don't even know what fighting him is gonna be like, but I can imagine dozens of ways he could really fuck us up, which imo is more threatening than knowing exactly who the enemy is and what they're doing. (Like, you bet your ass the moment they learned that Orin was a shapeshifter and had left for the moment, coming up with a passphrase was the first thing the team did. "If you ask me about the weather and my answer doesn't include the phrase 'stinky cheese', stab me immediately". Boom, plan foiled.)

One easy fix would be if the kidnapping came much later in the game (so you don't have like another two weeks of adventuring to do before you'd consider going after the Netherstones), if the taken character was always your love interest if you had one, if you resting more than a few times between the kidnapping and the rescue killed the kidnapped character (with revivify that's just a pretty nice emotional moment- hell, she could just keep taking people until you finally go to her), and maybe if one of the times she shows up (be it the kidnapping scene, either one of her other appearances, or just a random long rest), she actually killed you. Like straight up stabbed to death, left bleeding out in your bed to be revived the next day.

Tbh, after she got snatched, I fully expected Lae'zel to show up waving Orin's spine on like the second night after her kidnapping, yelling at me for being a useless istik.

[stemmmm]

how did not giving a shit about your wedding ruin your life 0_0

because now we have to plan the damn weddingggg

[dov6doll]

[yonderly-alamort]

ma sister: why tf are u crying this time? 💀

me staring at the same fanart for half an hour:

the fucking fanart:

[squuote]

no more fluff stanley and narrator, only violence and rage and hunting each other for sport and killing and

[catboyrichardkarinsky]

hold on is this anything?