#what comes after the rain

[heart-songs]

When I say I want to know you, I mean I want to understand the softer side of life. I want to know tender things. Awakening things. The gentle way darkness surrenders to light. The wisps of blue hour birdsong that seep through windows and dreams to retune heartstrings. It seems to me the edges of our bodies are softest in the morning, and I want to understand the science of it all. The biology of spaces. The delicate kind between your eyes and mine. How the chambers of a heart, fractured and frayed, can still hold room for another without breaking. How the fine lines between fingers instinctively expand to welcome others in. I want to learn the art of healing. The indelible marks we absorb through seasons of growth. Teach me symbiosis. Let’s coexist like lichen in the lace-trimmed homes they stitch to the arms of trees. Remind me how the whim of a breeze scatters seeds. How those seeds might lay dormant for two seasons plus one, then put down fresh roots and venture out towards the sun. It’s been so long since the sun kissed my face. Your gaze feels like the sun, and when I say I want you to kiss me I mean I want to know what comes after the rain.

- Cora Finch

[masterrainb0w]

"I kiss you on the top of your forehead. Uh—May I?"

“You may not, but instead I kiss your lips. May I?”

"No."

[carefulfears]

the main reason why i literally don’t care about anything less than continuity in the x files is because so many of the things they did were just for vibes. why was mulder colorblind in one episode and then never again? for the vibes. why was mulder afraid of fire in one episode and then never again? for the vibes. why was it snowing in north carolina in spring at mulder’s funeral? for the vibes. so a 20-something girl could write prose fic about it being fitting that the ground was hard and unrelenting as he was lowered into it. is that not enough????

[lunarharp]

into the deep end - 30k T orufrey fic, focusing on memory trauma, disability, and romance.

the sweet oblivion of the victim, the poisoned freedom of the other.

for one moment - it had felt like two parts returned - the needed reunion of two disparate halves. no more secrets, no more pain.

the moment you get to give back what you never wanted to take. that moment, under the night-blooming flowers, when they had both let out the same single broken sigh of relief.

but they were never whole to begin with, were they?

qifrey swore he wouldn't say 'sorry' to this man any more if he could help it - sorry is cheap now. he didn't want to be in a position ever again where you only have 'sorry' left. so he just looks down into the threads of his blanket, strains his eye until it hurts, feeling his insides - his throat, heart and head - burn with pain. he expects more, but olly says nothing.

olly says nothing.

[tsunochizu]

I know this is not what all of you followed me for but deal with it

Ragequit head bonk

[swordheld]

hi! your blog is one of my favourites and i absolutely adore reading your thoughts. my grandfather recently passed away and it feels like i lost myself with him. how do i continue living after this? there is this constant weight on my chest and it feels like an emptiness has made a home inside of me. how do i go on when it feels like the world crashed on my shoulders?

hello, love! this is so very sweet and kind of you, and i hope you're treating yourself gently and kindly right now - there aren't words for a loss like this. that heaviness is difficult, and hard, and painful. it's okay if things don't feel okay, right now, or even soon - i think that's something that a lot of the people i know that have gone through similar grief feel: like they should be able to get back to a relative 'normal' in a [insert far too short period of time].

but it's okay if it hurts. that's where i'd like to start. you're allowed to feel that emptiness, that world-crashed feeling that goes beyond words, beyond time. don't feel like you have to rush this to feel some sort of better. things get easier with time, i promise you this, but sometimes painful feelings are important to feel, too. cry, scream, feel your emotions. they're a part of you. grieve.

it's perhaps a little silly, but when i think about death i always think about a couple of space songs: mainly drops of jupiter by train and saturn by sleeping at last. there are perhaps others that speak to the emotions better, but these two have always hit something a little deeper for me, and are popular for a wide-reaching reason.

and while personally i don't know much about grief like this, i do know a lot about love; and i think they're a lot of the same thing.

the people we love are a part of us, and this is why it takes from us so deeply when we lose them, because it does feel like we've lost a part of ourselves in the wake of it. but it's because they were so central to our experiences of living - our lives, that the separation introduces a hollowness - a place where they used to be. a home that now goes unlived in.

an emptiness, like you said.

but just because they're not here physically, doesn't mean he's not still there, in your heart, in your life, your memory. you can hold him close in smaller ways, as well: steal a sweater, or cologne/scent for something a little more physical and long lasting for remembering. hold onto the memories you cherish, the things that made you laugh, the ease of slow mornings and gentle nights. write them all down, slide a few photographs in there, go through it and add more when you miss him. keep them all close, keep them in your heart.

you're not alone, in this. he's still there, with you, it's just - in the little things.

he's with you in the way you see and go about your daily life, in doing what he liked to do, in the ways he interacted with the world that you shared with him. the memories you recall fondly when the night is late or the moment is right and something calls it into you like a melody, an old bell, laughter you'd recognize anywhere.

but i think, perhaps most importantly above all others - talk about him. with your family, your friends, his friends, strangers; stories are how we keep the people we love alive. the connections they've made, the legacies and experiences they've left behind, and so, so many stories.

how lucky, we are - to love so much it takes a piece of us when they go. grief is the other side of the coin, but it does not mean our love goes away. it lives in you. it lives in everyone who knew him, in the smallest pieces of our lives.

the people we love never really leave us, like this: they're in how we cook and the way we fold our newspapers, our laundry, in the radio stations we tune in to and the way we decorate our walls, our photo albums. they're in the way we store our mail, organize our closets, the scribbled notes in the indexes of our books. the meals we love and the drinks we mix, the way we spend time with one another. they've been passed down for generations, for longer than history - and we are all the luckier for it.

think about what you shared with him, and do it intentionally. bring him into your life, like this, again. whether it's crosswords or poetry or sports or anything else. if one doesn't help, try another. something might click.

i hope things feel a little easier for you, as they tend to do only with time. i hope you find joy in your grief, even if it is small and hard to grasp at first. know that your hurt stems from so much love that there isn't a place to put it properly, and that it is something so meaningful and hurting poets and storytellers have been struggling to put it into words and sounds that feel like the fit right for eons, and that it is also just simply yours. sometimes things don't have to make sense. sometimes they just are - unable to be put into words or neat little sentiments, as unfair and tragic as they come.

but i promise it will not feel like this forever. your love is real. and perhaps, on where to begin on from here - i think it's less on finding where to begin and just beginning. and you've already started. you've taken the most important and crucial step: the first one. wherever you go, after that, from here? you'll figure it out. you always have, and you always do. it'll come, as things always do. love leads us, as does light - and you're never alone in your hurt. in your grief, your missing something dear to you. i think if you talk about it with others, you'll find they have ways of helping you cope as well - and they have so much love of their own to spare, too.

as an aside, here is the song (northern star by dom fera) i was listening to when i wrote this, for no other reason more than it makes me think of connections, and love, and how we hold onto the people we love and how they change us, wonderfully and intrinsically. it's a little more joyous than the others i've mentioned, and plays like a story, and it made me think of what is at the core of this, love and stories and i am here with you, and maybe it'll bring you some joy, if you'd like it. wishing you all my love and ease 💛

[yumemiruuuu]

Feng Xin: Reasons why Mu Qing is a disappointing fictional character

Mu Qing: … Did you just refer to me as a fictional character??

Feng Xin: Yes. I refuse to acknowledge the fact that I have to share oxygen with the likes of you.

Feng Xin: Now hold your breath and shut the fuck up.

[anghraine]

My best friend and I moved in together with his closest friend from his MA program, and while I had met her before (the friend; my bff is a man), we hadn't spent much time together because I've never lived away from the West Coast (and only two years out of the PNW) and she's never lived outside of North Carolina and only briefly visited the PNW once, when she went to Portland last year.

It's been a delight to show her around the PNW and realize we need to explain things that are just sort of omnipresent in our lives. The bff and I were casually griping with each other about having to run an errand to Trader Joe's at an inconvenient hour, and were telling her, "it's okay, you can stay in the car and avoid the people if you want" and she was like "NO I MUST SEE IT, I'VE ONLY HEARD OF THEM" and nearly ascended to another plane when we showed her around the store.

The bff and I grew up in the same town in NW Washington (him for his first 18 years, me from 9 to 19) and he lived in Bellingham and Seattle for years before he went to NC for grad school (I went to the SF Bay Area for mine, a very different experience). Both of them are hardcore coffee aficionados, but he struggled with the different Coffee Ways of the South, so for the true PNW experience they want to tour various indie coffeeshops next.

Also, she adores Kaidan in Mass Effect and we were like, oh, is your passport up to date? We could take a trip sometime and show you your boyfriend's beloved English Bay. It's very beautiful :)

her: O_O

me: Actually, it's worth going to Vancouver BC for its own sake as well, it's truly spectacular. We used to go all the time as kids.

bff: And Victoria!

her: O_O

[sysig]

Hiya :) I've been getting into DSMP animatics, and I love seeing the different interpretations of the character designs even though I only have a vague sense of the lore so far. It's all got cool vibes!! Can I request a drawing of Ranboo or Wilbur, or maybe even both? I'm not sure if they actually ever interact in the story or not, but I'd say interpret the prompt however you want and have fun??

Day 19 - Stuck inside

[dandeyrain]

i genuinely don't mean this in a like. condescending way. but reading people talk about how Confusing and Nonsensical and Overpacked boy and the heron is make me feel insane. every single plot point is clearly spelled out; frankly, one of my only critiques of the movie is that i wish they'd left some of it LESS clear. yes, the second half is rich in dreamlike fantasy, but the story never breaks its own rules, and before every major reveal in the fantasy world theres an extremely obvious explanation — almost too on the nose to even call it foreshadowing — from somebody. like i just don't understand how anybody finds it impossibly confusing and weird and bad to engage with

[disruptivevoib]

:[

Snail mortality rate up by 2. I'm so sorry snails.

[smtown-tourist]

It still blows my mind that Onew - ONEW!!! LEE, JINKI!!! - is the SHINee member with not one, not two, but THREE Waterbomb appearances this summer!!! 🤯🐰

[fizzytoo]

couch cuddles and coffee go best with rainy days

+ this unfortunate scared little puppy

[bloodfin]

Dewdrop "anything you can do i can do better" Ghoul is absolute shite at Guitar Hero.

Cumulus? God tier. Mountain and Phantom? Go back and forth for a very close second. But Dew? Can't get those little gremlin fingers to work this game no matter what

[its-the-sa]

I am kind of confused, how do you view the great cycle as to how it works? In my eyes I think there's infinite realities, so infinite timelines where one has died and one has not, but one living in such a timeline and sleeping after the affects would deal with the aftermath. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but for example if you were to kill a creature and then sleep, that creature would be gone for the rest of your timeline up until you die of old age or terminal illness or ascend. But in another reality that creature is still alive. Or, if you die after killing it, you wake up in a timeline where the creature is alive again. sorry this is a lot of words lol but I am genuinely curious

no you're fine, i like words! and yes, it does make sense. honestly, this theory is probably the most canonically plausible one. it fits best with the 'mood' of the game, and it explains the various mechanics most accurately.

however, i dont personally follow that theory for my own headcanons. mainly because.. its no fun to me, lol. i prefer to imagine a cycle literally just respawns creatures videogame-style, no alternate timeline shenanigans involved.

so, thats the headcanon i follow in my AU: as long as you have enough 'life force' left when you're killed, your soul simply leaves the old body and spawns a new one, like a snake shedding its skin. you still wake up in the same timeline. if you have family, they'll probably be in or near your shelter waiting for you to respawn. if ur a scav, your buddies probably laugh at you because they all saw you die doing something stupid, and life goes on.

death is only really 'permanent' when the body doesnt have enough life force left to regenerate, such as when someone dies of old age or illness. in those cases, if the soul is still bound to the cycle, then it will be reincarnated as a new creature, like in traditional buddhism. the new self may or may not retain memories of their past life, but usually they don't. this is what i think happens to hunter if they dont make it to the void sea.

and, of course, if you die without any worldly desires weighing you down, then your soul ascends.

[darkwood-sleddog]

trying not to jinx it but we're going mushing tomorrow and the trails are 1.) groomed but 2.) not open to snowmobiles yet and 3.) it's gonna be cold af (means empty of all other users usually). so promising.