#while everyone processed what happened

[pandora15]

life is cruel.

it's tragic, horrific, and unfair. it gives us the worst of things, causes us to feel and experience things that are so unspeakably painful that sometimes I can't even. I can't even.

and it seems even more cruel in those moments of pain and grief and loss when you see something beautiful, like fall colors, or the color of the sky at sunset, or how the holidays typically are meant to bring joy to people but all you can think about now is that every year when this time of year comes, you'll just think about how tragic it is.

and cruel.

and horrific.

and unfair.

and beautiful.

[goldkirk]

.

[simcardiac-arrested]

“srs/fp” this “srs/nsh” that but where is the love for my favorite sapphics (slivermoon)

right here boss

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

I love this scene because even after everything, the first thing Naesala does when he gets into the room is react in panic about Reyson and Leanne being unconscious. In that short moment, he just reacted on the instinct that he's always cared about them, despite how shaky things had gotten with Reyson a few years ago and how he was forced to do the things he did (including with the Laguz Alliance in RD).

If he was thinking logically and had a moment to process the situation, he might've stood back and pretended to care less than he actually did, as is usual for him. In this case he didn't hesitate to react and ran to them as soon as he walked in, because it was a knee jerk reaction.

If he sat back and thought about it, he would've known Tibarn was going to start making threats and trying to pick a fight, but his genuine desires overcame logic for just a second long enough for him fear for Reyson and Leanne. As long as the two of them are alive and well, he can continue putting on that mask and faking his way through it. If there's any chance they're in life threatening danger, he'll change course to make sure they're safe (such as refusing to fight Reyson when he was in service to the Crimean army, even at his own expense).

Since Naesala wasn't aware how badly the herons were being affected by the medallion, he wasn't aware in advance that they were in any danger. He doesn't know what happened here, so he walks in and suddenly sees them unconscious on the floor. For all he knew, it could've been life threatening - hence his instant response that didn't wait for his brain to register that he's supposed to be playing the bad guy. I think the only reason he could calm down and conclude it wasn't is because nobody else was panicking/grieving with the implication of a possible death.

(And fwiw, yes, he did have to technically sell Reyson to Oliver in PoR. If he didn't abide by something the senate wanted, Oliver could just make up some story to Lekain to get him to trigger the Blood Pact. Naesala knew he was being a snake to get the whole thing to happen, but he did technically have to go through with it the moment anyone from the senate wanted something from him)

[sunrise-on-the-shore]

i need so much time to process the information i have encountered today. i'm gonna be away for a bit.

[icewindandboringhorror]

I think the hardest thing in writing for me sometimes is the like “show don’t tell/let people communicate through subtext/Normal People don’t just walk around openly explaining their motivations for everything That’s Unnatural” thing because like.. I literally DO walk around openly explaining my motivations for everything, that is how I talk, I am an analytical detail oriented over-communicator who explains everything as thoroughly as possible and and will give a fully detailed 2 minute long answer to something simple like “how are you doing today?” .. like it’s hard to make things sound Natural and Normal when you yourself are inherently unnatural and abnormal in your methods of communication to an extent lol

[ihaventsleptinweekz]

Sometimes I think I'm a normal person then the 11 pm thought kicks in and suddenly I'm insane

[moss-flesh]

do u ever have an oc n u love em but u havent done much writing about them, and then u spend like a couple hours thinking about them and suddenly theyre the love of your life

[jarvis-cockhead]

i dont rlly have a big following here at all but i do appreciate anyone who interacts with my stuff immensely and suddenly felt the need to say it. ive been going through some stuffTM and its been a whole ass time and im still reeling tbh. it has been a hell of a time but tumblr still feels like such a cozy comfy place .. i forever long to connect more with people here but never know how. anyway idk where this post is going but haii hi im still here forever just a little funny in the head rn :3

[wrecking]

edit: i ended up just ranting abt like the current vibe™ in the tags... sorry abt that but like also whatever i don't care anymore

[unproduciblesmackdown]

no, More active effort, More conscious consideration

[eats-the-stars]

love the guy assigned to my case at the “help you get a job” program. i have exactly 2 modes. 1) procrastinating until the absolute last minute. And 2) guess I will complete months worth of work that is also due at the end of the year in exactly 3 days of non-stop effort. You can basically flip a coin as to which approach my brain will decide to take for any given task.

so yeah I have a job now. and my poor case manager dude is like “wait. no. that was so fast. it’s been one week. you did how many interviews? and you picked...this one. the one that is not like anything you have done before and also was not on the “jobs I think would work out for me” list that we made?”

and he was scrambling like “accommodations. training. oh god. um. do i need to talk to your employers?” and getting more anxious when I was like “no i think I have it covered.” like i am sorry bro but i know that my vibes in person are like “quiet forgetful autistic person who can pass for either a high school student or a grandma at any moment” and this does not inspire confidence, but I am actually pretty independent once someone gives me a little push to start a thing.

also...dude you have my job history. winter sports area general worker (concessions, ticket sales, renting ski/snowshoe equipment, managing cross-country trails, monitoring the tube hill, etc.). family restaurant hostess (basically every role in the place except a cook). person selling fireworks out of tent for all of July while also living in a smaller tent behind the shipping crate filled with things that go boom. call center customer service rep handling 4 different clients that range from crafts and home decor to incontinence products and super expensive furniture. freelance dog-sitting with clients ranging from “rich couple who wants me to let their elderly cockapoos out twice a day for $50 bucks a pop in a house with a basement theater” to “i’ll give you $10 a day to exercise and feed the 3 huskies in our small apartment also they can jump higher than you are tall and scream louder than you thought possible.” bro we added a whole “volunteer experience” section to my resume because I wrote grants and worked with an environmental group to restore native bluebirds to the community and volunteered at the community table and the animal shelter and the library. like i have done lots of things that are not really connected at all. someone says “hey do you think you could do this?” and I am suddenly living out of a tent for a month googling “what the fuck is a crossette?” i once ended up in Memphis for 2 months doing volunteer construction work in the aftermath of a hurricane because my cousin didn’t want to go alone and everyone was like “oh we know someone who goes with the flow so hard.”

so you better believe i told you “oh i don’t know, maybe a receptionist position would be nice” and then applied to every local job known to god and then a few extra and took the first one to say “cool can you start next week?” i know i did not give off “I will try anything at least once if you ask me fast and then go ‘great!’ before I can process what i agreed to” vibes while sitting in your office in my colorful leggings, grandma sweaters and animal hats while not making eye contact and talking about how lovely my nephew is and how much I enjoy quiet time alone and gardening and i struggle with a poor memory and navigating social interactions. but i know you proofread my resume my guy. you asked questions about all these things except the construction thing because i actually forgot to mention that actually which is good because then i might have had to mention the cult involvement that i wasn’t aware of until i was stuck on-site but it all worked out so no sweat. still, i am glad that he is concerned by my “out of the blue” spontaneity. it’s kind of his job to help people settle into jobs that they can handle, and I also know that I would realistically need more assistance from him if I wasn’t so good at adapting on the fly due to my bad habit of saying “sure, I can do that” to literally anything. also my new job is honestly pretty tame, so i am not sure what he is freaking out about. i should really not mention some of the other jobs i spontaneously applied for before accepting this one. like..my friend...i could be working in a bridal shop. i could be training to install and repair vending machines or decorating cakes or delivering medical equipment. i applied for a job that was literally “window production.” none of these are actually as wild as that time I spent 2 months with a religious cult doing manual labor and living out of an abandoned, half-destroyed school building because my cousin talked me into it. i had to watch a dramatic reenactment of the crucifixion of Jesus on my very first night that brought the whole gymnasium of strangers to wild, howling tears while I was awkwardly clapping my hands as my cousin sobbed incoherently into my shoulder. i once dog-sat a bluetick coonhound for 2 weeks in the dead of winter, and the snow if his yard was so high that he was able to jump the fence and book it down the street. i had to chase him through knee-high snow for over an hour before he stopped to sniff a bemused old lady long enough for me to catch him. i once had a customer at the restaurant rail at me for a good twenty minutes because she was absolutely sure that we did serve pineapple upside down cake and i was just withholding this dessert from her, specifically. the bar for “jobs I would apply for” is so low that I actually thought “well as long as nobody spits in my face, pukes on me consistently, or shanks me in the kidney again I could probably do anything.” although to be fair to my case manager i did not mention those things to him (except the pineapple upside down cake lady because I mention her all the time, i am still pissed off about that situation). also, my sister was actually the one to have a dog wake her up in the middle of the night only to puke directly into her mouth, but I watched it go down, so the psychic trauma of witnessing that still exists.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[sweetpastillas]

pitting fob's return and p!atd's subsequent death against each other in my head like im drafting an old harry potter vs twilight essay lol

[papercutsmp3]

.

[soy-sauce-and-mothra]

Hey! Are there blacksmiths in your story? I'm a hobbyist blacksmith and I'm here to help!

Blacksmithing is one of those things that a lot of people get wrong because they don't realize it stuck around past the advent of the assembly line. Here's a list of some common misconceptions I see and what to do instead!

Not all blacksmiths are gigantic terrifying muscly guys with beards and deep voices. I am 5'8, skinny as a twig, have the muscle mass of wet bread, and exist on Tumblr. Anybody who is strong enough to pick up a hammer and understands fire safety can be a blacksmith.

You can make more than just swords with blacksmithing. Though swords are undeniably practical, they're not the only things that can be made. I've made candle holders, wall hooks, kebab skewers, fire pokers, and more. Look up things other people have made, it's really amazing what can be done.

"Red-hot" is actually not that hot by blacksmith terms. when heated up, the metal goes from black, to red, to orange, to yellow, to white. (for temperature reference, I got a second degree burn from picking up a piece of metal on black heat) The ideal color to work with the metal is yellow. White is not ideal at all, because the metal starts sparking and gets all weird and lumpy when it cools. (At no point in this process does the metal get even close to melting. It gets soft enough to work with, but I have never once seen metal become a liquid.)

Blacksmithing takes fucking forever. Not even taking into account starting the forge, selecting and preparing metal, etc. etc. it takes me around an hour to make one (1) fancy skewer. The metals blacksmiths work with heat up and cool down incredibly fast. When the forge is going good, it only takes like 20 seconds to get your metal hot enough to work with, but it takes about the same time for it to cool down, sometimes even less.

As long as you are careful, it is actually stupidly easy to not get hurt while blacksmithing. When I picked up this hobby I was like "okay, cool! I'm gonna make stuff, and I'm gonna end up in the hospital at some point!" Thus far, the latter has yet to occur. I've been doing this for nearly a year. I have earned myself a new scar from the aforementioned second degree burn, and one singe mark on my jeans. I don't even wear gloves half the time. Literally just eye protection, common sense, and fast reflexes and you'll probably be fine. (Accidents still happen of course, but I have found adequate safety weirdly easy to achieve with this hobby)

A forge is not a fire. The forge is the thing blacksmiths put their metal in to heat it up. It starts as a small fire, usually with newspaper or something else that's relatively small and burns easily, which we then put in the forge itself, which is sort of a fireplace-esque thing (there's a lot of different types of forge, look into it and try to figure out what sort of forge would make the most sense for the context you're writing about) and we cover it with coal, which then catches fire and heats up. The forge gets really hot, and sometimes really bright. Sometimes when I stare at the forge for too long it's like staring into the sun. The forge is also not a waterfall of lava, Steven Universe. It doesn't work like that, Steven Universe.

Welding and blacksmithing are not the same thing. They often go hand-in-hand, but you cannot connected two pieces of metal with traditional blacksmithing alone. There is something called forge welding, where you heat your metal, sprinkle borax (or the in-universe equivalent) on it to prevent the metal from oxidizing/being non-weldable, and hammer the pieces together very quickly. Forge welding also sends sparks flying everywhere, and if you're working in a small space with other blacksmiths, you usually want to announce that you're welding before you do, so that everyone in a five-foot radius can get out of that five-foot radius. You also cannot just stuck some random pebbles into the forge and get a decent piece of metal that you can actually make something with, Steven Universe. It doesn't work like that, Steven Universe.

Anvils are really fucking heavy. Nothing else to add here.

Making jewelry is not a blacksmithing thing unless you want jewelry made of steel. And it will be very ugly if you try. Blacksmithing wasn't invented to make small things.

If there's anything here I didn't mention, just ask and I'll do my best to answer.