#xivuuarath

[digital-dragoon]

dorumon prompt from @xivuuarath! 

[flowers-of-io]

do not get me started on taox's relatively tiny role (already outsized from what was expected, she was hardly planning on going to /space/) to the absolutely incomprehensible scale of impact she has had on not just the siblings but on hive /culture/. there are words and concepts named after her. she likely saw her betrayal as a regrettable necessity for the sake of the court, and for it to be carried down in memory for billions of years fills me with such bitter grief

Exactly!!! Tbh when it comes to Taox, I wonder how deep her story goes; she was aware of the Leviathan ("And if I fail, let the Leviathan in the deep eat me"), but I don't know how much of a stretch it would be to say she knew what was the Light/Dark/Traveler/worms thing all about, or even aware of any of it. What breaks my heart the most is I think the moment the Dakaua found her frozen in stasis for twenty-four thousand years, and despite knowing what the siblings had become, she still referred to them as Aurash, Sathona and Xi Ro when debriefing the Ecumene (and basing on that info Quria later simulated Aurash). Oryx remembered her millennia later, but so did she remember the innocent children she had betrayed, even as she was aware of the interstellar murderers they morphed into.

[anactualmoth]

The high celebrant of Xivu Arath in a cute dress if anyone wants

[wonderwafles]

catharsis + any of the osmium fam?

Sorry it took so long - this was a tough one to think of, oddly enough, bc I love the Osmium fam!

///

“Dad,” Crota said seriously. “What if I were to find Taox, and end her by my own blade?”

Oryx and his son were walking along the Spare Path, the slender, arching, fragile filament that connected the High War with the rest of the Sea of Screams.

Open hand and closed fist in one. Oryx wanted Crota to see it, and draw his own conclusions.

“If you do, I’ll kill you,” Oryx said, just as seriously.

“Because she is yours?” Eager, probing, desirous to see where the limits of his strength could take him. What a son he was given! He would grow great, one day, if he proved strong enough.

“Because I withheld my oath from you,” Oryx said. “At your birth, I kept it for myself, so you might be free to carve your own strength.”

They stopped above the highest point. Below them, time and space writhed. So savaged had it been, here, it was almost falling apart.

Oryx was delighted by its open wounds. Old Aurash surfaced in him once again, and he felt the urge to chart them. What lay beyond? What was beyond space? Would he find the Garden where all had begun? Would he uncover something entirely new, and name it unto himself?

“Yet what if I were to take it?” Crota asked him. Ever defiant. “Then it would be mine, by right. Then hateful Taox would be mine, too.”

Oryx lashed out with his foot. Crota was almost fast enough to avoid it - instead his knee cracked and he cried out in a moment of detestable weakness.

Now he dangled from the filament. Terror was in his eyes, but when Oryx peered down at him, Crota met his gaze with bravery.

Oryx moved to crush his son’s hand. Instead, with admirable strength, Crota pulled himself upward and lunged for his father’s heart, sword in hand.

Oryx caught and deflected the blow, and soon he had Crota hanging by the wrist, squirming to be free.

“That oath is not my most valued possession, but it is my deepest,” Oryx said. “Perhaps my oldest. And you think you could take it from me? Steal away my catharsis, my victory, like your sisters scheme to steal my power?” He laughed. His laughter was the pounding of the fist of a god against the stretched skin of the Universe.

Crota was now trying to bite his way out of Oryx’s hand. Oryx couldn’t help but be proud of the effort.

He wasn’t sure what would happen if his son succeeded. Something that sacred - his long awaited vengeance, gone from him -

He might destroy his son, scatter his atoms like sand in his clenching fist. Or he might make him the greatest golden crown of the broken down gnawing teeth of every living thing he had killed.

He was curious to find out, some day.

[theforsakencrow]

Sometimes I wonder if we could defeat Xivu Arath by just hugging everything she sends at us...

Make love not war.

[titan-mom]

🌚 all the dead seem to know where i am

It has been four days since the fall of the Last City.

There is nothing they can do. Curiosity has caught choppy radio frequencies, messages about rally points and fallbacks. Cries for help and rousing proclamations of hope filtered through static and droning Cabal feeds. But their cargo is too precious to risk. They have been lightless for centuries, they know how to fight without it. But their flock is their charge, now more than ever they may hold the future of the Guardians in the folds of their cloak. It is too risky for them to join an assault on the Cabal.

That does not mean they must be far.

They landed back on earth for safety, first and foremost. The Red Legion’s fleet was choking the system, making the other planets unsafe for a lone jumpship. They landed with a flock of four, and began the trek towards the city.

Tonight, the first new Ghost finds them. They are pink, with a spiked dawning shell, but their tines are bent and broken. They wobble in their flight, buffeted by even the slightest breeze, but their course is straight and true. They move without a word nor hesitation straight into Curiosity’s open palm, before resting there, eyelight fluttering like a heartbeat. Curiosity keens, pull them close and settles them in the deep swooping collar of their robes. The Ghost does not move for hours. Sephirah and the others buzz about them, sympathetic but unable to help. Eventually, the flock tires and retreated to their pockets. Pink regains their strength by dusk, but never speaks.

Curiosity moves Pink to a pocket as night falls, deactivates their eye and throat lights, and keeps walking. Just past 1900, they see a pair of eyes through the gloom, moving independently from a head. Two ghosts, matching shells. Tines clink as one bumps the other, and flashes an excited greeting. Curiosity turns on their eyes and holds out their hand. The pair of golden ghosts alight, blinking relief and warmth. Curiosity lets them nestle inside their robes, close to their core, and raises their internal running temperature a couple notches. Sometime later Kendari, the larger, thanks them, but admits they are still cold, and that it is probably because their Guardians had both been solar. He fears they will never be warm again. Curiosity can do nothing but rub his tines, gently, comfortingly, and hum soothing tones.

The next day brings a light snowfall, and they find Aurora in the early morning on a rock, the snow collecting on her broad sunburst shell and weighing her down. She gains the strength to speak when her core warms, and tells them how she had felt the Light this way, a candle in the dark. How she feels it now, stronger than she’s felt in days. Kendari and his partner chime their agreement, and Pink rolls over in their pocket.

“All these Ghosts in one place, bouncing Light off one another.” Sephirah realizes. “When I lost my Guardian, it felt like I lost all the Light in myself too. And I turned to the only thing I could feel, the Traveler. Zenith and Umbra and Chase have never had guardians, and I have healed since losing mine. We weren’t bled dry when the Light left, we just lost our connection.”  

Sephirah flutters up into Curiosity’s face. Since they all felt the Traveler go, she had been subdued, but with hope was returning to her old self. “We’re their Traveler now, we’re their beacon. And the more who flock to us the stronger we will all get!”

After that, the flock takes turns being out of their pockets, scanning the ground ahead, searching for the whispers of Light, and casting out as much as they dare as signal flares. When a response registers, frantic buzzing draws Curiosity to the spot, to gently dig away the snow and free the Ghost who settled to rest on their journey.

At sunset Curiosity scales the ridge ahead, and looks at last upon the Traveler and the occupied city. Their flock is sixteen strong now, double the largest it has ever been. They fill Curiosity’s collar and robes, pockets and satchel. Due to lack of room, Sephirah is settled atop their head, beneath their hood and among the spikes. It is the place where their own Ghost used to sit.

They will need to hole up somewhere close, this is too many Ghosts to travel with during an occupation, and the ship is three days back. And the responsibility is twofold now. They must stay close to the City, for other lost Ghosts to find them, and safety.

[mimusbirds]

1: s A M E

2: This is Merit, Shiv is the ghost. I haven’t drawn him yet but she’s effectively following after the footsteps of one very cranky Praxic Warlock while still dodging any attempts to induct her into the order itself. 

[nerice]

for the writer ask: playlist and mifflin?

what kind of music/songs help you write? do you have a writing playlist?

i don't listen to music while writing unless there's distracting noise, in which case it's exclusively the nier automata memories of puppets concert !! to the point where i have a fkcin pavlovian reflex anytime i hear the first notes of city ruins lmao ((also i have oc playlists ofc but i only rly listen to them while drawing bc it drives me wild 2 listen to any oc song n i will not be able to sit still and write lol))

what do you feel is your strong suit in writing?

oh. extremely somber dark night of the soul type scenes !! i absolutely love sitting my ocs on nge chairs & taking them apart or let them take themselves apart in front of others :)) screenplay is chock-full of these <3 also hand in hand w/ that but on a more metatextual level: poetic irony/tragedy !! i love building up absolutely horrible events thru small scenes that beat my heart to a pulp knowing what's coming ++ somewhat related, role subversions n fun terrible switch-ups whenever we are talking au/canon divergence settings <333

[snarkspawn]

🖍

A beauvabomb ehehe

[cappurrccino]

🌹!

The Crow was nothing if not curious, and he hadn’t wasted much time before asking her questions.

[flowers-of-io]

asher for the accurate depictions meme!

1. Self-loathing and blame. It's so interesting to compare the ways Asher and Eris approach their respective situations. I agree with what @allteacher wrote about her, that she sort of sees herself mirrored in how others see her and is constantly proving them (herself) wrong, constantly reassuring herself that she hasn't gone mad and paranoid and lost in her purpose; but she never blames herself. I can't recall a single line of hers where she says, oh, I'm a terrible person, I did this abhorrent thing to myself and people are right in their judgement of me. She suffers from survivor's guilt and blames herself for things like not helping Omar or not saving Vell or trusting Toland, but interestingly enough she is quite reasonable in that guilt and doesn't blame herself abstractly. She knows what she had to do in order to survive and I believe she struggled with it for some time after returning to the Tower, but it doesn't seem to haunt her that much anymore. She rightfully blames the Hive, and sees vengeance.

Asher however spins it just the other way. Yes, he hates the Vex and gladly tasks us with killing Brakion, but I don't think that act of vengeance helps quell his guilt in any way. He blames himself for everything about the accident. He blames himself that it's happened in the first place, that he is unable to find a cure, that his Ghost also got changed and is suffering, that he cannot bear to kill it, and so on. Like Eris, he seethes with anger and that anger propels him to move forward and seek a way out, but where Eris directs that anger towards the enemy, he has it pointed only at himself. I've been musing lately on how one's relationships with others mirror their own relationship with themself and how the undue criticism towards people is often the criticism you have towards yourself; a part of my own therapy, but also incredibly interesting in terms of character study. Asher's roughness and criticism and constant blaming directed at others (us, Zavala, Ikora, his fireteam, just everyone except Eris really) is more than anything his own self-blame and anger. I love (though it breaks my heart) the scene where he lashes out at Ikora for suggesting he consults various people about his affliction; I think he is really yelling at himself for not being able to find a cure and save his own life, and her proposals are just a burning reminder of that.

2. Fear. Of course there's the paralyzing terror of sand in the hourglass running out--he doesn't know if his Ghost can still rez him and is afraid to test this (and considers himself a coward for it). But he is afraid of so many other things: a connection with the Vex, having people close, losing them and them losing him. Io is as much a sanctuary to him as it is a hideout, and Asher Mir's One Way Ticket loretab captures it better than I ever could tbh.

3. The way he connects with people. I wonder to what extent he flinches from human contact because he is afraid of quite literally dying on them. His relationship with Eris is both intimate and aloof, and long before his ?death? has she written openly about the possibility of him dying in a sort-of way of preparing herself for it (spoiler: it didn't work, it never does). I think they have always been holding hands only halfway, ready to let go any moment when life got too fleeting and the ropes broke. There's that passage from Marasenna about loosely tethered ships and I see this being somewhat this way.

The way he connects with us (the Guardian) is also notable because at first he doesn't allow himself for anything resembling warmth or emotion--not until we return from the Pyramidion for the first time. He's so scared of us going there, and I think the first time he talks to us openly is only when we come back victorious and alive. One of his out-dialogue lines was "Don't die", ffs. The Gensym Knight armour is all 'oh don't fool yourself by thinking these things will protect you from the harshness of battle' and 'I have no use for mawkish sentimentality, I just need you to stay alive'. He keeps his distance because he's terrified of us dying on him.

He doesn't speak to his fireteam, and I wonder if it's because they remind him of his great failure or whether he secretly blames himself for getting them into it, or maybe because he's, again, scared of getting close if he's gonna die and leave them grieving anyway. He just really keeps the tethers loose, something he acknowledges particularly about the relationship with Ikora, and that maybe he ought to allow for a little warmth on his part.

4. Fascination with the enemy. Oh I think this is a loretab to something from either CoO or Warmind, that letter where he replies to Eris he couldn't find anything about Nokris in his archives. He also asks her if she feels a strange fondness, or fascination, towards the being which changed her, and admits to admiring the Vex in a way; the intimacy of mutual destruction, the closer he gets to them in the attempt to wreck them the more he understands them. All the while being afraid of becoming them! His last stand in the Pyramidion illustrates this whole process, I think, his meandered relationship with that place and the Vex in general. He wishes to see their end but knows how valuable a force they are and would not let the Darkness have it, but he's willing to defend that place with his own blood I think because it is also his, in a convoluted and hard to grasp way. The bravery he couldn't summon up ever since the accident finally wins over the fear of death and he does rise up to fight and guard it, and walk through that gates again to face his own demons. He calls that radiolarian lake "his". I hate the ending of his part in Duress and Egress equally much as I love it, and the Exodus quest tears me up.

[zaolat]

@xivuuarath Okay but I actually DO keep oc Pinterest boards, including for ocs I haven’t really talked about as well as my personal versions of vague canon characters akjsksdj

[phthalology]

@xivuuarath​  What’s your favourite piece of dialogue you wrote this year? A lot of my most inventive writing this year happened because Control lends itself to inventiveness so much. This is just how the Former talks, and I had a great time finding a mix of random words, words that actually conveyed what I wanted the reader to understand the dialogue meant, and funny phrases like canon’s “abalone” and “panini.” < Outside @#$! New @%@! Half-Price > She’s almost happy to hear from the Former, but nevertheless Jesse considers for a moment whether to hang up. She feels like she’s been caught. Like the Board is a parent that doesn’t want her to go over to her friend’s house. Screw that. “What?” < Writer @^#! Outside @#$! Substance @#$! Aspen > Writer/outside means Alan Wake, of course. Jen gave me “aspen.” I also think there’s some hard-won dialogue in this HZD fic, but am not sure it achieved its goal of conveying why that dynamic feels compelling and honest. 

What’s your favourite piece of description or narration? Hmm, that’s a hard one! There’s nothing I can point to this year that stands out immediately, the way Infinite Chess did before. I tried to do something new with narration in this one, basically to ... well, to flex, really, to let readers know right away they’re in for something with some momentum and some voice. It’s not Assassin’s Creed fic if you don’t feel like you’re plummeting at least a little bit. It had to have this sense of falling forward, especially in order for the end to feel like a crash. I also had a good beta-reader in @lonepower​ who confirmed for me where this worked and where it didn’t. Anyway, that story starts like this:

Race Phobos up the dirt roads, his coarse mane in her face, the smell of rich soil and goats in the air. All through Arkadia, both Kassandra and the nation scorched and filled by the rush of victory and anticipation, she ran like lions followed at her heels.  Which fic this year was most fun to write?

light & power was a unicorn: I watched Alan Wake over the course of a couple days, wrote the fic almost instantly afterward, and had almost no trouble with it. That wild rush after getting really into something and seeing the story you want to tell spill out so easily it’s like you’re watching it happen is a rare gift.  Luckily, some other people liked it too!

[neuxue]

does your inbox ever get a break?? I hope the shitty anons die down and go find something reasonable to do with their time

They come in waves; usually it’s just one or two people with a particular axe to grind (generally when I talk about gender, sexuality, or politics). It’s fine; I have had much worse, online and off, than someone anonymously telling me I’m Wrong About Stuff, so I’m pretty much immune to being upset by it (if not quite immune to occasionally responding to bait, but we all have our flaws)

[titan-mom]

as discussed: close enough to us hive sympathizers to be contentious, but probably also a favourite

Making a tshirt that says “Hive love me, fans hate me” brb.

[gothbnuuydex]

I think it’s kind of funny how the whole story of Destiny is created just because of some Family Drama™️