tempestclerics

[tempestclerics]

please donate to the sameer project, they're running out of money and losing traction. i gave $50 just now, if you have any money to spare please consider skipping the next online purchase or order-in food and donate, it's really simple and easy to do.

[tempestclerics]

My boyfriend has really vivid, elaborate dreams. He’ll often wake up and talk about some grand narrative- travel, exploration, politics, performances. I’ve always been a little jealous, he can hold really good plots together for them sometimes.

But anyway, this does have a downside; vivid, elaborate dreams make for vivid, elaborate nightmares. I can usually tell when it’s one of those nights, since he grinds his teeth pretty badly.

I was never quite sure what to do when I knew he was having a bad time of it, though the grinding alone was enough to worry me and push me towards intervening. I used to just shake him gently, hope to rouse him just enough to reset the dream or something, but it wasn’t too effective and anyway waking him up all the time isn’t good for rest.

I’m rather proud of the strategy I eventually settled on: gently, so as not to wake him up, I’d lay one arm across his hands, wrapping his fingers around me so that he was holding on. Nightmares being nightmares, I can usually count on a pretty tight grip when this happens.

It may seem a little odd, but consider that holding on to something with both hands is typically a very agentic frame of mind. We hold on to things that give us power, in one way or another, and possessing objects often makes us feel powerful in some respects. That has consequences, even for a dreaming mind.

I knew it was working when he woke up rather mystified from one such dream, and told me that he’d been running through the caverns of some dungeon or cave system, pursued by monsters, but then all of a sudden he was holding a giant anime sword and fought them off instead. So I got to be a sword for him that night, I was delighted.

I don’t usually get to know exactly what happened, since even for a very vivid dreamer like Ritter, nine tenths of these things get forgotten. But I know I’ve been things like door handles, steering wheels, stuff like that. And even when I don’t know what I am to him, he doesn’t grind his teeth nearly as much- the sleep is deeper and more peaceful, so I get plenty of feedback that it’s working.

It’s such a perfect encapsulation of love in microcosm, isn’t it? No matter how much you mean to them, and how much they mean to you, the gap between two conscious lives is fundamentally separating you. But fundamental does not mean insurmountable. There’s this whole world in him, full of dreams and perspectives that I’ll never truly experience. But I will be a part of those worlds all the same, finding little ways here and there to make sure that the dreams of me make him a better, stronger, and happier person.

Or at least, so one hopes. It’s a difficult challenge, and things often go awry. But usually you get at least a little lucky.

[tempestclerics]

A four page comic about drawing, drawn for the Portland Public Library's newest exhibit, "Why We Make Comics: Reflections on Storytelling".

If you live in Portland ME, you can see this comic, as well as three others drawn by Isabella Rotman, Caroline Hu, and Liz Prince, on display from October 6th to December 31 at the library!

[tempestclerics]

summer to-do list: unlearn internalized shame, sunbathe, read some good books

[tempestclerics]

funny how the popular conception of reptiles is that theyre like, slimy and wet. meanwhile they have smooth dry scales, while we mammals are covered in glands that secrete water and oils and other chemicals. where do we sweaty greasy synapsids get off calling lizards slimy

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dude you gotta watch severance it's so exciting. in season 2 they go outside

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west coast nest coast

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fuuuuck i just realized that the future idealized version of myself cant exist without current me being the catalyst for change and doing hard things. has anybody heard about this

[tempestclerics]

Nestled, watercolor, 2025

[tempestclerics]

I think this reads as dark but I believe in my heart that it does not have to be: Tortall AU in which Daine chooses to stay in the realms of the gods

1 The thing is, it's not that Daine doesn’t love Numair. The thing is, it's not that she doesn’t love her friends. It's not that she doesn’t feel the pull of the mortal realms. It's that for the first time in her life, she knows that she is in the right place at the right time. There is a part of her here - and always has been - that lives here alone - and always has done. Daine chooses.

2 Daine rides into the Battle of Port Legann on a steed made of clouds and stars, and all the birds of prey in Tortall wheel and dive with her. It's enough to save Rikash. It's enough to break Numair's heart.

(It’s not that he doesn’t understand.)

Sarra thinks Daine will be coming home.

"I love you so much, Ma," Daine says, smiling. "Over my dead body." She takes Kitten and Rikash and goes to live with the dragons.

3 Technically a new goddess should only set foot in the mortal realms on the solstices, and technically her powers should be granted to her by the great gods, but firstly Daine bound Uusoae, so they owe her one (or several), and secondly she has a well-known authority problem. Thirdly, she has pre-existing worshippers.

"AAAAAAAauaghDaine," says Maura of Dunlath, twelve, waking from a deep sleep. "You're sitting on my feet. Numair said you live in the Divine Realms now. What are you doing here? Am I dreaming?"

Daine is holding a very familiar recurve bow in her hands. "Where did you get this?"

"Sir Alanna gave it to me," Maura grumbles, reddening. "You can have it if you want it. It just makes me feel braver. That's all."

"Keep it with my blessing," says Daine. "I just came to tell you there's a rabid bear in the woods, a day's ramble away, crossing the border from Galla tonight."

Maura leaps out of bed and trips over a cat.

"Give my love to Alanna," Daine says. "There's somewhere I have to be."

'Somewhere' is by the side of a girl on the banks of a river, holding a soggy burlap sack of kittens, staring down a spidren. Daine aims and fires a bow which is not, strictly speaking, real. The spidren collapses.

"I just wanted to save the kittens," blurts Keladry of Mindelan.

"I know, sweetheart," Daine says, and kisses her on the forehead - a blessing and a benediction and a rueful prediction. Her first high priestess is a child of ten. "Tell Kally and Roald that Daine says hello."

4 "I just wanted to save the girl!" cries Keladry of Mindelan, fifteen, with a lap full of dirty burlap sack containing one outraged baby griffin.

"I know, sweetheart," Daine says. "And now you saved them both. Is one life worth less than the other?"

"No," says Kel.

"Here is my gift to you," Daine says. "You will come to no harm because of the kindness that you have done. And here is his gift to you. Because of the kindness you have done, you will always know truth from lies."

Daine is there when Kel repeats this in front of her knight-master and Buri, but not when Onua drops by Kel's rooms with an arrowhead necklace for her to wear.

"Did Daine look well?" Onua asks. "Did she seem happy?"

All Kel can offer her is compassion. "Yes," she says.

5 In the forest on the Scanran border, Keladry of Mindelan, eighteen, closes her eyes and clutches an arrowhead necklace tighter than is wise.

"I want to save them if I can," she whispers.

A sisterly kiss on her forehead, a burning touch on her cheek. The Chamber gave her this task, but it's Daine who grants her wish.

"I know, sweetheart," replies Veralidaine Sarrasri, goddess of the hunted. "Follow me. There’s no time to lose."

[tempestclerics]

thayet the peerless of tortall the most beautiful woman in the world is in no way shape or form white btw

[tempestclerics]

sometimes your distress does indicate you should stop and respect your limitations. at other times it's more of a baby aquatic mammal being introduced to water for the first time thing. Too bad the difference is so hard to tell.

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"I felt, for a time, as though—" "Things were so over?" "Well, not even just that things were so over, but specifically like a sitting duck. Like a duck who was sitting and then someone could come and shoot that duck almost no problem." Jet Lag: The Game Season 13.5 — We Played Hide And Seek Across NYC

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"name 100 real women" as a challenge is the funniest fucking thing I've ever heard. queen amy I need you to write the challenges every single season

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“It is extraordinary that nobody nowadays under the stress of great troubles is turned into stone or a bird or a tree or some inanimate object; they used to undergo such metamorphoses in ancient times (or so they say), though whether that is myth or a true story I know not. Maybe it would be better to change one’s nature into something that lacks all feeling, rather than be so sensitive to evil. Had that been possible, these calamities would in all probability have turned me to stone.”

— The Alexiad, written by Anna Komnene, the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, c. 1148.

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tiny little detail that i love is that james gunn gives us remarkable events that happened 3 centuries, years, hours and minutes ago but he skips over months because the remarkable thing is that that's how long clark and lois have been dating and they are going to reveal that to us themselves