xivu-arath

[xivu-arath]

if you're writing and find yourself thinking 'this is too weird/gross/offputting/esoteric/ambitious/catered to my specific interests + sure to push away a broader audience' that is the devil speaking and it is a lie. you are already firmly on the right path and you need to double down

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[xivu-arath]

you cannot headcanon your way out of overt thematic structures on which the entire narrative is built

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wait shit I still haven't put together anything for gen june... rip

[xivu-arath]

"Here is what is taught to the Hive, from the basest of Thralls newly made: that what can be destroyed, must be destroyed. What cannot be destroyed will surpass infinity."

my piece for @swordlogiczine - a fragment of how the hive might view time and history, framed by their crusade and fatal purpose

I am still so overwhelmed that I was chosen to write for the zine, especially in the company of talented friends and long-admired artists and writers! thank you so much for having me, @eiramew!

check out the whole zine here!

Let me congratulate you all. You may be a ragged, sorry group of acolytes – some of you not even with your eyes fully grown! – but you have lived a full year from the moment you clawed yourself free of the brood sacs. A year of hunger, growth, and perhaps even the forming of a few wits in your vacant skulls.

I am here to shake them loose, and see if they can do more than rattle on about food and killing.

By now, you must know the littlest fragment of our history. Of the pact made with the worm our god, the gifts and secrets they granted, how they cut the first wounds to lead us from our world|prison. Can even one of you frail wretches tell me which of the worms we follow is the strongest? Your single year of life should have taught you this at the very least.

Honest Yul, who spoke first! A safe answer, at least you have been paying some attention. 

What of Eir, reality cleaving to his words to carve out laws, or hungry Ur? 

Ah, Akka – a clever trap, most commendable. To deny it would be to deny the power our king commands. If your tongue doesn’t kill you, you might even do well… and now that I’ve said as much, you will have to be even quicker, won’t you?

All wrong, however – yes, callow acolyte, even your trick answer. The strongest worm, and the oldest, the one that truly cannot be escaped, even by its kin – we know its name, and its name is Time.

No? Perhaps you are too young yet to realize it – even our gods are trapped within the bounds of time’s coils. They cannot leap through it as those brittle machines do – nor would they, for such a victory would be hollow, unmade as soon as it was within our grasp. No, we carve our deeds into time’s hide through struggles and slaughters, and our history is found in these deepest wounds, the scars we have etched into it. Still the worm heals, and grows, and devours, and so our wars become stories, our stories myths, our myths an echo.

You might think each year, each decade and century and long millennia of our crusade is a step forward. This is a lie, a trap. Why is the future so close and the past so distant? Because time curls inward upon its own tail, until it reaches the end of history and swallows it, grinds it down into void and dust. Each of you, and even I, will one day be only a faded memory, a single faint mark upon it – and then nothing at all.

What’s this? You all look so discouraged! Does it trouble you so to know that you will be eaten twice-over? Time, at least, will leave no messy carcass or spore lying around for others to scavenge.

Here is a truth to make the knowing go down more smoothly.

Oryx will prevail. We will flense lies from truth as the softest, rotting flesh from bone. By sword and teeth and hunger we will craft the universe a most perfect ending, our first and final gift. Freed from its grasp by rendering reality irreducible, our king will behold the greatest worm in its totality – and cut off its head.

In its death throes, it will disgorge its tail, it will flail and unravel, and in its unravelling it will reveal the whole of time from the moment it bit down on the first flicker of consciousness. There, scarred and bleeding, will be the final truth, the only truth – the story of we, the Hive.

Live long, little acolytes, and live wisely. You would like to see it for yourself, wouldn’t you?

[xivu-arath]

"Savathûn shields from dire truths." Following his pledge of fealty, Nokris learns this firsthand.

for a private exchange for @phthalology!

[xivu-arath]

destinytober - path

Kaharn Atoll is what does it, with its swarms of strange ships, the bristling lightning spires turned to ornament and art, the impossible heights of buildings never meant to survive the waves.

Not a change, not a revelation, but a quiet unlocking: ah, the Fundament is so very large, and she (and her people, and everything her people have ever done –) is so very, very small.

“To watch”, they name her duty later, and Taox does not correct them as she swallows the mother jelly, laced with enough venom to alter its purpose. But she does not live to watch, or teach, or guide – or even lead.

With this small, frail life from a small, frail people, she will build.

[xivu-arath]

What lurks in the Moon's shadows as Osiris slays the Hive? Almost nothing. prompted by @eri-223: "bright"

Nameless, breathless, almost formless, a shadow among deeper shadows. First the fetid shadows of rotting halls, empty but for reckless bone-pickers and wisps of memory. The stark shadows of Luna, seething with fears captured and set loose by a lesser hand. Finally into the tunnels and desperate crypts, where the shadows are now ragged and streaming, flaring, swallowing and being swallowed. Among these the nameless and empty thing hides, and watches, and waits.

The Light is here. It churns the air with killing heat. It lashes out in great blinding torrents and gouts of flame. It makes of a man a wellspring, and the man makes of the wellspring a sword, and the sword cuts and scalds and burns and razes. There has never been a brighter slaughter in this place of futile death.

This alone does not interest the shadow. Nor do the wails and shrieks of the dying, or the hammering pulse of war growing louder with each strike. All of this has been seen before.

The wellspring falters. The man holds a sword, and blade must be met with blade. War’s blade is sharper and heavier and older. He will fall, and drown, and be devoured.

This too has been foreseen. But the Light remains, a spark of it that seizes and grows and grows and grows, not a sword nor a wellspring but a beacon of a star in its dying throes. It swells to fill the jagged crevasses and ancient battlements. The shadows are chased or burnt away and even the banner of war crumbles. The nameless, formless thing flees lest it too be transfixed and crushed.

Later, it will return to the man who has become a shell, and take hold where the Light once flowed. A husk turned hiding place, puppet, chrysalis.

Now it is empty and frail, but still it looks back into that gloried spasm of a god’s last and foolish gift. Beneath fear, beneath hunger rooted soul-deep, it wants with such clarity that it is almost defined, almost revealed.

As shadows do, it is lost within greater darkness. Yet even once named and living, the memory of brilliance remains.

[xivu-arath]

when you spend all day anxiously anticipating something only for it to not happen and then get like 1-2 hours left in the day to pivot to calming down and living slightly more comfortably before bed :///

[xivu-arath]

The fourth and final print batch of this year's May sketches is now available in the shop!

[xivu-arath]

the son of gorgo will be crowned in blood

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OMG???? FUCKING EMERGANCY

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I'm kinda shy but if youre persistent in getting to know me for 5-6 years I can be a good addition to your household

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chainsaw man - 03.

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for as somber and downright depressing as it is, there’s something really funny about the fact that joshua was just like “fuck it. gonna go kill myself so i can become god AND king of the afterlife” and then actually did it. a child killed the previous powerful as fuck adult composer and then became the ruler of the dead. literally how the fuck did he do any of this. and now he’s wearing that burger king cardboard crown in the UG with pride but at what cost. he didnt think this through at all.

[xivu-arath]

I think that relying too much in LLMs can indeed harm your capacity for learning, in the same way that poor systems of learning (rote memorization, just copying whatever without thinking) can. Learning is a thing you need... to learn. Even LLMs can be a useful tool for learning as long as you have a good learning strategy.

That paper that says that AIs cause COGNITIVE ATROPHY is still unreviewd and smells so much of bullshit that I'm tearing up from here. Do not share it uncritically.