*adds to tattoo list*

Erm…looks like we’re trending again.

Why?

In my first year of university, I was going through a very tumultuous time. There was all the many new things that come from leaving home, some good, some bad. There were the difficulties of a demanding if rewarding job, and I first became acquainted with the not-so-fondly-remembered and not yet fully un-internalized “student lifestyle.” Terrible food, awful sleep schedule, and this omnipresent sense of impending doom that was, at least in my case in Fall 2019, surprisingly prescient. Throughout all of this, I was not prepared to be struck by the warmth and depth and resonant Truth that cut through the noise and spoke to me with a certain book I picked up, by happenstance, because of its pretty cover. That book was A Conspiracy of Truths by @ariaste. You may have heard of them. https://www.alexandrarowland.net/a-conspiracy-of-truths

Now, needless to say I devoured aCoT, and subsequently its excellent sequel A Choir of Lies. I was sorrowfully disappointed to find out after finishing the absolute rollercoaster of Choir that there was in fact, no further reading yet to do. And so, profoundly affected as I was by this (for now) duology, which I will doubtless craft a dedicated and appropriately lengthy treatise at some point in the future, I set the books in a prime place upon my shelf and turned to face the rest of the year buoyed in my hopes for the brightness of Spring and the long lusty laughter of Summer. Alas, they were all of them deceived for another global epidemic was to begin. One (or two) life-altering years in a pandemic later… I returned to university, fully prepared to enjoy the hell out of an actual honest-to-gods academic institution that didn’t begin and end with a computer screen. It hit like a truck. Same awful student lifestyle, more bad habits piling up, and a rapidly growing sense of my own undiagnosed issue rearing its ugly head. I made one decision that saved me, probably. I kept buying and reading phenomenal books. I kept looking for stories to motivate, enervate, and inspire. Somewhere deep in my subconscious, I remembered that fateful message spoken by a Chant on a page three years past. To loosely paraphrase, “Stories [are] people, and the way people are.” I chose to focus on resilience, made it my motto, and sure I still had lots of work to do, but it helped. It gave me the push I needed to keep going.

That last long Winter that seemed so dark that the sun was never going to come back? I went a-wandering, and lo, a new instalment from @ariaste ‘s Mithalgeard universe! Not a Chant sequel as such, but I couldn’t get my hands on it fast enough. It was an oasis. A respite from the grind and dreary routines. It was also gay as… well as gay as a rainbow covered in gold, let’s say. And I cannot recommend A Taste of Gold and Iron fiercely enough, because although in many ways I managed to end my degree on a high note, that book drew me out of the darkness of the coldest part of the year. It gave me the sense to smell the flowers, to bask in the green and golden glow of a soon-to-be-attained victory, long overdue.

Alex had by this point also published several shorter works, (and a whole library’s worth of content on AO3, naturally) which I leapt to read whenever they crossed my radar. It helped that I joined their discord community which was leaps and bounds more reliable in terms of getting updates and also just having the chance to share in mutual fandom gushing. If you’re even remotely interested in learning more about what I’ve talked about here, you should join in! https://discord.gg/XHJ9Uy5gef Everybody there is absolutely lovely. So why do I bring all this up? To summarize a preamble that is, to put it mildly, not short, Alex’s writing sings to my soul. I love it more deeply than my non-existent children, and their body of work continues to evolve and grow and deliver on the themes and core messages that hooked me with that first book.

But wait, there’s more! Life carries on, and with it comes new stories! Specifically, Running Close to the Wind! It’s Our Flag Means Death meets Mithalgeard, which if I haven’t convinced you to go and read those other instalments, well just trust me when I say that is a potent and persuasive pairing! It’s also going to be dropping at an important time for me, what with convocation, another big move in my life, and a whole whack of uncertainty. Much like Avra, Teveri, and Julian though, I’ll just have to brave the rocky waters and hold on to those nearest to me, and that’s what I’d like to focus on at the end of this post. A Conspiracy of Truth taught me that stories are people, A Choir of Lies showed how stories can change people, and A Taste of Gold and Iron drove home that stories we tell ourselves are the hardest to rewrite, but also the most rewarding when we take ownership of them. I anticipate that with Running Close to the Wind, Alex will likely show us (with ample amounts of pomp and queer circumstances) how the story of ourselves can only ever be written by interweaving the tales of those closest to us. Perhaps, we’ll even discover how to navigate the often stormy seas of uncertainty that seem omnipresent these days, whenever we deign to pull our noses out from whichever books we’re currently nestled within. I know that’s certainly something I’ll be looking out for, come this June, and now hopefully you will be too! (This last link does go to the webpage for Running Close to the Wind, Tumblr’s just being weird I guess.)

Divinity: Original Kin

(In seriousness this is beautiful and bursting with meaning, but for lack of anything but slack-jawed awe I chose to make a dumbass pun.)

I got to hold a 500,000 year old hand axe at the museum today.

It's right-handed

I am right-handed

There are grooves for the thumb and knuckle to grip that fit my hand perfectly

I have calluses there from holding my stylus and pencils and the gardening tools.

There are sharper and blunter parts of the edge, for different types of cutting, as well as a point for piercing.

I know exactly how to use this to butcher a carcass.

A homo erectus made it

Some ancestor of mine, three species ago, made a tool that fits my hand perfectly, and that I still know how to use.

Who were you

A man? A woman? Did you even use those words?

Did you craft alone or were you with friends? Did you sing while you worked?

Did you find this stone yourself, or did you trade for it? Was it a gift?

Did you make it for yourself, or someone else, or does the distinction of personal property not really apply here?

Who were you?

What would you think today, seeing your descendant hold your tool and sob because it fits her hands as well?

What about your other descendant, the docent and caretaker of your tool, holding her hands under it the way you hold your hands under your baby's head when a stranger holds them.

Is it bizarre to you, that your most utilitarian object is now revered as holy?

Or has it always been divine?

Or is the divine in how I am watching videos on how to knap stone made by your other descendants, learning by example the way you did?

Tomorrow morning I am going to the local riverbed in search of the appropriate stones, and I will follow your example.

The first blood spilled on it will almost certainly be my own, as I learn the textures and rhythm of how it's done.

Did you have cuss words back then? Gods to blaspheme when the rock slips and you almost take your thumbnail off instead? Or did you just scream?

I'm not religious.

But if spilling my own blood to connect with a stranger who shared it isn't partaking in the divine

I don't know what is.

Read a post on Instagram that basically went "I'm 35 and have yet to receive a call to adventure, starting to worry that I'm not a protagonist"

I read that and basically unprompted said aloud "we're called to adventure every day."

So that's where I'm at; my unconscious self is cheering me on and I didn't even notice until I saw somebody else expressing the same doomspiral I find myself enterswirling.

If you think you've missed your call to adventure, consider that protagonists in movies and games and books only ever get the one, whereas you're entitled to as many as you are willing to hear when they make themselves heard.

How to Keep Your Travel Companion Alive and Well, a guide by Geralt of Rivia himself.

Page 8/?

Read a post on Instagram that basically went "I'm 35 and have yet to receive a call to adventure, starting to worry that I'm not a protagonist"

I read that and basically unprompted said aloud "we're called to adventure every day."

So that's where I'm at; my unconscious self is cheering me on and I didn't even notice until I saw somebody else expressing the same doomspiral I find myself enterswirling.

If you think you've missed your call to adventure, consider that protagonists in movies and games and books only ever get the one, whereas you're entitled to as many as you are willing to hear when they make themselves heard.

*thunder crackling*

THOU ART LISTENING TO

*fireball explosion*

102.3

*bubbling cauldron*

REAL WIZARDS FM

*shimmering mana crystal*

WHERE WE PLAYETH NOTHING BUT CHANTS, CHANTS, AND MORE CHANTS

*wololo*

THIS ART NOT THINE ELDER MATRIARCH'S STATION

*Imagine Dragons - Radioactive starts playing*

Jaskier and the Dandy Lions, touring the Northern Realms Summer 1264!

They're a boyband, they just don't know it yet.

Jaskier, Radovid and Geralt commissioned by @jaskierofrivia <3

if I was a vampire I wouldn’t have the problems I’m having. sure I’d have new different problems but I would be a vampire

If elves max out as 750, and the rough ratio is 1 human year = 7.5 elf years, that would mean that at 39 Astarion was the equivalent of a 5 year old, if not physically then developmentally.

the only contribution I have when posts point out that Astarion was 39 when he died which is, admittedly, very young for an elf but not as young as some of you seem to think it is

This.

but you see her on instagram and it was never really said that you guys aren’t friends but one day she stopped answering and you stopped texting and it’s not like the wound is a cavern but it is a diagram of what if in red letters. you want to tell her nice lipstick that’s a good color but the last time you spoke it was stilted and awkward 

how do you say goodbye, you know? it’s not an unfriend and block kind of situation. but you watch the people you once loved go on and have a life and you’re outside of it. and it’s bittersweet because of course it’s okay that you’re both thriving. but she used to be who you’d call if you needed to cry. she used to be who’d you’d be binge watching the new series with. you used to be hers, in a way, even if that way wasn’t permanent. and now she’s someone else and so are you and your friendship is clicking heart shapes next to pictures where she smiles next to people you’ve never met. you know where her birthmark is. she knows where you’ve buried your dead.

the poets and the singers and the authors write about romantic love when it ends. but nobody tells you how to get over a friend.

Photographed by Martin Schoeller for The New Yorker in 2002:

 "I was hired by the New Yorker in 2002 to photograph Robin Williams, and after doing my research what stood out most for me was that he was a very physical comedian. I came up with this idea to photograph him swinging from a chandelier in a grand hotel room. Most publicists shoot down these kinds of wild ideas, so I didn’t tell anyone what I was up to, but rigged up a chandelier at the Waldorf Astoria hotel for him to swing from. When Robin got there and saw what was happening, he lifted up his shirt and showed me this enormous scar on his shoulder. He’d just had surgery and couldn’t so much as lift his arm. He was so disappointed! He really felt bad about not being able to do it, because he loved the idea and really wanted to help me accomplish my vision. 

Unlike most Hollywood stars, he was unfazed by his success and position. He talked to everyone from stylists to the crew, to the hotel staff. We ended up asking a maid at the hotel to swing from the chandelier instead, and I asked him to just sit there and read a newspaper, which I think in the end was an even funnier, more unexpected picture.

[Follies Of God]

Something something Butlerian Jihad.

not to spoil where I'm going with my next video, but the more I research AI the more absolutely convinced I become that we need to smash it to pieces with hammers

There's a certain tragedy in how our physical media are slowly being subsumed by digital media.

When the end comes and we live our last moments, all of our material possessions lose their value in a final unquestionable way. We don't need them anymore. They may as well evaporate as far as we're concerned. But while we live, and breathe, and occupy these flesh-and-bone bodies, it is a comfort to reach for something and know that it will be there. To open a book and see the words, faded from many hands passing over them. To place a disc into a machine that will produce for you the treasured sequence of sounds and images that you feel such powerful emotions for. It's ritualistic. It grounds our experiences in the material, in the real. Now though, as all of these things become lost within the screen, as our very currency abstracts itself into numbers rather than paper and metal, we lose that. We surrender our relationship with stories to beings who undeniably have a singular priority; wealth extraction. It is a form of rebellion to take back control of that relationship, to deny these entities that much more of yourself. It is also an act of love, to capture and to treasure and to preserve that which brings you joy and fulfillment and inspiration in this life. You are not the owner of a bookshop, you are the guardian of worlds, you are not the lender of DVDs, you're the custodian of lives. You are not the seller of video games, you are the architect of connections.

We didn’t know what we had until we’d lost it.

I don't know if it's the depression speaking but these days I find it incredibly hard to enjoy anything about the Internet.

Literally every website has become a thousand times more inconvenient, bloated with promoted or recommended shit, stupid UI/UX changes pushed by out of touch billionaires.

The tipping point this week was Google changing the regular "Web - Images - Videos - Etc." tabs with fucking stupid ever-changing search suggestions, making the site a thousand times less accessible and so much more annoying to use

I'm tired. I want forums back. I want ugly html pages that give useful information back. I want to connect with other Internet users in a meaningful way again. Fuck modern corporate UI design. Fuck social media. I want out.

This is so vital and precious and important to remember, fellow creators. Rest on your seventh day, folks.

Gentle reminder that often creativity decides to hibernate for a bit.

It’s okay.  You’re not broken, you’re resting, and much like spring, creativity comes back.