sweet thing

harder than you think

i. When the Narnians stole Edmund away from beneath the Witch's blade, they told him he was safe. This wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the whole truth either.

ii. They brought him to the Stone Table. It was night. Edmund doubted very much that he would find safety there, for he still recoiled at the name of Aslan. He slept fitfully and woke the next morning before the sun was up.

iii. A sliver of gold just beyond the tent flap captured his attention, there in the dark. Unaccountably, Edmund felt the urge to rise and go towards it.

iv. And there was Aslan, who was supposed to be fearsome, supposed to be dangerous, supposed to be powerful, and he was he was he was. Dimly, Edmund felt himself hitting the ground.

v. But then Aslan said, “Come, Son of Adam. Let us walk a while, and reason together.”

vi. And as they walked together, in the cool dewy grass of early morning, the Lion told Edmund everything that he had ever done.

vii. They were standing in front of the Table when the conversation turned. Aslan spoke a riddle of a house blasted into rubble which he would piece back together overnight. He spoke of flesh being pierced, blood being shed, and of rejected stones being used for new foundations. He spoke about water welling up forever, washing you clean of everything you ever did wrong, all the blood that you ever thought of shedding, everything you ever tried to steal, and a river that carries you home when you can't walk anymore and spits you out brand new when it reaches the sea.

viii. Edmund's head swam. Silently, he yearned for the wisdom to understand what he was being told; or, failing that, at least to remember it for as long as it took him to puzzle it out.

ix. And then, the Witch. Then, the battle. The thrones. A year passed, and winter came. In its time, it melted back to glorious spring.

x. “Edmund,” said Lucy one day. “There's something we need to tell you.” She and Susan were cloaked in springtime gossamer, like fairy queens in poems he only half remembered. They sat on the window seat in his study, holding hands white-knuckled: his two beloved sisters.

xi. “It's about Aslan,” Susan said. “And the White Witch, and how he made her renounce her claim on your blood. The night before Beruna, he went back to the Stone Table.”

xii. “He let her kill him,” Lucy cut in. “Instead of you. And then, because he hadn't done anything wrong, the Emperor's Deeper Magic brought him back to life.”

xiii. “We've been arguing all year about how much to tell you,” said Susan wryly. Then, a little gentler, “We don't want to hurt you, but we feel you ought to be told what he did for you.”

xiv. And Edmund, who had never forgotten what Aslan told him on that cool, dewy morning before the sun came up, shut his eyes and whispered, “I know.”

xv. I know, he said. I know that he died. I know that he did it for me. I know he lived again because I saw him the next day, and the next, and the next. I think I know what it means - or at least, I know the shape of it.

xvi. “Oh,” said Lucy. “We should have realized that he would have told you himself.”

xvii. “Yes. But please, tell me the story all the same.”

Not an ask but I just want to say I love your interpretation of dream, ink and nightmare :). So many asks I come across come off as really fanon but you seem to know your stuff lol. It's refreshing to see dream as something else than a defenseless, flustered, feminine softie. Also your art is great!

thank you! we take inspiration from different media rather than fanon - not that fanon is bad, we just love other stuff too and want to sprinkle it on utmv characters (like dream taking inspiration from miquella and the concept of white lies, ink from varre and kaveh, killer from denji and teen gojo, nightmare from mohg and margott + concept of the dark truth) and there's a lot more characters we're planning on introducing and possibly have arcs on this blog.

and yes, agdt dream retains the same positive and optimistic outlook on life but being a dutiful guardian, it's his strength to have a soft and kind heart- not a weakness, hence i try to avoid interpreting the trait of him being kind as defenseless. he makes mistakes and had his kindness taken advantage of in the past but that doesn't mean he'll stop spreading joy and comfort! after all, his mother entrusted him with the responsibility, he would never want to let her down... even if he already did.

-wyllaztopia

Everybody knows by now I think that harrow’s name comes from the (early) Christian concept of the harrowing of hell.

To summarize briefly, in Christian mythology, when Jesus died on the cross, he descended into the underworld for the three days that he stayed dead. I say the underworld—the word they use is Hades, not Hell, although some translations use the word hell. This pre-dates the Christian conceptions of hell that we are more familiar with—fire and brimstone and punishment etc—and reflects the idea that it was more of a neutral place where everyone went when they died, stemming from other traditions like the Greco Roman hades (obviously, which it took the word from) or the Jewish Sheol. The harrowing of hell refers to what Jesus does when he gets to this place. He descends and he kills death itself (using the cross as a weapon)—the death of death—and he leads ALL of the dead people there up out of the mouth of hades. He frees them from the shackles of death. This is all laid out in the early apocryphal text the gospel according to nicodemus. You should read it it’s fun.

When I say mouth, I mean that literally. In art and literature, even in the gospel of nicodemus, hades was characterized as an actual living creature, and in the harrowing, Jesus kills it and leads the souls out of its gaping mouth. This has lead to some frankly excellent art:

Okay, back to the locked tomb. Why am I bringing this up (other than the fact that I partially wrote my thesis in this so I will talk about it whenever possible)? Well, we know harrow’s name is… significant. We also know that in Alecto, she will find herself in hell. Okay. Where do we see ^ this imagery pop up in the universe of the locked tomb? What place does John call hell? The Soma, under the river. Soma, which means body in Greek. The body that houses the dead in its belly, the body of hades, the living body of hell. And we’ve seen it’s mouth already, a gaping mouth lined with teeth.

EDIT: it was pointed out it’s called the stoma not the soma, but. Stoma means fucking mouth in Greek so…. The point stands. The point very much stands.

Like.. mouth indeed.

I think harrow is gonna go into the stoma. I think harrow is going to kill death—or maybe, in a delicious inversion the likes of which Tamsyn Muir loves so much, she is going to kill necromancy. The death of the death of death. And she’s going to lead out the souls in there. All the people—Augustine? Cassiopea?—and all the fucking planets too.

Idk we’ll fucking see.

Favourite tropes, PT 1: fiction that tells you it’s cool to care about things and that love is real and important to us all (and also there is magic realism) Everything Everywhere All at Once/ Welcome to Nightvale/The OA/The midnight Gospel/Mr. Nobody/The little prince/In./The Good Place/Maniac

Don't let your situationship embarrass you in front of your family 🥴

Catch up on Wasteland Gospel here!

Simon’s journey to find his own voice and autonomy in season 2 after being constantly tossed aside and silenced by the people around him is something that’s grown more powerful for me the more I’ve sat with the season over time. Yes, he’s a young teen who had his heartbroken and spends a lot of time in his feelings about that, but he consistently tries to take control over his life and his situation, and while he doesn’t always succeed and makes some bad decisions (Marcus being the #1 bad decision), he does it because he’s trying, in his way, to fight back on everything and everyone that’s done him dirty in the past. That’s why he sets the terms on his interactions with Wille, that’s why he quits the rowing team when he’s getting mistreated, despite believing he needs it to get better grades, that’s why he fights back against Jan-Olof for taking away his solo, that’s why he walks out on Wille when he realizes Wille hasn’t been honest with him about August, and that’s why he walks away from Sara when he discovers she also withheld the truth about August from him (and fell in love with him, no less).

Simon wants very much the same things that all of the other principle characters in the show want - love, acceptance, freedom - but unlike his privileged classmates (and even his own sister when she moves into the school and becomes one of them), he’s the one that’s always getting the short end of the stick and has to try so much harder to get what he wants, and we see him constantly fighting this throughout season 2. He doesn’t initially realize he’s fighting the same issue with Marcus - who is constantly controlling the pace of their relationship and talking over Simon - because he has it in his head that moving on should be good for him.

That’s why it’s so powerful when Simon pulls Wille aside before the Jubilee and tells him what he wants and what he’s willing to do to get it, and Wille stays completely silent and lets Simon have his voice (unlike Marcus who wouldn’t let Simon communicate his own reasons for ending their relationship and constantly speaking over him through their entire relationship), then immediately, through his speech, sets Simon free so that Simon will never have to be silenced due to his association with Wille ever again. Their relationship feels earned because Wille consciously works to undue the inequality he created in their relationship. Simon stays absolutely firm in his principles and is critical in Wille developing an understanding that actions have consequences for people outside of the sheltered bubble he grew up in, as his personal revenge on August satisfied him but did absolutely nothing for Simon. They may not know each other that well yet, but what they developed over the course of season 2 was a bond of deep respect and solidarity, and I’m more intrigued now to see how they continue to develop in the finale.

actually though, to me (and this might sound a bit meaner than i intend, truly, i'm not trying to mean here, just spitballing some thoughts), sometimes with fanon concepts it's not necessarily the transformation or alteration of characters into something they're not that bothers me so much as. hm. the general unawareness that something is a transformed concept. if that makes sense.

so like. overtly and excessively abusive and terrible drakes for example. i, clearly, am not a fan of it. but that doesn't mean it's not a concept that couldn't potentially be interesting so long as there is a general understanding that the person is aware of some of the actual canon behind the character & understand how they're specifically twisting and altering for the explicit purpose of transformation & exploring non canon things. so not like 'never touched an actual full issue of a comic at all & are only going based on what i think they are in my head' or genuinely thinking that the character or event is actually like that and are completely unaware it's going against canon & canon intentions (and this is not a 'there's only one true read thing' this is like 'the basis of how things work in canon would mean that this is probably what was meant'). if that makes sense.

like for example. a jack who is much more malicious than he is in canon & a tim that is trying to navigate being severely abused by his dad could be interesting. how does this tim handle it? does he struggle with being a victim yet having the power to stop his dad and yet also can't. is he having issues with tim drake is being abused, but robin is not (the tim/robin dichotomy). is he hiding things from his friends, like ives. is he flittering around dick, wanting to confide in dick but not wanting dick to think less of him? (does this take place during canon events, like prodigal?) are things like that happening? if so, then it's an interesting angle to me.

hell, you could even take dana and completely transform her into something she's not--rather than just a nice woman who's doing her best, is she a gold digger who preyed on her rich patient? is her niceness towards tim a facade? is trying to kill tim & jack & take the money. this clearly isn't true of her at all, but it could be a potentially interesting transformation if you have jack & tim at least acting like their canon selves around this. when does it take place? right after the wedding? when jack loses his money, does she take out a life insurance policy on him? (should she have lbr) does dana push for tim to go to brentwood to get him out of the way? does this end in bruce/jack endgame after batman saves jack? does it have references to nightwing annual 1 & the black widow story there for dick? the world may never know. (knowing dana even exists is a sign that there's some awareness of the canon that's being altered.). this wouldn't offend me as much so long as it was clear that it was an intentional alteration of canon dynamics and a clear what-if exploration.

just my thoughts.

Don't care that dorky cornballs hate rap because I truly believe it's difficult to get into any genre of music you didn't get a taste of during adolescence unless you're one of those weirdo freaks who listen to new music their entire lives. Yeah there's a racist element to it but overall I think people who actively listen to music outside of pop but say they don't like rap are telling the truth, the musical components associated with hip hop (I'm not talking about lyrics) are largely unpleasant to their ears. I feel the same way about classic rock.

Like I can show a Hamilton stan Story 2 by clipping. - a queer Be Gay, Did Crimes song where a man took his ass to therapy - and I still don't think they would like it. Appreciate it maybe, but not like it.

Honestly Peter/Roger should be way more of a ship imo. I know we barely got to see them interact in Dialtown but you cannot tell me Peter bringing up his wife was looking to spice things up in the bedroom or whatever wasn't a direct attempt to rizz him up that just completely flew over Roger's head (or maybe it didn't and Peter just chickened out. The possibilities are endless. I'm shaking you by the shoulders are you listening to me❓‼️)

do you make original art? have you ever submitted to zines/galleries and been rejected? feel like there's no place for your cool weird stuff on the internet? well, fret no more.

under the floorboards seeks to highlight artists that go unnoticed on the internet and uplift non-fanart pieces that don't get as much traction. UTF will be free to read & submit to forever and published online for the forseeable future.

officially opening submissions for under the floorboards vol 1! there's zero timeline and also i dunno how long a volume will be. each artist spotlight/ article will be posted somewhere, probably on a neocities site i'll host (or maybe mine until i get off my ass and make a second acct).

pls be open to communication either thru email or discord, as i'd love to have a casual interview component as well! shoot me a tumblr dm or email (in tags) if you're interested in being featured.

Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied. But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep. For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. - 1 Corinthians 15:12-21 (NASB)

Have a hardcore Resurrection Sunday, everyone!

Bible Project: Resurrection of Jesus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb24Lk1Oh5M

Us nessian/anti acosf folk have the antidote for the ship war which is to literally ship and ignore canon 🤷🏻‍♀️ canon sucks yet we’ve been trooping on with it buzzing in the background like an annoying fly. What does canon matter except provide the characters to us and we can literally just write, commission, draw etc whatever we want 😂

You're Not Alone, Lord Is With You Until The End Of Ages

ALLLL THE STICKERS IVE MADE!!!

Gravity falls, OTGW, Fionna & Cake, and Bee & Puppycat will be coming to my shop soon!!