Franco Nero in ¡VIVA LA MUERTE... TUA! (1971) with Eli Wallach and Lynn Redgrave

have humans developed a language that can accurately describe the intensity of this grief?

The happiest of birthdays to Django, Franco Nero!

I've been following you for years, and I love your art. Seeing you repost your older art pieces reminded me how much I loved the angry, bitter, miserable Machete art and how it resonated with me... but a part of me is also so happy to see the current art of him being happy. Cute art of him as a unicorn, or chilling in a bathtub with Vasco. Like, we're all growing and healing :')

i gnaw at my enclosure everytime you post.

I NEED TO BE FEEEEDDDD AAAAA

— [can i be] 🌎 anon [?]

“You’ve hardly changed.”

Astarion turns in surprise at the sound of your voice; it had been some years since he’d last seen you. He practically beams when he notices you, draping himself over you in glee, though it never quite reaches his eyes.

“And you’ve changed a lot. Did you miss me?” Astarion caresses your cheek, and you resist the urge to lean into the touch like so long ago. Instead, you slap his hand away and hold it far from your face.

“I’m not here for you, Astarion; I was called to Baldur’s Gate to deal with a rogue dryad.” You see the glee vanish and be instantly replaced by anger and jealousy.

“I did not ask what brought you here, I asked if you missed me,” Astarion states.

The ascension had twisted everything inside him, your attention was his and his alone, but unlike before where he’d mock pout, now he’d murder the person that stole your attention.

“I don’t have time for you Astarion,” you brush him aside, and his face darkens.

“Well, make time; I don’t like being ignored.” He reminds you, “Are you with someone? Did you replace me with some warm body to fuck?”

Your lack of response irritates him and lack of engagement in a conversation only prompts Astarion to follow you.

Now that you've made it to the autumn of

Your years and you feel your best yet

-The Bottom of It, Fruit Bats

Izuocha week 2024 Day 6: Cycle/Miracle

Yknow I was also thinking... if Neuvi were to ask Furina to become immortal again for his sake, she might actually say yes. Which is exactly WHY he'd never ask her to do so, because as much as he dreads her inevitable absence, he won't condemn her to that fate again

You got it. Because when she took on that curse half a millennium ago, it was also a request she agreed to. For the sake of all of Fontaine and not just the sake of Focalors, but it's still all too similar. Even if she said yes to him because she actually wants it then, who's to say she'll always want it? Who's to say the decades, the centuries won't weigh heavier and heavier as they pass, just like before? Who's to say she won't have to ask him to make her mortal again? And that would be even more painful than simply letting her go when she's meant to. So instead he'll treasure the time she has, that she's more than earned, and he'll do everything he can for her to treasure it too.

hi! your blog is one of my favourites and i absolutely adore reading your thoughts. my grandfather recently passed away and it feels like i lost myself with him. how do i continue living after this? there is this constant weight on my chest and it feels like an emptiness has made a home inside of me. how do i go on when it feels like the world crashed on my shoulders?

hello, love! this is so very sweet and kind of you, and i hope you're treating yourself gently and kindly right now - there aren't words for a loss like this. that heaviness is difficult, and hard, and painful. it's okay if things don't feel okay, right now, or even soon - i think that's something that a lot of the people i know that have gone through similar grief feel: like they should be able to get back to a relative 'normal' in a [insert far too short period of time].

but it's okay if it hurts. that's where i'd like to start. you're allowed to feel that emptiness, that world-crashed feeling that goes beyond words, beyond time. don't feel like you have to rush this to feel some sort of better. things get easier with time, i promise you this, but sometimes painful feelings are important to feel, too. cry, scream, feel your emotions. they're a part of you. grieve.

it's perhaps a little silly, but when i think about death i always think about a couple of space songs: mainly drops of jupiter by train and saturn by sleeping at last. there are perhaps others that speak to the emotions better, but these two have always hit something a little deeper for me, and are popular for a wide-reaching reason.

and while personally i don't know much about grief like this, i do know a lot about love; and i think they're a lot of the same thing.

the people we love are a part of us, and this is why it takes from us so deeply when we lose them, because it does feel like we've lost a part of ourselves in the wake of it. but it's because they were so central to our experiences of living - our lives, that the separation introduces a hollowness - a place where they used to be. a home that now goes unlived in.

an emptiness, like you said.

but just because they're not here physically, doesn't mean he's not still there, in your heart, in your life, your memory. you can hold him close in smaller ways, as well: steal a sweater, or cologne/scent for something a little more physical and long lasting for remembering. hold onto the memories you cherish, the things that made you laugh, the ease of slow mornings and gentle nights. write them all down, slide a few photographs in there, go through it and add more when you miss him. keep them all close, keep them in your heart.

you're not alone, in this. he's still there, with you, it's just - in the little things.

he's with you in the way you see and go about your daily life, in doing what he liked to do, in the ways he interacted with the world that you shared with him. the memories you recall fondly when the night is late or the moment is right and something calls it into you like a melody, an old bell, laughter you'd recognize anywhere.

but i think, perhaps most importantly above all others - talk about him. with your family, your friends, his friends, strangers; stories are how we keep the people we love alive. the connections they've made, the legacies and experiences they've left behind, and so, so many stories.

how lucky, we are - to love so much it takes a piece of us when they go. grief is the other side of the coin, but it does not mean our love goes away. it lives in you. it lives in everyone who knew him, in the smallest pieces of our lives.

the people we love never really leave us, like this: they're in how we cook and the way we fold our newspapers, our laundry, in the radio stations we tune in to and the way we decorate our walls, our photo albums. they're in the way we store our mail, organize our closets, the scribbled notes in the indexes of our books. the meals we love and the drinks we mix, the way we spend time with one another. they've been passed down for generations, for longer than history - and we are all the luckier for it.

think about what you shared with him, and do it intentionally. bring him into your life, like this, again. whether it's crosswords or poetry or sports or anything else. if one doesn't help, try another. something might click.

i hope things feel a little easier for you, as they tend to do only with time. i hope you find joy in your grief, even if it is small and hard to grasp at first. know that your hurt stems from so much love that there isn't a place to put it properly, and that it is something so meaningful and hurting poets and storytellers have been struggling to put it into words and sounds that feel like the fit right for eons, and that it is also just simply yours. sometimes things don't have to make sense. sometimes they just are - unable to be put into words or neat little sentiments, as unfair and tragic as they come.

but i promise it will not feel like this forever. your love is real. and perhaps, on where to begin on from here - i think it's less on finding where to begin and just beginning. and you've already started. you've taken the most important and crucial step: the first one. wherever you go, after that, from here? you'll figure it out. you always have, and you always do. it'll come, as things always do. love leads us, as does light - and you're never alone in your hurt. in your grief, your missing something dear to you. i think if you talk about it with others, you'll find they have ways of helping you cope as well - and they have so much love of their own to spare, too.

as an aside, here is the song (northern star by dom fera) i was listening to when i wrote this, for no other reason more than it makes me think of connections, and love, and how we hold onto the people we love and how they change us, wonderfully and intrinsically. it's a little more joyous than the others i've mentioned, and plays like a story, and it made me think of what is at the core of this, love and stories and i am here with you, and maybe it'll bring you some joy, if you'd like it. wishing you all my love and ease 💛

I think people ignore that dtk spends all of his time with former criminals Liz and Patty and has like zero parental supervision he acts super proper but I know in my heart of hearts they have done everything in their power to be bad influences on him and it worked. “He is polite” is such a blatant misreading of his character. he is actually rude on purpose because his sisters enjoy it and he does whatever they want. Patty taught kid every swear word under the sun within a month of knowing him because she thought it was funny and Liz was like ooohhhhg my god his dad who is literally the grim reaper is going to fucking kill us & then lord death just did not care because he lets kid get away with everything so she gave up on being a responsible older sibling and taught him how to threaten and intimidate people. Anything he does that seems cool is something that liz and patty taught him.

nona the ninth has helped me to romanticize the impermanent which is equally healing and horrific

i feel murderous intent within my bones whenever i see someone calling ten whiny for his "i could do so much more" speech . do not ever talk about him ever again. EVER again. i am in your walls

Ludinus Da’leth really just sat there and said with his whole chest that clerics were unfair because wizards have to earn their power. Wizards get their power from learning, and it’s a feudal system so there is no part of that learning that is free. If you want to be a wizard you either need to get really damn lucky and fall into a scholarship or your parents have a shitton of money to begin with, and judging by how he acts and how he treats people it was definitely the latter. He had all the barriers to magical power removed for him before he was even born and he thinks he deserves the world for the little work he did put in, and now he’s here to talk to us about how unfair it is that other people are on the same level as him? Compared to clerics, who can be picked from anywhere and any situation because the gods don’t discriminate?

Every class of magic user works for their power, one way or another. Every single one, including warlocks and clerics and whoever else he despises, and he can’t handle it because that would make him less special. So he’ll drown Exandria in blood to rise even higher from his already lofty position and then demand you thank him for the privilege. A true man of the people, there.

</3

So for all the TTB couples: who said I love you first?

.... Shit this about to get lengthy.

HoundxMirage: Mirage, mid-war while he’s tending to a Hound who’s becoming delirious from a badly-infected wound and a fever on the field and they have to wait for backup to come get them. Hound tells him to go after they somehow narrowly manage to escape a Decepticon patrol, he’s deadweight at this point, just leave him. Mirage tells him to stop being an idiot, and tries to keep Hound awake (Don't sleep, please don't sleep, you might not wake up, they're almost here) by talking about the first time they met and how this situation mirrors the time Hound braved Decepticon prison camps to find him after the Autobots faced of against the Cons for the first time to free their incarcerate comrades. And how shocked Mirage was to see him there, because Mirage wasn't expecting anyone to come. And Hound asks what he said then, and Mirage repeats his memory of the moment to Hound; That Mirage himself had told Hound to leave before they catch them both, he's just deadweight at this point, and Hound told him to stop being silly, he knows the Bots have their misgivings, but he trusts you, and he's not leaving a friend behind. And Mirage admits how trite that was, but how earnest and sincere Hound made it sound. How profound it was to have someone understand for once that his work requires him to wear masks, to put on airs, and Hound trusted him all the same for it. And how silly it felt in the moment to love Hound for something as mundane and simple as that. By that time, help finally gets to them and Mirage can breathe again, and he figures that Hound (who sleeps for several days recovering) might have forgotten about it, it's a silly notion, he must think the same. But when Hound properly wakes up, the first thing he asks Mirage, who's reading by his bedside, is if it was true. What Mirage had said about loving him. And Mirage is silent for a while, before deciding to throw away the mask of propriety, because Hound is one of the few who have seen him without it, and Hound has ALWAYS been open with him, and he won't give Hound any less than that deserved honesty. Yes, he loves you, he loved you in that fleeting moment, and he's loved you ever since, and he's tired of pretending what he feels is anything less than that... but he understands completely if you don't feel the same way. And Hound laughs weakly because he could never have imagined someone like Mirage--a gentleman, talented, and beautiful, but also braver than anyone gives him credit for and with a conviction to do good that so few have despite his privilege--could fall in love with him, some ex-military farm boy Wulver from Shetland, and he'd been content for the longest time to love Mirage in silence (Plants Mirage's favorite flowers/produce, always volunteers to model Mirage's new works, cares for Mirage's pets personally when Mirage is away on a mission, makes sure no one in his presence badmouths Mirage for literally doing what it is the Bot leadership enlisted him for in the first place). Hound's still a little loopy at this point, but asserts that since they're puttin' all cards on the table now, he loves you too, Merry, and god ain't they gonna be a sight at those fancy parties you're going to have to attend with a Plus One. Mirage laughs and kisses his forehead, and says that if they get kicked out, he'd see that as a plus point. He doesn't let go of Hound's hand as Hound drifts off again, and falls asleep next to him (Ratchet allows it for one night).

SideswipexStongarm: Sideswipe, during a sparring session of all things because OF COURSE THESE TWO WOULD. It would be while Sunny is still absent but after he and Strongarm have established that they Have Feelings for each other, but haven't said the words yet. Strongarm's recovering from an injury and needs the practice because she feels useless and is about get cabin fever and claw at the drywall if she's passed over for field work again. Sideswipe calls her stubborn, she's be like "hell yeah where'd you think THAT rubbed off from, Red?" and he's like "lol touche" and goes with it. He trounces her at every turn though, cause he's got his mojo back and has, with his house arrest, had time to learn a couple of new things, but she's unfocused and frustrated and it's actually clear that he's not giving it is 100% and is careful to avoid aggravating her still-healing injuries. When the slip-up seemingly happens and he immediately drops everything to check on her, she takes the chance to take him down and calls him out for falling for the oldest trick in the book as they're both lying on the floor, and he, without missing a beat says "yeah well, you know what they say about people doing stupid shit when they're in love." Record-screech, and a flat "what" from Strongarm as he repeats it again and she punches him in the arm because DUDE WHERE THE HELL DID THAT COME FROM and he just cackles because really, REALLY ?? HEY REMEMBER LIKE, THAT ONE TIME WE WERE ON THE BEACH AND YOU WERE LIKE "HEY YOU THINK I'D PUT ALL THIS GODDAMN EFFORT INTO THIS ZUPPA INGLESE FOR SOME CHUMP I DIDN'T CARE ABOUT", babe it's 3am and he could be in bed but no, he's here bruised and sweaty and prepping for a flying kidney dish from Ratchet when the doc finds out, and you really think he'd risk Ratchet's wrath for someone he didn't love? You really think you get to give him a reason to keep looking forward to another day and be the reason he doesn't feel like half a person anymore without him being stupidly twitterpatted over all 5'6 of you?

Strongarm's got her face in her hands --she'd self-immolate if she went any redder---and bemoans with a small laugh that he's got AWFUL timing---"I love you" in the middle of a sparring session ffs, where's the ROMANCE? THE ROSE PETALS AND CANDLE LIGHT? HARLEQUIN LIED TO HER. Sideswipe's howling at the revelation that YOU USED TO READ THAT STUFF??? but he's got a gleam in his eyes as he turns over so he's half on top of her and offers to say it again, under the right circumstances this time. She turns the tables on him again, gives him the kind of kiss that has him as flushed and gasping for air as she is, and tells him she still can't believe he's got her this messed up over him, but they've also still got three hours before dawn, so they should definitely take his little redo somewhere more y'know, comfortable (Let's just say they find a more pleasurable way to burn off her excess energy).

WindbladexStarscream: The question isn’t who said “I love you” first, it’s how many times these morons decided to say it post-war in their native languages thinking they were being slick before one of them (Windblade) eventually decides to let the game end and explain that hey, listen, you know she’s picked up plenty of Italian since you moved in with her right? And you’re at 449 “Ti Amos” right now so how about you make number 500 special and tell her to her face right now how you really feel? And he’s cackling because he’s Still Starscream and HAH 449! HE PEGGED YOU AT 445 AISHITERUS HE WINS THIS ROUND until Windblade nearly pisses herself laughing (“YOU WERE KEEPING TRACK?!” “YOU WERE KEEPING TRACK?!!”) and shuts him up with a kiss and is all OH MY GOD YOU’RE IMPOSSIBLE NEVER CHANGE BUT JUST SAY THE WORDS ALREADY and he does! In English that is! And repeats it three more times interspaced with kisses, because he doesn’t want her to forget this moment. And he thinks he's got her, being suave and heartfelt about it and all, until she asks him, apropos of nothing, if he wants to see the prize he won for those 500 "I love yous" and he's a blustery, squawking mess when she pulls out an engagement ring. By now they've become domestically comfortable friends with benefits, but a part of him still thinks she sees him just as that---a fun fling of a best friend. This is wonderful and all, but she couldn't POSSIBLY want like, an actual married life with him right? The FIRST DELEGATE HERSELF officially, PUBLICLY attached to a feral ex-con gremlin with a rep sheet? And Windblade is all are you kidding? Yes, she ABSOLUTELY wants the world to know that you're hers and there's nothing any of them can do about it, not any more. So how about you stay, and find out if we can reach the 1 million ILY mark together? Starscream can't say no---he has stake in the game now oh man, he wants to see which one of them can get there first, he wants to be there for every milestone, and he concedes that she's won this one. She's won this one, and he's genuinely never been happier that she got him good.

RavagexLaserbeak: Ravage, near end-war when they were caught in Shockwave’s Positive Reinforcement prison and were fed visions of an alternate universe type situation where they’re Completely Normal (Full Human), and Laserbeak is far more entranced with the elaborate illusion of freedom and acceptance than he is (as she looks more ‘monstrous’ /non-human than he does—and cannot pass in society). She finds it very hard to leave this simulation and he hears her insecurities front and centre now, the ones she always hides behind a cheerfully nihilistic grin of “I’m cool! It doesn’t bother me at all!” (Narrator voice: It bothered her deeply), while she’s kind of a snotty mess after she interacts with some of simulated humans/children who don’t sneer at her, don’t pull away from her touch, don’t look at her like she’s a freak because she KNOWS it’s not real she knows it’s too good to be real she knows but is it really so bad to want this for herself? For them? And Ravage tells her that some days when things get really hard out there, it’s that he wants this for her that he continues to fight on. Because he loves her, in a fleeting and dehumanising world where every mission could be theirs last and they were all they had for years; he’s always loved her, and she deserves a world like this, a real world like this, and it’s going to be hard but they’ll get there together. And it snaps her out of it. Because it’s so hard and it’s UNFAIR and CRUEL that they should HAVE to fight so hard to just be seen as worthy of personhood… but Soundwave fights for them, and Ravage fights for her, and to give that real love up for something fake and easy is something she won’t do. Ravage loves her, and she will fight to love him AND herself in an imperfect, but real world, through heartache and joy both.

Dratchet: Drift. Drift already knows he definitely sees Ratchet more than a friend, and Ratchet himself is struggling with that revelation for himself, but they try to keep it professional up until near to the end of the war, when Unicron becomes a massive threat and Drift is picked by by Onyx Prime to become their champion/conduit. Now, Drift can see spirits, and lives with a one-foot-in-the-living one-foot-in-the-grave mentality ever since he survived a neath-death experience which gave him that ability, and Onyx choosing to momentarily fuse with him gives him Psychopomp abilities that allow him to 'dance between the curtain' of life and death. However, this is all very unsettling for Ratchet, who's always 'fought death' as a doctor, and he's gets upset when he tries to touch Drift before Drift goes off for a mission to rally the souls of Sentinel Prime's dead men, and his hands go right through Drift. And he hates this. He hates that Drift is like a ghost now, that they're not on the same plane. He hates that he can't help Drift if something happens there, that Drift is going where he can't follow. And he doesn't want to lose Drift for a third time. But Drift tells Ratchet that there won't be a third time, because he's been dancing with Death his entire life so much so that he might as well be the embodiment of it---all the close calls, all the lives he took, all the souls he's attempted to help find peace in atonement---but every time he steps too close to the edge of the abyss, it's always been Ratchet who'd given him back his will to live and who'd shown him the value of a life when he'd become almost desensitized to it. And he'll do just that. Live. Death's call for him to take that final step and wear its mantle may be strong, but he'll fight to live and fight to come back to you because he loves you, Ronan Chase--the literal embodiment of Life and what it means to fight for it, in his eyes--and Death can wait a little longer, because his last dance will be with you. He manages to focus and phase himself back whole so he can kiss the knuckles of Ratchet's hands--these hands which saved him more times than he can count--before Ratchet pulls him in for a proper kiss and holds him to his word, because we have a lot to talk about, so come home to him when you're done.

When you lie on your CV and end up getting the job