#nor accurately sized whales | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lewdanimevsirl · 3 years

Text

Do you know whale have 1500 litres?

WARNING: This story is a work of fiction and contains many mature elements. Please do not continue if you are unable to handle such content.

NOTE: The characters in this story are based on their depiction in Fate Grand Order which is developed by Delightworks and based on Type-Moon's Fate franchise. I am neither a marine biologist nor a lore expert, thus some terms and information used may be inaccurate, but I have provided references (you hardly see those in these type of content) at the end. Sorry for any weird English or grammatical mistakes.

Summer

Jeanne d' Arc, Maid of Orléans, Holy Maiden of Salvation, Ruler. And now lying on the shoreline in front of me, covered in white gooey substance and her swimsuit all torn and tattered. Her black bikini was hanging off her body while her blue hoodie was covered in white sticky substances. How did this even happen?

It was summer, and like most servants, Jeanne had a summer-swimsuit form. The holy maiden of the tropics, the star of the dolphin world. I always wonder why she became an archer that shoots dolphins. But after this incident, I realised the truth behind it….

A few months ago,

Ever since I summoned Jeanne into Chaldea, we had a healthy Master-Servant relationship. We fought enemies together, we shared our worries together, we shared our joy together.

One day resting with Jeanne after a hard day of farming,

"I can't wait for summer to come. Can't wait to just sit back and enjoy myself." I entered my room and slammed my face onto the bed. "We really deserve the break from all the farming and fighting that we do. Not to mention we can finally bring out those swimsuits." "Yes, it's good to take a break." Jeanne followed behind me and took a seat at the table.

"Jeanne! Anything you looking forward to in the summer?"

"Summer? Hmmmm…. Heading to the beach. Can't wait to meet Reece. I missed him," Jeanne smiled while answering the question.

"Reece?! Oh ya, your dolphin… You never did tell me how you met Reece" I sat back up, hoping that Jeanne would share some stories about her dolphin with me.

"Ahh… uhm… It's a long story, we can leave it for another day." Jeanne quickly brushed off the question.

"Fineeee… But mind introducing me to Reece? I would love to chill with a dolphin!"

"Uhm… sure, Master, if you don't mind…"

I did not notice it then, but Jeanne was embarrassed and was hesitating with her words. I thought it was because she was tired, so I did not ask her any further questions. But it was during summer, that I finally found out the truth behind her words.

Summer

Finally, it is summer. I can sit back and enjoy myself. No more farming. No more grinding. I get to enjoy myself on the beach and enjoy the cold sea breeze. Well, that is what I thought I would be doing. But instead, I am stuck in a crammed room, helping the Dragon Witch, Jeanne Alter AKA Jalter (Jeanne's tsundere alter) with her work.

"May I come in?" a knock from the door interrupted our discussion over the work.

"Stop interrupting us! State your purpose and leave," Jalter shouted intensely, "Some of us have work to do!" "I am sorry, I just want to ask if Master is free now" the door swinged open and Jeanne sheepishly entered the room.

"Master, how do I look?" Jeanne strolled happily into the room, dressed in a black bikini wrapped around with a blue hoodie. "You asked about my swimsuit the other day."

"You look stunning…." I replied immediately only to be met by a stack of paper slapped onto my face. "Stop staring her and start doing work, you pathetic Master!" "Sorry you tsundere Witch, I am just complimenting your sister! Don't tell me you are jealo…" another stack of paper hit my face before I could finish my sentence.

"Sorry Jeanne, I am unable to join you and meet Reece now. I need to help this annoyance with her work…." I apologised to Jeanne. "You better be!" Jalter quipped in. "Don't wait for me, you should enjoy the summer. I will find you after I am done."

Jeanne looked at the piles of papers stacked across the room. "It's fine Master, work is important. I will just head off first. Will not interrupt you guys any further" Jeanne took a bow and start making her way out. "So sorry about…." "Quit yapping! We need to get this done by today." Jalter interrupted me as I sadly watched Jeanne exit the room, leaving the both of us struggling with work.

At the Beach

"Jeanne, you look loving today!" "Jeanne, join us!" "Jeanne, pity Master could not join us!"

While I was stuck in a crammed little room helping Jalter with her doujins, the rest of the Servants were enjoying themselves at the beach. Some of them lying along the shore suntanning, some of them swimming and surfing, and there was even a sandcastle competition.

"Jeanne, are you not joining us?" "Sorry, not today. I have something I need to do." Jeanne politely declined the other Servants. Instead of partaking in the activities with the rest of the Servants on the main beach, Jeanne made her way onto the far side of the beach.

"Now that Master is busy, I should take the time to indulge myself" Jeanne thought to herself as she walked towards the far corner of the beach.

Far side of the beach

"Reece!" Jeanne ran towards the shoreline and shouted for her beloved dolphin.

Squeaking and splashing noises could be heard as a dolphin could be seen swimming towards the shoreline.

"I miss you so much!" Jeanne run towards Reece and hug the dolphin tightly. Reece rubbed against Jeanne and squeaked in delight. "I know you are excited, but not here Reece. You know the drill, let us go further out." Reece squeaked and started swimming towards a rock formation at the corner of the shore.

"Smart boy, you know what I wanted" As Reece swam back from the rocks, he brought back a raft. The raft appeared stable and looked as though it has been used multiple times. Jeanne boarded the raft and petted Reece on the snout. "I know you are excited, I am too, let's go so that I can give you your reward." Reece squeaked and started pulling the raft towards the middle of the ocean.

"I wonder how Scrooge has been doing. It has been a long time."

Although research on the anatomy of aquatic mammals and how they reproduce is still ongoing, current research has found that the reproductive organs of aquatic mammals such as dolphins (Howard, 2009) and whales (Whales Online, n.d.) are hidden in a genital slit. During mating, the penis of the male partner will protrude out of the genital slit and penetrate the female's vagina. Due to this, many aquatic mammals mate either belly to belly or turned on the side.

Dolphins do not only engage in sexual acts with the intent of reproduction. They also driven to engage in such acts for pleasure. "It is more accurate to state that animals (including humans and dolphins) are often driven to engage in sexual acts because the act itself is rewarding" (Dolphins Communication Project, 2014).

A typical size of a common dolphin's penis is approximately the size of a human hand (Lunau, 2017). However, they have a prehensile penis, meaning they can "swivel, grab and grope, much like a human hand" (Wetzel, 2020). This is so that they can navigate the "unusual vaginal folds, spirals and recesses" (Orbach, 2017)

In the middle of the ocean

"Alright Reece, this is far enough." The dolphin stopped and started squeaking loudly. "Alright alright, I shall reward you for your effort." Jeanne leaned forward and petted Reece on the snout, before kissing him on the lips.

People have often wondered about the story behind Jeanne and Reece. Some say Jeanne rescued Reece from captivity. Others say Reece respect Jeanne for being a holy maiden of the sea. But unlike the simple and typical girl-meeting-dolphin stories that people believed, the truth is that Jeanne and Reece helped to fulfil each other's sexual needs.

Jeanne slowly descend into the ocean while leaning against the edge of the raft. "Alright Reece, I am ready! Time to receive your reward!" Reece squeaked and started swimming around Jeanne, before stopping in front of her and rubbing his snout against her chest.

"Stop it Reece, you know what I want." Reece stopped rubbing and ascended with his penis protruding out of his genital slit. "Good boy! This is what I have been waiting for! Enjoy your reward, you naughty boy." Jeanne began rubbing Reece's penis with her hands before placing it into her mouth.

You might think the irregular-shaped prehensile penis is unable to fit into the Holy Maiden's petite mouth. But Jeanne was experienced in putting irregular-shaped objects into her mouth. Jeanne started bobbing her head back and forth, licking the tip of Reece's penis while rubbing it. "Someone has been a bad boy, someone's cock is grabbing my tongue, so aggressive." Jeanne continued to lick Reece's penis while occasionally touching herself.

After a few moments, loud squeaking sound could be heard. Reece squeaked loudly as he erupted all his dolphin semen into Jeanne's mouth. White gooey dolphin semen dripped down Jeanne's mouth and splattered onto her black bikini and blue hoodie. "Delicious! Just like the first day we met." With a single gulp, Jeanne swallowed it and started licking her mouth. She then proceeded to lick Reece's penis clean. "I hope you enjoyed your reward Reece," Jeanne kissed the happy dolphin on the snout. "Now that you are clean, I need you to call Scrooge for me."

Instead of calling for Scrooge, Reece squeaked and started to nibble Jeanne's breasts. Within seconds, the dolphin had bitten Jeanne's bikini top off and began to nibble on her nipples. "Stop it… Hyahh… Reece! I… Ahhhh… already given… Hyah… your reward." Jeanne tried to stop Reece in between moans. "I… Ahhh… know you…. Haa… want to… Hyahhh… make me cum… Ahhh…but I am…Uhh… preparing for… Hah… the main course."

Reece whimpered softly and stopped nibbling. "I know you are a good boy and you definitely made me happy with all the dolphin cum, but I am preparing for Scrooge." Jeanne petted the dolphin. "I will let you do me next time, alright?" Reece squeaked loudly and started diving into the ocean.

"Ok, time to prepare for the main course." Jeanne laid back onto the raft and adjusted her black bikini bottom such that her vagina is exposed. "I wonder if Scrooge will be happy to see me." Jeanne thought to herself while she touched her own breasts and vagina.

Soon, a rumbling sound could be heard beneath the ocean.

Like the dolphins, the penis of the blue whale is prehensile to navigate the multiple folds of the female's vagina (Whales Online, n.d.). However, the size of the blue whale is much larger than that of a dolphin. An average size of a blue whale penis is 2.4 metres (Whales Online, n.d.). When erect, it expands to about 30cm (12 inches) in diameter and about 3m (10 feet) in length (University of Wisconsin, 2012). "The erect penis can be guided using muscles, almost as if it were equipped with a homing device" (Whales Online, n.d.). In addition, "each ejaculation of a blue whale could produce around 20 litres of sperm" (Whales Online, n.d.).

During mating, the male and female will spend time rolling around each other, before flying upwards and crossing the surface. As they cross the surface, "the male will thrust his penis into the vulva and ejaculates" (University of Wisconsin, 2012).

In the middle of the ocean

Jeanne always hated having to act prim and proper. On the surface, she would put on the demeanour of a pure and innocent holy maiden, but when she is alone, she would often indulge in self-pleasure.

Ever since she became the Holy Maiden of the Sea, it has become an annual tradition for Jeanne to meet up with Reece and Scrooge. She provided them with love and comfort, in return, they provided her with the sexual release that she desired, that she craved, that she needed.

A loud roaring sound could be heard as a blue whale emerged from the sea.

"Oh Scrooge, I have missed you and your long enormous cock so much! Come on and devour me, you naughty boy!" If anyone were there, they would have not believed that the Holy Maiden of Salvation would be lying on a raft, in a seductive position, fingering her own vagina and saying such sexual things.

The blue whale roared as water sprayed out of his blowhole. "Someone's excited! Come on Scrooge, let us not wait around and fuck me already!" Jeanne screamed as the blue whale approached the small and petite Jeanne lying on the tiny raft. As Scrooge approached the raft, the shadow of a 3m penis could be seen emerging from his genital slit, covering the entire raft.

Back in the room with Gudao and Jalter

"Finally! We are done with these!" I shouted as I slammed the last piece of doujin onto the ground. "I can finally head out to the beach and enjoy myself!"

I should have been at the beach enjoying myself, soaking the warm sun and enjoying the waves. But instead, for the past few hours, I have been stuck in this crammed room helping Jalter with her work. I even had to give up the chance of hanging out with Jeanne and Reece.

"We could have finished this an hour ago if someone had not fallen asleep on my lap." Jalter shouted from the couch that was covered with piles of paper, while scrolling through her phone.

"While at least I don't droo…." A pillow slammed into the face, interrupting me mid-sentence. Throwing the pillow back at Jalter, I retorted "At least, I don't sit around and used my phone all day."

"Ya, whatever," Jalter shrugged both the thrown pillow and my remarks off. "But at least I found this meme about that holy saint." My eyes lit up with interests as soon as I heard that. "You can't just say something like that and not show me!" I rushed towards Jalter and tried to grab her phone. Jalter immediately kicked me on the face in response. "Stop trying to snatch my phone, you pathetic Master. Alright, I will show you before you destroy my phone."

Jalter pulled back her leg and showed her phone to me. "This one here. The one that they compared that holy saint to a blue whale."

The picture on the phone read "Did you know that the Maid of Orleans, Jeanne d'Arc, is 159cm in height. But Blue Whale's penis is about 2.4-3.0m in length, which is almost twice of her height"

"Oh, and this one here"

The next picture read "Did you know that the maiden of orleans, Jeanne d'Arc, weighed 44 kilos. In contrast, a blue whale can ejaculate around 1500 litres of semen"

"What the fuck Jalter?! What the fuck did I just read?! What am I even supposed to do with that information?!"

"It is a meme, idiot. You are not supposed to do anything with it." Jalter continued to use her phone amidst my confused and panicked screaming. "Only a degenerate would draw or write anything based on this information, which I hope you are not"

"I guess you are right, there is no chance Jeanne would associate herself with whale penis and whale semen. I know, I shall find Jeanne and tell her…."

"Hahahaha," A crackling laughter could be heard coming from Jalter. "Ya, you tell her about whale penis and whale semen. I cannot wait for her to look at you with eyes of contempt and disgust."

"Well, Jeanne isn't like you, you big tsundere of a witch…" As soon as those words come out of my mouth, Jalter snapped and started throwing pillows at me. I quickly ran out of the room with Jalter chasing after me with murderous eyes. "You little shit, I am so going to kill you!"

"Jeanne! Save me!"

Meanwhile in the middle of the ocean

"Yes Scrooge! Fuck me! Pump it into my pussy!" The Maid of Orléans moaned loudly as the blue whale positioned his 3m penis near her vagina. "Come on Scrooge! Give it…" Jeanne's words were interrupted with loud moans of pleasure as the blue whale penis began to insert slowly into her vagina. The force from the whale's penis caused Jeanne' bikini bottom to snapped and hanged off her body.

"Ahhh… Hyahhh…" Screams and moans of pleasure could be heard emitting from the mouth of the Holy Maiden. A rush of satisfaction and joy had washed over her. Her mind was lost to the pleasure derived from the penetration of the blue whale's penis into her vagina.

Since Jeanne's vagina could barely fit the tip of Scrooge's penis, any movement made by Scrooge resulted in Jeanne erupting into moans of pleasure. "Yessss… Fuck me…. Deeper… Scrooge…" Uncontrollable moans filled the air as Jeanne gripped tightly to the side of the raft while her vagina was being ravaged by a 3m blue whale's penis.

"Arghhhhh!"

Jeanne erupted into orgasmic pleasure as she ejaculated all over Scrooge's penis. Her fluid sprayed all over the blue whale's penis that was still inside her. As she laid on the raft panting, Scrooge continued to move his penis, which caused Jeanne to resume moaning and screaming.

"Ahhhh…. Scrooge… Stop… Ahhh… Give me… a break…" Jeanne tried to get Scrooge to slow down amidst all her moans and screams. But it is to no avail. The horny blue whale ignored her pleas and continued pumping into her vagina.

"Hyahhhhh!"

Jeanne screamed in pleasure as she ejaculated again all over the large rod penetrating her. She laid on the raft, paralysed, her mind long broken by the pleasure she experienced. Her facial expression was something unbecoming of a holy saint. She had been fucked senseless by the blue whale that was still penetrating her. Although she was unable to move her body consciously, her lower half continued to twitch and vibrate with every movement and every pump that Scrooge made.

As her body prepared for her third consecutive orgasm, Scrooge started to roar loudly, and water began to sprout out of his blowhole. The 3m penis started vibrating and a wave of semen began to shoot out of it into Jeanne's vagina.

At the same moment that Jeanne erupted into her third ejaculation, her vagina was engulfed by a sea of whale semen. As Scrooge starts to retract his penis back, whale semen continued to shoot out of it, eventually covering the Holy Maiden and the raft. Traces of whale semen sprayed onto her blue hoodie and black bikini.

There lies the Maid of Orléans, Holy Maiden of Salvation on a tiny raft, swimsuit torn and tattered, covered with whale semen, with a mixture of her own fluid and whale cum leaking out of her vagina.

Scrooge roared loudly and started diving back into the sea. As he did, he created a wave that started sending the mind-broken Jeanne back into the shore.

A few moments ago, at the beach

"Oh look, a whale!" "You hardly see one of those around, especially when it is not whale season."

I was at the beach, busy looking around for Jeanne, when a water sprout could be seen in the ocean. Most of the Servants were captivated by what seem to be a whale.

"Have anyone seen Jeanne anywhere? I am looking for her."

"Jeanne? I spotted her heading there." Musashi pointed to the far side of the beach. "She might be chilling with her dolphin."

"Thanks so much!" I thanked Musashi as I quickly headed towards the far side of the beach. But I was not prepared for the scene that would soon be presented in front of me.

Far side of the beach

"Jeanne! Jeanne!"

I shouted for Jeanne while walking towards the far side of the beach. "Where did Jeanne go?" I thought to myself as I had not seen a single soul on my way there.

Nearing the end of the beach, I spotted something white floating along the shoreline. Curiosity got the better of me as I ran towards the white unknown thing, hoping to find out what it is. If only I was not that curious, if only I had given up on finding Jeanne, then I would not have to face the terrible truth that I was able to witness.

"What in the world…" The white thing has a humanoid shape and it looked to be wearing a swimsuit. I inched closer to it, hoping to figure out what it is…

"What?! Noo… No…. Why…." I finally figured out what the white humanoid thing and as soon as I did, I fallen to my knees in despair. I could not believe my own eyes at the very sight that was displayed in front of me.

The sweet innocent Jeanne d' Arc, swimsuit torn and tattered, with her bikini just hanging off her body. The Holy Maiden of Salvation Jeanne d' Arc, covered in white gooey fluid, and fluid oozing out of her lower regions. The Maid of Orléans Jeanne d' Arc, with a face of euphoria as if she had been fucked senseless.

"… …" I was speechless and I had no idea how to react anymore. I sat on the beach, staring at the atrocity that was lying in front of me, unable to process anything or do anything. I just sat there, paralysed by the sight that was in front of me.

"… … Oh… Master… You are here…"

After what felt like forever, Jeanne finally spoke. "How… do I look? Guess… you finally… see my true self…" Jeanne calmly sat back up and started cleaning the white gooey fluid that was lingering on her body. To my horror, she started to lick the fluid that had covered her hands and face.

"… Yes Master… I am a naughty saint… I am not your innocent good girl… I love cocks… and love being fucked in my pussy…"

I could not believe the words coming out from Jeanne's mouth. The person sitting on the beach in front of me was an entirely different person that had fought together with me, that had laughed together with me, that had cried together with me.

"Oh… Are you thinking about this fluid? It is Scrooge's cum…" I stared at her with a face of disbelief. "You know… Scrooge… my blue whale? Ya… this is his cum…" Jeanne continued to explain while fingering out some of the fluid oozing out of her vagina and licking it seductively. "I don't know why you are surprised… Did you not read my skills? A constant supply of mana near the sea? It comes from this… I had to get mana transfer somewhere…"

It was pure torture hearing those words, and it was even more painful seeing the sweet and holy Jeanne fingering herself and licking the fluid off her hands. I wanted to run away, but I don't know whether it is curiosity or fear, I was rooted to the ground, unable to escape from the horror that was in front of me.

"Uhm… Jeanne… Does the rest…" I tried to force some words out of my mouth to break the silence between me and Jeanne.

"Does the rest know? Of course not, you silly Master." Jeanne suddenly crawled towards me and placed her fluid-stained finger in my lips. "This is a secret between you and me, not even Jalter knows about this."

"I know! Let us make a deal!" Before I could even ask what she meant by that, she had already leaned onto and kissed me on the lips.

"Noo… Jeanne… Please… Stop…" I tried to struggle and break free from her, but the horny saint just gripped tightly onto my face and continued to kiss me aggressively. All I could taste was her cum-stained mouth and tongue. I could not escape. Somebody please save me from this nightmare.

"With this… this entire thing will be our dirty… little… secret." After what felt like an eternity, Jeanne finally let go of me. "If you are cooperative, I might even let… you… fuck… me…" Jeanne began to touch and finger herself at her vagina. Sensual moans began to emit from her mouth.

At that point, I could not take it anymore. I fumbled myself away from her, and began to lifelessly walk back towards the main beach. As I silently walked back, I was haunted by her final words…

"Remember… Ahh… Master… This… Hyahh… is our… Hahh.. dirty… little… secret…"

End.

Author's Notes:

So… uhm… Thanks for reading. This is the first ever fanfiction that I have written so some parts might have sound weird. I would not have imagined that I would research and write about this type of content. (What am I even doing with my life).

If you were wondering, yes, this was based on the actual Jeanne-blue whale meme. Thanks to the wonderful people at citov4810 (Instagram) for "motivating" me to think of such a story. In case you were wondering about the format of the story, the original plan was to make a doujin, but since I am bad at art, I reckon I would write out a story first, so that it will make it easier when adapting into a doujin. (It would not be anytime soon)

Oh, but I might write a sequel involving Musashi and Jalter in the future (since I mentioned both of them in the story). Hopefully, those would not involve any whales or dolphins.

Please give some feedback and of course, you are always welcome to create fan art based on this (I know some of you horny artists are reading this). And if there is a talented or experienced doujin artists reading this, you are always welcomed to make a doujin based on this. I would love to see the type of degenerate content people might create.

No dolphins or whales were harmed in the writing of this story. This story is a work of fiction. And please do not fuck a dolphin or a whale.

References:

Butter-T [@Butter_T]. (2020, July 19). Knowledge Time. Did you know that the Maid of Orléans, Jeanne d'Arc, is 159 cm in height. But Blue Whale's [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/butter_t/status/1284788510407356416

Citov4810 [@citov4810]. (2021, June 5). [Meme]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/CPuz8vZhhG8/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Dolphin Communication Project. (2014). Top 5 Dolphin Myths - Dispelled!. https://www.dolphincommunicationproject.org/index.php/2014-10-21-00-13-26/dolphin-science-factoids/item/94358-top-5-dolphin-myths-dispelled

Howard, C. J. (2009). Dolphin Chronicles: One Woman's Quest to Understand the Sea's Most Mysterious Creatures. Bantam.

Jay [@highonthighs]. (2018, July 30). Did you know the maiden of orleans, Jeanne d'Arc, weighed 44 kilos. In contrast, a blue whale can ejaculate around [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/highonthighs/status/1023747660027752448

Jeanne d'Arc. (2021, June 13). In Fate/Grand Order Wiki. https://fategrandorder.fandom.com/wiki/Jeanne_d%27Arc?oldid=953090

Jeanne d'Arc (Archer). (2021, June 14). In Fate/Grand Order Wiki. https://fategrandorder.fandom.com/wiki/Jeanne_d%27Arc_(Archer)?oldid=953914

Jeanne d'Arc (Ruler). (2021, May 10). In TYPE-MOON Wiki. https://typemoon.fandom.com/wiki/Jeanne_d%27Arc_(Ruler)?oldid=195455

Lunau, K. (2017, October 11). Scientists Inflated Dead Dolphin Dicks to Simulate Cetacean Sex. VICE. https://www.vice.com/en/article/j5gzqg/cetacean-reproduction-sex-dolphins-seals-dalhousie-university-science

Orbach, D. (2017, April 23). An intimate look at the mechanics of dolphin sex. EurekAlert!. https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-04/eb2-ail041217.php

University of Wisconsin. (2012). Blue Whale Reproduction. Balaenoptera musculus. http://bioweb.uwlax.edu/bio203/s2012/olson_rile/reproduction.htm

Whales Online. (n.d.). Reproduction. Whales Online A Gremm Project. https://baleinesendirect.org/en/discover/life-of-whales/behaviour/reproduction/

Whales Online. (n.d.). Reproduction System. Whales Online A Gremm Project. https://baleinesendirect.org/en/discover/life-of-whales/physiology/reproductive-system/

Wetzel, C. (2020, November 17). Nine of the Weirdest Penises in the Animal Kingdom. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/nine-weirdest-penises-animal-kingdom-180976274/

#degenerate #fanfiction #fan fic smut #fanfic #fan fiction #fate grand order #fgo oc #fgo stuff #fgo smut #fgo fate grand order #jeanne d'arc #smut

19 notes · View notes

diogenescamus · 3 years

Text

How The JRY/Ace Ops + Winter Scene In RWBY V8E7 Could've Been Done Better

From the RWBY Volume 8 Midseason Trailer: ......................................................................... Winter and the Ace Ops are, presumably, heading towards the whale with that bomb. It looks ridiculous to me considering she’s all “CHARGE!!” and they’re shuffling along with this massive thing. But the size does tell us that no, this can’t be a quick in-and-out mission like some of us hypothesized before, nor will it be an easy stealth mission (which is perhaps off the table entirely given Winter’s yell). Whether Team JRY has gotten Oscar out yet, given the Ace Ops information about the whale layout, or if they’re still inside is unknown.

. In regards to the JRY and Winter + Ace Ops scene from RWBY Volume 8 Episode 7 "War", I think it could've been done better. Like, what we got was alright, but a little more thought could've made the whole scene a whole LOT better. This is what I mean. . I think it's cool that Ren's Semblance is evolving to where he can sense emotions in general. It fits. Plus, it gives him some more versatility with his Semblance. . My real issue with the whole Ren's speech scene is that I easily thought up of an obvious way that whole scene could've been improved. Like, it's so freaking obvious, so why didn't the writers think of it? The components are right there. Anyways, here's how that whole scene could've been improved. . I kind of like Ren's whole "no one is replaceable" speech, so I think keeping the "muh feelings" aspect is fine but it can be improved by adding some rationality and strategy to it. If the writers would allow Jaune to be competent (for once instead of always relegating him to inept cringy comic relief) , he could've come up with a brilliant plan that could've turned the tide like this. He could first ask Winter to patch him to Ironwood, saying that he has a plan that could save all of them. Winter reluctantly agrees and gets Ironwood on the line. Jaune explains his brilliant plan that could turn the tide: . Jaune: "General Ironwood, I've come to make a bargain, so that we can both get what we want. We want to save Oscar who's in that Grimm Whale and retrieve the Lamp but you're not going to let us go without a good reason. Ace Ops' mission is to get into that huge Grimm Whale and deliver a bomb so that it can hopefully kill it and save Atlas. But how are they going to get through the hundreds of Grimm surrounding the Whale while also carrying the heavy Bomb? And even if they could get past all of them and make it inside the Whale, we don't know what type of Grimm or who else could be inside the Whale or if the Whale could be able to sense them inside it. They don't have any clear shot of going through those Grimm undetected while carrying the Bomb. That's where we come in. Ren here has a Semblance that allows him to mask negative emotions, allowing him and those under his Semblance to be completely invisible to Grimm, walk right past them. Thing is, he can only use it on 2 people by himself. That's where I come in. My Semblance allows me to amplify Aura and you know that I can do a whole lot from there. I have lots of Aura and you know how strong my Amps are. I've tanked a hit from a Colossus mecha head on and kept on walking. I healed Weiss from nearly dying to a flaming spear to the liver and lungs from Cinder during the Battle of Haven. Ren, Yang, and I are low on Aura but with a few minutes of intense concentration, I can regenerate my Aura and subsequently their's as well. From there, I can Amp Ren and his Semblance, allowing him to mask dozens, even over a hundred. With Ren and I, we can mask the Ace Ops and get them through the Grimm and into the Whale undetected. With Ace Ops backing us, we can fight our way through Salem's forces inside the Whale, retrieve Oscar and the Lamp of Knowledge, and plant the Bomb with some boosting on my end for good measure. In order to get what we both want, we have to work together, in order to save Atlas and Mantle. So do we have a deal?" . There is some silence on the other end as Ironwood contemplates on Jaune's deal before making a decision. . Ironwood: "Very well Mr. Arc, we have a deal. Ace Ops, coordinate with Arc, Ren, and Xiao-Long for the Payload Mission. Ren and Arc are the only real vital assets we need to pull this off but Xiao-Long should be useful as extra muscle, provided she doesn't just betray us like last time. But keep this in mind. Whether you escape from the Whale with Oscar and the Relic or not in time, this Bomb WILL go off. I will not put the lives of thousands of Atlesians at risk for the sake of 4 people. So be prepared to take responsibility for your own lives." . Jaune: "Understood." . From there, everyone gets to work, preparing for the Mission. Ren uses his Semblance "Tranquility" on himself and Jaune so that Jaune can intensely focus on meditating and utilizing his extremely fast Hazel-level Aura Regeneration Factor. The other Ace Ops don't put up a fuss, because they've been there during training with Jaune and his friends, so they know that he's being truthful and accurate in his and Ren's capabilities and how they can help make their suicidal mission an actual success. I may have been a bit overly detailed with all that Jaune said in that but I wanted to avoid CRWBY’s tendency towards annoying vagueness and not have Jaune repeat his stupidly vague "Hit them harder" thing, so I kept it a bit detailed so that both Ironwood AND the audience can know exactly what Jaune is proposing and how it's plausible enough to be effective. So in that scene, Jaune was persuading not only Ironwood but the audience as well. Ironwood and Ace Ops know that they would need the help of Ren and Jaune in order to make the Bomb Mission a success and if that means helping them with finding Oscar and the Lamp, then it's an acceptable risk/compromise that works for both sides' favor. Given that the Grimm Whale "Monstra" (that's the official name for it by the way) is several times bigger than the previously largest shown Grimm, the Leviathan, there's not a strong possibility that whatever Dust Nuke that Ironwood and the Atlas Army was able to cook up at the last minute would be powerful enough to take out the Grimm Whale. Jaune using his Semblance to drastically Amplify the Dust inside the Dust Nuke would act as a logical action to take as his Semblance can be the lynchpin to making sure the Dust Nuke would be powerful enough to destroy a colossal size Grimm like the Monstra. Plus, this serves as payoff to all the set up with the Training Scenes in Volume 7, especially the one in RWBY Volume 7 Episode 6 "A Night Off" which showed Jaune training his extremely fast Hazel-level Aura Regeneration rate. Not only that but it more logically connects JRY's goal and Winter + Ace Ops goals together, which also helps from a screentime perspective. . Anyways, after Jaune has fully regenerated his Aura, he uses his Semblance to Amplify the Aura Regeneration rates of Ren, Yang, and even Winter and the other Ace Ops so that their Auras are more than full. From there, they pick up the large heavy Whale Killing Bomb and then disembark from the Bullhead when they reached the closest they could come. From there, they get out. Jaune touches the shoulders of Marrow and Winter, Amplifying them. Marrow uses his Amplified "Stay!" to freeze the Grimm Horde attacking Atlas, with hundreds of avian Grimm dropping from the skies due to paralysis. An Amplified Winter Summons hundreds of full sized and Giant sized Beowolves, Ursi, Goliaths, Gryphons, and Nevermores, with her army of Summons tearing through the paralyzed Grimm Horde. This serves as reinforcements to the frontlines of Atlas soldiers and Mechas who were struggling against the Grimm, with several of the avian Summons entering the city to tear through the Grimm that made it through. This continues for a few minutes before Jaune, Marrow, and Winter have to stop, with Winter's Summon Army dissipating. Tearing through those Grimm would only be good so far as the Grimm Whale wouldn't stop producing more and more Grimm. By this time, the reinforcements have given the frontlines enough breathing room that they can relaunch the offensive with a second wind. . From there, Yang, Elm Ederne, and Vine Zeki (with his Aura Vines) lift and carry the large, heavy Whale Killing Dust Bomb while Jaune stands with Marrow and Ren in front, touching their shoulders and using his Semblance to Amplify the both of them, so that Marrow could Paralyze any enemies they face and Ren could mask everyone's negative emotions along with using his new Emotion Sensing ability to keep track of Grimm and even provide some protective fire with StormFlower. Jaune, Ren, and Marrow act as vanguard while Yang, Elm, and Vine act as middleguard with carrying the Bomb, and Harriet Bree and Winter Schnee cover the rear, with each using their Semblances to quickly and stealthily take down any paralyzed Grimm or enemies that they encounter, both in the front and rear. With this formation, the group ventures forward through the belly of the beast. Anyways, other stuff happens, blah blah blah, Oscar and the Lamp are retrieved and the Bomb is planted and Jaune uses his Semblance on the Bomb itself, Amplifying the Dust inside. (If he can Amplify Aura and Semblances, then it only makes sense that he can also Amplify Dust which can enhance both Aura and Semblance as well, with the function of Jaune's Amps being akin to a more potent version of Coco's Semblance "Hype") . Meanwhile, Ruby somehow arrives inside the Whale as well. Salem is pissed and is ready to dish out her 5-Maidens-worth of Magic against them but Ruby uses her Silver Eye Burst. It doesn't really hurt or kill Salem, as she's probably faced hundreds of Silver Eyed Warriors in the past who were much stronger than Ruby, but it does succeed in distracting Salem enough to prevent her from instantly annihilating them all with her Magic. Using that distraction, Jaune grabs on to Ruby and Amplifies her Semblance, with Ruby using it to grab all of their allies and very quickly flies out of the Whale at Mach speeds, before depositing everyone outside near the frontlines. We then see Salem watch the Bomb detonate at ground zero, with the Amplified Dust Bomb utterly destroying the Whale and causing a massive shockwave to spread throughout the air. And that's how they could turn the tide. . Anyways, I'm not the only one who was thinking something as obvious as this, right? . To conclude, these are the reasons why this rewritten scenario of how the JRY and Winter + Ace Ops scene in RWBY Volume 8 Episode 7 "War" would've been a logical and obvious improvement over what we've got in the show...... FIRST, the additions here make it clear that JRY, Winter, and Ace Ops are teaming up together. This not only gets around splitting the screentime between JRY and Winter + Ace Ops by having it so that they're both together instead of splitting off. SECOND, it gives a logical reason for why JRY and Winter + Ace Ops would both try to go inside the Grimm Whale and more naturally facilitates a team up rather than them going separately. Also, in my scenario, I had it where Ironwood is actually contacted (instead of being kept in the dark) and is offered a logical plan that allows JRY and Winter + Ace Ops to team up so that they can both get what they want. Even with saving Atlas and Mantle being his foremost priority, Ironwood could recognize the importance of retrieving Oscar and the Lamp of Knowledge, and the fact that Jaune's offer of an alliance is not only logical and beneficial but also is one that is being offered to him straight rather than being done behind his back, makes the offer all the more enticing. Not only that but Ironwood and Ace Ops would already know that Jaune's claims are true and accurate because they've spent weeks training together. THIRD, everything I've pretty much outlined in the scenario not only payoffs what's been set up before in Volume 7 and 8 but also serves as a natural and logical solution for the Good Guys to net out a victory and save Atlas and Mantle without requiring an Ass Pull or Deus Ex Machina. All the components are there to make it happen. FOURTH and finally, this would show JRY and Ironwood/Winter/Ace Ops putting aside their differences and working together to save Atlas and Mantle, which is a FAR contrast to Ruby "Sipping Tea While The Apocalypse Is Happening" Rose and her compatriots'' irrational irascible refusal to work together with Ironwood which only makes things worse for everyone.

. What do you all think?

#rwby

3 notes · View notes

beanarie · 5 years

Text

past & pending 3

this is for @stele3 whose lovely comment led to a somewhat mostly done chapter 1. <3 there’s a bunch more written, but none of it’s going on ao3 until i know how to pull the rest together. the rest of the series (post-finale, everyone’s in love) is here.

Welcome to the McGraw-Hamilton Bed and Breakfast, where no one ever calls ahead for reservations.

~~~

They watch the wagon approach for several long moments before Thomas's eyes grow almost impossibly wide and he comes out with it. "That couldn't be our Silver."

Thomas has never seen Silver bare-faced or walking with a boot that obscures, at first glance, that there's anything missing. It's strangely less jarring to see him like this than it is to see him looking like this and limping towards them, as if James expected him to still have his leg.

As he opens his mouth to call out a greeting, a small head pops up from the back of the wagon. For a moment James thinks... but no.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," Thomas says, "but that child is entirely-"

"Too old," James agrees. They watch her throw her arms around Silver so he can help her to the ground. She seems to be somewhere in that middle space between five and ten. Her skin is darker than he remembers Madi's being. Not theirs.

Another head pops up, this one belonging to an adult. Thomas makes a noise. "Is that-"

"No." James frowns as Silver guides her out of the wagon as well. "I have no idea who that woman is."

Silver tips his chin in their direction. "Everyone?" he says, projecting his voice. Four more emerge from the wagon, a man and three boys of varying sizes. "Meet Thomas and James."

James stares until Silver looks at least marginally shamed. "Sorry, for not writing," Silver lies. "We couldn't risk a message being intercepted."

"You also couldn't risk us saying no," James says under his breath.

Silver shows nearly all of his teeth. "How are my cats? I'm certain they missed me."

Thomas coughs so he doesn't laugh and cause James to snap and murder someone. "Well! I guess I'm dressing another chicken for dinner. Two more, perhaps?"

~ "We're seeking sanctuary," Silver explains, his mouth half full of stewed chicken. "Not here, of course. We have an idea of where to find Esther's mother." They're not all related. That's clear from their interactions. There appears to be a platonic connection between Esther and Obi, the two adults, and the middle boy looks to be Obi's son. "As for Felix and Andres," Silver continues, tilting his head toward the end of the table, where the largest boy sits with the smallest. "We, ah, picked them up along the way. Does that description feel accurate to you, Madam? Any objections to my phrasing?"

Esther's lips turn up slightly. She looks about thirty. "None," she says, not rising to what was clearly bait. He was teasing her.

After supper, after the washing up, everyone gathers in the parlor and their guests form a wonky, expectant semi-circle around Silver. Story time. James shouldn't be surprised. Children must provide an even more receptive ear than a crew of filthy, brutal, goat-fucking onanists had.

Silver tells of the fight for survival of a sparrow in the grips of a hawk. It's full of hair-raising chases and last-minute escapes.

"Boom!" He claps two hands together and the young girl sits up straighter. "A bolt of lightning hit the hawk, ending his journey in split second. He fell to the ground just steps from where I stood, stone dead, cooked, and even dressed for dinner. The shock of the lightning caused his feathers to flee from his body."

His audience begins to object, the children squirming and laughing. "Stop, please," Obi says, amusement and pain equally evident in his voice.

"On the soul of my dear Grandfather Solomon, when that bird fell he was more naked than the day he emerged from his egg. I have never eaten so well so easily in my life."

Esther scoffs and says nothing.

Felix turns to his brother and asks him a question in Creole. Andres nods and looks to Silver. "The sparrow?"

"Oh, Miss Sparrow took full advantage of her captor's misfortune. She saw her opening, and she took it. She flew away with lightning at her tail-feathers and never looked back."

The crash of Silver's fake leg hitting the floor disturbs the quiet within seconds of James closing the door. He's breathing hard, his eyes closed. "Six days," he says, rolling his shoulders and grimacing.

"Have you not taken it off at all?"

He opens his eyes and laughs sheepishly. "Honestly, I'm a little afraid to look."

"You could have removed it hours ago."

"That-" Silver waves a hand at the floor. "-is not going back on for quite some time and I didn't relish the idea of hopping about the rest of the evening." "What became of your crutch?"

"Giving indigestion to a whale, sprouting roots in the first stage of becoming a tree that will outlast us all, reading Aeschylus and Homer at fucking Cambridge. Does it matter?"

James finishes rummaging around in the trunk and rises with a laugh.

Silver narrows his eyes. "What is that?" He lifts a hand to object. "Before you start, yes, I'm fully cognizant of what that is, but, just. James. You did not buy me a crutch."

"You're correct. I did not buy it." James looks down at the crutch in his left hand and lifts a shoulder. Silver blinks once, then freezes. "Seemed a better use of my time than repairing the kitchen table again."

No response.

"Do you not agree?"

Silver remains still as a Grecian statue.

James sighs. "All right."

A smile pulls at one corner of Silver's mouth. "Well," he says. "It's no declaring war against the British empire in my name. But it'll do."

James swears under his breath. The curse he is under, that could not have been cast after he did anything to deserve it. He would have remembered something so significant, he would have noticed, and he would have taken steps to account for it. It must have been long, long ago. A malevolent figure emerging from the sea, finding his mother, and placing its ghostly finger on him while still inside her womb. Reaching out to his fluttering, thimble-sized heart and proclaiming in a ghastly wheeze most mortals could not hear, Room for shameless fucking miscreants only.

"You were planning on letting me see it, no?" Silver beckons lazily. As soon as James gets within range, a callused hand covers his and tugs, pulling him closer. Silver's fingers ghost over his brow-bone, reverent, and James considers thanking the sea witch after all. "Oh," Silver breathes, "I have missed you."

"Status report, Mr. McGraw?"

James pulls away to check that Thomas closed the door fully behind him. "He's being sincere, so I'd estimate we have about three minutes until exhaustion claims him for the night." They hadn't discussed where he would be sleeping, however, the room they still think of as his is now taken by Esther and the girl. With Obi and... smaller Obi, then the Creole brothers occupying another two rooms, there are still a few options for Silver. Neither Thomas nor Silver will likely voice these other options, so James certainly will not.

Thomas joins them from the other side of the bed. Silver's lips part in a surprised yet grateful moan, and then James spies Thomas's nimble fingers kneading his left shoulder.

"Trying to speed the process along?" Silver murmurs.

"Removing you from the conversation before your compromised self reveals something you may regret later."

The smile Silver favors James with is almost shy. "You know, sometimes it's fairly easy to see why you love him."

James meets his eyes then grins wickedly at Thomas over his shoulder. "Thomas, your efforts come too late."

"What, that? That was hardly..."

James eases away from the bed, rolling his eyes, and seems to catch something out the window. Something is moving out there.

Silver keeps going, though his tone grows vaguer by the word. "Khanyi, the girl, she may wonder where I am. She and Madi are kin of a sort and she seems to have appointed herself my minder."

"If she should rise before you, I'll take her to meet the animals," Thomas says. "They are marginally more entertaining to look after."

"Obi should have something for the children to do. He was a schoolteacher on the island. He's been subjecting them all to twice daily lessons."

"We have some books he may find beneficial."

"Esther will want to go hunting. Andres can go with her, but Felix and Obi's boy, Seydou, no. They'll lose their way chasing after baby deer and get themselves eaten by an alligator."

"How long do you plan on sleeping?" Thomas says, as James exits the room.

James approaches the front door, feeling a bit of a fool. A knock banishes thoughts of delusion from his head. So he did not imagine what he saw.

The woman at the other side is soaked to the bone, shivering, illuminated by lightning at her back.

James breathes out. "Madi."

"James," she says, using the manner in which he closed his letters.

Upon returning to the master bedroom, he gets past the threshold and simply... stops. Silver is dead to the world, his head tipped back and his mouth wide open. Like as not he'll be snoring soon. Thomas sits next to him with his ankles crossed, repairing a hole in someone's trousers with a needle and thread. James keenly wishes he were more practiced at painting human figures. Still, his brain, helpful as ever, catalogues details as though preparing to put them on a canvas. The crease of the pillow- James's pillow- under Silver's bad leg. The furrow of concentration splitting Thomas's brow.

"Is something happening?" Thomas asks, and it's enough to spur James out of his reverie and over to the armoire.

"We have an additional houseguest."

"Truly?" Thomas asks, as though they already host the world entire.

James grabs a blanket and one of his shirts. "You should put the kettle on."

In the first few minutes, they exchange standard pleasantries, she forwards her compliments on their home, and they manage to establish that everyone else arrived safely (plus two) and no, she did not travel all this way on her own.

"My escort chose to remain in town," she says. "But I have to say, if I had no escort, it would be no one's business save my own."

Thomas presses his lips together before he rallies. "This is quite true, Miss Scott. I do hope we did not offend."

Madi sighs quietly and adjusts the blanket around her. She looks diminished in his shirt and her damp trousers, small and miserable and uncertain.

"I am glad to see you," James ventures, heartened when he gets a tiny smile out of her.

"You've said," she points out, not unkindly.

"The sentiment is no less genuine for having been repeated."

"Might we get you something to eat, dear lady?" Thomas nearly begs, his sense of empathy going haywire from having a lovely woman in his kitchen visibly fighting back tears. "Dinner has been handily polished off, but we have bread and cheese. And fruit. I could fry some eggs?"

"Madi?"

Esther stands at the doorway and Madi all but jumps, dropping the blanket on the floor. She pulls herself together with an almost audible effort as Esther asks question after question in a language he does not know well enough to identify at rapid fire speeds.

Their hands inch ever closer and, well. That is not what he was expecting.

#black sails #black sails fic #silverflinthamilton #i won't tag silvermadi bc it's not in this section but they are very much a part of this fic #fun fact 99% of this was written an entire year ago #anyhoo my sunday is over and i need to go to bed #my writing #things by beanarie

23 notes · View notes

latenightcinephile · 6 years

Text

#854: ‘Leviathan’, dir. Andrey Zvyagintsev, 2014.

A lot of the films on this list are epic, and many of those are... swollen: too long, too inflated, and too exaggerated. Leviathan is none of those things, and it’s also one of those rare films that can be described as ‘statuesque’. This is obvious from its opening moments, where we see a string of images of the coast of the corrupt Russian village where the film takes place, any natural noise drowned out by the piercing score composed by Philip Glass. The first line of dialogue is not until five minutes in, and even then it’s terse and devoid of deeper significance - Kolia (Alexei Serebriakov) announcing that he needs a smoke.

The characters in this film are solid statues of human beings, but their interiors are crumbling. Kolia’s land is being bought out from under him by a corrupt mayor (a perfectly and pettily devilish performance by Roman Madyanov), who turns up drunk to threaten him and yet sails through his court proceedings with ease. Despite the urging of Kolia’s second wife, Lilya (Elena Lyadova), Kolia brings in his old friend Dima (Vladimir Vdovichenkov), a lawyer from Moscow, to try and mitigate the ordeal. Dima is thoughtful and courageous, suppressing Kolia’s more violent impulses when he can, but he is still unable to make a dent in Mayor Vadim’s brittle-seeming armour.

What at first seems like a typical story of small man taking on big government is rapidly undercut in a number of small ways, and the end result feels like a contemporary Biblical parable - the book of Job, perhaps, if Job wasn’t a particularly likable individual. The problem for Kolia, Lilya and Dima is that they are individual humans, and because of this they are damned on both an individual and systemic level. Their personal failings - their lust, their anger, and their cowardice - make it impossible to confront their situation in a unified way, and the corrupt legal system is designed to exploit their weaknesses while protecting the myriad weaknesses of those in power. Nobody at the office is authorised to release someone from prison, even for a trumped-up offense. The drunken mayor arrives in a spotless car, protected by a seven-foot-tall bodyguard with a close-shaven head. Even when Vadim is rattled by the amount of incriminating information Dima has been able to gather on him, Vadim has three coldly capable henchmen who have the mayor swaddled in a protective layer.

The system is perhaps at its most monolithic in those moments where Kolia and Dima are in the courtroom. While a typical ‘David-versus-Goliath’ film like The Castle would simply show the verdict, in Leviathan the court’s findings are read in all their impenetrable glory. The legal jargon that everyone hides behind is incomprehensible, and it shows what Zyvagintsev is trying to prove: that unlike in the story of Job, the word of neither man nor god is on Kolia’s side. It’s not enough for the court to reject his appeal; there must be three minutes of meaningless and obfuscatory explanation to rub it all in. The representatives of God in Leviathan are Russian Orthodox bishops, who have their own reasons for continuing Kolia’s suffering too.

Writing about Leviathan at Cannes, Peter Bradshaw suggests that Kolia in this film is not Job, standing in the face of God’s will and trying to draw out the Leviathan with a fishhook, but rather the beached whale that forms the film’s most striking image - a figure with “all the burdensome size but none of the power: massive, inert”.

Leviathan as a film can feel massive and inert, too. It’s tackling a topic that is small on paper but overwhelming on the screen, telling a story that is simultaneously a love triangle, a family drama, a Biblical tragedy, a courtroom procedural, a mystery thriller, and a parable of corruption. The characters are people who make poor choices while trying to do the right thing, but these choices reveal how inadequate they are in the face of the larger task. Kolia and Lilya’s marriage crumbles; Dima is driven back to the city. There is death and tragedy and imprisonment, like a good Dostoyevsky novel, and even the most kind characters have harshness as their default setting.

Zyvagintsev also wants to keep us at a distance from the action, both in his decision to make the characters somewhat despicable and in his directing choices, too. Most key scenes take place off-camera, lending mystery to some of them and discretion to others. We watch Dima get beaten up through a car windshield that blocks all sound. When we hear people talking, we very rarely get an understanding of their emotions, and when we see their emotions we never hear them speak. Lilya makes a decision that changes the world of the film, in both good and bad ways, and yet she says only five words of dialogue in her last fifteen minutes of screentime and still her decision makes a certain amount of clinical sense. It’s like watching a tragic lab trial from behind a clipboard.

What’s the point of this? Of striving? Why slog onwards in this blue-and-grey wasteland, why be at the mercy of heedless and brutal regimes? As Dima suggests, ‘everything is everyone’s fault’. I think of Kolia as being like a late-act Macbeth: in a position of power that he wants to maintain, but being constantly buffeted by a higher force that wants to balance things out. In Macbeth, that force is arguably fate, but more accurately the whims of classical tragic narrative. In Leviathan, the higher power is the world that gives no shits about the everyday man. Do Kolia and Lilya and Roma and Dima get what they deserve? Do they deserve the endings they get?

No. It’s worse than that. They deserve nothing at all.

#1001 movies #leviathan #andrey zvyagintsev #bleak

4 notes · View notes

dcadlynv-blog · 7 years

Text

“Kids these days,” her mom used to say, before her family cut ties with her, when she was a sad, sullen teenage girl curled around the bluish glow of her computer screen. “All their friends are online.”

Isadora would just smile. Yep. Oh yeah, like a fuckload of friends, momma.

The truth: her computer was her best friend. However weird she was IRL, she was a badass on her laptop, staving off her loneliness by messing around online with websites. Two or three times a year, she would rebuild her perfect persona via blog posts--a trend-devouring monster months in the making, constructed out of aesthetic photographs and clothing that cost more than she made in tips waitressing at papa’s restaurant in a full year. She cobbled together her OOTDs in a cracked copy of Photoshop, posting her dream doodles online with the naive longing of a little girl.

The bulk of Isadora’s teenagedom was passed in solitude, wondering if the fake girl who wore the summer’s favorite YSL lipstick and drank skinny lattes spiked with vanilla vodka would have more friends than the empty little nothing parked on the couch. Or if the spiky punk-rock chick, in her sharp-edged bob haircut and leather jacket, would crush the kids who turned away from her at school under the heel of a Doc Martin. Or if the artsy coffee-stained hipster girl would just toss her stick-straight black hair over her flanneled shoulders and shrug. She thumbed the spacebar, wondering if any of those girls would fall asleep at the keyboard feeling whole.

Her obligatory degree, which she completed in good time like a good little sheep, is in computer science. She’s a software engineer, emphasis papa’s. He is very proud. Columbia is not a joke, everyone. She paid for it with a few whale-sized loans and a lot of scholarship money, and graduated as quick as fucking possible. She moved to New York City, picking up an internship and then a full-on job at a #ontrend app development company, turning out the latest in flat color must-haves for the season.

Papa, bless him, used to mention her modest success at any and every family gathering. From humble beginnings, Isadora. Do you have X app on your phone? No? You should get it, it’s very popular. Isadora is lead developer on it. Isadora, who got good grades, who got into a good school, who worked the bar all through school, who snagged the internship, who did everything right.

Oh? The family said, smiling, with the patience of the unimpressed. Her cousin Leo-great grades, great school, great everything--is a doctor. He’s helping people in the really raw parts of the world, all the stuff that makes the news. He’s doing God’s work down there. Bless him. What is it that Isadora does, again? But even if Leo was a schmuck, something weird that she’s always noticed about her family is that she makes even them a little uncomfortable. Her own blood.

And Isadora’s parents are aggressively normal. They own a Mexican restaurant and bar, where Isadora waitressed on and off through college, passing out platters of cheese enchiladas to the children of white suburban Long Island families and margaritas to drunk commuters on their way home. Sometimes she’d see it in people’s eyes--is this how you do it? Is this “authentic”? How am I going to fit in here? Should I even try? Is it worth it?

Weird how she saw that in her father, too, living in the US. Is this how you do it? Is this how you fit in here, out in America? Momma was Lebanese, not Latina, though because she looked vaguely “ethnic” people always tried talking Spanish at her. Isadora’s pretty certain that contributed the most to the uncomfortable gulf between her immediate family and her dad’s extended--not a wide gap, but, y’know, you still had to be aware of it.

But Isadora never felt close to them, nor her mother’s family, though they got a pass for the distance--they were somewhere else in the world entirely. Everyone else? Isadora believes she’s justified in saying she might as well have been on another planet.. She never had regular friends. She never had anything except her parents, for the most part--and then, when she joined the Sinners, not even that.

Wait--that’s not quite true. There was Luke.

The really shitty thing is, Isadora realizes now, is that the app industry really is fucking disgusting. It’s frivolous. Nothing taught Isadora the secrets of human nature like the relentless copying of the competition, that the dark heart of pop culture was to chase trends fast enough so that the it looked like the idea everyone had was actually yours. They used the users to generate crazy money. Most people, Isadora learned, have the same secret flaws, easily exploitable for profit. Driving the user base was more important than building the product.

In fact, you wanted to start with the flaw first, and build the product around that. And if you couldn’t find the appropriate flaw? You created it.

So now, of course, looking back--Isadora has to wonder what flaw was created in her. What made her feel so lonely and strange and weird that she thought the perfect life was something you could buy and put on like a dress.

Isadora used to have a fantasy, in high school and college. In the interest of full disclosure, this was pre-Church, pre-Deadly, pre-Envy, pre-everything that prompted that. Isadora’s last idle fantasy world was particularly pathetic. Even though she was learning to love the taste of making other people nervous, at the New York office where no one knew what to do with her and her “concept” outfits, sometimes she entertained little notions, little scenes. Someone would approach her. This vague shadow person would be unafraid. They would smile at her, maybe quirk an eyebrow at her bag or her killer heels. They’d say something catty but comebackable. Why not? She’d drop that comeback. They’d laugh, meet-cute style, and just like that--a lover. A friend. At least one person who wanted to talk to her. Something.

A bare two months into her employment at the app start-up, they did a big money party to impress the investors. Isadora was at the bar, in a red and white dress meant to invoke the Queen of Hearts--for LookingGlass, their latest project, might as well show solidarity, right, even if the app was maddeningly shitastic--when she asked the sleek young suit to hold her whiskey for her while she reapplied her lipstick.

Isadora doesn’t remember anything about the conversation immediately following. She first knew him as Mr. Caplan, from Caplan & Cross Investing Group. He’d just started appearing after that moment, at her elbow, all night, making sly observations over a vodka soda with the material she supplied to him. She remembers thinking to herself, once or twice that night, he’s little more interesting than the other copies. I like him a little better than the other men who are just like him. He pinned her, accurately, as the primary architect of LookingGlass’ code--which meant, he’d taken the time to compare her with her LinkedIn profile and decide that she wasn’t the marketing rep that everyone mistook her for.

For that show of courtesy, she invited him to an afterparty, an exclusive thing she was saving for herself later that evening as a special treat, a reward for playing so nice here. See what else he’d trot out to impress her. In the taxi, he asked her to call him Luke. She told him, sure; his request was in the queue. He laughed, looked down at his hands.

Later, week nine of their relationship, he confessed to her that he’d been drifting in her direction all night that night, staying nearby in case she happened to glance his way, in case divine providence gave him an opportunity. Isadora’s brow furrowed. Her lightning-quick brain stalled, rebooted. She reassembled the world according to this information.

“God,” he said. “I was so afraid you wouldn’t even see me.”

Isadora feels like she keeps sliding through different versions of herself, tossing the failures to the back of her closet with last season’s mishaps, looking for the winner. She doesn’t know when exactly she started living as her fantasies instead of through them, but she has a guess.

Day one in New York City, it was like this: she looked in the mirror and said, no, this isn’t what I want to look like. She looked at her calendar and said, no, this isn’t what I want to do. Isadora made tentative steps, then bolder ones. When someone held up a Team Sinner QR code for her to scan for more info, she’d already reshaped the skeleton of her worldview. The Church of Sinners was the muscle. Becoming Envy was the first beat of her brand new heart. She feels more alive than she ever did before.

Of course, it could always been improved.

Isadora’s secret weapon has always been her obsessive drive, her power, her ability to ford through onerous details and mental hardship to her goal. She dislikes sleeping now. Shit ticking up on a counter. That’s her jam. Her salary was never amazing, she never once broke seven figures, but she didn’t allow a paltry lack of funds stop her. Isadora swaps and deals; she makes “connections” with designers; she curates a public Insta stocked with her greatest hits, one she’s had from before her days as Envy. People give her things now that they know who she is. Envy has appeared publicly. She’s actually walked red carpets. She saw on Facebook the other day, two girls who wouldn’t even look at her in high school now remember her fondly as friends.

Dangerous are those who dream in the day, right?

Joining the Church of Sinners put something in Isadora--or awakened something in her-- that she could have never had anywhere else. Maybe without religion, she would have turned into a bitter, lame little sweatpants Redditor with a grudge and a vaguely male sounding username. Maybe without the Sinners, without her frickin’ savior the real damn Devil, she would have marinated in her loneliness, in her regret, in her failure to find a self that makes her happy.

Instead: she is does whatever she wants, because she wants to.

Instead: nothing is without meaning. Everything is progress.

Instead: the only thing worth hating about yourself is the past you. It is ironic that the thing that Isadora levers the most in her proselytizing is the dread that people feel, drifting awkwardly through the world, the ugly regret that she herself no longer truly feels. Her only ache is one of desire. She doesn’t want to go back and change anything; she wants to go forward.

The advent of the Horsemen has only purified Isadora’s faith. The fact that the Apocalypse is drawing nigh actually changes nothing. Why give up? Why abandon oneself to nihilism? Are you afraid? Really? Why? Now might be the last chance you ever get, bitches. Seize the motherfucking day.

Isadora is a fanatic. She has always lived in a world of angels and demons, beings that were hundreds, if not thousands, of times more impressive and deadly than herself--so what’s the difference between them and the Horsemen to a puny mortal? Emulate them, fight them, love them. Live how you want to live. This is her religion.

Isadora reviews her Biblical history sometimes, to construct her sermons; she pesters Raziel and Renee for the deets. She composes her arguments with the same brutal elegance as her code. One sheep is useless; you gotta have numbers. You have to see that count tick up. Even more than that, you have to see that the numbers are useless unless you control them, how they think and the ways they think it. You have to have a good hold on the flaw you’re using as your lever. Isadora thinks, damn, Old Testament God may have been onto something.

The flaw created in people is fear. Did you know that? That’s what you use if you really want to make them believe.

#about isadora

6 notes · View notes

sarissophori · 4 years

Text

Hither Yonder, Chapter 16

The Last Goodbye

After a rushed breakfast, Varrion took Halli, Noma and Ianan down the path from the Consulry to Harbortown’s drydocks on the Valos, shaped in the likeness of a ship’s hull upturned, sheltering rows of stone piers, on which sat anchored a lone vessel in shade. Halli ran to it, eager to see her ship at last, standing by the ramp.

It was a work of crafted beauty, thirty cubits bow to stern, another thirty from keel to mast, made of white wood polished to a smooth glisten. The hull was slender, bowed down in the middle like a longbow, and had a crystalline lantern hung over the steering arm. Halli touched the planks; they were smooth as glass, with no obvious seam or rivet, as if they were simply pressed together.

“Hithrion is her name, the Wave-rider” Varrion said. “Made with care by our greatest craftsmen to be the finest ship of our age, and now she is yours.”

“She’s absolutely beautiful” Halli said. “May I go aboard?”

“Please do.”

Halli climbed the silver rope-planks hung from the midsection and strode Hithrion with slow footsteps. The mast had one sail, fine as silk but much tougher. She felt it, and saw her fingers through the other side. She went to the helm, to the steering arm of polished oak, and saw a stand with a compass under glass, its needle bobbing slightly. It pointed west rather than north.

“Thank you, consulate, for all your aid. My journey would have ended here, if not for you or Ianan.”

“The honor is mine” Varrion said. “Your supplies have been prepared, and Hithrion will be stocked ere the morning is gone from my personal stores. They are yours to have with my blessing, along with this.”

Varrion reached into his vest and handed Halli a folded piece of parchment tied with a golden string. Untying it, Halli saw that it was a map, showing the west coasts of Tarmaril and the breadth of the known seas up to their farthest reaches, to immortal shores. Stylized and elegant curves were drawn over the water, indicating currents, gulf streams and trade winds; marked also on its borders were the paths of constellations and prominent stars, and where their paths traced over the sea.

“It belongs to you, now” Varrion said. “May it lead you well.”

“This is, I…I don’t know what to say, consulate.”

“Considering what you have done for us, it is a small token easily parted with” Varrion said. “This was charted in the years before the Imperium’s fall. You will find it most accurate.”

Halli looked at the map and smiled shyly, touched by the gifting of it, on top of being given Hithrion and the supplies stored within. Suddenly, she became flustered.

“Oh no, no, no! Not again, I won’t accept any more courtesies without having something to give myself, it’s –it’s just improper!”

Halli patted her tunic, muttering and cursing, before digging into her trouser pocket and fishing out her own worn, soiled map of the Hither and Hinterlands, giving it to Varrion.

“Here!” she said. “This was given to me by Sador before I left Dumbria. It came from one of his most prized books about the history of Tarmaril. I’ve carried it all this way from there, and no longer need it to guide me. I want you and Ianan to have it. I hope that makes it meaningful in some way.”

“It does” Varrion said, taking the map gently from her. “This is a most precious gift indeed. It will have a place of honor in the library, an heirloom of Harbortown framed in crystal-glass. You are most thoughtful, dear Halli. Take care, and fair winds.”

Hithrion was loosed of her bindings and guided into the river, where workmen began loading the galley with food and water, blankets and coats, among other things. Ianan stood before Halli, putting on a brave face as he prepared to tell her goodbye, but he hesitated. He took her hands in his, mustering his courage.

“It is an unfair thing, Halli, to know you, to love you, only to have you vanish like some dream.”

“I love you, too” Halli said. “But all dreams end with the dawn, no matter their sweetness.”

Ianan sighed and bowed his head, gently caressing her hands.

“At least it was good dream while it lasted.”

“It was.”

“Then I have no regrets, here at its end” Ianan said, bringing his eyes, now shimmering, to meet hers.

“I will never forget you, Halli of Hanan.”

“Nor I you, Ianan of Tarmaril.”

She leaned in, and kissed him. “My prince.”

“In another life, perhaps” he said. “Go with the gods, di aluvae. I will keep my watch for your sail until your return. Goodbye.”

He kissed her back, and they embraced for a long moment. Neither wished to be the one to pull away, but Halli reluctantly removed herself from his arms, whispered goodbye, and boarded Hithrion, where Noma was waiting. Her tail waved, then stilled when she saw her face.

“Are you alright, dear?”

“I will be.”

Halli concerned herself with the rigging to avoid any more questions, partially unfurling the sail and swinging the rudder away from the dock. The wind caught them and nudged them into the estuary, then swept them down river. Varrion and the workmen watched them go, but Ianan ran alongside, keeping pace with them as the wind picked up and sped them on, the bow high in the water, out from Harbortown and down the coast, where the land wouldn’t follow. There Ianan stopped, forlorn yet hopeful, staring off as Hithrion shrank into the horizon under the growing sun, reflected by the glittering sea, until all sight of them was gone. The wind blew, and the gulls cried. So began his watch.

Beyond the shoreline, well into the bay, Halli let her sail unfurl to its fullest while swinging out the arm, giving only a passing glance back to Tarmaril and mortal lands, that final temptation, before turning her attention to the open sea ahead. Noma was at the bow, nose into the breeze, as a gust caught Hithrion and propelled them along; the keel lifted and glided through the surf as Lothshir did, yet faster, swift as a gull despite the breaking waves and foaming wake. Halli gripped the rudder to steady their course as their speed picked up, Hithrion keeping true as the winds took them farther from the shore, steadily fading into the distance until the coastline was nearly gone, now a thin dark line atop a far and roving blue. The sail fluttered, and they glided on. Consulting Varrion’s map, Halli steered them toward a westerly current of the greater ocean, banking them in a wide curve south while still west-bound, to gradually enter its stream and be carried off by its embrace. Once found, the greatest demand would then come from boredom and the length of their sail, however long it would be; the westernmost fringes of the map were left blank by those who made it.

Thus began the long, intertwined tediums of similar days and similar nights at sea, overlapping and indistinguishable, save that one was maybe more sunny, more cloudy, or rainy. Halli remembered Ianan’s warning of red mornings, and watched for them every sunrise, though for the most part the days remained impeachably calm.

Since leaving the coastal seas, the trade winds that so hurriedly swept them before had been slowly dying down; somewhere into the fourteenth or fifteenth day, as they began crossing the ocean’s girth, they died away completely, leaving a dull sky without a breeze, and an eerie quiet. Taken along now solely by the great west current, Hithrion sailed on at a leisurely pace, though the illusion of featureless waters made Halli feel otherwise, and pensive. She looked over Varrion’s map to occupy her thoughts.

“According to this, we won’t have any more wind until the Hunter passes overhead, or near enough” she said.

“Which is in about…ten days, if our speed holds.”

“Well that gives us some time” Noma said. “As if we needed more of it.”

“At least we don’t have to worry about storms for a while” Halli said. “Where wind won’t carry clouds, the skies stay clear, so they say.”

“Then we can sleep in” Noma said.

“I sleep long enough as it is out here.”

“Don’t we both?” Noma said. “But that’s all there is for us to do, excepting the minor course correction.”

“Go ahead, if you want” Halli said. “I’ll stay awake for a while longer.”

Halli was nodding off by the rudder when she heard Noma whining.

“Halli, Halli –there are fountains in the water, look!”

“Huh, what? Where?”

“Starboard, about three furlongs out!”

Halli scanned her eyes over right, from bow to midsection, when she also saw a random fountain jet forth like a puff of steam.

“I see it!”

“There’s another one behind us!” Noma said. “Even closer!”

Another spouted portside, and another. Strange humps rose up and rolled with the waves, then giant tails and breeching noses, larger than any beast they had ever known, and there were many of them.

“What are they?” Halli said, gripping the rudder, prepared to swerve Hithrion away should she have to.

“Your guess is as good as mine” Noma said. “But I would chance staying course, lest we antagonize them.”

All worries proved hasty. In slow graceful strokes, breeching and spouting as they went, a migratory pod of great northern whales caught up to and now passed their tiny vessel on by as they too followed the current; the year was nearing late, and instinct was driving them to fresh feeding grounds and nurseries. A few of the young swam underneath them, blowing strings of bubbles along the hull to tease Hithrion before answering the call of their elder’s songs. The pod for the most part paid them little heed, a minor curiosity, soon leaving them behind for the richer waters south of the ocean’s girdle.

“I didn’t know such giants existed in this world” Halli said as the spouts led off further away.

“They gave us no trouble, though.”

“Not all great things live to crush the small” Noma said. “Not intentionally, at least.”

Still, Halli kept them on a straight course until any sight of them was gone or faintly discerned, watching them go in fascination and respect for the size of even their smallest, wondering just how many more such creatures lay hid in the vast depths yet untraveled, and if all would be so peaceful.

Early on the eleventh day, rather than on the tenth, the first outliers of the westernmost trade winds patted the sail, growing stronger as they day went on, to Halli’s relief. Again, the wind took them as readily as any wing, and as it went from night to night the Hunter rose and fell at different points on the breast of the world, and Aelin, late in her arc, shimmered off the stern. It was in these moonless hours when Halli would dim the lantern so the water’s surface would reflect like a mirror the starry sky, where far enough, one could not be distinguished from the other. In that quiet, the songs Ianan softly sang entered her thoughts, what she recalled of them, and she hummed to herself as Noma rested beside, still and thoughtful, as the leagues went by.

Then, on the forty-sixth day since leaving Harbortown, they encountered another spell of calm windless ocean, though it was not marked on the map, nor probably could be; this perhaps began the uncharted waters no mortal had sailed since the height of Tarmaril’s folly, going on for who knew how much farther, and Halli became uneasy. She felt eyes on her, or in the thought of some presence considering her trespass –yet the weather was good, the skies clear, for the next few days.

A cold wind picked up, carrying them towards the first discernable horizon they saw in nearly two months at sea, a gray line made stark by a pale morning. What Halli hoped to be land soon proved another thing entirely; sailing closer, the line became a brooding front of storm clouds, their flanks spreading past where sight could see, their high roiling crowns threatening to overwhelm the rising sun, flickering red against their grim stratus. The seas underneath were dark with rain.

“Our last obstacle” Noma said.

“I’m ready” Halli said, folding Varrion’s map. “We’ve come this far.”

As she spoke a sharp gust whipped the sail and tore the map from Halli’s hands, throwing it into the sky till it was but a speck against the blue, then gone from sight. She felt a knot of resolve tighten in the pit of her stomach, ready to accept this final challenge.

She tightened down their rigging and furled the sail, folding the arm against the mast and tying it. She then secured the supplies in their galley and manned the rudder, waiting, allowing the current to slowly draw them in.

“Noma?”

“Yes, Halli?”

“If I don’t get another chance, I just want to say, I’m glad you’re here with me.”

“To the end, dear.”

They entered the storm, barrier, obstacle, whatever it truly was, and the sun in full was hidden from them. Only the lantern lit their way, and the harsh flash of lightning. Thunder cracked about them like a whip, and rolled overhead like a drum. The rain, in sheets, stung them like pellets. Waves rose out of the dark and battered Hithrion, lashing them with spray, making the deck slick with foam. Halli held firm to the rudder while Noma clung on with her claws, their stomachs rising and falling as Hithrion pitched in a turbulence they couldn’t see, but rode through in a strained desperation, hour on slogging hour, screamed at by gales and abused by breakers, gradually numbed and deafened with no respite.

In the moment when Halli’s resolve had ebbed to its lowest point and raw despair threatened to claim her, a slender light, blanched in the dark, appeared before them as a beacon, its source unknown, yet firing her resolve. It spread across the horizon but remained muted, ethereal, as if only a mirage. Halli’s heart assured her, against suspicion, that it was no trick; that it was light from the Undying Lands, pure if subtle, signaling the end of all paths and mischances, attainable at the last, if they could only hold on.

Then, against the gloom, reared from the waves, towered dark monoliths, vertical and sharp, as if rows of broken columns had been sunk into the bedrock by gods or giants as a wicked fence, a final insult to hope. The waves churned at their bases, and the wind shrieked off their pinnacles into the low brooding sky.

Veering hard, Halli steered them past the foremost rocks and into the heart of the labyrinth, fighting against the surf and undertows, the wind whipping them towards the pillars, but Halli’s skill and Hithrion’s craft availed them thus far, and they sailed on through the maws of doom.

The light was so close now, Halli could see vague shapes of land; the outline of a shore, shreds of forest, and above, the heads of misty uplands from which the light shone behind, from the hallowed plains beyond.

Almost there…

The monoliths crowded them in, narrowing their spaces, forcing them through passages of surging rip-currents and spray flying from the rocks, spat at them by gales. Halli tried to thread them past, but the current took them and swung them wide, despite her attempts to correct, and the starboard side was presented to the cleave of a waiting monolith. Within reach of that ghostly shore, this final obstacle nearly overcome, Hithrion was crashed against a face of stone and broken amidships, overwhelmed finally by the waves and subsumed by the tide, drowned in the fury of the storm.

Upon impact Halli was thrown into the chaotic surf and separated from Noma, tumbling in the rip-currents until all sense of direction left her. Swimming was of no use. She closed her eyes, and a blankness took her mind. The muted rush of water filled her ears, strangely peaceful after so much thunder and rain; her death would at least be a quiet one.

She was tumbled onto the shores of a sandy beach, and coughing, retching, blinking with burning eyes, she crawled her way to a stony embankment and collapsed, breathing heavily, glad just to feel herself breathing, and waited for the dizziness to lessen. Her roll-kit and supplies were washed away, but her sword at least remained fastened to her hip.

The beach, bathed in spectral iridescence, was untouched by wind or rain, though a dampness filled the air. The storm stood offshore, by design or natural chance, to never make landfall, grumbling beside a glowering sky that removed her from the mortal world and all bright things, sapped of color and warmth.

Halli clambered up a steeper part of the beach and looked out over the desolate landscape, dark and cold. Small pools were sheltered in craggy fissures at her feet, and a forest of bare twisted trees leered by the shore.

This was it, the Undying Lands, of whom innumerable songs, stories and tales praised a beauty beyond compare, beyond the scope of mortal description. This, if anything, was a wasteland, merely glanced over by holy light as if in an afterthought, where shadows abounded.

This was hell.

“N –Noma? Noma, where are you? Noma!”

Her voice echoed off sadly away. Halli stumbled across the smooth yet broken flats of the beach, made slippery by the myriad strings of stream-waters trickling through endless interwoven cracks and splinters. Patches of pale, luminous moss grew by these trickles and gathered at the pools, misted with dew.

“Noma, are you here? Oh Noma, where are –?”

Halli slipped into one of the pools, kicking something that shimmered at her feet. She slowly picked it up and held it against the light. It was a scabbard of black leather chaped with silver, much like hers, except degraded by time and the elements. In wary fascination, it dawned on her that this must have been the very beach, however it appeared then, where the vanguard of Tarmaril’s navy laid anchor, her envoys corrupting the land not simply with their presence, but with their intent, their petty greed. A shiver took her spine as she held it, and a dread feeling warned her she was not alone.

Hiss…

She looked above her, and sitting on a ledge over her, leering with gritted teeth, was a sly, hideous thing, man-shaped and vile, but no Homunculoi. Its expression held some level of sentience, if malicious.

Halli jumped and screamed, and it snarled a grin. As it climbed down into the pool Halli unsheathed her sword, reflecting the twilight in a wavering aura, and it paused, not because it was pained or threatened by the blade, but because somewhere in the murk of its tainted mind the creature remembered her sword, its shine, and the sentiment of old glories polluted its predatory will; high masts, proud banners, all withered to ash as poisoned memories behind baleful eyes, a sorrow mingled with self-loathing, and it hated her for reminding it of its pride.

It gaped a blood-freezing cry at her, and in the distance other calls answered it. It swiped its claws at her, and Halli cut the hand off at the wrist. Bellowing it drew back, spurting black blood tinged with the slightest red, falling down and thrashing in the water.

Halli scrambled away, fleeing the shores and shadows, to the dread forest and its sinister embrace. They pursued her, and she cried out.

“Noma, Noma!”

Further down the beach, in a shallow outlet between two spurs of rock, Noma lay within the purgatory of conscious and not, fighting to rouse herself, but not finding the strength for it. Bruised, battered, and in the despair of her groggy thoughts, she feared Halli lost when Hithrion was crashed, either drowned or smashed against the roughs, and cursed fate that it couldn’t have been both of them. For a Buio Thinanin to outlive their bond-mate was a terrible thing, a pain akin to surviving a spouse or child, and Noma quietly bemoaned her loss as her will to move was sapped, knowing she would never again feel happiness in what little time she had left, residing herself to end here, lost and alone, on the other side of the world, because of a promise.

“Noma, Noma!”

Her ears twitched, a jolt going through her like lightning; Halli was alive, alive, and she was in trouble. Life surged within her, her pains dulled by urgency, and stiffly, Noma clawed her way through the outlet and limped toward the forest, every disadvantage hers except for one: a love that mended weakness, and drove her on in boundless purpose. Maybe that would be enough.

“I’m coming, Halli…”

#story #fantasy #hither yonder #sarissophori

0 notes

therealchocolateorange · 4 years

Text

A Letter From The Middle

“Suck in, just suck it in! Take a deep breath, let it out, and suck… in!” I remember the broken zip on my year 12 formal dress. How it took a combined effort from my sister and my mum to wrench it shut. The way my mum pursed her lips when I walked out of the fitting room.

The envy I felt watching my best friend accompany the boy I loved to the formal, myself turning up without a date. The embarrassment of my tennis shorts; how they rode up between my thighs.

Reluctantly being dragged to little aths, finishing at the back of every race after being lapped multiple times along the way. How my mum would say “at least you didn’t come last!”, as she put my sister’s gold medal on the counter. How I begged to be able to wear anything but a singlet and bike shorts to run in.

Watching my siblings do flips on the trampoline, desperately wishing I could join in, but not being able to run without the embarrassment of jiggling, let alone trying to do a backflip. Desperately wanting my brother to not call me a “whale” and look at me with disgust. Wondering what it would be like to wear bikinis and sun dresses like my little sister, without constantly being conscious of all the bits sticking out where they weren’t supposed to be.

The first time a belt dug into my stomach so hard it left imprints on my skin. The shame realising it was already on the loosest notch. The realisation that my body was a pressing issue that desperately needed to be fixed.

* * *

I lost over a third of my body weight in under three months. I fasted at my office job and spent my lunch breaks walking laps of the Southbank promenade. I got used to feeling dizzy and my brain on autopilot, saving my daily intake until dinner with my parents.

Suddenly it seemed like everyone cared what I had to say. I had never felt so seen or acknowledged in my life. Well-intentioned people constantly told me how proud they were of me.

I was terrified to gain any weight or attempt recovery because I worried everyone would be disappointed in me. I didn’t want to let anybody down. I felt like my eating disorder was everyone’s favourite thing about me. I internalised the misplaced idea that I needed to continue starving myself if I wanted to keep up my newfound significance. It’s so hard to let go of the one thing that made people see you as something besides the fat girl.

When skinny people lose a significant amount of weight, we assume they are sick and in need of medical attention. When fat people lose a significant amount of weight, we assume they have made healthy lifestyle adjustments and we become role models.

* * *

And then my sister got sick. Suddenly she could no longer run, one of her favourite things in the world, and I could see how desperately she wanted to. She lay in bed for weeks, barely able to lift her head off the pillow. My mum told me her sickness was due to stress about my mental health, so once again wracked with guilt and shame, I decided to run. I laced up my shoes and took off. I’m trying not to cringe at how cliché it is, literally running to try and escape my pain. Forcing my raw and ragged heart to do something other than just be a sucking wound. The pain is channelled into motion. It never leaves me but it pounds in time with my feet on the trail.

It is hard. If it wasn’t, everyone would do it. But it’s a lot of other things, too. For me, it was mostly freedom. An hour to be outside. Time to be by myself unapologetically. A way to disconnect and clear my head. Freedom to challenge myself physically and work toward a goal that had nothing to do with work. That’s what keeps me coming back despite the hard parts.

So many of us move our bodies from a place of shame. We move to get away from a body type we don’t want to be, or to make us feel better about ourselves, which for most of the population really means to not feel lazy or like a slob. The bottom line is that we connect movement and the results of movement with how “enough” we are.

Like so many others’, my movement story started with shame. I started running to lose weight because I believed that my size was my worth; the skinnier I was, the more worthy I was. I ran my first marathon when I was 21, wildly unprepared but somehow managing to enjoy it, finishing the race in under 4 hours.

I wasn’t aware how dangerous it was to be motivated by metrics and aesthetics. I was constantly running toward “being enough” through my body shape and size. But the finish line was always the same distance away no matter how skinny or fast I became, I was never enough. Without my realising it, I’d spiralled into the depths of an eating disorder I’d worked so hard to escape.

* * *

It’s an incredible mental and physical feat to complete a marathon. What’s even more astounding to me is how well I managed to run at all that day. I was at the lowest weight I’d ever been, in the first year of a master’s degree, in the middle of nursing placement with a chest infection and literally running on empty. But somehow, despite this, my body carried me to the finish line, even after all the hurt and punishment that had been inflicted on it. I ran. I didn’t stop. And when I ran I felt freedom, because I could channel my anger into something other than sickness. I marvel at how my broken heart slams around inside my chest. Apparently, it still wants to do its job. In pieces and on fire, it fights.

The month before that race I spent a week at an interstate university sport competition. I spent every single day that week living off butter menthols and alcohol, skipping time out away from my team to go running every afternoon to burn up calories that I really didn’t have to spare. Because I didn’t believe I deserved a spot on that team. Because if I didn’t deserve court time then I didn’t deserve to eat.

Because that’s what shame does, it pushes you and pushes you because nothing you ever do is enough. When you feel pain like that you want to disappear, you want every inch of yourself to fade into the background. You don’t want to be seen, you don’t want to feel anything, because if you do you feel everything at once and all that’s left is the horrors of what you and others have done to you.

Years later, I find myself sitting on the bathroom sink, brushing my teeth until my gums ache because I still cannot get his name out of my mouth. It’s the moments right before falling asleep and upon waking up where I forget the events of that unigames, that everything has changed, that nothing is normal any more. My glow fades as I remember, I remember everything and my stomach drops, because I wish I could get that moment of forgetting back, or better yet, that moment in the past. But I can’t, and I start and end my day with an ache that won’t go away no matter how hard I try.

* * *

I live life like the whole of it is a masquerade ball and the theme is happiness. I have the right collection of curated masks to don; every one of them concealing all the effects of anxiety and MDD and disordered eating in my life. I appear to float through life with a feather-like lightness, all caution thrown to the wind and with a sanguine and self-assured disposition. But that is all part of the plan.

It is an obsession in our culture to conduct ourselves in a manner deemed acceptable according to community norms and unspoken rules. We vehemently seek the invisible stamp of approval from the people around us, committing ourselves to their expectations and policing our every move to ensure we measure up to the yardsticks. And this is escalated exponentially by social media.

The continuity of that in the grown up’s life is that I have a dichotomous existence as I battle emotional turbulence internally and yet do everything within my power to maintain a composed demeanour for the world to see and admire.

I am now searching for the keys to unlock my caged emotions so that I might once in a while admit candidly before others that I am not always doing okay. And maybe, just maybe, it will be all right for me to be human.

* * *

We will never know the true measure of anyone’s pain, nor can we accurately gauge their proximity to failure or progress: what I deem to be a mark of success may not be the same as someone else. However, I realised the story I was yearning to read was, in fact, one more like my own. I wanted to hear the candid account of someone in the middle, maybe just past the hardest days of this illness, but not quite to the happy ending where you’ve reached the place you never thought you would. Those narratives are inspiring, and they give me hope for the kind of future I didn’t think I could have.

Anyone who has courageously combated a mental illness knows success doesn’t even need to look like a life of riches and luxuries, but more essentially a home, a healthy and loving relationship, and a career that supports you. But what I haven’t heard much of is from those of us in the middle. It’s easy to feel alone in your struggles and pain when you don’t fully resonate with the people and stories around you. A greater sense of comfort can be found in that very specific kind of camaraderie.

In the not so distant past, my prospect was bleak and observed through the sadness of hollow eyes. There were days at a time spent in bed with anguished tears that turned into desperation and hate and then back again. I quit my job due to the rapidly declining and fragile state of my mental state. I pushed away friends in fear of burdening them with all my pain. I almost failed out of uni. I wasn’t capable of being in a healthy romantic relationship, not to mention the difficulty of explaining the large gaps in my dating history due to mental breakdowns and the sheer lack of desire to be romantically involved at all.

I have made three suicide attempts, with the most recent being earlier this year. It’s like a cancer. Except instead of deteriorating your body, it goes for your mind and the pain emanates from there. It gets worse, the pain doubles by the day. But instead of the cancer taking your life, you’re left there, in a state of agony and no reprieve in sight. If you’re here in this place my sweet friend, please know I have walked there, too. And I promise you it can, and will get better than this.

* * *

Today, I am in a newly reached sort of remission. The warmth of sunlight has finally started to melt the heaviness of a long winter’s snow. My mood has found stability, and while my successes aren’t quite tangible, I have achieved many small victories through the help and guidance of therapy and medication. In a world that values speed and instant gratification, I remind myself that to travel at a slow and steady pace is nothing short of admirable. These hurdles are not insignificant and in that, I stand proud.

I guess it’s hard to come to terms with; there’s fresh fruit on my kitchen counter. It’s not even bruised, and neither is my skin. There are no dishes in the sink these days, and no blood either, and there is food in the fridge. And this is what it means to no longer be living in the fast lane. Getting your shit together requires a level of honesty you can’t even imagine. There’s nothing easy about realising you’re the one that’s been holding you back this whole time.

But sure, I preach positivity and beg my friends to feel self-love, but the joke is that I still sweat over the fact that I haven’t done enough sit ups today to earn my dinner. I know I should love this body; it breathes, it swims, and it damn well knows how to love everything on this Earth other than itself. I stopped eating in first year uni, and still can’t see myself naked in the mirror. All things considered, this is my history. How could I know anything else?

I imagine most of my life playing out like this; in the way that the hot summer’s night will always grow cold again, the way the sun stops shining, how sometimes a hug doesn’t feel long enough and other times it’s suffocating. When you tell someone something but they only hear “I’m still breathing", so they leave thinking that you’re okay because you looked okay and that must mean whatever they say it means. When the pills stop working, when you can’t sleep more than three hours, when your heart is beating so fast and hard you can feel it in your throat. When the words you want to speak get stuck there forever, when your loneliness becomes a comfort. When your bed seems to feel more safe than being with friends, when you feel good for a little while until the darkness begins to settle again.

Maybe it is my fault. The truth is I always planned on dying young; a handful of pills and a bottle of vodka for breakfast, or getting too cozy with an electric socket. It was close, but I made it, and I’m glad. But once you’ve given yourself to the thought of a short-lived life, once your future becomes a back-up plan, getting by is the only thing that matters.

My heart aches a little when I think of how I have failed to acknowledge my own reality for so long and have sought to construct a false narrative. But now it occurs to me that there is absolutely no meaning in seeking acceptance from others when the starting point is not acceptance from one’s self. I am now searching for the keys to unlock my caged emotions so that I might once in a while admit candidly before others that I am not always doing okay. And maybe, just maybe, it will be all right for me to be human.

My future includes sips at fresh coffee, mugs made in classes I took with my friends, an apron for when my clothes get too dusted from making bread, and long runs through the rain. My future looks like a basket full of blackberries and my mother’s recipe book. At some point, I’ll stop crying when every new year introduces itself. I’ll spend my years reading and loving and never being afraid of improving myself because there’s still so much to learn. My future wasn’t always so precious to me, but now that I know what it looks like, there’s no chance I’m going to miss it.

0 notes

hudsonespie · 5 years

Text

A Guide To Types of Ships

Cargo ships are classified into various types on the basis of purpose, size, type of cargo etc.

The economic factor is of prime importance in designing a merchant ship. Every owner wants maximum return on their investment which means a ship’s construction not only depends on the current economic necessities but the factor of future adaptability also plays a part.

From the preliminary design of a vessel due for construction, the following information can be obtained:

Dimensions

Displacement

Stability

Propulsive characteristics and hull form

Preliminary general arrangement

Principal structural details

A layout of the various ship types and their subdivisions will be listed out, covering a wide range of all vessels in operation.

The type of ship plays an important role in deciding the above mentioned parameters.

Types of Ships

Ships are mainly classified into the following types:

1. Container Ships

2. Bulk Carrier

3. Tanker Ships

4. Passenger Ships

5. Naval Ships

6. Offshore Ships

7. Special Purpose Ships

1. Container Ships

As the name suggests, a vessel structured specifically to hold huge quantities of cargo compacted in different types of containers is referred to as a container vessel (ship).

Image For Representation Purpose Only

Types of Container Ships On Basis Of Sizes:

Panamax

Suezmax

Post-Panamax

Post-Suezmax

Post-Malaccamax

Learn about different types of container ships.

Refrigerated Container Ships: These Vessels carry refrigerated cargo (mainly in refrigerated containers)

2. Bulk Carrier Ships

Bulk carriers are a type of ship which transports cargoes (generally dry cargo) in bulk quantities. The cargo transported in such ships is loose cargo i.e. without any specific packaging to it and generally contains items like food grains, ores and coals and even cement.

Image for Representation purpose only; Credits: wikimedia.org

Conventional bulkers

Geared bulker

Gearless bulker

Self-discharging bulker

Lakers

BIBO

Read types of bulk carriers in detail here

Some other forms of dry cargo are:

Tramps: A boat or ship engaged in the tramp trade is one which does not have a fixed schedule or published ports of call.

Cargo Liners: An ocean liner is a ship designed to transport passengers from point A to point B. The classic example of such a voyage would be a transatlantic crossing from Europe to America.

3. Tanker Ships

Tanker ships are specialised vessels for carrying a large amount of liquid cargo. Tankers are further sub-divided into different types on the basis of the cargo they carry.

Tanker Turning in Gibraltar – Credits: Depositphotos

Read in detail – What are tanker ships?

The main types of tankers are:

Oil Tankers: Oil tankers mainly carry crude oil and its by-products.

Liquefied Gas Carriers: A gas carrier (or gas tanker) is a ship designed to transport LPG, LNG or liquefied chemical gases in bulk.

Chemical and Product Carriers: A chemical tanker is a type of tanker ship designed to transport chemicals and different liquid products in bulk

Other types of tankers: Some other types of tankers are juice tankers, wine tankers, integrated tug barges etc.

On the basis of their size, tankers are further divided into varies types such as:

VLCC

ULCC

Panamax

Aframax

Suezmax

Capesize

Handymax

Lighters

Handy

Learn about Types of Tankers

4. Roll-on Roll-Off Ships

Ro-Ro is an acronym for Roll-on/roll-off. Roll-on/roll-off ships are vessels that are used to carry wheeled cargo.

Image credits: pete / wikipedia

Pure Car Carrier (PCC) and Pure Car and Truck Carrier (PCTC) RoRo Ships

Container Vessel + Ro-Ro (ConRo) Ship

General Cargo + Ro-Ro Ship (GenRo) Ships

RoPax

Complete RoRo Ships

Learn about types of Ro-Ro ships.

5. Passenger Ships

Passenger ships, as the name suggests, are mainly used for transiting passengers.

Image Credits: wikimedia.org

They are mainly classified into:

Ferries – Vessels used for transiting passengers (and vehicles) on short-distance routes are called ferries.

Cruise Ships – Mainly used for recreational activities, cruise ships are like luxurious floating hotels with state-of-the-art facilities.

They are further classified as:

Liners, Cruise Ships, Pilgrimage Ships

Cross Channel Ferries, Coastal Ferries, Harbour Ferries

Arctic and Antarctic Cruises

Learn more about different types of passenger ships.

6. Offshore Vessels

Offshore vessels mainly help in oil exploration and construction jobs at sea. Offshore vessels are of several types.

Some of the main ones are:

Supply Ship: Vessels that supply to offshore rigs

Pipe Layers: Vessels engages in laying pipes and cables

Crane Barges or floating cranes: A crane vessel, crane ship or floating crane is a ship with a crane specialized in lifting heavy loads

Semi-submersible Drill Rigs: These are Mobile Offshore Drilling Units to make stable platforms for drilling oil and gas

Drill Ships: A drillship is a merchant vessel designed for use in exploratory offshore drilling of new oil and gas wells or for scientific drilling purposes

Accommodation Barges: Could be a stand-alone floating hotel or can include accommodation as well as space for Cargo

Production Platforms: To extract and process oil and natural gas, or to temporarily store product until it can be brought to shore for refining and marketing

Floating Storage Unit (FSU) – Floating vessel mainly used for storage of oil and by-products.

Floating Production and Storage Unit (FPSO): A floating production storage and the offloading unit is a floating vessel used by the offshore oil and gas industry for the production and processing of hydrocarbons, and for the storage of oil

Anchor handling vessels – These are used for offshore construction and installation operations.

Diving vessels – Are vessels used by divers for diving in the ocean for underwater jobs.

Learn more about different types of offshore vessels here.

7. Fishing Vessels

Ships or boats used for recreational or commercial fishing at sea are called fishing vessels.

Fishing vessels are mainly classified into two types – trawlers and non-trawling vessels.

Trawlers, Purse Seiners: A fishing trawler, also known as a dragger, is a commercial fishing vessel designed to operate fishing trawls. Trawling is a method of fishing that involves actively dragging or pulling a trawl through the water behind one or more trawlers. A purse seine is a large wall of netting deployed around an entire area or school of fish. The seine has floats along the top line with a lead line threaded through rings along the bottom. Once a school of fish is located, a skiff encircles the school with the net.

Factory Ships: A factory ship, also known as a fish processing vessel, is a large ocean-going vessel with extensive on-board facilities for processing and freezing caught fish or whales

Learn more about types of fishing vessels here.

8. Speciality Vessels

Speciality vessels are constructed and used for specific purposes.

Credits: Travellers & Tinkers/wikipedia.org

Tugs: A tug (tugboat) is a boat or ship that manoeuvres vessels by pushing or towing them.

Tenders – A boat or a larger ship used to service or support other boats or ships, generally by transporting people and/or supplies is called a tender vessel.

Pilot Crafts – Pilot crafts are used for the transportation of harbour pilots.

Cable Layers – Cable laying vessels help in laying cables on to the sea bed.

Research Vessels – They are special types of vessels used for carrying out a variety of researches at sea. Some of the most common types of research vessels are – seismic vessels, hydrographic vessels, oceanographic vessels, polar vessels etc.

Salvage Vessels – Salvage vessels are vessels engaged in salvage operation; recovery of lost property at sea.

Lightships: A lightvessel, or lightship, is a ship which acts as a lighthouse. They are used in waters that are too deep or otherwise unsuitable for lighthouse construction.

Barge Carriers: A barge is a flat-bottomed boat, built mainly for river and canal transport of heavy goods.

Timber Carriers: Vessels that carry timber

Livestock Carriers: Vessels that carry livestock/animals

Ice breaker ships: They are used for cutting ice deposits in extremely cold climate conditions to make waters navigational.

9. High-Speed Craft

High-speed crafts are a special type of technologically advanced high-performance (typically high speed) marine vehicles. Though most of these technologies are not used in commercial vessels, a few have been successfully implemented and tested in conventional merchant vessels of small scale.

Some of the main types of high-speed crafts are:

Multihulls including wave piercers

Small waterplane area, twin-hull (SWATH)

Surface effect ship (SES) and Hovercraft

Hydrofoil

Wing in Ground Craft (WIG)

Know more about different types of high-speed crafts.

10. Dredgers

Dredging is an excavation activity usually carried out underwater, in shallow seas or freshwater areas with the purpose of gathering up bottom sediments and widening

Dredgers are vessels with excavation tools used for removing sand and other types of deposits from the seabed. Dredgers are used for several purposes such as making shallow coastal areas navigational, deep-sea mining etc.

Dredgers are mainly classified into two types:

Mechanical dredgers

Hydraulic dredgers

Learn in detail about different types of dredgers.

Disclaimer: The authors’ views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of Marine Insight. Data and charts, if used, in the article have been sourced from available information and have not been authenticated by any statutory authority. The author and Marine Insight do not claim it to be accurate nor accept any responsibility for the same. The views constitute only the opinions and do not constitute any guidelines or recommendation on any course of action to be followed by the reader.

The article or images cannot be reproduced, copied, shared or used in any form without the permission of the author and Marine Insight.

Report an Error

from Storage Containers https://www.marineinsight.com/guidelines/a-guide-to-types-of-ships/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

0 notes

wayneschutt · 6 years

Text

Best Practices for Including Infographics in Your Blog Posts

I didn’t know much about infographics, including why they were valuable and how to best use them in my blog posts and on social media until I started reading fellow pet blogger’s sites. The content was phenomenal, but I found myself zeroing in on the infographic they included. The image was like the cliff’s notes of the entire post, except I didn’t feel like I was cheating on an assignment! Instead, I felt compelled to act and wound up sharing the image with my followers.

So, what are the essential things you should know about how to create, integrate and share these useful tools? This post will help to walk through some key elements that are associated with optimizing infographics.

What’s an Infographic?

There are different variations of infographics, each with their own value for use. In short, they are visual representations of the information included in the post you’re writing. For example, if you’re writing about signs your dog may be exhibiting that he’s stressed, instead of simply using the term “whale eye,” you can include an infographic that depicts different signs of stress, including whale eye. The infographic could be an easier way for the reader to process the information, especially if they’re a visual learner.

There are tons of ways to structure your infographics; I’ve seen infographics that provide impactful statistics with corresponding images, graphs that illustrate a point, short statements partnered with a graphic and some with just images and no text. One way isn’t technically better than another and you can switch up the format depending on the content you are writing about.

When Should You Use an Infographic?

There’s no right or wrong. The question you should ask yourself when considering using an infographic is “does a visual representation of this information add to the value of this post?” There are times when it may not.

If I’m writing a personal story about the first day I brought my dog home, sharing photos of her in her new space makes sense, an infographic does not. Conversely, if I was sharing an educational post on the top five things to plan for when bringing a dog home for their first day, a visual depiction of this information would add substance to the post.

Posts that include educational information, an attempt to persuade the reader, descriptions of information, like a DIY, are all times when an infographic may make sense.

Do You Have to Make Your Own Infographic?

Not necessarily. I’m not a graphic designer, nor am I skilled at illustration. I often find myself limited by my lack of ability in this area. That said, there are some great infographics that already exist that you may be able to integrate into your post. Type your subject into a search and see if other images come up.

WARNING: First, make sure you have permission from the person who created the image to use in your post. Second, make sure the content is accurate. I’ve seen a lot of posts on Pinterest talking about “safe human medications to give dogs,” and some incorrectly share drugs that should not be administered without, at the very least, conferring with a veterinary professional.

How Do You Make an Infographic?

I have successfully created an infographic, without any graphic design experience. In fact, I found the experience so rewarding, I kicked myself for avoiding making one sooner!

There are a variety of tools you can use to create an infographic without much strife. The tool I find myself using most often is Canva. One of the main reasons why I’ve gravitated to this medium is that I can create images on a computer and my phone, which means I am not restricted by lack of access. I also like this platform because they have an infographic option already created, which is sized for optimizing in social sharing, particularly Pinterest.

If you would rather use another platforms, the world is your oyster. I typed into a search bar “tools to make Infographics,” and was greeted with tons of free and paid options to choose from. There will be a learning curve for any option you choose, so make sure you give yourself some time to navigate the options and feel comfortable with using them.

Once you’ve determined your platform, it’s time to start creating your infographic. I find it helpful to map out what I’m hoping to convey on a piece of paper first. Just like mapping an outline for a piece you’re writing, it helps you to stay on track. As mentioned earlier, it is helpful to brainstorm and determine which type of images are most useful to illustrate the point you are trying to make. Is it a series of statistics? Should you include a relevant graph? Mapping out your content can help you to make that decision.

When creating your infographic, remember the K.I.S. system—Keep It Simple! Make sure the images are easy to see, words are easy to read, and your points are easy to ascertain. Remember, this is a visual that helps to share information, but you’re hoping people are clicking through to read more on your blog. If you give it all away in your infographic, they have no reason to be visiting your site.

However, to be honest, you kind of need to get your hands dirty and play around when making an infographic. Once you do, you’ll realize it’s actually kind of fun to be sharing your information in a different way. If you are new to creating an infographic, it’s always a wise choice to send a draft along to trusted friends who may be able to provide insight on content and layout that you may not have thought of.

Optimizing Your Infographic on Social Channels

When making a post, try to make the key points visible at the top of the infographic. Depending on which social platform you’re sharing images on, the whole image may not be visible. What this means is that you want to make sure that the most compelling information to prompt a click-through to be what’s seen, in order to increase the likelihood of click-throughs and social sharing.

Many people visiting your blog are doing so on their phone or on a tablet, so it’s really important to test out your infographic on both to see how it shows up. I’ve personally clicked away from posts where the infographic was too tiny for me to read on my phone.

While it’s entirely possible for your infographic to be shared on different social channels, the most “visual” of the social channels is Pinterest. Therefore, I recommend focusing on optimizing your image for displaying well on Pinterest. If you are using templates or design resources to help you create your infographic, it will likely already be sized to work well on Pinterest. There is no length limitation on Pinterest, but there is a width restriction, so longer posts are better to create than wide posts.

The keywords you use in your Pinterest description behave like any other SEO search engine, so make sure you’re spending time on crafting it in such a way that your infographic comes up in searches. Once your image is found, make sure your blog name is on the infographic and that it links back to your post to ensure you get traffic to your site. There have been times when my image has been re-shared and is no longer connected to my original post. I have found this out by doing a google image search of the infographic and seeing where it’s popping up. In those cases, I file a takedown request with Pinterest and they typically remove the imposter shortly after the request is made.

That’s a Wrap

This post has covered a lot of different parts associated with the creation and use of infographics. It’s kind of like the first time you show up at a buffet, and you grab a little bit of everything to see where you’re going to head when it’s time to come back and fill up your plate.

Please post your own best practices and questions so we can help to dive into any of the subjects listed in more detail. If you haven’t created an infographic yet, I hope this post has empowered you to work on making one and sharing it. We’d love to see your work and I encourage you to post them here or on the BlogPaws social channels.

Bryn Nowell is an award winning lifestyle blogger who curates A Dog Walks into a Bar, which highlights her love for drinking and dogs. She has been blogging for over three years and prides herself on her visual storytelling. The focus of her posts and photos are her two Boston Terriers, Bean and Yoda. Nowell has a Bachelor’s Degree in Public Relations and her Masters in Business Administration with a Marketing concentration from Quinnipiac University. She has written educational posts regarding business, public relations, and marketing best practices for the BlogPaws network multiple times.

The post Best Practices for Including Infographics in Your Blog Posts appeared first on BlogPaws.

Best Practices for Including Infographics in Your Blog Posts syndicated from https://thehuntingdogblog.wordpress.com/

0 notes