Bury the Dead (with a Stitch Through the Stars)

@inklings-challenge

1.

though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light

i have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night

[The Old Astronomer To His Pupil, Sarah Williams]

Thirsty.

It’s the only thing she can think. It’s all dark and her eyes are sticky shut and she’s so thirsty. It isn’t supposed to make a sound.

Her eyes flicker open to the weak barking whine that come out of her without meaning to. “Thirsty,” she whines, though it’s not supposed to sound like that. When she blinks the stickiness from her eyes a person comes into view, blurry at first. It isn’t one she recognizes. She hopes this one won’t hurt her. She hopes this one will help her.

“Ah, there you are,” says the person in a soft rumbly voice. It’s a man with strangely colored eyes and a wiry beard speckled and striped with white around his mouth. He presses a hand to her back, making her shiver, and she sits up almost surprised to have been lying like that. 

“Alright, there you go,” says this careful man. He tips his head in a question she cannot answer, then quickly walks away. She wants to follow him, instinctively, but thinks she does not have the strength. So she just whimpers. There is no one else to hear her. But it’s as if that calls the man back, because he returns with a worried look and holding a small clear cup. She can nearly smell the liquid inside it, can taste it already, and finds her limbs flailing as she reaches for it. 

The strange man holds up a finger. She knows that that means wait. She forces herself to still and the man smiles behind his beard. That’s good, isn’t it? 

“Drink it slowly,” he says. “Don’t shock your system. You’ll feel very thirsty for a while, but you had an IV the entire time to keep you hydrated.”

She isn’t sure what most of that means, but she tries to drink the cool, sweet water slowly like he said. She wants this man to be happy with her. She dips her tongue into the cup first, as if to lap it up, and ends up spilling much of it when her hands fumble. 

“Careful, now,” chuckles the man. He has a familiar rolling accent, and she both knows and does not know the language he speaks in. “You were a part of the younger batch, but your charts didn’t show a name,” he says once she has sipped down all of the water. “You can call me Daniel,” he continues. “and you are?”

She tips her head sideways. There is only a piece of something she thinks may have been a name, once. “I don’t know,” she tries to say, her voice raspy from dis- and mis-use. 

The man, Daniel, nods. He turns and writes something down somewhere. She tenses at this. This is familiar. She doesn’t think this is good. “That’s perfectly alright,” Daniel reassures her, though. “Amnesia is a noted side effect of this type of cryogenic inducement, especially at these rates.”

She tries to clear her throat. It sounds like a growl. “Is it… forever?” She asks. It does not bother her. She would just like to know, since it seems that she can ask. 

Daniel hesitates, tipping first one shoulder up and then the other, one side and then the next, like swaying back and forth. “Most often, no. It can be permanent in some cases, but usually it’s a case of time and patience. You’ll be fine,” he says kindly. “Do you have a name you would like me to call you in the meantime?” 

She thinks of the last warm voice she remembers. It fades in and out of her memory, black and white. “I think…” she licks her lips. “Lai?” And watches for a reaction. 

Daniel nods. He writes another thing down, maybe her name? And smiles. “It’s good to meet you, Lai. I’ve already told you my name. I’m this vessel’s generational medic. If you have any health concerns, you may come to me anytime. And since you seem to be suffering from post-cryosleep memory loss, let me explain:

“We are aboard the mid-journey ship Aleya, en route to an experimental colony on the upper edges of the star Earendel’s solar range. As you likely learned in school before your boarding, if you remember that, humans can only stay in a cryogenized state for so long before bodily systems begin to break down, so this journey has been planned in stages. You and I will not see the light of Earendel in our lifetimes.” His voice quietens at this, a wry smile faintly visible in his eyes if not his mouth. “This generation will grow old and reproduce and raise each other so that when they are of a safe age, the next can go to sleep knowing they will wake in their new home.” 

Lai sits very still, watching Daniel intently. All of what he is saying sounds very big. Big words she does not know, big ideas she can’t understand, but what she does hear is that what they are doing is big, very big, bigger than anything she’s done before. “I’m… important?” She hears herself say, strange raspy high voice she isn’t used to. 

Daniel nods, smiles again. She likes that. The smile directed at her, mostly, but also the being important. She thinks she’s been told that before. She thinks it’s nice. She tips her head. “So what now?” She questions. There must be more beyond this space they’re in. How much is there she can’t see? From what Daniel said, everything seems very vast. She isn’t sure about that.

Daniel breathes out thoughtfully. “There are semi-private living quarters enough for everyone onboard this craft. You were the last of the batch to come out of cryo, so I will escort you to re-meet the rest of them, so you won’t run the risk of getting lost. Do you feel strong enough to walk a slight distance?” 

She hesitates, then nods. She believes she can manage, but Daniel still has to steady her for a moment when she slides from the cot she was on. Standing on two feet feels strange. She looks up at Daniel, nervously licking her lips. She sneezes.

“будь здоро́ва,” Daniel chuckles as Lai stares at him, wide-eyed. She feels her face form into a grin, teeth showing and all.

“мой родной язык,” She exclaims in kind. My mother tongue! 

Daniel nods thoughtfully. “I thought as much. It’s mine as well, ancestrally at least.” He says the last as an aside, half quietly and looking off as it at nothing before his gaze fixes back onto Lai. “Shall we go?” He holds out his hand in beckoning and from instinct, Lai reaches out and takes it. Daniel watches this, puzzled, but does not pull his hand away and she is grateful. 

He leads her into a long, high-roofed hallway, walking slowly as if he worries she cannot keep up. But she does. She follows him by the hand through the tall white halls, head turned wonderingly up to see the ceiling, tiled in reflective blue. “What is that?” She asks softly. 

Daniel follows her gaze up. “Ah. Stained glass,” he says. “This hall ends in the chapel, if you were to return the way we’ve just come,” he explains. “The stained glass lights the way. I like to think it offers some semblance of hope, as well. The rest of the Aleya is not so artful.” 

The blue-ceilinged hall opens into a wide, vast place that immediately dizzies her when she reaches it, and she grasps onto Daniel’s hand harder. There are platforms at all levels around the edges of the tall, too tall walls, some wrapping all the way as far as she can see and disappearing into halls that must be similar to the one they’ve just emerged from. She gasps softly taking it all in, layers upon layers of floors and platforms, small forms moving around atop them and at the bottom, maybe a real floor. There are dozens of enormous glass windows, filled with inky blackness broken up by specks and swirls of light. It’s familiar. It scares her. It’s all she can see. 

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Asks Daniel softly. She looks up at him again, eyes pleading, don’t leave me, keep me safe. “Are you okay?”

Lai shudders. “это огромно,” She whispers. It’s vast.

Daniel hums and nods. “действительно.” Indeed, he tells her. “It’s our whole world.” 

He leads her across the platforms in a complicated thread where her feet stutter and hesitate at times. She follows blindly, still staring around at this place, so big, so cold. She can hardly wrap her head around it. The sky outside is so dark, but is it still the sky with them in it? She doesn’t know. She isn’t sure she wants to know. The sky is their whole world, it seems.

They turn down another hall, plain ceiling tiles above them instead of stained glass. She follows them with her eyes, losing count every few, and follows Daniel by sound. His footsteps are steady, steady, then stop and Lai finds herself in a more shadowy room, where there’s a rustle of blended sounds and smaller doors that lead off into who knows where.

There are more people in there, in varying states of motion. A man with dark skin sits on a rounded, cushioned bench frowning and squinting at a flat, glowing object in his hand. Two children hover behind a different man who stands in a corner speaking to a woman with green eyes. In a chair near a doorway there is a girl with curly hair holding a book, turned sideways with her legs thrown over the arm of the chair. Scattered all about the room are little metal bottles that she is sure are full of water. 

“Last one?” Asks the dark skinned man, looking up. He sets down the glowing thing and stands. “Took a while, didn’t it?” 

“She did,” Daniel agrees, lightly squeezing Lai’s hand before letting go. She tries to not be upset at that. But then he puts his hand on her shoulder and it warms her. “This is Lai. She’s suffering from a touch of post-freeze memory loss, so if someone would like to help her settle in…” 

The girl with the book unfolds herself from the chair. “I’ve got her, doctor,” She says in a lilting accent. “There is a bed in our cabin anyway, with Marla and her sister as well.” She offers Lai a smile. “I’m Esperanza.” 

“Hello,” Lai says. This girl is taller than her, moves strangely. Her hair is long and curly. Lai thinks she is interesting. 

“I will leave you to settle in,” says Daniel. Lai turns to watch him go and wishes he wouldn’t leave. “Желаю вам удачи,” He says in their shared first language. I wish you good luck. 

Perfectly smol

guys please we can NOT restart ace discourse rn there’s still sex scene discourse residue everywhere it’s gonna make mustard gas

furries are fucking awesome man reblog this post if you think furries are awesome

i love it when men r muscular and sweating and panting and when they wear tight shirts that show off their chests and sweaty and dirty and *gunshots*

i also like catboys and twinks tho too don’t worry guys :3

uh oh watching xxi and im so fucking unwell…. NEED to kill the director of this episode because that sequence of flint breaking down in his cabin is SOOOO fucking good. how 3/4 of the scene is shot from behind flint so he’s left in shadow and the only time we see his face it’s only half of it… as if his grief and rage and pain is still something only he can see… and even at the end, when we are so close to seeing his full face, the camera slowly backs away and hides him from view with the table, as if warning us that this view into flint is not for us. we hover so close to the edge— we are right over his shoulder, we see his shaking hands, we see him slump, we hear him sob— but we are not allowed in. the cinematography really reinforces the message that no one, not flint’s crew, not silver, and not even us, the audience, gets to see the shattered man underneath, because that undoes it all. that breaks the illusion of the monster of the high seas. and that’s the last thing they can afford to do now.

And on this Valentine’s I almost broke down in tears at a wife’s dedication to her heart surgeon husband whose brain is deteriorating with a rare case of dementia

wait I have one more ramble in me. botw shows how pinning all of the fate of the world on two chosen ones is maybe a terrible idea, both for how it affects the chosen ones and how it leaves the world doomed if they fail. and it lets them fail! it comes this close to questioning if things have to even be like this at all, if we have to follow what the legends say. but then it can’t really go the full mile, bc this is still a loz game, and you’re playing as link, and only you can defeat the calamity.

but I still think it manages to shake the table in an interesting way. you don’t need the master sword, you can use any old weapon. you can meander around aimlessly forever and leave hyrule doomed if you choose to play that way, and you don’t run out of things to do. your friends (in a more direct manner I feel like than past sages) can do SIGNIFICANT damage to calamity ganon before you even touch him. It feels less like your divine duty and more like you’re righting a past wrong. some of that is a consequence of the new looser open world format but it’s still in the game! It still has story and thematic implications to me! i think maybe that’s another reason why the shift in tone abt how totk talks abt link irks me lol

Bad Omens were right when they said true color always fades under the right lights.

Ok this has been bothering me all day. I saw a post talking about how Rauru and Sonia did more for Zelda than Rhoam did and… I’m once again going to defend Rhoam, cuz that’s a very unfair thing to say and a horrible comparison to make.

Rauru and Sonia helped Zelda with her time powers and learning about the secret stone. Rhoam didn’t help her with her sealing power. Why? Cuz he has no magic and he clearly wasn’t the one who had it. Her mother was the one who had the power and was the one to teach her. Rhoam had no idea what he was doing, he didn’t understand the magic, and he hoped that if she dedicated her life that it would awaken so that the calamity wouldn’t destroy their home.

Well he should’ve tried to help her anyways right? Well, yes it’s easy to say that, unfortunately Rhoam was put in a very bad position of being king with the looming threat of the APOCALYPSE!!!! I think it’s implied that Rhoam married into the family, since his wife had the sealing power from the blood of the goddess or whatever, and seeing how he’s Hylian, he wasn’t a prince from another kingdom since all other kingdoms in this world have small round ears. For all we know, he was a prince consort who was never raised to be king. We don’t know what he was doing before, but with his wife’s sudden death and the responsibility of protecting his kingdom, he didn’t make the right choices. Which isn’t an excuse, but in his position, it’s an explanation. Rauru and Sonia didn’t have an apocalypse threatening to happen, in fact, they were in an era of peace and the future seemed bright. Of course they had time to hang out with Zelda and have tea parties with her. They seemed to be relaxed and having fun, which makes sense seeing how there didn’t seem to be much of a threat to their kingdom, minus Ganondorf, but I don’t think either of them saw him as a huge threat, seeing how they were absolutely blindsided by him.

It’s implied in AOC that Rhoam shouldered all of the responsibilities of the kingdom, and it seemed that he was under a significant amount of pressure during the calamity. And I feel like he mostly did that so Zelda could focus on awakening her power. She didn’t seem to have many responsibilities as princess save for awakening her power and helping out the champions. She is barely 17 so it makes sense that she’s not ruling the kingdom, but I do feel like Rhoam did all that stuff so she could focus on the calamity itself. And I’m sure in his stress he grew frustrated whenever Zelda focused more on the machines than awakening her power. Which was not the right thing to do, but come ON the world is literally about to end and the ONLY piece of the puzzle they need is Zelda!!! Some people forget that she HAD to awaken her powers otherwise the world was going to be destroyed! And it almost was cuz they were awakened too late! They were in such an unfair situation! And it’s not fair to compare him to Rauru and Sonia who were not in the same situation he was in, who were lying around in the grass and drinking tea because the calamity wasn’t there.

Rhoam is such a well written character that acts the way you’d expect someone in his situation to act. And he has so much regret over some of the things he’s had to do to protect Hyrule. You can read it in his journal where he finally gives up and desires to act more like a father to Zelda, you can see it when he takes Terrako away from Zelda, and you can see it when he’s a ghost 100 years after everything is destroyed. He’s so guilty but he did what he thought was best so that Zelda could not have a throne to nothing, so that Hyrule will be safe. And there’s a lot of things he could’ve done better, but people don’t act rational under that much stress. Like come on, would you? Don’t lie you absolutely wouldn’t.

And this post isn’t meant to diss on Rauru and Sonia, I like them in their own ways. But it’s kinda dumb whenever people love complex characters and then turn around and hate on characters like Rhoam and make them completely one-dimensional when they’re not. Y’all are completely unfair to Rhoam.

academic rivalry but it’s me pushing the kid who’s better than math than me down a flight of stairs

yes i’m still on this. morgan’s FACE, emily being physically unable to even watch jj and reid hug, the look and the nod between jj and morgan 😭 this episode gave us some juicy stuff okay!!!

Everything in the Amazon lotr series makes perfect sense when you learn that the show runners have literally no experience working on tv shows. None. 😂 J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay have barely any experience in the entertainment industry. And like if you check their IMDb, their only credits are a Flash Gordon screenplay for a movie that wasn’t made and “uncredited” writing on the 2016 Star Trek movie (meaning they weren’t an official part of the production but talked to J J Abrams every now and then.)

The only way I can praise the Amazon show is the way you’d praise something written by a kid…”like wow this is your first try? Your first time ever working in tv and writing a fantasy story? This is good for a first try! Nice work! Your mom should hang it on the fridge!” The real question though is like, why didn’t they give biggest budget of any tv series ever made to people who had literally ANY experience showrunning ahsjndndnd.

To be honest I’m baffled at people who say this show is “desecrating tolkien” because like…first off, desecrating tolkien can be super cool. He sucked sometimes. Second, “desecrating tolkien” implies they were creating a story that had something specific to say about Tolkien, and they knew how to use their medium to convey what they wanted to say. But like…they didn’t. The Amazon series can’t desecrate tolkien, it’s relying on tolkien as a crutch to tell an amateur story that would be literally totally incoherent without you filling in the blanks with prior knowledge gained from the books and from other better adaptations.

I’m baffled at people trying to act like Amazon is being progressive with this series when its sorta like…the peak of conservative Hollywood nepotism? Two upper middle-class white dudes with literally no idea how to run a tv show because they have never been part of the process, ever, were gift wrapped the highest budget for any tv show ever made— not because they deserved to make the most expensive tv series ever made, but because they were upper middle class white dudes who happened to know famous people in Hollywood. People work in television their whole lives for the chance to be a showrunner and these two mediocre white dudes who have barely done any professional writing were handed the most expensive tv series of all time.

And it shows! It explains why the show doesn’t feel as expensive as it is. The process was “run” by people who literally have never needed to understand how creating a tv show works.

Everything feels so clumsy, unfocused, and generic because it’s being showrun by people who do not have enough experience to know what they’re doing.

It feels like someone’s first published work because it is. there’s some vague generic theme about being corrupted by darkness but it’s portrayed with all the grace and subtlety of showrunners who have no experience telling stories professionally, don’t understand how to do it, and so are just turning to the audience and flatly saying what the themes are supposed to be in bland boring language. (They couldn’t even find relevant quotes from the books to use instead— at least then it would sound pretty. Tolkein’s language is almost entirely absent from the show. :P)

There’s a lack of specificity— the tone veers wildly from “epic and idealized like the Pj films” to “relentlessly gory and cruel like GOT,” and almost no quotes from the books appear in the show despite language being so important to the feel of middle earth— because the showrunners are too busy struggling to learn the basics of showrunning for the first time to figure out things like “how to set a consistent tone.”

Characters turn to the camera and spoon-feed the audience information like we’re stupid and constantly reiterate exposition from previous episodes because the show runners have never worked on tv shows before, and don’t have enough confidence to trust the audience to understand anything.

The pacing is so bizarre and wonky, and the introductions of important characters/McGuffins is so clumsy, because the showrunners have never done this before ever on any tv show.

The show doesn’t look like the most expensive tv show of all time (even though it is) because the show runners don’t understand how to budget visual effects effectively. Tons of expensive labor is wasted on dream sequences and meaningless one-off plot beats that don’t add anything to the story when they could’ve been spent on the actual important emotional story moments.

And of course the way the show handles gender and race is so hollow because it’s driven by two white male nepotism hires tackling these topics for the Very First Time. They decide to handle sexism in middle earth by making it a world where patriarchy just doesn’t seem to exist(?), but they’re also not willing to actually genuinely imagine what that would look like. so we get a world where “there’s no patriarchy” but most the warriors/leaders are still men, all the women still dress in feminine clothing/hairstyles and all the men have masculine clothing/hairstyles, no women are butch and no men are effeminate, a woman fighting/showing up in battle armor is framed as a big cool reveal, and every single relationship is suffocatingly heterosexual (and there isn’t even the possibility of queer relationships/homoerotic subtext.) They had three POC play some of the side characters but were careless in how they handled them, in a way that’s a disservice to the talented actors— for example the character they marketed as “the first black elf in tolkien” is immediately thrown into a plotline where people are racist to him for being an elf and then he’s captured into slavery and spends a few episodes in chains driven around by white orcs with whips in a way that makes you realize the creators were too white to think about the optics of this. They also don’t tackle the root issues with the way tolkein portrayed race (the idea that different races are different Species with immutable personality traits) and just take his racist assumptions for granted. Meanwhile, every scene where people are “fantasy racist” against white blonde Galadriel for being an elf is handled with all the grace of a white teenager who just realized racism was maybe Bad writing their first fiction story saying Deep Things About Society for a high school assignment. Can you imagine how much more thoughtful writing we would’ve gotten from literally ANY of the far more talented experienced female and poc directors in Hollywood, people who understood how to tackle gender/race in their writing and who understood how to actually run a show? But no, the show has to be handed to two white dudes who have literally no experience writing for tv and no relevant credits, just because they’re white men who are well connected, and we have to trust tHese people to condescendingly explain the importance of diversity to us like we’re children. And then we have to pretend to like it because theres a massive right wing backlash against the show for being “so woke” (when it isn’t). ANSJSJJDJDJD

I just kinda…don’t understand? Why give so much money to people who have no experience and don’t know what they’re doing? People whose only qualifications are being random white dudes who know famous people?

It feels like such a waste of money and resources to throw so much into what’s essentially a training exercise for people who’ve never run a show before. The Amazon series is longer than the first two PJ films but it doesn’t feel that way because the showrunners don’t understand how to use a medium they have never worked in.

Like Peter Jackson had never directed anything on the scale of LOTR, but he had directed plenty of movies (with the writers who later partnered with him on lotr) before he was allowed to make it, AND had spent years pitching his scripts around Hollywood and helping develop the technology used for the visual effects. Heck, Ralph Bakshi had made animated movies before, and Rankin/Bass had worked on tv specials. As much as all those adaptations are flawed like?????????? I genuinely don’t understand why you wouldn’t hire more qualified people for the most expensive tv show of all time. or even just. Anyone who had literally any qualifications at all.

But I guess I’m thinking about this all wrong because…their lack of experience is likely why they were hired. Because of the complicated legal and rights issues happening behind the scenes, Amazon likely didn’t want to hire anyone who would have a coherent vision and a clear idea of how to execute that vision. The show needed to bow to the mandates of Amazon but ALSO the copyright issues (they don’t have the rights to actually adapt most of the stuff dealing with the history they’re adapting), the mandates of the Tolkien estate (who were allowed to make whatever petty changes they wanted to the story at any time) and the mandates of New Line Cinema (who were allowing Amazon to ape the style of their movies to get l publicity for their brand but are also completely willing to enforce copyright and demand change if they felt Amazon was stepping on their toes, and etc etc). Amazon needed inexperienced people who would go along with whatever they were told to do. Someone who had a clear vision and knew how to execute it would fight against the dumb corporate mandates. Someone who has literally never worked in tv before would assume Amazon knew best and do whatever they were told.

I don’t know, I feel the same way I do about the hobbit films where it’s just—it’s such a waste? It’s such a waste. It’s such a waste of time and a waste of labor, on a project that (because of weird corporate nonsense) has no clear artistic vision and only exists to be part of a lucrative Brand(tm.)

I won’t be watching the next season— I assume the the future seasons will be “better” because the show runners have now had their very first season of experience working in television ever (good for them and congrats on breaking into the industry for the first time etc etc), but that doesn’t change what a massive corporate waste the first eight hours were— again, that’s longer than the first two PJ films but it doesn’t feel like It because it’s so directionless and devoid of a clear artistic vision. Idk as long as the only Lord of the Rings adaptations we’re legally allowed to get are massive Mega corporate ones funded off the suffering of all the underpaid Amazon workers who die in the warehouses, you would think the adaptations would at least be good XD. Again, can you imagine what more experienced and talented directors with a long history of working in TV, and who were free to execute their artistic vision, could’ve done with such a giant budget? Can you imagine if corporations didn’t waste an entire season of television as the world’s most expensive training wheels for people who’d never seriously worked in tv before? Can you imagine how much good art we could get if Hollywood was actually a meritocracy? Idk dudes, idk.

so there’s no way they’re not making a graham plushie too right … because why else would flint have his guitar… and pride month is Next month…… so like… yknow…

I have a lot of new followers so just to make it clear I love trans people and neopronouns are cool as fuck and linguistically interesting and it/its pronouns are also awesome and whatever pronouns or language you use to describe yourself is real as fuck.

me when i’m literally sooo chill and nonchalant about being trapped inside a computer till the end of time like i literally do not care at all seriously idgaf I fr don't I really couldnt care less