Walking With Henry ✨

“You’re the one who asked if the Cod Empire had stories,” Jimmy says, sitting next to Scott by the edge of a mangrove island. In the distance in the swamp, they can watch several young codfolk attempt to play—Scott doesn’t know the name of the game. Something that involves a lot of treading water and throwing a ball around and makes Scott look exhausted just watching it, at least.

“Yeah, but I don’t get it. Don’t fables normally have like… morals?” Scott says. “The ones I knew did.”

“I mean, I’d say the story about the catfish was always pretty clear to me,” Jimmy says. “Doesn’t change, but adapts. It’s willing to eat anything, but not change who it is, and it outlives the goldfish, who change all the time, because of it—”

And Scott stands, distant from Ren but still covered in blood, red crystals floating around him. He raises his sword silently, then he sits down with the axolotl and waits. He’d finish it himself, but he’s always simply tried to survive, survive without changing who he is in the process. He doesn’t know if he’s succeeded. His teeth taste like iron and bile. If he’d been about to throw up, though, he would have done it days ago. Maybe that’s what victory tastes like.

“—that’s a moral, right?”

“Other people change the goldfish though. The goldfish don’t choose to change. That’s… that’s the point of goldfish breeding, Jimmy.”

“Yeah, and they die if you breathe on them funny. Don’t you know what a metaphor is? You’re the one who said fables normally have lessons!”

Scott sighs. “Yeah, yeah. Fine.” He sighs. “The oyster one, though.”

“Well that one’s just literal. Did you not know you can crack open oysters to check water quality? They’re a good indicator!”

Scott throws his hands up. “No! I didn’t grow up by the ocean! And the story’s more like that an animal just kills the oyster one day, and it finds out the pain the oyster had been preventing—”

And as Jimmy bleeds out on the grass, he realizes he’s bleeding out for them a second time. He hears, distant, Grian justify himself, but all Jimmy feels is like he’s somehow been cheated. He’s been killed first, again. The first name in a bloodbath of them. How is that fair? He’s never asked to die first! He’s never asked to die at all!

“—which is just. Really sad for the oyster?”

“Scott, they’re oysters.”

“They’re fables! We were just talking about metaphors!” Scott flops back. It’s undignified. He’ll get leaves in his hair, and mud all over his clothes. He doesn’t care. Here, the mangroves in the brackish swamp water smell like salt and something he hadn’t smelled anywhere else, and it doesn’t smell good, really, but he’s figured out it smells like life, and also maybe Jimmy, in a way that makes it easy to not care quite so much about appearances. Maybe it’s the bird in him, he thinks jokingly. He does have wings, and so many of the birds come to roost around trees like these.

They’re quiet for a while, Scott flopped back, children screaming and laughing in their game, and Jimmy watching all of them.

“Did you have a favorite?” Jimmy finally asks.

“Would it be cliche to say the one about the lovers? The seahorses, the one who builds a beautiful thing for his lover.”

“They die in the end, though.”

“Yeah, but, like—”

The war never comes to the hobbit hole. It’s funny; in the end, the two of them had gone to the war instead, when it came looking. Maybe they’d known better. Maybe, thinks Scott, in the afterlife their four hands had built, maybe they’d known better than to taint it.

“—the things they made were real.”

“Huh.”

Jimmy helps Scott up again. He looks at Scott in the eyes in that way that makes Scott either want to kiss him or strangle him. Scott’s never fully decided which, which probably makes it all the stranger that he’s sitting here, getting covered in swamp water and talking about fables.

“And yours?”

“Mine? Oh, uh, it’s one—funny, I think I learned it from Lizzie? I have no idea why that would be.”

Scott raises an eyebrow.

“It’s simple. It’s just that all things start as water, and all things will be water again one day.”

“…what? Why would that story be your favorite?”

Jimmy is quiet for quite a while.

“Maybe it’s because… no matter how badly we were to mess up…”

And he watches the explosion and he runs, he runs, because he doesn’t know what else to do.

“…no matter how bad of a decision we have to make…”

And Scott looks at the sword, and looks at Xonorth, and he doesn’t know what else he could do.

“…we’ll always end up back where we started.”

“That’s… oddly optimistic,” Scott says, although he’s not really sure that’s what he thinks about it. Somehow, instead of optimistic, it makes Scott feel like he’s somehow both too big and too small for his skin, thinking of the world like that. Thinking of everything going back to how it started.

On a circle, once again, they agree on their rules, and they shake hands, and they make their kingdoms. Again, and again, and—

“Well, I do like to keep cheerful when I can!” Jimmy says brightly. “Oh look, they’ve finished with their game!”

“Yeah,” Scott says. “So they have.”

love how no matter what, in all the pjo adaptations, grover has been nonwhite. filipino grover in the musical, black grover in the movies, and desi grover in the tv show

I hear people talk about how punk clothing is expensive, how you don’t have enough money to buy docs so obv you aren’t a real punk, how you can’t buy pins anywhere, how punk jewelry is sooo expensive BULLSHIT

The backbone of punk is diy. Punk is messy, punk is making the best of what you have. Nothing is more punk than making your own beauty with the shit you find scattered about

Wanna have docs? Buy some knock offs for 20 bucks and add some spikes no one will care

Want patches? Embroider on some old fabric. Use paint, bleach, markers, whatever you have. If that’s not good enough, buy from small businesses when you can

Want pins? Make em. Use safety pins and a bottle cap and you got a pin. Just paint something on, if you don’t have paint, I’ve used white out and pens just do whatever. Also fr just um borrow from any big shitty chain store, not from small businesses tho

Want jewelry? Pliers are your best friend. Fix broken jewelry with em, use chains u found to make something. I’ve used a hanging plant wire to make a barbed wire bracelet with nothing but pliers. Just fuck around. Buy from small businesses and again, big shitty chains are fair game

Want spikes and cool metal shit? Literally just take any metal like literally anything and stick it to your clothes. Safety pins, can tabs (esp monster ones bc fun colors) lighter caps, make spikes out of cans, take chains outta the recycle bin

Punk is the most accessible subculture. Punk was made by people with no money, and anyone who tells you you need fancy shit to be punk ain’t a real punk. Punk is about fucking around with the idea of what you should be, so just have fun! There are literally no rules!

happy gf 10 year anniversary

ever since i saw this live i had a dream of putting a star wars duel theme over the sheriff kill. so here u go. my favorite part of the last friday night stabby

music: john williams - duel of the fates (star wars soundtrack)

There is so much poetic justice going on around him.

There’s Grian and Scar, for one, which is enough to exhaust a whole season’s worth of poetry. The allies, the murderers, the fatal flaws, the victor and his final kill. As if that doesn’t cover it, there’s Impulse and Bdubs, the traitor and the betrayed, the two stubbornly insisting on a marriage through gritted teeth. Whoever said the universe doesn’t have a sense of humour is in for a bit of a reality check.  

And here’s the reality check – there’s Scott and Pearl. Except Scott doesn’t even pair up with Pearl, he chooses someone else – and yet, the person he chooses isn’t Jimmy. And Cleo hands him the flower, a daffodil, too yellow, and Scott makes a joke. And Jimmy jokes back, and the poetry around them shatters.

Keep reading

Hanging Lantern Pins // Arcane Spell on Etsy

it's been said before and i'm sure said better than i can phrase it. but really, really - if you like making "i'm going to kill myself" jokes, please try switching to being ironically conceited instead.

anytime something goes wrong, say things like "ah well at least i'm beautiful and charming and everyone loves me." when you forget something, try "my big huge brain is so smart and thinking about too many other very big wizardly thoughts you wouldn't even understand." when you're frustrated by one of your symptoms, start talking like you're in My Immortal. "Life has come for me but my eyes are beautiful pools of gorgeous fire and my hair is amazing. I stuck my middle finger up at life and told it to fuck off and it did."

just... try it for a month or two. try saying the most absurdly self-congratulatory shit you can think of.

i know it's tempting to make suicide or self-harm jokes. and for me at least, a decade ago (!) when someone suggested i stop making those kinds of jokes, i was kind of at a loss for what to replace them with. i wanted to make light of these moments, but genuinely (at the time) my first thought really was suicidal ideation. there was a part of me that even felt like ... i was kind of "making light" of that voice. that if i could say i want to die lol, it would help take the sting out of that genuine (albeit passive) desire. like i could turn my illness into a joke.

when i started complimenting myself instead, it felt awkward and stupid. it felt really, really ironic. what i was actually saying was nobody would ever think this stuff about me, that's what makes it so fucking funny.

but. the effect was immediate. first thing i noticed was the people around me. when i dropped a glass and said ah my skin is too beautiful and sleek the glass has swooned and broken for me, other people were suddenly overjoyed to jump in with the joke. rather than making an awkward moment, we'd both start cracking up. ah princess sleek hands, i've heard of you.

i was 19. i hadn't noticed i'd been making others tense when i said i want it all to end. i know now that it's incredibly hard to know how to walk that moment - do you talk to them about your concern? do you potentially make them uncomfortable by asking if they're okay? do you ignore the situation? do you help them pick up the glass, or do they need to do it by themselves? are they genuinely made suicidal over this small moment? and most importantly, how do you - without professional training or supplies - actually help?

most people want to help you pick up the glass in your life, they just have no fucking idea how to do it. they don't want to make anything worse. they don't want to make assumptions about you. they love you, they're scared for you - and being scared makes people kind of freeze up. it's not because they don't love you. it's because they do.

now when something bad happens, my first thought is how can i make a stupid joke about this. it isn't my brain saying you're a dumb fucking bitch. i spend more time laughing. i spend more time being gentle with myself. i spend more time feeling good.

and the thing is - what's kind of funny - is that you'd be surprised by how many people agree with you. the first time i said i'm too pretty to understand that, someone else said to be fair you're the prettiest person in this room. i promise - you really don't know how kindly your friends see you. but they love you for a reason. they sort of reverse-velveteen-rabbit you. your weird and ugly spots fade away and you just become... the love they want to give you.

go love yourself ironically. the worst thing that happens is that you end up tricking your reflection into actually loving you.

Who’s your favourite content creator outside the minecraft sphere? I’m curious

What do you mean they all died/lost their memories/left to wander in exile? I’m pretty sure everyone’s just hanging out at a pool party actually~

I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since the first episode of Empires!! I made this as a celebration and I had such a blast with it :DDD Be sure to zoom to spot all the details, and lemme know if you want me to post some closeup shots!