#Oblivion-Time writes

[orcusnoir]

"You know what I hate?" The Champion asked to no one in particular as he watched over the slow boiling pot of stew.

"Uh... Not having enough spices?" The Captain asked from his seat at the table.

Wild gave a nod. "Not what I was going for, but yes."

"Then what do you hate, Champ?" Wars asked while glancing over to the Vet. Legend was currently trying to stack his fork and knife on top of each other to no avail.

"How do I put this?" Wild tapped his chin in thought.

"As bluntly as you can." Hyrule chimed in.

"Fair enough. Why are certain clothes locked to certain people? It's fucking cloth." Wild complained with a laugh.

At first Wars was going to chide Wild for the language, but... He just couldn't. Wild had a point here.

"FINALLY!" Wind's loud voice startled Wars a bit as the Sailor had been awfully quiet in his seat. "Tetra and I both hate that stupid shit. What do you mean I can't wear heels? I'm trying to feel tall, and Tetra hates heels, and so somebody has to wear them."

"Tell me about it." Wild started. "Zelda let me try on one of her old royal dresses, don't ask how they survived a hundred years, and somebody had issues with that."

The Captain just laughed. Damn those social rules indeed. Wild in a dress wasn't something he was expecting to hear about today, but it was something that he could picture.

And the Champion would rock that dress.

"Heh, I've been thinking those rules were stupid since I knew they existed. So, since I was nine." Time joined the conversation. "I didn't even know what the big deal was back then."

"I'd ask how, but I'm afraid the answer would be too confusing." Twilight said.

"Oh, not at all, I was raised by forest spirits and a giant tree." The Old Man nonchalantly explained. "They didn't have concepts like "male" and "female." So imagine my confusion."

A claim that he made often but never elaborated on. Everyone, besides the Captain and Wind, thought it was a lie or a ruse.

Warriors just laughed, he couldn't help it.

"Oh little Mask and his insisting that he's a tree." Wars felt everyone's eyes turn to him.

Time laughed loudly. "You made that corporals life hell."

"I did not have time for that guy's bullshit. We are in the middle of a fucking war, if the kid says he's a tree then he's a fucking tree." Wars started to lose his composure from all of his laughing.

"What do you mean by "he's a tree"?" Sky asked while scratching his head.

"Again, I was raised by forest spirits." Time explain. "You lot, besides two, think this a lie. It's not."

"Time, your life profoundly confuses me." Sky said. "So they assigned you a tree?"

Time nodded.

"Instead of anything else?"

Another nod.

"Not like a boy tree? Just a tree?"

Another nod. "Two trees, to be exact. But yes."

"Two trees?"

"Maple and oak, to be exact."

Wars just watch the conversation with a grin. Oh, poor Sky. He must be feeling the same confusion that he and the Sailor had during the war.

"I feel so understood." Rulie said with the widest smile imaginable. "I'm just a Fae." He shrugged as the others turned to face him. "Not the legend kind of Fae. I was raised by Fairies."

"Well, now you can be a Fae tree. How lovely." Time stated with a laugh.

"What kinda tree?"

"Hmmm, you and the Captain both have the same one. Pine, and you can have maple too. As a treat."

"A Fae pine and maple tree. Nice."

"Are we just gonna brush over the fact that Wars already has a tree identity?" Legend asked.

"I do too!" Wind but in. "Take a guess, it's so obvious."

"Uh...Palm tree?" Twilight asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Correct!"

"What tree am I then?" Wild asked while seasoning a few cuts of meat.

"Willow." Time and Warriors both spoke at the same time.

"Damn, that was fast."

"You had this conversation before, hadn't you?" Sky asked while keeping his gaze locked to Wars. "So tell us our trees."

"Oh, alright, I'll try to remember all the specifics. It's been a while." Time laughed while tapping his fingers on the table.

"It all reminds me of the Minish. They have leaves instead of trees, though." Four, who had been quietly observing this whole time, finally spoke up.

"Oh, the Kokiri had leaves too. That's a whole other thing."

#linkeduniverse #linked universe #lu writing #lu time #lu twilight #lu sky #lu wind #lu wild #lu wars #lu warriors #lu legend #lu hyrule #lu chain #lu headcanons #queers them into oblivion #they might not have the terms but they've got the feelings #look me in the eyes and tell me that Time who was raised by a tree knew what a boy and a girl was #lu fic

[whinlatter]

Harry’s thoughts of Ginny in the Forest: a meta

‘Nothing too big, because you wouldn't be able to take it with you... I wanted you to have something to remember me by.' - DH, p. 99 (UK edition)

Here I am, on a rainy Thursday, doing re-reads for some writing and thinking about the parallels between Harry and Ginny's kiss on his birthday, and Harry’s thoughts of Ginny as he goes to his death. 

I’m thinking differently about Ginny’s motivations for the kiss these days. I used to think about her words to Harry that morning, and the act of kissing him, as a promise she’ll wait for when he comes back. Lately, I’m wondering if it’s not something sadder, and more profound. I think what Ginny does on Harry’s seventeenth is the act of a person who is starting to process the fact that the person she loves is likely going to his death — that he might not be coming back. It's a scene of a person bracing for grief and thinking about love after death, and it will set the stage for how Harry meets his own death in the Forest.

So here’s a much-too-long meta to help me think through these ideas - about the kiss, Ginny’s suspicions about Harry’s fate, and what it means that Harry returns to the memory of Ginny at the end of his life. (Stick the kettle on for this one and if you worked this all out long ago before me, just give me an eye roll and forgive me).

I’ve always taken Ginny's words to Harry before their kiss at face value. I thought of it not quite as a fun scene - it’s certainly sad - but sweet, a little sexy, and sort of reckless, even a bit mischievous on Ginny’s part.

It’s the birthday of the boy Ginny loves. They’re not together anymore. She knows he's going away. She wants to give him a birthday present, but she doesn't want to give him something he has to haul around or might lose. She does want to let him know that, despite their separation, her feelings are still the same. She craves a moment with him before he goes. She is still in love with him, she is deeply attracted to him, and part of her still feels a bit possessive. Although she’s not really concerned Harry’s going to crack on with some Veela, she does want him to have a memento of their time together. She wants him to have a happy memory, of physical intimacy and emotional comfort, to keep him going while he's away, to feel less alone.

Most of all, I used to think of the kiss (and whatever Ginny imagined might come after the kiss) as a promise. I still love you. Even though we’re not together and I respect why you have to go, I’m still all in on this. I’ll wait for you for when you come back. I want you to have the memory of this, as proof.

Harry’s reveal

But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I think about the context of when this kiss happens, after Harry and Ginny's last conversation before his birthday. It's the one a few days before, when Harry and Ginny are laying the table for dinner, and Harry lets slip to Ginny what he, Ron and Hermione will be doing when they leave:

'‘And then what does she think’s going to happen?’ Harry muttered. ‘Someone else might kill off Voldemort while she’s holding us here making vol-au-vents?’ He had spoken without thinking, and saw Ginny’s face whiten.‘So it’s true?’ she said. ‘That’s what you’re trying to do? ‘I - not - I was joking,’ said Harry evasively. (DH, 78-9, UK edition)

This is a desperately sad scene, but it’s also an important moment. Harry, so used to having his guard down with Ginny, realises he’s accidentally confessed something big: that he’s going on the run to try and kill Voldemort himself, with Ron and Hermione’s help. 

Ginny is shaken by this. As a character, she tends to either take things in her stride, or yells first, processes later. But this catches her off guard. Her words suggest there has been speculation about what it is the three of them are going off to do (‘So it’s true?’ suggests that Ginny, and perhaps other members of her family or the Order, have been speculating about this for some time). But both she and Harry realise here that he’s flippantly confirmed something huge that Ginny did not already know for sure. He’s spoken aloud the task is that Dumbledore has left him. 

It is a sign of how close Harry feels to Ginny, how safe he feels in her company, and how difficult he finds managing keeping secrets from her, that he lets this slip. He won’t come as close to telling the truth to anyone else, even people he trusts. The scene before this, in his conversation with Mrs Weasley, he didn’t let on nearly as much (though he admits that he found affirming the importance of secrecy difficult when he looked at Mrs Weasley and saw Ginny’s eyes staring back at him):

‘Well, Dumbledore left me . . . stuff to do,’ mumbled Harry. ‘Ron and Hermione know about it, and they want to come too.’ ‘What sort of ‘stuff’?’  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t—’  ‘Well, frankly I think Arthur and I have a right to know, and I’m sure Mr. and Mrs. Granger would agree!’ said Mrs. Weasley. Harry had been afraid of the “concerned parent” attack. He forced himself to look directly into her eyes, noticing as he did that they were precisely the same shade of brown as Ginny’s. This did not help… ‘Dumbledore didn’t want anyone else to know, Mrs. Weasley (…)  I didn’t misunderstand,’ said Harry flatly. ‘It’s got to be me.’ (DH, 77-8)

Later, he’ll also refuse to give any information to Lupin, for the same reason. 

'‘Can you confide in me what the mission is?’  Harry looked into the prematurely lined face, framed in thick but greying hair, and wished that he could return a different answer.  ‘I can’t, Remus, I’m sorry. If Dumbledore didn’t tell you I don’t think I can.’  ‘I thought you’d say that,’ said Lupin, looking disappointed.’ (DH, 173-4)

But with Ginny, he’s accidentally gone much further. He hasn’t said Horcruxes, but he’s as good as. The trio are setting off to try to kill Voldemort, the most dangerous task imaginable in this war. He tries, in vain, to undo it, but the damage is already done. Ginny knows more now than she did before: that the journey he’s about to go on is one that very likely will claim his life. 

What does Ginny know about Harry’s fate before this moment? 

It's clear from this interaction that Harry has never discussed any of this with Ginny before. In their breakup scene, Harry repeatedly said that he was breaking up with her for her own safety. He said he did not want her to be used as bait, as she already had been previously, and as Sirius was: 'Think how much danger you'll be in if we keep this up...' (HBP, 602). The focus was entirely on the risk to Ginny's life, a risk Harry says he cannot live with.

Ginny’s remarks at Dumbledore’s funeral told us something about how she, at that point, understood the path ahead for Harry. She made her half-joke that Harry was always busy saving the Wizarding World, and says she thinks he 'would never be happy', never fulfilled or satisfied, unless he were 'hunting Voldemort' (HBP, 603). She showed she interpreted his actions as choices being made by someone brave, determined, and personally committed to bringing about the end of Voldemort, not someone destined to. Harry’s motivations and reasons are ones she respects and empathises with. She knows the path ahead is dangerous. She doesn’t yet think of it as lethal. 

Harry didn’t respond to her assessments at the funeral, neither correcting nor confirming them. He didn’t let her know, at that stage, exactly what it is he is going to set off to do. The closest Harry came to revealing the road ahead for him in the break-up scene was this:

'It’s been like… like something out of someone else’s life, these last few weeks with you,' said Harry. 'But I can’t… we can’t… I’ve got things to do alone now.' She did not cry, she simply looked at him.’  (HBP, 602)

This is a pattern throughout their relationship, both as friends and later as romantic partners. Ginny knows a little, but not a lot, about Harry’s path. She thinks of it almost entirely as a decision he has made himself. Conversations about Harry’s destiny - about the Prophecy, about being the Chosen One, and, eventually, about the Horcrux hunt - happen near Ginny, but never with her. She does not seem to believe that Harry is the Chosen One or in any way bound to Voldemort's own fate. At the start of HBP, on the train in Slughorn’s carriage, Ginny states publicly her belief that any speculation about Harry being the Chosen One is nonsense: 

‘We never heard a prophecy,” said Neville, turning geranium pink as he said it. ‘That’s right,’ said Ginny staunchly. ‘Neville and I were both there too, and all this ‘Chosen One’ rubbish is just the Prophet making things up as usual.’ (HBP, 140)

Ultimately, before DH, Ginny has been given very little information. We can assume that she’s decided to respect Harry’s decision to keep any information from her and not to push for it. She has reason to fear he might be in danger, but she doesn’t yet know the full extent of it.

Ginny’s response

The immediate aftermath of Harry’s confession at the Burrow is very telling. 

‘They stared at each other, and there was something more than shock in Ginny’s expression. Suddenly Harry became aware that this was the first time that he had been alone with her since their stolen hours in secluded corners of the Hogwarts grounds. He was sure she was remembering them too.’ - DH (79)

It’s important that, immediately after this confession, Harry’s mind immediately takes him to private time spent alone with Ginny at the end of HBP. His certainty that Ginny, too, is reminiscing about them is typical of their wordless displays of understanding. They both reach for memories. And the memories of the last time he was alone with her, when they were still together, suddenly trigger an intense emotional and sexual tension. They are soon interrupted, and the dinner afterwards is extremely awkward. Harry wishes he were further away from Ginny, and tries, with great difficulty, to avoid touching her at the dinner table. The energy between them is intense and charged, anticipatory and frustrated. There are lots of ‘unsaid things’ that have just passed between them, and both are aware of it (DH, 79).

There are important themes being introduced here. Whenever Harry thinks about memories of his time with Ginny in DH, he does so consistently in two clear ways. To him, those times were private, intensely intimate moments which carried huge personal significance. It is strongly implied those were moments of sexual intimacy between the two of them, and where they shared an emotional closeness neither has found with any other character. But those moments with Ginny are also something Harry feels he was wrong to take. His relationship with her was something that, in retrospect, he embarked upon against his better judgement. He now feels it was something he was not entitled to, on account of his own burdens and obligations. Those were ‘stolen hours’ that were ‘something out of someone else’s life’. If we look to the wedding scene, we can see this most clearly:

‘‘Yes, my tiara sets off the whole thing nicely,’ said Auntie Muriel in a rather carrying whisper. ‘But I must say, Ginevra’s dress is far too low cut.’  Ginny glanced around, grinning, winked at Harry, then quickly faced the front again. Harry’s mind wandered a long way from the marquee, back to afternoons spent alone with Ginny in lonely parts of the school grounds. They seemed so long ago; they had always seemed too good to be true, as though he had been stealing shining hours from a normal person’s life, a person without a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead…’ (DH, 121) 

There are certain tropes at play here, that will that recur again and again in Harry’s thoughts of Ginny until the point of his death: the memory of time alone, the feeling of shared emotional and physical intimacy, to an intense degree; the sense of their time together being something stolen, both in the sense of it being snatched from within darker times, but also being forbidden, given with Harry’s fate when it comes to Voldemort. That Harry recalls these moments at a moment as two other characters make lifelong vows of marriage to each other is not insignificant: all is set up to maximise the sense of tragedy.

Ginny processing Harry’s fate

Ginny is not naive. Harry’s confession seems to change something about how she thinks about what he’s about to do. She may once have dismissed the prophecy of Harry as the Chosen One as nonsense. But she now has reason to suspect that might not quite be true.

She may well re-trace what she does know. After all, she was at the Department of Mysteries two summers prior, where she learnt that Voldemort, at least, thinks there is a prophecy of significance that involves Harry directly. She knows Harry has been having one-on-one lessons with Dumbledore: she even gave him one of the invitations (HBP, 228). She also knows that Harry and Dumbledore left school for a secret mission alone on the night the Astronomy Tower was attacked and Dumbledore was killed. She observed how Harry saw Dumbledore’s death as a catalyst to prepare for a path that required him to step back from her. Above all, we also know that Ginny is a character who understands Tom Riddle intimately. She is one of the people who comes closest to understanding the stakes of your life being bound, in some way, to Voldemort.

It is also significant that Ginny is a character canonically intrigued, and touched, by death, and by powerful Dark magic. The diary, and her own near-death experience, is the most obvious example. But in the Department of Mysteries during OotP, we are told she is also one of the characters most drawn to the veil, despite having far less direct experience of loss and grief than Harry, Luna, or even Neville:

‘[Harry] took several paces back from the dais and wrenched his eyes from the veil. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to — well, come on, then!’ said Hermione, and she led the way back around the dais. On the other side, Ginny and Neville were staring, apparently entranced, at the veil too. Without speaking, Hermione took hold of Ginny’s arm, Ron Neville’s, and they marched them firmly back to the lowest stone bench and clambered all the way back up to the door.’ (OotP, 775)

I don’t mean to suggest Ginny knew what was coming for Harry, that she foresaw him having to go to his death. She knows nothing of Horcruxes, she doesn’t know the contents of the Prophecy, and she certainly doesn’t know Harry himself is a Horcrux. Harry, of course, doesn’t yet know the certainty of him going to his own death, at this point in the text. But given the information she alone has been handed, inadvertently, by Harry, she has plenty of reason to begin to suspect the path Harry is on is one that might end in death, moreso for him than for an anyone else in this war.

Ginny doesn’t appear much in the following pages, other than in her role helping to prepare the house for the wedding. Over the next few days, she has lots of time to consider Harry’s words. We know she’s also sharing a bedroom with Hermione, who is actively preparing for their imminent departure, and watching the three of them try to sneak off together to make plans. This is time for Ginny to start to digest the information Harry has unwittingly divulged. She can now begin to think about how she ought to respond to the prospect of him leaving for a mission that will, likely, cost him his life.

The kiss itself

We can see Ginny has planned this interaction with Harry in her bedroom. The false casualness of how the scene opens - ‘Harry, can you come in here a moment?’ - and the actions of the bedroom’s other occupant, Hermione, suggests some level of premeditation and collaboration. For the first time, Ginny brings him into her bedroom, with the door closed. The setting is obviously intimate and suggestive.

Harry describes Ginny as seeming nervous, but purposeful, like she is readying herself for something - she ‘[takes] a deep breath’. She is looking at him ‘steadily’. Harry is nervous, too: he cannot bring himself to look at her, finding it almost painful, like ‘gazing into a brilliant light’ (DH, 98). Her trademark blazing look is in full force. She doesn’t entertain his attempts at small talk: she is serious about what she’s about to do.

‘‘I couldn’t think what to get you,’ she said.  ‘You didn’t have to get me anything.’ She disregarded this too.’ (DH, 98-9)

Ginny opens by revealing how difficult it has been for her to work out what she could give him, under the circumstances. She is, in her own way, acknowledging how hard she is finding processing what it is he has to do now. She has been struggling with the prospect of Harry’s departure, and the possibility, even the likelihood, of his death. But she has decided she wants to make that path easier for him. Despite his reassurance, she insists she wanted to give him something. 

‘‘I didn’t know what would be useful. Nothing too big, because you wouldn’t be able to take it with you.” He chanced a glance at her. She was not tearful...' (99)

These lines are so significant. The first two lines in particular are deeply profound. They read very differently to how I first thought of them, if seen in this light. I didn’t know what would be useful, she says, because she doesn't know what she can say that will be useful. What could possibly make this easier, to help Harry think about the enormity of his situation, or to help guide him on a path requiring him to accept his own likely death? 

She doesn’t want what she gives to him now to be too heavy, too sad, or too serious, because she knows Harry will not be able to deal with it (‘nothing too big’). Anything too declaratory, too sentimental, or too enormous, would be impossible for him to leave with. In the last part of the sentence, her words are deliberately vague: because you wouldn’t be able to take it with you. 

I think this is the most poignant part, and it suggests the part of Ginny's mind that believes in, and is curious about, what happens beyond, after death: the voices on the other side of the veil. I think there is some part of her that thinks Harry might be going somewhere she can’t reach him - what Dumbledore will later call going on. Ginny does not openly speculate about where Harry will be taking whatever she gives him. That it could be to his own grave, or beyond, is left unspoken. He looks at her, finally, after these words, because he seems to understand, on some level, what she is trying to say to him.

‘She took a step closer to him. ‘So then I thought, I’d like you to have something to remember me by, you know, if you meet some veela when you’re off doing whatever you’re doing.’’ (DH, 99)

Ginny has decided: the thing she will give him is a memory, one that he can take with him when they part. Something to remember me by. She wants the memory of her, of them, to be useful, to serve him in some way, and to be something that he might be able to take on with him after death. She tries to soften what she’s trying to convey, with the joke about the veela. But both seem to understand what she is really saying: that she isn’t really asking for his loyalty or fidelity. She doesn’t say she’s giving him ‘something to remember me by’ for when he comes back and they can be together again. Her words are very final. The joke is supposed to make it easier for him to hear what she is saying: she’s telling him, quietly, how to think about her when he leaves, whatever leaving might mean.

Harry, for his part, continues the joke. (‘I think dating opportunities are going to be pretty thin on the ground, to be honest.’) She plays along, sort of, in a very sad way (‘there’s the silver lining I’ve been looking for’). But both seem to know that there is no real silver lining to this. 

And then there’s the kiss itself: 

‘There’s the silver lining I’ve been looking for,’ she whispered, and then she was kissing him as she had never kissed him before, and Harry was kissing her back, and it was blissful oblivion, better than Firewhisky; she was the only real thing in the world, Ginny, the feel of her, one hand at her back and one in her long, sweet-smelling hair —’ (DH, 99)

It all comes to a head here. Harry recognises that this kiss feels exceptional, unlike any other they’ve ever shared - that Ginny has never put so much into a kiss before. It is ‘blissful oblivion’, this moment of extraordinary intensity, where she kisses him and allows him, for a moment, to think only about her and them together. It’s heady and sexual (‘the feel of her’). It’s a gift for Harry  to be able to forget everything and let this moment be a vacuum, to focus only on her. The crescendo effect of the short causes and run-on sentences allows the moment to build and build, a crescendo effect that anticipates something to come. 

Of course, their moment gets interrupted, again. Unlike when Ron interrupted her with Dean, Ginny doesn't rage at him this time: she is subdued, a response that is far more appropriate for her processing the fact that she may have just had her final kiss with the boy she loves. Harry suspects she has started to cry, something he notes is out of character. Ginny had imbued a lot of meaning into this interaction: this is a portrait of a character whose heart is breaking.

When Harry and Ron are discussing the kiss outside on the lawn, after the initial shock of being yelled at by Ron for going anywhere near Ginny, Harry has his own, shattering realisation of what all of this means for himself and Ginny:

‘Yeah, but you go snogging her now and she’s just going to get her hopes up again—’ ‘She’s not an idiot, she knows it can’t happen, she’s not expecting us to— to end up married, or—’  As he said it, a vivid picture formed in Harry’s mind of Ginny in a white dress, marrying a tall, faceless, and unpleasant stranger. In one spiralling moment it seemed to hit him: Her future was free and unencumbered, whereas his . . . he could see nothing but Voldemort ahead.’ (DH, 100)

Thinking aloud, Harry says it would be idiotic for he or Ginny to imagine they could be together, either now, or at any point in the future. He expects her to find someone else; he cannot even begin to imagine a future for himself after the task set out for him. He does not say his inevitable death - he has not yet embraced that reality - but he remains caught in the certainty of an existential battle with Voldemort that he knows he may well not survive.

Later that day, Harry will receive the snitch from Dumbledore’s will. Though he doesn’t know it yet, he now holds the resurrection stone, the item that will open at the close in the forest. It is a birthday that starts and ends with hints about what little time he has left: the stage is set for an arc that, now, has to end in his own death.

Foreshadowing Ginny and the Forest

Moments foreshadowing the significance of the forest are all over Deathly Hallows. Sometimes, they mirror the moment of his own death; often, they are related to Ginny. When they leave the Ministry, with Ron splinched, clutching the Horcrux locket, they arrive in a forest. For a moment Harry’s heart ‘leaped’ at the thought that they were back in Hogwarts’ grounds, the site of so much of his earlier happiness with Ginny (DH, 221). When the trio hear that Ginny, Neville and Luna tried to steal the sword of Gryffindor, it is the Forbidden Forest they are sent to by Snape as punishment (248-9). Harry does not fear the Forest, and is consoled by the thought of Ginny serving detention there rather than anywhere else.

In the Forest of Dean, the scene where Ron returns begins with Harry thinking of Ginny. He sits at the mouth of the tent, wanting to look for Ginny on the Marauders’ Map, until he remembers it’s Christmastime and she is at the Burrow (297). Later, in a moment that mirrors his later walk to his death, he follows his mother - Snape’s patronus, the doe - into the woods, in order to recover and destroy the Horcrux, inching Harry’s own life closer to its close:

Though the darkness had swallowed her whole, [the doe’s] burnished image was still imprinted on his retinas; it obscured his vision, brightening when he lowered his eyelids, disorienting him. Now fear came: Her presence had meant safety. “Lumos!” he whispered, and the wand-tip ignited. The imprint of the doe faded away with every blink of his eyes as he stood there, listening to the sounds of the forest, to distant crackles of twigs…  He held the wand higher. Nobody ran out at him, no flash of green light burst from behind a tree. Why, then, had she led him to this spot?’ (DH, 299)

Foreshadowing Harry's end in the Forest means also foreshadowing Ginny's own appearance at the moment of his death.

Harry’s ‘death’ in the Forest 

In the final battle, Ginny is the last person Harry sees before he begins his walk into the Forest. He takes the words she says to the child on the ground as her final act of comfort. Harry hears them as if they are being spoken to him: 

‘He was feet away from her when he realised it was Ginny.  He stopped in his tracks. She was crouching over a girl who was whispering for her mother.  ‘It’s all right,’ Ginny was saying. ‘It’s okay. We’re going to get you inside.’  ‘But I want to go home,’ whispered the girl. ‘I don’t want to fight anymore!’ ‘I know,’ said Ginny, and her voice broke. ‘It’s going to be all right.’  Ripples of cold undulated over Harry’s skin. He wanted to shout out to the night, he wanted Ginny to know that he was there, he wanted her to know where he was going. He wanted to be stopped, to be dragged back, to be sent back home (...) Ginny was kneeling beside the injured girl now, holding her hand. With a huge effort Harry forced himself on. He thought he saw Ginny look around as he passed, and wondered whether she had seen someone walking nearby, but he did not speak, and he did not look back.’ (DH, 558-9)

Harry believes that this is his final moment with Ginny before he goes to die. A part of him wants her to know that it’s happening: he is leaving, at last. But he can't call to her, because he worries she will try and stop him, and he might let her. Instead, he walks on, and doesn’t look back. After watching Ginny comfort the girl crying for her mother, Harry then goes on to the Forest, and summons his own mother, his own family, to walk with him to his death.  

‘His body and mind felt oddly disconnected now, his limbs working without conscious instruction, as if he were passenger, not driver, in the body he was about to leave. The dead who walked beside him through the forest were much more real to him now that the living back at the castle: Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and all the others were the ones who felt like ghosts as he stumbled and slipped toward the end of his life, toward Voldemort. . . .' (DH, 561-2)

Harry is already preparing to go on from this world: his living loved ones are the ones he now feels furthest from. He stands now with the dead he has summoned, who recognise him and seem to have memories of him. He doesn't fear the dead: he is going to join them.

It’s the death scene itself that I think has subtle, but important parallels with the kiss scene much earlier. In both imagery and in writing style, the scene recalls that earlier moment, where Harry found himself on the edge of another kind of oblivion. There is this mounting, febrile sense of anticipation. There is a tension that is almost sexual, a dynamic injected into the scene through descriptions of Bellatrix’s body language and behaviour towards Voldemort:

‘Bellatrix, who had leapt to her feet, was looking eagerly from Voldemort to Harry, her breast heaving. The only things that moved were the flames and the snake, coiling and uncoiling in the glittering cage behind Voldemort’s head.’  (DH, 564)

The ugly parallel of Bellatrix and Voldemort is not supposed to show the pair as the mirror image of Harry and Ginny. Rather, it is a theme that recurs throughout the series to demonstrate the gulf between Harry, with his immense capacity for love, and Voldemort, with none. Bellatrix and Ginny are memorably paralleled twice in the series: once, at the Department of Mysteries, where Bellatrix moves to ‘torture the little girl’, and Harry steps in to prevent her (OotP, 783), and again in the final battle: 

'Bellatrix was still fighting too, fifty yards away from Voldemort, and like her master she dueled three at once: Hermione, Ginny, and Luna, all battling their hardest, but Bellatrix was equal to them, and Harry’s attention was diverted as a Killing Curse shot so close to Ginny that she missed death by an inch—  He changed course, running at Bellatrix rather than Voldemort, but before he had gone a few steps he was knocked sideways…’ (DH, 589)

As Harry waits for the killing curse, we see the most direct parallel with Ginny's final kiss to him:

‘None of the Death Eaters moved. They were waiting: everything was waiting. Hagrid was struggling, and Bellatrix was panting, and Harry thought inexplicably of Ginny, and her blazing look, and the feel of her lips on his — ’ (DH, 564)

There's such an intense physicality and breathlessness to the whole scene, and an enduring pseudo-sexual tension, with Bellatrix audibly panting. Even the sentence structure even invokes the kissing scene: the run-on build up of clauses, the repetition of the present participle to actively hold the reader in one present moment, building and building and ending on a dash, the promise of something more.

At the end of his life, Harry returns to the memory Ginny gave him. She meant for it to be useful, if he was to go to his death. And at the close of his life he chooses to use it, as he prepares to leave her behind in this world and depart for the next. Just as the Resurrection Stone helped accept death, so too does the memory of Ginny. He feels the memory of her, the sensation of physical touch and of being kissed, the look she gives him that he knows as one of love and great courage. As he is killed, he remembers her last gift to him, the certainty of her love for him impressed upon him.

--

There's a line in OotP that I think is such an underrated line that sums up who Ginny is as a character. Harry is trying to get to Umbridge's fire to speak to Sirius when he thinks the latter is being tortured at the Ministry; Hermione suggests using Ginny and Luna as a distraction, despite Harry's objections:

'Though clearly struggling to understand what was going on, Ginny said immediately, ‘Yeah, we’ll do it,'... (OotP, 736)

This is who Ginny is. It's especially who she is to Harry, during the war. She doesn't fully know what's actually being asked of Harry (and, by extension, what is being asked of her, as the person who loves him, and who has most to lose if he is to die). But even when kept in the dark, she is enormously selfless, and her biggest act of bravery is extremely quiet. She keeps the secret Harry accidentally bestows on her, and she realises, in some sense, before he does, what it will likely mean for his life. She chooses to let him go on, knowing that he is loved, to make the path that he is on a little bit easier, even when she has realised that it will take him away from her for good.

#well that was longer that it needed to be #when in doubt write your way thru ur thoughts #pointing out foreshadowing and gasping is a full time job #justice for the birthday smooch basically #man said: blissful oblivion and also oblivion as in my DEATH #too deep in this to work out if this is even insight at this point #hp analysis #meta #harry/ginny #harry and ginny #hinny #harry x ginny #harry potter #ginny weasley #deathly hallows

[thresholdbb]

Do we think Seven can feel all of her face and body?

The Borg know when things happen in the collective and can arguably feel them, but when an individual is severed from the Borg, that expansive collective consciousness is violently narrowed down to a pinpoint. We know Seven has pretty good proprioception because she agrees that her shoulder hurts when the EMH finds that her biradial clamp is off by 0.3 microns. Because of this, she arguably has a very good understanding of how things in her body feel. That said, she doesn't really complain about physical pains, and we really only see her struggle when things are emotionally difficult.

Since she had been in the collective since she was 6, she wouldn't necessarily know that certain sensations are not normal. If there were any issues that happened as a result of her assimilation, she wouldn't necessarily know they are unusual after she was severed because that's what she has always known.

So back to my original question: can she feel all of her face? Looking at the placement of her facial implants, they are both on the trigeminal nerve. The cheekbone implant is right around the root of the nerve, and the eyebrow piece sits right over another branch. Trigeminal neuralgia is crazy painful, but she could have trigeminal neuropathy and think it's completely normal because she doesn't have a typical baseline to compare it to. I imagine the Borg implants must interrupt some nerve functioning to ensure that the drones move as they are supposed to, and the nano probes would repair any damage that would affect their functioning. But the Borg would consider physical discomfort irrelevant, so relatively minor issues like neuralgia, pins and needles, or any other unusual sensations would not be considered an issue.

#bodily autonomy in a collective existence #strange territory to be sure #but like how much do the Borg fuck with nerves #I would bet she has trigeminal neuropathy just because of the placement of her implants #like maybe the emh would find the issues but Borg tech is still new to Starfleet medicine and he would be in largely uncharted territory #I have more thoughts but they are still nebulous #I don't fully remember where her arm implant is placed but it's not on the exposed elbow nerve #I spend a lot of time thinking about fictional future medicine don't mind me #and the trigeminal nerves are sensitive little sunflowers #have you ever had a conduction test on your Trigeminal nerve? ask your emh today #meta #not like polished meta just a burst of wtf about the Borg #start actually writing my thoughts down again #not even going on main tags with my crack analysis idk #clearly I miss boyager #melts into oblivion

[thescrapwitch]

there's something special about finally writing - and finishing - a scene you've been daydreaming about for over a year.

#finally working on for want of a crown #dramatic times for everyone #also whichever mutual posted oblivion by LEAH you have saved my life I have played that song on repeat all morning #my writing

[dirty-bosmer]

WIP Wednesday

Tagged by @thequeenofthewinter. You are a such a gem srsly 💎 I've been so busy these days that it feels I only getting writing done when I'm tagged and (not) pressured to. But it works! These are very motivating 🥰

Tagging: @atypicalacademic @snowberry-crostata @kookaburra1701 @sylvienerevarine @gilgamish @dumpsterhipster @expended-sleeper @thana-topsy @skyrim-forever @nuwanders @zomboidatomic @nine-blessed-hero and whoever else feels so inclined to share :)

From The Illusionist Part II Chapter 78 — Penance (lol it's almost over I swear):

Nim didn’t know how long she waited at the shrine after all her disciples had disappeared. The gate remained open in a scream, a yawn, a sigh, the warm breath of the Isles brushing at her back. She waited there as the winter thawed. She waited as the spring ripened. All around the shrine, the air grew rich with the smell of peat, more sour than the Blackwoods’ musk, and as tendrils of her realm sprawled out from the luminous haze of the portal's maw, she waited for it to swallow her whole. 

But it didn’t, couldn’t, not even when she threw herself into its arms. There was something still tethering her to Nirn, and she knew only when she severed it could she set herself free. Already so much of the memories she clung to were fading. The faces, voices, the touch of another’s skin on her own, and surely one day soon this land would retract its spurs. She’d shake its grip, so she sat there as the seasons bled together in one miry stretch of timelessness, waiting on nothing and no one but the ghosts of her old life to disappear.

Nim drank water from the river and ate the alien fruits her own vines gave her, and she spent a few days thinking of Raminus while willing herself not to think of Raminus, because ever since Elianna and the others had passed through, she’d become less of a person, less of a god. More of a mouth. The teeth inside gnawed inexorably, and though she gorged herself on alocasia, she couldn’t stave off this hunger forever. The longer she remained in this world, the thinner her will became, and soon its gnashing would be so far beyond control. What would happen then? Who would she consume? Was she meant to feed it or temper it? Was that why she was still here, to become so empty of herself, so desperate she’d chew off her last limb to leave? What if she didn’t want to, and suddenly Nim dreaded the shape of her absence, forgetting who she once was, what she’d done, all the lives she could have led.

And then... and then he was there. Nirn hadn’t fallen away from her, and the winter was still winter. She could see it on his chapped lips and the pallor of his sunless skin. He smelled briny, of the shallows, his eyes sunken and crusted in salt. 

Lucien had appeared before her after a moment or perhaps many. Nim hadn’t been counting. They didn’t move the same way for her anyway, why bother. He approached from the forest edge trepidly, the fear in his eyes still unfamiliar, and he looked as if he’d traveled a week straight without sleep— edgeless, tumbled and smoothed, something vomited out from the darkest pit of the wilderness.  Nim straightened against her tree trunk, didn’t move.

Lucien's hand hovered beside his sheathed knife. He didn't grip it. “Again?” Nim said, a brow raised.

“Again.” 

“Come back with more weapons this time?”

He shook his head. “Only me, my hands.”

“Is that what you see yourself as, a weapon?”

“It's what I am. What I always have been. My Mother made me sharp. Sithis has—”

“Sithis has done nothing for you. It was me. Don’t you see it? It was me this whole damn time.”

#tag games #sorry for everyone tagged a million times in things; I have no idea how popular some of you are heh #the illusionist #oblivion fic #sheogorath #seyda writes #lucien lachance #oc: nimileth

[strigital]

so a new yearly adventure 'bout to drop and half of the players are already simping for ithelia while another half is grieving her boring design. me? i'm more interested in the fact that zenimax gave us a lore-friendly way to make our own dardric prince ocs and uuuh lemme just grab a sketchbook real quick and cook up an opposite to mepahala and probably/possibly her twin whose sphere are energies of the afterlife, death and being the shepherd of the undead and the restless dead 👀 and maybe a babygirl of a dardric prince who is the opposite of hircine and oversees the wild beauty of natural world, shapeshifers, sentient trees and talking animals, and mysteries of wild magic and secrets of the untouched wilderness, who has the bottom half of a deer whereas hircine has a head of an elk🦌 ooh! maybe even some opposite to namira whose domain is beauty, poetry and all that is aesthetically pleasing and dreamy and nice who may look like one of those fairies with butterfly wings all over them 🧚‍♀️

anyways, feck the lore, i'm here to 100% milk herma mora's ability to just "conveniently hide" entire dardric princes outside of reality thus making any and all stupid little dardric blorbo ocs we make "technically lore-friendly"

#*scribbles down a sexyman and a babygirl* #hehe #but tbh i think this changes my own skyrim lore!!! #see the mentor of the last dragonborn was the last ayleid scholar whose entire immortal life was spent recording events on tamriel #and collecting a whole Librarium of books of his own writing that herma mora would reaaaally love to have #and so he just spent his whole existance chilling in a pocket realm of oblivion being hidden from herma mora #thats where he kept yollokmir too while they awaited for alduin to pop back into existence #since hurling the bitch forward in time was not a normal course of events he decided to intervene and help the last dragonborn #i SUPPOSED that him being under the wing of meridia made sence since before this damn cinematic dropped SHE was a supposed nemesis of herma #NOW it would seem that putting the boy into ithelia's side of the hood would make more sence since her domain os basically hidden stuff #mayhaps old man was at the moment of the spell being cast within her realm and thus avoided the amnesia? #I'll have to do some rewriting... #oh well... #*dreamily thinks about all the daedra prince ocs i can make now* #elder scrolls online #eso #zenimax #bethesda #daedra #daedric prince #the elder scrolls #tes v #tes 5 #skyrim #fanfic related #writing related #fanfic: Fronkriid #oc related #alasil the watcher

[hannah-heartstrings]

Thiefguard's height difference keeps shifting. Originally I was writing Lecrinn leaning her head on top of his shoulder, then she was leaning it against the side of his shoulder, and now she leans it against the middle of his chest. I have no idea which should be canon.

#oblivion fanfiction #my writing #thiefguard #lecrinn #garrus darelliun #who needs consistency anyway? #maybe i'll just write whichever's cutest at the time XD #but i've always pictured her as short and him tall and that seems to slowly get more dramatic in my head

[coldshrugs]

when your group is listening to gale lecture about the newest confusing magic thing, but your girlfriend is not at all paying attention 🥰

#bg3 spoilers #ulysse bishop #shadowheart #THEY ARE KILLING ME #if you think they're not constantly holding hands on their little adventure into oblivion you would be wrong #also. if i had a nickle for every time i lost my mind about an elf with choppy gray hair and a spear #i would only have two nickles but it's weird that it happened twice (and one was a sneak attack) #anyone maybe one day when i finally finish the game i can write something about them #for now they're just in the microwave like a bag of popcorn. the kernels are just starting to poppoppop

[shat-on-the-dick]

SANGUINE/MARTIN CHAPTERRRR

NSFW warning, this contains some stuff like bondage and some other things, so please be careful if you are not comfortable with these themes.

But basically, yeah, they fuck.

Some old sanguinite! Martin fanart to illustrate.

But yeah, you can find me on Instagram as kyn_attempts_art! 🤙✨

Lastly, I'd love to hear from you!! If you liked or not, something I should do better or not etc etc

THANKS FOR READING!

#martin septim #the elder scrolls #oblivion #tes iv: oblivion #oc: sarah venius #my oc #my writing #pls id love to hear from you!! #its my first time writing something like this

[catilinas]

Wikipedia / Derrida, Specters of Marx / Lucan, Pharsalia 7.407-11 trans. J. D. Duff / Ida Östenberg, War and Remembrance: Memories of Defeat in Ancient Rome / Livy, AUC 22.50 trans. Heinemann / Paul Roche, Lucan: De Bello Civile Book 7 / Timothy A. Joseph, Pharsalia as Rome's "Day of Doom" in Lucan / Denis Feeney, Caesar's Calendar: Ancient Time and the Beginnings of History

#IT'S AUGUST 9TH POST BATTLE OF PHARSALUS HASHTAG. #WEB WEAVING #hashtag web weaving but this is essentially a mood board of like. half my th*sis :/ #i just think it's so so sexy of lucan to a) reference livy's cannae here (and elsewhere) For Real like you cant tell from the translation #but there's Verbal Parallels going on there #and so write pharsalus into the tradition of Cursed Defeat Calendar Days (which livy Borrows for cannae. but not getting into dies atri #in this tumblr post! but they are. sexy) #which is already controversial bcs pharsalus wasn't like. A Defeat. bcs it was a civil war battle. even labelling it a defeat of victory is #Taking A Side. oh shadi bartsch ideology in cold blood a reading of lucan's bellum civile we're REALLY in it now #but then lucan b) claims that the calendar (fasti) have Forgotten pharsalus (i.e. it should be marked as an Evil Day)............ #when they literally haven't like pharsalus is IN many many calendars! but as a public holiday! #and by saying the calendar Forgets Pharsalus. Actually lucan is selectively forgetting the calendar............ ARGH #they hate him for his denial of caesarian timekeeping and also for making time explode via literary necromancy :/ #a n y w a y #pharsalia #lucan #a lock against oblivion #beeps

[potatoesandsunshine]

i get why not everybody loves it as much as i do but i love oblivion so so much. easily on my list of top ten favorite video games of all time

#'oh playing it now can kinda suck—' correct. there are flaws. but i love it all the more for them. #the writing is SO! it makes up for everything for me #i have played this game enough times to memorize the layout of each random oblivion gate so when i go in i just already know it #i'm not a skyrim hater or anything like many people that was my elder scrolls intro and i love it dearly #but oblivion has the crown in my heart. i love making awful spells i cant use. i love when the enemies just keep doing the same things. #i love the arena fights and the questlines and the feeling of endless exploration (interrupted by bears) #and i can cry about martin septim any day of the week given a few minutes to think about him

[prettyboykatsuki]

i want to write. the nichest fic ever

elder scrolls au but with bakugou and reader. reader is a new intiate of the dark brotherhood and bakugou is an archmage in the mages guild and the target of the association

#aristotle.txt #STOPDFKJNSDKJD #u guys dont know this but elder scrolls: oblivion is one of my favorite games of all time #and i think its better than skyrim i will die on this hill #oh i want to write it so bad

[umbracirrus]

So... I was tagged by both @throughtrialbyfire and @oblivions-dawn to find words in my writing... that's five each, so there's 10 I have to find!! And I think that anyone who I would likely tag back has already done this/been tagged in this so wouldn't know who to tag back...

I have to find excerpts containing Blood, Frost, Dread, Known, Awkward, Woods, Silence, Cloud, Steal, and Blade... Quite the list!!! It's going to come from a mixture of what I have posted and some WIPs which I have dotted about........ Where possible I have used excepts from The Perfect Storm (both stuff that is and isn't posted!), but have delved into other WIPs too.

1. Blood

The Perfect Storm, Chapter 6

His grasp of her wrists tightened as the blade against her neck moved slightly, forcing her into lifting her head and making eye contact with him. "I am certain that this fuss you have been making will have been all for nothing once we return to Windhelm."

Fuss? Whiterun was under attack, people were dying, houses burning, her housecarl murdered, and he thought she was fussing?!

"I will never go with you, y-you hear me?!" The blade moved higher, and she let out a hiss as she felt a sting and a small, warm rivulet of blood slip down her throat. And then... She began to laugh. Her poison may have failed, but she had one last trick up her sleeve.

2. Frost

Excerpt from the still untitled fic based around Elyse's parents, WIP.

Edwyn almost felt sick as he heard that. He had never cast any magic on Ingja, with the exception of when they had just met and her leg was injured! He was a conjuration mage, he had never touched the illusion schools of magic once in his life. But even more frightening was the threat of The Chill.

Everyone who had been in Winterhold for more than a week knew of The Chill. It was what was used instead of a conventional jail... And was far out into the Sea of Ghosts. Surrounded by naturally occurring frost atronachs, horkers, wolves... Practically a death sentence if you weren’t prepared enough to handle it. Which you wouldn’t be, because prisoners were locked up in cages, left to the whims of nature until their sentence was completed, until they escaped, or until they perished.

And Ingja’s father wanted to put him in it.

3. Dread

WIP based around my Vigilant of Stendarr-turned-Vampire Dragonborn, Iduna

A small sigh escaped her lips as she placed the amulet down on the table in front of her, and reached out for her bottle of mead. There was a slight fruitiness to its scent, one which reminded her of days long gone from her youth when she would sit with her family around a fire with mugs of berry juice, fresh from the pot above the flames and infused with spices which could only make her feel warm and safe.

Juniper berries – she was certain.

“That looks as though it has seen better days. Stendarr, right?” A voice from behind her just as she brought the bottle to her lips made her flinch, with it being the first time that anyone had actually dared say anything to her beyond pleasantries. It began to stir a deep feeling of dread within her. There was a man stood there, a look of curiosity plastered across his face as he glanced towards the amulet. “You a Vigilant or something?”

Suddenly, her throat felt dry, forcing her to quickly bring her drink to her lips before she could think of how to respond. The answer was simple, something which could be answered with a lone word, but it was one that was just not coming to her mind. “Of… a sort, you could say.”

4. Known

The Perfect Storm, Chapter 9

“It isn’t anything to do with Ulfric, if that’s what you are going to ask,” she quickly stated, though not answering the question which actually had been on the tip of the housecarl’s tongue.

“Who was it from then?”

A tired sigh escaped the Dragonborn as she shrugged and started to finally unbuckle her gauntlets and pull off her boots. “That was a letter from somebody who wanted to ‘check up on me’ because they ‘haven’t heard from me in a while’. He doesn’t actually care for me, he is contacting me out of principle,” she explained, before letting out an almost amused snort as she moved her attention towards ridding herself of her breastplate. “He doesn’t even know that I am the Dragonborn, or at the very least I haven’t told him nor care to tell him. He may have figured it out through the grapevine, but if he has, he certainly hasn’t made it known to me.”

5. Awkward

WIP for events which happen very far down the line in The Perfect Storm hehe. Had to keep this one short to prevent spoilers :)

“Balgruuf.”

“Ulfric.”

The two Jarls remained stood in the doorway, tension building between them and resulting in any guests near to the door trying to subtly move away from them. It took Galmar clearing his throat and giving Ulfric a nudge for anything further beyond the awkward stare-down to happen.

6. Woods

More of the WIP based around Iduna!

Panic began to set in when, in the distance, plumes of orange-tinted smoke began to emerge from the woods around the base of the mountains. Her body grew tense, muscles stiffening as a scalding hot bead of sweat slipped down from her forehead to her jaw to her neck.

She wasn’t even there, but she could already feel the flames licking at her skin, the combustion of wood and stone under the intense heat, the dragon’s roars-

Just like Helgen.

“Iduna! Snap out of it already!” The voice, as ever, drew the vampire from her state of panic as she gave off a pathetic little whimper, and her gaze fell towards the dog by her feet.

7. Silence

The Perfect Storm, Chapter 11

“Balgruuf, look at me.” Elyse reached out and took the circlet out of his hands, and placed it back down on the table. “They do not hate you. Trust me on that.”

They remained in a heavy silence after that, with her trying to think of anything else which she could say to reassure him, and him trying to contemplate whether he believed her. Soon enough, a thought came to mind, and she just knew that it could help with changing his perspective.

8. Cloud

WIP based around two of my Heroes of Kvatch, Drissa and Florian.

"How about we just go to Cloud Ruler Temple, as per Jauffre's suggestion, then figure out what we do from there? We can't help the fact that-! Ow!"

Drissa's teeth were bared towards Florian as she stomped on his foot angrily. "If we had actually done as I had suggested, and only handed over the amulet after we had brought Martin here, then we wouldn't even be in this situation!" She then grabbed hold of her sword, and turned her back to the three men. "I'm done with this. All of it. I've helped fulfil the Emperor's final wish, and I'm not getting involved in any more of this- this bullshit! If you want to get your hands dirtier, then fine. Better you than me."

"Wh-What? But what about our-" Florian, ignoring the ache in his foot, began to try to pursue the Dunmer as she walked away from the priory. He was stopped by Martin holding out his hand, and shaking his head. "Driss…"

9. Steal

More of Drissa and Florian!

It was an injustice that she had been arrested, and given that she had been marched right past the Black Horse Courier offices on the way there, it would be the news of the province that she had been arrested by week’s end. No matter what, her reputation would be ruined. At best, she would be having her titles stripped from her in the Arena. At worst... well, she didn’t dare consider it.

 What she was not expecting once she was brought to a halt was to see another group of guards with another person in a similar predicament to herself.

“-gems did not end up in my hands intentionally, you know. I didn't steal them, I found them. It’s not my fault that his tailor did a shoddy job at stitching up his pockets!”

Or perhaps not.

“Stolen goods are still stolen, no matter how they are obtained,” the guard at the desk stated, just as he caught sight of her. “And here comes more trouble.”

10. Blade

The Perfect Storm, Chapter 11

Her heart was racing, and a thin sheen of sweat was covering her face as she remained stood as she was, her left arm falling to her side with its blade still in hand, her right remaining held forward with its blade lodged in place. A few loose strands of hair that had barely been able to remain tied up behind had fallen loose at some point, frustratingly sticking to the side of her face. The only noise around her, beyond the faintest of breezes, was that of her heavy breathing.

#meg has done some writing #this took an awful long time to pull together!!! #but i'm actually quite happy that there's a mix of skyrim and oblivion writing i've done in there #drissa and florian are pretty new characters compared to others but i love them already and am doing playthroughs as them on oblivion atm

[thresholdbb]

i'm trying to listen to/watch more media in Spanish so i would love any Spanish music recs. especially if it's Voyager flavored.

Ahaha, you've come to the right a place!

Alright, they are only Voyager flavored in my mind, but I can explain all of them if need be. My music tastes also sometimes leans pretty Chilean, which is a notoriously difficult Spanish dialect to understand. Also, sometimes it's just a line or two that I'll end up thinking about or it only corresponds to a certain scene.

Believe it or not, a non-exhaustive list:

Aleks Syntek - Historias de danzón y de arrabal

Arquero - Star trek (lol)

Bersuit Vergarabat - Mi caramelo

Calle 13 - La vuelta al mundo, Me vieron cruzar, La vida (respira el momento)

Carlos Vives - Cuando nos volvamos a encontrar

Elvira López - Loica valiente, Piel de pájaro, Distancia pactada,, Chueco, Norte

Fannu Lu - Fanfarrón

Fito Paez - A rodar mi vida

Fonseca - Te mando flores, Simples corazones

Gepe - Buena memoria, Un amor violento, Alfabeto

Jorge Drexler - Pongamos que hablo de Martínez

Julieta Venegas - Me voy, El presente

La Guacha - Amor platónico, Desaparecer, Corazón mezquino, Ay amor

Los Enanitos Verdes - Te ví en un tren

Los Rodríguez - Dulce condena

Los Totora - No hay mas nada

Los Vásquez - Miénteme una vez

María Isabel - Antes Muerta Que Sencilla (This is a meme song)

Mexican Institute of Sound ft. Lila Downs - Cariñito

Mon Laferte - Flaco, Vendaval, Mi buen amor, Si tú me quisieras, Pa' dónde se fue, Palomita, Por qué me fui a enamorar de ti, Cumbia para olvidar, Love, Se me va a quemar el corazón

Morat - Cuando nadie ve

Natalia LaFourcade - Nunca es suficiente

Paté de Fuá - No me platiques más, El extranjero

Pillanes - Loro (This is where my "el cerro es tan alto y yo soy tan pequeño tag comes from)

Riccardo Cocciante - Cuerpo sin alma

Rosalía - Bagdad

Schuster - Me enamoré

Silvio Rodríguez - Ojalá

Villa Cariño - Serenata cruel

Violeta Parra - Que pena siente el alma, La Jardinera (though I prefer a cover version by Juanafé)

Ok this got outta hand even after I made some cuts, my bad. I can also explain/translate/transcribe any of them (since some don't have lyrics online) and my Trek connections though

#Like 50 songs in i realized i should have made a playlist my bad #i can make it into a shorter list too #this doesn't even represent the whole scope of spanish language music i listen to honestly and i'm a lil insecure about my music tastes #clearly have some artists who resonate more with the themes #and this is all voyager not sure how well i could compile a list for another show/character #i could probably write mini essays about the connections i have a lot of thoughts about everything all the time #i also realize this says A LOT about me #soooo many situationship songs lolol #melts into oblivion

[spannardnation]

when the fuck oh when are ppl going to realise that everything can and should b scrutinised to make sure its healthy EVEN IF that thing makes u sexually aroused?

im sick of this narrative of "it's free from criticism if it gets u off" like no honey no its fucking not, some things have harmful roots and being sex positive isnt about letting anybody do anything regardless of the fucking harm it causes GOD

this is just like how ppl turned feminism into "women can be tradwives actually" like ok yeah women should be given choices but if they choose things that feed into the patriarchy that needs to be fucking addressed, same with if things that get u off feed into rape culture or ur trauma or something fucking amoral

like 'kink is free game its ALL fine' IS NOT TRUE it requires fucking nuance this is how fucking ppl started normalising child porn far and wide online again just bc its abt fictional characters IM PLEADING FOR A CRUMB OF FUCKING CRITICAL THINKING DEAR FUCKING LORD JESUS UR SCARING THE HOES

"no kinshaming" WRONG!!!!!!!! IF U START TALKING ABT WANTING TO FUCK A 14 YR OLD CHARACTER IM GOING TO HIT U IN THE TEETH WITH A BASEBALL BAT U FUCKING FREAK if u start being like "oooh i love reading noncon [thats just RAPE] its so sexy" IM GOING TO GUT U WITH A RUSTY SPOON

EVERYYYYYYYTHING requires fuckign nuance and people shutting down legit discussions bc they heard "no kinkshaming" be touted by honest to god rape and pedo apologists until it became like fandom law and RAN WITH IT piss me the fuck off i go thru this crisis like once a fucking week bc i see some fuckshit on here start engaging ur fucking brains i stg

sex positivity is about things being safe sane and consensual and that means it HAS TO BE SCRUTINISED to make sure it is those things, and if the things people are engaging in are harmful they they shouldnt be encouraged WHICH INCLUDES ppl getting into shit like rape, incest and pedo bullshit. they all come from places of abuse and are therefore not fucking safe or sane thanks for coming to my fucking TED talk and stop excusing freak behaviour just bc it gets someone off!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

#this is a reminder i hate proshipper bullshit bc theres a difference between #dont harass ppl who ship weird ships #and #let me ship an adult with a child #or #let me write abt minors fucking despite being a full fucking adult #ppl who use that label make me fucking NERVOUS bc why use a lable coopted by redos and rape fetishists who use the term “ANTI” unironically #blurring lines and horseshoe theorying into oblivion is the internets favourite pass time

[inkoherentwriting]

nobody asked about this but i think guilbert and miraina will get along not because they both have issues bonding with their respective brothers but because they are both two handed weapon wielders

#elder scrolls oblivion #oc: miraina #guilbert jemane #This is half joking #I consider those two half not a ship #Because miraina is emotionally immature when she meets guilbert and refusing to reach out to jesan out of jealousy and grief #and guilbert is struggling with his own need to take care of someone/being in a caretaker role #versus reynald's valid desire not to become his brother's next object of concern #Those two r not ready for a relationship (trying to write slow burn that may not go anywhere for the first time) #teehee #we shall see