Latest Posts by spiralling-spires - Page 7

here’s a story about changelings

reposted from my old blog, which got deleted:   Mary was a beautiful baby, sweet and affectionate, but by the time she’s three she’s turned difficult and strange, with fey moods and a stubborn mouth that screams and bites but never says mama. But her mother’s well-used to hard work with little thanks, and when the village gossips wag their tongues she just shrugs, and pulls her difficult child away from their precious, perfect blossoms, before the bites draw blood. Mary’s mother doesn’t drown her in a bucket of saltwater, and she doesn’t take up the silver knife the wife of the village priest leaves out for her one Sunday brunch. She gives her daughter yarn, instead, and instead of a rowan stake through her inhuman heart she gives her a child’s first loom, oak and ash. She lets her vicious, uncooperative fairy daughter entertain herself with games of her own devising, in as much peace and comfort as either of them can manage. Mary grows up strangely, as a strange child would, learning everything in all the wrong order, and biting a great deal more than she should. But she also learns to weave, and takes to it with a grand passion. Soon enough she knows more than her mother–which isn’t all that much–and is striking out into unknown territory, turning out odd new knots and weaves, patterns as complex as spiderwebs and spellrings. “Aren’t you clever,” her mother says, of her work, and leaves her to her wool and flax and whatnot. Mary’s not biting anymore, and she smiles more than she frowns, and that’s about as much, her mother figures, as anyone should hope for from their child. Mary still cries sometimes, when the other girls reject her for her strange graces, her odd slow way of talking, her restless reaching fluttering hands that have learned to spin but never to settle. The other girls call her freak, witchblood, hobgoblin. “I don’t remember girls being quite so stupid when I was that age,” her mother says, brushing Mary’s hair smooth and steady like they’ve both learned to enjoy, smooth as a skein of silk. “Time was, you knew not to insult anyone you might need to flatter later. ‘Specially when you don’t know if they’re going to grow wings or horns or whatnot. Serve ‘em all right if you ever figure out curses.” “I want to go back,” Mary says. “I want to go home, to where I came from, where there’s people like me. If I’m a fairy’s child I should be in fairyland, and no one would call me a freak.” “Aye, well, I’d miss you though,” her mother says. “And I expect there’s stupid folk everywhere, even in fairyland. Cruel folk, too. You just have to make the best of things where you are, being my child instead.” Mary learns to read well enough, in between the weaving, especially when her mother tracks down the traveling booktraders and comes home with slim, precious manuals on dyes and stains and mordants, on pigments and patterns, diagrams too arcane for her own eyes but which make her daughter’s eyes shine. “We need an herb garden,” her daughter says, hands busy, flipping from page to page, pulling on her hair, twisting in her skirt, itching for a project. “Yarrow, and madder, and woad and weld…” “Well, start digging,” her mother says. “Won’t do you a harm to get out of the house now’n then.” Mary doesn’t like dirt but she’s learned determination well enough from her mother. She digs and digs, and plants what she’s given, and the first year doesn’t turn out so well but the second’s better, and by the third a cauldron’s always simmering something over the fire, and Mary’s taking in orders from girls five years older or more, turning out vivid bolts and spools and skeins of red and gold and blue, restless fingers dancing like they’ve summoned down the rainbow. Her mother figures she probably has. “Just as well you never got the hang of curses,” she says, admiring her bright new skirts. “I like this sort of trick a lot better.” Mary smiles, rocking back and forth on her heels, fingers already fluttering to find the next project. She finally grows up tall and fair, if a bit stooped and squinty, and time and age seem to calm her unhappy mouth about as well as it does for human children. Word gets around she never lies or breaks a bargain, and if the first seems odd for a fairy’s child then the second one seems fit enough. The undyed stacks of taken orders grow taller, the dyed lots of filled orders grow brighter, the loom in the corner for Mary’s own creations grows stranger and more complex. Mary’s hands callus just like her mother’s, become as strong and tough and smooth as the oak and ash of her needles and frames, though they never fall still. “Do you ever wonder what your real daughter would be like?” the priest’s wife asks, once. Mary’s mother snorts. “She wouldn’t be worth a damn at weaving,” she says. “Lord knows I never was. No, I’ll keep what I’ve been given and thank the givers kindly. It was a fair enough trade for me. Good day, ma’am.” Mary brings her mother sweet chamomile tea, that night, and a warm shawl in all the colors of a garden, and a hairbrush. In the morning, the priest’s son comes round, with payment for his mother’s pretty new dress and a shy smile just for Mary. He thinks her hair is nice, and her hands are even nicer, vibrant in their strength and skill and endless motion.   They all live happily ever after. * Here’s another story: Gregor grew fast, even for a boy, grew tall and big and healthy and began shoving his older siblings around early. He was blunt and strange and flew into rages over odd things, over the taste of his porridge or the scratch of his shirt, over the sound of rain hammering on the roof, over being touched when he didn’t expect it and sometimes even when he did. He never wore shoes if he could help it and he could tell you the number of nails in the floorboards without looking, and his favorite thing was to sit in the pantry and run his hands through the bags of dry barley and corn and oat. Considering as how he had fists like a young ox by the time he was five, his family left him to it. “He’s a changeling,” his father said to his wife, expecting an argument, but men are often the last to know anything about their children, and his wife only shrugged and nodded, like the matter was already settled, and that was that. They didn’t bind Gregor in iron and leave him in the woods for his own kind to take back. They didn’t dig him a grave and load him into it early. They worked out what made Gregor angry, in much the same way they figured out the personal constellations of emotion for each of their other sons, and when spring came, Gregor’s father taught him about sprouts, and when autumn came, Gregor’s father taught him about sheaves. Meanwhile his mother didn’t mind his quiet company around the house, the way he always knew where she’d left the kettle, or the mending, because she was forgetful and he never missed a detail. “Pity you’re not a girl, you’d never drop a stitch of knitting,” she tells Gregor, in the winter, watching him shell peas. His brothers wrestle and yell before the hearth fire, but her fairy child just works quietly, turning peas by their threes and fours into the bowl. “You know exactly how many you’ve got there, don’t you?” she says. “Six hundred and thirteen,” he says, in his quiet, precise way. His mother says “Very good,” and never says Pity you’re not human. He smiles just like one, if not for quite the same reasons. The next autumn he’s seven, a lucky number that pleases him immensely, and his father takes him along to the mill with the grain. “What you got there?” The miller asks them. “Sixty measures of Prince barley, thirty two measures of Hare’s Ear corn, and eighteen of Abernathy Blue Slate oats,” Gregor says. “Total weight is three hundred fifty pounds, or near enough. Our horse is named Madam. The wagon doesn’t have a name. I’m Gregor.” “My son,” his father says. “The changeling one.” “Bit sharper’n your others, ain’t he?” the miller says, and his father laughs. Gregor feels proud and excited and shy, and it dries up all his words, sticks them in his throat. The mill is overwhelming, but the miller is kind, and tells him the name of each and every part when he points at it, and the names of all the grain in all the bags waiting for him to get to them. “Didn’t know the fair folk were much for machinery,” the miller says. Gregor shrugs. “I like seeds,” he says, each word shelled out with careful concentration. “And names. And numbers.” “Aye, well. Suppose that’d do it. Want t’help me load up the grist?” They leave the grain with the miller, who tells Gregor’s father to bring him back ‘round when he comes to pick up the cornflour and cracked barley and rolled oats. Gregor falls asleep in the nameless wagon on the way back, and when he wakes up he goes right back to the pantry, where the rest of the seeds are left, and he runs his hands through the shifting, soothing textures and thinks about turning wheels, about windspeed and counterweights. When he’s twelve–another lucky number–he goes to live in the mill with the miller, and he never leaves, and he lives happily ever after. * Here’s another: James is a small boy who likes animals much more than people, which doesn’t bother his parents overmuch, as someone needs to watch the sheep and make the sheepdogs mind. James learns the whistles and calls along with the lambs and puppies, and by the time he’s six he’s out all day, tending to the flock. His dad gives him a knife and his mom gives him a knapsack, and the sheepdogs give him doggy kisses and the sheep don’t give him too much trouble, considering. “It’s not right for a boy to have so few complaints,” his mother says, once, when he’s about eight. “Probably ain’t right for his parents to have so few complaints about their boy, neither,” his dad says. That’s about the end of it. James’ parents aren’t very talkative, either. They live the routines of a farm, up at dawn and down by dusk, clucking softly to the chickens and calling harshly to the goats, and James grows up slow but happy. When James is eleven, he’s sent to school, because he’s going to be a man and a man should know his numbers. He gets in fights for the first time in his life, unused to peers with two legs and loud mouths and quick fists. He doesn’t like the feel of slate and chalk against his fingers, or the harsh bite of a wooden bench against his legs. He doesn’t like the rules: rules for math, rules for meals, rules for sitting down and speaking when you’re spoken to and wearing shoes all day and sitting under a low ceiling in a crowded room with no sheep or sheepdogs. Not even a puppy. But his teacher is a good woman, patient and experienced, and James isn’t the first miserable, rocking, kicking, crying lost lamb ever handed into her care. She herds the other boys away from him, when she can, and lets him sit in the corner by the door, and have a soft rag to hold his slate and chalk with, so they don’t gnaw so dryly at his fingers. James learns his numbers well enough, eventually, but he also learns with the abruptness of any lamb taking their first few steps–tottering straight into a gallop–to read. Familiar with the sort of things a strange boy needs to know, his teacher gives him myths and legends and fairytales, and steps back. James reads about Arthur and Morgana, about Hercules and Odysseus, about djinni and banshee and brownies and bargains and quests and how sometimes, something that looks human is left to try and stumble along in the humans’ world, step by uncertain step, as best they can. James never comes to enjoy writing. He learns to talk, instead, full tilt, a leaping joyous gambol, and after a time no one wants to hit him anymore. The other boys sit next to him, instead, with their mouths closed, and their hands quiet on their knees.   “Let’s hear from James,” the men at the alehouse say, years later, when he’s become a man who still spends more time with sheep than anyone else, but who always comes back into town with something grand waiting for his friends on his tongue. “What’ve you got for us tonight, eh?” James finishes his pint, and stands up, and says, “Here’s a story about changelings.”

Kinda weird how the music that was popular when you were in grade school was mostly made by people substantially older than you, and yet that music is societally connected to your age group rather than the age group that made it. This is less so now that pretty much anyone can get their hands on audio software now, but skill still needs time to develop so most of the good stuff is written by people in their 20s at least.

The thing neurotypicals tend not to understand about the ADHD brain is that it really only has two gears

I turn to the chalkboard and carefully write out

WORKIN' HARD

HARDLY WORKIN'

First thing you see after you zoom in is how you die

How you dying 👀

I’m sorry these tags are so funny to me and for what

The names too. Usually tumblr bot names are “okay? Sure?” Sometimes one rhymes with something and is a little funny. But THESE are so direct and stupid. Like yep thats exactly what that ad is for

God knows how many Weird Dietary Supplement bots reported and I finally get my first proper pornbot. Idk it’s kinda funny how EVERY bot is on the asexual tag rn

God knows how many Weird Dietary Supplement bots reported and I finally get my first proper pornbot. Idk it’s kinda funny how EVERY bot is on the asexual tag rn

I love how opinions on s2 jon are either “he’s way too paranoid in s2 it’s almost hard to listen to” or “he’s so silly in s2 i love him he broke into gertrude’s flat and thought he was sneaky about it even after hearing sirens s2 jon is the best” no in between

them

I need to be shaped like a weird stick and be unseen

Reblog to hug prev poster (they need a hug)

before the poll, a quick definition of terms:

"mutual" - you found this post from a mutual (on their blog or your dash) "following" - you found this post from someone you're following, but who isn't following you "random" - you found this by scrolling through someone's blog, who you don't follow. this includes people following you "For You" - you found this on the For You page "recommended" - you found this in a "Check out these blogs" popup, or a "recommended" post when looking at a different post "other" - you found this post some other way. comment how? "reblog ✅" - you're going to reblog, queue, or schedule this post "reblog ❌" - you're NOT going to reblog, queue, or schedule this post

with that out of the way:

hear me out

me at any given time: can we just buckle down and focus on the task at hand please???

my brain:

my brain: ……….ranibow sprimkle……………

The funniest way to remember it’s thursday is to open tumblr and get out of context spoilers for the new episode. Especially since tumblr has a tendency to make comments that, having listened to the episode, are funny as fuck, and not having listened are average tumblr chaos with a tmagp flavouring

I started headcanoning jon as tall (taller than martin at least) at some point. When did i become a tall jon believer when did this happen what

Reblog to let your followers know that despite your current obsession your previous obsessions still exist and are simply lying dormant until they awaken and strike again

Happy International Asexuality Day!

The curse of modern fandom is that it has allowed fans to get even closer to artists, but they won't view the artists as people.

Human limits, human mistakes, human feelings, human needs, are never ascribed to artists, and when other fans rightfully point out, "hey, humans are making this, maybe don't harass them or demand they cater to your personal tastes," it gets shut down under, "uh, people who make popular mainstream things are automatically Public Figures who are also probably rich, so eat the rich and destroy artists over every perceived minor fault. <3"

Even though there's, y'know, a really big strike currently going on because those artists are very much not rich or influential or in control of the bullshit.

The Distortion would have become Helen regardless of if it had ever become Michael or not.

Think about it. Real estate is a pretty fun place to be an erronious door. Helen Richardson would probably have walked through as in canon, even without Michael to lure her in, and we know that her reaction was to make a map. So she makes a map, gets taken back after giving her Statement, (Jon never gets the “do you even know they’re lying to you” warning,) and she Becomes. Ta-da, Helen Distortion, no Michael involved at all.

I had a VIVID mental image of what the extinguished sun looked like after the eclipse. Nothing directly related to thinfs i saw during the eclipse, but mmm. So many thoughts. Colours

Late but this is me when I hear about an eclipse

I saw this post about a wizard arguing that electricity is magic and that what the wizard is doing is just manipulating the (insert fantasy jargon here) and clearly not magic. Anyways now im working on a universe with an entirely different atomic structure that gives each atom latent energy, like an electron but not. Because it’s actually “magic”

Help i will be up all night reading physics wikipedia pages if not stopped

Has tumblr been randomly crashing within 5 minutes of closing the app for anyone else? It’s getting annoying, it keeps dying right as i follow a notification to read a post (closing the notification) or while im scrolling through long threads of images (sending the post into the abyss forever… still mad about the tma comic i can never finish reading)

I don’t agonize. I go “yes this is perfectly clear” with full confidence, and then do entirely the wrong thing without ever even thinking “hey wait, this is kind of a weird thing to ask me to do”

Please, for the love of god, leave me CLEAR INSTRUCTIONS!!! If you think it’s implied, I promise you that to me it is not. If you give me poorly worded or vague directions I’m gonna spend half an hour stressing over the potential different ways to interpret them and either become paralyzed with indecision or inevitably interpret them the least correct way possible

The tma fandom seems to have unlocked our psychic capabilities. Let me explain.

If you’re on the tma tag, or just have a lot of tma art on your dash, you see art of characters you have only heard the voices of. And you go “Oh, that’s Jon!” “Oh, that’s Melanie!” “Oh, that’s Tim!” And only a handful of these characters have distinctly described traits (like Gerry’s eye tattoos), and fewer still have recurring appearances, or that we hear the voices of. And yet we all agree, roughly, on what they look like. Even if someone has a different design, instead of going “who the hell is that”, you go “well, that’s not what I think Georgie looks like, but I know it’s Georgie without having to check the tags”.

This gets even more interesting when you look at Sasha. Because she gets *replaced*. And so many drawings of not!Sasha label her as Sasha for the bit/for spookiness, but we all somehow *know* when we’re looking at not!Sasha, even when the drawing has no other spookiness.

Ive seen this extend too far sometimes, with a lot of Malevolent art being inadvertently assigned to tma characters, but rarely have I looked at a piece of tma art and gone “who the hell is that??”

Some of this comes down to a collective agreement on designs that happened before I got to the fandom - by the time I got here, pretty much everyone’s designs were largely nailed down. Even so, art where the designs deviate from The Socially Agreed Design are still readily recognizable as the characters. I’m getting to see this with Alice, too - I can look at almost any Alice drawing and go “yep, that’s Alice” and she’s only existed in our collective consciousness for like three months and her design isn’t solidified yet.

Just misread an ad that said “Perfect cargo trailer” as “Perfect crime trailer” and was like hm i dont think most people would advertise that

Being jurgen leitner the day that gerry almost killed him was probably really surreal. Imagine you’re minding your business, collecting fucked up books, and out of nowhere this goth guy covered in eye tattoos shows up and beats you half to death, then stops, goes, “no you’re too pathetic to be jurgen leitner” and leaves without further elaboration. And you dont correct him, you like being alive after all, and after that you just… continue with your life. And then several years later you tell this to some random guy in the tunnels you’ve been hiding in, and he not only knows who the goth was, but seems somewhat fond of the goth. And then you get brutal pipe murdered by the random guy’s boss. Oops

Me reading blog descriptions trying to figure out if the acronyms are meyers briggs types or fandom abbreviations