i don’t think any of you understand. the impetus, the fucking click behind scythebelts for me, is not strictly romantic. it is that sylnan, his entire life, has been trying to hold on to everything he can and he never gets to. and velrisa, god fucking bless her, has been waiting for someone to hold on to her like that, like nobody really has.
the impetus, the fucking spark, the starting point for everything i write for them, is based upon the gutsense fucking horror of seeing someone reach for you and not knowing if they mean to catch you for certain or just until you’re not useful.
everything else is just fluff and filler. the cleric/rogue dramatics, the high contrast, the jokes, the mutual admiration, the aesthetics- all of it is fluff and filler. good, but just not why i love it.
at core and center, they are holding on to each other until they are bleeding from the goddamn fingernails because nothing else is willing to stay as static and calm as they are. nobody else- not as though it is a personal failing on anyone else’s part, it is simply the way things go- is willing to cling on as hard for some chance at steady ground. sylnan and vel are. that’s what makes me write em.
cat post:
gxd? iw
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well that was cool! here’s the author. she’s been with us for about two weeks and she likes biting
old art i never put anywhere but discord!
THE MOTHERS! this is miriam ofc and what i think taxis mom would look like!! shes very cutie patootie
i do not think name was ever mentioned so,, i suggest, tabaxi clan name autumn remedy (autumn)
and i love them both and they are talking together where ever they are
you can tell i’m writing a fanfic when my search history gets weird as fuck. like.
8:08 pm : psalm 23
9:46 pm: late eighties prom dresses
9:47 pm: mid eighties prom dresses
10:50 pm: how do tape recorders work
10:56 pm: what are those doors in truck cabs called
11:23 pm: what’s 9% of 5600
11:24 pm: what percentage of us citizens are 18
11:27 pm: what’s 3% of 5600
THIS THIS THIS. we are giving u all our mental illnessess. open ur mind to the possibility:
scythebelts.
since scythebelts is gaining more popularity (as in ive seen like 3 other ppl talking abt it, which is a huge improvement from when it was just in @jamieycomplainey 's and I's dms) i think everyone needs to know of my favorite au of them, which is the goth/country au
weve gone through many iterations of how it happens, from goth vel and country boy sylnan, to the occasional what if sylnan was a goth and vel was country, theres a lot of backstory that is trapped in our dms which axel would be able to explain better but i think the idea of this needs to exist in peoples minds
two of you asked @fishcop and @octolingo-writes (hiiii guys ilysm) and i’m on a lot of robitussin rn so here goes:
art analysis (cold medication hallucinogen jrwi fated relationship chart edition)
- go read the individual types of relationships. all of them are insane. some of them are only used once. some of them (lake blue, 90% grey, rose, lemon, carmine) were meant to be used only once, and then their very existence forced me to examine all the various ways that emotion or relation could be considered applicable or canonical. some of them don’t make any sense. some of them are very straightforward. go read them and make one of your own.
-go make one of your own. all of these charts will be different depending on the creator and how specific they get and what individual interpretations they bring to the characters stories. go make one. do it. get crazy. be normal. do it. tag me if you want, i wanna see it. this fandom is so small i’ll see it regardless of what you do probably. make one.
-the mothers and wives are at the top, with the gods, because i am examining relationships, not plot; and in stories and lives everywhere very few things are more important than mothers and wives- especially when their relationships are restricted by the way their husbands and sons deify and restrict them. what is a woman if not a force of reckoning. what is a god if not a human’s hungry demands. what is a daughter if not a promise to be both. maybe that’s why there aren’t any daughters with mothers in the fated. maybe jared was scared of what they’d be.
-the gods relationships are absent unless they truly serve as humans when they interact. the storyteller is a plot point, a narrative device. ungaroh is an antagonist, an ending scene, a concept. for the purpose of this, they mean nothing. they are plot. i do not care about plot here. i care about plot in very few places. the interesting shit is the people- and they are easy (impossible) to understand, too. i included the gods on the paper for the purpose of excluding them in what matters.
-the narrative haunters and the salvation paths get represented differently (crosshatching and dotted or trailing paths) but the colors are similar because the ideals are similar. the same is true with the devotion of love (mahogany, the top line in the codex) and the feeling of bitterness (raspberry red- a little brighter, a little pinker, but hard to distinguish, especially in pictures).
-i stole the idea for crosshatching the doomed ones and the haunters (slate grey) from kurt vonnegut. “the destruction of dresden was represented by a vertical band of crosshatching, and all the lines that were still alive passed through it, came out the other side.” (go read slaughterhouse five.) so if you want to really get inside my brain on this one, you should try and look at how names and space are encircled or overwhelmed by the grey. usually it’s for people who died, because jared had a real knack for killing- literally or just conversationally cutting down- societally “othered” characters. sometimes it’s just used over a name to say “what would they have been if they hadn’t been treated like mothers and wives? like monsters? like statues? what would they have been if they’d been complex?” other times, it’s a barrier. other times, it’s just true: doomed from the start and barricaded in all relationships behind that doom- but still reaching through it in that strange, pale, ghostly way.
-similarly, a lot of the negative emotions get angular edges. a lot of the positive ones get curvy ones. there are several modifiers to this formula. one: straight lines should not indicate a straightforward or close relationship, but physical distance sometimes does. the exception to this is for the pc’s at center: we see all their relationships to each other up close and personal. straight lines mean simplicity and comprehension for them. often, that makes the relationships simpler. take mountain and hilda, who we never see interact: he deifies her, her mourns her, she is or at least was his reason to live, and in many ways that pedestal she’s kept on is simultaneously why she is a form of salvation and why she’ll never get to be a real, multifaceted character. the lines will never quite reach. but, like. mountain and sylnan? we see them go drinking, we see them argue, we see them in combat. they’re friends in the worst and most unlikely of places. it’s violent. it’s a little unhealthy. it’s honest. it’s devoted. sometimes it’s a little bit closeted. within that, all those visible complications, it’s simple: they are friends in the worst and most unlikely of places. that visibility of their relationship covers so much because speculation is close to impossible- we know so much.
modifier two: the misogyny lines are curvy- not because they’re gentle, but because they’re all-encompassing, encircling. taking it back to color for a second: the “dioxazine” (or however its spelled im on my phone i dont wanna scroll back up to the pic) purple reads as blackish here but its purple irl, especially in light, and i chose it for a) velrisa and oriana b) because it’s pretty and c) because as a color it overshadows so much else on the page. the lemon yellow i use for a relationship of destruction i chose because it hurts to look at. purple is just the opposite- it’s woven into everything. it’s easy on the eyes. it’s as natural in the picture as it was in the podcast. that should scare you. it dissolves in some places. it’s bold and bright in others. if i made this picture again i’d probably add more- the love and labor of women is wasted and missed and dismissed time and time again.
-the curly lines (see above, misogyny) are used for encompassing concepts- themes and feelings that entertwine and encircle. the fated love each other, as awkward and clumsyfooted as they are about it. i drew the vine-like circle around them (mahogany red, devoted love) as my second thing on this page, and for a while as i made it you could see the start of each path leading out from each character.
-that’s most of it. everything else is just kind of there if you look and i think the interpretation there is sorta fun so rehashing it here wastes time for most of us. sylnan and br’aad are brendan’s reasons to live, and whether you interpret the crosshatch for destruction as him towards them or them towards him it’s true. velrisa’s destruction and salvation are both in her being disowned, and she and ander are each other’s reason to keep going, so their entire relationship is framed in salvation (90% grey) because it’s a mutual thing. ugarth is encircled in 921 orange because in another world he’d have lived. oriana’s doomed narrative crosshatching is covered by these dioxazine spirals i made, because the misogyny is what really doomed her. there’s an old man yaoi (process red) line between ander and mountain, because it’s my relationship chart n i say so. there’s a question mark about whether or not velrisa’s family would have worked out with her in another life for the same reason that she has a relationship of deification, destruction, and salvation with them despite not one of them having names- there are so many unknowns we can’t even hope that in another world she would have stayed a happy little fisherman’s daughter. there’s a sexually charged hatred line between jacquot and sylnan/mountain for all that fag shit during the kidnapping in episode like 11.5. so it goes.
i’d love to blame this on cold medicine and isolation later, but i did this with such earnestness i refuse to let myself feel ashamed of this when time passes and i look back. art is cringy. loving things is cringy. storytelling and interpretation is cringy. the energy of live performance is cringy. all of the above are also sustaining and crucial to the development of a soul. it sustains the human race to be cringy.
i wrote this whole thing in-app on my phone. it took an hour and ten minutes nonstop. i refuse to edit it or read it back. im done now.
btw if ur still here- song of solomon 6:3 is “i am my beloveds and my beloved is mine.”
(fated relationship chart)
UHHHHHH UMMMM UHHHHH strangle macock in a cowboy hat. (the sniper on my position turns his safety off.)
can’t believe that doing the drug that makes you hungry n pimply n hairy n sweaty n horny n angry is making me hungry and pimply and hairy and sweaty and horny and angry. s’kickass.
babe are you okay you looked up “in front of my mother and sisters i pretend love is cheap and vulgar” again
it is a nearly unconquerable thing to not go back to what is bad for you when you like it. i am owed an apology and i’d like an explanation. what i get instead is the purse of your lips around a smile; a smile i have to blame on the drink in your hand because otherwise it spells disaster all over again.
all over again i’m back in your car, your arm against mine on the freeway. all over again we’re arguing about something that will be important later. right now the argument is silly and inconsequential. right now the sunroof is open and you ask me to spend the night. in the real world you offer me a shot. in the real world i say no to sharing a cigarette and i walk home drunk under the sweet, cold night.
more diaryposts because gxd is dead and this is my internet
i think maybe i am not afraid of love. i am afraid of the way i learned it. i am not afraid of parenthood- i want to be a father more than anything. i am afraid of the way i learned it. i am not afraid of boys. i am afraid of the way i learned to be one, to love one.
i spend my pocket money on liquor and show tickets and inhalants. i do not cut my hair. i wear ridiculous outfits and watch dirty movies i was not allowed to as a child. i am alive, alive, alive. i am living. i do not have to be liked. i do not have to be good. i do my best to be kind. it is enough.
i think he is good enough. i think i am good enough.
maybe it’ll all be good enough.
maybe it won’t be and i’ll be thirty. maybe is not enough. you cannot build a life on a maybe. you cannot rule beyond reasonable doubt when working with a maybe. you have to sit with it, and let it decide. a maybe is only a maybe for a time. sooner or later, it becomes a choice. a choice is good enough to build on, to carve into a life, to forge into a future.
what is enough is my gentleness. gentleness and goodness are two brothers, cut of the same cloth, but one of them is a god and one of them is a man. i am a boy. i am becoming a man. i have to make myself reach for the man, not the god. there is no sin in gentleness. i do not need godhood. this, here, now, is enough. gentleness is enough.