Xlili-lyraterx - Oneirataxia

What looks like a scene out of a J. R. R. Tolkien novel is in reality the natural phenomenon of Horsetail Fall at Yosemite National Park. In February each year for about two weeks, the angle of the setting sun, along with the shadow from El Capitan, come to the edge of the falls and set it ablaze. I met people who had been chasing the Firefall for years so I feel very lucky to have arrived when the conditions were perfect.

My fandoms and my fandom neighbors!

TODAY, August 12, 2024, The Animation Guild begins negotiations with the AMPTP to win a new contract for animation. This is a huge fight with severe stakes for the future of the Animation Industry in the US, and the guild needs your support!

TAG is fighting, Right Now, to stop exploitative practices that are weaponized against animation professionals across the globe, and working hard to ensure this industry has a future here in the states.

If you are a fan of animation, whether it's major or independent studios, eastern or western, tv or movies, we need you to get LOUD in support of The Animation Guild. The crews who work so hard to bring these works to life are struggling to pay their bills, if they can find work at all, while studio CEOs are getting multi-million dollar raises to cancel projects and gut streaming libraries.

We can win this fight, but we need public outcry and support. If you work in animation, if you've ever dreamed of working in animation, or if you just love animation, please stand with TAG and support the union effort to keep animation a viable career and a valuable medium!

Check out the Website Here: #StandWithAnimation

AnimationWorkersIgnited Twt / LinkTree

AnimationGuild Twt

Masterpost: How to write a story?

Compilation of writing advice for some aspects of the writing process.

How to motivate myself to write more

How to get rid of writer’s block

Basic Overview: How to write a story

How to outline a story

How to come up with plot

How to create a character

How to make a character unique

How to name your characters (Masterpost)

How to start a story

How to write a prologue

How to write conversation

How to write witty banter

How to write the last line

How to write a summary

How to write a book description

How to write romance

How to write friendships

How to write emotions (Masterpost)

How to write an argument

How to write yelling

How to write anger

How to write betrayal

How to title fanfiction

How to write an unreliable narrator

First Person vs. Third Person POV

How to write character deaths

How to use songs in a fanfiction

How to name fictional things

How to write self-insert fics

How to write multiple points of view

Introducing a group of characters

Large cast of characters interacting in one scene

How to write dual timelines

Redemption arc

Plot twists

Fatal Character Flaws

Good Traits Gone Bad (x)

Slow burn

Explanation posts about writing terms

What is…

AU ideas

Favourite tropes

Tropes of the day

List of Genres

Drabble vs. One-Shot

Advice for writing relationships

Masterpost: how to write relationships + romance

More specific scenarios

How to write a bilingual character

How to write a character with glasses

How to write heterochromia

How to create a villain

Reasons for becoming a villain

How to write a morally grey character

How to write an inferiority complex

How to write a road trip

How to create and write a cult

How to write amnesia

How to write being stabbed

How to write a stratocracy

How to write a heist

How to write the mafia

Criminal past comes to light

Ideas for traumatic experiences

How to create an atmosphere (Masterpost)

How to write a college party

How to write royalty (Masterpost)

Paramilitary Forces/ Militia

Superpowers Masterpost (Hero x Villain)

Inconvenient things a ghost could do

A Queen’s Assassination Plot

Crime Story - Detective’s POV

Evil organization of assassins

Evil wins in the end

Causes for the apocalypse

Last day on earth

Liminal Spaces

Workplace AUs

Signs of co-dependency

What to wear in a desert

If you like my blog and want to support me, you can buy me a coffee or become a member! And check out my Instagram! 🥰

Whale Shark Gliding Through Bioluminiscent Algae _ Mike Nulty

words for your fight scenes

Breathe

draw, expire, heave, inhale, puff, suffocate

Catch

intercept, tackle

Climb

arise, ascension, mount, scale, surface

Cut

amputate, ax/axe, bisect, chisel, cleave, crop, cut up, dent, dissect, engrave, etch, fell, hack, lacerate, mangle, molt, mutilate, notch, peel, scar, scratch, shave, shred, slash, slit, trim, whittle

Dispose

boot, chuck, disposal, dispose of, do away with, elimination, kick out, rejection, scrap, throw away, void

Drop

alight, crash, decline, descent, dive, droop, duck, fall, flop, fumble, go under, keel over, light, percolate, plumb, plunge, sag, settle, sink, slump, stoop, submerge, suspend, thud/thump, tumble, wilt

Hide

ambush, bury, camouflage, conceal, cover, cover-up, cringe, disguise, dissimulate, embed, ensconce, envelop, isolation, lurk, masquerade, palliate, screen, seclusion, sequester, shrink, shut off/shut out, sneak, withhold

Hit

applaud, bang, baste, batter, beat, blindside, boot, buffet, bunt, chip, clash, clip, clout, collide, concussion, crash, cuff, deflect, drive, flail, glance, hammer, jab, jostle, knock, lick, nail, peck, plaudits, pound, punch, rap, scourge, slap, smack, sock, strike, swipe, tap, thud/thump, tip, whack, whip

Hold forcefully

apprehend, cage, clasp, clinch, confinement, constriction, cramp, detain, embrace, enslave, fetters, grasp, gripe, hold, incarcerate, overpower, press, shackle, snatch, strangle, throttle, wrestle

NOTE

The above are concepts classified according to subject and usage. It not only helps writers and thinkers to organize their ideas but leads them from those very ideas to the words that can best express them.

It was, in part, created to turn an idea into a specific word. By linking together the main entries that share similar concepts, the index makes possible creative semantic connections between words in our language, stimulating thought and broadening vocabulary.

Source ⚜ Writing Basics & Refreshers ⚜ On Vocabulary Notes: Fight Scenes (pt. 1) (pt. 2) Word Lists: Fight ⚜ Pain

“why you scared?”

(some movements make no sense but im too lazy to fix it)

Just a hint of a reveal.

Promises Three: Subtle Dreaming

Dark!Morpheus x (female)reader, fantasy/medieval AU, 18+

Master List

Dream of the Endless had been promised a bride.

Chapter track: Rainbow - The Temple of the King - Algal the Bard

It has been... a rough couple weeks. But I'm back! Hope you enjoy! Your comments and questions mean the world! Special thanks to all you lovely rebloggers! I'm still trying to figure out how to respond without essentially reposting half a dozen times, but I see you, you make my week!

Subtle Dreaming

A knock on the door disturbed her work. It was an hour past midnight, when all but the youngest servants and ardent lovers had retired to their beds with heads full of dreams, a time a wandering mice and cat’s work.

But she wasn’t surprised, even less when she opened the door of her windowless chamber to find a young lady in her nightdress, wrapped in a shawl with wary hope in her eyes and a candle in her hand. Alis Everard. The youngest of a large family, and the only child still unmarried – and a child she was, barely thirteen, and of all the reasons the bard hated the king of Meiren, summoning such young suitors for his Endless guest might be the greatest. Her face hadn’t quite lost childhood’s rounded cheeks, and the seams on her nightgown had recently been let out after a growth spurt.

“I see your father is impatient,” the bard said. Wrapped in her own shawl over her own nightgown, she felt more than ever the noble’s equal. After such a long life, she understood better than most how little rank protected one from life and how much a peasant’s child was like a queen’s. She was the girl’s elder by far, but she’d been young once, and what youth didn’t go sneaking down corridors in the dark during their first trip to court?

“He bid me seek your counsel. May I come in?”

Stepping back, she ushered the girl into her sparse little room. “Of course.”

Once the girl was through, she moved to close the door, but a slippered foot darted through the gap to block it. “Not so quicky!”

The foot neatly kicked the door back open as the bard released it, and a young woman – who was, at least, properly a woman – swept by in a dressing gown of satin and a riot of chestnut curls. “I enjoy midnight jaunts, but not being spied on one.”

The bard did her very best not to smile, but failed entirely. She knew this late guest as well. Eilwyn Alder. The third generation in her family the bard had befriended, and she sat next to little Alis on the bed with the casual grace of someone entitled to it.

“My grandmother sent me for your thoughts, though I’m sure she’ll collect them for herself tomorrow. But I am a dutiful granddaughter, so here I am.” She blinked doe eyes as the door finally fell shut, poised and perfect coquettish grace. “So, what news? Or will I lose my beauty sleep for nothing?”

Pulling out a stool from beneath her tiny desk, the bard said, “I haven’t spent an hour in his presence, and I’ve had a long ride, so forgive me if I haven’t yet taken the full measure of the king’s guest and his schemes.”

Alis wriggled on the bed, twisting her hands up in her shawl. Her eyes bounced between shadows, looking for threats like the Dream Lord’s nightmares might crawl out of the walls to exact vengeance for some imagined slight. Not that they couldn’t, but the bard assumed Lord Morpheus had better things to do with his time than torment one overwrought teenager who didn’t want to marry him.

“What if he eats his bride on the wedding night? Like the Lindworm?”

Eilwyn scoffed, and the bard donned a gentle smile, even if she couldn’t keep the laugher from her voice.

“He’s Endless, not a dragon.”

“What does that mean?”

“Means you’d be better off with a dragon.”

The child curled into the corner of the bed, sinking into the blankets with her shawl swallowing the lower half of her face. Looking for comfort where her companions’ mirth had failed. The bard reached over to pat her knee, taking the opportunity to change the subject. “Honestly dragons aren’t so bad. One of my patrons is a dragon, you know. I was attending my yearly visit to his lair when your great, worried, noble parents called for me.”

A whisper of a promised story lured Alis’s eyes away from visions of doom. She glanced at Eilwyn, like she’d confirm the tale. The older girl gladly took up the role of expert.

“Everyone knows that,” she sniffed.

“Is it…” Alis mulled over the idea, confusing herself with her own bevy of questions. “Is it a… nice dragon?”

“These days he is. But he wasn’t always.”

The hook snared Alis’s attention, and her posture softened, though she didn’t leave the corner of the little bed. In fact, she made herself more comfortable, settling like a kitten, and a stab of rage that anyone thought this little girl ought to be considered as a wife seared through the gathering strands of the bard’s story.

She took a blanket and settled it over the child as she began to speak, shielding her from a king’s machinations, a world too big for little hands, and prying eyes.

.O.O.O.

Dream of the Endless retired to the chambers the King set aside for his use, though he had little use for them at all. He would not sleep. He had no intention of entertaining in the parlor, or writing missives at the richly appointed desk. There was no book on the shelves he did not already possess, and he left the food prepared for him to grow cold and stale on the table.

He did sip the wine, and in the darkest hours he found his amusement in wandered the sleeping minds of the castle. Boredom drove him. Cruelty, even. Vengeance called for the king to atone for his wounded pride, and the decade since the human’s error only gave Dream time to image new and wondrous torments. He wanted to watch the king’s schemes crumble in the dread nightmares prowling the would-be suitors’ dreams. He enjoyed the seeds of hate planted in parents’ hearts, the doubt in subjects who’d been nothing but loyal until this gathering.

The king’s story would be a horror, a kind of tragedy that left wounds in his lands and subjects the turn of generations would not heal. These seven days would be the fuse, a prologue to terror and loss. A lesson none would soon forget, lest they bring such punishment on their own loves.

He drifted, savoring the fears he would shape to his own ends. Until words snared his attention. A half-heard tale of a dragon spinning through recent memories of a soft touch and a smile in the face of inescapable dread.

He found a young mind loosely tethered to the Dreaming, caught in the tides running between the conscious and subconscious, where words and images of the Waking cast strange reflections in the fading thoughts before sleep. She led him to a plain, simple room deep in the castle. A place for high-ranking members of staff, perhaps. Utilitarian and uninspiring. Not a place this noble child belonged. But she was not alone, and as she dozed, Dream borrowed her senses.

Voices. One he recognized. The bard the king so detested. He knew her as he knew all dreamers, and he sensed his sister’s touch upon her.

She spoke of him.

“He’s the Prince of Stories. A bride market is beneath him. This is how political unions for picky lords looking for pretty faces are arranged, not how one of the most powerful creatures to ever live seeks a partner,” the bard said.

She was not wrong, of course. The story weaver spied the loose strings in the tale, the ragged ends that did not match, though she had yet to understand the pattern he wove.

“Whatever he wants, it isn’t love or a warm body in his bed. There’s something else. I just have to figure out if that something is a danger to any of you.”

So, loyalty did grow in the king’s court. Just not to the monarch. Dream felt the peace the bard’s presence brought the dreamer half-snared in her sleep. A quiet, sure thing. The confidence children had in oak trees their parents and grandparents climbed when they were young.

The other voice in the room did not speak as a child. This one was old enough for caution, and it worried for the old oak as well as those who sheltered beneath.

“To us, I should think.”

Did the bard not fear him? Had she stood outside as the storyteller for so long she’d forgotten she could be part of them as well?

“Whatever happens, dear, I’ll survive it.” Her only worry was for those she perceived as in her care. The children of children she’d watched grow. A touch carried through the dreamer’s skin and into their subconscious, a kind voice leading her back to the Waking. “It isn’t time to sleep yet. You must return to your room…”

The fragile link collapsed, and the bridge between the servants’ quarters and the noble guest room dissolved.

Lord Morpheus, Dream of the Endless, sat in his darkened chambers in the court of a damned king, and thought as he sipped from his wine that he would enjoy seeing the bard at work. He must amuse himself for seven days, after all, until the time of the agreement ran out, and she was a surprising creature.

The most surprising he’d seen in some time.