Avatar of Crimson Raven
  • Last Seen: 3 yrs ago
  • Joined: 9 yrs ago
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    1. Crimson Raven 9 yrs ago

Status

Recent Statuses

3 yrs ago
Current 'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
3 yrs ago
I say the words that I wish someone would tell me in vain hope that they might be returned to me.
2 likes
4 yrs ago
Existence continues.
4 yrs ago
So much I want to do, so little time...
1 like
4 yrs ago
“I’ve met some pricks in my time. But you, sir...” He said to the offending cactus.
7 likes

Bio



“NO ADMITTANCE.
NOT EVEN TO AUTHORISED PERSONNEL.
YOU ARE WASTING YOUR TIME HERE.
GO AWAY.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless


NOTICE


Thank you for Noticing This Notice.


Your Noting it has been Noted.


And it has been Reported to the proper Authority.


Hello lurker/ My old friend/ I've come to talk to you again/ Because a shadow softly creeping/ Lurking in the chat while I was sleeping/ And the roleplay that was forming in my brain/ Still remains with the sound of lurking.

In dead roleplays I walked alone/ Narrow pathways of casual zone...

Need mor ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

(Made in collaboration with @hatakekuro)




It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.

--Douglass Adams




All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.

Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.

And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow.

Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth.

And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part.

The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound.

Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.


~~As You Like It, Shakespear


"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."


~~ Macbeth, Shakespear





“All stories told have been told before. We tell them to ourselves, as did all men who ever were. And all men who ever will be. The only things new are the names.”




“The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.”




“What do you know?”

“Almost everything. That almost part can be a real kick in the teeth sometimes.”

“What do you want, then?”

“What I can’t have.” Wit turned to him, eyes solemn. “Same as everyone else, Kaladin Stormblessed.”




"Two blind men waited at the end of an era, contemplating beauty. They sat atop the world’s highest cliff, overlooking the land and seeing nothing.

'Can beauty be taken from a man?' the first asked the second.

'It was taken from me,' the second replied. 'For I cannot remember it.' This man was blinded in a childhood accident. 'I pray to the God Beyond each night to restore my sight, so that I can find beauty again.'

'Is beauty something one must see then?' the first asked.

'Of course. That is it’s nature. How can you appreciate a work of art without seeing it?'

'I can hear a work of music,' the first said.

'Very well, you can hear some kinds of beauty - but you cannot know full beauty without sight. You can know only a small portion of beauty.'

'A sculpture,' the first said. 'Can I not feel its curves and slopes, the touch of the chisel that transformed common rock into uncommon wonder?'

'I suppose,' said the second, 'that you can know the beauty of a sculpture.'

'And what of the beauty of food? Is it not a work of art when a chef crafts a masterpiece to delight the tastes?'

'I suppose,' said the second, 'that you can know the beauty of a chef’s art.'

'And what of the beauty of a woman,' the first said. 'Can I not know her beauty in the softness of her caress, the kindness of her voice, the keenness of her mind as she reads philosophy to me? Can I not know this beauty? Can I not know most kinds of beauty, even without seeing it?'

'Very well,' said the second. 'But what if your ears were removed, your hearing taken away? Your tongue taken out, your mouth forced shut, your sense of smell destroyed? What if your skin were burned so that you could no longer feel? What if all that remained to you was pain? You could not know beauty then. It can be taken from a man.'"

The messenger stopped, cocking his head to Shallan.
"What?" she asked.

"What think you? Can beauty be taken from a man? If he could not touch, taste, smell, hear, see, what if all he knew was pain? Has that man had beauty taken away from him?"

"I…" What did this have to do with anything? "Does the pain change day by day?"

"Let us say it does," the messenger said.

"Then beauty, to that person, would be the times when the pain lessens. Why are you telling me this story?"

The messenger smiled. "To be human is to seek beauty, Shallan. Do not despair, do not end the hunt because thorns grow in your way. Tell me, what is the most beautiful thing you can imagine?"

...




“In this,” Wit said, “as in all things, our actions give us away. If an artist creates a work of powerful beauty – using new and innovative techniques – she will be lauded as a master, and will launch a new movement in aesthetics. Yet what if another, working independently with that exact level of skill, were to make the same accomplishments the very next month? Would she find similar acclaim? No. She’d be called derivative.

“So it’s not beauty itself we admire. It’s not the force of intellect. It’s not the invention, aesthetics, or capacity itself. The greatest talent we think a man can have?” He plucked a final string. “Seems to me that it must be nothing more than novelty.”




"A blind man awaited the era of endings," Wit said, "contemplating the beauty of nature."

Silence

"That man is me," Wit noted. "I'm not physically blind, just spiritually. And that other statement was actually very clever, if you think about it."




"What is it to be witty, then?”

“To say clever things.”

“And what is cleverness?”

“I…” Why was he having this conversation? “I guess it’s the ability to say and do the right things at the right time.”

The King’s Wit cocked his head, then smiled.




“Expectation. That is the true soul of art. If you can give a man more than he expects, then he will laud you his entire life. If you can create an air of anticipation and feed it properly, you will succeed.

“Conversely, if you gain a reputation for being too good, too skilled . . . beware. The better art will be in their heads, and if you give them an ounce less than they imagined, suddenly you have failed. Suddenly you are useless. A man will find a single coin in the mud and talk about it for days, but when his inheritance comes and is accounted one percent less than he expected, then he will declare himself cheated.”

Wit shook his head, standing up and dusting off his coat. “Give me an audience who have come to be entertained, but who expect nothing special. To them, I will be a god. That is the best truth I know.”

~~ Stromlight Archive, Brandon Sanderson


"You see, whether you can draw like this or not, being able to think up this kind of design, it depends on whether or not you can say to yourself, ‘Oh, yeah, girls like this exist in real life. If you don’t spend time watching real people, you can’t do this, because you’ve never seen it. Some people spend their lives interested only in themselves. Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people, you know. It’s produced by humans who can’t stand looking at other humans. And that’s why the industry is full of otaku!"
-Hayao Miyazaki

"In culture an analogous situation leads to the emergence of enclaves shut up in ghettos, where intellectual production likewise stagnates because of inbreeding in the form of incessant repetition of the selfsame creative patterns and techniques. The internal dynamics of the ghetto may appear to be intense, but with the passage of years it becomes evident that this is only a semblance of motion, since it leads nowhere, since it neither feeds into nor is fed by the open domain of culture, since it does not generate new patterns or trends, and since finally it nurses the falsest of notions about itself, for lack of any honest evaluation of its activities from outside."

~Stanislaw Lem, author of Solaris

Some heartfelt music while you lurk



Or U liSTEN TO tem MOOSIC!



I just don't want you to have a Bad Time...



What do I live for?





"I think I've seen this movie before." -@Guess Who






I LOVE TVTROPES!

Most Recent Posts

Should I

Or should I not

inflict the character that has occurred to me

on this poor, unsuspecting, RP?
When a random game crash erases hours of playtime, including a completed RNG-fest.


Ferrin Astra




???


Tenrou Team - The Magi's story: Shadow of the Past



The young wizard's anger extinguished like a candle before a breeze as put-off exhaustion piled on his shoulders and dragged at his words. "Yeah yeah, enough bringing up the past." He sighed, waving his metal hand. "There's too much going on at the present to worry about the future." He followed Mavis' gaze as it turned sad. "Well, strategist, what will be our next move?"

"I have a request of you, Ferrin. I need you to free me from this existence... I fear this island is no longer home."

"Huh?" He blinked. "...huh." He said again after a pause. "If you would elaborate, that would be nice. Now, I am not one to jump to conclusions, but your phrasing could use some work."

Meanwhile, the masked woman had seemingly lost interest and wandered off, walking around from mage to mage. She spent nearly a full minute studying each small group intensely, before soundlessly passing them by. Through this, she said not a word, nor made a sound. Even her footsteps were so faint that few would hear them. However, when she reached the shore, she noticed the water in large area was steaming. More that that, she recalled seeing a big geyser over here earlier. She felt two sources of magic coming from below the surface. Was someone down there? This wasn't the time to take a swim.

She reached out to the darkness, and it answered her like a loyal companion. She drew from the darkness of the deep, from the shadows cast by the rocks beneath the island, and from her own. She swung her arms back and long tendrils of inky blackness extended from her sleeves. Then she cast them forward. They responded to her movement, lengthening and shooting beneath the waves. Seconds later, two girls popped out of the water, caught like fish on a hook. Despite the light emitted by one, and the fire by the other, the shadows grasping about the waist them kept their strength, though weakened. The two mages were reeled in by the darkness to be gently deposited in the sand at the feet of the shadow mage.

She regarded her catch. One seemed all right, if a little waterlogged. Some weak flames still danced from the Red One's form, turning the ocean water to steam. She bent over the girl and stretched out her hands, gathering shadows in them, the darkness stretching out from her sleeves. Her shadow rotated unnaturally to envelope the burning mage. The flames dimmed and appeared to be sucked downward, into the shadow. In seconds, the last of the flames were gone. She released the magic and stepped back. Then she just stood there, watching the both of them.
Ahem

Caw.
I guess I’m first? I’m posting early because I’m going to be very busy soon and I may not have another chance later.

So, without further ado:

Let the curtains rise.



Word count: 2,010 sorry. good year though
So I have actually finished my story. Wooo

Inspiration hit me like a truck and from there I tapped it out in a few hours.

However, I have a small issue: it’s 2,086 words. I don’t want to shorten it more, because I feel I’ll lose some of the story if I do. But I’m willing to if needed.

The Rules ask to keep it under 2,000. 86 isn’t too much over. May I submit my slightly too long story?

Edit: 2,048 and dropping.
This particular subject has always been close to my heart. How does a 'hero' become a 'villain'?

Perhaps further, what is a hero? what is a villain? And what makes them so? Good and Evil are, ultimately, subjective, either the opinion of the individual, by their conscience, or dictated by a higher power, be that higher power a government or a god. What happens when the conscious of the individual clashes with those of the high power? In that situation, how does one know which is right?

All fun philosophical fodder for a story. Very easily can the line between villain and hero be blurred beyond all recognition.

I'm going to do my best to get a submission in for this one. That said, I'm also a legendary procrastinator, so take the previous statement with a grain of salt.

Ferrin Astra




???


Tenrou Team - The Magi's story: Shadow of the Past



As the dust settled, Ferrin stared at Mavis with something dangerously resembling awe from the usually unflappable wizard. Of course. It has been over two hundred years. She had plenty of time to perfect Law since I last saw her. And here I was hoping I would be the first to figure it out. ...hey, daemon. Did you get that?" A multilayed, disharmonic voice, like dozens of different people speaking just out of sync echoed in his head.

Of course. You may analyze it at your leisure. After a pause it added begrudgingly. I'm...surprised. I never expected to see a human use it. Its potential is...well, not one that should be in the hands of mortals.

Ferrin cocked his head. But you will let me study it?

Of course. I abide by my word. It almost sounded offended. I would do nothing about it anyway. I am no god to decide what should or not be. It is simply dangerous. Like... Ferrin felt it shift though his mind for an appropriate simile.

"Like a toddler with sword." Ferrin finished for it, speaking aloud with a quiet sigh.

Mhm. A flaming sword.

I will...bear that in mind. We can compare notes later, but for now, conserve your power. I have a feeling I will be needing it before all is said and done here.

The being receded and Ferrin shook himself out of his reverie. A headache had crept up on him while he was standing there, and now his head was pounding away: thump thump thump. He ignored it as spared a glance at the scorched sand and broken ice where Zeref had stood. No sign of him now and not even Ferrin's wizardly senses could feel him. However..."This island stinks." He muttered, wrinkling his nose. He could still vaguely sense that something was wrong, and his mind interpreted it as a foul stench lingering just on the edge of smell. Logic said there was no way Zeref was still alive, but Ferrin's instincts told him they haven't seen the last of him. You don't live as a dark wizard for over two centuries without having some powerful tricks up your sleeve. Ferrin almost wished he could have a talk with the man. Pity they met as enemies.

Raising his head and his voice, he called out to everyone: "Do not let your guards down! We are not safe just yet. Those of you with healing talents or magic, tend to the wounded. If you still have a good amount of stamina left, form a rough perimeter and be extra careful to guard the spent and the wounded. We do not want to get surprised again." For that reason, he didn't dismiss Shiden either. Paranoia had kept him a live this long, he saw no reason to dismiss it now. He made a quick count and sighed in relief as he found everyone was accounted for. We were too lucky.

He was limping slightly as he made his way over to the newcomers. He studied each in turn, the six former dragons, the mysterious cloaked person in a mask, who was now just standing quietly and staring off into the distance, and the swordsman who randomly dropped out of the sky mid-fight. Oh and Mavis. He noted the Fairy Tail guild mark prominently displayed on the shoulders of three of the six former dragons. If he had to guess, they were all dragon slayers, if the feel of the pink-haired one's magic was any indication. Powerful ones too. He still felt uncomfortably warm just from the feel of that one's magic. Two bore guild marks he didn't recognize and the sixth, a dangerous-looking man missing an eye, had none that he could see. He studied the masked person--only to find that it was staring at him. Creepy. He shot back with his best glare. He tried to gauge how dangerous they were. They may have helped fight the Black Wizard, but the enemy of one's enemy isn't always a friend. None of them seemed to be aggressive now, but that didn't mean anything. He knew nothing about where their loyalties lay, and that put him on edge. Still, if they did attack, they would have to deal with every wizard here, which was a small comfort.

He stopped next to Mavis as the small group gathered around the former dragons, and he listened in to Sasha with an unreadable expression.

"You cast Law." He said. A statement, not a question. He shook his head. "And they accuse me of being reckless. I wonder who I could have learned it from."

A memory of the past flashed in his mind.

Ferrin, being the inquisitive kid with more magical talent then sense that he was, had managed to uncover the spell Law, among others and secretly began practicing. However, Mavis caught him before he was able to crack it. After a very thorough chewing out, in a quiet voice, she explained the dangers of the spell and what it had cost her, stunting her growth. After that, she made him promise that he would never attempt to cast that spell.

He was sure she still remembered the incident.

He sighed. "Though I'm sure you've had time to perfect the spell, and things turned out all right, I feel obliged to remind you that it was still a damn fool thing to do." Not that he had room to throw stones.

His gaze softened a bit as he looked over the dragonslayers, now knowing some of their story. Waking up with all that you knew and loved suddenly gone. That he could sympathize with. But he had no words to alleviate their pain. Mavis suggested returning them, and one could all but hear a vein pop on Ferrin. He glanced askance at Patrick. "Yeah, Timmy. Why don't you make yourself useful and return those that don't belong here to their own time. Or is messing with people and putting them in danger all you are good for?" Ferrin had noticed that Time Lord's interference only made things worse for those who had tried to rush Zeref, and he made sure to sink that barb deep. He wasn't interested in the sappy feels that were going around.

Behind him, the masked figure had inexplicably moved to stand on his shadow and was standing unnaturally still, staring at it's feet, it's head tilted to the side. It didn't make a sound. Now that it was still, one could make out a faint curve of chest underneath the ragged, dirty cloak, suggesting that the person in there was female. The mask, which might to have been a masterly crafted piece once, was as dirty and ragged as the cloak, with cracks spiderwebbing across it. Both looked to be very old. Of the person, only her hands could be seen, peeking out from her sleeves: her hands were pale, almost white, and long, unkept, dirty fingernails topped each of her fingers. A few stands of midnight-black hair poked out from under her hood, blending in with the shadow it cast. Her own shadow was notably darker then it should be, and eerily, would sometimes move independently of her or lag behind her movements.


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