#emocean

My brother: No. It's because I'm feeling ocean.

Me: Emocean

Space clownfish who hide among dangerously radioactive objects as protection against predators?

Space dragonfish that hunt in the void by using a form of radiation that isn't detectable by most space fauna to locate prey while remaining dark and undetectable themselves?

Space archerfish that spit out jets of hot plasma as both hunting tool and defense mechanism?

Space coral growing in nebulae that don't have enough gravity to crush themselves into stellar nurseries but have a wealth of chemicals ideal for space life to thrive in?

Although...what about space whale fall? Voids punctuated by sites of rich space life, like oases in an unending black abyss?

Space as a wild, WILD place. Yes, space is big, space is huge! The distances involved at once shatter and expand the hearts of those who love it, much as the seas did to early sailors. But to assume that it means that there's so little we can see and reach is to take a cup of seawater and declare the oceans empty.

Yes, the timescales involved defy all our abilities to conceptualize, to grasp and make sense, leaving us only with metaphors to approximate anything meaningful to us. We can barely conceptualize the time involved in a single human lifetime, of a single family, of a people, a nation or ideology. But to declare it all to far away in time to matter is to declare a thick book useless to read because it takes too long to get to the end, and missing out on countless adventures and discoveries along the way.

i cannot recall where it began

i think that when you truly love someone, it does not stop

moreso you may not know where it begins

it cannot be measured

and so cannot be compared

it moves us

it is the very reason we move

you cannot slow it

once a heart is opened

love comes gushing in and out

and it does not become full or empty

is it not marvelous?

nothing runs out of it

it is not something that leaves us as we give it

nor does it reach a maximum when it flows into us

it heals us

and is also sometimes the reason we hurt

but in the pain we grow

as we do in every passing moment

love and be loved

and do not think for amoment that there is anything wrong with it

MAHL | Every Passing Moment

this spilled out one afternoon in the course of like 10 minutes and i edited it the following morning, before editing once again upon posting it now. i'm not bothering to study the algorithms or times of day with most activity on this app. i'm posting this now cause i've been telling myself to start for ages and haven't.

Tagged by @aeonian-scribbles (thank you so much!), I’m tagging @pomegranate-belle @katabasiss @twiddletaffy and whoever else would like to participate! Also, I’m on mobile, so I apologize in advance for this absolute wall of text.

1. How long have you been writing?

As a whole? It’s been in fits and starts over the course of my whole life—with far more fits than starts. The majority of my family are artists, my dad also being a very skilled writer in addition; I come by my raw talent honestly, but having my projects constantly critiqued and examined under a microscope was way too overwhelming for kid me. I stopped being a writer (and an artist) in my preteens because even my secret works would be found by my mother, who would then yell at me for hiding them and accuse me of being a spoilsport that didn’t share anything with her. Yeah. Fun times.

I would occasionally break my self-imposed moratorium to design fake advertisements or draw some elf girls (baby zee was so gay and so clueless!), but I didn’t really return to writing until my senior year of high school. That was when I discovered fanfic—and yes, I realize how much of a late bloomer I am, trust me. Undergrad came with a lot of upheaval in my personal life (I’m not straight! I’m not cis! I’m severely mentally ill! Yay!) and that put a halt to my creative writing yet again, but I did a lot of journaling and poetry writing that helped me develop a better sense of my own voice. I’m still trying to relearn a lot of the things that were once second nature to me as a child, writing being one of them, but I have a lot more time and support in my life now! Hopefully I can channel some of that back into being creative.

2. What are the major themes of your current wip(s)?

I don’t really have names for my wips so I’ll distinguish them by their settings:

Douglass—self-discovery, friendship, growth, rising to meet challenges, acceptance, and recovery.

Thlaht-Rawat—adventure, honor, found family, accepting responsibility, intrigue, and accepting or rejecting one’s destiny.

3. What do you want people to take away from your story once they’ve read it?

4. Would you be excited if people write fanfiction about your wip(s)?

I pledge my undying love to anyone who wants to write stories set in my universes and/or using my characters!

5. What’s your go-to writing beverage?

I don’t have one.

6. Who is your favorite oc? Tell me about them!

Douglass—Three-way tie between Yusuf, Emilio, and Ocean. It feels like I talk about these three all the time so check their respective tags for more deets.

Thlaht-Rawat—Alizeh. She’s a golden eagle that uses her telepathic link with Qamar to endlessly roast him rather than doing anything to meaningfully help him out. I just realized that she’s sort of like if Gina Linetti were a bird lmao

7. Do you feel that mistakes are important learning tools in the writing journey?

Important, yes. Fun? No.

8. Rank your ocs by their capability in a footchase (either running after or from smth, your choice)

I have too many ocs orz

Best? Yrsa. Worst? Snaggle.

9. Does your wip have romance? tell me about it!! if not tell me about a friendship/important relationship in your wip!!

Douglass—there are a lot of ships (OTHER THAN EMOCEAN @earthsgayestdefender I see you El!) but the central one is Yusuf x Khadijah. It’s not really romantic though? They’re soulmates, but I’m trying to put a different spin on it. I honestly feel worried that I won’t be able to handle their relationship to my personal satisfaction. Right now, my intention is for them to be more like queerplatonic partners than lovers.

Thlaht-Rawat—Sengkule x Fulatangga is my (mostly) angst-free OTP in this ‘verse. They’re so sweet with each other and with their daughter? The best husbands and the best dads in the entire world.

10. Do you believe in the advice kill your darlings?

I mean... I would say no but the main character in one of my wips is literally dead before the start of the story so. I guess?

11. Do you prefer plotting or worldbuilding? Why?

World-building because it means I don’t actually have to work lmaoooo

These GIFs always leave me wondering....

Do whales dream of flying?

Of soaring with their flippers among clouds like they do among currents? Do they imagine themselves launching their bodies out of the water and into the air with ease? Do they dream of falling up towards the sky? Do they see the black sky of night as another deep dark ocean they could swim through? Of leaping over islands and coasting over continents? 

Is there joy in it? Or would these be nightmares to them without the soft support of a liquid environment? Would they miss the ease with which water transmits their songs compared to airborne sounds?

And dolphins! Who sleep with only half their brains at a time, and are essentially in a perpetual state of half-dreaming, do they leap into the air with such abandon because they forget, in that way only dream-logic makes you forget, that they can’t fly?

I think about this too, when I remember the times in my childhood where I would dream about being some four-legged thing, and the ease and comfort with which I would be able to move with my spine being horizontal rather than vertical, the weight and pressure suddenly absent on my back, legs and neck. What a relief it was, to be re-aligned with the horizon, instead of trying to rise above it on only two legs.

I think about this when I remember one of my few dreams of flying. In it, I am a thing with no name, and only vaguely shaped like a manta ray, but I am flying effortlessly towards a brilliant sunset, in a constant state of chasing the sun for an unknown reason. But the reason did not matter, there was only that sunset, and the softness of the clouds, the freedom from gravity, the release from verticality....

And then, the ultimate dream of flight I’ve had, of being an immense and dark thing in space, traveling through the void with no restraint at all. There was no up or down, no horizon or meaningful sense of direction or scale. There was only the freedom of being a black thing, in a black void, making and hearing no sound but still seeing everything and feeling everything with senses I still can’t understand but somehow knew...

 Until, in my blissful wanderings I come across an object that looks fascinating to me. It is round and colorful and spins, the colors banding all around it’s girth, and it is b e a u t i f u l . . . It is not bigger than me, and is of a different shape, but I am enamored with it anyways. And I suddenly feel the pull of it’s mass in what I now remember is called gravity, and if I let it pull me towards it, I risk ruining it’s magnificent gassy stripes. Best to keep my distance, however much I want to feel it more. 

At a safe distance I drift around it in all directions with ease, looking at it from every possible angle and never once feeling the disorientation of an uncomfortable perspective, until comes the moment where I notice that a small oval section of it has a bright red spot that I can’t hep but recognize...

I am staring at Jupiter and it’s Great Red Spot.

And I wake up.

If I am capable of such dreams, then can whales, too, with their brains much bigger than mine and their lives sometimes so much longer, imagine themselves taking flight?

Do whales have dreams like these? Do they dream of swimming close to the moon? Of flying over mountains and getting a closer look at them? Do they dream of brushing away stars with their tails like so many bright and pale jellyfish? Have they learned to navigate by the stars? Do they have their own constellations? Or do they imagine the space between the stars in the shapes of things they know?

Do whales dream of flying, and all the things that flying implies?

Do whales dream of flying...?