When I Escaped The Dragon And Safely Arrived To Riverwood Faendal Was The First Living Being To Greet

When I escaped the dragon and safely arrived to Riverwood Faendal was the first living being to greet me (well, except the chicken of course xD). He stood there, basking in the sunlight, waiting with his quest. In the distance loomed a vision of our forthcoming adventure in Bleak Falls Barrow.

Fic Lines! Tag Game~

Thank you to @dirty-bosmer @kookaburra1701 @elfinismsarts @friend-of-giants @mareenavee @ehlnofeh and... anyone else who tagged me that I might have missed. It's been hectic irl for me, and I haven't gotten a chance to devote a lot of time to Tumblr Tings, but this seemed like a lot of fun.

I'm gonna try to pull from "Breathing Water" and "Liminal Bridges", since I'm currently working on the latter -- so I'll include some unpublished stuff from that as well!

The rules are to share:

A line from your fic that makes you laugh

“You’re in a mood,” Neloth declared through a chuckle. “And you’re distracting me. Which is not helpful, mind you.”  Teldryn leaned in a bit closer. “Is that a bad thing?” “Shoo. Away with you.” Neloth flapped a hand at him. “Let me do my work. Unless you had a terribly important reason for coming to find me.”  “Maybe I just missed you.”  “Yes, well, absence does make the heart grow fonder. So go away.”

(from Liminal Bridges) Neloth and Teldryn's banter makes me laugh a lot.

A line from your fic that makes you sad

“I do…” Neloth began, and Teldryn jumped ever so slightly. Neloth’s voice was so ragged that he felt a little startled himself, barely recognizing the sound. He cleared his throat. “I do… feel.” He twisted the stiff bedroll between his fingers. “I do.” Teldryn said nothing, continuing to look straight ahead.  “It’s just…” He didn’t know where he was going with this, but the words were clawing their way out of him, like some kind of sick, emaciated animal emerging from a cave. “I don’t think I… feel… correctly .”

(from Breathing Water)

A line from your fic you're proud of

For a long moment, all he could see was darkness. Then, the shimmering light of his spell began to catch the edges of shapes, vague and distant. Dozens of ships, scattered like the splintered bones of giants across the ocean floor.

(from Breathing Water)

A line from your fic you think could have been better

Neloth hadn't quite gotten used to the new way of things.

(from Liminal Bridges) I actually went in and altered this line to read: "Neloth had difficulty adapting to the new way of things." but I'm still not entirely satisfied with it. Bleh... best not overthink it too much, I reckon.

A line from your fic that makes you want to punch a character

“It’s not like you even teach me,” Talvas argued. “You just use me as a–a slave.”  “I’ve owned many slaves, my dear boy. If you view the meager work I assign to you as akin to slavery, then there’s no doubt you are just as weak as I previously anticipated. You would have found yourself in shackles had you lived in Morrowind not two hundred years ago.” He sneered, beginning to turn away. “But very well. Get out of my sight. Such spinelessness is unbefitting of anyone who wishes to carry on the legacy of House Telvanni.”

(from a yet-unpublished chapter of Liminal Bridges!) I want to punch Neloth often. It's why I love him so much.

A line from your fic that makes you go 'aww'

“Cold are you?”  “Damn you,” Neloth retorted, looping a leg around one of Teldryn’s. He was as hot as a furnace and Neloth groaned at the warmth, wriggling his frozen toes beneath Teldryn’s calves.  “Aye!” he yelped, trying to jerk away. “You have icicles for feet, you bloody frost troll!” “It’s your duty as my partner to warm my feet,” Neloth argued, tugging the covers up around his shoulders and shifting down to press himself against Teldryn’s side.  “Partner, is it?”  Neloth looked up, a flicker of panic catching in his chest. He’d said that, hadn’t he? Partner. Teldryn was looking down at him with soft eyes, the barest hint of a smirk playing at the corners of his lips.  Neloth cleared his throat. “Would you prefer a different term?”   “No.” Teldryn slid further beneath the covers, wrapping a warm arm around Neloth’s waist. “No, not at all. I… I like that.” He pulled their bodies together, no longer flinching away from Neloth’s cold feet. “And I certainly need to uphold my duties.”

(from Liminal Bridges)

A line from your fic that's full of symbolism

Neloth said nothing, chewing nervously at the side of his tongue as Teldryn slipped a hand beneath his linen undershirt, running a warm, smooth palm across his sides. What on Nirn had possessed him to say ‘partner’? It was supposed to have been harmless banter; their usual back-and-forth. Now, the future stretched before him in branching uncertainty, sprouting delicate buds of possibility that could so easily be clipped or stunted by the cold.

(from Liminal Bridges) A continuation from the scene that "makes me go 'aww'". Honestly it took a while to pick a snippet. I write in unintentional symbolism all the time, or so it's been pointed out to me lol. That, and I love metaphor.

A line from your fic that contains an Easter egg

“For now, we need to try to talk our way out of this. I don’t think I’ll be able to cast any time soon.”  Teldryn let out a low chuckle. “Well, luckily, that’s something I can do.” He unstrapped his bracer and pulled his right glove off. On his middle finger sat a glimmering ring – a moon and star. “I can be incredibly convincing.”

(from Breathing Water) The Moon and Star ring has a charisma boon -- it fortifies personality and speechcraft LMAO.

A line from your fic that's shocking

He looked down at his own body and a wave of sickness washed over him, coupled with the feeling that what he was seeing couldn’t possibly be real: a sword protruding from the center of his stomach.

(from Breathing Water)

A line from your fic you want to talk about more

Agatha huffed a laugh under her breath, removing an empty alembic and replacing it with a kettle on her alchemy workbench. “Your charisma is one of your greatest strengths, Mister Sero. You would make a good diplomat.” “I beg to differ,” he scoffed. “Look at all the good it did me in the First Era.”  A sudden coldness settled behind his breastbone at his own words. An odd slip-up. He’d taken great care throughout his life to separate himself from Nerevar. The phantom memories that came to him in dreams, the loyalties he couldn’t seem to shake, the opinions that seemed to spring from his head fully formed, as if crafted by decades of experience… No. It was the result of knowing his history—knowing Morrowind’s history. Teldryn Sero and Indoril Nerevar were not the same person. To imply otherwise was too frightening.

(from an unpublished future chapter of Liminal Bridges!)

The difference between past Topsy writing Breathing Water and current Topsy writing Liminal Bridges, is that I've actually PLAYED Morrowind now and have a lot more insight into the whole Nerevarine business. And I really wanted to dig a little harder into Teldryn's relationship with being the Nerevarine, specifically what that means for him psychologically. I know there are 100 different ways to spin the reincarnation, but I've settled on the shape of "He's literally just Nerevar".

I tag @vidvana @trickstarbrave @tkwritesdumbassassins @daedrabait and anyone else who wants to jump in and hasn't already been tagged!

"Mr. Kwama, wouldn't you like some more of my delicious mud tea?"

That's what I imagine Dunmer kids are doing in their free time - throwing tea parties for all of Morrowind's eldricht horrors!

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Art featuring Rheavie, the adorable OC of @katastronoot.

I got the inspiration from one reblog tag of @downontheupside #Ahhgudhdud i love how the kid looks like they just want to go back to playing with bugs outside instead of seeing dessicated ghostly grandpa

And obviously this iconic photo:

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This was gonna be my ArtFight submission but I got a huge art block and ghfdjhjhfahgfafgthfjgerdrfgdsa

The random citizens of Morthal fantasizing about how life in Solitude would look like.

It often crossed my mind how the poor folk living in the monster-ridden nature's ditch must feel like living in the shadow of the grand and majestic capital of Skyrim.

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The finishing is heavily inspired by the wonderful @kalihoffs and her series of Skyrim holds posters.

*@elfcyclopedia is my second account lol I posted it on the wrong one lol

Still tagging @thana-topsy, @greyborn2 and @katastronoot :3

Fic Lines! Tag Game~

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Thanks @thana-topsy by tagging me :3 And therefore recognizing me as a fellow writer even though I still haven't posted anything online. Yet.

The fragments are from two fanfics I'm working on, both telling the story of Ildari Sarothril from her perspecive. They are namely:

"She Looks so Beautiful in Her Grave: A Prelude" and "Ashes Feed My Revenge"

As I said, I haven't posted them yet. But if you get interested feel free to dm me, I'll gladly share my work so far with you :3

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Ok, so here we go:

A line from your fic that makes you sad

He looked around the graveyard once again. The dawn greeted him with shy, pinkish rays dispersed in the morning mist. Lighting the sea, the grave… The beautiful and deadly nightshades painted ornate, slender shadows on the ash. The dawn, the time of the Mother of Roses. Silver tears filled his eyes. Oh what a lowly mortal he is, in the face of death, in the face of the Gods. He leapt down on his knees, facing the rising sun, and prayed, prayed ardently being sorry for Azura, Boetiah and Mephala for what he’s about to do. But he couldn’t help it, he couldn’t help it!

(from "She Looks so Beautiful in Her Grave: A Prelude")

A line from your fic that makes you want to punch a character

Master fucking Neloth. Ulves’ face was hued red with anger. It was him who killed her. He coaxed Ildari into performing some unfortunate experiment on her. Two days ago Ulves floated up into the main tower to bring his master food when he casually informed him to dig a fresh grave. His blood boiled from the sole thought of it. He wished to kill him with his whole heart. But he felt so powerless. The old sly wizard would fry him down to a crisp before he could even unsheathe his axe. The only option would be poisoning his meal… but it was very probable that this ash-sucker would survive somehow. And that would mean the end of Ulves’ life. And even if his master, what would that change? There was nothing that Ulves wanted to do after that.

(from "She Looks so Beautiful in Her Grave: A Prelude")

A line from your fic you want to talk about more

Imagine silence. But in its foulest form. The silence that is only found in places of death, sending shivers down the spines of the living. The stillness of a burnt-down village. The void that fills the space after a man has uttered their last words. Somewhere, all among that silence a faint sound could be heard. Ildari’s heart started beating.

(from "Ashes Feed My Revenge")

A line from your fic you're proud of

And there she was outside, barely treading, yet irate enough to kick the ash left and right with a sour grimace. The grim landscape stretched before her - all was only ash and burned-down trees, with suggestions of the shoreline and the mountains of the other side. But they were distant, covered by the thick clouds of wind-swept ash. […] As much as she hated the musty air in the tower, outside it wasn’t much better. Even though the wind was merely a breeze, she already choked a few times on the ash that got inside of her windpipe.

(from "Ashes Feed My Revenge")

A line from your fic that's full of symbolism

Her mind was failing her, it was like a barren soil that couldn’t hold onto any seeds of thought, and certainly not let them develop. After a whole eternity of torment, she couldn’t help but close her eyes.

(from "Ashes Feed My Revenge")

A line from your fic that makes you laugh

“Knock, knock! Can I come in?” chirped Niyya right outside the door of her room. That was weird. She was getting suspiciously friendly so quickly. Well, so far it was harmless. She’s probably one of those people that take all of their life’s pleasures in serving the others and have the reputation of a saint in the society - unless you are the one they are actually helping - then they become really annoying.

(from "Ashes Feed My Revenge")

A line from your fic you think could have been better

“Is everything all right?” How dare she ask such a question? Of course it wasn’t! Just look at her.

(from "Ashes Feed My Revenge")

A line from your fic that contains an Easter egg

[I don't feel like I've ever written one, sorry ): ]

A line from your fic that's shocking WARNING: suicidal ideation

She put the book down and covered her face with hands. It only takes so much to strip a man off the will to live. What if the voices are never going to subside? And the pain? She can’t live like that! What will she do? Will there be anything to live for? She imagined herself, lifeless, half-buried in ash, like this poor young Bosmer necromancer not unlike her, rotting away - only to be found by a flabbergasted traveller that wouldn’t even have the guts to give the final rites. No voices would be heard then. No pain would trouble her. Not a single tormenting thought would ever cross her mind. Tempting. She heard footsteps coming.

(from "Ashes Feed My Revenge")

A line from your fic that makes you go 'aww'

“Um… Ildari” Niyya hesitated. ”I think you are… pretty.” The Redguard’s face turned dark red. Now Ildari understood why Niyya was so suspiciously friendly. But, she was a girl - a mere miner for damn’s sake. And there she was, making goo-goo eyes at her. Ildari wanted to puke.

(from "Ashes Feed My Revenge")

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I don't know much fellow writers (yet) but I feel like @katastronoot and @greyborn2 might come up with something interesting :3

I know it's a bit late and I'm so indecisive but let's see what comes out of this xD

I could gladly accept some help with this whole artfight website bc I have no idea how it works, so if sb wants to guide a newb, just let me know 😅