Eren Branch

@rootandbranch.bsky.social

939 Followers 586 Following

40-something neurospicy polyam white queer, any pronouns. Tired. Low on fucks. Writing a space fantasy mecha retelling of wild medieval Arthuriana. (How wild? Four-way makeouts. Medieval literature!) I also write larps.

the same cat, less scrawny, with her face in a blue and white china bowl, absorbed in delight. there are some weeb ass dvds behind her
a photo of a very colorful calico-tabby cat. she is sitting in the corner of a room in front of a mirror, a little scrunched up and unsure
a photo of a hand holding the unpainted nacelle of a model starship, the uss cerritos. there are long stripes glowing a bright diffuse blue and a glowing red cap on one end
a photo of a dining room table strewn with tools, little jars of paint, pieces of a model starship, and general chaos
the meme where the guy from Scooby Doo takes the mask off the tied up villain. masked is labeled "AI" in scare quotes. unmasked is labeled "exploited labor."
photo of a long black wig stored on a wig head. it’s shiny as if it’s wet, and tangled with leafy strands dripping off the ends
a photo of a very messy work station in which many parts of a model spaceship are laid out in various degrees of painted
So you grew up and went to high school and pretended to be a normal girl who had never drawn things in her own blood. You did okay at school, you made a few friends, you carried on. And every time somebody asked you what you want to do or what colleges you were thinking of applying to, you would say you just weren’t sure yet, maybe psychology, because psychology is a safe answer. A normal answer that doesn’t make people ask more questions about the future that you don’t have.
a full-width screenshot of neko atsume: a cartoon yard full of cats playing with and on various toys, including five on a giant cat tree and four in and around a kotatsu
It's one of those book trope graphics except it's the meme where a bunch of knights are putting their swords on the round table. In the center of the round table, it says The Sword of a Thousand Stars. The three visible knights are labeled Arthuriana, epic science fantasy, and relationship drama. The many swords, in no particular order, are labeled: Magic giant robots. Love web. Piloting mecha involves mindfuckery. Enemies to lovers. Older protagonists. Psychic links. Past trauma. Messy feelings. Everyone is queer (bi, trans, enby, aro, lotsa flags here.) Bonding thru adversity. Weird space adventures about lost civilizations and planting seeds of life in the dark. The power of LOOOVE (and the ways in which it can—and cannot—heal trauma, isolation, emotional dysfunction, and galactic war.)
“If we knew where they were,” Guinevre says, “I’d offer them a place as a knight. In a heartbeat. Especially given…” “Given that Gall’s probably going to start breathing down our necks?” Gowrie grins, wide and lopsided. “I’ll just have to quest for ‘em.”
Clarion’s quiet for a moment, sipping contemplatively. “Do you love them? Your captive knight.” “God help me, I don’t know.” She runs her thumb over five white flowers, hidden by the sleeve of her gown. “I’m not exactly reasonable about them. What about you? Do you love your king?” “He was the end of my world,” Clarion says with a wry quirk of his lips. Then his smile softens. “And I love him from the bottom of my heart.” Eglantine clicks her empty glass against his. “To the madness after the end.” “To the end that is the beginning,” answers Lord Clarion.
At least for the moment, they’ve opened up some of the countless video feeds buzzing across Excalibur’s busy network. Marshal Bedyvana, standing before her tactical board with fierce concentration. King Artur, proud and steady in the golden gleam of his great sword’s cockpit. Lady Eglantine on Malea’s throne, flicking through data. Sir Gowrie, showing no signs of whatever hangover she must be sporting, canted forward in her seat, thunderous and chewing her lip.
But he knows how love is supposed to work for him. Your greatest power lies in love, my fair foundling. So she who raised him had said when he left home. You must have realized that as you mastered your third mark. But the love you need is something greater than simple comfort and joy. Seek a love that challenges you, that tests you. That guides you to greatness. Find somebody who stirs your heart to strive beyond the bonds of your flesh at the mere thought of them. And then strive. Adore them. Be a knight in their name.
a photo of a skinny, very brightly colored calico-tabby cat hunched nervously in a corner on a warm wood floor. she still has her left eye but it’s not in good shape.
“I’m going to see about finding us a distraction,” Eglantine says. “Another pilot.” “Who?” her seneschal starts. Then he stiffens, eyes flashing. “No. My Lady. No. You cannot possibly be thinking of—” “He is a pilot. And quite skilled, it seems.” “He murdered my son.” The whole council room falls quiet. The marshal’s orders, as she turns to her console and starts preparing for the retreat, are but murmurs. On the displays ringing the room, the light and color of pitched battle flicker in the dark, silent in the vastness of space. “And I grieve with you,” Eglantine says with care. “You know that. His life cannot be replaced. But if that had not happened, he would be leading the charge today. Let his sword, at least, be stood for in payment.”
The Black Knight laughs and covers their face for a moment, like even this much attention is embarrassing, then waves it off. Then they take a knee before Gowrie. “Sir Gowrie. I will answer this sword’s call. But if I yet live and walk free, I will return to Excalibur within thirty-five days, take up her sword, and do my utmost to protect your king and queen in their battle against King Gall.” They offer both hands, palm up. “On this I give you my word.” Something flip-flops in Gowrie’s gut. Sure, she knows how this kind of oath goes. She’s seen it done. She’s given Artur her hands more than once. But if she’s taken one, it certainly hasn’t been one offered so earnestly by someone like this. She takes their wrists, and their soft fingers curl around hers in turn. “I accept and hold your word.” And she hesitates only a moment. The title is presumptive, Artur will make it official later, but she can’t resist. “Sir Black Knight.”
a photo of a brightly colored cat curled up, fast asleep, with her head resting on a playstation five
“There was this old guy,” Gowrie says. “Merle, who helped Artur back when everything started. Found him out of the blue, guided him to Excalibur, backed him up as he unified the wastes. He knew things about Excalibur, the castles, the ancients. Probably knew more than he ever let on. And he could do things. With jump gates, with gravity, with disguises.” “What happened to him?” Eglantine asks, breathing fast from the climb. “He disappeared. Like he’d leave for months at a time doing god knows what, but one time he apparently just dropped it on Artur that he might not see him again and left like it was nothing. I spent a year searching the whole damn galaxy for him.” Gowrie chews her lip. It’s still a bitter, weary memory, trawling for months after a final lead in a region so remote that the jump gates weren’t even fully charted. Nothing like the terror of a blind jump to make something unforgettable. “Finally found this message in the gray reach, saying he was alive but somewhere he could never return from.” In the thin beam of Gowrie’s wristlight, the blue-white of Sera’s boots, where she’s taken lead, pause for just a moment. Then continue.
a photo of cat lying on her side. her belly is white, the rest of her is vivid mottled red and brown and black, and she has one eye and spotty toe beans.
Eglantine digests that with the dregs of her soup, and nearly the moment she’s done, a second course arrives: some sort of fowl stewed with tart peaches and a complex blend of aromatic spices. She feels as if she could survive on the scent alone. “I would like to speak with you more, Lord Clarion, I think. In private.” “Of course,” he says, inclining his head with grace. Gall accepts that with utter comfort and reaches for a bowl of fresh-cut herbs on the table to top his stew. “More herbs if you like it bitter,” Jan stage-whispers as he passes them over entirely. “Less if you like it sweet.” “But we have let you question us at length and asked you nothing in return,” King Gall says pleasantly. Eglantine refuses to show her nerves and simply smiles. “I’d imagine I’ve had a simpler life than you.” “Have you?” Gall asks, one eyebrow canted slightly, and she wonders how much of her history he’s dug into. “I’ve always wondered. Is there a particular tale behind your deep communion with Malea, or is it simple good fortune?”
photo of a hand holding a sweet potato in a gray-floored kitchen. one end of the sweet potato has a knob, and then it narrows, turns slightly tighter than ninety degrees, and extends into a solid thick tube
“Guin?” he murmurs. “Sorry.” She takes a deep, contemplative breath. “I suppose I’m tired.” She turns her cheek into one of his hands—hold me—and he answers, fitting his strong arms around her. She sighs, trying to let go of everything prickling under her skin, and tips forward onto the solid warmth of his chest. He used to be such a scrawny thing, all elbows and bright eyes and rage. Sometimes she misses those days. But this Artur is much more comfortable to hold. They’ll live, she tells herself, numb. They’ll live.
photo of a hand holding an “I voted” sticker against an out-of-focus swath of lovely new england fall leaves
a photo of a large and floofy black cat (a maine coon) draped across the back of a couch in an awkward and boneless sprawl. his green eyes are slitted open and the very tip of his tongue is stickinf out where his face is mashed into a cushion
a photograph of a long scrungly green metal dragon standing by the side of the road. there’s a lot of half-melted snow and a sign pointing to parking and it otherwise looks quite mundane, but then dragon.
Guinevre can’t hide much longer. People will wonder. Armored with retouched lipstick, she stills her mind as best as she can and dons her circlet. Artur, brushing her, is distant, distracted. Probably drunk. Just as well. It isn’t hard to find Eglantine and sweep her off to walk the edges of the party where the lanterns flicker against the dark. They both, she notices, look over their shoulders. Very discretely, of course. “Are you all right?” Eglantine asks. “You look rather wound tight for a party.”
a photo-realistic cross stitch of a falcon with a dark gray back and a reddish-barred belly glaring dramatically at the viewer
a view of the white mountains in New Hampshire from a viewpoint off the Kancamagus highway. it’s late sunset. the sky is a soft gray blue shading to gold and orange at the horizon. then there are layers of mountains, purplish gray in the distance. then there’s tall dark pine trees and a row of low meadow shrubbery, and there’s still just enough light for thr shrubbery to stand out green against the dark pines
a graph showing daily word count against a goal of 100,000 that was eventually raised to 120,000. there is a very sharp rise at first, 50k in the month of June. then a slower rise of about 20k in July, speeding back up to nearly 50k in August, and then very slowly writing the last 17k over September and October with a long stall in the middle
a word count report showing 137,247 words out of a goal of 120,000 in The Sword of a Thousand Stars
Marshal Morgassa of Orre is, in fact, in her own office, surrounded by over a dozen holo-screens with everything from inventories to maps to sword schematics. And ignoring them all in favor of the outsized jug of wine she’s staring at like it has personally insulted her choice of neckline. Gowrie does her best to ignore the hollow sensation in her gut that always comes when she steps back into the bone-familiar and echoing brown-and-copper of Orre’s corridors—which is worse now, somehow, after that fight over Joy—and scuffs her heel against the threshold like she has as long as she can remember. Hands laced behind her back, voice softer. “Mother?” “Eh—?” Morgassa startles, abandoning her dispute with the jug. “Oh, good, you’re back.” She stands, rounds her desk and wraps her up in a motherly embrace that Gowrie returns, briefly. Then tolerates, trying not to squirm. It’s still weird that she’s taller than her. Has been since she was thirteen and her first big growth spurt wracked her bones. Mom’s Gheris-sized, barely to her collarbone, solidly built. Deep brown hair, and Gowrie knows the only reason it’s not more silver than her little sister’s is that she dyes it. She’s a little behind on the roots, in fact. Since when had she had that much gray? “Now what’s wrong,” Morgassa says, stepping back and looking over Gowrie head-to-toe. “You could at least make it a question,” Gowrie grumbles. “Why you gotta assume something’s wrong?” “Because you never come visit me in my office unless something’s wrong,” Morgassa points out. “Sit. Wine?”
Gowrie opens her eyes to dim and distant white sunlight painting the rubble of a broken planet. Wreckage drifts in great arcs: dollops of frozen magma, tiny specks of uprooted buildings, strange spikes of black. For a long moment, with her sense of scale warped by her beneath-space hangover, she struggles to understand why she’s seeing a dead woman in the center of it all. A shattered corpse… Something thumps loudly on her window. “Gyeh,” Gowrie says, decisively. She didn’t jerk back in her seat. Definitely not. No, that would be an actual corpse—freeze-dried, clothing tattered, threading apart in that peculiar way that means radiation damage. No suit. Blown out into space aeons ago. It’s already drifting away; she reaches out to gingerly nudge it aside. “Sorry, man.”
“All right, but you have to tell us about your pilot,” Clarion says, valiantly steering away from heavier conversation as a lusciously herbed and orange-scented rice joins the table. “Lord Clarion of Riard,” Gall says, sounding more like a scolding mother than a crowned king. “One should ask the lady about herself first. It’s only polite.” Jan snorts. “Come on, though, I know how much you want to know.” Gall’s lips quirk in a barely restrained smile. “Will your lady repair easily, I hope?” he asks instead.
a brightly colored caliby cat sitting with her butt jammed against my knee (which is not really recognizable as my knee because i’m in a sloth kigu)
By the time Gowrie closes down the connection and slides out of the cockpit, rubbing her head, the being of the hour is actually, finally, awake. Not just that, but scrubbed clean, rested, hydrated, bright-eyed, fluffy-haired, and dressed in tight black trousers and a soft white shirt that somehow manages to look absurdly comfortable and cling to their shapely chest. They’ve folded themself cross-legged into a chair and are busying themselves with a bowl of something Gowrie can’t identify. Yup. Even with bruises yellowing their face, they’re still just as gorgeous as they’d been when they passed through Excalibur two years ago. God damn.
a tropes graphic except it's that meme template of the knights of the round table putting their swords together. in the center is the book title, The Sword of a Thousand Stars. the three visible figures are labeled "Arthuriana," "relationship drama," and "epic science fantasy." the swords are labeled: magic giant robots love web piloting mecha involves mindfuckery enemies to lovers older protagonists bonding thru adversity psychic links past trauma messy feelings everyone is queer (bi, trans, enby, aro, lotsa flags here) weird space adventures about lost civilizations and planting seeds of life in the dark the power of loooove (and the ways in which it can—and cannot—heal trauma, isolation, emotional dysfunction, and galactic war)
“It’s complicated,” Gowrie mutters. “Fine. I need breakfast. You can torture me all you like after breakfast. Come have some oatmeal like a normal person.”
Partial transcription: No luxuries like pressurized landing bays on this moon. You park in the thin ammonia sludge of the atmosphere and walk uphill both ways to the airlock like the next fellow. She and Gowrie wait through a long air-wash decontamination, her drinking in every detail of their surroundings as Gowrie taps her toe, and then they’re inside a long gray tube of a station. It’s a sort of structure Eglantine knows well from Pollux Aster: easy to pressurize, anchored to the crust, and filled with modular usefuls. Small shops, sleeping quarters for locals and for let. Two cantinas on opposite sides of the tube war for attention, and Gowrie angles towards one as she pulls off her helmet. Eglantine follows suit. “Everybody’s watching,” she murmurs to Gowrie.
an annotated photo, from high above, of a black and teal fabric cat tunnel. there is a cat hidden in it far enough that you can only see her long colorful tail, highlighted with a few janky arrows
a photo of a red and black and white one-eyed cat who is tucked underneath a desk and peering out
“Merle?” Gowrie asks, voice suddenly quiet and serious. She undrapes; then there’s concerned green eyes peering down at Guinevre as she rounds to face her. Gowrie has at least half a head on her—she’s always been a long and lanky thing, even before she thinned down on the same potions that softened her features, and now she’s practically a lance in the shape of a girl. The wind whips her thick red curls into a mad halo. “But he’s…”
a cat lying on her side. her belly is white, the rest of her is vivid mottled red and brown and black, and she has one eye
a moodboard/infographic showing a handsome black man. (faceclaim is Idris Elba.) the text reads: King Gall of Sorel he/him, with pansexual and polyamorous hearts Conquerer of most of the known galaxy "Two souls face one another. They test each other, press to the limits of their endurance. They learn the other’s movements, the other’s thoughts. A true battle, with honor, on an even footing, opens one’s heart to another." Skills: Fleet admiralty, mothership command, frontline piloting, seeing into his opponents and turning them to his side, negotiation, martial arts, cooking, hospitality Strengths: Open-hearted, honorable, generous, fearless, deeply affectionate and supportive with those he loves Weaknesses: Entitled, impulsive, lowkey possessive, likes showing off, approaches war like a sport and is often unprepared for the consequences, sure does love conquest Other images include an army of mecha, a dramatic judo throw, delicious pilaf, and a table set among greenery
a moodboard/infographic showing an Asian woman with short hair. (faceclaim is Joan Chen.) the text reads: Lady Eglantine of Malea she/her, with a pansexual heart Mothership commander and frontier leader "You are not the first to try to conquer the stars. You will not be the last. One tries to find the balance of walls and wildness that one prefers. But the old dream is dying, as all things change." Skills - Diplomacy, planetary governance and ecosystem management, battle tactics, lateral problem solving across various scientific disciplines, implacable composure, an unusually deep bond with her mothership, lying, schemes Strengths - Resourceful, resilient, clever, thoughtful, devoted to the greater good Weaknesses - Puts her own needs aside far more than is healthy, walled up from grief and loss Other images show a woman-shaped statue-like vessel floating in space over a planet, a white-ink flower tattoo, an alien landscape of pink and green, and scifi hologram displays
“I wasn’t born yesterday,” Kay snaps. “They’re going to overrun the main infirmary. Overflow staff are spinning it up.” He pauses. One soft huff, the sort that means his crusty heartstrings are twanging. “It’s an entire population. Colony skews young and able-bodied, but still. We got a lot of—” Something toddler-sized thumps into Guinevre’s leg. “Scared kids,” Kay finishes with a sigh. “Lady?” Tug, tug. “Do you know where my daddy is?” “You know that’s not your lady, right?” Kay grumbles. “Go count heads, brother,” Guinevre says, smiling, and offers a hand to her new comrade. “I’ll help you find him, all right?” Hiccup. Sob on her skirt. She crouches, keeping her precious coffee level, and wipes away some tears with her free hand. “I know it’s scary and there’s a lot of shouting. But you’re safe. And your father is here, I promise. You’ll just have to quest for him.” And that is how she winds up with a snuffling toddler on one hip when she approaches Eglantine’s seneschal.
a set of bathroom doors labeled “either” and “or.” (they were singles so this isn’t a huge dick move)
Guts from Berserk, stalking menacingly towards the viewer, clearly showing his missing eye. (dude's also missing one hand and has serious PTSD, not to mention whatever the fuck has been going on with his nervous system since he put on the berserker armor...)
a tropes graphic except it's that meme template of the knights of the round table putting their swords together. in the center is the book title, The Sword of a Thousand Stars. the three visible figures are labeled "Arthuriana," "relationship drama," and "epic science fantasy." the swords are labeled: magic giant robots love web piloting mecha involves mindfuckery enemies to lovers older protagonists bonding thru adversity psychic links past trauma messy feelings everyone is queer (bi, trans, enby, aro, lotsa flags here) weird space adventures about lost civilizations and planting seeds of life in the dark the power of loooove (and the ways in which it can—and cannot—heal trauma, isolation, emotional dysfunction, and galactic war)
a view of a seashore, showing various wild shrubbery giving way to grass before a slice of dark blue sea against a clear sky
an excerpt which narrates "They remained there a long time and neither debated nor spoke of anything but kisses and embraces, like people who enjoy doing just that."
an except in which Galehaut approaches Lancelot, who is an enemy knight on the battlefield, to say, extremely heterosexually, "My lord, I would do more for you than you believe, and I have already begun. Again I beg you, for God's sake, to stay with me tonight, on condition that I'll do whatever you ask of me."