kittinsrkillers

[kittinsrkillers]

practice portraits

[kittinsrkillers]

This week I've been reading a new anthology by one of my favorite authors, Naomi Novik, and I can say it's as fantastic as expected. Not all the stories are on the same level, but the best ones are downright stunning. My favorite is probably the title one, Buried Deep; after finishing it I felt like I had just experienced something truly magical. I also loved the chance to revisit the worlds of many of her other books. Oh, and the preview for her next series left me shook. I need it now!

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it’s also pretty funny (and by funny I mean tragic) how Orion was just. Hanging out in the scholomance corpse the whole time. Went through ego death, just hanging out in high school

THIS POOR BOY. The ending of TLG is incredibly tragic in hindsight; I remember how, at the time, we were all...

...by which I mean, me and five other people in the Tumblr tags...

...going BATSHIT wondering WHY would Orion choose to stay behind. The prevalent theory...

...by which I mean my own private theory...

...was that his hunting addiction (???) had overcome him?? But we really weren't sure.

And then to find out he chose to stay behind because, in that split second of horror, while El was busy panicking THE FUCK OUT, Orion was coming to the silent realization he too is a fucking Mawmouth. So he did the only thing he could think of to solve that, which was to commit Suicide By Falling Into the Void.

Not counting, of course, that the deathless nature of enclave foundations, plus his Evil Fucking Mommy keeping the faucet running to the school, plus his girlfriend being, you know, weirdly opposed to letting him spend eternity in suffering, would mean the school wouldn't really go, and he would just sit there inside for a couple days until he got rescued.

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I imagine that after he finished eating all the mals fucking around after the honeypot spell Orion was just like. The horse man meme staring at the gym gardens

The SADDEST thing is that he was at the gym.

There is no logical reasoning why the last maw should be at the gym. Probably it wasn't. The last mals probably were larvals and little things hiding in the fucking pipes.

So when Orion finished eating everything up in the place, he had just enough free will left to go to the gym, canonically his favorite place in the school, and sit down there to wait for death.

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And if i said they were Orpheus and Eurydice. What then.

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William Laurence truly has one of the funniest character arcs of all time. He does a complete 360 over the course of the series. Totally turned around yet somehow exactly where he started. He completely changed his worldview while being absolutely steadfast about it. He undergoes impressive character development while his character does not change at all. He is so damn stubborn about his preconceived notions of honor that he is willing to abandon his preconceived notions of dragons, gender, and race. He transcends the regency society he lives in not by breaking the confines of rigid values but by expanding those confines to include everyone.

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Podcast: Describing a naval battle from the Napoleonic Wars

Me: Well that doesn't make any sense. Where are the dragons

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I've read the first 3 and a half chapters of A Deadly Education, and my fears have not been realized. Galadriel and Orion are both decent and pragmatic enough I'm not annoyed by their relationship, yay! (No it's not a relationship yet but come on tropes are tropes, I could see the signs just from the blurb.) (Yeah Orion's idealistic, but he has his own motivations and thoughts, instead of getting randomly obsessed with El he just sees her as first another hapless student and then a potential threat.)

Don't come for me, certain YA romantasy relationship patterns just really don't do it for me personally.

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Okay so, I finished the first scholomance book. Mom gives spooky warning about staying away from Orion, oooo! I'm also 25% into the Last Graduate and- word of Galadriel's power is kinda spreading and- I think it would be really funny if as graduation approaches more and more people try to join her alliance, and she wouldn't really turn most people away, and in the end her alliance is just "the whole school". I think that would be funny.

[kittinsrkillers]

Okay so, I finished the first scholomance book. Mom gives spooky warning about staying away from Orion, oooo! I'm also 25% into the Last Graduate and- word of Galadriel's power is kinda spreading and- I think it would be really funny if as graduation approaches more and more people try to join her alliance, and she wouldn't really turn most people away, and in the end her alliance is just "the whole school". I think that would be funny.

[kittinsrkillers]

The funniest aspect of a child crime fighter is that sometimes they’re going to run into something that makes no sense because they don’t have the life experience. Because they’re nine.

Like Robin runs into a guy who works for The Penguin and the guy just throws his hands up like, “Don’t hit! I’m not an enforcer. I’m an accountant.”

Robin:

Robin, squaring up: I don’t know what that is.

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how is piracy bad? it’s sharing. and sharing is caring.

[kittinsrkillers]

the moral of the 1994 interview with the vampire movie is that the cure to depression is a sexy vampire lover

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text post meme: 3zun pt 1

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I feel like too often people frame Nie Mingjue's issues as ignorance borne from safety. Like, they think that because of his privilege as a sect leader he doesn't know what it's like to be in danger and forced to make hard choices to survive. And I disagree. Strongly.

First of all, Nie Mingjue is very familiar with death not only from war but from. You know. Actively dying since the age of fourteen. Let us not forget Nie Mingjue is dead! Super dead! And maybe he didn't die the exact way he expected to but he did, absolutely, know he was going to die. To act like Nie Mingjue is unfamiliar with the scenario of "do something you find morally reprehensible or die" is to ignore that he has been living that exact scenario and chose death.

Nie Mingjue knows death is a risk for someone like Jin guangyao, in fact he explicitly acknowledges it even in his worst moments like the stairs in chapter 49. Had his issue been ignorance, then he would've responded to Jin Guangyao saying that he's in danger and has to sacrifice others for his own safety with "No you aren't you'll be fine." But he doesn't. He accepts the fact that jgy is in danger with no qualms and says: then you should die.

That's not him betraying his values, those are his values. He is, essentially, pro-suicide. Jgy is like hey I have a moral dilemma what should I do and nmj straight up goes "Kill yourself" and earlier that same chapter when he was faced with a moral dilemma he went "I'm gonna kill myself." He believes the solution to moral dilemmas is suicide! He is extremely consistent about this! When it's pointed out to him that it would have been dangerous for Wen Qing to oppose Wen Ruohan it doesn't phase him because he thinks putting yourself at risk to do the right thing is the only moral choice. The idea that he can only hold this belief because he is himself somehow not in danger, again, requires you to ignore that he is dying the whole time. And it doesn't deter him. He is the idea of self-sacrifice as a moral good taken to its absolute logical extreme. Someone who is ready to die and demands the same from everyone else.

It makes him a very fun case study for fandom, because a lot of fandom spaces also tend to revere self-sacrifice as the ultimate good, and yet we get very uncomfortable when someone starts demanding it of characters we love. Like woah, hold on, that's a bit too far isn't it? Only we the audience get to do that!

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Weirdest possible NMJ take is that he's a hypocrite. "Oh he only believes in justice when it's convenient for him" I cannot stress enough how the problem he has is the EXACT opposite of this. Nie Mingjue holds onto his values even if it makes things objectively worse both for himself and others. He will stick with his idea of justice even if it's patently not suited for the situation. "Well he expects other people to take risks that would kill them only because he can take them with no personal harm" Nie Mingjue has, out loud, with full intent to follow through, declared that he's willing to commit literal suicide if it's what his moral code recquires. Nie Mingjue thinks dying for the cause is both reasonable and morally good and is- with the saber curse- doing it himself the entire time. I fucking WISH he would prioritise his own wellbeing at literally any point in the story it would probably make him more chill and easier to talk to.

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