#First one is based on some ship art we found

[vynnyal]

Some rw stuff

[rosenotactuallyquartz]

pearl + rose + greg

(the importance of these complex relationships, along with some very common misconceptions)

first off, no one is married

i’m surprised by how many fans, particularly on other platforms, are under the impression that rose + greg were married.

even though it was confirmed that they never got married in gem harvest. pearl also said, “we heard you like marriage, so why don’t we all marry each other!” after andy & greg argued about the fact that greg never married steven’s mother. when ruby + sapphire’s wedding happens, it’s clearly a novelty to all the gems.

i also think that rose + greg not being married is an important detail. people like to assume that their relationship was one that was completely human, fitting into all the norms of human society & using a bunch of labels. it’s as if rose was human herself, as if greg ever expected her to fit in, in any way, shape, or form (no pun intended).

their relationship was anything but conventional; that was how they wanted it to be.

their relationship was unique. there was little to no pressure or arguing. it was based on love & respect & comfort instead of rules. rules held greg back his whole life & in order to be his true self, he had to rebel against those he knew throughout his early life. of course, rose can understand not wanting rules. as seen in we need to talk, rose also gets very uncomfortable & anxious when she can’t fully understand human beings, what they expect and how they feel. so, they found an in-between, where they could relate to each other and connect as individuals, instead of forcing themselves to have an entirely human relationship or a gem relationship. their relationship was relaxed, open, and they were able to destress when they spent time together.

they’re similar people. impulsive, playful, naive at times, soft-hearted. there were things that scared him from the past, and it was clearly the same for rose. when it came to emotional conversations, there was a line that they would never cross. past that line was a lot of very, very serious conversations. the demayos, the diamonds, secrets, fears, traumas, questions about gem stuff that greg felt wary of. they strived for an equal relationship, so their issues were often mutual. if greg’s not asking for complicated details about gem relationships, he likely won’t expect rose to comprehend marriage.

image description: sketch of rose + greg by rebecca sugar. greg is smiling and blushing but looks calm, his eyes closed. rose glances back at him with a slightly mischievous yet soft smile

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ⋆ ☁︎ ✩₊˚⋆⁺₊✧ ⋆ ☁︎

misconceptions

the assumption that rose + greg were married only worsens the many pearl + rose misunderstandings. consider this: greg + rose were married, but rose never married pearl, who she knew longer than everyone? must be unrequited. or, at least, exes (confirmed not unrequited; also, i doubt pearl + rose understand the term ex). greg + rose were married, so their relationship must have been more important than rose’s relationship with pearl. greg + rose were married, so pearl was talking about what actually happened when she said, she chose you. this assumption overlooks pearl’s self worth issues & insecurities, the true meaning behind both of you, the importance of pearl + rose’s relationship, the miscommunications, the differences between gem & human relationships.

image description: alone at sea promotional art by hilary florido. greg is about to jump into a pool with steven standing next to him in a coach outfit, with a whistle. pearl, amethyst, and rose are sitting against the wall in swimsuits. rose looks at him with admiration, amethyst is grinning, and pearl has a look of disapproval.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ⋆ ☁︎ ✩₊˚⋆⁺₊✧ ⋆ ☁︎

pearlrose & gregrose

steven universe ships are often sorted into either “good” or “bad” categories by the fandom, which overlooks the fact that both of these relationships are… far more interesting. i wouldn’t be here if it were that simple. both relationships are comforting & beautiful & sweet & complicated & flawed & important for rose’s character. i love exploring the complexities of both, because:

"the thing that she really lacks is balance, any ability to temper her extremes. this is part of her character throughout her forms: she's always very extreme." — rebecca sugar, end of an era

rose’s two intimate relationships are with individuals who are opposites in various ways, their contrasting traits being different extremes.

pearl + rose had a lot of mutual codependency, which makes sense considering their contrasting personalities, witnessing a lot of each other’s trauma, and having shared trauma as well as intense, dark secrets. rose + greg both loved escapism, which is fitting as they are similar people who cope in similar ways, meeting after major traumas.

one of rose’s partners is overprotective, the other laidback; one is particularly serious about being told everything, and for good reason considering what she knows and what she + rose have been through. the other really, really understands not wanting to discuss painful pasts, and for good reason considering what he doesn’t know and what he’s been through.

rose forms meaningful relationships with both of them. her feelings were similar in the way that she loved them both. she related to both of them & admired both of them, too. she particularly admired pearl in a i-think-you’re-so-good-and-i’m-nothing-like-you way, because they have so many differences. she particularly related to greg, as they have so many parallels, she loves humanity, and she feels like she would be a lot like him if she were human.

both of them were comforting to rose. pearl was incredibly caring; she cared a lot about the pain that no one else could know about. she was gentle but very encouraging when it came to rose not needing to keep things from her. and if rose was sad, i’m sure she could tell. i was the one she told everything to! i can imagine pearl comforting rose, knowing what was going on without rose needing to say much. it was also comforting to rose that pearl knew about so many things she was ashamed of, but she remained on her side at all times and loved her so deeply and openly. rose had very intense emotions, & greg had a way of keeping life light which gave her a very particular kind of comfort. he would make her laugh when she wanted to cry & he would distract her whenever she was consumed by her emotions and spiraling thoughts. she loved the simplicity and it was comforting that he didn’t know about her past because they could start fresh together.

greg took pride in being accepting and supportive of everyone’s decisions, never trying to control things. it’s what he always wanted, and rose reciprocated. she supported & believed in him, which helped him heal from his childhood in a lot of ways. but, there’s also this:

"on the flip side, they enable each other. she never unpacks what scares her about her past, and neither does he” — rebecca sugar, end of an era

greg's relaxed personality & not knowing about her past made rose feel very comfortable… but almost too comfortable with hiding things. greg was happy when rose was happy, and this was very sincere. he taught her so much about humans & she ultimately decided to have steven. the love that she had for her unborn child was so strong & genuine & she trusted greg, knowing that he would be a wonderful father. i don’t even need to say anything about how much he loves steven. the issue is, she couldn’t quite understand the pain he would feel if she was no longer in his life. rose also had self hatred that was connected to pain from the past that greg didn’t know about.

in contrast, pearl knowing so much & having a history with rose made rose feel concerned about causing her stress. due to her self hatred, rose always focused on the negative aspects of herself. she couldn’t quite understand all the positive things she brought to pearl’s life, the ways that she was good for her (despite how expressive & intense pearl’s love was). don’t get me wrong, pearl’s love helped rose in so many ways, but due to lack of love for herself, rose could never quite wrap her head around why pearl adored her so much. the comfort, the closeness, the warmth, all the reasons pearl wanted to live with her forever.

with that said, she felt so much love and care from both of them. she simply felt undeserving of it because of the way she felt about herself. they all loved steven completely, rose was so excited for him to exist, and she wholeheartedly believed greg and the gems would be such important parts of steven’s life. nothing changes that.

this isn’t a one-couple-is-perfect-and-married-and-the-other-is-bad-and-unrequited situation, as some believe it is. both relationships are complex. rose was in a lot of pain resulting from personal issues, but pearl & greg both brought comfort to her in unique ways because of their differences. they now bring comfort to steven in their own, unique ways! i’m sure rose imagined that & she would be very proud of both of them.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ⋆ ☁︎ ✩₊˚⋆⁺₊✧ ⋆ ☁︎

image description: sketch in black and white of greg, rose quartz, and pearl. greg looks behind him, appearing confused and he is standing up. rose and pearl are kneeling and pearl's face is in rose's hands as she looks up at her.

[apollosgiftofprophecy]

FANFIC POLL TIME!

Descriptions (because i NEED to explain things haha-):

CHOOSE WISELY

Of Bridges Built & Burned: Based off this clowning between me and @moodyseal

BUCKLE UP THIS GETS WILD READ THE LINK ABOVE FOR A MORE DETAILED EXPLANATION

TD;LR- Commodus and Apollo get to both scream about their relationship (because it's usually only Commodus who does that), Commodus goes off to sulk/stew over it while Apollo completes his trials, then post-ToA they meet again and have a Much Needed Talk

...and *sobs* go separate ways... *ugly sobbing* DON'T MIND ME-

you know you love the ship when you write them breaking up in the most heart-wrenching scenario possible.

but shh...i have another idea to do with this but that's for another time😈

The Art of War: I've been DYING to do SOMETHING with Apollo (Favorite Son™) and Ares (Failure Son™) and I have 3 whole scenes in different points of time now!!!

First is when Apollo's young and new on Olympus. He's been shoved onto Ares for the time being because in Ancient Greece, boys were raised by their fathers and girls by their mothers, and when the father was unavailable, it was the eldest brother's job to watch his younger brothers.

Second scene is during/post Ares's kidnapping by the giants! Some Apollo angst, Zeus being the best dad ever (not), and Ares not having a good time.

Third and finally, is a little conversation post-ToA between them :3

The Sun's Rise: At last! Out of the vault! The moment we've been waiting for! Starring our boy Apollo, Prometheus being Prometheus, and a guest star you all should know by now :3

Hyapollo Multific: YEAH YOU HEARD IT. FIVE CHAPTERS OF HYAPOLLO, WITH SIDE DISHES OF APRICITY, HYARICITY, AND ONE-SIDED ZEPHYRUS PINNING FOR HYAPOLLO. COME GET UR FLUFF-DRAMA-ANGST FEST

@hyac1nthus i know you'd want to see this >:3

Koios ToA: What the hell was Koios doing during ToA? This fic will play like a snapshot of what our favorite titan was up too. Questions will be asked, answers will be found, and oh boy Phoebe and Koios are gonna have a bit o' long-overdue marital strife.

Drunk Twins: literally what is says on the label. the twins get drunk and the Hunt has to call in the mama wolf for backup lmao

The Conspiracy of Rachel Elizabeth Dare: based on this post by @hogoflight and expanded upon here by me! Rachel Dare is a conundrum to her friends, and they put their detective hats on to solve the case!

ToA BuzzFeed Unsolved: The Queer Capers of Lester Papadopoulos and Meg McCaffrey: BUZZFEED TIME! We need ToA buzzfeed fics so here I am making one :3

Apollo V Orion fight (with a side-dish of Jupiter & Commodus): Exactly what it says on the label lmao I had three oneshot ideas and then I went "COMBINE THEM!!" so here is a oneshot with three different things in it making a cohesive story :3

A Radiant Light: Did I make up an entire backstory for one background character? Yes. Is that character Phoebe the Hunter? Also yes.

how to get your daughter to divorce your brother and marry your nephew: a guide by demeter: funny fic about Demeter trying to get Meg, Nico, and Will to help her convince Persephone to divorce Hades and marry Apollo. Based off one of my headcanons haha

👀 lookin' forward to a lot of these, hehe!

Tag list: @txny-dragon @solahflare @fuzzystudios @apollosothertwin @peishathebookity @reuben-7991 @allylyrac @the-summersun

[muttlyparasitic]

Did you know Chernabog wasn't portrayed properly with Eyeless Jack?

Ok for some background first! So you know why I bring this up.

(Look for pink text to skip the background)

Back in 2021, I was big on making ship art with my Creepypasta Dazaliian and Eyeless Jack (I still ship them) specifically the rewrote more popular Lamishimish version of E.J, and I developed this headcanon that allowed his canon demon Chernabog to be more in control of him more often as if 2 consciousness were controlling the same body, Dazaliian in this ship being a demon herself looked up highly to Chernabog and would often be promiscuous with him. I always made it clear who Dazaliian was interacting with, and one day, I made some ship art with Chernabog and Dazaliian, identifying him with red pupils that appeared in Jacks eye sockets.

And suddenly I got this message from a friend:

So the situation opened my eyes... Chernabog is not a demon he is a slavic god along with his brother Belobog. The Eyeless Jack rewrite story that I had heavily referenced for my headcanons portrayed and used a real religious character wrongly, so I responded:

I enlightened my friend on where my perspectives were coming from and we talked about what I could do, we found the easiest solution was to change the demons name which honestly got me excited!

After asking my followers on Instagram we eventually settled with Nathara, a snake based overlord that was entrapped in the body of Jack a unfortunate man led by his collage crush to a cult that worshipped Nathara and became victim to the attempts to being Nathara to the mortal world to guide the cult.

This ended in Nathara being trapped inside Jack and Jack having to rely on Natahras abilities to simply survive as his body had mostly died during the ritual.

The story Lamishimish created used this "demon" that wasn't a demon to begin with

Portrayed in multiple ways, usually in black and white either mimicking man or birds, 2 slavic gods, to be more specific "Chernobog is an epithet of Satan, and Belobog arose secondarily in later literature. Chernobog and Belobog are Slavic deities (actual theonyms or epithets of other deities) Chernobog and Belobog are names of Christian figures with pre-Christian origin."

Side note, being alike to Satan does not make Chernobog evil, as in reality Satan punished evil and encourages free will, really not that bad of a guy but Christians like to villanize him to preach their god more.

I'm sure we can all think of a few religious figures from meny cultures where it kinda yin and yanged deities as one did the dirty work while the other harbored good souls.

Anywho not to sure how to end this!

I hope this educated some of you in the creepypasta community and if you portray Jack with the usage of Chernabog I recommend giving him a new demon to be possessed by!

[miyuskye]

HERE I GO with this super interesting event from the All Ships Ship Week event hosted by @ficwip

The ship dossier! And what ship I could've dossiered if not my current hyperfixation, aka Jon/Elias??? Sooo, the thing with loving a podcast is that you don't get a lot of official art, since the physical descriptions are also very scarce by author's choice. BUT! they recently made a TTRPG game based on the podcast, which these semi-canon designs. My personal image of the characters in influenced by the huge amount of fanarts circulating around, but, probably an unpopular opinion, I like these designs too. With reference to the image, the top one (not in the ship sense) is Jon, aka the Archivist, aka the pet project/obsession and the bottom one (again, not in the ship sense) is Elias/spoiler, aka the mentor/obsessed.

It would have been great, if I did actually understand the assignment and not gone off the trail with a full AO3 statistical analysis. Under the cut because probably not a lot of people are interested in my ramblings. The dossier is intended for both people familiar with the series, but also for people who know nothing about it. Warning for sparse spoilers about the whole TMA series (not TMP since I still have to listen to it!) (as I said, Elias is a big spoiler himself lol)

Let's begin this trip with a biiig disclaimer. Sadly for us avid AO3 users, the AO3 fandom does not represent the fandom in whole, so these stats are based only on the number of works in the AO3 context. Looking around at non-fanfic related site, i.e. reddit, I know there are some JE shipper there too, though I can't really be sure in what percentage with respect to the non-shipping community (or the people only shipping the canon couple). Links to the guru of fandom stats! toastystats (tumblr), AO3. There's also a github repository but I personally found it a bit cranky to use and it doesn't use an AO3 updated DB, though for big data statistics is fine due to the central limit theorem but for smaller fandom/tags it might be a bit inaccurate. Also the code is in python 2, which is now a bit difficult to use. I personally made my stats by doing targeted searches using the AO3 search function! Super easy to use, albeit a bit repetitive. Stats were made on Oct, 19-22, 2024. Again, I think the results won't change much through the years, especially regarding the main TMA tag data, but who knows if JonElias will surge in popularity (hehe it's a distant hope, I'm pretty much sure that the population distribution is already well-established).

TMA (The Magnus Archive) is a horror podcast, following the events of Jonathan Sims, aka Jon, aka the first part of my ship, who works at the Magnus Institute. This Institute is a facility researching in supernatural events and records supernatural encounters in the form of statements given by volunteering people. Jon is the Head Archivist, meaning he manages the statements and records some "odd ones", as per request of the Head of the Institute and his direct superior, Elias. Sooo yes, he's also his boss. :) lovely for them.

My lovely idiots are the 3rd most popular ship! Such a big achievement for me, who I usually ship obscure ships. As of today, we have 1434 JE works out of the whole 29751 works in the TMA tag. Way to go, JE community, let's keep this up!

The Jon/Martin ship is actually canon in the podcast, so that big percentage, compared to other fandoms, is largely explained by that (instead of simple popularity like Oikawa/Iwaizumi in the Haikyuu fandom). My other favorite ship is Jon/Tim, and I proudly contributed to that 2.78% (ofc also to the 4.8% of JE but it seemed quite superfluous to write).

Fun fact: speaking of spoilers, Elias' character tag in AO3 is a MASSIVE spoiler. It was what ruined the plot twist for me, because I looked for fanfics around ep 40ish (out of 200) and got that spoiled :( I understand why AO3 did that, because before the reveal the tags referring to Jonah and Elias were separated and I guess they wanted to unite them (since I also read some Jonah/Jon works before the reveal - all of them ended up having Elias being somewhat connected to Jonah OF COURSE, but I believe that before The Reveal there was also the belief that Elias was one of his descendants. I became part of the fandom after that, though, so it's just speculation based on older posts I came across).

This is probably my most favourite slide. JonElias has the highest Mature-to-Gen ratio (based on the AO3 rating system) with respect to the other ships. Jon/Martin, being 40% of the works also leads most of the general fandom stats, so it's more correct to actually cite the ship that makes the stat. I also believe that a lot of the more Gen-oriented fics feature Jon/Martin due to them being canon, that is also one of the possible factors influencing their and the whole tag ratios. Due to this, I believe that the Elias/Peter ratio might actually influenced by that, since they're a non-conflicting couple with the main one and are thus frequently included in their fanfics. The other fave of mine also has a higher Mature-to-Gen ratio than the general one, but not as high as JE.

Jon is the main character, so it's obvious that he is the most cited in all the works. Elias is the villain, so it's not so strange. Also, this refers to the characters tags, and this means that Elias might be included as a character even in other ships-based works. I believe the same happens with Tim, since ships with him have a lower presence in the fandom, but he is the third most included character. It's probably because he gets included into most of the Gen/JMart works.

These are the most used AO3 tags for the JonElias main ship tag. Do I really need to explain? They just do the talking in my place lol

A few words on the Alternate universe tag: AUs are somewhat canon in the show, due to plot-related reasons, and I believe this gives us space to imagine, stories where Jon is as deranged as Elias without denaturing canon. I personally believe Jon has the capacity of being feral as, if not even more than, Elias. Canon showed us a glimpse of what we could have but ended up not getting, again, due to plot-related reasons. Some fanfics are based on those glimpses. Also the Do not Archive will be an interesting topic to talk about later!

These are the most used tags for the individual characters. Some of them are also matching but not in their JE tagged works. For example, the tag Fluff might be present in 12% of Elias' works but more than half of those works are Jon/Martin-based works, so he's included in the work but, in a way, not actively participating in the fluff. Also, Jon is canonically asexual, hence the related tag! A few words on that, this doesn't and rightly won't stop people from producing M and E-rated works with him and characters (not necessarily Elias), contrary to what some people might think. And I assure you, as an asexual person, that no one of the JE fanfics I read (even the ones without the Asexual character tag) erased Jon's asexuality. If anything, the ones where Jon's asexuality was present and acknowledged were also my favorites!

Small digression on the Do not archive tag. I noticed that both JE and Elias' tag had a percentage of works being under that tag. Which is used when an author does not want the series staff to read their works. It's mostly used on M+E works (77% of DNA tagged works are M or E rated on AO3), as one would expect. At first I guessed it was related to the pronounced M-to-T ratio of the JE tag (which is even more pronounced on the DNA tag), buuut it turns out the main cause was just a quirk of the data/bias of the data case. As I said, there are only 1434 (as of end-October 2024) works in the JE tag and this means that this number can be biased by a single external source, which causes the shift in the data. This means that this is not a trend!

By excluding the cause from the analysis, the Do not archive tag percentages for JE are still higher than the other ships, but not by such a large margin (around 7% which makes sense).

Nothing to say here, the series reaching its peak in terms of fandom response and also due to COVID making people consume more media content, the JE rise followed the general raise of fanfics in the TMA tag. Which isn't surprising but not to be taken for granted either! Another sad but probably not a trend fact is that Jon/Elias production was slightly more flourishing during the earlier years of the series (especially 2018-2019), than it is now. This might probably related to a ship actually being made canon or probably fandom disappointment in the TMA finale (which I can understand). I read in a lot of earlier JE fanfics very excited comments about "omg I can't wait to see him and Jon in s4/5" and I was like *sad violin noises*, because they didn't get the amount of (canon-expected) interactions the JE fandom thought they would get. Again, this is just speculation and to be taken with a grain of salt.

Unexpectedly, M+E JE works have more words that Gen-rated ones (expected on the JE tag due to their M-to-T ratio, but kinda unexpected compared to the whole TMA tag).

JE fanfics are slightly more kudo-ed and bookmarked than the general fandom trend.

A conclusive remark, is that I made this just to see what behaviours could be extrapolated from such a tiny tag in an otherwise medium fandom (as for 2020, median number of fanworks in labelled big fandom was 45k. Havign roughly half of that number means that TMA is, on AO3, a medium fandom to me).

Anyhow, I wish you happy JonElias day which for me is once again every day since twp months ago :)

[pruneunfair]

Ranking all the OI I read. Part 1: the lesser.

It'll be like my tier list except with added stories from the haven't read yet section and of course my opinions.

Since Tumblr only allows 30 images per post and a daily pass based on how many pictures can be posted at all. I'll be posting this list through multiple parts starting with the worst. Get ready because there's gonna be a lot of negativity right now.

Starting with the tier I like to call "Absolute dog shit." Terrible plots, gross content being glamourized and little to no potential at all.

honestly picking the worst of the worst was hard cause there's so many to choose from.. and I think the title of the absolute worst doesn't go to Remarried empress or Today the villainess has fun again..

Its this one: beware of the brothers

I really can't say I was surprised 😭. I mean.. look at the damn title. The FL gets adopted into the family because she looks like the ML's dead sister and it just.. escalates into step-bro love. "But it's not related by blood-" still incest and even if they didn't grow up together, WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO FUCK SOMEONE WHO LOOKS LIKE YOUR DEAD SIBLING!?

The order of slave breeding

Yes this is an actual manhwa.. I genuinely wanna know why the author just looked at themselves in the mirror and said "Yes this is a good idea." As the title suggests.. it's about a slave merchant for a FL and her slaves falling in love with her and as if it couldn't be uncomfortable enough it is one of the few manhwa with a dark skinned ML. I don't care how many times they'll offer excues for the lead I don't fw slavery being used as a romance device in media.

I belong to house Castillo

Technically I didn't read all of it, I just read the spoilers for the rest of the chapters but to be fair, I just got finished cursing myself by reading stepbro fantasies and master/slave ships, I'm not trying to give my FBI agent a reason to search my hard drives. It's a basic and cliché found family where the FL Estelle is sold by her mother to her father and the ML is a 17 year old who basically grooms her..why? Because raising your love interest is the "only" way to make a story stand out amongst the other generic found family tales.

I tamed my ex husband's mad dog.

More cases of grooming except this time it's the FL as the perpetrator. ML looks like he's 8 but he's apparently 16.. so we got a groomer protagonist in the form of Reinhardt who also neglects her first child and favors her second child she had with her victim with the excuse of not wanting to care for her son being that he looks like her toxic ex. Lady what? That boy deserves his own villain arc holy shit.

No more turning a blind eye.

This one really dissapointed me 😔. The cover looked stunning, the artstyle while a little off was still eye catching and the title sounded promising. Nah this is a hunk of junk that had a gentrification plot for some reason.. and you were supposed to sympathize with the guy who wanted to render hundreds of people homeless to make room for art galleries or whatever it was they wanted?

The dragon kings bride

I already knew this one was probably gonna suck judging by the title. First off it treats dark skinned people like barbarians, the ML Hakan meets Lucina when she's a child, Lucina is threatened with death if she doesn't marry him and you can probably guess where it goes. Like I said I don't really have a right to be shocked but it still goes on the list for its weird obsession with Lucina being so tiny that having sex with Hakan could kill her along with a not so hidden pregnancy fetish.

I became the tyrants secretary.

Its just workplace sexual harassment, theres not much to it. Cannot stand the ML who is a basic garbage human and Rosalyn is a block of wood when it comes to personality. She wants to do all these things but she has no spine and no will to actually do them but at the same time shes so good at everything on a whim. I usually don't mind a clueless FL but Jesus christ! She makes Adrien Agreste look smarter!

The villains savior

Gotta say the artstyle is really pretty and the FLs design is so cute. Everything else though is pretty bad. The point is basically the lead Ezlay is trying to essentially "fix" the ML as the title suggest. A lot of people dislike this one because Ezlay is very emotional and cries too much but that's honestly the least of the issues here. Now to be fair, Aseph is a villain so it's expected that he's gonna suck but that doesn't mean Ezlay needs to have the personality of a rock either, it's not that she cries a lot that annoys me, she's literally just a male fantasy personified. All she is absolute patience and acceptance for what Aseph does to point of enabling that toxic behavior.

Now we enter manhwas that are horrificly awful, not much difference except these ones have a bigger grain of potential

Lucia

This one got a lot of hate tiktok so naturally I had to read it and yeah, it was pretty bad. The artstyle though just.. I'm sorry but Lucia's face is literally just 👁 👄 👁 and thats not even mentioning the ML Hugo. It's really crinegy and it tries to fill that void with poorly made smut. The plot is also really and I mean REALLY dead set on 1950s values for women and the relationship between Lucia's and Hugo is downright toxic. In fact I don't even think there's a plot.. it's just porn. The only reason it's not in dogshit tier is that it's so iconic for being awful that it deserves to be higher up.

When the villainess is in love.

Okay all I can give this one is that Libertia has a better character design than Lucia. She's a mary sue but at this point that's a lot of leads nowadays so it's not a total shock but this is definitely a case where the story would be so much better if it was the actual Libertia as the protagonist instead of a carbon copy of the ogfl taking over. The worst part though is the fashion and I normally do not care about how dresses look in OI as long as they at least look good and fit the setting.. and dear God a lot of those dresses are nightmares to look at. Thankfully I had heard the novel was better.

Today the villainess has fun again

not a fan of the protagonist. Reilynn is really insufferable to follow since she's basically just an entitled asshole who thinks that just because she got transmigrated as the wealthiest woman in the land that she must be in the right because she's not like Iris who is a basic pick me girl. Beyond the fact that watching her throw money at people to get past an obstacle without effort she's also heavily written as a pedo because out of her options which had 2 green flags her age, she chooses the slave she bought who acts and looks like a 10 year old boy with attachment issues.

Try begging

what is with Solche and their weird obsession with rapist male leads? It's somehow worse then cry or better yet beg. Basically the FL Sally/Grace is a spy and when the ML Leon finds out.. he basically tortures her and SA's her multiple times and somehow they fall in love. Do with that what you will, the only slack I will kind of give Try begging is that it at least warns you of what your getting into beforehand. I really hate that Solches writing actually has so much potential to be amazing yet they use their talents to make rape fetish content. I want to know why manhwa tiktok likes this so much, they're all about girl code until a rapist looks hot (Leon isn't even hot, hes mad ugly)

Abandoned empress

Ah yes, good ol abandoned empress, the manhwa communities favorite punching bag so it's only right it lands here. For all the writers out there if your making a character you'd want the readers to support as the love interest you typically would give them an interesting personality and to tone down anything you think is too much for a healthy relationship. Abandoned empress decides to do the opposite of that and even after scenes of Ruve abusing his wife Aristia by cheating on her, beating her, SA'ing her, killing her dad, and causing her to miscarry so you would naturally think "okay clearly Ruve is the antagonist." But instead they pulled some bullshit "but he's not doing it anymore because he was poisoned in the last timeline!"... what!? Were there any new writers by any chance because how did we go from a abusive monster to a misunderstood Lil guy? I would say more but I think everyone already agreed a long time ago Abandoned empress is ass.

Revenge on the real one

the protag is essentially those villainesses in regression stories that cause the heroines initial downfall. I was already aware of what would happen before I even read and let me tell you it was accurate. The protagonist Helga is AWFUL. The torture she puts Hillian through is overkill and at this point Hillian deserves her own regression story to stand up to Helga because my girl was not that bad for her sister to ruin her life because of a stupid tragic origin story. The worst part is the Helga fans I see on places like tiktok who just don't want to admit their FL is a bad person. "Oh but Helga past was so sad! It's not her fault she's like this." Don't mean she has to banish her sister from her own nation when Hillian was innocent.

Villain Dukes precious one.

I really dislike the reincarnated as a baby trope and I can only ever tolerate it when it's just for a few little chapters. They always feel like those weird ass Elsagate videos with embarrassing humor to come across as funny and this one is no different. Even after the FL grows up the plot is still bland and cringe inducing. I don't have a lot to say about this one other then it is weird as hell. Apparently it also got a little incest-y so no thanks!

Poisonous Lily

While the characters looked basic in terms of design the title sounded intriguing. Unfortunately the translation is horrible, they can't even get the whole Lily flower theme right on the tapas version by giving her tulips to carry on her wedding. The dialog is..interesting to say the least. I won't lose it too much though on this one though since I'm pretty sure this is a lower level book trying to make it out in a sea of over advertised manhwa

I thought my time was up.

You know those porn/no plot tags on ao3? That's basically ITMTWU in a nutshell. Within only 20 chapters, the male lead Asrahan is already obsessed with Lariette after chapters of her violating his personal space to force a relationship between them. The whole magic plot is pushed to the side, Asrahans curse isn't allowed to be an actual rotting flesh curse like it's described as cause he's still gotta be pretty, and the rest of the plot is basically just soft core porn and fanservice that does little to actually move whatever is left of the plot.

For my derelict favorite.

The. Hypocrisy. How is this book gonna make the entire message about deconstructing main character centered morality and then almost immediately backpeddaling with justifying Hestia for attacking a woman who doesn't know her for rejecting her favorite man and proceeding to just ruin her day whenever she can. Hestia would say "im not like other girls." Hestia would be an avid fan of those trust fund baby GMV. Hestia would put her hair in a messy bun, shit on whatever is popular and act like she's making a statement . Even calling her Hestia feels like straight up disrespectful to the real goddess of the hearth who funnily enough is known as one of the most chill Greek gods.

Marry my husband

now Marry my husband is not insanely problematic wheras it's just cliché, predictable and in general pretty bad. It is a fast food manhwa designed to fulfill the classic top boss takes good care of you fantasy so naturally a lot is put on hold to showcase the sweet relationship between the central characters and almost everyone needs to have a lover. It's so bad it's actually kinda funny because the villains are so cartoonishly evil for office workers. Sumin is out here speaking in 3rd person, dressing in clothes found in the little kid section of Walmart and makes comical comments about her desire to ruin Jiwons life, Minhwan is basically a borderline discord mod who casually killed jiwon in the first timeline and goes "Oh well." and there's this random ugly old man who's name I can't remember who's the only one interested in Sumin till the end because he basically wants em younger without the risk of going to federal prison.

Remarried empress

I don't think i need to explain much at this point, if you know my account then you already know how I feel about remarried empress. Season 1 was pretty good though.

Divorcing my tyrant husband

I think we all know at this point that's whenever a title has the word "divorce" 9/10 of the time there is never going to be divorce and it'll devolve into the FL changing her mind and staying with her trashy ex husband because he now decided that Robelia wasn't like other girls and left his mistress in the dust. The plot kinda started getting out of hand when Robelias love interests expanded to one of her obsessed slaves and a Duke to prove that Alexandros was the better option. The villian Aisha is a joke who gets her ass handed to her over and over because "damsel woman always bad." and the art starts to lose its touch. I usually don't mind when artstyle changes but dear God do some of these characters look a Lil fugly.

Cry or better yet beg.

The final story that is in the awful section, why? Because it has the most lost potential. As terrible as this CoHo equivalent is, it details the very realistic parts of being a mistress to a nobleman. In most other stories, the mistress is an evil wench who could easily back out but in cry or better yet beg, Layla is unable to escape Matthias's abuse because it could risk her uncles job. There's a lot to this manhwa and novel that could've made a tragic story about a girl trapped in an abusive relationship with little help, the art is gorgeous and the characters for the most part were well written. It's a real shame that it turned out to be a rape apologist work instead.

next up are the mediocre manhwas, finally there will a little more positivity.

The villainess is a marionette

its.so.boring! This one was hyped up all over the place on Instagram and tiktok and the art looked stunning so I gave it a shot. This is definitely one of those stories that only got popular because of its art in my opinion because the plot is so confusing. Events are happening left and right, the pacing goes from too fast to too slow, characters personalities and traits keep warping, and while this might just be the result of poor adaptation her brother comes across as incestuous a couple of times. while Cayena isn't the worst FL, she's a mary sue by all definitions. Sorry but it's a bunch of jumbled wires. The reason it earns a spot in "it's okay" is because I heard the novel like usual is better so it might not be the fault of the original author

I was the male leads ex

It wasn't bad just boring but a little less boring then the former I'll give it that. The artstyle looked prettier in the beginning so that was kind of sad to see it change in later chapters. What drew me to keep reading was the chance that the ogfl Julianna may not be evil but even a potential love interest. So I got excited and apparently there's the idea that Julianna is actually her brother in disguise which.. would just ruin it tbh, there goes any chance at a ogfl being a human being and not a plot device. Not a huge fan of Erica or really any of the love interests.

From maid to queen

This is the newest of the lineup I read and it was actually interesting for once to see a new story where the MC was the concubine. First off the maids feel less like women employed to do the chores of the palace and more like the cartel 😭, in early chapters whenever Urania is aiming to be the concubine, being lazy with her job or getting comfortable with a powerful man in general they're already out with sticks ready to ruin her day and they even try to kill her. Lot of people don't like that Urania isn't a girls girl but honestly I can't blame her for wanting more out of life then poverty, where she comes across as stupid is that she's still wanting that role even after it got her killed last time. I think that it could work though since it shows that urania is more human and not a perfect goddess of a woman however that does not make up for the shit world building (like what the hell was that mushroom that could turn into a perfect still corpse of you 💀)

The villainess maker.

Ill admit I'm a little harsh on this one on my tier list. The plot still isn't great but there are so much worse out there so it ended up moving up on the list due to default. The plot is mostly just bland and generic down to all the characters and the tropes. Ayla is a girlboss in the villainesses body, Charlotte is a super "revolutionary" kind girl turned wicked wench and the ML is another "touch her and I'll kill you" type. What i will give the Villainess maker is the distinct artstyle. It's not as stylized and while it does get lazy at the end it still is very recognizable.

Abellas dessert shop.

Its another extremely underrated manhwa that's another isekai about a wronged woman looking to move on from her shitty fiancé and start a dessert shop. Ngl the moments where Abella is forced to put on a kind face despite her cheating fiancé or her ex friend popping in is definitely relatable especially in the workforce. Still a little bland but wholesome.

I didn't mean to seduce the male lead.

Eleanor is the FL hired to convince the ML to accept women into his life with the hopes that he will fall in love with the ogfl Irene. Tbh this one can get very icky with how it tries to force the notion that you must fall in love but the guy just instantly falls in love with Eleanor so.. I guess that's a little better? Regardless though i will not fault this manhwa too much because unfortunately the author died before the story was over so it deserves a little slack since it never got the chance to be more. Rest in peace author.

Who made me a princess.

Ill be straight with this now: it's Mid. Objectively the story isn't too terrible and I do find Athy a good protagonist not to mention my love for Jennete but everything else is pretty "meh." Not a huge fan of Claude from his design to his personality, the ML is another case of a grown as immortal meeting his wife when she's still a child (theres a little credit ill admit for Athy being mentally a grown woman but that doesnt stop me from thinking its uncomfortable to acknowledge) It can be cute sometimes and I'll give it that but I don't think I'll ever reread it, just not for me.

Actually I was the real one

Good god this was such a bastardization of the original novel. With that said I'll admit i was still entertained reading it since you could say that the novel wouldn't be an instant cheat sheet to learn what was gonna happen. Still it could've at least tried to be a loyal adaptation. They give Keira 2 options to choose as a love interest when she had none in the source material, Zeke is pushed to the side and the maids honestly get on my nerves with their one note personalities. They also seem to forget that Cosette is literally being possessed by a demon he'll bent on destroying humanity (which she succeeded in the first time) because what was built up as an amazing antagonist is just a joke now. The only other redeeming factors are that in the Manhwa Cosette is still alive and the whole elemental plot stays constant. Despite my complaints on the adaptation it is still a interesting read but the novel will always beat it no matter what.

I know it sounds like I'm just being a negative Nancy with all of these and I'm sorry for being so negative but the next part will be more positive.

Next time on part 2 will be the decent stories.

[charlottesbookclub]

should we talk about the interlace on gwayne's horse's armor?

since I spend altogether too much time looking at stills and gifs of gwayne anyway, I figured I might as well share some observations I have about the really interesting visuals that are happening with his horse's armor

this is part art historical analysis, part gwayne meta, and part "let's look at some gorgeous images under the guise of doing visual analysis" so if that's your thing, please read on! if not, that's also totally fine – I get that this is hyperspecific and also a symptom of my very serious gwayne brainrot, so I'm putting everything else below the cut! 💚💚 (also it's quite long – sorry! 😅)

okay I want to be upfront about my qualifications and my shortfalls here: I'm an art history phd student and so basically all I do is visual analysis of objects. I've studied a number of medieval manuscripts that feature interlace (which is where I'm going to draw most of my knowledge from here), and I've taken a seminar (an advanced graduate course) specifically on medieval manuscripts, for which I wrote a research paper entitled "From Kells to Celtic: The Aesthetics of the Book of Kells Illuminations as a Marker of Irish Identity." HOWEVER I am NOT a historian of armor, so I will be taking my knowledge of interlace on other objects and applying it to the armor we see in the show

a short intro

so, the first thing that struck me about gwayne's horse's armor is that it's really different than the other equestrian armor we see, even amongst the other men who came with him from oldtown. to be honest, my guess is that this was likely done in the show to help him stand out and also show that he is a special and precious princess (which he is btw 😌😌) who needs fancy armor for his horse. I'm not sure if further thought went into it than that (but maybe it did! I'm happy to stand corrected here!)

however, the catastrophic levels of brainrot I've developed over this man have compelled me to read much further into it than that, which I shall now proceed to do with great enthusiasm! ☺️

first, let's look at the armor:

it's hard to find really detailed close-ups, but it's clear that the armor is incredibly intricate. not only do we have this very complex interlacing, but certain designs are marked out with different colors and internal patterning, making the whole thing even more visually interesting and complex

while interlacing is used across a vast range of time, cultures, geographical regions, and artistic mediums, given both the visuality of this armor in particular and knowing that westeros is based on medieval europe, seeing this interlace instantly called to mind a style that we today call "insular fusion" (I'm not going to go into all the specifics of it here because that's a post all its own lol 😅). it's a style perhaps most famously exemplified by The Book of Kells, but it is found throughout many different objects of the same period (ca. 700-900 CE)

now let's look at some fucking interlace hell yeah!!!!!!

from The Book of Kells (ca. 750-810 CE)

from The Lindisfarne Gospels (ca. 698-721 CE)

and two non-manuscript examples:

Animal Head Post from a Viking Ship Burial (ca. 825 CE)

and a later example, but one of my favorites:

Wooden Portal of the Urnes Stave Church (ca. 1050-1070 CE)

do we see the vision??? are y'all picking up what I'm putting down???

"okay, charlotte, I see the similarities, but why does this matter?" you may be asking yourself (or maybe you aren't idk), and the answer is: this type of interlacing had some super fascinating meanings and uses, some of which I think we can apply to gwayne! 💚💚

let me break it down from least to most potentially related to gwayne:

the aesthetics of interlace as an identity marker

use of interlace in a religious context

interlace as a status symbol

the protective potential of interlace

and now let's go into detailllllllll!!!!!

the aesthetics of interlace as an identity marker

I bring this one up because it's what I focused on in my personal research on the topic of interlace, but I also think it's the least relevant to gwayne. my argument in my paper was that the aesthetics of the interlace in the Book of Kells have been thoughtfully and intentionally re-used throughout history and into the present as a clear visual marker of identity that draws a narrative back to the production of the Book of Kells. however, in terms of the show, we have very little indication that the particular style of interlacing we see on gwayne's horse is associated with any larger identity concepts. it doesn't seem to be associated with house hightower, as none of the other men with gwayne seem to borrow this motif, nor do we see it associated with alicent (as far as I can tell from the little looking I've done, but I'm more than happy to revise this!). for it to make sense as some form of identity marker, it would have to be clear what identity he's visually referencing, and since his use of interlace seems unique, I think it's doubtful that it's part of a larger visual invocation of identity

use of interlace in a religious context

part of what makes insular fusion so interesting as a style is that it is indeed a fusion of a number of different regional styles, including vine scrolls from the mediterranean, triskeles from the northern british isles, and zoomorphic (meaning "in the form of animals") interlace from northwestern mainland europe. although insular fusion is used to decorate christian objects (like gospel books and churches), its component parts are much much older and have connections to various pagan religions that significantly pre-date christianity. obviously it's impossible to be 100% certain of the exact significance of interlace in any of these religious contexts (there are no written records explaining it), but scholars have a few guesses

one suggestion is that interlace in some way represented the spirit world/the world of the gods, or perhaps even a point of connection between the human world and the world beyond. although the religion of westeros is obviously different than any of the real-world religions that used interlace in this manner, I do still wonder if there could be a religious connection here. it's pretty clear that gwayne's mother was quite religious, and alicent is as well. although we don't totally know gwayne's relationship with religion, we could certainly guess that it's at least a little bit important to him, given the beliefs of the women in his life. I know that the most common religious symbol in westeros tends to be the seven-pointed star, which is not something I see on the interlace on the armor, so I'm not sure how far I would want to take this hypothesis, but I did want to put it out there for anyone who might have further thoughts!

interlace as a status symbol

as I mentioned to in the beginning, I do think it's likely that this particular type of armor was chosen for gwayne's horse because it does come off as a bit ostentatious. the manuscripts with interlace that I mentioned above were hugely expensive and time-consuming projects, and only the most affluent religious communities could afford such luxurious gospel books. given the level of detail on the armor, I have to imagine that the same is true in the world of the show. in some ways, it's a mode of conspicuous consumption; a demonstration of the hightowers' wealth and influence. there's a reason gwayne's horse's armor stands out: because it's meant to. it's meant to set him apart, even from the other soldiers who came with him from oldtown

now this next part is just my own conjecture, but I also wonder if the armor is meant to speak to a more artistic sensibility on gwayne's part. after all, equestrian armor is a very functional object with a very clear goal: to protect the horse. from a purely functional standpoint, the interlace does nothing to serve this purpose (and may actually hinder it a little??), it simply adds a complex visuality to the armor. aside from just flaunting the wealth that must have been expended to commission such a piece, it also suggests that it was crafted by artisans who had both functional and aesthetic goals in mind while creating it. whether it was gwayne himself who directed the commission or not, it seems significant that he chose to use this armor that doubles as a kind of art piece. he does seem to be someone who enjoys the finer things in life, so it wouldn't surprise me if he had an artistic appreciation too, and was using this armor as a way to demonstrate that (or perhaps even just as a way to show his own personal artistic taste/preferences)

the protective potential of interlace

technically, I think "interlace as a status symbol" is the most likely reason for the armor being the way it is, but this one is my favorite theory, so I'm putting it at the top. circling back to the religious uses of interlace, another theory of its religious significance is as a mode of protection. some scholars think that its creators believed that the weaving, intertwined lines of the interlace would confuse and trap evil spirits. building on this theory is the fact that complex interlacing was often used at transitional or liminal points, such as the beginning pages of a gospel book or on the doors of churches. the idea here is that the interlace wields its protective powers at these key entry points against any evil entities that might try to enter sacred or protected spaces

interlace as apotropaic (a fancy technical term meaning "protective," often used in reference to magic or magical practices) seems particularly poignant for an object that was literally going to be worn into battle. now, I admit once again that there is little canon evidence to suggest that interlace is thought of in this way in the world of the show, so I'm running with this theory more because I like it rather than because I think it's legitimately based in canon. but I just think it's very sweet that gwayne's horse would be adorned with this complex interlace that seems to be woven with protective powers. even if gwayne (or others) didn't literally believe that interlace had those kind of powers, the fact that he still made the choice to invoke the idea of protection against harm and evil is a lovely thought. (it makes me think of how people today still might carry a rabbit's foot or have charms against the evil eye, even if they don't actually place stock in the beliefs surrounding those objects. I just think it's cool that generations of cultural belief still imbue these objects with a kind of magical aura). I just like the idea that he (or someone else?? otto? alicent? his mother?) chose armor that might have been associated with protection against harm

and now I'll finally wrap up!!

whew that was a lot! if you've read this far – thank you so much!! I'm honestly not even sure if these thoughts were coherent, but I kept thinking about this when I looked at that interlaced armor, and I just had to get the ideas out of my head lol

but I'd love to hear what others think about this topic! I'm certainly not an expert on the matter, and I'd be super open to hearing if others have different interpretations!

if nothing else, I hope you learned something cool about interlace! (and also just how far I have descended into madness over this man that I am writing pages-long analyses of his horse's armor 😅🤪)

[tigris-types]

Yesterday, @starbiology posted that in cannon Neopets lore, Dr. Sloth arrived to Neopia and started creating experimental lifeforms on the empty planet. These lifeforms started to mutate into the Neopets we know today after magic was introduced, and then faeries were later discovered. Faeries are seen as immortal being and on the Neopian Times, Queen Fyora is often used as a stand-in for god. This means that our timeline is Dr. Sloth experiments - magic arrives - Neopets appear - deities/faeries appear.

I think it's safe to say that's deities are created by belief, and in the world of Neopia, "believing" can affect the weather and magic. So Neopets believing in a persona that controlled a force created the faeries, but where did magic originally come from? For that, we look to the stars.

Aishas are a unique neopet as they are the only one that can be painted alien. In their lore, the alien color was actually the original aisha, but they lost the additional ears when they adapted to life on Neopia. Aishas also have phychic abilities and a tie to the mystic arts; they are magical beings.

I propose that alien aishas brought magic to Neopia and created the faeries. Here's how I imagine it happening:

Alien aishas are explorers of the galaxy who come from a matriarchal society. They pray to their patron of stars and safe space travel Mira to guide them on their journey. They have discovered a planet that can sustain life just on the edges of their explorable range. The aishas send a small crew to check it out, but unbeknownst to them, it's under the watch and protection of Dr.Sloth.

He doesn't want anyone messing with his planet wide experiment! He found the planet first! It's his! So he shoots down the incoming ship. The aishas are able to make it to their escape pods and land on Neopia.

But how could this have happened? Were they too far away from their home planet for Mira to protect them? If they were truly out of range of the deity of space travel, could none of their gods help them now? Did they need to pray to new ones? No! That's blasphemy! Accidents happen, they should send out a rescue signal and wait.

So they do. But they find the planet full of hostile lifeforms, monsters of every shape, size, and color! And every time a rescue party gets near to the planet, it gets shot down in a similar manner. They assume it's something in the atmosphere that is breaking up their ships, and they loose faith in their old gods. Dr. Sloth meanwhile leaves his moon base to go investigate where all these ships are coming from as Mira looses her power as the Neopian aishas loose faith in her.

The colony of aishas are trying so hard to survive the monsters. They don't know the deities of the world they are now inhabiting, but they know how to be respectful to them.

They pray to the Mother of Protection so they can fight the monsters at their doors, and a battle faerie comes to aide them.

They pray to the Mother of Survival when their rations and supplies run out, and so a faerie with a cooking pot appears to teach them what can be combined to create something greater than its parts.

They pray to the Mother of Medicine in the winter when they start to fall ill from the cold. So a faerie of healing and snow appears to help them, and disappears when it's spring.

The faerie of survival tells them about neggs, and when they find a fruit that contains all their nutitrial needs, they praise the Mother of Neggs, and a faerie appears to tend to the negg bushes so the aishas will always have something to eat.

And although they have lost faith in their old gods, some rituals still carry over. Losing a tooth is still considered a great milestone that must be honored. The Mother of Milestone is manifested as the tooth faerie that gives money in exchange for teeth, but these aren't the nerkmids that they use as money. Could their be other civilizations on this planet?

As the aishas start to explore the planet to find other civilizations, they take their beliefs with them. They thank Mother Earth for soft grasses, shady trees, and protective caves. They thank Mother River for fresh water and Mother Ocean for a safe seafaring journey, and they thank both for the bounty of fish. They thank Mother Air for fresh breezes and to keep them upwind from the monsters. They thank Mother Fire for keeping the monsters away, and Mother Light for keeping their spirits bright.

But mothers can also be mean and nasty, and mothers can be cruel. They attribute the monsters and their hardships to Mother Decay, a spectral shadowy faerie that lives in our nightmares and can corrupt our minds until we become the monsters attacking our friends.

The aishas know they need protection from Mother Decay when they go to sleep. They need a force in the darkness to help keep them safe from the nightmares when no other mother can reach them, so they pray to Mother Dark for sweet dreams and sanity. Mother Dark may not always be nice, but she will do what no other mother can and make it so we can brave the night.

As the aishas expands, and new faeries start to appear in their settlements, things been a little hectic. No new civilizations have been found yet, and while their own has been more established, these faeries cause just as much help as harm. Magic is a new force that is altering the landscape, but they need it to make sense! Some have even claimed to find a land made out of jelly for faeries sake!

So the leaders pray to the Mother of Order and the Mother of Faeries. "Please" they say, "Please control your children so we may have order in our lives again" and Mother Faerie appears. It manifests as the Queen of all faeries and all must listen to her. Queen Faerie, no, Queen Fyora, whisks the most unruly faeries away to Faerieland so the Aishas can have peace again.

But with the Mother of Order and Civilization making an appearance, civilization is also brought to the monsters that have plagued Neopia. Everywhere the floating city goes, the monsters turn into the Neopets we know today. They start worshipping the faeries too, and the faeries' power grows. The world turns.

Monsters still exist, as the faeries can't solve every problem, but the aishas have neighbors they can trade with now. Some of the monsters can even be tamed and trained for pets or for jobs!

As Neopian society grows and thoughts and feelings change, new faeries take on the mantles of older ones. Faeries become a species of their own and can form relationships, although no one really knows how new faeries are created. They believe they have always been there, and their belief makes it so. Queen Fyora is thought of as the oldest faerie, and their belief makes that true as well. (Eventhough she is technically the youngest of the ancient faeries, but she is the only ancient one who remains in modern Neopia) (Besides Mira and maybe Kari, but idk)

Other notable faeries and how they came to be:

Library Faerie - Mother of Knowledge

Soup Faerie - Mother of Kindness - the current light faerie took over from a faerie with unquie wings that wasn't meeting the community's needs

Bree - Mother of Quests (when society became more modern, neopets got bored and prayed to be given more involved quests than just simple fetch quests, so Bree spawned and created Key Quest)

Kaia - she spawned as a kid, so idk what she would represent. A daughter of Culture perhaps? She can see into the future, so maybe she is the deity of Time who is in training?

Honestly, Kaia confuses me. But I hoped this made sense of how the faeries came to be! I also went for the mother angle to explain why all of them are female. Please let me know what you all think of this!

Oh yeah - faeries can die if no one believes in them, but if their domain is still needed, then a new faerie takes up that same domain. As a side note, that might be why Kari has an apprentice now. Neggs aren't as obtainable as they used to be and are pretty expensive, but they are still useful. Neopians opinions of Neggs are changing, so there is another faerie to represent the current generation of Neopians' thoughts on Neggs.

Same thing with Delina. Modern Neopians know that dark faeries aren't automatically evil, but they don't know what they can help with that isn't evil magic, so a good crafty dark faerie spawned. All dark faeries are crafty, but Delina is DIY crafty instead of magic crafty.

Thank you for reading! I know this was long but it was fun to write, and please excuse any errors as this was written on my phone. Also, please let me know your thoughts on this! If you agree/disagree or if their is some ancient lore that needs to be incorporated in this!

[katiekatdragon27]

I was listening to "All Eyes on Me" and "Respectless" during a car ride and had an epiphany.

Progress shots and lore below cut:

OK OK BEFORE WE START THIS IS VERY HEADCANONED BASED.

Design choices and character motivations are very much based on my own hcs (such as Wizard being woman, Wizard being Ales's twin and having his hair as a result, the whole Rabiteen/Hopiteensy lore situation, Bad Rayman and Goth being homies, etc.) I love self-indulgence, what can I say?

Here is a synposis since ik most of you looooooooove my essays below my posts:

This AU takes place between Origins and Legends. Instead of Goth being the 4th player, it's Wizard (like in the concept art). She and Ales are the magician twins that Polokus talks about when pulling on his beard in Origins.

During Origins, Wizard and Ales are working together to harvest lum magic. However, the two of them are not that good at it. So, Ales has the brilliant idea to have Wizard hang out with Rayman and help convince him to help with lum collection. The game proceeds as normal, until they get to Moody Clouds.

While the build is falling apart, the Raygang, minus Wizard, fall to the groud bc of a magic spell Ales casted while they were all busting it down. They fall asleep in the random-ass tree they're found sleeping on in Legends and that's why they're all out of the plot. Wizard, fueled on anger and betrayal of her brother's evil plans, chases his ass onto the ship and stops it from hitting the giant lum ball. Ales thinks his sister is protecting him, but then gets socked in the gut and thrown in a cage. Wizard then hijacks the ship and returns to the port in Moody Clouds, leaving Ales in a dark basement under his office. She returns to the lum ball and considers letting all the lums go but goes back on that decision and decides to keep them.

By enhancing some of Ales's mechanics (all of it is fueled with lums) with her natural strong magic, she goes on a massive power high, capturing all the remaining yellow lums on her own. She then turns her attention to the blue lums.

The ones that are inside of people.

At first, she goes for objectively bad people. The baddies who beat up all the teensies in Teensies in Trouble and so on, but then goes for the bigger fish. The fish like Jano. And she wins. Kills his ass so fast. It's terrifying.

She then starts trying to get the Fairy Council in on her tech and lum magic usage. No one (especially Betilla) vibe with this, cuz they're too busy looking for Rayman or a replacement. She then shows of her Jano kill and everyone is utterly flabbergasted. All the teensies are onboard tho, so that's a win. They start doing public executions of bad nightmares and dreams. Then... it turns into executing people who dislike executions or people who just dislike Wizard in general.

(This is the point where she starts dressing like this. The orange is a ref to her old concept art and the purple with yellow is pieces of Jano's hat she turned into cloths. Also, the stick's not wood. It's actually very strong steel that is incredibly sharp.)

Fun times.

The fairies really don't vibe with any of this, especially Voodoo Mama and Betilla, but for different reasons. For VM, it's because her populations are in dwindling numbers at this point. For Betilla, it's because the lack of lums is stunting/destroying the growth of the Glade and is lowkey incapacitating Polokus. The two of them then come together to figure out a way to stop this girl. They decide to recruit two individuals, a young looking Rayman clone that Betilla remembers a certain dark magic user creating, and a little nightmare teensy who is a massive nerd when it comes to lums. Those being bad Rayman (Shadi) and Goth Teensy.

We love recruiting kids to kill grown ass baddies cuz the authority figures are all shit at figuring their own problems out.

Together, the two of them, plus some other figures like First King and Rabbiteen, go to fight this overpowered scary woman who could easily smite them if she wanted. Good luck soldiers🫡🫡

I have more, but I'm still working on the story not bc I'm lazy noooo neeeeeverrrr.

Anyways, have a lovely day :))

[dreamchasernina]

What was the moment u started liking kataang and why

Thank you for the question!

I’ve shipped them ever since I can remember honestly, ever since I was 16 and decided to watch the show from beginning to end. There was a phase when I was like 12 that I kinda shipped Zutara but that was before the show even ended and I think it was mostly based on the first season. You could say I started shipping Kataang when I saw their last kiss at the end of the series, I found it so sweet and such an amazing closure to the show. The show starts with Katara and Aang and it ends with Katara and Aang, I always found it beautiful and that moment always brings tears to my eyes. So that was when I was 16.

So fast forward to me 28, I went through a really hard time in my life and I did what I always do to make myself feel better, I watched ATLA again. So when I finished it I was thinking - hey let’s see some cute Kataang fan art on tumblr. So I went into the Kataang tag and I was surprised to see so much hate for 2 of my favorite characters of the show. Rants after rants about how Kataang is toxic and forced and I was shocked…did we watch the same show?

Well you know what I did after that? I decided to rewatch the show yet again and this time to really focus on Kataang to see maybe it wasn’t as natural as thought it was. And you know what I found? That I shipped them even harder than I ever did before!

This time I kinda noticed the little things I didn’t before. Like the way Katara talked to Aang in the avatar state episode, how she practically told him she loved him. And then how she calmed him down in the desert episode (I’m also a sucker for the trope “the man loses his shit and she’s the only one who can calm him down”).

Then I guess on this rewatch what solidified it for me was her reaction to Aang getting shot. I watched that show so many times I lost count, but somehow this time watching it as 28 year old I felt Katara’s heartbreak so deeply, like the expression on her face said it all, how deeply she feels for Aang. And then in the Awekening, like my second favorite Kataang episode of all times, is when I was all like….that girl is so obviously in love with that boy, what is everyone else on? I guess they see what they want to see?

Like, it’s so obvious they’re each other’s person! They’re the ultimate friends to lovers and they just warm my heart so much. And so I finished the show and found myself starved for more Kataang content so I read the comics again, and I was being FED!

So that’s how I went from loving them as a couple to completely obsessed and I will defend them until the day I die!!

Mother/son relationship my ass, watch the damn show again and with your eyes open this time please! And Katara wouldn’t appreciate you adultifying her, she’s fucking 14! Sorry I just saw another anti kataang post and I’m fuming.

[noxsoulmate]

💞 Through Thin Walls 💞

🏘 A Tarlos Neighbor AU 🏘

Ship: Tarlos | Fandom: 911 Lone Star Author: noxsoulmate | Podfic by: Juulna | Artist: kinkajou Read and listen on ao3 | View the art on ao3

Chapters: 2/2 | Complete Word Count: 18197 | Rating: Explicit | Warnings/Tags: alternate universe - neighbors, first meetings, 5+1 things, podfic, podfic & podficced works, podfic length: 2-2.5 hours, dorks in love, two person love triangle, falling in love, getting to know each other, getting together, idiots in love, love at first sight, kinda, cliche firefighter rescue, fluff, fluff and smut

Podfic created by the amazing @juuls

Art made by the wonderful @a-kinkajou

Created for the @pod-together event

Based on a prompt by the lovely @actuallysara

Summary:

“Hey, so please don’t freak out–” In the next moment, Carlos could hear a thud, followed by a curse, and he was pretty sure the guy had just hit his head somehow. Carlos winced in sympathy. “Sorry! Sorry, it’s just your neighbor here.” “Dude,” came the reply, the voice sounding rough, probably from all the crying. “Way to give a person a heart attack. Also, creepy much?” “My apologies. The walls here are basically paper with some paint slapped on. So uhm… noises are somewhat muffled but… not really, I guess.”

~*~

3 times Carlos only heard his neighbor’s voice, 2 times TK lusted over a certain officer, +1 time it all melted together.

OR: A Tarlos Neighbor AU

🏘 Read and/or listen on ao3 🏘

💞 and please leave lots of love on the wonderful art on ao3 💞

I cannot thank my team enough 🥰 @juuls, @a-kinkajou, this was such a wonderful experience!! thank you so much for putting up with me, tolerating my rambles and my writer's block, agreeing to switch fics when I panicked, and always cheering me on - and of course for the AMAZING podfic and art respectively that you two created for this fic. I truly hope this will only be the first of many projects we will work on together 😘

Sneak peek and more art under the cut:

one

When the first sniffles came through the wall, Carlos was startled, turning in his bed where he was cocooned in his blankets, book in hand, and in the process of winding down. It was his first night home after a week straight of night shifts and it was his goal to quickly get back into a normal sleep rhythm, even though he wasn’t remotely tired. 

The sniffling sound that very clearly came from the room adjacent to his didn’t help in that endeavor, setting all his senses on high alert right away.

As far as he knew, the apartment next to his had been empty for the last few months. Someone must’ve moved in during the week – which was entirely possible, seeing how Carlos hardly had any free minutes between his shifts, helping on the ranch for two days, and covering some extra shifts so Mitchell could visit her sick mom.

What little time he’d spent in his apartment, Carlos had been asleep. So yes, a new neighbor moving in without him noticing was actually quite possible. 

That didn’t explain the sniffles though which by now had turned into sobs that hardly sounded muffled. And why would they? His neighbor probably didn’t realize just how thin these walls were. Carlos certainly hadn’t suspected it when he first moved in – but quickly found out the hard way. His neighbor until a few months ago certainly had a thing for loud women… 

Contemplating what to do, Carlos tried to focus back on his book. It wasn’t his business why his new neighbor was sobbing so loudly. Or bawling his eyes out by the sound of it. Damn… 

Putting the book back down, Carlos closed his eyes for a moment. Two parts of himself were at war right now. The polite side, reminding him that it was not his place, that it would probably be embarrassing for the man to find out that Carlos could hear him; that it wasn’t nice to snoop in other people’s privacy. And then there was his protector side, wanting to make sure the man was okay. It didn’t sound like he was in direct danger or crying because he had hurt himself. But the tears still sounded so full of pain.

In the end, it was his compassionate side that won out, and putting the book aside he turned further in bed and moved closer to the wall. Clearing his throat, he spoke just above his normal volume.

“Hey, so please don’t freak out–”

💞🏘 Continue on ao3 🏘💞

Noxy’s Tagging List:

@detective-giggles, @sgirl18, @firstprince-history-huh, @beautifulhigh, @rangergurlgleek1211, @shadesofdeviant, @actuallysara, @carlos-in-glasses, @cold-blooded-jelly-doughnut, @welcometololaland, @wtfuckevenknows, @lightningboltreader, @meditating-honey-badger, @just-inside-her, @alidravana, @morganaspendragonss, @bonheur-cafe, @heartstringsduet, @ravens-words, @lire-casander, @otter-love-asl, @ramblingdisaster73, @first-kanaphan, @xtltokio, @buckybarnesalways, @mangacat201, @catanisspicy, @lemonlyman-dotcom

[theinstagrahame]

This is the post where I show off the stuff I've gotten in the last month-ish. And it's been another good one!

(I mean it's always a good one, I have excellent taste)

Coffee and Chaos: I'm tickled by the concept of a coffeeshop AU, and I know that this game isn't explicitly for that. But it's also not *not* for that. Comes in a like conference-style folder, with all the bits you need to play tucked into the sides, which is also a great presentation that I felt deserved a shout-out!

Far Horizons Guide to Cults: I'm friendly with some Far Horizons folks, but wanted this book because it's awesome. A book containing notes and pre-made cults that have goals and drives beyond just "Be A Cult". I am intrigued by the occult, and I hope this gives me more nuance.

Neurocity: Picked this up on vibes alone, but I'm hearing more and more rad things about the creator. It's dystopic, a little cyberpunk, and the book is dripping with style. Can't wait to dig deeper.

You're In Space and Everything's Fucked: Station and Struggler's Guides: The title alone sold me, but I like what Dinoberry Press puts out in general. This is a solo survival space horror game with a cool respawn mechanic. I also splurged on the fancy version because the covers are very cool.

Dead Belt: The pleather folio for this honestly is what sold me, but the game itself is really cool. Salvage ships by laying out cards, exploring, and managing your air and tool resources. Try not to die. I haven't really succeeded at that last part yet...

Exquisite Corpse in the Maggot's Keep: Technically, this isn't a TTRPG, but it's go so many TTRPG folks in it that it might as well be. It's a choosable path adventure written by a variety of people in (if I remember the pitch) exquisite corpse style.

Best Left Buried: Throne of Avarice and In Calamity's Wake: As we already know, I'm a SoulMuppet fan (as in, I've written for their other big series, Orbital Blues). The main book, Throne of Avarice, was written by a creator whose work I've been trying to get more of. I haven't read Best Left Buried as fully as a game, but I am really excited by the excuse to dig in.

Between Clouds: I like air islands and big monsters and found family. Partially, I grabbed this because a friend got really excited about it, and it seemed like it could be fun to run a campaign with them, but I'm also curious about the Year Zero Engine, and glad to see people using it.

Kitchen Knightmares: Grabbed this as an add-on for the You're In Space crowdfund, but I'm glad I got it because it's loosely inspired by This Discord Has Ghosts In It, and that game rules. I might be able to pitch this to my friend group, who enjoyed Discord Has Ghosts.

In a Mirror Brightly/Handbaskets: First off, plug for the RTFM podcast, because it's very good. This two-games-in-one book is created by the two hosts of that show, who are great designers and seem really lovely. But, two wildly different vibes in a single volume is a great idea.

You Meet in a Tavern, You Die in a Dungeon: I've been following the creator for this since some of my earliest days in the RPG scene, so I was happy to help make this a reality. Feels very tropey, and I mean that in the best way possible.

In Other Waters: Tidebreak: Honestly, I have barely scratched the surface of In Other Waters, the PC game this is based on. But this is a Mothership solo hack that returns to that world, and it had me curious based on that pitch alone.

Aaand because I'm a doofus who forgot to include it, here's one more book! PLUS A guest appearance from my new desk mat.

Teeth: Been into Forged in the Dark lately, and as much as I enjoy Monster of the Week, the pitch for this seemed like it was more my speed. You're monster hunters, trying to keep the occult under wraps, while keeping secrets of your own. Plus, horror comedy!

The mat is the cover art from Friends at the Table's current season, Palisade. It's an Armor Astir campaign following up on some of the characters from their Partizan series.

[whirligig-girl]

Star Patrol rocket Piccard-5 encounters an artifact of the incredibly powerful White Marble Civilization. circa 2169, colorized & shipgirlified.

Commission for @foxgirlchorix, based on a render by Holly for @torchship-rpg

This is some of my best rendering work ever! These commissions do have a knack for putting me out of my comfort zone enough to continue developing my technical skills and style.

Image ID: Digital art of two ship girls in a black and blue nebula background. One girl is a very large solid white marble statue with a naked feminine form, pitted and cratered with meteoric impacts, drifting belly-down though space. Instead of a face, her head has a large hole which glows yellow-orange, with a white marble sphere held in space outside of it. A green tractor beam is being emitted towards the second girl, a Torchship named Piccard-5. She is a silver girl with her body resembling a star patrol jumpsuit. Warp drive rings circle her waist like a hula hoop. She is wearing a spherical ball helmet. She is wearing white rocket boots. She has glowing red-orange radiator panels as wings on her back. The white marble sphere's tractor beam is slowly disassembling her into individual hull sections, disconnecting her radiator wings, removing her boots to reveal the rocket propellant inside her legs, and taking her body apart. Piccard-5 is reacting with a worried or confused expression. End Image ID.

Artist's notes and concept sketches in the read more:

When this render was posted Levana immediately had the idea to make it one of a series she was planning on commissioning me for, of shipgirls based on Torchship's Star Patrol (and alien) rockets. So we quickly brainstormed how it would go down and what she could afford price-wise.

When I do big commissions with new characters where I'm creating the design without an existing OC reference, I charge extra for character design. That doesn't just go to waste! Here's the concept art page:

The White Marble shipgirl is inspired by the Eerie and Enigmatic Empty Vessels by @murmurlilies, which Levana really likes--if you look at her blog you might see one of those posts reblogged multiple times. I wanted to pay homage to the eerie and enigmatic empty vessels without directly ripping them off! The first sketch on the upper left is imagining the girl poses by breaking her arms into segments and moving them around, but that never looked quite right to me. The second is basically just a direct study of the empty vessels (with a ball head). The third is after a little more refinement--I liked the cute hair on the empty vessels so I wanted to keep the head mostly intact, and I found a way of keeping the silhouette of the jagged angular hips on the empty vessels but in a very different way! Meteoric impact damage, just like on the original Torchship render. I also used an edited version of one of the Empty Vessels drawings for the thumbnail sketch in the lower right out of laziness.

There's also a sketch of what Piccard-5 looks like when she's not being disassembled. Piccard-5 has a rounded main hull, so it looks much more like a regular space suit helmet than the frustum-shaped helmet on the Newton-2 shipgirl I sketched a while back. The Newton-2 shipgirl had heat radiators as wing shapes on her boots, but making them actual wings on her back makes the disassembly image all the more unsettling.

I changed the hairstyle on the white marble girl when I drew the main drawing because I wanted to evoke like, greco-roman marble statues, and so a curlier/braided look worked better than the cute pixie cut of the empty vessels. I'm really happy with how the final product looks. I knew I wasn't gonna be able to half-ass it with the rendering, you know, just a little shading along the edge; this required a lot of careful thought and it was a lot of fun to do! Especially where the craters interact with the terminator (line between light and dark), just like on the Moon, which I have a lot of experience sketching (see below--the following sketches were made while looking through telescopes at the Moon at night)

Here's a WIP of just the line-art:

and with the basic shading done on the marblegirl

I started with like, a cel-shaded look (?), and then went in and softened the edges, then went over it again to fix the craters. I also added the marble texture to the unshaded base layer.

For the Piccard-5 girl, I spent a lot of time trying to get the pose right. I wanted it to be a little stiff, she's in a suspension beam after all, but not too stiff? And I had to decide like, what pieces should be detached, and where should they be going. In the render, hull pieces are often displaced towards the side, but when doing that to a humanoid, it ruined the pose too much, so i avoided doing too much weird stuff to the torso and kept the disassembled pieces largely to one axis. The cross sections are hollow because they're ship decks. She's a spaceship, not a robot girl. The warp ring was suspiciously untouched by the dissassembly beam in the original render, but i had the marble girl pull a few pieces off of it in my drawing.

Probably the one thing that isn't based on something happening in the render is the belt. Like, rockets don't have belts, cosmonauts do! So that was a fun little touch.

[genesisvirus]

What's the twiddlefinger mod?

oh man. time to look like a nerd (i'm also clueless af this is just what hyperfixating on this mod for two days does to you)

twiddlefinger is a fnf mod. i'm sure we all know what fnf is atp.. we're gonna ignore that tho. i'd probably recommend looking at this video first (link leads to youtube video), mostly cuz i think jumping into it without knowing wtf is going on adds to the humor of it all. i'm gonna explain more about the mod events surrounding it that i could uncover cuz tbh the absurdity of some of this stuff just NEEDS to be mentioned. so you can watch the video before or after the ramble tbh

okay so if you're like me you went wtf is this mod and why does the song kinda slap tho.. so here's the basics that i've found while trying to find info, as someone that lives under a rock

-the characters and everything are based on a youtube channel called max design pro, which is known for using the uhm.. gegagedigedagedago chicken nugget meme??? in their videos.. basically a content farm channel generating likes by making kids think their lives can help the characters in the videos. that's where the help = like mechanic in the mod came from

-the main character, max, is a monkey. i'm apparently one of few people that could tell immediately? i think i'm insane

-okay so this one's a doozy. this is part of a trend in fnf mods going on now where people make one-off mods based on typically children horror content with lyrical parts in the middle of the songs, and where the devs are hidden in anonymity. this was apparently started by endless aethos, a fnf mod based on.. supermariologan? analog horror shit?? trust me i'm WAY more clueless about that one. apparently the main dev used a one-off account but the mod got cancelled once people found out they were a controversial dev, so it's kinda becoming a joke now.

-the lore is there is no lore. i can't find it. the devs said they're gonna make a qna but from what i can tell it's not made yet, all i know is the mod is a love story, max was corrupted with SOMETHING.. cuz in the good ending he does revert back to normal once you save him. idk tho. also in the bad ending he accidentally kills nugget. oops..

-the animation in the lyrical part used to be a FAN ANIMATION?? i just gotta show that off cuz i'm like. obsessed with the art. the animation is so good and apparently the devs thought so too cuz they brought the dude in to make the animation in here..

-now for the crazy part. max design pro saw the mod. they first made minor references in a couple of animations but now more elements are showing up. max from this mod shows up in the animations now. the good ending of this mod is legit CANON to the channel it was based on now. they straight up made a fnf mod canon to their content farm channel i am not joking

-and before you ask "wait do they know the mod is lowkey shipping their characters-" they absolutely do. they referenced the ship art in their video. they fucking KNOW GUYS. i don't think y'all know how insane it is for a content farm channel to not only be aware of the content their fans are making but MAKE IT CANON IN THEIR VIDEOS.. LIKE WTF IS GOING ON

and that was my essay on a satirical fnf mod about a monkey wanting to eat a chicken nugget hope to see y'all guys once i draw gay angst again

[kyouka-supremacy]

ooh how about Yosano for the ask game?

Yay Yosano!!! I love her so much <33

Favorite thing about them: Her backstory,,, It's just a masterpiece, for me it's really the peak of bsd's writing. “We don't want your skill. We want that kindness of yours” and “You don't need a skill at all. There's real value in your sadness.” ueueueueueueue. In two chapters it made of a relatively flat character a complex and human one, and we love to see that.

Least favorite thing about them: Nothing, she's great??? I can't think of anything.

Favorite line: There's no line that hits me in particular I can think of, but I really like the emotion / delivery of some of them. This one I like tons:

brOTP: Aaaaahhh I love her I want to see her interact with everyone. Older-sister kind of characters are ALWAYS my favourite. I love her dynamics with Ranpo and I like to think they have this sort of sibling complicity of two people who have known each other for a very long time and love each other deeply. I like her relationship with Fukuzawa, I like how explicitly protective he is of her, I'm glad she has someone she can trust who looks after her and makes her feel loved. (Actually, the Yosano / Fukuzawa relationship makes me emotional. Because Yosano was so deeply traumatized and broken and basically dead when he took her under his wing, and she looks so healthy and confident and serene in the canon timeline, it's basically a miracle; and the only way this could have happened is by having someone who deeply loved and cared for her, someone who kindly guided her through every step of rehabilitation. It moves me a little). I really enjoyed her interactions with Atsushi!! And I like to think Yosano and Kyouka would hang out, I feel like Yosano would be happy to sort of return the favour and help back a little girl who was able to slip out of the darkness just in time; I can see them have this kind of inter generational relationship where they go shopping together and chat about girl things.

OTP: I really like kousano!!! I feel like Yosano deserves her spicy pm love affair too ahah. I think it's got lots of potential for both fluff and angst, and I believe it's a cool relationship to explore for both characters!! I wish they'd meet in canon. When I first watched the anime I was low-key into ranposano, and though I don't feel very strongly about them anymore, I think it's a nice ship nonetheless!

nOTP: Nothing. Really I don't dislike ships pffttt.

Random headcanon: Something I don't think I ever brought up but that I firmly believe in is that whereas all the other ada members live at the ada dorms, Yosano, Ranpo and Fukuzawa have their own house where they live together. Fukuzawa took Ranpo to his home when he adopted him, and then Yosano joined them when they took her in because I mean, there was no way that they could leave her alone, right? So they've always lived together, and they are happy together, they never felt the need to change that. That's the real ada found family for me if there ever was one. Really like deconstructing the idea of nuclear family or of the fact that children can't live with their parents as adults while still being independent. Also it just makes sense? And it's heartwarming to think that Fukuzawa, the lone wolf with no friends of relations, now lives in a happy and lively household.

Unpopular opinion: Yosano existing isn't enough to beat the bsd being sexist allegations, I'm so sorry everyone I wish that was the case.

Song i associate with them: Kilmer by Niru Kajitsu, I just wish I didn't (个_个) There's even a beautiful fanart of Yosano in the style of the Kilmer pv here. Also Fräulein=Biblioteca by nyanyannya, just based on vibes alone (the purple butterflies!!), to mention something a little less depressing lol.

Favorite picture of them:

Favourite panel from the manga:

(Took me like. One hour to pick just one. She's always stunning in Harukawa's art style.)

Favourite illustration:

Favourite illustration in the anime art style:

Favourite Mayoi card:

Send me a character?

[acourtofthought]

I think the moment WE all found out the whoever runs Elain week was banning ships we knew the week would not really be about Elain.

And it is now an even bigger shit show watching how they are ignoring the problematic and racially insensitive comments the artist made. The art ITSELF was fine, but what she said and how she's doubled down is NOT, and then for the mods to support her and allow other elriels do encourage those comments should honestly be called out. I know they don't care, they are already refusing accountability and trying to make it about Gwynriel, when Gwynriel is not even a part of this fucking shit show. The truly can't help themselves in finding ways to turn this on Gwyn stans.

Anyways, here is what I think, El/riels are paranoid that the fandom will perceive their ship as the minority and that is why they make everything about Elriel, they can't even celebrate Elain as ELAIN without some passive aggressive, OUT OF CONTEXT cheesy caption that reads like a school girl writing in her diary for the first time about a crush on a boy who only thinks you are hot but could care less about your personality, and because you have no standards for yourself or too naive, find that attraction is all it takes to win you over. Even if the boy never bothered to ask you once, how your day was, or bothered to get to know you, because like who cares, he is a cute boy right?

They are shallow and their lack of depth and understanding to how SJM actually wishes for her couples to be equals, and fully themselves is their downfall. But jokes on them, it does not matter how much they push Elriel, Sarah does not give a fuck.

We don't have just one book of contextually evidence of the type of romance Sarah prefers, not even two, three of even 10, we have 16 books of fated mates as endgame, because that IS THE TROPE. Have they ever read any other books? You read enough romance books, it is easy to pick up on basic set up like this:

Character A is not wholly herself around Character B. Boy wants to only protect fragile FMC, they hold back who they truly are, especially their ugly side, maybe they trauma bonded when FMC was too scared and fearful of her destiny, but eventually when the FMC starts to embrace her fate, the relationship is doomed because the boy can't handle who she is becoming.... like where have I read that before? oh in several other popular series, from Fourth Wing, Shatter Me, The Mortal Instruments, like babes, the writing is on the wall, it's the most basic set up there is, Tamlin and Chaol also fit the bill of this archetype doomed romance, and they refuse to see it.

I bet good money if they read other books they would be team jacob, team adam, team stefan, team simon, team dain...I can go on and on. I bet they were team tamlin and chaol before the next books if they were even around then. They lack depth and understanding of the most basic romance types in a vast majority of books.

Az wanting to keep Elain away from danger is not romantic. It is sniffling her. Just like Dain did not want Voilet to train. Just like Tamlin did not want Feyre to train. Just like Adam wanted to keep Juliette from fighting. Stefan refusing to accept Elena for who she was becoming, wanting her to be the girl he first met, to Simon wishing things would have been what they once were, only to realize Claire never would be and learning their love was never meant to be romantic.

Like this is not hard.

I'll see your thoughts and raise you one.

I think even before the banning of ships we knew this wasn't actually going to be a true Elain week based on the history of Elain Weeks. Most character weeks reserve a day for relationship prompts but instead, this week has always been E/riel Week 2.0 run by E/riels who limit the amount of other content that's featured.

And I agree, it is sad to see that the sum total of many of these posts are simply fanart of e/riel with a quote from the book (i.e., how handsome they would be together) and that's the entire thing. Because Feyre thinking what she did back in book 2 (though she clearly was encouraging Elain to get to know Lucien in the novella) somehow is important to the ELAIN Home Prompt. Because Feyre's words should somehow dictate where Elain will be most at home, not Elain herself when the text in SF (the most recent book) clearly shows that despite Elain's attempts at doing her best to fit in, she really doesn't.

I was talking to Luna earlier and we had discussed how Sarah set up Nesta's story like this:

Nesta was in the NC but she refused to try to acclimate to the NC. She hid herself away, would not interact with the IC, would not engage with Velaris outside of the bars and taverns she visited, did not want to participate in the NCs holidays such as Solstice (and the exchanging of gifts). She was in the NC but kept herself removed from what made it the NC. It wasn't until her book that she began to try fitting in with the things around her she found her home.

In comparison Elain is in the NC and she's trying to fit in. She's trying to interact with Feyre's found family, trying to show interest in an available NC male within Feyre's circle, participating in the holidays and traditions of the NC, trying to make friends and find a purpose there. But despite Elain doing everything she possibly can to fit in, the text supports that something still isn't working. Cruelty still bothers her, the others still don't rely on her for anything, nobody is asking her about her trauma, nobody is asking her to train her powers, she's constantly sitting by the sunniest windows and losing her color in the winter, she barely laughed in SF. Elain is doing her best but no matter how much she gives, it's not going to be enough because she's NOT where she belongs. Versus Nesta, who finally gave in and began trying and realized she was where she belonged all this time.

But as you said, they are so fixated on such surface level things (they wanted to kiss!! Feyre said they'd be handsome together!) that they forget about the deeper, more meaningful aspects of Sarah's endgame pairings. And you're right, it will not matter how many fanarts they make, how loud they are within the fandom, it's not going to change what Sarah writes. Sarah has spoken time and again about what a toxic relationship looks like to her (Tamlin / Feyre), what a true connection for her looks like since she feels she has that with Josh, and she set E/riel up to look exactly like the Feyre / Tamlin romance did. Ignoring what kind of author she is and what relationships she prefers isn't going to help them. I think I'd have more respect if they said, "yes, I see where Az's behavior with Elain is problematic but I believe Sarah will have him made amends". But instead, they insist Az is so romantic towards Elain, that they share in true love. ?!$!$%#% WHERE????? You said it above but he does not have faith in her, he does not give her credit for anything she did in the war, he was not there for her during any of her arguments with Nesta in the last year. That is not love, not in any of the books you mentioned above and definitely not in a Sarah J Maas book. It's even more noticeable because of how she wrote Az reacting to Gwyn through the book, thinking on how far she's come, showing pride and admiration for her, believing in her. He isn't in love with Gwyn yet but those traits are a much more beautiful and solid foundation to build a real relationship on than talking about seeds, appearances and wanting to eat her out after avoiding her for a year.

Side note, I know you were saying Az is "stifling" her but the typo reads Az is sniffling her and I can't stop smiling because it's so funny when you read it that way.