#GOD those books are really something

[valentinerose529]

Thinking about how, when Petra is introduced as a character, notably one of the Only Girls In The Station, the boys are banned from walking around mostly-to-all naked like they've done for years. Ender remarks on it in his narration that Petra's too young to even look visibly different from the boys, with short hair and no chest and completely at ease running around shirtless with the other boys, yet she and her male peers are ascribed sexuality by their also-prepubescent commander and it honestly catches Petra some flack from the other boys who are annoyed they have to now wear their full uniforms now instead of various states of comfortable undress.

That always stuck out to me I think, it was a marked difference from the movie (which i saw first) where Petra is visibly a Pretty Girl, instead of in the books literally none of the boys cared until she was forcibly Othered by their superiors.

There is a passage from one of the Ender’s Game sequels that lives rent free in my mind every time I enter a public restroom of like… Bean thinking very hard about which stall to select because appropriately masculine men never select the first stall, if you take the last stall you’re trying too hard, but you can’t take a stall next to a stall next to one that’s already occupied…

Orson Scott Card is having a Real Normal One Over Here, I Guess.

[paxcallow]

desire to draw raz's hair unhatted and uncombed spiraled into imagining an extended gag about some emergency situation forcing all of the psychonauts out of the motherlobe into the quarry in their jammies at like 2 am and judging each other's clothing choices instead of getting actual work done.

[that-butch-archivist]

As an act of what is perhaps futile masochism, I counted how far my collection is & then got the numbers for my archival wishlist. I just wanted to see how far along I am in achieving my own unreasonable goals. These are the results.

Current archive count: 263 books

Current to-buy list count: 900+ books

Playing loose and fast with math that means I'm, what--20-22% of the way there? With that in mind, if there are any sugar mommies out there who have a niche interest in insane & unreasonable nerds, I would like to point out that I am available and also capable of mostly behaving. <3

[dxxtruction]

Louis being compared to as a saint. Saints, who find their salvation and then give intercession from beyond that veil to move others towards it. A guide for life, where they no longer fall into their sins and trajectories towards a certain hell. "Listen to me as if I am the voice of god, or an angel." Louis being that saintly catalyst for the vampires to confront themselves in that such a way. A saintly Louis is very dear to me.

[eyrieofsynapses]

good evening, all. it is May the 25th. our lilacs are blooming, just as the ones at the Watch House did. and I am thinking about remembrance of the fallen, and GNU, and the love in commemoration.

y'know, I read Night Watch… oh, maybe a year ago and some months ago. and the lilac symbolism, the remembrance of the Watch, has always struck me with the depth of the emotion of it, the tangibility of it in the flowers. but I wasn't aware that today was the day until I saw commemorative posts, all that gorgeous artwork and more, on my dash.

I was also not aware, until now, that fans commemorated the day not only because of the book reference, but in support of Terry Pratchett and of those with Alzheimer's. which knocked me over a bit because of course, of course the group that would use GNU to honor him would do that. and… I've been thinking about GNU a lot, lately, and this caught me again.

I read Going Postal a bit ago, and reread it recently. both times, the parts about GNU made me tear up. this idea of the names, the memories, the lives of the clacks workers who dedicated themselves to ensuring that people heard each other's voices—all those names spoken again and again and again by that which they poured their souls into, winging along in the air as they could not, an eternal reminder that they were loved—how could that not touch a person's heart?

when I found out that fans online used it to memorialize him, I damn well cried. hell, I still tear up just thinking about it. do you know, there's a code for an HTTP header "X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett" written by Reddit users to put in webpages, where it goes unseen by the average user? and in 2015, when Netcraft took a survey, there were eighty-four thousand websites using it? it's eight years later—how many thousands upon thousands of websites have this now, do you think? how many little cables of light has his name flown along, now? how many times?

that alone is absurdly and unimaginably lovely in its own right, but… there's something else to it. there's something about remembering with the lilac sprigs every year, just as Vimes and those who were there remembered their dead. something about how, when we take up our lilac sprigs, we carry a little piece of the characters in our hearts, too. I kept trying to put my finger on why that makes me tear up the way it does. the conclusion I came to is this:

what greater way to honor a writer is there, but to honor them the way they did the characters they poured their heart and soul into? what better way to say we know you and you are not forgotten and your work and words and gifts to the world are held in our hearts forever than to remember them by their own words, their own vision? how else could we say you embodied all the good you believed in and wished to see in the world, but to memorialize them after the little pieces of their soul they wrapped in ink and put upon the page?

it is a knowing of the writer, to remember them in their way. it is not a worn-out faceless platitude, but a reminder that their work has been read and will continue to be, that the characters and world they loved enough to bring to life last just as their name does. such remembrance is warm and loving and delights in their memory even as it grieves.

and now Pratchett's name has been written in his tradition, over and over and over, across the vast plane of the Internet, where it will—with any luck—continue to fly for generations to come.

there is no way to truly express the beauty of that… but perhaps we can catch a glimpse of it in the lilacs, both ours and the Watch's.

[arospecsyourblockdudes]

My desire to write svsss fics that really takes into account narrative roles and what that might mean for the world is so big but my ideas of what sorta plot to slap onto it is so small

[batemanofficial]

hello upper middle class northern usamerican tumblr user. i want to play a game. you will notice that you are in a super america convenience store in rural kentucky - you have three minutes to purchase a snack and drink of your choice and make normal small talk with the cashier. however, if you use the word "cryptid" or generally make reference to appalachia and its inhabitants as "wild", uncivilized, or lacking restraint around alcoholic beverages during your time here, i will personally tie you to the chassis of a four wheeler and tip it into the river. live or die. make your choice

[ichthyorelationships]

ideas: i didn't really think of him being underwater but they deserve to have drama by crying there too so i just think you could say something about the composition being denser than water or w/e. proteins

i'm always like good thing he didn't try to exit asap via swimming in ciao alberto But What If He Did lol. just swim Somewhere else along the coast, maybe panic about [money??] & whether somehow this ruins school for luca, whether he can get in touch w/o it being On Sight b/w him & all marcovaldos, consider just kind of trying out other places, traveling after all...fascinating considering the other povs on the issue like: now there's the paguros to sympathize w/a kid vanishing, luca however in a somewhat more novel position there, giulia's throwback to alberto being a bit perplexing lmao, kind of thinking the best massimo could do is have a prewritten letter for luca to give to alberto If Possible, conveying something like i know you didn't set my livelihood on fire on purpose but even if you did i'd want you to stay. and luca in a position to do all of "maybe give the island fun facts so someone can check if he's there" & "wait & hope alberto can/does get in touch" & "have a lot of feelings"....not even the context of what this drawing is about necessarily, just tacking it on here anyways. ahead of time i went "heh now i Know they're gonna have it get little Real here b/c it's really about alberto wanting the security of feeling he can 'earn' a sustained relationship" then the short cleared & i was lying completely dead on the pavement

[thatsgonnaleaveamark]

i am unwellll god this show is killing me

[oh-men-of-dark-and-dismal-fate]

I sat down and read Howl's moving castle a few days ago, and now I have an aching brain rot for these characters and need to read the next two books to fill the void in my heart.

[jonsnowunemploymentera]

I know that we’re all waiting and excited for Euron Greyjoy to serve the Eldritch apocalypse in TWOW, but frankly I’m more interested in what Jon and Bran will be up to. Bran is probably spending the majority of the book under the tutelage of Bloodraven (and potentially breaking from it). He’s probably going to unlock, or rather expand, new powers and there could be elements of greenseer magic that we probably haven’t seen yet.

Then we have Jon who, post-resurrection, will have magic crashing into him like a dump track: old god magic, R’hllor magic, and all that other weird stuff he can do. All the powers he’s been suppressing in ADWD will come spilling out and I’d imagine part of TWOW will be Jon trying to adjust to this magic as he’s going through all this rage and resentment (brought on by learning the truth of his parentage and dealing with the betrayal at castle black). I expect TWOW to have Jon in a really dark place and there’s the chance that magic will spill out as he (understandably) lashes out; whether he’s using magic knowingly or unknowingly, who knows. There’s even potential for Jon to get a magic mentor in the form of Melisandre; though it’s unclear how long Mel will hang around at the Wall because she needs to get back to Stannis so that the Shireen-bonfire can happen.

And - this is pure speculation on my part - TWOW seems to be the one book where magic is dialed up to 1000; I’m envisioning magic in this book to be a constantly pulsating element that as some point bursts into a huge explosion. With the Others coming and whatever Euron’s doing (and potentially Dany and her dragons), magic should have a heightened presence which makes me think that Jon and Bran are going to be experiencing some upscaling in terms of raw power. As magic becomes more and more prominent, Jon and Bran will do bigger more impressive things. I really cannot wait to see what they pull off in this book.

[ishikawayukis]

honestly there's nothing better than reading someone's opinions or thoughts about a piece of media and realizing "oh! i was actually missing the whole point of it" because it happens! it happens a lot and people are just too prideful to accept that maybe i was the one in the wrong for this one and didn't actually understand the theme of it all

[that-was-anticlimactic]

there’s something so sacred about sharing what you love with others: whether it be a song or food or clothes, a show or a movie or pictures. it's just... such a deep and personal thing, you know? having someone carve out a little part of their heart and gift it to you with an abundance of joy and excitement and passion... yeah.

[wrongplaceworsttime]

hot take?

i can’t get in to bingliushen or bingliu or liushen because to me they’re so ooc that they feel totally divorced from canon

in no way can i read svsss and come out of it like “oh yeah lbh is capable of loving somebody other than sqq” like this man is obsessed! instead of gaining a 600+ harem like bingge he focused all of his attention on one dude, and saying that he’s actually also interested in other people as well is like. the exact opposite of who he is in canon. liushen isn’t as horribly character breaking to me, but i still don’t see sqq ever returning lqg’s affections (because sqq’s also a bit obsessed, he’s just better at hiding it)

like i get that people like lqg (hey i do too!) and feel bad for his unfortunate crush, but for me that just does not translate to shoving him in with the main pairing and calling it good. and this is not me trying to lay down some objective fact that these ships are bad, this is me saying my opinion. i totally respect letting people ship what they want to ship, but these 3 ships are not for me

[fazcinatingblog]

Oh I just had a thought - when Dean's accounting business closed after he died, you could dig up the files and stuff because it's only been 6 years since he died and you have to keep records for 7 years so

[arielluva]

drawing my time traveler character bc she was the only good thing to come out of my concept art/3d modeling class (i learned nothing about character design or 3d modeling and this character was the only assignment actually about character design that we did (i did my senior project on character design and learned way more about it than a whole semester long class that was supposed to teach me it))

im also going insane trying to track down the shoes i used for inspiration for hers but alas i cant find them