#I did actually start a novel

[squidwithelbows]

Underrated character growth throughout the sellswords trilogy is Artemis becoming weirdly smug about his unrequested makeover as soon as he can use it to be condescending at people he doesn't like.

[evelili]

imagine you are playing a story-based game w the opportunity to learn more abt charas thru a relationship system (eg visual novels), and your ability to explore every relationship is linked to your success in a different part of the game.

[kenobihater]

sorry, he's allergic to SOUP? no wonder he thinks he's destined for infinite sadness, i'd believe that too if my immune system thwarted me from slurpin down a nice hearty bowl of soup 😭

[morethanwonderful]

Okay this topic has been haunting me for a while, because I feel like I have a wildly different perception of the Yin Tiger Tally's effects on Wei Wuxian than some other MDZS fans. Specifically, I've seen some takes that include the idea of the Yin Tiger Tally as some degree of corrupting force and/or supernatural drain on Wei Wuxian's mental health within the canon of the novel.

I really wonder if the different understandings stem from being influenced by which version of the story first sticks in your head. So! Indulge my curiosity:

Reblogs are helpful here, as I figure the answers from within my personal circle vs from the fandom as a whole will be pretty different :)

[ninjagocrohw]

collected the outfits ive actively designed for morro(not just slapped together without planning)

first one is his canon gi, colour corrected,

that i only ended up using in his initial arrival pages of @juniorjago oops lol. Ill probably use it for flashback stuff to morros babby years

second one is what i designed for him to wear in the post where he apologises to the kids for being a shit

third one is a failed design(yay!) where it was meant to be just. some clothes he threw on, but it looked too. formal? worky? so sCREW IT. he gets a new gi at some point in juniorjago! The fourth is what i ended up going with for this next arc that will EVENTUALLY come about.

[ali3nboyfriend]

tbh this isn’t so much a downside of being medicated but i’m not sure how else to describe it. but after being medicated for a few months it’s really a punch to the gut to have the realization that for all those years you could have been doing everything you wanted to do and more and this was the only thing holding you back. it’s hard not to feel like the time before becoming medicated was wasted somehow.

[pttucker]

Yoo Joonghyuk heard these words and looked back down at his bloody hands. Then he realized the identity of these emotions. Originally, he had no intention of saving these people. The people of Paradise weren't important to him at all. If Reinheit saw them as a sacrifice for Paradise, Yoo Joonghyuk considered them a sacrifice to clear the scenario. "Thank you." Yoo Joonghyuk listened to the voices and thought about it. Since when did this happen? From the second regression? No, perhaps the precursor had already been there. His goal was to finish all the scenarios and save the world. Under this tremendous conviction, he kept running forward. On this lonely and slow run, he was worn down bit by bit. There was no meaning in saving the world if everyone was dead. Yet he stood by and watched people die. It was as if he took the sacrifices for granted. After seeing Reinheit's death, Yoo Joonghyuk started to rethink his goal for the first time. "Can I ask for your name?" Someone asked for his name. Being famous in the Star Stream was directly related to the strength of the story. By answering with his own name, he would be able to gain new achievements. Yoo Joonghyuk was well aware of this. Yoo Joonghyuk thought for a moment before slowly opening his mouth. "My name is Kim Dokja."

*SCREAMING*

[bi-disastersoup]

Shifters - Part 3

In which they discover the dose limits on the experimental potions and some tension comes out as a result.

Part 1 Part 2

Some relevant reading as referenced in the argument:

"When you returned to the Ragnarok for one..."

"...or after you returned from your trip to the moon?"

"You asked the same of me once..."

"You really do have the most beautiful eyes, you know..."

(Part 4)

[fuckspn]

i have nothing funny or clever or insightful to say. cas told dean he loved him and then he died.

[alttheloco]

Fool’s Gold book cover!! :D

Read the fic by @tigers1o1 here! I very much recommend it, super good read.

[icewindandboringhorror]

Lineup of all of the characters that appear long enough to need a visual representation of them in the game lol

[todayisafridaynight]

At which point did you realise that the plot of IW is ass? I've seen people complain only about the ending or the halfway point where the teams separate, while I was already actively rolling my eyes like four-five chapters in

i think the moment i fully accepted that IW's story was. Definitely A Story was the moment ebina announced 'bleach japan'. like i think leading up to that point i was thinking to myself 'oh i hope i see X happen' or being like 'i wonder where this is going' and that sort but the proverbial bucket of ice was definitely that moment

[invinciblerodent]

brb, i have to go and. make strangled noises at nothing real quick; it just hit me over the head how Wyll's use of the metaphor of dancing as a stand-in for romance and intimacy really just. accompanies him all throughout his story, and how perfect it is

I guess I should have expected a character like him, that's both deeply poetic in his speech and courtly in his upbringing, would come to idealize a chivalric romance a bit, and translate his feelings on/of love to an element of courting that's as ritualistic and processional as ballroom dancing, but sometimes just realizing the obvious can really knock you off your feet for a second

like. just like how there is almost a blueprint to a perfect storybook romance in both stories and -consequently- in his head (I think romance might even be one of the literary genres with the highest number of unwritten rules that need to be fulfilled for a work to count as a romance), there is also a fairly strict method to a court dance. There is a series of well-known and practiced steps that was laid out in advance, and one is to perform them in succession, and in sync with one's partner. If one of the parties doesn't know or doesn't want to follow the rules/steps, it gets... tangled, messy, and you both stumble. The dance and the relationship both fall apart. The happy ending of a tale is not reached without all the steps in-between being followed, and he so dearly wants his fairytale ending, his happy, fulfilled love, I just---

it's such a perfect metaphor, and what makes it even more perfect is that Wyll is ostensibly aware of it, and he chose it, purposefully, and i don't want to watch the Act 3 commitment scene because I've not yet done it myself and don't want to spoil it, but I would be so surprised if he a.) made no mention of storybook romances, or b.) didn't just straight up propose y'know

i'm (metaphorically) crying, if it were possible to play this game on six different characters simultaneously without getting bored or confused I fucking would

[sarah-sandwich-writes]

Ok I lied, I also desperately want more about VLTD because I'm FERAL for it... *please*?? I'll take any little snippets you're willing to offer <3 - @fieldsofview

@fieldsofview god okay so Violet is coming a bit slow. I got 6k into it and realized I was already bored with the story. It just wasn't doing it for me, so I put it back in the percolator to stew some more and NOW I think I have the right setting for it. Originally I wanted to send them to Alaska bc of Nash's little throwaway thought about being brother of the year by buying Jo a plane ticket, but that's just not working for me creatively. Tennessee is where it's at, you know?

SO INSTEAD, he's going to buy her the ticket not knowing the reason she's been down in the dumps lately is because she misses when it was just the two of them. She's going to have a bit of a breakdown bc she's feeling all that and now he's trying to send her away?? But she still doesn't want to say it's him and Teddy that are the problem bc he's literally never been this happy before and she won't be the one to ruin it. So instead she confesses she misses her friends, which she does but also there's drama between her and Bella because of her moving away so it's a bit of a nasty surprise when she finds out that instead of Alaska Nash has arranged for her friends to stay with them for a week.

So now she has to deal with even less one-on-one time with her brother and also all the drama she thought was safely sequestered in Buford Hills.

So I'm going to have to cut most of what I have written (*sob*) but the intro is good enough to keep so here you go!

Here there be spoilers for Blue, like don't forget about me!

There’s an art to picking a hotel cheap enough that living out of it for three weeks won’t bankrupt you, but nice enough you won’t need to worry about bugs. In Jo’s opinion, it all comes down to the desk.

Hotel rooms follow a basic formula: bed (obviously), mini fridge (to store stress pudding), shitty single-brew coffee maker (always the same), a microwave (always different), an armchair in the corner (to sit in whilst eating pudding), and a desk. A good look at the desk and you’ll know whether you’ve made a mistake.

Too squat or wobbly—clearly not intended to be used—you’re in a cheap hotel meant for a single night stay and expected to be gone by breakfast. But a nice desk with a matching chair in a room that doesn’t make you feel like a dirty street urchin means you have successfully walked the line between frugality and indulgence.

Careful not to topple the precarious stack of client notes, Jo scoots the hard four-legged chair closer to the desk that’s too low to fit her thighs under despite being all of 5’4” in her derby skates. She sticks her plastic pudding spoon between her teeth and moves the stack away from the edge while creamy chocolate warms on her tongue. The sleeve of her favorite sweater, an ancient thing with a brown stain over her left breast that looks like a fatal stab wound (pudding incident of 2022), catches on the sharp corner but tears free without trouble thanks to the tattered state of the hems.

“When’re you gonna be home?”

She picks up her phone to see the familiar worry line between her brother’s eyebrows. Nash’s hair is overgrown again—beachy curls inching over his ears and peeping around the sides of his neck. He looks tired, but he always looks tired. More important is the aura of peace that he’s carried like a favorite blankie since they moved to their little mountain.

She swallows and slips the spoon from between her lips. “Thursday.” She points her spoon at the mini fridge where three pudding cups remain—one for each remaining day. “Think you can get the place baby sister proofed by then?”

The stress lines framing his mouth flex. “Yeah. ‘Course.”

She sticks her spoon into her pudding and leaves it there as she prepares to dig for whatever he isn’t saying, but, for once, he beats her to it.

He casts a surreptitious look over his shoulder then hunches forward and says, “Teddy’s got napkin swatches all over the front room.”

Ah, and they’re talking about Teddy again. It was a fun novelty for the first two months—she’s never seen her brother fall all over himself like he did for Teddy—but it’s been three years and she’s over it.

“I don’t understand why swatches. Why not just give us one of each napkin? It don’t make sense.”

“Uh, yeah I guess it’s kind of weird. Why napkins?”

His expression turns dour. “He wants me to pick one for the reception.”

“Alright, so pick.”

They were supposed to get married in February (fucked up, unnatural time for a wedding but nobody asked her), but then Teddy freaked out acting like a little backyard shindig wouldn’t be good enough and now they’re shelling out actual cash money to stand around in a swanky lodge for six hours and eat overpriced chicken.

Downright foolish, but again, nobody asked her.

“I tried but he said he could tell I was just trying to get out of it.” Steel gray eyes stare into hers. “Jo, I don’t care about napkins.”

“I don’t think anybody cares about napkins.”

“That’s what I—!” He lowers his voice. “That’s what I said.”

“But Teddy cares about—,”

“That’s the thing,” Nash interrupts, eyes wide, animated in his exasperation. “He doesn’t care either.”

“Then why—,”

“He thinks—,” He wrinkles his nose, then confesses, “He thinks it’s one of those things where maybe I do care, I just haven’t thought about it enough to know.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I know.”

“They’re napkins.”

“I know.”

It takes another five minutes to talk Nash around into telling Teddy that he’s put in enough due thought to determine he very much doesn’t care what people wipe their hands and face on at their wedding, but he turns down Jo’s suggestion that they stick a paper towel roll on each table so he must care at least a little bit.

When they hang up the pit of missing home hasn’t filled an inch. Even worse, her pudding is room temperature.

[marmolita]

so someone recommended Fourth Wing (by Rebecca Yarros) to me, and I got it from the library. I'm most of the way through it at this point and while the actual political plot is pretty interesting, overall it's just....not great? I recently read Rosaria Munda's Aurelian Cycle, which I also had some issues with, but Fourth Wing really feels like the inferior book here. Also while generally speaking I'm all for two cakes, this is very much a second cake and I think the first cake was better. Maybe I'll go on a journey through history of books whose plot is "kingdom has wars including domestic unrest, they fight with a dragon cavalry, and the two main characters who have a slow burn romance come from backgrounds on opposite sides of the domestic unrest, and also the higher ups are hiding things from them, and eventually the secrets of the country (and the dragons) will be revealed."

tbh I've never read Pern but if it's also this plot, maybe it's the original cake...

[vaugarde]

finished “yellowface”. goddamn that was a ride… highly highly recommend if you like villain protagonists