#I should re-read it

[jaratedeguadalupe]

hc that whenever somebody would try to scare remus in a haunted house he would just scare them back 

[shakibone]

oh, and for a less silly question, what can you tell us about Lazarillo de Tormes?

*cracks knuckles*

Alright, so Lazarillo de Tormes is a XVI century Spanish novel and foundational piece of the picaresque genre. Its' author is unknown, but its' influence has been huge. The story is narrated by the titular protagonist, Lazaro (called Lazarillo in the Spanish style of diminutives) who hails from a village on the river Tormes. Now an adult looking back on his peculiar upbringing, Lazaro recounts his life to the reader.

A bastard born in poverty, he had a reasonably happy life with his mother until she met his step-father with whom she had another son. Lazarillo was not mistreated by these and he was happy life they shared briefly, but when it was time for him to begin an apprenticeship he knew there was no longer a place for him back home.

Thus Lazarillo falls into the service of seven masters, each embodying one of the seven deadly sins. Among these are a greedy and cruel blind beggar, a proud nobleman who refuses to admit to his socialite friends that he has gone broke, a cruel priest who starved Lazarillo (maybe the priest was greed? Or wrath, because he beats the boy fiercely...) and uh... others who escape me right now.

It's a great story with some clever writing and scathing social commentary and crittique of all of Lazaro's so called "betters". The picaresque genre it embodies is one defined by a clever and rascally underdog of a protagonist (hero hardly applies, usually) who overcomes his oppressors through wits and exploiting their flaws and hypocrises, and can be a very satisfying read.

If tempted, I'd advise you get an anotated copy of Lazarillo de Tormes. Many of the references and symbolism can be lost if you're not a XVI century Spaniard.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[spockvarietyhour]

The Terminator: Tempest

[zwiebelii]

thinking about re-reading "Radikalisierter Konservatismus" by Natascha Strobl hmmmmmmm

[moonsun2010]

5 June - The Dracula Drought begins

a redraw of this art from DD2023!

[choccy-milky]

im finally playing HL again after only playing it once when it first came out, and thanks to mods (especially @silverxstardust's clothing mod) i finally made clora how i like her...LOOK AT HER.....my baby angel darling👼💖💖

seriously tho playing the game again after all this time (especially now that im playing as CLORA clora, and not just clora that was a random chara i made) is so different, but its also taking me back so much🥹😭💖

[finzphoenix]

A little late to the Riddler panel re-draw party, but alas! ^_^

...Someone give this man attention and a hot cocoa v.v☕️

[crynwr-drwg]

I don't know if this is an unpopular opinion or not, but I fully believe they need to make more IRL Elder Scrolls books

Like how they did with these:

These two books were honestly fucking sick, especially with what they did with alchemy stuff in it.

I definitely believe there are problems to be had with doing too MANY books (like WH40k, for example) but doing barely any is similarly criminal imo

[twisting-in-wonderland]

let! him! have! his! octopus! plush! >:[

(messy extra stuff----)

meanwhile,back at NRC:

(+ here’s a WIP >:] )

[wishchip106]

i’m slowly making my way through reign of x atm and its like the comics are just remembering they need to feed me or something every now and then

i need more of my favorite bald guy 😭

i can accept magneto every so often BUT ITS NOT ENOUGH EUGHH

[goldrushzukka]

i know i literally wrote this but god. i am crying

[heliojip]

rebonginator

[adoris-falling-blog]

I love it when people go hard on the Middle-Aged Divorced Dad of Three-ishness of Chilchuck. There's something so hilarious about little him sitting on a porch chair and smoking, watching a whole TV episode standing up with his hands behind his back, or at a grill wearing those black cage sandals with a malort in his other hand.

Love that halfling dad.

[lemony-snickers]

"you are the only one who's ever broken me open."

"do not scream god's name, scream mine."

"please don't make me say it if you aren't going to say it back."

"your heart is beating so fast." "because i'm happy."

"i want to draw a map of your scars so i can always find my way back to your heart."

"i don't believe in such nonsense." "i'm not asking you to. i'm simply asking that you believe in me."

"is that good? that's all i want, to make you feel good."

"it reminded me of you. but then, sometimes i think everything reminds me of you."

"what a fragile thing, that love can so easily turn to violence."

"why are you doing this?" "because i love you."

"it didn’t feel right when I was always thinking of you."

"i would have felt like the luckiest person on the planet."

"are you gonna take that off or should i keep guessing?"

"i wanted this to be special."

"i can't believe... after all this time... i should have known it would be you."

"i want to be wildly, deliriously happy.  wildly, deliriously loved."

"i try always to be too much for you."

"the sooner i leave, the sooner i will return and we can begin again."

"i didn't die." "you were dead to me."

"i don't care if other people see us together, you do."

"and you say i'm the one who should be resting."

"i'm sorry." "for what?" "that you got stuck with me."

"what makes you happy?" "lots of things." "and what makes you unhappy?" "lots of other things and some of the same ones."

"i wish i could give you the world." "the world is not enough. but you are."

"i have never needed anything so much as i need you. and i hate you for it."

[aroaceleovaldez]

Mark Oshiro confuses me a little bit not going to lie. In the press tour for the first book all they ever talked about was how Nico is their son and Will is fine I guess. Then they said like 2 weeks before TSATS came out that they didn't understand Will's character at all and it's one of the main reasons why Will has so little POV.

Possibly unpopular opinion but I don't think it's a good, encouraging sign when the writer admits to not really caring about the deuteragonist or not even having a sense of how to write them...

Yeah, no. If you have no interest in 1/2 of the POV characters of your book, you REALLY shouldn't be writing it (or at least, not have that be a main character). Especially when the main way TSATS could have been improved is if it was primarily Will-centric instead of Nico-centric. Will basically had next to no established character prior to TSATS! He was practically a blank slate! But all the new stuff we got for Will in TSATS was so clearly disinterested and had no regard for his previously established traits (or the established timeline/canon). Which is annoying because fleshing out Will would have been the PERFECT opportunity to actually incorporate a lot of the topics that Mark Oshiro specializes in as a sensitivity reader, which was the ENTIRE REASON THEY WERE BROUGHT ON AS A CO-AUTHOR!!!!

As TSATS stands, there is no reason for Mark Oshiro specifically to have been the co-author instead of someone else. It's so clearly just a PR move from RR following the huge backlash Rick received due to his response to criticism on how he wrote Piper and Samirah (and Reyna and etc etc). This was immediately following Rick saying he wasn't going to write what would become TSATS because "it [wasn't his] place to." Most of the topics that Mark Oshiro specializes in either weren't relevant at all to TSATS or written very poorly (to downright offensively) in TSATS, so either Mark Oshiro wasn't doing their job or was not able to do their job for some reason, but either way it basically makes the theoretical justification for Mark Oshiro being the co-author/sensitivity reader irrelevant.

With Will, it was HUGE fanon back in the day for him to be trans. Trans!Will and photokinesis!Will were basically the two biggest headcanons for him (both largely popularized by Cherryandsisters). We know Rick is aware of this old fanon because he canonized photokinesis!Will. If we had gotten trans!Will, that would have been great! And then made sense why we specifically got a trans co-author! (Instead, if anything, TSATS canonized Will being cis.) If we had gotten Will being latino, that would have been amazing!!!! And also then made sense as to why they chose Mark Oshiro for the job as a latinx author/sensitivity-reader, versus potentially choosing an Italian co-author since Nico being Italian/Venetian was emphasized so much in the book (and done poorly! Yknow what they could have done to fix that? GOTTEN A SENSITIVITY READER FOR IT)! Based on the themes and focuses actually present in the book, it would have been most logical to get a queer, neurodivergent, Italian co-author or sensitivity reader who specializes in those three topics at least. But we didn't! So why was Mark Oshiro chosen instead when they only specialize in one of those topics? PR reasons. It's blatantly entirely PR reasons and no actual thought or care was put into this book (or, likely, TSATS 2 either).

It doesn't help that we're also actively being told that the published version of TSATS was a rough draft. Or that their editor blatantly isn't doing her job. Or that "The Sun And The Star" was the working title that they just kept cause they didn't bother to make an actual title. And that the final version is full of explicitly last-minute scenes that weren't checked over at all (the final Bianca scene, for one). Or the ACTIVELY ADMITTING TO SOURCING IDEAS AND INFORMATION FROM FANS! That last one is kind of important because at this level of publishing that is a HUGE no-no for legal reasons. You can get into a lot of trouble for that and there is a reason why it is Ye Olde Fandom Law to never try to pitch your ideas or headcanons to the source creator(s) and keep fandom separate from the creators. There is a REASON why Rick Riordan is so distant from the community these days and it's for PROTECTION AGAINST LEGAL REPERCUSSION. Mark Oshiro being the exact opposite while also ACTIVELY ACKNOWLEDGING sourcing concepts from fans does not bode well! It has to do with copyright stuff.

It's just. So. Sighhhhhhhh >->o <- me lying on the floor about all of this. It's sad being able to see the glimmer of what could have been at the very least a decent book underneath all this. If anyone involved in the process had actually cared just the tiniest amount.

[romanticslimecreature]

I'm not saying this is canon or anything, obviously it's hard to apply modern conceptions to older writings and we all bring ourselves to our interpretations. That said, there's something really special to me as a queer woman-adjacent person about how Mina loves Lucy and Johnathan. I still think about the scene where Mina watched Lucy sleep and thought about how beautiful she was, how her fiancé will be lucky to see her like this. She segways into thinking about how women in the future will be able to propose to their husbands-to-be. I think Mina has the same love in her voice when looking after Lucy and when looking after Johnathan. And of course finding someone beautiful doesn't have to be romantic. I just like reading Mina as bi/queer and drawing on scenes like these.