#I’m lazy so this is what you get

[arandin-art]

Here you go with my War Games fanart sheet!

I though there would be two drawings in the space I left on the right (where the colored piece ended up) but… Obviously I chose a scene that feathured three main characters. So… I had to say good bye to Dumpling, sadly. :’( I’ll draw that round baby another time that’s it!!!

So…. @lovelyelbowleech, here's your fanart dump that I told you about!!! I really hope you won’t mind my messy style, and you’ll like those.

As you can see, I picked scenes as I was re-reading War Games from the start. I had to do a quick re-read of War Crimes to remember the injuries they acquired, but I’m pretty sure I forgot most of them anyways…

Each drawing had it’s own struggles but I’m still happy with them. And I had the joy of linearting that nightmare of three people posing sketch. (I love doing lineart, it feels like a treat earned after all the disastrous mental gymnastics you had to go through to figure out the characters’ poses.)

[xxrat--punkxx]

Repair day

[cerealmonster15]

walks into the function wearing a tshirt that says ASK ME ABOUT MY TOXIC THIRD YEARS POLYCULE HEADCANONS

this map has been stewing in my mind for years i think and i finally wrote it down in the illegible spaghetti way that i always do let's GO

lilia is not in the polycule he's just playing his own game of collecting sons. everyone is his son. he's also going to watch the drama because who doesn't love a soap opera playing out in real life he's got front row seats to the divorce vortex.

cater/trey/rook/vil are the ultimate four way polycule but also oh god theres so much going on there.

cater and trey are a ride or die duo but also trey knows cater sometimes isnt completely open with him but trey has a very passive nature to him as we've seen in book 1 and when he mentions cater's wish to himself in the starsending event... but theyre still close and care for each other a lot and i will die defending them if i have to fjdklsjfds

rook and vil oh my god rook and vil. they are so married. and so dramatic. and so. sdkfjsdkljf a little divorced because rook is also in love with the biggest rival of vils life but that is NOT enough to break their marriage. love finds a way. somehow. fdskjfjksdlg

^ i could go much more into both those duos but we simply. we dont have time we are moving along we are walking

rook and trey beloved science weirdos oh my god every time theyre on screen together theyre so funny. i love odd friendships. science marriage real.

cater canonically flirted with vil even tho it got somewhat censored in engtwst and was partially probably for clout reasons HOWEVER, to ME it's also for bisexual reasons. vil is canonically very pretty and caters like yeah 🧡🧡🧡 vil can see through when cater's being more superficial BUT ALSO they have genuine moments of getting along!!! like in events, beanfest 2 and the puppet one that's not out in eng yet. no spoilers here but there is a bit in puppet event that has me so vindicated on how they really do work well together and respect each other!!!!!!! into the polycule you go.

vil and trey,,, gestures to vil's lab coat story klsdjflksd they get along and it's cute. everybody loves trey.

even leona wants trey in the divorce polycule. no spoilers but please see playful land puppet event / leona's card vignette for that event. and also i think treys platinum birthday card story sljdflksdjf

the extreme difference between how malleus reacts to cater bothering him vs rook bothering him or even just Talking To Lilia is so funny. like he gets along with rook sometimes but in those two pe scenes hes SO aggro he wants that twink OBLITERATED he is going to KILL ROOK HUNT. but he will play tag with cater :^)

leona is the king of divorce. he is divorced to everyone he touches . he invented divorce. he's turbo divorced with vil and malleus because he and vil are just sooooooo. fsdkjfskdlg when therye on screen together it's like passive aggressive but mostly just aggressive bitching and bullying. theyre so funny. they have this energy of like "we have Tension but also i am going to kill you. i begrudgingly respect your abilities but i will only say so with layered insults." like the way vil says "so leona's got a pretty face but that's ALL he has going for him" like. multiple times. why does he keep doing that.

and then whatever he has going on with malleus is so funny. like malleus seems like hes a smug little bitch having fun with the banter [again he wants to Destroy Rook in those PE stories, but leona's blatant insults i feel like he's more teehee you stupid bitch >:)] and leona's just so pissed mad angry forever he's like no i need this dragon fucker DEAD for EXISTING !!! but i think malleus' having fun with the fellow teen experience of stupid razzing

leona and cater are giving me subtle divorced vibes in that one scene in book 2. listen. i have headcanons. ive talked about it. moving on 🚶

rook. leona. i feel i do not need to elaborate jfklsjfkljsekljfkl

idia is so funny. why are his opinions about everyone around him either "oh god hes ultra tier scary" or "he's so sparkly dazzling handsome beautiful". he does this often with no filter and it's so funny. i like that he and leona played chess for like hours or whatever in that one birthday vignette but i forget which one lol i think it was idia's union bday or something

do i have more to say. ive been thinking about them for hours and also years. i can and will talk about them forever i think they are So funny. this is just a messy summary of it all i'm barely scratching the surface i simply cannot go into full detail or this post will Never End GOODBYE!!!!

[hikaruchen]

To Embrace and Kiss the Lord.

INPRNT

-

Speedpaint Video:

[calo-wav]

thinking abt old men kl… literally always…. bc what if they were old…and married…and if they didnt have to wear those fuckass belts…

my kl fic 🫣

[ihearnocomplaints]

I point you all to my ko-fi page once more -> link

my parents, enraged that I didn’t sort a massive mound of clothes yesterday (after doing the other chores they asked), essentially decided they are going to start charging me rent.

So this is just in preparation for that moment when they do start asking. I’m still trying to save up to move out. It’s not a huge deal yet (idk how much they’re going to charge) so there’s no pressure to donate.

I work a full time job so I can’t really give much in return. But I can take doodle requests upon proof of donation! I’ll doodle any DCA you want.

Thanks.

[littlestar-center]

Hey Stamps, it's Clover.

I know you'll call me paranoid but you're gone when I checked this night. I'm hoping you're well, and safe...And healthy...God I'm a hypocrite. It's funny how I tell Connor to be calm in these situations when I'm stressed out right now. I know you told me to stop biting myself but it's getting hard right now.

Please be safe, it's been 5 hours.

Your dearest friend, Clover Honey

P.S. Do you feel weird in this place? I can't help it but Sunny hasn't come out his room for a good 3 months now. I hope he's healthy, keeps taking the food I leave out his door.

Hey Clover, :)

I’m safe, I’m fine. You’re fine, everyone is okay, alright? I’ve actually seen Connor this morning, probably best time to tell you where I am, I woke up at Dr. Crow’s hut. She told me something happened, something about place and time. I can barely read what you’re saying, I only got halfway through! It’s hard to see after taking so many potions.. I’ll try again in a little bit..

(5/5 (keeping this here because I am not making this shit a truth ask)) (also fuck your feelings.) (Annie I know your gonna see this fuck your feelings too *kills jack*)

IM TWEAKING THE FUCK OU-

[afterartist]

Over a years difference (Im not checking the actual time cause im lazy and also if i looked at tiktok to check I would get distracted again and forget to post this and then my IRL friends will get mad at me for ‘hogging all your art and never posting it’) very rough redraw!!

Top 10 moments before disaster

Also I actually (kind of) understand how armour works now! Yay for me!!

Tho the first pic of paps and sans he still has the battle body because it’s a costume/cosplay and not supposed to be actual functional armour

Also shows off the thing I’m most impressed with this year, my growth in actually attempting backgrounds, even if they’re rough I at least try now lol

Barrier and Trammel (what I have finally decided to call Barrierfall Papyrus) used to be best buddies *insert build a snowman here*

Also yes I am trying to remake my first TikTok and no it is not going well

It made me sad when drawing this that I’m considering just making another au with a happy ending for them (which also could technically be cannon, as they do split the timeline already in the story but we never find out what happened to the other AU so it sup for interpretation)

[ostrobothnianoccultist]

That’s why you create side blogs, for different interests.

Thankyou for you input anon!

I absolutely will not be doing that because in my opinion everyone should look at Dream (with love and admiration of course)

Like

Look at him

Absolute baby girl

How are you gonna be mad looking at that??

Such precious thing

He’s a blessing to your corneas. A shining light.

Have one more for good luck.

[hana-bobo-finch]

OKAYYYYY!!! THE LAST PDBC POLL I DID RESULTED IN A FOUR WAY TIE (VERY GOOD FOR ME BECAUSE I LOVE TO YAP) SO I SHALL START OFF THE STRING OF LONG RAMBLING CHARACTER POSTS WITH MY BELOVED BELLONA!!! once again, because I’ve already talked about her a bit, there’ll be a lotta retreaded stuff. Also she, or really anyone else for that matter, does not have the sheer amount of lore that pumpkin daddy has, so this and the others will be a lot shorter (HEARTBREAKING) (IT’S ABOUT 3.9K WORDS COMPARED TO THE MONSTROUS 7K WORD PUMPKIN DADDY RANT)But nevertheless:

MUCH LIKE. PRETTY MUCH EVERY CHARACTER there is not a lot known about her early years (or, more accurately, I do not want to have to come up with anything for her early years). Her early life was pretty boring honestly. She grew up in a pretty secluded desert environment with her parents and older cousin. It’s never said what her family did for work, it’s left purposefully vague, actually, but it’s some sort of government job that’s extremely secretive. Do not ask about the mysterious government projects taking place in the desert, do not ask about the mysterious government’s projects taking place in the desert, DO NOT—

anyway her cousin is probably the only interesting thing about this time. Her cousin’s name is Glad (usually goes by her first and last name hyphenated together, so Glad-Yu) and she doesn’t have a mouth!! what!!! Yeah so Glad has a rare genetic condition that makes it so she doesn’t have a mouth (it also affects her hearing. She also has a distant relative who has the same condition, his name is Di and there is Literally nothing to know about him other than a very brief plot point that really doesn’t have anything to do with him directly). BUT DON’T WORRY SHE’S FINE she has a device that can transfer nutrients to her directly so not being able to eat isn’t a problem. As for communication, she just uses a kind of sign language. Anyways!!! Because she grew up in such a secluded area, only ever being around her cousin and parents, Bellona’s social skills are absolute garbage!!! Even aside from that, she’s also just kinda generally unsociable. Not in a social anxiety way, she just does Not Like most people and can be rude. One would be inclined to blame it on environmental factors or simple misunderstanding of social situations due to her very obvious lack of social skills, but alas, no. Perhaps sometimes that is the case, but for the most part, she’s just being an asshole, no way around it. She’s quite lovely to the people she does like, but to everyone else, not so much.

But back to the main timeline! Things actually start for her when she’s around 16ish. She very badly wanted to become a firefighter, but was too young to actually become one. She thought this was ABSOLUTE TRAVESTY. She was way in over her head and thought she was totally ready to do such a dangerous job (she was not!!!) and didn’t want to wait—she just wanted to jump into her career immediately. Luckily for her, or more so unluckily, there was a shady and definitely not official fire department that was oh so pleased to have such an enthusiastic new member! What joy! Haha it doesn’t matter you’re 16 you can join us (NO SHE CAN’T). By some miracle, things went alright for her in the first year or so. She was actually pretty good at her job, or at least as good as an inexperienced teenager could be. About a year into her quote unquote career, she got sent off to fight a 3 alarm fire, during which she got trapped. That alone would be bad enough, but because the fire department she worked for was extremely unprofessional, her safety gear didn’t work properly and it resulted in her getting badly burned from her shoulder to up to her ear.

She was for the most part fine, but was, understandably, extremely traumatized by the incident and became even more reclusive than before. By that point she’d moved out of her parent’s place and lived with Glad. Even through everything, still had that stubborn impatience and became EXTREMELY bored with doing nothing all the time. And being bored and impulsive is not a good combination!!! She eventually made the impromptu decision to go to medical school to become a doctor. Glad tried to talk her out of it, trying to convince her that it was NOT a good idea to do that, but Bellona was set in her ways and left the desert to go to some cheap-ass college. Surprisingly, she was extremely talented in the medical field despite having little to no experience. She landed an internship at the hospital she stayed at during the whole Almost Fucking Dying thing and in her free time developed ways to make Glad’s life easier. It became apparent rather quickly she was a bit of a savant in the medical field, instantly picking up on everything and getting perfect grades. Because of this she was offered to go to a more prestigious school on some faraway island with the weird-ass name of Fincg island. Oh wow this is all going well looks like her life is really on the up and up (WRONG) (DONT FORGET THAT SHE DIES BY THE END)

SO!!! Everything was…relatively stable for a while. Though the more time passed the more time she realized she was maybe starting to regret her career choices and she badly missed Glad. But it wasn’t all bad because she managed to actually get a social circle (SHOCKING), including a woman named Sirene. And Sirene was beautiful!!! Woah!!! So they began dating. How pleasant, I’m sure this can only end well! (it does not) BUUUT ANYWAY Bellona continued breezing through college (well. As much as you can breeze through something as tedious as med school) to become a surgeon, more specifically an orthopedic surgeon. “hey yknow isn’t it kinda strange how she’s doing that all so fast, I mean by this point she’s only freshly in her mid twenties—“ EXCELLENT OBSERVATION. I KNOW!! COUNTERPOINT, THERE ARE SENTIENT GRANOLA BARS IN THIS UNIVERSE, SO MED SCHOOL GOING FASTER THAN IN REALITY IS NOT THAT STRANGE. BUT DEFENDING PLOT HOLES ASIDE—yeah she was on the path to becoming an orthopedic surgeon. During this time, she also started babysitting a relative of hers in her spare time, Minerva. Minerva isn’t really relevant to the rest of this so don’t expect a lot about her BUT the point is, taking care of Minerva made Bellona realize “OH MAN I WANT KIDS.” Despite her being kind of uncaring to everyone else, she’s an absolute sweetheart towards kids and is surprisingly good with them. She WILL be rude to everyone around her but she will ALSO teach the precious little ones how to bake.

BUT ALAS!!! things with Sirene were Not working out!! Even after being together for a bit over a year it became obvious that there was no real spark between them. Sirene ABSOLUTELY BROKE AND DEMOLISHED bellona’s heart by breaking up with her although bellona wasn’t actually that upset but EEEEYIKES SHE WAS TOO BUSY WITH HER JOB TO UNPACK THOSE FEELINGS!!! and thus began a horrible string of failed relationships! Whoops! (Technically this stuff happens Later in the story but for the sake of clarity I’ll just put it all here in this section) she was out there speedrunning relationships and was VERY pissed off that nobody she dated was “the one”!!! Eventually though she started seeing one of her coworkers, a dude by the name of Dr. Faul. Faul is the human equivalent to a slice of white bread. Bland and inoffensive. He is also one of my favorite unimportant characters. Faul proposed to her while she was at his family’s home over the holidays and OH FUCK. OH SHIT. THAT IS SIRENE. yup turns out Sirene is faul’s sister. And she was there. There was an incredibly awkward moment of realization from the both of them, faul was over here pouring his heart out and bellona was just staring in pure terror at his sister who she was making out with sloppy style like 6 months ago. She kinda just reluctantly accepted his proposal to try to diffuse the awkwardness but then immediately went to talk to Sirene. Sirene apologized for dumping her so abruptly, and explained that she since realized the reason the relationship wasn’t working was because she was aromantic. Bellona was like “what the FUCK is an aromantic” and after having it explained to her there was a moment of horrified realization of “oh ok that explains a lot actually.” But alaaaas no matter how much Sirene tried to convince Bellona to just break off the engagement now NOPE it is TOO LATE I’m marrying your brother. Spoiler alert she did Not last long in that plan and like a week later she broke up with him. The breakup was recorded on a hacked security camera by some clown named JS (will get to him someday, he doesn’t have a lot to him but he was arguably the beginning of pdbc as a whole so he has a special place in my heart) and uploaded in a fail compilation online. Faul then earned the name Dr. Fail and he spent the rest of his days, as described by bellona, “wandering around like a lost spirit.” All that stuff Really isn’t important to the plot but I just so very much love Dr. Fail, he did nothing wrong but ended up being the victim of public ridicule

BUT OK. ALL THAT STUFF ASIDE. this is where things actually get interesting. Aka it is where the man the myth the legend PUMPKIN DADDY comes in. WOOOOOO so a patient came in, some fella who apparently was hurt in a horrible accident. and she HATED him right from the start. She didn’t even recognize him as the literal owner of the island, he was just this asshole who she had to deal with (she’s in general not very in tune with the customs of fincg island, never bothered to even try to adapt). Absolute piece of work, she did Not like him. Would probably have left him to suffer if it wasn’t her job to help him. Pumpkin daddy was pissed off the entire time and constantly trying to leave (NO you CANNOT just stand up and leave you have a SERIOUS BACK INJURY get the HELL BACK HERE) and just. yeah. It was the exact opposite of immediately hitting things off. I’ve mentioned before that her bedside manner was already iffy but for him especially she didn’t even try to hide her disdain. At the time she was not so subtly trying to get fired because she really started to hate her job but didn’t have the courage to up and quit, so she wasnt even trying to be nice in hopes of getting fired. But alas she was too talented and they kept her around. Buuut nonetheless she helped pumpkin daddy out of necessity. Unfortunately for her she was stuck around him for a while, and, as I mentioned in a previous long rambling post, they eventually developed a convoluted hate fueled not-friends-friendship. basically just bonded over their mutual hate for each other. Kinda gotta skip around a bit here bc I already yapped abt this part in the pumpkin daddy essay but YEAH

Eventually she developed a morbid fascination with him (as I think anyone would, honestly) and started hating him Slightly less. Keyword being slightly. They’d sometimes chat for a bit, but the true bonding moment was when they mutually decided hey. Wouldn’t it be so funny if you committed medical malpractice. SO SHE DID she performed a very illegal quote unquote “spine lengthening surgery” to make him two inches taller. By some miracle it was a success and once again because of her prestigious position as a respected surgeon nobody ever called her out for it. She also gave him a skeleton tattoo on his back when he was knocked out and he didn’t notice for years lmao. Anyhoo she’d occasionally hang around him outside of work to go to the illegal crab restaurant bc she couldn’t find it on her own, and on the way she’d do things to scare the shit out of him. Mostly as payback for the time pumpkin daddy startled her to the point she almost crashed backwards into the used syringe disposal and eeeyikes that would not have ended well! But she was VERY much poking the bear here, I cannot express how bad of an idea this was. She is like 4 foot 11 and pumpkin daddy is like 6 foot 3 and he could fucking snap her neck with no problem. He. Did not do that, obviously, but im just saying this was a BAD idea. She’s basically like a chihuahua, just a hatred filled little gremlin who tries to intimidate people that could beat her up in an instant

ANYWAY after a while of going to the illegal crab restaurant every weekend, she learned from pumpkin daddy and Gourdie about TBYTF and started studying it with them. She didn’t really make any big breakthroughs about it, she was basically just stuck being the mediator between the two because they had VERY different opinions on TBYTF. She planted a bunch of hybrid roses around (which she argued was just as cool as pumpkin daddy’s hybrids, come on, look, the roses are blue AND pink, that’s way better than making human life from scratch). Pumpkin daddy hated these roses but he didn’t dare touch them as to not ignite her fury. She’d occasionally bring Glad to the restaurant when she was in town, or Sirene (who was now on good terms with her) and they’d have a jolly old time(?) that’s probably not an accurate description. But they sure did had…a time, alright. When pumpkin daddy and Gourdie got divorced she…was not much of a help! She barely listened to their tearful ramblings. She probably ended up making them feel worse because it was Very Obvious she did not care. She would just silently nod and say “awesomesauce” as if that’s an appropriate response to “my wife is leaving me.” But she did help out a little bit by taking care of extra while they sorted things out. Even then her helpfulness was…questionable, she had no qualms with expressing her distaste with the circumstances of the divorce right in front of extra. Like in the middle of comforting him she’d say stuff like “it’ll be fine, they’re just being stupid. Apparently, communication isn’t in their vocabulary, but “you’re a shithead fairy betrayer” is.” But she made extra a lil necklace so it’s okay that she was swearing in front of children.

As a bit of a side tangent, during this time she became extremely petty on the matter of art. Art of any kind. Music, writing, drawing, anything of the sort. Turns out she sucks at it. I mean sure she can become a prestigious surgeon at a relatively young age and is excellent at math but for the life of her she can not do anything remotely artistic. She attempted to show off her alleged piano skills but turns out she only knew one song and even then pumpkin daddy played it better. Pumpkin daddy bought a guitar and she was so pissed off that he was immediately better than her at it that she threw it off a mountain (pumpkin daddy proceeded to retrieve the busted guitar and just tape it back together like nothing happened). She tried to write a children’s book cause ok, she’s good with kids, can’t be that hard right WRONG she failed miserably and got so mad she burnt down a library. Despite having extremely traumatic experiences with fires. She was so pissed off she forgot to be afraid of fire. So yeah she is uh. Not all too talented in anything other than strictly analytical or scientific fields.

BUT MOVING ON. As I said in an earlier post, she eventually quit her job and moved back to the desert with Glad to continue the Secret Government Project. She didn’t expect to ever come back even for a brief visit because she wouldn’t have the time (and, let’s face it, there’s no reason to travel all that way just to see PUMPKIN DADDY of all people) but remained in contact via the occasional letter. BEFORE SHE LEFT THOUGH pumpkin daddy pulled the ultimate and definitely not morally dubious prank of making a hybrid of her! He created human life solely to freak her out! And it worked! The hybrid’s name was hybelle and Bellona was NOT amused and was quite glad to not have to deal with it once she left! Hybelle was a pretty accurate hybrid of her though, there’s a bit more to her but that would fit more in with the Fina essay that I will. Eventually write.

She didn’t really do anything of major importance while back in the desert except for one thing that I completely forgot about until right as im writing this and it’s making me giggle like a fool, she saved Minerva from choking on a building. Like just straight up a building idk the logistics of it either. She was at Minerva’s college graduation and Minerva Somehow choked on the administrative building and the visual is making me laugh way too hard so I will just get on with it. BUT UH YEAH she didn’t do a whole lot during this point, was mostly just doing secretive government stuff with Glad and baking blueberry muffins. She couldn’t start a family because she neither had the time or energy, and she can’t have children (which pumpkin daddy blames himself for. “why the hell does he think it’s his fault” EXCELLENT QUESTION he once mistakenly released a mutated virus across the land that nearly killed off the cow population because it made them infertile. bellona helped make the cure for it and months later when she offhandedly mentioned she couldn’t have kids he just assumed it was because of her proximity to the whole rampant cow disease thing. It is Not the case, but he doesn’t know that and has lived in guilt ever since).

ANYWAY UH OH. WAR TIME. SHE DIES WE ALL KNOW THIS. so uh she eventually caught wind of the war going on on Fincg island and knowing that pumpkin daddy was probably doing a horrible job at dealing with it, she for the first time in decades left to go back. Less of a happy reunion and more of planning to beat him up until he had some sense knocked into him. Very literally the first thing she planned to do was tackle him when she saw him. She planned to meet him at the illegal crab restaurant but uh. He never showed up! Which was odd, considering he follows a very strict schedule that every weekend he goes to the illegal crab restaurant. But alas he never showed and she was just waiting there like a fool. After a few hours of waiting she thought she heard him but uhhh whoops it was not him. And she tackled a cat (SO much more to it than that but the cat (gloss) doesn’t yet have enough lore to justify an essay on him. Maybe someday, the lore’s always growing so maybe Gloss will have his time to shine). And broke its neck. She was incredibly distraught by this and was freaking out when UH OH!!! HERE COMES TBYTF!! YEAH SO idk if yall remember but the illegal crab restaurant is directly in TBYTF’s territory, and turns out, when there’s a corpse up there, the first thing it does is revive it. So gloss came back to life (now slightly possessed by tbytf due to it being what brought him back to life) and he was horrified at what he was seeing. A CRAB RESTAURANT. bellona pleaded with him not to tell anyone about it but that little pest ran down the mountain and called the police to report such a horrible, illegal establishment.

A BIT LATER THOUGH. UH. she was trying even more desperately to find pumpkin daddy and got caught in the central city, which at this point was a violent war zone. She almost escaped relatively unscathed but uh. We all know that is not how it goes! She got spotted by Terri, a Jorgan clan enthusiast (“hey wait don’t you have a pikmin oc named Terri” ERM YES. AND UH. THE PDBC TERRI CAME FIRST. GOOD LUCK ENJOYING MY MOTH-LOVING PIKMIN OC KNOWING THAT THIS IS WHO SHE’S BASED ON🥰🥰 A MURDERER). Terri was not happy seeing someone affiliated with the pumpkin clan in any way and uh. shot her. yeah. She didn’t immediately die, she ended up finding Extra throughout all the chaos and got him to pass on a message to pumpkin daddy. And then she. Yknow. died.

Ok so. There is technically more, but that part is…extremely undercooked. I tried to write it out and it was mostly just “I don’t know why this is yet or what happens after this BUT—“ and I think it’s best I don’t mention it at all lmao. It was only added to the story in like the last 2 weeks so it is not well developed!! At all!!Point is though Bellona’s fiiiiine she got to rest in peace. eventually. There’s some other stuff with her that I hesitate to mention because it wasn’t technically her? It was just an illusion of her. Pretty important to the plot but not so much to this long ramble so I think I’ll skip out on mentioning it. But yeah that’s uh, pretty much it for now.

ANYWAY RANDOM TRIVIA FROM THE TOP OF MY HEAD TIIIIIIME OK

• she has a trident. she has on numerous occasions almost hurt someone with it by swinging it around

• she likes astronomy!!! constellations and stuff!!!

• For being so rude to other people she will NOT tolerate being called any sort of names. Once got inconsolably angry when pumpkin daddy called her a bitch for insulting his cool new anti gravity sand

• She calls everyone sugar. Is it supposed to be demeaning, a compliment, who knows? She just does it

• This isn’t a piece of trivia this is just a quote that I just remembered: Think back to the lucky break that you got a few months ago. Remember it? No? Well, perhaps you forgot it because you are stupid. You are so unbelievably stupid. You squandered your perfect opportunity. You’ll never get it back. It’s all your fault. All your misery is the result of your own stupidity. Screw you. Screw you I hope you die and termites invade your casket and the doctors researching your brain drop it down the sink and little rats eat the tiny, minimal remains of it. take a WILD guess who it’s directed towards

• Despite living in the desert she’s extremely pale. Uses too much sunscreen I guess

• BUS. SHE HAS A BARELY FUNCTIONAL BUS UHHH

• she hates snowmen. she thinks they’re a waste of time and hideous

• Was once the victim of pumpkin daddy’s scammy home improvement business venture

• She loves gloves. Exact opposite of pumpkin daddy.

• once drank eggnog out of a puddle!!! Don’t ask!!!

• she was included in the short comic I sent to the original author!!! It’s technically not canon to PDBC so I didn’t mention it but yeah. Maybe I’ll post that comic someday but I’m a bit of a coward. But all she did in it was sit there being pissed off and not enjoying steaks

idk how to end this here’s this (RUNS AWAY AND EXPLODES)

[lemonkatt17]

Human knockout anyone (SEND HELP. I LOVE HIM)

I will post the insanity doodles of this man

[skyblueartt]

If ya can’t project onto fictional people WHATS THE POINT 🗣️🗣️🗣️

[heartual]

if i have to have another healthy food and mindful eating conversation with my mom it’s over for me

[itspileofgoodthings]

Well, I actually have the most mundane of questions, but it’s been so long since I’ve been in an English class that I feel like I’ve completely forgotten (and I’m curious how you do it): how do you go about reading a book as a class? Do you assign them the chapters to read at home and most of them actually do it? Or do you give them class time to read? Do you have the kids who try to spoil the rest of the book for the class? Basically, how does one teach a book in the year 2024?  😀

And do you have your students annotate inside their books? (I know the English teachers in my school require the students to do that, and I get why, but I inwardly shudder every time I see a student marking up a page.) 

Haha I love this question because I too am always asking myself how DOES one each a book in 2024?

It’s sort of a combination. I absolutely assign reading every night (almost) unless it’s Shakespeare or any play in which case we read it all in class. But for a novel there’s a couple chapters a night. I read aloud to them a lot too. Sometjmes I make them read aloud to the whole class, rotating kids who read. Sometimes I assign a chapter to be read in class silently with questions or quotes due at the end of the reading. Sometimes I put them in groups and make them read aloud to each other. There’s no one way that works for sure and of course ultimately I have no control over how much they read and I’m not naive enough to think that most of the reading assigned for homework doesn’t get skipped most of the time buuuuuut.

My bottom line is that I believe it’s my job to get excited about the actual text itself (easier for me in some cases than others but overall pretty easy because it does fill me with excitement) and then commit to taking them on the journey of the story with me. And my goal—that I’m sure I often don’t reach—is to make that experience so much more fun if you have actually read. And the way that I teach is pretty text heavy which is why I always make sure I’ve read the chapters for the day and am not just relying on my memory because the way I do it is just sort of absorbing it all up like a vacuum-cleaner, schwooooop, and then either pulling stuff out of the reading to look at directly or directing them to do the same thing. So the big thing that I have going for me, if any, is buy-in. Is getting kids excited about actually reading the actual text. I also speak often and passionately about the evils of sparknotes etc. not because they help kids get better grades or whatever but because they present you with the husk and shell of a story, stripped of all that makes it interesting, and that by reading that alone they’re reading something so dry and dull and are not achieving what I always want them to achieve —which is, have an Experience with the Literature.

Again, it never works perfectly by any stretch and there are so many ways I want to explore in my quest to get better at it but overall I think, at my very best, I can create this wave of energy and excitement in the story itself which is the most organic and ultimately most helpful way to get them to want to read.

Also no haha. I don’t let them annotate! Though occasionally kids DO of course. But sometimes they bring in their own copies in order to do that. The spoilers absolutely happen and are annoying but I sort of get by it by moving on very quickly and/or talking about how it’s often not the ending but how you get there that makes it interesting. Because that’s just true!

[brightwoods]

Does anyone else feel like almost all of the conflicts that had to do with the various character dynamics in Chain of Thorns didn’t actually get resolved, they just unexplainably ceased to exist after two books of building them up because CC didn’t feel like writing them anymore and she didn’t know how to resolve it naturally after how she’d built the issues up so much?

Like how none of the characters but Cordelia and Thomas had any clue about the Alastair and Charles situation and then suddenly in CoT it was like who doesn’t know? Of course Matthew knew and didn’t say anything before and then randomly brought it up to Cordelia in Paris while assuming she knew too

Or how Alastair and Thomas went from how things were at the end of CoI with Alastair thinking it could never work because Thomas’s friends hate him to oh look everyone suddenly is friends with Alastair with no grudge with no development of that in this book at all, just an abrupt shift

Especially the Alastair and Matthew dynamic where Matthew hated Alastair and wanted him to have nothing to do with any of their friends and he spent CoI ranting about him to Cordelia. And then suddenly in CoT it’s like of course Matthew is supportive of Thomas and Alastair and oh look Matthew and Alastair are suddenly not just tolerating each other for Thomas’s sake but friends despite barely interacting and no development actually showing and never getting any mention of the other in their own POVs, just having Cordelia be like Alastair stop being dumb, you’re literally friends with him now

Or like everyone other than Christopher and Grace where it was like oh we don’t like her for how she’s treated us and her friends straight to anyway she’s one of us. Like yes Grace was useful and yes Tatiana manipulated her whole life, but none of that was why anyone changed their minds or opinions? It was just suddenly the flip of a switch when it was convenient for CC

Or Anna and Ariadne where it didn’t so much develop as Anna just acted mean to Ariadne on and off throughout the series and at the end of CoI she wanted nothing to do with a relationship and then in CoT she was just suddenly like sure I guess I do. Also, slightly different note, but I did not like that Anna barely interacted with anyone else for the entire book and she was just off in the corner being an irrelevant romantic subplot for almost all of the book except when she showed up to barely even be shown in the background being sad about her brother being dead

(Although Anna still got more of a reaction than everyone else and his death was poorly executed all around in the sense of how did you write this so predictably and poorly that no one even knows when he died and it’s so background and 99% of the characters don’t care at all and we don’t see his parents finding out or much of Thomas’s reaction or anything and it’s just as if he wasn’t a character anymore 2 seconds later which is a different genre of issue with CoT but similar problem in the sense that both issues made the book feel a lot more emotionless to read)

And how the issues of Thomas and Alastair being together as two men and Anna and Ariadne being together as two women in this time and the issues of what would happen if the fact that Charles and Alastair were gay got out to the entire Clave just disappeared and never got addressed at all. We know how the ClVe reacted to Alec Lightwood YEARS later. We know society was homophobic at the time TLH is set and that it seems like shadowhunter society was a lot less open-minded than mundanes a century later

I understand that Charles being blackmailed and making shitty decisions was annoying but it was like suddenly everyone finding out wouldn’t have consequences and all the other queer men characters were like how could you possibly be worried about this :/ as if they haven’t spent the whole series knowing they have to be careful about who they tell. And then suddenly it was just of course it’s totally fine and safe to have everyone find out and why wouldn’t you be fine with that. And it was really written in a way that had other queer characters like oh Charles is such a coward for not being ready to publicly tell a bunch of homophobic people his sexuality and it just wasn’t it??? And super weird after Thomas was terrified of telling even Anna and Matthew for years. And also, I did not care for the fact that when Charles did go risk getting outed to finally do the right thing, we didn’t even get to see it through any character’s perspective or how that important meeting went, we just got one line of dialogue from somebody else saying that it happened with no details at all. And I can’t think of other examples right now but there were quite a few moments like that where we got one line saying that something had happened that was important to the plot and to characters’ development that seemed like it would have been more interesting than some of what we did get to see where it was just totally breezed over and way too easy and totally background to less important stuff

And then there was the whole no one reacting to Ariadne and Anna dancing together publicly thing was like yeah that’s nice I guess but not realistic and it doesn’t go with the way things have been presented up to that point, it also just feels like a situation where CC was like well this would be easier for me so there just won’t be consequences and then they can easily end up happily together

And then there was the whole Thomas and Alastair thinking they couldn’t realistically be together thing and knowing they couldn’t get married or be known to be together by anyone they’re not close to and then at the end it’s still not really addressed how they’re going to be together? Like there was the laziest write off of the family tree being wrong and then we still are just left to assume that eventually they move in together and suddenly it’s not a problem and everyone’s fine with it? And then I also feel like we don’t actually know if everyone found out about Alastair and Charles’ sexualities after the blackmail or if people are going to assume about Thomas and Alastair or if that’ll cause issues or if no one knows outside of who they’ve told and they have to be careful or what. Which like wouldn’t necessarily need to be addressed if it wasn’t for the logistics of being together as two men in that time being part of the obstacle that they were struggling with being in their way and then it felt like it was totally forgotten to even be one at the end by CC

Idk like I’d love to think they just lived in a world where homophobia didn’t exist but it felt like homophobia was a plot point when CC wanted it to be an inconvenience and then suddenly disappeared just to make her writing easier the moment she didn’t want it there anymore instead of actually addressing the plots she raised with it if that makes sense?

And sorry, I really did not mean to go on a rant this long. And maybe everyone else had a very different reading experience than I did and other people don’t agree with some or all of this. I personally am just very confused about how the book was almost 800 pages long and it felt like so much of the development in it was us abruptly being told that development had happened rather than actually getting to see it and how so many of the issues were abruptly solved in an I don’t want to write this issue anymore kind of way rather than anything actually needing to be worked at outside of the Belial situation

Edit: You know what, I mentioned it in my tags but I feel like it’s annoying enough to put in the body of the post and make it even longer. What the fuck was with everyone outing or potentially outing everyone else just so that characters could openly talk about the queer characters and tell them to do what they want them to? Why did Matthew out his brother multiple times? Like yes, the people he said it to coincidentally already knew, but he didn’t know that. And why was Thomas outing Alastair? The straights got to keep their secrets as long as they wanted and fix their problems more naturally. Why did I have to sit through queer characters constantly having their sexualities and romantic histories to everyone else when they clearly had not okayed it? Why were the queer characters doing so much of the outing? Why were people who cared about them and knew what it felt like to be afraid of the wrong person finding out just broadcasting their sexualities to make it easier for CC to breeze past development to have their things get resolved fast? Why did no character have an issue with it at all?

[unhinged-nymph]

For some reason I had never listened to the high school ear biscuits episode and I am sobbing over this like they are just so truly in love with each other? Like platonically, romantically, whatEVER it is so obvious!!!! They chose each other so easily, almost subconsciously, over and over and being with each other forever was literally the default? To them it was always guaranteed? Like bitch I’m cryingggggg.

I also didn’t realize that the blood oath happened so late? Like they were around 16 years old making that kind of verbal commitment to each other? And having deep conversations about their futures together???

Link saying “I had this deeply rooted feeling, maybe even an attachment to our friendship” and talking about how the blood oath was validating for him because it made it “official” that Rhett prioritized him over everything and everyone else and then Rhett at the end saying that “There was something special between the two of us that eclipsed any other connection we had with other people” …

Like y’all…. My heart literally can’t take this 😭