#Should be tied but whatever

[the-unconquered-queen]

The cast of Blades of Light and Shadow and their Perfect Match types

Ever since I did my Blades/Elementalists attunement crossover to mark the anniversary of the Blades series, I’ve known I wanted to do something like this to mark the wide release of book three, and I love me some Perfect Match and the types system, so what better way than by incorporating that into a piece?

So the match types you see here are based on what we’ve seen of these characters up to book two, so any character evolution they may undergo in book three is not accounted for. You might also notice that, when deciding each character’s type, I went off of the core four traits instead of the match name or description, unless I needed a tiebreaker.

Finally, MC’s type is pretty subjective, as I’m sure everyone has a different idea of what their MCs are like, so for the sake of this edit set, Raine’s type is based on which traits she displays most in canon.

So, are you swiping right?

[idontmindifuforgetme]

scientists have big brains but the energy payoff is that their souls atrophy at a faster rate than usual so to combat that they need to read more books. and by more books I mean more clarice lispector

[rollercoasterwords]

yeah u can put "i hate jkr" and "fuck terfs" in ur tumblr bio but. can u listen + reflect when a trans woman criticizes hp fandom without immediately getting defensive.....

[keirientez]

lesbians on a different post because the girls need their space ok

[leslie057]

stranger things 4 is just like yess lets give nancy wheeler some friends. and then her friends mistreat her for nine episodes straight <3

[batsplat]

It's a thing I already knew but all your beautiful analysis really made obvious (to me) how much of a grudge holder vale is. That man is never letting it go he's gonna hold his grudges into his grave

you know, I do think this is an interesting issue, because I'm not sure this is true of all his grudges. just sticking here with the grudges he accumulated in his capacity as a competitor, rather than just his general approach to life or whatever... how you judge this will kinda depend on how you feel about the 'reconciliation' he's experienced with some of his rivals - and whether you read the whole thing as sincere or not. now, personally I reckon he still dislikes biaggi, but also you are allowed to just dislike people so I'll give him a pass for that. some of the others, I'm a little more convinced by the whole reconciliation schtick

let's get valentino's take:

interesting that he mentions those three together, isn't it? and like, he's still not messaging biaggi or inviting him to his home - "even with max" kind of tells you all you need to know - but the other two? they said some proper nasty things to each other over the years!! I mean, the casey rivalry, there's some remarks from both sides where quite frankly I think I would struggle just a touch to get over it

I don't know, obviously this could all be pr stuff, but I kind of feel like... y'know, why bother? it's 2022, you're retired, who gives a fuck? sure it's a good look to be all magnanimous, sure it can be a bit of a way of twisting in the knife to the guys left in the cold, but also, who would care if you don't play nice? I think especially with jorge, you surely don't need to do all that, inviting him to your home and dancing with him... (which, again, some of the spats those two had...) and with the casey rivalry, if there's one guy who's still hung up about what happened between the pair of them, it's obviously casey (speaking of blokes who can hold a grudge). maybe this is giving valentino too much credit, but personally I buy it's more or less sincere. there's nothing to really indicate he's still particularly bothered by any of their past disagreements - he's basically going for the 'all's fair in love and motorcycle racing' approach. he knows he was an asshole, he accepts they were assholes too, whatever, that's how these things work. he's generally a fan of drama in rivalries, unsurprisingly, and he was happy enough to contribute his fair share - but he does see it as fundamentally being part of the game

to point out the obvious, check out who he's left out: sete and marc. that's where he can't let go of the grudges... because it's not about the offence itself as much as it is about the betrayal. this is the thing with valentino, right, it's about what kind of bond you had with him. if you weren't his friend in the first place and then piss him off as a rival then, y'know, whatever. obviously he's going to be vicious in trying to get back at you, but also he's really not going to waste his time feeling too aggrieved by it. I mean, think about how all the bullshit between him and casey dropped off sharply post-2012... from valentino's end anyway. think about how jorge and valentino pretty quickly got on again whenever they weren't fighting for supremacy within yamaha. they weren't friends in the first place, then they were enemies for competitive reasons for a while there, then it's over and valentino is basically happy enough to call it bygones

but... if it's a certain kind of bond you had with him and then you wrong him... that little mental list of all his past grievances, all your past transgressions, that's where it comes in. that's where he ices you out. denies you any emotional warmth. ensures that any interaction going forward is conducted entirely on his terms. where even any public 'reconciliation' won't truly be sincere.... or, certainly he's not going to forget what happened. if something else happens... it's like you've always got the potential of triggering this lingering resentment, in a way, where all that past stuff is still primed and ready to be called upon. he certainly doesn't just let it go

or, as he puts it in his autobiography:

Biaggi and I never talk to each other. I mean, we've never had a real conversation, anything that's lasted more than the requisite time to insult each other or put each other down, in the nastiest way possible. In any case, I don't hate him. It's true, we've never been friends, but hatred is something different, and that's too serious a word to describe our relationship. Far too serious. No, we have a reciprocal antipathy. No doubt this is a result of what we do for a living and the fact that we both want to win every single time. And perhaps it's also a function of the fact that we have very different personalities and very different ways of seeing things. Still, I don't think this means we hate each other, as some journalists have written. I think I could feel hatred for someone, but only for someone far worse than anything Biaggi has done. For example, if I were betrayed by a friend, then, yes, I could hate him. But Biaggi will never betray my friendship for the simple reason that we are not, and never have been, friends. Our relationship is very clear: we compete on the track - outside the track, each goes his own way. You could say we detest each other cordially.

... I mean. he said it, not me. and given this book was first published in '05... biaggi can't betray his friendship because they were never friends... I'm not saying he's thinking about sete, but it has to at least be a possibility, right? he's talking about one rivalry here and refusing to even mention the other... and the one he's refusing to mention is the one where he was friends with the other bloke. I don't know, maybe that's reading too much into it! and anyway, even if this passage wasn't really about sete, it's obviously still revealing. "detest each other cordially" is essentially what he was doing with casey and jorge (or from his point of view in any case, not entirely sure they'd agree with that). the grudge comes when he feels let down by you... and then, yes, he'll never let it go

of course, he's willing to set aside his grievances for a while if there's sufficient motivation for him to do so. in 2009, when he had so definitively won that rivalry with sete, why bother kicking up a fuss? in 2016, quite frankly it was just too much, and it was getting to the point where it was obviously hurting him too. on the one hand there was the media furore that had been going on non-stop since sepang, on the other hand it was also hurting his own approach to racing. there's reports from the time how visibly aggrieved he still was in the first few races of the season, and it took until they got back to europe for him to... y'know, have fun again. it's not sustainable to be walking around with a constant dark cloud over your head and broadcasting burning resentment towards your two main rivals. certainly not for someone like valentino - he needs to be having fun! the slight rapprochement needed to happen, in a way, because otherwise those years would have been even worse for everyone involved. but that doesn't actually translate to forgetting any of those grudges. this is about convenience more than anything else

goes to show, really... most of the time he doesn't take these things personally. I talked about it a bit in this post, how maybe it's also something that changed over time for him: the question of whether he was willing to develop these kinds of bonds in the first place with competitors... because he does possess a certain level of self-awareness in terms of what these kinds of rivalries are like and what they do to interpersonal relationships. ideally, you don't want to be hurt by a friend like that, right? better not to have that kind of emotional attachment with your competitors in the first place. how unfortunate it'd be if all those years after sete the circumstances aligned for him to see a competitor as something like a friend again... because, after all, those are the only people who could betray him. those are the only people where he thinks he could truly hate them

[ineffectualdemon]

I enjoy shipping because it's fun

BUT

I much prefer:

"these two characters are so Unwell™ about each other it's shattered the concept of amantonormativity. Whatever they have going on has nothing to do with romance or sex and is closer to symbiosis or celestial bodies combining into something new."

Unfortunately usually the rest of the fandom seems to reduce them to romance and that's fine but it's not why I'm here

[pleasedontcareaboutme]

It's missing my father hours rn so imma just dump a bunch of pictures here and cry

( sorry i don't know the source of anything I just had them on my phone)

(also dont read the tags i just need to let it out lol)

[bogkeep]

can my hare fursona be an arctic hare even if they aren't native to northern europe.......

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

when I want to write something self indulgent to give me all the angsty and cuddly hurt/comfort feels but I can't because I end up feeling guilty because I'm seeking after feels that I feel in an inappropriate place because my mom told me one time when I was 15 that I shouldn't search that out or it's probably sexual sin but it confuses me because ALL the feels happen that way for me even if it's entirely platonic and nonsexual and so I don't know if it's okay to want to write to that because apparently all pleasure of any sort, even over platonic stories, is sexual or comes with a possibly probably sexual feeling and I also am having a hard time figuring out what's genuine conviction from God and what's just my anxiety/OCD/perfectionism/fear of failure

[nectarine-neuroticism]

having fun working on a commission for arturo. he wanted one of his ocs (angel, left) included in the commission, and another oc (paulina, right) that we brainstormed together for the sake of this fic.

i decided to let my computer charge a bit after writing for a while, so i decided to make picrews of the ocs (couldn't resist with makowka, long time fave tbh) just to help make the visualizations of them "tangible."

then i decided to make the rest of the mcs as picrews lol. take this as you will.

anyways,,, enjoy.

also, before you ask, yes. i did give benji a little gay boy earring. i asked simon if it was okay and he said all things are as they should be.

[sieglinde-freud]

anyways actually reading through awakening’s story and i really wish they had like owain or morgan or literally any other kid be a mandatory recruit because lucina has absolutely no one to talk to in the main story? and its like “well chrom is there” but then. thats it. i get to the part after the basilio vs walhart scene and lucina is just off in a corner while everyone was else talks and the dialogue is literally just

Lucina: Gods, I could’ve stopped him… I should’ve stopped him…!

Chrom: ok so castle next?

Lucina: Is everything I’ve done for nothing? Twice now, I’ve failed to change fate!

Flavia: yeah we have to go hit walharts castle

Say’ri: it’s what my brother wouldve wanted

Lucina: Maybe all I’ve done is prolong the inevitable… Maybe the future is doomed no matter what…

Robin: real ok check out this sick strategy

and then the scene fades to black. NO ONE IS TALKING TO HER its honestly really sad like. oh my god. owain is in my party just let him join or something. why is she even here right now

[piosplayhouse]

Guy yuri finals is bingqiu versus hualian I'm sorry tgcfers but there is a correct answer to this and if you still want to give hualian a chance I'd better only see ONE, maximum, piece of propaganda about how "they're yuri because the 800 years of yearning!" Some of us yurists believe in UHAULING and HARD PHYSICAL GIRLSEX

[zahri-melitor]

Look, one of the fundamental things I keep an eye on for DC writers these days is "is this person plotting a story arc that has sufficient escape valves in case of cancellation".

Because, realistically, even if you've been handed a headline title and an ongoing run, any writer should be tying off their story every 12 months and immediately before every major company-wide event. They shouldn't need to yank that cord, but you can always tell the difference between someone who has figured out how to exit their arc in advance and has just had to compress the story, and someone who's been caught on the hop (for active examples of this, go read literally any comic leading in to either Infinite Crisis or Flashpoint, as everyone got shuffled on their titles after both. You can see when teams were informed they were about to lose their books and when books were needed for the event in terms of how the stories all suddenly pivot to Getting Stuff Done ASAP).

There is also the evil cousin, 'run extended beyond expected plotting and ideas' which can show up but obviously is a rarer beast to spot.

[penepoly]

to me the most inexplicable character in the musical is zeus. in The Horse And The Infant he's impassive and impersonal. he never utters odysseus's name. he remains perfectly calm and unfazed when odysseus tries to object ("i could raise him" etc etc).

all this is a far cry from his attitude in Thunder Bringer and God Games--mockingly calling odysseus by his name and title, taking gleeful pleasure in his suffering, even attacking his own daughter in a fit of rage over it.

it baffles me. when did he start taking so much personal interest in odysseus? what exactly has odysseus done to incur this deep, long-lasting hatred? is it just main character syndrome or is there an explanation?

[tonystarkdeservesthewholeworld]

I finally read The Song of Achilles and I will genuinely never recover. I knew the myth but that didn't prepare me for this book. I actually can't breathe. there's just.. so much?? the writing style, the focus of the descriptions, the vocab just EVERYTHING.

In my almost 16 years of life, I have never been able to choose a favourite book, I've had a favourite series, a few favourites but never just ONE that I truly loved more than any other book but I think this might be the one.

I don't know how to describe how it made me feel but my heart is aching, the hopeless romantic inside of me is crying out to be loved the way Achilles loved Patroclus or the way Patroclus loved Achilles.

This book made me feel a strange nostalgia for running around a huge garden with big trees and sun-soaked grass and hedge mazes that I distantly remember from my childhood. I've always loved figs but now they will always be special to me because I will always think of them.

I've always had the urge to just run, sprint across an open field and probably end up rosy-cheeked collapsed in the grass and eventually manage to regain my breath and sit up to make daisy chains and bathe in the sun, it would feel so freeing. This book is like how I imagine that would feel because despite the gut-wrenching, heartbreaking ending they were still together. They will always be together. Nobody can ever separate them and that is what I want. A love so deep that I am permanently changed, a love so deep that when I long to be alone as I often do I can find them and curl up in their arms. I want a love like Achilles and Patroclus because I struggle with any kind of socialising, even with my friends and loved ones, but they are one. They don't need to worry about saying the wrong thing or saying nothing at all because they will always be one. Always.

This book has actually changed the way I think forever I fear

(pretty please read the tags)