#StoryWonk

[glorianas]

also my friend @storywonker brought up this excellent point, maybe just maybe a bit of a gender thing going on

[lifeattomsdiner]

I love that Soulbound can be a Saturday morning cartoon with ultraviolence.

Our esteemed GM @storywonker

[dragonsaffron]

Tagged by @lifeattomsdiner Tag some friends you’d like to get to know better! Last Song: Beyond These Walls by Miracle of Sound

Currently Watching: Critical Role, and I’m almost caught up.

Currently Reading: The Victorians by A. N. Wilson

Current Obsession: As you may be able to tell by my choice in reading, late-19th-century England. I tell myself that I’m doing it as research for a queer retelling of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but let’s be honest: I don’t know if or when that book is ever happening.

@zoestorm @beedok @storywonker @taylor-swift-is-my-robot-dog @velexiraptor

[mellifiedman]

Okay, I'm going to for-real take advantage of having unlimited characters again and tell you my very important thoughts on all the media I've consumed in the last month-ish. We're blogging! We love blogging, right?

BOOKS

Priory of the Orange Tree, Samantha Shannon: have you ever wished for a Guy Gavriel Kay novel that was way queerer, but also worse? Boy, have I got the book for you! It's clear that a lot of careful historical research went into this book, which I appreciate, but it doesn't make up for the fact that this book is an incredibly long exercise in writing multiple POVs that all kind of feel like the same boring, namby-pamby character, despite some surface-level angst (except for the scheming gay alchemist, who actually got to have some real moral conflict a few times). It's very clear early on that all of these little dweebs are going to make the most selfless and heroic choices possible at the end of the book, and they spend many hundreds and hundreds of pages riding a rail to just that conclusion. That being said, I can see this author writing an actual fantasy masterpiece in another 10 years, maybe?

The Luminous Dead, Caitlin Starling: this felt less like a real book and more like one of those extremely involved and gritty AU fanfics that people used to write for, like, Death Note. What if this couple you should hopefully already care a LOT about is in, uh...a cave? In space? A space cave? And they hate each other at first, but then they fall in love, and also only one of them is technically in the cave (the stronger one with the weirder hair color, still all according to anime plan [keikaku]). Also, it's psychological. The thing is, I don't actually care about these characters from a pre-existing media property, so I just thought this was an incoherent mess that didn't deliver on pretty much any count. If you want an actually good version of what this book was going for, just read a Patricia Highsmith novel with Alien on in the background or something.

Some Desperate Glory, Emily Tesh: man, this one slapped. You could definitely come up with some cringey booktok-style "what if Ender's Game was ~sapphic~" pitch for this one, but thankfully it's also just a really good, crunchy, humanist sci-fi book. Honestly, my main issue with this one is that I read it so obscenely quickly that I'm not sure I absorbed everything. There are some little flaws I could complain about if I really wanted to, but this book nails what I'm looking for in this contemporary crop of queerer, more diverse, etc etc genre fiction, which is that it's a good fucking book first, and not just an affirmation of my own personal laundry list of moral beliefs (which, hey! It totally is that, too!). Thank you @storywonker for the rec - you're at the top of the genre fiction friendship pile right now! Feel free to look down and grind your heel into the necks of those below you! It's what I would do.

Cradle series, Will Wight: these books are sooooo dumb. I've read ten of them and loved every second. Cradle 4 life!!

[skamortuus]

#absolutely insane thing for Stevie Nicks to say #lady have you not been in a band with your rivals for 50 years (via @storywonker)

this part of stevie nicks’ interview with rolling stone is taking me out

[bigassbowlingballhead]

is it weird that we’re not even mutuals and this post made me think of you??

https://www.tumblr.com/storywonker/753020674247901184/they-call-me-johnny-six-bowls-no-i-dont-smoke

this might be the most flattering thing anyones ever told me

[lifeattomsdiner]

Tag 9 people to get to know them better

Tagged by @st-just

3 ships: I don't tend to get *super* into ships these days, but... Olrox/Mizrak (Castlevania Nocturne), Stede/Blackbeard (OFMD, in anticipation of S2), and for a very freewheeling definition of "ship", 621/Ayre/Rusty OT3 (Armored Core 6)

First ever ship: ...I *really* do not remember at this point

Last song: Burning Down the House (live) by Talking Heads

Last movie: hm... I'm going to go ahead and count the recording of Nerdy Prudes Must Die

Currently reading: just finished Androne by Dwain Worrell, about to start The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon

Currently watching: just finished Castlevania Nocturne, next show tbd

Currently consuming: ...water?

Currently craving: the leftover kielbasa and rice that I brought for lunch

Tagging (no pressure ofc) @enonem @dragonsaffron @axiolotl @storywonker @daxleopard @jakey-beefed-it @mugasofer @centaurianthropology @johnconstantius

[exmakina]

I feel like B2 is very Harrow/Ianthe

O.O;;;

[skamortuus]

#i mean sure but there is a very lucrative black market for horse semen #and that one's been going for decades (via @storywonker)

[storywonk]

Still Pretty 1: Gone http://ift.tt/2yQozG7

[collapsedsquid]

France has seemingly occupied the minds of Brazil's military elite ever since French President Emmanuel Macron and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro engaged in a diplomatic spat last August. An article published on Friday in the premier daily Folha de São Paulo sourced a leaked military document that reveals Brazil’s highest rank-and-file believe France could become the country’s biggest threat over the next 20 years, due to a possible dispute over the Amazon.

Named "Defence scenarios 2040", the 45-page-long document was based on interviews with 500 highly-ranked army officers, who listed their biggest concerns and predictions during individual interviews.

[...]

It includes other "somewhat delirious hypotheses", such as an organised coronavirus attack against the 2039 Rock in Rio music festival by "Southeast Asian ultranationalists", Folha revealed.

Although the document lists four different strategic scenarios, France appears as the only common threat to all – an illustration of the fractured relations between the two countries, which soured in August 2019 when the Amazon fires made headlines and shocked the world.

Prepare for the Macroneonic empire.  Also a bit weirded out by the coronavirus mention, this was prepared during the “second half of 2019“ and while coronaviruses aren’t new I don’t know much about them as a big bioweapons fear.

[lifeattomsdiner]

🎶✨ When you get this u have to put 5 songs u actually listen to, publish. Then, send this ask/tag 10 of your favourite followers ✨🎶

Tagged by @st-just

Oh boy an excuse to inflict share the various niche bullshit I've been obsessed with lately? Don't mind if I do!

Hermetico - Balkan Beat Box - Randomly remembered that this band existed after somebody mentioned them offhand in high school like fifteen years ago, turns out they're really infectiously listenable? (And if parts of this track sound familiar--yeah, it's not just you. This is the original.)

Waltzing off the Face of the Earth (I. Crescendo) - Enter Shikari - Possibly the most blunt track of a whole album that wears its politics on its sleeve, but hey, it's good catharsis for those days when The Discourse is making you feel like you're losing your mind.

Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On) - Talking Heads - Take a look at these haaaaaaaaands! The hand of a government man! No notes.

Thank God I'm Not You - Himalayas - Possibly one of the cattiest songs I've ever listened to, and I'm into it.

tous les mêmes - Stromae - This might be the most enraptured I've ever been with lyrics in a language I don't speak, which is saying something given that I had an obligatory J-pop phase. Anyway, Stromae good.

so with the obligatory "only do it if you want to", tagging @jakey-beefed-it, @dragonsaffron, @enonem, @axiolotl, @daxleopard, @storywonker, @searchforthescars, @johnconstantius, @gostaks, and @mugasofer

[dragonsaffron]

@storywonker

Cis guy trying to fit in with all his trans friends: I’m like if a guy was a guy

[earlgraytay]

storywonker replied to your post “some more campy mormon art that definitely did not make me gay”

oh these are EXTREMELY Frazetta

ain’t they just

this is what the artist said about them

[theexistentiallyqueer]

Concept: Sansa Stark, adopted by Winter Ihernglass

Counter-concept: Sansa Stark, adopted by Raesinia Orboan

[rise-above-the-grave]

A thing to ramble about: Bail-Elrond parallels

holy shit I’ve been waiting for this topic to come up for like. years???

First of all they’re both noble. Extremely, entirely noble, down to their very cores. That nobility governs and judges their actions and their decisions. And yet, ironically, that nobility can be set aside (for noble reasons) to achieve an end that must be met.

I’d warrant they’re both political geniuses, though Elrond’s doesn’t come out to play so much in-text because Tolkien doesn’t focus on Elrond’s time in Gil-galad’s court much. That’s just glossed over. But their kinds/brand of intelligence are pretty similar, it seems to me, and so that seems to also indicate (to me) that, like Bail, Elrond is probably a genius when it comes to politics. Though, like Bail, he’s subtle about it. He’s not super flashy--though he can whip out a motivational speech like no one else if the situation demands it--but he’s quiet and calculating and, quite frankly, manipulative. But yet they’re good people and so that manipulation isn’t ever meant in a terrible or evil way.

They’re both fantastic parents too. Just, hands down good parents. Sure they screw up sometimes--but they’re...well, not necessarily “human”, but “not perfect” certainly. So yes, they screw up, but they apologize for their mistakes, and they seek to make reparations, and to get better than what they were.

They’re also both secretly (or not so secretly, depending on who you talk to), badasses. Bail can shoot and fight hand-to-hand, and in my headcanon Elrond is one of the best swordsmen in Arda. Yet that surprises people about both of them, because they’re so rarely seen as being warriors or badasses. Instead they’re seen as politicians, as rulers and lords, as a healer and scholar.

Elrond has a lot more darkness in him than Bail does though, I think--a lot more self-loathing, a lot more identity issues. Bail is a fairly well-adjusted individual, methinks, whereas Elrond is just...rife with PTSD and suicidal ideation and self-worth issues. So that’s one way that they’re radically different. I think that’s why I latched onto Elrond more as a coping mechanism than Bail though.... Anyway.

I’m sure there’s more. I might add to this post later on as I think of things. But that’ll suffice for now.