#and i was like HUH

[shinynewmemories]

Katniss describing her two Husband Options:

Ah yes, Gale. The One I have Chosen. My best friend. My hunting partner. He is mine and I am his. We're always together, except all the times we're not. No, his absence doesn't really bother me. He always has my back. Unless he's mad at me, in which case he says very mean things and shoves me. I don't crave his kisses or give him mine without immediately wanting to take them back. We never touch and that's fine with me. I absolutely would not marry him under any circumstances.

Peeta? No, we're strictly friends. Actually, we're engaged, but that's Snow's agenda. No, I don't hate the idea of marrying him. In fact, I could do so much worse. I mean, he's kind and strong and smart and generous. He bakes my favorite breads for me. He makes me laugh. He gives me hope. Sometimes when we kiss, I feel this strange sensation in my chest and I want more. It's probably nothing. Anyway, we spend hours alone together and I never get tired of looking at him. I actually feel safer with him than anyone else. I just wish things weren't so complicated and he could sleep in my bed every night...

[not-the-living-ghost]

the monty finch obsession to charles rowland obsession pipeline needs to be studied

[lorata]

there’s an article going around about turning off the TV in your brain, how many modern writers have no interiority and just describe stuff for the viewer, and I’m like, with respect, couldn’t be me

rich and detailed inner voice? I got you. physical description for a character I’ve been writing since 2013???? FORGET IT

[gomzdrawfr]

Do

Do huys usually touch hair or sum

[shelter-wood]

genuine no judgement question for people who always make the same looking character in games and stuff: why? is it a self-insert or looks like you? do you just have one oc who you really like and move them from media to media?

i always make different new characters for each new thing, so it’s always made me curious when i see people just making the same person over and over

[thiskindnessreturnsmetomyself]

Genuine actual question to the Toronto sceptres PWHL team/staff/fans

Are they ever gunna play that gay goalie or are they there to be cute or?

[eggcats]

I love when my period makes me experience what I can only call "nungry" where I'm both hungry but the idea of eating anything makes me feel sick. Like thanks I guess, good job. This does the opposite of solving anything.

My second favorite thing is when I'm stupid bc my cramps aren't too bad and I forget that sugar, caffeine, and chocolate are my triggers to make them worse.

Or when I gotta choose between being tired or drinking an energy drink, where half the time I drink the drink and then take like 3 ibuprofen and am just like "okay now fight!" lmao.

[evereverest2]

i like that half of my drabbles notes are just comments from the same three people who i always respond to shoutout to u guys ur adorable

anyway. little monster part 6 later today. only bc i felt bad for teasing too much. and certainly not bc im so fucking excited u have no idea

[lover-of-mine]

My brain has currently decided that Eddie is the type of person to befriend random people while waiting in lines and I can totally see this man talking to random old ladies at the supermarket so now I have decided that Eddie is the one who can't be left alone without being adopted.

[galaxycunt]

in college I had a neighbor in the dorms who was Brazilian and one time she asked me Latina to Latina: why did everyone else assume she spoke Spanish and I was like I’m sorry I wish I knew

[greyeyedmonster-18]

(no but re: living in different places, and what is considered polite vs rude. since leaving the midwest after spending YEARS there being given odd feedback of like “seems cold” “harsh” (even though patient evals/observations were the exact opposite hmmmmmm), i now preface every single professional/job environment i enter with

“i am not chatty. do with that what you will but i am not chatty, i am not talkative.”

i am hard working and kind and a million other things but im not chatty, so if you are looking for a colleague with whom you can have talk around a water cooler and pass time chatting and spend more than the 5 minutes of “how was your weekend? Good. You? Good” that is not me and look for someone else!!!

i am here to work and i will.)

[parlerenfleurs]

heya I'm curious about your love and frustration with the realm of the elderlings--invitation to rant about it, tell me about it, etc etc I'm just a curious creature

It's been SO LONG I'm sorry for the late reply! Beware that this will be rather lengthy.

Here is my tale of love and woe with RotE~

I cannot recall exactly at what age I started reading Fitz's adventures, but I think I was still in middle school. Needless to say, it was only the first two trilogies that were out back then. I was young, and thus inexperienced, and social media were not yet a thing, and I didn't hang out on forums much - not even sure we had a family computer at that time. So my reaction to reading about Fitz speculating in one of his historical intermissions between chapters about the Fool, and mentioning he wasn't sure of his sex, was entirely my own, as a young queer thirsty for representations of that nebulous and alluring otherness, while not knowing what I was. (I wouldn't know what I was for a good number of years yet.)

That is why my reaction to this piece of writing was to become feverishly convinced the Fool was a girl, and, despite not having the word to say it concisely yet, immediately and irrevocably realising I was shipping Fitz and the Fool with every single fiber of my being. Shipping, to me, then and largely now, wasn't about fun speculation. When I ship something it's usually because it's canon, or because canon gives me a very good reason to, wether it intended to or not. So it's less that I started going "wow they would be good together" as much as I became convinced it was author intent to reveal the Fool's gender and then get them together in the course of the story. (After all, Fitz liked girls, right? So the only way this could happen was for the Fool to be a girl, and for Fitz to learn it and open his eyes to a possible romance with him...)

To note: I had, thanks in large part to Japan's obsession for gender fuckery and the unique selection of anime ignorant westerners were putting up on the TV for children in the 90s, already been exposed to a fair share of cross-dressing and androgyny and ambiguousness, and I was eating it up, it was my favourite thing, it was so cool. So (for this reason and many others) it follows that the Fool became my favourite character of all time.

As we all know, Royal Assassin and co is masterfully written. Of course, reading the first two trilogies, it became one of my favourite series, not a dubious honour at all despite my young age, as I was a voracious and eclectic reader. It is wonderfully written, and can and does rip your heart out mercilessly. But that's fine, that's good, I love a story that makes me feel things, you know? But then it ended with what I can only, and with sincerity, call a tragedy. Because what else to call Fitz and the Fool separating, after all this?

I had no concept of ever accessing an author directly, and in that time, when you were like me a young girl living on a remote piece of tropical land far from any capital or big city where the Culture TM happens, there was no notion whatsoever of approaching a creator, and even less to demand a change, or to even think this was something that could be subjected to change. If a piece of media was a certain way, it was just an inevitability. Like rain or gravity. My critical mind hadn't at all developped either so I didn't approach things with the distance that would allow me to think "This is badly-written bullshit and here's why".

Not that I think it's necessarily badly written in that case, but I do now think it's a bit of a bullshit ending, all things considered. However, as mentioned, in my eyes it was a tragedy and I can accept a tragedy, it is there to hurt, and hurt it will, and there is some pleasure in that.

Something like a decade later, I'm well into my twenties. Enters the new trilogy.

By that point, I had been to university, studied arts and letters, and been on social media for a while. So I had both critical thinking skills and the awareness of my own sexuality. I also had learned fun words like shipping, and the extensive vocabulary of queerness. Twitter existed, so audiences demanded things from creators, also (which is bad in my opinion, but this mindset has influenced me anyway).

Interestingly, it became apparent that Robin Hobb had also, in the meantime, been exposed to that vocabulary through her fanbase, probably, and doubled down on the queerness already wonderfully present in the previous books. She introduced another character with a peculiar relationship to gender in Ash/Spark. She made Fitz mellower and more understanding of who the Fool is as a whole, of the fact that sometimes she is Amber.

She made Fitz pine desperately for his Fool, in such an obvious heartbreaking way...

So despite a very, very slow beginning, and a narrative choice of senseless brutality for Fitz's reunion with the Fool (I can't fathom why he went for the stabbing, seriously, when did he ever attack a feeble person who had no weapons and was not doing anything with a rush of paranoia like this?? Even if it's his daughter and he's a man full to the brim with emotions that are usually repressed, he's still, for the better and mostly for the worse, a trained assassin, so HOW COME he didn't assess this situation even a little bit rationally before going full Ides of March mode when a simple shove would have sufficed??) - as I was saying, despite the slow beginning and this stupid fucking plot point, I was getting very excited.

Not to be like "Molly was out of the way so their romance could blossom. At last." because it feels shitty to just shove the female character aside for the queer pairing, but. I couldn't feel Molly in this trilogy. I adored her and their romance as youngsters, yes, but it was ages ago for them both and for the readers, she was a faraway fantasy of a young love... She had moved on so hard she had countless children fo show for it! And now all I could see was Fitz trying so hard to convince himself life was good while missing, and missing, and missing, people, adventures, his wolf... Hobb just didn't make their happiness that convincing, I feel.

I did find it extremely cool to have an alternative POV in Bee for the first time.

I've talked about this and I'll try to find the post and edit the link in later (here it is), but Hobb has a problem with feminity and the markers of feminity. And she hasn't moved on from that whatsoever between the second and third trilogy. So Bee is adorable and interesting but it is again reinforced through her that feminity and beauty are a pursuit that's usually humiliating and is silly anyway, and for vain shallow stupid girls (see Shine). That's a whole rant though, better not repeat myself here.

What I'm trying to get at with this frustrated rambling, is that Hobb. Is an author. At times an excellent, incredibly good author! She can weave a narrative like no problem, it awes me! And here she is, writing, and here I am, a somewhat savvy reader, and I go "Oh! I see what you're doing! You're bringing back themes! You're really, really insisting on those themes about gender, and acceptance, and really pushing Fitz and Beloved together there ;)) I can see how hard you hammer this in, no worries, I'm a reader, I will read, I am expecting that pay off you're setting up, which may or may not be Fitzloved kissing ahah, I know, I am no fool (lol), I will just trust that this will get narratively satisfying! ;)"

...Yep.

I do somewhat get why people did like the ending. I do recognise it was... set up in the narrative and thus was that same kind of pay off I was expecting. That this is them becoming. Having no limits anymore. All that.

I just... She chose this. She chose to have things be awful and for Bee to hate Beloved despite how eagerly characters and readers were anticipating their reunion and relationship. She chose to have the Fool suffer, and suffer, and suffer beyond sense - for decades? And for what? Who doesn't get tired of torturing after so many years? Just let him rot in some cell, isn't that sufficiently awful already? I don't think this torture porn was realistic or necessary. She chose to rip them apart moments after their family reunion, Bee, Fitz and him. She chose to invent a worm-infecting-thingy just to have Fitz die a slow stupid death after all is said and done.

She chose to have them find no sweetness between them for the whole final leg of their journey, of going nowhere with Ash/Spark the Fool/Amber because Fitz just. Doesn't like Amber. Is uncomfortable with her. Can't, won't, shan't be allowed to be anything else than straight and rigid and traumatised. Can't find comfort in his dearest friendship. And of course, likewise for the Fool.

(At least there was Kelsingra!! Oh Kelsingra was almost worth all this~)

At least Fitz did feel like himself, except for the stabbing (and the stupidest way to kill someone painlessly when he strangles the messenger girl like dude? Dude?? Nothing else came to mind? Not even your poisons?? No??). But I profoundly disliked seeing the Liveship traders crew. Cheap crossover where Althea was bitter and unlikeable, Etta annoying though her refusal to see Kennit in a bad light is at least consistent, and everyone was just tense and brittle (though yeah, it was funny to see Fitz react to Parangon, ah-ah, fuck the entire rest of this though).

Bee burned it all down, which was satisfying, but otherwise? Why did I bother reading this? Why did she bother writing this, even? was my reaction upon finishing.

Listen, fuck the stone wolf okay, they should have gone into the wolf, but after living a little! After caring for Bee if she allowed it! After tasting, at long last, some sweetness, some companionship! Why did I get dragged along this bitter journey with this lackluster finish as my bitter reward?

It doesn't feel like something written out of love and hope, and even tragedies are full of love and hope, that's what makes them beautiful and compelling and worth experiencing. Even real life sorrows have this fleeting or sublimating grace to them a lot of the time. Why refuse it to your dear characters and readers?

In conclusion, I'm as obsessed as ever, but instead of feeling poignant feelings, I too now feel this bitterness about it all. I'd rather have kept only the tragedy, where love was still fresh and near and made it all, despite the unfairness and sacrifices, worth it.

[twinklingwatermellon]

I am excited for The WONDERfools, but speaking my truth, I don’t really think Cha Eunwoo can act. He’s pretty and all, but I’m much more hyped to see Park Eunbin in action again.

[lavenderpanic]

(Long rambly post so feel free to scroll) I wanna get some opinions on this so comment or reblog or whatever if you have any thoughts. Where do you draw the line between depicting things like abuse, EDs, drug use, etc. and romanticizing them? I write about a lot of pretty tough topics and I like to think that I do them justice and write them honestly and truthfully, including the bad parts that are often glossed over, but I do always worry that the wrong person will find my work and will start to idolize or romanticize what I've written.

I often think of movies like To The Bone or songs like Ultraviolence, which have been criticized for romanticizing EDs and abuse, respectively. And, as someone who consumes a lot of media related to those kinds of things and has also had the lived experience of actually living through them irl, I kind of agree, but I also kind of disagree. Like, when my ED was worse than it is now, I remember reading everything about anorexia I could get my hands on. I remember watching every movie and reading every blog and 90% of it wasn't "romanticized." Most of it was about your hair falling out and your skin going grey and not being able to shit, but I still idealized it. But now, in a better headspace, I can read/watch the same stuff and not see the beauty or allure of it.

Long winded way of saying that determining if something is romanticized is often dependent on the viewer/consumer. I honestly cannot think of a single way that EDs could be depicted that wouldn't have been romanticized by 2021 me. So do we never depict EDs in media? How do we toe that line?

But then on the other hand, there are certain things that I believe are rather blatant in their romanticization of things like drug use, abuse, etc. (Think Colleen Hoover and how she writes DV) and honestly have no redeeming educational merit, nor do they actually bring awareness to difficult issues. I think back to music I listened to that was like "oh I'm so thin and delicate I love starving lalala beauty is pain and suffering" like yeah duh that was bad for my brain, and it definitely fueled my ED.

Anyway. Been having lots of thoughts. This was worded poorly because I'm not feeling well atm but I'm curious where other people draw the line.

[dinitride-art]

You know, I don’t follow a lot of people who reblog stuff about good omens. So, there’s really only two people that I see good omens stuff from. However, despite knowing that one of those people is Neil gaiman and that logically there’s a fifty percent chance of the person putting this on my dash being Neil gaiman, every time I see a post and I’m like huh. This is a post about good omens that I didn’t expect to see today. Usually I don’t see posts about interesting details and speculation about the new season. Whoever could this be- my god. It’s Neil Gaiman once again.

[serfuzzypushover]

i. forgot to give two of them their tails kms