#because always

[dr-lemurr]

Starshine

Inspiration provided by @valhallaforducks though at the time she didn’t know why I’d randomly asked for someone to toss me a photo of Jeff Satur.

[tofangirlonly]

TRICK OR TREAT

[ae-neon]

The Rhys x Nesta aesthetic. I had a theory that Rhys actually loved Nesta and saw her more equal than Feyre.

Hello anon

I love that aesthetic and the recent by @/edgarallanhoesposts "Academic Rivals to Lovers" was so chef's kiss.

In the context of canon: Not many people like this pairing for obvious reasons and I don't blame them at all. But once I thought about it, it just seemed like the best way to play out that story.

I joked that sjm literally tried to recreate the Cullens with her inner circle but the similarities are a little glaring at times.

(People love to say Nesta is Rosalie but Mor fits just as well. My Nesta/Mor = Venus/Aphrodite Theory post is floating around somewhere. Mor with Cassian and Azriel with Elain, an almost perfect Cullen dupe)

Except for one

The mind reader and the natural shield.

This was the best part of Bella and Edwards dynamic. It's key to a healthy slow burn and especially to natural character and relationship development.

Other blogs (mainly @/bookishfeylin) have pointed out Feyre's bad communication skills before (and have great Feyre content) which is probably why Feysand went so "smoothly" : Feyre didn't have to grow as a person anymore, she just had to have Rhysand affirm her and guide her thoughts. He basically tells her she's never wrong and shapes this weirdly narcissistic side to her personality.

These "selfish" traits might have existed in small pieces before but one of the biggest points of book 1 was Feyre realising she's wrong about Tamlin, about Prythian and even about Nesta.

To be clear I used "grow as a person" rather than develop as a character because she does change. It's just not a very good change. Which is fine if that's what the story is about or what the narrative means to do but we know SJM thought she was cookin

She was not. And it started with the fact that Feyre was literally not meant for Rhysand until sjm decided to switch teams in the last 5 minutes. And no amount of retconning could overcome that key thing. Otherwise Feyre would have had Nesta's power. But she can't because then book 1 doesn't work at all.

I'm not saying Nesta was meant for Rhysand.

I personally think she was meant for Lucien and that a lot of Lucien's character went to Rhys rather than Cassian.

Book 2 and 3 Rhysand and book 1 Lucien both have the gentleman bastard things going for them. They both have complicated and tragic family backstories.

Hell, Lucien literally has the physical scar to show his rebellion against Amarantha while Rhysand has the emotional scars.

But I digress:

But it is interesting that in book 1 she is introduced with the key factor of a steel mind able to block Fae abilities and he's introduced as a mind reader and manipulator.

As SJM herself plagiarized "Like calls to Like?" Or Whatever

This power isn't an Archeron trait. It's exclusively a Nesta thing. And it's never actually explained.

Again, I'm not saying they were ever gonna be romantic partners - maybe Nesta was supposed to play a key role in defeating Rhysand (a la KoH) if he had remained the villain ???? Who knows.

But I do know that I find the idea of Nesta and Rhys pretty compelling because not only is Nesta sharp and clever and unflinchingly stubborn (plus literally raised to fit in somewhere dangerous like the CoN without being made to act like sex slave) - she also counters the one thing that makes Rhysand really dangerous, forces him to always step it up and gets a rile out of him.

She isn't just his equal.

Given time to understand and control her power, she's easily much more powerful. And that's how you even out a dynamic from "victim to lover" to "enemies/rivals to lovers"

Which is why sjm trying to Tame the Shrew with Cassian was never gonna work.

[esssteee]

Writing Patterns

Rules: List the first line of your last 10 (posted) fics and see if there’s a pattern!

tagged by @goatsandgangsters, thank you!!! <3

Let’s do this again, somewhere more comfortable.

He appears at first on a cold, pale dawn: a youthful lad requesting―demanding―safe passage, a lone shadow stark against the snow-painted Hedjut scenery of the north, his destination that of the more hospitable lands of southern Fjerda.

He doesn’t know when it started.

Fear.

“Nikolai Alexandrovich, what are you doing not being dressed yet?”

Winds are howling.

The sun has begun a slow descent for a time now, the air losing its warm quality, or as warm as it can be for northern Ravka’s early autumn.

At first, there is confusion.

A cough distracts him, followed by some loud nose-blowing.

At the twilight of his seventeen years, Nikolai comes back from the crucible that is the frontline, bloodied and cast in a new darkness adding age to what are otherwise a fresh face and a youthful mind.

Tagging: @inahandful-of-dust, @greensaplinggrace, @yletylyf, @aloveforjaneausten, @iamstartraveller776, if some of you want to try your hand at it!

[stimmingandstruggling]

more good news from tiktok: they’ve started blocking celebrities.

they’re calling it block party 2024. just blocking and ignoring countless celebrities who havent said shit about palestine. influencers, actors, anyone who went to the met gala, whatever, they’re getting blocked. and people keep talking about how cathartic it is, how good it feels, how they never realized they could DO that. there was some kind of subconscious law against blocking famous people, but it’s broken, and people are LOVING it. and it’s WORKING. a social media/digital advertising coordinator was talking about how ad companies are PANICKING, because they can’t accurately target anymore. so many big influencers, including fucking LIZZO started talking about palestine the MOMENT their follower counts started going down. and the best part? no one is forgiving them. lizzo posted a tiktok asking people to donate to palestinian families, and all the comments just said you’re a multimillionaire. put your money where your mouth is. blocked.

i feel like i’m witnessing the downfall of celebrity culture, right here right now. people are waking up.

[morganbritton132]

No one tells you when you get a Big Serious Job™ how many fucking abbreviations you’ll be forced to learn.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The math just adds up!

[junglejim4322]

The thing that is interesting is if you have any semblance of personality you will definitely encounter people who viscerally hate you and obsess over you for years and you will not even remember their name

[agave]

as a root vegetable, parsnip naturally desires to return to the earth 🌏🥕

[camaelczarka]

Louis dressing Lestat:

Armand dressing Lestat:

Lestat dressing himself:

[phantom-of-the-501st]

Remember that this is not the proof that they love each other

That was a last-ditch attempt from Crowley to get Aziraphale to stay

This is the proof that they love each other

Their love wasn't just made real because they kissed

It always existed

[cuntylouis]

Lestat + his wedding band 2.07 'I Could Not Prevent It' / Meet the Vampire Lestat teaser

[runawaymarbles]

The thing I keep coming back to, with all the *gestures expansively* is that real life doesn't have peaceful epilogues.

Every single win has to be defended. Forever. I'm sorry. It sucks. The Nazis lost until they stopped losing. The US had abortion rights, and then 50 years later it didn't. Empires fall, and then they invade other countries again. Oppressive regimes are overthrown and replaced with other oppressive regimes. You will never finish the work etc etc etc. Which is why it's so fucking important to be able to acknowledge and celebrate progress, when it happens. The people who came before you didn't put in all that work for nothing, and you aren't, either. You can't save it all for the Ultimate Victory because there is never going to be an Ultimate Victory. There's no such thing as a time when everything is good, and ours shall not be the commune of Heaven.

[wanderingibon]

anya deserved so much better

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.