#book 1.5

[layaart]

Winnie and Bellatine from Thistlefoot!

[gunsatthaphan]

🐶💥🐶.

[expelliarmus]

[darkcreamz95]

Made some JO Cooking Show doodles~

[varpusvaras]

My wife and I just spent over three hours hatewatching a movie that is less than two hours long...we had to pause every two minutes at the start and multiple times later on because we kept losing our fucking minds over and over again

[bastart13]

what do you actually think of waca? have you binged every arc?

I have only read the first three arcs though I do know a lot of spoilers for the rest of the arcs because my sister has read most of it :D

Personally, I enjoy the books a lot for the culture they create. The shifting but unchanging cultish atmosphere is great for constant conflict and works great with xenofiction. I think Firestar was a great protagonist to introduce the series and you do feel him earning his way up the ranks.

One of the best things the series does is maintain a sense of consequence and no easy/quick answers. Before the first book ends, Firestar knows Tigerstar is a murderer but it really makes sense each time why he can get away with it. Bluestar's devolving mental health and lack of trust never really got better. Leafpool and Crowfeather running away together hangs over both their heads for the rest of their lives. Even Firestar taking in so many outsiders breaking down his reputation both in and out of his clan works great for this. They never run out of conflict and it makes sense

On the flip side, I was surprised at the lack of personality for a lot of the characters. It is a massive cast so I don't blame the writers, but even the main characters kind of fall into the background and lose characterisation once the attention switches. Only a couple of non-POV characters stuck out to me but overall I think they all should have been exaggerated a bit to become distinct. Also, wow, a lot of these characters fall in love at the drop of a hat.

Bluestar, Cinderpelt, Yellowfang, Leafpool, and Hollyleaf are my favourite characters and I was astonished at how well the female characters were written and treated in arc 1. That... hasn't quite followed through and it's such a fascinating but weird feeling because you don't feel it as in-universe sexism, but the sexism of the writers creeping in.

A lot of characters do end up defaulting to "mother" or "mate" and lord a lot of mothers are entirely ignored. When Tigerstar tried to claim Brambleclaw and Tawnypelt from Thunder Clan I was just waiting for someone to bring up Goldenflower still lived there but, uh, no one did.

[vastly-fixated-devotee-667]

can someone explain to me the Old Builder Soren theory/headcanon? i assume it arose from his books being scattered throughout the portal dimensions, but if Soren were an Old Builder, wouldn’t Ivor have known that?

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

the doctor isnt neurodivergent or autistic or adhd or nonbinary or genderqueer or asexual. what the doctor is, is Not From Here

[bookwyrminspiration]

i almost successfully entered a bookshop without buying anything! key word almost. we’ll get em next time <- lying

[simonsrosebud]

oh neil, you would hate it here

[jamespotterthefirst]

Ethan and MC just talking for long moments of time is the height of romance. Soulmate activities.

[novelconcepts]

Moseying along in book 2 of The Expanse, and I cannot stress enough how much I am digging this series—except. There are Marines on Mars. We have fancy spaceship-travel shenanigans. There’s a body horror god molecule having its merry way with Venus. We are in Space, Motherfuckers. Why have I not met a single queer person yet????

[pawbeanies]

people keep tagging my posts w those captive prince bitches so now im listening to it at work. yknow. like a good cute office assistant. i have earbuds in its ok.

[bookie-the-reading-junkie]

tagged by @ladynightlark Thanks for tagging me!

Rules: make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! Then, tag as many people as you have WIPs

Since I kind of just got back into writing in the past couple of months, I don't have a lot of WIPs that I plan on actually doing something with. Most things I have planned are related to my Demon Slayer fic series Young Flames and Dying Coals (YFDC), because I have a few post-Lionheart fics in mind for that series. I'll list them as well as a couple ideas I have floating around!

YFDC: Lionheart ch 20

YFDC: Rust and Dust (Yoriichi's spirit is stuck in Yoriichi Type Zero)

YFDC: Pumped up kicks (one year later)

YFDC: Embers (final epilogue about ten years later)

Role Swap AU with Tanjuro and Demon!Kie (literally just came up with this yesterday but IDEAS)

non Demon Slayer WIPs/ideas

Fullmetal Alchemist x Harry Potter crossover (instead of getting his soul bonded to the armor, Al is sent to the wizarding world to defeat Voldemort)

How to train your dragon movie and book crossover (Movie cast is invited to the Wilderwest a year after the war)

@wanderinginkspots @ch1cken-egg @owlofthenight117 @ghostboymichael @wickedcriminal don't have to do this, but I'd love to hear your WIPs!

[sad-eyed-lady-of-the-paperbacks]

Eventually I’m going to type up my thoughts on 1.5 for real, but I’m too excited regarding Book II starting so off the top of my head I’m just going to say a couple things about the very end of the chapter.

Alyosha, who we were just told in the last chapter has faith and trust in people despite not being naive or stupid, is absolutely DREADING how his family is going to behave at the monastery. If Alyosha is convinced they’re going to act up, that does not bode well.

Despite being the irresponsible dissolute wastrel, who in lifestyle at least seems the most similar to Fyodor, we get some indications that there might be something noble about Dmitri. He’s the brother that Alyosha almost instantly becomes close to. Alyosha is sure that if anyone is going to take the meeting with the elder seriously and behave in a respectful way, it’s going to be Mitya. Also, while Mitya dropped out of school and while Fyodor rightly calculated at first glance that he would be easy to bamboozle, as we saw in 1.2, he is no means stupid or naive, because he too recognises that this whole thing is a farce or a trap. But he’s still determined to restrain himself, and tries to reassure Alyosha. We are also given some insight that the reason he agrees to this in the first place is because he secretly reproaches himself for his recent outbursts in the course of this feud with his father. Given Mitya’s biography, we might well find these glimmers of something more deep and honourable surprising.

And we also find out that Mitya’s memory apparently straight up sucks, because he can’t even remember what he promised Alyosha.

[confessionofanardentheart]

1.5 Starsty

Ivan seeks something unknown as of yet, Mitya seeks life's pleasures and what he's owed (a self- affirmed truth) and Alyosha seeks a bright truth quite beyond the dark world around him, as if he had found himself in Plato's cave. I expressed his love for humanity and desire to isolate himself are paradoxical -and they still are, though they are not contradictory. What Alyosha seeks is a truth via negation. The world of our senses is more complex and dark than it seems, the holy light is one, and it's simple yet mysterious. The achievement of the divine truth via negation -God is an other quite unlike the world and what we believe to be true about it. Alyosha seeks a truth at all costs, and if he ended in the monastery, it was only because the way he thinks made him a Christian, rather than his religion or a miracle shaping how he thinks. That's how he is a realist. The moment he reaches a different conclusion, he will chase it, no matter how diametrically opposed it is to his life so far, just as he decided to give "all" instead of "two rubles". So if the immortality of the soul proved to be the truth he arrived to, he will remove himself from the chaos, out of conviction and not fright- to be left alone with the light and contemplate it.

Shutting himself in a monastery despite his love for humanity is paradoxical, but necessary in his eyes... Just as there is paradoxical tension between obedience to the elder and freedom, with the former being seen as necessary to achieve freedom of the soul, as it is in many philosophies and doctrines that regard ignorance and endless desire as the true prisons of the human soul. Alyosha was compelled to go to the monastery out of admiration and love towards Elder Zosima, perhaps a father figure for this orphan? Far from being disconnected from the world, he is a man of the people who remains unbothered when Fyodor Karamazov is going to call at his door.

Alyosha is passionate about what he believes to be the right path, but he's still just a novice who feels anxious upon realizing he may be forced to become a spectator for the scene his relatives will make in the place he holds dear to his heart. Ivan's silence deeply unsettles him. Even Dmitri, who became more attached to him than his own full- blooded brother, worries him— as much as he respects his beloved Zosima, he's as powerless as he is to prevent what will follow...

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Links:

@keepingupwiththekaramazovs