#but holly hell

[chaotictrashgoblin]

Read some amazing fics that gave me brainworm, decided to write one with similar theme, but on the future, year after the end of the series.

Except for that, I have to rewrite the series to fit my narrative, which forced me to make a fix-it fic as some sort of prologue for my main fic

And now I'm already on 50k words and I'm not even near the middle of the rewrite.

Why I did this to myself.

[hannatokki]

I can't believe I haven't drawn john after double came out. I must remedy this

[thejudeduarte]

Jude would definitely be the type of person to watch action movies and talk about how unrealistic all the fighting is

[chronically-ghosted]

day before a 5 day holiday weekend. office empty. got me thinking thoughts.

[msrosez]

Cardan Greebriar, the unfortunately taken and unfortunately fictional man, you are

[rainagainstthewindowatnight]

sad blue films

thirteen ( 2003 ) dir. catherine hardwicke

[retrokid616]

imodna fans

me

[azrielthedrawer]

Get Weezer’d

[borgialucrezia]

"I think Louise is emotionally complex but she doesn’t over-pinpoint anything which kinda leaves you the audience with these questions and ambiguity." — HOLLIDAY GRAINGER

[redularium]

The Potts Method .

Gone, gone, the girl in brocade

Gone, the words we might have said

Howl winds, because she is dead

And gone, gone, gone

[starrynightsxo]

something I will never get over? cardan saying "you seem to have cut yourself" and jude replying "I could cut you too" THEN later cardan becoming a serpent and jude actually cutting him (she chops his head off) like my god did holly black really mother with this or what

[pa-pa-patato]

Holly:hey you said that your magic is different from other demons right?

Bendy:*nods*

Holly:*visibly very excited* how so!?

Bendy:….

Bendy:*starts to tear up* I don’t know

[lighthouseas]

i feel like we as a society do not acknowledge enough that holly wheeler, a supposedly minor character of very little importance, had the very last spoken line of s4

check if u don't believe me

[maingh0st]

@belabellissima's tags on this post deserve a post of their own, i—

[somewhereincairparavel]

TFOTA update (major spoilers for book 1): chapter 20

this book just keeps throwing plot twist after plot twist after plot twist on me and I'm falling for every.single.one. gosh. first jude kidnaps the human girl to free her into the mortal world, and she drowns herself? Then Dain yells at Jude for the thing I WASN'T expecting (stabbing Valerian) and then Jude fucking KILLS Valerian not even a few minutes later, then buried the body in HER house, then Balekin gatecrashes and slaughters almost everyone in his fucking blood line in the matter of MINUTES. Madoc kills Dain?? And ghost kills Caelia?? Rhyia kills herself?? Taryn and Locke might secretly have an affair??

Jude feels pleasure in seeing Cardan miss out on the coronation bc he got drunk which is ironically the best thing he did bc he dodged a bullet?? Now Cardan is the only hope elfhame has, which is also super ironic since Jude was marvelling over how glad she was that cardan wasn't ever going to be king in the first few chapters.

I NEED A MOMENT TO TAKE ALL THIS IN

[bonefall]

Since you mentioned only cats and a few other distant animals are sentient, does this mean foxes are getting their sentience removed? Midnight can talk to foxes in the books and even convinces some foxes to leave a patrol of cats alone (the foxes are WEIRDLY violent and talk about eating the cats too lmaoo).

I assume Hollyleaf's changes mean the Fox Cub Incident is either being moved or just removed entirely, I always found that small plot point interesting in face of all those "Non-cat in clan" AUs. Seems like something that could be interesting if an "us vs them" argument was formed from it, especially if it was targeted against Midnight and calling her unholy yknow?

Yeah, that sapience is gone completely. In this universe, language is limited only to humans, cats, and some distant animals that are far outside the range of Albion (elephants, bottlenoses, some parrots, etc)

And Hollyleaf's story especially. Ngl to you, I don't like that fox idea. Or anything about Hollyleaf's Story. I think it was the worst possible route to take.

"Hollyleaf will be a mother to this evil creature to learn what it's like to love something that hates you. It is so sad to be your mom Leafpool (Squirrel-who?). Don't you feel like a shitty daughter now, Holly? Let's not ask any questions about the code btw, or how you were already filled with crushing shame from it. Or how it made you so disgusted about the idea of pregnant nuns that you flipped your shit and ruined the lives of your entire family. No, what really mattered about this situation was maternal empathy. Also here take the nearest male character we can find to ship you with, we accidentally made Cinderheart too gay when she was upset about your death lmao"

But, digressing, putting my distaste of that novella aside,

WC is profoundly xenophobic already with just the cats, and I think it was a CATASTROPHIC mistake to make it so every animal is secretly intelligent but speaks animal language. Now every conflict between cats and their predators is an ethnic dispute! You're chasing out groups of people perfectly capable of reasoning if you bridged the language barrier, but they're also ACTUAL PREDATORS.

AT BEST; It's the same uncomfortable situations that Zootopia and Lion King ends up tripping over. In Zootopia, predators are used as an allegory for oppressed groups... but predators are MADE to eat prey. A rabbit is RIGHT to be terrified of a fox, twice its size with a jaw made for catching bunnies. In Lion King, lions have divine authority to rule over their dinner/subjects, and chase out any animal based on their personal ideology... which just so happens to only be leveraged against rival predator species.

(Nerd preemption: yes i know about lion guard. I do not think diverse Lion Cops were the solution you think it is.)

Carelessly adding sapience to "natural systems" often ends up accidentally justifying bigotry. Bigotry doesn't MAKE SENSE, it's bullshit we made up and perpetuate through culture, but food webs are completely logical. The rabbit fears the fox because the fox eats rabbits. The lion hates the hyena because they compete for the same food. Gazelles don't happily submit to an overlord who is divinely capable of deciding who should live and who should die, it's just nature.

But it gets even worse-- because it's actually WORST CASE; the Erins saw that complicated moral problem and went, "don't worry! They're actually born evil! Foxes just talk about food and killing things :)"

like... my brother in cats, YOU gave them language in the first place! What was the fucking point if they were just going to be evil barbarians anyway?!? For ONE scene where Midnight could show off her Duolingo streak???

So to summarize,

It was an awful idea to start with

It was executed in the worst possible way

In a series that is already plagued with xenophobic sentiment, this somehow made it even worse and more direct

If it was completely nuked it from the story, the series would be immediately better with minimal change. Holly caring for what is essentially the clan cat-equivalent of an exotic animal like a chimp or a tiger cub would have done the same thing

There is not even a glimmer of an idea here that justifies the poison that full sapience does to the wider implications of the series.

Don't even get me started on the Badger Debaucle in TNP, which is actually in my top 5 for most vile things in WC

So if I don't explicitly say that a species in BB is capable of true language, assume it is non-sapient. Talking animals like Midnight and Rat Leader are magical individuals-- gods, curses, etc.