#can you tell i love this book?

[decaffeinatedpartymuggoop]

My favorite thing about Annabeth is her wardrobe.

Cause like, Rick simplifies her clothes in a way a man would, and you can tell.

Cause in EVERY book, from The Lightning Thief to Chalice, she’s in the goddamn CHB shirt. With like some shorts or cargo pants. Nothing more, nothing less.

He’s made improvements over the years, giving her some other clothes. But he’ll always come back to old faithful.

Like, he most definitely did it on accident, but he made her so Adam Sandler and I love it

[egophiliac]

don't think I'm not still deep in the episode 7 brainrot. because OH BOY AM I

(also one more extremely, obnoxiously self-referential thing, I'm -- I'm so sorry)

[somnimagus]

My page for @sheikahzine; about Impaz's duty to her village, empty of people and full of memories.

[id in alt text]

[cuties-in-codices]

more medieval manuscript repairs

all from a miscellany containg thomas de chabham's "summa poenitentialis", southern germany (?), first half of the 13th c.

source: Basel, Universitätsbibl., B X 1, fol. 56r, 67r, and 71r

[sidsinning]

When men like problematic violent video games and media it's easily "life doesn't equal fiction", but when women like toxic romance it's "poor women are being brainwashed into liking abusive relationships we shouldn't glorify", but society don't wanna acknowledge their infantilization of women when it comes to guilty pleasure hobbies geared towards a female demographic, like they don't have common sense and a brain when consuming fiction

[offonaherosjourney]

If Alethkar wasn't always at war with someone, Adolin Kholin would have already discovered and gotten into drag. Sure, his wife would have to write most of his jokes and quips for him, but his fashion and dance routines would be unmatched. Her drag name would be Dolly Khocklin

[gloombeaches]

also idk if anyone else on here has seen some of the new scaremester covers sooo comp post of all the covers shown off so far!

[merakiui]

more eldritch horror, but this time with riddle.

there’s something strange about the old victorian house you’ve moved into.

you aren’t scared of its creaks and groans late into the night, all sounds of a house settling, nor do you fear the freezing cold. poor insulation, a part of any old fixture, you’re told, which you work to fix with every inexpensive and modern solution in the book.

it’s the eyes you don’t like.

they’re there when you’re out of the house, when it’s dark and all you can see peering in from the outside are shadows. but they’re there in the window, open wide and staring. they never seem to blink. and when they do, they blink slowly, one eye at a time, as if they’re only just understanding how to do the motion. you didn’t know they were there until a neighbor, who happened to be strolling by, noticed and pointed it out. you thought it was silly; you live alone and there’s no such thing as ghosts. but then you saw them yourself one night, when you stumbled out of your friend’s car after a night of celebration. you saw them watching you from the second story window, unblinking, listless. they snapped onto your form as soon as you emerged from the car.

you hurried in and turned on every light to find what you assumed was an animal or an intruder. no such thing.

maybe it was the glare from a light or the mirror reflecting something. you thought this was reasonable and for a few months you fooled yourself with this delusion, but the eyes never left. they’re always there in that same room, at the same time, looking out at you. like you’re the house and the house is a person. like the roles are reversed.

- - -

in your paranoia, you’ve started misplacing things. they turn up weeks later. you’re beginning to wonder if the possibility of a haunt is a reasonable assumption. either that, or perhaps you’re going mad. you’ve no idea.

the house leaks when it rains. it’s a filthy liquid. reddish brown, as if it’s tea or blood. you set out mugs and pails in hopes of catching it all so it won’t stain the floors. they fill up quickly. sometimes the house leaks when it isn’t raining. you think it’s a reflection of your mood sometimes. a foolish thought.

until you press your ear to the wall and mistake your heartbeat for that of another’s. again, another foolish thought. the house is not breathing or crying or sighing. it’s a house. it’s not alive.

but just because you’re a mess, you pat the wall consolingly and whisper, “don’t cry. it’ll be okay.”

the house stops leaking after that.

- - -

sometimes, if you’re too tired to let yourself finish, you lie in bed until you fall asleep. the house is silent and still. in your dreams, darkness enshrouds you in its silky, frigid embrace. you arch up into its touch, twisting and turning in your sleep, cradled in shadow. something curls around your thighs and pulls them apart, a slimy and smooth appendage prodding at your private parts. you shudder through your orgasm, tears dampening your eyelids.

the house whispers back: “don’t cry. it’s okay.”

you wake up feeling well-rested, but your underwear is damp. a wet dream? strange. you don’t normally get them. not since you moved into this house and struggled to fall asleep, spooking yourself with your own shadow.

you think nothing of it and swing your legs over the bed, ready to start the day.

- - -

when you’re sick, the house seems to make it significantly worse.

it’s cold, so you bundle up in layers. and then you feel feverish, so you strip off your second pair of socks and shrug off the extra blankets and sweater. but then the cold inevitably seeps through. you’re too weak to get up and do much of anything, so you rot in your bed, coughing feebly, curled in on yourself, napping the daylight away.

hours later, just as the sun’s dipping below the horizon, you wake to a glass of water on the bedside table. it’s accompanied with medicine, strawberry-flavored lozenges for your raw throat, and a bowl of soup. in your delirium, you must’ve prepared these for yourself and then left them on the table while you slipped in and out of sleep.

you manage to prop yourself up enough to drink some water, choke down the medicine, try some of the soup. it’s still hot.

that’s weird.

you’re certain it should be cold by now. and when did you put your socks back on? and why is there a cool rag draped over your forehead? did you do that? you must’ve.

no one else is here. you live alone.

weakly, making a laugh out of your misery, you tell your bedroom, “thanks for looking after me.”

in your dreams, the house and its shadows smile at you with adoring eyes. why wouldn’t i? they seem to say. you’re the heart of this house. without you…

you wake up with a hollow head, the fog of sickness ebbing away at a snail’s pace. it’ll take a few days before you can emerge from the graveyard of sheets.

sometimes you imagine having a lover or a best friend or even a roommate you can only tolerate occasionally, anyone who’ll look after you in your sickness and loneliness. anyone who’ll be there to listen to your woes when you rant about all the terrible things in your life. anyone who’ll be there to congratulate you when you succeed—when good things come your way.

you suppose you’re not so bad on your own. the house isn’t either. although you wish it wouldn’t make you so sick, incapacitate you until you’re properly bedridden.

in a few days, you’ll feel better.

you shut your eyes and fall back into slumber.

- - -

“this is too much house for one person.”

that’s what everyone tells you.

“well, i think it’s just enough,” you’ll say.

and it’s true. for its age, the house is in fine shape. occasionally, a mouse or two will find their way inside with the common house bugs. they’re all dead by morning, arranged in a neat pile for you to sweep up. it startled you at first and made you wonder if someone was living in the walls, only coming out at night, like a fairy or a ghost of some sort. a little helper.

but then you realized that was impossible. it happens enough that you can’t chalk it up to coincidence. nature works in mysterious ways, but not like this. this is unnatural.

but the pest problem is dealt with, so you clean and dispose of them.

next time, it will be a bigger pest. an intruder, maybe. or a persistent ex.

you wonder when your thoughts started becoming so macabre. when your dreams shifted into that of nightmares.

- - -

the house bleeds.

real blood. red blood.

a knife tears along the wallpaper, peeling it up in ribbons, and from the rip comes thick, soupy blood. it drips in crimson tendrils, puddling on the floor. you watch it, quietly mystified.

“this is what’s been making you sick!” your neighbor exclaims, gesturing to the wall for example. “this house is rotting!”

“it’s not rotten,” you tell them, quirking your head slightly. you don’t understand. why do they care so much?

“rotting,” they correct. “something in this house is rotting and it’s not good for your health.” they cover their nose and grimace. “even i feel faint and i’ve only been here a few minutes. fuck’s sake, (name), how do you live like this? you need to leave. call someone to deal with this. you can stay with me in the meantime. you’ll feel better.”

you open your mouth to agree because, yes, that would do wonders for your physical and mental health, but the house has a hold on you.

two eyes snap open in the shadowed doorway. something is looming there, watching your neighbor, who’s gesturing with the knife. you can feel the malevolence blanketing the air, deadly like carbon monoxide.

“i think you should leave,” you tell your neighbor, and you force them out because if they don’t go now they’ll be sick or worse. you promise you’ll figure this out. you will.

with enough prodding, they leave.

the eyes remain, watching you in silence as you patch up the wounded wall. “they’re only worried for me. that’s what you do when you care about someone. you worry.”

you scrub the blood from the wall and floor. it’s staining the wallpaper with a faint smear.

even if you could leave, you don’t think the house would allow it.

that’s silly. there’s nothing in this house but you.

right?

- - -

you need to get out.

a few days away will set you straight. you decide you’ll go only so your neighbor won’t fret. you have the strangest feeling that this will keep them safe.

oh, how the house hates to be empty.

if it could, you think it’d sag on the skeleton of its structural support, sad and pitiable. like wrinkled skin on bones. when you lay your head down at night, it’s to the second beat of another heart hidden deep within the walls. when you peer through the darkness, you think you see them moving, a rise and fall, as if breathing.

you’re not sure how, but this house is alive.

and it’s not going to let you leave.

you know it won’t because it’s stifling and suffocating. it grabs you by the ankle and tries to pull you back deeper inside, tears your suitcase open, shakes with a wrath so strong it thunders through the floorboards.

you brace yourself against the door frame, fighting it. it pulls with a surprising amount of force and you fall, hitting the floor with an echoing smack. you feel sick and dizzy, nauseous. something’s in the air. a haze. you think you’re seeing double.

in the gloom of a poorly lit hall, you see something dragging itself towards you. two impossibly round eyes, almost bug-like, large, black pupils ringed with red, are set into a ghastly pale face. it’s human…but not quite. it has the frame of a human, the body, but it crawls.

no.

no, it drags itself like it has only a torso and arms. like it can’t use its legs. like it doesn’t know how.

it reminds you of a pupa. wingless. small. squishy. fragile.

it hits you then—what this thing is.

it’s the house.

[benevolenterrancy]

okay finished the first book of the fish isekai series and it is RIDICULOUSLY fun -- it's like eating candy, sweet and stupid and very hard to stop. prince jing is perfect, i adore him

[khattikeri]

i actually admire lan wangji's character development a lot more when i acknowledge that prior to wei wuxian's death, he isn't actually as "righteous".

teenage lan wangji is regarded highly because he is upper class, has strong cultivation, and obeys his family and society's strict expectations. his rigidity and responsibility are more guided by the idea that his duty (the "right thing") is rule-following rather than doing actual good, even against those rules.

he's not a perfect stickler for the rules. he can be stubborn and petty, but even the few times he does transgress (e.x. kneeling before the gentian house) he doesn't get very far.

anyway... even with all his manpain struggling-- maybe even because of it, and because of his own lack of political power compared to people like lan xichen or lan qiren-- young adult lan wangji was honestly pretty entitled, even with his genuinely good intentions towards wei wuxian.

instead of doing the more difficult (yet right) thing of speaking up against those persecuting wei wuxian-- calling out his elders and the other clans as wrong, unjust, unrighteous, and acting against them (see jiang clan motto "do the impossible", which wei wuxian embodied very well)-- lan wangji was constantly trying to get wei wuxian to change himself and fall in line with society's expectations to avoid dying.

true, he eventually fights 33 of his family members... but by the time nightless city even happens, once jiang yanli dies, it's far too late.

yes, resentful energy is dangerous, and yes guidao is deeply misunderstood, and yes lan wangji didn't know about the golden core transfer. but even without knowing wei wuxian has no alternative, lan wangji knew that others were incorrectly labeling wei wuxian as evil. he knew the major clans kept attacking and provoking him, and while harder to realize, he could've reasonably seen how wei wuxian's actions are always twisted to demean him as a servant's son.

lan wangji wanted wei wuxian to come back to gusu so he could keep him safe, lock him up. but what would that have even helped in the end? love is a sympathetic cause, but locking up the one you love and never truly addressing why they're in danger is a selfish sort of love that doesn't reach the heart of the issues at hand.

only after wei wuxian's death is lan wangji able to let go of that. wei wuxian owed him nothing, not even change. lan wangji intentionally, purposefully chose each and every single day for thirteen years to remember wei wuxian by embodying what the man stood for, and acting accordingly. despite his grief and pain, he truly does become a good and righteous person.

contrast that with jiang cheng's reaction after wei wuxian's death. of clinging to everything he felt wei wuxian owed him. of vocally, violently demanding retribution after wei wuxian comes back to life. how dare you, why did you, you should've, you must... cattily justifying his aggression with equal parts resentful indignation and unhealthy "love" of their imbalance, of what they used to be.

lan wangji does none of that. by the time we reach the present day storyline, lan wangji, like wei wuxian, lets the past stay past and chooses to do good. even if that means going against the grain of society and expectations. he's a phenomenal person and character. i love him so much

[praetorqueenreyna]

Hi-res version of the frostbite.studios & atouchofmagicdesigns ACOTAR dust covers! Bless them for making Lucien and Tamlin look SO FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOOODDDD!!!

[rugwurm]

deus ex machina

[krowbby]

polly:

sarge telling people every day:

bonus from tonker:

[starrynightarchive]

it makes me want to tear my hair out when someone mentions that platonic relationships need to have sexual/romantic undertones to be interesting. friendships that blur the lines between romantic and platonic is great, friendships that have sexual relations are great, any kind of friendship is great. but these days im seeing this awful thought of "friendship needs to not be strictly platonic to be interesting and platonic" and people don't realise that this is just "friendships are less important than romantic/sexual relationship" in a different font. im very intense about my friends and each of my relationship with them is different than the other. one of my best friends is also almost like my partner. another one of my best friend is just my best friend. there is nothing romantic or sexual orientation whatever between us. i love both of them dearly and one relationship here is not more important than the other to me. i smile so wide my face hurts when i see her walking towards me. we used to live a few streets away and yet everytime i saw her i used to run to go embrace her. i have seen them in their lowest and they have seen me in mine. i do not want to kiss her on the lips or make her my girlfriend. the thought has never crossed my mind. but she has saved my life multiple times. she is a part of my soul. she is my friend. and if you say "yeah, that's what i mean, that emotion and its intensity is inherently romantic!" then that means you haven't experienced the height of love and care friendship can offer and im so sorry for your loss. also you are subscribing into the inherently harmful thought of "everything that is intense and meaningful is romantic". like my wonderful friend vik once said, "they're not my just anything. they're my friends."

[aroaceleovaldez]

Nico and Percy's dynamic through the series is eternally funny to me, because it's just. like.

Percy's having a constant mental struggle between his fatal flaw of loyalty with a promise he made to Bianca to protect Nico, versus his Big 3 kid desire to maim other Big 3 kids / Poseidon descendant urge to totally maim Nico specifically. He hates Nico so so much. He thinks Nico's annoying and weird at best, and creepy/sketchy when he's older. The only positive thoughts Percy has towards Nico are "He's Bianca's brother and Bianca was my friend and I owe her/He's Hazel's brother and Hazel is my friend and would kill me if I was mean to him," "He's a powerful asset and useful ally (if questionable)," and "He's kinda pathetic and I feel maybe a little bad about it." Percy has multiple occasions throughout the series where he strongly considers - and on one occasionally actually goes through with - throttling Nico.

Meanwhile, Nico is following around Percy like a lost puppy. He explicitly can never bring himself to even dislike anything about Percy no matter how hard he tries. He has a whole bit in BoO where he's mentally going "UGH he's so stupid BUT IT'S ENDEARING HOW DARE HE." He's totally smitten. He's making deals with his dad for Percy. He's making convoluted plans to help Percy stand a chance against Kronos. During the entirety of BoTL it's like he's playing tsundere - "I'm helping NOT PERCY SPECIFICALLY with this quest! Me helping Percy would be SILLY because I DEFINITELY HATE HIM." Then he proceeds to show up to Percy's birthday party to basically ask him on a weird date and spend the entire next book scrambling around trying to help him or protect him or impress him. And Percy could not give less of a shit.

Just. That dynamic is so funny to me. Percy is the founder of the Nico Protection Club in that he's the one they're all protecting Nico from and meanwhile Nico is throwing himself at Percy to the point where the literal god of gay love calls him out on it.

[mylittlenookcorner]

Everyone being afraid and tiptoeing around Sabran when she’s throwing a fit and then there’s Ead who just deadpans “You’re an idiot” to the queen of Inys.