#especially due to two specific scenes lol

[running-in-the-dark]

had a weird dream lol (nsfw I guess)

so I dreamed. that I dreamed. that I was watching a Night Court x The Librarians crossover episode. and there was a scene where Dan Fielding had sex with Jenkins. just. yeah. it was not censored but I couldn't see because I was too confused why that was suddenly happening (it was logistically impossible and involved dancing and happened in a crowded room lol) (I think someone was hovering)

so then I woke up (remember I dreamed I was dreaming). and wrote a tumblr post about it. I don't think I would be writing this right now if that hadn't been part of it lol.

that was the not so weird part, it got much stranger after that. tried to find footage of that episode, there was a conspiracy about it, found it, X Files stuff (somehow Mulder and Scully were involved in finding the episode lol), Guillermo from WWDITS was there and I thought his name was Graham and he was offended, some guys used Bull from Night Court as a battering ram, there were sex toys lying/rolling around everywhere, Jenkins [redacted] (felt too weird typing it out. it was good though....), stuff about executions, random monsters, some guy was my dad and he was mean. it really felt like my brain was just given a list of bullet points and gave up on making it into something that made sense

soo yeah uh lots to think about 🤔

[butterflydm]

The Queen of Attolia (plus some WoT comparisons)

Haha, it's been a few months but I got my chance to read the next book in the Queen's Thief series and it was so good! I am going to have two sections in this review -- my overall thoughts and then some specific thoughts that are mostly for @markantonys due to the series being her recommendation and I have a lot of thoughts about the comparisons between the Queen of Attolia x Eugenides and Mat Cauthon x Fortuona, because you can really do a point by point comparison, though I don't think it was intentional -- I think that Megan Whalen Turner and Robert Jordan were both going for the same idea but Turner was, imo, wildly more successful than Jordan at it.

But first, thoughts that don't particularly relate to The Wheel of Time:

We open with a tense cat and mouse chase between The Thief and the Queen's guardmen and that is really the heart of this book when it comes down to it -- a cat and mouse game between two extremely complicated people, and how they have to navigate in the world that they share.

Turner is really good at writing these fun action scenes where you're very much in the PoV of the character.

The (apparent) foundation that is laid here (that later gets overturned because Gen got to me again and he was once again acting on personal information that he kept from me for the majority of the book, lol, love him for it) - is very much beginning as enemies who have respect for each other's skills. At this point in the book, I knew that they would end up married due to spoilers and I know that it's considered a good romance, so I was really looking forward to seeing the journey, especially since I did get spoiled about the huge upcoming traumatic event.

But we start from this strong narrative place where they are aware of each other and have respect for each other but they belong to two separate counties that have some political tensions and they are both important parts of those countries and can't set that aside.

Because of how bold Gen is, Attolia has been backed into a corner by his actions and we actually see this affirmed by Gen's cousin (the Queen of Eddis) and her thoughts on the matter -- she is aware that Gen going into Attolia's country to spy on her is a dangerous thing for him to do.

And then the cutting off of his hand. This is brutal, and it feels brutal, and then we also get these hints of Attolia's reaction afterwards (that we get into more later) but especially her reaction when he begs her not to hurt him anymore and you can really see her feel the impact of what she did. She doesn't allow herself to show her remorse but even this early on, we're getting hints of it as readers.

Then when Gen goes home, we actually see that the Queen of Eddis also maintains a mask in public, just like Attolia does, so we see another hint here that Gen understands that kind of masking. Eddis looks just as cold and impenetrable to Attolia's guards who return Gen to her, as Attolia looks to everyone else.

I really appreciated how long the recovery time was after the loss of Gen's hand and how much time we spent with him to feel him get used to the changes (and how economically Turner is able to pass that time). We get these tiny looks at Attolia as well, and her difficultly sleeping at night, which we expand on later.

Then we get the return of the Magus from Sounis! It was really nice to see him again, dropping in to visit Gen, but he's also here to give us that continuation of the division between personal and political -- as a person who genuinely likes Gen, the Magus was upset about what Attolia did to him, but as the advisor to the king of Sounis, he knew that they would be able to use Eddis's reaction to Attolia's act on the political stage.

But what a way to learn that the two countries are at war!

It takes some time for Gen to really believe that Eddis went to war over him, and we see him processing that over the course of the book as well, and they talk about it more. I do think that Gen does not always realize how deeply other people care about him.

Turner really is so good at giving us these pieces of information that reframe the earlier story -- now we know that during all those snippets of Attolia that we had earlier, she was also dealing with realizing that her actions with Gen led to the war that she's currently embroiled in.

The progression of the war was really well done (again, Turner is very economical with her narrative here), with what details she chooses to focus in on, and we see that Gen, even though he has gained more of an ability to have that cold and impassive mask like Attolia has, still does things like make sure that no one is on the ships that he's destroying, because he doesn't like getting people killed.

Turner also does a really good job showing how destabilizing the war is to all three countries involved, and how the war is hurting everything.

We take a little mythology story break here in the narrative, which was a fun story about love and choice, both of which are very relevant. This story definitely does end up applying pretty heavily to Gen and Attolia in the themes, and I like the style that Turner tells these stories.

I love how perceptive Gen is once he's been apprised of the situation and we get to see the thought process that leads to him blaming the emperor's ambassador more for the loss of his hand than he does Attolia herself, because he sees that ambassador understood that seeing Gen maimed and returned to Eddis would be more like to spark a war than just killing him would, and a war is exactly what he needs in order to try to justify getting his troops onto Attolia's land. All the politics here are pretty complex but I feel like the book does a good job explaining the reasoning.

And this is also the point where it's really confirmed that Attolia knows that the ambassador is underestimating her, and that she also understands a lot of the things that he thinks that he's pulling over on her. But because of the fragile position that she's in, she needs to entertain the ambassador's advice and his attempts to sidle in on her country.

Quote about Gen: "It was like him that if he had to have a thing, to have the fanciest thing of its kind."

I really like all this about the cost of war; the price of war; and why this outside party has been trying to urge war on the three countries.

We also get Eddis admitting to Gen that she thinks that she could have possibly controlled herself and not started a war if he had only been killed, rather than treated in a way that she finds so insulting, and that it made her so angry that she made a choice that had now brought a lot of damage to their own country that she wishes could be avoided. And Gen can see, basically, that the ambassador of Medes is the one who put both Eddis and Attolia in this trap, and he was used as the tool to start this war.

We really move into Attolia's PoV and we get the story of the broken amphora (she thought about it when she saw Gen after she'd had his hand cut off) -- it was, essentially, the moment that marked when her life changed and she couldn't be a young girl anymore.

This really is a heartbreaking story -- how after her brothers died and she was the heir, her father essentially sold her off to be married, and her fiance was actively plotting against her father and how to suck her country dry for his own benefit after they were married. And how she kept herself quiet and small and just listened, but then poisoned him at their wedding feast, also having her captain of the guard kill the next man who tried to force her to marry him. We also see here that she only trusts loyalty that she can buy in gold (because every other kind of loyalty failed her).

Then we finally get the big reunion! This scene is so tense, with both Attolia and Gen wearing these cold masks (we later realize that Gen has pretty much directly modeled his mask on Attolia's) and we get this private negotiation that is only for the two of them. And this moment when it is literally just them, together on a boat, with no one else to interrupt them... just exquisitely done.

It's been implied before, but this is where we get our confirmation that Attolia has been just as haunted by Gen this entire book as he's been haunted by her. They've been separated for most of the book but constantly haunted by each other. I gotta share the quote:

"He was too young to have bones that ached. No matter what he thought of himself, he was hardly more than a boy. A boy without one hand. She reached up to push the wet hair out of her face, wondering when she had sunk so low that she had begun torturing boys. It was a question she had asked herself night after night, lying awake in her bed or sitting in a chair by the window watching the stars slowly move across the sky."

We've been seeing her do those things the entire book, but this is the first moment when we're told what she was thinking about in those moments.

We also get our Big Revelation here that Gen has had feelings for Attolia since before the events of The Thief! How does he hide these things from us so well! Gen! We learn here (and we get even more detail later) that he's been feeling drawn to her for literal years. That part of the reason that he made those trips that she thought were mockery was because he wanted to be close to her and get a look at her and see if she really was the monster that their spies reported that she was, or if she was just a woman who was being forced to make difficult, maybe impossible choices.

And then we get our story reversal where Attolia gets 'rescued' by the ambassador and his people, and we get to see how she behaves in these circumstances where she doesn't believe that she can trust Gen (sure, he said he loves her, but she cut his hand off! And he's a known liar! how can she trust him?) vs this dude that she knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that she absolutely cannot trust.

The moment when she tells her handmaidens not to put on her golden bee earrings, I knew exactly what she'd done, especially when we got Gen's reaction. The writing doesn't have to tell us in the moment what's occurring (that she put on the earrings that he left for her one time and that she said she would only wear if she'd decided to marry him) for us to know, and I love that. This coded sign that only he will understand.

It's the most unique and fascinating marriage proposal I've ever read. Well done. Haha, and I did guess that the gray-haired man that he fought so well with was his father. <3

Love the moment when we see him process that marrying the Queen of Attolia is going to mean... that he'll be the King of Attolia. He just wanted to marry her because he liked her! <3 <3

And everything after that was just so delightful. Working together for the double-cross and then the process of Eddis and Attolia working out the treaty and Eddis trying to convince Gen that they can have the treaty without the marriage, and his rejection of that, and then essentially testing Attolia with that offer as well.

I also really like one of the moments when Attolia realizes that she can trust Gen, which is when Eddis tells her that of course Gen also lies to her. Constantly. And I feel like that reframed a lot of her interactions with Gen for Attolia. Realizing that Gen wasn't being maliciously deceitful towards her; he's just Like That With Everyone. Plus, I can't forget the moment when, after the battle is won, Attolia and Eddis return to where Gen is being held and Attolia believes for a moment that he's been poisoned as a parting shot by the Medes ambassador and we can literally watch as her heart completely shatters and she is completely undone and devastated in her head and even shaken where people can see her. It's beautifully written.

And we get the moment with the gods (who are very real in this series but very carefully choose how they interfere) and it's just as well done as it was in the first book. The windows in the palace shattering as the goddess responds to Gen's sacrifice! And basically laying out to him that his suffering was required to reach this ending and would he trade it back if he could -- if it meant that Attolia would have been forced to make that deal with the Medes ambassador. And Gen would rather have Attolia in his life and wanting to marry him than have his hand back.

Just that whole final section that leads up to the ending of the book, with Attolia really being able to believe Gen when he says that he loves her... it's so good. How the narrative (and Eddis and Gen) are able to tease out Attolia's feelings for Gen, and how we end on that final quiet moment between the two of them. Really powerful ending.

It's a really good book and it's a really good romance. Gen and Attolia are both fantastic characters and even with all the twists and turns and revelations, their relationship felt incredibly captivating and believable. I really believe that Gen wants to break through Attolia's walls and, just as important, I feel like there's a person on the other side of those walls who is worth being loyal to and loving. You understand why Gen wants to be Attolia's husband, even after she ordered his hand cut off, which is very impressive storytelling.

Hopefully I'll get the chance to read the The King of Attolia soonish, and not in, like, four months.

*

And now onto the Wheel of Time/Mat & Tuon comparison section of the review for @markantonys 💖

It really does feel like a point-by-point improvement on Mat & Tuon, though I suspected unintentionally (it looks like this book came out 3 years before CoT).

Starting with the characters: wow, Attolia really is so much the person that I would have wanted Tuon to be. And she feels like the person that Jordan wanted readers to believe that Tuon was. Every place where I was going through my WoT reread and going "footage not found!" about something the narrative tried to claim about Tuon is something where the footage is very much found for Attolia. While Tuon's potentially heartbreaking backstory really is just backstory and ends up have zero impact on her active storyline, Attolia's tragic backstory is the entire spine of what her character is going through and what Gen can help her with.

We get to see and really experience Attolia's context, which is not something that we got with Tuon. Jordan makes an attempt, I guess, with Karade's sob story about Tuon and the doll, but he made the bizarre choice to frame this story in Karade's PoV (Tuon's slave), not from Tuon's PoV. For whatever reason, Jordan always insisted on making Tuon the most insufferably smug person in the world in her own PoVs.

With Attolia, we get those breaks in her mask that I kept desperately wanting us to get with Tuon but we never did. Again, this is mostly only for the reader, not even for Gen -- the reader gets to see behind Attolia's mask. And so Attolia is captivating and fascinating and I understand why she felt like she had to do these horrible things.

With Attolia, we actually get her being removed from her power base and feeling helpless, which Jordan never had the guts to do with Tuon (when Mat kidnaps Tuon, he lets her take her slave along with her, and then some of his allies decide to support Tuon over him despite having zero narrative or character-based reason to do so), which means that when Attolia regains her power, it has a much bigger impact on the narrative, while it felt like Tuon never really lost hers. Attolia and Gen both manage to be scrappy underdogs, in their own way, and that's something that Tuon never was.

Both Attolia and Tuon commit horrific acts, but while we see Attolia's remorse and how it torments her, Tuon always seems to shrug off the horrible shit that she does. It doesn't ever affect her emotionally and she never seems to think past it after it's done. She is a character without remorse or reflection (I think she vaguely thinks that it's a shame one time when she's pondering how she will break Mat's spirit but that's about it). And Attolia has those two qualities in spades. Attolia feels like a real woman to me in a way that Tuon never did. We see the brave face that she puts on, we see her regret and remorse, we see her loneliness, we see her jealousy over the Queen of Eddis, who is able to trust the members of her court in a way that Attolia has never felt she could trust her own. Tuon just feels really shallow in comparison to Attolia.

Even in the first cat and mouse scene with Attolia and Gen in this book, you can see the push and pull and the narrative equality of the characters. Gen has been in and out of four different strongholds of hers, and she feels that he's pretty much taunting her with his abilities. There's a mutual respect for the other person which was one of the big things that was missing for me with Mat and Tuon. In her final PoV in KoD, we learn that she has not had an ounce of respect for him during this entire journey -- it's not until she sees how the Band respects him that she considers whether or not there may be more to him than just being a pretty and dumb sextoy. And the big problem with that is that was the period when the 'romance' was being developed. During the time when she didn't have any respect for him as a person. And that makes it very difficult to find their relationship compelling, even apart from the fact that I found Mat himself profoundly unlikable in CoT & KoD.

Now, Mat being a terrible person (in CoT & KoD) and Tuon being a terrible person (always and forever) are not things that would stop me from shipping them in general. I am capable of finding Awful4Awful pairings compelling (like Louis and Lestat from Interview with the Vampire). They don't have to be good people, but there has to be something in the relationship that grabs onto me at any level, and that's where Mat and Tuon failed.

We can see in Attolia's thoughts that she envies the relationship that Gen has with the Queen of Eddis -- she envies that loyalty and wishes she could have something like that of her own. That sort of envy was also missing from CoT & KoD (I am going to mention, briefly, that some of these elements were present in the Mat & Tuon relationship in AMoL but at that point, it was just too late for me to give a shit about their relationship, because CoT & KoD thoroughly killed any interest that I had in them). Whether because of his own personal kinks or because of the plans that Jordan had for the Outriggers, Jordan made Tuon too much of an island; too much of an wall. The way he wrote her made me feel like nothing Mat could do would ever really matter to her in any way; that she was content to use him up and then throw him out and that's just not my thing. It may have been Jordan's kink but it is not mine.

So I definitely understand @markantonys's point about this feeling like a well-written version of Mat and Tuon! It really does feel like this is the sort of relationship that Jordan wanted to write with Mat and Tuon but didn't have the skill at romance writing to pull off. Something like Mat and Tuon is Hard Mode Romance and Jordan wasn't even always good at Easy Mode Romance.

Two of the key elements that really makes Attolia and Gen work for me is just getting to sit and exist in Attolia's emotional reactions to the wrong that she has done to Gen; and Gen acknowledging and processing the harm that she'd done. And both of those things were desperately needed with Mat and Tuon, both as characters and as a romance.

A major major part of why Mat and Tuon failed for me is because I didn't feel like Mat was actually reacting to her realistically for the vast majority of their page time together; she threatens to invade a city and he laughs it off, she assaults his companions that he freed from slavery and he thinks it's hot?!?, she talks about how she likes to torture women and he ignores it.

If Tuon had cut off Mat's hand, the way that Attolia cut off Gen's, it feels like Jordan would have just had Mat shrug it off and then buy her a puppy as a reward or something as his response. Here, we get Gen begging Attolia "please don't hurt me again" after she cuts off his hand and then we have months of separation and recovery and processing before the narrative takes him anywhere near her again. And Attolia is forced to reckon with what she did, first by being haunted by the memories of him crying from the pain and loss, and then she has to face it directly by seeing his stump, seeing the pain that he's still in (because of her). She has to admit (not just to herself but to him) the damage that she did before they can move forward together. This is something that Tuon never shows herself capable of on any level. Tuon is never allowed to grow as a person the way that Attolia is, or to be vulnerable with the audience or with Mat.

I definitely still really felt the Mat-Gen comparison in this book too. Lots of places, but there's a great moment in the meadow with him, Eddis, and the Magus, where Eddis explains that Gen has deliberately made people believe that he can't fight but he also still gets miffed sometimes if people fall for his carefully constructed facade.

And the moment when Gen tells Eddis that he plans to steal the Queen of Attolia. It really feels, again, like this is the sort of vibe that Jordan wanted us to believe existed between Mat and Tuon: "She may be a fiend from hell to make me feel this way but even if I've got to hate myself for the rest of my life, this is what I want. I dream about her at night." This intense draw and this pull that he feels towards her. Jordan appears to want us to believe that Mat feels this kind of draw towards Tuon at the end of KoD but has not created any kind of foundation in Mat's characterization as to why.

We also got the long separation between Attolia and Gen where they are haunting each other with their absence. Attolia and Gen just get the time that is needed to develop this relationship in a way that's believable. Time in the story, not page time. This book is shorter than CoT & KoD, and probably shorter than if you made a "Mat and Tuon" novella out of their scenes in those books. It's the actual 'in world' time that matters, that gives Attolia and Gen time to think about each other and miss each other in a genuine way.

For another comparison -- Gen 'steals' Attolia to marry her like Mat kidnaps Tuon, but the context is so incredibly different on every level. Mat gets, essentially, tricked into kidnapping Tuon by the 'finn (it never would have happened if he hadn't heard that prophecy) while Gen acts with intention the whole way through. Technically, in both cases, Gen and Mat are 'saving' Attolia and Tuon by kidnapping them, but we feel the weight of it with Gen and Attolia in a way that we don't with Mat and Tuon. And a lot of that is because the bulk of Gen and Attolia's build-up happens before the kidnapping, during the times when they're separated and haunted by each other. So once the kidnapping happens, it's quick-paced and moves the plot forward rather than, you know, just fucking around with a circus for a month.

We also know that Attolia has complicated feelings about Gen already. I talked about this with @markantonys but that really is something that needed to happen with Tuon so much sooner than it does in the books (there are two big Mat & Tuon scenes in AMoL that desperately needed to happen back in CoT, imo -- Tuon trusting that Mat isn't trying to kill her; and Tuon going wild trying to protect Mat in the command tent).

Attolia and Gen also genuinely have things that they can each offer the other person, while with Mat and Tuon, none of the things that Tuon offers are things that Mat actually wants (slaves bowing to him; being dressed up like one of the Blood; being formal at all times - these are things that some of Mat's fans want for him, but not things he wants for himself) and she just feels like this ravenous black hole that constantly takes and takes and takes and gives back nothing of value. When Gen is startled at the realization that marrying the Queen of Attolia makes him the King and he'll have to actually be a king, it's this incredibly sweet moment, because it illustrates so clearly that he wants Attolia for herself and not her country. When Mat reacts against the idea that marrying Tuon makes him royalty, it just kinda makes him look dumb, because we've been given nothing of value in Tuon herself as a person, and no reason for Mat to care about her.

With Tuon, Mat talks about how she's better than other nobles, but nothing she actually does on the page is better than any other Seanchan noble. It's all 'footage not found'. By contrast, every single positive thing that Gen says about Attolia is backed up by the text and we even get shown additional positive qualities that no one needs to talk about because it's right there in the text.

With Tuon, it feels like Mat is attempting to gaslight me (and himself?) into believing that an interesting character exists there despite all the evidence against it, while Attolia simply is a compelling character based on what happens on the page.

That fact that there are so many raw similarities between the two pairings, but my reaction to them are so different really does illustrate the importance of execution, imo. Attolia and Gen's romance manages to travel so much further than Mat and Tuon's, while also being considerably more economical with how many pages it took to get us there.

The point-by-point comparison (aka WoT's failure of execution):

Tuon's interior life is poorly illustrated in comparison to Attolia's; because she starts off as an even worse person than Attolia but so much less character work is done on her than on Attolia, who is haunted this entire book by how she has "sunk so low as to torture boys" (on that note, Turner's choice to make Gen the younger and more openly vulnerable one really works here).

Seeing that Attolia's handmaidens are genuinely affectionate and protective of her at the end of this book is so incredibly touching, because she had no expectation of their loyalty (she believes in the loyalty of gold, and gold alone, for the most part). Tuon, otoh, has slaves that she expects to be subservient and loyal unto death, so her slaves' affection for her (that was trained into them) is something that completely fails to move me. This difference in the expectations of the character also makes a huge difference in how their PoVs come off -- Attolia's walls are due to her internal vulnerability and we get to see that vulnerability in her PoVs; while Tuon comes across as full of herself and incredibly arrogant, taking everyone around her for granted.

We're told that Tuon is smart and perceptive but rarely get any evidence; while Turner shows us Attolia's intelligence and how she sees a lot more than people like the Medes ambassador believe that she does. We get to see Attolia's intelligence in how she tricks the Medes ambassador into believing that she's so much less perceptive and intelligent than she truly is. This is another place where Jordan's unwillingness to ever place Tuon into a genuinely vulnerable position really hurt the character. Turner wasn't afraid to make Attolia the underdog and knew that it wouldn't undermine her as a character, it would strengthen her, because we would get to see who she was in adversity. The set-up of Crossroads of Twilight should have led to us seeing Tuon in adversity but Jordan was allergic to allowing her to be truly vulnerable, and gave her people to hide behind (Selucia & Setalle Anan) the entire time.

Mat as an agent of chaos is wildly downplayed in comparison to Gen as an agent of chaos. The Seanchan end up getting spared the chaos that the end of the Age brought to pretty much every other society, even though Mat seems clearly positioned to bring their society crashing down even as late as Winter's Heart. Gen's actions, otoh, are constantly throwing other people's plans off.

Mat does not behave realistically to the horrible things that Tuon says and does -- with Gen, even though we find out towards the last third of the book that he was already in love with Attolia before the book begins, we still get his raw reactions to her doing things that hurt him. He has nightmares after she orders his hand cut off, his pained begging of her not to hurt him again, and how he develops his own mask of impassiveness that is modeled on her own. Gen also never throws away his moral code in order to try to force himself to be at peace with the relationship -- he grows and changes as a character as a result of his trauma, but he stays himself at the core.

Something else that Jordan could have used more in the books that would have helped develop an understanding of why Mat believes that something exists beyond Tuon's 'cold Empress mask' would have been to make the comparison between Rand's mask and Tuon's mask more clear in the narrative. Because there's too much separation in time between Rand and Mat's interactions with Mat and Tuon's interactions. In this book, seeing that Eddis also needs to put up a queenly mask of not caring about Gen at first (in front of the Attolian guards when they return him to her after his hand has been cut off) helps illustrate why Attolia needs the mask that she uses -- Eddis doesn't trust the Attolians, but Attolia feels like she can trust absolutely no one, and so she always needs the mask and feels like she can never take it off. That's compelling! It could have been compelling in Tuon too, if it had been written better.

On that note: Turner personalizes the damage that Attolia's cold mask and her ruthless defense of herself/her country is doing by having her hurt Gen directly, and that being something that she struggles with over the course of the book. With WoT, Jordan basically did everything he could to hide away the damage that Tuon/the Seanchan were doing from Mat in order to try to justify why he could ~fall in love~ with her (was it intentional? to set their relationship up for a fall later in the Outriggers? we'll never know) without ever actually changing Tuon/the Seanchan for the better, which also meant giving Tuon no reason to have any internal struggles over the choices that she's made.

Gen and Attolia get another thing that Mat and Tuon desperately needed but that Jordan refused to give them: privacy. They negotiate getting married (after Gen has kidnapped Attolia in a much more narratively satisfying kidnapping than Mat and Tuon's!) in privacy, just between the two of them; when we get the conversation about their feelings at the end, again it happens in private. That makes a huge difference. Jordan being unwilling to ever actually yank Tuon away from her full power base and her slaves was a huge hindrance to ever allowing her to be vulnerable. And I do chalk this up to unwillingness and not failures due to plot set-up because there is no good reason to have Selucia tag along on the kidnapping and then it's even more bizarre in CoT & KoD, when the character of Setalle Anan goes from being fond of Mat to all of a sudden acting like he's the worst person in the world and she must protect poor helpless baby girl Tuon from him.

Both Attolia and Tuon get tricked by their respective love interests about who they are as a person because of the facade that they put up, but Attolia still has respect for Gen and his skills, even as she doubts his character, and it is Gen's own actions that show her who he really is and make her believe in him; while with Tuon and Mat, she spends over a month with him and still refuses to look past his surface until she literally has her face rubbed into it by seeing the Band's reactions to him. This difference is a key one in making Attolia's failure to see Gen as a failure due to the protective walls that she has up; while Tuon's failure comes across as her just not being very perceptive or intelligent. And the fact that we don't get the moment when Tuon begins to have even the faintest shred of respect for Mat until the end of Knife of Dreams just meant that I felt even more like all the pages time that Jordan spent on the two of them in CoT & KoD was a complete waste of my time.

We got to have genuine reactions from all of Gen's loved ones about the relationship! This is a huge place where, I guess, Sanderson is the one who failed for a change instead of Jordan because wtf was Perrin's "lol you married now bro? haha" reaction to Mat being married to a slaver? Though Jordan also does this to a certain extent with Thom, who we are supposed to believe is in love with Moiraine, and yet who never calls Mat out on courting a woman who would enslave and torture Moiraine if she had the chance. By contrast, Eddis is genuinely hesitant and worried because of everything they've heard about how cold Attolia is, and because she's the reason that Gen's hand was cut off.

We get to see Attolia and Gen develop a shared language and see behind each other's walls. The moment when she wears the earrings that he left for her, and he knows that it means she's chosen to marry him of her own free will is such a huge and impactful moment, and the only people who are aware of what it means are Attolia and Gen! This is really a failure that happens based on earlier failures of execution: because Mat and Tuon are never allowed to be alone together, it's impossible for them to develop this kind of shared coding and shared language.

12. We also have the 'footage not found' issue, where one of the characters (mostly Mat) tries to tell me something about Tuon but the narrative completely fails to back it up: this is the case with Tuon being intelligent and perceptive (in the narrative shown to us, she never picks up on anything until her nose is forcibly rubbed in it); and this is case with Mat thinking near the end of Knife of Dreams that Tuon belongs in the same 'better than other nobles' bucket as Talmanes when she has never shown herself to be willing to make better choices than other Seanchan nobles: he is still, at this point, worrying that she might enslave him and turn him into her cupbearer; she has not only threatened but actually assaulted his companions; whenever she's placed in a position of power over other people, she takes advantage of it and them. We're told that she's not a child but she also throws a tantrum (and pottery) at Mat at the start of Crossroads of Twilight. This could have worked if Jordan had leaned into the fact that Mat is deliberately lying to himself in order to make his marriage bearable, but that's where things like randomly having Setalle Anan go over to Tuon's side messes with that narrative.

13. When Jordan has Mat think about how Tuon dying would be a deep loss to him, it's just baffling because she has not done a single thing the entire 'courtship' that has shown why in the world Mat would feel that way. All of the attempts at reaching out during the courtship are Mat's, while Tuon just smugly accepts it as her due. Because Attolia doesn't just accept Gen's love as her due, because she actually doesn't believe him and challenges him on it, we get to hear his justification of it and why he feels that way, and then we also get to see her reciprocation. The relationship is a two-way street in The Queen of Attolia.

14. Which ties into the fact that Jordan chose to make Tuon not just a slaver but an enthusiastic slaver who enjoys the slave-breaking process and that is an incredibly dark place to start a character but it could have worked if it had been the beginning of Tuon's character arc and we'd actually watched her change and grow from that position. And she had the narrative set up for it! In her very first chapter, the reader learns that Tuon has the ability to learn to channel! She was created with the narrative juice to have a compelling arc about accepting the truth about herself and her people. And then Jordan gave that arc to Bethamin instead, lol.

15. In both of these stories 'fate' does kinda serve up Gen/Mat to Attolia/Tuon on a silver platter, but the execution of the storylines makes the reveal that fate was acting to push the two of them together so much more effective in The Queen of Attolia. Choice is a much larger consideration in Attolia and Gen's relationship than it is in Mat and Tuon's. There are elements of the higher powers of the world at work in both relationships, but Attolia and Gen have to put in the work themselves and have to face hard emotional truths in order to get us to the satisfying ending. I get the impression that Tuon wouldn't know an emotional truth if it spit in her eye. We actively see both Gen and Attolia consider and reject the idea of solving their main problem (about the war) without needing to get married; we see them choose their marriage and each other.

With Mat and Tuon, this is a lot more muddled. Fate/the Pattern/the 'finn want them to marry each other but we never get any kind of payoff as to why, and this is primarily because of Jordan's other storylines imo. He should not have had Rand already willing to make peace with the Seanchan in his separate storyline. Convincing Rand to be willing should have been Mat's job (because that also would mean that Mat would need to make the arguments to convince the readers). Jordan showing at the end of KoD that Rand is willing to make a deal with the Seanchan, even at the cost of giving in on the matter of slavery, basically completely voided any narrative reason for Mat and Tuon to get married, but without the satisfaction of seeing the two of them grow to a place where they would actively make that choice rather than being motivated by what they believe is necessary (due to prophecy).

There really were the bones of a potentially compelling story with Mat and Tuon, and I really do hope that the show (when we get there) is able to take those bones and turn it into a genuinely compelling story.

[brella-boi]

Okay guys this is becoming a tradition of me seeing films recently so heres a

Sonic 3 review from a technical standpoint

Look im no film critic or anything, but i AM an animator and theres a lot of. Things. I see whether I want to or not. Its just how my brain is wired because of my profession lol

(This is full of spoilers btw so now's your time to fast scroll away)

Anyway lets begin!

The movie is great. Cool even. I liked it! But theres a lot of direction decision that I am just. Baffled by I guess?

First of all- the models are different. (Httyd ass moment) And the way they sculpted the characters lips absolutely destroys anything theyre trying to emote. It looks like theyre CONSTANTLY pursing their lips. Like they ate a lemon. Do you understand? Sonic also has much more pronounced brows which makes him look more pissed off constantly LOL

[Sonic 1 model vs sonic 3 models, pay attention to the lips]

Eggman and Dr Stone had possibly the best interactions in the entire movie. Their dynamic was fantastic, and I would argue they kinda carried the movie. Unfortunately! The ending left their issues unresolved. And Dr Stone looked entirely unbothered by the possible death of Eggman.

This brings me to some writing choices that I feel may be due to... Either infantalising or time cuts. The storyboarding of this film was just. God how do I even describe this. It feels like a lot of crucial scenes where cherry picked to be deleted between shots. Thats not good at all- and while character continuity WAS there, it really did feel like something crucial was missing in some scenes. This is especially evident in the Chao Garden scenes. Specifically when the general dies (WHY DOES HE DIE LIKE THAT. WE DIDNT EVEN SEE THE RUBBLE GO ANYWHERE OR PIN ANYONE DOWN OR SEE MASS PANIC FOR PEOPLE TO DIE?) The characters COMPLETELY gloss over his death- a death that feels like its out of a show for 8 year olds Im not going to lie to you. He just flops, delivers a line, and thats it.

It feels like the two halves of the movie were written by two different writers.

The first half is weak. The jokes are stale. And the storybeats almost feel off. The actions scenes- while there's nothing particularly offendish about them- don't *hit*. If you're an animator or writer you understand that important beats need to pack a punch. It was severely lacking in packing punches in the first half.

I also wanna speak to the animators. Are you okay? Was this made on tight deadlines? Where is the fun and whimsy? Did you outsource this? Did you give your workers a good environment or were they crunching and hating life? Or did you hire younger animators with no senior feedback because they're cheaper to hire?

Look, the animation is good. Just that. Its good. Its TV show standard, not movie standard. Its lacking a good push to the poses, its using slow keyframing between poses instead of it being snappy, with good silhouettes, with good visual gags. Instead were left with this.. subpar passable animation for every character instead of something energetic and snappy like Sonics personality. I think this is where I take the most issue with because guys come on. You didnt push the models to their limits at ALL. And Sonics speedy running is... Well read my previous points. Where are the fundamentals of animation about exaggeration? Not in Sonics run cycle.

The second half of the movie carried the first half on its back thanks to Eggman. I am SO GLAD to see giant spaceships and mechs and whatnot. Thats great! Loved to see the lovely mech models and once again- interactions between Eggman and Dr Stone. Id go as far as say they should be gay tbh (hello? The scene where theyre tied up?)

I didn't bring up Shadow entirely so far. And honestly Ive no notes about him. All my notes are entirely about just the animation and not hitting the beats well. His characterisation was great- it actually explains his aggression pretty well and then redemption. Genuinely the last arc of the movie was fantastic. And finally we got to hear a rock score to go with it. Maria was fun, the flashbacks were fun, the scientific exploration was fun. All in the second half of the movie of course!

My overall score is 6/10.

To untrained eyes the movie is going to be extremely fun- if a little more childish in some parts than others. I'm glad they took some risky moments, I'm glad the characterisation is well written. I just wish other aspects were tightened down, mainly animation and storyboarding.

6/10 but I never thought Id leave the cinema with the thoughts "I could storyboard some of these scenes in a lot more meaningful way, and Im not even a storyboarder."

I recommend a watch! Its not a bad movie. Its not a rock-it-out-of-the-park movie either though. I feel like maybe all the anticipation and high expectations maybe made it not as gut punching for me as it couldve been. Overall, all I can gleam from it is theres a lot of things to improve on! But nothing that really destroys it or makes it bad. Just a lot of room for improvement.

Thanks for reading!

[cripplecharacters]

Hi! Sorry if this is a stupid question but I was wondering about representing disabilities/things in general that you don't have.

I always see people say that they want characters to be represented properly, and to show their disabilities and lives in an accurate way, but I also see people talk about how you shouldn't write about the struggles a POC/minority/person with a disability/etc. faces because you don't experience that and you're speaking over them or only using their story for "trauma porn" or whatever.

Maybe it's just because I'm autistic but I'm really not understanding how those two things coexist. How do I show how someone lives, especially with a disability that might be painful, without writing about the things they face?

Obviously it would be super weird if the character's entire personality was just "My life is awful because I'm so different, I can't do the things everyone else can, my life sucks."

But what about normal things that they struggle with? Like "Yeah I only have one arm, it's a pain in the ass to do dishes but it's not the end of the world." or "I have albinism so my depth perception is shit but whatever" or "It's fucking annoying when people stare at/judge me because I look different, but if they don't like it that's their problem, not mine lol."

Is the problem whether or not a characters ENTIRE story revolves around their disability? Using my own as an example:

A story, specifically, about how Funky Bungus, as an autistic person, lives in the world and what struggles he has due to his disability, VS a story where Funky Bungus is trying to stop two kingdoms from going to war and there's a short scene where he feels bad about not being able to make eye contract with people, before going back to the Kingdom War Drama.

I just want to use my stories as a way to educate people about disabilities and make people go "Hey, that character is like me!" or to make people think about their actions, like having a character complain about people staring at their scar/missing arm/etc. so maybe people will read it and go "Wow, I guess it IS rude when I don't mind my own business, from now on I won't stare at people."

Sorry if this got long and incomprehensible 😬

I guess the question is "How do I write about the struggles someone with a disability faces without coming across like I'm writing trauma porn or speaking over people" but I just have the Overexplain Everything So I'm Not Misunderstood Disorder™ lmao

I believe you have it right; the problem with many stories about disabilities written by non disabled authors often lies in when the story relies entirely on the disability.

It’s absolutely fine to write about the struggles a character faces — for an example with one of my disabilities, say a non-disabled author wrote about how a character kinda hates their chronic pain and wishes they didn’t have it. But otherwise there’s other stuff going on in the character’s life, like friends and family and hobbies, not just self-pity, and there’s other things going on in the plot, like maybe a mystery to solve or an Item to find or an adventure to go on or something.

That would be perfectly fine, and I’d love to read it actually, and really writing is kind of a balance of using what we know already and mixing it with things we haven’t experienced but have researched and/or thought about.

That’s how you show an authentic character with disabilities — they have struggles, things they can’t do or can’t do as well as others, but that’s not all there is to them. There’s things they enjoy doing, things they’re good at, people they spend time with and things they do.

Good intentions combined with research and knowledge (and good plots!) will make for good stories that feel authentic.

Hope this helps!

Mod Sparrow

Hi!

I think that there can be good stories that have disability/ableism as its primary focus, but they should be #OwnVoices (as in, made by people who experience said thing). That's largely because it often gets very specific and thus easy to misrepresent even if you have good intentions. Sometimes it can end up like "being disabled is so sad and everything is inaccessible, how tragic!" and end up pitying the character - rather than actually sympathizing with them - just because that nuance is missing. To use the same example as you did, "character complains about people staring at their scar sometimes" would be a completely normal way to include ableism as a part of life that does happen, while "character gets bullied for 300 pages for having a facial difference" would be in the torture porn category (when written by someone who doesn't have that experience).

I think that what Sparrow described is the best if you're not describing your own experiences. Including ableism as a thing that happens from time to time or as a tertiary focus is totally fine. That's how it is in real life - sometimes things do suck, but there's still a whole lot of other things that we do.

I think your desire to educate people is admirable and it should be very much doable with the solutions you presented! Good luck writing!

mod Sasza

[zazzander]

random thought, not even sure if you still like Octavian but i was watching a summary of Augustus Caesar’s reign and something interesting is that Augustus never declared himself a king or an emperor (due to not wanting to be stabby stabbed like Julius) instead he strategically made the senate acknowledge his status without making any actions or saying anything that implied that he was giving himself power

So technically if Octavian looked up to Augustus (this is me assuming Octavian would have looked up to Augustus, given he mentions his namesake) no way would he try to declare himself anything higher quoting Reyna “Octavian was elevating himself almost to the level of emperor.”

Which is giving me the impression that the whole declaring himself pontifex Maximus had nothing to do with him declaring himself like an emperor, since it would make sense for Octavian to pull smth like Augustus and not make any big moves.

Sorry for the unhinged/maybe wrong rant!

Have a great day’

I've analysed Octavian all I can without more content (if he comes out with a Roman prequel or something it will definitely reactivate my fixation lol)

It's hard to know what Riordan was going for in this scene beyond "look he's (still) evil".

Octavian definitely looks up to Augustus. He says so in this very scene. But I think the big context is whether or so New Romans care if they have a sole leader or not. On the face of it, they do, since they have two praetors and a senate. But then again, Reyna was able to reign solo for months without any objections (even Octavian didn't point the blatant power imbalance). She was technically co-ruling with Jason but regular Romans would definitely find it icky. If they do care, Octavian would need to work around that.

It's weird that he'd even do the Pontifex thing, considering he stated in the previous book that he'd be in charge if Reyna left anyway. That just seems like a great way to make them mad! Especially because Octavian would be one of the only people at Camp who could be a Pontifex in the first place. All the children of the gods are inherently bastards. And to be a Pontifex your parents have to be married in a specific way (Romans have three types of marriage).

I think this is just a case of Riordan not reading his own books back. Because Reyna also directly contradicts her previous orders in this scene as well.

In the empire, the emperor was also the Pontifex Maximus. So I think that's where Riordan ripped it from. But that makes no sense in the New Rome context since, canonically, there are no other priests! You could say Octavian was always the Pontifex Maximus based on that. Furthermore, when Jason takes the title literally no one accuses him of claiming the powers of an emperor.

If I were to read into the scene, without Reyna's hate tinted glasses, I'd say he was desperately trying to appease/communicate with the gods – which would match what Jason is told in this same book. I think it's also important to remember that Gaea is the one sending this vision. She wants Reyna to hate Octavian and will show her exactly what she needs to see for that to happen. (This fact is often overlooked by the heroes who have them)

[creatingblackcharacters]

forgive me if the time for talking about this has passed , but i picked up Arcane recently and was just reminded of people posting mel,ambessa, and ekko for the "favorite Black characters" ask game. and tbh, no ill will but i think your followers fell a little short on describing these characters. bc i was told they had little to no screen time, i wasn't expecting literally anything while watching the show! but all three of them are insanely well written, and mel is a HUGE aspect of the story. (IDGAF about jayce. everything he did is only because mel allowed it lol)

ekko and ambessa are side characters, but their inclusion and depth is masterful- like- i have no idea how accurate ambessa's writing is to a Black mother specifically, but i felt *every* one of those scenes with her and mel. she's a great example of "love to hate" where you know she's unambiguously terrible, but her writing is a complete MASTERCLASS! same with ekko! the artistic direction for him is just stunning. arcane works in "twos", it has two sides of one situation and you're meant to weigh both. but ekko represents the third option, the "wait, fuck that! i'm doing my own thing!" option, the nuance. (youtuber Schnee has a good 20 min essay on him.) i think its severely underselling both their presences and characters to say theyre "barely there", especially when theyre set up to have even more influence in the next season (inb4 their characters are butchered and i look stupid)

this (https://www.tumblr.com/wlwmedarda/762678221428899840/sevika) is a really good post on how the fandom undersells these characters. if youre an Arcane fan i would suggest reading this to reevaluate how this fandom space treats Black characters. also maybe watch the show again, because were you even paying attention??

👀👀👀👀👀 okay okay! That's exciting to hear. Maybe people were saying that in comparison to everyone else they weren't receiving the due they felt these characters deserved. Imma let y'all's season 2 drop and if they all come out of it unscathed, we'll discuss me watching it. Bc tbh they're the only ones I want to watch it for 😅 and TV shows have an unfortunate history of shafting the Black characters or their good writing.

[livi-in-digital-circus]

Here are some songs that I think would match Ragatha/Miss Agatha and Jax/Jackson in your AU!!!

Ragatha/Miss Agatha:

- the grudge by Olivia Rodrigo would work with her and her terrible fiancé, especially after what he did to her baby. I think it could also work with her and Jax after she slapped him.

- Diet Mountain Dew by Lana Del Rey would work both Ragatha and Jax. It fits their will-they-won’t-they narrative.

- Bigger Than The Whole Sky by Taylor Swift. This song reminds me a lot of Agatha’s miscarriage and the horrible feelings that came with it. It’s the moment where everything in her world fell apart.

- Lose You To Love Me and Single Soon by Selena Gomez. The first one would work with Ragatha’s regrets over her past relationship with her ex, while the second one highlights a happier ending for her. It’s her new start with Jax, specifically her getting ready for the dance with him!

Jax/Jackson:

- Dancing With Our Hands Tied by Taylor Swift. I feel like this matches the dance scene, before everything fell apart of course.

- teenage dream by Olivia Rodrigo. This song would probably reflect the aftermath of Agatha’s coma and all the pain Jackson went through after finding out. Although this isn’t canon to the story, I feel like this would fit his 18th birthday party without her.

- Love You Down by Ready For The World. This song would resonate a lot with Jackson’s one-sided crush on his brother’s teacher and the dreams he had about her.

- Colors by Halsey would definitely work with Jax’s dreams about his past. It summarizes all the people and all the feelings he ignores to avoid feeling anything.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy these choices :D. Your AU has been one of my favorite TADC AUs I ever read. The amount of emotion, drama, and romance was captured perfectly without feeling OOC. Keep up the great work Livi!

AAAAAA THANK YOU SO SO MUCH 💕

I don't know why I didn't think of adding more Taylor and Olivia songs to my playlist, but I actually had those two Selena songs somewhere in the back of my head while making it!

I'll listen to all the songs when I get home from school in 10+ hours (it's past 1 AM here lol)

I would also like to take this opportunity to explain some of the Korean songs on the playlist:

Prologue by aespa is about feeling immature and not ready for adulthood, to me it fits Agatha perfectly because even though she has been an adult for some time, she still has the heart of a teenager and has trouble dealing with some adult issues

Checkmate by Xdinary Heroes is about feeling confident because of a won game, I relate this song to the moment when Jax's attack on Ragatha during their stage play was successful

The Ugly Duckling by YENA, well I interpreted the song's lyrics much differently than it should be interpreted, I relate it to Agatha's miscarriage due to the lyrics being about trying to move on after a horrible event and there is also a child mentioned so-

War of Hormone by BTS is a very controversial song which that has been accused of considering girls playthings for boys, basically Jax's attitude towards Ragatha before she almost abstracted

Doll by (G)I-DLE, the title says it all, it perfectly describes how Ragatha was treated by Jax and how she's fed up with it

Quarter Life by TOMORROW X TOGETHER is another song about finding adult life kind of hard and trying to go on despite you already screwed up a lot of things, every time I hear this song I think of Jax and how he feels after remembering his former life

Lonely Boy by TOMORROW X TOGETHER is a breakup song that in my opinion fits how Jackson felt after losing Agatha

Happily Ever After by TOMORROW X TOGETHER (yeah, it's my fav boysband lol) is the song I had in mind while writing the last chapter, even though it's upbeat it tells about how cruel life is and that there's actually no happy end, just like in the story :D

And thank you for enjoying my AU! At first I thought it would fail as it has no drawings (I'm really terrible at drawing + I can't do digital art) and focuses more on writing, but the amount of support and love my work has received in these few months makes me incredibly happy 🥺

[everybody-loves-purdy]

Hi! It's me again 😆. I just wanted to ask, what are your theories on The Elders' Quest? I can't waittt 🤣

Hi!

Ok I am almost never correct but I would like to put forth some of my theories anyway lol, they’re mostly for elders quest alone but some extend a bit beyond.

This one is very specific but in chapter 4 of the elder’s quest there will be a gathering scene with a Tawnypelt pov where Crowfeather’s retirement is announced, which causes Tawnypelt to reflect on her still being an active warrior.

Heathertail will replace Crowfeather as WindClan deputy

The voice in Moonpaw’s head will be her absorbed twin. It will become sinister as if tries to take more control of the body, but ultimately Moonpaw will realise her sister only wants to be part of the world and they will find a way to co-exist at some point mid arc, but then the real challenge for the two of them will be gaining acceptance from the clan. Maybe they will hide their true nature for a while, especially if the twin ends up in control of the body for periods. I think the cliffhanger for elders quest for Moonpaw will be the twin getting hostile.

Leafstar’s loss of sight will be reveals to the clan when she gets something very wrong that has big consequences, and they will be angry at her for hiding her condition due to the negative impacts this mistake has. Unsure if this will be the elders quest or a bit later, maybe the mistake happens in the elders quest and the aftermath from the clan is next book?

Bellaleaf dies.

Tawnypelt and Crowfeather will invite Brambleclaw to go along with them on this quest. He will either accept and die on the journey or not be up to it and not go. If he doesn’t come along then if anyone’s going to die it’s gonna be Crowfeather, but I think he would be much less likely to die than Brambleclaw.

I’m genuinely not sure where the whole construction and Moonpool plot is going to go, I just really hope the clans won’t move again.

I think those are my main predictions lol

[seriousbrat]

quite contrary: mary macdonald + historical context, music

this is my Mary MacDonald playlist and I'd like to talk a little about my interpretation of her and her cultural/historical context! it might not align with fanon, ive no idea but idc frankly haha. I hope to have done my due diligence in terms of research (i'm an absolute research fiend) and in general this is a topic I'm personally highly interested in. because it's highly interesting and (ime) little-discussed. I'll be providing links for further reading. tagging @goldenromione bc she asked me to do this!

so in my fic Mary is a muggle-born girl from a British-Caribbean family in Croydon. Her family owns a Caribbean restaurant in Thornton Heath. She's rebellious and punky and gets a lot of this from her two older brothers, both Muggles; Toby, the eldest, is part of the Race Today Collective in Brixton, dedicated to the publication of a political magazine (Race Today) on race relations in the UK. The middle brother, Lewis (who has a fling with Sirius as a matter of interest lol) is a musician/DJ very active in the Ska Revival/Two-Tone scene of the late 70s-early 80s.

All this is very influential on Mary; she is very outspoken about muggle-born rights at school, and her music taste reflects her background. I do think she would like women-led punk especially x-ray spex, but also in terms of ska a group I think she'd have liked is the selecter, which features pauline black the coolest female vocalist i've ever seen in my entire life. just look at her:

this will be explored in the upcoming 4th part of my fic, in which we see Sirius in his Brixton flat, and Mary and Lewis both spend a lot of time there. Specifically, he lives on Railton Road, which was a very important street in terms of both Black and LGBT history in Britain. It was the scene of the 1981 Brixton Riot and the location of many collectives at different points like the British Black Panthers, the 121 Centre (one of London’s longest running squats, also housed anarchist groups and other orgs), the aforementioned Race Today Collective, the Pink Fairies/South London Gay Community Centre, among others. It was also the home of many important Black British activists and historical figures like C.L.R. James, Darcus Howe and Leila Hassan. A few links:

A Radical History of 121 Railton Road By the Waters of Babylon; The Battle of Railton Road; International Centres Today in London gay history: the South London Gay Centre evicted, Brixton, 1976 Activist Streets (on history in Thornton Heath, linked above)

If anyone is interested in this topic I cannot, cannot recommend enough the miniseries Small Axe on Amazon, which covers a few different important moments in Black British history from the 60s to the 80s. It's so incredibly good and the soundtrack is SUPREME. Another good one to get a feel for the period is In the Long Run, created by Idris Elba and set in London in the 80s, loosely based on his own childhood.

Lastly, a few images of how I see Mary under the cut:

this is simona brown, my mary fancast, though the image I used for my playlist is of brenda sykes who I also think is an absolute Mary vibe.

[ghoooooooooooooooost]

i only shared it w a friend before but can i tell you all my death mark 2 au/rewrite... here (spoilers obvi, also body horror + insects warning)

(edited so theres more details smile)

most things r the same except for the departed (and no naked girl cgs OFCOURSE)

making it so that the departed pretends to be daimon instead of the two high school girls

normal daimon is around but he’ll gradually get sick n every now n then something weeeeird happens (as in yashiki accidentally talks to fake daimon. also maybe you see the weird bug ghost that hovers above everyone near endgame with him first)

crowbar scene happens w fake daimon while real daimon is actually passed out somewhere. mashita comforts yashiki n then they both realize its a fake

(that's what these doodles were referencing)

my dearest friend chip suggested the departed could also be konoe so n that would make sense n make him more present in the plot so byeah

we both agreed that they didn't push the bug + mold horror theme far enough so i tried my hand at it. mold can be really gross irl ewwww

my design for departed daimon is actually toned down from the og tho, just bc i thought the weird spider face was more goofy than scary. personally bugs are scary to me when they're crawling on you n burrowing into your skin n making holes n laying eggs in there - like the bees in death mark 1. there was some real-stories tv show abt that specific thing happening that aired when i was a kid n it freaked me out a lot

why was hime's mold just ourple swirls boooriiiiiiiiiiiing

/

edit july 15th 2024 adding this into the main og post since wonderful chippard linked it (basically a neater rewrite of everything i just said + what i said in the reblog addition. i rewrote it for a solo zine hence the proper capitalization lol)

Instead of Himeko and Michiho being The Departed, it’s Daimon and Konoe. Normal Daimon is still there but every now and then he’ll start acting strange or feeling sick due to The Departed’s possession. The “love” aspect would be shown through Daimon specifically too so Doctor Duo ship is canon in this. Konoe basically uses Daimon to try to get to his Dear Husband. In place of going into a coma like in the original, his behavior intensifies and condition worsens until he suddenly runs to the bathroom. When he comes back… dun dun dun… that’s The Departed – Yashiki doesn’t know…! Crowbar scene ensues. But!? After Yashiki tells Mashita, they see Daimon perfectly alive in the infirmary. Yasuoka found him collapsed in the hallway at some point.

The plot would play out basically the same with some changes (no fanservice girl cgs; more Konoe screen-time; Michiho + Himeko act differently; Saki or Abe partner? more school-related ghosts...).

Maybe the game could be longer to give the new characters more time to shine while not removing the returning ones. Not sure how that would work exactly… One possible solution would be to have day segments where we get to play as Yashiki while he's actively teaching (which would also address the "why'd they even pick a school setting" problem bc damn they barely did any school specific plot shit outside of Hanako & Kashima). Would be awesome and in-line with how the first game brought up war if they kept addressing problems with the education system. Also I think I wouldn’t have any unavoidable human casualties after Hanako’s chapter? All the unavoidable deaths made my friends confused about if they were doing something wrong or not and it honestly felt off to me too. It would be compelling if after failing to protect the first student(s), Yashiki actually successfully protects the rest of them in the good route. Making him feel like he’s become more steadfast after the first game and staying true to his word. Especially if Naomi survives in my opinion - ‘she almost dies but is spared if you make the right choices’ or something like that. She could even be in the room when Yashiki sings the school song.

Not sure how I'd make The Departed feel even more connected to the school... Maybe there's a romantic superstition popular among the students that's based off their "wedding ceremony" -- but it's innocent enough to not give away how they died.

[lieutenantselnia]

One of my favourite 2D Doof scenes just because I like listening to him (or actually both Doofs) rambling over stuff, here in the German version! <3

A few words on this; when I imagine scenarios with him in my head I'm actually never quite sure if I imagine him talking in German or English, in my mind it just kind of all blurs together since I'm so used to using both languages in my everyday life at this point. However, I think for the most part I imagine him with the sound of his German voice and his pronunciation, probably also because I'm more used to it (for PnF I always kinda preferred the German dub, I don't know why exactly, it really can't be nostalgia since I didn't watch it as a kid, but maybe just for the childhood show vibes). I like the original as well though (and sometimes kind of mix them up in my mind), I feel like Dan voiced the two Doofs with a bit more nuance, making 2D Doof speak a bit slower and maybe a tiny little bit deeper, to give him a bit more of an intimidating aura.

Another detail about his accent that might be interesting especially for non German speakers: In the original, Heinz' home country Drusselstein is a parody mostly on Germany/German-speaking countries, and on a few occasions, characters are heard speaking some German words. Doofenshmirtz himself is supposed to have a sort-of German accent as well. In the German dub, this was mostly replaced with Russian, for example that once scene where little Heinz is dressed as a lawn gnome and his father yells at him "Bewegen Sie nicht!", which is a grammatically incorrect way of saying "Don't move!" (correct ways would for example be "Beweg dich nicht!" or "Nicht bewegen!"), while in the German dub he yells in Russian "Не шевелиться!" - in latin letters something like "Nje shevelitsja!" - (which I believe is also grammatically incorrect lol).

Doof's accent seems also inspired by what the (stereo-)typical Russian (or generally Slavic) accent sounds to German people. However it doesn't lean very strongly into it, the most notable thing is that he rolls his Rs quite a bit stronger than it's common for German speakers, otherwise he speaks pretty much standard German. For example his pronunciation of the "ch" sound isn't really emphasised at all, which often tends to be associated with a Russian accent.

Also another small note about accents in general, I don't know how common it still is nowadays for people to think that German speakers all speak with a strongly rolled R, but we actually don't. Of course it may depend on the region or specific dialects, some people also just happen to naturally speak with a more rolled R due to their individual mouth/throat anatomy, but in the standard way of speaking in both Germany and Austria at least, it's not really a thing. We roll our R differently than English speakers, but it's also not that very "full" rolled R that you may hear in languages like Spanish. I myself, despite being Austrian and growing up speaking the Austrian variant of German, am physically struggling to roll my Rs because my tongue frenulum is literally too short to do it properly. The R pronunciation was always my biggest challenge in my Spanish and Russian classes (luckily my teachers weren't strict with it as long as you tried). But yeah, I just wanted to clarify that Doofenshmirtz' way of speaking isn't what the average German speaker would sound like, also I just find languages a fascinating topic to ramble about :D

[reikunrei]

i honestly cannot get over how much this scene from tfs

reminds me of terry stuck in her chair in st2

especially how much her dress is reminiscent of the sheet(?) over henry's lap, and arms in the same pose on the arms of the chair (yes, i know henry is tied down and that's the logical place to do it, but still). even the cuffs on her sweater are visually similar to that of the straps tying henry down

it took me a minute to connect the visual back to terry, but with the general context of the scene in question (brenner talking to henry about the kids in the lab, how he's been behaving well enough that he's now allowed to meet them, etc.) i was immediately looking at it like "this looks like a woman just coming out of a rough pregnancy/delivery who was barred from seeing the kids due to her acting out of sorts/unhealthily." and maybe it's just because of all of henward's mother coding (shoutout to mothergate and the post of all time by james) but with all the sa coding throughout tfs, the weirdness with henry's supposed relation to the lab kids, etc... i definitely feel like it's a connection we're meant to make

and while i don't have the full context from that tfs scene yet, james and em have also said that henry is way out of it in that whole sequence (and you can really tell in the still of him looking down at where brenner is touching him. he looks exhausted). which only further reminds me of terry, not just in the sense of her being involved in hnl drug programs and mkultra, but also her general state after she's been zapped (not to mention how terry has no real way to communicate other than these flashes of memories using her/el's powers, much like how atp henry has no real way to communicate the truth to anyone, including the audience, so we have to form our own conclusions based on the fragmented evidence we're given, but anyway)

which, speaking of...

sure, a ball gag and a bite block/mouth guard aren't exactly the same thing, but they could be used for similar purposes (in this case, to prevent biting. in the case of terry, to keep her from biting her own tongue. for henry? perhaps the same case, but likely also to prevent biting others if his arms are also strapped down)

and with the question of henry's relation to the lab kids/el specifically, it brings me back to the idea that el and jane might not be the same person at all and it was more of a mixup/el misunderstanding what terry showed her, etc. (which has been talked about countless times before by multiple people but i can't find the posts atm rip im so sorry)

and so if we're meant to make a connection between henry and terry with these visuals, plus with the whole "henry was being kept away from the kids for misbehaving" and "terry was punished for trying to find her child after she was taken from her" ... i feel like it's stupid to not draw a line between the two of them and reach the conclusion that henry fathered (or mothered) at least some of the lab kids. and to then see terry fight so hard to get jane back... only to be shown 001 (some version of henry) doing everything he can to save el as well?

anyway i can't remember where i was going with this post anymore lol. long story short, i think this new visual from tfs is just one more nail in the mothergate coffin, and henry definitely was used to breed more powerful kids, and the close tie to terry just makes me think that he really and truly fathered el

[thedragonagebigbang]

Bang Creator Interview: Tumblr: @thraaaaaaaanduuuuuuuuiiiiiiiiil  |  AO3: chissprincess

The Collaboration period has begun! In these quiet months before works are due, we want to foster a sense of excitement, camaraderie, and celebration among our participants. To that end, all participants were given the option of a formal interview by our mod, Dema, or an informal “ask-game” survey. We hope you enjoy getting to know our phenomenal creators as much as we have!

ONE WEIRD TRICK FOR MAKING FRIENDS IN THEDAS

Vowelthranduil and Dema talk about that OTHER dragon media, early fandom experiences (fantheater, anyone?), and the supremacy of the Reluctant Hero trope

Dema: So! The collaboration period just began. Has this given you a fresh burst of energy for your fic?

vowelthranduil: It's definitely made me think more about my fic. The timing has been weird though because unfortunately, someone over on the House of the Dragon team also made the decision to cast Ewan Mitchell as Aemond and then made the further decision to allow the man to speak entire sentences in High Valyrian a few weeks ago. Up until that moment I was an entirely casual Game of Thrones/House of the Dragon fan but when that scene happened I could literally feel the casual leaving my body. So good news, I'm definitely in fic writing mode and thinking about fics and that includes my DABB fic! Bad news, it also includes like 3 House of the Dragon fics. My poor poor brain lol.

Dema: Hey. Momentum is momentum 😂For a long fic like this, do you have a full outline, or are you being guided by Vibes?

vowelthranduil: For this particular fic I do have a bit of an outline. There's a timeline I'm following of my character's life that I'm trying to follow. But to be honest a lot of it is also Vibes. I definitely don't look at the timeline or any kind of outline as set in stone. I'll change things as needed or if I feel like I have a better idea or if I feel like something just isn't working out. The nice thing about this fic is I know where my ending point is, which is something I often struggle with in my other longfics.

Dema:  Especially when your attention is divided between two very different fandoms, how do you get in the zone for this fic? Or are you allowing some of that HotD inspiration to infiltrate your DA fic?

vowelthranduil: Nah HotD and DA, despite both involving dragons, are very much in Never the Twain Shall Meet territory. Music is a big thing for me, in any of my fics. I have entire playlists for my HotD fics and my other DA fic. I don't really have a set playlist for this one, but I have lots of music that gives the proper vibes and is already sorted into some other easily accessible playlist so I can just bring that up. Or I'll go back and read what I already have, look at some of the art I have of my OC, or even just do a little DA-based research. I don't have the time to get into a full DAI playthrough right now or I would do that too.

Dema:  Have you done a Big Bang before or is this your first?

vowelthranduil: I've done smaller bangs, and I did try to do the WIP Big Bang a couple of years ago, but I couldn't keep up with it between school and mental health issues. I'm not in school now though. I work, but not having homework is super helpful. I come home and have time to do other stuff instead. Like, you know, write fics for Big Bangs mwahahaha

Dema: Do you try to set aside specific time to write?

vowelthranduil: I have tried in the past but I'm definitely not organized enough for that. Plus when something inevitably happens and I don't write at the appointed time or don't write for the appointed amount of time, I just feel guilty, and guilt is the inspiration and motivation killer.

Dema:  Is there anything that reliably creates a writing-mood? Or do you find the muse strikes randomly?

vowelthranduil: It can be pretty random I find. New music will sometimes do it, but unfortunately, there's no guarantee that the new music will be in any way helpful with creating the muse for a particular project so I can't rely on that. I can sometimes use music I already have to trigger the muse when I sit down to write but like...the general "I want to write now" feeling has to already be there. Otherwise it just turns into a long daydream session and I can lose a whole day to that easily without ever writing a single word if I'm not careful.

Dema:  How long have you been writing, fanfic or otherwise? Have you always been a writer?

vowelthranduil: I mean I can definitely remember writing as a kid, doing creative writing projects in school and stuff. I didn't really like it very much because I felt really confined. Like I remember this one time in Catholic school we were writing stories and I wanted to write something with a lot of magic but this was Catholic school, so I didn't dare do that, I had to turn it into something that would be acceptable to the teachers there. So I felt really stifled. I didn't even find out about fanfiction until I was about 14 or 15, when we finally got internet at my house (and this would have been around...like the late 90s in a pretty rural area). I was in the Star Wars fandom at the time, though of course I wouldn't have described it that way because I had never heard the term "fandom" before and didn't really have access to a broader fan community outside of my immediate friend group (for anything, not just Star Wars). But yeah once we got the internet I found fanfiction pretty quickly. I don't remember how exactly. But it was really cool and to be honest, it was something I was already doing sort of. You know how kids invent their own stories to play out alone or with their friends, that kind of thing. And I had been reading the Star Wars novels at the time, and I wrote these really corny plays that my friends and I actually performed. So I guess it depends on how exactly you want to define "fanfiction." If we go by a strict definition of a story, then the first one was probably when I was 14/15 after I found my first fics on the internet, and it was a self-insert fic of the most obvious caliber. If we include those plays, then a little early, around 13. If we go by the first ones I shared online....probably 16/17? But I legit don't remember for sure on that. And I've been doing academic writing for ages, like all of my degrees are in the humanities and social sciences, really writing-heavy fields, so I legit don't remember a time except my very young years when I haven't been writing SOMETHING regularly. (Hey look at that, I wrote you a novel.)

Dema:  I want to know more about these plays. That is SO cute and so lovely.

vowelthranduil: Oh god. They were like…I'm trying to even remember anything at all about them right now lol

Dema:  What part did you play? Do you remember that?

vowelthranduil: I think I legit wrote them with all of my friends in mind as the characters. Like I was the bounty hunter who was originally working for the Empire (and I was a Falleen, not human, so I was basically covered in green face paint) and....I was hunting Luke Skywalker for some reason. Because this is Star Wars so like, of course. And my best friend/boyfriend (look I wrote a trilogy and we started dating somewhere in this timeline lol) played Luke and wouldn't you know it but my character married Luke somewhere in all of this/ Oh and we defeated the Empire I'm pretty sure. Because...of course we did?

Dema: Incredible. I love it

vowelthranduil: Oh I wrote a play based on a Midsummer Night's Dream at one point too. God when was that? Must have been around the same time.

Dema:  A Star Wars play??

vowelthranduil:  No, this was straight Shakespeare fanfiction

Dema:  Oh, even better

vowelthranduil: We made sets out of cardboard boxes and stuff it was truly wild

Dema: I am delighted. When did you get involved with the DA fandom?

vowelthranduil: I THINK it was around the time DA2 came out? I'm actually not 100% sure except that I know DAI was nowhere near out yet. Like I don't even think it was a rumor. I had a friend who played DAO and was always talking about it and how great the romances were and stuff. I really wanted to play but I was super nervous because up until then I had only ever really played the Sims and like, Oregon Trail (the super old-school one and also Oregon Trail 2 I think). And of course DAO was kind of expensive so I was really nervous to spend the money on something I might hate, especially since I had tried Skyrim and not really gotten into it. But then it went on sale for like $5 around Black Friday (but also that low price is what makes me think this was proooooooooobably right before the DA2 release) so I decided I could take the chance for $5. It's either the best $5 I ever spent or definitely in the top 10 of best $5 I've ever spent.

Dema:  Do you have a favorite game in the franchise?

vowelthranduil: Oh DAI definitely. I'm really attached to my Lavellan.

Dema:  Is it the character-driven plot that made these games feel different than games like Skyrim? I do think it's so interesting how you're very multi-fandom but DA is the only game-fandom you've mentioned.

vowelthranduil: Yeah I don't really know what it is either. Some things just really grab me sometimes but I'm never entirely sure why. Like I've always been really into Star Wars but I never got into Star Trek. I enjoy some of the other big sci-fi franchises like Battlestar Galactica but I wouldn't say I'm "in the fandom." Until very recently the big book/movie/TV-show-based fantasy fandom was Tolkien. I've always kind of assumed that was a right-place-right-time kind of situation, i.e. my first real exposure to it was the Peter Jackson movie in 2001 and it just kind of hit me at juuuuuuuuuuuuust the right point in my life to become a part of me or something. What the hell was it about Ewan Mitchell speaking a few lines of a conlang that dragged me out of 13 years of being a casual into joining the HotD/GoT fandom? Damned if I know. So yeah, I'm not entirely sure what it is about Dragon Age that gets me vs. other games that by all accounts feel like they should be similar. Maybe it's that there's something relatable about them for me? I'm not really sure, kind of thinking out loud here as it were. But like in DAO I think it's kind of easy to relate to someone like Alistair, right? Like he's a nice, kind of goofy guy trying to find his way in the world. In DA2 we've got some real, recognizable struggles happening, and sure they're couched in these very fantasy tropes of "magic" and "elves" but a lot of the basic ideas are very real-world. I suppose in DAI there's something very similar to what's going on in LotR, where you've got some poor unsuspecting little guy who just kind of gets chucked into events whether they want to be there or not but then they get to choose over and over to do the right thing, perhaps even at their own expense, and save everyone in the process. It's an entirely thankless task for them and the world is never going to remember them properly (as we find out in Jaws of Hakkon -- rather painfully if you're playing a Lavellan imo) but someone has to do it and it might as well be you. Er, them....You know what I mean.

Dema:  Yeah! And I get what you mean. Timing has such a big impact and it's fascinating how some media clicks and others don't. Alright we're down to the wire here so if you've read the other interviews, I think you know what I'm about to ask 😂Do you have a misleading clickbait title for your bang fic you could share with me?

Vowelthranduil: lol omg

Dema:  Without giving anything major away that would identify your pitch lol

vowelthranduil: So coming up with titles is literally the worst, hardest, and least-favorite part of writing fics for me. I currently have a doc titled "absolutely the most bizarre fic concept I have ever had" and it's literally just...a romance fic with a slightly odd pairing lol

Dema:  Well. You definitely do not HAVE to do this lol

vowelthranduil: So for this one I guess I might go with something like ONE WEIRD TRICK FOR MAKING FRIENDS IN THEDAS

Dema: Perfect! I don't think we have a one weird trick yet! I honestly love "absolutely the most bizarre fic concept I have ever had," that made me laugh. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today!vowelthranduil: Yeah thanks for interviewing me!

[variousqueerthings]

the ask meme for due south cause yeah! and cobra kai

thaaanks -- will do cobra kai separately!

DUE SOUTH! I'VE ONLY HAD YOU FOR (checks) TWO MONTHS? NOW? AND I HAVENT EVEN WATCHED PASSED SEASON TWO BECAUSE I AM TAKING MY SWEET TIME!!!!! BUT OHHHHHH OKOKOKOK

my favorite female character Meg!!! doubly so because I feel she's probably not popular because she's designated The Love Interest. but she's sooo "puts her under a microscope." - she's so very autism flat voice/resting bitch face coded - add to this she canonically has had issues with male superiors in the past and so her trust in men is Lowww means people around her read her as a bitch (and she is, bless her) - her interactions with fraser, especially once they begin to acknowledge there's mutual smthin going on there, are so fucking funny, because neither of them can just have conversations, it's gotta be a mix of powerplay/who-knows-what-this-is/wants to step on/wants to be stepped on nonsense and so often it's in public!!!! - she was introduced as an authority figure and pretty much has remained so all season, so a lot of her scenes aren't only about love-interest stuff, which is often where female characters fail to get fleshed out -- she's doing her own thing, and if anything, liking fraser is very very annoying to her because she's got shit to do dammit!

my favorite male character fraser and rayv come as such a set pair, argh. the things i like about fraser are the things that rayv corresponds to, the whole martyr-and-guy-who-refuses-to-let-him-be-martyr, the need to give everything and the guy who takes some of the strain, but... i do think fraser edges him out Just (not that kind of edging, stop), because in my heart of hearts, i am always drawn the most to characters who want to be used, characters who want to give every piece of themselves, and within that, characters who are very capable -- AND he fulfills the criteria for another one of my favourite character archetypes, the not-so-talked about butterfly-under-the-wheel (as i first heard @gjdraws call it) he's an atypical version of it, because usually the butterfly-under-the-wheel is partially defined by their inability, that is, they exist to create wonderment/beauty/hope in the world around them, but they don't actually have very many skills and would probably die without the far more pragmatic other characters around them. they do sometimes have a skill (see, lito in sense8) and where fraser fits is that while he has many skills, they're often impractical for survival in the specific world he's in (chicago, capitalism, Society) and his alienation with the world, his unique way of looking at it, constantly makes said world dangerous for him in ways ray has to help him with. he also sucks with money (very common in this type), is considered almost unreal in terms of attractiveness, and ofc... suffers a lot. my sweet sweet butterfly-on-the-wheel

my favorite book/season/etc feels unfair between two seasons -- i will say, i called s2 a denouement the first time i watched it and i think now im watching it slower i am far more able to see it on its own merits, without s1 hanging over it if i do a favourite amount of episodes divided by the amount of episodes in the season however and don't count the Pilot [i leave to calculate] think s2 has more of my very favourite episodes, but i think s1 is more evenly placed in quality overall. what does that tell you? idk, the Pilot's the favourite, shall we say?

my favorite episode (if its a tv show) lol um. toss up. (not counting Pilot) in no particular order: some like it red, mask, vault, north, letting go, the deal, a hawk and a handsaw

my favorite cast member going by amount of other things ive watched, it must be PG, but i have tried to mostly stay away from the cast in interviews and the like

my favorite ship relationship generally (romantic, platonic, third thing, you know the deal) is fraser and ray. like i said, they're thematically a pair, that's just what they are. but i have a reaaal need to explore meg and fraser and ray, considering the shenanigans of two people who feel various kinds of unhinged things about one emotionally somewhat oblivious (but very caring) man

a character I’d die defending gosh, this'd probably go to meg too. specifically her relevance! i think her addition in s2 is incredibly welcome and changes up the dynamics in interesting ways and if you take in her actual personality -- that is, look beyond her "just" as a love interest, she's got a whole lot of interesting foundation, fascinating speech patterns and behaviours, and chemistry with fraser (whether one wants that chemistry to be romantic/sexual is obvs subjective, but their scenes together are Good and tell us a whole lot about both of them in my opinion) i'd also defend victoria As A Scheming No-Good Villainous Person, because I think there's no need to soften her in order to make her cool, idk if that is being done, but i would die on the "her being absolutely terrible" hill is great actually (maybe i'm defending her from some of the writing not wanting to commit, despite... literally all the atrocities... she shot dief!!!??? she burnt down his dad's cabin????? she framed him and tried to send his most important person to jail??????? murder????? and you're telling me that despite all of that she wasn't manipulating him by batting her big beautiful eyes and pretending to be the victim! i desire cruel women in my life dammit!)

a character I just can’t sympathize with i mean... looks above. victoria? but i think she shouldn't be sympathetic anyway. she needs to be a bit vile, a bit fucked up, a bit possessive and destructive for my taste oh and fuck frank zuko of course

a character I grew to love 1. irene! i struggled with her on my first watch and now she's in so many of the private discussions i have about this show -- she does sadly fall right into "fridged woman for man angst" but there are more than enough bits in there + carrie anne moss' performance is absolutely stellar, that you can really feel her as a character as well -- someone trapped, searching for freedom, and nostalgic for something that was probably never going to work out even if they had been able to try it and bitter and stronger than people in the story give her credit for (and ohhhh where's that fic you wrote about her and fraser talking!) 2. frannie. i needed until s2, because s1 just... kept making her weird and stalkery and shallow in ways that i had to just, at times, mentally rewrite (her total lack of situational awareness whilst her brother is drowning in front of her only to be put upon when he's been saved and needs "her good blanket" to keep him warm is like. i simply do not see that scene). but after heaven and earth, beginning with that scene between her and ray, she changes! and you can buy someone building a fantasy and refusing to step out of it because of pain until jolted back into reality and it being a very subtly tragic thing, only to bounce back and take it on the chin. that's frannie!

my anti otp um. i guess fraser and allosexuality/alloromance. that man's relationship to these things is not normative -- he may be analysed to enjoy sex or to want romance, but textually he is so fucking leftfield with these things that if those underpinnings don't exist i can't understand him. my man was canonically asking people to describe what love is supposed to feel like as a 30+ year old man, and had had sex like... possibly once in his 20s (and the consensual aspects to it are vague) and then that same woman at one point in his 30s, who first severely emotionally blackmailed/coerced him and later threatened his life and the lives of his friends that and like. whatever happens to him whenever someone (meg, usually) pushes him around/grabs him/orders him about

hon. mention to elaine, who i feel has been slowly given less to do in s2 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

[jemdeserveslove]

Sarah J. Maas is much more comfortable and better at writing multiple pov's books

I wrote this TWO years ago and never posted, but I think it's still valid, so I uptaded a bit. Welcome to my TED talk: if you love or hate Rhys, this is for you!

I was inspired to write this due some discussions I have seen here lately surrounding Rhys and the pregnancy plot in acosf, so I'm gonna throw my two cents here. Honestly, I don't think I have a very formed opinion on this. I don't agree with what Rhys did and I think it was wrong, but I do think it was on his character to do so. When I was reading acosf, I remember thinking how it was such a Rhys thing to try to come up with a solution to the problem before saying it to Feyre, especially considering that it was a life/death situation. NOW, that's not really a good thing, cause Feysand's whole thing is how they treat each other as equals and Rhys's attitude kinda of went agaisnt that.

Of course, there was the whole "let's not stress the pregnant person out, cause that won't do any good to anyone", which, let's be honest, it's true. But, still, I remember thinking how ewww it was that literally EVERYONE knew about that (hell, I think even Helion knew, right?) except for Feyre. And, yk, it's her LIFE, so she should know (obvs).

NOW, here's what I really wanted to talk about. I think one of our biggest issues surrounding this is the lack of reaction from Feyre. I think it's said in the narrative that she and Rhys had a huge argument about it, but that in the end it was cool. And that's really bad. For us, the readers, it was like "some really serious stuff" BOOM "unicorns and rainbows", we didn't get to see any of that

And the thing about this (and correct me if I'm wrong, cause it could be fake news lol) it was stated that they cut out a lot of scenes that sjm wanted to include, I suppose as bonus chapters, and those scenes were especially Feysand scenes. But her editor thought it was better to cut them out, because that would have diverged the attention from Nesta and Cassian (which, sort of did for some people anyway, but whatever).

And I think this is such a big mess and it's some bad writing in a way. I don't think sjm is a bad writer, quite the contrary, I enjoy her writing very much. But the issue with ACOTAR is that we had three books solely with Feyre's pov, so everything we know about all the characters were because of her and we sort of only had her character growth (if you get what I mean). And, now, we're having this trasition with each new book with two new pov's, and it seems that it's not really covering everything that it should cover to tell the story. ACOSF held a attention on Feysand that I understand why they did it, but if they're going to put a lot of weight into them to that specific story, they should've added more scenes with their pov's.

And, for me, everything comes down to sjm being a lot more comfortable in writing stories with multiple pov's. She did that with ToG and CC. To make a personal comparison with her latest books, hosab had a much better structure than acosf and I think the plot flew a lot better. I can't say the same for hofas, but I think the problem there was the unequal weight of the povs (Tharion and Ithan compared to the rest lol). But in ToG is done beautifully! Of course, sometimes we don't care about certain povs, but that's normal.

Anyway, really excited for some acotar 5 news and tbh, looking foward as to how we can slander Rhys again lol (I love him, ok)

[bennydwight]

I stumbled across your Two Boys and Their Cars AU for the first time in a while and I forgot how much I love it! I'm curious. With the little nuggets of info that Steven drops by accident, what would Stan's running theories be about his home life? Would he think he was part of some sort of cult (like because of the gem names), or maybe a crime ring (because of the many people who have tried to kill him)? What would Steven's thoughts be about Stan's past?

Also, Steven has NOT had a standard childhood in the slightest, which probably skews his perceptions of normality a lot. What things/situations do you think would come as a suprise to Steven?

Hello hello! I also forget how much I love that au sometimes, I want to revisit it soon :P

Currently, Stan's running theory on Steven's home life is that his mum dipped when he was young (since Steven never really talks about her without an air of profound sadness/regret), and his dad was pretty absent until Steven starting being 'openly effeminate' (remember, this is like the 60s/70s) and he kicked him out of the house. Stan knows the situation wasn't good, due to all the attempted murder lol, but he has his suspicions that the fantastical stories Steven tells about his extended family and his adventures are just ways of coping and protecting himself from the horrible 'reality' of his life.

Steven doesn't have a whole lot to go on in terms of Stan's life, since Stan is very tight lipped due to it still being a fresh wound. He knows that there was a sibling involved just based off Stan's protective instincts, and he knows there wasn't much nurturing in the family since Stan flinches at true emotion. Other than that, and without much practical experience with typical family structures, Steven finds Stan to be hard to read.

In regards to normality, Steven is at a double disadvantage due to being 1) pretty sheltered, and 2) out of his time period. There are things he's been taught, especially relating to emotions and the expression thereof, that just do not fly in the time of Stan's childhood. He's also very openly himself, which makes people generally uncomfortable. There specific social cues he doesn't pick up on as a small-town kid, and a lot of the surprise on his end comes from people not reacting the way he expects them to. He also finds oddly mundane things to be fascinating, like a long stretch of highway, or a biome he's never seen, or laundromats. One of my favourite scenes in this au (as of now, unwritten) includes them both going to a science museum and checking out all the cool things inside!

And then the angst happens after that lol